The first and most important things that strike me about Hélène Cixous’ theory, and her life, are that both are positioned at a time when the very nature of writing and speech, and the relationship between the two, were being fundamentally questioned by some of the foremost scholars of her/our time. Cixous’ work is directly related to philosophers such as Derrida, who argued that neither speech nor writing can lead us to any fundamental truths, since both are caught between the signifier, the word, and the signified, the meaning.

What Cixous was working, writing and theorizing against, then, was a concept as old as the Western world — what Derrida framed as logocentrism, which relied on dichotomies such as mind and matter, light and darkness, presence and absence, and nature and culture. This opposition resonates with me in terms of my own writing, in which — in line with many feminist writers and theoreticians — I hope to overtly and covertly challenge binary oppositions, including self and other, male and female, sentient and nonsentient, dominant and submissive.

Cixous, however, manages to sidestep one of the pitfalls many feminists (and other champions of a non-oppositional way of thinking about relationships between human beings and among and within elements throughout the world) inadvertently stumble into, which is to favor or articulate only one “side” of the story: that of the oppressed or shunned group. Instead, she “ … did not simply privilege the ‘female’ half of an existing binary opposition between ‘male’ and ‘female’ … she questioned the very adequacy of an either/or logics to name the complexity of cultural realities .”*

The result, of course, is that some have in turn questioned or shunned Cixous’ ideas. Those who frame the world in terms of binary oppositions might find it confusing or frustrating to interpret or confront thoughts, speech, writing and theories that don’t conform to such dichotomies. In contrast, I argue that Cixous’ approach could serve as a model for all poets. (It’s absolutely a model for my own poetry.)

For what is poetry if not a lifting of the veil of culture, even if only for a few moments — an opportunity to delay categorization, as cognitive theorist Reuven Tsur would argue, in a world that is increasingly (at least in the West) prodding us to rapidly categorize our surroundings, experiences and interactions? As if the experience of the experience weren’t enough — the one we are currently engaged with at any given time — we are seduced into gazing out as if along a rural Kansan horizon at the next experience, and the next, and the next: All of them lined up before us like diary cows waiting to have their teats automatically milked, those heavy udders of potential experiences ready to burst if we don’t tend to them immediately.

It goes without saying that dichotomies are one way to achieve the rapid categorization our culture pushes on us like dime bags full of skank weed. When we can see the world as this or that, that or this — or being the operative word in each case — we don’t have to use much cognitive (and hence emotional) space to relate to that world, its objects or its inhabitants at any given moment. This frees up even more time to rapidly categorize new experiences and move on to the next (and the next), as if living as a sentient being were simply a matter of peeling out at 60 miles per hour from one drive-through window to another.

Furthermore, overturning dichotomies momentarily only to shift the power (in theory more so than in reality) from one group to another or to reassign blame from the latter, shunned group to the former, desirable one — that adhesive rat trap so many well-meaning theorists and activists fall into — is merely a matter of executing awkward acrobatics on a stage, as opposed to pulling down the props, dismantling the stage, removing the exhausted, underpaid aerialists and then taking a seat in the audience to see what’s left occupying the now-empty space.

Creating empty space in place of dualities and other cultural and cognitive assumptions — space the mind can inhabit and move through unhindered and uninhibited — is the job of any good theorist, any good thinker/feeler.

And hence it’s the job of any good poet, or at least any good poem, or at least any poem I personally would actively take the time to seek out and read and sit with and return to. For if poetry won’t help us resist fast, easy categorization of this tremendously complicated world we live in and instead encourage us to slow down, remove our blinders, snap out of our cultural trances and realize all that we can never realize, it’s hard to say what, if anything, will do the trick.

*from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by William E. Cain, et al.

(If you are reading this post through an RSS reader, you might need to click through to the site to see the embedded video.)

… of stripping all the line breaks out of my poems. I am no longer a poet. I am now a writer of short prose. Or a “text generator,” if you will, a phrase I find far more appropriate for what I do anyway.

Even if you see a line break in my work, remember: It’s just text. That’s all. Text and white space. Like notes and rests.

Too bad I can’t get a master of fine arts in creative writing with an emphasis in text generation.

My friend Kristen Shaw posted a link today on her Facebook profile to this official White House Photo of President Barack Obama by Pete Souza. The image and caption spurred me to write the following response in a comment thread on Kristen’s Facebook profile. (I’ve altered it a little since posting it on her page.)

Thanks, Kristen, for bearing with me as I worked through what the photo welled up. I promise not to squat on your Facebook page again. At least not for a while. But actually, it’s kinda your fault for posting cool stuff that gets my fingers going.

Here’s the photo’s caption, to give some context:

President Barack Obama eats a peach following a town hall meeting at Kroger’s Supermarket in Bristol, Va. on July 29, 2009. Seconds later, the President handed a dollar bill to the CEO of Kroger’s, who attended the event.

And Here Is My Response
(But first, I should note that this falls under the category of “memoir” and is very much personal for me, not political.)

(I should also note that I am using the word “manipulate” in the broadest sense possible. Not in the pejorative sense.)

(I should also note that I have to note these things because I will soon be in a government-funded volunteer program that does not allow me to say things that are political in nature.)

(I should also note that I am not yet in that program so I can still say what I want.)

(I should also note that the limitation of what I can say once I am in the program scares me a little.)

(I should also note that by “a little,” I mean “a lot.”)

