We are very excited to have shared our opinions with Young Feminist Europe. You can visit our reflective exercise on The concept of the genius, lad culture and mainstream misogyny through their site or read it here. Two individual book reviews Kris Kraus’ “I Love Dick” (1997) and Max Blecher’s “Adventures in Immediate Irreality” (1936). Two seemingly unrelated reviews aim to illustrate the normalisation of misogyny in mainstream culture. We suggest that “I Love Dick” , a work of great magnitude is not recognized because of its ‘feminine’ character as opposed to “Adventures in Immediate Irreality” ‘s reception as ‘ingenius’. Feminist Reflections“I LOVE DICK”, a review by Theo Ioannou I read this book in my first year of university as a theatre and performance undergraduate. At that time, I was way too deep into lad culture. Embarrassing as it is to admit, I was in love with Seth Rogan comedies and Family Guy (to be honest, I still find laddy humor pretty funny, irritating but, funny). As a fresher, I was also discovering the wonders of modern art, so my perception of cultural products was slowly changing. To be honest, I did not buy Kraus’ “I LOVE DICK” because of how fascinating an intellectual I knew her to be but because the sensational title caught my eye. Clearly, Kraus knew what she was doing, she was appealing to edgelords like myself.But when I started reading it, I was absolutely fascinated. I had never before encountered this blend of fiction and journaling and it excited me as much as it confused me. In “I LOVE DICK”, Kraus recounts her obsession with a sociologist named Richard (or Dick). She initially pursuits Dick as an artistic project together with her partner, Sylvere Lotringer. When it becomes clear that she will always be seen as Lotringer’s assistant, she leaves him and starts to pursue Dick in real life. What makes her work incredibly powerful is that it is not a ‘feminist’ book, it is simply an account of her life. Inevitably, her life is shaped by the fact that others attach their prejudices on her. But as she accurately predicts in her book (in an almost prophetic manner) “I LOVE DICK”, a work of immense artistic value that deserves a place in every major category, always ends up in the ‘women’s category’ and in that category alone. Kraus obsession with Dick comes to an end after he unsurprisingly ignores, mistreats and disregards her after they have sex. This is not a commentary on ‘hookup culture’ (the book is pretty sex positive as one can infer from the title). It is an introspection on the girl-who-has-an-imaginary-crush trope. A ‘girl’ who obsesses over a man has no salvation. Feminists can often belittle such obsessions and proclaim that you should rather focus on nobler causes like, a career or academic achievement. Society at large on the other hand, views all ‘feminine’ obsessions like One Direction, Twilight or Justin Bieber as frivolous and stupid while at the same time elevating ‘masculine’ obsessions like South Park or, Rick and Morty. Kraus makes a deep dive into the unexplored territory of ‘feminine’ obsessions. They are so much more than just some frivolous fantasy of tricking some guy into a relationship. She reveals with the utmost sensitivity that such fantasies are a way of coping with the reality of a lifetime of humiliation and rejection on a professional and a romantic level. They are fantasies of respect and acceptance. A defence mechanism of sorts that counteracts the harsh reality of having to be the side-kick, the helper, the loving but silent subordinate. Kraus is never ashamed of her fantasies and she unapologetically chooses to be herself. This book inspired me to do the same. And thus, she keeps on moving forward. “Adventures in Immediate Irreality”, a review by Despina Ioannou In an attempt to read books that wouldn’t irritate me during lockdown I chose to read ‘Adventures in Immediate Irreality’. I fell for the idea of sinking in the dream-like ambience which the introduction had promised. Max Blecher, the author, provided an impressive description of the psychosomatic effects of his illness through the lens of sincere existential anguish. At the time of writing Blecher was suffering from spinal tuberculosis which had completely immobilised him and would eventually kill him. Under the threat of fast approaching death Blecher’s recollections of childhood and teenage memories were put together and formed this autobiographical novel. One of the central themes of the novel is the exploration of the protagonist’s sexuality.The main character likes Clara, his friend’s sister. Every day he (should we say Blecher?) visits the shop where Clara works to hang out with her brother. The narrative arc could have developed to be a decent love (or lust) story but it takes an unexpected turn when Clara reveals that she would like to spend some alone time with him: “When Clara’s legs touched mine new hopes, vast new expectations