Strategies of (In)visibility and resilience: women writers in a digital era

Abstract

Women’s presence in literary history has been particularly conditioned by their place in society and by the limited spheres in which their production was expected to appear (e.g. the sentimental novel, romances or children’s literature). In today’s digital, open and connected society, women continue to face visibility problems in the publishing industry and in the online spaces that grant presence and agency. Their role in cultural creations is still hindered by vertical powers that operate as main censors. This circumstance takes place even in a rhizomatic and decentralized virtual space, where dissident discourses have highlighted it, although without enough discursive power to create a full disruption in those monolithic powers capable of isolating and making invisible whole social and cultural sectors. Forcing women’s invisibility or limiting the scope of their production in cultural spheres results in adverse, when not downright traumatic, situations for these authors. The present study addresses the phenomenon of the neutralization of the female author and the strategies developed by women writing in Spanish and English in order to turn this situation around.