Resistance Against Discursive and Non-Discursive Signification: Self-Realization in She Unnames Them https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13687904

Resistance Against Discursive and Non-Discursive Signification: Self-Realization in She Unnames Them

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13687904

Author(s): Ebru Ugurel Ozdemir

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13687904

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Volume 15 | Issue 4 | August 2024

Pages: 368-383

The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 15, Issue-IV, August 2024 ISSN: 0976-8165
www.the-criterion.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030
Resistance Against Discursive and Non-Discursive Signification: Self-
Realization in She Unnames Them
Ebru Ugurel Ozdemir
Aksaray University,
Department of Western Languages and Literatures,
Aksaray, Turkey.
Article History: Submitted-27/07/2024, Revised-15/08/2024, Accepted-19/08/2024, Published-31/08/2024.
Abstract:
Language not only operates the linguistic practices through symbol/word systems, but
it has great significance in creating subjected subjects through the insidious force of a self-
stimulating ideology, as well. The role of language in subject formation is thus interrelated
with the ideological aspect, which predetermines and conditions the position of individuals in
parallel with the expectations. According to the Althusserian theory of interpellation, language
functions as an instrument of the ideology by creating linguistic barriers between the sexes.
Named through hailing, individuals indeed accept their predetermined function and role in the
world: being a subject requires submission beyond question. Reinforced by the religious and
phallocentric discourses, the ideology positions women as the victims of the patriarchal system.
This study aims to portray the operations of resistance by addressing Kristeva’s language theory
concerning religious liberation. With this purpose, the short story She Unnames Them by Ursula
K. Le Guin is discussed within the theory of interpellation of religious patriarchy, which
Althusser explains within Subject-subject relationship. The relationship between subjectivity
and religious patriarchy and the normalization process of interpellation are interpreted from the
perspective of Althusser. The potentiality of un-naming and misrecognition of the grammatical
language of the religious patriarchy is exemplified within the story by making reference to
Kristeva’s argument.
Keywords: Interpellation, religious patriarchy, language, Althusser, Kristeva.
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1. Introduction
I am because I say
I say myself
I am my name
My name is not my name
It is the name of what I say.
My name is what is said.
I alone say.
I alone am not I.
I am my name.
My name is not my name,
My name is the name.
(Blackmore 69)

“Is our vulnerability to language a consequence of our being constituted within its
terms?” (1997, 168), the postmodern feminist and philosopher Butler questions to clarify the
linguistic vulnerability which individuals are exposed to suffer from. Besides establishing ways
for linguistic practices, language has great significance in sense of creating “subjected
subjects”, and the price individuals pay for their subjectivity is to internalize their inability and
weakness to protest against the social sanction of language.
Metaphorically, language symbolizes a tool to emphasize the absolute male authority
which embraces sex/gender codification via signifier/signified relationship. In other words,
language is an instrument of patriarchy, through which it legitimates the construction of
masculine and feminine as natural. Therefore, the patriarchal ideology assigns a responsibility
to language to categorize individuals either as transcendental or immanent. “Women makes
man and man makes the world; woman is concrete, need-bound, animal; and man is conceptual,
active, human” (Olugbade 512). As a result of the signifier role of language and of men in the
universe, women are doomed to accept their inferior and marginalized stance. To put it
differently, illegitimate obligatory standards force individuals to comply with the system by the
threat of punishment on the condition of noncompliance.
The French philosopher Althusser theorizes the subordinated subject formation under
the name of interpellation, regarding that the production of the subject is the outcome of the
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linguistic formulation of interpellation and ideology together (2008). Transformation of
individuals into subjects through hailing, in other words, occurs with the supportive relationship
between linguistic (language) and non-linguistic (ideology) modes of subjectification.
Critically examining the repressive apparatuses which serve for the purpose of the dominant
authority, Althusser claims that ideology reveals itself through various forms such as religion,
politics, economy, science, and literature (1971). Accordingly, the political religion or the
patriarchal religion reinforces each other through discursive and non-discursive practices with
the purpose of inventing subjected subjects.
