In order to present the feminist perspective in your writing, you must teach your reader to reinterpret (eurocentric ? male?) cultural paradigms.
The writers of post-colonial third world nations strive to break from the imperialist-taught interpretations of the classics in order to write their own people’s reality. Similarly, the feminist writer must break away from canonically taught male pedagological interpretations of life.
Actual relevance of life from a feminist perspective can only be projected when your reader is able to interpret your writing outside of the canonical male pedagological parameters.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in his article “A Globalectical Imagination,” applies this concept for developing a relevant reading of the European (imperial) classics in postcolonial cultures:
“Today, a Fanonian reading of Shakespeare would yield contemporary relevance even for students outside of the imperial perimeters.”
Thiong’o then notes how through an imperial interpretation “Macbeth’s bloody dagger” could be explained as “the result of blind ambition, a fatal character flaw.”
Freeing the reader’s interpretation from that imperial paradigm, allows the reader to see the bloody dagger as reflecting how “imperial nations had taken power by the sword, maintained it by the sword and the colonized could only grab it back by the sword” he writes.
Thiaong’o continues, “It’s not just Shakespeare, Goethe or Balzac. A certain reading of postcolonial literature can equally straitjacket the ethical and aesthetic vision (I would add, “of your reader as she interprets the postcolonial writer’s work.”)
Similarly, a reader of the feminist writer’s work can equally be “straitjacketed” by interpreting what she reads in canonical eurocentric paradigms and miss the concepts the writer is presenting. To avoid this happening, you must train your reader to reinterpret outside of that straitjacket.
