Departamento de Filología Inglesa
URI permanente para esta comunidadhttps://hdl.handle.net/10953/32
En esta Comunidad se recogen los documentos generados por el Departamento de Filología Inglesa y que cumplen los requisitos de Copyright para su difusión en acceso abierto.
Examinar
Examinando Departamento de Filología Inglesa por Materia "821"
Mostrando 1 - 4 de 4
- Resultados por página
- Opciones de ordenación
Ítem Bleak Bodies: Genetically Engineered Women in Louise O'Neill's (Anti-)Utopian Patriarchal Satire Only Ever Yours(Peter Lang, 2021) Machado Jiménez, AlmudenaIn the latest years, Louise O’Neill (1985-) has drawn in the reading community with her novels, which depict the stark reality of rape culture in our contemporary society. Particularly, her debut masterpiece Only Ever Yours (2014) makes use of a feminist dystopian scenario to explore the origins of female brainwashing and subjugation that stigmatize women’s nature. The community of O’Neill’s novel brilliantly pushes to the limit the nightmarish day-to-day of young girls and their pressure to become compliant patriarchal women, by immersing them since their creation in an educational centre until they reach seventeen. For this, the author presents a two-fold method of feminine conditioning: pre-natus, with the aid of genetic engineering and artificial birth, and post-natus, since girls undergo isolation and strict indoctrination of the patriarchal standards in female educational centres. After this period of internment, their destinies are fixed for the rest of their lives, either as companions or as concubines, but always silenced and ready to give pleasure to men. This community of eves ironically reflects the phenomenon of ‘sorority without solidarity’, persistent in the creation of patriarchal utopias and that turns as an obstacle for the understanding of what feminism should be. Only Ever Yours necessarily disturbs the mind of the reader and denounces the need to understand feminism not as a homogeneous bloc, but as unity in diversity and mutual understanding, in order to fight back against patriarchy from within.Ítem On Utopus' uterus: The colonisation of the body and the birth of patriarchal utopia in Thomas More's Utopia(2021) Machado Jiménez, AlmudenaFollowing European exploration of the Atlantic, origin myths could now be projected onto a possible future and ‘undiscovered’ lands. Often the island proved the most suitable design for these projections to ensure the ‘perfection’ of the community and avoidance of corruptive external influences. These novel conceptualisations envisaged new social constructs to explain human nature, however, they continued to be overtly patriarchal. Gender essentialism and colonisation of the female body was an integral part of reproducing traditional utopian imaginings. Thomas More’s Utopia exemplifies this archetypal gendered conceptualisation of the ideal island society where female education serves to reinforce patriarchal structures and women are essentialised in terms of their fertility. This paper addresses the relationship between the geography of Utopia and the insularity and confinement of women as dominated ‘matrixial entities’ which is further reinforced by utopian cartography. In this context, I assert that the process of colonisation and islanding unsettles the immutability of these patriarchal constructs and exposes the dystopian origins of Utopia.Ítem Sorority without Solidarity: Control in the Patriarchal Utopia of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tal(2018) Machado Jiménez, AlmudenaDespite all variables, the subjugation of the female figure has always been the constant in the conceptualisation of patriarchal utopias. To ensure that subjugation women must undergo a process of reformation and surrender into normative sororities that are at the mercy of the state. It is argued here that such patriarchal utopias involve the elimination of solidarity with and between members of the sororal collective. This ensures the isolation of women and, consequently, eliminates the emancipation of womanhood from patriarchal idealisations. Sororities without solidarity are subjected to a comparative analysis of various classical utopian/dystopian texts and Atwood’s feminist dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale in order to foreground the problem concerning the construction of normative female beings. Moreover, the figure of (e)merging women in contemporary feminist utopian/dystopian discourses paves the way for female empowerment within patriarchal society by combining sorority and solidarity.Ítem You Speak Newspeak: Linguistic Strategies to Fight Orwellian Dystopia in the Classroom(Dykinson, 2020) Machado Jiménez, AlmudenaThe Orwellian dystopia depicted in 1984 is well known for the suffocating use of surveillance technology and the deification of Big Brother’s iconography. These manipulative techniques only control the environment and actions of the citizens, who eventually find shelter in their minds. Hence, language becomes a dwelling for dissidence, a space of resistance. To prevent this potential form of transgression, the Ingsoc regime creates Newspeak, based on linguistic reductionism and doublethink. The use of this artificial language aims to condition the discourse of future generations according to the ideological stance of the government. Orwell’s critic on the notion of doublespeak can be extrapolated to current political campaigns or the news media, whose biased discourse distorts the message and persuades the audience. This paper aims to present connections between Newspeak of 1984 and contemporary tactics of misinformation using doublespeak. Particularly, linguistic strategies are designed in the classroom to help students detect common patterns of manipulation and overcome possible dystopian scenarios. To convey this research, I recur to theories of linguistic relativity that expose the influence of language on reality. Furthermore, I articulate how the use of literary criticism can be used as a tool to deconstruct the correlations between language and thought. The design of activities that test students’ knowledge on doublespeak (e.g. strategic use of euphemisms, ambiguous constructions, etc.) exemplifies the parallelism between our contemporary society and the Orwellian dystopia, as well as it invites learners to reflect about their personal perception of the world through language. Students’ awareness of the linguistic impact on global politics makes them understand that philology is not only a subject of study but it is also a space for critical thinking and global competence, in which they can build promising utopias.