8/13/2019 Holograms of Desire; Review

1/3

Review: Holograms of DesireAuthor(s): Alice ParkerReviewed work(s):

Writing in the Feminine: Feminism and Experimental Writing in Quebec by Karen GouldSource: The Women's Review of Books, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Dec., 1990), pp. 28-29Published by: Old City Publishing, Inc.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20109683Accessed: 22/03/2010 06:58

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ocp.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Old City Publishing, Inc.is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Women's

Review of Books.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20109683?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ocphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ocphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/20109683?origin=JSTOR-pdf

8/13/2019 Holograms of Desire; Review

2/3

Two PoemsThe Right toMourni.So one more house is going updown the road, almost across from us,in what for thirty years I have regardednot as my personal meadowbut as ameadow that except for grass,catnip, a hollow maple log, a cowpath,stones, manure, wild strawberries, Queen Anne's Lace

was empty.No possession

needs to fix the watcher's innocence.No claim of mine permits me to intrudeon the kingdom of another dreamer.Anger, neighbors, human habitation:always until now there was an elsewhere.Strange: when I come topeople thehouse inmy head,what Ipicture is a familygathered around the knowledgeable TV,thirsty for information of their kind,

our kind, Imean: news, sitcom, anecdote,the human moment dramatized. A meadowturns to green backdrop for our race's raveningappetite. Entertain usii.

Less than half awake, Ihazily recalla recent conversation with my mother.Checked tablecloth, a sweaty glass of tea:facing me, chin on fist, she n?edsnext to no words to sayhow-it is that death awaits us all.Frightening? Sad? Absurd?Words to that effect.But what words exactly?Though well disguised as true, quotidian, boring,this is a dream thatmuffles boththe sleeper's and the speaker'stongues?as do our waking conversations.Sturdy, healthy, seventy-four years old,unemphatic as a large eraser,walking through her days with almost nouse left for spoken language,apologizing for the hopelesstedium of the topic,nevertheless she dares deplore the end.Hi.Travelling, I could hardly wait for eachcastle, each wind-scoured vineyardto lie enamelled flat inmemory?an easy wish to gratify. Not onlywas the journey's capsule soon to bewholly digested in the guts of way,but also going home across the seameant thatwe had no choicebut to turn tail on ten weeks' sceneryand pick up our old lives. And here they are,we are, Imean. A house isrising wherea cowfield used to be, the meadow's gracestripped brown and raw for driveway, wires, pipesall tohook up the house toother houses,to place it in its context. There is no

need now to shrink away from a slow present.There isno time like the presentforeshortens to There is no time.Presence is past. Seated at sleep's tableI garble the act ofmourning,then shutmy eyes to take it in: the spanof loss, the source, the memory, the green.

AWeek in FebruaryFriday, K. rediscovers Cavafy. Saturday, J. turns four. Sunday, G.composes fourteen seconds of a concerto and nearly has his handslammed in the door by a neighbor who in nine years has so farfailed to look him in the face and so doesn't recognize him. Monday,Woody Allen's film crew is rumored tohave thrown awayeighteen cakes the size of bathmats and sixty-three roast turkeys.Tuesday, an angel-faced young man in army fatigues kills anotheryoung man with a karate kick to thehead. Wednesday, theAngloGreek Marxist poet who wants to trash convention mails out apoem that ends "Rain smells like rain." "Feel the rhythm throughyour fingers " cries the children's music teacher on Thursday. Bigger and stranger than our separate uses, the spirit of the city wobbles over the park, anchored by a ravelled thread of longing.Friday, preparing to teach The Tempest again next week, Iwonderhow to conjure itup newly, that island where travellers keep stumbling embarrassingly over their hearts' desire.

?Rachel Hadas

Holograms of desirebyAlice ParkerWriting in the Feminine: Feminism and Experimental Writing in Quebec, by KarenGould. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990,302 pp., $32.50 hardcover.

