The Dynamic of Performance as Comfort in Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time
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After reading Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), the reader is left to ruminate on the legitimacy of Consuelo “Connie” Ramos's experience and its significance. This question leads to an investigation on how Connie's experiences not only transform her so she could understand her situation from a different perspective but also how some of these experiences can be read as performances that can transform the subject and the audience as a participant. This is significant, as examining Connie's travel into the future as a transformative performance linking the present with a utopian future illustrates the affective power of performance. This paper borrows from Judith Butler's concept of performance, Richard Schechner’s analysis of rituals, and interprets the play of conformity as a performance as conceptualized by Sadiya Hartman and as a kind of mimicry based on the use of this concept by Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture to analyze the novel through performance and its affective. I argue that the dynamic relationship between the quotidian life of Connie as a woman of color hospitalized in a mental institution in the 1970s, the rituals performed in Mattapoisett of 2137, and her travel to this possible eco-feminist utopian future can be interpreted as performances are a source of comfort which incites Connie to take up arms and fight for a divergent future against the absolute systemization of biopolitical mechanisms.
Abstract
After reading Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), the reader is left to ruminate on the legitimacy of Consuelo “Connie” Ramos's experience and its significance. This question leads to an investigation on how Connie's experiences not only transform her so she could understand her situation from a different perspective but also how some of these experiences can be read as performances that can transform the subject and the audience as a participant. This is significant, as examining Connie's travel into the future as a transformative performance linking the present with a utopian future illustrates the affective power of performance. This paper borrows from Judith Butler's concept of performance, Richard Schechner’s analysis of rituals, and interprets the play of conformity as a performance as conceptualized by Sadiya Hartman and as a kind of mimicry based on the use of this concept by Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture to analyze the novel through performance and its affective. I argue that the dynamic relationship between the quotidian life of Connie as a woman of color hospitalized in a mental institution in the 1970s, the rituals performed in Mattapoisett of 2137, and her travel to this possible eco-feminist utopian future can be interpreted as performances are a source of comfort which incites Connie to take up arms and fight for a divergent future against the absolute systemization of biopolitical mechanisms.
참고문헌 (13)
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