The introversion is necessary because while I'm in NY at the conference, or on a plane, or in a classroom, or catching up on grading , or crash-prepping courses due to travel (all of which count as extrovert activities for me), friends are going into labor, breaking their wrists, worrying over dissertations and motivations, quitting a crap tenure track job, and me in a widening fondness for an interesting man, and my brother is moving to a new shot at some Nice Green Cash in Arizona.... so, I had a few other things to process and offer energy to whether directly or vibrationally. So, once again, my debt to Hotel Hill-Ries in the Bowery. Y'all are too good.
Plus, in the world o' books, McFarland's Editor Cat is being a little funky, and not in the groovy way. We're still talking, which is good. But, we're sort of moving through discussions one little step at a time that could felled in one graceful swoop with a full proposal. Sewwww, I've dived into All That. Nearly there. Just a few more notes on audience and competition, and the selection of a couple essays as samples, and Editor Cat will simply have to, by force of conscience, commit to this anthology. Meanwhile, I'm nervous. What's with the string-along, and especially when between 12 and 15 people have a stake in this book, and lots of them are Amazing Young Scholars, and what's the matter here? So, a bit busy with that, too.
And stressing in a background kind of way about that and the other book, and wondering: Did I get ahead of myself ? Seriously. Like maybe, way ahead and in much too much of a hurry by which I will be crushed like an old cricket by a spry cat? We shall see.
Et, aussi, des bonnes nouvelles! Five of the ten Motif Series poems will be published in Arabesques (see the roll, it's on there somewhere), which is hip, and peace making, and international 'n shit. V. Excited there. -- perhaps also a hint about which of the sorts of poetry i write the world wants to eat.
But, all That aside: this year's Irigaray Circle was simply amazingly tasty. My compliments to the organizers for the depth of the panels and for keeping up that relaxed-and-smart atmosphere the meeting had last year. It's good to be part of a good community. And a moving circle now: the conference will go to Hofstra next year, and then either to Wash U or Webster U, or more hopefully to Paris on the suggestion of Claire Potter. It's dicey, in some ways on the French side there, but she's willing to try to make arrangements, make sure Irigaray hears these engagements and celebrations of her work before she, well, dies. She is of that age, healthy though she is now. Plus, you know, I like these people, and several more are about to become correspondents, and yay.
As always, everything was smart, every paper was rich. But, we had a minor revolution that nearly made me jump up and cheer. Elizabeth Grozs's paper! (of which, must have copy) What a RELIEF. I did whooop a little when it was over, but tried to keep my voice down.
Here's the gist: title "The Ontology of Sexual Difference." Yep, that's what she said. A new account of the real, one that makes it quite clear, thank you, that sexual difference is the reason that there is complex life, that if in the real it is two that makes our life (and with it the symbolic &c.) even possible, then a merely accurate symbolic and metaphysics would be of two, by two. This point is made, gently but pointedly, into a defense of Irigaray's work against recent (or constant) and mistaken (!) critiques of it as homophobic, eurocentric, or colonialist. Why? Because except in a few rather discrete moments, Irigaray is not doing social politics. She's doing ontology, which has implications for social or cultural politics, but is not that, not addressing those valences of our experience. On the political and symbolic valence: Sexual Difference inflects those differences but is not the same category: it's not like race, or religion, or ethnicity, or sexuality, or ideology. Sexual Difference is, eventhough it is also constructed.
"Sexual difference," saith Grosz, "is the generator of the new ... is the failure of identity and sameness ... is overcoming in a Nietzschean sense." It is "the failure of death." (squirming with happiness)
There are connections to three D's going on this thought: to Derrida, to Deleuze, and to Darwin.
Sexual difference is a kind of ontological rhizome (my prhase, I'm summarizing a bit messily), and thus our connection to Deleuze (or one of them). Sexual Difference is everywhere a kind of moving substrata of other differences and runs across or through cultural expression and social organization.
