When I read chapter 3 and 4 of Fausto’s book, it immediately reminded me of another book I read two years ago, ¨Middlesex¨ by Jeffrey Eugenides. The main character in ¨Middlesex¨, Calliope/Cal, is a hermaphrodite and I believe the story line follows her/his personal struggles of as s/he grows up and starts to change both physically and emotionally. In fact, I think she grew up as a girl only to discover that she was male when she reached puberty. I remember that one of most striking characteristics of that book was the underlying binary opposition of words and ideas that the author would use. For example, the story moved seamlessly between Greek and American tradition, past and present, history and fiction, and most importantly male and female. Jeffrey Eugenides commingles genders, places and cultures in his book. The point I want to make is that both Eugenides’s idea and Fausto argument is founded on the notion everything is contingent, intermingled, tangled with each other. Nature and nurture cannot be separated. Similarly, the sex and gender have transcended history in many ways. And to agree that the only truth is a dichotomy is to be very blind.
No comments:
Post a Comment