Speaking of policing borders

The timing just makes me laugh.

Musings on intersectionality

Siobhan Somerville is my new academic crush.  The premise of her book, called Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality, is that “it is not merely a coincidence that the classification of bodies as either ’homosexual’ or ’heterosexual’ emerged at the same time that the United States was aggressively constructing and policing the boundary between ’black’ and ’white’ bodies.”  She’s talking about the end of the 19th century, which developed the concept of “homosexuality”* as a condition rather than a collection of perverse sexual acts, and saw a number of trials such as Plessy v. Ferguson which established legal definitions of blackness and whiteness.  Both aspects of classifying and controlling bodies seem to have emerged from the same Victorian impulse, which is an excellent connection in itself, but Somerville just has a gentle, subtle way of reading works from this period.  Let’s not talk about queer texts and straight texts, she says.  Let’s talk about about how sexuality interacts with racial dynamics.  Let’s talk about sexually ambiguous and biracial characters as mediators.  Her writing is nuanced, careful, interesting.  So this book is a great example of intersectionality, examining how all of those little identifying tags we use interact together within a web of power. 

For me, part of the pleasure of this book is that it opens up spaces in my mind that sometimes get dusty.  When I think about my relationship to sexuality, I usually forget to add whiteness into that equation.  (Hello privilege.)  But think:  how does your race play into your sexuality, or at least with the way your sexuality is read by other people?  For example, when I first moved to Philadelphia, several of my new male friends pegged me as a “Southern belle” - a label that I don’t think particularly applies to me, but in which my whiteness is nonetheless embedded.  Think of how my initial shyness would have been perceived differently if I had been Asian, for example.  Think of the way black mothers are often shown in media, versus white mothers.  (Yes, motherhood is an extension of sexuality.  Deal.)  Think of how often folks just shrug and say Latino men are more sexually aggressive. (”…than white men” is implicit and unspoken.)  There are certainly cultural memes for expressing sexuality that differ among demographics - but as with so many cultural practices, these memes are reproduced in words and images to the point of making them presumed fact.  (As Michael Omi argues, this is how stereotypes are made.) 

Then, it is interesting to me to consider sexuality and race as made things, ideas that have a genealogy.  In mean, that’s always in the back of my head, but Somerville sketches a possible family tree:  the ancestor of identity politics is medical and legal objectification.  I don’t think that undermines the political and psychological usefulness of identifying with a race, a gender, a sexuality, or anything.  But it does complicate things.  What is it to be white, if whiteness was developed in part to disenfranchise large numbers of people?  What is it to be homosexual, when homosexuality was first named as a disease?  Most importantly, what does this have to do with now?  If New York Times Magazine features a story about “Childless Europe” on the cover and a yet another new study has been released to suggest a medical explanation for gay men**, where do these branches join the family tree? 

No answers.  Just an invitation to muse, like the title says. 

*a rather hilarious line from this research:  Havelock Ellis, “[Homosexuality] has, philologically, the awkward disadvantage of being bastard term compounded of Greek and Latin elements. . . ‘Homosexual’ is a barbarously hybrid word.”  Barbary!  Miscegenated morphemes!  Egads!
**don’t you think it’s interesting that most recent studies claim to find a possible biological cause for male homosexuality, but not female homosexuality?  In Somerville’s book, it’s the opposite - or at least, she focuses on a few early studies that dissect womens’ bodies to describe the anatomical divergences of the female “invert.”

Haikoo

Have I invited you to join us in a haiku year yet?

Oh.  Well, go read the page, and if I have been so discourteous as to forget your name in the facebook group, please nudge me gently.

Ecentipede and I have been talking about doing this for ages.  Haiku is not my favorite form of poetry, but I’ve been behind the idea from the start, for a number of reasons:

1. I need to be nudged to think poetically.  The last time I really wrote poetry on a regular basis was fall 2005, when I was reading poetry on a regular basis.  Reading and thinking about poetry so much helped me to word the thoughts in my head differently, to find new angles and soft lights in visions.  I’ve been missing this.  That’s the reason I started reading poetry to my cats last fall, but all three of us have been getting up a little too late in the day to enjoy it this summer.
2. Haiku are short.  Seriously.  I grant you that in the mere fortnight since we began this blog, I’ve had several days when I just could not be bothered to squeeze out seventeen syllables… but most days, it’s been pleasant to sit down for five minutes and reflect on the moments of the day.  Occasionally I’ve haikued on the spot:  for example, last week smoking and drinking just felt too good not to notice, so I pulled out my pen right there.
3. I like brains.  And I like ecentipede.  So it pleases me to enjoy a little bit of her brain every day, and to feel happy about her growing plants and friendships.