In parallel with Althusser’s repressive apparatuses which serve for the maintenance of
the sexist ideology, Kristeva considers religion a language of the unconscious through which
individuals are imposed with specific patterns to describe themselves (Kristeva, et. al 153). To
make good her charge, Kristeva makes reference to psychoanalysis, which is regarded as the
source of dichotomies which exist between the sexes: the portrayal of the divine man and the
demonic woman is the product of a religious discourse. For Kristeva, religion functions as a
repressive instrument which stereotypes individuals under the issue of divinity. Attacking on
the Lacanian definition of the subject formation, Kristeva argues for the liberation of religion
and of the masculine discourse which have created “false consciousness” so far (1982, 27).
Despite the fact that religion is considered the source of female marginalization, the real
responsible is patriarchy as it legitimates inequality by creating dichotomies between the sexes.
Christian religion is a patriarchal religion and the manifestation of the prevailing ideology.
Because patriarchy misinterprets the theological doctrines and sacred texts, men assume
authority over women. In other words, it is patriarchy which uses religion as a repressive force
against women. Kristeva explains the role of religion in the production and development of
subjectivity as the corner stone of the maintenance of the dominant ideology. Religion is the
“phantasmic necessity on the part of speaking beings to provide themselves with a
representation” (1981, 32).
No matter how pervasive the influence of the ideological weapons has on women, it is
possible to overrule the repressive forces by negating to perform the roles. There is nothing/no
one before its naming; interpellation does not describe a pre-existing or given subject (Butler,
1990). Despite the power language has as a pervasive instrument of both religious and
patriarchal ideologies, the possibility to misrecognize or un-name the universalized structure of
language and to achieve the “linguistic turn” is verisimilar. Besides, as sex/gender is merely
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performative, once individuals resist the predetermined rules by not performing the attributed
gender roles, it will possibly signal a new nascence.
The short story She Unnames Them (1985), written by Ursula K. Le Guin, is full of
references to the ideological weapons which have caused to entrap women under the pretext of
their biological defect. Patriarchy and religion, which are legitimated through language, are the
main causatives of female suppression. Le Guin exemplifies the categorization between man
and woman by making some animals speak and represent religious patriarchy as well. The
parameters determined by the ideological powers are faithful to male myths, which tell of the
resemblance between women and animals. The patriarchal authority, as the representation of
the dominant ideology, follows blindly the outdated claims of the ancient philosophers, who
argued that neither women nor animals have the autonomy to maintain their lives on their own.
These two species, they believed, are to be dominated and disciplined by male masters as the
mere reasonable ones! (Olugbade 515). Accordingly, the writer reveals the similar intimated
condition of women and animals by touching on the ideological facts the influential
philosophers propounded.
This study examines the manipulative power of language from the perspective of the
religious patriarchy. The power of language is the main focus of the study to reveal the existence
and maintenance of non-linguistic identities. In the short story She Unnames Them, the
unswerving roles, which have been imitated and repeated beyond question, are handled first
with the purpose to expose the demagogical discourses which have perpetually orientated
individuals to perform their pre-established roles. Moreover, the firm stance of the unnamed
protagonist is interpreted from the poststructuralist angle of the literary critic and feminist
Kristeva. In order to provide a basis for the argument, the concept of interpellation propounded
by the French philosopher Althusser is particularly examined and discussed with specific
examples from the story.
Though it is a pretty short story – just one page –, She Unnames Them has been
examined from different perspectives such as ecofeminist criticism, patriarchal ideology, and
poststructuralism so far. However, it will be the first to reveal the invalidity of the ideological
norms by treating religion and patriarchy under religious patriarchy. In this regard, through this
study, not only the discursive norms, but the non-discursive ones, which have been stressed
upon individuals as the precept, are also disconcerted via the arguments proposed by the above-
mentioned philosophers. Within the story, the power of language to establish the superior male
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image is repudiated and destabilized through getting rid of the patriarchal language and not
submitting to gender roles.
2. Linguistic and Non-linguistic Interpellation of Sex
The power of language determines how we think, act, and shape our identity; in other
words, discursive practices structure non-discursive practices. Through linguistic patterns, rigid
standards of patriarchy are normalized and internalized in the form of non-discursive habits.
