VOICING THE UNSPEAKABLE: LINGUISTIC DISRUPTIONS AND FEMININE SUBJECTIVITY IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH FICTION

Abstract

This article investigates the nexus between linguistic experimentation and the articulation of feminine subjectivity in contemporary English fiction. In a critical landscape shaped by poststructuralist and feminist theories, language is no longer viewed as a transparent medium but as a contested site where identity, power, and meaning are continually negotiated. Drawing upon the works of Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter, Ali Smith, and Deborah Levy, this study explores how these authors deploy linguistic disruptions—fragmented syntax, silence, ambiguity, and corporeal metaphors—to articulate what Hélène Cixous terms écriture féminine. Through close textual analysis framed by the theoretical insights of Cixous, Kristeva, Butler, and Derrida, the article demonstrates how the breakdown of conventional narrative structures becomes a mode of resistance against logocentric and patriarchal discourses. In destabilising traditional forms of representation, these writers foreground the body, the unspeakable, and the multiplicity of feminine experience. Furthermore, the role of the reader emerges as co-creator of meaning in texts that refuse closure and linear coherence. Ultimately, this article argues that linguistic innovation in these fictions is not merely stylistic but profoundly political and ontological, enabling the emergence of marginalised voices within and beyond the text.