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(no subject) [Nov. 9th, 2005|03:33 pm]
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eye of the tulips,
And I have no face. I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.


-from "Tulips" by Sylvia Plath

Just by viewing one stanza of "Tulips," I witness both an act of negation and affirmation achieved by Plath. "And I have no face. I have wanted to efface myself" is itself a paradoxical sentence. To want to remove oneself is to affirm that there is a body present in the first place. But the narrator negates herself by seeing herself as a "cut-paper shadow," not even a "cut-paper object" but the shadow of one. Even light is given more solidity to her self-inscribed presence: the light which "slowly widens and slowly thins" implies a volume, a three-dimmensional wholeness, compared to how light has been constantly referred to as a "beam"/ "ray" of light "flitering" through. In the case of the light, the word becomes flesh; light is fattened by the verbs it has been attributed to. The narrator, instead, is the filter between the eye of the sun and of the tulips.

How effectively does the writer both desires to efface herself by rendering the light and tulips more energy while she occupies the minimal space. But the constant presence of "I" is already a self-indulgence, a reminder to the reader that the writer is constructing the whole scenario; the writer is not obscured by the text.

Reading Rose's essay, although I'm still pretty fuzzy about certain issues, I shall try to tackle them here.

Plath's writing is a form of abjection, where she is "a phobic who succeeds at metaphorisation so that, instead of dying of fear, s/he is resuscitated through signs." The innate and intense emotional pressure in the writer is abjected through the very writing of it, and in Plath's case, "that connection between the body and the language knows no limits" since the heavy reliance of bodily metaphors and synaesthesia forces the reader to conjure the usually violent image, lending it bodily, substantial substance. For me abjection is an act of expulsion, of the desire to excrete and expel that which one wishes to dissociate from. Because of this I am confused how abjection figures in Plath's writing: while there is evidence of the physical act of purging from within, these emotions are still very much intensely Plath's. In her writing she injects the solidity to her emotions but they are very clearly borne by Plath; she does not repel against them.
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half-cooked beans [Oct. 24th, 2005|08:50 pm]
This essay titled "Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions" by Judith Butler comes in handy after our class discussion on whether the body is a blank slate or already written from the time it is made.

Butler writes:

"To claim that "the body is culturally constructed" is, on the one hand, to assert that whatever meanings or attribtues the body acquires are in fact culturally constitued and variable. But note that the very construction of the sentence confounds the meaning of "construction" itself. Is "the body" ontologically distinct from the process of construction it undergoes? If that is the case, then it would appear that "the body," which is the object or surface on which construction occurs, is itself prior to construction. In other words, "the body" would not be constructed, strictly considered, but would be the occasion, the site, or the condition of a process of construction only externally related to the body that is its object."


I would like to think that the body itself is a text, while cultural and social influences and ideologies acting upon the body is akin to the idea of a hypertext acting on a hypotext.

Butler declares that the paradox inherent in Foucault's work is that while he does claim "that bodies are constituted within the specific nexus of culture or discourse/power regimes, and that there is no materiality or ontological independence of the body outside of any one of those specific regimes", yet Foucault's theory "nevertheless relies on a notion of genealogy, appropriated from Nietzsche, which conceives the body as a surface and a set of subterranean 'forces' that are, indeed, repressed and transmuted by a mechanism of cultural construction external to the body".

My attempt to interpret/rephrase Butler's argument: the paradox exists because while bodies are said to be constructed within (power) discourses, such forces are nevertheless still external, outside of the body, acting on the body. While the body is not the entire circle equating cultural constructions, the body occupies a circle within that larger circle of forces that act upon the body as surface.

"The critical question," Butler says, "is whether the understanding of the process of cultural construction on the model on 'inscription'...entails that the 'constructed' or 'inscribed' body have an onotological status apart from that inscription, precisely the claim that Foucault wants to refute".

