11) Describe the "community of Black women writing" that Hortense Spiller references and discuss why it is named such.

 

Hortense Spillers is a black feminist theorist, and literary and cultural critic, who is especially known for having written several influential interventions in the field of psychoanalysis, race and gender. In her work, she contests psychoanalytical clichés, found in literature from Freud to Fanon, to question white gender and family norms. Her key strategy is to not stop at mere critique, but to suggest models that keep being dismissed or demonised as potentially valuable alternative models. In particular, her 1987 essay 'Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book', on African American gender construction, has become famous for contesting the stereotype of the absent black father that has also been perpetuated in policy literature

feminist literary criticism has sought to examine old texts within literary canon through a new lens. Specific goals of feminist criticism include both the development and discovery female tradition of writing, and rediscovering of old texts, while also interpreting symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view and resisting sexism inherent in the majority of mainstream literature. These goals, along with the intent to analyze women writers and their writings from a female perspective, and increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style were developed by Lisa Tuttle in the 1980s, and have since been adopted by a majority of feminist critics.

As with other aspects of feminist theory, over the course of the second half of twentieth century feminist literary criticism has expanded to include a significantly broader spectrum of identities under the umbrella term of 'feminism'. Third wave feminist theory and beyond has striven to include more identities and aspects of intersectionality, and feminist literary criticism has followed suit. Third wave feminism and feminist literary criticism is concerned more with the intersection of race and other feminist concerns. As a result, the variety and nature of texts examined has grown to include more texts from transnational perspective, while still maintaining its roots in analyzing how male dominated society effects the interpretation and creation of literature. At the same time, new feminist literary critics examine the universal images used by women writers to uncover the unconscious symbolism women have used to describe themselves, their world, female society across time and nationalities to uncover the specifically feminine language in literature.