Ms. Gendering Man

Making Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights a "she" reveals some of the presuppositions that structure the novel. The question arises: who follows whom where?

This calls to mind another occasion.

Ti-Grace Atkinson opens a speech she gave "On 'Violence in the Women's Movement'" (in Amazon Odyssey) with such gender unsettlement to make a point about allegiance.

I am dedicating my remarks tonight on violence to Sister Joseph Colombo. I am referring to America's latest superstar, gangster, criminal: Joseph Colombo. You may have heard about how Superstar Colombo not content with his vertical media image, backed his head up into three bullets at Columbus Circle on June 28, 1971.

She at one point in her remarks tapped a picture to the podium.

In the book the photograph covers a whole page.

It is of course a provocation. Clear-eyed. Her peroration appears in all caps and rehearses the "sister" trope.

LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF DIANA OUGHTON. LONG LIVE ANGELA DAVIS. LONG LIVE BERNADINE DOHRN. LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF VICTORIA WOODHULL. LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF THE VALERIE SOLANAS OF THE SCUM MANIFESTO. LONG LIVE THE STUBBORNNESS OF SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR. LONG LIVE BIG MAMA FLORYNCE KENNEDY. LONG LIVE SISTER MARK RUDD. LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF JONATHAN JACKSON. LONG LIVE THE SPIRITS, AND THE HOPES, AND THE BODIES OF ALL THE BEAUTIFUL, REVOLUTIONARY, FOOL, CRIMINALS, WHO ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO FIGHT FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF A HUMAN SPIRIT. LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF SISTER JOSEPH COLOMBO, AND HIS BODY. IF ITS CONDITION MEETS HIS TERMS, HE HAS PAID HIS DUES, AND TOO MUCH OF OURS BESIDES.

May we, the women here, make a Revolution.

Beautiful, revolutionary, fool, criminals ... <-- note the order and how is segues into the invocation of Colombo. Criminal fool. Beautiful revolutionary. He/she.

We know where. TO FIGHT FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF A HUMAN SPIRIT
Who follows?

And so for day 2179
30.11.2012

Embracing A Most Peculiar Aside

A Summary Account . . .

(I should say somewhere about here that when I say "he" I also mean "she": as the late President Smith used to say, man generally embraces woman.)

Northrop Frye By Liberal Things (1959). This is his address upon his installation as Principal of Victoria College.

The aside can be read as a humorous touch of heteronormativity. Tone is all. But for even the tone-deaf, it is the "generally" that once spotted works its magic. It signals exceptions. Other ways.

Indeed the context of the aside is set in the commonplace of attending university to find oneself.

Finding out why they went is something that comes much later, if it comes at all. An inscrutable Providence has decreed that they should be at university during the mating season, and for some students, going to college is partly a sexual ritual, like the ceremonial dances of the whooping crane. More thoughtful students are fond of asking themselves and each other why they came to college, and their reasons are generally [there's that keyword again] given in terms of usefulness. But the thoughtful student soon realizes that the university is not there to be useful to him; he is there to be useful to it. It does not help him to prepare for life: life will not stay around to be prepared for. [...] There is no answer to the student's question, for the only place an answer can come from is an experience that he has not yet had. [enter the aside quoted above].

How is it that I come to read "generally" as offering a sliver? By training as a reader. Training I generally received at university.

Such close reading partakes of the moves made by José Esteban Muñoz in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009). He draws upon the work of Ernest Bloch (The Principle of Hope) to carve out space for the work of the experience-not-yet-had.

The point is once again to pull from the past, the no-longer-conscious, described and represented by Bloch today, to push beyond the impasse of the present.

Between the then of Frye and the then of Muñoz lies the publication of The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing: For writers, editors, and speakers was first published in 1980 by Casey Miller and Kate Swift. And after them all a challenge to recite the specificity of desire: "Every gay person has been in a situation where less specific pronouns are useful, perhaps even a safety measure [...] “you” has fallen out of favour and pop seems joyfully full of new young artists not only being candid about who their songs are lusting after, but celebrating that point of difference, too."

I remember as a youth before attending university listening to "I Don't Know How to Love Him" lifted from Jesus Christ Superstar and performed by Helen Reddy. Long before I learnt about shifters like the pronoun "I" (Émile Benveniste), long before I could claim experience of many before, long before the mysteries of incarnation shone for me, I was queering the text:

I don't know how to take this
I don't see why he moves me
He's a man he's just a man
And I've had so many men before
In very many ways he's just one more

Muñoz again:

Queerness's form is utopian. Ultimately, we must insist on a queer futurity because the present is so poisonous and insolvent. A resource that cannot be discounted to know the future is indeed the no-longer-conscious, that thing or place that may be extinguished but not yet discharged in its utopian potentiality.

insolvent - discounted - discharged
Bills come due. But who is doing the accounting? Who keeps the general ledger?

And so for day 2128
10.10.2012

Boys Will Be Girls Will Be Boys

In retrospect there is a hint of gender politics in Eric Partridge's entry on "boys will be boys"in his 1964 compilation A Book of Essential Quotations. He adds to the quotation from Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Anthony Hope's gloss:

"Boys will be boys." "And even that," I interposed, "wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls."

The source of that quip is The Dolly Dialogues [1894].

And so for day 1963
28.04.2012

Cameo

Sappho appears in this poem "Divine Botany" about in part a residency at Casa Valparaiso. Sometimes, the speaker sees the ancient poet; sometimes she sees you, the beloved. I like how the homage plays up a different sort of composition, with things instead of with words.

Some afternoons I see
sure-footed Sappho
clambering
up and down these hills,
collecting oregano,
composing a green lettuce
salad for her shy
linen-skirted friend, crimson
pomegranate
blossoms in her gold-
streaked hair.

From Di Brandt The Lottery of History (Radish Press, 2008).

What is intriguing about this poem ("Divine Botany") is that the beloved is addressed as amante which would (in Italian) do for a man or a woman. Furthermore the dedication is simply to "J". The other poems in The Lottery of History that are dedicated to individuals bear full names. Note that the oregano gathering Sappho gathers ingredients for a salad for an unnamed but gendered friend. The effect is intriguing.

And so for day 1348
22.08.2010