Longing

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

  On the one hand, Foucault wants to argue that there is no “sex” in itself which is not produced by complex interactions of discourse and power, and yet there does seem to be a “multiplicity of pleasures” in itself which is not the effect of any specific discourse/power exchange. In other words, Foucault invokes a trope of prediscursive libidinal multiplicity that effectively presupposes a sexuality “before the law,” indeed, a sexuality waiting for emancipation from the shackles of “sex.” On the other hand, Foucault officially insists that sexuality and power are coextensive and that we must not think that by saying yes to sex we say no to power. In his anti-juridical and anti- emancipatory mode, the “official” Foucault argues that sexuality is always situated within matrices of power, that it is always produced or constructed within specific historical practices, both discursive and institutional, and that recourse to a sexuality before the law is an illusory and complicitous conceit of emancipatory sexual politics. The journals of Herculine provide the opportunity to read Foucault against himself, or, perhaps more appropriately, to expose the constitutive contradiction of this kind of antiemancipatory call for sexual freedom. Herculine, called Alexina throughout the text, narrates a story about h/er tragic plight as one who lives a life of unjust victimization, deceit, longing, and inevitable dissatisfaction. From the time s/he was a young girl, s/he reports, s/he

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  C. The most revealing story concerning Augustine’s father came when the two were in a bathhouse together and the father saw the physical evidence that Augustine had entered puberty. 1. Augustine’s father rejoices that it will not be long before he will become a grandfather. 2. The father probably celebrated this news by getting drunk. 3. At an age when Augustine needed moral guidance, his father was unable to provide it. 4. We realize that Augustine’s father had not turned away from his selfishness toward higher things; hence, he is hardly in a position to guide Augustine. III. Augustine introduces his mother, Monica, by explaining how she responded to his adolescence and his progress in school. A. Monica warned her son against adultery and preferred that he remain celibate. B. However, she also told him that if he had to have sex, not to get married because it would take him from his studies and damage his career. C. Monica believed that if Augustine received a good education, he would use it at some later time to discover and follow the Christian God. D. Augustine explains that although Monica is herself experiencing an ongoing conversion (she is already a baptized Christian), she still had a long way to go. E. However, Monica certainly was a better parent than her husband. IV. Augustine makes numerous allusions to Athens (Plato) and Jerusalem in weighing the virtues of his education. V. Having established his need for true education—a real turning toward the highest things—Augustine now tells the story of how he and some friends stole some pears one night. This story summarizes the narrative of Augustine’s need for education and his failure to obtain it. Suggested Readings: A Reader’s Companion, chapter 3. Cooper, chapter 2. 22 ©2004 The Teaching Company. O’Connell, St. Augustine’s Confessions: The Odyssey of Soul, chapter 4. Garry Wills, Saint Augustine’s Sin, pp. 3–28. Questions to Consider: 1. How does becoming an adolescent make life more complicated for Augustine? 2. Is Augustine the writer too tough in his criticisms of his parents during his teen years? 3. Are there ways for children to get a real education in the Platonic sense if teachers and parents are unable to provide it because they themselves do not have it? ©2004 The Teaching Company. 23

