The Twilight of Secrecy: Disrupting the Subaltern Self

• In Event: Rhetorical Practice and the Politics of Gender

Abstract

Using Stephenie Meyer’s novel Twilight and Taylor Swift’s hit-single “Love Story,” I propose that women are obligated to view themselves in light of a past-future constructs and are disempowered from affective self-expression. Ultimately, critical analyses must focus on what is strategically left unsaid in order to empower individuated, self-constructed identities free of counfounding theoretical lenses that obfuscate the subaltern self.

Author

• Kristyn Meyer, University of Texas, Austin