On the one hand, "The End" is much like the other stories in this first set. The narrator fits the pattern of at least slightly crazy, expelled, somehow deformed or defective (keeps talking about people being horrified when they see his skull), etc., etc. At the end of "The End," it seems that the character either commits suicide or dies naturally. Another thoroughly happy Beckett story about the misery of existence in a world where there is no meaning.
But I'm going to try to take a slightly different approach. Partly because I saw an alternate reading that I thought might be interesting and partly because I do get tired of analyzing the existential drone of horror, boredom and hopelessness. Instead of seeing "The End" as the tale of the last days of an individual who is far from healthy or sane, I thought it might be interesting to look at it as a story of his life as a whole.
Beckett begins, "They clothed me and gave me money." Eventually, after several readings, I asked, "So who gives us clothes and money." In my case, the first people to give me clothes and money were my parents. (Well, my grandparents may have beat them to the punch, ever so slightly, but you get the picture.) This led me to the initial thought behind the idea above – this isn't just about the narrators end-of-life, it is about his whole life. So, starting from this premise, where else does it lead us?
The narrator says that the money was "to get me started." This part is the story of a beginning. The next sentences talk about how the narrator will need to get more money when this is gone, and shoes and so forth, suggesting a child leaving home for the first time to make his way in the world.
Then Beckett tells us that, "The clothes… were not new, but the deceased must have been about my size." He has inherited his clothes from a dead man, much as he inherited his ancestry, his genes and environmental effects on his psyche from a man who "died" (to use the term in the Shakespearean, Much Ado About Nothing sense). It's also worth noting that the dead man was "about [his] size" but "a little shorter, a little thinner." Children are often about the same size as their parents unless there is a marked disparity in their parents' sizes. This is simple genetics. It is also worth noting that, historically, humans have become taller over the centuries as food supplies and other health factors have improved, so it would not be unusual for a child to be slightly taller than his father, but not so much so that he couldn't wear his father's clothes.
The narrator asks for his old clothes back, but the institutions warders have destroyed his clothes. He cannot go back to them. They are discarded much as a caul might be discarded, or the afterbirth. Much as it is impossible to literally return to the womb. The removal of the bed linens and breakdown and removal of the bed (79) also fit this pattern. Perhaps a better analogy for these discarded components is the amniotic fluid, which is lost at the beginning of the birth process (when the mother's water breaks).
The narrator also uses this juncture to mention that he wants a different hat, one he can pull down over his face because he "could not go about bare-headed, with [his] skull in the state it was" (79). Infants are born with soft spots in their skull to ease the birthing process. This deformity of the skull suggests this condition. In most children, these soft spots close as the skull matures, but some children have a condition that leaves the soft spots open for years or permanently. Perhaps the narrator is simply referring to the usual case, or perhaps he has an effective soft spot in his skull that lets in things he would rather keep out.
Not wishing to leave, the narrator draws out his time in the institution. He asks if he could stay if he could make himself useful (80). His warder, Mr. Weir, tells him he cannot be useful and must leave. In a similar way, a child takes from the mother's body and offers little in return beyond possibly a sense of emotional wellbeing. At a certain point, the charity of the mother's body must cease. The child must leave. It is not useful to the body anymore.
Still longing to linger, the narrator gets permission to wait in the vestibule of the institution until the rain ends or until six o'clock. Likewise, a child in a difficult birth seems to linger in the womb or in the birth canal. Finally, an intern tells him that, with the rain ended, he must leave, and exits the institution, born into the world.
The next image is walking through a garden in the beautiful post-rain light and seeing a child "stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, ask[ing] his mother how such a thing was possible" (81). This echoes the newborn's initial stretching, grasping motions. The doubtless amazement as it begins to process light that is unfiltered by the mother's body. The sensory rush that is the infant's first, direct observation of the new world, the new womb, in which it will live.