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Brian went out and got some snow, and we packed it on Lori’s legs, which were dark pink. The next day she had blisters the length of her thighs. “Just remember,” Mom said after examining the blisters, “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” “If that was true, I’d be Hercules by now,” Lori said. Days later, when the blisters burst, the clear liquid inside ran down to her feet. For weeks, the fronts of her legs were open sores, so sensitive that she had trouble sleeping under blankets. But by then the temperature had fallen again, and if she kicked off the blankets, she froze. • • • One day that winter, I went to a classmate’s house to work on a school project. Carrie Mae Blankenship’s father was an administrator at the McDowell County hospital, and her family lived in a solid brick house on McDowell Street. The living room was decorated in shades of orange and brown, and the plaid pattern of the curtains matched the couch upholstery. On the wall was a framed photo of Carrie Mae’s older sister in her high school graduation gown. It was lit with its own tiny lamp, just like in a museum. There was also a small plastic box on the wall near the living room door. A row of tiny numbers ran along the top, under a lever. Carrie Mae’s father saw me studying the box while she was out of the room. “It’s a thermostat,” he told me. “You move the lever to make the house warmer or cooler.” I thought he was pulling my leg, but he moved the lever, and I heard a muffled roar kick on in the basement. “That’s the furnace,” he said. He led me over to a vent in the floor and had me hold my hand above it and feel the warm air wafting upward. I didn’t want to say anything to show how impressed I was, but for many nights afterward, I dreamed that we had a thermostat at 93 Little Hobart Street. I dreamed that all we had to do to fill our house with that warm, clean furnace heat was to move a lever. ERMA DIED DURING the last hard snowfall at the end of our second winter in Welch. Dad said her liver simply gave out. Mom took the position that Erma drank herself to death. “It was suicide every bit as much as if she had stuck her head in the oven,” Mom said, “only slower.” Whatever the cause, Erma had made detailed preparations for the occasion of her death. For years she had read The Welch Daily News only for the obituaries and black-bordered memorial notices, clipping and saving her favorites. They provided inspiration for her own death announcement, which she’d worked and reworked. She had also written pages of instructions on how she wanted her funeral conducted.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  How suavely, how gently his hands began to search her body, as if he were searching for the place where her sensations were gathered and did not know whether it was around her breasts, or under her breasts, along her hips or in the valley between the hips. He waited for her flesh to respond, perceiving by the slightest tremor that his hand had touched the place she wanted to be touched. Her dresses, sheets, nightgowns, the water of her bath, the wind, the heat, everything had conspired to sensitize her skin until this hand fulfilled the caresses they all had given her, adding warmth and the power to penetrate the secret places everywhere. But as soon as Pierre leaned over too close to her face to take a kiss, then the image of John interfered. She closed her eyes, and Pierre felt her body also closing against him. So with wisdom, he pursued his caresses no further. When they returned home that day, Martha was filled with a kind of drunkenness that made her behave recklessly. The house was so arranged that Pierre and Sylvia’s apartment was connected to Martha’s room, and hers in turn communicated with the bathroom used by John. When the children were younger all the doors were left open. Now Pierre’s wife preferred to lock her bedroom door, and the one between Martha and Pierre was also locked. On this day Martha took a bath. Lying quietly in the water she could hear John’s movements in his room. Her body was in a great fever from Pierre’s caresses, but she still desired John. She wanted to make one more attempt to awaken John’s desire, to force him into the open, so she would know whether or not there was any hope of his loving her. Once bathed, she wrapped herself in a long white kimono, with her long thick black hair hanging loose. Instead of returning to her own room she entered John’s. He was startled by the sight of her. She explained her presence by saying, “I am terribly anxious, John, I need your advice. I’m leaving this house soon.” “Leaving?” “Yes,” said Martha. “It is time I leave. I must learn to become independent. I want to go to Paris.” “But you are so needed here.” “Needed?” “You are my father’s companion,” he said bitterly. Could it be that he was jealous? Martha waited breathlessly for him to say more. Then she added, “I should be meeting people and trying to get married. I cannot be a burden forever.” “Married?” Then he saw Martha as a woman for the first time. He had always considered her a child. What he saw was a voluptuous body, clearly outlined in the kimono, moist hair, a fevered face, a soft mouth. She waited. The expectancy in her was so intense that her hands fell to her sides, and the kimono opened and revealed her completely naked body.