I am not discriminate in my brain-love, so I’m quite serious about encouraging other friends to write and share their writing.  Bookmark us.  Read a few with your daily feed.  Think about what you would condense into a drop of seventeen syllables, given the chance.  And then do it.

A taste of the future

I’m in the library.  I come in about once a week to drop off an armload of critical literature and scoop up another.  I’ve had my eye out for a few books on ethnic Modernist literature - Temple lets you keep books for a semester, so there’s no telling when books will be back on the shelf - and PS150-250 is now as familiar as my own apartment.  (Just as randomly organized, too.  I can see that the Dewey decimal spirits have trouble categorizing interdisciplinary work.)

New book today.  Shiny - nice, colorful cover.  I was not surprised to see that it was collection of essays on Asian-American literature (although it might also have been shelved in the PRs).  I WAS surprised to see that it was titled Eating Identities:  reading food in Asian American literature.  2008.  Dammit!

I flipped through and noted that the author doesn’t write about Crossings, the novel examined in my conference-paper-to-be-dissertation-chapter.  Good.  But I’m becoming less and less edgy!  Just a year and a few months ago I was struggling to find sources on food semiology and trying to persuade my class that it was a worthwhile pursuit, and now there are shiny new books on the subject.  I’ll be jumping on a feminist food theory bandwagon by the time I’m done with exams and ready to write my prospectus.

So I stood there, heart sinking in my favorite section of the library, and thought Oh no.  Publish or perish - the epic adventure begins!

Ghost Stories

I read a few of Edith Wharton’s novels in January, in the early slow-paced days of my exam reading. I loved them. Reading them reminded me of my Jane Austen phase in New Orleans, the pleasure of dwelling (temporarily) in a chilly, mannerly world where fortunes and reputations could be made or destroyed merely by social machination. But Edith Wharton is edgier, a little meaner. Signification is still submerged and unsaid, but it is very clear - hanging in the air like breath on a cold day, sharp as ice crystals.

So when I saw a collection of Edith Wharton’s tales of the supernatural (!) at Half Price Books, I made sure it fell into my basket. . . even though there is no way it will end up on my exam list.

I imagined Edith Wharton’s ghosts and vampires peopling the same world as her glitterati at the opera, peering into each others’ boxes through brass-stemmed opera glasses. But interestingly enough, her supernatural tales (at least, the ones I’ve read so far) take place in a more Victorian world. Instead of the bustle of Old New York, the drama of these stories plays out in remote manors in Europe and in liminal spaces like trains. Electricity is out of the question; only candles will do. Where Age of Innocence and House of Mirth are very much about struggling for moral happiness in a highly immoral milieu, the tragedy that pins the ghost-story souls to the mortal coil is usually a transgression given supernatural retribution. Above all, that characteristic sharpness is replaced by a more formless, swooning engagement with the world: women fall and hit their heads on things; some don’t even get out of bed to be haunted. I had to read two of the stories twice before I picked up on the suggestion of adultery, something that is never hidden or untrackable in the more famous novels.

In a way, ghost stories are like warped detective fiction. Rather than representing the Sherlockian talent of the human brain to read and connect unintentional traces, ghost stories force clues out of thin air: a shape seen in the hall, a drawer that slides open to reveal a photograph, a light that allows itself to be followed until you discover that last puzzle piece that you never would have found, didn’t even want to look for. I remember the stories I used to tell my tour guests: the signs are mysterious and unclear until screams force the neighbors to barge in, or rotted wood gives way to illuminating documents. If evidence remains unfound or unexplained, the case is not weakened; rather, unearthly forces are all the more incriminated.

And, like detective novels, ghost stories are nearly always about victims or villains trying to break out of moral order: star-crossed lovers, adulterers, spouses and relatives jealous for love or riches. Frankly, since I find Edith Wharton’s moral complexity so compelling, I was pretty disappointed to find lovers walled up inside catacombs and faithful housemaids returning to serve their mistresses.

But what would a supernatural tale look like if it took place under electric lights, in crowded cities without miles of moors around for burying secrets?  Is it possible to produce horror and modernity in the same textual space? 