Butler echoes our discussion on whether the body can 'stand alone' by itself, by its own biological determinism. As said by Dr. Yeo, the question posed was a "trick question", because it is almost impossible to see the body context-less. Is it possible to think of a body prior to cultural inscriptions? Under what circumstances is the body empty from imprints and writings? Is physical isolation (think Crusoe) proof that the body is capable of existing outside of/from cultural inscriptions? But even Crusoe has not been spared from being written upon: Lewis Nkosi labels him as the "true prototype of the British colonist". Once Crusoe's existence is made publicly known, his bodily identity will be written with attempts of writing him as a text. But was Crusoe's way of life on the isolated island simply a case of pure biological determinism, a white male's innate survival instincts, by finding means to survive when faced with dire straits?

As for Friday, his silence may be indicative of his unawareness of cultural inscriptions imprinted upon him. This, however, does not make him a solely biologically determined person. In my opinion, silence tempts the occurence of inaccurate and unethical cultural inscriptions, since silence may be interpreted as a sign of inferiority.

I liked the way Susan VanZanten Gallagher ended her critical piece on Foe: she wrote that "Foe ultimately addresses the issue of how one can write for - in support of - the Other withour presumng to write for - assuming power over - the Other."

The double meaning of "writing for" was what impressed me, and it also reminds one that the act of writing onto a body is a delicate one, where ethical issues cannot be ignored. Bodies are texts, and writing for a body is to inscribe a meaning onto that already present text. In writing for the Other, despite the intentions, misrepresentation can still occur. The act of writing is also a powerful one, and by wielding the pen, the Other writes him/herself into the Self. The body seems unable to separate itself from cultural inscriptions: a body has the ability to reject certain cultural inscriptions and create new writings, as Foucault says that "[power relations] are not univocal; they define innumerable points of confrontation...". Whereas the utterly disempowered prisoner's body is "caught up in a system of constraints and privations, obligations and prohibitions". The body is inevitably linked with its discourse of writing: who does the writing, and in what way is it exercised onto the body...



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no sign of the promised redemption [Oct. 3rd, 2005|12:13 am]
"it is to the individual experiencing it overwhelmingly present... yet is almost invisible to anyone else, unfelt, and unknown.
...
even prolonged, agonized human screams...convey only a limited dimension"

just as the gothic figure embodies the intangible essence of the uncanny and horror, the machine in In the Penal Colony physicalises the pain that the prisoner will suffer. the pain that is executed, despite it being conveyed through words, needs to be physicalised in order to assist the reader anthropomorphically, vicariously.

both the reader and the prisoner have the common physical body, and it is by providing the written impressions of the machine that its image can be visualised and given shape. the pain is felt as the reader winces upon reading descriptions of needles and the act of writing in blood.

to seek empathy, pain has to be given a shape - either in the form of a grotesque appartus or a finger dripping fresh blood onto the floor.

*


the absence of voice/sound
I noted that the ability, or power, to speak resides only in the explorer and the officer. when the prisoner communicates, it is through physical actions of "gestur[ing]" and "wrestling, half in jest". Scarry's idea that the voice as a source of self-extension comes into mind: "so long as one is speaking, the self extends out beyond the boundaries of the body". The prisoner has already been denied his voice, while the absence of speech in the soldier indicates that he is just another apparatus in the setting to be utilised. Absence of the voices suggests a dehumanisation of the two silent characters.

"as soon as the focus of attention shifts to the verbal aspect of torture, those lines [of moral responsibility] have begun to waver and change their shape in the direction of accommodating and crediting the torturers".

The lack of verbal torture here indicates the absolute autonomy in both the officer and the physical aspect of torture. Also, the officer says that if there had been interrogation, "things would have gotten into a confused tangle". The lack of verbal torture renders more attention to the machine itself, emphasized too by the presence of verbal discourse which has already made the machine its central focus. This absence of speech once again alienates the prisoner by maintaining him as a ambivalent and un-knowable character, and the reader is not provoked into empathising with or disregarding him. The reader cannot find out if his/her inclination is towards the prisoner or the torturer, because the prisoner is never given a chance to speak, let alone lie, as accused by the officer.

