Eng. 609 – Week 9 Blog 1

Anne Donadey and Francoise Lionnet, in “Feminisms, Genders, Sexualities” (2005), utilize Aristotle’s topoi of authorities to bring the topics to bear. The authorities are people who have had to deal with the brunt of being classed as secondary citizens in a male, white, hegemonic system and society. Therefore, the authorities I am speaking of in regard to this article are largely women and homosexuals. The authors’ use stories of women such as Gloria Anzaldua who have fought the “good ole boy” system to better their personal and political fortunes. Interestingly, the authority part comes into play as memoir writing by academics has taken foot. Donadey notes, “The current popularity of memoir writing may have been triggered by the need to ‘write with feeling’ (Kaplan 2319) in an academic world that still tends to reject the possible contribution of emotions to knowledge. Thankfully, these women have broken across borders to tell their stories, and they are authorities in climbing over and breaking down walls. A nice consequence of their work is the author’s observation that the “well-established” division between literary criticism and creative writing in English departments is becoming more porous” (230).