Reessencing the sign: Creating alternative realities through counter-discourse as represented in Atwood’s The Penelopiad

Abstract

This study explores the ideological nature of language through Slavoj Žižek’s reinterpretation of Heidegger’s concept of “essencing” and its role in shaping discourse. It examines how language constructs and reinforces social hierarchies, particularly gender-based inequalities, by analyzing Homer’s Odyssey and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and Rachel DuPlessis’s feminist narrative strategies— “changing the sentence” and “changing the sequence”—the study highlights Atwood’s subversion of male-dominated narratives. By engaging in revisionist mythmaking, The Penelopiad challenges hegemonic structures, reclaims female agency, and envisions an egalitarian discourse free from patriarchal constraints.