현재의 존재론: 유토피아라는 욕망과 페미니즘 SF의 현재성*

곽은희 숙명여자대학교 아시아여성연구원 2023 아시아여성연구 Vol.62 No.3

This article analyzes Park Moon-young’s SF novel, Women on Earth, from the perspective of ‘ontology of the present’ and examines the point where the desire for utopia and feminist SF meet. The novum, in which “violent men disappear by an alien light,” reveals the aspect of science fiction that resolves social contradictions by relying on extraterrestrial characteristics that do not exist on the Earth, while at the same time showing sensitivity to gengersensitivity. In this respect, this novel occupies an important position in pursuing a feminist utopia. This pendulum movement between the novum and the real world awakens women from the inertia that has dominated their lives to date, sensitizes them to the reality of violence and oppression they encounter, and allows them to think holistically about the possibility of a different life. Women on Earth seeks to overcome the failure of imagination that our era is experiencing through feminism by restoring sympathy for the pain of others while affirming the weak. The differences, conflicts, discords, and tensions within feminism that are revealed in the process of realizing feminist utopia are recognized as the source of the common sensibility of sisterhood through the weakness of women on which feminism is based, and are also a heterogeneous struggle to prevent women from becoming entrenched in feminist separatism.

현재의 존재론: 유토피아라는 욕망과 페미니즘 SF의 현재성

곽은희(Kwak, Eun-Hee) 숙명여자대학교 아시아여성연구원 2023 아시아여성연구 Vol.62 No.3

This article analyzes Park Moon-young’s SF novel, Women on Earth, from the perspective of ‘ontology of the present’ and examines the point where the desire for utopia and feminist SF meet. The novum, in which “violent men disappear by an alien light,” reveals the aspect of science fiction that resolves social contradictions by relying on extraterrestrial characteristics that do not exist on the Earth, while at the same time showing sensitivity to gengersensitivity. In this respect, this novel occupies an important position in pursuing a feminist utopia. This pendulum movement between the novum and the real world awakens women from the inertia that has dominated their lives to date, sensitizes them to the reality of violence and oppression they encounter, and allows them to think holistically about the possibility of a different life. Women on Earth seeks to overcome the failure of imagination that our era is experiencing through feminism by restoring sympathy for the pain of others while affirming the weak. The differences, conflicts, discords, and tensions within feminism that are revealed in the process of realizing feminist utopia are recognized as the source of the common sensibility of sisterhood through the weakness of women on which feminism is based, and are also a heterogeneous struggle to prevent women from becoming entrenched in feminist separatism.

여성들의 유토피아 크리스띤 드삐장의 『여성들의 도시』와 마거릿 캐번디시의 『숙녀학교』

정희원 ( Chung Heewon ) 영미문학연구회 2019 안과 밖 Vol.0 No.46

This essay reads Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies and Margaret Cavendish’s The Female Academy as texts of women’s utopias. A medieval literature in French and an English drama after the Interregnum respectively, they have not gathered much critical attention as female utopia. Defining de Pizan as the forerunner of women’s separatist utopias, this essay offers a comparative reading of Christine’s female version of civitas dei and Cavendish’s female academic society. In both works, the education of women is the major issue that the two authors address by demonstrating the process of building (and unbuilding) feminotopias. While discussing Christine’s and Cavendish’s works as female utopian texts, the essay questions and demonstrates how each author critically appropriates the male-centered utopian tradition that existed from the premodern utopia of St. Augustine’s to the modern academic utopia of the Royal Society. If Cavendish’s female academy can be defined as a failed utopian experiment, this study suggests that the writer’s ambivalent attitude towards the female academic society reflects historical conditions under which female subjects could become the ‘legitimate’ parts of the society only by marriage and for the sake of their husbands.

