'I refuse these givens': Embracing Multiplicity of Identity in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich

Yıl 2000, Sayı: 11, 73 - 81, 01.04.2000

Özlem Görey

Öz

The world we live in is divided into clearly defined territories and oppositions. Some of these mutually exclusive and hierarchical binary oppositions that spring to mind are Activity/Passivity, Sun/Moon, Culture/Nature, Day/Night, Father/Mother. All these dichotomies spring from the ultimate binary opposition Man/Woman, which is gendered and takes the male as the reference point[1]. The symbolism of Male/Female does not refer to two different halves of humanity, but it has been used to express and maintain the hierarchical and oppositional relationship between the sexes which is divided and based on the subordination of the female, as it is always the feminine side of these oppositions that carries the negative attributes. Such a system of organization takes man as its measure in defining everything, including woman. Luce Irigaray too, like Hélène Cixous, believes that only in a different order of meaning might it be possible to construct a positive representation of feminine identity. This requires the rejection of the ever powerful notion of universal truth, as its universality is a fallacy; it is universal only from the male perspective.

Kaynakça

• Cixous, Hélène. “ Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks / Ways Out / Forays”, Belsey Catherine, and Jane Moore, eds. The Feminist Reader:: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1989 101-116.
• Gelpi, Barbara Charlesworth, and Albert Gelpi, eds. Adrienne Rich’s Poetry. London: W. W. Norton, 1975.
• Irigaray, Luce. An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill. London: The Athlone, 1993.
• --------. This Sex Which is Not One. 1985. Trans. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.
• Rich, Adrienne. The Dream of a Common Language:Poems 1974-1977. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.
• --------. “ Split at the Root.” Ed. Ursula Owen. Fathers:: Reflections by Daughters. London: Virago, 1983.
• --------. The Fact of a Doorframe :Poems Selected and New 1950 – 1984. 1980. London: W. W. Norton, 1994.
• --------. “ Power and Danger: Works of a Common Woman. ” On Lies Secrets, and Silence : Selected Prose 1966 - 1978. London: W.W.Norton, 1980.