were born in me”. Clara’s unintentional touch led to the character’s “first complete and normal sexual adventure” (where complete = penetrative sex and normal = heterosexual). After accusing Clara of having “a violent way of provoking (him) and taking a sordid joy in watching (him) suffer”, the writer feels justified to proceed to the climax of the chapter: “I was at her in a flash. I grabbed her hand (…) She pulled away. ‘Let me go’ she said, annoyed. ‘Come on Clara please…’ I touched her feverishly all over (…) I pulled her off the chair by force. She let me drag her along the floor”. What is a context where someone would let you drag them along the floor? I wonder. Oh well, I thought, this was in the 30s; and I proved to be naive enough to have believed that I could find at least one modern review that had spent one word to address this issue. Blecher was characterised as “a genius (who had) suggested a way that rediscovers life and radiates beauty from suffering”; he had created a “world open only to the genius of child wonder and adolescent desire”. As of his encounters with Clara: “He agonised over his insecurity” “he (was) (…) no different than most other adolescent boys”, “exploring the dark and mysterious depths of sexuality” a masterpiece of “sensibility” and “intelligence”. Blecher’s exploration of his own sexuality was justified and romanticised by critics. It was seen as a standard and accurate representation of adolescent male sexuality. The representation not only is false (just like any other generalisation) but it also maintains and encourages violence. It is as if the concept of ‘the genius’ is itself part of a male culture where many of the characteristics of the newly re-emerged lad culture are present. A culture where women are seen as ‘fascinating’ but ‘incomprehensible’ and a place where interaction with women in any intellectual way is difficult to be found. Although the stylistic virtuosity and the uniqueness of the content go without question I can’t help but wonder; should something like this go unnoticed? Afterthoughts; A Duologue.Despina:
Should something like this go unnoticed? Theo: This is why almost everything irritates me. Despina: Tell me about it! Even reading Kris Kraus was upsetting for me. Theo: That upset you!? Why? Despina: I felt upset because Kris had to live off her husband’s success while her work was not recognised. I felt that I personally have to either endure or fight against this kind of inequality. I tortured myself with wondering whether the enduring undermining of women’s work is real or if it is just a way for me to justify my failures. I always end up being disappointed and confused as to what is going on around me, how I should perceive myself and others. Ironically, I feel the same type of alienation as Blecher. Theo: I get it. Kris can be ‘too real’ sometimes and when I’m in a bad headspace I don’t want to read and watch things that are too real either. Also the enduring undermining of women’s work is real and it’s not a ‘justification’ of personal failures it is a real problem! I mean it’s only recently that women have created their own cultures that are in the public sphere. Even stereotypically ‘feminine’ things like rom-coms and the like, had been exclusively created and marketed by men until recently at least. Despina: You are right, It could be that the contemporary (re)emergence of ‘lad culture’ is just a reaction to the appearance of public female presence… Theo: Wait what do you mean? Because I understand ‘lad culture’ as the ‘boys will be boys’ sentiment which was probably not around when Kris Kraus was writing and was definitely not around when Blecher was writing. Despina: Frankly, that is what I meant. Although the term did not exist when the books were written, I believe that the sentiment did. I get the feeling that some elite intellectual circles had features which resemble university lad cultures. Although ‘Lad culture’ may appear to be a childish banter in its core it is a culture that excludes any group that is not perceived as white and male and unapologetically aims to maintain privilege over other groups. Theo: I guess it could be seen as progress to talk about a ‘lad culture’ coz it means that there are cultures and communities in the public eye that are not laddish. But then again is it really progress when the products of lad culture are seen as super intellectual? Like some people talk about Rick and Morty as if it is written and produced by an elect group of intellectuals who are deeply concerned about scientific enquiry, when it’s probably a bunch of guys who wanted to do fart jokes. Despina: It feels as if there is a thread connecting the culture of the 20th century ‘genius’ to the 21st century’s lad culture. It’s like Blecher, Silvere and Dick from ‘I love Dick’ belong exactly to that ‘elite lad circle’ which was licensed to decide whom to regard as a genius. For me, ‘Adventures in