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LesterLaTidaMichelle1999 cd.pdf (2.44 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Writing "Openly" an Impossibility: Juxtaposing Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, and Patricia J. Williams' Autotheoretics

Lester, LaTida Michelle
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392311054

Abstract Details

1999, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Womens Studies.
Understanding that inherent within women's autobiography is an uneasy relationship between author and audience, this project reconsiders this dilemma utilizing Kenneth Burke's rhetorical concepts: identification, separation, consubstantiality and terministic screens. The use of Burke is meant to extend current limitations in feminist thought insufficient to simultaneously account for both the constraints of the formal model and mutations of the traditional form. Examining autobiographical/theoretical hybrid texts—bell hooks' Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider, and Patricia J. Williams' The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor—the project operates within mutations to the traditional autobiographical form to show how an awareness of an audience as judge can persist within texts working to dismantle this relationship. Focusing on particular components of Burke's contemporary rhetoric with each primary text I initiate a movement toward considering the African American woman public intellectual's ability to carve out a narrative space to represent herself and situate the concerns of her community. Maintaining an awareness of the limits of autobiography, the autobiographical form nonetheless remains the most viable method of replicating an identity that lies outside conceptions of universality—vested in widening the universal space, while challenging the idea of a universal.
Martha Wharton (Advisor)
Mary Fonow (Committee Member)
Valerie Lee (Advisor)
Jacqueline Jones Royster (Committee Member)
Sally Kitch (Committee Member)
74 p.
Language Arts; Womens Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Lester, L. M. (1999). Writing "Openly" an Impossibility: Juxtaposing Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, and Patricia J. Williams' Autotheoretics [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392311054

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Lester, LaTida. Writing "Openly" an Impossibility: Juxtaposing Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, and Patricia J. Williams' Autotheoretics. 1999. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392311054.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Lester, LaTida. "Writing "Openly" an Impossibility: Juxtaposing Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, and Patricia J. Williams' Autotheoretics." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 1999. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392311054

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1392311054
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© 1999, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.