BY Tatiana Teslenko

Magna Cum Laude (English), Kharki State University, UkraineJ975

Candidate of Philological Science (Theory of Language), Odessa State University, Ukraine, 1989

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THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DmOROF PHILOSOPHY

In the Department of English

OTatiana Teslenko 2000 SIMON FRASER UNXVERSrrY July 2000

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This exploration of feminist utopia as a set of strategies for re-inventing a patnarchal genre is based on the new-rhetorical theories of genre that view language as situated socid action and genres as "typified rhetorical actions baçed in recurrent situations" (Miller 159).

Being active social processes, "dynarnic rather than static" (Devitt 580), genres respond to and regenerate their context of situation. Evolving due to changes of larger discursive systems, they continue to exist only if the strategies they embody "work". The study identifies a need for a utopian genre that can provide the feminist community with a conceptual space to articulate the politics of change, to validate the personal as political, and to express ferninists' self-defence in their retaliating syrnbolic violence against patriarchy.

My readings of Dorothy Bryant's The Kin ofAta Are Waiting for You and Joanna

Russ's The Fenurle Man are based iipon Burke's rhetoric of identification, Bakhtin's concept of chronotope, and feminist theones of gender and subjectivity. My key terrns are gender, sexuality, subjectivity, power, language, and meaning.

Feminist utopias criticise patriarchd social order and offer a new conceptuai space: they envision a different timelplace which allows for ideological change. This act of imagining is always problernatic once it is written down; first, utopia must avoid fixing the act of socid drearning by creating blueprints of utopian worlds because doing so removes the transfomative potential of the imagined future which can generate change in the present.

Second, a feminist utopia must describe a better place for women while working with the very tools of patriarchy in the fortn of language. Consequently, it attempts to disrupt the genre-setting 'rules' of mainstrearn utopia through the use of ambiguity, multiplicity, and openness.

The ferninist utopia is not a 'naturai' or ideologically innocent transgression of patriarchal genres, but a set of strategies both contingent on the rhetorical situation and implicated in the politics of ferninist discourse community. The ferninist utopia describes 'the good place which is no place'; but as a genre, it is grounded in place and tirne: it reflects the feminist attempts to change their infirior positioning in the socio-historic context of the 1970s. Adaiowledgements

A complete list of people that helped me throughout this project wodd be much longer than the dissertation itself: it would include ferninist scholars fiom the Ukraine,

Canada, and the United States, who did the hard work of utopian dreaming together with me.

Because 1 need to lirnit this list to acknowledging the contributions of just a few people, my big and sincere 'thank-you' goes to:

Professor Carolyn Rhodes, Professor Janet Bing, and Professor Anita Freedrnan, Old

Dominion University, Virginia, for encouraging me to start the project;

Professor Richard Coe at Simon Fraser Uniyersity, Canada: for opening up my mind like a parachute (ail the subsequent fiights or fails are my own), for introducing into the disciplinary community, and for tactîul and continuous guidance throughout the project;

- Professor David Stouck, Sirnon Fraser University, and Associate Professor Janet

Giltrow, University of British Columbia: for most valuable advice and incessant support;

rny family: for inspiring me and for putting up with me throughout the project.

I would also Like to acknowledge the help of my colleagues and students from Simon

Fraser University, Kharkiv State University, Old Dominion University, Center for Research in Women's Studies and Gender Relation at the University of British Columbia, who helped shape my trajectory as a ferninist researcher and teacher. Table of Contents .. Approval ...... rr

Abstract ...... rrr.* *

Acknowledgernents ...... v

Table of Contems...... vi

List of Tables...... U:

...... INTRODUCTION...... 1

Rhetoric of ldena~cation...... II

Methodology: Genre us Strategy ...... 19

Propositions ...... 29

Chapter Outline ...... 34

CHAPTER 1: UTOPIA AND UTOPIANISM...... 40

Sralnng the Spin: the Uopian Impulse ...... 41

Utopia and Ideology ...... 44

Utopian Chronotope...... 45

Utopia and Gender Issues ...... 53

[dent@. Desire. and D~rerence...... 67

me Utopian Tranrcendence ...... 84

Genre and Meta-Genre ...... 88

=R 3. SAVING THE HUMAN RACE OROTHYBRYANT) ...... 114

The Real World...... 118 VI Chronorope ...... 123 . . Hol-ka as Icon of intenonty...... 135

Ut~pianpeople ...... 138

Gender beling ...... 152

FZuid Meaning and Rigid Word...... 165

The Law of Light ...... 174

CHAPTER 4. JOANNA RUSS: NEW MEANING FOR OLD CONCEfTS ...... 188

Calculated Ambiguity...... 190

Linguistic Sexism ...... 202

Four Agents: ldentiry Under Comtncction ...... 207

Janet the Savior ...... 209

Jeannine: Cognitive Starvation ...... 216

Jaek Temor of Terrorkm...... 221

Joanna: Usurp the Denied ...... 228 . Identification Rmszted...... 238

CONCLUSION:OTOPIAN GENRE AS FEMINIST STRATEGY...... 252

Findings ...... 252

Socio-historie context ...... 256

Chronotope ...... 259

. Femrnist message ...... 264

Feminist interventions ...... 265

Utopian Vision...... 268 WORKS CITED ...... l...... 272

Appertdix 1: Alix Kate Shulman 's Accomt of the Early Years of WLM ...... 287

Appendix 2 . Adrientre Rich on Manijiestations of Men's Power...... ~~~.~....~~.....~.~~~...... 291

Appendùc 3. Freud's Theoty of Sexuality ...... 293

AppendUr 4: Marge Piercy "Wornan on the Edge of Time " ...... 298

Appendix 5: Michele Roberts "The Book of Mrs. Noah" ...... 301

AppendUr 6: Lingtrisric pragrnatic anulysis of "The Book of Joanna "...... 305 List of Tables

Table 1 . Terministic Index of God-ternis for the Project ..-28

Table 2. Terrninistic Index of Utopian Key-ternis ...... -49

Table 3 . Feminists Propositions of the 1970s ...... 64

Table 4. Manifestations of Men's Power ...... 291

Table 5 . Key to annotations: Cohesion ...... 305 "We are post-feminist when we are post-patriaahy. " (Lee and Poynton, personal communication, 9.01.2000)

Humanity has long drearnt about a better future, and the imagineci better world, utopia, has been associateci in the human mind with dreaming, desire, hope, and progress. Oscar

Wilde puts it best when he articulates the connection between progress and the realization of utopias: "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias"

(Wilde 27).

But what is Utopia and how can it be achieved? Sir Thomas More's CTtopin' gave a name to numerous earlier, as well as later, efforts to picture ideal societies. As Lewis

Mumford comments in The Story of Utopias (l), Sir Thomas More was a punster in an age when it was not always wise to speak too plainly, and when the keenest mincis delighted to play tricks with language. He coined a tenn in which the root, topos, means 'place'; the prefix can be read as eu which means 'good', or as ou which means 'no' or 'not'. More was aware of the multiple implications of his term; and, lest anyone else should miss hem, he elaborated his linguistic paradox in a quatrain included in his Latin text (More 1995, 1) which,

' More's two-part moral document was composed in Latin in 1515 under the title Libelius vere Aureus nec minus sahtaris quam festivus de oprimo reipublicae statu deque nova Insula Utopia ( A Pamphlet truiy Goiden no iess bentrficial than enjoyable concerning the republic's best state and concerning the new Island Utopia). It was published in 1516 and translated into English in 155 1 by Ralphe Robynson (Snodgrass 529). unfortunately, is ornitted from English translations of his Utopia. As Mumford (1 -2) reports,

Thomas More explained in his verse that utopia might refer either to the Greek eutopia, which means 'the good place', or to outopicz, which means 'no place'. Thus, utopia implies an evaluation, as well as suggests the unattainable2.Lyman Tower Sargent (1994) remarks that, though al1 fiction describes a 'no place'. utopian fiction generally describes a good or bad 'no place'. The meaning of More's ambiguous term has been debated ever since. Used in diverse contexts, it started various spins of meanings, such as the derogatory in colloquial 'utopic7 and taxonomie in academic 'utopian'.

Since Thomas More, many attempts have been made to define utopia; however, until the present, this phenornenon has resisted static definitions. Meanwhile, Our understanding of utopia has been systematically problematized (Sargent 1994). While some scholars restrict utopia to a literary genre, others use this term for a variety of manifestations reflecting utopianism as social drearning (Sargent's definition) or a certain viewpoint, a philosophical approach to perceiving and representing the world.

Over the past two decades, most commentators have arrived at the conclusion that utopia resists definition because of the plurality of phenomena involved in the concept. For exarnple, the Marxian philosopher Ernst Bloch (66) believes that utopia is not necessarily a literary genre or even a written work of any kind; he considers literature, architecture and music as important vehicles of utopia What binds these diverse phenomena together is their representation of dreams of a better life. They al1 venture beyond the present reality and reach forward to a transforrned future, embodying both the ~t of wishing and what is wished for.

* More's Raphael HjrtNodayhas a 'telling narne' which means "spinner of idle tales". 2 Ruth Levitas in The Concept of Utopia (1990) conceives utopia as the expression of a desire for different (and better) ways of king. With its ernphasis on human desire (15 l), her definition of utopia responds to that of a broader phenomenon - utopianism. While Levitas is not directly concerned with literary utopias, her definition reinforces the argument that utopian literature should be treated as a subset of a broader phenomenon.

Another important debate developed around the mainstrearn meanings of utopia as a blueprint and utopia as perfection. It is still argued whether utopia should or should not describe 'perfect' societies. For Andreas Voigt (19û6), utopias were "idealistic pictures of other worlds" (1). Joyce Oramel Hertzler (1923) identified perfection as a "distinctive characteristic" of Thomas More's Utopia,saying that "More depicted a perfect, and perhaps unrealizable, society, Iocated in nowhere, purged of the shortcomings, the wastes, and the confusion of Our own tirne and living in perfect adjustment, full of happiness and contentment" (2). Perfection, then, is perceived as beneficial for human beings and as essential for utopia; indeed, as Kenneth Burke points out, "there is a principle of perfection implicit in the nature of symbol systems; and in keeping with his nature as symbol-using animal, man is moved by this principle" (hnguage 17). Burke even includes perfection in his definition of humans:

Being bodies that learn language

thereby becorning wordlings

humans are

the symbol-making, symbol-using, syrnbol-misusing animal

inventor of the negative

separated from our natural conditions 3 bv instruments of our own makina goaded by the spirit of hierarchy

acquinng the foreknowieâge of death

and rotten with perfeCn'on.

(Language 16)

Employing "the Aristotelian concept of the 'entelechy,' Burke explains that "each king airns at the perfection natural to its kind (or, etyrnologically, is marked by a 'possession

of a telos within')" (Language 17). 1find it notable that the Burkean definition of human beings lists the knowledge of death and the rot of perfection side by side, in so far as some utopian scholars now argue that perfection symbolizes death: "the death of movement, death of progress and process, development and change; the death, in other words, of politics"

(Sargisson 1996). Here is the paradox, then: progress is fùelled by striving for perfection, and this motivates Our utopian dreams. But, once perfection is achieved, it is dead: to strive for perfection, then, is to strive toward death. Indeed, as Marie Louise Bemeri ( 197 1) in her

Journey Zkrough Utopia (first published posthumously in 1950) points out, utopias have often ken plans of societies functioning rnechanically, dead structures conceived by economists, politicians and moralists; according to her, such an exclusionary focus

undermined utopia's potential to reflect what Bemeri.caIls "the living dreams of poets" (3-4).

In this dissertation, 1 am most concerned with one particular convention of the 'dead'

structures promoted by patnarchal utopias: they envisioned alternative societies that surmount

al1 the prejudices of the status quo with the notable exception of sexism. Most mainstream

utopias failed to make one important imaginative leap - they failed to expose the sexist

discrimination within the patriarchai status quo and to envision true gender equality. Since

4 Thomas More, patriarchal utopias have set, in Anne Freadman's tems, 'the rules of play' for the utopian genre, as well as 'the rules for piaying' (thus reflecting societal ceremonials that blended paoiarchal regdations and mords). In its sûiving for peifection, patriarchal utopia portrayed sexist discrimination as natural, 'perfect' and etemal. As M. Keith Booker (1994) points out, a signifcant lack of genuine attention to gender issues in mainstream utopia suggests that gender prejudice is far more difficult to overcome than other social conventions.

Booker expiains this resistance by the fact that sexism is one of the most ingrained and invisible characteristics of Western socio-political reasoning. Thus, as 1 will show in my discussion of the ferninist critical discourse in Chapter 2, feminist utopian writen realized that, in tems of gender representation, the officiai patriarchal utopian genre got stagnant: it became excessively regulated and exclusionary. Hence, feminist writers could not make use of the utopian genre without re-inventing it. They needed to re-create utopia as a "constellation of strategies" (Schryer 1998) for envisioning the new non-sexist social order.

1approach this genre from my subject position of a feminist researcher, an immigrant woman raised in a traditionally patriarchal ethnic cornmunity which was going through a deconsmiction of its own: first, the dismantling of patriarchy in favor of comrnunist

'democracy' with its tacit sexism and false promises of equal opportunities for men and women3. Since 1991, this society has undergone a painful deconstruction of comrnunist mythology and return to the 'mots' of vulgar capitalisrn. Due to the limitations on translation and dissemination of books in the Soviet Union in the years of the Cold War, it was only in 1994 that 1 first read the feminist utopias discussed in this thesis, and that was an eye-opening experience. 1 could not understand a lot of their ideas because 1 was not farniliar with the context of the socio-cultural situation in the United States in the 1970s: in that period, in socialist countries sexism was tacit, and women's roles as mothers and educators were openly celebrated. The Soviet dystopias which were reactive to the inflated optimism of socialism did not attempt to re-invent gender roles, but they were not sexist either. It took me four years of living and studying in the United States and Canada to start understanding the local sexist context to which feminist utopias were reacting in their bitter revelations of the female positioning in the patnarchal society of the pst-1960s4.

As it is now widely acknowledged, feminism is one of the most far-reaching movements of the twentieth century, whose influence has been felt in every area of social, political and culturai life worldwide. One of its most important characteristics is that it combines theory with practice: king a set of ideologies, ferninism is also a movernent which retains a cornmitment to change the sexism ingrained in capitalist patriarchy.

Moreover, there are at least two aspects to ferninist rhetoricai action: first, feminist discourse influences feminist social action; and second, ferninist rhetoric itself is one of these actions. As 1 will attempt to show in my readings of ferninist utopias, the changes feminist rhetoric has set in motion may be as much defensive as accommodating because the patriarchal institutions and structures are stnving to protect their cherished areas of privilege

In the Soviet pend (1917-1991), heterosexuai monogarny was the nom. promiscuity could be regarded as an ideological crime, as non-conforrnity to the Moral Code of the Builders of Cornmunism. Psychoanaiysis was unknown, the sexuai revolution did not happen, the Party was aiways right, and everybody who thought different could be sent off to Siberia. and superiority. One of these changes is caused by ferninist interventions into the traditionally patriarchal areas of language and rneaning. In their interventions, ferninist writers utilize the potentialities of the utopian genre: utopian thinking creates new conceptual spaces which cm be imagined as different ways of conceptualizing the past, present and future. According to ferninist critics, this new imagining, in order to be really different, needs to transgress the patnarchal ways of thinking, conceptualizing and theorizing It is for this reason that many commentators stress the paradigrnatic nature of the tramformative effect of utopian thought: if utopian thought can change the shape and scope of our consciousness, then what used to be the unthinkable cm be thought of, desired, and articulated. In the absence of bluepnnts, the future is open-ended.

Therefore, it is Iikely that feminists employ the utopian genre as a recognizable, socially- standard, trans-historical fom to facilitate their social dreaming.

1refer to Burke's rhetorically grounded and pragrnatically oriented conception of fom. In Counter-Statement, Burke claims that certain literary and artistic forms are to some extent trans-historical, universal in nature; and, as genre theorists infonn us, they are socially standard. Burke says that there exist universal formal patterns which serve to distinguish our experiences [such as "the accelerated motion of a falling body, the cycle of a storrn, the procedure of the sexual act, the npening of crops" (Counter-Statement45)]. Therefore, part of the artist's task is to use these patterns. Burke reasons that because form is the "adequate satisfymg of an appetite," the artist must constmct a 'tsymbol" which serves the function of

4 On many levels, as Naorni Wolf and Susan Faludi have argued, the 'feminist revolution' of the 1970s has failed, and since the late 1970s there has knan anti-feminist backlash in the media that works so as to revoke the gains rhat the ferninist movement has won for women (Garnble 193). 7 "arousing the human potentiality for king moved by the crescendo" (Counter-Statement45) of human desires. And since, for Burke, "the symbol is the verbal parallel to a pattern of experience" (152)' he asserts that the artist producing the syrnbolic artifact must begin "with his moods to be individwzted into the subject-matter, and his feelings for technical form to be individuated by the arrangement of the subject-matter" (52). I would also suggest that utopia might be such a tram-historical artistic form, whereas the feminist utopia is one of its historical and social manifestations, further individuated in the work of utopian writers.

According to Burke, " art is eternal in so far as it deals with the constants of humanity.. .. But art is also historical - a particular mode of adjustrnent to a particular cluster of conditions"

(Counter-Statement 107). What Burke means by "conditions" are dominant societal attitudes reflected in the socio-historical context; he dso mentions the "practical attitude" that "alters

Our way of living" (107). For Burke, writers who are intent on affecting social change will need to constmct syrnbols which identiQ with certain residual, contemporary, and emergent

social attitudes that have currency in society. And, as 1 intend to show, this is what feminist utopian wnters do.

Burke's idea of the "practical attitude" is, in fact, somewhat andogous to Kenneth

Bruffee's adaptation of Richard Rorty's division of "normal" and "abnormal" discourse:

dominant 'normal' discowse comprises "the standards and expectations members of discourse

communities share since the prevalence of a cornmunity's discourse is partiy established and

maintained through a process of labeling individuais as king either insiders or outsiders, as

having or lacking the values, knowledge and skills required to belong to a comunity" (Behr

15-16). Burke also points out that people often identiw with the discourses of discourse communities in unconscious ways. Moreover, those who are excluded fiom becorning members of a certain discourse community will ofien exhibit non-standard, deviant,

"abnomai" discourse. From the point of view of epistemology, "abnormal discourse is at best an accident, something not to be expIained but rather to be elirninated as quickly as possible by either socializing or excluding the ignorant person" (Cooper 208). However, from the point of view of hermeneutics, "abnormal discourse is an important object of study, for though abnomal discourse produces nonsense, it also produces intellectual revolution" (Cooper 208).

From the perspective of patriarchd hegemony, then, feminist discourse is abnomal and non- standard; but for the ferninist discourse community it is transfomative and revolutionary.

This fùnction is also related to Burke's idea of practicai and aesthetic attitudes as identifications which challenge and attempt to overthrow the authoritative codes that are often inscribed into the dominant discourses.

Such a "counter-discourse" overthrowing capitalist authoritative codes was developed within the Arnerican "counter-culture" of the 1970s. In the 1960s, a vision of justice and economic democracy, as well as minimal governrnent, individual and group fieedom, decentralized ideals, and localist claims was expressed in the Port Huron Statement, the founding manifesto of the Students for Democratic Society, and Martin Luther King's "1 have a dream" speech (Moylan 199). The rejection of the highly tëchnological, centralized corporate patnarchy was deepened in the theory and practice of ferninism and radical ecologism, as weli as in racid and ethnic liberation rnovements. Al1 these developments produced "the contours of counter-culture" (Bookchin 3, 115- 116) that fomed the underpinnings of major social movements, arnong them the wornen's liberation movement. Being "abnormal" revolutionary discourse, ferninism repeatedly identifies the oppressed situation, attempts to tum the dominant patriarchal discourse inside out, and tries to develop a recumng, characteristic way of writing. As 1will show in my discussion of ferninist rhetoric of the 1970s, language serves as a crucial tool for expressing feminist ideology. 1 assume that, in their opposition to patriarchal discourse, ferninist writers turn to utopia because for them utopian thinking is a vehicle to promote ferninist ideology and to demonstrate the continual exploration of the possible new ways for semiotic representation. Without utopian thinking, says Drucilla Cornell, "ferninism is inevitably ensnared in the system of gender identity that devalues the ferninine" (168-169). Therefore, denying the traditional usage of utopia within the "normal" discourse "in the sense of the establishment of a blueprint of an ideal society", feminism readily ernploys the utopian potential for "abnormality", revolutionary criticism, and metaphoric transformation of patriarchal gender and genre canons: "the necessary utopian moment in feminism lies precisely in Our opening up the possible through metaphoric transformation" (Cornell 17 1). As 1intend to demonstrate in my discussion of ferninist interpretations of psychoanalysis, feminist narratives offer new options for the female subject; to use Julia Kristeva's words, they reveal "a certain knowledge and sometimes the truth itself about an otherwise repressed, nocturnal, secret and unconscious universe" (Kristeva Women and Power 456). 1 will attempt to prove, then, that the syrnbolic action of ferninist discourse is the expression of the repressed tmth about the women's inferior subject-positioning in patriarchy and the creation of new conceptual spaces for the metaphoric transformation of patriarchal discourse. The feminist utopian tradition gained considerable energy with the second-wave ferninist movement of the late 1960s - early 1980s, the tirne of rebellion and change that helped to bnng to life Berneri's "living dreams of poets" (3-4). This period witnessed a major ideologicd revolution that caused numerous political, social, and cultural changes. One of these changes was an explosion of feminist narratives that exposed the inferior positioning of women in patriarchy and met their demand for envisioning a better social order. Indeed, dunng this pend feminist writers produced works that re-energized many literary genres. In particular, in their interventions into the utopian genre feminists were moving toward an open- endedness that sought to overcome the tendency toward monologicai stagnation5 that, as they argued, had long haunted patnarchal utopia.

Rhetoric of Identification

In this dissertation, 1 will attempt to define the feminist interventions in terms of

Burke's rhetoric of identification. Burke's theory is premised on how art can foster the justification and, ultirnately, the maintenance of whole social orders. Burke says that discursive practices are instrumental in generating certain world views, as well as influencing individuals who hold these views. This theory, thus, explains how individuals are constituted culturally. While 1. A. Richards believes that rhetoric "should be the study of misunderstanding and its remedies" (3), Burke cornments that rhetoric "is the use of language

1will argue that, as Burke proposes in defining his principle of "individuation", although art takes the fonn of prier structures, the specific individuations of a fonn of experience will change significantly with changes occurring within the social contexts and ethical systerns out of which they *se. Thus, for Burke, the individual fomwhich serve to convey our experiences are not stagnant, but are dynamic and flexible; they can be modded and remoulded to accommodate changes taking place within social situations. 14 as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to syrnbols"

(Rhetoric 43). As Coe observes, Burke's concept of rhetoric is grounded in his definition of humans as ''beings who continuaily define and redetine [themselves] through the symbolic processes of language, discourse, rhetoric, culture" ("Editor's Preface" xi). Burke, therefore, directs our attention beyond a classical understanding of the power of language to persuade and towards the ability of language to emct. Coe explains that "the crucial relation of attitude to act (and, as synonyms such as standing, position, and posture suggest, [attitudes] .. . crucial relation to substance") is an idea that 3mderlies the re-framing of rhetoric that leads both

Richards and Burke to the New Rhetoric" ("Burke's Act" 3). Coe also notes the way in which

'Burke emphasizes that the phrase 'inducing cooperation' presumes that cooperation must be induced" ('?Xining" 48). For Burke, then, cooperation arises fiom the ways in which individuals corne to identiq with a particular social perspective by dividing themselves €rom other perspectives and fomring social groups. Rhetoric thus

becomes prirnarily the process whereby a community cornes to share a syrnboiii discourse - or whereby a communaily shared discourse creates consubstantiality, subliminally persuades individuals to identify with the community, even to sacrifice their lives for their country and flag (and what it stands for). Or to refuse to listen to, understand, or publish nonstandard discourse. (Coe "Defining" 49).

Burke suggests that, whereas the key term of the 'old' rhetoric was 'persuasion' with its stress on deliberate design, the key term for the 'new' rhetoric should be 'identification' which cm include a "partially unconscious factor of appeal" ("Old and New" 204). His key concept is consubstantiality. He states that,

In being identified with B, A is "substantialty onen with a person other than himself. Yet at the sarne time he remains unique, an individual locus of motives. Thus he is both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another. (Rhetonic 21).

Consubstantiality, Burke argues, etymologically refers to the term "sub~tance,'~which points towards a person's or a group7ssocial context. Describing the function of the term

"substance7' in western philosophy, Burke contends that the term "in the old philosophies was

[constnied as] an acc and a way of life is an acting-together, and in acting together men have comrnon sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes that rnake them consubstantiaZ"

(Rhetoric 2 1). In other words, Burke explains that when people are consubstantial they stand on a comrnon ground; this is how discourse cornrnunities fomi themselves. That is, through

"acting togethei' people divide themselves from others and, in doing so, ofien unconsciously

UientifL with a given set of discursive practices which bind them together within a discourse comrnunity. This phenornenon has significant ideological implications because, when king part of a discourse comrnunity, peopIe cm induce other people to divide themselves from their world views and adopt the view of their cornrnunity. As Burke stresses, people often form allegiances with others through transcending identifications which oppose the world views that they may hold. And it is precisely for this reason that Burke defines rhetoric as a

"partisan" weapon through which individuais and groups are "at odds" with each other

(Rhetoric 22). According to Burke,

Identification is affirmed with eamestness precisely because there is divis/on. Identification is campensatory to d~sion.If men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician:to proclaim their unity. .. Put identification and division ambiguously together, so that you cannot know for certain where one ends and the other begins, and you have the characteristic invitation to rhetoric (Rhetok 22.25). He fûrther speculates that to identiQ with a particular group or perspective is contingent upon human motivations that may only be signified "in terrns of verbal action, and which ultimately serve the purpose of unifjing us to see things in tems of some thing rather than its other counterpart" (Grammar 49). It follows that, for Burke, langage dialectically shapes Our perceptions; that is, people subscribe to certain social perspectives by transcending the claims of competing social orientations6. Burke therefore asserîs that Our identifications only komemeaningfül to others when they are explained through our ideology. For hm,

"an ideology is an aggregate of beliefs sufficiently at odds with one another to justi& opposite kinds of conduct" (Counrer-Statement 163). And since identification is "a kind of transcendence," it can serve to eliminate disharmony, thereby enabling people to subscribe to certain world views: "with such identification there is a partially drearn-like, idealistic motive, somewhat compensatory to real differences or divisions, which the rhetoric of identification would transcend"' (203).

By arguing that acts of reading, speaking, and writing motivate OLU attitudes in certain ways, Burke shows that our critical discourses, which are allegedly designed to challenge the syrnbols of those who control Our society, cm function in ways which are ideological.

Terminologies, as Burke explains, act as "terrninistic screens" through which people (or worldlings) view their world, directing their attention to some aspect of a situation rather than others (Language 44). Thus, for Burke, language is "both social and socidizing"; human

Like Roman Jakobson writing about the metalinguistic ("Linguistics and Poetics" 355-77), like Fredric Jmeson cornrnenting on the metacritical ('Metricornrnentary" 9- 18), Burke studies the way language folds ont0 itself. beings are "bodies that learn language / thereby becorning worldiings". Burke notes that Our

species8 is the one "endowed by mutation" with the ability to use a language that "cari comment on itself ', a "'second-level' dimension (the possibility of words-about-words,

symbols-about-symbds) that makes possible the development of human personality as we

know it" (Language 29). Burke labels this capacity "logological," defining logology as

"words about words" (Rhetoric of Religion 1).

Addressing the relation between psychology and logology, Burke comrnents on the

relation between "God" and his concept of "god-terms": "An idea of God need not be derived from the child' s relation to its father andor mother, but is also irnplicit in the logic of

language, which naturaily makes for culmination in some word of maximum generalization

that serves as over-al1 title of titles (and this is what we mean technically by a 'god-term')"g

("Symbol" 224). God-terms, then, are unitary terms that enable people to transcend purely

secular domains of perception. Burke notes how "any over-al1 term for motivation, such as

honour, loyalty, liberty. equality, fratemity, is a surnming up of many motivational strands"

Burke therefore views human experience as an on-going drama of life in which human actions result from the ways in which people respond to language; from this assurnption he develops his dramatistic approxh. * Burke acknowledges that "whereas many other anirnals seem sensitive in a rudimentary way to the motivating force of symbols, they seem to lack ihe 'second-leveï aspect of symbolicity that is characteristically human, the 'reflective' capacity to develop highly complex symbol systerns about symboI systems, the pattern of which is indicated in Aristotle's definition of God as 'thought of thought,' or in Hegel's dialectics of 'self-conscious'" (Language 24). The idea of a supcerne king, then, is irnplicit in linpistic operations; "it can also ernerge as a consequence of language folding back on itself and discovering in its own hierarchical expansion the mode1 for an overall deity; Tide of titles, Lord of lords" (Carter 76). In other words, to some degree, the existence of God is derived from the existence of god-ternis: when people set out to prove the existence of God, they at least end up proving their ability for linguistic generalization. However, Burke is careful to distinguish his logology fiom theology, repeatedly emphasizing that he is not proving the existence of the supernaturd but rather demonstrating the verbal nature of such proofs. 15 (Rhetoric 110). Such terms function as rhetorical motives because they may appear "as absolute and unconditional to us" but are, in fact, "the titie for conditions" (1 1 1).

Since god-tems serve to "entitie" our experîences, they can perform the ideological function of motivating Our actions. Just as language frames provide us with order in interaction, so too the terminologies we develop create frames of acceptance and rejection of authority. The cntical discourse on feminist utopias shows that numerous disciplines that are concerned with this genre - philosophy, utopian studies, ferninist theory, literary cnticism, psychology, sociology - al1 impose their own terministic screens on it, creating ternis and indices that, according to Burke, are a "reflection" of their respective disciplinary attitudes - and a "deflection" of others (Burke Language 45). This action of disciplinary attitudes can be interpreted through Janet Giltrow's concept of meta-genre. Giltrow provisionally describes meta-genres as "atmospheres of wordings and activities, demonstrated precedents or sequestered expectations -atrnospheres surroundhg genres" emphasizing that, "[llike genres themselves, meta-genres are indexed to their context of use: every activity -or discipline - having its own relation to and life in language, and meta-genres representing or advancing these relations, positioning genres in relation to other activities" (Meta-Genre 1-22). Because meta-generic assumptions brought forth in the critical discourse on ferninist utopias position this genre in relation to other feminist activities, 1 assume that 1 need to explore both the social action of the feminist utopia and that of its critical discourse. Following Burke's understanding of language as "csymbolicaction"

(hnguage 44), 1 will argue that both utopianism and ferninism are syrnbolic discourses that

represent theory and practice, strategy and action. My other assumption is that in their

interventions into patriarchal utopia, feminists use language strategicdly for

1) iden-ng feminist goals; 2) developing consubstantiality within the ferninist discourse community; 3) challenging patriarchal terms, hence, patriarchal attitudes. In Burkean terms, they create the framework of acceptance for ferninist rhetoric and the heworkof rejection for the "normal" patriarchal rhetoric. This assumption directs my attention to language use in feminist utopian genre and in the meta-genre.

Working within the "abnormal" revolutionary discourse, ferninist genres re/constmct ferninist rhetorical situations; in this way, they invoke feminist changes in the existing patriarchal reality. These changes need to be explained: and, because genres are cultural artifacts, 1will attempt to explain their functioning by their relation to other artifacts (such as language and gender). 1am also informed by Bakhtin's suggestion to initially identiQ genres as "typical forms of utterances"" (Bakhtin 63),as relatively stable types that reflect recognizable and recuriing episodes in the life of a comrnunity. As 1 will show in my readings of the ferninist utopian novels, these episodes are described as gendered because they represent the gendered activities of the members of a community, and therefore genres reflect and reproduce gender roles typical of life in the comrnunity. Members of the discourse

'O As Coe points out, Burke attributes to 1. A. Richards the idea that "the symbolic act is the dancing of an attitude" (Philosophy 8) but extends Richards' concept of attitudes as incipient, potential acts waiting for activating situations. This extension embraces both the notion that attitude can be 'me fsrst srep towark an act" and the notion that "attitude can be the substitute for an act" (Grammar 236). 17 cornrnunity recognize these types as generic. In Our case, members of the feminist cornrnunity would recognize utopian texts as marked by 1 'ecrirurefeminine or strategic writing practice (in

Helene Cixous' terminology) that violates the patnarchal utopian genre in a feminist way. So fa.,the new-rhetorical genre reasoning is hospitable to ferninist theory, but it aiso raises some questions:

if speakers are used by genres as vehicles for the reproduction of the social order, then

how feasible is the project of constructing an independent woman's style (or mode of

writing) with its own system of genres?

in what respect is such a style feminist?

how does it embrace and re-value the 'feminine' in language?

Carol Pearson in "Corning Home: Four Ferninist Utopias and Patriarchal Experience"

(written in the wake of the explosion of ferninist utopias of the 1970s and fmt published in

198 1) provides a useful interpretation of the social action of feminist utopias. Pearson defines this action on the bais of content and function: Terninist utopian fiction implicitly or explicitiy criticizes the patriarchy while it emphasizes society's habit of restricting and alienating women" ("Coming Home" 63). She argues that feminist utopias %ssume that patriarchy is unnatural and that it fails to create enviroriments conducive to the maximization of fernale - or male - potentid. Upon discovering a sexuaily egalitarian society, the narrators have a sense of coming home to a numiring, liberating environment9'(63). Pearson here defines the critical function of utopia, at the same time assigning a constructive role for it. The nature of this construction is one of rediscovery. Feminist utopias, then, facilitate this rediscovery because this genre functions as an important arena for artistic and social critique. This action makes the ferninist utopia a perfect genre to embody the new feminist strategies of writing and reading which Teresa de Lauretisl ' called Toms of cultural resistance":

Not on!y can they work to tum dominant discourses inside out (and show that it cm be done) ...ttiey aiso challenge theory in its own terrns, the terms of a semiotic space constructed in language, its power based on social validation and welt-established modes of enunciation and address. (Quoted in Godard 53).

Therefore, the new-rhetorical framework enables me to hypothesize that ferninist utopias of the 1970s ernerged and functioned as a set of strategies to provide an alternative to patriarchy and articulate the politics of feminist opposition and change.

Methodokgy Genre as Strategy

One of the ways in which the new-rhetorical theories treat genre is perceiving it as strategy. This reasoning reflects the new conception of language as constitutive rather than descriptive; genre has now become the focal notion for understanding lmguage in its social, functional and pra-gmatic aspects. While traditional theories of genre focused primarily on discursive fonn, the new theories explain the discursive structures of a genre functionally, not merely as a socially standard form, but as a socially standard rhetorical strategy for addressing a type of situation and attempting to evoke a desired type of response (Coe and Freedman

1997). Defining genre as a "typified rhetoricai action" (Miller 24), genre theorists have articulated the need to consider not only the foms of genres, but also their contexts, functions,

" Film theorist Teresa de Lauretis is Professor of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cm.Drawing on structuralism, serniotics and psychoanalysis, she focuses on the questions of identification, pleasure and desire in film She is also concemed with how these cari be related to social and material reality. De Lauretis argues that feminism is characterized by a tension bewn 'the critical negativity of its theory' and the 'affirmativepositivity of its politics' and that feminists artists seek to offer alternative narratives which will articulate their desire in tem which interrupt or reverse the usual structure of narrative (Gamble 261). 19 and their ability to reflect and shape tacit social values which Raymond Williams (1976) cails

'comrnon sense'.

In this way, genre can be viewed as a meaning-making event that facilitates specific social action. George Herbert Mead makes an important connection between meaning and action when he says that "meaning occurs in relationships among organisms and objects, not in them nor in mincis. Meaning occurs among phases of the sociai act" (cited by Thayer 205).

In his application of Mead's pragmatism, Burke reasons that

Action as hem conceived does not invoive rationdi, or even 'consciousness of action,' but is equated with the intemal motivations of an organism which, confronthg reaiii from its own special point of view or biilogical interests, encouniers 'resistance' in the extemal worid. And this extemal resistance to its intemal principle of action defines the organism's action. (Gmmm237)

Burke is here saying that people's actions are both constitutzd and constrained by their matenal and social environments. This argument suggests that the material and social environment of the 1970s influences feminist re-invention of rhetoncai genres as foms of political and cultural resistance. The feminist cornmunity offers various strategies for social action that encompasses new situations. 1assume that the ferninist utopia acts as one such strategy, naming the ingredients of the patriarchal socio-syrnbolic order in a way that demonstrates the ferninist attitude to them, and creating a conceptual space for re-arranging, remolding, or re-inventing these ingredients.

My exploration of ferninist utopias as generic strategy incorporates the new-rhetoricai focus on the actions of genre users. Being dynarnic entities that both shape and are shaped by their users, genres are socially standard strategies, embodied in typical fomof discourse, which have evolved for responding to recurrent types of situations: "these strategies size up the situations, name their structure and outstanding ingredients, and narne them in a way that contains an attitude towards hem" (Burke Philosophy 1). They continue to exist only if the strategies they embody 'work', and, therefore, they evolve and are adapted to suit particular purposes in particular contexts. Aviva Freedman rerninds us of the emphasis that Bakhtin places on the 'fieedom' and 'plasticity' available to the users of genres ('Zocating Genre

Studies" 10). Coe describes generic structures as "pre-parecl ways of responding.. .[which] embody Our social memory of standard strategies for responding to types of situations we encounter repeatedly" ( Hisr0t-y and Principles of Rhetoric 183). This perspective rerninds of

Giddens' idea that ''@luman social activities.. . are recursive. That is to Say, they are not brought into king by social actors but continually recreated by them via the very means whereby they express themselves as actors. In and through their activities agents reproduce the conditions that make these activities possibIe" (2).

Carolyn Miller's proposal that genres be defined by "the action they accomplish", as well as her emphasis on the heuristic andor tyrannical nature of genres as sites of dissent reflects Burke's attention to "situation and motive" (Miller 24). Thus, Miller suggests that genres help genre users better understand what ends they may wish to achieve through such use (40).

Recent contributions to genre studies that 1 am employing here include Anne

Freadman's wideiy-cited metaphor of 'game-playing' for describing the action of genres, with its implication of sociality and mm-taking. Freadman also speaks about the "ramified, intertextual memory" of generic "uptake" ("Uptake" 9) and proposes to treat genre as a verb

(action) and not as a noun (state). Taking up on Freadman's proposai, Catherine Schryer describes genres as "regdated improvisationai strategies that agents enact to promote certain forms of gnoseological order". She proposes to examine genres as trajectory entities or

"stmctured structures that structure Our management of time/space", arguing that it is useful to think of genres as actions or verbs: "As discourse formation or constellations of strategies, genres provide us with the flexible guidelines or access to strategies that we need to function together in the constant social construction of reality" ( Schryer 1- 28).

The new-rhetorical theories of genre, then, developed in response to ideologicai exigencies articulated by Alan Luke in Genre and the Nav Rhetoric when he called for "some system of analysis that enables normative judgements of genres and texts, that foregrounds whose interests they serve, how they constnict and position their writers and readers, and who has access to them" (ix). Catherine Schryer (1998) specifies that "a more reflexive and critical tum is needed to probe at questions of ideology and power so that al1 genre researchers can explicitly acknowledge the political dimensions of genres" (1-28); she sees genres as

"stabilized-for-now or stabilized-enough sites of social and ideological action". As Burke explains, ideological actions are those ''frarned and propounded for an uIterior purpose"

(Rhetoric 88). Burke refines this notion by characterizing ideology as "but a kind of rhetoric

(since the ideas are so related that they have in them, either explicitiy or implicitly, inducements to some social and politicd choices rather than others)" (88). Schryer further infers that genres are forms of symbolic power and could be forms of syrnbolic violence if they create timekpaces that work against their producers' and receivers' best interests.

Nadeane Trowse articulates the powers of prohibition inherent in genres, suggesting that genre-use and genre-comprehension create opportunities for both positive and negative social effects and benefits, and concluding that genres can have "exclusionary, even punitive potential". Invoking Freadrnan's metaphor, Trowse observes that "if genres are like garnes, genres must, like games, have rules in order to function. And rules may disempower, may restrict or prohibit certain actions of players, may even specifi what kinds of players can or cannot play" (1-24).

Like other aspects of discourse, genres are neither value-free nor neutral, and often imply lierarchical social relationships. They also create and opente in a specific timt/space or have a specific chronotope. Milchail Bakhtin coins his term 'chronotope' by combining two

Greek roots: chronos which means tirne and topos meaning place. It literall y means "time space" and is applied by Bakhtin to "the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature" ("Forrns of Time and of the

Chronotope in the Novel" 85).

Michael Holquist (1990) reports that Bakhtin first found out about chronotope in 1925 from a lecture on the chronotope in mathematical biology; his theory of the artistic chronotope was developed in 1937- 1938 as part of his notes towards historical poetics and illustrated by example of genenc heterogeneity in the novel. In his essay "Forrns of Time and of the

Chronotope in the Novel" (234)' Bakhtin introduces this tenn into literary studies in a metaphorical sense. As Holquist suggests, Bakhtin could have borrowed this idea from mathematics where it was introduced as part of Einstein's Theory of Relativity to express the inseparability of space and time (treating time as the fourth dimension of space).

For Bakhtin, spatial and temporal indicators in the artistic chronotope are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole: "Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becornes artistically visible; Iikewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history" (Toms of Time" 84). It is this interaction of indicators that characterizes the artistic chronotope. As Holquist points out, here Bakhtin follows the

German philosopher Emmanuel Kant who defines space and time as indispensable forms of any cognition, but Bakhtin takes up the Kantian evaluation treating these forms not as

"transcending7'but as forms of the most irnmediate reality. Bakhtin attempts to show what role time and space play in the process of concrete artistic cognition which he calls 'artistic individualization' in the genre of the novel. Beginning with elementary perceptions and representations (85), Bakhtin rnoves toward establishing the relative typologicd stability of novelistic chronotopes.

Deveioping Bakhtin's idea of chronotope, Schryer (1998) suggests that al1 genres function as discourse formations projecting potential views of the world and differing possibilities of human agency. She indicates that genres are "local and in a constant state of construction; they are dynarnic; they are sûuctured structures that structure; they are strategy-produced and driven and produce strategy". To describe this process of producing strategy, Schryer develops a metaphor of a constellation:

Constellation like, [genres] fundion as strange attractors, creating patterns of connecteci content, fotm, and style. They create gnoseological systems - systems where common sense visions of timelspace and the possibiliiof human action exist. Consequentiy they are profoundly ideological. They create ideologies. (23)

Schryer concludes that "[alt the level of individual agents, we are genred al1 the time.

We are socialized through genres and acquire Our linguistic capital through Our exposure to various genres" (24). But, as she points out, it is not only linguistic capital that we gain through genres: we acquire gnoseological and ideological capital as weIl. Consequently, 1 24 assume that it can be instrumental for my study to understand genre as a nexus of timdspacehdeology. This means that, in order to analyze the action of utopia as a strategy for rekreating feminist ideology, 1need to focus on its chronotope.

Bakhtin asserts that chronotope has "an intrinsic generic significance" (Bakhtin's emphasis, 85). Genres express space/time relations that reflect current social beliefs regarding the placement and action of human individuals in space and time (Schryer 3). Hence, it is important to study genre (and text) in context. Aviva Freedman argues that genres are contextdependent and their features cannot be isolated and taught explicitly ("Locating Genre

Studies" 1-20). M.A.K. Halliday (1986) introduces an important distinction between texts and their contexts saying that the social context cannot be collapsed into a text - rather they are separate yet related entities. For Halliday, context is the whole environment surrounding the text; it precedes the text which emerges from it". The tem 'context' has been traditionally used in linguistics to refer to the verbal surroundings of an utterance. In rhetonc, anthropology, and genre research this concept was importantly expanded by anthropoIogist

Bronislaw Malinowski (1923) who distinguishes between 'context of situation' (which is not specifically verbal) and 'context of culture' as the frqes for understanding language in use.

Malinowski defines 'context of situation' as "the situation in which words are uttered" (306), i.e. what an observer needs to know about the irnmediate situation in order to understand a particular instance of language in use, so he obviously includes much more than just words in this term. His 'context of culture' is "the general conditions under which a language is spoken" (306), or those "geographical, social and economic conditions" that must be

l2Though Martin argues thût readers can discover in a text al1 they need to know about the social context (1993). 25 referenced in any discussion of "the meaning of a word" (309); Le., what an observer needs to know about the broder culture in order to understand the meaning of language in use. Coe represents both these contexts as framing the rhetorical situation of an utterance ("Eco-

Engineering"). For Burke, context is important; in fact, his study of rhetoric provides the criticd heuristic to describe a contextual theory of discourse. Burke points out that, unlike formalist literary theory, rhetoric studies an utterance and its context simultaneousIy. Context, then, is extremely important in the analysis of a genre because it can show how discourse is persuasive, how it '%anmotivate people to subscribe to certain attitudes and to respond with certain actions or behaviour, often on the basis of group identification" (Rhetoric 67). Burke's drarnatism accounts for the ways in which "words are aspects of a much wider communicative context .. . [since it] considers both their nature as words in themselves and the nature they get from the non-verbai scenes that support their acts" (Gramrnar 482). Burke's perspective points towards the context into which discourse is disserninated, as well as towards the social effécts such discourse may have.

Like Burke, Bakhtin argues that 'Yom (and this includes thematic and stylistic construction) always has ideological commitments" and thus "every genre has its own value- laden orientation" (670-67 1). For Halliday (1 986) a genre is known by the meanings associated with it; in fact, genre is a short form of the phrase 'genre-specific semantic potential' .

One of the purposes of genre research, then, should be to study the "chronotopic unconscious7' or the set of unspoken assumptions about space and time that are so fundamental that "they lie even deeper (and therefore may ultimately be more detennining) than the prejudices imposed by ideology" (Holquist 142). In rny exploration of the chronotope of ferninist utopias, 1 am also guided by Janet Giltrow 's discussion of genre's dependence on the background knowledge of a comrnunity of users ("Genre and the

Pragmatic Concept" 174-3, which in this case includes the knowledge of both paûiarchal utopian genre and the feminist rhetoric of the 1970s. 1 will argue that the ferninist utopia as a genre, then, has a certain trajectory, a specific potential for producing world views and representing human agency for the ferninist comrnunity. Consequenùy, when ferninists address the issue of gender and power, they need to explore the new utopian genre's relationship to time and space, not just in terms of ifsportrayal of the present, its alternative, or the future, but, most importantly, in ternis of its attempt to control timekpace. In particular, feminists explme the possibilities for human action that exist within the utopian chronotope.

Because in each generic chronotope differing sets of vdues are attached to human agency, feminist genres have the potentiai to provide a conceptual space for foregrounding ferninist issues. 1 further assume that agents (protagonists, authors - and, by implication, readers) in utopian chronotopes have more access to rneaningful action (in the future or in the alternative world) than in other chronotopes. Following this line of reasoning, 1 am interested in the context of situation, context of culture, and social action of the feminist utopia as the site of gendered opposition and resistance to patriarchy.

In my discussion of feminist utopias, 1will employ inter-related god-terms (Burkean

'titles of titles') that are listed in (but not lirnited to) Table 1. Table 1. Terministic Index of God-ternis for the Project

Ferni~sm- oppositionai ideological movement Patnarchy - dominant social order comrnitted to changing sexist codes and imposing authoritative sexist codes (such expressing feminist desire. as men's assumption of authority over wornen as 'naturai'). Rhetoric - use of language "to induce some Ideology-the rneans whereby, at the level social and political choices rather than others" of ideas, every social group produces and (Bulw. reproduces the conditions of its own existence. Burke defines it as "a kind of rhetoric, "an aggregate of beiiefs suficiently at odds with one another to ident* opposite kinds of conduct". Identification -a kind of transcendence, the Consubstantiality -identification with a process of establishing shared ground, thus cornrnunity created through ideoIogy and creating consubstantiality be tween the rhetor and cornmunally shared discourse. audience. Division (from other groupst an opposing process, impiicit in identification. Language is understood as socially constructed Discourse - system of linguistic symbolic action, dialectically shaping our representations through which power perception of reaiity (with an ideological sustains itself. Discourse is contextually fùnction of making people "act together" on the deterrnined and can be perceived by basis of group identification). members of a discourse community as 'normal' and 'abnorrnai'.

Utopia - trans-historicai artistic form portraying Feminist utopia -describes a sexuaily a non-existent society that provides for better egalitarian, liberating, nurturing society possibilities for the humanagency. 1t is that maximizes the hurnan potential. As a described in considerahle detail and located in site of gendered opposition and resistance alternative time and space. tonpatriarchy, it generates feminist ideology through social criticism, transcendence and transformation of ~aûiarchalcodes. Genre comprises patterns of connected content, ~eta-g&&involves critical discourse on- form and style marked by a specific genre that infomis or ratifies writers. Like nexus of tirne, space and ideology. genres, meta-genres possess serniotic ties to their contexts of use and are profoundly ideolo!zical. Symbolic power [Bourdieu's terrn (Bourdieu Symbolic violence Eurdieu's terni - 163-17 l)] - genre's ability to empower genre (Bourdieu 5 1-2)] - genre's ability to users for specific action. create time and space that restrict certain agents from using the genre. It occurs when an agent unwillingly participates in an action that is against his or her best interests. Identity - a fluid, arnorphous and provisional Subjectivity - the notion of self as an state of "becomuig", an interaction of multiple, autonomous and self-actuating agent fractureci aspects of the self; it is relational capable of valid self-knowledge. The 28 (requires a bond to the "other"), retrospective subject is a function of discourse -a (fdthrough mernories and recollections), and recipient site of meaning rather than the fonnulated within language. source, fisswed and constantly "in process". In patriarchy, fernale subjectivity is alienated as the fernale is 1 detërmined socially, hguistically and 1 1 biologically by paûiarchy which identifies 1 1 her by her diffeknce and positions her 1 1 oppositionally within dominant discourse. 1 L'eçritwe ferninine - strategic writing practice 1 Chronotope - intrinsic connectedness of 1 working in opposition to conventionai iinguistic 1 temporal and spatial relationships 1 stnictures. reflecting certain social beliefs regarding Fernale-sexed texts - narratives rnarked by the placement and actions of individuds. feminist artistic individuation.

Propositions

My study, therefore, proposes a pragrnatic, situated approach to the ferninist utopia as a cultural, political, and rhetorical subject and employs new rhetorical principles to explore the relationship between utopian forms of ferninist discourse and the system of contexts

(including those of culture and of situation) in which feminist utopias emerged and functioned in US American culture of the 1970s.

My analysis has three major aims: descriptive, methodological and theoretical. First, 1 intend to describe both the context in which the ferninist utopia emerged, the critical discourse on it, and the genre itseif, outlining distinctive external features (such as audience, purpose, occasion, and function) that show how this genre is embedded in the context of culture of the

1970s' United States. 1find previous formuIaic attempts to define the feminist utopia problematic because they invoke inappropriate closures. The performative acts of these

approaches are essentially and etemally exclusive ones (Sargisson 36); they are incomplete

and inadequate because they restrict discussions unnecessarily, and because they can have the

insidious functions of disciplinary or cultural imperiaiism. The second aim is methodological: I will try to develop a working model of a comprehensive, detailed approach to the study of feminist utopianism, focusing on its generic features of transcendence, social criticism, and metaphorîc transformation. There is a consensus among the critics that the expression of utopian thought has always ken transgressive of disciplinary boundaries. Indeed, Ernst Bloch identified utopia in terms of transcendence. Furthemore, utopian thought dways represents a cntical engagement with political issues and debates of its tirne. As 1will show, attempts to capture utopia within the bounds of one discipline or one ideology inevitably result in both inadequate readings of utopian texts and inadequate conceptuaiizations of utopianism itself. Most theories discussed in the thesis prove that unidimensional analyses simply no longer work. My anaiysis is based on a multi-dimensiond and inter-disciplinary approach. It incorporates complementary aspects bomowed from the new rhetorical theories of genre, utopian studies, feminist theory, and discourse analysis, while at the same time insisting that any framework that emerges fiom this integration must remain flexible. 1assume, then, that only a non-formalized new rhetoricai approach cm do justice to the cornplexity and diversity of ferninist utopias. This assumption implies that no single existing theory or analytic model is adequate to define it. Instead, such theories and models cm be consulted, either to extract relevant ideas and analytic ways of reading that can contribute to a better description, andor provide a larger perspective. Thus, my approach is essentially flexible, allowing the researcher to be open about those inevitable methodological decisions that involve an interpretation of the data before the anaiysis ever begins. In particular, the new-rhetorical approach will allow me to observe the following:

1. what happens when the action of a patriarchal genre is inadequate for a new task? 2. what strategic changes occur when ferninists adopt the utopian genre?

3. what is the shared symbolic action of ferninist utopias?

1 will also identifi interna1 features of substance, thus establishing those areas in which genre standardizes its narratives. Various aspects of text and context are integrated into an explanation of the symbolic social action of the genre. Adciressing the assertions that the ferninist utopia transgresses the patriarchal utopian chronotope and creates a new conceptual space from which to re-approach the world in a non-dualistic way, 1 will examine the ways in which the chronotope of the feminist utopia offers possibilities for disrupting patnarchal certainty and tmth and exploring openness and rnultiplicity.

In particular, 1 will examine the following aspects of its symboIic action:

its transgression of social codes and truth-conditional notions of reality;

its dismption of dominant genre canons;

its changing of patriarchal tropes;

its experimentation with the narrative forrn;

the verbal action of ferninist utopian narratives;

discursive means by which it is achieved.

Third, 1will examine the ferninist utopia as an exampIe of genre transformation triggered by a changed situation. Here, 1intend to clari@ what happens when the action of a patriarchal genre is inadequate for a new task and examine those strategic changes which occur when ferninists adopt the utopian genre. Applying the new rhetorical approach, 1 am treating îhe ferninist utopia as the site of gendered opposition and resistance to patriarchy that explores new possibifities for human agency. Discussing the ferninist genre's relationship with the

31 antecedent patriarchal genre, I argue that ferninism finds in utopia a "pre-pared way of responding" that embodies the "ramified, intertextual memory" of generic b'uptake". Treating the antecedent genre as a trans-historical form, ferninism overcomes its patrïarchal limitations and revives it through feminist individuation. Feminist utopias reject utopian blueprints because thosc blueprints maintain hierarchies of social and cultural patriarchy. The new utopian genre is context-specific, contemporaneous w ith the 2" wave feminist movement and made possible by it. It displays a dialogic and intertextual relationship with feminist rhetoric of the 1970s, articulating the feminist message and vocalizing the concerns of the feminist discourse cornrnunity. Because it is made possible by the discourse cornrnunity, it designs specific narrator - reader interaction; treating audience as consubstantial and directly addressing the readers in focal narrative moments.

The feminist utopia as a genre has several ideological functions. The narrowness of the patriarchal utopia urges feminist writers to 'dernand the impossible' and ultimately empowers them for conceptual transgression. The feminist genre emerges in response to the negative representation of women in the patriarchal genre (as invisible, objectified, non-important, or non-existent), and is, therefore, critical of the patriarchal social order. It provokes social transformation by offering possibilities for individud and social change. Suggesting divergent options for the way out, ferninist utopias promote the feminist message that biology is not

(necessarily) destiny; not, at Ieast, in social and political terms. In particular, this genre:

Questions the adequacy of patriarchal language to describe reality, and especially feminist

realiîy. Explores the ways in which binary oppositions (maie/female, rnincihody, spirithnatter, or

utopid dystopia) cm be deconstnicted through arnbiguity, fluidity and multiplicity.

Portrays personal as political while describing the situations that empower the wornan for

individual growth and transformation.

Treats violence with a seriousness that is central to the ferninist rhetoric of the he.

b explicit about economics and politics as the driving force of capitalism and a key tool in

oppressing women and maintaining the status quo.

Portrays unprecedented workplace opporhinities unattainable for most women in the

1970s.

Describes societies that are not prescriptively heterosexual.

The primary foci of the dissertation include the application of the principles of the new rhetoric of genre toward the study of a feminist genre and its interventions into the patriarchal

genres. The secondary foci of the dissertation are derived from the primary foci; in particular, they involve rhetorical analyses of several feminist utopias. To test these ideas, I will start with a survey and assessrnent of existing approaches to utopian theory. 1will further examine ferninist utopian discourse, its relation to the politics of resistance, and its strategic syrnbo1ic

action.

Thematicdly, my analysis will include the discussion of ferninist utopian subversions

of the concepts of power, subjectivity, gender, sexuality, womanhood.I further move to the

analysis of discursive means which allow for the utopian transgression. 1later explore the

estranged form of ferninist utopian narratives and inquire why much feminist utopianism is

not rnarked with closure. This theoretical discussion wilI be grounded in close readings of two 33 feminist utopias: Dorothy Bryant's The Kin of Ata ~reWaiting for You ( 1971) and Joanna

Russ's The Femle Man (1974).

My project intersects several areas of knowledge: genre studies, utopian studies, feminist theory. Its implications for feminist theory are based upon its attempts to outline feminist interventions into patriarchal utopian genres and to establish utopia's contributions to feminist goals. More importantly, while applying an inter-disciplinary approach to the genre of feminist utopia, 1also aim to re-examine, cl- and add tu the recent propositions of the new-rhetoncal theories of genre.

Chapter Outiine

Chapter 1, Utopia and Utopianism, explores the terministic screen of utopian studies.

