PARADIGMS AND CULTURAL CONCEPTS

Paradigms and Cultural Concepts

Paradigms and Cultural Concepts

Introduction

As a philosophical movement, feminism has existed since the first consolidation of patriarchy as a social system, but as a literary movement, feminism could be placed in the decade of the sixties compulsive, when different political movements, intellectual, racial and ethnic groups demanded changes society. Then in the late seventies, traditional feminist approaches are emerging in the absence and silence women are exposed and where female passivity and submissiveness are reported in both the social structures in literary texts. These studies were mainly in how male authors described and characterized what they perceived and conceived as what should be "feminine." However, late twentieth century, in the eighties and nineties, there is a shift of perspective in which female identity is displayed in three dimensions, i.e., exploring the subjectivity of writers, literary heroines and readers. This concept of identity is manifested as a strong social presence creates tension and legitimizes the female voice. It is developed and a transition important and necessary for the plurality of voices, female autonomy and affirmation of flexibility and tolerance, all of these characteristics typical of contemporary feminist theory. My study, then, consist in the analysis of the transition phase of feminist criticism. That is, how in the eighties and nineties was visualizes the concept of female identity as a basis for the XXI century feminist criticism. (Hutchison, 2011)

Therefore, it exhibited significant theoretical concepts of the two decades mentioned above, outlining and perceptions of identity and cultural and social validity.

Feminism as an alternative paradigm

The fragmentation of female identity is evident in literary discourse; sufficient to analyze the poetry of Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Bishop or Sylvia Plath, among many others, or the stories of Doris Lessing, Sandra Cisneros, Alice Walker or Isak Dinesen. At present, ...