Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - András Tarnóc: Voices From the Wild Zone: Three Versions of the Feminist Aesthetic in American Culture

perspectives gave rise to much of feminist literary scholarship in the U.S. in the 1980's. Similarly to Irigaray, Elaine Showalter representing the British-American line believes that female literary creation is sex defined and functions as a revolt against the view of writing as a phallic, or Oedipal process. According to the latter, the author through the writing process becomes a father to himself, suffering the "anxiety of influence," a term referring to the internal struggle a male writer must wage against his literary ancestors (Showalter 257). Perceiving writing as putting the "phallic pen on the virginal paper" reinforces that this activity belongs to the male domain (Showalter 250). Showalter predicates her own theory on Shirley and Edwin Ardener's model positing society as a compound of dominant and muted groups. Whereas women belong to the muted, subordinated group, owing to a "lack of full containment," or perhaps overlap there exists a "wild zone." The wild zone, or independent female space is the source of women's creativity. While similarly to the French psychoanalysts' view Showalter considers the source of creative activity to be rooted in the unconscious, she concedes that the means of expression, or channels of communication are male dominated, and women are restrained to use the "master's tools." The wild zone manifests itself in three ways. Spatially it is an equivalent of an area in the dominant culture forbidden to men, experientially it indicates particularly female activities (childbirth, child rearing), and metaphysically corresponds to the imaginary (Showalter 261-262). Rachel Blau Du Plessis argues that just as the Etruscan was a language unintelligible to the Romans, the female language appears Etruscan to the dominant socio-cultural order. Female writing is characterized by a porousness of communication, a secret language, a non-hierarchical structure, (131) and "non-linear movement" (135). In its "shapeless shapeliness"( 132) it can be compared to a "verbal quilt" (136) representing the woman as a "leaf

1 in opposition to the "phallic tower" (133). Female writing performs a synthesis between opposing elements: love and ambition, mother and child, death and pleasure (134). Since woman is an incorporation of contradictions, she represents a strange liminality: an outsider by her sexual status and relation to the dominant group, yet an insider by social position (135) reminding one of DuBois' famous description of black consciousness: 100