Its three sections discuss the utopian impulse, the interaction of utopia and ideology, and utopia as a literary genre. Starting with Thomas More's spinning of the term utopia, the discussion moves through systematic attempts to problernatize its meaning towards a broader understanding of utopian impulse and a definition of utopianism as a fom of social dreaming.

It rests on the assumptions developed in the seminal work of Ernst Bloch (1986). The future, argues Bloch, constitutes a realm of possibility - real possibility, rather than merely formal possibility. And although not al1 real possibilities will in fact be realized, these possible futures must be seen as a part of reality. ,

Bloch further argues that utopia reaches toward the future and anticipates it; in so doing, it helps to affect the future. Human agency plays a central role in choosing which possible future may become actual: "the hinge in human history is its producer" (Bloch 1: 34 249). In its concem with the definition of utopia and its relationship to perfection, the discussion in the Chapter takes up the ideas of prominent cornmentators in the area of utopian studies (Lyman Tower Sargent, Ruth Levitas, Darko Suvin and others).

Chapter 2, Wtupianism and Feminism, discusses the terministic screens of feminist theory. In Section 1, Utupia and Gender Issues, 1 explore the context of situation, inspecting the major ferninist propositions put forth in the 1970s. 1 aiso discuss the issues of sexism in paûiarchal utopia that prornoted the need to develop a special mode of writing - aparole feministe (Gershuny 189) to articulate the new understanding of gender and female sexuality.

In the next section, Zdentity, Desire, and DrjSfince, 1touch upon psycho-analytical theories of Sigmund Freud (1953-65), Jacques Lacan ( 1978) ,Julia Kristeva (1982, l984), Helene

Cixous (1986, 1993), focusing on the dynarnics that brought forth the need to theorize this feminist mode of writing. This need was forrnulated in France by Helene Cixous (1986) and, in the Unites States, by Audre ord de'^ in her famous cal1 to action: "one cadt break the master's house with the master's tools".

Indeed, as discussed in the next section, me Utopian Transcendence, when the old meanings became suspect, there was a need to conceptualize and articulate new meanings.

Deconstructing dichotomy and dualism, introducing plurality, open-endedness and evolution,

l3 Poet and academic Audre Lorde (1934-1992) worked as a Iibrarian before embarking on an academic career. She published several volumes of poetry, as welI as the autobiographicd Cancer Journais (198O), the 'biomythographical' Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) and the influential collection of essays Sister Outsider (1984) (Gmble 265). Located as she waç at the intersection of a number of penpheral subject positions - wornan, BIack, lesbian and, in the last years of her life, cancer sufferer, Lorde is concerned with the voicing of the experience of marginalization; one of her saying habecorne a popular slogan: "one can't break the master's house with the mater's tools". 3s feminist critics offered tools for producing new meanings; one of them was fiction theory that originated in the Canadian feminist discourse community.

The ferninist utopia was one of the genres re-claimed and re-invented in this meaning- reconstxucting process. In the last section, Genre and Meta-genre, the discussion works its way through the web of existing definitions of feminist utopias towards a multi-planar approach to this genre. From the content-based definitions developed by Sally Gearhart and ohers, 1move to function-based analyses of Carol Pearson and Tom Moylan, and then to the more ment approaches developed by Lucy Sargisson and other commentators. Here, 1 identiQ the ferninist utopia as a genre and advocate the need to apply the new-rhetoricai theories to analyzing this genre.

Chapter 3, kingthe Human Race, provides a close reading of Dorothy Bryant' s novel The Kin of Ata Are Waitingfor You (originaily pubiished in 197 1 as The Cornforter).It discusses Bryant's interventions into the patriarchal genre, her re-working of the folkloric and idyllic chronotopes, and her understanding of language and its socio-symbolic action.

1 start my andysis with Bryant's utopia for a number of reasons. Bryant's utopia is more readily identifiable as spiritual and environmentdly- rninded than feminist. The circumstance that intrigues me here is that even now radical feminists have a problem identifying her narrative as a ferninist utopia because it does not portray a strong female protagonist, objects to rage or self-defense, and downplays the issues of political activism and separatism. In the fmt section, Gyn/Ecological FOCLIS,1 argue that the novel's ferninist message and its symbolic action are more elaborate rather than blatantly radical. The next section, neReal World, introduces the male protagonist of The Kin of Ata

Are Waitingfor You. Mer killing his girl-fnend and getting into a car accident, this rnisogynist winds up in Ata, an island where people live in an egalitarian fashion and dedicate themselves to discovering the tmth through their dreams. In this Chapter, 1 argue that Bryant continuously and deliberately evokes a sense of drearntime that can be read through the conditional mode. Her utopian vision vocalizes the realm of the Symbolic by merging dream with reality on a number of levels: those of language, communication, mythology, culture, which are discussed in the following sections of the Chapter. The Atan culture is not an inscribed text, it defies writing or other graphic representation because they 'freeze' and reifj language and culture. Neither is there any permanence in the complex and shifiing mythology of Ata Considered in such a way, the drearntime of the conditionai mode is not a mere escapism, but rather, it has a transfomative function,. motivating the protagonist to undergo a metamorphosis which can be read as a paradigm shift in his sexist consciousness.

Chapter 4, New Meaningfor Old Concepts, discusses Joanna Russ's novel The

FedeMan (written in 1969 and published in 1975).

The novel's significance and popularity makes it significant as an instance of the feminist utopian genre that creates new meanings by deconstructing old meanings through manipulation of the audience's perception of the patriarchal social order. An important figure in feminist utopian fiction 14, RUSSis notable both for the strong feminist message and stylistic innovations of her narrative. This simultaneously hilarious and angry novel is based on the

l4 RUSSis one of the James Tiptree, Jr., Award Winners. The Jarnes Tiptree, Jr. Award was established in 199 1 to recognize the achievement of Alice Sheldon, an outstanding feminist SF writer. It is aven to the work of science fiction, utopia, or fantlîsy published in one year which best explores or expands gender roles. 37 traditionai utopian prernise of voyages to alternative worlds. However, Russ introduces an interesting new development: her four agents/ protagonists share identical genes, but, due to the differences in the socio-politicai context of their respective situations, they have developed four very different subjectivities. Jeannine, who lives in an economically depressed

United States, is the most oppressed and underprivileged patriarchal woman. Joanna comes from a world familiar to the novel's readers - Arnerica in 1969, with the second-wave feminism on the move. Having more choices than Jeannine, Joanna is still expected to hinction as a man-identified woman. She longs to express her true subjectivity: her attempt to become a fernale man is most pronounced in the novel.

The utopian visitor Janet represents the ideal person who grew up with no gender- based constraints on her life and thus developed her human potential to the full. She hails from the utopian Whileaway, a world in which al1 the men were killed off centuries ago in a plague (or, in a different version of the story, in a war). Joanna wisthlly calls Janet a woman

"whom we dont believe in and whom we deride but who is in secret our savior from utter despair" (Russ Female Man 2 12-2 13). Jael, the fourth protagonist, brings the other agents together in her world, a near future in which men and women wage a permanent cold war.

Jael's experience of king a woman is much like Joanna's, but her response to patnarchy is terror and violence.

The Chapter discusses the novel through the lens of fiction theory. Here, 1focus on

Russ's cdculated ambiguity and her attempts to re-construct female subjectivity based on the multiplicity of agents with the same genetic make-up. In the Conclusion, 1 discuss the findings and implications of this project. focusing on

the chronotope of the ferninist utopia Here, 1analyze ferninist the ferninist genre in ternis of

its interaction with other genres, its re-metaphonzation, and transformation of the patriarchal concepts man and woman.

When descnbing the new utopianism emerging from the 2ndwave of the feminist revolution, recent cornmentaries (Barr 1993, Moylan 1990, Sargisson 1996) point out that this renewed feminist utopianisrn forces "the field of politicai theory ont0 the new ground: utopian thought journeys into uncharted and unfamilia territory, and creates spaces in which visions of the gooci cm be imagined" (Sargisson 5). 1will argue that, taking up feminist appeals to appropriate ''new power, language, and meaning" (Kristeva Vomen and Powef' 449) and to write "the tme texts of women - female-sexed texts" (Cixous "The Laugh of the Medusa"

333, the feminist utopia moves beyond the 'status quo' of patriarchai utopia "which discusses the existing oppressive situation and the suffering of a female protagonist, but provides no explicit solution other than to live in the system as it is, to go mad, or to die" (Hacker 68).

Developing the potential of fiction theory to confront and resist the patriarchal genre's "mles of play", to expose the arbitrariness of binary oppositions and disrupt mainstream conceptions of narrative and reality, the feminist utopia creates open-ended possibilities for irnagining change. In this process, the ferninist utopia projects iv the rnind of the reader a multitude of ideas about the ways in which we can make the present world better for everyone, and not for women only. Chapter 1: Utopia and Utopianism

Our reality is essentially unfinished, and utopian dreaming is important precisely because it describes a possible future (or a range of possible futures) located within real life.

Bot.ideology and utopia are consigned to a syrnbolic redm of ideas which is outside this reality and can be contrasted with it, In this Chapter, 1 discuss Ernst Bloch's and Karl

Mannheim's insights on ~herelationship of utopia and ideology.

A diachronic look at the efforts to define utopia reveais some interesting dialectics: in order to demonstrate one or more utopian traditions, scholars have to define utopia, but that definition itself emerges fiom the existing traditions. As Lyman Tower Sargent argues in

"Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited" (1994), the basic utopia, eutopia, dystopia lexicon must be complicated to express the range of materials that authors have recently created, though his criterion in al1 cases is the existence of at least one work that fits only a single category. In particular, he questions anti-utopia and dystopia, two commonly used terms:

"Anti-utopia is in common use as a substitute for dystopia, but as such it is often inaccurate, and it is useful to have a term to describe those works that use the utopian forrn to attack either utopias in general or a specific utopia" ("Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited" 30-37)). At the same time, he concludes, recognizing changes in the utopian traditions, we need to realize that those traditions still exist. The task of defining utopia is further problematized due to the evolution of utopian traditions, which is, in tum, caused by the real-life social developments.

The traditional utopian emphasis on perfection is currently perceived as outdated; most commentators argue that adhering to this characteristic of utopia easily leads to misrepresentation of the continuous evolution and dynamic nature of utopianism as a 'living drearn of pets'. 1 find that the paeiarchal cntical approach to utopia cannot be applied to the analysis of the ferninist utopia because it is incomplete in two important ways: a) it fails to capture the richness and diversity of utopian thought; b) it creates a view of utopia which sees it as closing debate, ending progress, and providing ideal conditions for stagnation and decay.

Needing to redefine utopia, 1switch towards evaluating Lyman Tower Sargent's serninal index of utopias, grounding my approach in it. In conclusion, 1examine the concept of the utopian chronotope, the futility of blueprints, and the emphasis on ideology in utopian fiction.

SWngthe Spin: the Utopian Impuise

Without the Utopias of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopiûns who traced the lines of the first city... Out of generous dreams corne benefcial realities. Utopia is the pnnciple of al1 progress, and the essay into a better future.

(Anatole France, cited in Mumford 22)

The above saying of Anatole France implies that the cornmon-sense meaning of the term utopia is twofold: first, it refers to the ultimate human dream of perfection in an imaginary land; second, it is directly connected to progress because it outlines rational efforts to remake human nature, environment and institutions, and to enrich the possibilities of communal life. Since the time when More spun on eutopia or 'good place', cornmentators have added dystopia or 'bad placeyand anti-utopia or 'not a good place'. Therefore, the imaginary utopian place rnust be recognizably good or bad for the readers. To enrich and challenge the common-sense understanding of utopia, researchers have done a lot of spinning

41 around these three terms, one of the latest additions king as unusual as ~ïchroniaor 'not when' (Sargent 'lThree Faces of Utopianism Revisited" 1-2). Moreover, we should also remember that utopias evolve diachronicaily: most sixteenth-century eutopias would homi5 today's readership even though the authors' intentions were progressive for that time. On the other hand, most twentieth-century eutopias would be considered dystopias by sixteenth- century readers; many of them would likely be bumt as 'works of the devil'.

In her influentid book "The Concept of Utopia" (1 990) and in her recent paper

"Educated Hope: Ernst Bloch on Abstract and Concrete Utopia" (1997), Levitas provides one of the more recent and complete discussions of utopianism. She starts with the seminal work of Ernst Bloch which has been widely incorporated into utopian studies as a justification and cetebration of utopianism and welcomed because of the ever-present need to defend utopia against those who regard it as trivial or dangerous (Levitas "Educated Hope"

65); she then provides extensive comments on the past definitions and the curent situation in utopian scholarship.

In his encyclopedic study, The Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch richly details the presence of a utopian impulse which he understands as "the human capacity to fantasize beyond our experience and the ability to rearrange the world around us" (Bloch 1: 3). It is fundamental to Bloch's argument that reality does not consist only of what is, but includes what is becoming or rnight become. The material world is essentially unfinished and in a state of process - a process whose direction and outcome are not predetermined. Levitas agrees that the utopian impulse is a crucially important human activity which is conditioned by "the unfinished-ness of the material world" (66). It is tme, then, that utopia is the expression of hope, but that hope is to be understood "not .. .onEy as emotion.. .but more essentially as a directing uct of a cognitive kind " (Bloch 1: 12).

Bloch makes an important distinction between abstract and concrete utopia This distinction is fundamental to the relationship between utopia and any political orientation involving a cornmitment to social transformation (Zevitas "Educated Hope7'65). Without this distinction, utopians can only visualize alternative worlds; the point of political activism, however, is to create one. For Bloch, then, abstract utopia is fantastic and compensatory: yes, it is wishfùl thinking, but the wish is not accornpanied by the will to change anythng.

Concrete utopia embodies what Bloch claims as the essential utopian function, that of simultaneously anticipating and affecting the future. While abstract utopia may express desire, only concrete utopia carries hope (Levitas "Educated Hope" 67). Concrete utopia, understood both as content and function, is within the real, but relates to what Bloch describes as Front, or Novwn,that part of redity which is corning into king on the horizon of the real.

This particular location (within, but on the edge of the real) means that utopia is transcendent; yet, it is "transcendent without transcendence" (Bloch 1: 146). Sheila Delany divides utopia into two categories: the programmatic and the ideological. The former stresses a comprehensive social critique and serious social planning; it atternpts to demonstrate what should change and what might realistically replace present arrangements; and it also tends to propose social reforms that give scope to human variability. According to Delany, the ideological utopia tends to minirnize social criticism or confine it to a few key areas of social concem, to simpliQ both sociai criticism and social planning in accordance with a specific, schematic ideoiogy, and to offer a static social structure that emphasizes uniforrnity rather than variety. In this dissertation, I will follow the distinction proposed by Bloch, treating feminist utopias as concrete utopias, and, therefore, carrying hope, simultaneously anticipating and affecting the future.

Utopia and ldeoiogy

Bloch's distinction between abstract and concrete utopia can be clarified by comparing it to Karl Mannheim's understanding of ideology and utopia (one of the chapters in which Bloch discusses the issue is titled 'The Encounter of the Utopian Function with

Ideoloa&'). Mannheim regards both ideology and utopia as categories of ideas incongrnous with reality. However, utopias are oriented to the future, and are those ideas which transforrn reaIity in their own image, whereas ideologies are oriented to the past and serve to legitimate the status quo. Consequently, not al1 forms of wishful thinking are categonzed as utopias.

Mannheim does not disagree that "wishful thinking has always figured in human affairs"

(184). For Mannheim, those forms of wishful thinking which do not serve to affect the future are not utopia at dl. For Bloch, they are utopia, but Iargely comprise abstract utopia.

Both Bloch and Mannheim point out that their distinctions are analytical and their categories are ideal types: concrete utopia contains abstract elernents, ideology may contain utopian elements, and utopia may contain elements of ideology. Whereas concrete utopia, like

Mannheim's utopia, is anticipatory, transfomative and linked to the future, abstract utopia

(while compensatory) is not necessarily linked to the pst in the sense of sustaining its social forms (although it does draw upon memory rather than imagination in the construction of its images). Mannheim's ideology is anti-utopian in function; Bloch's abstract utopia is not. Another fundamental difference is in the relationship between utopia and reality.

Mannheim sees reality as given, and, moreover, regards the question of what is real as unproblernatic. Both ideology and utopia are consigned to a syrnbolic realm of ideas which is outside this reality and can be contrasted with it. ForBloch, reality is essentially unfinished, and concrete utopia is important precisely because it is a possible future (or a range of possible futures) located within the real. It is not only anticipated subjectively in utopian thinking (as product of the "not yet conscious"), but has objective reality as the "not yet become" or as the real-possible future, whether or not in any particular case it becomes actual reality. Whereas Mannheim cm only retrospectively define ideas as utopian, since they qualiQ only if they succeed in realizing thernselves, Bloch's open future dispenses with the criterion of success in distinguishing between abstract and concrete utopia. Whereas

Mannheim fears the utopia as irrational and potentially revolutionary, Bloch welcomes the

'red drearn' and the revolution.

Utopian Chronotope

As a literary genre, utopia is not only a subset of utopianism, but has a 'composite' structure: it resembles a novei yet usually lacks developed plot and character; it resembles a political tract yet generally Iacks the close argumentation or the explicit agitational point. In his prefatory note to A Modem Utopia (1905), H.G. Wells was "vacillating over the scheme of this book" and asking himself whether his utopia was "an argumentative essay, a discussion novel or a 'hard nanative'?Wells concludes that utopia is "a sort of shot-silk texture between philosophical discussion on the one hand and imaginative narrative on the other" or

"a hybrid of the two" (Delany 157). 45 An important generic characteristic of utopia is its chronotope- an imaginary location in time and space related to a representation of a certain set of values of the utopian cornmunity. In his essay ''Foms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel' ( 198 1), Bakhtin observes that every genre has "a certain chronotope which expresses spacdtime relations that reflect certain social beliefs regarding the placement and actions of human individuals in this particular space and time" (Bakhtin Toms of Time" 233). Bakhtin understands chronotope as a formally constitutive category of literature ; he ventures to Say that "it is precisely the chronotope that defines genre and generic distinctions, for in literature the primary category of the chronotope is time" (85). The chronotope as a formally constitutive category determines to a significant degree the image of the individual in literature. From this, Bakhtin infers that the image of the individual (protagonist) is always intrinsically chronotopic. Projecting

Bakhtin's concept on the utopian genre, we can define the utopian chronotope as a rneans for uncovering social contradictions that employs a certain way of expressing time's fullness: the way of utopian inversion. Utopian thinking locates such categories as purpose, ideal, justice, perfection, the hamonious condition of the individual and society in the utopian space and time. Discussing the concept of the Golden Age, Bakhtin points out that "this particular

'trans-positioning', this 'inversion' of time is typical of mythological and art2Stic modes of thought in various areas of human development; it is also characterized by a speciaI concept of tirne" (Bakhtin's emphasis, 147). In utopia, the world of the future (or the alternative present) is not homogeneous with the real-life present and the past, it is somewhat empty and fragmenteci, with just enough detail to support its ideologicai plane. The primary characteristic of the utopian chronotope is its arnbiguity or the conditional mode of the narration: utopia is often presented as a drearn, a vision, an illusion. Kenneth Burke suggests that in order a0 understand how reality is apprehended "what we want is not temthat avoid ambigui~,but tenns that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily anse" (Grammar xviii). Therefore, ambiguity becornes a resource for multiple utopian visions in alternative worlds that are govemed by laws different from the real-world laws.

Tzvetan Todorov defines the particular kind of ambiguity in utopia as "problematic in tems of its existence":

The ambiguity is sustained to the very end of the adventure: reality or dream? Truth or illusion?. .. The person who experiences the event must opt for one of two possible solutions: either he is the victirn of an illusion of the senses, of a product of the imagination - and laws of the wodd then remain what they are; or else the event has indeed taken place, it is an integral part of reality - but then this reality is controlled by faws unknown to us. (footnote 24, quoted in Delany 160-161)

The next essential characteristic is the prominence of the ideological difference: utopia describes an imaginary 'community' or 'society' with a distinctively differing ideology; in this way, ideology is rendered (more or less) discursively visible. This makes utopia social and ideological in nature: the tem generally refers to works which describe an imaginary society in some detail. Some centuries sîressed certain aspects of societal life and neglected others, and some authors are concerneci with certain parts of society more than others. But, as researchers point out, it must be a society - a condition in which humans (or utopian people) express themsetves in a variety of ways. For exarnple, Darko Suvin defines utopia as:

the verbal construction of a particular quasi-human community where socio-political institutions, noms and individual relationships are organized according to a more perfect principle than in the authots community, this construction being baseci on estrangernent arising out of an atternative historicai hyphesis. (132) Lyman Tower Sargent argues that Darko Suvin misses an important point found in J.

Max Patrick, who says "a Utopia should describe in a variety of aspects and with some consistency an imaginary state or society" (293). On the other hand, Suvin's definition is important in emphasizing that most utopias are based on "an alternative historical hypothesis" or, in other words, an explanation of how the better society came into king. Utopias are often criticized for simply describing the society without indicating how that society was or could be achieved. While many utopias skip such explanations altogether, they are, as Suvin notes, frequently there.

A traditional characteristic of utopia which is currently king debated is whether it should strive to provide a blueprint for a perfect society. Many classic utopias are characterized as finite or static, or representing/ desiring perfection. These are the fundamental characteristics of any encyclopaedia or dictionq definition15, and as such they form the pivotal ternis of the standard view of utopia Some authors insist that the utopian society must be perfect and therefore unrealizable. One goes so far as to Say that "Utopia is a place where everybody iives happily ever after .. . ," which obviously does not include dystopias and critical utopias. But people do no not "Iive happily ever aftei' even in More's

Utopia. Sargent demonstrated in an article in 1975 that perfection has never bee:! a characteristic of utopian fiction, but the misuse of the word perfect persists (Cf. Sargent, "A

Note").

'' YJtopia - an imagioaty ideal society or political state. The term .. . was coined by Thomas More for his book Utopia that describes a perfect political state as he envisioned it" (Morner & Rausch 232). 48 Arnong the definitions of utopia, Lyman Tower Sargent's comprehensive index of utopian key-terms is considered the most useful (please see Table 2 below).

Table 2. Termïnistic Index of Utopian Key-terms

(Sargent '7hree Faces of Utopianism Revisited 9):

Utopianism Social dreaming.

Utopia a nonexistent society described in considerable detail and normally located in tirne and space.

Eutopia or positive a non-existent society described in considerable detail and utopia normaily located in time and space. The author intends a contemporaneous reader to view this society as considerably better than the society in which that reader lives.

Dystopia or negative a non-existent society described in considerable detail and utopia normally located in time and space. It is intended to be considerably worse than the society in which the reader lives .

Utopian satire a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space. It presents a criticism of the contemporary society.

a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space that is aimed to criticize utopianism or some particular eutopia.

Critical utopia a nonexistent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space. Its iùnction is to portray a better society than the contemporary one. However, this society has diffkult problems that the described society rnay or rnay not be able to solve. This narrative takes a cntical view of the utopian genre. Sargent defines the broad, general phenornenon of utopianism as social dreaming: "the drems and nightmares that concem the ways in which groups of people arrange their lives and which usually envision a radicaily different society than the one in which the drearners live. But not al1 are radical, for some people at any time dream of sornething basically familia?' (Sargent 'LThree Faces of Utopianism Revisited" 3). Sargent further maintains that utopianism has been expressed in three different forms, each with many variants - utopian literahire, which includes two fundamental traditions (which he calls body utopias or utopias of sensud gratification, and city utopias or utopias of human contrivance); comunitarianism; and utopian social theory. He makes an important point when he argues that it is essentiai for commentators to keep these forms distinct and not deny the existence of any of the three.

In bis more recent work, Lyman Tower Sargent further elaborates the term 'utopia' as a general umbrella-term to update his basic definitions. He discusses the dialectics of the efforts to define utopia and acknowledge its traditions: in order to demonstrate that there is one or more utopian traditions, we have to define utopia, but that definition emerges from the existing traditions. Sargent reflects briefly on the nature of definitions, arguing against the very possibility of defining since the act of definition depends on where we stand and who we are. At the same time, says Sargent, we constantly make distinctions and must do so to have any sort of control over the flow of information and knowledge that passes through us each day. These distinctions are the root of definition. It is necessary to be able, at least as an hypothesis to examine, to Say that something is A or Not-A, utopia or not-utopia, intentional comniunity or not-intentional community. At the same time, it is necessary to recognize that definitions are intellectual constmcts that attempt to provide a useful tool to deal with the bulk of a phenornenon. Definitions are rarely or ever useful at the extremes, and the boundaries established by definitions are both moveabie and porous or permeable, but for certain purposes (e-g. bibliography) boundaries are necessary (Sargent 'Three Faces of Utopianism

Revisited" 1-2). Sargent points out that we are discussing living traditions which are dways in process, only fixable at a moment in time and place. Their evolution further problematizes the task of defining utopia According to Sargent, therefore, utopia is the general umbrella- term that can be further suMvided into positive utopias (or eutopias) and negative utopias

(dystopias and anti-utopias). There is a lot of similarity in Sargent's definition of dystopia and anti-utopia. His only distinction is that anti-utopia is concerned with criticism of the contemporary society, while dystopia portrays a society that is considerably worse that the reader's, with the negative tendencies of the contemporary society taken to their logicd end.

Analyzing Sargent's index, Nan Bowman Albinski (1988) points out that eutopia represents a 'good' place and involves a comrnon belief in the malleability of hurnan rrature.

She fin& that eutopia is often set in the future but always directly connected to the imperfect present. Dystopia evinces a shared belief in the flexibility of human nature but shows it king manipulated for the worse, often in the narne of eutopia. Dystopia may be, but is not necessady, anti-utopian. An explicitly anti-utopian work is focused on satire, but utopian satire is not always directed against utopia as such. The anti-utopia is, according to Albinski, unique in its approach towards human nature, which is presented as fixed and imrnutable.

Albinski's analysis is in tems of content and form, and she manages to avoid problems of overgeneralization by keeping the focus of her work context-specific. With regard to form she finds that the British and American eutopias of the 1960s and 1970s show declining realism and a shift towardç degory and mbiguity, while clear-cut images are the property of the modern dystopia. ûiapter 2: ütopianism and Feminism

Feminism has foregrounded issues of gender difference and male dominance in society; it has prompteci a concem wiBi putüng women 'on the map' and a critical reappraïsal of pre- and non-feminist research. (Coates 1-2)

Feminist writers employed the utopian potential for re-envisioning the patriarchal social order; however, they needed to re-invent the patriarchal genre because of its tendency towards stagnation, blue-printing, and porû-aying sexism as natutal. A discussion of sexism in patriarchal utopia in this Chapter will enable me to rnove towards understanding the nature of feminist interventions into the utopian genre. In order to do that, 1focus on the major feminist propositions of the 1970s, their critique of the patnarchal representations of female sexuality, the patriarchal language, and the need to develop Z'ecnture ferninine or a strategic writing practice. Looking closely at the feminist modifications of the patriarchal mode of writing, 1 briefly discussfiction theory, applying it as a tool to analyze feminist utopian narratives. 1

Merdiscuss the inadequacy of definitions of the feminist utopia based upon its fonn, content, and function, thus advocating the need for a multi-pIanar new-rhetorical approach.

Utopia and Gender Issues

Despite giving frequent lip service to gender equality, patriarchal utopia typically described a utopian society with conventional gender stereotypes in place. As commentators point out @elany 158, Booker 337), Thomas More's seminal text set the stage for maintaining the sexist status quo, even when imagining a future world. Delany places Thomas More in a group of patriarchal utopian writers whom she caiis 'ideological. ' These writers are conspicuous in their tendency to include oniy a minimal arnount of social cnticism in their work, or to limit it to only a few areas of concem. They create future worlds that are in agreement with a preconceived, ideological focus which pnvileges conformity instead of diversity (Delany 1%). For example, in contrast to his belief that social and economic inequality is the source of the ills of contemporary society, More's Raphael Hythloday described an ideal utopian society where equality was emphasized even to the point of suppressing individual Liberty and imposing a potentidly oppressive conformity. However, despite the demand for complete social homogeneity, More's Utopia envisioned a strongly patriarchal society: its principal political unit was the family household ruled by the patriarch.

Upon marriage women transferred to the household of their husband's family, while males remaineci members of their own family for life. Within the household, the patriarchal hierarchy was cast in Stone: 'Wives are subject to their husbands, children to their parents, and generally the younger to their elders" (More 4 1).

More's vision of the female subservience in his otherwise homogeneous society was not unusual. At that time, male supremacy was such an obvious and apparently natural idea that it might never have occurred to More to include gender inequaIity among the other social hierarchies leveled in his society. Booker mâkes a strong case arguing that More's inability to imagine a society with genuine gender equality "stands as a reminder of the profound embeddedness of gender prejudice in Western society" (338). Indeed, female subservience and total dependence on male members of the family was still the nom in 1976, when Phyllis

Chesler and Emily Jane Goodman invented the following advertisement to expose the inevitable round-the-clock unpaid domestic labor which women were expected to perform in the Arnerican household (quoted in Russ Whar Are We Fighting For? 17 1-172):

Help Wanted

Requirements: Intelligence, good health, energy, patience, sociability. Skills: at least 12 different occupations. Hours: 99.6 pfweek. Sakry: None. Holidays: None (will be required to remain on stand-by 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). Oppottunities for advancement: None (lirnited transferabilrty of skills acquired on the job). Job secunty: None (trend is towards more layoffs, particularly as employee approaches middle age. Severance pay will depend upon the discretion of the employer). Fringe benefits: Food, clothing and shetter generally provided, but any additional bonuses will depend on the financial standing and good nature of employer. No health, medical or accidental insurance; no social security or pension plan.

Booker fûrther argues that, due to its critical potential, dystopian fiction would seem to be a more natural genre for feminist writers, despite the fact that their works have more typically been associated with utopian fiction. Centrally concerned with the clash between individuai desire and societal demand, mainstream dystopia focuses on sexuality and gender relations as elements of this conflict. For exarnple, the govemments of dystopian societies in

We, Brave New WorZd, and 1984 focus on sexudity as a crucial matter for their efforts at social control (Booker 337). This focus stems fiom a wide-spread perception that sexuality is a potential locus of powerful subversive energies. On the other hand, despite a consistent focus on sexuaiity, rnost patriarchal dystopias have done elatively little to chaUenge conventionai gender stereotypes.

Ferninist thinkers of the last century were well aware of the sexism in patriarchal utopia, responding to it with an alternative utopian tradition that has been centrally concemed with demonstrating the possibility of thinking beyond the patriarchal mode. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the "first wave" of ferninist theonsts concemed thernselves with analyzing such sex-related institutions as family, motherhood, chastity, prostitution, birth control, and the double standards or moralityL6.Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Mary E. Bradley wrote late 19h-cenniry utopian works with ferninist affinities, and the early 2oh-century work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1 86û-1935) (Moving the Mountairt, Herland, and With Her in

OurZand) heralded the beginning of a full-blown ferninist utopian tradition.

Why did the ferninists turn to the utopian genre? 1 betieve that the new-rhetorical theories of genre can help us cl- this issue. If we consider genre as a meaning-making event, then we arrive at an interactive conception of form in which Our discursive genres serve to regularize communication and social relations. Such a pragmatically, rather than semanticdly, orientated conception of genre contributes toward an understanding of how discourse works - that is, how language serves to motivate social actions. In much the same way that Burke shows us how formal linguistic entities are "individuated" through social contexts, Carolyn Miller argues that the existing generic models provide writers with solutions to recurring rhetoricd problems. Drawing on Lloyd Bitzer's definition of "rhetorical situation

l6 Though iïrst-wave ferninists did focus on the connection between the subjugation of women and male sexuality, for the most part they did not make women's sexuaIity cenirai to their analysis of wornan's social condition, except as it affect4 other. institutions, like motherhood ( Shub22). 56 ' as a 'complex of persons, events, objects, and relations' presenting an 'exigence' that can be allayed through the mediation of discourse" (152), Miller asserts that typified actions rnirror comrnonly perceived interpretations of events. She further maintains that what does recur "is not a material situation (a rd,objective, fachial event) but our construal of a type (157), which is how "recumng situations seem to 'invite' discourse of a particular type" (162). As

Coe argues, "rhetorical structures .. . are the social memory of standard responses to particular types of rhetorical situations" (ApoZogy 19). The social, collective mernory that Coe refers to represents the conventionalization of discursive practices operating within discourse cornrnunities: a discourse cornmunity's social rnemory serves to "invite7' a discourse of a certain ''type." Burke points out that form implies a strategy of response, an "attitude"; therefore, as Coe argues, 'Yom is cultural not neutrai" (20). Coe thus reinforces Burke's idea that literary forms have an a priori existence: "insofar as a form is socially shared, adopting the form involves adopting, at least to some extent, the cornmunity's attitude, abiding by its expectations" (Coe Apoiogy 19).

1 will add that whereas the ferninist utopian writers adopt the utopian fom in terms of its social dreaming and criticism of the existing social order, they draw an important distinction when representing the system of values ingrained in the patnarchal utopian genre, attempting to adopt the utopian form to represent ferqinist values. Ferninist authors consider utopia especially instrumental for their social critique and exploration of an alternative socio- syrnbolic order because utopia allows "idea to become flesh, abstraction to become concrete, imaginative extrapolation to become aesthetic reality" (Annas 145). The feminist rhetorical situation changed in the period of 1930s-196ûs. By the 196ûs, first-wave feminism of the beginning of the century had long been in eclipse, and, far fiom king viewed as a political relation, gender relations and sex per se were considered mostly within a biological, psychological, personal, or religious perspective. Until the radical femïnists boldly declared that "the personal is political", opening for politicd analysis the most intirnate aspects of male-female relations, women's sexuality had not for decades been viewed squarely in its political dimension as an aspect of power relations between the sexes.

In her widely disseminateci "A Program for Feminist Consciousness Raising," in Notesfrorn the Second Year, Kathie Sarachild, a founding member of the Redstockings and a vitally important theoretician of consciousness raising, repeatedly emphasized the importance of connecting personal testimony with testimony of other women, now and in the past, and with politicd organizing.

Alix Kates Shulman (1980) in her discussion of what triggered the second wave of feminism suggests that it was Simone de Beauvoir who reopened the subject of sex and power to feminist analysis in 1949 with the publication of The Second Sex in France. In the USA,

Betty Friedan's 1963 The Ferninine Mystique signaled a second round of organized ferninism.

A larger feminist context came about when the radical wing of the second-wave ferninism made sexuality a central part in ferninist analysis of patriarchy. Radical ferninists of the 1970s were "those rnostly young women of the New Left whose discontent'' with their

l7 It is notable that 1 have not been able to find any account of similar subordination in the Old Lot?: one wouid wonder whether it was not practiced or not felt - and why, but this analysis is beyond my purposes in this dissertation. subordination by male radicals led thern in the late sixties to form the wornen's liberation movement (WLM to the FBI)" (Shulman 22-23).

Thus, ferninist utopias of the 1970s appeared in a unique socio-historic context when the new cultural space was forced open by an active group of feminist theorisb - Sirnone de

Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Shulamith Fiestone, Kate Millett, Bettie Frïedan, Mary Daly, Dale

Spender, to narne but a few. (In fact, Russ in me Female Man mentions their names as the founders of New Feminism). Another major social development of the decade (late 1960s - eady 1980s) was the emergence of a ferninist comrnunity that provided "women writers with an audience with a shared body of experience and values" (Snitow 16 l), an audience eager to recognize itself in the writings. It is worth remembering here that Burke clairns that our social discourses are contexnially based, that they become meaningful to us through extrïnsic factors (that is, through the ways in which language functions to both uni@ and divide us)''.

Feminist discourse of the 1970s cast a new light on the Arnerican socio-political scene. Alix Kates Shulrnan (1980), an active participant of these events, reports that in 1967 a hancihl of feminists began organizing for women's liberation and analyzing every aspect of the relations between the sexes, including the sexual:

Not that the subject of women's sexuality was ignored before then. Sex had long been a "hot," salable subject. Men were studying it in laboratones, in books, in

l8 Through his concept of consubstantiality, Burke conveys that language performs the ideological function of making people "act together" on the bqsis of group identification. Burke's conception of the relationship between identification and consubstantiality that makes feminist discourse both ideological and subject to ideology is premised upon the ways in which the writer has interrelated generality and detail in a form that ensures consubsrantiation when both reader and writer remain simultaneously separate and joined together. By following the verbal actions of others, readers corne to be the other, yet because they remain themselves, motivated and composecl of rnany different and particular verbal scenes or contexts, they remriin "unique, an individual tocus of motives". 59 bedrooms, in offices; after several repressive decades, changes called the "sexual remlution" and %exual liberationwwere being widely discussed and promoted al1 oirough the sixties; ski& were up, pnidery was dom. (Shulman 21) !

Shulman further narrates that in 1969 a coalition of feminist groups staged a sit-in at the Ladies Hume Journal office until they were granted twenty pages in which to present feminist ideas to a vast fernale audience (Shulman 27). Late in 1969 the fmt Congress to

Unite Women was held in New York, attended by more than 500 wornen. That sarne year, as

Shulrnan reports, Barbara Seaman's The Doctor's Case Against the Pill was published.

Shulman goes on to give a comptete history of the publication of the most influentid feminist books of the 1970s - one rriight speculate that for theferninists in the 1980s' when her account was published, this publishing record of 2nd wave feminist books was signifcant. In this way, they were attempting to historicize the development of their rnovement. As Shulman reports, in 1970 came Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, Shularnith Firestone's Dialectics of Sex, and the first of the large publishers' anthologies of articles and pamphlets that had been circulated earlier in women's liberation movement's journals: Robin Morgan's Sisterhood is Powerfzd,

Leslie Tanner's Voicesfi-ont Women 's Liberation, Sookie S tarnbler's Women 's Liberation: A

Blueprintfor rhe Future, and, in 1971, Vivian Gornick and B. K. Moran's Woman in Sexist

Society. Their books were "expressive of the non-dogmatic, multi-tendency, ferninist, ecological and libertarian oppositional consensus that developed in the United States in the

1970s" (Moylan O).Tom Moylan argues (201) that this consensus reflected the triple alliance of ferninism, ecologism and libertarian socidism because the multiplex libertarian discourse could not emerge within one paradigm. However, much as he wants to represent this development as a cooperative alliance, the situation was not that simple because sexism was prevaient in the New Left as weU.

Sara Evans provides a valuable account of the emergence of radical ferninism from the civil rights movement and the New Left in PersonuZ Politics: The Roots of Women 's

Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Le_F (1979). She documents sexual insults and exploitation of women within the New Left and the persistent refusal of the male radicals to take the cornplaints of women seriously. Marge Piercy, who later became an outstanding utopian writer, provides in her 1970s essay "The Grand Coulie Damn" a first- hand account of the sexual resentments of New Left Women (Morgan 1970).

Despite the media version of the great sexuai revolution of the sixties, and fat- from king freed by it, the Young, dedicated women in the New Left expressed the feeling of king victimized by it. As ShuIman points out,

they complained that they were expected ktonlyto type the speeches, stuff the envelopes, and prepare the food and coffee for the radical men they worked with, but to sleep with them besides, without making any demands in retum. Their own feelings, their needs for affection, recognition, consideration, or commitment, did not count. If they did not comply, they were often made to feel like unattractive, unhip prudes who could really be replaced. Sexual favors were often the price of politii favor. Naturally, these women resented being used sexuaily, as tbey resented performing political labors without appreciation, and resented being relegated to doing Mat they called movement's "shitwork" - al1 by so-called radicals whose prodaimed purpose in Me was to end oppression. And these women saw an intimate connection between the way men treated them in their organizations and the way they treated them sexually; they were hivo sides of a single demeaning attitude toward women -ne that would not take them seriously. (Shulman 23)

Applying the tools of analysis and organization that women leamed in the civil rights movement and the New Left to their own situation, and drawing on the works of both

Beauvoir and Friedan, women used their sexual discontent to help them understand the power relations between men and women. Shulman further reports that as soon as the consciousness raising groups were organized, many women without pnor political experience began joining them to voice their resentments: "Many complained bitterly that their men never took responsibility for birth control, for children, for the progress of their relationships. The stones poured out. In those days, few of the women had had the opportunity to taik honestly about sex with anyone; it had been a taboo subject in the fifties and was still suspect in the sixties. Certainly, women had not felt free to talk about the intimate physical details. For not only were sexual topics embamassing, but sexual problems had long been taken as signs of persona1 failings or illness and as such were sharneful, and talk about sexual secrets was considered a betrayal of your man and thus dangerous" (23). Shulman remembers the first excitement generated when the women in her group in 1967 first admitted to each other that they had been faking orgasm - and for various reasons (24). Once the truth was oufthey tried to analyze why they had felt the need to fake. Instead of feeling guilty about it, they saw faking as a response to pressures that had been put on the women by men. Still, no matter how liberating or exhilarating their discussions were, the purpose was not simply to improve their sex lives or to find some personal solution to their probierns: "The women wanted nothing less than to understand the social basis for their discontents, including the sexual, and then do something to change it - for everyone" (24). The early consciousness raising meetings "felt like life-transforming discussions because Our object was justice for al1 women" (25).

However, consciousness raîsing was not therapy, but mostly fact-gathering sessions.

Rather, in sync with Aucire Lorde saying that a slave cannot break the master's house with the master's twls, consciousness raising was conceived as a new political tml, modeled on the Chinese practice called Speaking Bittemess: "If women were tmly to understand their situation in patriarchy, they had to base their analysis on information they could trust, information that was not suspect, and for this they had to gather it themselves" (24). Wornen had to question ail generaiizations that had been made in the past, and question the interests they served, substituting knowledge based on the experience and feelings of women, starting with themselves.

Carole Hanisch in "The Personal 1s Politicai" (1970) discusses the differences between thempy and consciousness raising sessions. Since everythmg women discussed was connected, they felt they could start anywhere in their analysis of women's lives: sex, class, work, mamiage, mothehood, sex roles, housework, health, education, images, language - al1 these aspects of women's lives were riddled with sexism. The women's liberation movement would change them al1 because the focus of the movement was on bridging the gender gap and empowering the female subject. Major feminist propositions (in Table 2 on p.p. 4849) focused on issues of power and gender stereotypes related to work, parenting, rnarriage, and language: Table 3. Feminists Propositions of the 1970s

Ideot ogy Capitalism is a patriarchal institution which oppresses women. Gender roles Men and women should not be stereotyped by their gender roles. Difference One branch of feminism argued that there are no innate psychological or social traits associated with king a man or woman; another argued that there are, but that the ones associated with women have ken devalued and distorted by paûiarchal culture. Men think in a linear fashion, women tend to think more holisticaily (the circle is a female symbol suggesting this idea). Men define themselves by what they own and control; women by their relationships to other people. Men strive to compete, but women prefer communal decision- making in which al1 aspects of a problem are discussed until a consensus is arrived at so that the group is not divided into wimers and losers. Language oppresses women: terms associated with them often create a presumption of passivity and weakness. New ways of using language to make men and women more equal are needed. Work Work should be done by whoever can do it, and gender is largely irrelevant to this. Women should have equal access to work of equal value. Women should be able to pursue their careers without having where they live determined entirely by their husbands'jobs. Marriage A marriage in which a woman is prized only for her sexual attractiveness and availability is a sort of prostitution. Parenting Marriage and motherhood should not prevent women from having careers any more than maniage and fatherhood prevent men from doing so.

Women should not be defined by their childbearing abilities. Men can and should raise children as well as women. 1 are raised. A few ferninists even argued that children should be able to "divorce" their parents. Chiidren can be raised by al1 kinds of configurations of Ioving adults: the traditional nuclear famiiy is not necessarily the best mode1 for child-rearing. 1 Sexuality 1 Children should be raised to accept their bodies and their sexuality without shame. Sex should be a matter of intimate sharing, not of conquest or 1 trophy-hunting. I / Rape is a crime of violence which should be punished much more severely than it usually is. Homosexuality and bisexuality should be just as socially 1 1 acceptable as heterosexuality-as should ceiibacy. Beauty The social emphasis on physical beauty depersonalizes and 1 1 dehumanizes women. Women should not have to reshape and decorate themselves 1 (removing body hair, for instance) to be accepted and loved (a 1 distinction was made between make-up to match a societai ideal of beauty and a decoration such as wearing ear-rings or necklace). Childbearing Childbirth is a natural phenornenon, not a disease. Wornen should be able to return to work shortly after giving birth. Modem childbirth techniques common in hospitals are dehumanizing and dangerous. Women should be able to give birth at home, without dnigs, using such traditions as giving birth in a squatting position. The medical establishment is generally male-dorninated; women I 1 need to reject the authority of docton and insist on treatments 1 1 appropriate to their needs. Traditions Great women from the past can provide inspiration for us today; their influence and importance need to be more widely recognized. Shularnith Firestone (238-240) sumrnarizes these propositions when she urges the women "to create a paradise on earth anew". Her "ultimate revolution" rats on severai important dernands:

kingwomen from biological tyranny and willingness to advocate extra-uterine

reproduction;

difising childbearing and child-rearing to society as a whole;

rejection of the nuclear family;

economic independence and self-determination of dl;

liberation of children;

total integration of women and children into larger society;

fiee creative work for al1 who want it;

sexual freedom and love.

Taken together, the writings of feminist theonsts of the 1970s dramatize some of the contradictions that ernerge when feminists seek to free wornen from the strictures imposed by capitalist patriarchy. Their work also forms part of a wide-range series of theoretical debates about the hoarding, circulation, and expenditure of sexual energies and flow. Providing the critique of these strictures, these works also force attention on how female subjectivity can only be comprehended once we examine the econornic principles which inform differing masculine and feminine subject-positioning within patriarchal social order. A radical improvement of ferninine subjectivity is therefore impossible without a feminist revolution that will liberate ferninine desire. 66 IdenMy, Desire, and Difference

A major effect of feminist criticism is the uncovering of the politics of difference. sex, like race, is an area of social relations where dominance has invariably been justified by dtference. In focusing on 'difference', ferninists were increasingly questioning, not only how one thought about the difference between women and men, but also how one considered the many differences - including those of sexuality, age, class, and ettinicity - that at times came between women seeking liberation from pahiarchal oppression.

Feminist reasoning has revealed that scholarly cornrnents on sex difference always reflected the ideas of their time. Second-wave ferninists argued that, historically, in the first half of the 20~century a lot of research was done specifically in order to provide a scientific account of an already assumed fernale inferiority: while equality presupposes a standard to which one is equal, the implied standard has always been men.

With the renewal of campaigns for women's rights in the late 1960s, vigorous feminist discussions of Freud's wntings initiaily looked most unfavourably at Freud's psychoanalysis and especially at his theory of penis envy. In the 1970s, however, the controversy changed direction with the gradua1 appearance of books and essays that claimed Freud's writings could be interpreted in a way criticaily advantageous for feyinism.

Sigrnund Freud first elaborated his account of sexuality in 1905; however, even in the

1960s, Freud's psychoanalytical theory was still part of the "normal" dominant discourse.

According to Bristow (1997), the widely-cited findings of Freud's psychoanalytic investigations cm be sumrned up in three main points: " 1) sexual life begins during infancy;

2) the 'sexual' and the 'genital' have separate meanings, since the 'sexual' encompasses many 67 behavioun that are not 'genital' in character, and 3) sexual pleasure involves the development of erogenous zones, ones that rnay or rnay not lead to reproduction" (62-63). To understand the complex identifications through which the infant must pass in the formation of sexuaIity,

Freud theorized two interdependent structures: the Oedipus complex and the castration complex. Suggestive yet schematic, they provide two of the main foundations to Freud's explorations of sexuality (please see Appendix 3 for a brief overview of this theory). These explorations are important because they infiuenced the socio-political context in which ferninist utopias of the 1970s emerged. The ferninist utopia as a genre is reactive to its context of situation; therefore, as 1 will show in Chapter 4, feminist utopias reacted to Freud's reasoning on sexuality.

Freud's attempts to explain how the castration and Oedipus complexes operate for giris are problematic. For once Freud explains how agir1 reacts to the threat of castration, it soon emerges that the absence of penis marks not the end, but the beginning of her Oedipus complex:

\ A littie girl behaves differently. She makes her judgement and her decision in a flash. She has seen it and knows that she is without it and wants to have it. < Hete what has been narned the masculinity complex branches off. It may put great diffÏculües in the way of the regular developrnent toward femininity, if it cannot be got over soon enough. The hope of some day obtaining the penis in spite of everything and so of becoming a man rnay pe~istto an incredibly late stage and rnay becorne a motive for stmnge and otherwise unaccountable actions.. .. Thus a girl rnay refuse to accept the fear of being'castrated, rnay harden herself in the conviction that she does possess a penis;and rnay subsequenüy be compelled to behave as though she were a man.. .. Afteia wman has becorne aware of the hundto her narcissisrn, she develops, like a scar, a sense of inferiority. When she has passed beyond her first attempt at explaining hef lack of a penis'as being a punishment personal to herself and has realiithat the semiai character is a un'iversal one, she begins to share the contempt felt by menfor a sex,yhich is the berin so important a respect, and, at least in holding that opinion, insists on being like à man. (Freud 19:253) Even though the boy must pass dong a tormented route through what Freud frequently terms

the 'positive' Oedipus complex towatds 'normal' heterosexuality, the girl has to travel a much

more difficult path towards the sarne destination. ~ndeed,in Freud's theory, everything for the

girl goes from bad to worse. Her conflict is caused by the imbalance between the masculine

and ferninine, active and passive, aspects to her psyche. But given that the Uedipus complex

is now in place between the girl and her father, nothing has been resolved for sure. As Freud

remarks in Temininity" (1933)' girls cm remain in the Oedipus complex ''for an

indeteminate length of time; they demolish it late and, even so, incompletely". Recognizing

the controversial implications of this assertion, Freud acknowledges how "feminists are not

pleased when we point out to them the effects of this factor upon the average feminine charactei' (Freud 22: 129).

And ferninise were definitely far from king pleased. Feminist engagement with psychoanalytic thought has made a significant contribution to the larger debate about

'difference' that preoccupied many feminist theorists. Feminists criticise the Great (white male) Thinkers for their accounts of 'human experience' which exclude the experiences of

women and other underprivileged, marginalized groups. Radical ferninist reasoning mirrors

Simone de Beauvoir's famous argument in Second Sex (1 974) that man has constructed woman as 'the Other', as the one who is not himself. Being the more powerfùl gender group, men impose their own definitions on the masculine/ feminine opposition. Al1 the negative characteristics of humanity (as men perceive them) are projected into women. Therefore,

according to this argument, in the existing socio-syrnbolic order, women are 'naturally' perceived as 'deviant', peripherd or invisible. In 1970, Kate Millett's Sexunl Politics appeared, with its polemic against penis-envy.

A landmark study for the 1970s' this book provides a rigorous analysis of patnarchal culture in both the Victorian and modem periods. Millett's discussion focuses on male iiterary figures, such as D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Henry Miller (1 89 1-1980), in a series of chapters examining the development of sexist thinking from the Victorian epoch to the sexual revolution of the 196ûs. Freud's work features in Millett's central chapter, "The Counter- revolution, 1930-196û". To Millett, these three counter-revolutionary decades mark an era that quelled the advanced sexual views pioneered in writings by Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard

Shaw, and Oscar Wilde, al1 of whom came to prominence at the end of the lgh century.

Protesting against the "habitua1 masculine bias of Freud's own terms and diction", Millett rebuts Freud's castration complex on the basis that he makes no distinction between 'fact' and

'fantasy' (182-3): 'Tt is interesting that Freud should imagine the young female's fem centre about castration rather than rape - a phenomenon which girls are in fact, and with reason, in dread of, since it happens to them and castration does not" (1 84). Millett contends that

Freud's theories collapse culture into nature, the sociai into the biological - and with devastating consequences:

Freud had spumed an excellent oppominhy to open the door to hundreds of enlightening studies on the effect of male-supremacist culture on the ego devekprnent of the young fernale, prefemng instead to sanctifyher oppression in terms of the inevitable law of 'biology'. The theory of penis envy has so effectiveiy obfuscated understanding that ail psychology has done since has not yet unraveled this matter of social causation. If, as seems unlikely, penis envy cm mean anything at all, it is productive only within the total cultural context of sex. And hem it would seem gihare fuliy cognizant of rnalesupremacylong before they see their brohr's penis. ... Confron@dwith so much concret8 evidence of the male's superior status, sensing on al1 sides the *precation in which they are heu, giris envy not the penis, but only what the penis gives one social .pretensionsta.

(Miliett 187). For several years, Millett's rhetorically assured polernic exerted influence over the Women' s

Liberation Movement. At this time, ferninist critici sm dso active1y disputed Jacques Lacan' s psychoanalytical theory of the phallus, one of his rnost controversid theoretic devices designed to explain how the subject becornes sexed.

Dating from 1958, Lacan's me Signzjication of the Phallus emphasizes that the phallus "is the signifier intended to designate as a whole the effects of the signified, in that the signifier conditions them by its presence as a signifier' (Lacan Ecnts 285). If these words sound like a riddle, then his succeeding explanation look even more perplexing:

The phallus is the priviieged signifier of that mark in which the role of the logos is joined with the advent of desire. 1 It can be said aiat this signifier is chosen because it is the most tangible element in the readm of sexual copulation, and ais0 me most syrnbolic in the iiteral (typographiil) sense of the terni, since itïs equivalent there to the (logical) copula. it might be said that, by virtue of its turgidity, it is the image of the vital fbw as it is transrnitted in generation.

All these propositions mereiy conceal the fact that it cmplay its rote onlywhen veiled, that is to say, as ifseif a sign of the latency wttich any signliile is struck, when it is raised to the fundon of the signifier.

It remains obscure why Lacan reserves the position of the privileged signifier for the phallus; in what way is logos joined with the advent of desire; why is the phallus equated with the copula; how turgidity represents the flow; and why can the phallus only fùnction as a signifier when veiled.

In the ferninist critical discourse, psychoanalysis has, since its inception, been the subject of highly contentious debate. By the 1980~~+an's difficult and demanding texts were widely circulating in English, and these too prompted significant questions for ferninists seeking theoretical tools that would illuminate the psychic and social formation of femininity within a patriarchal culture. As Bristow (98-99) reports, cntics hostile to the work of Freud and Lacan fî-equently raise the following points:

1. psychoanalysis fails to address the historical specificity of the structures and narratives it

explores, by seeking to pass off its findings as timeless and universal;

2. psychoanalysis conspires with the phallic authority it strives to analyze, by refusing to

propose models that could or would remove the pais or phallus from its omnipotent

place;

3. psychoanalysis is preposterously based on an epistemological impossibility, by professing

to interpret what it cannot by definition understand, since the unconscious is not

imrnediately accessible to knowledge;

4. psychoanalysis lays far too much emphasis on the conservative nature of sexual

identification, by presurning that eroticism cm only be understood by returning it to

f0undationa.I events that occurred extremeiy early in childhood, and which supposedly

determine al1 succeeding relations;

5. ps yc hoanalysis purports, but does no t manage, to resist biological assumptions, by

reducing its critique of sexuality to questions of anatomy.

Feminist theory has expIored these cnticisms in strenuous detail. For example, Adrienne

Rich in "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" (1980) examines societal forces which wrench women's emotional and erotic energies away from them and other women, and fiom women-identified values. According to her,

if women are the earliit'sources of emotionai caring and physical nurture for both fernale and male children, it would seem logical, from a feminist perspective at least, to pose the following questions: whether the search for love and tendemess in both sexes does nat originaiiy iead toward women; wtry in fact wamen wouid ever .direct that search; why species-suW, the means of impregnation, and emotionallerotic reiationships should ever have become so ngidîy identifid with each other; and why such violent strictures shouid be found necessary to enforce women's total ernotbnal, eroüc loyalty and subservience to men. (Rich 68)

Rich reports that Kathleen Gough in her essay 'The Origin of Family" (1975) has listed eight characteristics of male power as men's ability to:

deny women sexuality or to force it upon hem;

cornmand or exploit their labor and to control their produce;

control or rob them of their children;

confine ihem physically and prevent their movement;

use them as objects in male transactions;

crarnp their creativeness;

withhold from them large areas of society's knowledge and cultural attainrnents (69-70).

Rich elaborates on each of Gough's categories, identifying some of the methods by which male power is manifested (please see Table 4 in Appendix 2). Rich argues that women are confronted not with a simple maintenance of inequality and property possession, but with a pervasive cluster of forces, ranging from physical brutality to controi of consciousness which suggests, as she insists, that an enormous potential counter-force has to be restrained. Some of the forms by which male power manifests itself are more easily recognizable as enforcing heterosexuality on women than are others. Yet, as Rich comments, each one "adds to the cluster of forces within which women have been convinced that mamiage, and sexual orientation towards men, are inevitable, even if unsatismng and oppressive components of

?3 their lives" (Rich 7 1). Rich concludes that these situations occur precisely because women are depnved of choice and therefore have canot "undo the power men everywhere wield over women, power which has become a mode1 for every other form of exploitation and illegitimate control":

We have been stalied in a maze of false dichotomies which prevents our apprehending the institution as a wtiole: "gooa" versus %ad"marnages; "mamage for love" versus anangeci rnarriage; "liberated" sex versus prostitution; heterosexual intercourse versus rape; Liebeschrnerz versus humiliation and dependency. Within the institution exist, of course, qualitive dierences of expenence; but the absence of cho'ke remains the great unachwledged realii, and in the absence of choii, women will rernain dependent upon the chance or luck of particular reiationshiis and will have no coliective power to determine the meaning of sexuality in their ris. (91)

Rich calls for a revision of the institution of heterosexuality itself, as well as for the restoration of the history of the female resistance "which has never fully understood itself because it has ben so fragmented, miscdled, erased" (91). Rich observes that this analysis will need "a courageous grasp of the politics and economics, as well as cultural propaganda, of heterosexuality" (9 1).

