Her characters rebel against intersecting systems of oppression and, as a result, disrupt normative ideologies, especially those concerning gender. Piercy’s novels such as Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and He, She and It (1991) highlight the socially constructed and subjugating natures of gender roles, making them essential works at the intersection of masculinity studies and contemporary American science fiction. Her critiques of traditional masculinities and femininities exemplify Brian Attebery’s description of a radical change in science fiction, making it “virtually impossible for an SF writer to take gender for granted any more” (Attebery 6).
Le Guin, James Tiptree, Jr., and others as a central voice in 1970s feminist science fiction, Marge Piercy is a feminist poet, novelist, and recipient of the Arthur C. This analysis examines the ways feminist speculative authors such as Piercy, reversing the process Butler highlights, utilize their fiction to challenge naturalized, patriarchal conceptions of gender.ĢOften cited alongside Joanna Russ, Ursula K. In her landmark text, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Judith Butler sets out “to trace the way in which gender fables establish and circulate the misnomer of natural facts” (xxxiv). In examining the fictional presentation of traditional and alternative masculinities in an influential feminist utopian novel, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), this research locates new insights into the possibility of critiquing and transforming manhood. This project continues the work of scholars mining “theatre, film (narrative and documentary), literature, music, advertising, internet content, television, photography, politics, and current events-to posit questions about the processes of gender creation,” but applies such an approach specifically to American science fiction (Shaw and Watson 1). Applying a similar approach at the intersection of masculinity studies and speculative fiction, this analysis utilizes contemporary American feminist utopias as a site for mining new masculinities. These efforts frequently intersect with literary scholarship since they entail analyses of “representation and its connection with wider questions of change and continuity in contemporary, and in some more historical, masculinities and identities” (Edwards 3).
1 There is a resulting effort among masculinity scholars to develop feminist-oriented conceptions of manhood that may challenge and replace these patriarchal gender roles. This conflict has escalated with the recent resurgence of patriarchal ideals of manliness.
0 kommentar(er)
