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Language and Agency in 'Dwellings' single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Language and Agency in 'Dwellings'
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'This article explores ways in which our collaborative work of fiction, ‘Dwellings’ – also published in this issue of Axon – uses Luce Irigaray’s assertion of the importance of speech as a starting point to explore the experiences of young women navigating the perils of gender relations within patriarchy. The work employs poetic prose juxtaposed with truncated prose fragments to create overlapping stories that comment analogically and obliquely on one another. The intersecting narrative strands reveal the limited power accorded to female adolescents and children in a patriarchal society, even as they attempt to subvert and defy patriarchy’s encompassing social and moral structures. The work comments on the importance of language in achieving agency and on ways in which young women may construct or articulate new and alternative realities.'  (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Axon : Creative Explorations Inhabiting Language vol. 9 no. 1 May 2019 16849694 2019 periodical issue

    'When discussing metaphors of inhabitation and dwelling and their relationship to language, Heidegger’s enigmatic claim in his ‘Letter on Humanism’ (1946), comes to mind: 

    'Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home. (239)

    'This statement highlights an important connection between language and being, but also asks questions about the accommodation of utterance and its properties. For Heidegger, the way we occupy language assists us in belonging. Furthermore, in his reflections on thinking, Heidegger argues that poetic language is crucial to ways of being in its ability to illuminate thinking and offer wisdom:

    'I shall mention poetry now only in passing. It is confronted by the same question, and in the same manner, as thinking. But Aristotle's words in the Poetics, although they have scarcely been pondered, are still valid – that poetizing is truer than the exploration of beings. (275)' (Editorial introduction)

         2019
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Last amended 24 Jun 2019 13:05:36
https://axonjournal.com.au/issue-no-1-may-2019/language-and-agency-%E2%80%98dwellings%E2%80%99 Language and Agency in 'Dwellings'small AustLit logo Axon : Creative Explorations
Subjects:
  • Dwellings Cassandra Atherton , Paul Hetherington , 2019 single work short story
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