UPM Institutional Repository

Reorientation of desire in Adrienne Rich's Twenty-One Love Poems


Citation

Hassan, Mohamad Fleih and Talif, Rosli and Jujar Singh, Hardev Kaur (2015) Reorientation of desire in Adrienne Rich's Twenty-One Love Poems. In: 5th Malaysia International Conference on Foreign Languages (MICFL 2015), 2-3 Dec. 2015, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (pp. 311-322).

Abstract

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) is a leading voice within the feminist movement in the United States. The issue of female identity and liberation is a recurrent theme in Rich’s poetry. She proposes a new possibility of freeing women through the reorientation of female desire as a key issue in the restructure of female identity. Therefore, my objective in this study is to deal with the abject representation of female desire in Adrienne Rich’s Twenty-One Love Poems to show her poetics behind the reorientation of female desire. This paper employs Julia Kristeva’s Abjection in analyzing Rich’s Twenty-One Love Poems (1977) to explore her poetic discourse concerning the restructuring of female identity through the reorientation of female desire. Desire is a key determinant of one’s identity; thus the application of Kristeva’s theory of Abjection will give a better understanding of Rich’s resort to the reorientation of female desire as a source of empowerment for women. Rich presents her proposal of female desire as a new strategy of helping women against the oppressive thought of heterosexuality and patriarchy in her poems. Rich in this poem exhibits a transformative understanding of the potentials and powers of the female body and the possibility of utilizing it to face the compulsory heterosexuality and patriarchal thought.


Download File

[img] Text
44-11.pdf
Restricted to Repository staff only

Download (380kB)

Additional Metadata

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Divisions: Faculty of Modern Language and Communication
Keywords: Abjection; Desire; Female identity; Heterosexuality
Depositing User: Nabilah Mustapa
Date Deposited: 18 May 2018 03:45
Last Modified: 18 May 2018 03:45
URI: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/60264
Statistic Details: View Download Statistic

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item