Irigaray. "The way of love" (New York, Continuum, 2002) trans. Bostik & Pluhacek

In Luce's preface to the english translation she defines (without defining) her mode of writing and how she sets her writing as 'discourse in real time'.  She is exemplifying philosophy in the feminine "where the values of intersubjectivity, of dialogue in difference, of attention to present life, in its concrete and sensible aspects ... raised to the level of wisdom" (viii-x).  She is in dialogue with Heidegger.

She finds for this project that "narrative and descriptive languages are no longer appropriate".  It is about making something "exist in the present and thus into the future".  She talks about "staging an encounter" between two who haven't yet meet in real time.  Through text we can do it.  "prepare a place of proximity".  I suppose it is drawing another being into yourself - Luce prepares the space within her.  That is gutsy territory ... but can be natural.  Don't women carries little life forms within them?  Luce meets in the womb ... in her own womb.  Drawing the discourse into the place which nurtures, begins, becomes, and births into the world.

She writes of four voices in her text.  Heideggers, her own, the reader, and her translators who shaped her words into language my mother spoke.  Its fascinating to think that I am one of her voices.  She includes me.  Once again I drawn, invited into a text in Luce's embrace - I have this opportunity to speak with her.

Tess of the D'urbervilles (London: BBC, 2008) dir. David Blair

Just watched the recent BBC version of Tess.  Very good though perhaps miscast in the male characters ... but believable enough to evoke a deep rising for justice outside of the perversity of societal norms and (hypocritical) 'biblical values' (the kind of biblical values that have been usurped by victorian society to serve only those who can afford their kind of morality and are a stick and a stain for the rest).  Thomas Hardy's portrayal of social injustice is breathtaking, deep and his anger at the hypocrisy of his society is palpable.  He is able to provoke his audience to forgo their common sense and rationality and see with their eyes.

Tess is the woman of the Song ... and probably lasts just as long.  A messiah snuffed out and forever youth and beauty... but her story entwined with Hardy's pen will echo for all our days.  He resonated for us.

Stigmata (1998, London: Routledge, xiv)

"I want stigmata.  I don't want the stigmata to disappear.  I am attached to my engraving, to the stings in my flesh and my mental parchment.  I do not fear that trauma and stigma will form an alliance:  the literature in me wants to maintain and reanimate traces."

Cixous compares stigmata to stigma (antisemitism), and to the stigma of the flower.  In the botanical stigma she senses recreation, resurrection.

Cixous Fest

Cixous writes like a lionness!!

You are born, you live; everyone does it, with an animal force of blindness.  Woe unto you if you want the human gaze, if you want to know what's happening to you. (Coming to writing, 1991, 6)

Thomas Hardy "Tess of the D'urbervilles"

Thomas Hardy's novel on a 'pure women' is provocative.  He seems to be able to see in a way that was completely contrary to the norms of his day.  I want to think more about his portrayal of Tess' struggle; his stunning ability to intuit her alterity.

Sappho

I now have Barnstone's translation of the poems of Sappho (Barnestone, "The complete poems of Sappho" Boston:  Shambhala, 2009) and will redirect my search to earthing out some other ancient feminine voices by which to compare Shulamith.

"In the wake of the Goddesses" Tikva Frymer-Kensky (1992)

Tikva Frymer-Kensky is an Assyriologist & Sumerologist.  Tikva writes a thorough (and balanced) resource on the ANE goddesses from the perspective of Israelite faith/s.  Interesting theses include the dismissal of the 'feminine-empowering' attributes of modern paganism that seeks to tie itself to a misinformed view of the function of goddesses in the ANE.  According to Tikva the Sumerian/Mesopotamian goddess myths were complicit in phallocentric ('patriarchal') culture of the day.  They did generally serve the status quo that involved public life that centred on men and private life where women (and the divine women) were attributed some limited conceptual ownership of childrearing, weaving, beer brewing (!!) and childbirth. Tikva's view that civilization was both awoken by women (who were placed to be the early technologists and scientists) and then diminished by it.  The growth of civilization and the proportional growth of misogyny (particular picking up speed in the greco-roman period) is terribly sad.

How does this help my search?

I'm thinking about the role of culture in the production of poetic and tolerable forms of struggle by women, Tikva's elucidation of the biblical laws of sexual purity certainly show removal from women at every level, ownership of their own sexuality (ownership belongs to either father, father & betrothed or husband - but never to the woman).  In this light, and in light of the grave punishment she may recieve, the Shulammite is courageous indeed (or a fool) and her statement "my vineyard is my own" is even more revolutionary.