A Subversive or Utopian Fairy Tale?: Re-reading Goblin Market as a Quest for Female Self

정다운 한국영미문학페미니즘학회 2016 영미문학페미니즘 Vol.24 No.3

There has been a conflict among Victorianists in interpreting Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market as to whether it should be upheld as a Utopian or subversive project. I argue that these contrasting strands existing in the poem demonstrate Rossetti’s unique feminist-religious poetics that contain both utopian solution for and subversive critiques against Victorian society and mores. While many critics tend to emphasize either aspect of the poem, it is crucial to read the poem as a dialectical movement between the utopian and the subversive to go beyond a simple binary opposition between the fantastic and the real, the masculine and the feminine, the bestial and the human, nature and the sheltered home which has long framed the Victorian separate sphere ideology. By offering an overview of the history of feminist criticism on Goblin Market, this paper aims to demonstrate how such oppositional values are intertwined in its narrative development and how its boundary-crossing gestures contribute to Rossetti’s unique feminist poetics that ultimately advocates for a strongly conscious female self and autonomy.

샬롯 퍼킨스 길먼의 『허랜드』가 그리는 페미니스트 유토피아

김미정(Mijeong Kim) 한국비평이론학회 2020 비평과이론 Vol.25 No.3

페미니즘은 지배 논리 혹은 다수의 논리에 의해 억압되거나 배제된 자들의 침묵당한 목소리들을 회복시키고 함께 연대하여 폭력적인 사회구조를 바꾸어 나가는 것을 지향한다는 점을 고려할 때, 페미니스트 유토피아는 더 이상 변화가 불가능한 하나의 완벽한 닫힌 세계가 아니라, 수 없이 다양한 목소리들과 존재 방식들이 서로 부딪히고 갈등하는 불안정성을 감수하고서라도 함께 공존하며 끊임없이 유동적으로 변화하는 열린 세계여야 할 것이다. 그러므로 그러한 이상향을 그리는 페미니스트 유토피아 문학의 현대적인 의의 또한 현실과 동떨어지고 더 이상의 변화의 가능성이 없는 완벽한 세계를 말하기 보다는, 이상적 사회상을 성취하는 ‘과정’ 자체에 의미를 두고, 바람직한 미래사회를 향해 계속 진행 중인 공동체적 실천을 키우는 영양분이 되어주는 데 있다. 이런 맥락에서 본 논문은 최초의 본격 페미니스트 유토피아 소설로 손꼽히는 샬롯 퍼킨스 길먼의 『허랜드』를 분석한다. 우선 길먼이 『허랜드』를 쓰던 당시 사회적/시대적 배경을 살펴봄으로써 그녀가 주장한 ‘모성의 사회화’가 무엇이며, 왜 사회개혁의 논리로 ‘모성(애)’를 강조하는지 살펴볼 것이다. 또한, 많은 후대 비평가들이 지적하는 한계들에도 불구하고 길먼의 『허랜드』가 페미니스트 유토피아를 향한 선구적 목소리를 내고 있다면, 그녀의 글쓰기가 왜 엘렌 식수(Hélène Cixous)와 뤼스 이리가레(Luce Irigaray)가 설파한 정치적 실천행위로써 여성적 글쓰기(feminine writing)로 해석될 수 있는지, 그리고 그것이 왜 질 들뢰즈(Gilles Deleuze)의 이론에서는 기존 사회의 억압적 규범/규율체계에 저항하여 수많은 ‘탈주선’을 생성시키는 창조적 작업일 수 있는지 분석할 것이다. 마지막으로, 『허랜드』에 내재해 있는 디스토피아적 요소들을 이론적인 맥락에서 살펴본 후, 그럼에도 불구하고 길먼이 추구하는 페미니스트 유토피아가 닫힌 정적 세계가 아닌 유동적으로 열린 공간, 혹은 그 ‘열림’을 향한 지속적인 운동을 뜻한다면, 결론적으로 『허랜드』의 현대적 의미와 유토피아적 상상력의 의의를 짚어볼 것이다. Considering that feminism aims to restore the muted and silenced voices of those oppressed, marginalized, or excluded by the logic of the majority, and to change the violent social structure by banding together in solidarity, the feminist utopia should not be a complete closed world where any change is no longer possible, but an open world where countless different voices and ways of existence collide and coexist with each other, enduring instabilities and conflicts and always changing fluidly. Therefore, feminist utopian literature has the modern significance when it nurtures and nourishes ongoing communal practices for a desirable future society, putting more weight on the ‘process’ of achieving it, rather than merely talking about a perfect world that is far from reality and has no potential for change. In this context, this paper first explores what Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued for the socialization of motherhood and why she emphasized motherhood as the logic of social change by examining the historical backdrop of Herland. If Gilman’s Herland is a pioneering voice for a feminist utopia despite its limits pointed out by many later critics, this paper argues why her writing can be interpreted as ‘feminine writing’ as a political practice preached by Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, and how it can be a feminist performance that creates numerous ‘lines of flight’ resisting the repressive norm of disciplinary society in terms of Gilles Deleuze’s theory. Lastly, after examining the dystopian elements inherent in Herland, if the feminist utopia pursued by Gilman is not a closed static world, but a fluidly open space, or a continuous movement toward the ‘openness,’ this paper points out the significance of Herland and its utopian imagination in the modern sense.