It is sexual difference that "opens life to chance, to contingency, to possiblity." This is for Grosz both a Derridian and Darwinian point. In Derridian differance, opposities (and remember, a binary is just one and it's opposite, a unity, G so perfectly says) have to be placed into play and slippage, into connotation, to discover their sameness and at the same time open up to real difference, two genuinely not-like terms, and once that happens, meaning MULTIPLIES and becomes undecidable -- that is, life becomes possible. Where the unity of the One and its abject is not at all life (and here see Derrida or my paper for Dublin) -- it's that insidiously smart attempt at closure that the whole PoMo geist points out just ain't so and my haven't we been mistaken.
Now, in an analogy I admire for its adventure, Grosz moves to Darwin to point out that in science (one method for encountering the real, or trying to), or in evolution chez Darwin, there are several aspects of difference at work, or play. One: there's just plain old biological or sexuate difference. Boys and Girls. And the fact of that difference allows for RNA and DNA to do their thing and create infinite variation. That is, "Sexual difference, the genuine interaction of two in difference, multiplies difference infinitely." And there goes your critique that we can't get from two to the many. Wham. Two means many. It's in a world without, or rather that fails to acknowledge difference (twoness), and its operations that we can't get to the many. REmember, binary is just one. (gah)
Bonus, in Darwin we have the little discussed theory of sexual selection (not nearly as closely examined as, say, natural selection, fittest, etc.). Herein, Darwin points out that our physical characteristics are not ONLY about getting food, defending from predators, or surviving sudden environmental ruptures: they are ALSO about getting other members of our species to want to have sex with us. That is, on a real level, to want to engage in that difference. Yep. She's not kidding. (and my notes get sketchy in the places where i was utterly tuned in, so take her word for these things, not mine)
Sexual selection, argues G, drives genetic creativity. The simplified example: giraffes have long necks because they help to reach leaves, thus to survive in the dry seasons, BUT also because GIRAFFES FIND LONG NECKS SEXY. See?
Now, me here, that feedback loop in nature might be mild, but in culture it's very strong, We have the symbolic and imaginary to deal with and deal in and make and manipulate. We encode what we find sexy (or nice, or moral, or true, or right) into the symbolic and then enforce it, which then shapes what we find sexy, and affects how we interact in our difference. This, of course, is why IRigaray's critics are concerned. But, G points out, Irigaray interventions in the symbolic are only openings, cracks, possibilities WE will have to exploit and explore and negotiate because all (ALL!) she's done is point out the hidden fact that the real, or it's philosophical correlate ontology, is sexed. From there, the imaginative work (yes, she uses the word) is up to us, as Irigaray has said, each starting from where we are: in our moments, contexts, bodies, sexualities, and so on and on. We will have to do the inventing of forms of life more suited to us, and once we get clear on SD and the way it inflects or cuts across (and morphs in relation to) other differences (like, the butch-femme spectrum in many lesbian communities: a scale of relative masculinity and femininity, partly symbolic, partly a nod at the real, partly just real, and also evidence of differences infinite creative capacity), the more effectively we can create life and lives that allow us our becomming, our own evolution. Since, an ontology of sexual difference is an ontology of becoming, where ontologies of identity are of stasis -- which the real (and the imaginary or the symbolic) do not do, after all.
Or something along those lines and far more coherent than this remembered summary. This paper has to get into print soon, and I'll be just sooooooo waiting for it.
Oh, and people liked my paper too, and some didn't, and you know how that goes. The paper was the Irigarian reading of Graham's poetics, and the responding question, picking up on the ethical/spiritual thingy, asked: Well, that's all very nice, but isn't this harder done than said? Which, well, yes, quite. Not a compelling reason not to try, and fail, and try, and fail, and keep on with it in becoming, which is, you know, contingent, and open-ended, and non-linear, and imperfect, and the only honorable choice, and whatnot.
All of Which was better than the turkey sandwich I bought at the "deli" in the Newark airport, and the unfamiliar whinging noise the plane made for a few seconds during take-off, and the fact that I'm at odds with an economy in which everything costs more while being crappier.
But, there's a bunch of 20th C Lit gigs up this year, so maybe next year I'll be able to afford more crappier stuff and talk about poetry and theory three days a week. Applications Ahoy!
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