Confusion

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Between Us

  Attend to another person, grasp their circumstances, and know what they feel. I hope you now understand that we can neither directly read emotions from other people’s faces, nor simply “catch” the emotions of other people. We can think we can, but our perception need not match the interpretation of the target—even less so when they are from a different culture. It is challenging to “meditate on someone else’s motives, beliefs and history,” as Zaki suggests we do, when the distance with your own motives, beliefs, and history is large. Just imagining how you would feel in a similar situation will not do the job. If you tried, you would almost certainly make sense of a given situation in a way that fits your culture’s values and relationship goals. You would be likely to have emotions that are “right” in your culture. You would interact with others who draw from the same collective repertoire of emotional episodes as you do. As Coates points out: “It is funny when you have never been in that environment, but very serious when you don’t have anything else to lean on, if you are from a place where all you have is like the basic, physical respect . ” Projecting your own feelings is of limited value when you try to understand emotions that are embedded in another cultural reality. I met Hazel Markus thirty years ago at a conference that she and Shinobu Kitayama organized on the topic of culture and emotion. Neither of us knew at the time that Markus was to become my American mentor, but right away I felt we meshed. When we ran into each other in the women’s restroom, I showed my empathy, or so I thought: she had so much on her mind being one of the organizers—I had seen her really busy. So I looked at her warmly, and said: “You look a little tired.” Upon which Hazel looked startled, turned to the mirror and confirmed that, yes, she needed to refresh her lipstick. I stumbled, and added that I did not mean to suggest she looked bad. Research by psychologist Birgit Koopmann-Holm, herself of German descent and living in the United States, suggests that I was projecting the understanding of the situation that would have applied in my (then Dutch) cultural environment onto Hazel.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  “NO ONE KNEW exactly what she was. She dressed like a man. She was small, lean, flat-chested. She wore her hair short, straight. She had the face of a boy. She played billiards like a man. She drank like a man, with her foot on the bar railing. She told obscene stories like a man. Her drawing had a strength not found in a woman’s work. But her name had a feminine sound, her walk was feminine, and she was said not to have a penis. The men did not know quite how to treat her. Sometimes they slapped her on the back with fraternal feelings. “She lived with two girls in a studio. One of them was a model, the other, a nightclub singer. But no one knew what relationship there was among them. The two girls seemed to have a relationship like that of a husband and a wife. What was Mafouka to them? They would never answer any questions. Montparnasse always liked to know such things, and in detail. A few homosexuals had been attracted to Mafouka and had made advances towards her or him. But she had repulsed them. She quarreled willingly and struck out with force. “One day I was quite a little drunk and I dropped into Mafouka’s studio. The door was open. As I entered I heard giggling up on the balcony. The two girls were obviously making love. The voices would get soft and tender, then violent and unintelligible, and become moans and sighs. Then there would be silences. “Mafouka came in and found me with my ear cocked, listening. I said to her, ‘Please let me go and see them.’ “‘I don’t mind,’ said Mafouka. ‘Come up after me, slowly. They won’t stop if they think it is just me. They like me to watch them.’ “We went up the narrow stairs. Mafouka called, ‘It’s I.’ There was no interruption of the noises. As we went up, I bent over so that they could not see me. Mafouka went to the bed. The two girls were naked. They were pressing their bodies against each other and rubbing together. The friction gave them pleasure. Mafouka leaned over them, caressed them. They said, ‘Come on, Mafouka, lie with us.’ But she left them and took me downstairs again. “‘Mafouka,’ I said, ‘What are you? Are you a man or a woman? Why do you live with these two girls? If you are a man, why don’t you have a girl of your own? If you are a woman, why don’t you have a man occasionally?’ “Mafouka smiled at me. “‘Everybody wants to know. Everybody feels that I am not a boy. The women feel it. The men don’t know for sure. I am an artist.’ “‘What do you mean, Mafouka?’ “‘I mean that I am, like many artists, bisexual.’