The theonst who has become most notable for modimng the phallocentric paradigms of psychoanalysis to feminist ends is Julia Kristeva. From the outset of her career, Kristeva has been preoccupied with the processes that bring the subject into the domain of language.

Trained as a Iinguist and semioûcian, Kristeva's earliest research redefined the Lacanian distinction between the Irnaginary and the Syrnbolic. : She elaborates three orders - the semiotic, the thetic, and the syrnbolic - to explain the intricate stages through which the subject cornes to represent itself to itself. Since her research concentrates on the channeling of the drives, Kristeva consequently has much to Say about sexuality. Kristeva's works were published in France in the 1970s, and by mid -1970s were available in English. Through translation, Kristeva's work became widely known because it theorized the sarne popular culture of capiralist society that nourished the feminist utopias of the l97Os, especially

Monique Wittig's Les Guerielleres (197 1).

Kristeva details her three orders in Revolution in Poetic Language, fmt published in

France in 1974. There she explains how the semiotic refers to its Greek etymology, where the word means 'distinctive mark, trace, index, precursory sign, proof, engraved or wntten sign, imprint, trace, figuration" (Kristeva Revolutiun in Poetic Language 25). S ince the word implies 'distinctiveness', it helps to identiQ 'a precise modality in the signifj4ng process'; that is, the process that sustains the subject. Like Freud and Lacan, Kristeva wants to define how the infant's multiple drives are manipulateci and directed by its encounters with both its body and its environment:

Diirete quantities of energy rnove thmugh the body of the subject who is not yet constituted as such and, in the course of his development, they are arranged according to the various constraints imposed on this body - always aiready in the semiotic process - by family and social structures. In this way the drives, whiih are 'energy' charges as well as 'psychiil' marks, articulate what we cal1 a chora: a nonexpressive totali formed by the drives and their stases in a motility that is as full of movement as it is regulated. (Kristeva Revolutron in Poek Language 25)

The chora denotes 'an essentially mobile and extremely provisionai articulation constituted by movernent and their ephemeral stases", Not yet related to the signifying chain, the chora is a pre-symbolic realm that provides the dual rhythms of fieedom and constraint from which a relation to signification will gradually emerge. The chora represents the pre- linguistic moment where the child remains unable to differentiate itself fiom the matemal body. But, unlike Freud and Lacan, Kristeva remarks that this stage involves not random polymorphous perversity, but a space in which perceptions and sensations are taking on sorne semblance of organization. I see Kristeva's work as consubstantial and parallel to the development of ferninist discourse in the 1970s - early 1980s; therefore, 1 find her concept of

'chora' instrumental for my analysis of the pre-linguistic stage in the metamorphosis of the subject in Dorothy Bryant's île Kin of Ara Are Waitingfor YOK As I intend to show, the utopian society on Ata even designates a specific place (hol-ka) for the individud agent to be able to experience this transformation.

Following the semiotic cornes the rupture marked by the thetic: "a break in the signimng process, establishing the ident~jicationcf the subject and its object as preconditions of propositionality" (Kristeva Revolution in Poetic Language 43). "Al1 enunciation", Kristeva ad&, "is thetic". So the creation of a word or sentence is based on "propositionalit.: that is, a proposing of meaning. Placed on the 'threshold of language", the thetic is where syrnbolization cm begin. The thetic stage combines both the Lacanian rnirror stage and

Freud's established mode1 of castration. It marks the moment where subjectivity necessarily emerges through irnaginary misrecognition and through a relation to the primary but veiled signifier: the phallus.

The third and final order is calkd the syrnbolic (it bears some resemblance to the field of signification to which Lacan gave the sarne narne). Kristeva carefully outlines how and why the symbolic eventually must intervene: "Dependence on the mother is severed, and transfod into a symbolic relation to an other; the constitution of the Other is indispensable for communication with an othei' (48). Entry into the symbolic marks 'the first social censorship' because the subject, as it propels its image of itself into the world, meets with symbolic castration (48). But for Kristeva, the subject never quite deserts the semiotic. Art enacts the 'semiotization of the symbolic', and in doing so 'represents the flow of jouissance into language' (79). Judith Butler in Bodies Thar Matter (1993) defines the symbolic as "the normative dimension of the constitution of the sexed subject within language. It consists in a series of demands, taboos, sanctions, injunctions, prohibitions, impossible idealizations, and threats - performative speech acts, as it were, that wield the power to produce the field of cuituraliy viable sexual subjects : performative acts, in other words, with the power to produce or materialize subjectivating effects"(Bodies Thar Maiter 106).

Kristeva's later work, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980)' makes it clear that her concem with the semiotic chora means that sexual desire refers as much to the maternal body as it does to the phallic signifier that constitutes the subject's lack. What she calls the 'abject' marks 'our earliest attempts to release the hold of the rnatemal entity even before ex-isting outside of her'. This 'abject-ing', argues Kristeva, constitutes a 'violent, clumsy breaking away' that carries the 'nsk of falling back under the sway of a power as securing as it is stifling' (Powers of Horror 13). To be sure, this focus on the significance of the 'matemal entity' to the inchoate human subject provides a counterweight to the phdlocentrism of Freud's and Lacan's paradigrns.

Similar to Kristeva's chora, Helene Cixous's feminine economy of desire asserts that woman 'has never ceased to hear what-comes-before-langagereverberating' ("Sorties" 88).

Cixous's "Sorties" (1985 119751) focuses on the masculinist logic of the 'same': a rigid system of reasoning that Cixous memorably names 'the Empire of the Selfsame'. In Cixous's view, the masculinist impenalism of the 'Selfsame' violently enacts an ongoing 'story of phallocentrism'. As I intend to show, most feminist utopias portray and cnticize this dominant phallic nmtive that 'keeps the movement toward the other staged in a pabiarchal production, under Man's law' (79). Faced with the glorification of the ttiumphal "Selfsame', Cixous

longs to liberate women's jouissance. Such femininejouissance, she claims, belongs to an

'instinctuai economy' that 'cannot be identifïed by a man or refemd to the masculine economy7(82). 1 am also wondering if this suppressed feminine jouissance really poses an alternative to the binary logic of gender upheld by the phalIocratic paûiarchy. In this respect, the sexual logic celebrated by Cixous's 1 'ecriturefeminine - or a strategic ferninine writing practice - may be somewhat more traditional than it appears. "Let masculine sexuality gravitate around the penis, engendenng the centralized body.. . under the party dictatorship", declares Cixous. 'Woman", she argues, "does not perform on herself this regionalization that profits the couple head-sex", she adds. Cixous urges the woman to write her own self, her desires, her body, for herself and other women. Her appeal to "bnngwomen to writing" ("The

Laugh of the Medusa" 334) articulates the need to create a common language that cm connect women into a feminist community. Like Burke in his rhetoric of identification, Cixous takes it for granted that language is indispensable in uniting people, implying that the feminist re- invention of a style is quite possible and necessary. For Cixous, when women begin to write in al1 their diversity and complexity, "beauty will no longer be forbidden" (335). Once women have taken language, discovered its symbolic potential, and re-invented it for themselves, then they can write "the true texts of women -- female-sexed texts". Therefore, as both Cixous and Kristeva argue, any transformation of female subjectivity must necessady be based upon a decisive change of the woman's relationship to the socio-symbolic contract, upon the appropriation of power and new signimng practices:

sexual diierence - wkhis at once biilogical, physiologiil, and relative to reproduction, - is translateci by and transiates a diierence in the relationship of subjects to the symbolic contractwhiih is the social contract a difference, then, in the relationship to power, language, and meaning.

(KrÏsteva Women and Powef" 449)

Many other feminist theorists insist that women need to develop a new language and meaning which wiLl tùnction as "abnormal", deviant discourse within the existing pabiarchal situation. The rhetoric of 'silencing', 'alienation', and 'appropriation' permeates the writing of radical feminists @aly 1978, Kramarae 198 1, Rich 1978, Spender 1980). Arguing that even the narning of the world was done fiom the men's point of view, they claim that the entire language system is sexist and misogynist, since it belongs to men and is controlled by them only. Man-made language is a form of Orwellian thought-control, because men define the limits of language and make women see things their way. Jennifer Coates explains the patriarchal practice of aiienation by the androcenhic rule: "Men will be seen to behave linguistically in a way that fits a writer's view of what is desirable or admirable; women, on the other hand, will be blamed for any linguistic state or development which is regarded by the writer as negative or reprehensible" (Coates 15). In rny readings of feminist utopias, 1 will explore how Dorothy Bryant and Joanna Russ portray diverse patriarchal tactics of rendering women nonexistent, unimportant, or literally invisible [as one of Russ's protagonists cornrnents, "My fiend Kate says that most of the women are out into fernale-banks when they grow up and that's why you don't see them, but 1can't believe her" (The FedeMan 204)]. 79 Radical feminists warn that the inauthenticiv of language may undermine women's capacity to transform themselves and the existing sokio-symbolic order. They assume that only through a different language can women constmct a different reality. While Mary Daly

(1978), Adrienne Rich (1980), and Dale Spender (1980) disclose the inauthenticity, alienation, and misrepresentation of women's experiences in the pauiarchal discourse, they acknowledge that a woman can only find some whole, authentic female self (the inner Eye/'i') through a process of personal and politicai transformation (that involves the denial or transformation of the patrïarchal discourse). Language is arnong the rnost important sources of women's aiienation, but it is aiso potentially a resource of their transformation. Language

breaks' women; however, when repossessed, it can aiso remake them. This revolutionary discourse can enable women to overcome and change the patriarchal social order.

From this line of reasoning, one could deduce that this position is similar to Burke's assertion about the unity of division and identification. It is worth remembering here that

Burke's concept of identification is grounded in his definition of humans as "beings who continually define and redefine [themselves] through the syrnbolic processes of language, discourse, rhetoric, culture" (Coe "Editor's Preface" xi). In order to develop consubstantiality, then, feminist theorists argue for the exorcism of the patriarchal language because women in patriarchai discourse are relegated to a 'negative sernqntic space'.

More radically still, Spender in Man Made Language (1980) denies the existence of reality outside its linguistic representation. She is advocating the stronger version of the Sapir-

Whorf hypothesis that, as it is known, combines two principles: linguistic determinisrn

(language detemiines the way we think) and linguistic relativity (distinctions encoded in one language are not found in any other language). Whorf's argument is that people dissect nature dong lines laid down by their native languages. The world is presented to people in a kaleidoscope of impressions that have to be analysed by the mind - according to Whorf, by the linguistic systems of the mind. He maintains that people cut natural phenomena up, categorize them, organise them into concepts, and in this process, ascribe significance to their experiences according to hierarchies and agreements that are codified through language. This linguistic agreement is implicit and tacit, but its tenns are absolutely obligatory: people cannot cornrnunicate without subscribing to the organisation and clarification of data which this agreement decrees (Crysta1 15).

Linguistic relativity (or the weaker version of the hypothesis) is generally accepted in linguistics, specifically, in psycholinguistics. Language may not determine the way we think, but it does influence the way we perceive and remernber, and it afFects the ease with which we perform mental tasks. For example, people cm recall ideas and concepts more easily if they correspond to words and phrases readily available for them in their language.

Spender, however, dvocates linguistic determinkm (the stronger version of the Sapir-

Whorf hypothesis) in her reasoning that the language women use affects what they perceive as real. Constmcting a new female 'self frst requires some 'exorcism' of masculinist language and, secondly, a means of expression to reveal and unravel ferninist consciousness. Only then cmwomen attempt to change the patriarchal reality.

Another utopian wnter, Suette Haden Elgin, elaborates this position in her utopian novel Native Tongue (1985). She describes a universe based upon the Sapir-Whorf ideas ckedto a logical conclusion. In her book, language determines reality. The novel portrays a bloodless ferninist revolution in which women change reality by secretly constnicting a

komen 's Ianguage', Laadan. They look forward to the time when it will becorne a womenS natural tongue (instead of king their artifcial creation), ernpowering them to liberate themselves. But this creates a problem: women have a problem with working out a valid plan of action. The answer is a Whorfian paradox: the entire problem is based on the women 's assessrnent of what would happen within the old, pre-laadan reality; but Laadan has created a new reality in which al1 previous calculations are void. Moreover, Laadan has changed the women's reality, but it has not affected men's reality . Women end up with a 'native tongue', but they do not end up with power. Therefore, their 'iiltimate revolution" is only partially successful. It is notable that Burke argues that the vocabularies of comrnunities are constituted arbitrariiy and that Our conception of "reality" is influenced through the ways in which language is cul turally determined. However, we rnust consider that there is a reality outside of language that is not covered by the frarnework of our interpretati~n'~.

Feminist utopias of the 1970s demonstrate that, whatever the particular meaning is ailotted to sexuality, treating sex symbolically and extending its range are acts of selfesteem.

Most feminist utopian writers are less interested in defining sex's elemental nature or value than in looking at how sex happens in a woman's life, at how it emerges as one element in a larger drama, the daily experiences of women. As Ann Barr Snitow (1980) puts it,

The novels that try to extend the boundaries of sexualii are expressing what until now has been primanly a fernate article of wisdom: the body is an animal that needs to be fed, to be held, also to be loved; one can never forget about it, pretend it is not

l9 'We discern situational patterns by means of the particular vocabulary of the cultural group into which we are boni.. . these relationships are not realities, they are interpretati0n.s of dity- hence different frameworks of interpretation will lead to different conclusions as to what reaiity is" (Burke Permanence 35). 82 there, Women, whose vocation it has been to be attuned to the slightest physical change in thernsehres (pregnancy), in their families (illness), in hirinfants (the need for constant nurturance). are quite naturally the sex to suggest that the varied joys of living in the body could and should be exploreci and extended.

(Snitow 171)

In her famous utopia Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy examines the opposite choice, showing a society of the future in which motherhg has been diffused into the life of the community freeing sexuality to become an area of both play and profound feeling

(please see Appendix 4). Dorothy Bryant's Garden ofEros enters the strearn of consciousness of a blind wornan having her baby alone on the floor of a rough cabin in the woods. Her husband, mysteriously and all too casually absent, is present in her mind dunng the first few hours of contractions. She tenderly remembers their courtship, their first lovemaking. As the night progresses and the pains come faster and harder, she begins to get angry at her husband, only to forget him altogether as necessity calls forth a strength and simplicity of purpose in her. She gathers together al1 the things she will need - a piece of string to tie the cord, some water, a blanket. The baby cornes well before the husband returns. The man is the shadow beside the baby, beside the strength of the mother. Her rhythmic movement toward giving birth pushes the novel fonvard, a stirring physical event before which al1 other so-called procreative acts pale. Here we cm see how, in this instance of genre, the woman protagonist is empowered while the man is relegated to a negative semantic space, thus reversing the socio- syrnbolic contract.

The feminist wnters use their new freedom (to be explicit about sex) with skepticism and are clear what a specifically fernale openness will look like. They want to know, if men are unstable, if they are a vanishing species, what other kinds of erotic richness life offers women besides closeness to these elusive or destructive others.

The ütopian Transcendence

How, then, can ferninist writers represent women's experience, "express a reality that has been mute" (Cixous 335; Brossard Picture Theory 13) within the constraints of patriarchal language ''tailoreci to the needs of a society where the Phallus is sigrîificanf' (Scott l)?

At this point, 1 would like to rernind my readers of a feminist strategy to explore theory in and through fiction. As 1 will attempt to show, feminist utopias borrowed ftom the classic utopian mode of writing in as much as they exploited "the utopian potentid to posit an alternative world that allows for a radical shift in the narrative: options other than capitulation and defeat are made possible" (Moylan 61). But feminist utopian writers have dso challenged and transgressed various aspects of the patnarchal soqio-syrnbolic order, one of the most notable contributions king 1'ecrirure ferninine, or a feminist mode of creating and cornrnunicating new meanings.

One of the theorists who argue that feminist utopianism effects theory is H. Lee

Gershuny (1984). She identifies a comon pattern in textual utopias, which consists of three phases, each with a particular function. Her analysis is focused on utopian work on language but cm, for the moment, be usefully considered with reference to utopian texts in general.

Phase one is concemed with analysis and criticism of .the present; phase two with transformation, manifested, for exarnple, in the creation of alternative worlds; and the third phase is focused on transcendence of what she calls androcentric forms of expression, an example king that of dualistic thought (189-203). w Gershuny's conception of transcendence is not incompatible with Lucy Sargisson's

use of the word îrmsgression:''In discarding masculinist maps that polarize female and male

into hierarchies, feminist writers have attempted to blend reason and feeling into a unified

sensibility" (Gershuny 192). Sargisson (1996) argues that it is the construct of oppositional

conceptualization as a vehicle of oppression, domination and hierarchy that is the primary

target of feminists. Sargisson agrees with Gershiiny that transcendence is a concept of which

feminist theory is particularly cautious, as it is traditionally associated with the valuing of

mind over body. Sargisson prefers the term 'transgression' arguing that the transgression of

boundaries (eg such as those between mind and body) by the feminist utopian text can change the way in which ive theonze our relation to the world. This transgression renders such

boundaries redundant and opens the previously masculine world of the mind and theory to the

body and emotion. WillfuI transgression of generic or conceptual boundaries is an effwt and a

function of utopian thinking (Sargisson 58). Likewise, Connie, in Marge Piercy's Womnon

the Edge of Time (1979), is motivated by her experience of Iife in other 'presents' (for neither

the eutopia nor the dystopia of Woman on the Edge of Time is distanced temporally from her own present in any strict sense) to risk al1 and challenge the authorities to which she is subject in her own time ( 1 discuss Piercy's utopia in Appendix 4). Either the eutopia of Mattapoissett or the dystopia could exist as the result of social developments that start in Connie's own time,

since the future is not fixed (nor, as mentioned above, is the present); however, it can be changed through social action. Transgression of our acceptance of reality provokes tmly open ended attitudes towards both the here-and-now and the not-yet. Utopian transgression can be achieved through creating a text that incorporates both fiction and theory, through a specific technique offiction theory which operates in many feminist utopian narratives. Fiction theory helps to create an imaginative space between the

real and utopian worlds, the writer and the reader, the reader and text. This space contains and

generates revolutionary power for the ferninist dreaming of social change that can be enacted in the here and now.

Nicole Brossard fmt used the terrn "fiction theorique" to narne texts marked by

l'ecriture ferninine. Brossard uses "fiction" negatively in L'Amer to imply that fictions are constructs created by the patriarchy and cornpliant women in which women are made into

objects. But her "fiction theonque" is something else-the text as both fiction and theory - a

theory working its way through syntax, language and even narrative of a female as subject, a fiction in which theory is woven into the texture of the creation, elirninating or trying to, distinctions between genres, between prose, essay, poetry, between fiction and theory. She explains that this mode of writing manifests the women's desire to understand patriarchal reality not for its own sake, but "for its tragic consequences in the lives of women, in the life

of the spirit" (Brossard 35). According to her, fiction theory attempts to simultaneously create

and theorise new strategies of writing and reading:

The female body will speak its realii its images, the censure it has been subjected to, its bodyfilled to butsting. Women are aniving in the public squares of literature and te& They are full of mernories: anecdotal, mythic, mal, and fictional. But above al1 women are filled withan original al1 encompassing memory, a gydecological memory. Renderd in words, its reali brought to the page, it becornes fiction theory.

- (Brossard ~îchk 35) Ficrion theory can be understood in relation to Burke's method of "perspective by incongruity," presented in his Permanence and Change (1935). This perspective describes the way a world view cm be dialectically evoked through the hsing of incongrnous tems.

According to Burke, revolutionary change occurs when an existing heor perspective is superseded by a cornpeting, and hence incongruous, social orientation. Theonsing fiction and fictonalising theory helped feminist writers to transcend foundational assumptions about writing. By using Burke's dramatistic method of analysis, we can explainfiction theory in terms of its motives and, ultimately, as a feminist mode of social action.

Daphne Marlatt discusses the interaction ofifiction and theory implied by the term: theory deconstructs sections of patriarchal society whilefiction, aiways conscious of itself as fiction, offers a new angle on the 'real' (Marlatt in Godard et al. 58). Fiction theory is manifest in a nurnber of genres of poetry and prose. Generic strategies respond to the rhetorical situation, narning its ingredients in a way that contains an attitude toward them. Therefore, to understand and explain a genre marked by fiction theory, we should restore to consciousness the situation to which it corresponds, and the specific attitude that it embodies. We must focus on the ends this genre is structured to meet. In this respect, 1assume that both 1 'ecriture ferninine as strategic wnting practice and fiction theory as its essential part constitute some of the feminist strategies for re-inventing the utopian gepre.

Another feminist critic who has developed fiction theory as a critical mode is Barbara

Godard. She States that "[w]ornen's writing disturbs our usual understanding of the ternis fiction and theory which assign value to discourses. Detached from their ordinary contexts, established meanings become suspect. By inciting the reader to rethink herhis presence within that 'social reality,' women writers effect a disturbance in those constructions that work at keeping us al1 in our "proper places." Godard maintains that fiction theory focuses on self- conscious use of language and self-reflexive nature of the narrative as well as the "cornplex nature of feminist interaction with the text which explodes categories and genres" (Godard et al. 54). Godard's argument brings to rnind the principle of genre theory to describe genres as intertextual (Freadman "Anyone for Tennis?" 45-50) and explain them interactively. Kathy

Mezei in Godard et al. further suggests that the disruption of distinctions between genres in fiction theory provides a way to expose the arbitrariness of man-made traditions. 1find this comment important because it explains what feminist fiction does. As a mode of writing, it uses language to "blow up the law" (Cixous "The Laugh of the Medusa" 343) of the patriarchal order that assigns value to traditional discourse. Thus, the feminist utopia and other ferninist genres become purposive, functional and motivated, and cmbe defined by what they do, and not only their forma1 properties.

Although fiction theory has not often been applied directly to the analysis of feminist utopias, it is a critical tool which lends itself easily to such an analysis. At its most fundamental level, the ferninist utopia defies the patri.archa1 utopian genre and explodes subjectivity and reality which patriarchal utopia creates and reinforces.

Genre and MetaGenre

"Utopias, though not blueprinls, cm be harbingersn. (Kessler 1984)

Before discussing the novels, 1would like to examine the critical discourse surrounding the feminist utopian genre and its assumptions about what the feminist utopia is

80 and how it should be written. 1 am guided here by Burke's idea that critical discourse is always idcological. According to Burke, criticism itself is an ideological enterprise that serves the interests of an influential group of theorists because the c'substance" of human discourse is contextualIy deterrnined: language becornes meaningful to us through extrinsic factors which exist outside of critical and literary texts. Burke says' that a person's orientation (which works through ideology) is, in effect, a vocabulary that provides a framework for interpreting the world. According to Burke, an orientation is "a bundle of judgements as to how things were, how they are, and how they rnight be" (Permanence 14). He maintains that Our ideologies/orientations are perspectives that guide our expenences because "our mincis, as linguistic products, are composed of concepts which select certain relationships as meaningful" (14).

1 think that Janet Giltrow' s concept of meta-genre will be helpful for my analysis of critical discourse on the feminist utopia. Giltrow points out that meta-genres are

"atrnospheres of wordings and activities, demonstrated precedents or sequestered expectations

-atmospheres surrounding genres" that have serniotic ties to their context of use. Meta- genres "comprise not only syntactic. substantive and pragmatic regularities but also regularities in the way readers and writers translate their tacit know-how into discursive knowledge" (Giltrow Meta-Genre 1-24). Meta-genre could, therefore, be used for critical analysis; in my case, for exploring the sociopolitics of the feminist discourse cornmunity. I will suggest that, though critical discourse and meta-genre are not the sarne concepts20,they

Criticai discourse includes hermeneutic, biographicai, histoncist, and other sub-genres; meta- genre, among other sub-genres, includes rubrics, hand-ou&, guidelines (GiItrow personal communication 3 1.05.2000). 89 intersect, and some sub-genres of critical discourse make meta-generic assumptions about

what kind of narrative cm be identified as a feminist utopia, and what kind of social action a

ferninist utopian narrative should accornplish. According to Giltrow, the concept of meta-

genre facilitates understanding of the kind and quantity of information a context transmits to

its writers and readers (Meta-Genre 18). Giltrow further suggests that the concept of meta- genres is instrumental because it can help us discriminate arnong rhetoncal situations by

the situations in whkh writers compose in a particular genre;

instances of contest and domination where hguage is a site for interested

interpretations;

functional collusion of understandings, a deep socialization and isomorphism of

practice and identity;

' dissent or acclamation in social locales;

unspoken negotiations amongst conflicting interests;

the role meta-genre plays in positioning academic and research institutions in the

larger social order (Meta-Genre 1-22).

1will start my analysis with Joanna Russ's influential essay Recent Feminist Utopias

(198 1) where Russ discusses eleven feminist utopias published between 197 1 and 1976. The earliest of them is Monique Wittig's Les Guerilleres, brought out in the English translation by

Viking in 1971. [Russ mentions that Wittig's book is actually not an Arnerican utopia, but it could possibly be regarded as a catalyst for some of the later Amencan utopias ("Recent

Feminist Utopias" 133-134).] Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed was published in 1974 and

90 Russ's The Female Mun in 1975. Several books appearcd in 1976: Samuel Delany's Triton,

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ttie Shaîtered Chain, Marge Piercy's Wornan on the Edge of

Time, Sally Gearhart's The Wanderground: Storïes of the Hill Women, Catherine Madsden's

"Commodore Bork and the Compost", and two stones by Alice Sheldon, "YourFaces, O My

Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! " under the pseudonyrn of Raccoona Sheldon and

"Housron. Houston, Do You Read? " under the pseudonym of James Tiptree, .Jr. Suzy McKee

Chamas's Motherlines was published in 1978.

Being published in 198 1, Russ's essay is one of the fmt feminist attempts to theorize the new genre. At this time, Russ was an established feminist writer with a developed network of fans; therefore, her meta-generic assumptions about what a feminist utopia should do and how it should be written and read were coming fiom a position of authority and were influencing the deveIopment of the genre. It is of particular interest to me because, as Giltrow suggests, "even the history of a meta-genre itself - its timing in the schedule of the genre's career, its changes over time - could be read to discriminate amongst rhetorical situations"

(Meta-Genre 18). Struggling within the limitations of the patriarchal definition of utopia as a blueprint of a perfect society, Russ starts with a disclaimer: "although 'utopia' may be a rnisnomer for some of these works, many of which present not perfect societies but only ones better than the authors' own, 'feminist' is not": these narratives portray societies that are conceived by their authors as better in explicitly feminist terms and for explicitly feminist reasons; moreover, these utopias "use similar tropes and similar terrns in their presentation of feminist concerns and the feminist analyses that are central to these concerns" (1 34). It is notable that, while commenting on the similarity of feminist utopias, Russ does not include Dorothy Bryant's The Kin of Atu Are Waitingfor You (197 1) in her list, thus tacitly undennining its identification as a feminist utopia due to Bryant's emphasis on spirituality and ecology, and lack of a strong female protagonist. According to Russ, feminist utopias are remarkabIe not only for their explicit ferninism but for the similar forms the ferninism takes: They not only ask the same questions and point to the sarne abuses; they provide similar answers and remedies" (1 36). And this is what Bryant does not do: she does not imitate other feminist utopias. Science fiction king a small field, Russ surmises that it is likely that these writers have read one another (with the exception of Monique Wittig); nonetheless, she fin& it significant what exactly these writers chose to irnitate. Russ explains the similarity of themes and forms of feminist utopias as a result of 'parallel evolution' ( 133).

Within the new-rhetorical framework, 1 would like to make two observations. First, as Russ's analysis shows, feminist utopias of the 1970s are intertextual. As Burke suggests, Our social discourses are connected rather than autonornous; this relates to Bakhtin's insight that al1 utterances are dialogic and, therefore, intertextual.

Second, the consensuai solidarity that the meta-generic assumptions of feminist cntical discourse display is quite prorninent. According to Giltrow, such consensus "may signiQ a functional collusion of understandings, a deep socialization and isomorphism of practice and identity" (Giltrow Meta-Genre 18).

Russ further asserts that feminist utopia emerged in response to the negative representation of women in science fiction and utopia of the 1960s, Amencan science fiction king read at the time primady by boys and young men. This atmosphere identifies the situations of which ferninist writers had to overcome the syrnbolic violence of the patriarchal genre, including the mis-representation of woman and the sexism of the patriarchal critical discourse. 'Woman' in the patriarchal genre was an absence, at best a pale imitation of 'man', if not actually the feared castrating 'other'. According to Lucy Sargisson, patriarchal theories of social order have nonnalized and stereotyped human behavior and gender into hierarchies of acceptability, associating the highest or most desirable attributes with masculinity and essentializing female roles, sexuality and constructions of gender (Sargisson 202). The predorninant way in which knowledge or reality is organized in patriarchal systerns is through binary oppositions. This fixed construction of reality is extremely problematic because not only do patriarchal texts establish such binaiy oppositions in the present world, but they also imagine those constructions as a natural part of any future or 'other' world as well. The blueprints of future societies that patriarchal utopia conscnicts remain closed, maintaining hierarchies of social and cultural patriarchy and prohibiting any re-imagined constmctions of ferninine or challenges to gender roles.

According to Russ, UsArnericm science fiction until the 1970s ignored both woman's estate and the problems of social structure with which ferninism deals. Even such "honorable exceptions" as Theodore Sturgeon and Damon Knight, says Russ, could only "indicate their stress at a state of affairs in which wornen were perceived as inferior and men were encouraged in machisrno" because "earlier feminism had been buried and the new ferninisrn of the late 196ûs had yet to occur" (Recent Feminist Utopim 135). For example, Sturgeon' s

Venus Plus X "presents no political analysis of sex class, and its solution - Literal unisex - places the blame for oppressive social conditions on the biologically innate temperament of the sexes" (1 33, a solution that Russ rejects because of either the assignment of blarne to biology or to both sexes equally. Russ divides patriarchal science fiction into three categones according to its attitude toward sex roles: "the status quo (which will be camied into the future without change), role reversds (seen as evil), and fiction in which women (usually few) are shown as equds alongside men" (135). in a side-kick role, as in Westerns. Russ emphasizes, however, that "the crucial questions about the rest of society (e-g., personal relations and who's doing the work women usually do) are not answered" (1 35) by the paû-iarchal genre.

Moreover, a particularly rnisogynist sub-genre evolved within patriarchal science fiction: the role-reversal (or battIe of the sexes) novel that describeci "dl-female or female-dominated wodds (of which there are none arnong ferninist utopias) that are retumed to normalcy by male visitors from our own society or male renegades from the world of the story" (143). By some rnethod rerninisccnt of a phallic display (flashing, kiss, rape), the 'normal' men overthrew 'abnormal' gynocracy which was portrayed as both repressive and inefficient.

These novels presented the phallic display (including rape) as desired by the woman. Russ identifies these novels as suikingly violent and non-erotic, presenting sex as a matter of power and not pleasure:

The battle-of-the-sexes novels envision what is essentially (despite science-fiction trappings) a one-tome confrontation between one man and one woman, in which the man's sexual power guarantees his victory, while the feminist utopias, if they present a conflict at dl, see it as a public, impersonal struggle. One might expect the public war to be more violent than petsonal conftict; thus the relative gentleness of the feminist books is all the more surprising. (Recent Feminist ütopias 144)

Russ is wnting this in the 1980s, as an established feminist utopian writer and critic.

Her status has some meta-generic consequences in as much as her analysis of the situation in which feminist utopias of the 1970s emerged infiuences not only the meta-genenc assumptions of other feminist utopian cntics, but feminist ideology at large.

Distinguishing ferninist utopias as relatively gentle, Russ mentions, however, that they are perceived by patriarchal critics as violent precisely because their violence is "abnormal" and deviant - directed by women against men. Russ reports that a male reviewer in Mother

Jones described her novel The FedeMan as "a screarn of ange< and "a bitter fantasy of reversed sexual oppression", quoting at length from the episodes when women use violence against men. However, thei-e are only four such episodes in Russ's novel: "a woman at a party practices judo on a man who is behaving violently towards her and @y accident) hurts hirn; a woman kills a man during a Cold War between the sexes after provocation, lasting

(she says) twenty years; a woman kills another woman as part of her duty as a police oficer; a woman, in anger and terror, shuts a door on a man's thumb (this last incident is briefly mentioned and not shown)" (Russ 144). Nonetheless, the male reviewer quoted at length from the second and fourth incidents (the only two quotations from the novel he used), entirely disregarding the other two and ignoring the novel's (relatively peaceful) utopian societies.

Russ's account of this instance of critical disparity provides evidence of dissent between the feminist critical discourse and the mainstrearn critical response.

In this rnisogynist context, the social action of feminist utopias (to reject the strictures of patriarchal language, to create a positive semantic space for the woman, to imagine the woman as having a self that can be liberated from the strictures of male dominance, of narrative fom, as well as of the real world) was itself a iiberating experience. Importantly, Russ analyses the kairos of genre emergence: she identifies the 'mini- boom' of feminist utopias in the 1970s as a phenornenon not ody contemporaneous with the

2ndwave ferninist movement but made possible by it (135). Russ discems the social exigency and provides evidence for the existence of the feminist discourse community when she concludes that "in these recent ferninist utopias we certainly have part of the growing body of women's culture, at ieast available in some quantity to readers who need and cm use it" (146).

Carol Pearson asserts the existence of feminist counter-discourse united by similarity (or, to use Burke's phrase, consubstantiality) when she observes that feminist utopias form "a remarkably coherent group made possible by the feminist movement" ("Corning Home" 63).

We can observe here how genre becomes a meaning-making event that achieves specific social purposes. It follows, then, that feminist utopias are marked by I'ecrirure feminine; they are "fernale-sexed texts" which members of the feminist discourse community are able to recognize. M.A.K. Halliday's insight about the function of the text is worth remernbering here, though Halliday definitely did not refer to the ferninist science fiction and utopia when making this claim. According to him, a text "functions as the realisation of serniotic orders

'above' the language" because it "does not merely reflect the reality beyond it; it participates in the reality-making and reality-changing processes" (Halliday 339). For these reasons, feminist utopias of the 1970s were bridging an important conceptual gap because their social action promoted the personal as the political and wielded a lot of power assigned to women in counter-acting the syrnbolic violence of the patriarchd utopia and science fiction. Jeanne

Gomoll in her 1986 "Open Letter to Joanna Russ" refers to the empowering action of feminist utopias: it was not one or two or a mere- scattering of women, after dl, who participateci in wornen's renaissance in science fiction. lt was a great BUNCH of women: too many to discourage or ignore ird~dhiiy,too good to pretend to be flukes. In fact, their work was so peiuasive, so obvious, so influential, and they won so many of the major awards, that their [work] demands to be considerd centrally as one looks back on the hte 70's and eariy 80's.. .. Ah ha, I thought, how could they ever suppress al1 THAT?! (Quoted in Russ What Are We Fighting For? 429)

Suppressing 'al1 that' mini-boom of feminist utopias came in an elaborate way: it was done not through cnticizing the decade's feminism directly, but by criticizing it in code, Le. by attacking something that seemed unrelated to it. As Jeanne Gomoll explains:

For the ktcouple [of]pars Vve begun to suspect thatthe phrase "the micidecade' is reaily .. . [an] attstck upon changes made by the women's rnovement.. .. But the ironic judgement of the men who found themsekescared for iess well than their fathers had ken, is that women who are not seîflessmust be sMsh.. .. As time goes on, the two statements - # 1: that SF was boring - or faddish - in the 70s and # 2: that women's wnting and issues are boring - appear to be two separate statements and new readers are lulled into ignorance. (Quoted in Russ 1998,429- 430)

Thus, the initially negative response grew into a powerful backlash when patriarchy reversed the major achievements of second-wave feminism. As Russ mentions in her 1998 book, "[wlhen you can't bury something completely, declare it boring, selfish, and a fad"

(What Are We Fighting For?429). Nonetheless, this negative mainstream response to feminist utopias suggests that the feminist genre was soçially active enough to generate the negotiation of conflicting interests21.

Identifying themes and concems specific to ferninist utopias of the 1970s,

Russ points out that traditional issues of patriarchal science fiction [such as "material success, scientific triumph, irnmortality, king adrnired for one's exceptional qualities,

'' "A meta-genre which occludes or tactfulIy or tirnidly evades, or naturalizes highly contingent practices, may not be bad in itself, but, raîher, a sign of unspoken negotiations arnongst conflicting interests" (Giimw "Meta-Genre? 18). 97 success in cornpetition, inherited status" (Recent Feminist Utopias 146)] are noticeably absent from them. According to Russ, thefeminist utopia is:

... expiiiit about economics and politics, sexually permissive, demystifying about bioIogy, ernphatic about the necessity for female bonding, concerneci with children ... non-urban, ciassless, communal, relativeiy peaceful while allowing room for femafe rage and female seifdefense, and serious about the emotional and physical consequences of violence. (Russ, "Arnor Vincit Foerninarnn, 15)

Russ's definition points towards a generic utopian difference from mainstrem fiction: utopia allows the writer and the reader to move beyond constraints of everyday reality.

More recently, commentators have suggested that feminist utopianism goes even more beyond

the strictures of patriarchal fiction: it is different from the patriarchal utopian genre because it transgresses the standard view of utopia as perfection due to its desire to escape closure

(Sargisson 3). This desire is sometimes read through theones of the construction of meaning.

Traditional patriarchic criticism argues that rneaning is constructed by a cornplex hierarchical system of binary oppositions. Patriarchal theones of social order norrnalize or stereotype

human behavior and gender into hierarchies of acceptability and associate the highest or rnost desirable attributes with masculinity. Ferninist utopiqn thought, however, attempts to deny hierarchy, linearity, and dichotomy. It makes an effort to transgress the old system and open

new conceptuai spaces for exploration in emancipatory projects. However, despite the overt denial, hierarchy is still implicit in the feminist utopian novels themselves: sorne characters

have more social status than others, or are more intelligent, enlightened, etc.

Ferninist critics want to return both a language and a meaning to the body, retum to it

the idealized, mythic quality that the body had in ancient times, and simultaneously return a

reality, a materiality, to language and to meaning. Of particular interest, then, are the ways in which the new feminist meaning is constmcted in these narratives. Feminist critics, however, are not original in denying dichotomy. Burke, for exarnple, views binary oppositions as

"static, synchronie, ahistoricai, antithetical to process" (Coe 'Burke's Act"). As Richard Coe points out, when Burke "creates such a dichotomy, he heuristicaily seeks a third term to transfomi the dichotomy into a transcendent dialectic, "to watch for modes of catharsis or of transcendence that rnay offer a symbolic solution" ("Burke's Act" and "Burke's Words"

165-66). According to Burke, meaning is contextual; it can only be articulated through a system of beliefs and attitudes which functions to ground a meaning: the extrinsic "substance" that supports a meaning.

Recurrent thernes and constructions in feminist utopias fa11 into three broad areas of transgression: reconsideration of stereotypes of gender, sex and the nuclear farnily; disruption of assumptions about time king linear or sequential, and tmth and reality king stable; transcendence of patriarchal genre and narrative conventions. In al1 three areas, feminist utopias use multiplicity as a method to reject dualistic, hierarchicd thought and to re-present reaIity. For this dissertation, the third area is most important.

Russ believes that feminist utopias of the 1970s are not only embodiments of apparently 'universal' human values, but they are also reactive; that is, they supply in fiction what their authors believe women lack in the real world (144). Consequently, these utopias are concemed with "the grossest and simplest forms of injustice and violence against women"; for exarnple, they deal with rape and the unavailability of non-coercive and non-exploitative sex.

Another issue that they are preoccupied with is the escape from urban landscape that women do not own, do not enjoy, and in which women are not safe or happy. In ferninist utopias, women are busy saving their children from solitary imprisonment, madness, rape and beatings, or king chained for Life (146). Essentialist values of fernale roles, sexuality and constructions of gender are usuaiiy challenged in these texts. For example, Angela Carter's novel The Passion of Nav Eve transgresses notions of gender and its construction by having male characters changed to fernale through medicd experiment; in contrast, characters initially thought to be fernale are revealed as male. In Carter's representation, gendcr is

Eragmented and chaotic - and this is her personal answer to essentialist definitions.

Ferninist utopian writers face a dilemma, however, when they engage in ferninist constmctive theory because their attempts to destabilize binaries that privilege representations of men could simply reverse the hierarchy and attribute a supenor status to women, as

Sargisson clairns Sally Miller Gearhart' s Wanderground does. This pitfall is often avoided by utopias that both challenge the reality of the present world and deny the ideal of linear, historical progress. Using Les Guerilleres as an example, Sargisson shows how Monique

Wittig's society of women constantly works to deny order through knowledge or history, such as that contained in the Ferninaries books which they bum, and to focus instead on change and flux, represented by the register, which is constantly updated and rewritten (209). Using a disjointed narrative without a central narrator, Les GzqmYleres functions to negate dualistic constnrcts of women and fernininity in contrast to notions of masculinity, while it creates a society that is constantly changing in the present and into the future.

In the 1stquarter of the 20& century, then, much feminist comrnentary on utopianism was cast in term of its narrative content (Gearhart 1984, Pearson 198 1, Russ 1995). Due to the surprising thematic similarity of feminist utopias, an assurnption was made that it was the narrative content that distinguished ferninist utopias fiom the patriarchai genre. However, while it is certainly true that the content of ferninist utopias is what delineates them as specifically feminist, this content alone is inadequate w ith regard to definition. Sally Miller

Gearhart's definition is a good example of this inadequacy:

A feminist utopian mvel is one which a) contrasts the present with an envisioned idealized society (separateci from the preçent by time or space), b) offers a comprehensive critique of present valueç/condiins, c) sees men or male institutions as a major cause of present social ilk, and d) presents women not only as at least the equals of men but also as the soie artiders of their reproductive function. (Geahrt 296).

As Lucy Sargisson demonstrates (3 l), Gearhart's definition is insufficient and

t exclusionary on several accounts. The first concerns utopian content and is fairly straightforward: irnplicit in Gearhart's point of (a) is the assumption that the feminist utopian novel is representative of eutopia, while other elements of the field, such as dystopia, are king disregarded. Sargent, on the other hand, insists that the field of utopianism contains the eutopia, the dystopia and utopian satire. Moreover, there is no room in this definition for the open-ended utopia. In this reading, therefore, Gearhart's understanding of utopia is over- restrictive: it downplays such important aspects of the social action of feminist utopias as the envisioning of a future society that is bettcr in a feminist sense, portraying it in its development, or exploring strategies for social chans. It also reduces the women's activity to their reproductive function, or, at least, gives this function a primary defining status.

Therefore, Gearhart's definition of the feminist utopian novel invokes unnecessary closure - a twofold closure that restricts utopianism to conventional understandings, and restricts ferninism to Gearhart's limited conception. It is important to note at this point that new-rhetorical theories of genre hold a social view of writing, clairning that a discourse cornrnunity's discourse is, to a great extent, regulated through its discursive genres. Advancing Burke's dramatistic account of discourse,

CaroIyn Miller argues, for example, that "a rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish"

(15 1). By defining genres as modes of "social action", Miller offers a pragrnatic and epistemological account of discourse. That is, she argues that genres shape particular kinds of knowledge, thus producing particular kinds of responses. Charles Bazerman, following

Miller, asserts that "a genre is a social consüuct that regularizes communication, interaction, and relations" (62). Genres are dynamic in that they serve to affect a discourse cornrnunity's discursive expectations. Martin Behr suggests that genres "legitimize modes of social action because they fùnction to conventionalize methods of both academic and non-academic inquiry; they are therefore instrumental in constituting ideological beliefs arnong the members of discourse communities who generate them" (3).

This is where critical discourse demonstrates its ideological essence: definitions established in terms of content would attempt to idenm politically grouped 'types' of utopia.

The use of a politically defining adjective such as 'feminist' to describe a certain type of utopianism (eutopia, dystopia and utopian satire) does have some advantages. It makes for a definition that is descriptive while allowing flexibility to the genre itself. However, it also has limitations which outweigh its advantages, for if the characteristics of this fomof utopianism are taken to be representative of the genre as a whole, familiar problems of exclusion will arise once more. Again, we cmsee how a closed approach produces an unnecessarily closed concept.

More recently, commentators (Levitas 1990, Sargisson 1996) have repeatedly rejected content-based definitions as "evaluative and normative, specifylng what the good society would beyrather than reflecting on how it rnay be differently perceived" (Levitas The Concept of Utopia 4). Instead of relying upon function, form or content, Levitas proposes that utopia be considered in broad tems as the expression of the desire for a better way of Iife. However, her definition is inefficient because it is too broad and may be applied to many other genres.

Sargisson (1996) supports the idea that the nature of the desire expressed in these novels is of some defining value in distinguishing the ferninist from the mainstream utopia:

"Whereas utopianism per se cannot be defined with regards to function, form or content alone, these aspects do play a role in identifjmg specifically.feminist utopias" (20). However,

Sargisson also finds that "anaIyses in these tems produce warped visions of feminism" (34).

She concludes that the content-based approach to utopianisrn is unsatisfactory because it leads to misrepresentative (hence unnecessarily exclusive) ideas about the content of utopian thought. Not al1 utopias are the sarne, and so this approach sirnply does not work in a definitional sense. It cm, perhaps, be employed to enable separation of one 'typey of utopian thought (such as ferninist) from others. Obvious flaws in this approach lie in the tendency to

(rnis)represent (and hence erect) exclusive understandings of feminism (Sargisson 37).

Since its onset in the 1970s feminist utopianism has never been a homogeneous body of thought; no more than feminism itself. More importanly, feminist utopianism, while fldyrooted in the present in its various critiques, is not representative of feminism in general. Nan Bowman Albinski (1988) raises similar points regarding the differences amongst ferninist utopias. Albinski has undertaken a comprehensive historical analysis of American and British feminist utopian literature. She finds some stciking differences between these works: the American tradition is concerned with a 'belief in social rather than political change, interna1 rather than external influences, and in religious and moral rather than secular evolution' (Albinski 5). Differences in narrative content can be found within women's utopian theory and fiction because differences exits within and between the various ideological manifestations of feminism. The move observed by Albinski towards a certain fragmentation and dislocation is illustrative of this. Black and white ferninisms are not yet cornfortable with one another: and the consequent tension between the pull of integration on the one hand, and separation on the other, is an important theme of her work. Any approach which insists upon criteria of narrative content runs the risk of burying this diversity.

Therefore, definitions merely in tems of content cannot be universally applied and are inadequate. Normative definitions may enable us to distinguish the ferninist utopia from other types, but not to define utopianism or feminism. Formulait attempts to define ferninist utopias are problematic because they invoke inappropriate closures. They restrict discussions unnecessaily and could potentially have the insidious functions of disciplinary or cultural imperidism. The performative acts of these approaches are essentially and eternally exclusive ones because stifling and naïve generalizations are limiting the activity of the critical

discourse.

Another important approach to the feminist utopia has been developed by Tom

Moylan, whose book Dernand the Impossible (1986) is of considerable value for utopian studies. Though his position is not without problems, Moylan is right in viewing utopian thought as representative not only of the unfinished-ness of the world, but as "rooted in the unfulfiled needs and wants of specific classes, groups, and individuals in their unique historical contexts" (Moylan 1). Therefore, Moylan broadens the narrow understanding of utopia by including not ody content and form, but function, the last one king the element to which he pays the most attention. The function of utopia is to provide the opposition to what

Moylan terms %e affirmative culture": "'Utopianegates the contradictions of a social system by forging visions of what is not yet realized either in theory or practice. In generating such figures of hope, utopia contributes to the open space of opposition" (1-2). Moylan's position here is consubstantial with the argument about the dominant "normal" discourse and the

"abnormal" revolutionary discourse of the counter-culture that 1discussed in the Introduction.

The influences of Bloch and, to a lesser extent, Mannheim upon Moylan's thinking are apparent, yet the central hypothesis of his Demand the Impossible is distinct from that of any other thinker. Moylan, desiring to see the apparent uniformity and universaiity of twentieth- century capitalism shaken, delights in the new multiplicity of what he narnes the 'critical utopias' of the 1970s. For Moylan, utopia is critical in two senses (this dichotomy is a distinctive flaw of his approach):

'Criocal' in the Enlightenrnent sense of cfi& -that iç expressions of oppositional thought, unveiling, debunking, of bththe genre itseif and the historical situation, as well as 'critical' in the nucleat sense of the'cntr'cal miss required to make the necessary explosive maetion. (Moyian 10).

In order to critique contemporary society, critical utopia must, according to Moylan, destroy, transfonn and revive the utopian tradition, which, in its presendpast state, idwas inadequate to the task of provoking social transformation. A fixed, finite and universai utopia 105 of perfection cannot, says Moylan, adequately critique a fixed, finite and universal capitalist system. He introduces his own approach when he argues that only an understanding of utopia that destroys old perceptions of the genre can transform them into something new and thus revive utopianism. This new utopianism can adequately reflect the concerns, needs and wants of contemporary oppositional forces. Critical utopia does not blueprint: social change in process is privileged even in the alternative soçieties it presents. Zn this way, the key term

'critical utopia' describes that growing category of utopias that present a good place with problems that reflect critically on the utopian genre itself: both difference and imperfection are retained. Moylan's theory not only conceptualizes utopia, but also (and importantly) approaches utopianism from a fresh angle. Moylan writes,

A central concern in the critical utopia is the awareness of the limitations of the utopian tradition, so that these texts reject utopia as a blueptint while presening it as a dream. Furthemore, the novels dwell on the confikt between the original world and the utopian saciety opposed ta it sa that the process of social change is more diwarticulateci. Finally, the novels focus on the continuing presence of difference and imperfectian within the utopian saciety itself and thus render more recognizable and dynamic alternatives. (10-1 1)

Moylan ties this new literary utopia to what he narnes a new historic bloc of opposition to Westem(izing) culture and capitalism:

The critical utopia is part of the plitical practice and vision shared by a variety of autonomous oppositional movements that reject the domination of the emerging system of transnational corporations and pst-industrialproduction and ideological structures.. .The new historic bloc of opposition is one that draws together an alliance of various groups and interests. (1 1)

I

Critical opposition means opposing the existing space of opposition; its function is not to provide an alternative but to deny that existing options are the only ones. Opposition thus understood is a bigger concept than the either/or position; it is compnsed of multiple critiques

106 of a@) (0mni)present structure of exploitation, hierarchy and alienation. This leaves Moylan's concept in a position of considerable strength with regard to the transgressive ferninist utopianism (55). According to Moylan, a key theme in feminist thought tday is the maintenance of diversity and differences (56).

Cntical utopia clearly fits the works Tom Moylan was discussing when he invented the term in De& the Impossible. However, Lyman Tower Sargent is convinced that critical utopias are no longer as important as they were when Moylan initially characterized them (therefore Moylan's position is historically contingent). To take but one example, writing about Marge Piercy's Womnn on the Edge of The (1W6), Moylan says it is a cnticaI utopia because ". .. she is aware of the limitations of the genre itself: its tendency to reduce alternative visions to closed and boring perfect systems that negate the utopian impulse that generated thern.. ."(l51). While Lyman Tower Sargent argues that this characterization of the utopian tradition is wrong, he agrees that Woman on the Edge of Timg is clearly a critical utopia in that the tension between the contemporary United States and the alternative futures presented is central to the text. However, Piercy's protagonist resorts to murder as a rnethod of struggle against patriarchy; as Sargent cornrnents, one can wonder if murder as the mechanism of social change really fits Moylan's notion of an "articulated process."

Lyman Tower Sargent further questions Moylan's theory by asking if a "critical dystopia" is plausible at al1 or whether it is simply an oxyrnoron because al1 dystopias are

"critical" in Moylan' s sense. As Sargent suggests, "criticai utopias" in Moylan' s definition are still king written, and we need to think more seriously about the possibility of a "critical dystopia" and keep the concept even though it needs to be re-thought, especiaily if "critical" irnplies this particular kind of genre-awareness.

There is, then, a normative prescription in Moylan's approach to utopia which is not unproblernatic. The tone of his work, though, is useful, as he is the only commentator to attempt to explain why the main body of contemporary utopian fiction Iooks so different from what is ofien assumed to be the standard utopian text (or the utopia of perfection): " There cm be no Utopia,but there can be utopian expressions that constantly shatter the present achievements and compromises of society and point to that which is not yet experienced in the human project of fulfillment and creation' (Moylan 28). Utopian thought not only points to the not-yet-become, but opens receptivity to new and radically different, 'other' ways of king and thinking. The ultimate function of utopianism is, for Moylan, the development of an open consciousness of the present: 'Tt can only offer itself as an activity which opens human imagination beyond present lirnits' (40).

Tom Moylan argues that feminist wi-iters attempt to create in their works what he calls

"criticai utopias," retaining an "awareness of the limitation of the utopian tradition, so that these texts reject utopia as blueprint while preserving it as dream" (10). Such utopias are able to function effectively as critiques of the status quo, while maintaining a self-cntical awareness that prevents thern from descending into empty utopian cliché. At this point, 1 would like to support the notion of the dual utopian /dystopian action (Booker 343) or the double (utopian and dystopian) center of gravity in feminist utopias which contain both "the negative and positive poles of exposure and advocacy, the contrary (though complementary) impulses of destruction and construction, or social criticism and social planning" (Delany

158).

Feminist utopian writers have always been aware that their positive visions were imperiled by wamings within their utopian texts. In the context of the Arnerican 1980s dominated by Reagan-Bush conservative politics and tarnished by the defeat of the Equal

Rights Amendment, ferninist writers found it more and more difficult to see better tirnes ahead. This is the pend in which Suzy McKee Chamas, for exarnple, sets up her utopian

Motherlines with Walk to the End of the World, an earlier dystopian fiction. Meanwhile, both

Piercy and Russ present aiternative futures that suggest multiple possibilities, some utopian, sorne decidedly dystopian. And by the mid-1980s Margaret Atwood produces The

Handmaid's Tale, a ferninist text that is almost purely dystopian. Indeed, as Fitting notes, ferninist visions of the future tended in general to show a dark tum in the 1980s, probably due to political reverses that dumped the ferninist optirnism of the 1970s: "More recent fictions no longer give us images of a radically different future, in which the values and ideals of feminism have been extended to much of the planet, but rather offer depressing images of a brutal reestablishment of capitalist patriarchy" (142).

Raffaella Baccolini suggests that we should reconsider dystopia in the same way that we have been forced to reconsider eutopia as a result of feminist criticism. Discussing patriarchal genres, she notes that "genres are cultural constructions; implied in the notion of genre and of boundaries lies a binary opposition between what is 'normal' and what is

'deviant' - a notion that feminist criticism has attempted to deconstmct since this difference consigns ferninine practice to inferiority" (quoted in Sargent 'Vtopia: The Problem of Definition" 139). She argues that women writers have used various strategies to underrnine the dominance of genre. Female protagonisis are a central strategy but so are the frequent use of irony, detachment, and humor. As she points out: '2aughng at the collapse of the Western world and its heritage cm also be seen as a sign of a lack of nostaigia of the 'golden past' of patriarchy" (139). Lucy Sargisson (59) extracts from socialist and feminist approaches a view of utopianism as having oppositional and transfomative dynarnic functions. She challenges the simplistic dualistic opposition and replaces it with a multi-sourced and multidirectional conception, which needs to create new paradigrns. Utopianism has a speculative function which is located in part in its conventions of critique, estrangement and imaginative writing.

'Vtopias, though not blueprints, cm be harbingers", says Carol Kessler (2). Lucy Sargisson suggests that, instead of blueprints, feminist utopias are better read as metaphors. This position reminds of Burke's insight that metaphors identify the ethical with the aesthetic, that they can be used to constmct a "corrective literature" which will motivate us toward an alternative social orientation accomrnodating the needs of the female subject. Keeping in mind Carolyn Miller's idea that "a rhetoncally sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish" (15 l), 1 would like to suggest that the major symbolic action of the feminist utopia is, therefore, its participation in contemporary re-metaphorization and generating a modem ferninist mythology. This action provides for the "fusion" of form and substance that Miller discusses when she says "a genre is a complex of formal and substantive features that create a particular effect in a aven situation" (153). Miller goes on to argue that substance and form interrelate hierarchically, claiming that form on one level signifies substance on another level. And it is 'Wirough this hierarchical combination of form and substance that symbolic structures take on pragmatic force and become interpetable actions" (Miller 160).

The very success of the feminist intervention in the patrïarchal utopian genre becornes possible because of a strong feminist desire for social dreaming. The new-rhetoricai reasoning that 1am employing here is based on Burke's dramatistic position that formal discursive structures often have a priori existence since they must identify with an audience's desire and expectations. The rhetorical impotence of the over-regulated paûiarchal genre is overcome by the emergence of a new genre that compensates for the desire and expectations of the ferninist discourse comrnunity. This feminist genre challenges sexist restrictions on gender representation in both current and utopian reality. Fe.minist utopian transgressions of the notions of time, reality, and sequentiai order can be read through Luce Irigaray's 'conditional mode'. interpreted by Rosi Braidotti as a way to address becorning a woman rather than king a woman (415). The idea of becorning is a powerful notion that subverts time and reality because a subject that is becoming is constantly changing and cannot be fixed or defined in the same way as a static 'being'. In the next Chapter I will attempt to show how becorning, or the conditional mode, implies an etemal present that is evoked in the drearntime of Dorothy

Bryant's The Kin of Ata Are Waitingfor You. The novel's male protagonist undergoes a paradigrn shift in consciousness regarding what constitutes reality. 1 will also develop Carol

Pearson's conception of time as paradoxical, coexistent (past, present and future) and outside of Our control ("Of Time and Space" 261). 1find it useful in attempting to view the ferninist utopia as work that disrupts certainty and tmth, playing with time and space, openness and diversity.

