Un-gendering the Subject in U.S. Women's Experimental Novels

Abstract

The prevailing philosophical tendencies in Western culture have historically conceptualized the feminine as man’s “other” —an absence, a mystery, a silent space. If a woman, fictional or otherwise, resists relegation to the realm of otherness by speaking, acting, or otherwise assuming agency, she is perceived as a subject according to the masculine model (i.e. not really a woman). Attempts to represent female subjectivity outside of this binary bind have been the ongoing work of women novelists in the twentieth century. But recent intersections between feminist and postmodern theory have brought forth a framework for re-envisioning gendered subjectivity as a constructed product of language and culture. The wide range of aesthetic and philosophical inquiry this framework invites may be evidenced by the explosion of experimental fiction produced by woman in the U.S. since 1970. This article examines five novels whose authors engage in formal/linguistic experimentation in order to explore the discursive processes through which gendered subjectivity is constructed and/or propose radical alternatives to normative Western models of gendered subjectivity: Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays (1970), Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping (1980), Leslie Dick’s Without Falling (1988), Kathy Acker’s Empire of the Senseless (1988), and Madeline Gins’ Helen Keller or Arakawa (1994).