For THE ast two decades Montreal hasbeen the scene of an exciting new writing that its practitioners have labeled"writing in the feminine." When I discoveredthis subversive writing several years ago withNicole Brossard's French Kiss (1974), myfirst question was: How do they get awaywith this?Like many American readers I stillbelieved thatQuebec was quaint, backward,ruled by the Fathers, and thatwomen were

largely absent from cultural life.How wrongI was.

In her new book Karen Gould does amasterful job of explaining how a conserva

tive, agrarian, Church-dominated, colonizedpeople emerged suddenly in the early sixtiesinto the age of "modernity," throwing off inshort order centuries of cultural and religiousideology. As in theUS, feminism was bom ofleftist politics and the civil rights struggle, inQuebec the struggle for Francophone inde

pendence. The four writers Gould analyzeswere deeply involved as university studentsin activity for political reform, precipitatedby the death in 1959 of theQuebec "Fuhrer,"as Maurice Duplessis, the twenty-yearpremier, has been called. Serious r??valuation of the political agenda and subsequenttransformation occurred in all areas of

Quebec society. The feminist slogan was tobecome "No Free Quebec without FreedomforWomen, No Free Women without QuebecIndependence."Editor of Quebec Studies andDirector ofWomen's Studies and professor of French atBowling Green State University, KarenGould is ideally situated for the task of explaining experimental feminist writing practice in Quebec. She follows Quebec criticSuzanne Lamy's advice to work in collusion

with the texts rather than to operate on them,providing luminous readings of the difficultworks she studies, opening them up and outso we can discern their inner workings andeach writer's relationship to language and towriting.An astutely knowledgeable guide, she

leads the reader through an impressive territory that includes very different landscapesand mindscapes. France Th?oret's work islocated at the juncture of gender and class;here she attempts to transmute centuries ofrepression and silence into awriting that canexpress a "newly-born" desire for workingclass women. Madeleine Gagnon remaps thebody and inner spaces of the female psychein her work, thus putting a certain distance

between an early Marxist commitment topolitical action and a more recent inwardjourney. Louky Bersianik works?or perhapsplays?at the intersections between history,philosophy and myth, emphasizing therecord of female oppression inWestern culture. The most challenging project is doubtless Nicole Brossard's Utopian vision, her"holograms of desire" that truly represent awriting for the twenty-first century.Gould's study permits the Americanreader to assess the quiet revolution that hasbeen taking place just across the border; ageneration of innovative feminist work hascome of age in Quebec, with another justbehind it. Although some of us may barelyknow the names of the principal writers,numerous texts are available inEnglish. Onour doorstep, a writing practice is beingelaborated that interweaves feminism with allof the significant 4*posts"of our time: post

modernism, post-structuralism and postcolonialism.Benefiting from their familiarity with

European philosophy, Marxism and psychoanalysis, avant-garde writers in Montrealwent towork in the sixties on the languageand on a literary tradition that had focused onthe "terroir," the land. An experimental writing practice evolved, given the name "New

Writing." Its practitioners emphasized,J paradoxically, a formalism ("textuality") that

suppressed the traditional lyrical impulse inpoetry and abolished author, narrative and

genre/gender in fiction, while promotingsociopolitical transgression, especiallythrough the use of eroticism.

By the early seventies, Gould explains,feminists began to find creative ways to preserve thedynamism of the literary practice of"modernity" and to recreate a gendered subject.

Acknowledging the subversive character of their respective approaches totextual production, the four writers discussed at length in this study havechallenged themaking of an in-different text and, in so doing, have

worked to unsilence and recover amultitude of female voices, each with

its own rhythm, tone and story to tell.(pp.2-3)

The intent of thisnew feminist writing hasbeen to refashion the symbolic language ofthe fathers in which women have functionedas fetishized objects of male desire. The jointgoal of the four writers inquestion has beento create a space of the "imaginary," literallyto re-figure the imagination by exploring theknowledge women have of their bodies andtheirfeelings. The purpose is to refurbish?toTQ-store?the traditionally phallic repositoryof images centered on an asexual Mother. InThe Aerial Letter Nicole Brossard explains:"to write in the feminine means that women

must work at making their own hope andhistory, in the one place where these can takeshape, where there is textual matter." Theresult is a new genre called "fiction-theory"that blurs the boundaries between poetry, fiction and the essay, between the personal andthe public/political.