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Gus HE DECIDES AGAINST the job offer in Albuquerque. He likes being around water too much. Blame it on all those summers on the Vineyard. He’s lucky to get a second offer and jumps at the chance to write for the Oregonian. Aside from all that chauvinistic crap about keeping outsiders out, the people in Portland are friendly and the women are fresh, outdoorsy types. When he’s sent to Seattle in March to get a story on Microsoft he calls Caitlin and arranges to meet her for a drink. Abby’s sent him her phone number. She’s the chronicler of their lives. Caitlin arrives with two guys in tow. James and Donny. Can you believe I once tried to seduce this guy, she tells them, pressing her thigh up against his. She and James and Donny fall all over themselves laughing, as if the idea of her seducing him is a sick joke. He’s sorry he called. He doesn’t need this. So how’s the Cough Drop? he asks to change the subject. You mean you haven’t heard? Heard what? She eloped with Bru. Just last week. No way ... Does that surprise you? Yeah, it surprised him. Only joking, darling Gus! she tells him, taking his hand. And she dissolves into laughter again. He gets out of there as soon as he can. Doesn’t tell anyone he saw her. 37 ANOTHER PRESIDENTIAL election but this time Vix and Paisley were less than thrilled with the candidates. “At least Barbara will be better than Nancy,” Paisley said, as if the election were over and the votes counted. “She’s got a sense of humor. And she wears the same pearls as my grandmother.” Maia found their political discussions hilarious. “I don’t see how you can defend the Republican party after what happened to you,” Paisley told her. “Please,” Maia said, “if your guys had been in office we’d be in the middle of a serious depression.” When the phone rang Vix couldn’t find it. “Check in the bathroom,” Paisley called. “Next to the toilet.” It was Caitlin. “Vix ... where are you?” “In the bathroom, actually.” “I mean where are you, as in, when are you coming? I’ve found the perfect place for us to live. It’s furnished in antique wicker and there’s a small garden. Roses, Vix ... all year round. But you have to give me a date. They won’t hold it for long.” What was she talking about? “Vix ...” “Wait a minute. I’m losing you.” She walked with the phone back to the kitchen. “I never said I was moving to Seattle ... did I?” “No ...” she began. “But you’d mentioned you were disappointed with your job, so I assumed ...” She paused. “I must have misunderstood.” “Besides,” Vix said, “you never stay in one place long enough ...” Why was she making excuses? “It will be a year in November.” “Well, I’d love to come for a visit.”

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —¿Dónde están todas tus cosas de la casa? —pregunto. —¿Qué? Respiro hondo, preparándome. —Hay muebles, pero no mucho más. No parece que vivas allí. ¿Por qué? El otro lado del teléfono está en silencio, y dejo de respirar, con miedo de no escucharlo hablar. ¿La pregunta fue insultante? No quise que lo fuera. Me di cuenta que él sabe mucho sobre mí, y apenas sé nada sobre él. Sabe quiénes son mis padres, qué le pasó a Cole y a mi amigo, que amo las cosas de los 80, que crecí sin una madre, lo que estudio en la universidad... Pero él todavía es un gran misterio. —Lo siento si eso sonó mal —le digo cuando no responde—. Es una hermosa casa. Es solo que Cole mencionó que tú y su madre se conocieron en la secundaria, donde eras una especie de estrella de béisbol. Debes amar el deporte. Solo tengo curiosidad por qué no veo trofeos o imágenes, o algo así en la casa. No hay fotos recientes de ti y Cole, tampoco música, ni libros... Nada que describa lo que te gusta. Respira, se aclara la garganta y un sudor frío recorre mi cuello. —Está todo empacado en el sótano —me dice—. Supongo que nunca lo saqué después de mudarme a la casa. —¿Cuánto tiempo has estado en esa casa? —Eh... —se voz se desvanece como si estuviera pensando—, supongo que la compré hace diez años. ¿Diez años? —Pike... —digo, tratando de no reírme. Exhala una risa en mi oído, y sonrío, sacudiendo la cabeza. —Supongo que suena raro, ¿eh? —pregunta. ¿Que todavía no hayas desempacado todo? Sí. Giro sobre mi espalda, manteniendo mi brazo metido debajo de mi cabeza. —Entiendo que botemos ciertas cosas a medida que envejecemos —le digo—. Pero has tenido una vida desde que te mudaste a ese lugar, ¿cierto? No veo nada de tu personalidad. Lugares que has visitado, baratijas que has recogido a lo largo de los años... —Sí, lo sé, yo eh...

