Tag: joanna russ

Paper

Disposable, renewable, impermanent.

In his initial dedication, Salvador Plascencia writes “to Liz, who taught me that we are all of paper.” He later cuts out this dedication, emphasizing his point.

We jump into the story with a little boy buying back his three pounds of feline and reconstructing his slaughtered cat Figgaro. The prologue sets us up for themes of destruction, loss, and subsequent rebirth or renewal. It also places us in a magical realism situation, where we must accept that people can be made of paper.

Plascencia takes us into a world of impermanency, one where people are constantly shedding skins or changing. In the most physical sense, there’s Merced de Papel, who “never allowed history to accumulate, her skin changing with the news of the world.” (164) Other characters are changing themselves physically (burning, cutting, patching, covering up in lead); fleeing their own lives and leaving dust; or altering their identities in some other way. People become non-people, or at least not themselves. Rita Hayworth, for example: “Margarita Carmen Cansino shed syllables from her name and velvet curtains from her stage, rising, leaving a tail of draperies and scraps of paper cut from her birth certificate, to emerge as a star” (56) Hollywood’s presence, in the form of carried winds and background music, is a constant reminder of temporality.

Salvador Plascencia becomes a non-person too. He forgets about his characters (poor Smiley…) and then shuts them out to the point where they are able to censor their thoughts from him and the readers.

But I think The People of Paper also ironically confirms the existence of some kind of permanency. His one paper character is the last of a dying breed. And this novel is Plascencia’s way of physically documenting history. Incriminating himself for casting Liz in a bad light, he leaves everything he’s already told us where it is and writes on without her, or rather, with just her presence hanging over him much like Saturn hovers over de la Fe. He hasn’t actually deleted anything or pushed her out of his mind (or ours). She just becomes the girl who can’t be named. Paper allows his version of history to live on and be consumed by voyeurs like us who, like he says, don’t even know these people.

He also makes us aware of the book and its physicality, its history and process, even its price. He goes so far as to imply some readers would lick it to simulate licking Merced de Papel. I found Plascencia’s author/book/reader relationship more thought-provocative than, say, Joanna Russ’s abrasive/defensive approach in The Female Man, even when Plascencia denies us access to the text by blocking it out or relating to us the inner thoughts of the mechanical tortoise in binary code.

In fact, I like the complementary nature of form and function (combined with imaginative, often heartbreaking writing) so much that is my favorite book we’ve read so far. Plascencia manages to insert himself as a character halfway through without making me want to throw the book into a door. And just when I start getting annoyed with his despondency, he goes ahead and starts over right in the middle. He is repairing his history with paper, like Merced de Papel repairs her skin, like Antonio repairs his butchered cat.

A Misandristic Proposal

What is the opposite of misogyny?  Misanthropy?  No, that’s the dislike of humankind in general, rather than the specific dislike of males.  Try again.  Misandry is the word.  As I type it into Microsoft Word and hit the spacebar, it becomes underlined in red.  Misspelled?  Quite possibly.  No, a quick trip to the Oxford English dictionary confirms spelling and definition.  So misandry simply isn’t recognized by Microsoft technology.  It’s unfamiliar.  It’s defamiliar.  Perhaps, this just represents one of many omitted words and names, or maybe it signifies something greater and more telling about (wo)men and technology.  Regardless, it offers point of entry into discussing Joanna Russ’ The Female Man.

Though Russ’ The Female Man can fit into many classifications of literature (e.g. postmodern fiction, science fiction, a feminist work, etc.), I am interested in how it functions as a satire.  At the end of the text, Jael proposes the women (Janet, Jeannine, and Joanna) “do business with [Jael’s] Womanland” (211) and to incorporate women soldiers from each of their individual realities to wage war on the men.  Jeannine and Joanna quickly acquiesce.  Jeannie states, “‘Oh sure, I don’t mind.  You can bring in all the soldiers you want.  You can take the whole place over; I wish you would’” (Russ 211).  The response is pert and off-the-cuff.  Oh sure.  Why not? Well, why not?

Janet, the woman from the all-female Whileaway, alone, resists.  Moreover, she refuses Jael’s retelling of the plague as an act of female aggression.  It is unclear whether this resistance comes from inexperience with males, stupidity, or a more simplistic view of conflict resolution (or perhaps, like Microsoft, Janet does not have a word for this construct).  Still, we don’t know why she would resist or why anyone should resist?  At first glance, it seems perfectly logical.

