a) Biddy Martin's 'Sexualities without Genders and Other Queer Utopias' is still spot on, especially this:
Queer theory and politi...moreThoughts / feelings:
a) Biddy Martin's 'Sexualities without Genders and Other Queer Utopias' is still spot on, especially this:
Queer theory and politics necessarily celebrate transgression in the form of visible difference from norms that are then exposed to be norms, not natures or inevitabilities. Gender and sexual identities are arranged, in much of this work, around demonstrably defiant deviations and configurations. Surfaces, then, take priority over interiors and depths and even rule conventional approaches to them out of bounds as inevitably disciplinary and constraining. What requires more emphasis, in this context, is that the subordinarion of women does not follow simply from the failure to conform to convention, but also from the performance or embodiment of it. Reconfiguring gender requires reconfiguring the institutional and discursive conditions that structure and are structured by regulatory norms, but also reconfiguring interiorities, and, in particular, distributions of power, autonomy, attachment, and vulnerability. (p13)
b) the Gayle Rubin / Judith Butler interview is pretty disappointing, although what's really shocking is a) that they could just get research grants and go to France to read French books and met Foucault, b) how little queer historiography scholarship there actually was back then, c) generally how little fussed they seem about scholarship beyond psychoanalysis, Lacan etc.
c) I didn't realize Emily Apter was queer, this makes her about 500% cooler, I need to go back and reread her book on translation. Her essay, 'Reflections on Gynophobia' is also surprisingly still very relevant.
d) it gets pretty boring after the first half, so I lost patience, stop reading and returned the book to the library.(less)
And truly, one cannot predict who in the world will be one's reader: a ball can't know what it will hit once it's been shot into the distance. Well, then,...moreAnd truly, one cannot predict who in the world will be one's reader: a ball can't know what it will hit once it's been shot into the distance. Well, then, my life-creating verse, whom I breathe, in whom I live, fly into the darkness, into the void, or simply, into the secret drawer! Our path was blocked at midpoint by a cruel century. But we're not complaining - let it be! And yet, and in the main, it's a splendid thing, this century! Perhaps it has no use for poems, or for names and patronymics or for separate lonelinesses - still, it kneads the dough of centuries! (#225) (p 267)
I came across this book while I was browsing through the Slavonic studies part of the library and the title caught my eye, I'm glad I picked it up and read it. Some of Parnok's poems are amazing and I really like the format of the book, the way biographical data is interspersed with poems - at the same time, the book does have its disappointing moments. After the first two hundred pages or so it becomes a bit dull - the novelty of reading about a Russian lesbian in the 1910s - 1920s wears off and you (or at least, I) yearn for more information both about the cultural atmosphere in Russian at the time and about her poems. The book ends up being a catalogue of Parnok's lovers based on clues from her poems and, I dunno, I feel like this doesn't really give you that much insight into who she was as a person or the kind of homophobic culture she had to navigate. The translations of the poems are also often rather disappointing - I felt tempted at times to rearranged them slightly - I don't want to criticize Burgin too harshly because she's obviously put so much work into the book, which included translating hundreds of poems as well as looking through a lot of hard to get hold of archival material. I also felt like at some points in the book Burgin was trying very hard, too hard, to link Parnok's life / work / vision to that of her Western contemporaries - at one point she goes on and on about how Parnok was a woman-identified poet. I found this disappointing too because I would rather have read about how Parnok can be integrated into the life / work / vision of other Russian / 'Eastern European' women. I guess, really, what I wish most is to be able to read her in Russian.
To conclude, another one of her marvellous poems:
I'll remember everything. In one boundless moment, the obedient herds of all my days will crowd before me. On the paths I've trodden I shall not overlook one track, like the lines in my reference book, and to the evil of all my days I shall softly say "yes". Are we not summoned here by the whim of love - love, I have not endeavored to break your chains! And without fear, without shame, without despair I'll remember everything. Even if my toil has yielded me a pitiful harvest, and my barns are full of wormwood rather than corn, and even if my god has lied, my faith is firm, I won't be like some contemptible defrocked monk in that endless moment, the last moment, when I'll remember everything. (#42) (p 135-6)(less)
It has it's high points and low ones, so I hesitate between 4 and 5 stars. Some of the discussion on psychoanalysis is very boring if you're not inter...moreIt has it's high points and low ones, so I hesitate between 4 and 5 stars. Some of the discussion on psychoanalysis is very boring if you're not interested in psychoanalysis (which seems like a very obvious thing to say?) so I skipped one of the essays, 'Quandaries of the Incest Taboo', I think, just because I really couldn't bear to read all about Freud etc again. That being said, the high points are very high and some of the essays are not only very reader, but almost touching - or more than almost? very? do I feel hesitant in admitting that theoretical texts can be deeply emotional? is 'theory' and / or 'philosophy' meant to be cold and emotionless? Hmm, Butler touches on these kinds of concerns about the nature(s) and purpose(s) of 'theory' and / or 'philosophy', especially in the last essay of the collection 'Can the "Other" of Philosophy Speak?' - among other things so I'm inclined to consider them. I think what I like best about this, though, is that the version of gender 'theorizing' / 'troubling' / 'undoing' / 'doing' / etc that this book expounds is a lot more personal and / or 'intimate' than Gender Trouble (although I also think it's unnecessary to counterpose the two books) - and, as such, I think it runs fewer risks of imperialist universalization, though I continuously long for more inclusion of nonwestern / nonUSian issues / perspectives / contexts. (less)
Bah, people seem to ignore about 4/5 of this book, specifically the 4/5 that is a wonderful critique of a lot of (still) contemporary discourses / pra...moreBah, people seem to ignore about 4/5 of this book, specifically the 4/5 that is a wonderful critique of a lot of (still) contemporary discourses / practices within feminist theory / activism. (less)
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