Two ways of looking at the father: The Father de Sharon Olds y Fun Home d’Alison Bechdel

• Autores: Sara Villamarín Freire
• Localización: 452ºF: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada, ISSN-e 2013-3294, Nº. 27, 2022 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Cuerpo, visión y textualidad: poéticas y políticas de la mirada en la contemporaneidad), págs. 165-183
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1344/452f.2022.27.9
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Dues formes de mirar el pare: The Father de Sharon Olds y Fun Home d’Alison Bechdel
  • Dos Maneras de Mirar al Padre: The Father de Sharon Olds y Fun Home d’Alison Bechdel
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

    Este artículo explora una serie de dispositivos visuales-textuales utilizados en la representación de figuras paternas en el poemario The Father (Sharon Olds, 1992) y la memoria gráfica Fun Home (Alison Bechdel, 2006). Argumento que la literatura puede contribuir a deshacer la fusión de la paternidad y el patriarcado al retratar a los padres como individuos complejos, falibles y, sobre todo, reales, en oposición al principio abstracto incorpóreo que ha prevalecido en las culturas occidentales. Sostendré que las cualidades subyacentes de la ficción dominante pueden subvertirse a través de una serie de mecanismos formales relacionados con el campo visual que buscan fomentar la participación del lector. Al hacerlo, tanto The Father como FunHome brindan alternativas a las representaciones tradicionales de la figura paterna.

  • English

    This article explores a series of visual-textual devices used in the representation of father figures in the poetry collection The Father (Sharon Olds, 1992) and the graphic memoir Fun Home(Alison Bechdel, 2006). I argue that literature can contribute to undo the conflation of paternity and patriarchy by portraying fathers as complex, fallible, and above all real individuals, as opposed to the disembodied abstract principle that has been prevalent in Western cultures. I will contend that the subsuming qualities of the dominant fiction can be subverted via a series of formal mechanisms related to the visual field that seek to foster reader engagement. In doing so, both The Father and Fun Home provide alternatives to traditional representations of the father figure.