“Language, which is a medium for everyone to verbalize even the simplest mental processes,
places women in an awkward position in which they cannot articulate their self and woman
identity with the limited words of the male-dominated language” (Subaşı 43). In other words,
language functions through repressive discourses which serve for the purposes of the dominant
power. Because ideology is the product of a political project, the aim is to disperse the policies
of the dominant discourse through fictionalized rules.
Kristeva argues that the effect of discourse is the apparent reflection of the pervasive
ideology. In other words, she approaches the issue from the performative nature of subjectivity
and the specific role language has in the problem of ideology. “She is the excluded other,
outside grammatical language. “Woman” enters signification as the “other” to men. Through
this objectification, the masculine subject takes on characteristics of coherence and unity”
(Assiter 42). Patriarchy, as the main responsible for the construction of gender, stimulates
gender roles as nonlinguistic realities. Because woman is always codified as the nonexistent,
she is doomed to be subordinate to the patriarchal dictations. Although the story is just
concerned about the awakening of the protagonist, She Unnames Them shadows forth how
painful the process of regaining “self” has been. It is not stated in round terms; yet, the signified
position of the main character is realized through the portrayal of some animals. Just like
animals, women have also been given names; in other words, they are imposed with the idea
that they cannot exist within the system themselves. Thus, they naturalize and internalize the
names and roles attributed to them beyond question through performing their subjectivity
repeatedly. Within the story, Le Guin illustrates the power and influence of language on women
by characterizing some animals: “Most of them accepted namelessness with the perfect
indifference with which they had so long accepted and ignored their names” (1985, 27). The
animals have normalized and internalized their passive stance in life so far, and to get rid of the
labels does not mean anything for them at the moment. The more they repeat to perform their
gender roles, the more they become acquainted with the repressive system.
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The constitution of human subjects is therefore the product of a cultural history which
inherits the masculine authority as the absolute. “It was with the dogs, and with some parrots,
lovebirds, ravens, and mynahs, that the trouble arose. These verbally talented individuals
insisted that their names were important to them, and flatly refused to part with them” (Le Guin
27). The forenamed animals, as the representation of some women in the world, never want to
get rid of their names since they are obsessed with the idea that without signification they could
never express themselves. How language plays a dominant role in the symbolic positioning of
women as inferior can thus be illustrated through the literary meanings, connotations, or
morphologic order of some words. In parallel with the aim of structuralism, ideology assigns
the signifier role to man and declares him the authority to define and position woman by
privileging the male sex and reducing the female one into a signified being since in patriarchal
societies authority is associated with men: they dominate, they rule.
Being as she is, she does not achieve the enunciatory process of the discourse of
History, but remains its servant, deprived of self (as same), alienated in this system
of discourse as in her master and finding some hint of her own self, her own ego,
only in another, a You – or a He – who speaks. Her own will is shattered so afraid
is she of the master, so aware of her inner nothingness (Mills 56).
The naming process is theorized by Althusser under the name of interpellation. In Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses, the philosopher asserts that the logic or coherence of a system
of ideas (beliefs) is obtained through the relationship between systemic elements, and those
elements – ideas (beliefs) – take shape through material practices (1971). Influenced by Lacan,
Althusser builds his philosophy on the psychoanalytic perception of subjectivity: reality – as
opposed to real – is merely the world human subjects create after they take a step towards the
symbolic order. In other words, once individuals become acquainted with language, it is
impossible to return to the Real phase (something beyond experience) (Lacan, 2007). In this
regard, interpellation, as the main representative of the symbolic order, forces individuals to
submit to the law and authority without questioning its validity. Serving as a sort of instrument,
interpellation/hailing treats everyone just like puppets. Accordingly, individuals constitute their
own reality. To illustrate, the patriarchal ideology interpellates women as vulnerable and
inessential beings who are supposed to obey the authority without questioning in order to
remain a subject within the system.
In She Unnames Them, the generic names have been given to the animals without their
consent; the system works through the impositions and dictations directed to the subjects.
