Margaret Atwood

This article is an attempt to study subject formation in relation to gender in Margaret Atwood's (1939- ) Surfacing (1979) and Bodily Harm (1983) within the frame of the uncanny. The issue of gender has been discussed in Atwood's novels from different perspectives but this article claims that what have been rarely discussed in Atwood's novels are the unrepresentable realities in relation to gender which can be foregrounded by dislodging the uncanny. The uncanny which was once a rather minor issue in Freudian oeuvre has been reconsidered in the contemporary era by prominent thinkers, such as Jean-François Lyotard and Julia Kristeva whose ideas are used in elaborating the unrepresentability of gender in this article. The idea of the female sublime is the most significant issue in the context of the uncanny in this article which challenges any representational system of gender formation and problematizes our preconceived hence familiar perceptions of gender formation and reevaluates them in an unfamiliar, dynamic and unrepresentable space.

In accordance with Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics, the interconnection between the subject and its Other is equated with the master-slave relationship, which is not by any means absolute. This article aims at illustrating an oscillating state of master-and-slave relation with regard to Levinas’s ethics in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. The Face of the Other becomes a ‘poor master’ who needs help and yet gives a serious order to the subject, one that he should obey. Subsequently, the Other deprives the subject of his/her wealth, thus overcoming its own poverty; therefore, the Other as a ‘poor master’ and the subject as a ‘wealthy subject’ constitute an ethical relationship. Founding the argument on the above-mentioned Levinasian principles, this paper approaches the altruistic intentions of Atwood’s post-apocalyptic characters, and inspects how the post-apocalyptic world of her MaddAddam trilogy is ultimately orientated towards, if not also predicting, a return to now bygone humanistic, ethical and communal society.