If you know examples, share them… or tell me a ghost story.

Just disserts

For a modern poetry class I took in my first semester of grad school, I found myself scrabbling to find sources for a twenty-page paper. (I’d thought myself proficient in the use of criticism as an undergrad, but I’d only ever used four or five sources in a given assignment.) One of my sources, a nondescript volume I found in the university library, was discarded after it received this comment on my annotated bibliography: “the date of this and its publisher says ‘dissertation’ and the likelihood of its being interesting goes down.”

I hate to say it, because many of my colleagues are currently ABD and I will be too within the year (knock on wood). But it’s true. Sometimes dissertations are about as interesting as listening to your neighbor talk about her baby cousin who you’ve never met, or her dreams.

I’m currently reading a published dissertation about Don DeLillo, Ishmael Reed, and Kathy Acker – which sounded like an intriguing line-up. Also, the cover was shiny. But the poor author begins his work by claiming that the three postmodern authors, while certainly postmodern by some standards, are not all that postmodern, really. You’ll see. Then he gets niggly, picking on bits of other people’s criticism. Then he’s knick-knacky, setting out Baudrillard and Derrida like good china for the company. (They go back into the cupboard pretty soon). He makes claims like: “More to the point, whatever their similarities, voodoo and western poststructuralist theories are not really based on the same beliefs.”

When it is my time, pray that the writing comes easily and charmingly. Otherwise I will resort to posting dissertation chapters on my blog and paying you guys for constructive criticism so that I do not have to go into the nondescript-binding section of the library.

Swamp Blossom

Although it rained for most of the month of May and I was taking chilly photos of wet flowers not so long ago, today was 90+ degrees and the air was so thick with moisture that I couldn’t see the tops of downtown highrises.

I missed the bus that I meant to take to center city, so I walked a little over a mile to meet some colleagues for lunch.  For the first third, I felt like I was walking through cotton, and I got a stitch in my side from the weight of my laptop.  After that, the shade and a little breeze kept the moisture on my skin from running and my muscles felt good and loose in the heat.

After lunch and a few hours of coffee shop study, I walked back.

I still prefer this to the winter.  Immeasurably.

Meta

I fail to see the impact my current work has on the world.  All I’m supposed to be doing right now is taking things in - reading, synthesizing, remembering - and consequently, I stopped putting out.  (Heh.)  I’m a little depressed.  I kind of want to begin an article based on my love of The Unpossessed but that would put me off my reading schedule.  It cycles - if I do things to please myself, even if they are good, virtuous things, then I feel worse for not obeying the Conscience of Conscientiousness.

So, meme to take me out of myself for a few leisurely moments.

1. If you’re a bloggity sort of person, what is your favorite post of yours that you’ve written lately (or ever, if you prefer)?  Link please.  If you don’t blog, you can write whatever you want in this space.
2. Why do you blog, if you do?  Why do you comment, if you don’t?
3. Enough about blogs.  Tell me something I don’t know about you.
4. Do you like the little shape icons next to your names?  They are randomly generated by your IP address, but I like that ecentipede’s appears to be wearing glasses and Jess-exclamation-point’s actually appears to be exclaiming.  Or beaming.

Now.  Read comments, click on at least one of the blog posts linked by commenters, and go comment on it.

A long ride either way

The bus ride from my street to my building at Temple is about half an hour.  It’s longer than the subway, but it is just about the right amount of time to read a critical article, or thirty to forty pages of a novel - give or take, factoring in the daydreams and the landmark-watching.

At Market, a man roughly my age took the empty seat next to me.  I scanned him from the corner of my eye; might have been a student or a hipster, might have just been a dude.  Somewhere around Spring Garden, he asked me what I was reading.

“White noise.”
“Is it a novel?”  Oh, not a hipster then.
“Yes.”
“How is it?”
“Not bad.  I’m required to read it, though, so I’m chugging through it.”
“Oh.”  He became quiet.  I read.  After a few blocks and a few pages, he said,
“Is this something people do?  Have conversations with strangers on the bus?”

I considered.  This is so hard for me, this light banter with an unknown in relatively neutral ground.  I know what I’m doing in an erotically charged environment, like a bar or a bookstore.  Elsewhere, I’ve observed that a man who starts talking may just have something on his mind or may have a need for social contact to fulfill, but that more often he wants money, or attention, or dominance.