I am curious to why Kafka made the attempt to note the silence of the machine: "he remembered that a wheel in the Designer should have been creaking, but everything was quiet, not even the slightest hum could be heard".

the machine
Korean director Park Chan Wook said: "The violence in Korean movies is different to that in American movies. In America, there is a lot of use of guns. With a gun, there is distance between the killer and the victim. There's no physical contact. But with a knife, used more often in Korean films, even the person exacting the violence feels the effect."

I reckon that the knife requires the very act of transferring of physical strength from one to the other, which is why the "effect" is greater. The machine, on the other hand, symbolises perhaps "the greatest distance that can separate two human beings". Since it is battery-operated, it is able to work independently, allowing the torturer to sit back and admire the performance. Intense, world-destroying pain gets misinterpreted as "enlightenment" by the officer - the idolisation of the machine represents the extent to which communication fails badly between human beings.
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this love, hate [Sep. 27th, 2005|12:13 am]
i was reading a snatch, about how meaningless language is, because it is "parasitic" upon nonverbal significations. even ideas, something intangible, find roots from physicality.

by a stroke of fate, i came upon this beautiful poem:

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous ones we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be good as fingers.
They can be trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.

Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.

But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

-anne sexton
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nameless and naked [Sep. 20th, 2005|07:39 pm]
found this quote by jensenska succinct and apt:

"obviously, we are capable of living because at some time or other we took refuge in lies, in blindness, in enthusiasm, in optimism, in some conviction or others...but [kafka] has never escaped to any such sheltering refuge, none at all...he is like a naked man among a mulitude who are dressed."


taking refuge in blindness reminds me of what honi fern haber wrote: "as long as these bodies stay in their proper place, their ideological dimension goes unnoticed. but when they are recombined in unexpected ways, we have to learn to read them all over again." the transformation of gregor into a so-called vermin, however, is a disgust which does not succeed in provoking insight and empathy. blame it on the uncomplying audience, his family members, who fail to see the possibility that this transformation can exist as a metaphor. the disgust is never elevated to an epiphanic experience, but remains as a distraught state, alienation, outright disdain and physical abuse.

blindness is quietly noticed by the omniscient narrator: "all foresight had forsaken them" (102).

he is like a naked man among a mulitude who are dressed
the state of being dressed not only signifies a fallen one, but also, an ideological one. to be dressed is to be laden with ideologies that inhibit into binary logic, among others. foucault desccribes the body as "a surface upon which the rules, hierarchies, and metaphysical commitments of a culture are inscribed and reinforced"; the body is not naked and clean, it is imbued with ideological slants.

haber notes that power can be repressed through "linguistic exclusions" and "a prescribed range of possibilities". the former can be said to refer to binaries; the latter, to the limited characteristics that define an attribute. while power creates this binary of insect/human being, this power is internalized and reproduced by gregor's family. the binary has been so deeply entrenched that none of them are able to reconcile insect (physical) attributes with human (mental) attributes. gregor's father indicates that it is "unthinkable" that gregor "could understand [them]" (133). grete echoes this view: "if this were gregor, he would have realized long ago that human beings can't live with such a creature, and he'd have gone away on his own accord."

does language control/create thought, or does thought control/create language? the existence of both the Self and Other in gregor remains nameless. the fear increases, because it is by putting a name down onto a fear that one can have control over it.
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(no subject) [Sep. 9th, 2005|07:37 pm]
because i've been rather bogged by how the body figures within this academic scope, i somehow find myself unconsciously relating my personal experiences to the idea of body. admittedly, i find it difficult to tear myself away from attributing the mind to a higher status.

today i watched the film "be with me". i was in awe of theresa's fingers: her fingers simultaneously function. the way she breaks an egg, how she cuts veggies, teaching a child to mould, where the two hands touch, feel, and more than that. the fingers can talk. the fingers have a life of their own, just as mine have, when i am inspired and pounce on the typing pad and type furiously away. but her fingers are what her entire life depends on, to keep her in touch with this world that talks and operates visually.

