Abstract
Sexist and overly sexualized images of women abound in Baret Yacoubian’s novel "Avalo." The novel’s disturbing representation of women, however, critiques and queerly counters the prejudiced heteronormative island setting these representations are set against. Yacoubian’s protagonist viciously repeats discriminatory traits of his community in his own derogatory and misogynistic descriptions of Cypriots to shock them into compassion and recuperative change. The protagonist presents for instance a mother’s mistreatment within her dysfunctional home and proceeds to attack her passivity by provocatively referring to her as “the swallower” throughout the novel (Yacoubian 9). He mimes the misogynism of her social milieu in order to disidentify with it, a strategy, which is analogous to theorist José Esteban Muñoz’s queer disidentification that aims to unsettle dominant oppressive ideologies from within (4). Yacoubian’s literary response to the community’s prejudice agrees also with psychoanalysts Dori Laub and Nanette C. Auerhahn’s understanding of overcoming massive psychic trauma (297). Moreover, the novel’s disidentification with prejudiced Cypriot sociality rearticulates the traumatic metanarrative of the Turkish invasion, which exasperated separatist and prejudiced sentiments in the Cypriot community. It unsettles prejudiced, heteronormative, and national social connections in an attempt to counter national trauma.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Revisiting Sexualities in the 21st Century |
Editors | Constantinos Phellas |
Place of Publication | Newcastle upon Tyne |
Publisher | Cambridge Scholars |
Chapter | 11 |
Pages | 174-189 |
Number of pages | 16 |
ISBN (Print) | 1-4438-7436-1 |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- Misogynism
- Misogyny
- Disidentification
- Women
- Gender
- Queer
- Trauma
- Recovery