Resistant Readings project
The Resistant Readings (Lectures resistents ) project aims to disseminate a repertoire of teaching and research materials focused on literary works that depict gender-based violence. It is aimed at the academic community, agents involved in promoting reading, and the general public. Its proposed interpretive approaches center on a gender perspective, drawing on the principles of reading against the grain of a text’s ideology, as postulated by Judith Fetterley in The Resistant Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (1978). Previously, the team applied these principles in Literature and Male Violence. A Guide for Academic Research (T. Iribarren et al., 2023), integrating both the conceptualization of violence and an intersectional perspective.
The Resistant Readings project is founded on the premise that literature—through its complex interweaving of characters, geographies, and temporalities—generates narratives that reproduce and recreate ideological assumptions. Consequently, plots, perspectives, and other narrative, poetic, and dramatic strategies foster specific views on violence. Literary texts, therefore, have the capacity to both reinforce hegemonic discourses on male violence and generate innovative imaginaries regarding the structures that enable it.
Reading from this perspective brings to light the resistance that may emerge within the text through subversive characters who defy dominant male dictates, thereby prefiguring post-patriarchal and post-violent scenarios. Activating these readings thus allows us to question the implicit portrayals of violence while simultaneously envisioning new scenarios for a restorative, egalitarian, and more just coexistence in the real world.
Resistant Readings is a project by the GRESOL research group.
OBJECTIVES
- Promote reading from a gender perspective, with a particular focus on the literary representation of gender-based violence.
- Provide critical interpretation tools and counter-narrative models for revising the literary canon.
- Enhance the visibility of works by women writers.
- Propose interdisciplinary approaches to narratives of violence.
- Establish connections between non-hegemonic literary spaces.
- Contribute to education that fosters equality and respect for women and girls.
- Establish a virtuous cycle among research, teaching, and knowledge transfer.
- Link literary reading with various forms of activism (feminism, human rights advocacy, environmentalism, and the defense of minoritized languages and literatures).
Resistant Readings has been supported by:
A portal of academic resources for a critical approach to literature depicting male violence. Reference: 2023 INDOV 00004. PI: T. Iribarren. Funding: Consell Interuniversitari de Catalunya. Dates: 12/04/2024 – 12/10/2025.
NAME, Narratives at the Margins of Europe. Reference: PID2023-152619NB-I00. PI: Neus Rotger. Funding: MICIU / AEI / 10.13039 / 501100011033 / FEDER, EU.