“Sometimes,” I answered after a few beats.  “Some people are chatty.  I’m not, really.”
“I’m not either,” he said.  But before we passed Girard, he’d asked me about the school I attended, the purpose of my doctorate, the location of my bachelor’s degree, and a few other details.  His questions were quiet and undemanding.  I gave brief answers and never stopped reading until he offered a statement.

“It’s my second day in Philly.”
Oh.  That explains some of the questions.  I asked, “Where did you come from?”
“Brooklyn.  Well,” he amended, “most recently, rehab.  Before that, jail.  Before that, Brooklyn.”
Oh.  “So it’s been a long journey, then,” I said.  He agreed.

We discussed the layout of the city and his interest in journalism, and he thanked me for chatting with him and I wished him luck.  I stepped down one block early and wished I’d left him with a map of some kind, more information about his new city or at least a more positive energy.

*

At Reading Terminal Market in the afternoon, the browsers and the hustlers appear in roughly equal numbers.  I narrowly dodged an older couple who stopped to watch a woman buy meat from a butcher, as if they’d never seen such a thing.  Picking up a head of locally grown Boston lettuce, I stopped to watch two older women briskly and purposefully selecting produce.  Oranges and tomatoes bounced into their hands and onto the fruitpile again like the ball in a game of jacks.  Water from the lettuce ran down my hands.

A few steps away, a man sat like an enthroned statue, patient and unmoving.  He held a cardboard sign which read:
YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN ROAD WAY TO HELL EVERY ONE

A touch of melancholia

10th street: Red flowers, rainy day

Originally uploaded by tanglethis

And a couple of Overheards.

This photo is from yesterday afternoon. The Seattle-themed spring (grey and chilly days, dark and stormy nights) seems to have relented today, but the wind is still brisk and I am still be-sweatered.

On the bus up 9th street, two older women with fabulous South Philly accents boarded in the midst of an involved conversation about about their respective diets. I wish I could reproduce the conversation, because I loved the way they spoke and the easy communication between them - I want to be an old lady on a bus like that someday, hanging out with my old lady friends and not giving a fig who overheard.
But their conversation made me sad. They were both recovering from serious health issues. One had experienced complications from diabetes. The other, healing from eye surgery, told her friend that all she needed to do to lose weight was to eat “right.”
“Are you kidding?” said her friend. “I eat salmon twice a week. I eat right. It’s not coming off.”
“It’s in God’s hands,” said her friend positively. “Thank Jesus. I knew when I went in for this surgery.”
“You know what it is, I sleep all the time. I can’t stop sleeping.”
“Give it to Jesus.”

As I said, I wish I could reproduce their conversation for you in full to explain why I was so touched - but it made me sad that these two white-haired ladies were comparing notes on how to lose weight and equating weight loss with health gained, and praying to higher powers for assistance. It was a perfect storm of culturally encouraged magical thinking.*

Maybe spiritualism is in the cool air this afternoon, because I found myself sitting next to an older man in Chapterhouse who was as perfectly at ease as those ladies in conversing with the baristas, me, himself. He has headphones on now, and I suspect that his notebook is full of lyrics for the melody he hears- he keeps confirming and denying with his left hand, and once he opened both hands in an arc as though to invite in whatever chilly spirit is blowing dead blossoms off the cherry trees and making everyone talk just a little louder, almost boisterously.

He just called one of the baristas “sugarpants.” They laugh nervously around him, not sure what to do with him.

I think what I describe as “melancholy” - as a opposed to garden-variety self-pity or depression - usually implies a sharpened attunement to energy around me: the moods of the unspringlike air, of human bodies, of red flowers with their shivering faces turned up in a downpour. These things send my mind spinning in a hundred different directions, away from what I am supposed to be thinking about. So I write, trying to name what I think I’m missing.

*I don’t often write about size acceptance although I think about it often - even when I’m experiencing a bout of low self-esteem, as I have lately. So to catch you all up, let me explain that I am as disenchanted and skeptical of weight-loss rhetoric as I am of religion. I think it’s a kind of socially sanctioned hysteria that persuades an old diabetic woman or her doctor that her primary task is to be more thin (rather than to be more well), that imagines thinness as the moral reward for “good” behavior and its opposite as a kind of scarlet letter, and that equates the loss of weight with the gain of health (and beauty, and virtue, and so forth). For a kind of horrifyingly hilarious sampler of the kind of magical thinking this promotes, see Kate Harding’s sendup of Helpful Diet Tips.