Breaking through Dualities: Three Feminist Utopias
Date Issued
2004
Date
2004
Author(s)
Yen, Cheng-Ying
DOI
en-US
Abstract
Breaking through Dualities: Three Feminist Utopias
Abstract
This thesis is an attempt to illuminate the challenges on dualities embodied in three feminist utopias. Utopias, as Thomas More coined the word, have always been both "the good place" and "no place," with a view to laying bare the contrast between the utopia and the author's society. However, such a contrast is not the only duality found in utopias. In the course of trying to seek a remedy for the present evils, the dominant utopian tradition nevertheless unknowingly perpetuates the existing power structure, the most eminent of which is the split between man/woman, and culture/nature. On the other hand, while feminist utopias resort to various strategies to discover the deficiencies inherent in the genre, it is arguable that these strategies, under close examination, can be used to unsettle the original premise.
To illustrate this argument, three feminist utopias written in the 1970’s are scrutinized. In Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground, women’s autonomy from men seems to be fully realized; however, such separatism in fact might further deepen binary oppositions. On the other hand, Ursula K. Le Guin builds in The Left Hand of Darkness a world with its androgynous inhabitants; nevertheless androgyny may still prove inadequate in dismantling dualism. By contrast, Marge Piercy’s Women in the Edge of Time is a more successful example. It promises an egalitarian two-sex society where differences are acknowledged and valued; its world is a fluid one, not static.
Subjects
女性烏托邦
二元對立
feminist utopias
dualities
Type
thesis
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