Early mornings with Percy Shelley

I am in the process of creating a new lifestyle for myself.  One in which I actually wake up in the morning.  (Shocking, I know).  Eat breakfast (with many, many cups of coffee), and then spend all of my daylight hours in the library.

I've done well so far.  With the exception of Saturday and Sunday (where my routine was broken with a migraine and church), I've done a complete week without falling off the wagon.  Written about half of a (rough) rough draft of my theory essay, and read about 800 pages of Icelandic myth and history.

The real test will be how well I survive the revival of crew training tomorrow.

But anyway.  That was actually just a prelude to say that I was in the Bodleian today, reading The Poetic Edda (translated by the professor I'll be working with this term), when one of the women from my Thursday night Bible study asked if I wanted to take a lunch break with her.  So we went to a local deli and bought baguette sandwiches (Brie and onion marmalade) and then ate them in her college's MCR (which, for those of you uninitiated, is the "Middle Common Room" -- i.e. the place where grad students hang out).

She's a member of University College, and gave me a bit of a tour, which included this lovely memorial to (arguably) the college's most famous member: Percy Bysshe Shelley.

In case you didn't know, besides being married to the author of Frankenstein, Shelley is one of the most famous of the Romantic poets, usually remembered beside such names as Byron and Keats.

What I found exceedingly amusing, however, is that this memorial (given to the college because it was too large to transport, as originally intended, to his grave in Rome) commemorates a student who lasted a grand total of one term at Oxford.  That's right.  On the 25th of March it will be exactly 200 years since Shelley was expelled.

Which explains, I suppose, why, when originally offered the memorial, the Fellows of the college decided to reject it.  But granted foresight (and extra money from his daughter-in-law) they finally accepted what has become the college's leading tourist attraction.

It, appropriately enough, is described as the statue that "continues to fascinate and disturb."  I think that Shelley, the author of "infidel poetry" (so described by the journalist who gloated, upon hearing of his death, that "now he knows whether there is God or no") and the "inspiration to rebellious students everywhere" (so claimed by one of Oxford's current student newspapers), would appreciate the description.

Writing is Woman's (or why theory makes my head hurt)

So, this is my attempt to think through, in a space that is nonthreatening in its informality, some of my ideas for the theory essay that is currently leaving me wordless and angsty.  I would like to claim (though my college friends would have to verify) that I've never struggled so much with an essay in my life.  That I've never been so utterly incapable of coherent thought, or worthwhile expression.  Maybe it's the pressure of trying to create something worthy of Oxford (whatever that means), or maybe it's the attempt to reflect on pure, unadulterated theory, without the grounding in literature and life.  Or maybe I'm just out of practice.  After all, other than two application essays and a few (short) creative writing pieces, I haven't written anything since graduating almost two years ago.

But I really want this OUT OF THE WAY.  Done with, so I can move on to better things.  Things like Icelandic literature and books on myth.

Here is what I do know:

It is an essay that will touch on the work of Cixous.  And Virginia Woolf.  And maybe Kristeva, Irigaray, and others.

It is an essay about women.  About women and their relationship to writing.  About women and the metaphor of writing the body.  Feminine ecriture, writing is woman's, and all that.

Toril Moi has an essay, written in 2008, that points out one of the main complications that seem to lie at the heart, not just of women and writing, but of feminism and theory in general.  There seems to be a tension, a conflict even, between political feminists and literary theorists (be they queer, postmodern, etc.)  Between those who need the signifier "woman" to retain it's meaning and significance, and those who wish to displace the binaries (and the signifiers) altogether.  In writing, this issue takes the form of dissonance: a political mandate to read and study the work of women writers vs. the theoretical conjecture that the author (and gendered subject) is dead.

Moi argues that the feminists and theorists have no real answers for each other, and generally escape conflict by avoiding the debate altogether.

But I think there's a way out of this seeming standstill, and always has been.  When Roland Barthes wrote about the death of the author, he was affirming, in many ways, what feminists already knew: that the patriarchal, masculine subject -- the mythic phallus, impenetrable and whole -- was an illusion.  A protection, as Peggy Kamuf puts it, between the boundlessness of an unlimited textual system and our own power to know.  And it was time, Barthes argued, for the myth to be put to death, and the text liberated from the constraints of the Author-God.

