Gender&LitUtopiaDystopia Wiki


Some Random Things I Should Maybe Remember?

Stuff from “Herland” discussion

-motherhood

-eugenics: breeding things to be a certain way

-no sexuality…seems uncontrollable…obernut metaphor—exterminate moth that sexually reproduces

-no shame, nothing to be ashamed of—Garden of Eden—traditional religion narrative as well as traditional marriage narrative

-Herland finally judged to be “great” based on standards of Christianity

-ends with Gilman telling us the reason women and men need to be separate is because of sexual violence

            -perfect land/births/motherhoodàsafe from this sex stuff

-even Jeff…doesn’t take advantage of it, but places women in role of weak/victim

Queer Theory

-Queer: everything not traditionally heterosexual…not just sexual orientation—reorientation towards world

-everything “normal” in our lives is based on assumption of heterosexuality

Stuff from Angels in America discussion:

-we use language to talk about things/tell things

            -some language actually does something…like saying “I do”

            -not just describing world—part of world

            -language is changing world as we use it—through performance we create something

-creates possibility of change

-this play does something—play becomes gendered by actors’ performance

-Q: What does this play do/perform/enact/create?

            -homosexual perspectives (kind of entirely different point of view)

            -conflict, doubt, guilt, abandonment

            -humanity (loss in relationships)

            -magical, delusions, divinity

            -messiness

            -illness

            -mortality

            -race

            -religion—Mormonism, Judaism—oldest and newest—question of prophet

-“Big ideas, stories, people dying, and people like you”

            -“Angels in America”= America

-words we use construct world, change things, always performing them—Roy calling illness cancer vs. AIDs

-dystopic or utopic or lived reality???