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Sir Thopas Heere bigynneth Chaucers Tale of Thopas THE FIRST FIT Listen carefully, please, to me And I will tell the company A funny little story. At some time in history There was a knight and gent Good at battle and at tournament. What was his name? Sir Thopas. He lived in a far, no, distant country Not very near the sea. He dwelled in a city called Hamelin Famous for its porcelain. His father was a rich man, and grand. In fact he ruled the entire land. What was his name? I don’t know. Now Sir Thopas was a brave knight. His hair was black, his face was bright. His lips were red as a carnation. But then so was his complexion. I could have said, red as a rose, But I will confine that to his nose. How big was his nose? Enormous. His hair was as yellow as mustard paste, And he wore it right down to his waist. His shoes were from the Vendôme And his clothes were made in Rome. They were so expensive That his father looked pensive. How much did they cost? Thousands. He could hunt for wild rabbit And had acquired the habit Of hawking for game. He could wrestle and tame The most ferocious ox. He could whip the bollocks Off any contestant. He was no maiden aunt. There were many young virgins Happy to slake his urgings When they should have been asleep. But he did not so much as peep At them. He was chaste as a lily And stayed so willy-nilly. So it befell that on one morning Just as the light was dawning Sir Thopas rode out on his steed In hope of doing daring deeds. He held his lancet like a lord, And by his side there hung a sword. He made his way through forests dark Where wolves howl and wild dogs bark. He himself was after game, Which once more I rhyme with tame. But listen while I tell you more Of how Sir Thopas almost swore With vexation. Around him sprang weeds of every sort, The flea-bane and the meadow-wort. Here were the rose and primrose pale, And nutmeg seeds to put in ale Whether it be fresh or stale Or only good as slops in pail. The birds were singing sweetly enough, Among the nightingales a chough. Was that a chaffinch on the wing, Or was it a dove just chattering? He heard a swallow sing on high, And then a parrot perched near by. What a lot of noise! And when he heard the birdies sing He was filled with love longing. He spurred on his horse Over briar and gorse Until the beast was sweating. It looked like it had been rutting With a mare. Thopas himself was exhausted. He got down from his quadruped And lay stretched on the ground.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  sentimental.” • • • I could hardly sleep that night. Neither could Brian. From time to time, he’d break the silence by announcing that in seven hours I’d be leaving Welch, in six hours I’d be leaving Welch, and we’d both start cracking up. I fell asleep only to be woken at first light by Brian, who, like Mom, wasn’t an early riser. He was tugging at my arm. “No more joking about it,” he said. “In two hours, you’ll be gone.” Dad hadn’t come home that night, but when I climbed through the back window with my suitcase, I saw him sitting at the bottom of the stone steps, smoking a cigarette. He insisted on carrying the suitcase for me, and we set off down Little Hobart Street and around the Old Road. The empty streets were damp. Every now and then Dad would look over at me and wink, or make a tocking sound with his tongue as if I were a horse and he was urging me on. It seemed to make him feel like he was doing what a father should, plucking up his daughter’s courage, helping her face the terrors of the unknown. When we got to the station, Dad turned to me. “Honey, life in New York may not be as easy as you think it’s going to be.” “I can handle it,” I told him. Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out his favorite jackknife, the one with the horn handle and the blade of blue German steel that we’d used for Demon Hunting. “I’ll feel better knowing you have this.” He pressed the knife into my hand. The bus turned down the street and stopped with a hiss of compressed air in front of the Trailways station. The driver opened up the luggage compartment and slid my suitcase in next to the others. I hugged Dad. When our cheeks touched, and I breathed in his smell of tobacco, Vitalis, and whiskey, I realized he’d shaved for me. “If things don’t work out, you can always come home,” he said. “I’ll be here for you. You know that, don’t you?” “I know.” I knew that in his way, he would be. I also knew I’d never be coming back. Only a few passengers were on the bus, so I got a good seat next to a window. The driver closed the door, and we pulled out. At first I resolved not to turn around. I wanted to look ahead to where I was going, not back at what I was leaving, but then I turned anyway.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “Great. How about next week?” Vix laughed. “I can’t take off whenever I want. Maybe next summer. If you’re still there. I need to save up some money first.” “I’ll send you a ticket.” “No ... don’t.” “Same old Vix.” But she wasn’t the same old Vix. She wasn’t fourteen anymore, or even seventeen. She’d graduated from Harvard, survived a year in the city on her own, a year of working for Dinah Renko. It was true she’d grown bored at Squire-Oates. Last week she’d tried speaking to Dinah about her job, but Dinah hadn’t been in a listening mood. “Your generation hasn’t learned to pay its dues, Victoria,” she’d said. “Just because you have a Harvard degree doesn’t mean you can run the company.” “I don’t want to run the company. I just want to try something besides editing the Captains of Industry. It’s been a year. You told me when I first interviewed there would be opportunities.” Dinah had gained twenty pounds since they’d first met, but it showed only in her face and upper body. She’d taken to wearing short skirts with tunics and Vix wondered how she kept from toppling over in the three- inch red heels she favored to show off her legs, her best feature. She had two young children, both in private school, and a husband who’d lost his job in publishing and was now at home trying to write a novel. Once, when she’d brought the kids to work, she’d dumped them on Vix. “I’m sure you can find a way to amuse them,” she’d said. They’d wrecked the place in an hour. “This job is an opportunity!” Dinah’s voice rose. “Working with me is an opportunity! But not if you’re without patience.” She was not without patience but by now she knew Dinah was never going to set her free. And moving to Seattle wasn’t the answer. The next morning on her way to work Vix stopped to listen to the Bag Lady on the corner of Fifty-sixth and Sixth as she sang her version of “Lullaby of Broadway,” substituting Timbuktu for ballyhoo. When Vix dropped a few coins into her cup, the Bag Lady looked directly at her and nodded. For the first time Vix saw the person inside the beggar. She

