The Shifts of Power in Gender Discourse: Approaching Bao Ninh's Short Stories and Svetlana Alexievich's Unwomanly Face of War from Feminist Narratology

Cao Kim Lan

doi:10.22801/svn.2022.14.1.133

The Shifts of Power in Gender Discourse: Approaching Bao Ninh's Short Stories and Svetlana Alexievich's Unwomanly Face of War from Feminist Narratology

SUVANNABHUMI
Abbr : SVN
2022, 14(1), pp.133-160
DOI : 10.22801/svn.2022.14.1.133
Publisher : Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies
Research Area : Social Science > Area Studies > Southeast Asia
Received : October 13, 2021
Accepted : January 15, 2022
Published : January 31, 2022

Cao Kim Lan ¹

¹Institute of Literature, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS)

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper examines narratives of women's marginal position in Bao Ninh's Short Stories and Svetlana Alexievich's Unwomanly Face of War from a feminist narratological approach. In analyzing voices of marginalized women, direct and indirect descriptions of women's beauty and pain, and private-public narratives of women's love stories, this paper aims to identify presentations of women's real authority in the text written by a male author, Bao Ninh, and in the one by a female author. The paper argues that juxtaposing these texts reveals an overturn of the traditional conception of sexual and gender differences. Specifically, distinguishing between male/female discourse does not show powerful /nonpowerful language, but recognizes the real authority of each type of discourse based on sexual differences. The writing also illustrates that masculine language becomes powerless and deficient in the women's world; meanwhile, in writing about herself, woman establishes a type of a powerful feminine discourse, which blends both emotional, enthusiastic, and gossipy characteristics of female language and direct, rational, and strong ones of male language. Thus, the feminists' radical segregation on male/female discourses to overturn masculine authority and create a language for women at par with men has been clearly shifted when comparing the two writers' texts based on the juxtapositional model of the comparative literature.

KEYWORDS

Shifts of power, gender discourse, marginalized women, powerful/nonpowerful discourse, Svetlana Alexievich, Bao Ninh

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Scopus Citation Counts (1) This is the result of checking the information with the same ISSN, publication year, volume, and start page between articles in KCI and the SCOPUS journals. (as of 2024-10-01)

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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[book] Yengoyan, Aram / 2006 / Modes of Comparison: Theory and Practice / University of Michigan Press

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SUVANNABHUMI 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.03

The Shifts of Power in Gender Discourse: Approaching Bao Ninh's Short Stories and Svetlana Alexievich's Unwomanly Face of War from Feminist Narratology

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Citation status

Scopus Citation Counts (1) This is the result of checking the information with the same ISSN, publication year, volume, and start page between articles in KCI and the SCOPUS journals. (as of 2024-10-01)

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

SUVANNABHUMI 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.03

The Shifts of Power in Gender Discourse: Approaching Bao Ninh's Short Stories and Svetlana Alexievich's Unwomanly Face of War from Feminist Narratology

ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS

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Scopus Citation Counts (1) This is the result of checking the information with the same ISSN, publication year, volume, and start page between articles in KCI and the SCOPUS journals. (as of 2024-10-01)

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