But this displacement of the omnipotent (male) Author, rather than erasing the political significance of women's writing (as so many feminists seem to fear) opens new doors to symbolically re-interpret the relationship between gender/sex and writing.

Virginia Woolf famously asserted, in her 1928 treatise on women and writing, that great writers are androgynous (and must not think of their sex).  She also asserted, somewhat contradictorily, that women must write as women, and not as men.

Taken on closer evaluation, these two statements prove to be related, for Woolf seems to imply that to write as a woman -- a real woman, and not the stagnate image created in the patriarchal conscious -- is to be androgynous: fluid, multiple, ever-shifting, changing, never coded, never closed.  It is, in short, to be all that phallogocentricism, in its obsession with stability, wholeness, and rigidity, is not.

Helene Cixous makes a similar argument, stating that woman has never lost her bisexuality.

As the repressed/oppressed/negated signifier in the binary man/woman, woman holds no commitment to the phallocentric order.  In fact, it is the very passion with which patriarchal discourse has attempted to obliterate her that provides the means for her to break free.  For the signifier "woman," subsumed/submerged/swallowed/annihilated by its partner "man," can never hold the weight of the real woman, with breath and blood, body and voice.  All woman has to do is show up -- write her body, her very self, into being -- for the existing discourse to crash and burn.

And since woman has no allegiance to the phallocentric ideal of unity and oneness (for, as Luce Irigaray so blatantly points out, woman's sexuality is not one, but two, and not two, but many), she is free to be nothing and everything; to return and start again from elsewhere; to never say exactly what she means.  Lacking a phallus to begin with, she is unfettered by the fear of castration.  She could never claim to posses the (one) truth, so she has no need to defend it.

And since woman is multiple, and writing is multiple, Cixous can make her claim -- bold and threatening -- that writing is woman's.

For it is time for a new metaphor, not the Father-Author and his text, but the mother-writer and the boundless Other that she births.  For, as Kamuf points out, the metaphor of the father is one of mediation and intentionality.  It is to stand removed, and to present a work whole and unblemished, as one conceived it to be.  The metaphor of motherhood, on the other hand, is one of illegitimacy, of borrowed names, and of deep, vulnerable, exposure.

It is the realm, not of the universal (masculine) truth, but of individual (feminine) experience.  The realm of the embodied text (and it is, somewhat ironically, embodiment and specificity [rather than universality] that allow individual voices to survive in all their multiplicity and contradiction).

As Woolf writes in Three Guineas, "As a woman, I have no country.  As a woman I want no country."  To be a woman is to be an exile, separate from the patriarchal structures of culture and power that have defined so much of our discourse and rhetoric -- our very tools for understanding the world.  But as Kristeva states, all writing must come from a place of exile, for only then can we be set free from the bonds of the common sense.  Or in the words of Cixous, we must trade places with the moon to gain a new perspective.

Luckily for women -- especially women who desire to write -- we already live on the moon, so writing with a new voice, untainted by the Law of the Father and the rules of a phallogocentric economy, isn't hard at all.

All we need is the courage to find our voice in the first place.

Cooking French in England

I am in the midst of eating freshly made ratatouille with a giant loaf of French bread.  I'm not sure why this fact is so exciting.  It just is.

Okay, so that's a lie.  I do know why it's exciting, the truth is just a bit embarrassing.

It's the first time I've ever made myself a real meal.  Like a "follow the recipe" type meal.  I make killer pasta all the time, but I'm usually cheating with ready-made sauce.  And while I can also make great quesadillas, pita bread pizzas, and other food involving the oven and melted cheese, I wouldn't consider any of those a "real" meal (even though making ratatouille is probably just as easy).

Now don't get me wrong, I have made food in my life -- just usually with the help of others, for others.  It never made a lot of sense to make something just for myself.  It takes time and effort, and I can't eat it all anyway.

