Guest lecture: NARRATING THE FATHER’S BODY
Guest lecture by SELMA postdoc Sara Villamarin Freire
“Narrating the Father’s Body: Storytelling, Paternal Asomia and the Father-Child Bond”
16th October, 16-17
Arcanum, room 355
Sara Villamarín-Freire’s doctoral dissertation, Against Dominant Fiction: Seeking Alternatives to Hegemonic Fatherhood in Contemporary American Literature, interrogated the role of literature in the configuration of alternative models of fatherhood—specifically, literary representations of paternity shaped like acts of reciprocal storytelling between fathers and their children. In sum, it aimed to test whether it is possible to rethink the paternal figure outside the limits of hegemonic masculinity through the use of narrative imagination. Departing from the assumption that identity is constructed through dialogic practices—including individual interaction but also interaction with narratives understood as cultural models of interpretation—she studied representations of hegemonic fatherhood, defined as a set of discursive and interpretative practices linked to a changing social-historical context that can be traced in specific cultural manifestations.
Her current project, “Narrating the Father’s Body: Storytelling, Paternal Asomia and the Father-Child Bond”, seeks to continue this established line of research. It rests on the assumption that literary manifestations can contribute to undoing the association between fatherhood and patriarchy through the representation of individual fathers as fallible, vulnerable, and embodied figures, anchored in materiality; yet literary manifestations can likewise contribute to reinforcing existing cultural narratives. Fathers whose bodies become visible via their representation as fallible or vulnerable individuals defy others who adhere to hegemonic masculinity/paternity, which is traditionally associated with asomia or bodilessness. Incorporating cues from narrative hermeneutics, ethics, and autobiographical studies, she seeks to further investigate alternatives to hegemonic fatherhood by focusing on the materiality and form of the paternal body and the father-child bond, with a focus on contemporary Anglophone literature.