Discourse on the Body: An Ecofeminist Reading of MargaretAtwood’s two Dystopias

• Main Authors: Ming-ming Chen, 陳旼旼
• Other Authors: Hui-chuan Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/52417959830532737563

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 外國語文學研究所 === 102 === The body has been one of the most contested sites in the history of human existence. Literary portrayals of the body, especially in utopian settings, often break the yoke of biological constraints, transcend the confinement of rationality, and manifest all guises of imaginations and fantasies. This thesis approaches Margaret Atwood’s two dystopias—Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood from an ecofeminist perspective, and examines the representation of the body as it pertains to the issue of reproduction, pornography, and vegetarianism. Drawing from ecologism and feminism in their discussion of the dual subordination of nature and women in the patriarchal structure of domination, ecofeminist discourse on the body makes room for the discussion of the precarious state of the body as physically collectable, controllable, consumable, and customizable. As embodiment becomes endlessly alterable for human ends, this thesis demonstrates how the representation of the bodies in Margaret Atwood’s two dystopias exemplify both the liberating and utopian potential, and the totalitarian dystopian mechanisms that lurk behind the system that sanctions oppression.