'I am the other face of you'

Hi guys, to my great embarrassment I seem to have misplaced my blog posting date paper. So I decided to just write about what I find most interesting and relevant to my choice of text, feminist theory. First, I’d like to mention Helene Cixous article, The Laugh of the Medusa. Cixous talk about writing as a fundamental feminist activity. She says “every woman has known the torment of getting up to speak” (1947). And this is true in Anais Nin’s case. She grew up introverted, unable to express herself freely in front of others, and she had difficult time at school adjusting. She eventually withdrew to homeschooling option. She took up diary as a way to “speak” and “reconcile” with herself and her past as well as construct her present and future. Cixous also mentions the act of speech as an act governed by phallus. She said women who speak are often bare in front of the crowd, and even when she speaks, she “draws her story into history.” This reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s quote about how men will tell you the truth when given a mask. In women’s case, it seems that mask and reality is intertwined without having to “perform” or “masquerade”. Her idea about how women have become another women’s enemy under the “white continent” male dominated society’s way of viewing women is fascinating. She says, “we’ve been made to believe that it was too dark to be explorable. And because they want to make us believe that what interests us is the white continent, with its monuments to Lack. And we believed. They riveted us between two horrifying myths: between the Medusa and the abyss” (1951). In this sentence, I can see so many connections to Nin and her writing. Nin’s attempt to write out the actions and reflections of her psyche and actually getting herself psychoanalyzed in the process is in a way trying to defy these myths constructed by men. There are dangerous pits though. First would be Nin did not initially write the diary to publish it. And secondly, she is just one woman and she does not necessarily represent the entire female population and can say, ‘this is how women think!’ Although there are problems in accepting Cixous’ entire claim, I do believe that there are several interesting ideas that can be related back to Nin’s writing. Her writings were not meant for publication but since it is published, it is legitimately on the table for discussion. Whether it was meant for publication or not, I think that it is safe to say that Nin’s writing of her private thoughts and her private activities violated social norm at the time did contribute something to the women’s conception of “I”. Through Nin’s writing, women were able to realize that there is multiplicity in women just as there is multiplicity in men (like Walter Whitman’s poem) and the frame of women’s mind can be explored and it is not necessarily a “dark continent” as Dr. Freud would say. In terms of Donna Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, one line really caught my attention and that is the last line of her essay. “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess” (2220). This made me throw the question out for anyone to discuss: Is Nin a cyborg or a goddess?

James Creech vs. Barbara Johnson

I really enjoyed reading James Creech's "From Deconstruction" excerpt lambasting Barbara Johnson. It's not that I didn't take away anything constructive from Johnson's article; she lays out a solid and airtight argument regarding Claggart's character. But I agree with Creech when he says that she leaves no room for other interpretations.

One thing I think that Creech's article shows us is the different lenses and biases we all as readers and critics have. I recall that once Amanda pointed out the "Jemmy Legs" ejaculation excerpt, we tried to look for more homoeroticism. That's not to say that it isn't there in the text of Billy Budd! I just wish to point out what I understand Creech to be saying in his article; that if we come to a text with a certain expectation and the purpose to find that in the text, we are eliminating other potential venues of fruitful meaning and analysis. This vaguely reminds me of philosophical concept of 'synchronicity,' a Jungian term regarding the experience of two or more events that are unrelated but are seen to take place together in order to produce meaning. One example I'm familiar with is "The Dark Side of the Rainbow" where people sync up Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album to the film version of The Wizard of Oz. The purpose of this is to see that the two mediums work together in tandem and the lyrics of the song often describe what is happening in the film. Some criticisms the Dark Side of the Rainbow has come across is that is the moments of synchronicity are overshadowed by the multiple and numerous instances where the music and film do not sync up and our brains discard information that does not fit with the pattern we have decided to see.

I'm not 100% well versed in Jungian theory, but if we take reading the text as an event and interpreting/analysing the text as a separate event, we can see how synchronicity can be applied to our studies. If we force a text into a certain argument or do not not consider the opposing side, then we fall into the fault of Barbara Johnson as Creech sees it; "Johnson acknowledged no other reason to read Melville's tale" (17). I'm primarily thinking of the ways academics sometimes do not consider that perhaps their argument is wrong, misinterpreted, or even other venues for meaning within the text.