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Finally, we entered hill country, climbing higher and deeper into the Appalachian Mountains, stopping from time to time to let the Oldsmobile catch its breath on the steep, twisting roads. It was November. The leaves had turned brown and were falling from the trees, and a cold mist shrouded the hillsides. There were streams and creeks everywhere, instead of the irrigation ditches you saw out west, and the air felt different. It was very still, heavier and thicker, and somehow darker. For some reason, it made us all grow quiet. At dusk, we approached a bend where hand-painted signs advertising auto repairs and coal deliveries had been nailed to trees along the roadside. We rounded the bend and found ourselves in a deep valley. Wooden houses and small brick buildings lined the river and rose in uneven stacks on both hillsides. “Welcome to Welch!” Mom declared. We drove along dark, narrow streets, then stopped in front of a big, worn house. It was on the downhill side of the street, and we had to descend a set of stairs to get to it. As we clattered onto the porch, a woman opened the door. She was enormous, with pasty skin and about three chins. Bobby pins held back her lank gray hair, and a cigarette dangled from her mouth. “Welcome home, son,” she said and gave Dad a long hug. She turned to Mom. “Nice of you to let me see my grandchildren before I die,” she said without a smile. Without taking the cigarette out of her mouth, she gave us each a quick, stiff hug. Her cheek was tacky with sweat. “Pleased to meet you, Grandma,” I said. “Don’t call me Grandma,” she snapped. “Name’s Erma.” “She don’t like it none ’cause it makes her sound old,” said a man who appeared beside her. He looked fragile, with short white hair that stood straight up. His voice was so mumbly I could hardly understand him. I didn’t know if it was his accent or if maybe he wasn’t wearing his dentures. “Name’s Ted, but you can call me Grandpa,” he went on. “Don’t bother me none being a grandpa.” Behind Grandpa was a ruddy-faced man with a wild swirl of red hair pushing out from under his baseball cap, which had a Maytag logo. He wore a red-and-black-plaid coat but had no shirt on underneath it. He kept announcing over and over again that he was our uncle Stanley, and he wouldn’t stop hugging and kissing me, as though I was someone he truly loved and hadn’t seen in ages. You could smell the whiskey on his breath, and when he talked, you could see the pink ridges of his toothless gums. I stared at Erma and Stanley and Grandpa, searching for some feature that reminded me of Dad, but I saw none. Maybe this was one of Dad’s pranks, I thought. Dad must have arranged for the weirdest people in town to pretend they were his family.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  The discussion of drag that Gender Trouble offers to explain the constructed and performative dimension of gender is not precisely an example of subversion. It would be a mistake to take it as the paradigm of subversive action or, indeed, as a model for political agency. The point is rather different. If one thinks that one sees a man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a man, then one takes the first term of each of those perceptions as the “reality” of gender: the gender that is introduced through the simile lacks “reality,” and is taken to constitute an illusory appearance. In such perceptions in which an ostensible reality is coupled with an unreality, we think we know what the reality is, and take the secondary appearance of gender to be mere artifice, play, falsehood, and illusion. But what is the sense of “gender reality” that founds this perception in this way? Perhaps we think we know what the anatomy of the person is (sometimes we do not, and we certainly have not appreciated the variation that exists at the level of anatomical description). Or we derive that knowledge from the clothes that the person wears, or how the clothes are worn. This is naturalized knowledge, even though it is based on a series of cultural inferences, some of which are highly erroneous. Indeed, if we shift the example from drag to transsexuality, then it is no longer possible to derive a judgment about stable anatomy from the clothes that cover and articulate the body. That body may be preoperative, transitional, or postoperative; even “seeing” the body may not answer the question: for what are the categories through which one sees? The moment in which one’s staid and usual cultural perceptions fail, when one cannot with surety read the body that one sees, is precisely the moment when one is no longer sure whether the body encountered is that of a man or a woman. The vacillation between the categories itself constitutes the experience of the body in question.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Las suelas de mis botas de trabajo se pegan al suelo con cada paso que doy por la habitación. Nunca he entendido el atractivo de este lugar o por qué ha durado tanto. Veo a Jordan en el otro extremo de la barra, su puño cubierto con una toalla blanca y enterrado en un vaso mientras lo seca. No estaba seguro de que estuviera aquí, pero cuando no está en la casa, es aquí donde está. Todavía lleva la misma ropa de anoche cuando la vi salir, y un bostezo se extiende por su rostro. Su cabello está atado en una coleta alta, y sus labios rosados con un toque de lápiz labial. Estaba bonita ayer. Esta mañana, mi sospecha está desdibujando todo. De repente, tengo veinte años nuevamente y estoy preguntándome dónde estuvo la madre de Cole toda la noche. Pero Jordan no es así. Es una buena chica. Simplemente, no tiene sentido que haya dicho que estaba con Cole cuando no era así. A menos que estuviera metida en algo que no debería. No quiero que Cole pase por eso con Jordan. No como lo hice con su madre. ¿Qué pasa si la deja embarazada y se queda atascado, tratando con una persona así? No quiero que se quede solo para siempre, porque cree que no es suficiente para ella. Me obligo a calmar mi respiración. Estoy sacando conclusiones. Relájate. Ella me ve acercándome, y sus ojos se iluminan un poco. Abre la boca para decir algo, pero hablo primero. —¿Estás bien? —pregunto—. ¿Tuviste una buena noche? Ladea la cabeza, titubeando un poco. —Um, sí, supongo. Así que, nada malo pasó entonces. Está en una sola pieza y parece feliz. —¿Tú y Cole se divirtieron? —presiono, y mi pulso comienza a acelerarse. Deja caer su cabeza evitando mis ojos mientras coloca el vaso debajo de la barra. —Sí. —Asiente. Y tenso mi mandíbula, mi temperamento se eleva. Acaba de mentir otra vez.