The mother's response is telling. "F--k off." Not only is the new world amazing, it is horrifying. Horrifying for its sensory overload. Horrifying for its dryness. Horrifying for its coldness. Horrifying for its silence – the absence of the steady sounds of the mother's body that the newborn has always known. Horrifying for its clamor of strange, sharp, loud, irregular, confusing noise. The child is effectively thrust into the world unprepared. It feels like it's mother has rejected it, told it to f--k off.
The narrator remembers he "[forgot to ask] Mr. Weir for a piece of bread." The newborn is suddenly without food. Everything it has needed was supplied by the mother directly. Now feeding is mediated by the mouth. It is soon hungry, looking for food, water. Even waste removal is more complicated. But there is no turning back. Departure is complete. There is no return to the mother's body. The child has been born.
29 September 2008
24 September 2008
ENG4013 - Sexual Difference & Queer
Dr. M spent a lot of time talking about Lacan's extensions of Freud's ideas on desire last week. A couple of general notes. While Freud says that the original desire is the mother's breast (though note that shouldn't be seen as precisely literal, just for the things that implies – warmth, comfort, food, etc. – so single fathers or bottle-feeding mothers, don't feel you can't meet that) Lacan says there is no original desire. Desire is part of what we are and is never satisfied. When desire is satisfied, we have no reason to live. On the whole, I thought Lacan was a bit out on a limb, sawing on the wrong side, but, hey, this way of thinking apparently makes some people feel better. As the title of a Steve Taylor song says, "Since I gave up hope, I feel a lot better." (The song is full of such irony.)
This week, we're reading the chapters "Sexual Difference" and "Queer." Questions to consider:
Sexual Difference
As best I can tell "essentialism" is B&R's way of saying "fundamentalism" while avoiding the religious connotations that have attached to that term. According to B&R, essentialization of gender says that there is essentially one form of sexual difference – the anatomical or biological difference between male and female. B&R contend that gender stereotypes are built on top of that essentalist view. They then launch into a discussion of phallocentrism and phallogocentrism, which doesn't mean quite what one might think. Basically, these come down to the idea of "patriarchy" which B&R equate with the idea that there is some "unity of meaning" or "certainty of origin" that some meanings are "legitmate" and others "illegitimate" and that the author (and author's intent) actually matter. So, basically, the reverse (which seems to be "feminism") says that text can mean whatever you want it to mean (as long as it doesn't offend the feminist critics). Somehow I detect a whiff of inconsistency here. As far as significance, it means you can read whatever "gender" you wish into a given text and that literary works are not inherently "feminist… masculinist or … sexist" – which seems to say that however you read a text in terms of gender, it's all in your head and you'll never be able to prove it right or wrong (and shouldn't beat people over the head if they don't agree with you).
Dr. M explained that deconstruction is about identifying a "hierarchy" or relationshp where one side of the relationship has privilege or power over the other, then inverting that hierarchy and transforming the relationship. He noted that it isn't enough to just reverse the relationship, you have to break some part of the underlying assumption of the relationship. So, last week we talked about the triangular relationship where A and C both desire B and therefore B becomes a powerless object with no desire. Deconstruction would require us to refigure the relationship so that B gained power without totally disempowering A and C.
B&R identify the hierarchy in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in terms of the male/female relationship expressed and focusing on the male=rational/female=irrational idea that is developed in following: "John is practical to the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." They suggest that this can be read to present rationalism as a type of superstition (John's dismissive attitude toward anything that challenges his beliefs or doesn't fit into them, his "horror" of superstition as a superstitious fear of superstition). So, while John is supposedly a rational man, he is inconsistent because he responds irrationally to the irrational. (B&R say this section is "concerned with a suspension of the logic of non-contradiction.")
Butler criticizes "identify politics" (associating oneself with a group, typically a minority group of some kind) because it is (she says) a form of essentialism that constrains the subjects it seeks to liberate and disempowers them because they must subjugate themselves to it.
If you think some of that seems convoluted or contradictory, I'm with you. Dr. M will probably clarify some of it during class.
