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Title Discursive Reconfiguration of Nature and Women in Native American and Afro-American Ecriture Feminine

Author(s) Mr. Mumtaz Ahmad

Abstract ABSTRACT Thesis Title: Discursive Reconfiguration of Nature and Women in Native American and Afro- American Ecriture Feminine The dissertation explores Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison‘s fiction to analyze the discursive reconfiguration of the Native American and Afro -American women and their symbiotic relationship with nature. The study asserts that these two novelists, through their distinctive Ecriture Feminine mode of representation, have subverted negative, stereotypical misrepresentations of Native and Afro- American women in the mainstream pahllogocentric discourses by discursively reconfiguring their differential identities. Opposed to Euro- American anthropocentric world view that dominates women and nature, they have delineated bio-centric relationship between Native American and Afro- American women and nature to emphasize their environmental consciousness. An eclectic theoretical framework combining theoretical insights from Poststructrual French Feminism, Black Feminism and Ecocfeminism has been developed to analyze the texts from Ecriture Feminine and Ecocfeminist perspectives. Four primary texts - Tracks and Love Medicine by Erdrich and Beloved and Paradise by Morrison, have been selected to analyze the use of discursive techniques/ stylistic features/ and modes of narration by these novelists. Discourse Analysis Method derived from Foucault‘s critical insights into discourse theory has been employed to illuminate the meanings contained in the data. It is argued that their fiction makes a shift away from the universalizing identity politics of the dominant western culture by constructing nonlinear narration celebrated by Ecriture Feminine aesthetics which comprises of interconnected stories rather than a rational, linear plot valorized by western culture. The study concludes that Erdrich and Morrison‘s fiction, undermining the masculine / pahllogocentric structures, identity politics, singularity of meaning and the artificial imposition of coherence that defines masculine logic, stresses the fluid relation between subject and the discourse by drawing on the energy of the experimental mixing of orality and community. The study asserts that Erdrich and Morrison‘s Ecriture Feminine fiction has made substantial contribution to extricate women and nature from the oppressive patriarchal/ phallogocentric structures v by highlighting the concerns about environmental racism. They have broadened the scope of identitarian politics by dissolving the cultural boundaries, re- imagining the histories, amalgamating white and non- white narrative techniques and responding to Poststructrual French Feminism‘s call for ―new poetics‖.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2021-09-13

Subject English Literature

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