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  The language of usurpation suggests a participation in the very categories from which s/he feels inevitably distanced, suggesting also the denaturalized and fluid possibilities of such categories once they are no longer linked causally or expressively to the presumed fixity of sex. Herculine’s anatomy does not fall outside the categories of sex, but confuses and redistributes the constitutive elements of those categories; indeed, the free play of attributes has the effect of exposing the illusory character of sex as an abiding substantive substrate to which these various attributes are presumed to adhere. Moreover, Herculine’s sexuality constitutes a set of gender transgressions which challenge the very distinction between heterosexual and lesbian erotic exchange, underscoring the points of their ambiguous convergence and redistribution. But it seems we are compelled to ask, is there not, even at the level of a discursively constituted sexual ambiguity, some questions of “sex” and, indeed, of its relation to “power” that set limits on the free play of sexual categories? In other words, how free is that play, whether conceived as a prediscursive libidinal multiplicity or as a discursively constituted multiplicity? Foucault’s original objection to the category of sex is that it imposes the artifice of unity and univocity on a set of ontologically disparate sexual functions and elements. In an almost Rousseauian move, Foucault constructs the binary of an artificial cultural law that reduces and distorts what we might well understand as a natural heterogeneity. Herculine h/erself refers to h/er sexuality as “this incessant struggle of nature against reason” (103). A cursory examination of these disparate “elements,” however, suggests their thorough medicalization as “functions,” “sensations,” even “drives.” Hence, the heterogeneity to which Foucault appeals is itself constituted by the very medical discourse that he positions as the repressive juridical law. But what is this heterogeneity that Foucault seems to prize, and what purpose does it serve? If Foucault contends that sexual nonidentity is promoted in homosexual contexts, he would seem to identify heterosexual contexts as precisely those in which identity is constituted. We know already that he understands the category of sex and of identity generally to be the effect and instrument of a regulatory sexual regime, but it is less clear whether that regulation is reproductive or heterosexual, or something else. Does that regulation of sexuality produce male and female identities within a symmetrical binary relation? If homosexuality produces sexual nonidentity, when homosexuality itself no longer relies on identities being like one another; indeed, homosexuality could no longer be described as such. But if homosexuality is meant to designate the place of an unnameable libidinal heterogeneity, perhaps we can ask whether this is, instead, a love that either cannot or dare not speak its name? In other words, Foucault, who gave only one interview on homosexuality and has always resisted the confessional moment in his own work, nevertheless presents Herculine’s confession to us in an unabashedly didactic mode. Is this a displaced confession that presumes a continuity or parallel between his life and hers?

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Caitlin had her there. “When?” Vix asked. “Six weeks ago. It was a mistake. I’m still not sure how it happened. The condom broke, I think.” “Are you still seeing him?” “No. He’s married.” “The producer?” “What producer?” “The one who took you to the play in London?” “What play in London?” “You told me ... when you called.” “I don’t remember.” “It wasn’t that long ago.” “Well ... I’ve been busy. A lot of things happen. I don’t necessarily remember all of them.” How come Vix remembered if Caitlin didn’t? “Did you love him?” She didn’t know why she bothered to ask when she already knew the answer. “No, I didn’t love him. But I enjoyed his company, in and out of bed.” Could she say the same about Bru? They hadn’t spent that much time together out of bed, but in it ... “I left the Sorbonne. I felt claustrophobic there. Everyone was so ... French. It really got to me after a while. I’m better off in London, don’t you think?” Vix had no idea. Suddenly, Caitlin’s face lit up. “I’ve just had the most brilliant idea. Take junior year abroad. Wherever you decide to go, I’ll go with you.” She was dancing across the room now, singing out the names of cities. “Paris, London, Rome, there’s even a program in Grenoble.” She flopped back on the bed then rolled over to face Vix. Paris, London, Rome ... Maia had considered spending junior year abroad but her parents urged her to wait. Paisley’s family didn’t have the money. We have fallen into genteel poverty, she’d told them, doing Scarlett O’Hara. “Well? ...” Caitlin asked. “I can’t.” Caitlin’s mood shifted. “I’m so sick of hearing you say that!” She jumped off the bed, unzipped her dress, yanked it over her head, and dropped it on a chair. She was wearing black lace underwear, probably

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  If to become a lesbian is an act, a leave-taking of heterosexuality, a self-naming that contests the compulsory meanings of heterosexuality’s women and men, what is to keep the name of lesbian from becoming an equally compulsory category? What qualifies as a lesbian? Does anyone know? If a lesbian refutes the radical disjunction between heterosexual and homosexual economies that Wittig promotes, is that lesbian no longer a lesbian? And if it is an “act” that founds the identity as a performative accomplishment of sexuality, are there certain kinds of acts that qualify over others as foundational? Can one do the act with a “straight mind”? Can one understand lesbian sexuality not only as a contestation of the category of “sex,” of “women,” of “natural bodies,” but also of “lesbian”? Interestingly, Wittig suggests a necessary relationship between the homosexual point of view and that of figurative language, as if to be a homosexual is to contest the compulsory syntax and semantics that construct “the real.” Excluded from the real, the homosexual point of view, if there is one, might well understand the real as constituted through a set of exclusions, margins that do not appear, absences that do not figure. What a tragic mistake, then, to construct a gay/lesbian identity through