Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2025
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program
Liberal Studies
Advisor
Jean Halley
Subject Categories
Feminist Philosophy | Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority | Nonfiction | Women's Studies
Keywords
feminism, memoir, autoethnography, affect theory, emotion
Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to show the ways women’s emotions or affect, particularly rage and love, are described by women writers in their most intimate stories. I discuss the way emotion has been demeaned, and how feminist scholars have instead viewed the body as a place of insight, reclaiming a knowledge from the senses. In the midst of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, women give voice to their affectual experiences and cultivate the feelings they have so often been denied. Focusing on the particular ways women’s anger manifests in their lives and in their bodies, I zoom in on the rages of girlhood and how women’s relationships are affected by anger as it moves through and between them. I argue that anger is an essential part of women’s individual lives and our collective movement, and that love is always amid that rage both within women and in their relationships. I develop the idea of the erotic, as defined by Audre Lorde, as a guiding light toward collective freedom, with the passions of anger and love as synchronous tools of liberation that can rise up through our voices. This thesis is also partly autoethnographical, recounting some of my own experiences with anger and how I have come to understand them in our sociopolitical context.
Recommended Citation
Siverio, Genesis, "Love Amid the Rage: Feminist Affect in Women's Life-Writing" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6398
Included in
Feminist Philosophy Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Nonfiction Commons, Women's Studies Commons
