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Tracing the Androgyny Image as a Self-Distancing Strategy in Adrienne Rich’s  Diving into the Wreck

Abstract

The phallocentric structure of language privileges the male’s discourse throughout history at the expense of feminine discourse. Feminist writers including Adrienne Rich resort to Cixous’ term of  “écriture feminine” to inscribe female differences in language. Rich calls female writers to create their own discourse through re-writing female myths. The objective of Cixous’ theory “écriture féminine” is to deconstruct the man/woman binary opposition. Thus, the present study aims to analyze the use of androgyny image in Rich’s poem Diving into the Wreck as a distancing strategy to challenge the heterosexual male’s institution in light of Cixous’s theory of “écriture feminine”. The study concludes that Rich creates the androgyny image as a self-distancing strategy in Diving into the Wreck as a way of returning to the place where there is no sexual difference between man and woman, and to the source of the feminine power where there is no exclusion for the Other.

Keywords: Adrienne Rich, androgyny, Helene Cixous, écriture feminine, phallocentrism.