the same exclusionary means, as if the excluded were not, precisely through its exclusion, always presupposed and, indeed, required for the construction of that identity. Such an exclusion, paradoxically, institutes precisely the relation of radical dependency it seeks to overcome: Lesbianism would then require heterosexuality. Lesbianism that defines itself in radical exclusion from heterosexuality deprives itself of the capacity of resignify the very heterosexual constructs by which it is partially and inevitably constituted. As a result, that lesbian strategy would consolidate compulsory heterosexuality in its oppressive forms. The more insidious and effective strategy it seems is a thoroughgoing appropriation and redeployment of the categories of identity themselves, not merely to contest “sex,” but to articulate the convergence of multiple sexual discourses at the site of “identity” in order to render that category, in whatever form, permanently problematic. IV BODILY INSCRIPTIONS, PERFORMATIVE SUBVERSIONS“Garbo ‘got in drag’ whenever she took some heavy glamour part, whenever she melted in or out of a man’s arms, whenever she simply let that heavenly-flexed neck … bear the weight of her thrown-back head.… How resplendent seems the art of acting! It is all impersonation, whether the sex underneath is true or not.” —Parker Tyler, “The Garbo Image” quoted in Esther Newton, Mother Camp

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  That was followed by the sound of Dad stomping down the stairs into the basement, furious at all of us, me for back-talking Erma and making wild accusations, and Lori even more for daring to strike her own grandmother, and Brian for being such a pussy and starting the whole thing. I thought Dad would come around to our side once he’d heard what had happened, and I tried to explain. “I don’t care what happened!” he yelled. “But we were just protecting ourselves,” I said. “Brian’s a man, he can take it,” he said. “I don’t want to hear another word of this. Do you hear me?” He was shaking his head, but wildly, almost as if he thought he could keep out the sound of my voice. He wouldn’t even look at me. After Dad had gone back upstairs to tie into Erma’s hooch and we kids were all in bed, Brian bit my toe to try to make me laugh, but I kicked him away. We all lay there in the silent darkness. “Dad was really weird,” I said, because someone had to say it. “You’d be weird, too, if Erma was your mom,” Lori said. “Do you think she ever did something to Dad like what she did to Brian?” I asked. No one said a thing. It was gross and creepy to think about, but it would explain a lot. Why Dad left home as soon as he could. Why he drank so much and why he got so angry. Why he never wanted to visit Welch when we were younger. Why he at first refused to come to West Virginia with us and only at the last possible moment overcame his reluctance and jumped into the car. Why he was shaking his head so hard, almost like he wanted to put his hands over his ears, when I tried to explain what Erma had been doing to Brian. “Don’t think about things like that,” Lori told me. “It’ll make you crazy.” And so I put it out of my mind. MOM AND DAD TOLD us how they’d made it to Phoenix only to find that Mom’s laundry-on-the-clothesline ploy hadn’t kept out intruders. Our house on North Third Street had been looted. Pretty much everything was gone, including, of course, our bikes. Mom and Dad had rented a trailer to carry back what little was left—Mom said those foolish thieves had overlooked some good stuff, such as a pair of Grandma Smith’s riding breeches from the thirties that were of the highest quality—but the Oldsmobile’s engine had seized up in Nashville, and they’d had to abandon it along with the trailer and Grandma Smith’s riding breeches and take the bus the rest of the way to Welch. I thought that once Mom and Dad returned, they’d be able to make peace with Erma.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He folded his arms. ‘Perfect,’ he said. After that - clad not exactly as a boy but, rather confusingly, as the boy I would have been, had I been more of a girl - my entry into the profession was rather rapid. The very next day Walter sent my costume to a seamstress, and had it properly re-sewn; within a week he had borrowed a hall and a band from a manager who owed him a favour, and had Kitty and I, in our matching suits, practising upon the stage. It was not at all like singing in Mrs Dendy’s parlour. The strangers, the dark and empty hall, disconcerted me; I was stiff and awkward, quite unable to master the few simple strolling steps that Kitty and Walter tried patiently to teach me. At last Walter handed me a cane, and said I should just stand and lean upon it, and let Kitty dance; and that was better, and I grew easier, and the song began to sound funny again. When we had finished and were practising our bows, some of the men in the orchestra clapped us. Kitty sat and took a cup of tea, then; but Walter led me off to a seat in the stalls, away from the others, and looked grave. ‘Nan,’ he began, ‘I told you when all this started that I would not press you, and I meant it; I would give up the business altogether before I forced a girl upon the stage against her will. There are fellows who do that sort of thing, you know, fellows who think of nothing but their own pockets. But I am not one of them; and besides, you are my friend. But -’ he took a breath. ‘We have come this far, the three of us; and you are good - I promise you, you are good.’ ‘With work, perhaps,’ I said doubtfully. He shook his head. ‘Not even with that. Haven’t you worked, these past six months - harder than Kitty, almost? You know the act as well as she; you know her songs, her bits of business - why, you taught them to her, most of them!’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘This is all so new, and strange. All my life I’ve loved the music hall, but I never thought of getting up upon the stage, myself...’ ‘Didn’t you?’ he said then. ‘Didn’t you, really?’ Every time you saw some little serio-comic captivate the crowd, at that Palace of yours, in Canterbury, didn’t you wish that it was you? Didn’t you close your eyes and see your name upon the programmes, your number in the box? Didn’t you sing to your - oyster-barrel - as if it were a crowded hall, and you could make those little fishes weep, or shriek with laughter?’ I bit my nail, and frowned. ‘Dreams,’ I said. He snapped his fingers. ‘The very stuff that stages are made of.’ ‘Where would we start?’