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “When are you coming back?” “I don’t know.” “For the holidays?” “They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here.” “Christmas?” “Phoebe’s coming for Christmas.” “Then when?” “Maybe never.” “Don’t say that.” Caitlin’s voice turned low, seductive. “Do you miss me?” “You know I do.” “I miss you, too. Is Harvard all it’s supposed to be?” “It’s tough, if that’s what you mean. I’m just trying to keep up.” “What about Bru?” “What about him?” “Do you get to see each other?” “We talk on the phone.” “Is that enough?” “What do you think?” Every time she heard Caitlin’s voice she felt an ache, a longing for something, she didn’t know what. Even though it was almost a relief to be on her own with no one looking over her shoulder, no one questioning her every move, she missed her. To Vix she was still Caitlin Somers, the Most Influential Person in My Life. “Does she have to call in the middle of the night?” Maia asked. “I need my sleep. I can’t function with less than seven hours. Could you please tell her she’s not just waking you, she’s waking me, too.” But the next time Caitlin called and Vix asked if she could call before eleven P.M. Caitlin said, “Overnight rates are less expensive. I’m on a budget, you know. I’m learning to manage my money.” “You’re serious?” Vix asked. “Of course I’m serious.” “Okay ... I’ll try to explain that to my roommate.”

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  But I told her I looked like I was wearing a big pillowcase with elephant trunks sticking out of the sides. Lori refused to wear hers outdoors, or even indoors, and Mom had to agree that sewing wasn’t the best use of our creative energy—or our money. The cheapest cloth we could find cost seventy-nine cents a yard, and you needed more than two yards for a dress. It made more sense to buy thrift-store clothes, and they had the armholes in the right places. Mom also tried to make the house cheerful. She decorated the living room walls with her oil paintings, and soon every square inch was covered, except for the space above her typewriter reserved for index cards. We had vivid desert sunsets, stampeding horses, sleeping cats, snow-covered mountains, bowls of fruit, blooming flowers, and portraits of us kids. Since Mom had more paintings than we had wall space, Dad nailed long shelf brackets to the wall, and she hung one picture in front of another until they were three or four deep. Then she’d rotate the paintings. “Just a little redecorating to perk the place up,” she’d say. But I believed she thought of her paintings as children and wanted them to feel that they were all being treated equally. Mom also built rows of shelves in the windows and arranged brightly colored bottles to catch the light. “Now it looks like we have stained glass,” she announced. It did, sort of, but the house was still cold and dank. Every night for the first few weeks, lying on my cardboard mattress and listening to the sound of rainwater dripping in the kitchen, I dreamed of the desert and the sun and the big house in Phoenix with the palm tree in the front and the orange trees and oleanders in the back. We had owned that house outright. Still owned it, I kept thinking. It was ours, the one true home we’d ever had. “Are we ever going home?” I asked Dad one day. “Home?” “Phoenix.” “This is home now.” SEEING AS HOW WELCH was our new home, Brian and I figured we’d make the best of it. Dad had shown us the spot near the house where we were going to put the foundation and basement for the Glass Castle. He’d measured it off and marked it with stakes and string. Since Dad was hardly ever home—he was out making contacts and investigating the UMW, he told us—and never got around to breaking ground, Brian and I decided to help. We found a shovel and pickax at an abandoned farm and spent just about every free minute digging a hole. We knew we had to dig it big and deep. “No point in building a good house unless you put down the right foundation,” Dad always said. It was hard work, but after a month we’d dug a hole deep enough for us to disappear in.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  La puerta de su habitación está abierta y puedo ver su cama directamente al frente, la cabecera contra la pared opuesta mientras me dirijo hacia su habitación. Cada vez que he pasado por aquí para darme una ducha esta última semana, se sintió extraño. Estar sola en su habitación. No fisgoneo, pero es tentador. Su cama siempre está hecha. Unas sábanas acomodadas descuidadamente en un apuro, pero no puedo evitar estar un poco sorprendida. Sino fuera por mi madrastra, la cama de mi padre nunca estaría hecha. Dirigiéndome hacia al baño, veo las fotografías de Cole, retratos desde su nacimiento hasta su último año alineadas en el marco del espejo de su tocador. Una pantalla plana cuelga de la pared, el cable eléctrico está colgando y desconectado. El modelo de un barco está sobre su cómoda con solo con una fina capa de polvo sobre las velas blancas. Y un reloj viejo con una desgastada correa de piel que nunca lo he visto ponerse está sobre un plato en su cómoda. No hay otra joyería en ningún otro lugar. Además de la cama, las dos cómodas, la televisión y las mesitas de noche, la habitación es minimalista. Nada en las paredes, por supuesto, una lámpara negra con una pantalla gris y la fuerte luz de la tarde filtrándose a través de las grietas en las persianas parcialmente abiertas. Odio que viviera aquí solo durante tanto tiempo. Alguien necesita alegrar un poco este lugar. No mi hermana. Cerrando la puerta del baño detrás de mí, la bloqueo y estiro mi brazo hacia la ducha, abriendo el agua. Dejo mi cambio de ropa en el mostrador del lavabo y me desnudo, sacando una toalla del armario y colgándola en el gancho afuera de la regadera. ¿Ya estás celosa? Sacudo mi cabeza, mi ira despierta de nuevo mientras entro en la regadera y cierro la puerta de cristal. No estoy celosa. Simplemente no quiero verla mangoneándolo como sé que definitivamente puede hacerlo. Mayormente es un juego para mi hermana y esconde sus inseguridades detrás de un comportamiento caprichoso y sarcasmo. Pike no es así. Necesita a alguien tranquilo. Alguien que sepa cómo mantenerlo tranquilo. Alguien que pueda envolver sus brazos alrededor de su cuello y hacer que el resto del mundo desaparezca.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  que él creyó todo lo que salió de su boca, que ella era la víctima en cada situación, y yo era el enemigo. Ella no podía equivocarse, y yo no podía hacer nada bien. Después de un tiempo, decidí estar allí para él. Con el tiempo se dará cuenta, y lo superaremos. Verá a través de sus mentiras, y solo necesito esperar. Sin importar cuánta paciencia vaya a necesitar o las discusiones, mientras tanto. Al menos Jordan es bastante buena. Será un buen amortiguador entre nosotros. Incluso si casi me caigo de culo cuando descubrí quién era. Cierro los ojos, apoyo el dorso de mi mano sobre mis ojos y pienso en esa noche. Me divertí saliendo con ella en el cine. Sus respuestas, su humor, lo fácil que fue hablar con ella... La forma en que se relajó a mi lado durante la película fue tan jodidamente cómodo y natural. La forma en que su sonrisa se sintió en mí... No la habría invitado a salir. Es demasiado joven y sabía que tenía novio. Pero fue difícil no pensar en la idea por un momento. Ella es genial. Y luego, cuando descubrí quién era, casi me enojé. Recuerdo haberla escuchado durante esa llamada telefónica y apretar los dientes con tanta fuerza que me dolió la mandíbula al darme cuenta. Estaba enojado, porque en ese momento estaba celoso de mi hijo. Estaba celoso de cualquier chico que tuviera diecinueve años y tuviera la oportunidad de estar con ella. Su piel perfecta y su nariz respingona. Su magnífico labio inferior que creo que me atrapó mirándolo. La forma en que inclinó la cabeza hacia atrás, levantó los pies, y podía estar simplemente a mi lado. Todo se sintió fácil. Pero la chica de mis sueños está fuera de los límites. Es de Cole, y tiene diecinueve años. No hay forma. Es una niña, y mis pensamientos breves y sórdidos permanecerán escondidos en mi cabeza. Mi teléfono vibra sobre la mesita de noche, extiendo la mano y lo agarro, mirando la pantalla. Y gimo. Ahora no. Pero deslizo el botón verde de todos modos y cierro los ojos, sosteniendo el teléfono en la oreja.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  I dare say that if she had been a mouse, and he a cat, he would have pounced straight away. He would have been the cat who got the cream. He was so lost in love and longing that, when he went around with the collection bowl, he would not take a penny from any of the young women. Out of courtesy, he said. I think he was in a daze. Excuse me - At this point the Miller stopped, and refreshed himself with some ale; he put the flagon to his lips, and almost choked on it. The sound of his coughing and retching was horrible. But then he resumed his tale. That night, under the light of the full moon, Absolon took up his guitar; he fully expected to stay awake all night for the sake of love. So he wandered abroad, amorous and willing, and made his way to the house of the carpenter. Just before dawn, at the crowing of the cock, he stood beneath one of the casement windows. There he began softly to play the guitar and to sing this accompaniment: ‘Now, dear lady, if it pleases you, have pity on me.’ But his voice woke up the carpenter, who turned to his wife lying beside him. ‘Alison,’ he said. ‘Wake up. Can you hear the voice of Absolon? He is singing right beneath the window.’ All she said was, ‘Yes, John, I hear him. I hear him very clearly.’ So, as you would expect, matters took their course. Absolon, the unsuccessful wooer, becomes deeply unhappy. He fritters away the day and stays awake

