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Greimas and gender: Mere recipe or real meal?

  • Heidi Bostic EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: August 11, 2017

Abstract

How may Greimassian narrative semiotics join forces with feminist inquiry? This essay begins with an analysis of a cake recipe from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue and A. J. Greimas’s “Basil Soup, or the Construction of an Object of Value.” MacIntyre and Greimas raise the issue of gender in distinct ways. MacIntyre’s dismissive attitude toward traditionally feminine household duties contrasts with Greimas’s careful analysis and his unexpected invocation of a law that had a major impact on French women’s lives. The essay discusses what recipes can tell us about gender identity, and what we can learn about being a woman when narrative theorists invoke recipes. Extending the analysis, the essay points out that there is very little extant research on gender in Greimassian semiotics. Readers often assume that this type of semiotics is concerned only with “paper subjects,” that it offers a “mere recipe,” not a “real meal.” However, many of the latest innovations in Greimassian semiotics harmonize with dominant trends in the study of gender. Although Greimas did not foresee feminist analysis, his theoretical contributions certainly prepared rich ground for such work. The future is bright for additional research at the intersection of Greimas and gender.


I am grateful to audience members at the 2014 “Narrative Matters” conference in Paris for their comments and questions, to Michael Loudermilk for research assistance, to Sarah Walden for expertise on cookbooks and food studies, and especially to Stephen Pluháček and Lenore Wright for their constructive critiques.


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Published Online: 2017-8-11
Published in Print: 2017-11-27

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Préface
  3. Introduction: From A. J. Greimas to romance semiotics today
  4. Part 1: Phenomenology, perception, passion, subjectivity / Phénoménologie, perception, passion, subjectivité
  5. La nature de la signification: idéalité et plurivocité
  6. Greimas and gender: Mere recipe or real meal?
  7. La sémiotique de Greimas: Une épistémologie (discursive) immanente
  8. D’où vient le sens? Remarques sur la sémio-phénoménologie de Greimas
  9. Greimasean phenomenology and beyond: From isotopy to time consciousness
  10. Aesthetics and perception / Esthétique et perception
  11. La saisie esthétique, transformation non narrative de la subjectivité
  12. L’esthétique de Greimas face aux sensibilités valéryennes
  13. Que peut la théorie greimassienne pour une sémiotique de la perception? Enquête et perspectives
  14. La question de l’intensité dans la théorie greimassienne
  15. Passions and the subject / Les passions et le sujet
  16. La place du sujet dans la sémiotique de Greimas
  17. La sémiotique des passions : hier, aujourd’hui, demain
  18. La passion et la figurativité: Les deux tentations greimassiennes face à la profondeur
  19. Stylistique et sémiotique tensive : Convergences et divergences
  20. Enunciation and subjectivity in language / Énonciation et la subjectivité dans les langues
  21. Two concepts of enunciation
  22. L’énonciation, la praxis énonciative et le discours
  23. Texte, textualisation et pratique : Le devenir de l'énonciation
  24. Part 2: Texts, histories, cultures: Theory, methodology, applications / Textes, histoires, cultures : Théorie, méthodologie et applications
  25. Transversalité du sens et relations interartistiques : l’héritage greimassien
  26. Du texte à la pratique : Pour une sémiotique expérimentale
  27. Une autre approche structurale est possible: Sens, expérience, analyse
  28. Greimas et la perspective des objets : Pour une approche sémiotique en mode mineur
  29. Réflexivité et énonciation dans le film The Hours
  30. Enjeux de la notion de genre en sémiotique
  31. Semiotics and the social sciences : Methods, explorations, applications / La sémiotique et les sciences sociales : Méthodes, explorations et applications
  32. La part sémiotique de l’anthropologie des modernes
  33. Hjelmslev, la sémiotique et l’École de Paris
  34. The study of the future, social forecasting, mutations: Semiotic challenges and contributions
  35. Rethinking ideology: Greimas’s semiotics, neomarxism, and cultural anthropology
  36. Narration and the experience of history
  37. Construction des sens en réception : La propagande de la sécurité routière à l’épreuve de ses destinataires
  38. Places and cultures / Contextes et cultures
  39. Semiotics of textscapes and cultures
  40. Tracés territoriaux d’un point de vue sémiotique
  41. Lire De la part de la princesse morte de Kenizé Mourad à la lumière de la sémiotique topologique d’Algirdas Julien Greimas
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