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“Patriarchal men have depicted themselves as “more human” than women because they have
viewed human as signifying everything superior and deserving, everything that supposedly
separates humans from “animals” (Adams and Donovan 22). As a consequence of the
internalization of the ideology, some animals reject to give their generic names back: “A faction
of yaks, however, protested. They said that “yak” sounded right, and that almost everyone who
knew they existed called them that” (Le Guin 27). Once they are interpellated as yaks, for
instance, they are supposed to act out the roles determined by the rule makers. In a similar vein,
once an individual is born as a female, she is assigned to carry out feminine gender roles, and
she is expected to internalize such codifications through the repetition of the acts. As Butler
claims, there is no “I” outside language; the identity of subjects is signified through the signifier
role of language (2004, 145). Therefore, subjects remain as the effects of the dominant
discourse; passive and ineffective in the process of production and existence.
As a literary critic and philosopher, Kristeva claims that the univocal language is
masculinist and phallocentric; therefore, in such a world, women do not have representation in
the linguistic system other than being undesignated (1990). The phallocentric order reinforces
its power and sphere of influence through the ideological weapons which are at the disposal of
masculine hegemony. Religious patriarchy, in this sense, represents the fundamental swords
that nourish the phallocentric ideals. Kristeva reveals the fact that Christianity is a patriarchal
religion and the manifestation of male authority (76). Accordingly, the religious legitimacy in
the Western culture is the production of a patriarchal mentality, and thus, it is nothing more
than illusion which always attempts to justify its reality via fictional discourses.
Within She Unnames Them, some animals are reluctant to give their names back because
they embrace their (unnatural) names as the source of their identity and they suppose that
without such names they cannot exist: “It was with the dogs, and with some parrots, lovebirds,
ravens, and mynahs, that the trouble arose” (Le Guin 27). Without the names and definitions
ascribed to them, the animals in the story have been obliged to believe that they cannot survive.
In other words, they have been signified by their signifiers as they are; on the condition that
they deny their origin, they are threatened with the possibility of nonexistence. Once the
individual is labeled either as male or female, the expected behaviors are determined in domino
effect. Becoming signified is accepted as the fate of women in the world because the signifier
role is assigned to men as the representative figures of language.
In She Unnames Them, Le Guin never reveals the identity of the character until the end
of the story that a male figure (Adam), as the representative of the phallocentric order, decides
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on everything. The phallus-centered ideology, phallocentrism, regards that merely men have
the power to write the law of the universe. Because women have been coded as unreasonable
creatures on earth, men have declared themselves as the mere writers of stories, histories…
“Among the domestic animals, few horses had cared what anybody called them since the failure
of Dean Swift’s attempt to name them from their own vocabulary” (Le Guin 27). In the story,
the reason why these animals feel uneasy about handing back their names is based on the fact
that they are impelled to believe that it is men who have granted this privilege so long as they
comply with the ideological dictations. Thus they refrain from acting against the definitions and
labels they are associated with.
“Christian devaluation of the human body as part of a mundane, feminine order
excluded from an idealized masculine presence that is definitely disembodied” (Jasper 3). In
the traditional Western thought, women have been devalued under the choplogic assertion of
the religious doctrines. Based on the Cartesian myth, Descartes reveals his inegalitarian view
through the dichotomies he put forward: “A legacy of the soul/body distinction (which) is often
enacted in unequal relationships, such as men to women, masters to slaves, fathers to children,
humans to animals” (Spelman 127). In this sense, Le Guin handles women’s condition by
including some animals in the story; the resemblance between animals and women reveals the
oppressive and marginalizing mentality of the dominant regime: “generic appellations
“poddle,” “parrot,” “dog,” or “bird,” and all the Linnacan qualifiers that had trailed along
behind them for two hundred years like tin cans tied to a tail” (Le Guin 27). Historically,
women are associated with animals in that both have been believed to be dominated because of
their vulnerability and lack of mental faculties. This supposition has always been reinforced by
the religious ideology; the rule makers and executives insist that God created animals as the
servants of humans; and women, in a similar way, are designed to serve for the benefit of man.
Besides the weight of the patriarchal ideology, Althusser’s notion of interpellation is
better understood within his Christian Religious Ideology. By addressing “human individual”
and naming him/her, God declares the absolute power over individuals by predetermining the
role and function of the subject in the world. “It is a process that tells you “God exists and that
you are answerable to Him” (1971, 177). Within the religious patriarchy, the sovereign power
(God) is characterized by the pronoun “He” and creates Adam first and then woman as a
companion (servant) to him. It seems that Adam, as the first man, has the authority to name
everything because even woman was created from his rib. Therefore, the source of linguistic
interpellation of man/woman, male/female and many others make sense.