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

  Foucault’s theory of sexuality offered in The History of Sexuality, Volume I is in some ways contradicted by his short but significant introduction to the journals he published of Herculine Barbin, a nineteenth-century French hermaphrodite. Herculine was assigned the sex of “female” at birth. In h/er early twenties, after a series of confessions to doctors and priests, s/he was legally compelled to change h/er sex to “male.” The journals that Foucault claims to have found are published in this collection, along with the medical and legal documents that discuss the basis on which the designation of h/er “true” sex was decided. A satiric short story by the German writer, Oscar Panizza, is also included. Foucault supplies an introduction to the English translation of the text in which he questions whether the notion of a true sex is necessary. At first, this question appears to be continuous with the critical genealogy of the category of “sex” he offers toward the conclusion of the first volume of The History of Sexuality.17 However, the journals and their introduction offer an occasion to consider Foucault’s reading of Herculine against his theory of sexuality in The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Although he argues in The History of Sexuality that sexuality is coextensive with power, he fails to recognize the concrete relations of power that both construct and condemn Herculine’s sexuality. Indeed, he appears to romanticize h/er world of pleasures as the “happy limbo of a non-identity” (xiii), a world that exceeds the categories of sex and of identity. The reemergence of a discourse on sexual difference and the categories of sex within Herculine’s own autobiographical writings will lead to an alternative reading of Herculine against Foucault’s romanticized appropriation and refusal of her text. In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Foucault argues that the univocal construct of “sex” (one is one’s sex and, therefore, not the other) is (a) produced in the service of the social regulation and control of sexuality and (b) conceals and artificially unifies a variety of disparate and unrelated sexual functions and then (c) postures within discourse as a cause, an interior essence which both produces and renders intelligible all manner of sensation, pleasure, and desire as sex-specific. In other words, bodily pleasures are not merely causally reducible to this ostensibly sex-specific essence, but they become readily interpretable as manifestations or signs of this “sex.”18