Ill Feminist utopia provides the becorning female subject with a possibility for a counter discourse, as it reveals the lirnits of pahiarchal tolerance in authorizing feminist social action.

The feminist utopia differs significantly from the patnarchal genre because its counter- discourse does not come from the dorninating socio-symbolic order, from the hegemony.

Another important difference is in its social action: the feminist utopia authonzes and contains women's personal experiences. We could Say that this new genre fills the need to discuss feminist ideological matters that was thwarted by the restrictions of the patriarchal utopian genre.

Discussing the feminist utopia as strategy, 1 would like to conclude that, if the utopian genre situates the utterance and its speaker as the defining rhetorical act, then it is clear too that feminists have to violate patnarchal rules. The narrowness of the patriarchal utopian genre urges feminist writers to 'demand the impossible' and ultimately empowers them for conceptual transgression. While the function of their utterance may indeed be defiance of des, hence a threat to society and a challenge to patriarchy, let us not forget that the feminist meaning they constnict is chronotopic. Feminist interventions foreground their avoidance of the patriarchai signiQing pladtirne and their creation of a new signifymg space for representing feminist values. The most prominent social action of these narratives is their criticism of the present-day patriarchy and sexism. These texts are critically utopian (MoyIan

198); they have played their part in the anti-hegemonic politics of the 1970s. They have added to the ways in which the women perceived their dissatisfaction with the present. They also contributed to the wider utopian dialogue of speculation about the emancipatory society and shared in the reassessment of activism going on since,the 1960s. Feminist utopias reflected the recognition of the interrelation of the personal and the political, as well as the open critique of patriarchal master discourse. In the form of the utopian text, the open and self-reflexive operations comrnon to those novels break utopian discourse out of its petrified systematizing, as well as its denial and CO-optationby the market and state structures which have restricted utopian desire. As a result, the cntical impulse itself becomes the primary message of these texts (Moylan 198). While Russ and Bryant do not commit to feminism and resistance in the sarne way, they address many issues that were crucial to women in the 1970s. Chapter 3. Saving the Human Race (Dorothy Bryant)

GyWEcdogical Focus

When Dorothy Bryant's novel, The Kin of Ara Are Wairingfor You,appeared in 197 1 the response of the feminist community was a critique and a radical departure from her position. The novel's identification as a feminist text was seen as probiematic on the grounds that "Bryant's feminism is subsumed in her holistic ecologism: the emancipation of women is not a central theme of this text" (Sargisson 153). Indeed, in her utopia Bryant goes beyond the problems of living in the world without dishirbing its ecological balance into presenting its charactes as feeling a strong emotional connection to nature. This utopia did not fit easily within the orientation and meta-generic assumptions of feminist scholars, possibly, due to their perfectionist tendency; as Burke comments, to the extent that a terminology contains various implications, there is "a corresponding 'perfectionist' tendency" for people to cany out these implications (Language 19). Because Bryant's utopia favors tolerance, hurnility, forgiveness

(even of rape and murder), Bryant's opponents rnight have ken induced to carry out the implications embodied in their rigid definitions of the genre and failed to recognize the extent to which her book was consubstantial with their ideology. For exarnple, rny women's studies students in the fall of 1999 had a problem identiwng her book as feminist because it does not have a strong female protagonist, its feminist message is overshadowed by ecological and humanistic concerns, and it does not express female anger and rage, nor does it suggest radical action against patriarchy. 1would argue that, though Biyant's novel is more traditionally utopian (it is written in a drearn-like mode, presenting utopia as a drearn, which is 114 consubstantial with the more traditional understanding of utopianism as social dreaming), its femhist orientation functions on a deeper level. Examining Bryant's articulation of the ferninist message, 1 will take a look at strategic changes that occur when Bryant adopts the utopian genre. 1 am treating Bryant's novel as an instance of the feminist utopian genre that provides a site for gendered opposition and resistance to patriarchy and explores new possibilities for the huma. agency by means of:

Questioning the adequacy of paûiarchal Ianguage to describe reality, and especially

feminist reality (thus challenging the patriarchal divides of conscious/subconscious,

knowabld unknowable, tmth/illusion, writingkireaming).

Exploring the ways in which binary oppositions maleifernale, nature/culture, spiritlmatter,

pnmitive/advanced, healtlddisease, can be transgressed.

Portraying the personal as political (by examining the oppositions of self/collective,

privatelpublic spheres) and describing the situations that empower a person for growth and

transformation.

Treating violence with a seriousness that is central to the ferninist rhetoric of the time.

Describing a two-sexed society that is not prescriptively heterosexual, and by promoting

ferninist reasoning on the issues of sexuality, love, control over one's fertility, child-

bearing, birth, parenting.

Discussing the chronotope of Bryant's novel, 1 will explore its relationship to the antecedent genre(s), its àialogism and intertextuality, arguing that Bryant's novel does not only intervene into the utopian genre, but it also revives basic folkloric and idyllic matrices in literature. In doing this, 1will employ Bakhtin's theory of the foikioric and the idyllic chronotopes outlined in "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel" (206-236).

Bryant explores several possibilities of traditional plots: the first is the traditional utopian premise of a voyage to utopia and retum to the real world. This cycle reflects a sense of utopian fulfillment as expressed in Le Guin's maxim "true departure is return", in this case retum to the roots of pre-capitalist, classless society. (Le Guin in The Dispossessed suggests that there is always a sense in which you are retuming as you depart, and that your retum indicates the hilfdlment of the journey for which the deparhue was a beginning. Her slogan

"tnie departure is retum" is illustrated by the circularjmagery and the cyclic fom of The

Dispossessed and by the story of the protagonist.) The next is the traditional cyclic 'frarning' device: the first and last chapters occur in the real world, and they frarne the portrayal of the utopian world. 1 will argue that this particular cyclic movement of the text demonstrates both

Bryant's revival of folkloristic traditions and her ferninist interventions into them. Bryant creates one more cyclic cTrarne'7when she directly addresses the readers in the epigraph:

". ..and the Comforter.. . shall teach you al1 things and bring al1 things to your remembrance"

(Bryant ii) and in the very end of the novel, portraying her protagonist as the Comforter who invites the readers to start their utopian journey "tonight, when you close your eyes" (220), thus constmcting the readers as participating in the action of the novel. In contrast, in her description of the protagonist's tra~sformationin the utopian world, Bryant treats the audience as eavesdroppers. This double framing device is not unusual either, and Bryant's epigraph justifies this cyclic fiarning in its mystical implication that the Comforter will tell the readers what they have always known. This device shapes the narrator - reader interaction, helping Bryant's protagonist treat the audience as consubstantial and directly address the readers in

focal narrative moments.

Discussing the book's relationship with the antecedent patriarchai genre, 1will argue that

ferninism finds in utopia a "pre-pared way of responding" that embodies the "ramified,

intertextual memory" of generic "uptake" (Freadman 9). Treating the antecedent genre as a

trans-historical form, ferninism overcomes its patriarchal limitations and revives it through ferninist individuation. The new utopian genre is context-specific, contemporaneous with the

2ndwave ferninist rnovement and made possible by it. It displays dialogic and intertexnial

relationships with other literary genres, plots and motifs. Bryant's utopia rnanifests its dialogism when it takes up the motifs and plots of the detective story, Christian fables, the pastoral, the agicultural idyll, the journal, the confession. The narratorlprotagonist is a thoroughly dislikable man who, during the story, causes the deaths of two people and twice rapes one of his healers. In another cyclic motion, the novel star& with murder and finishes with the trial of the protagonist. Bryant borrows on myth and fable when describing the metamorphosis of the protagonist in the utopian world and his willfuI sacrifice. She also makes an important move when she expands the possibilities of patriarchal genres.

For example, as Bakhtin argues, the mythic unity of the world of folklore mles out any representation of individual chaRge and self-realization. To move towards this, the narrative must move away €rom the world of folklore to a genre w hose chronotope allows for individual transformation. The world of Ata, then, combines both the chronotopes of the idyll and the novel by means of representing the private origin and public representation and use of dreams.

Bryant's innovation is that her utopian chronotope combines two chronotopes that seemed to be permanent opposites for Bakhtin: Bryant creates a possibility for the existence of an individual observer in the colIectivist utopian time, and for his subsequent individual transformation in this collectivist chronotope.

The Real Worki

The novel starts with a sudden jump, in an unmediated narrative voice. This unnamed

'TTof a male, white, individuaiistic narrator proudly presents himself as the embodiment of cornmon-sense capitalist morality and utter consumerism. This narrator/protagonist, a self- made rich man, remains unnarned throughout the novel, though Bryant fin& most unusual names for her utopian women and men (Aia, Tarn, Chil-sing, Sbgai, or a little girl narned

Herbert). Bryant does not find a name for her patriarchai protagonist, and I find it notable that neither does Russ in The Femle Man: Russ's male characters have no names as well. This anonyrnity suggests to me that the emphasized nameless-ness of male characters is the ferninist utopian genre's attempt to relegate the man to a negative space that helps feminist writers to problematize the gender construction in the "nomal" patriarchai discourse.

1will cal1 Bryant's protagonist the Man. In the metamorphosis of her white, male, intellectual protagonist, Bryant offers her stimdating yet problematic answer to the readers.

By choosing a male protagonist and narrator while using a female utopian character to promote her eco-humanitarian ideals and articulate her strategy for initiating social change,

Bryant also goes outside radical definitions of the feminist utopia Even if Bryant's novel is not a radical feminist utopia, it sends a strong ferninist message by envisioning the reaiization of feminist values of the 70s: nurturing, persuasion, bonding, sharing, spirituality. At that time, it was especially revealing to have these values reflected through a masculine consciousness.

The Man's real world is a patriachal society wfiere human relationships are based on the capitalist ideology of competitiveness, consumerism and individ~alism~and the patriarchal values of ownership, rigid gender stereotypes, heterosexual monogarny, nuclear family ad excIusive parenting - al1 of which are problematized in Bryant's utopia. In capitalist patriarchy which Cixous calls "the on-going story of phallocentrism" in the "empire of the

Selfsame" (Cixous "Sorties" 79), individual success at the expense of others is highly valued -

- and Bryant makes an effort to show the futility and irrelevance of patriarchal values, thus exemplïfjing the critical function of the feminist utopian genre. The Man describes his

'successful' pre-Atan life in ternis of having material possessions, power, prestige, and capital. The protagonist enjoys living on what he calls an "orgasmic plane of success": he has a strong appetite for "talent, appreciation, farne, drugs and drink and sex and fame and things.. .plenty of things" (l3ryant 25). Within the "normal" patriarchai ideology, this way of life is accepted and celebrated. However, within the utopian perspective, Bryant creates a framework of rejection for the patriarchal order by portraying this world as a nightmare- generating disaster:

A worid where al is donagdm, where the most admired are the farthest from their dreams. W hem empty speech is praised. W here noise is constant. W here people leam hate and suspicion of dl, even of th&e they sleep with. Where people must feed thernseives, or have.the food snatched away from them. W here instead of the sacred drearns of the la-ka people fiIl themsehres with diversions that are like pain- killers, oniy adding @âiiion'to disease. Where al1 the people are like starving beasts, catching a giimpse from time to time of the great feast that lies before them, but kept fmm it by an invisible wail of fear and pride and superstition, crying, clawing at one another, despairing, and, by their acts, creating nigMmares sa that they leam to despise and fear that *ch would save:them .. . (Bryant 139) The Man's method of getting money and women, who "fall into his bed like cut gnss," is highly unethical and immoral, and it is not surprising that al1 his coveted "orgasrns of lifeyyprove to be false: 'But almost before you've finished saying it, you're on your way down, the thrill is waning, the orgasm is over and you can't reach it quite that way again "

(25). When the Man twice rapes a woman in the utopian world, it is clear that his own rape- related empowement, pleauring, and disdainful treatrnent of her is the nom that he has acquired in his rdworld.

But the ideology of individual success at the expense of others promotes isolation and profound loneliness. Not surprisingly, while surfing on the 'orgasmic wave' of success, the

Man understands that his success is 'phony', feels lonely and suffers from frequent nightrnares:

That was what my Iife was really al1 abok the lowsr I sank, the higher I was tiying to reach, trying to Iive liie on that orgasmk plane, clutching and trying to hang on, falling and trying to get back. R was al1 fine, except for the nightmares. And the nightmares were, pert-iaps, the only reaf thing in rny rie. I knew al1 the mst were phony- . I knew rny popularity would wane, but not before I've made a lot of money and then will be able to .. . able to do what? I hadn't thought of the next stage, the next orgasm, yet. But I was coming down. The nightrnares were becoming more frequent- (Bryant 25)

He cannot develop a human connection even with his girlfriend Connie, who he sees as a stereotypical woman "out of one of his books", with "long legs, small waist, full breasts that hung loose, half covered by tossed blonde haii' (1). Connie's stereotypical looks are phony: "the pubic hair tells the hue color of her bleached hair: mouse brown, blotchy skin with smeared make-up" (1). Despite Connie's claims that she exists, that she is not his invention, in the Man's world she is treated as a dispensable sex object and not quite a human being; therefore, neither communication, nor understanding or love are possible. The Man gets

120 violent and kills Connie without hesitation and remorse, transforrning her into a "wet doll", a commodity that the Man has consumed and now discards at his will. Bryant demonstrates the patriarchai relegation of the woman to a negative semantic space by having the Man kill his girlfiend because he is not sure that she actually exists and that she is not part of his nightrnares.

However, his victim becomes one of the phantoms of his nightrnares which throughout the novel are contrasted to the utopian "good dreams". Panicking, the Man escapes and gets into a car accident. The cinematic description of the slow rnovement of his car, that floats through the air, then rolls and rolls (5) and finaily crashes, marks an important focal point in the narrative when the real-world time slows down for the protagonist and eventually stops entirely. He realizes that his death will be a plunge into permanent nightmare, and this is what frightens him most. However, when the Man awakens, instead of a nightmare, he finds himself in a utopian paradise which he does not recognize as such, at least not until much later in the novel. The paradox is further intensified when the utopian people explain to the Man that he could not have reached utopia if he did not want to get there: 'Tt is a very hard thing," said Salvatore, "a very great thing, to corne from the outside. That is why we were so grateful that you came, because we saw you as part of the fulfillment of our purpose" (8 1). The purpose of Ata is "to survive, to persist in the dream until the lost Atans returnred], not in ships or planes, but one by one through their drearns; to hoId on until man could begin again to fulfill his destiny" (146).

Throughout the novel, Bryant keeps rerninding the readers of the existing threat of the real world: its planes, helicopters and ships keep approaching Ata. The people of Ata cannot afford to have the island discovered because their way of life will perish, and that will result in the collapse of the reai world. Therefore, by using their collective telepathic power, the people of Ata make their island temporarily 'disappear' and thus evade invasion. The Man witnesses this phenomenon when a plane is approaching Ata: "then suddenly the whole village disappeared. 1blinked and it came back. As 1 focused and unfocused my eyes upon the village it alternately melted into scrubby ground and reappeared in its spiral design, like a shifting optical illusion game or an expert work of camouflage" (39). This collective action causes exhaustion of aH the people - in a similar situation, the Man sees dl people "lying al1 about, as if shot down in the rnidst of their work, in the fields, on the paths" (79):

Then I heard a familiar sound, a rattling dmne, a whoshing roar. A plane was passing overhead. t looked up into the sky but I could see mthing. It was fîying too high. Already the sound was dying away.

As I looked back down into the valley I saw a frozen sene corne back to life. I thought my vision was playing tricks on me, for it seemed that al1 the people had for a few seconds frozen absoluteiy in the rnidst of a movement, like a movie.thatstops to becorne a still picture and then is animated again. Now they were in motion again, i feit doubtful that they had stopped at ail. (41)

Later in the novel Chil-sing explains this phenomenon to the Man: '' A helicopter.. . came out fiom a ship. It was looking for someone lost at sea. It saw Ata. It came down close.

It was going to land here.. . And so Ata disappeared - sank into the sea. Disappeared - like in a dream.. . The people, together, made it so. Ata melted into the sea like.. . a mirage." (79).

Another utopian character, Tmthe Frenchman, explains to the Man why the utopian people keep Ata invisible: "Ata is the only hope. It alone stands apart ftom the way of life you and 1 Chronotope

In discussing Bryant's novel, 1 am interested in the ways in which the feminist utopia reflects cumnt social beliefs and explores possibilities for human action in the real-life and in the utopian worlds. 1 find Bakhtin's theory of chronotope instrumental for my analysis.

Bakhtin's term 'chronotope' Iiteraily means "time-space" and stands for "the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artisticdy expressed in literature"

(Tom of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel" 85). Bakhtin asserts that chronotope has

"an intrinsic genen'c significance" (Bakhtin's emphasis, 85); in his discussion of the reworking of the idyliic chronotope in the Rousseauan novel(230), Bakhtin also implies that some genres can employ chronotopes that are pertinent to other genres. According to Schryer

(3), genres express spacekime relations that reflect current social beliefs regarding the placement and action of human individuals in space and time. 1assume that the feminist utopia, in its exploration of alternative ways tu create new meaning and in its borrowings from other genres, can combine several chronotopes; in th@ case, treating both the utopian novel and the idyll as its antecedent genres. This assumption allows me to regard each of the two chronotopes in Bryant's novel (that of the outside world and that of the utopim world) as an independent nexus of time/space/ideology.

Carol Pearson, a feminist utopian scholar, sees the strength of feminist utopianism in the interconnection of its political theory and its rep~sentationof timelspace relations. In "Of

Time and Space: Theories of Social Change in Contemporary Feminist Science Fiction"

(1984), Pearson identifies three principles drawn from this new theory: 1. Tirne is linear; and it is relative. To the degree that we live only in linear time, we are

locked into a world govemed by laws of causality, dualism, linearity, and struggle. But we

also have available to us a reality based upon relativity. In this dimension, time and space

are not separate, but timdspace is curved. It then becomes possible to understand that we

can change not only the future but the past. Such analyses focus on concepts like paradox,

synchronicity, responsibility, cornmitment, and transformation (Pearson 260-1). As 1

intend to show, Bryant's utopian world, Ata, is based upon such a relativity; it

accommodates a possibility for cornmitment and transformation.

Pearson's reference to tirne/ space curves is connected, in my opinion, to the understanding of time and space in quantum mechanics? From its principles, Pearson draws her second and third principles:

2. Although past, present and future CO-existand are equally red, the only point of action in

which anything cmbe changed is in the present. ParadoxicalIy, widespread social change

occurs only as a result of the sohtary decisions of individuais to step outside iinear time

into the 'etemal now'. Yet, at the sarne time, no one moves fülly into the new world

alone. No one is fully there, until we al1 are, says Pearson (26 1).

1find this insight quite important because it can be applied to the feminist genre itself: the ferninist utopia is part of non-standard discourse that is perceived by patriarchy as 'abnorrnal', yet is revolutionary for the ferninist community because it provides a space to promote social change on ferninist terms. Such a change cari be envisioned and initiated through the feminist

" Quantum mechanics shook the certainties of physical science by showing that light, previously considered to be a wave, could, under certain circumstances, behave as a particle. It was thus neither a wave nor a particle, but both or either, depending on circumstances. It transgresseci the binary dilemma of eitherlor. 124 discourse, but it will not be successful until dl society goes through it. From this, the third

principle follows:

3. The move into a new, utopian future occius when we simultaneously take responsibility

for our own Iives and relinquish dl iIlusions that we control anything - others, the flow of

history, or the effects of our own actions ("Of Time and Space" 261).

In Bryant's novel, as soon as the utopian time begins, the real-world time stands still for

the protagonist, although space expands. This new space, however, is abstract and fragrnented,

marked by difference, and has a specific sociocultural and ideological connection to the

utopian collective. Bryant's ideal of the unity and hatmony of al1 hurnanity as the best way

forward (or as the best defense against the evils of the real world) is realized on Ata, a utopian

island in the center of the world where a pre-urban, pre-technological classless society

develops. The isolation of the island provides for the necessary separation of this community to avoid being consumed by the reai world. For the protagonist, it provides a solution to his

individual search for fulfillment. But it also acts as a limitation, not only separating, but enclosing the community within the geographic seclusion. The dynarnic of the plot rests on the contnst of the two chronotopes: that of the outside world and that of Ata, thus exploring the outsidehnside binary opposition. The utopian Ata exists in parallel with the Man's own real Me. However, the Man's transformation is conditional; it can only happen in the utopian world and depends on his actions there. On the contrary, change is not possible for an Atan person unless it is prescribed by the comon dream.

I wili argue that in her utopia, Bryant ernploys the trans--historical folkioric maîrix thai was describeci by Bakhtùi in his anaiysis of the folkloric bases of the Rabelaisian chronotope (Toms of Time and of the Chronotope in the NoveI" 2û6-224). Bakhtin traces back the basic forms of the productive and generative tirne of folklore to a pre-class, agrlcultunl stage in the developrnent of human society because "[tlhe preceding stages were poorly suited to the development of a differential feeling for time, and for its reflection in ceremonies and in linguistic images"

(20. As he argues, a sharply differentiated feeling for time could arise only on a collective, work-oriented agricultural base. 1 intend to prove that Bryant's utopian time is cooperative and communal, differentiated only in the events of collective life; everything there exists solely for the kin as a whole. Atan society is classless, lacking any kind of council or government; classlessness here is an assumption so absolute that it never even gets discussed. The interior time of an individual life is not important, and the individual Atan lives cornpletely on the surface, within a collective whole. On Ata, both Iabor and the consurning of products are collective; the Atan moral and cultural systerns are based on a collective social consciousness.

Bakhtin identifies seven features of the folkloric chronotope that 1will use for my discussion of Bryant's novel. He describes folkloric timdspace as 1) collectivist, 2) measured by labor events, 3) as the time of productive growth, 4) airned towards the future, 5) profoundly concrete and spatial, 6) unified in an unmediated way, and 7) marked with cyclicity (206-210).

Accordhg to Bakhtin, the folkloric time is collective because it is differentiated and measured only by the events of collective lqe; everything that exists in this time exists solely for the collective. In her description of the Atm colIective, Bryant demonstrates how the ferninist genre can use the possibilities from pre-capitalist societies for envisioning a non- sexist social order that invokes the ferninist values of sharing, nurture, tolerance, patience, and understanding. On Ata, as she portrays it, identification is based on shared societal habits and an ideology that is almost non-verbal and revealed through dreaming, ritual, myth and dance.

In fact, there is an ideologicd endorsement of the non-verbal as superior to verbal cornmication. The Man initially identifies Ata as likely either an hdian reservation or a nird commune (Bryant 12). This is an important move for the novel because it provides the necessary socio-historic orientation and allows for the Man's initial division fiom the community.

Bakhtin further describes folkloric time as "the time of labor, measured by labor events; everyday life and consumption are not isolated from the labor and production process.

It is the time of productive growth; "the time of growth, blossoming, fniit-bearing, ripening, fniitful increase, issue" ("Forms of Time" 207). On Ata, as the Man notices, "There was constant work to do. But if everyone helped there was never too much to do. There was always time for the hol-kas or for a long walk around the island to gather wild gras for the weaving. And the yield was always enough" ( Bryant 158-159).

Bakhtin insists that this time is maximally tensed toward the future because al1 labor processes are aimed forward. He observes that Yhere is as yet no precise differentiation of tune into a present, a past and a future (which presumes an essential individuality as a point of depanure)" ('Torrns of Time" 207). Similarly, the Man reports that , 'There were times for doing certain things: times for planting, for dreaming, for eating, for telling dreams. There were times, but no time: 'Time doesn't exist here," I told Augustine. "There is only now," she agreed. "It is because nothing changes." "Change cornes, but very slow and very suddenly," she said" (Bryant 173j. Bakhtin adds that this time is spatial and concrete: 'Tt is not separated from the earth or from nature. If as well as the entire life of the human king, is al1 on the surface.. .. Human life and nature are perceived in the same categories. The seasons of the year, ages, nights and days (and their subcategorïes), copulation (marrïage), pregnancy, ripening, old age and death: al1 these categorical images serve equally well to plot the course of an individual life and the life of nature (in its agricultural aspect). Al1 these images are profoundly chronotopic"

(Torrns of Time" 208). Likewise, on Ata, death is not perishing or the end of life, and not sacrifice. For the Atans, "[dleath is onIy release into drearns; it cmonly be bad if one's drearns are bad" (Bryant 138). And birth is a shared experience in which everybody in the cornrnunity helps out: "Giving birth is a very hard thing. We al1 try to help.. .. We try to take some of the pain on ourselves, to share it. We try to give some of our strength for the hard work. We try to make the girl feel happy that, once she has done this, she need no longer carry the burden of the child alone. Then she will labor in joy. At the least, we give the warmth of

Our bodies surrounding her" (149).

Therefore, as Bakhtin explains, this time is unified in an unmediated way. Bakhtin makes an important distinction here when he says: 44However,this imminent unity becomes apparent only in the light of later perceptions of time in literature (and in ideology in general) when the time of personal, everyday farnily occasions, had already ken individualized and separated from the time of the collective historical life of the social whole, at a tirne when there emerged one scale for measuring the events of personal life and another for measunng the events of hisrory (these were experienced on various levels). Although in the abstract time remained unified, when it was appropriated for the making of plots it bifurcated"(208). Time is measured by labor events and govemed by rinialsB. Bakhtin says that in a folklore matrix, an individual is never lonely because he is always in the collective, and each moment of his life "will avail itself to king made public" (Bakhtin 'Forms of Tirne" 123).

To use Bakhtin's term, the exteriority of an individual Atm exists not in the empty place: on this island, to be exterior means to be for others, for the collective, for one's own people.

Therefore, the mity of a person's extemalized wholeness is of a public nature. Al1 major events (birth, christening, wedding, food, work, sleep, sacrifice) happen in the open space and within the organic human collective. Private life on Ata adopts the most varied means for making itself public, one of these means king the dream-sharing ritual: to remember and share their dreams, every moming each of the twelvepople in the Atm 'sleeping wheel' tells their drearn to their neighbor in the sleeping wheel. The drearn-sharing ritual takes place at the first graying of dawn, when the Atans wake up, hang their grassy blankets on the wooden supports of the tent, and greet each other with the ritualistic "nagdeo":

The two of them stood facing each other. Then they reached their arms upward as if to pull something from the roof. Instead, they swung their arms outward to the side and stood in that way for a few seconds. Then, slowly, in simuttaneous motion, they brought their hands togeaier prayer-fashion in front of their chests. As they stood that way, the bald man began to talk. I recognized his voice. ît was the one that had chanted over me in the dark. This time he did not chant. He seemed to be telling sornething, conversationaNy. But this was not a conversation. The black woman stood attentive, listening. His voice trailed on softly. As he spoke a black bird flew in between the mats on the sides of the tent. It flew straight to him and perched on hii shoulder. After a while he stopped talking.. There was a slight pause before the black woman started. She spoke for oniy a few minutes, and he tistened just as

"The hbor aspect of this idyU is of special importance (present already in Virgil's Georgics);it is the agricultural-labour element that creates a real link and cornmon bond between the phenornena of nature and the events of human life (as distinct fiom the rnetaphoncal link in the love idyll). Moreover - and this is especially important - agricultural Iabor transforms aU the events of everyday life, stripping hem of that private petty character obtaining when man is nothing but consumer; what happens rather is that they are turned into essentiai life events. Thus people consume the produce of their own labor; the produce is figurally linked with the productive proces, in it - in this produce - the Sun, the earth and the rain are actuaily present (not merely in some system of metaphorical links)" (227). 129 attentively and silenüy unül she finished. Then they nodded at each other, dropped their hands to their sides, and waiked out of the tent (Bryant 14-15)

Bakhtin's final characteristic of the folkloric tirne is its cyclicity, whicich he identifies as a negative feature, "one that limits the force and ideological productivity of this time. The mark of cyclicity, and consequently of cyclical repetitiveness, is imprinted on al1 events oçcumng in this type of time. Time's forward impulse is lirnited by the cycle. For this reason even growth does not achieve an authentic 'becorning"' (Tomsof Timey'209-210).

Similarly, on Ata life is rnarked by a certain rhythm and follows an agricultural cycle:

"everything went on as usual. Grain and legumes were king harvested and root vegetables planted. Food was prepared for storage on the steps of the la-ka; a few steps were already full.

The days were shorter, and the air crisper. Every evening the usual procession to the la-ka took place" (Bryant 77). The Man gets accustomed to this cycle and treats it as the 'natural' order of things: "Seasons passed, but 1no longer kept track of the number of cycles through which we lived. Time was one; there was only now" (Bryant 203). Yet, while living in the 'now', the Atans are concerned with the future. Al1 their collective labor concems itself with the future, al1 labor processes are aimed forward, and al1 are following the cyclic pattern. Bryant rnakes her patriarchd narrator acknowledge the superiority of the Atm ecologically sound, pre-technological agiculturd practices: 'Tt was only much later that 1 came to any realization of the intricate pattern of cultivation. Plants which needed a great deal of Sun fonned umbrellas over those that needed shade. Certain plants attracted bugs antagonistic to those attracted by the nearest other plants. Seemingly irregular swirls of planting patterns repeated themselves, year after year, possibiy following lines of underground channels of water. flourished where dreams directed they be planted. The people were rïght. They operated with

knowledge far deeper than 1could ever reach - 1who could not even dream" (158).

To complete the natural cycle, the kin of Ata recycle everything, including the bones

of their dead which become agricultural tools: " At the next funeral 1leamed that bodies were

taken to a high cliff over the sea where they were picked clean by large birds within a couple

of days. Then the skull was buried and the rat of the bones taken back to the village and

thrown into the pile of tools, used until broken and the chips buried in the fields" (159).

However, the Man, who rnight once have been shocked by this, Iater validates this practice as

in no way disrespectful of the dead: "How could there be disrespect toward those who, these people believed, had simply ken wholly liberated into their dreams, freed from the bones that now dug the soil? " (159).

Bakhtin further moves toward discussing the idyllic mode1 for restoring the ancient complex and for restonng folkloric time (Toms of Time" 224-236). He mentions several kinds of idylls, distinguishing the following "pure types: the love idyll (whose basic fonn is the pastoral); the idyll with a focus on agricultural labor; the idyll dealing with craft-work; and the family idyll" (224). He also mentions mixed types of idylls, in which one or another aspect predominates (love, labor or family). Al1 the types of idylls have several cornmon features determined by "their general relationship to the immanent unity of foklonc tinte"

(225).

This finds expression predorninantly in the special relationship that time has to space in the idyil: an organic fastening-down, a grafting of lie and its events to a place, to a familiartenitory with al1 itsmxks and crannies, its farniliar.mountains, valieys, fields, wp and forests, and one's own home. tdyiiiciife;and its events are inseparable frqm thi concrete; spatial camr of the world where the fathers and grandfathers lNed and whëre one'srhildr6n andtheir childien fiIl lm. This liîtle spatiai yuorld is lim#ed and suf-ent umo itself, not linked in any intrinsic way wÎth 131 other places, wÏth the rest of the wolkl. But in thii littie spatially limited worid a sequence of generations is localired that is potenüally without limt The unity of the life of generations (in general, the life of men) in an KfSl is in most instances primariiy defined by the un@ of phce, by the age-old W-ngof the Me of generabions to a single place, from w)riih this Me, in generai, in al1 its events, is inseparable-. - This unity of place in the life of generations weakens and renders less distinct ail the temporal boundaries between individual lives and between various phases of one and the sarne life. The unity of place brings together and even fuses the cradle and the grave (the same iiicorner, the same earth), and bn'ngs together as well childhaod and oki age (the same grove, Stream, the same lime trees, the same house), the Iife of the various generabions who had also hed in the sarne place, under the same conditions, and who had seen the same things. This blumng of ail temporal boundaries made possible by a unity of place afso contributes in an essentiai way to the creation of the cyclic rhythmicalness of time so characteristic of the idyll. (225)

Bakhtin mentions that the farnily idyll in its pure form is not cornrnon, "but in conjunction with the agriculturd idyll it is of enonnous ~i~cance":''This forrn cornes closest to achieving follcloric time; here the ancient matrices are revealed most fully and with the greatest possible actuality" (226). This form of the idyll draws upon not the conventional pastoral life (which, as Bakhtin explains, "exists nowhere in such a form7'), but "on the real life of the agricultural laborer under conditions of feudai or post-feudal society" (226).

Right from the beginning, the Man perceives the Atm comrnunity as "abnomai", non-standard, anti-capitaiist, and, as we will see, non-patriarchal. This commune is extremely ecology-rninded. Ln this world with no industry, no pollution, no waste or environmentai hazard, everything is built of wood, leaves, grass. I will argue that here Bryant uses the idyllic chronotope as a trans-historïc foim that she individuates to describe her spiritual-ecological utopia The utopian time is ided for expressing Atan ideology; it is the communal time of the human collective living in the presence of the uniting drearn. Atan ideology is collectivist and oriented towards the future of the comrnunity. Discussing the ways in which idyllic chronotope is reworked in the novel, Bakhtin turns to the Rousseauan novel. According to Bakhtin, reworking proceeds in two directions:

"fiit, the basic elements of the ancient complex - nature, love, the family and childbearing, death - are isolated and undergo sublimation at a higher philosophical level, where they are

ûeated more or less as foms of the great, etemal, wise force of earthly life. Second, these elements provide matenal for constituting an isolated individual consciousness, and from the point of view of such a consciousness these elements act as forces that can heal, pur@ or reasswe it, forces that solicit its surrender, its submission, requiring that it fuse with them"

("Forms of Time" 230).

Folklonc tirne and the ancient matrices are perceived here as stages in the development of society and consciousness from a point of view that is contemporary to the writer, a point of view in which such time and such matrices become the lost ideal of human life. The contact with the lost ideal is re-established at a new stage of development; the novelty, therefore, is that "the interior aspect of life is retained, and, in the majonty of cases, individuality is preserved as well (al though it is transformed)" (230). The major change in the narrative is that whereas in the idyll, as a rule, there were no heroes alien to the idyllic world, in novels of the Rousseauan type, the protagonists are the author's contemporaries, people who had already succeeded in isoiating individual life-sequences, people with an interior perspective: "They heal themselves through contact with nature and the life of simple people, leaming from them the wisdom to deal with life and death; or they go outside the boundaries of culture altogether, in an attempt to utterly imrnerse themselves in the wholeness of the primitive collective" (23 1). Therefore, as Bakhtin shows, 'Wie Rousseauan line of development, by sublimating in philosophicai terms the ancient sense of the whole, makes of it an ided for the future and sees in it above al1 the basis, a nom, for criticizing the current state of society. In the majority of cases this critique is two pronged: it is directed against feudai hierarchy, against inequality and absolutism, against the false arbitrariness of society

(conventionality); but it is directed as well against the anarchy of greed and against the isolatecl, egotistic bourgeois individuum" (23 1).

In the novel, the transformation of the patriarchal Man is not possible in the real world, but it is possible on Ata, in the eternal "now", in the unity of utopian time/space. The real- world tirne begins again when the protagonist returns to his own nightmarish place, California, where only a few weeks have passed since the Man disappeared, though the Man had lived on

Ata for about fifteen years. In an ironic twist of the plot, he now wishes that the real world was just a dream, and he could wake up on Ata again: "A good look in the mirror showed that 1 was thirty years old, no older. The dates on the papers, the statements of my iawyer, showed that no more than a few weeks had passed. 1 wished with al1 my sou1 that this were a dream, and 1 waited and waited to wake up. But 1did not. Had al1 the events of the past time happened? Did Ata exist? The answer was obvious: Ata existed, but only in the drug-laden and injured brain of an admittedly imaginative and desperate man" Pryant 2 14).

The Man's transformation is irrelevant for the real world; therefore, the Man starts doubting the existence of Ata Gradually, the Man understands why he was taken to Ata and chosen to corne back: to use his celebrity status and to tell the world about Ata: "It was to fulfill Augustine's dream by shining this feeble light on the people of Ata, .. . 1was chosen because my career, my life, my trial and my execution will attract a larger audience than might corne to read the book of a better man or woman" (219). Though the Man's transformation happens elsewhere, its results are Important for the real world. This outside world, therefore, is the only point of action where the future can be changed; and it was to understand this that the

Man had to step outside the linearity of his time into the drearn, into the utopian 'now'. He now needs to dernonstrate his cornmitment to and responsibility for his transformation.

Bryant, thus, reinforces the idea that transformatioti is only possible for the patriarchal Man in the utopian timdspace; before that, as an etemally lonely and isolated capitalist individual, he could not undergo a metamorphosis (which is only possible in the collectivity of utopian timdspace) and willfully choose sacrifice that also provided him with a possibility for action: to retum to the real world and write a book that we are reading, thus promoting the utopian ideals and initiating social change.

Hol-ka as lcon of lnteriority

The Man's fmt experience in the utopian world is relief and relaxation felt through sensory perception: helpless and wounded, he fin& hirnself in "absolute blackness and stillness" (6),in muteness and invisibility. For a long time, he seems to hang between two dark places, the nightmare of his death-sleep and this waking up to blackness and shadows l

(that rnight be read as Bryant's description of birth or re-birth). He feels king touched, listened to, even smelled. But he also feels safe, cared for, and relieved: "Something touched my cheek. It was cool and wet and smelled like a leaf. A cool drop fell on my lips. 1licked them. It was water. 1 let my eyes open again, and the drops of cool water fell into my mouth.

1opened my eyes again, but saw only blackness. 1 could sense that someone knelt over me dropping water into my mouth from something that smelled green, like grass or leaf" (7). 135 The necessity to perceive the whole world in the mute and blind mode helps the Man to concentrate on his inner lïfe; this necessity also revitalizes him and facilitates his transformation. Through silent meditation and silent drearns, the Mm engages in a conversation with hirnself; this expenence purges him for perceiving the utopian world: "1 was wide awake. 1 knew 1had corne through something. I've been close to death, but 1was going to Iive now.. -1wondered where 1was" (9).

As the Man fin& out later, he is recuperating in a hol-ka - the utopian place where the individuals can hide and meditate whenever a crisis occurs in their lives. 'Hol-ka' is Bryant's icon of interiority. Here, though, in the utterly collectivist and pubiic life every aspect of existence can be seen or heard, Ata provides a space for mute and invisible intemal Iife. The hol-ka is such a ritual place reserved entirely for invisible or mute joumey back to one's roots: as Augustine explains to the Man later, 'The hol-ka is to help us when we have gone very far from nagdeo, or when we are &aid we might. There we go naked back into our mother. And we come out reborn and begin again" (70). In this way, bol-ka becornes a syrnbol of the womb. However, it looks like a strange kind of womb to the Man: cold, dry, dark, and unfeeling, where, as Bryant tells us, dunng his first session the Man feeIs detached and claustrophobie. The Man describes it as a completely dark "hole in the ground, covered with a rock and clay roof' (Bryant 57), with enough height to kneel but not to stand:

I crawied inward.inthe dark, slipping dowwiward into the depths of the mound. I came to reston a mat. I could see nothing at dl. I sat up, crosslegged. I could see nothing, hear-nothing. I oniy sensed the nearness of the stone walls, the stone and clay roof over my head, that I could touch by simply raising my ami.

A horrible, sick fear uncoiled itseif like a snake in my beily. I coufd hear rny breathing, short rasping gasps. I jurnped up and hit my head on the Stones above. I sat agani. My flesh cr&ed: I'imagined al1 kinds of repulsive vermin crawling out of the walls and covering me. Twice I headed for the tunnel and began to crawl out, but I stopped mysetF and went back

I began ta feel that I might suffocitte. I gdped for breath, panteci. I broke out in a sweat of apprehension that the stone roof wouid fail in on me and bury me alive. I was already buried die,entombed. (96)

Nonetheless, an important process takes place in the hol-ka: the Man's transformation starts there. Like every other Atm, the Man can now undergo a ritual purging of his mentality and perceptions, thus returning to an infant's state which cm be compared to what Kristeva implies by developing her concept of 'chora' or "pre-symbolic realm": hoI-ka can be perceived as the utopian space in which, after the ritual purging, perceptions and sensations are taking on some semblance of organization. According to Kristeva, this space represents the pre-linguistic moment where the child remains unable to differentiate itself from the maternai body: "[nlot yet related to the signimng chah, the chora is a pre-symbolic realm that provides the dual rhythm of kdomand constra.int from which a relation to signification will gradually emerge" (Kristeva Revoluîiur, in Poetic Language 24-25) Here, the subject's multiple drives are manipulateci and directed by its encounters with both its body and its environment. The Man is shown as drifting through various stages of fear until he sweats his fears out and becornes empty inside:

In that first session in the hol-ka, that was al1 that happened. I had no idea how long I stayed. For hours, it seemed, I drifted through aitemate States of tenor. Fears washed over me like waves: fear of dyhg,'fear of being buried, fear of not finding the way out, fear of king squeezed to death by black shadows, fear of everything. I sweated and panted my fear out, until there was no tnore fear. I felt nothing. The tenor had oozed out of my pores. I was empty. (96)

After this fmt session in the hol-ka, the Man's nightrnares are gone - he has "sweated them out" and is free to "drearn of childish trivia" instead (105). WhiIe the Man thinks that not much has happened to him in the hol-ka, this is because what happens is unknowable to him: he goes through a process of purification that issirnilar to what Kristeva describes as the processes that an infant undergoes in the chora: 'Discrete quantities of energy move through the body of the subject who is not yet constituted as such an& in the course of his deveiopment, they are manged according to the various constraints imposed on this body - always already in the serniotic process - by family and social structures" (esteva ib?voiutiun in Poetic Lunguage 25j. The Man is now free to drearn childish drearns and, like a child, absorb the values that the utopian social order will impose on him.

utopian people

Getting out of the hol-ka, the Man meets the first utopian people: Chil-sing, an oriental-looking boy with golden hair, and Augustine, a muscular, strong and slim black woman with sharp and pointed Nordic features, blue eyes and coarse brown hair in a long braid. Their unusual racial make-up is an interesting move for the feminist utopia because it problematizes the paûiarchal values and reinforces the ideology of the feminist discourse: racial make-up is perceived as irrelevant because racial diversity does not affect consubstantiality of the utopian people on Ata. Here the feminist utopian genre dw'=monstrates its openness and tolerance to ideological innovations.

It is notable that, descnbing the utopian person, Bryant combines the traditional feminist images of circle and light with a Christian symbol of a halo: "1 lwked into the face of a boy, a broad fair face with the slight down of a blonde beard. His hair was thin and long, curling down his shoulders. His face was broad, with high cheek bones, and his eyes were wide and slanted with an oriental fold. He was leaning over me, shielding my face fiom the

Sun, so that the Sun shone behind his head, lighting up his hair like a halo" (10).

Circular imagery proliferates in the descriptions of the Atm tents shaped like domes

(1 1), their round hol-kas, and the ritual sleeping wheel in which the Man is included:

They filed one by one, walking very erect, alrnost ceremoniousiy, as if in a fomal procession. Each of them went to the wall and took one of the blankets that were hanging there. Tvm of them helped the Iieone wrap itself and lie down. Then each one did the same, lying down under the place where his or her blanket had hung, head near the wall, feet pointhg toward the center of the tent, fike the spokes of a wheel. Then they al1 murmured something; the sound whispered softiy around me. it was the first word of their language Iieamed, and, as Iwas to know later, the most important. "Nagdeo," they said. Wagdeo, nagdeo," echoed softly until it died into the darkness and I hard only their breathing.

I sat up to try to get one more hkat them, and as 1 squinted through the darkness I saw that I too had been placed as one of the twelve spokes of their wheel, with my feet pointing toward the center of the tent'l lay back and slept. (14)

By including the Man into the sleeping wheel, the Atans make him part of their community. The images of the wheel and circte are further reinforced by the circula structure of the novel and the cyclicity of life in the Atm agrkultural cornmunity. They are also supported by the spiral irnagery in the description of the utopian village: "[Tlhe path curved. It seemed to curve dways to the left. We were walking in a circle, a continuousIy narrowing cide. Along the path were other tents like the one I'd ben in. And 1 could see Our destination, in the center of the narrowing circles rnarked by the low stone walls" (28). Bryant gives the readers another description of the viIlage with its twelve round la-kas and twenty round hol-kas:

From where I -t I coufd look straight dom upon the village. At the center of there is was the great tent, rising above the huge old tree. The low stone walls started from.the tree,-spirding outward in wider and wider circles. Along the wall, at irregular intervals, were tent domes like the one I stayed in. Icounted hivelve of them. The stone walls ended abruptiy at the last one. Then the spiral continueci with the liigloo type mounds; there web over twenty of them blending outward inegulady into the fiab beyond-

The image of the circIe envelopes al1 individuals within the utopian community and emphasizes a holistic approach to life; it avoids pyramidal hierarchy and promotes the utopian message that "hue departure is return". But (though Bryant does not show this other than by portraying the Man as trapped on the island) the circle cm also be lirniting, final, enclosing the individual within the coIlective, restricting individual freedom, and promoting the need to prescribe conformity. Thus, Bryant's usage of circular imagery can be read as an implicit attempt to problematize her utopian paradise. Her novel, then, can be identified as a critical utopia in Moylan's sense due to its implicit criticism of the limitations of the utopian tradition.

Slowly recuperating, the Man has a lot of time for anthropological and ethnographie observations: he notices the Atans' faraway, concentrated look, the austere and ascetic way of their life, their comfortable and harmonious closeness to each other: "They al1 dressed alike and di walked alike: silent, erect and sornehow tensed, as if listening to something. .. . The younger ones ran and skipped, but even they seemed occasionally to be skipping in time to music only they could hear" (18).

At first everybody looks alike, then the Man is able to see some startiing combinations of physical traits. Yet, he is unable to identiQ the ethnicity of these people, and soon observes that ethnicity is irrelevant here as racial ciifferences cause no obvious discrimination:

Most of the people were of a racial blond I &ld not quite identify. They were of medium height and build and ail,.of course, sun-tan or brown. Their features fonned a medium composite: eyes neither namw nor round, noses neither flat nor pointeci, lips neither full ~r thin. Their hair prieci from the lightest and finest to the darkest or co&est. But a large rn@orityof them had staiaing combinations of physical traitS. like the black hmanwith the No& feresand blue ems, or the golden- haired boy with oriental*, like signs of ment inte8rt,reeding,or mutations, or throw-backs. 1 saw no sign that these extrerne types were in any way noticed or thought of as dierent by the others. (Bryant 19)

One of the possible interpretations of the inelevance of race is an implicit critique of capitalist paûiarchy whose discriminatory practice reinforces racism alongside with sexis~n'~.

Such a critique was quite functional in the sociopolitics of the 1970s and was part of the feminist discourse. In Bryant's utopia, division is not based on race, gender or class; in fact, division is hardIy an issue at al1 because it scems that identification for the Atans does not imply division from any other group. The Atans treat dl humanity as their kin; thus, the feminist values of cooperation, tolerance and acceptance of diversity are promoted.

Neither is the Man sure of the gender of the Atans, since every Atm wears their hair long and is clothed in the same shapeless, knee-len@ tunic. He soon finds that only beards and body contours cm be treated as definitive signs of their biological sex: "Up to the age of sexual maturity the children were naked and long-haired, they looked sexless or al1 rather like little girls because of their long hair. The old people looked alike in their own way " (19).

More irnportantly, he observes a total lack of gender roles in work and parenting:

The men waited on me as often as the wornen did, and on each other. ... I saw no dierence of function except the women obviously nutçed the infants; but the men canied and cared for the small ones as much as the wornen did. -..The= were not many babies, and itwas hard ta tell who their parents were. They seemed to be passed from one to another. I learned finally who the mothers were, as the babies were passeâ back to the same women to be nursed. But 1 hardly noticed the mies anyway. They wem-inconspicuousbecause they were quiet. (20)

He is not even able to distinguish the Atans by narnes, because few of these people have a name before they are thirty, when "a name comes to them in their drearns" or they 'hear' the name of sorneone in the real-world "who fels close" (176) and wants to reach the utopian Ata. Later, the Man witnesses several christenings on Ata which are rituais performed in re~o~pitionof persons who have drearned a narne: "He told the drearn in the la-ka that night, then was formally introduced to al1 the people. As he walked among them, they each pronounced his name and touched his forehead" (176). The Man, however, remains unnamed throughout the novel - and this is important for this instance of the genre because his name does not matter; what matters is his initial patriarchal identification and his subsequent transformation into a utopian person.

Living in complete harmony with nature and wiîh themselves, the Atans are very healthy people. The Man is arnazed at "the magnifice.nt health of the people" : "1 rarely saw anyone ill. The people believed that iil health was donagdeo - acts which would disturb or decrease their ability to dream, and resulted from accompanying States of imbalance. That was why they irnrnediately went to a hol-ka, at the first sign of such imbalance. A session in the hol-ka generally averted iifness" (134). They have pet animals, but it is the animal who chooses a person as a pet. Therefore, in an interesting twist, the animals are not perceived as pets (even if the narrator so calis them), but the people are:

Many of the people were accompanied by pet animals or birds. The black woman had a diifferent cobr butterfly riding on her shoulder every day and the baM man was seldorn *ut the black bird perched as if sprouting fmm his shoulder. The white cat seemed to stare suspiciously at me over the shoulder of the woman who was akyswith hïm. The golden haired boy had his yellow dog who was ahys curling up to sleep. The bushy-haired giant was incongniouslyfollowed by a bleating tamb. (20)

24 Bryant suggests a comection between capitalism and racisrn when the Man asks Salvatore what good can Augustine do in the outside world "if she lives the life of a poor, obscure black wornan" (1 88), irnplying that Augustine would be cornpletely dis-ernpowered. 142 The kin of Ata cirink rain water out of sea-shells and grow plants, herbs anci fniit.

They treat anirnals as their kin, therefore, their diet is strictly vegetarian. As the Man comments, "1 need hardly add that I knew better than to suggest that we eat birds or animals, or even fish. They would have reacted the same way as if I had told them we should eat the children. When animals died, their bones and skins were taken (only after the birds have picked thern clean) and used for many things. But no one would have thought of killing any of themV7(159). Thus, the Atans consume only the produce of their own labr; the Man notices fiuits and leaves lying around arnong shells and water pots perched on the low Stone walls, but he never sees any adults eating. He assumes (correctly) that they must eat somewhere else and that the surplus food is left there for children and anyone else who could not wait until the sundown for a communal meal.

The association of food and children is characteristic for the agricultural idyll; the folkloric matrix is revived through the portrayd of growth and the renewing of life. Food sharing on Ata becomes a ritual that promotes kinship; al1 generations and age-groups come together for the sundown meals in the la-ka. People feed each other; thus, food becomes a gift,

Iike an ornament. "Omarnents, like food, were to be given to others", observes the Man after he sees that no one decorates himself or herself, but "people sometimes put a flower or a woven necklace on someone else, then stand back to enjoy the effect7'(5 1). During the food-

sharing ritual, the emphasis is not on nourishing oneself, but rather feeding each other fiom

earthen pots, putting bits of food in the mouths of others. No one feeds themselves from the

pots, except one or two of the smd children (3 1). The food-sharing ntuai is very significant

in the social life on Ata. As Chil-sing explains to the Man, this ritual is based on a myth about the waking-dreamer, i.e. a very strong drearner, "[olne who lives in the dream al1 the time, asleep or awake. One who goes Home without dying" (104):

Once, long ago, when Ata wao very young and the twehre times twelve people had not yet dug and buiit the great la-ka, but satto tell dreams beneath the branches of the great Life Tree, a strong drearner, a wakingdreamer, was born among them. He had been born as a baby, tom ou? of the body, long before, but then he was born again as a wakingdreamer. And all this happened in the midst of famine, when the ha- of sumrner was gone, and the mot crop of fdl had been dug up, and still the winter fast was long to go before the first new grass would corne to feed the people .... And the waking-drearnersat beneath the Life Tree and the people al1 came more him, and they said, We have only these twehie pots of grain ieft and these twehre baskets of fruit. Some will eat and some will starve. Tell us wha shall iiiand who shall die before those of us who are strong take all, and the people of Ata are reduced to strong bodies with bad dreams.'

And the wakingdreamer said, You feed dl the people.' But the people protesteci and said, Wehave not enough for al1 pedple.'

'Vou have not enough for yourselves,' said the wakingdreamer. 'If you feed yourselves you will stanre, but each feed another, and al1 will be filled, for kin are nourished by Mat they feed to others.'

And so tweive people picked twelve pots and began to feed others from the pots. And twelve more picked up Mive baskets of fruit and began to feed ail the twelve times twelve people fmm the baskets. And when they were through, and ail were fed, al1 having been fed from the hands of others, the pots and the baskets were still full and so were the people. (103)

In response, the Man narrates to Chil-sing the Christian fable of loaves and fishes.

However, much to the Man's surprise, Chil-sing finds the Christian fable a corrupted version of the utopian dream: "the point of the drearn is lost. The waking-drearner of your story is just a trickster who can make many fishes from a few. It is not his act, but the act of the people in feeding one another that multiplies the food. Such a story becomes donagdeo when it is corrupted. Perhaps if your people had not put it down into markings, they could have improved it, dreaming it over until it got better, instead of king stuck in such a meaningless story", concludes Chil-sing (104). In this example, Bryant's manipulation of bililical motifs is quite significant: she attempts to create consubstantiaiity with her audience by mentioning the well-known Christian fable. However, what she suggests is that genuine consubstantiality should be based upon sharing not only material things and activities (food, dwehgs, utensils, work, leisure, parenting, ntuals), but aiso through common ideology expressed in the Atm drearns that promote sharing, unders tanding, and tolerance. Christian motifs are Mersupported with the Man's preaching to the children, the Man's 'retun' to the ritual la-ka like a 'prodigal son' asking for forgiveness after he muders Tarn, and his willful choice to go back to the real world and, in this way, to accept sacrifice. Christian motifs are also evident in the Atm emphasis on the number "twelve7': there are twelve people in the sleeping wheel, and the population of the village is lirnited by the "twelve by twelve" number of the dream (148). In this way, Bryant demonstrates the interaction of the ferninist utopia with patriarchal discourse.

The implication for the feminist genre, 1 think, is the possibility of transcending the rigidity of patriarchal discourse by transforming Christian imagery and fables to reflect the ferninist message.

It can also be useful in the feminist utopian genre to have a male protagonist notice, describe and theorize utopian social practices because such a strategy provides for a smoother introduction of ferninist values of sharing, connection, collaboration, nurture, vaiuing social bonding over biological bonds, and communal parenting. Portrayal of such practices through the eyes of a male protagonist, 1 would assume, provides for their legitimacy and accessibility for the readership of the 1970s. The Man gets his fust lesson in collectivism during the welcoming ritud when he is taught how to get nourished by feeding others:

The black wornan waiked up to me and held out a morsel, smiling at me. Itook it in my mouth and lodced strai'ght into her blue eyes as I chewed and swallowed. I reached for more, but she made a general gesture toward the people around her. They were iooking at me e>cpectantlyas if they wanted me to feed them. When I walked around putb'ng food into their mouths they laughed and ciasped tkir hands and made general gestures of detight. Isupposed that they cansidered it a special honor to be fed by me, when I noticed that they made the same gesture when a small child stopped feeding himseif and held out food towardç others. (Bryant32)

In this spiritual and agriculturd idyll, the Man initially experiences profound boredom.

He is king taught and taken care of like a child, but he has not yet developed any relationships with the utopian people. He had never spent so much time alone. He is still devising plans of escape; it never occurs to him that he can stay in this commune for a long time. However, when he tries to escape, he realizes he is trapped on an island (37). Later on he asks Chil-sing about the geographic location of Ata, but the only answer he gets is that Ata is the center of the world:

"What is this island?"

"Atan

"Where is it?"

"It is Ata."

"No, in what part of the world?'

"In the center of the worfd." T "But near what country?-Near Mexico? Near Europe? W hem?

''1 cannot say anything of counttïes. Ata is the center of the world."

"How did Iget there?"

Why pucame is unknpwable." mot whV, how? 'They are the same-"

It takes him time to understand that the world in question is not his, not the outside world that is divided into parts, continents, countries. Ata is the center of a unified utopian world, situated in a unity of time and space marked with features that make Ata very different from the Man's real world. The Man soon discovers a paradox: the Atans believe that he ended up on their utopian island on his own will. Augustine saw him in a drearn three times, and waited for hirn to come, but she did not bring him to the island because no one has the power to bnng another person there. It is next to impossible for anyone to get to Ata unless one is a strong drearner. Though the Man denies it, according to Augustine, he had to want to get to Ata with his whole soul:

"In the dream, " she said, "1 saw the face of the man in the sunlight. It was your face." , "Are you sure pudidn't dream this after you found me?"

"Sure, " she said. "1 waited for you."

''So you believe your dream brought me here?'

"No. Oh, no, " she said. "No one can brincj you here. You must want it with your whole soul. You mtedk"

"1 did not."

