Michael Flashcards
Atwood’s purpose in writing Alias Grace as an “intricate patchwork of texts”?
“rejects the mono-vision of traditional histories and highlights the processes of framing and arranging pieces in particular juxtaposition”
Atwood’s purpose (Truth)
” By being placed side by side, all the texts that make up the novel begin to challenge one another’s authority as well as any universal notion of truth”
Atwood’s purpose (history)
“the novel disrupts certain established conceptions of history” [as linear]
Atwood’s purpose (reclamation)
“contemporary reconceptualization of history as a socially, culturally and textually constructed process”
Atwood’s purpose (Science)
“the advent of scientific history in the second half of the nineteenth century had a notable gender dimensions, in that it led to the disappearance of women from histories”
Atwood’s purpose (legal system)
“the legal system functions in practice as “a storytelling contest”. These competing stories transform the ambiguous data of subjective experience into coherent, moral, persuasive narratives”
Atwood’s purpose (texts)
“undermining any clear distinction between different kinds of texts”
Atwood’s purpose (Memory)
“the novel acknowledges through its offerings of various texts that the real material Grace and murders can never be recuperated”
Atwood’s purpose (the past)
“the past is already semiotized or encoded, that is, already inscribed in discourse and therefore always already interpreted”
Atwood’s purpose (structure)
“a spatialized version of history, consisting of a patchwork of texts that challenge each other at the same time that they create a dynamic web of intricate but never authoritative patterns”
Atwood’s purpose (documents)
” destabilizes the authority of official documents… also recuperates previously unauthorised texts and discourses”
Sociohistorical context (quilts)
“women’s stitched fabrics were often the most eloquent records of their lives and function as texts”
Sociohistorical context (female power)
“although custom limited their lifestyle, these women could exercise control in the domestic arts”
Sociohistorical context (power of quilts)
“actual quilts and the model of patchwork… Threaten the linear… logic on which… western scientific knowledge has tended to ground”