Immediate Irreality’ provided some kind of proof that the connection wasn’t just in my head. Theo: That connection is definitely not in your head. It’s almost like that label attaches itself on a very specific group of people. They don’t really need to do much more other than exist to be seen as geniuses. Despina: Just like the serial killer documentary; do you remember watching that? Theo: Ted Bundy! That guy could have very much just gone to the police and said “I have raped and murdered many many women some of which were also underaged girls” and the police would not bat an eye. I mean the guy was an idiot, he left a trail of evidence behind him and he was still seen as a genius somehow. Despina: Exactly… it is almost as if gender performance (in combination with other things: class, race etc) is a rather accurate predictor for perceived intelligence. This is why I always felt that my performance was not acceptable in ‘intellectual’ environments because (I assume) that it is more feminine than it ‘should be’. Theo: I think I’ve always been more ‘masculine’ or ‘laddish’ in performance than you but that’s not really accepted either. You know I realised one day that no matter how ‘masculine’ I performed everyone was still going to perceive me as a woman, so I just let myself perform however I wanted. Despina: You probably are right it is not about performed gender. It is rather perceived gender that enables us to ascribe intelligence. After all, misogyny is embedded in our culture is not something you encounter only when you feel like encountering it. It is in modernism, in banter, in having fun, it is in surrealism, it is in existentialism… Theo: So what are you supposed to do when things trigger you beyond recovery? Despina: I don’t think there is ‘beyond recovery’; there are times when identifying how a representation is problematic will permanently change your views on a given topic. I think we should just accept that sometimes it will be painful. Theo: Sometimes it’s really hard to forgive that something so established can be so blatantly sexist and even apologetic to rape and violence. I’m sure there was plenty of sexism in the 18th century but Groupchkaya was still the first ever female character I could actually identify with. Despina: We shouldn’t forgive any such representation; we should however understand such violence in its context. I agree that empowering female characters can be found in classic works and I don’t even consider it surprising. There may have existed non-misogynist writers who still functioned as part of patriarchal structures and were able to create empowering female representations. Theo: It’s not and it shouldn’t be because at the end of the day the truth is varied and complicated. We should find the balance between speaking truth to power while acknowledging that sometimes we might have become the power that truth needs to be spoken to.
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Vanessa and Despina decided to co-write a reflective-text. They chose an inspiring topic; language and identity. Despina jotted down some questions. In trying to answer them Vanessa wrote short stories related to the languages that she speaks. Despina wrote her own reflections. Despina, then, weaved the language-stories of the two girls together. The result is the following text, one that they realised was made so much richer by the reverberations and echoes that danced between their voices... A conversation between Vanessa and Despina English; our common ground Mother tongue Other languages and thoughts English; our common groundVanessa: I first realised the power of language when I was in high school. A former student from my town came to talk about his job during our English class. The town where I lived is very small: 7000 people at most. Hence, I already knew him by sight. I knew him for being a rather shy person. His gait exposed insecurity, his stammering voice was normally low. To be honest, I cannot be sure that he stammered, but that’s how I remembered him, the impression I had of him. The person who spoke that day was very different. Clothed in the sharp sounds of English, he emanated confidence. He stood straight and delivered his speech with calm and assurance. It was as if he knew something we didn’t. That day I learnt that you can become someone else by learning a new language. You can even become a confident person. And that’s what I went on doing, as I enrolled in the faculty of foreign languages and then moved to the UK, and to Russia, and to Portugal. Each of these languages and each of these places revealed someone different within me. When I am in England, I am law-abiding, I work tidy and tirelessly, I gain a confidence that only that language gives me. Despina: I feel that my story with English is a much sadder one and my relationship with it is still kind of difficult. English is like a toxic friend to me. I was very young when