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  At the close of his brief paragraph on the negative Oedipal complex in the young girl, Freud remarks that the factor that decides which identification is accomplished is the strength or weakness of masculinity and femininity in her disposition. Significantly, Freud avows his confusion about what precisely a masculine or feminine disposition is when he interrupts his statement midway with the hyphenated doubt:“—whatever that may consist in—” (22). What are these primary dispositions on which Freud himself apparently founders? Are these attributes of an unconscious libidinal organization, and how precisely do the various identifications set up in consequence of the Oedipal conflict work to reinforce or dissolve each of these dispositions? What aspect of “femininity” do we call dispositional, and which is the consequence of identification? Indeed, what is to keep us from understanding the “dispositions” of bisexuality as the effects or productions of a series of internalizations? Moreover, how do we identify a “feminine” or a “masculine” disposition at the outset? By what traces is it known, and to what extent do we assume a “feminine” or a “masculine” disposition as the precondition of a heterosexual object choice? In other words, to what extent do we read the desire for the father as evidence of a feminine disposition only because we begin, despite the postulation of primary bisexuality, with a heterosexual matrix for desire?

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  So let the plot go left in this one place instead of right, or let your character decide to go back to her loathsome passive-aggressive husband. Maybe it was the right thing, maybe not. If not, go back and try something else. Some of us tend to think that what we do and say and decide and write are cosmically important things. But they’re not. If you don’t know which way to go, keep it simple. Listen to your broccoli. Maybe it will know what to do. Then, if you’ve worked in good faith for a couple of hours but cannot hear it today, have some lunch. Radio Station KFKDI need to bring up radio station KFKD, or K-Fucked, here. It is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to listening to your broccoli that exists for writers. Then I promise I’ll never mention it again. If you are not careful, station KFKD will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on. You might as well have heavy-metal music piped in through headphones while you’re trying to get your work done. You have to get things quiet in your head so you can hear your characters and let them guide your story. The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac, and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on. KFKD is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer—please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written. Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you—an altar, for instance, or votive candles, sage smudges, small-animal sacrifices, especially now that the Supreme Court has legalized them. (I cut out the headline the day this news came out and taped it above the kitty’s water dish.) Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in. You might also consider trying to breathe.

