كليدواژه :
خودآگاهي , مارگارت اتوود , ظهور , هويت جنسيتي , فراخوانش , رمان
چكيده لاتين :
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the merging boundaries of “Self” in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, a novel written in 1972. Atwood explores the inner conflict
of the protagonis t and pursues the gender roles and discriminations towards
women. The narrator is suppressed in the wilderness, and during her journey, she
is looking for her pas t. The novel shows that the fractured sense of self such as
interpersonal relationships, self-image, and identity begins from childhood. More
specifically, the novel attempts to search for the identity and survival of the self in a
pos tmodern society. The main objective of this s tudy is to identify the mental, psychological,
and spiritual boundaries of self in this society. Moreover, the research
takes a feminis t approach to explore the ways the narrator utilizes to build and
preserve the boundaries of self, which resulted in self-realization at the end of the
novel. These practices include turning in to feelings and emotions, seeking support
from others, considering the pas t and childhood life, and improving self-awareness
and self-care. Moreover, we categorized and elaborated the boundaries of self in
three separate categories: female subjectivity, fake identities and ideology, and
landscape, nature, and cultural aspects. Atwood illus trates the subjugation of nature
and women by the Wes tern culture throughout a journey to the pas t and to the
forgotten territories of the protagonis t’s psyche paralleling them with the remote
Canadian fores t areas and taking advantage of narrative s trategies that contribute
to the psychoanalytical theme of the novel. Background S tudies
Although Atwood has never defined herself as ‘feminis t’ her work has often provided
immense material for feminis t criticism. Surfacing, the second novel by Margaret
Atwood is s tructured as a journey of a nameless protagonis t in search of her missing father to the Northern territories of Canada where grew up. This journey
simultaneously becomes an inward journey too, into her
subconscious mind. During the journey some issues are tackled, the concept of
the search for the Self, the sexual politics and gender roles, return to the natural
environment as the ultimate healer in contras t to the civilized un-natural social
relationships of New York City.
A considerable critical discussion on the novel has been the analysis of the spiritual
journey of the protagonis t into the physical wilderness of her birthplace and the
subconscious memories of childhood in search of her identity. In “Power, Madness,
and Gender Identity in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing: A feminis t Reading”
Ernic Ozdemir argues that the male dominance in the Capitalis t culture is impersonal
and at the same time internalized by both sexes. On the other hand, madness
is considered to be a subversive act of agency agains t the patriarchal power s tructure
(Ozdemir, 2003). Another frequent approach to Surfacing is the pos t-colonial approach. Irena
Dudová argues that the return of the female protagonis t to the natural wilderness
in search of identity is mos tly a spiritual search for peace and rejoining with the
spirits of the ances tors that is inspired mos tly by the native American cult of the
ances tors and spiritual unity with nature (Dudová, 2010).
Methodology and Theory
The present article reads Atwood’s Surfacing from a feminis t psychological point
of view while applying Louis Althusser’s theory of the subject which considers two
cooperative power- oriented mechanisms of ISA and RSA to be at work to ‘interpellate’
the subject into their acquired identity. ISA s tands for Ideological S tate Apparati
represented in the cultural ins titutions like education, family, and religion, and
RSI which s tands for Repressive S tate Apparati represented in the legal sys tem and
police operations (Bidet, 2015).
The Psychological theories of the ‘self’ have been reviewed and quoted to shed
light on the internal processes that the protagonis t undergoes to reach the ultimate
situation in the final chapter. However, the main theoretical outlook is Lacan’s
pos ts tructuralis t theory of the subject which holds language as s tructured like the
unconscious and the process of language learning as the process of the entrance of
the subject into the symbolic or the Law of Father in the patriarchal society.
The above-mentioned theories get us to ask the following ques tions in the analysis of the novel:
- How can the search for the ‘Self’ in the novel can be identified as a ques t for the
re-union with the imaginary and taking refuge from the symbolic to the pre-linguis
tic arena of the imaginary?
How are the Althusserian theory of the subject can be traced in the process of subjectification
of the characters and what is the novel’s tone toward these processes?
What is the novel’s answer (if any) to the problem of the identity of the ‘self’?
Discussion
The predicament of Atwood’s protagonis ts in mos t of her novels has a deep
connection with their experiences that are repressed in their minds. These
memories play a dominant role in making their life a complicated web. Atwood
firmly asserts the need to recover one’s memory to come to terms with
the pas t and discover true self-identity. The novel gives hope to the readers
that irrespective of the kind of experiences in life, every woman can
emerge with a sign of new courage to lead an authentic and renewed life.
This s tudy explores the boundaries of “Self” in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.
This paper discusses that “Self” is complicatedly bound up with identity, power,
and ideology (Kuhn, 2005). Self and self-fashioning often become a dominant
feature in Atwood’s fiction as a response to cons tructing one’s identity. Furthermore,
Atwood in Surfacing creates a pos tmodern s tructure of gender, power, and
culture. Also, Atwood takes notice of the wholeness of the self as a woman and her
merging identities (Telligman, 2013).
Conclusion
Surfacing is a pos tmodern novel not jus t because of its rather naked exposition of
the processes and s tructures of subjugation of women and the imposition of gender
roles through the ISA, but more significantly because of its internal capacity
to reveal the indeterminacies of discursive oppositions by laying bare the very
relativity of every single opposition. Although the gender roles are highlighted
throughout the novel, the myth of happy marriage is harshly attacked, the victimization
of women in the power s truggle of the sexes is shown in Anna’s desperate
attempts to keep the game going, and there is more to it than jus t the description of the process of the subjection of women.
