On 16/3/05 8:25 AM, "Knut Mork Skagen" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I think you're oversimplifying the case (and am aware that you've since
> gone off to re-read, but felt like throwing myself into the discussion
> all the same). To state the obvious, writing is always about more than
> what it's about, and as the essay in question puts forth, this holds
> true for erotic literature as much as for any other. To me the most
> important issues put forth were not any attempts at constructing "a
> more mutually respectful social milieu" but explorations of identity
> and, crucially, language.
Quite, Knut; and thanks for your following comments. It's a perilous edge
that Sophie is walking, but it seems to me that she is clearly not intending
the fuzzy New Age thing of appropriating or patronising Indigenous poetries,
but attempting to examine what those uses of sexuality (which include
confronting elements like s&m, as resistant echoes and distortions of larger
violences) does in these poems. I just can't see the claims of moral
innocence or the reductive sensual=good business that Dominic does, but I
can see how sexuality enters certain writings in various ways as a political
protest and energy, and as human ambiguity and expressiveness. I also think
that Sophie is quite correct in taping misogyny, racism, homophobia and so
on as derivations of fear; homophobia and repressed homoeroticism go
together like, well, love and marriage and horses and carriages. But that's
another argument.
Also, pleasure is a much sneered at thing, and I like her upfront
privileging of it as a political protest. It's cheeky.
"Indigenous" is a term that indigenous peoples tend to prefer themselves,
certainly in my experiences of talking to Aboriginal writers. It's also a
way of more universally applying a larger identity of being colonised and
decultured, of recognising that Aboriginals, Native Americans, Pacific
Islanders, the Welsh and so on have certain things in common.
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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