الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Despite its apparent male bias, Science Fiction offers a freedom to women writers, in terms of style as well as content, that is not available in mainstream fiction. Unlike mainstream fiction, science fiction allows for settings which are not limited to history or reality. The fluidity of form that science fiction allows is most remarkable: the set length of the novel does not dominate. Writers can let themselves experiment, writing and rewriting in short story, novella or novel form. The conventions of science fiction; time travel, alternate worlds, telepathy, allow for new settings, new social structures, and perhaps new life forms, without necessitating a scientific explanation of how these all came about. This is why writers of the mainstream perspective were encouraged to call science fiction ‘speculative fiction’. Feminist science fiction serves as an important medium for feminist thought, particularly as a bridge between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women’s contributions, especially to science, are recognized and valued, worlds where the harmony with the natural world is 134 maintained, worlds void of class distinction and worlds that move beyond gender. Feminist science fiction poses questions about social and political issues such as how society constructs gender roles, the role reproduction plays in defining gender and the unequal political and personal power of men and women. Some of the most notable Feminist Science Fiction works have illustrated these themes using ‘utopias’ to explore a society in which gender differences or gender imbalances do not exist, or ‘dystopias’ to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue. With the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin’s excursions into the controversial field of redefining gender began. The Left Hand of Darkness depicts an image of a society free from the constraints of sex, war and technological exploitation. It is a powerful tale of human contact with the alien. Genly Ai is a black male, an envoy from Earth who forges a relationship with Estraven, a native of the planet Gethen. The dualistic imagery Le Guin employs works well against the backDROP of a winter world. Le Guin’s concern with dualism is an interesting case in point regarding women and science fiction. She constructs her narrative upon the binary opposites fostered by patriarchy; man/woman, superior/inferior, active/passive, 135 black/white, left/ right, etc. to criticize as well as describe reality and the present world. The Left Hand takes an imaginative leap out of the constraints imposed by the dualistic structure of patriarchy and open up a world in which such constraints are no longer relevant. A world in which the complex relationship between the wider world of politics and the passion and desires of the human heart are explored with subtlety and wit. The Left Hand also, offers insights into the connection between feminist beliefs and their expression in utopian fiction. On Gethen there are meant to be no men. The human inhabitants are androgynies, with an oestrus cycle that brings them regularly into Kemmer, when they can take on either female or male sexual characteristics. The novel is at least partly about the social and political consequences of this. The world of Gethen is one which is thus free from sexual difference, sexual repression and sexual desire. It is also a world free from war or any kind of exploitation; especially that of land. The hero journeys through and around a landscape that is beautiful and fascinating. Even when he journeys across the frightening icecap, it becomes part of his search for balance and integration. Like The Left Hand, The Dispossessed is constructed around a set of binary opposites: socialism/capitalism, scarcity/wealth, and individual/society. The work is subtitled ‘An Ambiguous Utopia’ and one of the major themes of the work is the ambiguity of this utopia. Anarres is not presented as a perfect society. Bureaucracy, 136 stagnation and power structures have problematized the revolution, as Shevek understands through the course of the novel. Le Guin paints a very stark picture of the environmental constraints on society. Hardship caused by lack of resources is a prominent issue, reflected in the title of the novel. Anarres citizen are dispossessed not just by political choice, but by the lack of resources to possess. Here, Le Guin draws a contrast with the natural wealth of Urras, and the competitive behaviors this foster. Undoubtedly, Anarres is not a perfect society and Le Guin shows that no such thing is possible. The novel is one of opposites: a social commentary that presents communal cooperation as the truest human ideal, yet focuses on the inevitable separateness of the creative individual within such a structure. Through these dichotomies Le Guin examines the tension between human aspiration and human nature, between what can be dreamed and what can be achieved. Le Guin reveals two complex societies that are not what they initially appear, and her willingness both to praise and criticize them is what makes this novel work. It is like other feminist works of the period which assume that the patriarchy is unnatural and that it fails to create environments conducive to the maximization of female potentialities. The positive values stressed in both stories can reveal to us what, in the author’s eyes, is wrong with our own society. Thus if 137 the stories are family/communal in feeling, we may pretty safely guess that the author sees our society as isolating people from one another, especially women from men. If the novels stress a feeling of harmony and connection with the natural world, the author may be telling us that in reality she feels a lack of such connection. The dislike of urban environments reflects women’s experience of such places since most cities can be places where women and powerless men are threatened. The stories’ classlessness obviously comments on the insecurity, competitiveness, and poverty of a class society. Their relative peacefulness and lack of war is an obvious indictment to the ethnic and racial rivalries within our societies. The utopias’ sex permissiveness and joyfulness is a poignant comment on the condition of sexuality for women: unfriendly, coercive, simply absent, or, at best reactive . The physical mobility emphasized in these books is a direct comment on the physical and psychological threats that bar women from physical mobility in the real world. The emphasis on freedom in work reflects the restrictions that bar women from vast areas of work and experience. Likewise, women’s dystopias highlight the denial of women’s personal independence and their capacity to make moral decisions and act on them. They show women trapped by their sex and by their femaleness. Dystopian visions are in a sense pessimistic: depicting a creation myth in a future world of darkness and 138 violence, where women are reduced to their biological function and become only breeding machines. The dystopian tradition draws on and extrapolates from contemporary political forces and in particular the expression of class and gender hierarchies. Yet, we have seen female characters taking steps out of darkness and violence, towards finding a place for themselves. Alldera of Walk to the End of the World is one of these. This element of hopefulness rests on a strong belief, among feminists, in the power and efficacy of women’s capabilities, for Walk is fired by a political vision coming from the heart of women’s liberation movement, one that is transformed by the power of Charnas’ imagination into a rich and complex fiction, a power which uses exaggeration to make women’s lack of power visible and discussable. The connection between feminism and science fiction is especially close and prosperous. For science fiction is able not only to display actually existing gender relations, but also to offer speculative representations of alternative models of political and social organization: and not by inversions or cancellations of actuality, but by properly utopian or dystopian imaginings that are didactic and critical in character. The language of science fiction, the possibilities in fantastic imagined futures and alternative scenarios of the present, help break down the boundaries and restrictions of everyday realities. The ideas presented in science 139 fiction help create the possibility of another space. In speculating about alternatives, they reflect on how it is possible to create a culture of tolerance. |