just because i am an able-bodied person, it doesn't give me the right to ignore how essential my bodily functions are. there have been days when i live my life feeling mentally exhausted, when i feel like i'm just floating by in this world. and i'm brought to my feet again when i fall sick with a bout of flu, because that's when my body tells me something which i've overlooked. that's when i remember that however self-important i make myself to be, i am still affected by physical pains and strains.

and one more thing. love doesn't belong only to beautiful, shiny, radiant bodies. in that body with a bulging hairy tummy, there is a love that is child-like and easily satisfied. mass media teaches us what is ugly, and then associate "ugly" people with perverted, distorted love. and behind that weather-beaten, stoic face lined with wrinkles there is someone who just want his lifelong companion back. stereotypical love has been age biased. bodies tend to give off different vibes that amount to first impressions, but love can transcend these physical boundaries.
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rambled observations [Sep. 2nd, 2005|08:44 pm]
Isserley represents a fragmented self; there are different voices within her contesting each other, and the selves within her never seem to reconcile. "As soon as she caught herself yearning, she yanked this contemptible little shoot of sentimentality out by the root." The repressed self in Isserley surfaces at her most vulnerable moments, and she makes a conscious attempt to ensure that it remains in the shadows. Isserley, in fact, yearns for the respect of her other human counterparts, wanting to show Amlis Vess that she is capable and indispensible by bringing back bounty, but she knows that 'indispensible' was "a word people tended to resort to when dispensibility was in the air". (76) Ensel steals a piece of meat for Isserley, and she is determined not to show gratitude. She has repressed anxieties yet only portrays a stoic appearance. This, i find, is a way of self-defence mechanism of an alienated person, who finds herself unable to fit as a regular member in either her human or vodsel community, and she learns to distrust both sides. Isserley's melancholy is never explained in the novel - "something inside her was trapped", but the reader can only guess at what is it. Her guilt towards the vodsels, yet full of disdain at this guilt because it would mean that she identified with the "animals"? Coupled with the indignance that her body is mutilated?

In our society, "sizing somebody up" is a colloquial speech, a figurative metaphor used to 'test' someone's eligibility. in Isserley context, this phrase takes on the literal meaning. Both hitcher and Isserley practise the mutual act of sizing each other up: the size of tits and muscles respectively. To the hitcher, the body is a metaphor for sex; to Isserley, the body is metaphor for food. And this is "the law of the fucking jungle" (36). Except that size, instead of indicating intimidation, is now a vulnerability. Both parties are vulnerable to attacks from either one.

"Just one humiliating encounter could shake her so badly." (41)
Isserley feels threatened by the looming fear that is triggered by a hitcher's aggression, and she is almost immediately ashamed for feeling scared. Her body is a tool (which she likes to believe is indispensible) from which she completes her job by using it as a bait. Her body allows her to feel accomplished, and inherent in that, a sense of power. It is a way of assuring herself that she maintain a sense of authority among her human counterparts. The body, however, is also a liability since she is at the mercy of male vodsels who harbour fantasies of raping her. This deprives her of the absolute power of the hunter against the hunted.

The novel is a third person narrative which centers Isserley's thoughts and emotions. The significance of the body to Isserley is implied when she reveals that "th[e] inability of some of the most superbly fit and well-adapted vodsels to be happy while they were alive...was one of the greatest mysteries" to her. At one point of time, Isserley believed that "her passage into a bright future was a matter of physical inevitability, a lush and glossy birthright...". Isserley gives the body weight by equating it as a source of confidence, pride and happiness. One can imagine her repressed emotional pain at having to endure living in a mutilated body, a constant reminder of inferiority and shame. Moments in the novel hint of Isserley's private struggle against "the embittering specifics of her sacrifice".

