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A. S. Byatt and Intellectual WomenCultural Histories of the Intellectual: From Patriarchal Myth to Feminist Mythopoeia

A. S. Byatt and Intellectual Women: Cultural Histories of the Intellectual: From Patriarchal Myth... [This chapter situates this book in its historical and cultural context and introduces some key ideas from theory, firstly by considering the myth of the public intellectual as it is constructed within selected theories of the intellectual, dating from the nineteenth century to recent years. I examine the severe gender-blindness of most examples of such theories, and the unwillingness of those that do mention intellectual women to treat them as anything other than anomalous, separate and inferior examples to their male peers. The rest of the chapter then reads a selection of the feminist rejoinders to these theories as efforts to modify them that often do not entirely succeed because they do not address the precise tropes and discourses underpinning patriarchal ideas. Women intellectuals certainly are intellectuals, especially where they advance feminist politics in an exercise of what Edward W. Said called the ‘critical sense’ (1994) fundamental to intellectuals, but still women, unjustly, do not achieve full cultural legitimacy alongside men. Therefore, I contend with the fact that many women intellectuals are also women authors as an indicator of fiction’s place in the re-imagining of cultural histories that recount a single and narrow story, indeed a myth, that has ceased to be useful.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A. S. Byatt and Intellectual WomenCultural Histories of the Intellectual: From Patriarchal Myth to Feminist Mythopoeia

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
ISBN
978-3-031-08670-0
Pages
1 –41
DOI
10.1007/978-3-031-08671-7_1
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[This chapter situates this book in its historical and cultural context and introduces some key ideas from theory, firstly by considering the myth of the public intellectual as it is constructed within selected theories of the intellectual, dating from the nineteenth century to recent years. I examine the severe gender-blindness of most examples of such theories, and the unwillingness of those that do mention intellectual women to treat them as anything other than anomalous, separate and inferior examples to their male peers. The rest of the chapter then reads a selection of the feminist rejoinders to these theories as efforts to modify them that often do not entirely succeed because they do not address the precise tropes and discourses underpinning patriarchal ideas. Women intellectuals certainly are intellectuals, especially where they advance feminist politics in an exercise of what Edward W. Said called the ‘critical sense’ (1994) fundamental to intellectuals, but still women, unjustly, do not achieve full cultural legitimacy alongside men. Therefore, I contend with the fact that many women intellectuals are also women authors as an indicator of fiction’s place in the re-imagining of cultural histories that recount a single and narrow story, indeed a myth, that has ceased to be useful.]

Published: Aug 31, 2022

Keywords: A. S. Byatt; Intellectuals; Women; Feminism; Myth; Mythopoeia

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