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The Subject gives a name and a place to the subject, and so performatively produces
this subject as this name and as occupying this position in the world. And more
significantly, the subject is constituted as embracing the fact that this is his or her
name and place (Davis 891).
Kristeva claims that patriarchy, reinforced by the divine naming – the voice of God –, forces
individuals to become subjected subjects. Because ideology is omnipresent and omnipotent,
within the religious patriarchy, omnipotence and omnipresence are characterized by God, and
God interpellates his subjects. Ideology is universal and the determining element of everything
human subjects constitute around themselves. According to Kristeva, religion is like language,
through which individuals perceive and interpret the world (2009). Within She Unnames Them,
Adam is the one who regards himself as the representative of God on earth; he names everything
and establishes an authority on Eve and animals based on the phallocentric and religious
discourses. To explain the power of the religious patriarchy, in Genesis, Adam says:
This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”
(NASB 2, 19-23)

Kristeva regards that the study of the unconscious reveals the fact that religion functions
through fictional impositions beyond perception; in other words, psychoanalysis is the
substitute for religion in a sense to penetrate the unconscious of human subjects (1987).
“Psychoanalysis explores the anxieties and psychosomatics of [the religious] men, precisely –
the man who, from the totem to the taboo, consecrates the father, love, and prohibitions”
(Kristeva and Clement 164). Kristeva claims that Christianity disperses an invented discourse
with the support of the patriarchal ideology. To put it differently, individuals are transformed
into subjects through the ostensible discourse, which is thought to be asserted by God, as the
Subject. Because God is considered “the imaginary representation of the real King” (Jasper 14),
the cultural atmosphere is shaped within this frame and “man” becomes the symbol of “king”
and “god” in the real world. Both in Christianity and psychoanalysis, as Kristeva claims, gender
hierarchy determines the position of the subjects: the father figure is always idealized, and
therefore, the child’s first encounter with the father signals his/her identification of God with
the Father. This phase represents the beginning of the internalization of the paternal authority.
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In She Unnames Them, it is inferred that the unnamed woman (Eve), who stands for her
whole sex, has been forced to accept her inferior status, and this judgment is legitimated by the
religious patriarchy. Compulsory heterosexuality, reinforced by the religious patriarchy, has
forced Eve to accept the institution of marriage as the norm. Accordingly, she has normalized
and even internalized her passive and signified condition under the domination of her husband
(Adam). She has lost her name, her identity, her real self… Without any meaningful
explanation, her identity has been shaped, changed, and determined to be appropriate with the
expectations of her male tyrant. “As Butler states in Gender Undone, the masculine hegemony
normalizes and forces human subjects to fulfil the norms which are indeed the criteria for
“normal men and women” (2004, 206). Since individuals are born into an unnatural world,
which is indeed out of their control, they are defenseless against the power system. In order to
exist within and be accepted by the system, they learn how to naturalize the categories and
codes invented by others.
3. Operations of Resistance in She Unnames Them
She Unnames Them is a provocative short story, through which the power of language
is portrayed as a rebellious force against ideological apparatuses. In other words, anti-
foundational aspect of poststructuralism (re-signification) enables the deconstruction of
phallocentric language. The female protagonist of the story experiences the subject formation,
the meaning and feeling of becoming a subjected subject on the one hand, and misrecognition
or subversion of the norms which have interpellated her and others so far on the other. “It is
language, not metaphysics, which determines what it is to be a subject – woman becomes
authentically herself when she begins to “speak woman”, a language specific to the feminine”
(Stafford 73). The protagonist of the story is against the internalization of naming by patriarchal
and religious power relations, and in order to announce the fact that there is no coercive nature
of the norms to submit, she resists to this naming through language: “One of my reasons for
doing what I did was that talk was getting us nowhere, but all the same I felt a little let down. I
had been prepared to defend my decision” (Le Guin 27).