Irony
1. "Instead, here she was, free to wander in an unbounded wilderness..." (68). Isserley badly wants to believe she is liberated like her physical surroundings, but the irony comes when it is revealed on the next page that "[i]n her mind, she was already behind the wheel". What does Isserley base her identity on? I find that she is bound heavily by her physical deformity, and as much as she tries to break out of it, her body nevertheless is a relentless reminder of shame and humiliation that she, simply put, is a social misfit. Because she is handicapped, she desires to prove herself otherwise through her commitment of the job behind the wheel. Is this the only way to salvation for Isserley?

2. It is ironic that Isserley chooses victims by indication of them being isolated wanderers whom no-one cares for, when Isserley herself is possibly in the same plight as her victims. Isserley changes her physical form, and to her, it becomes a loss of identity.

---

I identify with Isserley on a "human" level because she has anxieties, is guilty of stereotyping "typical" male figures, seeks solace during private moments with nature. She longs for an outlet to vent her pent-up, "undigested" feelings. She struggles to get a grip of herself yet she falls prey to some feeling that she cannot exactly identify. Like humans, like me, she is a being made up of emotions.
So what freaked me out was when she desired some form of catharsis at witnessing the castration of the male vodsel - I was horrified because he was of my own species! I find it sad too when William's silence was mistaken by Isserley as stupidity, immediately classified as "a typical male of the species". There he was, trying to be concerned yet exercising concern over how his remarks would be interpreted in the context of "over-civilisation". Isserley's revenge on William has saddened me (Faber probably intended to create such an effect, seeing his in-depth attention to William's thoughts), yet I can also identify this as a vulnerability following the rape.
The boundaries between Me as Self, and Isserley as Other, it seems, are blurred and contestable.
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MASSive [Aug. 19th, 2005|07:25 pm]
an excerpt from roald dahl's The Twits:

a person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. you can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

when one talks about the physical entity, the body, it is not uncommon to think of it as a superficial one. intangible qualities like intellect seem to be relegated to a more superior status. i realised, from the excerpt, that the physical, the exterior, is in fact a reflection of the interior. kindness will shine through not-so-flattering physical features. so do our emotions, beliefs and social roles and identities: they can emerge from the the body, a "surface of inscription", as pointed out by Grosz.

i particularly find Grosz's point that "[p]ower...operate[s] directly on bodies, behaviours and pleasures"(page 32) interesting. most of the time, we students sit in a classroom with attention usually directed on the teacher, ready to listen and jot down notes. it is only in questioning this normalised behaviour do we find out that power relations and ideology govern the way our bodies behave and react in social structures. the body is inscribed to adopt a certain social identity in relation to that social context. in this case, my role as a (conventional) student is assimilated into my body - i sit down quietly listening to lectures. when bodies see themselves bound by social structures, they can either choose to perpetuate existing social identities or adopt a new system. all because systems are flexible, as long as the body is willing to manoeuvre. the body is contained within social structures, yet social structures are affected by the movement of bodies as well.

the fat black woman is not assertive; i find more so an eagerness within her to escape from the role which society has conveniently given her - that of an inferior, ugly object. her body is 'ugly' only because prevalent ideology defines it ugly. yet she will not succumb; she wants to let it known that her inner beauty will shine through her body. being cast off as an Other, she needs to vocalise her thoughts, she needs to subvert the sympathetic eyes cast upon her.

of course, if one were to be cynical of the fat black woman's intentions, one would say that it would be almost impossible not to feel inferior with all the figures of stick-thin people flashing on tv on repeat-mode. one show that the fat black woman will not be happy about is the upcoming one titled "villa wellness" where (the idea i get is that) fat ladies are eager to shed their extra weight off. this would mean fat people admit defeat. so how believable it is for the fat black woman to "toast herself as a likely win" while watching Miss World?

it is sad that we are heaped with endless slimming ads and endless reports of how celebrities manage to shed 7kg. a scrawny figure who proclaims that "everyone is obsessed with weight" adorns our tvs singing national songs. i liked her when she was healthy-looking, but even she is pressured into slimming down. the body that reflects an anxiety to follow current trends.
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