자연-문화 중첩지대로서의 몸과 물성페미니즘—테리 템페스트 윌리엄즈의『피난처』읽기

초록

Feminist scholars including ecofeminists tend to either dismiss thecontemporary nature writer Terry Tempest Williams or forcibly attune her totheir critical schemes, because they find it difficult to confine her works suchas Refuge within their schemes. This difficulty largely arises from Williams’presumptive advocate for a special connection between women and naturethrough women’s bodies despite her apparent feminist causes both in her ownlife and her works. Williams’ affirmation of women’s bodies and the womennatureconnection in Refuge, however, does not repeat a simple essentialistposition; rather, she suggests women’s bodies and the women-natureconnection as an ecopolitical space where women’s (toxic) bodies are resultsof cultural, social, and political activities. Williams’ advocacy of materialitysuch as women’s bodies and physical nature and her positioning women’sbodies as an ecopolitical space are spontaneous results from her own life-longexperience living intimately in the Utah desert land, transcending conceptualand ethical assertions of postmodern feminism and ecofeminism. Williams’sposition becomes far more sensible and timely appropriate, considering thatsome science-minded postmodern feminists, whose trend is often calledmaterial feminism, have produced revealing facts in the late 2000s that vouchfor Williams’ affirming materiality of human bodies and nature andpositioning women’s bodies-nature-culture connection as an ecopoliticalspace.

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