But I watched an episode of Castle last night (give me a break, I had a migraine), and there they were in the kitchen, cutting up their bright and beautiful vegetables in front of a roaring fire, and I realized that I want that. The time and space in my life to glory over food preparation.  To make things delicious and beautiful, the way my mother does.

I didn't put any plans into action -- because the truth is that I don't have the time or space right now -- but then I had a good day today.  I woke up, and got up (don't make me tell you what a massive achievement this is for me), and spent the day in the library.  And while I didn't get a huge amount actually written, it was a step in the right direction, and I did write some.  I signed up for meals (including breakfast) tomorrow, and in the afternoon I met with Professor Paul Fiddes to talk about Charles Williams, and Dr. Lynn Robson to talk about my dissertation.  And while I didn't make any new discoveries (I always knew I was falling back on my "images of Eve" option), it's still nice to know that a final decision has been made.  And I can't wait to start reading.  So much so, that I actually feel motivated to get this theory essay OUT OF THE WAY.  Let's hope that holds true tomorrow (or when I come back from seeing my MSt lovelies tonight).

All that to say, I got out of my last meeting, and had a sudden, irrepressible urge to make myself something real.  So I did.  I went to the store, bought an eggplant, courgette, onion, tomatoes, and freshly baked baguette, and came home and did some cooking.

And now, since the hot water is finally back on, I'm going to go take a shower.

Christmas Trees and Old Icelandic

Back at Oxford I am.  After a glorious Christmas with family (though missing the gametrekkers).  A live Christmas tree (with glowing shells), the glory of the Pacific coastline, crackling fires, cookies and goodies galore, and, most wondrous of all, the bright warmth of family -- grandmothers, brothers, parents.  How I love them all.

And then New Year's in Minnesota with lots of cousins, aunts, uncles, and the hardest puzzle I've ever encountered.

All while reading Icelandic sagas and NOT writing my theory essay.

But now I am back.  In an empty room and an empty apartment, with jet-lag, lovely memories, and the need to get back to work.  Hard work, and really fast.  I have Icelandic history to read (lots of it), Sagas to plot out (a necessity, since there are so many names I can't keep track of what happens from chapter to chapter, much less book to book), dissertations to plan (along with people to meet with), and, most dreaded of all, a theory essay to write (with all the reading that goes with it).  So I probably won't get around to writing that PhD/DPhil proposal and applying to programs.  But oh well.  I think I need another year anyway.  To read and think and really know what I'm planning.

But if the essay ever gets written, and a decision on a dissertation topic and adviser is ever made, then I'll have to admit that I'm excited about what comes next.  About getting back to literature.  About building arguments from the texts of stories.  About learning about Iceland.  Though this year is making me wish, SO strongly, that I had more/stronger languages.  Norse, Old English, Middle English, French, and yes, a better reading knowledge of Arabic.  What I wouldn't give to float effortlessly through Medieval (and modern) texts that now I'm not allowed to touch, or must access through mediation.

And these sagas burn with tales of betrayal and revenge.  Friendships destroyed.  Blood-ties honored.  Loyalty torn.  And in the middle the women hover, egging on their husbands, brothers, uncles, to blood-lust and manhood, often at the cost of their own happiness and their men's lives.

And I find it interesting that these stories, of heathen faith and legendary courage, black magic and violent deeds, are mediated through a Christian era.  The old gods, it seems, may be rejected but they are never doubted.  Thangbrand, King Olaf's missionary to Iceland, tells the people, not that Thor is an illusion, but that without God's will he would never have lived in the first place.  And the gospel is spread with both "fair words and dire punishments" (The Saga of the People of Laxardal).  God proves himself (for, indeed, the God of the Icelanders is certainly male) with heathen miracles and proofs of power.  The ministry of incarnation amongst a culture bound to the heroic code?  Who's to say?  For isn't this the same God that once ordered the butchering of men, women, and children, proving to surrounding nations that the God of Israel was strong?

But there are hints of another way.  Hauskuld, who declares that even if it were true that his foster brothers have been treacherous, he would still "far rather suffer death at their hands than work them any harm" (Njal's Saga).  Or Njal himself, the seeker of peaceful restitution, who refuses to shed blood and thinks of the new religion, when it comes, that here at last is a way to God.