Theoretical Poetry: What I Fail or Achieve
Agnes Cecile, Drawing Restraint, 2010
One assignment in my cultural theory class was to prepare a presentation that analyzed a text from a specific theorist. My text was Judith Butler's Performance Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Because most pedagogical systems are entrenched with syllabi outlining regurgitation and structure, the second part of the assignment was to write a reaction to your presentation... or...something along those lines. Basically, the directives translate as follows "now that you've expanded your mind and perception, confine your reflections and ideas into a small, compact space, similar to the spaces that theorists like Butler, Foucault and hooks work to tear down".
So... I completed the assignment and wrote the 500 words:
…Just give me an A+, Deneige
You know how lame this written part of the assignment is--
Forcing me to reiterate
What I have already worked hard at preparing
To present for (and in)
A classroom space that is open, one that prefers questions
To answers
And allows for words and language to breathe--
And then confine myself and
Box my ideas in even further
Into a five hundred word statement
(alright, I’m at seventy-one, not including these words)
That pretty much goes exactly against what JB is questioning
So like her, instead of being interested to tell you
About what I think my presentation did
I’m more interested in the undoing of it
And fuck containing my words into an analytical space
That just told myself and forty other students
Words that every ear needs to bleed with
From an explosive brain injection
Of a truth and voice so fundamental
For the marginalized individuals
Who want, need and deserve love
And to express it equally
Many of whom never have been ‘permitted’ to experience it
Or have to repress their desire for it
Or have been shamed for their expression of it
Or who have it, and somehow keep it hidden behind private walls
Or who are ‘lucky’ to experience it outwardly, in our oh so liberal country
Where we confuse ‘blessed’ or ‘lucky’ as synonymous with equality
Whatever the case, we are still forbidden
As if love is a material
That can be stripped from our hands and hearts
All because we inhabit
A “...[culture] that so readily punishes or marginalizes
Those who fail to perform the illusion of gender essentialism” (Butler 528).
Well. I presented. And people were relatively quiet
(I wonder why---maybe the end of class, or maybe they all just had their sexualities..er... I mean, minds rocked).
Regardless, I was still giddy and eager to present--
Judith Butler is amazing
And I had to hold back my urge to state
That I’m already a mild addict
I’ve certainly broken the skin
If I’m being clever with words...
And oooHHHhhhh
Is Judith Butler ever clever
I felt it difficult to articulate her poetic way with theory, her
circular
quotes casual opinions
ideas that float
seamlessly between paragraphs
pulling you from start to finish
realizing
that I’ve made a full circle
a full revolution
the quintessence of the word--
revolution
around and through
change
through and around
evolution
and I’m undone
and redone
and then choose to redo
and undo again
just as her silky, provoking thesis
weaves between and under
through and atop
her worded ideas
planting catalytic seeds
into the pores of wayward faces
dis-easing them from
the black and white
hegemonic binary
that is
sed
i
men
ted
deep within our cultural
sub-un-conscious real(ident)ities 1 2
__________________________
1. Inspired by the writing strategies (complexities) cultural theorists have used, my ‘theoretical poetry’ demands the reader’s time and acute attention to sit with and unfold the ideas, to work through the words and language and then to reflect. My resources were my presentation, Judith’s Butler’s text, and a bit of materiality re: Marx, dominance and love re: bell hooks, genotext and metalanguage re: Kristeva, and some ISA work re: Althusser, if you can find it.
2. I was chatting via Skype about the written component of this assignment with my best buddy, complaining out my frustrations. He helped me by riffing on creative ways to write the paper, and we got carried away and then: On 14-06-14, at 9:00 PM, M. Amirault wrote: but i should write a normal one. I might fail. lol
and that was the saddest thing I’ve ever written. Fuck fearing systems that tell me what I Fail or Achieve.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. “Performance Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal. 40:4. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1988. 519-531. Rpt. in SOCS 201 Introduction to Cultural Theory. Coursepack. Ed. Magnolia Pauker: Emily Carr Institute, 2014. Print.