Karen Gould writes in solidarity withthe texts she reads with such attention. Thus her Afterword, which addresses the theoretical and political implications of the act of reading andher own subject

position as a scholar/critic, is a welcome conclusion, developing thoughts on the care andnurture of very special texts. I find it ad

mirable and all too rare that a critic combineswith such grace scholarship, theory andpraxis. Gould has not only done her homework?and it is extensive?she has produceda volume that will appeal to a variety ofreaders. She has presented texts that challenge all of our reading strategies without

belying their complexity or overburdeningher own prose. She reads and writes as anaccomplice, always, as she observes, in thecompany of another woman. Here, as Brossard wrote of the translator in her last novel,is a "body to body with the book," a fine

metaphor both for reading and for writing.Of the four writers in question?NicoleBrossard, Madeleine Gagnon, FranceTh?oret and Louky Bersianik?the first twoare doubtless the best known outside ofQuebec. Brossard has more than 25 volumesto her credit, and was founding editor of

important avant-garde and feminist journals.Gagnon, a professor and sometime collaborator of H?l?ne Cixous, has likewisepublished continuously since theearly seventies. She was somewhat slower than Brossardto relinquish leftist politics in favor offeminism in her writing; recently she hasexplored amore subjective terrain. Th?orethas consistently addressed sexism and classism, stressing how painful it has been forworking-class women, mired in traditionalroles, to articulate female desire. Bersianik,trained in linguistics and philosophy, provides a subversive rewriting of theory, history andmyth, emphasizing, as do all of thewriters, the significance of memory for thefeminist enterprise: as Monique Wittig

declared, if we cannot remember we willhave to invent

28 TheWomen's Review of Books /Vol. VIII,No. 3 /December 1990

8/13/2019 Holograms of Desire; Review

3/3

Feminist readers will discover thedistinctiveness of each writing practice, the struggleof each writer with a revised grammar andsyntax, the physical process of transmutingher body, her thoughts and her feelings into

words that can adequately speak them. Writing here is, as Adrienne Rich recommendedin the mid-seventies, "re-visionary": at stakeis the creation of female subject positionsand a female libidinal economy, what Cixouscalled that "unexplorable dark continent"denied us by Freud and Lacan.

Grounded in the North American soil, thefour writers in question interest us as ameeting-place for Anglo-American pragmaticsand insistence on gender specificity with

Franco-European post-structuralisms, especially deconstruction. Gould argues persuasively for the significance of their enterprise?the density of their texts, the urgencyof their ambitions and the diversity of theirapproaches, which come together under therubric of "writing in the feminine."

Because they insist on a consciouslylesbian body and desire, the texts of

Nicole Brossard are perhaps the mostradical. Especially noteworthy for newreaders are her collected essays, The Aerial

Letter, and her rewriting of motherhood (aparticularly difficult institution for Quebecwomen, given Catholic ideological tradition)in These Our Mothers. Gould tracks

Brossard's development from formalismthrough radical feminism: since the midseventies she has challenged all of the structures of the language, exploring the roots ofevery word, using the dictionary as both atool and a weapon; she scrutinizes, modifiesand recontextualizes each word in order tocreate a new female subjectivity. In a phrasethat has become her signature she remindsus: "to write I am a woman is full of consequences."

Similarly, Louky Bersianik ismerciless inher deconstruction of patriarchal history andWestern metaphysics. In U Eugu?lionne sheuses the distancing device of a visitor fromouter space tomock the master discourses ofour culture, and in Pique-nique sur Vacropole she rewrites Plato's Symposium as afeminist banquet tomourn the mutilations towhich women have been subjected as well asto celebrate female capacity for a love that isno longer based on objectification andpower.

Gould calls France Th?oret's Nous parlerons comme on ?crit (WeWill Speak as WeWrite) "an ambitious and original attempt toexplore the complex interrelationships between writing and repression, discourse anddesire," which emphasizes the "liberatingpotential ... of women writing to and forother women." Exploiting the resources ofher own bio-graphy, Th?oret explores therelationship between spoken and written language, and the consequences for workingclass women of overcoming an imposedand/or elective mutism that prevents themfrom gaining access to their own voices."Words," she wrote in 1986, "words, I needall of them. I have never had enough words."