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

  The significant difference between Foucault’s position in the first volume of The History of Sexuality and in his introduction to Herculine Barbin is already to be found as an unresolved tension within the History of Sexuality itself (he refers there to “bucolic” and “innocent” pleasures of intergenerational sexual exchange that exist prior to the imposition of various regulative strategies [31]). On the one hand, Foucault wants to argue that there is no “sex” in itself which is not produced by complex interactions of discourse and power, and yet there does seem to be a “multiplicity of pleasures” in itself which is not the effect of any specific discourse/power exchange. In other words, Foucault invokes a trope of prediscursive libidinal multiplicity that effectively presupposes a sexuality “before the law,” indeed, a sexuality waiting for emancipation from the shackles of “sex.” On the other hand, Foucault officially insists that sexuality and power are coextensive and that we must not think that by saying yes to sex we say no to power. In his anti-juridical and anti-emancipatory mode, the “official” Foucault argues that sexuality is always situated within matrices of power, that it is always produced or constructed within specific historical practices, both discursive and institutional, and that recourse to a sexuality before the law is an illusory and complicitous conceit of emancipatory sexual politics. The journals of Herculine provide the opportunity to read Foucault against himself, or, perhaps more appropriately, to expose the constitutive contradiction of this kind of antiemancipatory call for sexual freedom. Herculine, called Alexina throughout the text, narrates a story about h/er tragic plight as one who lives a life of unjust victimization, deceit, longing, and inevitable dissatisfaction. From the time s/he was a young girl, s/he reports, s/he was different from the other girls. This difference is a cause for alternating states of anxiety and self-importance through the story, but it is there as tacit knowledge before the law becomes an explicit actor in the story. Although Herculine does not report directly on h/er anatomy in the journals, the medical reports that Foucault publishes along with Herculine’s own text suggest that Herculine might reasonably be said to have what is described as either a small penis or an enlarged clitoris, that where one might expect to find a vagina one finds a “cul-de-sac,” as the doctors put it, and, further, that she doesn’t appear to have identifiably female breasts. There seems also to be some capacity for ejaculation that is not fully accounted for within the medical documents. Herculine never refers to anatomy as such, but relates h/er predicament in terms of a natural mistake, a metaphysical homelessness, a state of insatiable desire, and a radical solitariness that, before h/er suicide, is transformed into a full-blown rage, first directed toward men, but finally toward the world as such.

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

  In the case of the incest taboo, Lacan argues that desire (as opposed to need) is instituted through that law. “Intelligible” existence within the terms of the Symbolic requires both the institutionalization of desire and its dissatisfaction, the necessary consequence of the repression of the original pleasure and need associated with the maternal body. This full pleasure that haunts desire as that which it can never attain is the irrecoverable memory of pleasure before the law. Lacan is clear that that pleasure before the law is only fantasized, that it recurs in the infinite phantasms of desire. But in what sense is the phantasm, itself forbidden from the literal recovery of an original pleasure, the constitution of a fantasy of “originality” that may or may not correspond to a literal libidinal state? Indeed, to what extent is such a question decidable within the terms of Lacanian theory? A displacement or substitution can only be understood as such in relation to an original, one which in this case can never be recovered or known. This speculative origin is always speculated about from a retrospective position, from which it assumes the character of an ideal. The sanctification of this pleasurable “beyond” is instituted through the invocation of a Symbolic order that is essentially unchangeable.49 Indeed, one needs to read the drama of the Symbolic, of desire, of the institution of sexual difference as a self-supporting signifying economy that wields power in the marking off of what can and cannot be thought within the terms of cultural intelligibility. Mobilizing the distinction between what is “before” and what is “during” culture is one way to foreclose cultural possibilities from the start. The “order of appearances,” the founding temporality of the account, as much as it contests narrative coherence by introducing the split into the subject and the fêlure into desire, reinstitutes a coherence at the level of temporal exposition. As a result, this narrative strategy, revolving upon the distinction between an irrecoverable origin and a perpetually displaced present, makes all effort at recovering that origin in the name of subversion inevitably belated. 3 SUBVERSIVE BODILY ACTSDOI: 10.4324/9780203824979-3

