The Absence of Fathers:On the Logic of Knowledge and the Gender Order in Arcadia
In the play Arcadia,written by the modern British playwright Tom Stoppard,the absence of fathers in an aristocratic family and the loss of authority in academia share a certain common trait,not only revealing the collapse of patriarchy,but also embodying a logic of knowledge,at the center of which are subversion and renarration.This logic of knowledge runs through the whole play,and illuminates the characters'pursuit of,challenge to and rebuilding of knowledge.Behind it is the integration of reason and passion,and of science and humanity.Firstly,Thomasina,an English young lady living in the 19th century and loving her life,is highly endowed in science.She refuses to accept the given gender role.Secondly,contemporary scholars living in the 20th century,represented by Hannah,dedicate themselves to digging into the past,with the conviction that truths and light exist beyond authority and mainstream values.Last but not the least,the young intellectuals,in their research,have come to the realization that both sticking blindly to reason and logic,and adhering entirely to passion and imagination,can distort truths and do harm to their own research.Their stories show that the essence of knowledge hegemony is self-complacency,the dismissal of difference and the refusal of the multiplicity of ideas.Along with the plot development,conflicts are resolved,and the patriarchal binary oppositions between the centralized and the marginalized reconcile.By comparing and re-discovering the events taking place in Sidley Park in the past and the present,Stoppard has conceived of a prospect of organic integration of rationality and sensibility,of the Classical and the Romantic,pointing out that in the process of pursuing and producing knowledge,one must avoid academic frivolity aiming at quick success,and try to compromise gender binary oppositions and counteract academic hegemony,so as to restore the female talents who were rendered voiceless by a patriarchal society,and deconstruct the logocentric discourse system appertaining to the established power-discourse relations.
Tom StoppardArcadialogic of knowledgegender orderpatriarchy
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