Grammatical structures threaten to disin

Advisor, SpecialPrograms for TalentDevelopment

Provide academic advising on an individual andgroup basis for students in the Special Programsfor Talent Development. Ensure that the SPTDstudents progress toward graduation in a timelyand systematic way. Serve as head advisor orcourse instructor during SPTD's Pre-MatriculationProgram. Bachelor's degree required, Master'sdegree preferred, in Counseling, Education orrelated field. Two to four years' successful experience inhigher education working with variedracial and cultural groups; demonstrated ability tocommunicate with diverse populations; familiaritywith the philosophy of higher education opportunityprograms;, evidence of excellent skills inwriting,speaking and working with students required. Thisposition isgrant-funded and is limited toAugust 31,1991 with the possibility of renewal. The fundingcycle ends on August 31, 1993. Submit a letterof application and resume by 12/7/90 to: FrankForleo, Search Coordinator, Advisor, SpecialPrograms for Talent Development (221028F)Position, THE UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND,P.O. Box G, Kingston, Rl 02881. An AffirmativeAction/Equal Opportunity Employer.

tegrate, as do the readers' expectations of acoherent narrative landscape, but the intent isto "dismantl[e] the barriers todiscourse," tochronicle the entry into language for thosewho have been denied expression as a "selfconsciously and radically inventive femaleact."

In her recent work Madeleine Gagnonpositions the woman writer as, in Gould'swords, "an archaeologist of her own body

thought," examining layer after layer of sedimented feelings, sensations and experiences

"as she retraces the shadowy clues and hidden cracks in her own internal development."She is above all a survivor; from her solitudeshe fashions what she characterizes in Lueuras "blueprints for...a writing capable of trans

mitting...the traces of archaic flashes shooting forth new meaning." Like Cixous, Gag

non explores both a personal and a collectivefemale unconscious.

These few examples barely give a senseof the rich diversity of the works, or Gould's

meditation on them in Writing in theFeminine. Gould's study will naturally appeal to readers who are familiar with thewriters in question, but also to those who are

interested in experimental feminist writing,and to those who have a stake in the relationship between current feminist theory and anavant-garde literary practice. She is particularly successful in explaining the com

plex issues of "writing in the feminine" to alay audience. As she notes of Brossard, it is a"feminist writing practice that is both

women-centered and future-oriented," projecting a vision that is "necessarily inprocess," a vision of an "ultimate intimateelsewhere among the words on a woman'spage." 4*

off our backsthe best in feminist journalism

"oob is international in scope and focuses on diversetopics dealing with poor women, working classwomen, minority women, prison, custody, andabortion. It'snever been simple-minded. It'swhat Ithink of as feminism. "--Marilyn F rye

news from every continent-working women'sissues, health, reproductive rights, Blackwomen's issues, lesbian rightsthorough reports of women's conferencesbook reviews, commentaries, letters, more

Don't miss out[offu backs:outraged and outrageous since 1970

subscription rates:Contributing: $20 Canada, Mexico: U.S. $18Individual: 17 Overseas airmail : U.S. $25, UK ?".6Institutional: 30 Free towomen prisonersSubscribe now-send check to:

off our backs2423 18thStreet NWWashington, DC 20009, U.S.A.

Name_Address_City, Postcode

If ourcheck is not on a U.S., UK, orC. bank,make it utfor theU.S.$ equivalent, plus $5 for ashing thecheck. J

Assistant/Associate/ FullProfessor of SociologyTenure-track position beginning September1991. Teach courses in Race Relations,Stratification, and General Sociology toundergraduates. Conduct research, seekingexternal funding when appropriate. Advisestudents and perform professional service.PhD in Sociology required. Specialities inRace Relations and Stratification, and the ability to teach courses in these subjects are required. Evidence of skill/potential in teachingand research required. Candidates for appointment at the Associate/Full ranks must haveprior faculty experience and a strong record ofresearch and scholarly activity. Screening ofapplications will begin on January 1,1991 andwill continue until position is filled. Submit letter of application and resume including thenames and addresses of three referencesto: James Loy, Search Committee Chair,Assistant/Associate/Full Professor (021087FPosition), THE UNIVERSITY OF RHODEISLAND, P.O. Box G, Kingston, Rl 02881. AnAffirmative Action/Equal OpportunityEmployer.