(I should also note that if I get in trouble for saying what I am about to say — for owning and expressing my personal reaction to the actions of one man, who happens to be a bigtime leader, and how those actions parallel my own father’s actions , who was also a leader of sorts (but both of whom I am talking about as men and more specifically as men dealing with other men with varying levels of power) — then this is not a country I want to live in or serve through public service.)

(I should also note that I do have a rather lengthy interpretation of what it means when a $1 bill is handed to the CEO of Kroger’s by the leader of the free world, but that I will keep that part of the story to myself, or share it in a private fashion, or turn it into a robot poem, and instead at this juncture focus on the portion of the story that deals with my father. Because that’s what really matters anyway. To me. And since this is a memoir piece, what matters to me is what matters.)

(I should also note that I am happy that what matters to me matters.)

(I should also note that the notes for this little piece are now much longer than the piece itself.)

(I should also note that some might feel a letdown once they see the actual piece.)

(Finally, I should note that I am sorry if the notes overhype the piece. Memoir FAIL.)

And Here Is My Response, for Real This Time
Obama manipulates people and situations the way my father did when he was alive. Very different goals — same methods.

I mean, that move of eating the fruit first, then publicly handing the CEO a $1 bill is so laden with meaning.

It’s like the time my father stole a truckload of watermelons from a rural farmer in Oklahoma, essentially after sweet-talking the farmer by posing as the leader of a Girl Scout troop that was on a retreat and saying he needed watermelons for all the little girls who had been begging for them, which was the story he had to make up on the fly because the farmer had caught him stealing the watermelons and had chased after him and my father’s best friend with a rifle, so you can understand how my father had no option but to think of some way out of the increasingly hostile situation, otherwise he and his friend might get shot.

(Not put in jail. Not fined. Shot.)

The farmer, on hearing the story of the little girls, ended up helping my dad and his friend load my dad’s El Camino up with as many watermelons as it would hold — all for those hungry, needy, nonexistent darlings — and my dad brought all the watermelons back to the small college town where we lived, stuck a hand-written sign on the back of the truck (if you can call an El Camino a “truck,” a proposition I find pretty iffy), saying the watermelons were $1 apiece.

Over the next few days (or perhaps it was weeks or months — I can’t recall how fast the melons went, though I do suspect the black market for half-stolen, half-charmed watermelons on our hidden suburban street might not have been that boomin’), he proceeded to sell the produce, one melon at a time, to the neighbors.

One day, a board member for the local university’s Student Union, of which my father was the director (so, one of my father’s bosses, essentially) came over.* This man, as near as I can remember, was like a ball of old, uncooked dough. He seemed to roll into any room, rather than walking or gliding into it, and he always had a certain moisture level about him, as if water from the dough was desperately trying to escape the surface tension that was his face.

His first name was unknown, as he went by his first and middle initial. His last name conveyed speed, a race. Together, the name always seemed to me to indicate that his last name was in too much of a hurry to wait around while his first and/or middle names were written out, hence the initials.

When he smugly handed my father a $1 bill for a watermelon, my father said, “Just for you, a discount! 50 percent off!” My father then tore the $1 bill in half and handed the other half back to the board member.

No. He didn’t get fired. And yeah. You can see where I get my fire.

My father proudly carried his half of the dollar bill around in his wallet for the rest of his life (though he only lived a few more years after the watermelon shenanigans). He would slip it out at the slightest urging, sometimes with no urging at all, and walk the adults through the entire story again over a drink, or two, or three. I learned young what that transaction symbolized for my father, and all the power that torn bill contained for him. For all of us. This is one of many situations my father owned that made him at once mythical and epic.

It took me a long time to understand why my father stole watermelons he didn’t need and wouldn’t eat, why he didn’t just give the watermelons away to the neighbors or to the doughy man, and what use there was in tearing a perfectly good $1 bill in half then keeping your half within arm’s reach at all times — carrying and displaying it not like a token, but like a prize.

But I came to understand, even though I am still, 38 years into my life, looking for my half-dollar to treasure, one that will allow me an excuse for entering, again and again, into the story of my life, my one small triumph. My father didn’t have that moment until he was 52 years old, if I recall correctly. Three years before he died. I still have time. He paid his dues, as I am paying mine.

So don’t even get me started on all the meaning in that move of Obama’s, handing a $1 dollar to the CEO of Kroger’s. Gestures like these are never simple. And they go much deeper than a photo op. (Not to mention those peaches cost more than a dollar, according to the sign hanging above them.)

I know this kind of man. I grew up with this kind of man. I admit to loving this kind of man, of wanting to emulate this kind of man. But I am also very scared of this kind of man. In my father’s case, at least he was turning the tables on levels of authority, as opposed to reinforcing them. He was my Br’er Rabbit,** my trickster, leaving people so confused, they never knew quite what he’d done to them.

And I do love them: my father and Obama. I do. But it has nothing to do with them as leaders. Instead, it’s personal; I love how they navigate the world.

*I actually don’t know if this was his exact title. I would be able to fill in details like this if I had family to ask. But I don’t.

**Br’er Rabbit is usually associated with African-American folklore but actually has Cherokee origins, specifically the Tar Baby story. That’s a pretty good fit, seeing as my father was one-quarter American Indian, although he was Chickasaw, not Cherokee.

:: One of my short poems in Braille

I’ll explain more later. Or go look at my recent status messages on Facebook to see what’s going on. I need to find a way to get these printed with texture, so they are functional. This is my first attempt to translate a poem into Braille. Bear with me.

(I forgot to include the title. Doh!)