Hi Liz,

I meant to reply to your excellent post much sooner but have been out of town and not posting for several days. And I've ended up answering your email to David B when I meant to answer your earlier post, just because it's the only one left in my box.

I agree with so much of what you had about how this split of the head from the body has such cultural consequences. It is often the animosity that fuels the science/art conflict, an animosity which itself originates in the original assumption that what is impersonal and objective, i.e., of the head alone, is of more value. A valuation which grants distinction to the 'hard' sciences as opposed to the 'soft' arts. In a sense, though, it seems to me to permeate our culture, it is very difficult to find any division which is often a locus of violence and conflict that doesn't reflect this in some way.

Well thanks for the post, it's very interesting.

Best,

Rebecca

Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
 -------Original Message-------
From: Liz Kirby <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 04/10/03 06:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Simone Weil/what it takes to read a poem

>
> I dont agree that talking about gender means open debate goes out of the
window Dave. My experience is exactly the opposite - 'open debate' is
closed (certainly to me!) if gender isnt on the agenda.

Liz

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
> poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of david.bircumshaw
> Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 1:44 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Simone Weil/what it takes to read a poem
>
>
> I agree with much of what you say here, Liz, but have my reservations
too.
> What I'm uneasy about is gender categories as a focus for the
> discussion of
> poetry, if group labels become a focus for such then open debate
> goes out of
> the window, I can think of many examples from my own experience
> where women
> have abused other women, although I agree about the generally
> male tenor of
> sexism in our culture and society. One of the little points in my
> poem 'The
> Cloud' y'know is that the 'Muse' is +not+ passive, she is actually very
> violent and destructive. Not so much a receptacle as a figure of fear.
>
> Anyhow, here's my parodic flaunt on group categories
>
>                              THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WEST
>
> by Professor the Reverend D.Bircumshaw Esq.
>
> The reality of Western culture is that it is predicated on a prejudice
> against people from Mansfield. Although I have ransacked the libraries
and
> records of our culture I can find no reference to this wonderful
> town in any
> imaginative art. I have perused Dostoevsky, peered at Shakespeare,
probed
> Joyce, interrogated Gertrude Stein, sat up late with Dante, combed
through
> the compendiums of LANGUAGE poetry, listened with care to the
Symbolists,
> and asked George Eliot in vain. But everywhere there is silence on
> Mansfield. Not even in redactions of the legends of Robin Hood is it
> mentioned, although Sherwood Forest was but close by. My belief is that
> there is a deliberate cultural conspiracy to suppress the
> existence of this
> town which artists throughout the generations have collaborated in.
>
>
> Best ( with a wink)
>
> Dave
>
>
> David Bircumshaw
>
> Leicester, England
>
> Home Page
>
> A Chide's Alphabet
>
> Painting Without Numbers
>
> <a target=_blank
href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm</a>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Liz Kirby" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 12:30 PM
> Subject: Re: Simone Weil/what it takes to read a poem
>
>
> Rebecca
> > The disdain for the body is, I think,
> > one of the fundamentals of Western culture. It's in all those myths,
> > both Biblical and Greek where the head is severed from the body.
> > The belief in detached reason, the disembodied eye/I, the body
> > abandoned without the means of speech, hearing, or sight.
>
> this is a very fundamental problem that preoccupies me a lot!  I think
you
> are exactly right that there is a severence at the very heart of Western
> culture.  The most dramatic expressions of it are to be found in myths
and
> in theology (St Paul, St Augustine!) but it is also at the base of the
way
> we perceive knowlege too - the whole structure and practice of
'science',
> the perception of the body in 'medicene'.........
>
> It is a 'splitting off' that is immensely destructive as your
description
> makes clear - the body rendered dumb/blind/deaf, suspended in a
flotation
> chamber and denied the means of expression because it is defined and
> experienced precisely at that which is incohate and idiotic.
> What a massive
> mistake that is!
>
> I keep seeing all kinds of connections here - horror at the bodies
> functions, the drive to both split off, feminise and idealise a
> 'muse' which
> Alision has been talking about, the ability to concieve and use a
> technology
> of war.  These are closely connected.  Since women's bodies so visibly
> refuse to be silenced (menstrual bleeding, preganacy, breast feeding
> .....)and since the defining terms of this way of percieving the world
are
> male, women become the repositories, the site over which the conflict is
> enacted.  And so we have the equation of the female body with the
abject,
> and the contradictory and impossible elevation of the female idea as a
> 'muse' or 'madonna'.  It is interesting that a 'muse' has to be
completely
> passive and receptive herself in order to function - she is
> simply a cypher
> for the (male) artist to resolve his horror/fascination. She
> makes the world
> a safe place _for him_ to create in - she herself is a screen on which
the
> contraditions are 'solved'.
>
> Not surprising that women have also been the source of a great deal of
> resistence to these ways of ..... being/perceiving/exisitng.  It
> isnt ideas
> that are at stake here - it is bodies, it is 'the real'
>
> Liz

>