Hi all,
With respect to Carolyn's question: no you don't 'have'
to read this book. I am sorry but this (and any other) threads are
bound to exclude some people due to the diversity of the list. I had
not read "Women on the edge of time" until a few days ago. I read it
because I had often heard it quoted as an 'ecofeminist novel'. Other
such quoted novels are 'Herland'; I recently was at a conference where
a paper was presented on this novel arguing that in some respects it
could be reclaimed for ecofeminism, I have yet to read this book but
apparently the author veers towards racism and eugenics, it was written
in 1919 I think, as if that was an excuse.
Another novel, which I have read, which has been seen as
ecofeminist is Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale". But back to
Piercy. I really enjoyed this book, another reason I read it was that I am
rediscovering science-fiction as not necessarily 'geeky', masculinist and
as containing somewhat masturbatory (or Chirac/ean) dreams of colonisation,
ie., a continuation of the 'master' project.
I loved Piercy's ideas on 'job rotation', I think they are essential
to utopias, we have to move beyond the meritocracy, which probably most
of us on this list are a part of, me included, which is so structured by mind/body
dualism,
wherein those that do 'body work' (I'm not talking about weights here folks!)
are inferiorised against those who work primarily with their minds, those
that '''''embody''''' a rather suspect notion of 'reason'.
I also liked the male-female ambiguity, which Connie found a bit
troubling since she felt a need when observing people to classify them as
either male or female. We need to labour against this view. Piercy's language,
the use of the words 'Person' and 'per' instead of he, she, herself, himself etc,
I also liked.
What I didn't like so much was Piercy's implication that the
emancipation of 'women' is premised upon the removal of childbirth from
the womb. In this respect she allies herself with Shulamith Firestone and
I suppose it's not impossible that she was an influence since they wrote
at around the same time, late 1970s. This view suggests an abhorrence with nature.
Piercy seemed to be implying that when pregnant women are passive and constrained,
which though I am male, I know to be false. I am however not anti-technology and for
instance liked the use of solar power on every house(which they already have on many
Greek islands). Finally as some of you who remember my previous postings, I would
take Piercy's vegetarianism a little further. I think it is also worth talking about
dystopias, especially the one mentioned briefly in Piercy's novel. It bears a
resemblence
to Dennis Potter's dystopia in 'Cold Lazarus', currently on TV over here.
Well this has turned out rather long, so I'll await other contributions with
anticipation,
Cheers,
Richard :-)
