ABSTRACT By positing that the first woman’s actions were the catalyst of humanity’s fall from God’s grace, and, from then on, fostering biased and misogynist views of the role of women in society, the biblical narrative of Adam and Eve has become one of the most influential texts in the History of Western women. Although the authority of the Book of Genesis to dictate the status quo of women has been repeatedly called into question over the centuries, it was with the advent of Feminism that the movement of “writing back” to the Bible was intensified. This article examines how, by using strategies of literary fantasy, Ursula Le Guin’s short story “She unnames them” rewrites the biblical text of Genesis. In Le Guin’s narrative, Eve is given protagonism so that, through the rebellious initiative of unnaming, she is able to create a meaningful connection between herself and the animals that populate the Garden of Eden. The specific aim of the article is to explore the articulations between feminism, post-colonialism and ecocriticism in Le Guin’s short story, linking the strategy of “writing back” with ecofeminism through Val Plumwood’s conclusions on binarism, as well as with post-colonial ecocriticism, via Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of Eurocentered planetary consciousness, among other theories that help explain the power relations between the human and the non-human spheres.

RESUMO Ao propor que as ações da primeira mulher foram o gatilho para que a humanidade caísse em desgraça perante Deus, o que gerou visões pejorativas e misóginas do papel da mulher na sociedade, a narrativa bíblica de Adão e Eva tornou-se um dos textos mais influentes na história das mulheres no ocidente. A autoridade do texto bíblico de Gênesis para ditar o status quo das mulheres tem sido frequentemente questionada ao longo dos séculos, mas foi com o advento do Feminismo que o movimento da reescrita da Bíblia se intensificou. Este artigo examina os modos pelos quais, ao fazer uso de estratégias próprias à fantasia na literatura, o conto de Ursula Le Guin, “She unnames them”, reescreve o texto bíblico. A narrativa confere protagonismo a Eva que, por meio da iniciativa contestadora de desnomear, cria uma conexão significativa entre ela e os animais que povoam o Jardim do Éden. O objetivo específico é explorar as articulações entre feminismo, pós-colonialismo e ecocrítica no conto de Le Guin, ligando a estratégia da reescrita contestadora ao ecofeminismo, por meio das conclusões de Val Plumwood sobre binarismo, como também à ecocrítica pós-colonial, com o conceito de “consciência planetária eurocentrada” de Mary Louise Pratt, entre outras teorias que ajudam a explicar as relações de poder entre as esferas humanas e não humanas.

Abstract: Settler Colonial Studies is a theoretical approach being developed in Australia by Lorenzo Veracini (2010, 2015, 2016), inspired by Patrick Wolfe’s (1999, 2016) precursor theories. It proposes a differentiation between “colonialism” and “settler colonialism” based on the premise that the latter involves land dispossession and the literal or metaphorical disappearance of Indigenous Others, while the former is mainly concerned with the exploitation of Indigenous labour and resources. The fact that settlers “come to stay” is a crucial element in positing settler colonialism as “a structure”, whereas colonialism would be “an event” in the lives of the colonised Others. This paper adopts settler colonial theories to propose a comparative study of two modernist “social” novels by women writers in Australia and Brazil: Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Coonardoo (1929) and Rachel de Queiroz’s The Year Fifteen (1930). Both novels deal with exploitation, discrimination, racism and the dispossession of the Indigenous Other and their miscegenated descendants, from a non-Indigenous, i.e. “settler”, perspective. Elements that are crucial for settler colonialism, such as ambivalence, indigenisation and mechanisms of disavowal and transfer in several of their guises, are examined, compared and contrasted.

"Mateship", or companionship and loyalty in adverse situations, was a common theme in late nineteenth century Australian short stories. Women were excluded from the practice of mateship and were not usually the protagonists of those narratives, being either kept in the background as mothers and housewives, or not present at all in the plots. Going against these stereotypes, in Barbara Baynton's story "Squeaker's Mate", the "mate" is an independent, strong and hard-working woman. Baynton explores the gloomy consequences of this reversal of expected gender roles, especially after an accident leaves the protagonist paralysed and no longer in control of her body. What occurs in "Squeaker's Mate" is a kind of "anti-mateship", in which irony serves as a device to expose gender relations and the exclusion of women from what is traditionally considered heroic and historical. In "Squeaker's Mate", Baynton questioned the adoption of "mateship" as an Australian value more than half a century before that discussion started to draw formal critical attention.