Ms Stephanie Dotto

Research project: Haunted Bodies: Resistance and Defamiliarisation in 21st Century Feminist Fabulist Fiction

Abstract

Despite fabulism abounding in the periphery of academia, there is little critical discussion as to its relevance and definition as a literary mode. Rather, it is part of a liminal discourse subsisting through blogs, podcasts, university classrooms and conferences, most likely due to its literary in-betweenness and use of the fantastic to ‘make physical what is otherwise ephemeral or ineffable' (Haggard 2018). Through this research, I will establish a critical definition of fabulism and determine what makes it such a productive mode for articulating an othered experience, particularly for women writing in the 21st century during a time of renewed antagonism against female bodies and resurrected questions of consent. This will be achieved by examining how fabulism confronts ongoing questions of biological identity and bodily autonomy and defamiliarises established genre-specific tropes to make the familiar unfamiliar.

Situated within the context of a wide international selection of fabulist authors, I hone in on the work of five female writers from varying sexual orientations, cultures and geographies who are using the fabulist mode to address the above issues: Carmen Maria Machado, Kirsty Logan, Caribbean Fragoza, Mariana Enriquez and Kelly Link. By applying a feminist interpretation of Viktor Shklovksy's defamiliarisation and Darko Suvin's theory of cognitive estrangement—building on Marleen Barr's definition of feminist fabulation as ‘an umbrella term for describing overlapping genres' (Barr 145) by contemporary feminist writers who are ‘[transforming] fiction to suit themselves' (Barr xv)—I will substantiate fabulism as a productive and performative literary mode that awakens us from automated perceptions and ‘[captures] the inherent strangeness' (Haggard 2018) of the female experience. Ultimately, the originality of my work lies in my intention to establish fabulism as an effectual response to a growing social and political denial over a woman's bodily autonomy, evidencing the ways in which female bodies are both contested and contestable.