"YOUcrïed from the depths of yourself to come here." She looked at me admiringly. 'Still it is not easy. You must &e a very stmng drearner."(72-73)

Not believing her, the Man devises plans to escape, persuading the Atm children to help him and luring hem with the benefits of civilization: "You are king held prisoners of superstition. Follow me and I will Save you" (76). The Atans let the Man persuade their 147 children, occasionally watching him from a distance. Nobody seems to be paying a.ny attention to them, and the Man does not understand why: "For, of course, 1was lying. It was easy to talk about bringing the blessings of socalled civilization to Ata. Ata would probably gain a jet-strip, a gambling casino and a set of slurns from which these people codd go out each day to serve the tourists. It could even become another navy base. If the people were not so ignorant, 1 thought, nor so reluctant to argue, they could easily have made my little speech sound ridiculous" (75). Instead, what happens to the Man is that his old nightrnares start haunting him again, and they seem to affect the children in his gang: 'The children slept fitfully, often starting and moaning. I slept little, if at dl. The old nightmares had corne back with redoubled terror and when they were not there, 1was killing Connie, endlessly, in slow motion. 1 suspected someone of poisoning the food left for us and began eating fruit 1 picked myself. But the nightmares continuai, bursting on me every time 1closed my eyes. 1 began to feel that the island was a trap where 1 would go mad and die7' (78).

The Man notices that the Atans have some jewels that they display during their rituals.

For exarnple, during the fire dance, he sees the children passing on rubies from hand to hand

(48), and later on he sees a huge pearl: "1 looked up to see the child's mouth open wide with joy - and between her teeth 1saw a peul as big as an egg. Then, some quick sleight of hand, and it was gone" (49). The Man can only see jewels during ritual dances and drearn-telling rituals: ''1 had been listening with my eyes closed, concentrating on the words. I opened my eyes. Salvatore stood in front of the fire. The spokes of gold crown radiated from his head with almost blinding glow. Then a quick motion, and the crown was gone" (65). The Man suspects that these people are Ming their treasure in the la-ka (thus, the motif of the treasure island becornes one more of Bryant's manipulations of traditional patriarchal motifs that make her utopia dialogic). Asking Chil-sing about the treasure, the Man gets no definite answer: '?s your treasure kept in the la-ka?"'Treasure?" "The riches of your people. The precious omarnents used in the dances." "Oh, yes. " He frowned as if uncertain. "Our treasure is kept in the la-ka" He pushed back his golden curls and looked apologetic. 'But please.. . 1 would please like to stop talking now" (6 1). The Man decides that the Atans are hiding their treasure fiom km; he, therefore, needs to find it before he escapes from the island: ''1 decided that these people were a mixture of subtlety and stupidity. They obviously knew the value of the precious gems 1 had glimpsed, and they prized hem, but only as a decoration to their stories and rituals, not as means for their matenal condition" (49). The Man spends nights searching the la-ka, where he thinks the treasure is hidden between rituals (78), but he can find nothing.

Then the Atan elders come to offer hirn a deal - they can get him off the island in the spring, after the winter fast. But the Man wants to rob them of their jewels before any deal can be made: "Turn them over, Now. To show good faith. Then L'Il wait till spring and 1 won? cause any more trouble" (83). The Atans listen to hirn in great surprise: 'They al1 turned and looked at me. Even the children's mouths hung open. "Tell me," said the squeaky-voiced old creature. "Tell me, you saw these things dunng the telling of the stories in the la-ka?" (83).

When the Man describes the jewels he saw, Tarn, the old Atan translating for him, srniles in reply. And, suspecting that Tarn is laughing at hirn, the Man gets angry and kills Tarn as he had previously killed Connie: "I only meant to scare him. 1was furious, but 1felt quite in control of myself because I thought 1 had won. 1 simply reached out to give hirn a backhanded slap across the face, to fiighten him, to show them al1that 1 meant business.. .. At a bare touch of my hand he lost his balance. He fell head down in a heap, across three steps. His head stnick the Iowest step. The smile was still on his face. We didn't have to touch him to see he was dead" (84).

Thus, the Man becornes twice murderer. Judging the utopian people by himself, he assumes that their patience, tolerance and gentIeness are only cover-ups for "pent-up rage which would be now unleashed upon the murderei' (85). He anticipates that they will search the island, find him and kill him. Hiding for three days in the hills, he is visited by the spirit of the dead Atm who offers hirn forgiveness by saying: 'We never mourn for those who go

Home, my kin" (88). Like a prodigal son, the Man gpes back to the village where everybody is waiting for him in the ritual place. Expecting to be killed, he asks to be forgiven: "1 killed the old one. Before that 1 killed a woman. But these murders are the ieast of my crimes. 1 have never done anythmg goad. 1 am an empty man. Not a real person. 1 gave away what was reai in me long ago. 1sold it. For nothing. I am nothing. I am not fit to live" (89). This episode exemplifies the identity crisis of the patriarchal Man - he carmot go on living Iike that, in guilt and isolation.

This, then, is the time when the patriarchal Man understands the IÜtiIity of his life and is asking for death. Instead of a knife, he feels Chil-sing's cool hand on his neck: the boy is helping him up. The cornmunity forgives him, and the Man starts crying, thus undergoing a ceremony of purification and forgiveness: "Tears streamed from rny eyes. 1 hadn't cried since

1 was a smaü boy. Now the tears poured, silently, steadily in streams down my cheeks.. . The people got up from their seats on the steps. One by one, they came up to me, touched my tears, and moved their hands across my body, washing me with my own tears.. . Some of them were crying too" (90).Through this purification, the Man continues his transformation into a utopian person. Later on, when he starts understanding what is happening on Ata, Augustine explains to him that the Atans treasure is not materialistic - it is spiritual. It exists, but everybody sees it in the form that is adequate for hisher mentality. Within his paûiarchal mentality, the Man saw the Atan treasure in the form of gerns. In reality, it is something very different, and for the most part, unknowable unless one becomes consubstantial with the Atans and starts living in the presence of their dreams:

"Will the dance be done with the omarnents? The precious stones, the gold crown?"

She took a long time to answer. "If that is what you want," she finally answered.

What do you mean?"

"1 do not see such things in the dances or the dreams. If pusee them, they are there, they are true, for pu."

"You mean theqre-allin rny head. I was hbnotized. They don? reaily exist"

Tes, they exist." Then she saw we meant something different. "In this way: she pinched rny am,"they do not exist When we watch the dance, when we listen to the dreams, we are in the presence of what is most rdand most precious- But we cannot see it or touch it, and so, perhaps it appears to each of us in the forms of that which we treasure. For you, because in the great world, these stones are valued. .."

"1 hallucinateci rubies," I grunted disgustedfy.

Wou saw that sornething presented before pu, something which you could not understand, was a great treasure." (1 12)

In this way, Bryant makes the patriarchal Man understand that material treasures are useIess, that spiritual treasures are most real and most precious, but to see them, he needs to complete his transformation and acquire the values of the utopian world. Towards the end of the novel, derhis transformation is complete, the Man can see the treasures for what they really are - acts of true kindness and love: "1 began to see acts of bue kindness and love which shone like the jewels 1 had first seen in the la-ka" (196).

Gender Leveling

In contrast to many other feminist utopias that describe one-sexed societies, Bryant's utopian society is two-sexed. However, the role of gender difference is downplayed: no new gender stereotypes exist on the island, and old paûiarchal gender stereotypes simply do not apply. The gender gap is bridged within the kin as an extended family; not a real-world nuclear farnily, but rather an un-owned, non-headed, non-patriarchal family based on kinship.

With monogamy being a matter of choice, mariage as it exists in patriarchy has no legal status on Ata, and their coupling is not a matter of parenting or econornical needs. This society is sexually permissive for the experimenting young people; however, mature adults choose to be senally monogamous, and the very old ones are portrayed as sexless, belonging to the whole cornrnunity, king treated in some ways like children again (174).

Bryant makes particular efforts to portray a non-sexist society. Sexual activity is non- expIoitative and unfettered from puberty on. For example, the Man notices that the naked children engage in sex play the way the animds do, "touching and sniffing at one another, ignoreci by the adults" (5 1). This play is often homosexual, and the Man decides that there are no restrictions on sex, and both heterosexua! and homosexual preferences are re~o~gized.No penalty or taboo applies to any sexual practice - except rape, which is regarded as an act of violence, not sex, but still inflicts no penalty other than having bad dreams (this crime, therefore, is punished within the realm of the collective subconscious). He later sees a young couple having sex in the orchards, and he is shoçked when he realizes that "on their way back 152 they spotted me, realized I'd been watching them, but gave no sign of embarrassn1ent7'(52);

moreover, they gave hirn "a smile of enticement".

The Man understands that on the island there are no distinctions between private and

public life. To him, this cornes as a paradox because, in his understanding, the everyday life

that he observes on Ata should be an exclusively personal and private lge. The Man,

therefore, thinks that by its very nature there can be nothing public about it: in the Man's

world everyday events of this kind (such as waking up, meditation, eating, copulation) are

intimate affairs of isolated people that could not occur in the eyes of the world. However, on

Ata these events take place in the open, in the public eye. This public nature of private life creates a place for the contemplative observer, for the protagonist's 'T' who is in a position to judge, evaluate and meditate upon this iife. The Man becornes an indispensable and

obligatory participant in the events: for example, together with everybody in the comrnunity,

he mentally assise a girl in giving birth - and this is a striking experience for him. While in the outside world, children are bom where they cm not be seen, on Ata everybody is

summoned to the rituai la-ka to give some of their spiritual strength to the woman for her hard

work:

When we entered the la-ka, the girl was standing near the fivitwith three boys. Each person who entered stopped by her to embrace her and to kiss her. She was smiling and seemed quite relaxed, but every two or three minutes her eyeç blinked ~idiyand she trembied as of gripped and shaken by a great,fist. Sometimes she wourld,sitor lie dovùn. Then she woufd get up and walk amund, leaning on two of the boys;. .The uvalking and sitting went on for hours, Mile everyme sat in silent concent~tion.Then, as SMstood leaning on a boy;a great gush of water poured from under her tunic. Th@bOys~tipp8d her back, supporting her so that she lay haIf sitting up. .Sounds d.guMital stmining carne from:her throat, no screams, but mmof the agonyqf. àn eff'oit'wh'ihreached the limits of human endurance. G~~Jswere king al1 around me;'and tears poured down contorted faces. The Man finds out that the three boys are considered to be the fathers of the baby: she lay with al1 three, therefore one must be the biological father, but they do not know which one, and this does not matter. What matters is that al1 the Àtans spiritually support the girl in labor, help to clean up the blood and 'make a fresh place for her and the baby to lie near the fire pit.

She would stay in the la-ka, Salvatore told me, constantly attended by the fzthers of the child, near the warm fm,for three days, then would take her baby and walk back to her ka" (150).

For Bryant's audience in the 1970s, this description of birth in a more naturd position, constantiy attended by one's relatives, was a welcome change. This description is also important for the feminist utopian genre because this exarnple articulates one of the ferninist propositions of the 1970s (please see Table 3 on page 63-64), namely that chiIdbirth is a natural phenornenon, and women should be able to give birth at home, without drugs, using such traditions as giving birth in a squatting position., They should also be able to return to work shortly after giving birth - and this is wbat Augustine in Bryant's noveI does three days after giving birth to her daughter: "On the third day Augustine bounced up in a very businesslike way, as if we had indulged ourselves long enough, and I followed her back to the ka, carrying the baby" (155).

However, while Bryant's utopia expresses a feminist value system, there are gaps that betray her privileging the nuclear, monogamous farnily and heterosexual superiority. At the beginning of the novel the protagonist is farnily-less, wandering through a cornpetitive world among hostile people. The novel's movement takes the protagonist out of the capitalist world of random "success" into the small utopian world of kinship, where nothing is accidental, where authentically human relationships are re-established: love, childbearing, child-rearing, a peaceful old age, shared meals in the la-ka 1find that this base of kinship is not much different fiom that of paûiarchal family: there are no gender roles on Ata, but the Atan behaviours follow the traditional patriarchal prescriptions for the ferninine roies that involve self-sacrifice, subservience, humility, tolerance, acceptance, and numuing. 1assume that Bryant challenges sexist repmentations of gender roles, but does not transcend them.

At first, the Man remains foreign to the utopian world; later he heals himself through contact with nature and the life of Atans, learning fiom them the wisdom to deal with life and death, re-defining happiness and purpose in life. Thus, to rernember Bakhtin's phrase, Bryant creates a protagonist that resembles Rousseau's chawters "who go outside of boundaries of culture altogethei' (Bakhtin 231) in an attempt to utterly imrnerse themselves in the wholeness of the idyllic collective. Moreover, Bryant exhibits two instances of traditional, male-identified, heterosexual, monogamous nuclear family bias that undercuts her assertions of personal freedom. Such gaps reflect a distance between Bryant's intention and her socially situated rhetoric.

Bryant vaiorizes the love idyll of the Man and Augustine, as well as the long-term monogarnous relationship of Salvatore and Aia, who stay together year &ter year, without pledges or promises, without compulsion. A relationship of this sort is neither required nor even hopeci for, but a couple who remain together for many years is felt to be a great asset to the collective (174). Such a couple is thought to have cornbined into something greater than the sum of their two parts. They often (but not exclusively) drearn together, and their drearns are considered to be very strong. In general, such a couple cornes very gradually to be viewed with the delight that most societies reserve for small babies - as a precious gifi (174). And sometimes a ceremony honoring their relationship is held: a wedding. Bryant valorizes monogarny by portraying the wedding of Saivatore and Aya and by making the protagonist hope for his own wedding with Augustine:

Sahmtote and Aya had been together, 1 was told, since adolescence, when they had two children. ... They worked together at most things, yet never seemed to exclude anyone else because of closeness of their relationship. Sbgai put it very well when he saiâ, "Havingfour msinstead of hrvo, they can incfude more people in their embrace: (174)

The love idyll of the Man and Augustine starts almost against Augustine's will: at first she rejects his courtship, remaining poiite but indifferent; after he forces her, she hides from hirn in the hol-ka, until she can be serene and neutral again (62). However, later on she is instructed through her dreams to become his partner, and she Ieads him to a grassy bank with trees and simply says: 'Iam to be woman to you" (107). She does not Say that she loves hirn, as if her emotions have nothing to do with her mission prescribed by the dream. The Man feels that their love-making is like "a ritual to cancel out rape, a punfied re-enactment" (107).

However, Augustine is not his woman, she is a wornan to him, and this rnatters in the utopian world because, as she explains, 'No one belongs to anyone else" (1 10). This is an unusual relationship for the Man, and he is afraid of Augustine's "total and open acceptance" of him:

"She was not an adversary, nor was she simply a body to be aroused by prescribed techniques to prescribed responses. .. And I was afraid" (1 10). While monogamy as a choice made by two people is not essentially patriarchal, patriarchy does reinforce monogamy through a system of laws and practices. The Man tries to build their relationship the way he was taught to see fit, suggesting that Augustine and he should have a separate ka, as a married couple.

Promising Augustine: 'T wiU be man to you," he wants to build a ka for the two of hem, apart from the others, "as man and wife should live, 1told her. But she seemed horr3ed at the idea that the two of us should leave the ka to live alone" (1 11). The Man explains to her that he wants them to be alone so that they could make love anytime they wanted, but she says that they can make love anytime they want as things are, except the night that is reserved for sleeping: "Before long, we will not want to make love so much. Then if we lived alone, we should have nothing but each other. Two is the numkr for making love. Two is a very strong number; for other things it is too strong" (1 11).

The Man tries to reduce the warm and gIowing Augustine to be the patriarchal figure of the "good woman" behind the "great man": in the novel, she cornforts and cures his wounds, fulfills his sexual desires, bears their child, cares for them through the winter fats, and keeps her body warm for her man whenever he pleases. However, though Augustine remains always affectionate to him, she also works for her kin, for the whole coilective, and later for the whole human race, becorning a spiritual leader. In their relationship, Augustine makes the Man a very happy and fulfilled individual,. in this way contributing to his transformation. Bryant shows that their deep intimacy transgresses sex because the Man feels fulfilled and accomplishes more, even when Augustine refuses his sexual advances: "now

Augustine refused me fiom time to tirne, when she was menstruating or when she felt fertile.

In some ways, these times were better than Our lovemaking days. We lay together in a deep rest that seemed no different from the rest that came after orgasm, and 1 began to notice that on those days 1 accomplished a great ded of writing in the aftemoon" (172).

When Augustine is pregnant, he chooses to be celibate, counting off the time before they could make love again. Seeing this, she says to him: "Many girls are wann and eager after the fast. They will not refuse you" (147). Startled, the Man asks if she would be jealous if he made love to another girl. Her answer is a paradox: 'mat depends on where you are in your dreams. 1 can't know. Only you cm find out. If sex for you is still simple, as it is for the children, for the goat", than it has nothing to do with her, and she does not care (148). Despite this, the Man remains faithful to Augustine, and this cornes as a great surprise to him: "It was the first time 1 had ever denied myself sex for any reason" (152). He gradually understands that he loves Augustine with a kind of love that transcends 'simple' sex, "love that shares pain".

When Augustine gives birth to their daughter, the Man has one of the most profound experiences on Ata. Describing the birth as both a private and a shared event (ail the people of the village corne to the la-ka to support her, though no one had been sent to get them), Bryant compares Augustine's contractions to the heaving of the earth in an earthquake, developing monumental imagery and returning tactility to language; to use Cixous's phrase, she is really

"writing the body" and representing women's shared "gyn/ecological memory" (Brossard

Picture Theory 35) :

She seerned to be looking at the fire from between her knees, over her great belly. I saw the beliy suddeniy flatten somewhat and heard the rush of water. Then I watched it heave in great, steady, constant contractions, like the heaving of earth in the earthquake. 1 wished with al1 my might to take some of the pain frorn her- I looked at her face, e-ng to see it contorted with the effort, but her face was still serene, gleaming in the glow of the fire on'which her narrowed eyes fixed in deep concentration. (1 54)

The Man and Augustine do not get to enjoy their parenting for long: except when

Augustine is nursing the baby, she seldom touches itkcause the others take turns caring for the infant: 'The baby never cried. At fmt restless gnints of hunger, someone heard and brought her to Augustine to nurse. At any other stimngs, she was held and rocked. Her first sound was a coo of pleasure at recognizing Chil-sing's face as he bent over her"(155). Bryant emphasizes time and again the diffusion of parenting to society as a whole group. The Man confesses: "She was truly, from the beginning, not our baby. She belonged to everyone" (155).

Indeed, Atan children, derthey are bom, belong to the whole collective. Every Atm takes great care not to thwart children, raising them in the spirit of nagdeo. As Salvatore explains to the Man, "our numbers remain the same and not many children are born" (15 1) because no woman wants to go through pregnancy and birth once she knows what it is. However, when outsiders fiom the real world come, they ofien conceive children, and this is a healthy factor that varies the physical and ethnic type of the Atans. Atan ideology prescribes that children cannot be disciplined even if they try out dangerous things, including drugs (194- 1%); children "must try everything, have everything - too many would destroy Our way of life faster than any invasion from outside" (152). Therefore, too many children are "donagdeo", both for an individual woman's health and for the survival of the collective, not only because any increase in population wiil disrupt the fragile ecological balance and lead to starvation, but for ideological reasons which are much more important than starvation:

"Children are.. .they are bundles of appetites, hungers. They come straight out of the dteam, yet they are the farthest from it. Their humanity is so raw, so.. ."I laughed. "Screaming egotists. It's interesthg that you admit that. We don?; in our worid, we cal1 them innocent; pure.. ." .Yhey are pure desire. And they must not be thwarted, for if they are they will never grow. They must give up gradualiy of thelr own free will. To force is donagdea." (152)

Matis implied here, then, is that denial of worldly desires and passive spirituality is desirable. Carefùlly preserving the ecological balance as part of preserving nagdeo, the spirinial balance, the utopian world of Ata is then limited not only to a welldefined place and time, but dso to a welldefined narrow circle of kin, and to a well-prescribed ideology of asceticism and endurance. Ata, then, is problematic as a feminist utopian society because it favors prescribed conformity that stifles diversity and activism and reinforces hurnility and tolerance.

The Man cornes to understand Ata through his experiences there, and through his discussions with the Atans, in particular, Salvatore and Augustine. In fact, Augustine's function in the novel is not ody to show the Man the way to live, but to show the way out for the whole human race. In the novel, Augustine is compared to a flower because she is dways accompanied by a buttefly. She manifests inspiration, drawing every living thing towards her glowing spiritual light: " There was always a circle of children and animais around her, drawn to her as were the constant attendant butterflies whose size and colors increased as the days grew warrnef' (1 56).Graduaily, Augustine develops into a miraculous healer and spiritual leader of her people: "In addition to directing more aqd more of the planting, Augustine was beginning to do healing. Instead of going to a hol-ka when feeling out of sorts, or afier an accident, people went to Augustine, who touched them briefly, alrnost apologetically, as if she were embarrassed. I saw one child whose foot had been cut by a bone tool. A few minutes after Augustine touched her, the wound was closed and there was hardly a mark to show where it had been "(179-180). Al1 her activities are shown not as hard work, but as 'acts of grace': "And nothing she did seemed to be work. Everything was a dance. Whether she walked or wove, fed people from the pots or dug in the ground, al1 her movements were such acts of grace that 1often stopped whatever 1 was doing just to watch her. I was not the only one. There were always people around her, as if she gave out a glow in which kin would warrn themselves" (173). The Man realizes that his life is cornplete, and that he cannot imagine his life without Augustine (175). He now defines happiness as monogarny, absorption in work and a simple lifestyle. The Man hopes for a wedding with Augustine:

1 have never been so happy in my life. As we were storing the seventh harvest since my atrival, Lput my amis around Augustine and said, "If anyone had ever told me aiat happinesswas monogamy, primitive lingconditions, and absorption in a work taa vast to be completed, I wouki have laughed. " Idid iaugh, but with joy, for Augustine had corne back to Our ka to spend the winter. Ifett sure she was hckfor good, (1 81)

However, Augustine, in tears, asks him not to hope for a wedding, because she anticipates that she will need to be sent to the outside world, thus providing the protagonist with an exarnple and showing him the way out. She symboiizes the glowing Iight of hope:

But she more than startled me at the next ceremony of lights. W hen Augustine reached the Life Tree and stood looking at the children dancing mund it, the branches of the ttee suddenly bürst into flame. It was not my delusion; everybdy saw it. The tree blazed for a moment; aien the flames sputtered out. Augustine hkedas surprised as the rest of us. But we ail tumed to look at her, al1 feeling that somehow she had caused it. She hung hehead and boked embarrassed again. and, of course, everyone but me turned and pretended nothing had happened. (180)

Through her sacrifice, Augustine shows the Man the next step in his transformation. At the next spring ritual, she voluntarily steps into the sacrificial fire and gets sent into the real world. Her sacrifice is portrayed as a great loss to her people and as an event of monumental proportions that shuts down everythmg in the universe - the wind, the fire, the

"Has any kin been chosen?" Augustine released my hand and stood up. Igrabbed her hand and tried to pu1 her down. A great moan swept over the la-ka. Augustine said nothing. She sirnpty st@ there looking into the fire. "No," 1 said. "What is this?" My wotds were dmwned out by the moaning, whiibroke into.sobç. People began to sway un con troll ab^. Augustine moved. I tied to grab her but Sabatore stopped me. Tears ran down hii face as he shook his head at me, Augustine wadked dom the steps to the fire and stood in form of it

The moaning gradually dies down, and the people fell into silence. All went onto their knees. Augustine stood very still saying Ming. The siience deepened. There was finally no sound at dl, nd a rude of wind, not a crackle from the fire, not the sound of a bird, not even the bun of a fly. No one breathed. It was so still that I swear I coufd hear the rays of sunlight wuring overAugustine. Then that swnd stopped. For an instant ail was still as if universe had stopped. In that instant Augustine waîked into the fire. (1û4)

After Augustine gets sent into the outside world, the Atans moum her and pray for her al1 night. Bryant again introduces Christian motifs here because the Atans obviously consider Augustine a saint and a martyr. To the Man, it sounds "like a funeral for a person who'd gone to hell", which shows that the concepts of hell and divinity are not foreign to

Bryant:

'.,.guard our Augustine through her sufferings and keep her always in the dream. Let her not be ovemme. If she must suffer, let her sufferings be brief. Let hem be such as she can bar, yet less than that, or let us in Our drearns and in our waking Iife and work, bear them with her. Help us in Our los. Let those who mourn be comforted. Let us not poison our drearns with grief- Let us get on with dreaming. Else this sacrifice will be in vain, and strengthen us to,. ." This went on until the fire died, (186)

After a while, the Man has a clear and vivid dream about himself wandering in the

London Underground. Lost at unknown stations, he aimlessly gets on and off trains which rush him "to places but not to a destination." Then he goes up an escalator, and there, under the sign

WAY OUT, he sees Augustine in the uniform of the ticket-taker. She smiles at him and holds out her hand to help him out (189). In this way, through the dream and through keeping the

utopian rhythm, the Man and Augustine re-unite.

For seven years, the Man keeps seeing vivid drerims of Augustine every night,

following her ordeal in the real world "as she circled the world on her knees, scrubbing fioors of the powerful, succoring the oppressed" (193). This spiritual connection with Augustine marks another important stage in his transformation because Augustine shows him the solution, she becomes the WAY OUT: "at that point, my whole life had made a complete shift, a pater change than had been made by my corning to Ata. For a long time my life had centered around

Augustine and the writing. Now that she was gone, Augustine was even more the center, as the

WAY OUT" (192). Once, in his dream, the Man atternpts to interact with Augustine when he sees her standing behind a cafeteria counter taking orders for food. However, she intempts hirn very firmly, saying that he cannot order there, he must accept what is offered (194). In this episode, Bryant again promotes acceptance, humility and patience as utopian ideals.

After watching the real-world people, following Augustine for over a year, the

Man starts feeling pity and love for them. And at that point the breakthrough in his telepathic powers comes: he learns how through his drearns to get Augustine out of the real world, bring her back to Ata, and keep her with hirn for some time. This goes on for seven years: at night when he skeps, he watches Augustine in al1 her activities in the outside world, and sh~.sees hirn there and acknowledges him. During the day, she stays by hirn for as long as he holds the

Atan rhythm, and he bends al1 his efforts toward proionging these times.

He begins writing a story of her ordeal in the real world where she becomes a spiritual leader from whom a lot of people draw strength: "she worked hard at menial tasks and kept little for herself. What she had, she gave where it was needed. She sang in poor front churches and brought great comfort to rniserable people, but her songs were also in the form of protests against injustice, and many marched to her songs. 1was always beside her, hoping to help with whatever strength 1could give her, but feeling always that it was 1who drew strength from her" (198). In these years, the Man and Augustine leam to be together in aimost every instant, and rise to "love which shares pain7'(198). At the end of the seventh year, while in the real world, she is shot in what the Man describes as "a senseless riot", stepping in front a young man who was raising a rock to throw at the police (199). The Man and the Atans go in a procession toward the cliff where the dead are left, and they believe that, with the first rays of

Light, she is fieed fiom her ordeal and ailowed to go Home.

Thus, the utopian woman becomes the spiritual leader, saint and martyr who sets an example for the man, teaching him how to transgress sex, jealousy, possessiveness, selfishness, and move towards the reakation of his utopian purpose in explicitly ferninine ways: through humility, toletance, acceptance, and persuasion. The Man and Augustine transgress foMoric harrnony, idyllic unity and personal fulfillment for the utopian purpose to initiate social change that is aimed to Save the outside world. The way out is shown by the woman who thus symbolizes 'nagdeo' or the goodness of the utopian drearn. The man keeps his utopian rhythm until his summons corne (204) to fulfill his purpose: "1 drearned by night and sometimes by day. 1 kept my rhythm, th-1 for each day that 1was able not to fa11 too short of nagdeo, especially considering the kind of man 1 am. I felt Augustine everywhere now, yet not as 1did before, but her essence, like traces of her in the air, in the people, the animals, something that was and was not Augustine, but was becoming something greater than Augustine, something purer, now that she was released" (203). By the end of the novel, the Man finally understands the reasons for his joumey to utopia: " 1know now why 1was taken to Ata and why kept there and why chosen to come back. It was to fulfill Augustine's dream by shining this feeble light on the people of Ata. What I don? understand is why it should be me. Perhaps 1 was chosen because my career, my life, my trial and my execution wilI attract a larger audience than might corne to read the book of a better man or woman" (218-2 19). However, his action is problematized by the conditionai mode of the narration when, at the end of the novel, retudng to his own 'reality', the protagonist is not sure whether he ever really left it. Consequently, the chronotope of Bryant's novel accommodates calculated arnbiguity, manipulating the readers' understanding of reality and illusion.

Ruid Meaning and Rigid Word

"Dreams are the fire in us" (Marge Piercyj

One of the concerns of ferninist rhetoric reflected in the novel is the discussion of

patriarchal discourse that negates the woman. Lie many other ferninist wnters (Kristeva,

Cixous, Daly, Spender, Rich), Bryant is concerned with what brings the subject into the

domain of language - and whether language is necessary at dl. We might Say that she pays

attention to what Kristeva would describe as the pre-linguistic (syrnbolic and thetic) stagesz5in

the development of the human king. Bryant uses an interesting strategy to transcend the

problem of using patriarchal ianguage to describe feminist values. Her Atan 'people of the

Light' are almost completely divorced from spoken and written language, except for

ceremnial purposes. On Ata, as she portrays it, identification is based on shared societal

habits and an ideology that is almost non-verbal and revealed through dreaming, ritual, myth

and dance. In fact, there is an ideoIogical endorsement of the non-verbal as superior to verbal communication, particularly in the fact that it is the Man who is the portrayed as the writer of

this piece.

Following Burke's observation that social life is dominantly "cultural", it is important

to note that the Atm culture is of cmperative nature. Burke also comment. that "work-

patterns and ethical pattems are integrally related," but under capitalism "this basic integration

between work-patterns and ethical patterns is constantly in jeopardy, and even frequently

impossible" because of "capitalism's emphasis upon the competitive aspects of work against

the cooperative aspects of work" ('The Nature of Art Under Capitalism" 676). Bryant's

utopia describes the Man's capitalist world as individualistic and competitive, whereas the

utopian society is based on cooperation and sharing. The Atans live for their comrnunity and for each other, like one social organism. In this way, Bryant expands the feminist message about the need for female bonding to include al1 of humanity. Bryant demonstrates how the feminist genre cm use the possibilities of precapitalist societies to envision a non-sexist social order that invokes the ferninist values of sharing, nurture, tolerance, patience, and understanding.

The Atan discourse is constmcted through the social mechanism of interweaving language and dream. There is a lot of fiee indirect discourse in the novel as opposed to direct speech and dialogue. The Atans do not talk much, and, whereas their speech is minimal, their dance and Song are the preferred modes of communication. Participation (and thus conformity to utopian expectations) is important. Later, the Man lems to participate in the

" The ihetic stage is placed on the 'threshold of Ianguage"; this is where syrnbolization begins. In the syrnbolic order, a symbolic relation to an oiher is introduced as a basis for communication with uie comrnunity- 166 dances, 'since the kin of Ata placed great importance on everyone learning and participating in the dances"(lI3). He asks Augustine to explain the meaning of the dance, and she cannot do it because, for her, words are false and inadequate to descnbe movements: "Of course, the movements have meanings behind them. If we were sure of the meanings, we would not need the dance. There is a great danger in trying to interpret the dance in words. Words get between us and the dance and the meaning behind the dance -just one more thing between us and the meaning. One must dance the dance and go through it to the meaning" (1 18). As Burke asserts, in pre-industrialist societies, rituai dance serves to foster, on the one hand, a degree of competitive behaviour, while on the other hand it functions to induce cooperation:

The ethical values of workare in its application of the competitive equipment of cooperative ends.. .. It has been suggested thatthe primitive group dance is so highly satisfying 'ethicaliy' because it is a faithful replia of this same cooperative fusion. It permits a gratifying arnount of muscufar and mental setf-assertion to the individual as regards his own particular contribution to the entire performance, while at the same time it flatiy invoives him in a gmup actMty, a process of giving and receMng. ("Nature" 676)

Not only is Burke here acknowledging that competitive behaviour is not restricted exclusively to capitaiist social formations, but he is also proposing that there exist universal forms of human expience grounded in biology. Hïs account of ntud dance appears to suggest that competitive and cooperative behaviour means that people transcend the cultural divisions which function to inhibit cooperation. Here Burke further applies his rhetoric of identification showing how art can foster the justification of the social order. Art has significant ideological traits since it '%endsto promot&a state of acceptancey':

lt carries the social patterns into their corrésponding "imaginative pattems," hence tends to substantiate or corroborate these pattems. The aesthetic act hem maintains preciseb,thekind of thinking an&feeiing and behaving that reinforces the communal productive and distributive act. ("Nature" 677) Accordingly, dance is portrayed as a ritual that promotes conformity and collective action. Speech on Ata is described as fluid and minimal; a few words suffice, with meaning varying according to context (this might be read as Bryant's irnplementation of what Dale

Spender describes as the "exorcism~~of the patriarchal language). The Atans do not cornmunicate much in words: '"ïhey seerned to avoid speaking as much as possible, using gestures when they needed to tell someone something" (47). Judging fiom their language, the

Man initially concludes that they are "a race of mental retardants" (47) because he cannot understand how anything can be cornrnunicated with a language of such poverty. (47). Indeed, the Atan language is limited in vocabulary but syntGcally cornplex: the word 'ka', for instance, refers to a dwelling or a hut, and to al1 its contents and parts; a single noun 'kin' refers to al1 humans, becoming plural or singular according to context: "One pronom referred to al1 human beings. People called to one another by this word when not using someone's narne, or they referred to one or more people by it. It was both singular and plural and it meant kinship. The way most people use the word 'brother' but because 'brother' implies gender and singularity, it is quite wrong. The closest word I can think of to approxirnate the meaning of this pronoun is 'kin' .We were al1 called kin" (5 1). Collectivism is reflected in the language also because the language has no sense of the singular: "The language lacked al1 sense of the singular, the individual. But what shocked me, next to the lack of a sense of tirne, was inconsistency of gender. Everything animate and inanimate was either masculine or ferninine, nothing was neuter - except human beings" (50). The Man adds that he never encounten anythng like this in any other language. Here, Bryant demonstrates the inadequacy of patriarchal language to express utopian subjectivity, as well as irrelevance of concepts of gender and singularityfplurality.

The Atm verbs lack tenses: "literally, as they spoke, there was no sense of past or future, only of now, the present moment" (Bryant 50). This is sirnilar to what Bakhtin describes as folkioric chronotope with "no precise differentiation of time into a present, a past and a future (which presumes an essentiai individuality as a point of deparhue)". Indeed,

Bryant attempts to create such a chronotope on Ata: the Atm language lacks tenses because tirne is the eternal 'now'; it does not exist other than in dreamtime. Instead, there is a powerfuily and sharply differentiated meaning for times, and for their reflection in ceremonies and rituals:

As the days went on, I began to understand why the da@ language of Ata lacked tense. There were times for doing certain things: times for planting, for dreaming, for eating, for telling dreams. There were tim&, but no time. Yime doesn't exist here," I told Augustine. 'Thsre is oniy now," she agreed. "It is because nothing changes." "Change cornes, but very slow and very suddenly," she said. (173)

Because time does not exist, change, then, cannot happen - it is brought fiom the realm of the subconscious. Bakhtin argues that a folkloric conception of time arises only in collective, work-oriented agricultural base: "at its hea'rt is a taking apart and putting together of social everyday time, the time for holidays and ceremonies connected with the agricultural labor cycle, with the seasons of the year, the periods of the day, the stages in the growth of plants" ('Forms of Time" 206-2 10). This time is characterized by a general stnving ahead (in dream and in action) towards change, towards the fulfillrnent of the utopian drearn.

For the kin of Ata, "reality consisted of dreams and their waking life was an illusion"

(66); this makes their drearns particularly important as visions of reality through which their perception of life is expressed. Drearntime is sunk deeply in the individual and collective subconscious, implanted on it and ripening on it. When the Man tells the Atans that their drearns are not real, they are "hallucinations, mental enactments of desires" (66),they do not understand him. The crucial thing for Atans is not the self-suff'iciency of their limited spatial world, but its telepathic Link to the rest of the world. Their goal in Me is to find a path to dream higher dreams that let them communicate with the real-world people; this goal is more self-sacrificial and spiritual than ecological. Searching for the path and trying to stay on it is absorbing and vital for the person who tries it. This is a particularly interesting development for the ferninist genre: whereas utopia is generally viewed as social dreaming, Bryant's feminist utopia idealizes living the dream and dreaming higher (more humanistic) dreams.

Dreams therefore become their life regulators; the kin choose to live in a certain rhythm which in turn serves as a ciream regulator:

Since 1 iiion Ata, there were no physical baniers to my progress in my sumundings. Ata provided the conditions and the freedom to c-e or not to choose to live according to the universaliy-accepteddream regulators: a simple diet, enough physical labor, few distractions, the company of people with shared values, solitude when desired.

1 soon discovered that the mal challenges,lay beyonci the acceptance of these material conditions, that no adherence to dietary or work regularity made up for the loss of rhythm resuking from an angry word or a malicious thought

Drearning prescribes a certain lifestyle, a rhythm, a meditative approach of patience and opemess which facilitates the individual changejn the mentality of the male protagonist.

For many years, the Man collects the drearns that he hem on Ata because he thinks drearns

(and not the rhythm) are key to everything. He inscribes them on animal hides and stones. As the scope of his work grows, he categorizes dreams and creates taxonomies, thus trying to impose patriarchal order on the shared dreaming of the Atans:

i made rough d'rvisions of the drearn stories. At the top were the histoiical chronicles, which seemed, generaliy, to be the most stable and permanent. Then there were what I calied Great Dreams, the stories which were repeated on important days, like the ceremonyof lights. Then there were Sabbath Dreams, whiih were more important than ordinary dreams but were not yet accompanied by rnuch music or ceremony. ihen there were the fairy ta@, .. . then there were the winter tales, those prepared conglornerates of each person's store of the year's drearns, aien the weekday dreams, den made up of things from winter taies. The scope of my work grew, as did the numberof categories: history, customs, ceremonies, allegories, faiiy tales, songs, batth practices, agricukural methods, bodily disciplines, etc. (1?7-179).

He then becornes increasingly fnistrated as he realizes that his attempts to impose order do not work: each story varies with the teller. There is, he cornes to recognize, no permanence in 'the complex and shifting mythology of Ata' (164). He has another revelation: intrigueci by the similarity of Atan drearns to the mythology, folklore and literature of the real world, the Man decides to "reconcile" all these versions:

For every version of every Atan drearn thwere scores of conesponding versions in the outside world. I had an idea that if I could reconcile al1 versions from the outside world with severai Atan versions, I would anive at some greater truth behind them. If, in fact, I could manage to do this with only one dream, in al1 its multiple expressions. That effort wouid be a worthwhiie project to fiIl the remaining years of rny Me- (200)

The implication for feminist genre reasoning, then, is quite significant: while the Man looks for order in terms of hierarchy, permanence and stabiiity, al1 his regdatory efforts are futile because Bryant's utopian cireamtirne is fluid and changeable. According to Burke, al1 human action is perfomative; the human performance has a way of affècting the situation. We can speculate that the Man's action of writing down the dreams affects the situation in an unpredictable way: paradoxicaily, the dreams remain unknown, unrepresentable, resisting fixation. Despite patriarchal atternpts at writing or other graphic representations of dreams, the utopian culture remains something other than an inscribed text. At this point, his Atan fî-iend

Salvatore tells him a new dream with an important message: to grasp the reaiity beyond the dream, one needs mch more than a passive act of reading and writing. One needs to act, to keep the rhythm - to live in the presence of the drearn. Salvatore's drearn articuIates the elevation of speech above writing and dreaming over speaking:

In my dream the people of Ata began to make markings. Ttiey were very pleased, believing that al1 the great dreams of Ata wouM be captureci and preserved, and none would be lost. ... But then disputes amse as to which were the best versions of the dreams, and as to whetherthe mark gave the correct rneaning. Many more marks were invented, and rnany wrked on carving alternate stories. Kin split over which story was conect .. . There was m time to camail the stories; choii would have to be made. But even more serious was the effect that writing had upon the words of the story. It froze them. People began to mistake the word for the unknown behind 1. lnstead of expressing the unknown, the carved word became a thing between the people and the unkmwhich it should syrnbolize. All was donagdeo. The people ceased to drearn high drearns. And so, one by one, they stopped the writing and the reading. They went back to the oId way of telling the dreams in spoken words that rose like srnoke and disappeared into the air to intenningle there, where ihere was rmm for an infinite number of dreams, which could change and grow and become closet to reaiity. (201 -2)

To function as life regdators, the dreams have to remain fluid, changeable and resisting inscription. These dreams are individual, however, they influence the whole collective through sharing and rituals. Men a person drearns the sarne dream three tirnes, it is considered important enough to be toid to dl the Atans in the la-ka. And then al1 the people obey what this dream tells them (as a collective) to do. Through this procedure, the utopian collective maintains its social order.

While the Man refines his content-based taxonomy of dreams, Salvatore again warns him that simply to drearn (and even keep the rhythm). is not enoug!!: a person must obey their drearns. The Atan dreams exist on different levels: simple bodily dreams and deeper drearns.

172 Bodily dreams warn the Atans about some inner strain or beginning of dis-ease. Every htans tries to live in such a way as not to make these wamings necessary. They find and keep a certain biological rhythm. Deeper drearns come only after the simple bodily dreams go; they may be very direct and sometimes veiled, but they tell the people deeper things about themselves. And lastly, after deeper drearns are fulfilled, they go away, and the more important dreams come to the Atans and teach hem how to communicate telepathically with the outside world:

Then there are the dmsin which we open ourseives to other people, dreams in wtiich we find that the words and gestures, the crude and indirect ways of our waking iii, are not necessary. That we &n be touched more directly. That we can listen and see better. (191)

These drearns tell them that language is not necessary. Therefore, on Ata, obeying the rhythm and perceiving (listening and seeing) are far more important than speaking and writing. This valorization of perceiving over expressing is most interesting: on the one hand,

Bryant attempts to question the patriarchal dogrna that language is indeed necessary as a tool for understanding; on the other, the idea of using language as a means of expression is represented as "patriarchal" in this instance of the genre (and several others, e.g. Suzette

Haden Elgin's "Native Tangue"). The only person who needs language is the patriarchai

Man. For hm, writing is the venue for Iiberation and the finding of his voice, in part because for him writing is still about stability and order. Through writing, he is able to document his consciousness raising for the world to read. In contrast, the Atans need no words to communicate and live in harmony with everything around them, in an understanding that transcends the language barrier: they create stories without writing, and their traditions of orality help them keep these stories alive. With time, the Man realizes that his hallowed ski11 113 or talent of writing is really an untmth, only a partial translation of reality; and in rising above writing and its inadequacies, he lems to comunicate in the Atm way, i.e. on a more intense telepathic level.

The Law of Lght

According to Burke, social order is understood by its members through symbols, myths, rituals and images in which society reflexively perceives itself. Consequently, Burke's perspective of symbolic action allows for societies to be forrned around collective symbols.

Shared dreams, myths, and archetypes act out and perpetuate the cornmands of the collective.

What unites society, says Burke, is common experience and that requires syrnbolic sirnilarity, cornmon meanings; therefore, one can describe and analyze society as a syrnbolic order. On

Ata, the central symbols and images of light and darkness, cycle and circle, dream and word constmct the meaning of situations for which the actions of the kin are strategies. Being cireamers rather than talkers, the kin of Ata are still hurnan beings; and as languaging beings, they are " "inventors of the negative" and are "goaded by the spirit of hierarchy", as Burke writes in his definition of human beings. The negative is the concept that Burke uses to describe the symbolic processes through which people make sense of their world. According to Burke, we are "moralized by the negative" that has a "hortatory" function, what he calls the

"thou shalt no^'^^. Here, Burke is urging us to consider how language is an instrument of

26 Tourcharacter is buiit of our responses (positive or negative) to the thou-shalt-not's of modity, and if we necessiinly approach life fiom the standpoint of our personalities, will not al1 experience reflect the genius of this negativity? Laws are essentially negative; "mine" equals "not thine"; insofar as properîy is not protected by the thou-shalt-not's of either moral or civil law, it is not protected at di'' (Burke Language 1 1). 174 transcendence in as much as it defines our nature as human beings, affects our behaviour and motivates Our actions.

Without an order there is no disorder, and, as any other society, Ata is engaged in drama through the linguistic device of nagdeo and donagdeo, "thou shalt" and "thou shah not" that articulate the division, create authority and dictate the acceptance or rejection of mords expressed in dreams. So, while they deny negativity on one level (nothing is explicitly prohibited; rather, certain actions are not recornmended), the Atans are still trapped in the primeval positivehegative dichotomy.

By examining the dreams of Ata, the Man is inquiring into the concepts and ideas used to produce understanding in this collective. Atm rituals, myths and symboIs do more than reflect the experience of their collective life; they create it It is worth remembering here that

Burke views myths as stories that function as "the basic psychological tool for working togethe?; he says that myths cm serve to promote the continuation or transcendence of a given "reality" because they "deal with a second order of reaiity" (cited in Behr 22). Burke therefore argues that the communal relationships by which a group is bound are arbitrary, chey are also "myths", but they "nonetheless serve a real function because they symbolically orient our perception beyond our immediate material environments and, in doing so, affect real human actions in the world" (Behr 22). On Ata, as the Man reports, "every act had become ritualized to serve the drarnas of their dream life, which in mm dictated their waking life" (67).

Therefore, myths here affect human actions in the Atan world; dreams are enacted in rituals that, through the mechanism of prescribed conformity, govem the actions of the Atans. The communal consciousness of Atans as conveyed through their myths, language and ritualization, is quite unique. Importantly, in the Atm language, the term for word is the same as the term forfalse or lie. This utopian language contains few abstractions except nagdeo and donagdeo; there are words for good or bad, honor or du@,and other lofty concepts, but dl of these are seldom used. Notably, there is no word for huppiness. The Man coma to realize ihat nagdeo encompasses all that is positive, and donagdeo, al1 that is negative: this is the concept by means of which the Atans are "moralized". These hivo terms are never applied to persons, only to acts. Persons are just kin, neutral, neuter, unmodified.

Nagdeo is "a greeting, a prayer, a benediction," roughly rneaning 'good drearns' , or 'valuable drearns' or 'enlightening drearns.' To cal1 something donagdeo is to Say that it is "not productive of good, valuable, or enlightening drearns, drearns that showed the way back - to the sun" (67).

On Ata, there is no written moral code: each person finds for oneself what is donagdeo. However, certain actions are prescribed as not recornmended through shared dreams: forcing anyone to do or not to do something is not good. Eating too much or not eating enough, or talking too much (98) is not recornrnended. To work too hard is also donagdeo: a bit of work, however, makes one's body ready for good drearns. The Man perceives this principle as a societd regulation of the ordering and distribution of work without compulsion (99). An Atm should not exhaust himself in compulsive work for fear of king restricted to drearning only of "trees falling on his aching back." But more importanùy, no one would want to exist entirely on the labor of others, lest he or she drearn "mean" dreams

(68). Anger, violence, coercion is donagdeo. Even when the Man is raping Augustine, the

Atans do not stop hirn because "to stop or force hirn would be donagdeo" (54); they just watch hirn with a grave expression and, in this way, make hirn profoundly ashamed: 'Wobody moved, nobody said anything. ... Suddenly 1felt sick. Something I had not felt for so long I hardly knew what it was - a wave of sharne - passed through me. I felt it only as anger, sickening anger. 1stood up. As soon as 1 did, the people fell back and started to walk back to the fields" (54). His victim Augustine does not blarne hirn either; instead she goes straight to the ritual place of refuge - hol-ka - and stays there until she forgives him. But the Man is not regulated by the Atm mord code: once forgiven, he rapes her again and, this time, he makes her pregnant. Yet, he is not punished even for his second crime (he is only reprimanded with donagdeo):

And I feit t had lost something again. Even iying in that dirt she had a kind of dignity I couldn't touch. I felt that I was the one who had been humiliated. She looked steadiiy up at me, shook her head slowly and said, "Donagdeo." Her eyes flashed angrily, and she shook her head as if to clear Ït, got up quickiy , brushing the dirt off her tunic and humed away. Almost tunning, she pulled off her tunic as she humd across the field to a hol-ka. She dropped the tunic on the ground and crawled inside. (56)

The Man fin& that donagdeo expresses "reactionary and primitive taboos" (68), telling the people that they are imprisoned by their superstitions (70). If there is hierarchy or social order, there is also the rejection of order and the consequent guilt. Burke suggests that the ccsacnficialprinciple .. . [is] intrinsic to the idea of ~rder".'~Here, then, is Burke's

Here are the steps In the Iron Law of History That welds Order and Sacrifice: Order leads to Guilt 1?7 foundation of society: drama is based on conflict; conflict implies hierarchy; hierarchy causes guilt; guilt leads to redemption, and redemption produces victimage. Rejection means the need to expiate the resulting guilt. Burke writes that rituais, ciramatic enactments, provide us with visible symbols in which hierarchy is built up and in which rejection is atoned for; this means that the scapegoat, the victim, is essential to the order of society. Given the socio-historic exigence of the 1970s, the sacrificial principle is essential for Bryant's novel; the Christian drama is enacted again and again: first the utopian woman is sacrificed, then the Man willingly goes through transformation and accepts sacrifice.

The Atm creation myth is of paramount importance in the novel because it speaks about the division fiom the Sun and the need to go back to it. It reveals the connectedness of light and darkness, sign and its meaning, nature and humans, part and whole, dream and reality. It also discloses the ultimate goal of the Atan people - to overcome the gravity of guilt, to go to the sun, and to becorne the Iight again. This myth is told, performed and enacted several times in the narrative. Each time, it evolves, transcending fixed meanings and overcoming the rigidity of reification:

But the day came when a piece of the Sun fell to the ocean. It fell and floated on the ocean. It separated itself into earth and water and plants and animals. It was no longer Sun, but each of its parts was a part of the Sun and a sign of the Sun- And ail its parts, earth and water and plants and animais, were content in their division,

(for who cm keep coinmandments!) Guilt needs Redernption (for who would not be cleansed!) Redemption needs Redeemer (which is to say, a Victim!) Order Through Guilt To Victimage (hence: Cult of the Kiii). (Burke Rheroric of Religion 4-5) 178 conteni in their expression of the sun; stmnng and king, as a sign of the Sun bot never true Sun, 'oçt to the fom of the ûue sun.. . Until the single multiple signs formed aie human pahc And the homan part of the Sun was not content. The humah suffered b-use within kwas the knowkdge of the faIl fmthe Sun and the yeaming to retum. It knew and it did not know. It suffered and yeamed. it suffered and yeamed for what it did not know. And out of its suffering and yeaming grew the cty of the people, yearning to know the way back to the Sun. And the Sun took pity on the people, and when tfwy fell asleep, the Sun shone through aie sleep and iii up the worid of sleep and showed them the way. In-silentligM of sieep aie people saw that as there was a law of gravity there was also a law of light and that the law of light was stronger than the law of gravity. And the people obeyed aie light of skep, and they kept the IigM within them, and stood in the ligM of sleep both waking and sleeping until the tight sunoundeci them and filled hm. And they becarne the Iight And as the sun shone on them, they show back, and were lifted as Iight and shot as rays of light. And gravity was overcorne and the people of Iight retumed to the sun Where they shine and ffame etemaliy. (64-65)

Myths are not only toid and retold on Ata; they are also enacted. Augustine's and the

Man's sacrifice is part of such a myth, intensified by ihe imagery of light When the Man becornes consubstantial with the comrnunity, the purpose of Ata is revealed to him: without

Ata, the human race "would have destroyed itself. The complete disconnection from the dream, total donagdeo, is destruction. When that possibility is imminent, someone is called, some kin of Ata, someone very strong. This kin is sent back, is sacrificed, is sent to live among those on the edge of destruction. The human race is like a suicide, perched on the edge of a cliff, wavering, teetering. When she is about to fdl over the edge, one of us goes out and, using all the strength he has, makes a wind that blows against the falling, keeps humanity wavenng on the brink" (Bryant 140).

The Man asks: why bother, why not let the human race jump? Here is what Salvatore answers hirn:

But my dear kin, did you suppose we of Ata are not of the human race and ail a part of us? We are al1 kin, and though we have lost them. we must draw them al1 back again if any of us is-togato ... to wbt we are for* One cannot go alone; it must be al1 or nom, you see. A hard law, but inexorable. (140) So, every Atm, especially a leader, a "strong dreamer', lives in constant anticipation of the time when s/he will be 'called' to Save the human race. Says Augustine:

The person must be calkd, chasen. In his dreams. In the winter fast. Çornething happens, I do not know what, because I have never been calfed. Then when we corne together after the fast, 'when we admost pureiy in our dreams, vue can send the chosen kin out to the rest of the world. it is a sacrifice to save the woriâ. (1 38)

Bakhtin identifies another characteristic of ritual when he describes it as a cultic activeby which society differentiates itself from undifferentiated production (Bakhtin 2 12).

According to Bakhtin, the elements of the etemal matrix, such as food, drink, death, enter into bal, acquire a magic significance in the ritualistic context. Ritual and everyday life are highly interwoven with each other, but there is already an interior boundary between them: bread in a ritual is no longer the actud ordinary bread that one eats every day. Indeed, the

Atan herb and grain stew becomes their ritualistic nourishment. As Bakhtin points out, the isolated object becomes a substitute for the whole. This is the source of the substitutive function of the victim and the basis for sacrificiality in the novel: when the Man chooses to be sent into the real world, he is thus willfully sacrificing himself. At the sarne time, in this willful sacrifice, he acts as a substitute for the real warld itself in the Atan ritual of pushing the world away from suicide.

Bryant's treatrnent of myth is frequently metaphorical: if myth has (historically) embodied patriarchal values and aspirations, re/deconstructed myth perhaps can embody or at least inscribe different values of connectedness, sharing, bonding, coilectivism. By suggesting alternative tmths, realities and values through metaphor and myth, by stirnulating questions and perhaps discordance in the rnind of the reader, Bryant, 1suggest, attempts to challenge patriarchy and create ferninist mythology. In this way, her changing of patriarchal tropes 180 functions sirnilarly to Russ's disjointeci narrative technique that 1discuss in the next Chapter.

Tradition is denahiralized, symbolic order uptumed, and new spaces for/of exploration opened: 'The 'as if of the imagination is implicated in the very act of 'seeing' the real"

The mord development of the protagonist in Bryant's novel requires self-sacrifice.

After Living on Ata for close to fieen years, the Man understands its "greatest miracle": the

Atans are "no different from any other people in the world, subject to the same faults, desires and temptations, but living each day in battle against them" (204). Portraying this constant battle is an important action of the novel. Through the sacrifice of Augustine and the resulting catharsis, the Man cornes to realize that he needs to tpnsform and start battling his paûiarchal self. Seven years later, at the spring ceremony, he steps into the flames of the ritual fire to be sent back to the world.

When he is sent back to the world, he is "sent from heaven to hell" in an act of utopian redemption. He breaks from the utopian collective wd becornes an individual hero again: aided by others, visited by his daughter, but acting alone. Through his self-sacrifice, he is enabled to fulfil Augustine's dream and to cast a light on the people of Ata through writing the book we are reading. His sacrifice becomes his nagdeo, his act of gratitude to the people of

Ata:

I had been grateful that I iyd been able finally to do one small thing for so great a people. For now I knew them as they realiy wer6, not a happy, primitive, innocent .-people,free frorn.the cares.of the.wiorid, but the sustainers, the sufierers who tried to counter-balancewhatwas.,dqm by men like me. People waiting patiently since the beginning of-tirge,mig'ned togoing on till the end of tirne, knowing that they could look for no g~tpbgresi,no sign of the coming fulfillment of their dreams. :~6oplewho gave dl ,th& stren@h to the. rnost strict, seihimposed, unaroailated discipline, resigned~tomntaining thii ùahce, and the balance of the whole insane world, until it would, of its own choiie and-fromits own real'ition of necessiîy, corne back to Ata. (204)

In the very last development of the plot, the Man 'finds the utopian rhythm' again. It is interesting that, to descnbe utopian fulfillment, Bryant uses the sarne metaphor of 'orgasrnic waves' that she used at the beginning of the novel. As soon as the Man pleads guilty to the charge of murder, he gets instant gratification: he sees "indescnbably warm, glowing light.. . everywhere":

From the center on my being the light broke in waves, in orgasrnic waves, outward to the extremities of my body, every cell of my body metting together in the waves of IigM that flowed outward from my center, and over me from the very air arwnd me, from everything. 1 breathed it into me and it poured out of me, sweeping through me like a million orgasms. I was full and whoie. I was part of ligM and of al1 the other things that shone in and with the light. AI1 were one. And whole.

In that instant I understood dl the stories and dmsand songs and da- of Ata, stories of jewels and of Sun, of fire and of ocean. 1 understood the many versions of each story and the contradictions and paradoxes, and I knew that they were dl, in their own way, true. For I had glimpsed the realii behind them. (21 8-21 9)

In conclusion, 1 find that the controversy around the novel could stem from the fact that, in making her protagonist a male, a father and husband, a wrïter and leader of the Young, articulate and well-liked in the utopian society, Bryant draws on the traditional qualities of the male hero in Western culture - and yet her male hero does not get his social position in Ata by his patriarchal virtues, but only by rejecting them and adopting values associated with ferninism. It is aiso quite obvious that each step in the Man's metamorphosis is superceded by his sexual encounters with the utopian woman. In this pattern of sexual potency and moral transformation, Bryant reveals a deeper valorization of the "creative potency" of the male, aided by a female partner who is a stimulus and catalyst for the solitary transformation of the male. His wüled transformation is considered as necqssary to achieve utopia and universal harmony. This formulation has something in common with the phallocratie capitalist status quo which places the male, heterosexual hero at the center of its cutture. Bryant's Ata, then, implies such a patriarchal mentciIity because it reinforces Christian virtues of hurnility, tolerance, self-sacrifice, conformity, acceptance (that are also inscnbed by patriarchy as traditionally ferninine virtues), and provides little opportunity for activism, change, pluraiity, diversity and open-endedness.

