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"La rebelión de las niñas: cuerpos, poder y subjetividad en la representación de niñas y adolescentes en escritoras del Caribe hispano" explores the acquisition of women's subjectivity by analyzing images and voices of young girls and adolescents. This research aims at filling a void in the field of Caribbean Studies by establishing a dialogue between women writers from the continental Caribbean whose works have received scarce critical attention (Fanny Buitrago and Marvel Moreno from Colombia, and Antonia Palacios from Venezuela), and better known writers from the islands (Rosario Ferré, Magali García Ramis and Mayra Santos-Febres from Puerto Rico, and Julia Álvarez from the Dominican Republic). Girls' bodies are interpreted both as the site of interplay among the psychological, sexual, social and cultural forces that shape female subjectivity, as well as the means of the girls' "rebellions" against the patriarchal norm. Narratives of formation portray how subjectivity emerges from the tension between the "lived body" and the objectified body, socially produced through the inscription of its materiality by relations and techniques of power. The role that girls and images of girlhood play in sustaining and challenging "womanhood" is also emphasized by reading women's narratives against the background of cultural beliefs about girlhood. In addition, these narratives depict the social and political transformations experienced by women from the fifties to the new millennium. The persistence of girls' susceptibility to the control and appropriation of their bodies, demonstrates one of the main hypothesis of this work: that becoming a "woman" under the patriarchal norm requires the inner dissociation of the body from the self. Therefore, attaining "a body of their own" is one of the primary challenges in the women's pursuit of autonomous subjectivities.My theoretical approach draws on feminist theories of embodiment by Elizabeth Gross and Judith Butler among others, as well as on philosophers like Luce Irigaray, Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur. It is also nourished by the theories and research clustered in the field of Girls' Studies, especially works on psychoanalysis, sociology, media and cultural studies of theorists such as Emilce Dio Bleichmar, Valerie Walkerdine and Catherine Driscoll. |
