조애너 러스의 『여성 남자』와 페미니스트 유토피아

Abstract

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.