»A Place of Rage«. Women's Fantasies of Violence in Contemporary Crime Literature
Thinking about fictional female violence means inquiring into the fantasies of violence of a group of people who have historically been subjected to a frightening continuity of violence and who are often still kept in deadly ignorance and defencelessness regarding the handling of violence and defence. Following Elsa Dorlin philosophy of self-defence, the political begins in the intimacy of fantasy, in the way violence is imagined – in a place that the poet June Jordan calls »a place of rage«. Contemporary crime fiction can be such a place where resistance is imagined and put to the test. Fantasies which can form imaginary counterweights to the depiction of women as vulnerable and defenceless bodies. These forms of resistance must be interpreted as more than a desire for empowerment; they are a demand for a new reality, a change in the coordinates of the possible and conceivable.
Fiona Wachberger is a doctoral candidate in Literature and Cultural Theory at the University of Tübingen and part of the German-French Graduate School »New Critical Theories and Decentralized Epistemologies« at Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès. After studying Philosophy, Hermeneutics, and Political Science at the University of Zurich and Zeppelin University, she is currently investigating women’s fantasies of violence in contemporary crime literature as forms of resistance and desire in her dissertation project. Since the spring of 2022, she has been teaching Political Philosophy at the Philosophical Seminar of the University of Lucerne, where she also worked as a research assistant. Her research interests focus on the staging and negotiation of violence and gender across various media and the cultural-philosophical exploration and understanding of practices of resistance and self-defense.
»Women's Fantasies of Violence and Self-defence in Contemporary Literature«, in: Simona Feci und Laura Schettini (Hg.), Towards a History of Women's Self-defence against Gender-based Violence. Roma: Viella Libreria Editrice [forthcoming].
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