The Forest Within the Farm
Locating the Collective Androgynous Influence as Destabilising Anthropocentric Control of Space in Diana Wynne Jones's Hexwood
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12943256 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mary-Anne Potter (0000-0003-3093-2418, University of South Africa, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 2-3 |
| Pages | 26-38 |
| Publication date | 2019-09-02 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Scrutiny2 (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1812-5441 • E-ISSN: 1753-5409 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/18125441.2019.1647451 |
| OpenAlex | W3011998505 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
The influence of the Anthropocene has required a reconsideration of how humanity relates to, depends on, and interacts with the world. This, according to Jeremy Davies, summons towards it a re-imagining of the relationship between human and non-human life (The Birth of the Anthropocene. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016). In addition, such a re- imagining can only be effected through a dissolution of deep-rooted binary classifications, with the view of generating a more integrated approach to relational paradigms: that Self is Other. Such an understanding can be applied to, for example, statements like “humanity is nature”, or “humanity is technology”. However, to achieve this new relational paradigm, destabilisation away from binaries is required. In Diana Wynne Jones's Hexwood (New York: Greenwillow Books, 1994), the influences of machine, myth, human, and nature intersect, and the point at which each of these influences converge is Banners Wood—the forest within the farm. The space of the Wood is intertextual, as proposed by Julia Kristeva (Desire in Language. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), and is a space where these multiple modes of being, and potentialities of becoming, perpetually influence or “talk” to each other. Using ecocritical, ecofeminist, and intertextual theory, I unpack the destabilisation, or disruption, of distinct archetypal binaries that pertain to gender and space, and how these, in turn, speak to an ecocentric and androgenised drive to destabilise anthropocentric patriarchal control
Aesthetics · Anthropocene · Anthropocentrism · Ecocriticism · Ecofeminism · Environmental ethics · Humanity · Posthuman · Sociology · Theology · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
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