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  III. Augustine begins to consider “big questions” that he will struggle with for many years. A. What is the nature of evil? Augustine wonders where evil originates. B. What is the nature of God? In his initial questioning, Augustine wonders whether God has a body, although he will refine this question over the next decade. C. How can people of the past be considered moral if they did things that today are condemned as evil? 1. Augustine gives examples of Old Testament figures who offered animal sacrifices and practiced polygamy. 2. Augustine ponders the act of God commanding people to do unprecedented things. IV. Young Augustine, seeking eternal wisdom, wants it rather quickly. A. He turns to a group called the Manichees for answers. The Manichees were a quasi-religious, quasi-philosophical movement named for the 3rd-century thinker Mani. B. The Manichees took basically a dualist stance—everything material is evil and everything that is spirit is good. C. Among other things, this dualism led the Manichees to take rather peculiar positions on Christian teachings. 1. The God who, in Hebrew Scripture, created the material world and declared it to be good is not a good God. 2. Jesus was not flesh and blood, because all matter is evil. 3. The Crucifixion was not what it appeared, because nails can hardly harm pure spirit. V. Augustine became associated with the Manichees for almost a decade. A. The Manichees, despite a complicated mythology, offered a rather simple answer to complex questions: All could be explained as the struggle between matter (evil) and spirit (good). B. Augustine, in his Manichean period, learned about the teachings of Christianity through the prism of Manichean thought and found it to be intellectually indefensible. 28 ©2004 The Teaching Company. VI. At the end of Book III, Augustine is asking good questions and beginning to get serious about life. A. He is ready to learn. B. He is impatient and does not yet understand the struggle that he must go through to find eternal wisdom. Suggested Readings: Cooper, chapter 3. O’Connell, Images of Conversion in St. Augustine’s Confessions, chapter 1. ———, St. Augustine’s Confessions: The Odyssey of Soul, chapter 5. A Reader’s Companion, chapter 3. Questions to Consider: 1. Can you think of any experience you have had of reading a book that has radically altered your way of thinking and priorities similar to the way Augustine responded to reading Cicero? 2. In what way might the cliché “a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing” apply to Augustine after he has read Cicero’s Hortensius? 3. How important is figuring out what questions to ask to anyone’s education? 4. How do we gear ourselves up for a long struggle once we embark on a quest for genuine wisdom? ©2004 The Teaching Company. 29

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  2. Now, he makes it clear that he could not have come to an understanding of the intellectual truth of Christianity without these texts. II. At the beginning of the book, Augustine is still wrestling with the problem of evil. A. The Manichees had a consistent answer for this problem, because they believed that there was an ultimate principle of good and an ultimate principle of evil. B. Now that he has become disillusioned with the Manichees, Augustine can no longer accept that answer. III. At this time, Augustine also sees the intellectual contradiction of predictive astrology. A. He had already become suspicious of it. B. He receives help from a man who tells him that the idea is bogus. C. He uses the example of twins to put the final nail in the coffin, using in particular, the biblical examples of Jacob and Esau. D. The implication here seems to be that astrology was important for Manichaean beliefs and practices. IV. Augustine tells us that he read books “written by the Platonists” and translated from Greek into Latin. A. He is not specific about the exact texts that he has read. B. He paraphrases these books, rather than quoting them directly. C. His paraphrase is also a paraphrase of one of the most important texts of Christian Scripture, the beginning of the gospel according to John. D. The surprising and, to some extent, shocking claim that he makes is that these Platonists teach the same thing as the Gospel of John. E. Augustine’s claim is that even though these words may not have been exactly what was said in the text of these philosophers, they accurately represent the substance of what he saw in them. F. Thus, in these pagan philosophical texts, he finds a way of articulating Christian beliefs. 40 ©2004 The Teaching Company.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  The unity of the subject is thus already potentially contested by the distinction that permits of gender as a multiple interpretation of sex. 7 If gender is the cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes, then a gender cannot be said to follow from a sex in any one way. Taken to its logical limit, the sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders. Assuming for the moment the stability of binary sex, it does not follow that the construction of “men” will accrue exclusively to the bodies of males or that “women” will interpret only female bodies. Further, even if the sexes appear to be unproblematically binary in their morphology and constitution (which will become a question), there is no reason to assume that genders ought also to remain as two. 8 The presumption of a binary gender system implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it. When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one. This radical splitting of the gendered subject poses yet another set of problems. Can we refer to a “given” sex or a “given” gender without first inquiring into how sex and/or gender is given, through what means? And what is “sex” anyway? Is it natural, anatomical, chromosomal, or hormonal, and how is a feminist critic to assess the scientific discourses which purport to establish such “facts” for us? 9 Does sex have a history? 10 Does each sex have a different history, or histories? Is there a history of how the duality of sex was established, a genealogy that might expose the binary options as a variable construction? Are the ostensibly natural facts of sex discursively produced by various scientific discourses in the service of other political and social interests? If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called “sex” is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. 11 It would make no sense, then, to define gender as the cultural interpretation of sex, if sex itself is a gendered category. Gender ought not to be conceived merely as the cultural inscription of meaning on a pregiven sex (a juridical conception); gender must also designate the very apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are established. As a result, gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “a natural sex” is produced and established as “prediscursive,” prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  They feel that they know exactly what they mean by God. The catechism definition I learned at the age of eight—”God is the Supreme Spirit, who alone exists of himself and is infinite in all perfections”—was not only dry, abstract, and rather boring; it was also incorrect. Not only did it imply that God was a fact that it was possible to “define,” but it represented only the first stage in Denys’s threefold dialectical method. I was not taught to take the next step and see that God is not a spirit; that “he” has no gender; and that we have no idea what we mean when we say that a being “exists” who is “infinite in all perfections.” The process that should have led to a stunned appreciation of an “otherness” beyond the competence of language ended prematurely. The result is that many of us have been left stranded with an incoherent concept of God. We learned about God at about the same time as we were told about Santa Claus. But while our understanding of the Santa Claus phenomenon evolved and matured, our theology remained somewhat infantile. Not surprisingly, when we attained intellectual maturity, many of us rejected the God we had inherited and denied that he existed. Paul Tillich pointed out that it is difficult to speak about God these days, because people immediately ask you if a God exists. This means that the symbol of God is no longer working. Instead of pointing beyond itself to an ineffable reality, the humanly conceived construct that we call “God” has become the end of the story. We have seen that during the early modern period the idea of God was reduced to a scientific hypothesis and God became the ultimate explanation of the universe. Instead of symbolizing the ineffable, God was in effect reduced to a mere deva, a lowercase god that was a member of the cosmos with a precise function and location. When that happened, it was only a matter of time before atheism became a viable proposition, because scientists were soon able to find alternative explanatory hypotheses that rendered “God” redundant. This would not have been a disaster had not the churches come to rely on scientific proof. Other paths to knowledge had been downgraded in the modern world, and scientific rationality was now regarded as the only acceptable path to truth. People had grown accustomed to thinking of God as a “clear,” “distinct,” and self-evident idea. Had not Descartes, founder of modern philosophy, told them that the existence of God was even clearer and more obvious than one of Euclid’s theorems? Did not the great Newton insist that religion should be “easy”?