Kristeva argues for the religious revolution as a solution to the categorizations and
constructions of the ideological sanctions on human subjects. The French philosopher declares
that religion provides relief in particular points while imposing the necessity of suffering
through the suppression of individual identity. “Christianity is an illusionary therapy […] an
unconscious memory-trace inscribed into the consciousness of Western subjectivity” (Bruijn
70). Accordingly, the conscious is shaped through the impositions on the unconscious.
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However, once the liberation of theology is achieved through an anti-religious struggle, the
suppressive influence of religion on individuals is challenged. By un-naming the animals within
the Garden of Eden in the first place, the protagonist indeed subverts the masculine language
which has codified and categorized women and animals as inferior puppet-like subjects: “The
insects parted with their names in vast clouds and swarms of ephemeral syllables buzzing and
stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunneling away” (Le Guin 27). Through
this story, Le Guin achieves to undermine the male authority which is reinforced by the religious
patriarchy, as well. Accordingly, the failure of interpellation is possible once women realize
their symbolic position determined by the religious patriarchy. Male dominance is rejected by
the moment the woman character stops repeating the roles and acts which have been assigned
to her sex as a rule.
In the very beginning of She Unnames Them, the protagonist un-names other animals
with self-determination: “They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between
myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became
one same fear” (Le Guin 27). Kristeva argues that the only way to gain autonomy and freedom
is through revolting against the authority (2009). Therefore, Eve is determined enough to reject
the sanctions of religious patriarchy, and she liberates first the animals which resemble her
previous stance in life: “None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when
I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in
the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day” (Le Guin 27).
Critical of structuralism and attacking the Lacanian theory – language (symbolic order)
shapes human psyche –, Kristeva focuses on the semiotic dimension of language, through which
the ideological discourses are possible to be subverted. In other words, semiotic language (pre-
discursive) is concerned about the maternal linguistic practice, and the only way to get rid of
the impositions of the symbolic (paternal) language is to recover the maternal language (Butler,
1989, 104). The symbolic language is established upon the acceptance of the paternal rule
(Adam) and the rejection of the mother (Eve); therefore, by refuting the authority of both
religion and patriarchy, it is possible for women to develop their own language. For Kristeva,
the return to “pre-religious” belief would end the hegemony of religious patriarchy (2009, 12);
within the story, Eve is decisive not to submit the paternal authority any more by creating her
own discourse. Despite the fact that language functions to objectify women through
fictionalizing gender, it is possible to resist the coercive nature of the norms that constitute us.
This noncompliance is the explanation of the failure of interpellation; that is, misrecognition of
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naming. Once women disregard the illegitimate rules which language imposes upon them by
the force of patriarchal and religious ideologies, they will be recognized as free subjects with
their identities.
And the attraction that many of us felt, the desire to feel or rub or caress one
another’s scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another’s blood or flesh, keep
one another warm — that attraction was now all one with the fear, and the hunter
could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from the food (Le Guin 27).
In She Unnames Them, the protagonist calls for a rejection of the names which are attributed to
them pointlessly. “Cattle, sheep, swine, asses, mules, and goats, along with chickens, geese,
and turkeys, all agreed enthusiastically to give their names back to the people to whom – as
they put it – they belonged” (Le Guin 27). In The Order of Things, Foucault makes reference
to Borges in his explanation of the taxonomy among animals as: “a) belonging to the Emperor,
b) embalmed, c) tame, d) suckling pigs, e) mermaids, f) fabulous, g) dogs running free, h)
included in the present classification, i) which behave like madmen, j) innumerable, k) drawn
on camel skin with a very fine brush” (1994, xv). Despite the fact that we have such sort of
definitions, categorizations and codifications, we can get rid of the signification system by
embracing poststructuralist, postmodern epistemology which is against strict universal norms
and generalizations.
“Possible religious subjects on the absolute condition that there is a Unique, Absolute,
Other Subject, i.e. God […] which should be written with a capital S, to distinguish it from
ordinary subjects (us)” (Althusser 177). The scala naturae places God at the top of the hierarchy,
and this hierarchy is followed by male masters in the world. In other words, men regard that
they have the authority to represent God on earth. In all ages, women, on the other hand, have
been categorized as insignificant and deficient. While man is considered the mirror of God,
woman is regarded as evil and lack due to the Original Sin of Eve. Since Eve is thought to be
the example of wrongdoing, immorality, and moral weakness, her sex has been doomed to be
controlled, directed, and corrected by male hierarchy. However, within the story, the readers
never learn the name of the protagonist, but certainly know that it is Eve. Le Guin’s portrayal
of her main character without a name proves how resolute she is to create a new Eve (post-
religious) which is absolutely different from the old one: speaking, negating the rules, protesting
the male authority, and discarding the hailing.
