Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers

This book attempts to deal with the problem of literary subjectivity in theory and practice. The works of six contemporary women writers — Doris Lessing, Anita Desai, Mahasweta Devi, Buchi Emecheta, Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison — are discussed as potential ways of testing and expanding the theoretical debate. A brief history of subjectivity and subject formation is reviewed in the light of the works of thinkers such as Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Raymond Williams and Stephen Greenblatt, and the work of leading feminists is also seen contributing to the debate substantially.

Radha Chakravarty is currently Reader, Department of English, Gargi College, University of Delhi. Prior to this, she has taught in the postgraduate programme at the University of Delhi and at Miranda House and Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Delhi and has previously published five books in translation — Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Kapalkundala (2006); Rabindranath Tagore’s Farewell Song: Shesher Kabita (2005); Mahasweta Devi’s In the Name of the Mother (2004); Rabindranath Tagore’s Chokher Bali (2003); and Crossings: Stories from Bangladesh and India (2003).