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Women’s writing; women’s work. Myth, spinning, weaving, and, of course, science fiction.

“…the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion”. (Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto, 1985: 149)

‘Myth’ is widely used pejoratively to imply a story that is not objectively true, and the identification of a narrative as a myth can be imbued with politics; for example, there is often contention over whether religious narratives are myths or otherwise. Generally, however, myths are known to play a fundamental role in shaping how a society is built and enacted (ahem, Functionalism). Greek myths are, of course, the most well known, and they are said to be so prolific because they were continuously re-enacted and practiced in every day life for the Greeks. As Greek society at this time was an oral culture that had limited sacred texts, myths were performed and retold through stories, songs, dances, art and poetry, and resultantly they could easily be reshaped and adapted. According to Plato, myths were passed down through mothers and nurses and so, perhaps unsurprisingly, these classic myths have long been appropriated in modern fiction, especially through writing by women, about women. As I mentioned in my post on Ariadne, often this writing re-appropriates, subverts and transforms patriarchal and androcentric narratives of women, their writing, and their work, and while Irigaray claimed that although reading these myths exposes the patriarchy but nonetheless reproduces it (deconstruction), Cixious more optimistically argued that myths hold the potential for positive and powerful resistance to patriarchy (reconstruction). Today, although some authors have directly re-imagined the classic Greek myths, such as Ursula K Le Guin’s rewriting of Vergil’s Aeneid in Lavinia, and  Margaret Atwood’s version of Homer’s Odyssey in The Penelopiad, other writing takes particular metaphors or themes from these stories, including, of course, weaving. 

Weaving and writing have always been connected, as shown by the similarity between the words ‘text’ and ‘textiles’; writing a text is a similar process to weaving a textile (Hiiii Barthes - text as fabric). However, ‘weaving’ as a description of writing has traditionally been used as a metaphor for lying or fiction, and therefore has negative connotations in comparison to factual writing. For example, textile terminology is used in expressions like ‘spinning a tale’, ‘fabricating a story’, or a ‘web of lies’, or, more specifically “Oh what a tangled web we weave when at first we start to deceive” as once said by Sir Walter Scott.  Given that weaving is considered “women’s’ work”, the diminutive associations of women with fiction are unsurprising, and reiterate Enlightenment discourse and the dissemination of a dichotic rhetoric that fed into the gendered division of labour, whereby men were associated with reason, truth, and the mind and so were supposedly more suitable to modern science, law, and other ‘objective’ public services, while women were condemned to the private sphere in which they gossiped all day loooonnnggg. In my research on witchcraft for The Empress, the association of women with gossip and lies served as evidence against them in the witch-trials during the 18th Century. Federici (2004) reveals how the word ‘gossip’ actually referred to friendship during the Feudal age, and only after the Enlightenment and the witch-trials was it shifted in response to the increasing regulation of gender, social and family relations in order to prevent social congregation, particularly between women.

The Empress explores the tensions between modern witchcraft and modern science, and owes a lot to Margaret Cavendish, and especially her influential work ’The Blazing World’ that was published in 1666, right in the midst of the Scientific Revolution. Cavendish was no doubt a great scientist, but her gender excluded her and other women from public scientific discourse (although she was, in fact, the first woman to attend a session of the Royal Society of London in 1667). Whilst she published a non-fiction work, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy, she accompanied it with a fictional story, The Blazing World, which explores the same themes.  Resultantly, The Blazing World can be regarded as the first science fiction ever written, and furthermore, the first recorded feminist perspective on the epistemological and social shift (~The Enlightenment~). You can read more about her work in my essay, but essentially the story criticises positivist science for it’s disregard towards the multiplicity of existence in the world, influenced by Cavendish’s alternative ontological perspective, that of panpsychism. Moreover, the story centres on two female protagonists, the Empress and the Duchess, and Cavendish emphasises their friendship in such a way to denounce the government’s condemnation of female friendship as a form of witchcraft, or gossip. Cavendish wrote in fiction, believing that, as Aristotle said, “Poetry is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history” in its ability “express the universal.”, but also, more cunningly, so that her ideas and scientific enquiries could reach other women who were only permitted to read fiction work; she even addressed the book, “To all Noble and Worthy Ladies”. (And yes, there are significant criticisms to be made about women and class during this time, as only ‘noble and worthy’ ladies would be able to read, write, etc. BUT read with a little historicity…).

Cavendish’s work is less cited than I expected, given the surging popularity of feminist science-fiction, and I originally struggled to find a copy (I buy most of my non-academic books in charity shops, and definitely couldn’t find The Blazing World in any near me). HOWEVER, to my excitement and joy, Formling republished it late last year with a beautiful new cover, pictured below!


Anyway, there is a false assumption that objectivity necessarily equates to intersubjectivity and transparent communication or expression through language. In light of feminist theory, the supposed objectivity of knowledge is considered an idealistic thought construct created by men as a tool in the dissemination of power, and concomitant discourses of modern science (remember Foucault?!). Objective knowledge is thought to be derived from empirical experimentation, however this also means that it is completely detached from the reality in which it emerged, rendering it, in actuality, ineffective, in-affective, apolitical and un-inclusive. What Haraway more appropriately refers to as ‘situated knowledges’, better explains the social construction of certain epistemic practices within, and only within, particular contexts, embodiments and perspectives. 