Bryant's ideal is harmony for al1 hurnanity on the basis of humility, toterance, conformity. Bryant's critique is directed against capitalist patriarchy, against its inequality and sexism, but it is also directed against the chaos of consumerism, materialism, greed, and against the isoIated, egotistic capitalist individual. Bryant's utopia, thus, exemplifies several generic functions, in particular the cntical and the transgressive ones. Through conceptual transgression, Bryant intervenes in the patriarchd utopian genre, overcoming its narrowness and tendency towards provision of blueprints. Emerging in response to the negative representation of women in the patriarchal genre (as invisible, non-important, or nonexistent),

Bryant's utopia problematizes patriarchal values and provokes social transformation by exemplimng utopianisrn of process that offers possibilities for individual change. Offering her anti-capitalist option for the way out of the patriarchal situation, Bryant's book promotes idealism versus materialism, spintuaiity versus consumerism, reinforcing the feminist message that neither biology nor social order are destiny; not, at least, in social and political terms.

Bryant's utopia dispIays a move away fiom certainty and 'tmth' towards a more open-ended and less acquisitive understanding of ourselves and Our relations to others. Utopian ideals demand space and time for their full reaiization, and Bryant's Ata embodies a definite system of feminist ideals. For example, Bryant's Augustine legitirnizes traditional feminine 'passivity' and tolerance (which are only such from the linear perspective, but, as

Bryant suggests, can fùnction as important strategies within the feminist utopian discourse).

Bryant's portraya1 of the utopian woman also

provides a critique of the low status of women's work in the present and the subsequent

revaluing of traditionally 'feminine' occupations such as teaching and healing;

challenges assumptions about an innate female nature and counters them by the emphasis

on women's strengths;

portrays violence as male and thus antitheticai to a feminist vision.

Bryant's description of Ata accomplishes the following important fùnctions: it

challenges the public/private divide by patterning society after the family;

gives precedence to respect for individuals over issues of race and class;

describes social order achieved by persuasion rather than by force;

romanticizes the human relationship with nature.

We cm see that Bryant's position is consubstantial with many other utopias of the

1970s~~.As Carol Pearson puts it, these feminist utopias form "surprisingly numerous areas of consensus among such seerningly divergent works" (63). These utopias differ fiorn patriarchal narratives because they discard stereotypical themes and devices, such as striving for perfection, providing blueprints, and validating the patriarchal gender roles; rather, they employ such traditional feminine forms of self-revelation as the diary and the confession.

Bryant portrays a new relationship to one's own self, to one's particular 'Y - with no witnesses, without any concessions to the voice of a "third person", an observer. 1will argue that relating his own "seif" makes the protagonist's transformation much more believable.

Here. to use Bakhtin's description of the protagonist's metamorphosis in a novel, the representing consciousness "seeks support and more authoritative rereading of its own self, without mediation, in the sphere of ideas and philosophy" (Bakhtin 'Foms of Tirne" 145); and his own self is revealed to the Man within the utopian chronotope which encompasses dreamtime or the conditional mode. By contrasting the Atan chronotope to that of the real world, Bryant's novel depicts a constant struggle between the alienation of the real-world depersonalized self and human bonding and sharing built ont0 an abstractly humanistic foundation of the utopian world.

In the utopian chronotope, the Atans privilege their dream life over their waking one, which they consider to be illusory. The dreamtime of the conditional mode is not mere escapism; rather it has a transfomative function. The protagonist's metamorphosis is only possible in the utopian chronotope which enables the protagonist to change his own perceptions and hence his actions in his own reality. 4 farnous writer, almost of cult standing, he could, as his lawyer insists, successfully plead not guilty to the charge of murder that he

'LAfeminist utopian novel is one which a) contrasts the present wiîh an envisioned idealized society (separated from the present by time or space), 6)offers a comprehensive critique of present values/conditions, c) sees men or male institutions as a major cause of present social ills, and d) presents women not only as at least the equals of men but also as the sole arbiters of their reproductive function" (Geartiart 296). 185 faces when he retums from the utopian worid. Tnstead he pIeads guilty and chooses a death sentence. He has, to paraphrase Margaret Whitford, undergone a paradigm sfiift in consciousness which has Ied him to a willfid sacrifice. To use Bakhtin's phrase, his metamorphosis "serves as the basis for portraying the whole of an individual's life in their more important moments of crisis: for showing how an individual becomes other thm2 what he was" (Bakhtin's emphasis, Bakhtin 115). In this way, Bryant is able to provide sharply differing portrayals of one and the same man at various stages in the course of his life: she describes the man's crisis, transformation, and rebirth. The Man gets sent back to his world because, as it was observed, in their own chronotope agents have more access to meaningful action than in other chronotopes. The Man's action is, then, writing the book we are reading:

what if, for some very good reason as yet unknown to me, I had been sent back not oniy in space, but in time.. .. There was oniy one way to find out if Ata was real; that was to believe, to do only what.was nagdeo, even if it meant throwing away my Me. It was a gambfe with ail odds against me. if I lost, I would die or spend the rest of my Me in a cage.

Suddenly I laughed; would that life be any less vicious a prison, any less a death, now that 1 know what it meant to be an Ah?Wi that faugh, the tension loosed its hold on me. Or, rather, I let go, Iike the fast letting go in a long series of surrenders.

In his final monologue, the Man, twice rapist and twice murderer, is transformed into the Cornforter promisecl to us by the epigraph of the novel: after his metamorphosis, he is able to bring ail eternal utopian values to Our remembrance. The utopian side of the novel relies on the red-life possibilities of human development - possibilities not in the sense of a prograrn for immediate practicd action, but in the sense of the etemal demands of the human nature.

The transfomed Man now offers to the audience the fetninist btessing for the action motivated by the novel: It is finishsd and tomonaw I go Home. Peihaps you picked up this book because of the sensation sunounding rny trial ... if puconîinued to read, it was because in this hasty and incomplete account, I tdd pusomething thatat some level of Furbeing, you already know. Something wu kmw as an echo, as a glimpse of a dream or as a fragile hope puare ashameci to voice. -Do not judge these words by the man who &es them .Listen not to my drearns, but to the echo they evoke in pu,and obey that echo. And think that if 1, a murderer whose murders were the ieast of his crimes, a man like me could find himself in Ata and couid re-karn the dream, and further, couid glimpse for a moment the reality behind the ciream.. . then how much easier it migM be for yw. You have miy to want It, to believe it, and tonight, when you close your eyes, yw can begin your joumey. The kin of Ata are waiting for you. Nagdeo- (220)

Here, the reader is promoted from the role of the eavesdropper to that of the participant who is encourageci and blessed for participating in the symbolic action of the novel. The feminist transformation of the patrïarchal Man is complete and the ferninist motivation for individual activism in search of the utopian Home is finally articulated.

Bryant's novel definitely plays its part in the anti-hegemonic context as an attempt to digest the intense socio-political experiences of the 1970s. Bryant considers the important question of the individual's relation to society, the peerof drearns, and the use of this power.

She also attempts an examination of a peaceful, decentralized utopian society whose politics and philosophy are monitored by the collective subconscious revealed through their drearns.

Bryant challenges many patriarchal divides: those between pnvate/public spheres of life,

interiority/exteriority, drearninglwriting, action/passivity. In its reliance on the conditional

mode and open-endedness, the novel hints at the higher reality which cm be pasped through dreaming higher drearns. Bryant's utopia works toward the classical utopian aspirations of

Western philosophy which Moylan identifies as reconciliation in the potential hannony for al1

(93). As a revival and transformation of utopian writing, it contributes to the wider feminist

utopian dialogue about the emancipatory society. Chapter4. JoariM Russ: New Meanhg for OM Concepts

Joanna Russ, Nebula, Hugo, and Tiptree awardZ9 winner, wrote her utopian novel

The Fernale Man in 1969~'. Russ's novel has been highly important for the development of feminist utopian genre because of her utopian vision, activist solutions and radical narrative interventions. Taking up feminist issues pioneered by theorists in the 1960s - 1970s (Betty

Friedan, Shularnith Fitone, Germaine Greer, Kate Millett, and Sirnone de ~eauvoi?'),The

Fernale Man exemplifies the intertextual and dialogic nature of the feminist utopian genre.

The book is socio-historically contingent and implicated in the politics of the 2"wave feminist movement with which it is contemporaneous. Problematizing patriarchal values,

Russ discloses the linguistic sexism of patriarchal discourse by portraying a heteroglossia of societal voices and employing an array of rhetorical devices. In fact, Russ makes the negative patnarchal response to feminism one of her central themes. When Janet Evason, Russ's utopian visitor, meets New Yorkers at a party, she is right away exposed to patriarchal denial of ferninism: " A Manufacturer of Cars From Leeds (genteelly): 1 hear so much about the New

Feminism here in America. Surely it's not necessary, is it? ofe beams with the delighted air of someone who has just given pleasure to a whole roomful of people. ) Spossissa, Eglantissa,

Aphrodissa, Clarissa, Lucrissa, Wailissa, Lamentissa, Travaillissa, (dear God, how many of

29 These are awards for the best book of the year in the genres of science fiction, utopia, and faniasy. For exarnple, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award was established in 199 1 to recognize the achïevement of Alice Sheldon, an outstanding feminist SF writer. It is given to the work of science fiction, utopia, or fantasy published in one year which best explores or expands gender roles. 30 The Femak Man was first published in 1975, and it is considered one of the first feminist utopias of the 1970s. 31 RUSSmentions a review "of The Second Se.by the ktsex" and asks her little book to "bob a curtsey at the shrines of Friedan, Millett, Greer, Fiestone, and al1 the rest" (213). t08 them are there?), Saccarka, Ludicrissa (she came in late): Oh no, no, no! (They al1 laugh)"

(The Femule Man 37). A minute later, Saccarissa ad&, pouting: "Po' little me! 1sho'ly needs to be liberated!" Another man joins in: ''I'll tell you what 1 think of new feminism. I think it's a mistake. A very bad rnistake" (4243).

On many occasions in the novel, Russ uses irony and sarcasm to disclose patriarchal treatment of women. In the example below, she reveals how women are used as cheap or unpaid labor:

Anyway evemy(sowy) eve- hwsthat what women have done that is reaiiy important is not to conçtitute the great, cheap labor force that you can zîp in when you're at war and zip out again afterwards, but to Be Mothers, to form the coming generation, to ghbirth to them, to nurse them, to mop floors for them, to love them, cook for them, clean for them,change their diapers, pick up after them, and mainiy sacrifîke themseh for them. This is the most important job in the world. That's why th8y do not pay for it .(1 37)

Russ's revelations provide a socio-historic explanation for the rage and anger of radical feminists, thus facilitating her emphasis on separatism as feminist strategy. Russ's novel, therefore, had a profound impact on the emerging feminist community as an exarnpIe of a consciousness-raising narrative (feminist science fiction and utopian fans still include it in the 'must read' list). Russ reinforces the idea that gender is a social construct, that patriarchy is not going to change by itself, and that individuals can succeed only when they gain access to power, even if it is done by force. Indeed, Russ makes her utopian philosopher Dunyasha

Bernadetteson include power in her rna~irns~~.

32 "Dunyasha Bernadetteson (the most bmiant mind in the world, b. A.C. 344, d. AC. 426) hexd of this unfortunate young person and immediately pronounced the following shchashiy, or cryptic one-word saying: 'Power!"' (Russ Fernale Man 68). 489 I will start my analysis with discussing îïze Female Man's relationship to the antecedent genre, its disruption of paû-iarchal narrative codes, its dialogism and interaction with both patriarchd and feminist discourses, Russ's insistence on arnbiguity, fluidity and multiplicity of identification illustrated by her protagonists.

Using the new-rhetorical anaiysis, 1 will explore several conceptual issues:

the initiation of young girls into patriarchal sex roles;

the subversion of the key concepts "manhood"and "womanhood";

the attempt to eradicate the difference and to resolve contrarieties between the key

concepts within Russ's "femaie man".

Caicufated Arnbguty

The form of Russ's novel is the fmt refreshing experience for the reader because

Russ develops what 1would cal1 'calculated ambiguity' and makes an elaborate attempt to disrupt the narrative codes of patriarchal fiction. As Burke reminds us, Yom in literature is an arousal and fulfillment of desire. A work has form in so far as one part of it leads the reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence" (Counter-Statement 124).

Fom, thus, evolves out of an artist's ability to identify with an audience's expectations. 1 would iürther argue that Russ manipulates her readers' expectations of the utopian genre: she intervenes in the patriarchal genre with narrative innovations that can be best described in terms offiction theory, a feminist mode of writing later theonzed in the Canadian feminist discourse community. Daphne Marlatt, a ferninist theorist and writer, thus describesfiction theory (the punctuation in the citation below is original): fiction theory a corrective lens which helps us see dhmugh the fiction we've bsen condined to take for the mal, fictions whiih have not only constnicted woman's uplace"in patnarchal sociely but have constructeci the very "nature" of wornan (aIways thatwhich has been). fiction theorydeconstnicts these finswhib hWon theory ,conscious of itseif as fi,Mers a new angle on the "reai", one that looks from inside out rather than outside in (the diierence between woman as subject and woman as objeci). this is not to say that fiction theory is busy conshucting a new ideobgy, a new "Iine" - indeed (in-action) suspiciius of correct lines, of daims to a pre-emptive rd,it entes a fiefd where the "seef not only Mesit iike she sees it but says where she is seeing fmm.. .this is whem viskm in that oaier sense enters in, that wtiiih is also and could be. f'ictions that focus on our becorning (ml). grounded in an analysis of the actual (theory). (Mariait in Godard et al .a)

Russ develops the utopian genre's possibilities to accommodate fiction and theory within the nmtive, seeing parts as parts, and not as a searnless whole. Joanna, one of Russ's protagonists, describes writing the book we are reading, as well as seeing herself writing it; she, therefore, sees the narrative from the inside. This reflexive strategy helps Joanna understand why writing causes so much pain to her: she is writing it from her inferior positioning in the social order:

You will notice that even rny diction is mmingfeminine, thus reveaiing my tnie nature; I am not sayÏng Ydarnnnany more, 'or Wast!'; I am putb'ng in lots of qualifies like "rather," 1 am wnting in these breathless litüe feminine tags, she threw herself down on the bed, I have no structure (she thought), rny thoughts seep out shapelessly like menstnial fluid, it is ail very fernale and deep and full of essences, it is very primitive and full of "and's," it is cailed "nin-on sentences." Very swampy in rny mind. Very rotten and badly off. 1 am a woman. I am a woman with a woman's brain. 1 am a woman with a woman's sickness. Iam a woman with the wraps off, bald as an adder, God help me and you. (Russ The Female Man 137)

Although utopian scholar Tom MoyIan does not use the tenn fiction theory in his anaiysis of The Female Man, his use of ideas of Yves hmax and the "politics of montage" parallels Marlattysdescription of fiction theory. Moylan develops Lomax's assertion that the purpose of montage is not to make many parts fit into some kind of searnless and complete whole in which the individual parts are lost, but to continue to see the parts as parts, as a multiplicity that reveals our negotiations of difference (MoyIan 82). Another ferninist critic,

Barbara Godard, argues that ferninist narratives mediate difference in their re-presentation of women by using a multiplicity of narrative forms that play with language and critique patriarchal social discourse. Godard argues that "[w]omen's writing disturbs our usual understanding of the terms fiction and theory which assign value to discourses. Detached from their ordinary contexts, established meanings become suspect. By inciting the reader to rethink her/his presence within that 'social reality,' women writers effect a disturbance in those constnictions that work at keeping us al1 in Our "proper places" (61). Godard's definition of fiction theorv closely matches Russ's utopia: ,

a narrative, usually seif-minoring, which exposes, defamiliarizes anaor subverts the fiction and gender codes determining the re-preseritation of women in literature and in this way contributes to ferninist theory. this narrative works upon the codes of language (syntax, grarnmar, gender-coded diction, .etc.), of the self (constniction of the subject, seiflother, drives, etc.), of fiction (charactemation, subject, matter, plots, closure, etc.), of social discourse (male/Temale relations, hiMorical formations, hierarchies, hegemonies), in such a way as to provide a critique andor subvert the dominant tradition that within a patriarchai society has resulted in a de-fomed representation of women. Al1 the hileit focuses on what language is saying and interweaves the story. it defies categories and explodes genre. (Godard 60)

Though Godard's daim that fiction theory explodes genre sounds quite radical, she here refers to the patriarchai genres that indeed stifle the feminist desire to represent women's experiences in the patriarchal status quo and to envision a new social order. When seen in this perspective, her definition is not contrary to how genre theory justifies the feminist interventions into the patriarchal genres.

Moylan identifies the montage elements in The FemaZe Man that fiction theory would I recognize as playing with narrative and language codes. This montage effect is first established by the division of the novel into nine parts which are further divided into segments

192 of varying length and forrn. Sometimes a segment is a long and subjective considention of a signîficant event in the life of one of the agents in the novel. Such is Part Four, XVI, in which

Janet remembers falling in love with Vittoria (Russ The Female Man 75-9). At other times a segment is only one sentence long, like Part Four, W, which makes a simple yet piercing comment on the hegemony of male-dominated political decision-making: "[tlhere are more whooping cranes in the United States of Arnerica than there are women in Congress" (6).

Different narrative strategies can even be combined in one segment such as Part Five, IX, which includes a description, a dialogue set out as parts in a play, and a numbered list (93).

This disjointed narrative technique is a notable development for the feminist utopian genre because these segments and, on a slightly different plane, numerous shifts from the first to the third-person narration disnipt and de-familiarize patriarchal traditions of fiction and narrative.

Another technique is the absence of titles in most sections of Russ's novel because it intensifies arnbiguity- Each section is written from the point of view of the author, one of the protagonists, or some unacknow ledged narrative voices. In its explorations of alternative worlds and different female identifications, the novel is an extended dialogue of four protagonists - Janet, Jeannine, Joanna, and Jael. ,

One more way in which the codes of fiction are reworked in 7'he Female Man is its refusal to adhere to a conventional utopian plot by multiplying and problematizing it. Russ's narrative can be seen as an instance of the ferninist genre that does not permit the antecedent utopian genre to become a rhetorical constraint, particularly in its chronotope. Traditionally, utopia portrays one voyage to (and a return from) a perfect society that is presented as a blueprint for the development of the author's contemporary society. Such, for example, is Bryant's utopia discussed in the previous Chapter. Conversely, Russ's chronotope is based on the tactics of disnipting time and space linearity. Sequence and chronology are continuously questioned in the protagonisis' visits to the worlds: Joanna's of the present, Jeannine's dystopian past, Janet's utopia, Jael's dystopia The reader must constantly work to understand not only who is speaking in any given episode, but fromhn which world this person is. This kind of disruption brings into question whether there are four separate agents, or whether each of them exemplifies a different aspect of the same female self. Arnbiguity is hirther complicated because some episodes represent the "strearn of consciousness" of one more female character, adolescent Laur, who is also on her way towards becoming the female man.

The subjectivity of the female man, then, becomes a montage, a multiplicity. PIot, characters, chronology, place and point of view shifi and circle so that they can never be hIIy grasped or pinned down. Moylan observes that, by not privileging one type of action, Russ's utopia develops possibilities for diverse and multiple actions: "[nlever does the assemblage of this.. montage freeze into privileging one type of one action " (Moylan 85). Refusal of closure aIlows the text to "work upon the codes of language, .. of self,.. of fiction" (Godard et al. 10).

A further element of fiction theory in The Fernale Man is its self-mimnng or self- reflexive construction: Jeannine's dystopian past is a reflection of our own, and Jael's dystopia is mirroring Janet's utopia. Though each of the four JtYsattempts to challenge gender stereotypes, the real potential for change resides in Joanna's writing the book we are reading, in the fiction that provokes radical action.

The fragmented form of the novel represents ferninist resistance to the constraints of the patriarchai genre. The book accommodates the expansive possi bilities of the patnarchal genre to depict a better society together with the potentiality of fiction theorv to indicate a way towards the utopian destination which resists the custornary closure of authoritarian utopian systems. The twisted braid of the namative disturbs traditional expectations of form and challenges the reader to reenvision the present and the future. Its calculated arnbiguity is based upon three distinct strategies:

intentionaily misleading usage of the first person pronoun '7";

its intertextuality demonstrated by borrowings from other literary genres (the novel,

science fiction, drarna, and the pastoral);

its plurality of unmediated narrative voices.

1 am interested in Russ's stylistic projects because, following Russ, many other feminist utopian wnters have explored the narrative possibilities that she foregrounded (please see Appendix 5 for a discussion of Michele Roberts The Arc of Mrs. Noah).

Russ deliberately starts her narration with "1", and this grammatical fiction puzzles the reader who does not know which of the protagonists is speaking, or even what subject is talking - a woman, a man, or a female man. Indeed, as Butler writes,

(problematizing Descartes 'Cognito, ergo sum"), "there is no "I" prior to its assumption of sex, and no assumption that is not at once an impossible yet necessary identification" (Bodies That Matter 99). Russ uses the grammar that challenges this identification precisely because she wants to avoid the explicit assumption of sex and/or mislead the reader. The reader is indeed confused, partly because Russ is unable to define clearly what differentiates her female men fiom their previous female identifications. The following example illustrates Russ's calculated ambiguity. Janet Evason, the utopian visitor, starts the novel with a monologue, in an unmediated utopian voice, without the typical narrative frame of a voyage to utopia or the mediation of a guide to show the non- utopian characters around.

PART ONE

1

I w& bom on a fam on Whileaway. When I was five I was sent to a school on South Continent (like everybody else) and when I tumed twelve I rejoined my family. My-mother's name was Eva, my other rnother's name Alicia; I am Janet Evason (Russ Female Man 1).

1 The first section of part two contains a monologue of another unnarned utopian character; the reader will not know her name until Part Eight where this mystification is finally disclosed. Moreover, the second section of Part Two introduces one more unacknowledged narrator who identifies herself with the pronoun 'T',simultaneously declaring that she is not the 'T' of the above section. This narrator articulates the central question of the book: how can a person identi@ herself if she rejects the patriarchal brand narne "woman"?

PART TWO

Who am I?

I know who I am, but what's my brand name?

Me with a new face, a puffy mask. (.. .) l'm not Jeannine. i'm not Janet. I'm not Joanna. (. ..) You'll rneet me later (Russ 19). As I have said before l.(notthe one above, please) had an experience on the seventh of Februanr bçt. nineteen-so

You would not have noticeci anything, had you been them.

Manhood, chiidren, is not reached by courage or short hair or insensibiiii or by king (as I was) in Chicago's only skyscraper hotel wtiile the snow rages outside. (..) But what then is Manhood?

Manhood, children. .. is Man)iood (Russ Fernale Mm 19-20).

It is notable that Russ asserts that her character has indeed turned into a man, but does not define Manhood which remains desirable, but non-definable. Russ's hybrid, fragmentecl text "operates throua acess: it isolates, exaggerates, reconnects, plqs with certain features or components of the personality under varying conditions" (McClenahan 1 14). Within the fragrnented narrative, the four characters are drawn into closer contact with each other and deeper explorations of their own selves, their respective worlds, and their choices of action.

Moreover, they Live their lives and go through their transformations while king observed, lectureci to, and gossiped about by a multitude of patriarchal societal voices. For Russ, such a form resists simple closure and consistency, yet allows a strong statement about the present- day situaiion in the world. This hybrid fom offers an,unusual perspective on alternative strategies and tactics of the oppositional politics of change, thus contnbuting to the ideological function of the feminist utopia

Russ creates an oxymoron for her title: a female man is a contradiction in tenns which can be interpreted through Burke's perspective by inconpity. Here, ambiguity is important because, as Russ further shows, though 'man' should.include 'woman', it really does not: being a gender-specific terni, 'man' in paûiarchal discourse excludes 'woman' . Russ makes this obvious when she uses other gender-specific ternis (such as 'ferninine', 'female' or

'wife') as antonyrns to 'man':

Man is a rhetoticai convenience for "human." WarV includes "woman."Thus:

1. The Etemal Ferninine ieads us ever upkdand on. (Guess who 'usrnis).

2. The last man on earth will spend the iast haur before the holocaust searching for his wife and child. (Review of The Second Sex by the firçt sex).

3. We ail have the impulse, at times, to get nd of ouf wives. (Irwing Howe, introduction to Hardy, talking about my wife).

4. Great scientists choose Mirproblems as they choose their wives. (A.H. Maslow, Who shouid know better).

5. Man is a hunter wtio wishes to compete for the best kill and the best femaie (everybodyb (Russ The Fernale Man 93)

Consequently, by developing arnbiguity, Russ disrupts the traditional meanings of the key concepts 'man' and 'woman' and makes them suspect. According to Burke, planned incongruity involves the deliberate fusion of incongruous terminology; it has both a disruptive as well as an enlightening effect, and it can therefore work as a "corrective frarnework" through which one affects a new social stability. Ambiguity, then, "is a resource that makes transformation possible"33(Coe 'The History and Principles of Rhetoric" 1- 15). In our case, arnbiguity is used to describe the transformation of a woman into a female man. The titIe is also incongruous for another reason: it talks about one female man, while the novel describes at Ieast four such transformations. In fact, throughout the novel, Russ bombards the reader with exarnples of arnbiguity and selfcontradiction; she even celebrates it in describing the man's statue on Whileaway: "An ancient statue outside the fuel-aicohol distillery at Ciudad

33 Hence, instead of considering it our task to 'dispose of any ambiguity . . . , we rather consider it our task to study and clarm the resources of arnbisty (Grammar xviii-xix, Burke's ernphasis). 198 Sierra: a man seated on a stone, his knees spread, both hands spread against the pit of his stomach, a look of blind distress, face blurred by time. Some wag has carved on the base sideways eight that means infrnity and added a straight line down from the rniddte; this is both the Whileaway schematic of the male genital and the mathematical syrnbol for self- contradiction" (Russ 100). Thus, the man on Whileaway is pIaced near an aicohol distillery, he is in permanent distress, and is a monument to self-contradiction.

Burke suggests that literary and artistic forms are to some extent tram-historical and universal in nature; and, therefore, part of the artist's task is to convey the universal patterns of experience. Russ employs a 'universal' utopian narrative prernise that has been widely used before her. Her premise is based on the traditional utopian ploy of alternative temporal probabilities andor different world~'~.In this way, to use Burkes' phrase, she is able to satisfy her readers' appetite for utopian genre expectations. For Our purposes, it is enough to define an alternative world as not a place, but a possible way Our world rnight be, or might have ken. It follows, then, that there can be an infinite number of possible worlds. As it has been observed, one of utopia's generic features is to constmct "alternative universes in which variations of history exist in pasts, futures, and presents that are those of the protagonist, or reader" (Moylan

61). Developing a metaphor of a twisted braid of multiple aiterations (which can be read as symbolizing a set of trajectories/strategies), Russ introduces her narrative's central premise:

Every displernent of every rnolecule, ev*ry.change in orbit of every electron, every .quantum of light that stnkes hem and not there - each of these must

3"ere exists a large philosophical and critical Literature on the logic and semantics of possible worlds (McCawley provides a good overview). Green mentions that the notion of the difTerent wodd is by now so standard (not only among science fiction and utopian writers, but even among logicians and linguists) that references are not made to its origin (Green 40). 199 somewhere have its alternative. it's possible, tw, that there is no such thing as one char Iine or strand of possibiiii, and that we tiie on a sort of twisted braid, blumng from one to the other without even knowing it, as long as we keep within the limits of a set of variations that diymake no différence to us. (Russ Fe& Mm 6-7)

Russ uses this utopian extrapolative premise to set the chronotope for several feminist alternatives to the patriarchal, phalïocratic world of the United States in 1969. Serving as the basis for the narration, this prernise indicates Russ's rejection of single-minded, linear, authoritarian visions of the present-day reality. Indeed, it marks her resistance to the existing totalitarian soçio-syrnbolic order, facilitating the open, disjointed, fragrnented form of her narrative. Russ's chronotope (as portrayed by the twisted braid of alternative times and spaces) rejects linearity and promotes unrestrained instantaneous tirne/space movement.

However, time appears to stay still on Whileaway and in Womanland while the four J's visit these societies; the protagonists can only feel the passage of time in Joanna's real world. It is here, in the real world, then, that the movement of time offers the possibility for societal change in the future. Joanna's real world, thus, contains a potential for her revolutionary transformation into the fernale man through enacting anger and violence against patriarchy.

Russ coiisciously challenges and rises above pre-existing and indoctrinated patrixchal narrative strategies. The result is that words and concepts are not divided; they are not, in other words, made discrete by grammatical interruptions. Connections between concepts, overlaps and dissonances, cm thus be perceived. This is a different way of writing that is transfomative of the language in which it is couched, and of Our reception of it. It is rerniniscent of Cixous's concept of l'ecriture fmnir~ine~~.Russ develops a confrontation of established and new meanings. Through her disclosure of patterns of linguistic sexism Russ compels the readers to consider whether these four characters can ever be adequately described by one-sided ternis that beg questions of a politicai nature: why must women as sexuai beings be determined as not-men, as "chics", '%itches" or "whores", i.e. in negative ways? In this way, Russ attempts to reconsider the supposed neutrality of patriarchai discourse. It is particularly obvious in the scene at the party when a patriarchal man is getting

confused while attempting to encourage the utopian visitor Janet with " You're a real balsy chick. I mean you're a woman.. .I mean you're a fine person" (The Female Man 39). Another man is quite willing to discuss feminism, but he reminds Janet of the 'obvious' and 'natural' things: 'What you've got to remember.. .is that most women are liberated right now. They like what they're doing. They do it because they like it." But, as this man clairns, "You can't challenge men in their own fields" (43), such as power, work, money, physical strength.

According to him, "Unequal pay is a disgrace. But you' ve got to remember, Janet, that wornen have certain physical limitations" that supposedly explain why they are victirnized: "you have to take into account that there are more than two thousand rapes in the New York City alone in every particular year. I'm not saying of course that that's a good thing, but you have to take it into account. Men are physically stronger than women, you know" (44). Thus, the Man justifies male aggression and violence against women as "naturai".

'' Cixous urges the woman to write her own self, her desues, her body, for herself and other women. Her appeal to "bringwomen to writing" articuiates the need to mate a common language that can connect wornen into a ferninist comrnunity. For Cixous, when women begin to write in aii their diversity and complexity, "beauty will no longer be forbidden". Once women have taken language, discovered its symbolic potential, and re-invented it for thernselves, then they can write "the tme texts of wornen - femaie-sexed texts" ("Sorties" 334 -335). 201 Later, the host of the party makes a pass at Janet who is not amused by his manifestation of human courting and finds it "savage". But the host is not discouraged by her remark because in his patriarchal Iexicon, "savage" is marked as affiiative: "Masculine, brute, virile, powerfbl, good" (45). Smiling broadly, the man says: "Right on, sister," when

Janet suddenty dumps him. And the patnarchal man is not prepared for this situation. He has no experience in dealing with it - Russ metaphoricdy describes him going through a patriarchal advice book, "flipping furiously through the pages of the book; what else is there to do in such circumstances? (It was a little limp-leather - excuse me - volume bound in blue, which 1 think they give out in high schools. On the cover was written in gold WHAT TO DO

IN EVERY SKUATION.) "Bitch!" (flip flip flip) "Prude!" (flip flip flip) "Bali-breaker!" (flip fIip fiip) "Goddarn cancerous castrator!" (46). When Janet finally understands that these are insults, she breaks his arm. This is totally beyond his expectations because, in the Man's blue book, the girl's response to insults should be tears and not violence: "Girl backs down - cries

- manhood vindicated. Under "Real Fight With Girl" was written Dun 't hurt (except whures)"

(47). Joanna finds instructions to coping with brutdity in her own pink book (which embodies society's double standards for acceptable male and female behaviour): "Man's bad temper is the woman'sfault. It is also the woman's responsibility to patch things up afrenvards" (47).

Seeing Joanna's predicarnent, Janet advises her to throw both books away - and this is how

Joanna' s liberation starts.

In a short pmin Section V Russ describes women's suffering from the (alleged) inferiority complex, depression, and identity crisis in patriarchy: 202 Leaming to

despise

one's

self

Russ's protagonist is learning to despise herself because patriarchy has habitually relegated the woman to the negative semantic space and abjected her as the disgusting other, defining her by her difference. This inferiority compIex is generdized as every wornan's expenence because, once again, the reader is not told which of the four protagonists is speaking. Verbal mystification is even stronger in the example below that discloses linguistic sexism (al1 original punctuation in the exarnple below):

Bumed any bras lateiy har twinkle twinkle A pretty girl like you doesn't need to be liberated twinkle har Don? listen to those hystericai bitches twinkle twinkle twinkfe I never take a woman's advice about two things: love and automobiles twinkle hnnnkle har May I kiss you iiile hand twinkle twinkie twinkle, Har. Twinkle. (49)

Even by comparing this passage to the previous and the next, the readers cannot decipher whether one or many narrative voices are speaking here: it certainly sounds like a whole sexist crowd. The readers can decipher this mystification, however, if they consider this passage within the context of the novel, or even within the whole context of the rhetorical situation in which the novel appeared, and within the socio-political context of USAmerican culture. Russ here demonstrates patterns of linguistic sexism that permeate patriarchal discourse. She also depicts the women's reaction to this socio-historic situation: patiiarchy renders women invisible or unimportant. When the secret service agents are looking for Janet,

Joanna tells them: "Who are you looking for? There is nobody here. Only me" (21). She feels that she is nobody; likewise, Jeannine usually sees herself as unfit to live and readily communicates with mannequins rather than people.

The novel refiects the sexist background against which the multiple stories of the four

Js unfold, thus suggesting that the ferninist utopia as a genre is reactive to its socio-historic situation, particularly to patriarchal theorising of women's infenor positioning based on

Freud's psychoanalysis (please see Appendix 3 for an account of Freud's reasoning). A short section vocalizing anonyrnous swietal voices follows a part introducing Laura Rose Wilding of Anytown, USA, an adolescent girl who "can't ever be happy or lead a normal life" kcause she is "a victim of penisenvy" (65). Law's mother blarnes herself for her daughter's

"deforrnity": "My rnother worked as a librarian when 1 was little and that's not ferninine. She thinks it's defonned me" (65). Laur is daydreaming that she is Genghis Khan - that is, trying on a male identification. According to Freud, Laura is demonstrating her masculinity complex.

Laur's predicament can be read as Russ's attempt to portray the confusion caused by Freud's psychoanalytical theory that perrneated the patriarchal discourse of the time. As discussed in

Chapter 2, Freud argues that the absence of a penis causes the girl's sense of inferiority?

'' Freud says: "A little girl behaves differently. She makes her judgement and her decision in a flash. She has seen it and knows that she is without it and wants to have it Here what has been narned the masculinity complex branches off. It may put great difficulties in the way of the regular development toward fernininity, if it cannot be got over soon enough. The hope of some day obtaining the penis in spite of everything and so of becorning a man rnay persist to an incredibly late stage and may becorne a motive for strange and otherwise unaccountable actions.. .. Thus a girl may refuse to accept the fear of king castrated, may harden herself in the conviction that she does possess a pis,and rnay subsequently be compelled to behave as though she were a man.. .. 2a4 Russ here, therefore, reacts to Freud's theory that the girl's conflict is caused by the imbalance between the masculine and ferninine, active and passive, aspects to her psyche (please see

Appendix 3). Russ, however, shows that Laur's conflict is caused and re-enforced by continuous harassrnent exercised by anonyrnous rnembers of patriarchal society. For exarnple, quite suddenly for the reader, Laur's drearns are broken by a sexist and offensive passage in an unnameci narrative voice:

(. ..)Everyone knows that much as women want to be scienüsts and engineeffi, they want foremost to be womaniy cornpanions to men (what?) and caretakers of childhood; everyone knows that a large part of a woman's identity inheres in the styie of her attractiveness. Laur is daydrearning. She lmks straight before her, blushes, smiles, and doesn't see a ttiing. After the party she'll rnarch stiff-iegged out of the mmand up to her beâroom; sitting tailor-fashion on her bed, she'll read Engels on the family and make in the margin her neat, concise, perfectly men notes. (. ..) She's sumunâed by mermaid's, fish, sea-plants, wandering fronds. Drifting on the affective cumnts of the room are those strange social artifacts hatf dissohred in nature and mystery: some pretty girls.

Laur is daydreaming that she's Genghis Khan.

VI

A beautiful chickwho swims naked and whose breasts fioat on the water Iike flowers, a chick in a min-tight shirt Mosays she balls with her friends but doesn't get uptight about it, that's the real thing (60).

Laur can read Engels and drearn about becoming Genghis Khan as rnuch as she likes; the patriarchal voices will still view her as a sex object. Sirnilarly, teen-age Joanna drearns of king Humphrey Bogart, James Bond, or Superman, but she is constantly told that these

After a wonm has become aware of the wound to her narcissism, she deveIops, like a scar, a sense of inferiority. When she has passed beyond her first attempt at explainhg her lack of a penis as being a punishment personal to herseif and has reaiized that this sexual character is a universal one, drearns are not dl right for women (205). Because the sexist voices are unacknowledged, the reader is left to speculate who Laur's or Joanna's anonymous opponents might be: rnisogynist neighbors or peers. The anonymity of the sexist voices in the novel makes them impersonai, and therefore more generic, typical for the patriarchal context. Similarly, Russ keeps shifting authorial voices in the following sections: from the author's point of view to an intentionally impersonal one which emulates an encyclopedic entry on a sirnilar topic: the under- representation of women in Amencan political life. This narrative strategy is important for the feminist genre because it dlows the feminist writer to portray a panorama of USArnerican culture in a confined space of the novel:

And Ilike Anytown; f like going out on the porch at night to look at the iights of the town: fireflies in the blue gloaming, across the vaIley, up the hill, white homes where children played and rested, where wives made potato salad, home from a day in the autumn leaves chasing sticks with the family dog, families in the firelight, thousands upon thousands of identical, cozy days (61).

There are more whoaping cranes in the United States of America than there are women in Congress (61).

Later in the novel Russ portrays the result of continuous societal harassrnent when she describes how a woman tums from self-hate to man-hating:

If they tell me about the pretjr clothes again, l'II kill myself. I had a fwe-year-old self who said: Daddy wont love you. Ihad a ten-par-old self who said: the boys won't play with you. I had a fieen-par-old seif who said: nobody will many you. I had a twenty-year-old seif who said: ycu cant be fuHilled without a child.. .

she begins to share the contempt felt by men for a sex which is the lesser in so important a respect, and, at teast in holding that opinion, insists on king like a man" (Freud 19: 253). 206 I am a sick wornan, a madwoman, a ball-breaker, a man-eater; I don't consume men gracefully with my fire-like red hair and my poisoned kiss; I crack their joints with these fiMy ghouls' claws .. .I dont think my body will sel1 anything. I dont think I woukl be good to Iwkat O, of al1 diseases çeFhate is the worst and I don? mean for the one who suffers it! (Russ 135) Thus, due to the symbolic violence of patriarchal discourse, through self-hate, rage and anger, the woman reverses the socio-symbolic contract and resorts to syrnbolic violence against men.

Four Agents: Idenbty Under Constniction

The utopian visitor Janet travels ten centuries backward in time to Our Earth. She arrives from the utopian planet Whileaway, a world in which al1 the men were killed centuries ago in a plague (or, in a different version of the story,' a war). Janet represents the ideal woman who grew up with no gender-biased constraints on her life and, therefore, was able to develop her human potential in full. The panorama of life on Whileaway is ody part of the novel, for much of the action occurs in alternative worlds. The reader lems about them through the experiences of Joanna, Jeannine, and Jael, the other three protagonists, each having the same genotype and thus representing the power of societal and cultural construction of identity.

The utopian Janet first meets Jeannine, who is from an alternative reality of the United

States in 1969. In her world, Depression never ended, World War Two never occurred, and women are more openly repressed than in the existing world. The third protagonist, Joanna, fünctions as the main narraor of the novel, though it is doubtful that the fictional Joanna cm

be easily identified with Russ herself. l

Both "real-life" Joanna and dystopian Jeannine represent women trying to accommodate to patriarchd worlds which are contrasted to the utopian Whileaway and the struggling Womanland. Joanna lives in the "real-life" New York in 1969 with its 207 contradictory, and usuaily faise, promises of liberation to the individuai female in the phailocratic society. Joanna's world is less dystopian than Jeannine's, but not to a great extent.

Russ resorts to irony and sarcasm to describe its social progress:

YOUsee how very ditferent this is from the way things used to be in the bad old days, say five pars ago. New Yorkers (female) have had the right to abortion for alrnost a year now, if you can satisfy the hospibl boards that yiau deserve bed-room and don't mind the nurses calling puBaby Kilier; citizens of Toronto, Canada, have perfectty free access to contraception if they are willing to travel100 miles across the border; I could smoke myown cigarette if Ismoked (and get my own lung cancer). Foiward, eternalty forward! (136)

Joanna wistfully calls the utopian Janet a woman "whom we dont believe in and whom we deride but who is in secret our savior fromatter despair" (Russ 2 13). "Our only savior" (87) Janet is portrayed as a redeemer; this cornes through in her manipulation of the pronouns he/she while singing a religious hyrnn (in this particular instance of the ferninist utopian genre, it is important that God is portrayed as a female):

Part Four

After six months of IMng with me in a hotel suite, Janet Evason expressed the desire to move in with a typical famify. I he'ard her singing in the bathroom:

I knowl That my /Re&-ernerl Livethl And She/ Shail stand Upon the latter da-ay/ On Earth.

"Janet, he's a man!" I yelled. (. ..) But of course, she doesn't listen. (Russ Female Man 57).

Janet's effect on Jeannine is generally ovenvhelming, because Jeannine had never irnagined the possibility of a fke and self-motivated woman, much less a whole planet full of them. Around Janet and in Whileaway, Jeannine typically wmts to fade away into the woodwork and retum to the secure slavery of her own time. Yet, she is curious enough to stay and absorb the mentality of the utopian "female man". Janet's effect on Joanna is more

208 immediate, for Joanna is already partially aware of the need to be transformed: as a femde subject, she is trying to find a new identification in a patnarchal society that reduces her to a sex object. These three characters meet a fourth, Jael, from a dystopian future between Our time and Whileaway's. Jael is from a world in which, refeming to both gender and power, the

"haves and have-nots," the men of Manland and the women of Womanland, have engaged in a tinng and never-ending Iife-and-death struggle. Jael's experience of king a woman is much

Iike Joanna's, but her response to patriarchy is violence, aggression, and terrorism, The braided namatives of the four protagonists invite the reader to accept responsibility for current choices that could lead toward one or another alternative-

Janet the Savior

In her opening monologue, Janet irnrnediately asserts the existence of a one-sexed utopian society which has successfully functioned without med7 for a thousand years [as she explains, for her men are 'a particularly foreign species' (33)]. On Whileaway, women are free and fulfilled individuais rather than victimized subjects produced by the socio-historic situation in the USA of the 60s (partly because, though motherhood is portrayed as a gratifjing experience, children leave their mothers rnuch earlier, at age five). The core of their social structure is families of thirty to thirty-five persons; children have a free run of the planet past puberty, and "the kinship web is world-wide". It is interesting that utopian societies both on Ata and on Whileaway employ the concept of extended farnilies for childcare; both of

37 As RUSScomments, "Plaque came to Whileaway in P.C. 17 (Preceding Catastrophe) and ended in AC. 03, with half the population dead; it had started so slowly that no one hewabout it until it was tw Iate. It attacked males only" (12). 209 them are aiso classless, non-urban, communal, and ecologically sensitive. Whileaway, however, is an industnaily developed society with a planned economy. Its citizens have access to free creative work and personai fulfillment.

This is how Janet describes her new subjectivity - that of the female man of the future:

Iwas bom on a fam on Whileaway. When t was fn/e I was sent to a school on South Continent (like eve- else) and when I turned twelve Irejoined my farniiy. My mother's narne was Eva, my other mother's name Aliiia; I am Janet Evason. When I was fhirteen Istdked and killed a woif, alone, on the NoRh Continent above the forty-eighth parallel, using only a rifle.... I've worked in the mines, on the radio network, on a milk farm, a vegetable farm, and for six weeks as a librarian after I broke my kg. At thirty I bore Yunko Janetson; when she was taken away to a schml five years later (and I never saw a child protest so much) Idecided tu take time off and see if Icould find my famiYs old home -for they had moved away after I had rnamed and relocated near Mine City in South Continent. The place was unremgnizable, howver; our rural areas are always changing. f could find mthing but the tripods of the computer beacons everywhere, some strange cmps in the fields that I had never seen before, and a band of wandenng children. They were heading North to visitthe polar station and offered to lend me a sleeping bag for the nigM; but I declined and stayed with the resident family; in the moming l starteci home. Since then I have been Safety Offier for the county. ... I've superviseci the digging of fire trails, delivered babies, fked rnachinery, and milked more mcmcows than Iwish I knew existed.... I love my daughter. I love my famiiy (there are nineteen of us). 1 love my wife (Viioria). I've fought four duels. I've killed four times. (Russ Fernale Man 1-2)

Here, then, is the exciting potential for the Arnerican women of the 1970s: free access to jobs, technology, career choices, communal living, a network of friends and farnily, free and safe travel. But al1 of this can only happen once the "North Continent Wolf' is killed, once maIe power is broken, and women are free to establish their own society. It is meaninml that the sacrificial slaughtering of al1 men in the war has been translated in the communal memory into a more appropriate myth of a plague that killed al1 males on Whileaway.

Whileaway is now a relatively peaceful society: though the Whileawayans still kill each other in duels over incornpatibility in temperarnent, the officially sanctioned mythology enabled the

210 women to get rid of their guilt for massive violence against men. It aiso allowed hem to assume a new identification and tum into "fernale men" without any remorse.

However, Russ does not make it clear whether Whileawayans identiQ themselves as women, and what this concept means for them. It is not easy for the reader to define them as men or women either, because these gendered concepts are no longer relevant: woman on

Whileaway has no other. This is an interesting development for the ferninist utopian genre because it shows that sexual identity is not a basis for difference or discrimination; it means

Iittle in the utopian context where the very notion of identity is challenged. Another generic feature is the criticism of patriarchal language: due to linguistic difficulties, the new sexual identity cannot even be expresseci by means of patriarchal language: though their last narnes end with 'son' (Evason, Janetson), this flexion is presented as the fault of conventional patt-iarchal translation. Janet cornrnents to Joanna that, "Evason is not 'son' but 'daughter'.

This is your translation" (1 8).

In the society of Whileaway, the hegemonic modification of the woman is completed. To use Kristeva's phrase, this society seems to hinction as utopia's floodgate which she describes as "the only refuge for fulfrllment" ("Women and Power" 453).

However, Whileaway is not convincing as the place of the final "fulfillment", in the sense of harrnonious society celebrating the ferninine values of tolerance, spirituality, sharing, self- sacrifice, bonding, because here sexual difference has been disintegrated by force.

Whileawayans eliminated their male counterparts, in the meantirne appropriating traditionally

'male' values of anger, arrogance, dominance, hunger for power. It follows that this unique circurnstance should allow for developing the singularity of the individual woman; however, this does not happen in the novel: individuation for Whileawayans is blunwl rather than hlly developed.

Yet, Whileaway displays a panorama of utopia as liberated zone: an ideai society which is pst-industrial, socialist, ecologically sound, and libertarian (Moylan 65-67). This world is under-populated, which is the key to its emphasis on ecology: famis, moo-cows, fields, ecologicd house-keeping are important in this world: "Whileaway doesn't have any tme cities. And of course, the tai1 of culture is sevenl centuries behind the head. Whileaway is so pastoral that at times one wonders whether the ultimate sophistication may not take us al1 back to a kind of pre-Paleolithic dawn age, a garden without any artifacts except for what we would cal1 miracles" (14). The self-sufficient utopian world does not waste itself in stagnation: another key tem here is work. The only people who do not work are mothers. Motherhood on

Whileaway is celebrated as a vacation, as one of the few periods when the woman has no other work for five years than raising ner child. Janet bore her daughter at thirty, and she describes motherhood as "a hiatus at just the right time": "It's a vacation. Almost five years.

The baby rooms are full of people reading, painting, singing, as much as they cm, to the children, with the children, over the children.. .There has been no leisure at al1 before and there will be so very little after - anything 1 do, 1 mean, 1really do - 1must ground thoroughly in those five years. One works with feverish haste.. . At sixty 1will get a sedentary job and have some time for myself again" (14-15). Childhood is a very important period in the Iife of the person, as well as the drastic separation from the mother at age five. This period is recognized as forming the basics for identification as a Whileawayan: i Whiieawayan psychology focates the basis of W hileawayan character in the eady indulgence, pleasure, and fiowering whiih is drasticalfy curtaiied by the separation from the mothers. This (isays) gives Whiieawayan Me its characteristic independence, its dissatisfaction, its suspicion, and its tendency towards a rather irritable solipsism. .. Etemai optimism hides behind this dissatisfaction, however; Whileawayans cannot forget this earfy paradise and every new face, every new day, every smoke, every dance, brings back life possibilities. Also sleep and eating, sunrise, weather, the seasons, machinery, gossip, and the etemal temptations of art. (52)

Al1 citizens enjoy individual autonomy within their world-wide web38of kin. This

cornrnunity supports its rnembers and maintains a nsk-free environment, which is a sharp contrast to the USA in 1969:

There's no kingout too late in Whileaway, or up too earty, or in the wrong part of tom, or unescorted. You cannot fall out of the kinship web and homesexual prey for strangers, for there is no prey and theré are no strangers - the web is world- wide. In al1 of Whileaway there is no one @O can keep you fmm going where you please (though you may risk Furlife, if that sort of thing appeals to wu), no one wi-10will follow puand try to embarras puby whispering obscenities in purear, no one who will attempt to mpe pu, no one wtia will wam you of the dangers of the street, no one who will stand on street corners, hot-eyed and vicious, jingling lwse change in his pants pocket, bitterly biieriy sure that you are a cheap f loozy, hot and wild, who likes it, who can't say no, who's making a mint off it, who inspires him with nothing but disgust, and who wants to drive him crazy.

On Whileaway eleven par-old children çtrip and live naked in the wildemess above the forty-seventh parallel, where they mediiate, stark naked or covered with leaves, sans pubii hair, subsisting on the mots arld benies so kindiy planted by their elders.. .

W hile here, where we 1Ne -! (Russ Female Man 81)

Paradoxically, Janet becomes Whileaway's fifit ernissary across time boundaries, because she is "stupid"- they could spare Janet since, with an IQ of 187 and the routine job of

Safety Oîficer, she was less bright than the others and could be released fiom a job that required Linle work in utopia. Notably, Russ includes several socio-historic indications for the reader. Whileaway is a nowhere-land, but the noveI is consubstantial with the socio-histoncd context of the 1970s: first, Whileawayans meditate, reflecting the spirinial practices of the

1970s; second, the IQ is the sole rneasurement for a person's intellect (which is an anachronism for ferninism in the 1990s that includes other aspects of intelligence and ways of knowledge-making not measurable by IQ). Third, marijuana is a wide-spread and legal drug on Whileaway. In this way, Russ acknowledges the 1970s habit of smoking marijuana: Janet remembers "the orderly fields on Whileaway, the centuries-old mutations and hybridizations of cannabis sativa, the little garden plots of marijuana tended (for al1 1 know) by seven-year- olds" (36).

Stupid as Janet rnight be in the standards of Whileaway, she provides a sharp contrast to the two New-York women in the alternative 1969s: Jeannine, passive and repressed, and

Joanna, awakening but stiH questioning. Janet's "female man" subject-position is alien to the

Earth women expectations because it situates itself outside the linear time of their identifications. As it was developed and operates "without equal in the opposite sex", it rernains "exploded, plural, fluid, in a certain way nonidentical" for thern (Knsteva "Wornen and Power" 448). Therefore, Jeannine and Joanna initially identiQ Janet as a woman, and this paradox indicates discrepancies between their mentalities and hers.

Russ's utopian society has other contradictions, and arnbigiiity is quite welcome on

Whileaway. Even their statue of God (who is, of course, female) is the tribute to contradictions:

'' ln the novel (written in 1969) Russ acqguses the term "world-wide web" which is quite There is an unpoikhed, white, marble statue of God on Rabbit Island, all alone in a field of weeds and snow. She is seated, naked to the waist, an outsized fernale figure as awful as Zeus, her dead eyes staring into nothing. Atfirst She is majesüc; then I notice that Her cheekbones are too broad, Her eyes se?at diierent levers, that her vuhole figure is a mass of inhuman contrad'ctions. .. -

Persons who look at the statue longer than I did have reported that one cannot pin It down at dl, that She is a constamüy changing contradiction, that She becomes in tum gentle, tenifying, hateful, loving, "stup'W (or "dead")and finaily indescribable. Persons who look longer than that have known to vanish right off the face of the Earth. (Russ Female Man 103)

Citizens of Whileaway celebrate their jouissance - the joy of living a happy and fulfilled life - by playing musical instruments and dancing (102). They celebrate such occasions as the full moon, the winter and sumrner solstice, the autumn and vernal equinox, the flowering of plants, copulation, birth, rriarriages, sport, divorces, great ideas, anything at dl, nothing at dl, and even death (103). Taboos on Whileaway include "sexual relations with anyone considerably older or younger than oneself, waste, ignorance, offending others without intending to" (53). In this respect, Russ's utopia exemplifies the ways in which this genre pursues feminist goals with explicitly feminist means. Here, then, wornen's jouissance is liberated, and Cixous's description of an empowered woman could be read as a portrayai of Whileawayans:

Her libido is cosrnic, just as her unconscidus is worldwide: her writing can also go on, without ever inscribing or distinguishing contours, daring these dizzying passages in other, ffeeting, and passionate dwellings within him, within the hims and hers whom she inhabits just long enough to watch them, as close as possible to the unconscious from the moment they arise; to love them, as close as possible to instinctual drives, and then, further, al1 filled with these brief identifying hugs and kisses, she goes on and on infinitety.

(Cixous "Sorties" 88)

prophetic given the recent internet developments (1993 and on). 21 5 Another period which provides a striking contrast to women's experiences in patriarchy is old age on Whileaway: old age is a time for creative work, fiedom and leisure.

Older women have learned "to join with calculating machines"; i. e. they have responsible jobs that require computer experience: "old brains use one part in fifty to run a city (with check-ups made by two sulky youngsters) while the other forty-nine parts riot in a freedom they haven't had since adolescence" (53). Seniors, then, are free to "spend their days mapping, drawing, thinking, writing, collating, composing7'. In this creative work, they manifest celebratory qualities of feminist strength.

In the end of the novel, Janet becomes a legendary figure, the women's only hope, both "everywoman" and secret savior "who appears Heaven-high in our drearns with a mountain under each arm and the ocean in her pocket, Janet who comes from the place where the labia of sky &d horizon kiss each other so that Whileawayans cal1 it The Door and know that al1 legendary things corne therefrom. Radiant as the day, the Might-be of our dreams, living as she does in a blessedness none of us will ever know, she is nonetheless

Everywoman" (2 13).

