“Certainly, female writing exists, but mainly because even writing is powerfully conditioned by the historical-cultural construction that is gender. That said, gender has an increasingly wide mesh, its rules have been relaxed, and it is more and more difficult to reconstruct what has influenced and formed us as writers…”

—  Elena Ferrante

On the concept of “female writing” in “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Certainly, female writing exists, but mainly because even writing is powerfully conditioned by the historical-cultural …" by Elena Ferrante?
Elena Ferrante photo
Elena Ferrante 25
Italian writer 1943

Related quotes

Judith Butler photo

“If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.”

Judith Butler book Gender Trouble

"Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" (1990)

Reinaldo Arenas photo

“The writer has a fundamental responsibility to write well or to write the best he can, because if he doesn’t he’s not a writer. And when a writer writes, he’s always referring to a social and historical context…”

Reinaldo Arenas (1943–1990) Cuban poet/novelist/playwright

Source: On a writer’s responsibility in “The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas” https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-literature-of-uprootedness-an-interview-with-reinaldo-arenas in The New Yorker (2013 Dec 5)

Cornel West photo

“I focus on popular culture because I focus on those areas where black humanity is most powerfully expressed, where black people have been able to articulate their sense of the world in a profound manner. And I see this primarily in popular culture. Why not in highbrow culture? Because the access has been so difficult. Why not in more academic forms? Because academic exclusion has been the rule for so long for large numbers of black people that black culture, for me, becomes a search for where black people have left their imprint and fundamentally made a difference in terms of how certain art forms are understood. This is currently in popular culture. And it has been primarily in music, religion, visual arts and fashion.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

"Cornel West interviewed by bell hooks" in Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (1991)

Julia Stiles photo

“I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn't have actresses then.”

Julia Stiles (1981) American actress

Daily News, April 12, 1999.

“We don't have a clue what it is to be male or female, or if there are intermediate genders. Male and female might be fields which overlap into androgyny or different kinds of sexual desires. But because we live in a Western, patriarchal world, we have very little chance of exploring these gender possibilities.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

As quoted in "Eve Experts" at Real World Multimedia (2004) https://web.archive.org/web/20040318235408/http://www.realworldmultimedia.com/legacy/eve/info/experts/k_acker.html

Teresa de Lauretis photo

“The hero [of a narrative] must be male, regardless of the gender of the text-image, because the obstacle, whatever its personification, is morphologically female…. The hero, the mythical subject, is constructed as human being and as male; he is the active principle of culture, the establisher of distinction, the creator of differences. Female is what is not susceptible to transformation, to life or death; she (it) is an element of plot-space, a topos, a resistance, matrix and matter.”

Teresa de Lauretis (1938) Italian academic

de Lauretis, Teresa (1984). "Desire in Narrative", Alice Doesn't, p.118-119. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253203163.

Adrianne Wadewitz photo

“Wadewitz said to attract more women editors, attitudes within the Wikipedia community need to change. This became clear when she revealed her gender, after writing anonymously for several years.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wholf, Tracy (May 18, 2014). "'Wikipedian' editor took on website’s gender gap" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/wikipedian-editor-took-wikipedias-gender-gap/. PBS NewsHour (PBS). Retrieved May 19, 2014.
About

Thomas Mann photo

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Source: Essays of Three Decades (1942)

Albert Lutuli photo

“It is fair to say that even in present-day conditions, Christian missions have been in the vanguard of initiating social services provided for us. Our progress in this field has been in spite of, and not mainly because of, the government. In this, the church in South Africa, though belatedly, seems to be awakening to a broader mission of the church in its ministry among us. It is beginning to take seriously the words of its Founder who said: "I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly."”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician

In allusion to the words of Jesus Christ (John 10:10).
Africa and Freedom, Nobel Lecture (1961)

Aldous Huxley photo

“Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Related topics