https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.005
The Porous Body: A Baradian Reading of Ontological Reconfiguration in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing
DR. LIZ MARY ANTONY
Assistant Professor
Department of English
St. Albert’s College (Autonomous), Ernakulam, Kerala
liz@alberts.edu.in
Abstract: The landscapes, climate, animals, human beings, a city, the outbreak of zoonoses, a toxic plume; bioluminescent water; trees, concrete structures, all these things have something in common. Whether tangible or intangible, socialised or not, these are all material forms in varied combination of forces, agencies, and other matter. Matter and agency are interconnected in numerous ways. Their constant interaction with each other plays a huge role in the formation of the world that we live. This study reviews specifically the changes that agencies establish through nature and human interface during globalisation. Globalisation is an intra-active agency that has the ability to make changes on the growth of a country. Its hegemonic impact affects the economic system explicitly and the value system implicitly. The constant process of this ‘intra-action’ between women and fast changing environment is represented on Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s works. Her novel Surfacing is referred to bring out varying levels of ‘interaction’ endured by the protagonist due to the onslaught of globalization on the basis of feminist theorist Karen Barad’s concept of agential realism. According to Barad, differences are generated in this world through the intra-action of human/non-human matrices. Matter whether living or non-living is not passive in Barad’s agentic world, but is a means of generative becoming. In this sense matter has to be understood as something that has its own semiotic dynamics and it is also an essential part of environment’s semiotic and cultural evolution. Thus, the paper provides an understanding of the complex relationship between the human and the non-human worlds in terms of agency.
Keywords: Agential Realism, Materialism, Intra-action, Ecofeminism, Globalisation
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