I moved to England, very far from being fluent (or even able to communicate basic things); it was impossible to follow the lectures without Greek subtitles; let alone write an essay about music and modernism (yes, that was the first essay topic we were given). However, the lecturers were rather understanding. I never failed an assignment even though some didn’t really make sense. I think they guessed what I was trying to write. The first time English made me feel happy was when I managed to read Dorian Gray; the first time I realised that learning a language opened a door for me. I gradually loved the English literature, the English language and culture. It was the English literature that enabled me to see the world through their eyes; understand their struggles, their anxieties; their history. Without ever forgetting how it feels... to not be able to communicate. Without ever managing to shake off the impression that other people criticise me for not being fluent (enough). Vanessa: right after coming back from my year in Sheffield I went to the beach with my mum. Re-enacting my habits, I flipped through the pages of her women’s magazine and I could not help notice a subtle but threatening sentence. Below the photograph of the “model for a day” the journalist wrote: “This is Valentina and she dreams of becoming an accountant”. My English-filled eyes stumbled shocked at those words: if the same photo had been published in an English magazine, they would have written “This is Valentina and she plans on becoming an accountant”. She wants to. She is studying for. But not dreaming. Dreaming becomes to the realm of unreality, planning to that of the possible. And becoming an accountant should reside within the realm of the possible. What ideological operation is realised in using dreaming instead of planning? Is it telling us that getting a steady, lay job in Italy is not within reach (which is indeed probably not)? Is it moulding us to think that we are extremely lucky (a dream!) if we find the job we have been trained for? And what confidence gives you instead, saying in English, I am studying to be an accountant and then go on becoming it? Is that related to the no-more-stammering voice of the guy I had listened to in that high school class? Mother tongueDespina: Could it also be telling of our confidence as well ? I usually find that (although this is a personal observation and it surely would take a lot of discussion/research to suggest something like that) but I feel something like nation-confidence exists. Smaller, poorer (or even countries that were hit harder from the crisis) have a collective low(er) self-esteem; which is surely imprinted in the language. I always find the ‘Collective Greek Self Esteem’ (creating terminology along the way ) erratic. A Greek person may be complaining on and on; sinking in their personal drama for absolutely no reason. Nevertheless, beyond the contents of their words one can always identify a constant overtone, some kind of pride colouring whatever it is they are talking about. My guess is that it is stemming from the very fact that their culture comes from Ancient Greece. Even non particularly nationalist people (even I, it is myself I am sketching here, I am not looking to offend anyone haha). Such sentiments,though, are so complicated and ever-changing that I am never sure that I get it; and then I don’t feel fully entitled to talk about the Greek language as if it were my own because if I had to choose one mother tongue I ‘d choose my dialect.. Vanessa: It’s not clear what a mother tongue is. The embarrassing truth is, I don't speak Italian. I like writing in it, and I even teach it, but I never really speak it. When I speak Italian, I speak my dialect, Pergolese. Despina: I didn’t know that you also speak a dialect.. Vanessa: Maybe it’s the burden (and the joy) of those who grow up in a little town, to be always wanting to run away and to catch oneself looking back once one is far? I hold onto my dialect like on a log of wood in a shipwreck. In my dialect I find connection to the ground. But my dialect also estranges me, because it brings me back to a me that I wanted to leave behind when I moved away. The uncertainty, the gaps between words, the shyness, the sensation of unbelonging surface through the language and I, who am witty in English, loud in Spanish, scandalous in Portuguese, decisive in Russian, stand still without words. The biggest shock was going back to Bologna, once the place I called home, after years of living abroad. I was a complete stranger. People talked to me and I wanted to speak other languages. I wasn’t privy to their cultural repertoire. I didn’t know how things were done anymore, and yet everyone expected me to be at ease, ‘cos after all this is my country. I ended up making friends with a French, a Canadian, and a German. In the small enclave of people who didn’t belong, I belonged. Is there a nation