Jeannine: Cognitive Starvation

Jeannine comes from an alternative world whose history after the 1930s took a different turn. There was no Second World War, no nazism, no concentration camps, no nuclear bombs; this world is in permanent depression. The post-war period of global US economic and military dominance, the cold war, the post-colonial development never happened. Women did not enter the labor force en masse. Since no pi11 was introduced in the 216 196ûs, the women were not 'drafted' as the 'soldiers' of the sexual revolution. Russ 'spins out' interesting developments of Modem History as it rnight have ken:

The Chinese New Festival waç invented to celebrate the recapture of Hong Kong frorn the Japanese. Chian Kai-shek died of heart diise in 1951 and Madam Chiang is premieress of the New China. Japan, whiih contmls the mainland, remains faidy quiet since it lacks the backing of -for example - a reawakened Gennany, and if any waraccurs, it will be between the Divine Japanese Imperiality and the Union of Soviet Socialkt Repubiii (there are twelve). Arnericans don? wony much. Gemany still squabbles accasionallywith lfaty or England; France (disgmced in the abortive putsch of '42) is beginning to have trouble with its colonial possessions. BRtain - wiser- gave lndii provisional self-government in 1966. The Depression is still world-wide. (But think - only think! - what might have happened if the wodd had not so iuckily slowed dom, if there had been a reaily big war, for big wars are forcing-houses of science, econom'ks, polii; think what might have happened, what migM not have happened. lt's a lucky world. Jeannine is lucky to Iive in it. She doesn't think so.) (Russ Female Man 28)

Describing Jeannine's situation in her patriarchal world, Russ's utopia manifests several important aspects of its generic social action: it criticizes patnarchy and develops socio-historic orientation for the readers (such as the abortive putsch, Chian Kai-shek, the

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) that allows them to recognize their own situation. It also speculates about "what might have happened". The chronotope in Jeannine's "lucky" world is different fiom that of Joanna's real-world: tirne here does not rnove, the world is stagnant in its permanent depression, and there is no possibility for social change. Women here are destined to remain on the margins, invisible, mute, constrained within stereotypical roles of possession

- child or mother, sexual object. Consequently, though Jeannine dreams of having "a beautifbl body and personality to bum" ( 17), patriarchy renders her "relieved of personality", passive and weak, and most commonly associating with 'souls' of fumiture and mannequins:

Stupid and inactive. Pathetic. Cognitive starvation. Jeannine loves to become entangted with the souk of the furniture in my aparbnent, softiy drawing herself in to fit inside them, pulling one long limb after another into the cramped positions of my 217 tables and chairs. The dryad of my Iiving mm. ... That long, Young, pretty body loves to be sat on and I think ifJeannine ever meets a Satanist, she wil find herself perfectfy at home at his aitar at a Black Mas, relieved of personaiity at last and forever (93)-

Later in the novel, when the "passive" and "weak" Jeannine mets the guerilla fighter

Jael, she is most directiy affected by her mentality. A childish, dependent, fiightened woman of 29, Jeannine has chenshed romantic love so thoroughly that she feels that only by meeting a tall, dark, handsome, domineering myth can she ever be rescued from her worthlessness and the boredom of her bare-subsistence job. The Hollywood-style fantasies of romance and marriage are her sole escape:

If t had the money, if I could get my hair done. ... He cornes into the library; he is a college professor; no, he's a playboy. :Who's that girl?" Talks to Mrs. Allison, siyiy f lattering her. 'This is Jeannine" She casts her eyes dom, rich in feminine power. Had my nails done today. And these are good clothes, they have taste, my own individuaiity, my beauty. There's sornething about her, " he says. "Will you go out with me?" Later on the roof garden, dnnking champagne, "Jeannine, will you -* (16)-

Jeannine intemaiizes the conflict of maintaining one's own authenticity and the guilt of not fitting the established mold. In her situation, patnarchy is totally oppressive: marriage and motherhood are the only choices for girls while boys are expected to have careers and adventurous lives. Wornen's value is based solely on one's desirability; maniage and children are the only options; in fact, Jeannine does not really exist until she is married: "There is some barrier between Jeannine and reai life which cm be rernoved only by a man or by marriage; somehow Jeannine is not in touch with what everybody knows to be real life" (120). Man's contribution to a relationship, then, is "Make mefeel go04 her contribution is Make me exist"

(120). Jeannine talks about the pressures to marry; though she wants "something else," she is

"not fit to live" (121) without marriage because, as Russ explains:

218 VI1

Men succeed. Women get mamed.

Men fail. Women get married.

Men enter monasteries. Women get mamed. ' Men start wars. Women get mamed.

Men stop hem. Women get marri&.

Dull, dull. (126).

Jeannine is in a crux: she is haunted by the thoughts of marriage and the impossibility of marrying her suitor Cal: '7 ought to get married. (But not to Cal!)" (108). Her family and friends are pressunng her as well: when her brother sees her, the first thing he asks about is her wedding plans: "Jeannie. .. It 's nice to see you. When did you get in? When are you going to get married?? (1 13). When Jeannine jokingly asks her brother who she should many, his answer is quite serious: "anybody" (1 16). Her family members are relieved when at last she announces her wedding plans: 'We're getting married - marvelous! - and my mother is very pleased because 1am twenty-nine" (150). The ody person who is not pleased is Jeannine herself: '4 have everything and yet 1 am not happy. Sometimes 1want to die" (150). Jeannine, thus, demonstrates her on-going conflict with social pressure to conform to traditional femaie traits of passivity, tolerance, dependence, propriety, admiration and support of men, and her betrayal of herself when she behaves in these inauthentic ways. Presumably, Russ demonstrates here that it is not possible for a patnarchal woman to own her own sexuality and initiate fiee nonexploitative sex. For exarnple, Janet shocks the "real life" people in her expression of her sexual desire and also in her sexual preferences. Social taboos for women to express their anger or sexuality are reflected in Joanna's shock when she sees Janet throw a 219 man on the flwr at the cocktail party, or when Jeannine and Joanna see Jael killing a

Maniander. Obviously, while male violence is acceptable, there is no room for female violence (even in self-defense) in patriarchal worlds. Women are so openiy oppressed in these worlds that there remains no other option than either to die or to initiate change. Thus,

Jeannine's intolerable enslavement facilitates Russ's articulation of ferninist rage and the need to appropriate power by force.

Pathetic in her passivity, Jeannine is frightened by the possibilities suggested by Janet and, while briefly visiting in her own time, tries to escape her self-fulfillrnent by capitulating and marrying Cal, thus pleasing her family and burying herseIf. We see her in the novel refusing to be a man (86) and "softly but very determinedly" trying to bolt her door against the change initiated by Janet: "She wanted to get back to the freedom of Fifth Avenue, where there were so many gaps - so much For Rent, so much cheaper, so much older, than 1 remembered" (87). However, influenced by Jael, Jeannine is rendered "self-possessed" and

"quietly stubbom" (165) by a sudden awareness that she, too, cm kill a man and thus appropriate power (even through violence). Her resispnce to change is finally broken not by utopian fülfillment, but by the dystopian chance to destroy the male society that has so totally restricted her. In this case, Russ's novel demonstrates the dual utopian /dystopian action

(Booker 343) or the double (utopian and dystopian) center of gravity of the ferninist utopian genre which contains both "the negative and positive poles of exposure and advocacy, the contrary (though complementary) impulses of destruction and construction, or social criticism and social planning" (Delany 158). When Jael kills the Madander, Joanna is asharned, Janet weeps, and Jeannine is calm in the revelation of the power of women. She has seen a way toward acquiring her new subjectivity and decides to join Jael's movement. At the final dinner Jeannine, former slave in a penpheral "undeveloped" Society, is the one who wholeheartedy joins in Jael's plan to extend the war into other time zones: "You can bring in al1 the soldiers you want. You can take the whole place over: 1wish you would (2 11). Thus, she accomplishes the first stage in the transformation into a femaie man - she catches the gems of anger, violence and aggression and welcomes the terronst amiies which wiil inevitably destroy her world. At the end of the novel, Jeannine goes window-shopping because she wants to Say good-bye to her patriarchd self and to weIcome the politics of change and opposition:

Gdbyeto mannequins in store windows who pretend to be sympathetic but who are really nasty conspiracies, goodbye to hating Mother, goodbye to the Divine Psychiatrist, goodbye to The Girls, goodbye to Normaiii, goodbye to Getting Mamed, goodbye to The Supematuraliy Blessed Event, goodbye to king Sorne Body, goodbye to waiting for Him (prfellow!), gwdbye to sitting by the phone, goodbye to feebleness, goodbye to adoration, goodbye to Politii, hello poliics. She's çcared but that's ali right. (209)

Jael: Temr of Terrotkm

Important as utopia is for Jeannine and Joanna, Russ shows that the move from oppression to freedom cannot be taken without the mediation of the anger and the violence, both metaphonc and political, of revolutionary change. This skepticism about the programmatic efficacy of utopian reasoning and the foregrounding of radical change are important rnoves for the feminist utopian genre because this is where feminist discourse shows its revolutionary potential. The necessary assertiveness and anger are supplied by the fourth J. Jael, or Nice Reasoner, which is her cover name in her job as an employee of the Bureau of

Comparative Ethnoiogy, is "the woman without a brand narne", that is, without femde subjectivity. More accurately, she represents a different type of a "female man", a terrorist and secret agent. Jael comes from an dl-woman society that is in constant war with the dl-man society. It is notable that Russ examines wa.as a basis for identification because, as Burke suggests, war can be "a unifying enterprise":

War does promote a highly cooperative spirit. War is cuhral. The sharing of a cornmon danger, the emphasis upon sacrifice, risk, cornpanionship, the strong sense of king in a unifying enterprise - dl these quaiities are highiy moral, and in so far as the conditions of capitalistic peace tend to inhibii such expressions, it is possible that the thought of war cornes as a "purgation," a "cleansing by fire."

(Burke "The Nature of Art Under Capitalisrn" 677)

Russ's guerilla fighter Jael is from a utopian society unified by war; and, irnportantly, she is the one who brings the other three protagonists into contact with each other. On assignment as one of the leaders of Womanland, Jael sought her "aiter egos" in alternative worlds to recruit them into the movement. Jael tells the other three about herself at her estate in Vermont hills, with its computerized house, ecologically balanced beauty, and live-in male android, the "sex-object" Davy who is the "most beautiful man in the world". She describes her gradua1 move from the underground sentimental Arcadian communes to the revolutionary violence of a guerilla fighter, now privileged to spend short periods of rest in her own palace and gardens. Rather than finding refuge in a pastoral escape that rnight satisfy herself, she realized that such an escape was still a capitulation to the power structure. Therefore, she made a cornmitment to fight for the cornpiete defeat of male power: "it took me years to throw off the last of my Pussy-fetters, to stop king (however brutaiized) vestigially Pussy-cat-ified. But at last I did and now 1 am the rosy, wholesome, single-minded assassin you see before you today" (Russ 187).

In Jael's worid, femininity, tolerance, decency, passivity, dependency have derogatory meanings, while creativity is limited to technologicai girnrnicks facilitating murder and rape.

Womantand provides an answer to radical feminist speculations about what happens when women refuse power and create a parailel society [the one that Kristeva describes as "a counter-power which then takes on aspects ranging fiom a club of ideas to a group of terrorist commandos" ('Women and Power" 452)]. This answer is the appropriation of power in order to exercise violence against men. Womanland is indqed a counter-society; it might serve as an example of a social structure whose very logic, as Kristeva would say, "necessarily generates, by its very structure, its essence as a simulacmm of the combated society or of power"

(Kristeva 'Women and Powef' 454). In this counter-society, everything is done in the name of the Woman, an ideological concept that helps to mobilizes individual women for struggle against Manland, but is dysfunctional when applied to individual pesons. Ferninist theory

(and Knsteva's work in particular) has since warned us that this ideology can become "an unbelievable force for subversion in the modem world": the woman "does not exist with a capital "Wu,possessor of some mythical unity - supreme power, on which is based the terror of power and terrorism as the desire for power" (455).

Any social order is sacrificid, but sacrifice orders violence, "tarnes if', while refusal of the social order uncovers the risk that the unchained power will explode and lead to absolute arbitrariness. Womanland illustrates this arbitrariness; it both proves and argues with

Kristeva's waming that the femaIe identification with power and the constitution of a fetishist counter-power are stmcturally related to the problem of tet~onsrn~~.Portraying Jael, then,

Russ demonstrates that the ferninist utopia treats violence as a viable option, with a seriousness that is centml to the feminist rhetoric of the 1970s. This counter-investment is evident in the anger, violence, and the rnilitary resistance required to strike back and dcstroy the coercive power of the current order which are represented in the terrorist Jael. Etut Russ does not let the reader judge Jael too harshly: Jad suffers from a profound guilt syndrome, but not for the murder and violence she cornrnits, for she is a victim, as well:

In my sleep I had a drearn and this drearn was a dream of guik It was not human guilt but the kind of helpfess, hopeless despair that would be felt by a small wooden box or geornetrical cube if such objects had consciousness; it was a guilt of sheer existence-

lt was the secret guik of disease, of failure, of ugliness (much more worse than murder) it was the attnbute of rny king like the greenness of the grass. It was in me. lt was on me. If it had been the resuft'of anything I had done, I would have been less guiily.

In my dream I was eleven pars old. (Russ FemI8 Man 193)

Jael later explains why she faels so guilty: an old-fashioned girl, she was brought up to believe that a woman (as a victim) is to blarne for dl of "those shadowy ferninine disasters, like pregnancy, like disease, like weakness" that happen to the woman in the patriarchal

society. In such violent acts as abuse or rape, tbe woman is considered " not only the victim of the act but in some strange way its perpetrator; somehow she attracted the lightning that stmck

39 Kristeva seems to approve of terrorism as the only means of selfdefense, as the result of reversing the social order, as "ihe inevitable product of what we have cdled a denial of the socio- syrnbolic contract and its counter-investment as the only means of self-defense in the struggle to safeguard an identity" (' Women and fower" 454). 224 her out of a clear sk~?This is how Jael describes over-hearing adults blarning another seventeen year-old girl for king raped:

Now, in my eleven years of conventional life I had iearned many things and one of them was Mat it means to be convicted of rape - 1 do not mean the man who did it, I mean the woman to whom it was done. ...A diabolical chance -which was not chance -had revealed her to al1 of us as she tmly was, in her secret inadequacy, in that wretched guiitiness which she had kept hidden for seventeen years but Mch now finally manifested itsetf in front of everybody. Her secret guitt was this:

She was Cunt-

She had 'lost' sornething (193)

Jael' s stoy shows patriarchal patterns of initiation of young fernales: through small talk and gossip into appropriate accepted modes of behavior. Never blarning the rapist, societal voices blame the victim instead:

Now the other party to the incident had manifested hi essential nature, too; he was Prick - but being Prick is nota bad thing. In fact, he had 'gotten away with' something (possibly what she had 'lost'). .

And there l was, Iistening at eleven years of age:

She was out iate at night

She was in the wrong part of town.

Her s kirt was too short and that provoked him.

She liked having her eye blacked and her head banged against the sidewalk.

I understood it perfectly. (193)

Though the young listener daims that she understands the situation, in fact, she does not, for she still wonders why the victim is guilty, and cm only associate this guilt with the mysterious Original Sin:

And if that isn't guitt, what is? I was very lucid in my nightmare. I knew it was not wrong to be a girl because Mornmy said so; cunts were al1 right if they were neutralized, one by one, by kinghmked to a man, but this orthodox arrangement only parüy redeems them and evety biologcal possessor of one knows in her bones aiat radical inferiority which is only another narne for Original Sin. (1 94)

But the grown-up Jael does not confom to patriarchd sex-roles: she articulates a passionate division from patriarchai identification: she is not like that, NON SUM, not a

victirnized object: "I, 61. Repeat it like magic. That is not me. 1am not that. Luther crying out

in the choir Like one possessed: NON SUM, NON SUM, NON SUM!" (Russ 195). Why, then, does she kill? Talking directly to the 'idiot reader', Jael rushes to explain her motivation:

Now hem the idiot reader is Iikeiy to hit upon a fascinating speculation (maybe a little too late), that my guiit is blood-guitt for having killed sa many men. I suppose there is nothing to be done about ai&. AnVbody wtio believes I feel guitty for the murciers I did is a Damned Fool in the full '8bliisense of those two words; you might as well kill yourseif ngM now and Save me the trouble, especially if you're male. I am not guiity because I murdered.

I rnurdered because I was guitty.

Murder is my way out. (195)

Her driving force, then, is revenge on al1 men for al1 the victirnized women. Like any other counter-society, Jael's Womanland is based on abjecting the man as the scapegoat, "on the expulsion of an excluded element, a scapegoat chirged with the evil of which the cornrnunity duly constituted can then purge itself' (Kristeva 'Women and Power" 453). Thus, male violence and aggression are replaced by femde terrorism; now the man becornes the excluded element, the sacrificial scapegoat: Tor every drop of blood shed there is restitution

to be made; with every huthful reflection in the eyes of a dying man 1 get back a little of my

soul; with every gasp of horrified comprehension 1 corne a little more into the Iight. See? It's

me!" (Russ Femle Man 195). The eventual slaughtering of al1 men is regarded as a necessary purge which will finally exonerate this comrnunity and make the utopian Whileaway possible. Here Russ portrays feminist ideology which becornes a kind of inverted sexism when this logic of

Iocating the guilty one in the other sex is followed to its conclusion. Jael demonstrates her tactical violence when she takes the three women dong on an assassination mission to

Manland. There, with her steel teeth and retractable claws, urged by her voluntary hysterical strength, she kills the male official by raking open his neck, chin, and back. This is yet another sacrificial scapegoat murdered in the war that will continue "until the beautiful, bloody moment that we fire these stranglers, these murderers, these unnatural and atavistic nature's bastards, off the face of the earth" (173). At her home, Jael demonstrates the freedom of her desire as the three J's watch her make love to Davy, her male humanoid sex-object. Later, the pragrnatic and straightforward Jael telis the three Js what kind of business she wants to do with thern:

We want bases on your worlds: we want raw materials if you've got them. We want places ?O recuperate and places ta hide an ami& we want places to store Our machines. Above all, we want places to move from - bases that the other side doesn't know about. Janet is obviousty an unoff-cial ambasador, so 1 can talk to her, that's fine. You two might object that you are perçons of no standing, but whom do you expect me to ask, your govemments? Also, we need someane who can show us the locai ropes. You'll do fine for me. You are the authonties, as far as 1 am concemed.

Well?

Is it yes or no?

Do we do business? (200)

Jael, thus, personifies the fighting force of change and becornes the catalyst of action to reach the utopian possibility. The paradox is that, seized by the same rage with which the

227 dominant order originally victirnized her, this female temorist resembles nobody else but a cynical Big Brother with his big technological club. Unlike Janet who offers a vision of a better place but no clear way to get there, Jael suggests violence as the only way to resist the present domination and open the path toward utopia, but no satisfactory vision of a more peacefùl and humanistic society. However, Joanna likes Jael best of dl, seeing in her "death's- head grimace" only a nervous tic, that has "intensified with time into sheer bad-angelry, lurninous with hate": "I think.. . that 1Iike Jael best of al1 us, that 1would like to be Jael, twisted as she is on the rack of her own hard logic, triumphant in her extrernity, the hatehl hero with a broken heart, which is like being a clown with a broken heart" (2 12).

Joanna: Usurp the Denied

Joanna, the "real life" character, appears in the novel as an oppressed woman who vocalizes ferninist ideology and gradually evolves into a threat to patriarchy. However, when she was five, she was a happy Little girl because she thought bat the world was a matriarchy and women had al1 the power:

I couldn't tell the difference between "gola* and "silver" or "night gown" and "evening gownn, so 5 imagined ail the ladies of the neighborhood getting together in their beautiful "night gownsn- which were signs of rank - and making al1 the decisions about Our fives, They were the govemrnent. My mother was President because she was a school teacher and local people deferred to her. Then the men would corne home from "work" (wherever that was; I thought it was like hunting) and lay "te baconnat the ladies' feet, to do with as they wished. The men were employed by the ladies to do this. (207)

Growing up, Joanna understands that matriarchy cm only be her fmtasy, and she starts yearning for power and fulfillment. She does not want "to be a 'ferninine' version or a diluted version or a special version, or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an

228 adapted version" (SM)of the male heroes she admires. She wants to be these heroes themselves: as a teenager, she wants societai approval, she needs somebody "to teil me it was

O.K. to be Humphrey Bogart (smart and rudeness), O.K. to be James Bond (arrogance), O.K. to be Superman (power), O.K. to be Douglas Fairbanks (swashbuckling), to tell mc that setf- love was al1 right, to tell me 1 could love Gdand Art and Myself better than anything on earth and still have orgasrns" (205). But societal approval does not corne because these virtues are reserved for men only; instead, Joanna is told she is a woman, and should therefore be "tirnid, incapable, dependent, nurturing, passive, intuitive, emotional, unintelligent, obedient, and beautifd" (Russ 205).

Throughout the novel, Joanna displays diffenng layers of complexity. Caught between

Janet's self-realization which occurred in Whileaway and Jeannine's self-suppression which occurred in the dark ages of prewar, Depression America, Joanna has achieved a certain amount of freedom but is still constantly rerninded that she is a "sexless sex object" (15 1) whose main role in life is to serve the Man. At the beginning of the novel Joanna is "moody, ill-at-ease, unhappy, and hard to be with" because al1 that patriarchy instructed her to do is

"dress for The Man, smile for The Man, talk wittily to The Man, syrnpathize with The Man, flatter The Man, understand The Man, defer to The Man, entertain The Man, keep The Man, live for The Man" (29). The reader sees her as a self-hating heterosexuai woman: "1 love my body dearly and yet 1 would copulate with a rhinoceros if 1 could become not-a-woman"

(15 1). This hatred is caused by her inferior status and constant societal brain-washing that

motherhood, subservience, dependency, respectability are desirable and "natural", whereas independence, freedom of choice, career, skills, fitness, even weaith are not essentiai for a woman to be happy, as the example below illustrates:

v

The Great Happiness Contest

(this happens a bt)

First Wornan: I'rn perfedy happy. 1 love my husband and we have two darling children. Icertainty don? need any change in my lot.

Second Woman: I'm even happier than you are. My husband does the dishes every Wednesday and we have three darling children, each nicer than the last, I'rn tremendously happy.

Third Woman: Neither of you is as happy as I am. I'm fantasticalfy happy. My husband hasn't Iooked at another woman in the frfteen pars we've been mamed, he helps around the house whenever I ask it, and he wouldn't mind in the least if I were to go out and get a job. But i'm happiest in fuifilling my responsibilities to him and the children. We have four children.

Fourth Woman: We have skchildren. (This is too rnany. A long silence.) 1 have a part-time job as a clerk in Bloomingdalels to payfor the skiing lessons, but I really feel Iam expressing myseif best when I make a custard or a meringue or decorate the basement.

Me: You miserable nits. I have a Nobel Peace Prize, fourteen published novels, six lovers, a town house, a box in the Metropolitan Opera, I fly a plane, Ifix my own car, and I can go eighteen push-ups before breakfast, that is, if you are interested in numbers.

All The Women: KiII, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. (116-1 17)

Russ accentuates the painful phases of change that Joanna goes through in order to main the sarne entitleinent to power as men. In the workplace, Joanna initiaily acts as if she were neuter. That was necessary for king identified as "One Of The Boys", for king included as part of her male-dorninated professional community. Behaving in the neuter mode ensured that she is not identified by her difference; otherwise she felt like she was wearing a sandwich board that said: "Look! 1 have tits!": l'II tell you how IWmed into a man.

First I had to turn into a woman.

For a long time I had been muter, not a wman at al1 but One Of The Boys, because if you waik into a gathering of men, professionaliy or othenivise, you might as well be wearing a sandwich board that says: LOOK! I HAVE TITS! There is this giggling and this chud

Describing her transformation into a woman with a man's rnind, Joanna still judges its success by societal approval: unless everybody says so, her transformation is not complete.

Then a new interest enters her life when she meets the utopian Janet (29). Janet shows

Joanna the possibilities of anger and violence against men, lesbian love and desire, as well as the vision of an entire society of lesbians. Influenced by Janet, Joanna transforrns into an emerging Lesbian, but she is still "dissatisfied with things" and, as she explains, "it is not because 1 am a Lesbian. It's because 1am a tall, blonde, blue-eyed Lesbian ". Implied in this description is that she still lwks like a stereotypical object of male desire; in fact, she still loves men's bodies but hates men's min& (209). Finally, we see her turning into a man. In observing Janet toss the host of a cocktail party across the floor and Iater initiate the teenage

Laura Rose Wilding into lesbian love-making, Joanna is motivated to change, especially when she sees the contrasting enslavement of Jeannine. She sees in Janet's violence and desire (and in her sisterhood and self-confidence) a rde mode1 that inspires her. She decides to throw off her old identity, rejecting "the brand name" that reduces her to a sexual comrnodity, and become a "female man":

For pars I wandered in the desert, crying: Why do you tonnent me so? and Why do you hate me so? and Why do you put me dom so? and I will abase myself and 1 will please you and Why, oh why have puforsaken me? This is al1 very feminine. What 1 leadlate in Me,under my min of lava, under my kiP-or-cure, unhappiiy, sbwiy, stubbomly, barely, and in really dreadhil pain, was that there is one and only one way to possess that in which we are defective, therefore that which we need, therefore that which we want. Becorne it. (1 39)

Joanna's decision and subsequent transformation are described as highly syrnbolic performative acts4'. Russ actually depicts her female man "assurning" a new sex through a speech act initiating a new signifjmg practice: "if you let yourself through yourself and into yourself and out of yourself, tum yourself inside out, give yourself the kiss of reconciliation, marry yourself, love yourself -/ WeIl, 1 turned into a man" ( Russ The Fenuzle Man 139). But what is the product of this transformation? This new subject is violent, egocentric, rebellious, yeming to be powerful, but still obsessed with the feeling of guilt. 1 would suggest that these features are quite recognizable: they are patriarchal virtues reserved for men. To become a

"female man", Joanna needs to acquire a new attitude to violence, desire, and love. Much like other radical feminist fiction, Russ's novel reveals the hegemony of patriarchal ideology, particularly in suppressing female identities, seeing men as both degenerate and irremediable. Ironically, while passionately rejecting male subjectivity as oppressive, and ptacing men in the position of the disgusting "other," thus reversing the existing socio-symbolic contract, Russ usurps the oppressor's subjectivity for her "femde man." From the infinity of multiple and contestatory utopian identifications, she chooses a transformation of female subjectivity which denies nurturing, enriching, constructive, materna1 traits and welcomes hatred, violence, dorninance, and arrogance4'. This seems to be Russ's alternative for the present-day oppressed female subjects: to resolve their desire by the assumption of male places and practices42.In this respect, Russ's new subject, the female man, becomes associated with everything fer which feminism has so ostensibly criticized men.

This process of becorning a man starts at the beginning of the novel and continues in

Part Seven, entirely devoted to Joanna's transformation. Claiming that she is "the female man" of the title ["I have just tumed into a man, me, Joanna 1 rnean a female man" (Fernale Man

S)], Joanna explains:

If we are al1 Mankind, it follows to my interested and righteous and ngM now very bn'ght and beady lile eyes, that I too am a Man and not at al1 a Woman.... I think I am a Man; I think you had better cail me a Man; I t hink you will write about me as Man from now on and speak of me as Man and employ me as a Man, and recognue child-rearing as a Man's business; ... I am a man. (And you are a

40 Butier (Bodies Thar Maiîer 1993) argues that "the symbolic is understood as the normative dimension of the constitution of the sexed subject within language. It consists in a series of demands, taboos, sanctions, injunctions, prohibitions, impossible ideaiizations, and threats - performative speech acts, as it were, that wield the power to produce the field of culturally viable sexual subjects : perfonnative acts, in other words, with the power to produce or matenaiize subjectivatingeffects" (106). 4 1 As Russ never defines her "female men" other than by arrogance, violence, and hunger for power, it remains obscure what positive female braits are preserved in her new subjects. It also seems that Russ neglects the losses their fernininity suffers, as well as the emotional and physical consequences of their violence and anger. 42 In Appendix 6, 1present a linguistic pragmatic analysis of a passage kom "the Book of Joannal* in which Russ portrays what 1 cal1 "aggressiveness training": Joanna understands that she will be devalorized and mis-represented unless she adopts male behaviour. 233 woman.) That's the -le secret. ... Listen to the female man. If you don't, by God and al1 the Saints, I'H break your ne& (1 40)

This passage is crucial for the novel and important for the genre itself because this is where the fernale man finally emerges; and the first act of this becoming-subject is violence.

Through language, Russ atternpts to construct a new semiotic place for her new subject, obviously playing with the ambiguity arising from the meaning of Man as Homo Sapiens and man as male: her Mankind is simultaneously humanity and the male woulation of the planet.

Compared to the homophobic violence which the totally denied Jeannine chooses, the activism adopted by Joanna requires more time to develop and is of a more complex variety, for Joanna lives in the "developed rnetropolis of postwar affluent society. Whereas for

Jeannine the process of "becoming a female man" is facilitated by the utopian Janet, for

Joanna the decisive step from awareness to action is only possible after she retums from Jael's world, impressed by the power of direct violence. Thus Jael becomes the catalyst that moves

Joanna from awareness to action. The male virtues Joanna acquires are arrogance and violence, but they are useless unless directed against an "other", a powerless, oppressed subject, be it man or woman [and this is where the (con)fusion of the key concepts is completed, because the subjectivity of the victirn no longer matters]. In Part Nine, Joanna accomplishes her transformation into a female man with her own rnicro-structural violence:

I cornmitteci my f irst revolutionary act yesterday. I shut the door on a man's thumb. I did itfor no reason at aland I didn't warn him; I just slammed the door shut in a rapture of hatred and irnagined the bone breaking and the edges grinding into his skin. He ran downstairs and the phone rang wildiy for an hour after while I sat, listening to it, my heart beating wildiy, thinking wild thoughts. Horrible. Homble and wild. I must find JaeL(203) Two sections later, she cornmits "the crime of creating one's own Reality" by making love to Laura: "1can't describe to you how reality itself tore wide open at that moment" (208).

Finally, acting on the anger and desire that she obseded in Janet and Jael and then found in herself, Joanna is initiated into the movement and sets off on her own path of resistance: she writes the novel we are reading. Her book is 'kritten in blood and tears" because it is a passionate denial of female inferior positioning in patriarchy, but it is also full of hope and

anticipation of a better future. Joanna says, " This book is written in blood. 1s it written entirely in blood? No, some of it is written in tears. Are the blood and tears al1 mine? Yes, they have ken in the past. But the future is a different matter" (95). h her act of writing the very text in which she appears, Joanna is totally "liberated", and her matemality tums into her creativity, evident in her aectionate attitude to the "little book", she is writing. It is notable that, while still engaged in writing, Joanna anticipates the rnainstream negative response to her namative.

This response is important because it demonstrates the dialogic nature of the feminist utopia and its potential for accomrnodating both fiction and .theory. Russ discloses symbolic violence of patriarchal discourse when she describes negative critical reviews of her book. Again, she is portraying a heteroglossia of anonymous societal voices that attempt to ward off her reasoning as "ephemeral trash.. . missiles of the sex war" but develop nothing more than flat denial:

We would gladiy have listened to her (they said) if oniy she had spoken like a lady. But they are liirs and the twth is not in them. Shrill.. .vituperative.. . no concern for the future of society.. . maunderings of antiquated feminisrn.. . selfish femlib.. .needs a good lay. .. this shapeless book. .. of course a dmand objective discussion is beyond.. . twisted, neurotic... some truth burÏed in a large& hysterical... of very limited interest, I should.. . another tract for the trash-can.. .bumed her bm and thought that.. .no characte&tion, no plot.. . really important issues are neglected while.. .hemetically sealed.. . women's limited experience... another of the screaming sisteM... a not very appeaîing aggressiveness ... could have been done with wit if the author had ... deflowering the pretentious male.. .a man would have given his rigM arm to.. ,highly girlish.. . a &aman's book ..-another shnll polemic *ch h... a mere male like myself can hardiy.. .a brillimt but basically confused study of feminine hysteria whiih., . feminine lack of objectivity.. this pretense at a novel.. .trying to shock ... the tired tricks of the anti-novelists.. .how often must a poor critic have to.. . the usuai boring obligatory references to Lesbiinism.. . denial of the profound sexual polarity which.. .an ail too vmmanly refusal to fa& fam... pseudo-masculine brusqueness.. .the ladiesm-magazinelevel.. .trivial top6 like housework and the prediile screams of.. .thase who cuddled up to bail-breaker Kate will., . unfortunateiy sexless in its outlook. .. drivel., a waped clinical protest against.. . vioientiy waspish akck.. .formidable self-pity whih erodes any chance of.. . fomless.. . the inability to accept the female role which.. .. The predictable fury at anatomy displaced to.. .without the grace and compassion whiih we have the right to expect.. anatomy is destiny.. . destiny is anatomy. - .sharp and funny but without red weight or anything beyond a topical. .. just plain bad.. .we Wear ladies," whom Russ would do away wiîh, unfortunatelyjust do not feel... ephemeral trash, missiles of the sex war.. . a female lack of experience which .. ..

Q.E.D. Quod erat demonstrandurn. lt has: been proved. (Russ 140-141)

At the end of the novel, Joanna imagines her "littie daughter-book" (2 13) going out into the world to be read. Joanna herself is exhausted; she says: 'Tm a God's typewriter and the ribbon is typed out" (2 13). Though she cannot bring about a decisive social change that will set women free, her book cm describe al1 her problems of attempting such an action and reveal the ways in which patriarchal construction of female subjectivity can be transgressed.

The imaginative gap is bound through this awareness of the book as fiction and theory that provokes social action. This final monologue demonstrates a number of important developments for the feminist utopian genre. First, Russ advocates the creative action of writing as a viable way out of oppression. Writing a female-sexed text is thus portrayed as an important contribution to ferninist movement. Russ's monologue is dialogic in as much as she remembers the names of prominent feminist theorists: Friedan, Greer, Firestone, Millett. In the context of their rhetoric, ferninist action also means consciousness raising and organization of women with common goals of eradication and challenging oppression. Writing gives voice to

236 experience, documents oppression and change, and cornrnunicates women's experiences to

the readers. It cmbe argued, then, that for Joanna the writing of the book is the birthing of

herself. But the emancipated Joanna also does some unexpected things: she asks her

daughter-book to tell her former husband that she still loves him. She instnicts the book to

"behave herself' and not to be too aggressive in provoking social change. Joanna hopes that

her book will have a life in the world, grow old and die - become obsolete. This is, then, the anticipated finale - the book cm only grow obsolete after it affects the socio-historic change, and patriarchy is eliminated. On that day, "we will be free":

Go, Iitk book, trot through Texas and Vermont and Alaska and Maryland and Washington and Florida and Canada and England and France; bob a curtsey at the shrines of Friedan, Millet, Greer, Firestone, and al1 the rest; behave yourseif in people's living rooms, neither looking ostentatious on the coffee table nor failng to petsuade due to the dullness of your style; knock at the Christmas garland on my husband's door in New York Ciand tel him that l loved him truiy and love hirn still (despite what anybody may think); and take your place brave@on the book racks of bus terminais and drugstores. Do n~tscrearn when you are ignored, for that will alarm people, and do not fume when you are heisted by persons who will not pay, rather rejoice that you have become so popular. Live menily, little daughter-book, even if I can't and we cm?; mite yourseff to al1 who would Iisten; stay hopeful and wise- Wash your face and take pur place without a fuss in the Lîbrary of Congress, for al1 kksend up there eventually, bthlile and big.

Do not cornplain when at last pubecorne quaint and old-fashioned. when you grow as outwom as the crinolines of a generation ago and are classed with Spicy Western Stones, Elsie Dinsmore, and The Son of the Sheik; do not mutter angdiy to yourself when young persons read you to hrooch and hrch and guffaw, wondering what the dickens you were al1 about. Do not get glum when you are no longer understood, little book. Do not curse your fate. Do not reach up from readers' laps and punch the readers' noses.

Rejoice, iiie book!

For on that day, we will be free. (213-214)

The Female Man promotes not Whileaway as its ideal utopian society, but the utopian

idea that one day this book will no longer be understd because the stniggles for recognition

237 - that its protagonists wage will no longer be necessary: the world will have changed enough for gender inequality and stereotypes to be considered fictional.

Identification Revisii

'Who am I? 1know who 1am, but what's my brand name?' @uss Female Man 19).

This question keeps turning up in Russ's novel as her four protagonists seek re-codification for the dis-empowered paûiarchal w0rna1-1~~.They want to divide themselves from the patriarchal identification because it is permeated with bittemess and pain; as Russ keeps rerninding us, al1 that patriarchy taught the four J's is'how to despise themselves. According to

Burke, 'Tdentification is afçinned with earnestness precisely because there is division.

Identification is compensatory to division.. .. Put identification and division arnbiguously together, so that you cannot know for certain where one ends and the other begins, and you have the characteristic invitation to rhetoric" (Rhetoric 22,25). Russ's new identification for the woman is problematic because, while the dis-identification with patriarchy is definiteIy present, there is too little cornrnonality to unite the four J's other than by this division from patriarchy. As Butler (Bodies That Maîîer 1993) rerninds us, certain identifications and affiliations are made precisely in order to institute a disidentification with a position that seems too saturated with injury or aggression.

43 The pairiarchal term was rejected by feminist theorists because it caiis for false universality that diffiises individual differences; as Rose Braidotti says, " Womn is a general urnbreiia term that brings together different kinds of women, different levels of experience and different identities" (Braidotti 415).

238 : How, then, can the old identification be transgressed? According to feminist theorists, re-codification can only occur when women appropriate power and new signifLing practices44.

Russ's utopia, then, reflects the early feminist attempts to identiQ with power and develop signifjhg practices previously denied for the fernale subject. In paiucular, Russ explores contrasting conceptions of power: power over and power to, the first of which is acquisitive and grounded in appropriation (in this case, of masculine virtues), while the latter is to do with internat empowerment (individually or by society). While these two conceptions of power are not necessady mutually exclusive, in the utopian worlds (Whileaway and Womanland) they are separately construed. One of ferninist scholars, Frances Bartowski, observes that this distinction between the two types of power is generic for the feminist utopia:

The feminist utopian novel is a place where theories of power can be addressed through the construction of nanatives that.test and stretch the boundanes of power in itç operational details. Writing from the margins and coming into speech in full knowiedge of the abuses power ove4 feminists have terided to imagine instead about power to, they have needed and chosen to take up the materiality of language, in order to install a self as subject, knowing that the seîf has also been subjected. (Bartows ki 5)

In Russ's dystopian Womanland, the gender conflict is translated into a direct power struggle, a war which started forty years ago and will be fought until the death of the last man on the planet. In contrast to this ever-lasting war, on the utopian Whileaway the issue of difference is re-channelled into the difference within each woman: power here is used to promote the singularity of each woman [this process illustrates a more recent feminist current which, as Kristeva explains, intends "to channel this demand for difference into each and

44 sexual difference - which is at once biologicd, physiological, and relative to reproduction, - is translated by and translates into a difference in the relationship of subjects to the symbolic contract

239 every element of the female whole, and finally, to bnng out the singularity of each woman, and beyond this, her multiplicities, her plural languages" (Kristeva 'Women and Powef'

458)]. But, even on Whileaway, the homologation of society is accompanied by assimilation of the woman into the masculine modes of action; therefore, masculine virtues are valorized.

Bartowski also directs our attention to the power of language in shaping the subject. It is worth rerninding here that, as Burke argues, identification with a particuiar group or perspective is contingent upon human motivations that may onIy be signified "in terms of verbal action, and which ultimately serve the purpose of uniQing us to see things in terms of some thing rather than its other counterpart" (Grammur 49). According to Burke, therefore, human experience is an on-going drama of life in which human actions result from the ways in which people respond to language. Joanna's painful attempts to respond to her patriarchal identification through language exempli@ the inauthenticity of patriarchal language :

Being told I was a woman.

At sixteen, gMng up.

In college, educated women (1 found out) were frigid; active wornen (1 knew) were neurotic; wornen (we ail knew) were timid, incapable, dependent, nurturing, passive, intuitive, emotional, unintelligent, obedient, and beautiful. You can ahnrays get dressed up and go to a party. Woman is the gateway to another world; Woman is the earth-mother; Woman is the etemal siren; Woman is purity; Woman is carnality; Woman has intuition; Woman is the Vie-force; Woman is selfless love.

"Iam the gateway to another world, * (sau 1, looking in the mirror) "1 am the earth- rnother; I am the etemal siren; 1 am pur&," (Jeez, new pimples) "1 am camality; f have intuition; I am the Me-force; I am selfles love." (Somehow it sounds diÏerent in the first person, doesn't it?)

Honey (said the minor, scandalized) Are ypu out of purfuckin' minci?

IAM HONEY

which is the social contract: a difference, then, in the relationship to power, language, and rneaning. (Kristeva 'Women and Power" 449) 240 1 AM RASPBERRY JAM I AM A VERY GOOD LAY

I AM A GOOD DATE

1 AM A GO00 WIFE

Lofty generaiizations about the Woman as b'earth-rnother," "purity" and the like faIl apart and sound false when Joanna 'tries them on' in front of the mirror. They can only be used in the generic sense (here, in the 1" person plural). However, these generalizations make no sense when individualized (used in the 3* person singular). Conversely, demeaning and denigrating patriarchal identifications cmeasily apply to an individual woman, but they make

Joanna 'crazy'. Totally confused and nauseated, she keeps on looking for the key word in the patriarchal identifications (which she describes as "vomit") until she is ordered to stop acting like a man. Again, the anonymous voice in this remark syrnbolizes the constant patriarchal monitoring and brainwashing that renders women self-less and soul-less. Russ describes this brutal censorship as "constant male refractoriness of Our surroundings" that tears the women's souls out of their bodies:

(Then Idecided that the key word in al1 this vomit was self-ess and that if 1 was really di the things books, f riends, pare*, teachers, dates, movies, relatives, doctors, newspapers, and magao'nes said 1 was, then if I acted as I pleased without thinking of al1 these things I would be ail these things in spite of my not trying to be ail these things. Ço-

( Christ, will you quit acting like a man!")

Alas, it was never meant for us to hear. It was never meant for us to know. We ought never to be taught how to read. We fight through the constant male refractoriness of out sunoundings; our souls are tom out of us with such shock that there isn't even any bW.(Russ n7e Femaie Mn205-206) While questioning patriarchal identifications for the woman, Russ is exposing the

constraints of patriarchal language that, as Witting comrnents, "is worked upon from within by

these strategic concepts" of manhood and womanhood (Wittig 'The Straight Mind" 409).

Russ is trying to overcome patriarchal "patterns of linguistic sexism" such as domination and privileging of mas~ulinit~~~.However, Russ does not find any other signifier for her new subject than a female man. Her tiùe is arnbiguous because, as she describes, her female man is a man with a woman's body and a woman's soul, so his only male features are those associated with the mind, i.e. ego, mentality, ideology, signimng practices, and the Iike. She rnight be better off with a neologism (neologisms and occasional lexical coinages are generic for science fiction and utopia), but she chooses to be ironic rather than inventive. 'Manhood' remains unidentified in the novel, while 'fernininity' is associated with feebieness and incapacity. Russ's Jeannine is "fleeing from the unspeakableness of her own wishes - for what happens when you find out that you want something that doesn't exist?" (125). She is trapped within the limitations of patriarchal language when she thinks about her experiences on Whileaway: "Why does she keep having these dreams about Whileaway? While-away.

While. A. Way. To While away the time. That means it's just a pastirne. If she tells Cal about it, he'll say she's nattering again; worse still, it wou~,soundsiiiy (you can't expect a man to listen to everythng (as everybody's Mother said)" (108). Likewise, when the adolescent

Laura tries to find out who she is, she is trapped within the inarticulate rigidity of patriarchal discourse: "She's the girl who wanted to be Genghis Khan. When Laura tried to find out who she was, they told her she was "different" and that's a hell of a description on which to base

45 Gershuny identifies such patterns of iinguistic sexism as gendered hierarchies and the privileging 242 your life; it cornes down to either "not-me" or "Coninient-for me" and what is one supposed

to do with that? What am 1 to do? (she says) What am 1to feet? Is "supposed" like "spouseci"?

1s "different" like "detenorate"? How cm I eat or sleep? How cm1 go to the moon?" (208).

Butier in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sa" (1993) argues that

"Identification is a phantasmic trajectory and resolution of desire; an assurnption of place; a temtorializing of an object which enables identity through the ternporary resolution of desire, but which remains desire, if only in its repudiated fom" (99). It can be argued, then, that the four J's strive to acquire a new identification that wards off patriarchal desire and acts as a vehicle for ernancipated desire: in her patriarchal surroundings, Jeannine dways wants something else, and Joanna is a wornan with a man's mind who wants to be a female man.

Butler further wams that "there is no subject who decides on its gender" (200).She speculates that if such a "willful and instrumental subject" could actually decide on its gender, it could, therefore, "wake up in the moming, peruse the closet or some more open space for the gender of choice, take that gender for the day, and then restore the garment to its place at night"

(Butler x). She concludes that such a subject, "one who decides on its gender, is clearly not its gender from the start and fails to realize that its existence is already decided by gendei' (x).

Therefore, Russ's attempts to create a subject who can decide on its (already pre-existing) gender appear futile because gender is not an artifice to be taken on or off at will. On the contrary, "gender is part of what decides the subject" (x). Russ's predicament may therefore be predestined by her gender (for her as the authoress, gender is not an effect of choice), as well as by the impossible task to portray a gender-less subject.

of masculinity (Gershuny 19 1). 243 According to Burke, a whole range of signiwng practices exists pnor to the subject, and rhetoric often functions as a system of unconscious identifications which serve to constitute the subject. Burke argues that language and human motivation are not autonomous entities but, rather, are inseparable and intrinsically related. Thus, 1 suggest that the 'Temale man" identification functions as a site for ambivalent prohibition and production of desire.

Butler reminds us that, "[ilf to assume a sex is in some sense an "identification", then it seems that identification is a site at which prohibition and deflection are insistently negotiated. To identify with a sex is to stand in some relation to an imaginary kat,irnaginary and forceful, forceful precisely because it is imaginary" (Bodies That Matter 100). Russ's protagonists do have a choice to keep their identification as women, but they choose a hegemonic identification of a man. Since gender is constmcted through relations of power and specifically, through normative constraints that not only produce, but aiso regulate various subjects, then, to identie with a man, even partially, does not necessarily rnean to oppose a female desire, but to re-direct it.

1 would like to make two observations here: 1) utopia presents a possibility for a subject to decide on its gender (cf. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness); 2) the readers are going to "read" (or guess) the gender of the subject anyway. Huwever, Russ's choice of her tenn female man does not make her readers' job easy: in the novel, the "fernale man" identification remains sornewhat inarticulate and confusing. Russ does not even explain whether her god-tenn 'Yemaie man" represents a gendered subject at dl. As Burke asserts, god-terms can ''uniy people towards a certain view of social order and cm often work to obscure or "mystify" the rhetorical motives which, in effect, have served to constitute the terms themselves; the term female man reflects Russ's calculated arnbiguity. Moreover, in the novel, Russ's fernale man is multiply identified. This identification is fluid and at times obscure, because for this book female man is not a rigid designator: it does not pick up the same referent in the utopian worlds. hstead, as a non-rigid designator, it describes each of the four protagonists in their respective worlds.

It is even more mystifying when we remember that, as feminist theorists argue, the new identification for the woman is not based on the 'other', but on the difference of 'desire': while developing and operating "without equal in the opposite sex", it remains "exploded, plural, fluid, in a certain way nonidentical"(Kristeva 'Wornen and fowei' 448). Thus, developing ferninist traditions that challenge the patriarchai Law of Identity, Kristeva maintains that femaie subjectivity is nomadic, unnameable, resisting definitions that are lirnited within biological, social constmctionist, or cultural interpretations. This definition reminds of how Russ describes the statue of the female God on Whileaway: "She is a constantly changing contradiction. .. . She becomes in tum gentle, termng, hateful, Ioving,

"stupid" (or "dead") and finally indescribable" (Female Man 103).

Al1 four Js share the same genotype, but not the sarne genealogy; therefore, they develop different identities. Identity, says feminist theorkt Rose Braidotti (and her position contrasts with Kristeva's), "is a play of multiple, fracnired aspects of the self; it is relational, in that it requires a bond to the 'other'; it is retrospective, in that it is fixed through mernories and recollections, in a genealogical process" (Braidotti 4 18). Russ's four protagonists display the potentialities of the same female self in differing socio-historic contexts, avoiding the false universality of the subject. Each wonian's socio-histonc situation is unique, and each J still demonstrates a strong relationship with her own history, and genealogy. Russ, thus, portrays

how ideology and discourse work to order the four J's perceptions and motivate their actions

in different ways. Her protagonists' identifcations only become meaningful when explained

through their ideologies. According to Burke,

ldeology is like spirit taking up its abode in the it makes that body hop around in certain ways; and that same body would have hopped around in dierent ways had a different ideology happened to inhabii it. (Language6)

Russ's protagonists have a sirnilar bodily image; however, they develop strikingly different identities because the ideologies taking abode in these bodies are drasticaily different.

While the dystopian Jeannine is characterized by narcissism, fear, passivity, and dependence, the utopian Janet is associated with strength, intelligence, imagination, and adaptability.

Jeannine and Joanna have a similar condition of sisterhood in oppression and exclusion, but their oppressive situations are obviously not the sarne. The third J, the super-terrorist and guerrilla fighter Jael, is obsessed with fierce independence, cunning, power, and anger.

Joanna, the fourth character, is the primary narrator in the novel, who isolates each of these potential persons within herself. She asserts her active presence in shaping the text and in pushing the conflict to excess by developing the other J's worlds in her narration and carefully monitoring the way they respond to their encounter. Explorhg the possibilities inherent in their common genotype, Russ probes the way towards uniting the contrarieties between the patriarchai god-terrns, thus resolving their conflict and eliminating the difference: as she advises, "to resolve contrarieties, unite them in your own person" (Russ Fernale Man 138).

However, Russ shows that this attempt cannot be not successful. As she cornments, "You can't unite woman and human any more than you can unite matter and anti-matter; they are

246 designed not tu be stable together and they make just as big an explosion in the head of the

unfortunate girl who believes in both" (15 1).

While the four J's confront each other and move towards the identification with the

"fernale man", Russ articulates the ideological question comrnon to critical utopias. This

question concems the strategies for overturning the patriarchal order and moving towards an

emancipated society. Ali four J's are driven to feminism which "liberates in women ... also

their desire for fixedom, lightness, justice, and self-accomplishrnent" (Braidotti 41 8-9).

Within this feminist orientation, Russ's strategy is separatism which for her is the only way

to ensure success for the women's rnovement. Separztism asserts a revolution of women

alone, for a revolution of men cannot be trusted to succeed. Russ's book provides several separatist trajectories to the assumption of the new place, describing the dystopia of Jael's

Womanland and the lesbian utopia of Whileaway.

Portraying her utopian society, Russ atkmpts to transgress sexuai difference through

advocating lesbianism. This strategy to ensure recodification of the woman into a dominant

subject is not new, it has kenenvisioned before. For example, Monique Wittig emphasized

the change in perspective when she proclaimed: "For us - lesbians and gay men - there is no

such thing as being-woman or being-man. "Man" and "woman" are political concepts of

opposition" ("The Straight Mind" 408-9):

What is woman? Panic, general alarm for an active defense. Frankly, it is a problem that the lesbians do not have because of a change in perspective, and it would be incorrect to say that lesbians associate, make love, live with women, for "womannhas rneaning only in heterosexuai economic systems. Lesbians are not women. (Wittig "Straight Min@ 410) As Wittig here argues, lesbians refuse king identified as women, but they are neither men, and this lack of meaningful identification, probably, constitutes Russ's motivation for creating her term female man.

To overcome the symbdic violence of patriarchal discourse, Russ articulates a strategy of collective and non-hierarchical effort rather than leaving the process of social change to enlightened individuals. Women must work together in ail their diversity and disagreement, for alone woman will not break through the bonds of the present system. In this sense, the novel exemplifies Russ's definition of ~to~ia~~as it promotes women's bonding.

However, at the sarne time, Russ's utopia challenges her own definition: far from king peaceful, the book is dense with female rage and female self-defense, and, at a certain level of reading, S~~~OUSIYsuggesting violence as the only alternative to the oppressed female subject.

Russ also promotes the feminist message that the personai is political, or rather, that ferninist politics are more concemed with women's personai experiences in pahiarchy. In the example below, Russ again portrays her argument with anonymous patriarchai voices: "You ouglzt tu be interested in politics.. .. NO squabble between the Republican League and the Democrat

League will ever change your life. Concealing your anxiety over the phone when He calls; that's your politics. StiH you ought tu be interested in politics. Why aren't you? Because of ferninine incapacity" (203). Even the passive and weak Jeannine gets interested in the

46 Russ defines feminist utopia as <'explicitabout &onomics and politics, sexually permissive, demystifjing about biology, ernphatic about the necessity for femaIe bonding, concerned with children ... non-urban, classless, communal, relatively peacehl while aliowing room for female rage and fernale seIfdefense, and serious about the exnotional and physical consequences of violence" (Russ "Amor Vincit Foerninm" 15). 248 feminist politics at the end of the novel: she says 'goodbye' to patriarchal Politics and 'hello' to the new politics (209).

Within this separatist and non-hierarchical collective strategy, Russ's tactics of change begin with the process of consciousness raising as each woman becomes aware of her own oppression, that of other women, and the possibilities of change which lie in the cornrnon action. Such awareness does not autornatically happen (due to the syrnbolic coercion of the dominant discourse); therefore, both Janet and Jael engage in the process of political organizing of the other two J's. However, their tactics are diverse. The education, socialization, and service required to continue the new social alternative are represented in the utopian Janet, especially in her care for Laura, but also in her life and work in Whileaway. Jael promotes a different set of tactics, rerniniscent of "the more radical feminist currents which, refusing homologation to any role of identification with existing power no matter what the power may be, make of the second sex a counter-society"(Kristeva 'Women and Power"

453). There is, yet, a similarity between the two organizers in their appropriation of patriarchal virtues of arrogance, violence, and dominance for their "female man" identification.

While the overall strategy necessitates separatism from men to avoid any chance of compromise, the need for the women's colIective tactical activity remains unfuIfilled. Despite their common strategy, the protagonists pursue differing tactics. Paradoxicaily, they do not achieve collective action (though Jael suggests it), because their consubstantiality is lacking crucial aspects, such as cornmonality of discourse and ideology. Therefore, other than in their unifying resistance to patriarchy, the four protagonists do not engage in cooperation. While, as Burke observes, cooperation arises from the ways in which individuals corne to identify with a particular social perspective by dividing thewelves fiom other perspectives and forming social groups, these ways for the four J's are,distinctly different. As Burke stresses, people often form allegiances with others through transcending identifications which oppose the world views that they rnay hold; and this is what happens in this instance of genre.

Russ's rhetoric is well-articulated: her novel becarne an important site for social critique, thus promoting feminist strategies of cultural resistance. Teresa de Lauretis describes such "forms of cultural resistance" in the following way: Wot only cm they work to turn dominant discourses inside out (and show that it cm be done)... they also challenge theory in its own tenns, the temof a semiotic space constructed in language, its power based on social validation and well-established modes of enunciation and address" (quoted in Godard 53).

Examining the UsArnericm socio-historic context of the 1970s as a multiplex and contradictory assemblage of closures for the woman, ,The Fernale Man also portrayed the gradua1 process of identification of al1 the four wornen. As they seek out and are found by the others, their interdependent individual and collective development continues until the final dinner, ironically on Thanksgiving Day, after which they go off on their own revolutionary ways in their îransformed identities. Syrnbolized in this instance, is "the possibility of a woman whose wholeness and scope are indeed 'speculative,' a Joanna who acknowledges who she has ken, who and where she is, and thus has knowledge and control of what she can become" (Hacker 15). Whereas this can be said of the development of a single free and actualized female subject, it does not hold for the four J's as a group, because they are not united. Since identification is "a kind of transcendence," it could, as Burke argues, serve to eliminate disharmony, thereby enabling people to subscribe to certain world views: "with such identification there is a partially dream-like, idedistic motive, somewhat compensatory to real differences or divisions, which the rhetoric of identification would transcend" (203).

However, dishamony is not elirninated in Russ's utopia, and its constructive role remains unfülfilled as the novel does not facilitate any rediscovery. Russ does not attempt to portray a more humanitarian, egalitanan society; therefore neither the protagonists nor the readers "have a sense of corning home to a nwturing, liberating environment" (Pearson "Corning Home"

63). Their separate paths lead the four Js to the denial of their own female identification, to partial appropriation of male subjectivity, to anarchy, and the eventual fusion of the key pahiarchal divides of biological/social, fernale(femininity)/ male(masculinity), personaVp0litica.l.

Through multiplicity and montage, Russ is able to use the idea of utopia as an interactive process of constantly challenging and becorning rather than the closed and fixed act of a created utopia. By forcing the readers to engage with the text as a fictional construction, while notions of gender and reality are deconstmcted within the novelistic world, the binary opposition of fiction.reality is transgressed. Utopia in The Fernale Man is not somewhere but something; a revolutionary activity, an imaginative space that both condemns dominant power structures and encourages action that will lead to change in the future. Conclusion: Utopian Genre as Feminist Strategy

Now, in the year 2000, the ferninist utopia of the 1970s is far from king terra incognita, but it is still an uncertain temtory that allows for diverse readings. Feminist utopian discourse is not the sole property of the ferninist discourse cornrnunity; feminist utopias go into the world (as both Bryant and Russ ask their books to do) revealing a plurality of identifications that transcend the patriarchal gender constructions. To conclude, I'd like to review the major findings of the study. I will start with the relationship of the feminist utopia to the antecedent genre and continue by discussing the chronotope of the feminist utopia. 1 will furthcr outline its ideological functions discussed in the dissertation, its feminist message and narrative content, and its interventions into the patriarchal genre. 1will conclude by suggesting implications for Our understanding of the feminist utopia as a generic strategy for envisioning the new social order.

Findings

1 fond patbiarchd approaches to utopianism incomplete because they contribute to the common-sense understanding of utopia as a perfect society. Utopian thought is far more interesting and complex than is allowed by the standard view of utopia as a genre that represents a perfect society and offers a blueprint for change of many patriarchal codes with the notable exception of sexism (Booker 337-338). Traditional approaches, therefore, produce inappropriate and unacknowledged closed representations of utopianism. Most mearchers now rejet perfection as a characteristic of past definitions on the bais of the following two 252 arguments: fmt, very few eutopias present societies that the author believes to be perfect.

Perfection, even in the mainstrearn utopia, is the exception, not the nom. Second, a perfect society cmonly be achieved by force; thus, utopianism cm potentiality promote totalitarianism and advocate force and violence. However, without the tem 'perjiect' in the definitions of utopia, part of the logic of this argument would disappear.

Feminist citical discourse on utopia is openended - and, at times, problematic. Quite often, its rhetoric stems from traditional middle-income (often radical and separatist) feminist positions that narrow its scope by excluding (or failing to represent) positions of other humanist groups. Feminist discourse is, then, profoundly ideologica14': in the 1WOs, the vast majority of feminist utopias themselves and their critiques were the product of white Western feminism. This movement's self-consciousness regeing its historical racism and cultural imperialism was reflected in its ambivalent attitude towards class and race4'. These studies might have been revolutionary in the 1970s, but they suggest a different reading in the 1990s. 1 found most criticai cornmentary of the 1970s and early 1980s unidimensional and unable to satisfactorily define the feminist utopia as a genre precisely because it often defines consubstantidity on very rigid grounds.