  • català

    Aquest article explora una sèrie de dispositius visuals-textuals utilitzats en la representació de figures paternes en el poemari The Father (Sharon Olds, 1992) i la novel·la gràfica Fun Home(Alison Bechdel, 2006). Exposo que la literatura pot contribuir a desfer la fusió de paternitat i patriarcat quan es retrata als pares com a individus complexos, fal·libles i, sobretot, reals, en oposició al principi abstracte incorpori que ha predominat en les cultures occidentals. Sostindré que les qualitats subjacents de la ficció dominant poden subvertir-se a través d’una sèrie de mecanismes formals relacionats amb el camp visual que busquen fomentar la participació del lector. En fer-ho, tant The Father com Fun Home brinden alternatives a les representacions tradicionals de la figura paterna.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • ASSMANN, A. (2017): “The Empathetic Listener and the Ethics of Storytelling” in Meretoja, H. and C. Davis (eds.), Storytelling and Ethics:...
  • BECHDEL, A. (2006): Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Mariner Books.
  • CHUTE, H. (2006): “An Interview with Alison Bechdel.” Modern Fiction Studies, 52(4), 1004–13. DOI:10.1353/mfs.2007.0003.
  • CHUTE, H. (2011): “Comics Form and Narrating Lives.” Profession, 107–17. www.jstor.org/stable/41714112.
  • CHUTE, H. (2017): Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere, HarperCollins Publishers.
  • CVETKOVICH, A. (2008): “Drawing the Archive in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, 36(1-2), 111–28. DOI:10.1353/ wsq.0.0037.
  • EVELETH, K. W. (2015): “‘A Vast “Network of Transversals’: Labyrinthine Aesthetics in Fun Home.” South Central Review, 32(3), 88–109. www.jstor.org/stable/...
  • FALUDI, S. (2006): Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Crown.
  • FOX, M. (2019): “Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: Queer Futurity and the Metamodernist Memoir.” Modern Fiction Studies, 65(3), 511–37. DOI: 10.1353/mfs....
  • HAMAD, H. (2014): Postfeminism and Paternity in Contemporary U.S. Film: Framing Fatherhood, Routledge.
  • KEEFE, A. (2015): “‘The Day They Tied Me Up’: Serial Return, Punishment, and the Phenomenology of Memory in the Work of Sharon Olds.” Contemporary...
  • KEITH, T. (2017): Masculinities in Contemporary American Culture: An Intersectional Approach to the Complexities and Challenges of Male Identity....
  • KIMMEL, M. (2017): Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. 2nd ed., Nation Books.
  • KRISTEVA, J. (2002): The Portable Kristeva, Oliver, K. (ed.), Columbia University Press.
  • LAPLANCHE, J. and PONTALIS, J-B. (2006): The Language of Psycho-Analysis, Karnak Books.
  • LEJEUNE, P. (1994): El pacto autobiográfico y otros estudios, Megazul-Endymion.
  • MARKS, L. (2000): The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, Duke University Press.
  • MCBEAN, S. (2013): “Seeing in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” Camera Obscura, 28(3), 103–23. DOI:10.1215/02705346-2352167.
  • MCCLOUD, S. (2001): Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, William Morrow.
  • MCCULLOUGH, K. (2018): “‘The Complexity of Loss Itself’: The Comics Form and Fun Home’s Queer Reparative Temporality.” American Literature,...
  • MESSNER, M. A. (1997): Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements. Altamira Press.
  • OLDS, S. (2019): The Father, Alfred A. Knopf.
  • OLIVER, K. (1997): Family Values: Subjects Between Nature and Culture. Routledge.
  • OLIVER, K. (1998): Subjectivity without Subjects. From Abject Fathers to Desiring Mothers. Rowman and Littlefield.
  • PADVA, G. and BUCHWEITZ, N. (2014): “The Phallic: ‘An Object of Terror and Delight’” in Padva, G. and N. Buchweitz (eds.),Sensational Pleasures...
  • PEARL, M. (2008): “Graphic Language.” Prose Studies, 30(3), 286–304. DOI:10.1080/01440350802704853.
  • PEDRI, N. (2015): “What’s the Matter of Seeing in Graphic Memoir?” South Central Review, 32(3), 8–29. DOI: 10.1353/SCR.2015.0036.
  • RECALCATI, M. (2014): El complejo de Telémaco: padres e hijos tras el ocaso del progenitor, Gumpert, C. (trans.), Anagrama.
  • ROHY, V. (2010): “In the Queer Archive: Fun Home.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(3), 341–61. DOI:10.1215/10642684-2009-034.
  • SILVERMAN, K. (1992): Male Subjectivity at the Margins. Routledge.
  • SONTAG, S. (1978): Illness as Metaphor, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • TANNER, L. (2006): Lost Bodies. Inhabiting the Borders of Life and Death, Cornell University Press.
  • WATSON, J. (2008): “Autographic Disclosures and Genealogies of Desire in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” Biography, 31(1), 30–58. www.jstor.org/...
  • WARHOL, R. (2011): “The Space Between: A Narrative Approach to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” College Literature, 38(3), 1–20. DOI: 10.1353/lit.2011.0025.
  • WHITLOCK, G. (2006): “Autographics: The Seeing ‘I’ of the Comics.” Modern Fiction Studies, 52(4), 965–79. DOI:10.1353/mfs.2007.0013.
  • YAEGER, P. (1989): “The Father’s Breasts” in Yaeger, P. and B. Kowaleski-Wallace (eds.), Refiguring the Father: New Feminist Readings of Patriarchy,...
  • YAEGER, P. and KOWALESKI-WALLACE, B. (1989): “Introduction.” In Yaeger, P. and B. Kowaleski-Wallace (eds.), Refiguring the Father: New Feminist...
  • ZAKIN, E. (2011): “Psychoanalytic Feminism,” in Zalta, E. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, , [16/12/2020].
  • SHOSTAK, D. (2020): Fictive Fathers in the Contemporary American Novel, Bloomsbury.