• From City of Night (1963)

  Now the malenurse entered with a tray. “Youve fixed a tray for my guest, of course?” the Professor asked him. “I didnt know he’d be here,” said the malenurse. He left, returned with a tray for me. “Larry is not an angel,” the Professor said again. “There is even, wouldnt you say? something Uncomfortable about him. I distrust him sometimes. Do you suppose—” he asked, lowering his voice, “—that Larry is a misplaced agent for the FBI—in the wrong cell?” He laughed, pleased with himself. “Perhaps,” he whispered in posed secrecy, “he is writing a book about me—but then, it wouldnt be the first time I have been between covers!” He proceeded to eat, talking between mouthfuls. When he had finished, he placed the tray on the table. “We have talked enough,” he said. “Come over here, uncategorized angel. Stand next to me now. We have looked into the Soul long enough for today—now: Now let us look in the other, equally sacred, direction....” Later as I walked out the door of his bedroom, I heard him call after me: “God Is Love....” In the outside room, the malenurse sat reading a thick book. He rose, walking swiftly toward me as if I would escape. He thrust the book at me: “The Professor wrote this!” he said. “Hes written many great things!” I reached for the book; but before I could even read the title, he withdrew it from me, not allowing me to touch it. “Heres the check,” he said. 4 The next day I received a more desperate telegram: VITAL UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE TO THE CONTRARY THAT YOU MAINTAIN DAILY CONTACT WITH ME. I NEED THIS CONTACT VERY BADLY NOW FOR THE REASSURANCE IT GIVES ME IN MOMENTS OF VARIOUS CONFUSIONS AND DANGERS TO MY PEACE OF MIND. CAN EXPLAIN ALL WHEN YOU COME TO SEE ME. G IS L. When I saw the Professor, again there was no mention of the telegram. The tape-measure was on the bed.... The “interview” proceeded: the mountainous anarchy of the facts of his life piling higher and higher. Occasionally, I stopped listening, the drumming of his voice lulling me. There were episodes begun, interrupted, picked up, sometimes not finished—the story of Robbie winding through it like a wayward river.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The Jews who had fled to Portugal were tougher; they had preferred exile rather than abjuring their faith. Initially, they were welcomed by King João II, but when Manuel I succeeded to the throne in 1495, Ferdinand and Isabella, his parents-in-law, forced him to baptize all the Jews in Portugal. Manuel compromised by granting them immunity from the Inquisition for fifty years. Known as Marranos (“pigs”), a term of abuse that Portuguese Jews adopted as a badge of pride, they had time to organize a successful Jewish underground. For generations, closet Jews tried to practice their faith to the best of their ability, but they labored under huge difficulties. Cut off from the rest of the Jewish world, they had no access to Jewish literature and no synagogues and were able to perform only a few of the major rituals. Because they had received a Catholic education, their minds were filled with Christian symbols and doctrines, so inevitably, as the years passed, their faith was neither authentically Jewish nor truly Christian.4 Others, as we shall see, would become the first atheists and freethinkers in modern Europe. Deprived of the observances that made the Torah a living reality, Marrano religion became distorted. In the Portuguese universities, the Marranos had studied logic, physics, medicine, and mathematics, but they had no expertise in the more intuitive disciplines of Jewish practice. Relying perforce on reason alone, their theology bore no relation to traditional Judaism.5 Their God was the First Cause of all being, who did not intervene directly in human affairs; there was no need for the Torah, because the laws of nature were accessible to everybody. This is the kind of God that, left to itself, human reason tends to create, but in the past Jews had found the rational God of the philosophers religiously empty. Like many modern people—and for many of the same reasons—some of the Marranos would find this God alien and incredible.