Keeping faithbyElizabeth GratchHow IWrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature, byMargaret Walker, editedby Maryemma Graham. New York: The Feminist Press, 1990, 157 pp., $29.95 hardcover,$9.95 paper.

WHEN MARGARET WALKER'S Jubileeappeared in 1966? 30 years in the

making?writer and critic GuyDavenport denounced it as a "romance"and its author for having "swallowed themyth" of slavery.Walker saw it differently,and in her republished essay "How IWroteJubilee''?which describes theway shewentabout first imagining, then writing, hergreat Civil War novel ?she calls herself "anovelist in the role of social historian." Fiftyyears of writing have proved thatWalker isthat?and much more.

Her contribution to our literary canon includes ten published books (poetry, fiction,autobiography, social history, literary criticism) and many speeches. That she has beenneglected and that, according to this volume's editor Maryemma Graham, "too fewstudents in today's colleges and universitiesknow her name ? even as an anthology poet,which she certainly is," indicates what isabominable in our system of selection.How IWrote Jubilee and Other Essays onLife and Literature isa first step toward correcting the omission. This collection offourteen speeches and essays spanning theyears from 1943 to 1988 represents, inGraham's words, "a vivid, self-told account ofthe author's life." Graham, who was Walker's student at Northwestern Universitytwenty years ago, suggests that critics whohave dismissed Walker are in fact "uncomfortable with her aesthetic vision," whichcombines traditional American values witha troublesome social radicalism nurtured bysuch early experiences as her three-year

Margaret Walker.writing stint with the Work Projects Administration in the thirties and her friendship with Richard Wright. Far from being anaive storyteller, Walker has made a formidable contribution to the history ofideas?in particular ideas about US national culture and its values in the realms ofreligion, family, racial consciousness andthe role of women.

History is a thread that runs throughWalker's canon, from her first publishedpoem, "ForMy People," which won theYaleAward for Younger Poets in 1942, to the

St. Lawrence universityDana Fellow and Coordinator of Gender StudiesSt. Lawrence university invites applications for the tenure trackposition of Dana Fellow at the level of Assistant Professor. Thisposition will be shared between the interdisciplinary GenderStudies Minor Program and one of the following departments:Anthropology, Biology, Economics, Fine Arts, Government, History, Philosophy, Psychology, Religious Studies and ClassicalLanguages, or Sociology. The appointee will serve a term (usuallyfour years, and potentially renewable) as Coordinator of GenderStudies and will have primary responsibility for outreach topromote discussion of gender roles on campus.Dana Fellows are excepted to teach in the First-Year Program,an interdisciplinary, team-taught course and residential program.Beginning with her/his second year at St. Lawrence, the appointee will serve a three-year term in this Program.During the first year at St. Lawrence, teaching load will be twocourses per semester, a reduced load to enable the appointee tobuild the Gender Studies Program. Thereafter the appointee willteach a regular load of three courses per semester, including thecore course called Gender and Society.Applicants should have a completed Ph.D. with evidence ofscholarship in feminist studies, evidence of effective teaching,and demonstrated interpersonal skills. Applications, curriculumvitae, and full dossiers should be sent to:Professor Eve StoddardDepartment of EnglishSt. Lawrence UniversityCanton, NY 13617Nominations will also be accepted. Review of applications willbegin on January 15, 1991.St. Lawrence university is a coeducational residential college of2,000 students committed to fostering multicultural diversity inits faculty, staff, student body and programs of instruction. As anEqual Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer, we specificallyencourage applications from women and minorities.

The Women's Review of Books / Vol. VIII, No. 3 /December 1990