Voice of the Voiceless in Susan Faludi's Backlash: Undeclared War Against American Women

Abstract

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991) by Susan Faludi has been analyzed from the subaltern or voice of the voiceless perspective that powerfully subverts the elitist ideology. The memoir recollects 1980s American women movement with resistance and self representation by generating issue to change their fate and raising their voice against the marginalization which is rewritten in a form of report, interview and victim's experiences. This study aims to deconstruct the conventional women's experience and binaries centrally collected in Faludi's memoir. Furthermore, analyzing Faludi's memoir, this paper shows that the subaltern is not the subaltern inborn, the very term ‘subaltern’ is a social construction. It shows that sublaterns have the energy and capacity to change their fate, their condition and position by their own efforts. They can raise their voice against all sorts of marginalization. In this way, this paper explores the voice of the voiceless through the memoir of Falaudi that she seeks to explore what is unexplored.