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The unnamed protagonist gives the message of the possibility of resistance and
subversion of the ideological conceptualization. There are no inherent gender identities but
repeated roles which enable and create normative subjects. Therefore, through denaturalizing
signification or hailing, it is possible to subvert the traditional ideological norms and so-called
universal facts. “You and your father lent me this, gave it to me, actually. It’s been really useful,
but it doesn’t exactly seem to fit very well lately. But thanks very much! It’s really been very
useful” (Le Guin 27). She accepts that she has lived within the borders of the male hegemony
so far; yet, the more she suffered the more it helped her gain self-consciousness to reconstruct
her real sense of self. The dread of being punished by God and his representative; man had
caused her to remain silent and be the subject of her master. After delegitimizing Adam’s
sovereignty over her and liberating herself from Adam’s sphere, the new Eve is decisive enough
to live and reflect her real identity free from the bounds of the male ideology. Therefore, this
nonobservant Eve has a distinct role and function than that of the traditional one. Rather than
submit the religious and patriarchal authority, Eve represents the power of woman to reject the
universally fixed femininity as deviant, other, and passive; but she herself will construct her
real self. Le Guin’s Eve never submits, but discards all the norms that limit and marginalize
her. “This was more or less the effect I had been after. It was somewhat more powerful than I
had anticipated, but I could not now, in all conscience, make an exception for myself” (27).
4. Conclusion
The language of sex/gender is nothing more than the mask of masculine ego; through
fictionalizing the binary oppositions between man and woman as masculine and feminine, the
male generic attempts to repress and marginalize women through invented discourses. The
reason for the need of a mask is based on the fear of the subversive power of women to rebel
and repulse. Despite the overall power of the religious patriarchy, the subversion of the system
is possible through discarding the roles, definitions and impositions. The power of language
can also be used to change and even subvert the negative use of words for women. What we
need is a sex/gender neutral language: through the denial of structurally constructed discourses,
the reconstruction of a gender-neutral language actualizes. We have the power to disregard the
price we pay for our subjectivity to live as coerced beings with violence. In order to deconstruct
the Western notions, destabilization of the fixed signifiers which have coded subjected subjects
so far is necessary. It is nothing more than an illusion to display transcendental self as essential.
De-legitimation of philosophical and ideological fictions will be the only way to unmask the
game of ideology.
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“Gender identities are constructed and constituted by language, which means that there
is no gender identity that precedes language” (Salih 56). Thus, if it is the world of words that
shape and define feminine and masculine roles and positions, it is a priori to reject all such
linguistic patterns and produce the positive new ones. As Althusser states, language functions
both as a weapon and a mirror in that it reflects the society which privileges the dominant
ideology: patriarchy is thus nourished by the linguistic representations. Through the
protagonist, the social codes and the religious norms are portrayed and mirrored. The value
system and the hierarchical structure of the society could be evaluated with ease. Accordingly,
Althusser’s concept of interpellation has been exemplified through the main character and some
animals as well. The Kristevan approach to the religious patriarchy through the semiotic
language is also illustrated as a solution to the manipulation of the symbolic one.
The unnamed protagonist (new Eve) represents misrecognition of the norms and
negation of performativity of the gender roles. In this regard, Butler’s argument, which
necessitates the negation of societal assertiveness, is also vindicated by the end of the story.
Noncompliance is the revelation of the failure of interpellation; the reality is beyond the surface
codification. By not performing the roles attributed to female sex, women have the potential to
get rid of discursive and non-discursive practices. It is a fact that language is metaphorically a
mirror of the societies, through which the inner and deeper core of norms, value systems and
relationships between people is reflected. Therefore, challenging the existing representations of
the discourse of religious patriarchy by discarding it and neutralizing language from binaries
will grant freedom to every living thing.

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