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  We are subject to the bad aspects of Saturn, in the turning of the spheres, and cannot escape our destiny. What is the saying? “He must need swim that is borne up to the chin.” So stood the heavens on the day that we were born. We must endure.’ Palamon answered him, shaking his head. ‘Cousin, you have received the wrong impression of my woe. It was not our confinement that made me cry out. My new torment entered my heart through my eye, where very likely it will kill me. I am woeful because of her. With the flowers. Below us.’ He went over to the window again, and looked down at Emily. ‘The fairness of this lady that I see, walking to and fro through the castle garden, is the cause of all my pain and lamentation. I cannot tell whether she is a woman or a goddess. My guess is that she is Venus, come to earth.’ Thereupon he fell to his knees and prayed aloud. ‘Venus, great goddess, if it be your will to reveal yourself in this garden before me, a wretched and sorrowful creature, I beseech you to deliver us from this dark prison. Yet if it be my destiny to remain in durance vile, imprisoned by divine decree, then turn your piteous eye upon my family that has been brought so low by tyranny.’ And as he prayed Arcite walked over to the window and beheld Emily wandering in the garden. The sight of her beauty affected him so greatly that, if Palamon had been wounded, Arcite almost expired. He sighed deeply, and could not refrain from speaking out. ‘This perfect beauty, this vision of her that walks within the garden, has slain me suddenly. Unless I obtain her mercy and her grace, unless at the very least I am permitted to see her, I am as good as dead. There is nothing else to say.’ When Palamon heard his complaint, he became angry. ‘Are you serious? Or is this a joke?’ ‘I am in deadly earnest. God help me, I have no reason to play.’ ‘It does not reflect well on your honour, you know, to be false and treacherous to your cousin.’ He was frowning at Arcite as he spoke. ‘We have both sworn deep oaths that we would never cross each other in love, and would each seek our common good. We have both sworn that we would rather die under torture than oppose or hinder one another. We would remain true till death do us part. That was my oath. I presume that it was yours. I don’t think you will deny it. But now what has happened? You are aware of my love for the lady in the garden, but you have decided that you also wish to be her lover. No chance. I will love and serve this lady until the day of my death. That will not be your fate, Arcite, I swear it!

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Kathy and Ginnie Sue were also working on the bird, but soon they stopped to watch me. From the tail, I pulled that nice piece of meat that everybody misses. I turned the carcass upside down and scraped off the jellied fat and meat flecks with my fingernails. I stuck my arm elbow-deep into the bird to excavate any meat clinging to the rib cage. “Girl,” Ginnie Sue said, “in all my days, I have never seen no one pick a chicken clean like you.” I held up the spear-shaped cartilage in the breast bone, which most people don’t eat, and bit down with a satisfying crunch. Ginnie Sue scraped the meat into a bowl, mixed it with mayonnaise and Cheez Whiz, then crushed a handful of potato chips and added them. She spread the mixture onto two slices of Wonder bread, then rolled each slice into a cylinder and passed them to us. “Birds in a blanket,” she said. They tasted great. “Mama, Jeannette lived in California,” Kathy said. “That so?” Ginnie Sue said. “Live in California and be a stewardess, that was my dream.” She sighed. “Never got beyond Bluefield.” I told her and Kathy about life in California. It quickly became clear they had no interest in desert mining towns, so I told them about San Francisco and then about Las Vegas, which wasn’t exactly in California, but they didn’t seem to care. I made the days we had spent there seem like years, and the showgirls I’d seen from a distance seem like close friends and neighbors. I described the glittering casinos and the glamorous high rollers, the palm trees and the swimming pools, the hotels with ice-cold air-conditioning and the restaurants where hostesses with long white gloves lit flaming desserts. “It don’t get no better than that!” Ginnie Sue said. “No, ma’am, it sure don’t,” I told her. Sweet Man came in crying, and Ginnie Sue picked him up and let him suck some mayonnaise off her finger. “You did good on that bird,” Ginnie Sue told me. “You strike me as the kind of girl who’s one day going to be eating roast chicken and those on-fire desserts just as much as you want.” She winked. It was only on the way home that I realized I hadn’t gotten answers to any of my questions. While I was sitting there talking to Ginnie Sue, I’d even forgotten she was a whore. One thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table. WE FOUGHT A LOT in Welch. Not just to fend off our enemies but to fit in.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I wanted to be back in Phoenix, sitting under the orange trees behind our adobe house, riding my bike to the library, eating free bananas in a school where the teachers thought I was smart. I wanted to feel the desert sun on my face and breathe in the dry desert air and climb the steep rock mountains while Dad led us on one of the long hikes that he called geological survey expeditions. I asked if we could all go, but Dad said he and Mom were making a quick trip, strictly business, and we kids would only get in the way. Besides, he couldn’t go taking us out of school in the middle of the year. I pointed out that it had never bothered him before. Welch wasn’t like those other places we had lived, he said. There were rules that had to be followed, and people didn’t take it kindly when you flouted them. “Do you think they’ll come back?” Brian asked as Mom and Dad drove off. “Of course,” I said, though I had been wondering the same thing. These days we seemed more of an inconvenience than we used to be. Lori was already a teenager, and in a couple of years, Brian and I would be, too. They couldn’t toss us into the back of a U-Haul or put us in cardboard boxes at night. Brian and I started running after the Oldsmobile. Mom turned once and waved, and Dad stuck his hand out the window. We followed them all the way down Court Street, where they picked up speed and then turned the corner. I had to believe they’d come back, I told myself. If I didn’t believe, then they might not return. They might leave us forever. • • • After Mom and Dad left, Erma became even more cantankerous. If she didn’t like the look on our faces, she would hit us on the head with a serving spoon. Once she pulled out a framed photograph of her father and told us he was the only person who had ever loved her. She talked on and on about how much she’d suffered as an orphan at the hands of her aunts and uncles who hadn’t treated her half as kindly as she was treating us. About a week after Mom and Dad left, we kids were all sitting in Erma’s living room watching TV. Stanley was sleeping in the foyer. Erma, who’d been drinking since before breakfast, told Brian that his britches needed mending. He started to take them off, but Erma said she didn’t want him running around the house in his skivvies or with a towel wrapped around him looking like he was wearing a goddamn dress. It would be easier for her to mend the britches while he was still wearing them. She ordered him to follow her into Grandpa’s bedroom, where she kept her sewing kit.

