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Arwa Al-Mubaddel AFHEA BA HONS MA (Dist) AMInsLM

Dr Arwa Al-Mubaddel

(she/her)

AFHEA BA HONS MA (Dist) AMInsLM

Teams and roles for Arwa Al-Mubaddel

Research

Thesis

Metamodernism and Metafeminist Subjectivity in British Women's ‘Experimental’ and Innovative Writing from the 1960s-1990s: Oscillation, Historicity, Affect, and Relationality

 

(posted 20 February 2024; updated 02 July 2024)

 

My study is both revisionist and interventionist as it proposes a new literary and cultural genre development and conceptualises a new configuration of female subjectivity in British women’s ‘experimental’ and innovative writing from the 1960s-1990s through a metamodern and metafeminist critical framework. Metamodernism was popularised through cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin Van den Akker’s ‘Notes on Metamodernism’ (2010) as a cultural paradigm of the early 2000s. My thesis, however, posits metamodernism as a cultural variant of the 1960s to 1990s through its early and current theorisations in the chosen texts of this thesis. Metafeminism, on the other hand, was introduced critically in the 1990s by Lori Saint-Martin to refer to the feminist links between Quebecan women’s new writing beyond post-feminist paradigms. I adopt and negotiate metafeminism through a new reading of post-structuralist theories of feminism, as well as radical, intersectional, and decolonial feminisms from the 1960s to 1990s. This thesis therefore draws a link between metamodernism and metafeminism by postulating metafeminism as a metamodern model of feminism. This study is the first to extend critical metafeminism beyond its Canadian context and through a metamodern model.

My thesis further argues that metamodernism developed as early as the second half of the twentieth century as a cultural and literary sensibility alongside an ambivalent feminism that complicates aesthetic and authorial attitudes towards ‘second-wave’ and ‘third-wave’ feminism in selected works by Doris Lessing, Ann Quin, Brigid Brophy, Angela Carter, Jackie Kay, and Bernardine Evaristo. I conceptualise the formal poetics of Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Quin’s Passages (1969), Brophy’s In Transit: An Heroi-Cyclic Novel (1969), Carter’s The Passion of New Eve (1977), Kay’s The Adoption Papers (1991), and Evaristo’s Lara: a Family Like Water (1997) as demonstrated through aesthetic form and representations of female subjectivity in these texts. My thesis further offers a revisionist reading of French feminism, radical and intersectional feminisms, as well as later twentieth-century deconstructive approaches by conceptualising a metamodern metafeminist understanding of oscillation, historicity, affect, and relationality. In doing so, it contests essentialist understandings of the feminine/feminist representations of female subjectivity in British women’s ‘experimental’ and innovative writing from the 1960s to 1990s. 

I position my study within the emerging fields of metamodernism and metafeminism alongside renewed critical interest in the understudied field of British women’s ‘experimental’ and innovative writing. It introduces the first in-depth study of metamodernism and metafeminism, and metamodernism within the context of  the twentieth century, seeking to offer original conceptualisations for both by positing their distinct development through British women’s ‘experimental’ and innovative writing. The interdisciplinary nature of this study further contributes to theories of female/feminine subjectivity, feminist theory, ‘black’ British literature, literary genre studies, twentieth-century critical and cultural critique, experimental writing, and Modern & Contemporary literature and culture.

 

 

Funding sources

Funded by the Saudi Cultural Bureau London/ KSA Ministry of Education 

Biography

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honours and awards

·        Distinction, 2023, British Higher Education Teaching (Advanced HE) Portfolio, Cardiff University Fellowship Program

·        Cardiff Award, 2022, Career and Employability, Cardiff University.

·        Ymlaen Award, 2021, Student Futures Unit, Cardiff University.

·        Distinction Award, 2019, Saudi Cultural Bureau.

·        ‘The English Department Award for Highest Distinction in Literary Studies’, 2013, Rutgers University.

 

Speaking engagements

·        ‘Entangled Energies: Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and Naomi Alderman’s The Power (2016)’, at University of Dundee, Contested & Erased Energy Knowledges Trans-Disciplinary Conference, October 31-November 2, 2024.