조애너 러스의 『여성 남자』와 페미니스트 유토피아

장정희(Chang, Junghee) 신영어영문학회 2021 신영어영문학 Vol.80 No.-

This paper examines construction of feminist utopia focusing on multiple feminist alternatives to the male-dominated world in Joanna Russ’s The Female Man. Russ presents the parallel universes in which the four protagonists Janet, Joanna, Jeannine, Jael confront each other and move toward revising cultural contradictions and challenging the dominant ideologies of gender and power structure of their world. In the braided narratives of the four J’s, the feminist utopia does not exist as a static alternative to the present society, it works to reconstruct and extend the categories of gender, sex, and power structure. The four J’s learn how to overcome women’s oppressive situations and reconstruct their identities through their interactive process. Especially Joanna’s declaration that she has become a female man shows the main strategy of revision toward feminist utopia in the text. The four J’s realize that feminist utopia is not a fixed one and they should fight to have utopian future. Russ contributes to the formation and development of 1970’s feminist utopian science fiction through her exploration of gender and experimental narrative strategies.

마지 피어시의『시간의 경계에 선 여자』에 대한 여성주의적 독법: 유토피아 문학에서의 방문자 : 안내자의 관계를 중심으로

김지은(Kim, Jieun) 순천향대학교 인문학연구소 2021 순천향 인문과학논총 Vol.40 No.1

유토피아 문학은 현실사회와는 다른 이상사회의 특징을 단순히 백과사전식으로 나열하는 관광 안내문이나 개인적 경험을 담아내는 여행기가 아니라, 유토피아 사회(상)을 비판적으로 검토하기 위해 전략적으로 ‘안내 관광’의 형태를 취하고 있는 문학 장르이다. 유토피아 문학에서 방문자와 안내자가 주고받는 대화는 상호작용하면서 변증법적으로 유토피아 사회(상)을 검토하는 산파술적 ‘소크라테스식 대화’로 구성된다. 그렇기 때문에 유토피아 문학작품 속에서 유토피아를 방문하는 자가 누구이며, 이 외부의 방문자에게 유토피아의 내부를 안내하는 자가 누구인지, 또한 방문자와 안내자로서 이들은 어떤 관계를 맺게 되는지 파악하는 것은 작품을 읽어내는데 있어 매우 중요한 분석틀이다. 이 글은 마지 피어시의 『시간의 경계에 선 여자』에서 여성 방문자 코니와 여성 안내자 루시엔테가 맺는 관계를 기존 남성 작가의 유토피아 문학에서 남성 방문자와 남성 안내자가 맺는 관계와 비교하고, 그 특징으로 필연성과 미종결성 그리고 실천성으로 제시한다. 구체적으로 이 글은 코니와 루시엔테의 만남과 접속이 첫째, 우연이 아닌 필연이고 둘째, 일회성으로 종결되는 것이 아닌 복수적 접속으로 진행되며, 셋째, 적극적인 개입과 저항을 요구한다는 점에 주목하여, 피어시의 작품에서 상상되고 추동되는 페미니스트 유토피아(상)은 기존의 지배 이데올로기에 균열을 만듦으로써 여성 억압의 현실을 변화시키는 대안적 가치이자 저항적 실천 그리고 연대의 가능성으로 제시되고 있음을 살펴본다. Utopian literature is not just a travel guidebook that encyclopedically lists the characteristics of ideal society different from the real society, or a travel essay that describes the personal experience. Instead, utopian literature is the genre that strategically takes the form of ‘travel guide’ for a critical review on the utopian social aspects. In utopian literature, visitor and guide exchange an interactive conversation composed of the maieutic ‘Socratic dialogue’ which deeply examines the utopian social aspect in a dialectical method. Therefore, identifying who visits the utopia, who guides the visitor throughout the utopia, and what kind of relationship they form as visitor and guide in utopian literature are crucial analytical tools in interpreting utopian literature. This paper focuses on the relationship between a female visitor named Connie and a female guide Luciente, and the time which enables this relationship in the Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. In this fiction, the feministic utopia imagined and driven by Connie and Luciente is suggested as the alternative value, resistant practice, and possibility of solidarity that ultimately changes the reality of suppression on female by causing a crack on the existing ruling ideology.