For exarnple, any utopia that was not radically feminist was excluded from analysis, as it happened with Bryant's The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You. However, utopian thought has always been transgressive of boundaries. Indeed, Ernst Bloch identified utopia in terms of

47 As Burke reminds us, criticisrn is an ideological enterprise: acts of reading and writing are ideological because they serve "the interests of a powerful group of iiterary intellectuals" (Behr 47). 48 Dorothy Bryant in The Kin of Ata Are Wuitingfor You breaks this stigrna by rnaking her Augustine a black woman with Nordic features and blue eyes. 253 transcendence. Utopianism has always ken critically involved with political issues and the debates of its time. It follows that attempts to capture the ferninist utopia within the bounds of one discipline or one ideoIogy inevitably result in both inadequate readings of utopian texts and incomplete conceptualizations of utopianism itself. Most theories presented here provide evidence that unidimensionai analyses simply no longer work, thus gesturing towards a multi- dimensional approach.

Such as approach was envisioned in the 1WOs, in the writings of Tom Moylan, Lucy

Sargisson and other utopian scholars who viewed feminist utopias as rooted in the unfulfilled needs and wants of women, which patriarchy marginaiized as the "other". The critical function of utopia, then, is to provide the opposition to what Moylan calls "the affirmative

~ulture."'~Moylan argues that feminist wnters attempt to create "critical ~to~ias,'"~retaining

an "awareness of the limitation of the utopian tradition, so that these texts reject utopia as

blueprint while preserving it as drearn" (10). Critical utopias function effectively as critiques

j9 "Utopia negates the contradictions of a social system by forging visions of what is not yet reaiized either in theory or practice. In generating such figures of hope, utopia conmbutes to the O n space of opposition" (Moylan 1-2). order to critique contemporary society, criticai utopia mus&according to Moylan, destroy, transform and revive the utopian tradition, which, in its present/past state, idwas inadequate to the task of provoking social transformation. A fixed, finite and universai utopia of perfection cannot, says Moylan, adequately critique a fixed, finite and universd capitalist system. Only an understanding of utopia that destroys old perceptions of the genre can transform them into something new and thus revive utopianism. This new utopianism cm adequately reflect the concerns, needs and wants of contemporary oppositional forces. Critical utopia does not blueprint: social change in process is privileged even in the alternative societies it presents. In this way, the key tenn 'criticai utopia' describes that growing category of utopias that present a good ptace with problems that reflect critically on the utopian genre itself: both difference and imperfection are retained. Moylan's theory not only conceptuaiizes utopia, but also (and importantly) approaches utopianism from a hsh angle Utopian thought not ody points to the not-yet-become but opens receptivity to new and radically differenvother ways of king and thinking. The uttimate function of utopianism is, for Moylan, the development of an open consciousness of the present: 'It can only offer itseif as an activity which opens hurnan imagination beyond present lirnits' (40). of the status quo, while maintaining a self-critical awareness that prevents them from descending into an empty utopian cliché. The mainstrearn critical discourse attempted to identiQ the feminist utopia in terms of a "deviant" genre; however, this identification was not acceptable for the ferninist discourse cornmunity because this difference implied that the feminist genre was inferior. For example, feminist theorist Rafaella Baccollini observes that

"genres are cultural constructions; implied in the notion of genre and of boundaries lies a binary opposition between what is 'normal' and what is 'deviant' - a notion that feminist criticism has attempted to deconstmct since this difference consigns feminine practice to inferiority" (139). Baccollini argues that wornen writers have used various strategies to undennine the dominance of the patriarchal genre. Female protagonists are a central strategy but so are the frequent use of irony, detachment, and humor. As she points out: "Laughing at the collapse of the Western world and its hentage cm also be seen as a sign of a lack of nostalgia for the 'golden past' of patriarchy" ( 139). Sargisson (59) extracts from socialist and ferninist approaches a view of utopianism as having an oppositional and a speculative function which is located in part in its conventions of critique, estrangement, and imaginative writing, suggesting that, instead of blueprints, feminist utopias are better read as metaphors.

Because my purpose in this dissertation has ken to discuss the feminist utopia within a more embracing framework that incorporates humanistic attitudes, rather than king constrained by radical feminist ideology only, 1 advocate a pragmatic, situated approach to this genre as a cultural, political, and rhetoncal phenornenon. Directing Our attention towards the connections of ideology and genre, the new hetorical theones of genre51help us see how to bridge the gulf between diverse tactics offered by feminist utopias for the transfomation of the fernale subject. They develop Burke's drarnatistic position that forma1 discursive structures often have a priori existence since they must identify with an audience's desire and expectations.

Smbhistoric Confext

Appearing in the socio-historic context of the 1970s, feminist utopias were prepared by the writings of feminist theorists whose analysis of women's situation showed that al1 aspects of women's lives were riddled with sexism: sex, work, rnarriage, motherhood, housework, health, education, and langage. Feminist pubIications cast a new light on the socio-political scene in the United States of the 1970s. The rejection of the highly technological, centralized patriarchy was deepened in the theory and practice of ferninism and radical ecologism, as well as in racial and ethnic liberation movernents. Al1 these developments produced "the contours of counter-culture" (Bookchin 1 15- 116) that fomed the underpinnings of major likrtarian movements, arnong them the women's liberation movement. The ideology of the women's Iiberation movement attempted to change the situation for the fernale subject and bridge the gender.gap in capitalist patriarchy. It also

5 1 According to Burke, rhetoric should become the new method of critical inquiry because it deals with how language and ideoIogy are intrinsically connected. Burke effectively articulates how an ideology is a fùnction of sipifjing practices. His conception of ideology as a form of rhetoric, thus, reveals how an ideotogy cmfunction as a system of identifications which serve to constitute the subject. Similarly, Schryer foregrounds this connection when she argues that genres create ideologies because they function as discourse formations projecting poteritid views of the world and differing possibilities of hwnan agency. Being "Iocal and in a constant state of construction", genres are "dynarnic; they are sûuctured structures that structure; they are strategy-produced and driven and produce smtegy"(28). 256 created a ferninist discourse community that provided women wnters with an audience eager to prornote the changes. Therefore, the 'mini-explosion' of feminist utopias in the 1970s is a phenornenon not only contemporaneous with the 2ndwave feminist movement but made possible by it. Russ discems this socid exigency when she concludes that "in these recent feminist utopias we certainly have part of the growing body of women's culture, at least available in some quantity to readers who need and cm use it" (146). Carol Pearson expresses a sirnilar opinion when she observes that ferninist utopias form "a remarkably coherent group made possible by the feminist movement" (Pearson 198 1).

Feminism fin& in utopia a "pre-pared way of responding" that embodies, to use Ann

Freadman's phrase, the "ramified, intertextuai memory" of generic "uptake" (Freadman 9).

This genre possesses what Carolyn Miller calls "the heuristic nature of a site of dissent"

(Miller 24) which in this case is gendered opposition and resistance to patriarchy. It also explores new options for human agency; in particular, for the female subject. It treats the antecedent paûiarchai genre as a trans-histoncal fom, overcoming its patriarchal limitations and reviving it through ferninist individuation. The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You is a more traditionally utopian narrative; the visitor travels to utopia, lives in it, describes the utopian society, and retums to his world with the purpose of transforrning it. Bryant's novei borrows fiom other patriarchal genres: the idyll, Rousseauan novel, Christian fable, rnyth, and the detective story. Conversely, The Female Man reverses the traditional narrative premise of joumey to utopia by making the utopian visitor travel to Our world; the reader is forced to plunge into utopia Erom page one. Russ describes several such joumeys, forcing the readers to wonder which world they are in and which protagonist is taUcing. Both narratives reject utopian blueprints as closed and rnaintaining hierarchies of social and cultural patrïarchy, but preserve utopia as a dream. Utopian Ata is such a drearn, and the distinction between reality and dream in Bryant's novel is diffuseci: what matters is to obey one's drearns. Russ's utopia is not Whileaway but writing the book that is insmicted to go into the world and change it.

The ultimate revolution will be complete when the book becornes obsolete: that means that

"we will al1 be W7at that moment.

Being made possible by the feminist movement of the 1970s, the feminist utopia reflects the concems of the feminist discourse cornmunity. Its socio-symbolic action is simultaneously empowering and restrictive in as much as it accommodates both revolutionary unity and separatism. According to Russ, feminist utopias are remarkable not only for their explicit feminism but for the similar forrns the feminism takes: '"Ttiey not only ask the same questions and point to the sarne abuses; they provide similar answers and remedies" (136).

The major ideological function of ferninist utopias is to articulate the anti-capitalist and anti- patriarchal libertarian message. The Kin of Ata Are Waitingfor You does so by portraying the continuous caring of the utopian people for the real world and by vocalizing the comrnon dream. Both ferninist utopias establish a particular relationship with the audience, treating the readers as consubstantial and often directly addressinp thern. Bryant's narrator directly addresses the readers at the end, teaching them how to go on a personal joumey towards the realization of utopia through dreaming higher àrearns. Russ's protagonist, by taiking to the

"little-daughter book", indirectly addresses the reader at the end, explaining the way towards the realization of utopia through consciousness-raising action. Chmotope

The new feminist utopian genre habecome a meaning-making event that achieved specific social purposes. Ferninist utopias provide the becorning fernale subject with a possibility for a counter discourse because they reveal the lirnits of patriarchal tolerance in authorizing ferninist social action. This genre differs significantly from the patriarchal genre because its counter-discourse does not corne from the dominant social order, from the hegemony. Another important difference is in its social action: the ferninist utopia authorizes and contains women's personal experiences, fulfilling the need to discuss feminist issues that was thwarted by the restrictions of the patnarchal utopian genre.

The feminist utopian genre has a specifiç potential for producing world views. For example, Bryant's novel combines the folkioric unity of timdspace with the novel's potential for portraying the transformation and growth of the protagonist from utter egotism to self- sacrifice. The conditional time or the drearn mode on Ata accommodates arnbiguity: at the end, the Man is wondering whether Ata is a reality or a drearn. While for the Man space extends from the real world California to the utopian island, for the Atans space is encompassed and enveloped within the island. The Atans have a limited potential for individual growth, but they do not need it because their life paths and actions are explained to them in their drearns. Al1 they need is to obey and enact the dreams. Only the patriarchal Man can undergo a transformation from utter division, individualism and isolation to collectivism, identification with the whole human race, and self-sacrifice.

Russ's novel portrays the idealistic unity of timekpace on Whileaway, but no unity in the real world where, therefore, a potential for change exists: the transformation into the female man occurs in the real world. Russ's chronotope is presented in her metaphor of a 259 twisted braid of alternative tirnedspaces that rejects linearity and facilitates unrestrained multi- directional tirndspace travel. Time does not move on Whileaway, Womanland and in

Jeannine's world; the protagonists feel the passage of time only in Joanna's red world. Space is both iocalized and parallel; space travel to alternative worlds is instantaneous, though not accounted for in the traditions of science fiction. Russ's utopia is not somewhere, but something - a revolutionary consciousness raising action of the book. Joanna's real world contains a potential for her revolutionary transformation into the female man through enacting anger and exercising violence against men; but real societal change will occur only as the result of the action of the book: the book will grow obsolete when al1 women will be free.

An important feature of the feminist utopian chronotope is that it disrupts certainty and truth and plays with openness and multiplicity. Both novels employ the technique of calculated ambiguity: the reader is not told whether Ata is a dream or a reaiity. But this does not rnatter: the Man chooses the huth and reality of Ata over life in the real world even if Ata is a drearn. Thus, Bryant portrays fixed binary oppositions in the present world as unimportant and promotes the fluidity and multiplicity of "living in the presence of the drearn."

The calculated ambiguity in Russ's novel is more developed: the readers are not told whether the four protagonists represent fiagrnents of the same self, or they are different, self- contained selves. We never know whether the Female Man is a gendered subject at dl. The idea of becoming a utopian subject is a powerful notion that subverts time and reality because a subject that is becorning is constantly changing and cannot be fxed or defined in the sarne way as a static 'being'. The feminist utopia, thus, disrupts certainty and truth, playing with openness and multiplicity of 'becorning'. For example, dreams on Ata are resisting fixation, non-describable, changeable. While the utopian ideai remains the sarne (we are al1 kin), the strategies of how to stop the human race from wavering on the brink of suicide differ depending on the individual who is chosen to be sacrificed.

Feminist utopias are "neither wholly pessirnistic nor wholly optimistic. They are entirely open-ended and this is where their radicalism lies" (Woolmark 99). Thus, deconstructive textual practices, tactics of remetaphonzation, transgression of social codes, as weU as of the notions of tnith and reality, allow ferninist utopian writers to embody open- ended textual and conceptual strategies in portraying the future.

ldeologifunctions

As a genre, the ferninist utopia is purposive and functional. Joanna Russ cd1 it

'reactive': it reflets what women lack in today's patriarchal world. Therefore, the feminist utopia does not embody 'universal' human values, but reacts to sexism and discrimination contemporaty soçiety. It provides its users with what Bakhtin calls 'freedom' and 'plasticity'

(Freedrnan 'Zocating Genre Studies" 10) for open-ended, dialogic, intertextual communication. The rhetorical inefficiency of the over-regulated patnarchal genre is overcome because the ferninist genre fulfils the desires and expectations of the ferninist discourse cornmunity. It is free of patriarchal restrictions on gender representation in both current and utopian reality. Gershuny (1984) argues that ferninists have attempted the linguistic transformation of womanhood which she Iocates at the center of their attempts to create paradigm shifts in consciousness: In criticizing patriarchal institutions, feminist writers have generated a parole feministe both to transforrn and transcend patriarchal paradigms. To perceive herself as a abject in present or future worlds fim requins what Mary Daly calls an 'exorcism' of masculinist language and, secondly, a means of expression that reveals and unravels feminist consciousness. Starting fiom different perspectives, feminist writers are developing that language in forms as varied as philosophical treatises and utopian literature. The result is that feminist models, myths, and methods not only reflect a dedsensibility, but an integration of tbtee phases of feminist consciousness: analysis and criticism, transformation, and transcendence.

Gershuny here outlines three important ideological functions of the feminist utopia: criticism, transformation and transcendence. Criticism of the present-day patriarchy and sexism is the most prominent ideological function. Sargisson ( 1 85) observes that patriarchal discourse as a vehicle of oppression, domination and hierarchy is the primary target of ferninists. For these reasons, feminist utopias of the 1970s promoted the personal as political and empowered the women to counter-act the symbolic violence of the patriarchal discourse.

Both Bryant's and Russ's narratives are critically utopian (Moylan 198); they have played their part in the anti-hegemonic politics of the 1970s. They have added to the ways in which the women perceived the dissatisfaction with the present. 'Woman' in patriarchal discourse was an absence, at best a pale imitation of 'man', if not actually the feared castrating 'other'.

Conversely, in Bryant's utopia, the patriarchal world is a nightmare; patriarchai success is phony; patriarchal values are not unacceptable. Connie screams: "But 1 exist!" Yet, the Man does not believe her and kills her as a phantom of his nightmare. In Russ's narrative, Joanna asks the secret agents: 'Who are you looking for? There is nobody here. Only me", thus equating herself with nobody. Jeannine feels self-less and usuaIly wants to blend in with the furniture. In the workplace, Joanna needs to act as if she is neuter, otherwise the men harass her as if she were weaing a sandwich board saying: "Look! 1 have tits!"

Feminist utopias are also critical of the patriarchal genre becawe patriarchal utopias have a reductive tendency to perfection that negates the utopian impulse that generated them.

The feminist utopia emerged in response to the negative representation of women in patriarchal utopia The blueprints of future societies that patriarchal utopia constmcts remained closed, maintaining hierarchies of social and cultural patriarchy and prohibiting any re- imagined constmctions of womanhood or challenges to gender roles. In this rnisogynist context, the transgressive social action of feminist utopias (to imagine a wornan as having a self that cm be Iiberated from the strictures of male dominance, of narrative forrn, as well as of the real world) was itself a Iiberating experience. It forced women to consider the inadequacy of patnarchai language for representing feminist values. Both Bryant and Russ see patriarchal constructions as unnaturai and not essential in the alternative worlds. Whereas in Joanna's world al1 important positions are occupied by males, in Janet's (and in Jael's) world women are qualified for and have access to al1 the jobs.

Feminist utopias promote utopianism of process, initiating it on two levels: 1) they provoke social transformation; 2) they offer possibilities for individual change. Both utopias address becorning a subject rather than being a abject. Joanna's transformation into the female man (and a lesbian) has only just begun; in the end, she admits to still loving her husband and asks her little daughter-book to behave in socially acceptable ways.

The feminist utopian genre is diaiogic and evolving in as much as it takes up similar topics in similar ways: both Bryant's and Russ's utopian societies promote sharing, cooperation, caring, numiring, collectivism. However, The FedeMan articulates the rage and anger of radical feminists of the 1970s, promoting separatism as strategy because men are not to be trusted. Russ's narrative advocates the appropriation of power by force. Masculine virhies (dominance, arrogance, smartness, deness, competitiveness) are valorized because the new subject, female man, appropriates them. Anger, rage and violence are offered as realistic ways to empower women, whereas consciousness-raising is shown as a way to reach rtssertiveness. Both novels aiso develop orientations for the readers: Bryant's Man thinks that

Ata is an Indian reservation or a rural commune, in this way reflecting ecological and environmentai trends of the 1970s. Russ mentions such socio-historic orientations for the readers as the Depression, World War Two, Chinese New Year, Supeman, etc.

The transgressive function of feminist utopias is a response to the narrowness of patriarchd utopia that urges feminist wnters to 'dernand the impossible' and ultimately empowers them for conceptual transgression of gender, class, race, language. The ferninist utopia transgresses patterns of linguistic sexism and attempts to elirninate gender difference in various way: through separatisrn on Whileaway, within the chernical-surgical castrati in

Manland [ "everyone should have his own abortion" (178)], through Joanna' s micro-structural violence towards men.

Feminist message

Feminist utopias reflect the recognition of the interrelation of the personal and the political, as well as an open critique of "normal" paûiarchal discourse. Both Bryant and Russ demysw biology, treating it as not destiny; not, at least, in social and political terms. Bryant offers possibilities for transformation not only for the woman, but for the Man. Russ's novel 264 imagines the woman as having a self and liberates her from the strictures of male dominance.

Its central question is " Who am I? I know who 1 am, but what is my brand narne?" Russ passionately and desperately rejects the patriarchal identification of woman: her Jael screams:

"NON SUM ! Not me!" However, Russ's female man identification remains nomadic and mystifving, partly because it is not related to an "other".

Both novels are explicit about econornics and politics as the driving force of capitalism and a key tool in oppressing women and maintaining the status quo. They are sexually permissive and not prescriptively heterosexual, classless and communal to the core.

Feminist utopias treat violence with a seriousness that is centrai to the ferninist rhetoric of the time. They also contribute to the wider utopian dialogue of speculation about the emancipatory society and share in the reassessment of activism going on since the 1960s.

Feminist interventions

Largely through the conscious manipulation of language - both in word choice and in language structure - Russ and Bryant are able to constmct their novels as female-sexed texts.

Through privileging free indirect discourse, circular reasoning rather than analytic logic, and openended story lines, these novels approach the feminist values while king confronted with the necessity of using the patriarchal language by either exposing it, deconstnicting it (The

Female Man ), or transcending it altogether by making a point of avoiding the use of patriarchal language to demonstrate its inadequacy (neKin of Ata Are Waiting for You ).

As narrative strategies, ferninist utopias often employ the writing practice that has ben described asfiction theory: self-conscious and overtly transgressive wnting that aims, arnongst other things, to dismpt the symbolic order of representation. This is not, however, change for 265 change's sake, or an inversion to the ordeddisorder opposition, but rather representation of the conscious manifestation of the desire for a dynamic and open attitude towards apparent certainties. This desire is a characteristic of transgressive utopian thought. For example,

Margaret Whitford identifies two 'types' of utopianism: "static utopianism, and utopianism of process, the intention of which is to bring about (paradigrn) shifts in consciousness" (Whitford

19-20}. Fiction theory, therefore, reveals the ways in which constructions of binary oppositions, of maleKemale, masculine/ferninine, or utopial dystopia, cm be deconstructed through ambiguity, fluidity and multiplicity. While focusing on what language is saying, Russ explores the possibilities of l'ecriture ferninine to crieque and/or subvert the dominant tradition that within a patriarchal society has resuIted in a de-formed representation of women.

In particular, Russ employs the disjointed narrative tactics of fiction theorj: her narrative is constmcted as self-mirroring, self-reflexive; it defamiliarizes andor subverts the fiction and gender codes, in this way contributing to ferninist theory. Russ presents parts of her narrative as parts (a montage, a multiplicity) and not as a whole (that reveals her negotiations of difference). Al1 the four worlds remain fixed and resist change, but change is possible in the action of the "little daughter-book". Therefore, this book becomes fiction that implies action.

Bryant pursues feminist goals (cooperation, sharing, nurturing) with explicitly ferninine rneans

(tolerance, humility, passivity, self-sacrifice, patience, acceptance), thus employing traditional narrative techniques and tradi tional patriarchal understanding of fernininity.

Describing pregnancy, birth, parenting, feminist writers attempt to return both a Ianguage and a meaning to the body, return to it the idealized quality it had in ancient times, and simultaneously retum a reality, a materiality, to language and to meaning. Ferninist utopian imagery plays a key role in expressing the general sensibility of their social drearns, with their central motif of smashing the boundaries that divide and isolate. While The Femle Man reflects attempts to avoid further compromise and to build stren-gh, 7he Kin of Ata Are

Waitingfor You takes up the attitude of détente, of cooperation of previously contending forces to transcend hostility, suffering, and injustice.

Russ uses langage to highlight that rneaning is not neutral but undivorceably connected to the social constmct fiom which it is created. Bryant approaches ferninist values by animating them in her utopian world, wMe patriarchal 'wisdorn' and 'reasonTare typified in the visitor. By refùsing to connect Ata with anything as (allegedly) incomplete, biased and fiagmented as the written and spoken word (that connection is reserved for Earth), Bryant demonstrates the absurdity of capitalist values while quietly but undeniably showing the benefits of ferninist values. Thus, Bryant attempts to bypass the question of language altogether, treating is as a patriarchal constmct that reifies the fluid meaning of the ever changing drearns and is therefore unnecessary in the utopian world.

While both novels are responding to similar situations, they suggest different strategies for intervening into the patriarchal genre. Russ clearly attempts to tear the patriarchal genre apart

(although such "breaks" are not peculidy ferninist). Her use of experimentation in form is in itself a rebellion. Bryant resists traditions conceptudy more than she does stylistically. Russ takes her statement one step further and elevates her argument by rebelling against the very genre she is writing in. These strategies reveal the different degrees of complexity and the relative arnount of resistance. The higher textual complexity of The Femle Man reflects

Russ's deeper examination of her context and her consequent multi-level rebellion. The Kin of Ata Are Waitingfor You addresses womenysplacement only on the metaphoric, symbolic, and conceptual level and does not explore, nor does it rebel, on the linguistic levels.

Utopian Vision

Russ and Bryant envision very different utopian societies. The consubstantiality of women in Russ's utopian world is based upon division from men because men are viewed as irrernediable and, therefore, unnecessary. WhiZe portraying the woman as a devalorized and mis-represented entity and asserting the specificity of female experiences, Russ attempts to elaborate alternative identifications for the female subject. However, this attempt is not successful : ironically, instead of developing different forms, dl four protagonists symbolize different stages of the sarne process: usurping the male subjectivity and turning into a man.

Russ's novel clearly favors separatism and (symbolic) violence against men. Russ's utopian

Whileaway is a contrary political vision, a peaceful but nonetheless striking revolution against patnarchy. Her guerilla fighter Jael shows that women's rage can be the catalyst for change because radical actions force a confrontation with the oppressor. The expression of anger fkes the woman and moves her out of a victimized position into an empowered position.

Though female anger frightens people, this emotion cannot be ignored. Rage empowers women in their counter-acting symbolic violence toward patriarchy. Thus, Russ valorizes anger and rage, rudeness, arrogance, violence (including murder), homosexual (iesbian) seduction of minors, and portrays objectification of men as sex toys. Whereas Russ criticizes the masculine authority, power, dominance, arrogance, she valorizes them by making them desirable qualities for her female man. Male dominance and power, thus, are partially appropriated, and violence is portrayed as a reaiistic way for wornen to change the existing situation.

Several options for the way out are offered by the two novels: while Russ suggests terrorism, action, and separatism, Bryant prornotes humility, patience, acceptance, and harmony. Augustine shows that tolerance and forgiveness can also be appropriate actions when the force that the woman is tolerating is rigid, unrnovable, and unlikely to change with violence and pressure. When Augustine does not react to the Man's oppressive behavior and simply lets hirn be without judgement, she thus empowers him to feel the guilt of his oppressiveness and move into a more supportive, equality-based treamient of her and the utopian world. Bryant, therefore, insists on consubstantiality with the whole human race, envisioning a world where violence is not necessary and culturally not acceptable; where men and women exist together without definite gender roles; where sexuality is permitted to be expressed but not indulged in.

Bryant aiso compares the flawed and dis-eased Earth to the fragrant, harrnonious, rhythrnical Ata as a total opposite to the dominant social order that has Ied to chaos on Earth.

This cornes through in syrnbolic contras&: health and dis-ease, nightmare and dream, violence and tolerance. The contrary political voice is clear because Bryant portrays Ata as a new social structure, sirnultaneously insisting that patriarchai language is inappropriate to descnbe reality, and especially feminist reality. While the Man is able to describe the real world, exposing it as completely flawed, the world of Ata defïes verbal and written description: even when the Man tries to write down the myths, he cannot contain them. In the end, Ata is reveded more through dreams, myths, and rituaIs, as well as by the way in which the Atans relate to their surroundings and to one another.

Impiiitions

If the utopian genre situates the utterance and its speaker as the defining rhetoncal act, then it is clear too that feminists have to violate patriarchal niles. The narrowness of patriarchd utopia urges feminist writers to 'demand the impossible' and ultimatel y empowers them for conceptual transgression. While the function of their utterance may indeed be defiance of rules, hence a threat to society and a challenge to patriarch y, the feminist meaning they constiuct is chronotopic, and, consequently, profoundly ideological and socio-historically contingent. Feminist interventions foreground their avoidance of the patriarchal sipiQing practices and their creation of a new signifying space for representing feminist values.

As such, hese diverse and, in many senses, divergent works also form part of

"abnormal" revolutionary discourse. These works may correspond to what Tom Moylan

(1986) calls the 'critical mass' of a 'new historie bloc of opposition'. With the qualifier that the opposition is not dong the lines of a cohesive dialectic, feminist opposition to the manlwoman and rnindhody divides can be said to be of this 'critical' nature. It envisions an imaginative space behween the real and utopian worlds, the wnter and the reader, the reader and text. This space contains and generates revolutionary power for the ferninist drearning of social change that can be enacted in the here and now.

Ferninist re-invention of rhetorical genres as forrns of politicai and cultural resistance demonstrates that the feminist cornmunity offers a plethora of strategies for encompassing new situations. Feniinist critics maintain that genre can be theorised and invented to assert no difference ferninine as the context of the ferninist situation. They Mersuggest that multiple

recurrent situations spell out an objective need for its specific syrnbolic action in a particular cornrnunity of speakers. It follows that feminist genres escape the curse of further producing

gendered situations because they constantly work on the patriarchal order, re-arrange it, and

ultimately change it.

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Appendk 1: Aik Kate Shulman's Aarunt of the Eady Years of WLM

"A review of the major actions of those earliest years of WLM - actions initiated by a

mere hmdful of ardent women, at first maybe 100 in 1967, then, by 1970, many thousands - reveals how central was the new feminist andysis of sexuality to our collective stmggle for justice.

In 1967 the first small groups began organizing and doing consciousness raising. By

September 1968 the fledgling movement considered itself ready for its first national demonstration: about sixty feminists, mostiy from New York, went to Atlantic City to picket the Miss America Pageant, using that event to demonstrate how women are (degradingly) judged as sex objects. Inside Convention Hdl women unfurled a huge banner in the balcony that read, simply, Women's Liberation. Outside on the boardwalk, demonstrators mockingly crowned a Iive sheep "Mïss Arnerica," filled a "freedom trash cm" with items of female

"torture" Iike curlers, bras, girdles, and high-heeled shoes; spoke only to female reporters; and paraded with leaflets and posters. One of the most powerful posters was a replica of a display ad for a popular steak house depicting a woman's naked body charted with the names of beef cuts. The pageant seemed a perfect symbol of the exploitation of women as sex objects, but the ideas of WLM were then so unthinkable that the demonstration was not well understood.

Many odookers and reporters were incensed; it was at that demonstration that ferninists becarne known as "crazy bra burners," though no bra was burned. So acceptable was the practice of vaiuing women for their sexual attractiveness that many people genuinely believed the demonstrators must be ugly women, motivated by simple jealousy of the contestants, proclaiming a politics of Sour grapes.

The following spring the newly fomed Redstockings held their first abortion speak- out, at which women gave public testimony describing in heart-rending detail what they had to go through to get abortions. This testimony broke a very deep taboo and started a passionate public debate that is still going on. It is hard to believe how stunned the country was by this action. At the heart of the prohibition against abortion (and birth control) is the deeply held feeling that female sex outside of procreation must be punished. As a nationai columnist wrote at the time, "She had the fun, now let her pay." (In the sarne way, the early speak-outs on rape emphasized not only the bmtality and hatred in the act of rape but the way in which, by society's "bIaming the victirn", women's sexuaiity was held responsible for rape - as reflected in laws, police procedures, and relevance of the victim's sexual history.) What was new at the abortion speak-out was that the women, speaking of their feelings and experience and pain, tied abortion to the question of women's freedom, which had not been done publicly since the birth control debates of an earlier time. Indeed, what prompted the Redstockings speak-out was a legislative hearing on abortion at which the "experts" testiQing were fourteen men and one woman, a nun. The Redstockings thought it time to hear from the "real experts": women.

Those earls years witnessed a proliferation of actions, from a Whistle-In in Wall

Street, in which feminists made sexual passes at men on the Street at lunchtime, to a protest at the National Bridal Fair by WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), to a takeover by New York Radical Feminists of legislative hearings on prostitution - al1 intended to raise public consciousness of sexism. The insults flung at demonstrators by angry observers at these demonstrations were predorninantly sexual: we were called dykes, whores, and beasts, as well as commies, bitches, and nuts.

In 1969 a coalition of ferninist groups staged a sit-in at the Ladies Home Journal offices until we were granted twenty pages in which to present ferninist ideas to the Journal's vast female audience. 1joined the cornmittee that write the article on sex. Many of the articles the Journal editors could stomach, but the sex piece scandalized them - in part because it briefly discussed lesbianism but aiso, 1think, because it so clearly brought together the private and the public, the personal and the poLiticai. Late in 1969 the fmt Congress to Unite Women was heId in New York City, attended by more than 500 wornen. That same year, 1969,

Barbara Seaman's The Doctor's Case Against the Pill was published. Then, in 1970, came

Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, Shulamith Firestone's Dialectics of Sex, and the fmt of the large publishers' anthologies of articles and pamphlets that had been circulated earlier in women's Iiberation movement's joumals: Robin Morgan's Sisterhood is Poweïj-kl, Leslie

Tanner's Voicesfiom Women S Liberation, Sookie Starnbler's Women 's Liberation: A

Blueprinr for the Future, and in 197 1 Vivian Gomick and B.K. Moran's Woman in Sexist

Society - al1 including important articles on sexuality. There was a great outpouring of articles, stories, books, conferences, demonstrations, debates. Lesbian feminists began forming separate groups and exploring the connections between lesbianism and feminism; at the Second Congress to Unite Women (1970), a radical lesbian group calling thernselves the

Lavender Menace forcd the movement to examine its attitude towards lesbianisrn. The women" self-help movement encourages women to examine their own and each other's bodies, inside and out, not only to overcome ignorance and shame, but to free us fiom bias and control of the male medical establishment. New York Radical Ferninists and other groups outside New York organized speak-outs, frequently modeled after those early Redstockings abortion speak-outs, on such volatile topics as rape, prostitution, marnage, rnotherhood.

Feminist ideas were spreading everywhere as we made new connections and more women joined the movement. It seemed to us then that we could not be stopped."

(Alix Kates Shulman, 25-27). Appendi 2. Adrienne Ridi on Manifestations of Men's Powr.

Table 4. Manifestations of Men's Power

(Compulsory Heterosexuaiity 69-7 1)

The power of men tu by means of clitoridectomy and infibulation; chastity beIts; deny women [our own] punishment, including death, for fernale adultery; sexuality punishment, including death, for lesbian sexuality; psychoanalytic denial of the clitoris; strictures against masturbation; denial of maternai and postmenopausal sensuality; unnecessary hysterectomy; pseudolesbian images in media and literature; closing of archives and destruction of documents relating to lesbian existence

-- 7'0force if [male by means of rape (including marital rape) and wife beating; sexuality] upon them fatherdaughter, brother-sister incest; the sociaiization of wornen to feel that male sexud "drive" arnounts to a right; idealization of heterosexual romance in art, literature, media, advertising, etc.; child mamage; arranged marriage; prostitution; the harem; psychoanalytic doctrines of fiigidity and vaginal orgasrn; pomographic descriptions of wornen responding pleasurably to sexual violence and hurnili2tion (a subhninal message king that sadistic heterosexuality is more "normal" than sensuality between women)

to comdor exploit by means of the institutions of rnarrïage and motherhood as their Zabor tu contrd unpaid production; the horizontal segregation of women in the ir produce paid employment; the decoy of the üpwardly mobile token women; male control of abortion, contraception, and childbirth; enforced sterilization; pimping; femde infanticide, which robs mother of daughters and contributes to generalized devaluation of women to control or rob them of by means of father-right and "legal kidnapping"; enforced their chikiren sterilization; systematized infanticide; seizure of children from lesbian mothers by the courts; the malpractice of male obstetrics; us of the mother as "token torturer" in genital mutilation or in binding the daughter's feet (or rnind) to fit her for marriage to confine them by means of rape as terrorism, keeping women off the physically and prevent streets; purdah; foot-binding; atrophying of women's their movement athletic capabilities; haute couture, c'ferninine" dress codes; the veil: sexual harassrnent on the streets: horizontal segregation of women in employrnent; prescriptions for "full-time" mothering; enforced economic dependence of wives 6 tu use them as objects in use of wornen as "gifts"; bride-pricing; pimping; arranged mle îransactiom marriage; use of women as entertainers to facilitate male deals, e.g. wife-hostess, cocktail waitress required to dress for male sexual titillation; cal1 girls, "bunnies", geisha, kisaeng prostitutes, secretaria 7. to cramp their witch persecutions as campaigns against midwives and creativeness female healers and as pogrom against independent, "UnassimiIated" women; definitions of male pursuits as more valuable than female within any culture, so that cultural values becorne embodiments of male subjectivity; restriction of female self-fulfillment in marriage and motherhood; sexual exploitation of women by male artists and teachers; the social and economic disruptions of women's creative as~irations:erasure of female tradition 8. to withholdfi-omthem by means of non-education of females (60% of the world's large areas of the illiterates are women): the "Great Silence" regarding society 'sknowledge and women and particularly Iesbian experience in history and cultural attninments culture; sex-role stereotyping which deflects women from science, technology and other "masculine" pursuits; maie sociaVprofessiond bonding which excludes wornen; discrimination against women in the professions. Appendix 3. Freud's Theory of Sexuaiii

Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuali~(published in 1905) assm that the unconscious becomes the turbulent zone where diverse sexual drives have to be repressed so that the human subject maintains its identity. The first phase of Freud's diphasic mode1 of sexual development occurs early in infantile life, its second phase during puberty, and between the two there is a period of latency. But, as Freud repeatedly shows, the sexual identity initially taken up by the infant is the result of a far irom easy process, since it refuses to obey any preordained path of development. Stressing continually how biological instincts cannot have exclusive rights in determining sexuality, Freud argues tbat the infant's body becomes sexualized through ambivalent psychic responses to the anatornical distinction between sexes.

To understand the complex identifications through which the infant, as Freud daims, rnust pass in the formation of sexuality, Freud theorized two interdependent structures: the

Oedipus complex and the castration complex. Suggestive yet schematic, they provide two of the main foundations to Freud's expIorations of sexuality. In his Infantile Sexuali~(Freud

VI1 180), Freud declares that "germs of the sexual impulses are aiready present in the new- born child". However, cliildren begin their "sexual researches" more actively between the ages of three to five. Freud argues that when children fmt examine their social worlds, they are preoccupied with the question: Where do babies come fiom? This inquiry, we are told, precedes any interest a child might have in the division between the sexes. Yet as the child's

"i-esearches" deepen, the whoie issue of sexual difference becomes a source of considerable anxiety. Freud is concemed, among other things, with accounting for how desire becomes 293 focused on certain objects - what Freud calls sexual object-choices. In the process of having needs, making demands, and therefore becoming a desinng subject, the child will doubtless confront the crux that fascinates Freud: how the subject faces up to the matornical distinction between the sexes. It is at this point that Freud briefly sketches one of the two structures for which his work is notorious: the castration complex. Here is how Freud proposes what happens to boys and girls when they confront symbolic castration:

It is setf-evident to a male child that a genitai like his own is to be attributed to everyone he knows, and he cannot make its absence tally with his picture of these other people.

This conviction iç energetically maintainecl by boys , is obstinately defended against the contradiions which soon resuk from observation, and is only abandoned after severe internai stnigglq (the castration cornplex). The substitutes for the penis whih they feel is missing in women play a great part in determining the fom taken by many perversions. (Freud ï:l95)

However, Freud maintains that little girls go through a different process:

Liegirls do not resort to denial of this kind when they see that boys' genitals are formed differentiy from their own. They are ready to recognize them immediatety and overcome by envy for the penis - an envy cJminating in the wkh, which is so important in its consequences, to be boys themselves. (Freud i:l95)

In the Three Essays, it remains unclear how the castration complex interacts with the

Oedipus complex. One has to look at later works, such as Die Ego nnd the Id (1923) and

'The Dissolution of the Oedipus Cornplex" (1923), to understand exactly how boys and girls supposedly follow divergent paths that involving conflicting loves and losses. In these writings, Freud characteristically pays greater attention to the tortuous route taken by the boy

(and not by the girl), as he heads towards 'normal' heterosexuaiity. Undoubtedly, as Bristow comments (72), the boy undergoes a highly conflicted process More he becomes the active, masculine, heterosexual male that patriarchal society wants him to be: 294 At a veiy eariy age the lieboy develaps an object-cathexis (Le. transfer of erobic energy on to an objecq for his mother, +ch is originaiiy related to the mother's breast.. .; the boy deals with his father by MntQmg himseif with him. For a time these two relationships proceeâ side by side, until the boy's sexuai wishes in regard to his mother becorne more intense and hii father is perceiveci as an obstacle to them; from this the Oedipus complex originates. His identification with his father then takes on a hostile colouring and changes into a wish to get rid of his father in order to take his place with his rnoaier. Henceforward his relation to his father is ambivalent; it seems as if this ambivalence inherent in the identification from the beginning had bemme manifest. An ambivalent attitude to his father and an object- relation of a soleiy affectionate kind to his mother make up the content of the simple positive Oedipus complex in the boy. (Freud l9:32)

As Bristow remarks, although for some time the boy enjoys his phallic phase, he soon realizes that he is his father's rival for his mother's love, thus inaugurating the Oedipus complex: ''This rivdrous structure places competing demands upon the boy: (1) to love his mother and to hate his father; (2) to relinquish his Iove for his mother and to identiQ with his fathep (74). If the boy negotiates the customary path towards heterosexuality, then the boy will retain an affection for his mother while identifying with his father. But in order to achieve this final step, he has to go through a further stage in the drama: the castration complex: The castration complex has many implication for the boy: (1) he understands that his mother is not

'phallic' like hirnself; (2) he cannot love his mother, since that is his father's right; and (3) he must develop alternative libidinal attachments to a fernale object to secure his identity" (74).

Syrnbolic castration, which manifests itself culturally in the incest tab,leads to the formation of the superego, the psychic agency that reaches deep into the id to act censoriously against the ego. The superego is where the subject internalizes cultural prohibitions, such as the interdiction of sexual relations between sons and mothers. If the boy eventually identifies with the authority of a patemal superego, then he will enter the period of latency in the years

More puberty as a subject predisposed to heterosexuai desire.

The picture, however, is markedly different when Freud attempts to explain how the castration and Oedipus complexes operate for girls. For once Freud explains how a girl reacts to the threat of castration, it soon emerges that the absence of penis marks not the end, but the beginning of her Oedipus complex:

A little girl behaves differenüy. She makes her judgement and her decision in a flash. She has seen it and knows that she is without it and wants to have it.

Here what has kennamed the rnasculinity compfex branches off. It rnay put great difficulties in the way of the reguiar development toward femininity, if it cannot be got over soon enough. The hope of some day obtaining the penis in spite of everything and so of becoming a man rnay persist to an incredibiy late stage and rnay becorne a motive for strange and otheMlise unaccountable actions.. .. Thus a girl rnay refuse to accept the fear of kingcastrated, rnay harden herself in the conviction that she does possess a penis~andrnay subsequently be cornpelled to behave as though she were a man.. ..

After a woman has becorne aware of the wound to her narcissisrn, she devebps, like a scar, a sense of inferiority. W hen she has passed beyond her first attempt at explaining her rack of a penis as being a punishment personal to herseif and has realized that this sexual character is a universal one, she begins to share the contempt fek by men for a sex which is the fesser in so important a respect, and, at least in holding that opinion, insists on kinglike a man. (Freud 19: 253)

Even though the boy muse pass dong a tormented route through what Freud frequently terms the 'positive' Oedipus complex towards 'nonnai' heterosexuality, the girl has to travel a much more difficult path towards the sarne destination. hdeed, in Freud's theory, everything for the girl goes fiom bad to worse. Her conflict is caused by the imbalance between the masculine and ferninine, active and passive, aspects to her psyche. How, then, will the girl get ùirough the castration complex? What will lead her out if this drastic situation?

According to Freud, the answer is the Oedipus cornplex. Having wanted to be a man, claims Freud, the girl must accept that "she cannot compte with boys and that it would 296 therefore be best for her to give up the idea of doing so" (Freud 19:256). She becomes, in other words, resigned to her femininity, and thus miraculously discovers an appropriate substitute for the penis she has lost. How is this done? "She gives up her wish for a penis and puts in place of it a wish for a child: and with thatpurpose in view she takes her father as a love-object". As Bristow cornments, '?>isillusioned with her clitoris, she focuses instead upon her vagina. With this somatic shifi of interest, she can at last move out of her masculine phase to fulfil what is culturally expected of femininity" (76). Appendix 4: Marge Piercy 'Woman on the Edge of Tirne"

Marge Piercy's Womon the Edge of Tinte (1976) is considered a classic feminist utopia. It is a story of Connie Ramos, a Chicana woman in her mid-thirties, living in New

York, labeled insane and cornrnitted to a mental institution. But the tmth is that Connie is overwhelmingly sane and tuned in to the future. She is able to comrnunicate with the year

2137 where two totally different ways of life are competing: utopian (communal, nonsexist, environmentally pure, and open to rituai) and dystopian (totalitarian, exploitative, and rigidly technological). Piercy skillfully interweaves numerous themes: medicai paternalism (towards exploiteâ groups such as al1 women, ail people of color, and especiaily poor wornen of color); and technology over-leaping human ethics. In Connie's struggie to keep the institution's doctors fiom forcing her into a brain control operation, the readers find the timeless struggle between beauty and terror, good and evil.

In Piercy's utopia, the world consists of many family-communities, in which everyone knows and is a relative of everyone else. Government does not exist or hardly exists, although there is sometimes a council dealing with work assignments (seen as the main task of govemment). The book de-genderizes social and biological activities. The Utopian

Mattapoissett is still, however, a society of difference. While men and women are people of the sarne social standing , when the pronouns 'he' and 'she' are replaced by the universally applicable 'per', this linguistic intrusion does not eliminate the difference: they are still men and women, distinct from each other as such in physical terms. They are both the sarne and different; in this way, binarity is somewhat tran~~ssed,but not entirely surpassed. Woman on the Edge of Time is an important narrative, well-written, inspiring and thought-provoking, 298 and many of its topics have been taken up: physical freedom to travel safely and without money; access to education and jobs; communal parenting; sexual permissiveness. The point of permissiveness is not to break taboos, but to separate sexuality fiom questions of ownership, reproduction, and social structure. Monogamy, for exarnple, is not an issue since farnily structure is a matter of parenting or economics, not the availability of partners. Woman on the Edge of The is reproductively the most inventive of the fem utopias of the 1970s, with bisexuality (which is not perceived as a category and so is not narned) as the norm, exogenic birth, triads of parents of both sexes caring for children, and al1 three parents nursing infants.

Exclusive homosexuality (also not named) is an unremarkabïe idiosyncrasy.

Piercy portrays a war between the utopian society and a dehumanized, class-stratified, technological dystopian society, in which women are subordinate to men and both sexes are exploited within a hierarchy. This dystopian community holds the moon and a few remote bases on earth. Connie is caught in a tuming point in the war between utopian and dystopian comrnunities. War is not central to the plot and is kept on the margins of the novel; it is not portrayed as a sport or military adventure; it is not a drarnatically full-scale shooting war either. The warfare that Connie sees is that of ideologicd skirmish, n&uraI disaster, social collapse. One might argue that this corresponds to women's usual experiences of war.

Violence has emotional consequences and is certainly not presented as adventure or sport.

The novel shows a rite of passage undergone by a female child at puberty. Witnessing this rite, Connie is at first disgusted by the future society, but finally she wishes that her own child could somehow be adopted by the people of utopia. Connie's longing for and assent to utopia States eloquently the suffering that lies under the utopian impulse and the sufferer's simultaneous kingof and defiance of pain, racism in this case, as well as class and sex:

Suddenfy she assented with al1 her sou1.... For the first tirne her heart assented.... Yes, you can have mychild, you can keep rny child .... She will be strong there, well fed, well housed, well taught, she will grow up rnuch better and stronger and smarter than 1. A assent. I give you rny battered body as recompense and my rotten heart. Take her, keep hed... She will never be broken as I was. She will be strange, but she will be giad and strong and she will not be afraid, She will have enough. She will have pride. She will love her own brown skin and be loved for her strength and her good work. She will walk in strength like a man and never sel her body and she will nurse her babii like a woman and iÏÏin love like a garden. Like that childien's house of many colors. People of the rainbow with its ends fwed in earth, 1 give her to you! (Piercy 371) Appendix 5: Michele Roberts '7he Bodtof Mis. Noah"

I can illustrate alterations of fom recumng in feminist utopia with an analysis of Michele Roberts' utopian novel The Book of Mrs. Noah ( 1987). In contrast to other feminist utopias, this book does not present itself as an overtiy political piece and would not Et' into some characterizations of the genre of utopia (for example, it provides no blueprint). It is, however, utopian in that it criticizes the present from a recognizably political perspective (that of feminisrn). It presents a fictional present that is quite estranged from Our own. The female characters, however, are recognizably contemporary. It cm, furthemore, be characterized as a ferninine text because: it is marked by multiplicity in tems of subjectivity and narrative fom; the female body is written into the text;

it attempts to inscribe female experiences and to explore alternative points of subjectivity; it is open-ended. The book does not appear to form a single narrative, at least superficially. It is divided into short and apparently unconnected stones in a narrative strategy similar to a Chaucerian tradition. All stones are told by women, except one which is told by an old man who is the Word of God', dubbed the Gaffer' by the women. The fundamental area of the Ark is the Library, representing a catalogue of women's lives: "The Ark's bookstack, extending over many decks, contains dl the varied clashing aspects of women's imagination expressed in books" (Roberts 1987,20). The fomof the texts in these books is openly utopian:

wnting materials on offer include knotted strings, circular seals, blackboards and chalk, wampum bits, message tallies, tablets of clay and ivoty and wood, oracle bones, slabs of gold and silver and wax, shards of pottery, strips of cloth and papyrus and papier; sticks of bamboo, palm leaves, biof birch brk, leather scrolls, rolls of parchment, copper plates, pen and ink, palettes and paintbrushes, sticks and dust-trays, printing presses, typewriters, tape-recorders, word processors, etc. (Roberts 20) This profusion of writing materials reminds of the mdtiplicity of women's cultural histories and experiences. Sargisson notes mat text' and textile' are linked etymologically by the Latin text'meaning koven' (Sargisson 155); al1 the described items are writing marerials. Their diverse fomgenerate texts of a certain tactility: these books are perceptibIe by touch; Roberts mentions that they are indexed on 'sol3 thick pages: rag paper, lovely to touch' (2 1). Cixous and Irigaray name tactility, affinity and openness to the body as stylistic markers of a ferninine text; Roberts elaborates that, weaving the body into the narratives of the travelers. The entire book, with its recurrent references to feeding and its proxirnity to pain and love, cm be read as an exploration of motherhood. In the Iater stages this imagery becomes explicit:

Creation starts here in the Ark. Love actively shapes the work. My mother nourishes me with words, words of such power and richness that I grow, dance, leap. But the pumeof the Ark is to leave h The purpose of the womb is to be bom from it. Ço when I'm forced to go frorn her, when I lose her, I can cal1 after her, cry her name. I become myself, which means not-hec with blood and tears I becorne the not- mother.

(Roberts 274)

The images of water and the womb corne together. Though the Ark as mother is a benevolent figure, more disturbing images of the possessive mother are evoked in earlier chapters. Mrs. Noah, on one of her exploratory trips to the shore, enters a city that is above ground level but underwater (this rnight be a syrnbol of another womb). She passes through a room of metamorphoses, where chaos reigns and al1 rules are transgressed in a orgiastic and sensually described scene. In the middle of these descriptions cornes a somewhat unexpected passage on writing and the construction of forrn:

A narrative is sirnply a grid placed on chaos so that it can be read in descending lines from lefi to nght, if that's what you want to do. Some writers prefer simply to record, rather than to interpret, the interfocking roorns and staircases and galleries of this place, this web of dream images that shift and tum like the radiant bits of glas in a kaleidoscope. Others like the Gaffer, make a clear design, dot incident onto - a discernible thread. (Roberts 67-8) This possessive, fettering and fettered idealIrnode1 whose biology is her destiny is renounced by Roberts. The fictional renunciate, Mrs. Noah, completes her joumey where it began, in Venice, city of water, with her husband. She is detemùned, despite his wishes to the contrary, to have a child, but not to become this figure of mother. The book ends with a sense of personal empowerment that has clear political implications. This text is illustrative of contemporary politicai/ theoretical utopianism. It is more than fiction because it is in itself a piece of creative theory. Roberts uses the form of the novel as a vehicle for an exploration of feminist theory and a mouthpiece for voicing the experiences of women. Her attempt is meaningful in view of current debates within political theoretical circles about the tise'of literature as illustration of theory. The concern is rooted in the tendency arnong practitioners to select appropriate fiction, poetry or other foms of 'literature'regardless of context, to illustrate and reinforce the argument. The Book of Mrs. Noah, however, is saictured around those themes within fictionai texts which coincide with those in feminist political theory, and particularly utopian theory. Its fragrnented narratives form part of a whole which is an exploration of the roles and functions of the female body in patriarchal society, and an allusion to alternatives. This 'whole' is not complete as the text is resistant to closure. It cm, I believe, be situated within a feminine economy of textualization. Each character, except the Gaffer, has been invited on the journey by Mrs. Noah; each, to an extent, is a caricature of facets of women's experience. Roberts acknowledges cultural differences whilst construction a sense of cohesiveness 'as women'. She is addressing the much-discussed dilemma: that the feminist need for cohesiveness works in tension with the need to represent diversity. None of Roberts's characters express the concerns of women of cultural and ethnic groups other than white, but within this category considerable diversity is introduced. We rnight speculate that she is addressing Elizabeth Spelman's assertion that though al1 women are women, no woman is ody a woman' (Spelman 1990, 187). The introduction of this diversity to one form of womanhood (the white Western kind) shows the universal construct of Woman (not as man) as inadequate and redundant. Appendix 6: Linguistic pragmatic anaiysis of The Book of Joanna"

Table 5. Key to annotations: Cohesion

I Reference ties Lexical ties Conjunctions

I 1 R-l third-person pronouns 1 LI repetition 1 C-I additive R-2 definite determiners 1 C-2 adversative I I L-2 sYnOnYms R-4 place1 tirne expressions L-4 general words C-4 temporal 1 L-5 coiiocations E-I e'lipses l 1 E-2 substitutions

Discourse enti ties Assumed familiari ty :

>> presupposition BN brand-new

proj. projection U unused

M. Th. marked theme inferable

verb. sp. verbatim speech Ic inferable, containeci

verb. th. verbatim thought E evoked

1 find it essential to discuss the passage below in tems of its relationship to the book as a

whole, and, more largely, to the genre of ferninist utopia. If discourse is a multidimensional

process (Halliday), then the text as the product of this process functions at a higher level of the

code as a realization of semiotic orders 'above' the language. It functions as part of a larger

serniotic systern, that of genre. Due to this potential, a text is not a mere reflection of what lies

beyond; it is an active partner in the reality-making and reality-changing process (Halliday).

Russ's The Fernale Man (LI9691 1974) reflected early feminist attempts to identiS with

power and usurp the sipiQing practices previously denied to the female subject. It vaiorized 305 feminist anger and fury and activated the consciousness-raising tomado which swept over

North Amenca since then. Within the context of the novel, the passage provides the protagonist with an incentive to follow dominant behavior stereotypes: aggression, arrogance and coercion. In her training, Joanna turns to these practices. Within the context of the genre, the passage depicts characteristic dystopian developments extrapolated to an extreme situation. 1 am interested in the specificity of the narrative voice, the relationship between represented and representing consciousness, and the point of view, because 1 find that they indicate the formation of the new mentality. The verbal action under study includes texture, theme-focus interaction, topics, projection and modality. Relevance theory is used to interpret gaps and analyze implicature.

Example: Joanna Russ The Female Man 201.

1

1. This is the Book of Joanna. II

2.1 was dnving on a four-Iane highway in North

America with an acquaintance and his nine-year-old son.

3."Beat lm! 4. Beat 'im!" cried the little boy excitedly

as 1 passed another car in order to change lanes. 5.1 stayed

in the right-hand lane for a while, admiring the buttercups

by the side of the road, and then, in order to change lanes

back, fell behind another car. 6. "Pass lm! 7. Pass 'im!"cried the distressed child,

and then in anxious tears, "Why didnt you beat lm?"

8. "There, there, old sport," said his indulgent Daddy.

9."Joanna drives like a lady. 10. Menyoute grown up

you'll have a car of your own and you can pass everybody

on the road." 1 1. He turned to me and complained:

"Joanna, you just dont drive aggressively enough."

12. In training.

Socio-Historic Allusions

Each of the novel's four protagonists (Janet, Jeannine, Joanna, Jael) has a 'Book' devoted to her story; al1 these Books" descnbe a similar utopian development. This makes the allusion to the Gospel of John in S 1 rneaningful. The demonstrative pronoun This seems ambiguous and rnisleading: a discourse deictic, it implies a reference tie at the sarne time. S2 provides the socio-historic and spatial orientation for the dialogue and implies aggressive driving tactics which are as culture-specific to USArnerican men as Arnerican football and bâseball. The socio-historic allusion is highly instrumental: it signais a new discourse topic and constnicts the audience as knowledgeable of gender-specific driving practices. Chafe informs us that the island-like nature of rernembering motivates the author to provide an orientation for each new discourse topic through the provision of a setting. S2 also claims that the fictional representing consciousness is identified with the author, Joanna Russ. Here, the first person supplements the past tense as further evidence for the presence of the representing consciousness. In the orientation the topical subject is represented with a pronoun 1, and is 307 identifiable due to its relationship to S 1, but a four-lune highway and an acquaintance are non-identifiable. The 5in (male driver of another car) is context-inferable and semi-active, though it might have a lower activation cost in S3, S4, S6, and S7. It is signifiant that it is represented with a pronoun, not spelled in the full noun phrase; the pronoun is indicative of the rnedias res strategy and reflects a protagonist-oriented strategy. The setting (orientation) contains both a pronoun and full nouns, and thus indicates two strategies at work: the concession to the reader's consciousness and the protagonist-oriented strategy. 52 - 12 are in the past tense: the protagonist's (Joanna's) represented extroverted consciousness is temporally pior to the representing consciousness of Joanna-the narrator which provides the deictic center for the discourse. According to Chafe, first person narration represents the point of view of the author, and here the two points of view, that of the protagonist, and that of the narrator, coincide. In the projecting clauses, excitedly, unxious, bistressed, tears, indulgent, complained reflect the narrator's perceptions and thoughts and indicate the representing consciousness.

Point of View

Relevance theory helps to connect the meanings in section 1 and II and clarifies that it is Joanna-the protagonist who is in training here. The passage provides excessive evidence for the fmt-person point of view: the frequency with which the self is mentioned (S 1, S2, S4, S5,

S9, S 1 l), its favored status as a starting point (S2, S5, S9, S 1l), references to the self3 feeling and evduations (S5, SS, S 11, S 12). The past tense temporarïly dissociates the representing self from the represented self.