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

  Someone once said to me, “I am trying to learn to stay in the now—not the last now, not the next now; this now.” Which “now” do your characters dwell in? What are your characters teaching their children by example and by indoctrination? For instance, I was teaching Sam peace chants for a long time, when he was only two. It was during the war in the Persian Gulf; I was a little angry. “What do we want?” I’d call to Sam. “Peace,” he’d shout dutifully. “And when do we want it?” I’d ask. “Now!” he’d say, and I’d smile and toss him a fish. The words were utterly meaningless to him, of course. I might as well have taught him to reply “Spoos!” instead of “Peace” and “August!” instead of “Now.” My friends loved it, though; all three of his grandparents loved it. Now, how much does this say about me and my longings? I think something like this would tell a reader more about a character than would three pages of description. It would tell us about her current politics and the political tradition from which she sprang, her people-pleasing, her longing for peace and her longing to belong, her way of diluting rage and frustration with humor, while also using her child as a prop, a little live Charlie McCarthy. The latter is horrifying, but it’s also sort of poignant. Maybe thirty-five years ago this woman had to perform for her parents’ friends. Maybe she was their little Charlie McCarthy. Maybe she and her therapist can discuss it for the next few months. And did this woman stop using her kid, once she realized what she was doing? No, she didn’t, and this tells us even more. She kept at it, long after the war was over, until one day she called to her three-and-a-half-year-old son, “Hey—what do we want?” And he said plaintively, “Lunch.” I once asked Ethan Canin to tell me the most valuable thing he knew about writing, and without hesitation he said, “Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.” I think he’s right. If your narrator is someone whose take on things fascinates you, it isn’t really going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time. I could watch John Cleese or Anthony Hopkins do dishes for about an hour without needing much else to happen. Having a likable narrator is like having a great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running commentary totally holds your attention, who makes you laugh out loud, whose lines you always want to steal. When you have a friend like this, she can say, “Hey, I’ve got to drive up to the dump in Petaluma—wanna come along?” and you honestly can’t think of anything in the world you’d rather do.

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

  Someone once said to me, “I am trying to learn to stay in the now—not the last now, not the next now; this now.” Which “now” do your characters dwell in? What are your characters teaching their children by example and by indoctrination? For instance, I was teaching Sam peace chants for a long time, when he was only two. It was during the war in the Persian Gulf; I was a little angry. “What do we want?” I’d call to Sam. “Peace,” he’d shout dutifully. “And when do we want it?” I’d ask. “Now!” he’d say, and I’d smile and toss him a fish. The words were utterly meaningless to him, of course. I might as well have taught him to reply “Spoos!” instead of “Peace” and “August!” instead of “Now.” My friends loved it, though; all three of his grandparents loved it. Now, how much does this say about me and my longings? I think something like this would tell a reader more about a character than would three pages of description. It would tell us about her current politics and the political tradition from which she sprang, her people-pleasing, her longing for peace and her longing to belong, her way of diluting rage and frustration with humor, while also using her child as a prop, a little live Charlie McCarthy. The latter is horrifying, but it’s also sort of poignant. Maybe thirty-five years ago this woman had to perform for her parents’ friends. Maybe she was their little Charlie McCarthy. Maybe she and her therapist can discuss it for the next few months. And did this woman stop using her kid, once she realized what she was doing? No, she didn’t, and this tells us even more. She kept at it, long after the war was over, until one day she called to her three-and-a-half-year-old son, “Hey—what do we want?” And he said plaintively, “Lunch.” I once asked Ethan Canin to tell me the most valuable thing he knew about writing, and without hesitation he said, “Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better.” I think he’s right. If your narrator is someone whose take on things fascinates you, it isn’t really going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time. I could watch John Cleese or Anthony Hopkins do dishes for about an hour without needing much else to happen. Having a likable narrator is like having a great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running commentary totally holds your attention, who makes you laugh out loud, whose lines you always want to steal. When you have a friend like this, she can say, “Hey, I’ve got to drive up to the dump in Petaluma—wanna come along?” and you honestly can’t think of anything in the world you’d rather do.