Language is not merely a mode of articulation, it is also a dwelling place (Monolingualism of the Other1), constituting an individual's self.At the same time,language has been a powerful tool for exercising repression (Hendricks and Oliver 5). With power being integrally connected with patriarchy, patriarchal structures haveexercised this manipulation through language in constructing identity or ipseity. Through its"juridico-discursive" (The History of Sexuality Vol. 183) functioning, patriarchy has, through all ages,silenced a woman by imposing its own criterion of feminine fulfillment and pushing her to the position of an object.Hence, when women writers enter the domain of writing, the act in itself becomes a transgression asa woman endeavours to reclaim her voice and her physical beingthrough this literary intervention with the help of language.Yet, this struggle is not uniform as it deals with a multiplicity of force relations that determine and undermine the multivalent forms of resistance which function as indicators of the dichotomy within the notion of a woman writer's sense of the self or ipseity as she engages with language which has been a domain of patriarchal power.Using the Foucaultian notions of censorship and repression in conjunction with the relationship between patriarchy and the feminine mystique as its philosophical underpinnings,this study endeavours to investigate how specifically women poets, across various historical eras and cultures, have tried to cross or negotiate with these unsettling obstacles. Through a close reading of five poems by five women poets belonging to different eras and cultural contexts, this article analyses how their use ofvarious modes of expression become indicators of the multivalent forms of transgressions that they engage in and how these resistances can be valorized through their modes of creative expression.
Key words: Women poets, ipseity, power relations, patriarchy, resistance.
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