What’s wrong with a rebalancing of power?  In Jeannine and Joann’s worlds, when woman are not being infantilized by the men in the text, they are being raped or arranging their lives so that they won’t be vulnerable to rape.  Clearly, a master-slave relationship is at work, dominating the women at every opportunity, denying them “adult independence—namely money” (118).  It is only through technology that Whileaway and Womanland the women regain their power.  Why not take this to the next level?

Given the endless possibilities of technology, an inter-dimensional war with men may throw the balance of power in favor of the women.  Most of the characters find that idea fairly attractive.  In fact, Jael’s logic reflects that of an oppressed people made free.  Rather than preach the ills of subjection, the free must, in turn, oppress to maintain their freedom.  Freedom cannot exist without oppression; oppression cannot exist without freedom.  On second glance, it simply replaces one societal ill with another: misandry with misogyny.  So what’s the point of this exercise?  By promoting misandry, The Female Man would undercut all its previous points about the master-slave power in male-female relations.  But it doesn’t just do that.  Misandry defamiliarizes misogyny.  It gives us a new word, a new point of reference, a new context to highlight an old referential.

Authorship, Cyborgs

“I am the author and I know,” Russ says on page 165. If, as Karin and Jael propose, all four women are the same woman, made different by their external circumstances, it seems to contradict the idea that women only appear to be the same because their circumstances repress them to the level of household objects. Maybe the four women are not the same person representing one-dimensional sides of a conflicted self, but they are just different possibilities of the same person, upon which each woman’s bizarre circumstances have shaped her so that other possibilities of herself are strange and horrifying to her (the murderous one, the lesbian, the repressed wannabe-housewife).

By claiming she is the author, Joanna Russ asserts her control over the text, but also shows the complications and uncertainties underlying that control. The alter egos filter through in interchanging blurbs. Jeannine says, on page 122, “Who am I, what am I, what do I want, where do I go, what world is this?” I think the multiple realities and personalities the J’s find themselves faced with represent the feeling of dissociation present in real life. This disjointedness and confusion is represented by the jumbled, fragmented structure, which Alana commented on earlier.

Also, as Anthony brought up, there seems to be an idea of self-criticism and self-deprecation, as well as multiple layers of authorship. There is the recurring question: “I know what I am, but what’s my brand name?” (174), and an unending search for self-identification in the midst of multiple dehumanized worlds. The book as a whole, which acknowledges its author and offers its own harsh criticism, is as self-aware, self-effacing, and confused as its characters are.

Examples of dehumanization are both literal and symbolic.  Almost every conversation between a man and woman is infuriating and results in the complete ignorance or mishearing of the woman’s words. This happens, too, between women, as in the conversation on page 113-114, where Jeannine’s words are misheard but unnoticed anyway. Russ seems to grapple with how one can possibly be his/her own person, or even a person at all, in the face of oppression. And of course, the cyborgs are literally dehumanized.

Speaking of cyborgs, what do people think about the half-changed people in Manworld? And does anyone quite know what to make of Davy, the robot/sex toy Jael has? He’s this ultimately dehumanized man in the middle of a book where women are the ones who are constantly objectified. Thinking about it more, I realized that while women are the main characters, men are also dehumanized stereotypes. She kind of takes the humanness out of everyone, and gets away with it because she’s created all these alternate worlds. But men are so oddly one-dimensional, except maybe Cal, who is strangely complicated and conflicted, both generically repressive and oversensitive. And then here comes this beautiful objectified robot-man? What are we supposed to get from all of this?

  

Also, on the topic of women and technology in the news, here’s an article from the Washington Post yesterday, called “Limbaugh, the Vatican and a Woman’s Place”: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2009/03/limbaugh_the_vatican_and_a_womans_place.html.

The article is very short, but touches on a lot of nerves (women’s rights, Catholicism, political affiliation). Some passionate user comments follow.