As an anthropologist, I have spent years critiquing the false objectivity of Western science, including anthropology, whilst championing subjective, artistic and experimental research methodologies. This is particularly pertinent due to an aspect of futurology in most of my work, which necessarily requires speculative research techniques and practices, such as ‘Story Completion Method’. More theoretically, I have written about horror/monsters, speculative fiction, feminist science-fiction, afrofuturism, and indigenous futurisms, in an exploration of the potential of fiction more generally in anthropology. Moreover, some of the oldest science-fiction is particularly telling of the gender and social expectations in the past, rather than just reimagining them in the future. In 1881, Mary E. Bradley Lane’s (deep breath) Mizora: A Prophecy: A Mss. Found Among the Private Papers of Princess Vera Zarovitch: Being a True and Faithful Account of her Journey to the Interior of the Earth, with a Careful Description of the Country and its Inhabitants, their Customs, Manners, and Government, spoke of the technological innovations produced by women, such as parthenogenesis, video-phones and lab-grown meat (remember my post on female tech innovations - and how ~we~ are actually responsible for all of them, pretty much). One of my favourite old feminist sci-fis is Sultana’s Dream by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, an Indian-Muslim women, that although published in 1905, reimagines purdah from a feminist standpoint, and also talks of feminist scientists who invent solar power?!?!!!!! Like The Blazing World, these genres interrogate and critique dominant culture, but they also work to represent the possibilities (solar power, parthenogenesis, phones, etc) and goals of feminist theory, therefore bridging theory and practice. Together, these narratives throughout history form a ‘mythos’; a web, or body of diffractive and intra-connected stories (like the world building of H. P. Lovecraft, but cooler, more diverse, and, of course, feminist). Nancy Miller explicitly argued that the goal of feminist re-appropriation of myths must be the recovery of ‘the women’ in the story, whereby we must represent a diversity of women’s’ lived experiences as autonomous and independent realities, rather than just as the singular ‘woman’.

Feminist science fiction really took off during the 1970s, in accordance with second-wave feminism (as a critique of domesticity, reproductive labour, and supposed biological differences between genders) and then the techno-feminism (moving into third-wave feminism) that followed. Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto is an essay that undermines the dichotic boundaries upheld by patriarchal society in much the same way that science fiction does, but notably by revealing the fallacies between human/machine, human/animal and, of course, fact/fiction. However, Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Joanna Russ’ The Female Man (1970) took the genre mainstream (of course, along with Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, and a few others). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Le Guin and Russ both produced non-fiction essays on the craft of writing as a woman. Fro example, Le Guin’s The Language of the Night (1979) has so many amazing points on the importance of fantasy, fiction and storytelling:

“We read books to find out who we are. … And a person who had never listened to nor read a tale or myth or parable or story, would remain ignorant of his own emotional and spiritual heights and depths, would not know quite fully what it is to be human. For the story— from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace— is one of the basic tools invented by the mind of man, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”

Although written some 300 years later (give or take), Russ’ How To Suppress Women’s Writing (1983) details the stigma surrounding women’s’ writing and work in a way that echoes Margaret Cavendish’s narrative. Although somewhat sarcastic and on the nose, Russ explains how women are not given opportunities to write, or are not given any credit, or when credit is given, their work is dismissed or belittled. She outlines eleven ways that this occurs, ranging from general prohibitions on access to the tools to write; ‘pollution of agency’; ‘false categorising’; ‘isolation’, whereby a work is claimed to be the sole achievement of that woman; and the lack of models. These arguments further reflect the myths of Arachne and Philomela, who are silenced when they speak up. Although Russ is referring to women’s writing, many of her points are equally symptoms of the disregard of weaving and fibre practices. Moreover, as I will go into more detail on in a later post, Russ’ commitment to footnoting and references is very much akin to Ada Lovelace’s contribution to Babbage’s writing. 

Returning to the metaphor of weaving as literary production, it is perhaps unsurprising that many feminist SF authors and thinkers have positively re-appropriated the trope, as they have the genre. Fibre crafts, including sewing, knitting, embroidery, and weaving are understood to be more grounded, attentive, contemplative, focused, creative and dynamic, which reminds me of the video I shared of an interview with Renate Hiller. More specifically, Haraway famously refers to knowledge as being like an embroidered quilt, multi-layered, idiosyncratic, collaborative and, to some extent, ad hoc. She also refers to the ‘Cats Cradle’ and string figures, as visualisation of the thought process, and a method of collaborative giving and receiving. Her imagery and metaphors resonate a lot with my weaving process, and thinking theory with or through objects. In the Navajo language, string figure games are called na’atl’o’, and they manifest as practices for telling stories of the origins of the People of the Diné and the constellations, whereby they actually materialise stories and myths, making them into existence. Again, I am reminded of the Greek myth of Philomela, who communicated her truth not through language, but by weaving it into fabric. Although these may just be stories, as the anthropologist Marilyn Strathern (1992) wrote, “It matters what ideas we use to think other ideas (with).”. 



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