·        ‘The Spectral 'black' Atlantic in Bernardine Evaristo's Lara’ (1997;2003), at University of Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh’s Postcolonial Fault-lines: Branching into the Unknown (Cross-Disciplinary Research Conference on Postcolonial and Decolonial Knowledges), Glasgow, UK. October 10-12, 2022.

·        ‘The Radical Feminist Cultural Politics of Emotion in Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve (1977)’, at the University of Chichester’s Angela Carter: A Radical Prescience? Conference, March 5, 2022.

·        ‘Feminist Affect Studies: An Overview’, The Modern& Contemporary State-of-Field Discussions, School of English, Communication, and Philosophy at Cardiff University, November 25th, 2021.

·        ‘The Role of Students in Decolonising Higher Education’, Roundtable Participant, Decolonising Higher Education Forum at Cardiff University, Cardiff University, UK. November 5, 2021.

·        ‘Metamodern New Sincerity and ‘Ironesty’ in Brigid Brophy’s In Transit: A Heroi-cyclic Novel (1969)’, at University of Reading’s Exploring Authenticity in Contemporary Literatures in English Symposium, November 1-2, 2021.

·        ‘Intergenerational Family Identity, (Un)belonging, and Diaspora Consciousness in Bernardine Evaristo’s Lara (1997)’, at the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association’s (CWWA) Contemporary Women Writing Race: Textual Interventions and Intersections Symposium, September 10, 2021.

·        ‘The Relational Self and Intersectionality in Jackie Kay’s The Adoption Papers (1991) and Red Dust Road (2010)’, Jackie Kay: an International Conference, Research Institute for Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University and the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association (CWWA), June 3rd, 2021.

·        ‘Metamodernism and Feminine Subjectivity in British Women’s Writing’, The Modern & Contemporary Flash Paper and Networking Event, School of English, Communication, and Philosophy at Cardiff University, May 20th, 2021.

·        ‘Visual Narrative and Cinematic Vision in Ann Quin’s Passages (1969)’, Cardiff Booktalk, Cardiff University, March 24, 2021.

·        ‘Feminist U(s)topias and Evading Historicity in Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve (1977), School of English, Communication, and Philosophy Work-in-Progress Sessions, Cardiff University, Dec 2, 2020.

·        ‘Radical feminism, Feminist Evolutionary Biology, and the Transgendered Female Body in Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve (1977)’, British Society of Literature and Science Winter Symposium at the University of Sheffield and University of Aberdeen, Nov 23, 2020.

·        “Intersectionality and Inclusivity in Higher Education”, Students’ Leadership Conference 2020, Students’ Guild, Exeter University. October 21st, 2020.

·        “The Matrixial Borderspace in Ann Quin’s Passages”, ENCAPsulate Conference, School of English, Communication, and Philosophy, Cardiff University. June 11, 2020.

·        ‘How Can Intersectionality Inform Our Research and Practice’, International Women’s Day Symposium, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University. March 7 2020.

·        “Metamodern Oscillation in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook’, Doris Lessing Centenary Conference: A Writer’s Quest.  University of East Anglia, Sep 12-14, 2019.

·        “Orientalist Discourse, Colonial Desire, and Subjugation in Representing Bedouin Women in Sarah Jane Higginson’s A Bedouin Girl (1894), “Exploring South Asian and Middle Eastern Gendered Subjectivities”, Assuming Gender Seminar Series, Cardiff University. May 1st 2019.

·        “The Role of Vivienne Haigh Wood Eliot in Shaping T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land”, Thanks for Typing Conference, University of Oxford. March 9 2019.

Supervisors

Ann Heilmann

Ann Heilmann

Professor

Contact Details

Email Al-MubaddelAF@cardiff.ac.uk

Research themes

Specialisms

  • Metamodernism
  • Modern & Contemporary
  • Women & Gender Studies
  • Critical & Cultural Theory
  • 'Experimental' Literature and Life Writing

External profiles