Transitioning from Danielewski to Russ

So, I’m relaxing over spring break, recovering from the marathon that was Danielewski’s House of Leaves (thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless), and I start in on Joanna Russ’ The Female Man.  After having finished the novel (shall we call it a novel?) a week later, I reflect.  At times I thought the book was brilliant; the subversion of the science fiction, manipulating the genre to fit what she was trying to address on the feminist ‘front’, was outstanding.  The Faulknerian use of stream of consciousness and first-person narration is also commendable.  But then there were parts of the novel that became burdensome for me; in other words, at a certain point, I felt like the book’s entire discussion (the question of a woman’s role/freedom/right [I hesitate to provide a label for fear of a Jael-like counterattack] in the world) became repetitive; and I would guess if you go searching for criticism against The Female Man you might find a similar complaint somewhere…

…but really you don’t have to look any further than the book itself:

Shrill . . . vituperative . . . no concern for the future of society . . . maunderings of antiquated feminism . . . selfish femlib . . . need a good lay . . . this shapeless book . . . of course a calm and objective discussion is beyond . . . twisted, neurotic . . . some truth buried in a largely hysterical . . . [and so on and so forth]. (140-41)

Within the book, Joanna Russ has provided the reader with criticism for the book: The Female Man is its own worst critic.  What does this tell us about Joanna Russ and her intentions?  Is she mocking these critical voices; drawing attention to the very biases that they reinforce?  Is this critical inclusion a form of self-deprecation of her novel?  Is it a little bit of both?

Whatever answers we might conclude to these questions, this section of the book got me thinking about Danielewski.  Of course, after three weeks of House of Leaves, we are all familiar with Danielewski’s tactics, his self-proclaimed preemptive strike against any form of literary criticism, or any attempt to disassemble the book.  I’m not necessarily suggesting that Joanna Russ was trying to actively prevent criticism like Danielewski is, but she is certainly anticipating responses towards the book.

With House of Leaves already in the discussion, I also thought of another interesting comparison between the two authors.  With the construction of numerous levels of ‘authorship’ (i.e. Zampano and Johnny Truant), Danielewski effectively ‘distances’ himself from the text.  Conversely, Joanna Russ eliminates any separation between her and The Female Man by identifying herself in the book as both character and author, crossing the conventional line between author and text.  I wonder what this accomplishes for the book.  As the ‘1970s feminist trying to succeed in a man’s world’, what can we say about The Female Man Joanna and the author Joanna?  I’m thinking it’s important to remember that  she is only one of the four female ‘representations’ in the book.

…As you can tell, this book has left me with more questions than it has provided answers.

Side-note:

With all the references to the moon,  it will be hard not to think of The Female Man whenever I listen to Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’.  Now, I keep thinking of ‘Us and Them’ in terms of Jael’s version of Earth with warring male and female societies.  Try it; it just about fits…

Technology in the Female Man

In the Harraway article that we read she expresses hope in the possibility that we can be saved if we all learn to live as cyborgs,  a blending of the human and the machine.  Joanna Russ would appear to agree with this idea as her Utopian society Whileaway in The Female Man is made up almost entirely of cyborgs.

The people on Whileaway are trained to become one with technology from birth, and eventually it becomes a part of them.  Although its description seems rustic and pastoral, the society of Whileaway is only possible through their use of and coexistence with technology.  I have no idea what an induction helmet is, but it must be pretty awesome if “with their induction helmets on their heads, their toes controlling the green peas, their fingers the vats and controls, their back muscles the carrots, their abdomens the water supply,” (51).  Not to mention that at some point they figured out how to not only have babies without any males, but to genetically modify those babies to an almost perfection.

My question is this:  Is technology necessary to conquer nature?  Not only trees and butterflies nature, but human nature, or more specifically female nature?  Russ spends a great deal of time explaining to us that the idea of “female nature” or “maternal instincts” are just social constructs that are meant as a mode of domination by males (and other females as well).  Men in the novel constantly assume that it is part of a woman’s DNA that she will be happy with pretty clothes, or that all she wants to do is sit on the couch and eat bon bons while her husband Climbs Everest (what is a bon bon anyway? I’ve always wondered that).  So why is it so necessary that technology be so ingrained in her idea of a utopia.  Women are only seen as strong enough to exist on their own  on Whileaway, and only with the help of all their technology.

Janet would be considered the most advanced J, or most enlightened, in a way.  However, her and the rest of the people on Whileaway are completely dependent on advances in technology to survive.  Jael would be the strongest J physically, and the one could argue the toughest.  However, she relies on her robot boy-toy for pleasure.  Also, the women of Womenland are dependant on technlogiocal advances to survive using it as a means of commerce, namely baby farming and time travel.  Jeannine seems to be the most connected to nature, with her cat (Mr. Frosty!) and her plant, but she seems to be the weakest of the J’s to me.

If Russ was attempting to get across the point that women can do whatever men could do and that the differences between the sexes is illusory, why this emphasis on technology?

I may have completely misread the novel.  I am assuming that Whileaway is meant to be  a utopia.  It is possible that it was not meant to be and therefore everything I said above would be pretty much worthless.