MARGARET ATWOOD: SF, ETHICS, GENDER, AND ECOLOGY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47250/intrell.v32i1.12864Abstract
This chapter analyses Margaret Atwood´s dystopian novel Oryx and Crake (2003), the first of the MaddAddam trilogy, by focusing on the juxtapositions of ethical, gender and ecological issues. We look at the figuration of the major women characters, especially Oryx, regarding the ways Atwood´s SF can be aligned to contemporary theories about women´s body, and the mascarade (Russo, 1986; Grosz, 1990; Butler, 1990). By observing the functioning of the dystopian principle of world reduction (Jameson, 2005) in Atwood´s narrative, we stress the gender politics underlying the portrayal of the women characters as we deal with the following questions: how to understand the author´s problematizing of women´s trajectories in the context of the patriarchal ideology as still configured in the future depicted in the novel? To what extent do women´s bodies reenact a potential identification with the oppressor? What are the literary metaphors at play in the construction of the interactions within the human and the more-than-human (Alaimo, 2008) universe? Bearing in mind gender and ecological tropes, how ethical is the world created by the Canadian author? Viewed as SF, in the sense that it combines science fact, science fiction, speculative fabulation, and speculative feminism (Haraway, 2016), Atwood´s works may raise provocative reflections as regards the future of humanity (?).
KEYWORDS: Women´s sf. Ethics. Gender. Margaret Atwood. Feminist Ecocriticism.
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