of unbelonging people, who nevertheless belong to each other? When I speak Italian, I am the insecure girl who gave up on her dream because of fear of failure, I am the girl who didn’t know what to say at parties, the one who, even then, didn’t belong. I seek refuge in the shelter of other languages. Despina: It almost feels like an obligation; we are obliged to perceive our native language as our first tongue. But how could the language of our thoughts and dreams be foreign? I always think that. How about dialects? Does that count as mother tongue? The emotional bonds with the dialect are so strong; it is the only form of the language that makes me feel at home but at the same time it is a source of irritation when certain assumptions are made about me and my personality because I have a different accent. I think it goes back to what you ‘ve just said; I guess I just feel exactly the same.. It is very painful for me because I would really like to use it for so many more things; I would be so happy if I could write just one Cypriot poem. But I can’t; I just cringe every time I start doing this and the cringe is so strong that won’t let me finish my poem. Other languages and thoughtsVanessa: And what about Spanish? Spanish is the only language I speak without having lived in any of the countries where it is spoken. I didn’t even study it: I learnt it by trial and error as it was the language of conversations between me and my ex. I never read a book in Spanish while we were together, I only used it for talking and writing texts that must be still populating the nightmares of linguists. However, when we broke up I could not accept breaking up with the language as well, and I sought it in novels and poems, in my trips to Andalucia, in the taste of a beer that brought me back to the tascas and tapas and tortillas of the Galician shores. As I never studied it, I absorbed this language from my ex: the words he used more often I would also use, the mistake he made I would replicate myself. Who am I when I speak Spanish? I am the trace of a faded love; my Spanish speaks of us. Despina: What about Spanish? To be honest Spanish in my mind was an opportunity to realise how much I like languages. I got so much into Spanish that after a few months of lessons I was reading literature in Spanish and watching Spanish TV. I just feel that before Spanish I was passionately looking for something to like rather than passionately liking anything. Maybe that is an exaggeration; but I am allowed one.. Vanessa: The Opposite Stories of Russian and Portuguese When I am in Russia, I’m on a rush - I run, I am tense, I don’t wait. I am governed by strict and insistent internal rules. I move on straight paths, approaching my directions without turning on my steps. But also, I can melt in exquisite bursts of diminutive ka and iusha (smotri-ka! Mishula! kotionka!). Linking dots on the map, the same diminutives come up like sobs in my Portuguese - um cafeziiinho, que fofiiinho..beijiinhos. But, if in Russian they drop down like guillotines on a sharp and dry ending, in Portuguese they stretch the words and force my mouth to bend on a forced smile. Right in step with my Portuguese slower, lazier, chattier self. This Portuguese me likes strolling and going in circles; she talks louder and often breaks into laughter; moreover, she learnt to sing when there’s no-one around. Failure- Aspirations French is the last language I tried to learn before moving to Canada. Here, I got stuck and I have spent the last months in a perpetual state of waiting. I was supposed to practice the little bit I knew and become fluent, but the truth is, I barely spoke to anyone since I have been in lockdown, so how could I practice it? Now people ask me, oh, you live in Montreal, did you learn French? And my heart sinks, because I am aware that I spoke it better when I arrived than now. French is the knot in my throat, from which sprouts insecurities and guilt. It confronts me with my fears and my failure. This language belongs to a hollow body that wants to puke. I don’t know yet how I will find my way again through this language. Despina: See some languages are attached to people. At least in one’s mind. My mum is fluent in Russian and also a teacher of Russian. She loves the language, the culture, the literature; quite everything related to it. I, on the other hand, only know my mother’s perception of Russia and the Russians; I have no other contact with it; and in a sense, my repeated, almost always failed, attempts to learn Russian with her are somehow a reenactment of our relationship. I tried to learn for the first time when I was 7 years old, then again when I was 15, again at 17 and now at 25 I am finishing level A1! Many and constant attempts to maintain and deepen a relationship with a language and a person; many times failed; but it seems like there is hope. |
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