Who is a Subject and what is Her Position? A Response to Merinda Simmons
Issue: Vol 9 No. 1 (2013)
Journal: Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Islamic Studies Biblical Studies
DOI: 10.1558/post.31182
Abstract:
Merinda Simmons's Changing the Subject offers an important and critical reading of a variety of slave and diaspora narratives that focus on Afro-Caribbean women, pushing the boundaries of contemporary scholarship on narrative, gender, and post-colonial theory with insights from migration, diaspora, and identity studies, along with post-structural theory. While Simmons provides a rich re-reading of four historical novels that deal with these topics, her critical analysis does not address the ways in which the subject positions of differently situated bodies, past and present, are constituted by the structural constraints that surround them and must respond in ways that call out for a political position. Moving beyond Simmons's focus on discourse, I ask how scholars might address such concerns without undermining their own theoretical rigour.
Author: Matt K. Sheedy
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