Flee from Sex and Gender: Utopias in Second-Wave Feminist Science Fiction

안선영 한국영미문학페미니즘학회 2016 영미문학페미니즘 Vol.24 No.3

This article discusses how sex and gender are set as a non-problem in some feminist utopias of second-wave feminism. An examination of the utopias of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), and Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy (1987-1989) reveals that, in the process of envisioning a feminist utopia, the authors render genderlessness an a priori condition, which has the unintended effect of obviating the necessity of transforming the existent condition. This article demonstrates how these kinds of utopias that eliminate sexual and gender conflicts in advance—made available by exiting Earth and allying with aliens—are historically unattainable, and argues, via materialist thought, for the importance of imagining the utopia developed in and through changing material circumstances. The article suggests that part of the reason for the evasive aspect of the utopias coming out of this politically charged era is found in the contradicting historical forces of the time, with politics of redistribution and restructuration, postmodern ethos, and neoliberal current in tension.

페미니스트 과학소설과 젠더: 조안나 러스의 『여성 남자』와 어슐러 르 귄의 『어둠의 왼손』을 중심으로

김경옥 한국중앙영어영문학회 2016 영어영문학연구 Vol.58 No.2

This study focuses on the gender problem and the emergence of the feminist science fiction through Joanna Russ’s The Female Man and Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Traditionally, science fiction was considered as a masculine genre because the writers and reading audience were mostly men. Furthermore, the stories centered around male heroes and women hardly found any significant appearances when science fiction first appeared. Feminist science fiction was first seen in the 1970s. It explores gender discrimination and critiques the dominance of male power and institutions. The Female Man is about four women who lived in different times and spaces. When they cross over to each others’ worlds, their dissimilar views on gender roles startle the others’ pre-existing notions of womanhood. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Gethen adopt sexual attributes only during the period of sexual receptiveness and high fertility, called kemmer, in which individuals can assume male or female attributes, depending on the context and relationship. Russ’ and Le Guin’s text are responses to the radical currents within American feminism in the late 1960s. They directly confront the question of socialized versus biological differences and extends the fluid concept of gender.

여성 과학소설의 유토피아 구성: 어슐러 르 귄의 『어둠의 왼손』

장정희(Chang, Junghee) 신영어영문학회 2020 신영어영문학 Vol.77 No.-

This paper examines construction of utopia in feminist science fiction focusing on Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin constructs Gethen/Winter as the gender-fluid society inhabited by androgynous creatures and subverts the traditional concept of gender identity. As the androgynous society, Gethen is free from division of labor by sex, strong drive toward progress, threat of war, and technological exploitation. Le Guin criticizes racialism and gendered hierarchical structures in her contemporary society and emphasizes the value of real communication and transcendence of dualism through Genly and Estraven’s hard journey on the Gobrin ice. Expecially Genly comes to understand true nature of androgynous society through Estraven’s love and sacrificing spirit. He also realizes that the process is more important than the end through the journey. Le Guin contributes to offering the strategic reference for the feminist science fiction writers who attempt to actualize new social and cultural structure by suggesting utopian vision of future based on transcendence of dualism and gender polarization.