A self-declared antifeminist writer became canonical in women’s studies through her fiction.

Evidence

The South African refugee writer Bessie Head is a classic example of this historical turn. Head was a self-declared antifeminist who in the 1970s saw no resonance in Western feminism for the kinds of issues faced by the village women whom she lived with in Botswana. Yet Head’s fictional explorations of gender dynamics and women’s communal resistance have since turned her into a widely taught writer in women’s studies courses. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 1364

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes ch28’s note that recognition of activist-intellectuals can outrun their own self-identification, as with Maathai and Audre Lorde-style mislabeling. — connects to: Fiction can smuggle rescue narratives into putatively feminist texts — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 226; Colonial women’s-rights rhetoric coexisted with active antifeminism at home.; A narrative intended as masculine can be overtaken by its female characters — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 687

Broader Connections

• Colonial women’s-rights rhetoric coexisted with active antifeminism at home. #exemplifies (0.78)
• Fiction can smuggle rescue narratives into putatively feminist texts #expands (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 226
• A narrative intended as masculine can be overtaken by its female characters #expands (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 687