Bodies of Words: Feminism and Fictocriticism - explanation and demonstration

Abstract

There’s a strange forgetfulness around the term fictocriticism as it’s used in Australia now - for fictocriticism made its appearance here in the writing (mostly non-academic) of women very well aware of those strange, exciting and provocative texts emanating first of all from France and then later from Canada from the late seventies onward - most influential were Helene Cixous’ manifesto ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ and her polemical essay ‘Castration or Decapitation’, Luce Irigaray’s first two books and in particular the collection of essays This Sex Which Is Not One. In Australia, an awareness of this writing was manifest soon after in the work of a number of writers in Frictions, published by Sybylla Press in 1982 & edited by myself & Alison Tilson - one of the first collections of Australian women’s (fiction) writing edited from a feminist perspective (and still trying to figure out exactly what that meant). I would cite in this context the contributions of Sneja Gunew, Wendy Morgan, Kerryn Goldsworthy & myself most obviously - but also, less obviously, Anna Couani & Kathleen Mary Fallon. Meaghan Morris’ very critical reading of ecriture feminine which appeared in Hecate in 1978 was crucial, and the influence of Marion Campbell’s first novel, Lines of Flight (1985) is incalculable. Much of this writing blends essay and fiction, shifts suddenly between fiction and poetry, makes use of indeterminate forms like the prose poem, and also of lists, fables, cliches - all manner of literary detritus.