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Dissertation Information for Allison B. Kimmich

NAME:
- Allison B. Kimmich

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Women's Studies

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1997)

ADVISORS:
- Martine Watson Brownley

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Pamela M. Hall
- Julie Abraham

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Borders, Bodies, and Secrets: Discovering the Subject in Contemporary American Autobiographies

Abstract: "Borders, Bodies, and Secrets: Discovering the Subject in Contemporary American Autobiographies" broadens the scope of much recent feminist autobiography criticism, which typically claims that gender--particularly femininity--determines writing style. Building on the work of frminist theorists like Patricia Hill Collins and Elizabeth Spelman, which had not previously influenced feminist autobiography criticism to a great degree, I argue that identity categories like race, gender, and sexuality must be understood in relation to one another.

Specifically, this study considers texts by a group of critically acclaimed writers: Annie Dillard, Maxine Hong Kingtson, Audre Lorde, and Paul Monette. Though these authors comprise a diverse group in terms of their themselves as autobiographical subjects. Indeed, I contend that the four writers create subjectivities through a process Teresa de Lauretis names as dis-identification, defining themselves against and beyond normative identity categories. I argue that the writers' skepticism about the descriptive power of terms such as "woman" or "American" also leads them to question categorical thinking more broadly.

The study proceeds thematically. The first chapter looks to the autobiographies as social histories which document both the writers' childhoods during the 1950s and the time periods in which they produced and published their works. Chapter two examines the writers' representations of place as a social construct, one that reflects power relations at work in the dominant culture. By variously crossing physical boundaries, then, the writers challenge social norms.

The third chapter focuses on another kind of transgression: telling family secrets. Much as physical spaces mirror social relations, secrecy similarly arises from cultural prohibitions. The writers reveal family secrets to take charge of information which had been somehow regarded as shameful, recasting the secrets as crucial elements in their self-definitions. Finally, chapter four considers the role that the body plays in each autobiography. I build on the psychoanalytic concept of abjection, which is typically understood as a threat to subject formation, and argue that the four autobiographers embrace their physiologically and socially diseased bodies to arrive at new models of subjectivity.

MPACT Scores for Allison B. Kimmich

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-02-02 20:19:43

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