Meanwhile, onto the idea that gender identity is performative. Butler says that gender identity (sexuality) is not biological (which ought to go over well with anyone who wants to find a "gay gene" or claim they were "born gay"). Rather, she says, it is created by a person's actions. So if you act straight or gay or bisexual or whatever, you are that. She also says that gender identity is learned and imitated (copies others who follow the pattern) and that, because gender identity is based on actions, it is all a "drag act."
Heady stuff. Ironically, it seems to say that gender identity is a choice. The actions we choose determine us, not genes, overbearing mothers, weak fathers, or the bully who picked on us. Wow! Who'd've thunk I'd find a liberal post-existentialist literary critic arguing that people are responsible for their actions, not things outside their control.
This week, we're reading the chapters "Sexual Difference" and "Queer." Questions to consider:
Sexual Difference
- Explain what essentialism and essentialization of gender signify
- Explain the two step process of deconstruction described for "The Yellow Wallpaper" or Daniel Deronda.
- Explain Judith Butler's critique of "identity politics."
- Explain what Butler means when she says gender identity is performative.
As best I can tell "essentialism" is B&R's way of saying "fundamentalism" while avoiding the religious connotations that have attached to that term. According to B&R, essentialization of gender says that there is essentially one form of sexual difference – the anatomical or biological difference between male and female. B&R contend that gender stereotypes are built on top of that essentalist view. They then launch into a discussion of phallocentrism and phallogocentrism, which doesn't mean quite what one might think. Basically, these come down to the idea of "patriarchy" which B&R equate with the idea that there is some "unity of meaning" or "certainty of origin" that some meanings are "legitmate" and others "illegitimate" and that the author (and author's intent) actually matter. So, basically, the reverse (which seems to be "feminism") says that text can mean whatever you want it to mean (as long as it doesn't offend the feminist critics). Somehow I detect a whiff of inconsistency here. As far as significance, it means you can read whatever "gender" you wish into a given text and that literary works are not inherently "feminist… masculinist or … sexist" – which seems to say that however you read a text in terms of gender, it's all in your head and you'll never be able to prove it right or wrong (and shouldn't beat people over the head if they don't agree with you).
Dr. M explained that deconstruction is about identifying a "hierarchy" or relationshp where one side of the relationship has privilege or power over the other, then inverting that hierarchy and transforming the relationship. He noted that it isn't enough to just reverse the relationship, you have to break some part of the underlying assumption of the relationship. So, last week we talked about the triangular relationship where A and C both desire B and therefore B becomes a powerless object with no desire. Deconstruction would require us to refigure the relationship so that B gained power without totally disempowering A and C.
B&R identify the hierarchy in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in terms of the male/female relationship expressed and focusing on the male=rational/female=irrational idea that is developed in following: "John is practical to the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." They suggest that this can be read to present rationalism as a type of superstition (John's dismissive attitude toward anything that challenges his beliefs or doesn't fit into them, his "horror" of superstition as a superstitious fear of superstition). So, while John is supposedly a rational man, he is inconsistent because he responds irrationally to the irrational. (B&R say this section is "concerned with a suspension of the logic of non-contradiction.")
Butler criticizes "identify politics" (associating oneself with a group, typically a minority group of some kind) because it is (she says) a form of essentialism that constrains the subjects it seeks to liberate and disempowers them because they must subjugate themselves to it.
If you think some of that seems convoluted or contradictory, I'm with you. Dr. M will probably clarify some of it during class.
Meanwhile, onto the idea that gender identity is performative. Butler says that gender identity (sexuality) is not biological (which ought to go over well with anyone who wants to find a "gay gene" or claim they were "born gay"). Rather, she says, it is created by a person's actions. So if you act straight or gay or bisexual or whatever, you are that. She also says that gender identity is learned and imitated (copies others who follow the pattern) and that, because gender identity is based on actions, it is all a "drag act."
Heady stuff. Ironically, it seems to say that gender identity is a choice. The actions we choose determine us, not genes, overbearing mothers, weak fathers, or the bully who picked on us. Wow! Who'd've thunk I'd find a liberal post-existentialist literary critic arguing that people are responsible for their actions, not things outside their control.
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