T ( ) The enclosure, metamorphosis (magnification), emergence and transformation of She/Not I Catherine Linton MA Fine Art July 2013 For Sophie, 10 2 Abstract Humpty: When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.1 1 Robin Wilson, Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life, London: Penguin Group, 2008, p. 2. 3 She/Not I 2 —more than I—3 Is to be found here, In signs, Out of shape:4 π ⏐ ✩ ϕ ∞ *** ℵ ⎯ Code to test —bend, stretch, grab, let go, throw up, catch, drop, kick to one side, go, pick up, or not— What it is to be, —face, And the rest— Seen. Framed in art (as life). [girls make art, front stage, take notes] Four parts, To get to a T.5 1) She’s there, 2) Gets more clear, 3) Finds out how it is, 4) Comes to be,6 Infinite? 7 A proof in 5500 words,8 Might send a soul mad.9 Text is split,10 ⎯ Word weight, ⏐ Rows, Thin, Sinks, Climbs, A ground. Falls, ⎯ ⏐11 In voice, Read both, Plays, Skip, Beats.12 [some count more] Be Isis.13 2 Samuel Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, London: Faber & Faber, 1986, ‘Not I’ pp. 374-383. Beckett’s Not I performed by Lisa Dwan—tutored in the role by Billie Whitelaw who originally performed the part at its 1973 premiere—is an intense monologue, set in a pitch-black space lit by a single beam of light. A disembodied female mouth floats eight feet above the stage and delivers a stream of consciousness, spoken, as Beckett directed, at the speed of thought. 3 Hélène Cixous, The Hélène Cixous Reader, ed. by Susan Seller, New York: Routledge, 1994, p.xxi. Never ask who am I? Ask who are I? Who can say who I are, how many I are, which is the most I of my I’s? 4 Marion Woodman, Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride, A Psychological Study, Toronto: Inner City Books, 1982, p. 89. Jung believed that the healing was in the symbol, for the symbol brings, together body, mind and soul through the creative imagination. The poet in touch with the collective unconscious is given the exact symbol which, when read, brings goose flesh to our bodies, meaning to our minds, and tears to our eyes. 5 Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation, Toronto: Inner City Books, 1985, p. 101. Initiation ceremonies, in primitive tribes, in mystery cults and in the Christian Church, traditionally fall into three distinct phases: separation, transition and incorporation. Bruce Lincoln suggests that for women these phases are better described as, ‘enclosure, metamorphosis (or magnification), and emergence.’ 6 Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation, p. 30. Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain: ‘what is essential […] is not embedded in building, is not embedded in clothing, is not necessarily embedded even in a rule. It is somewhere along the line of something deeper than a rule. It is concerned with this business of total inner transformation.’ 7 Amir D. Aczel, The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, The Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity, New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000, p. 225. Is the universe finite or infinite? [...] Neither do physicists know whether actual physical space can be infinitesimally divided. Some theories posit the existence of a ‘smallest measure’ of space and time, related to the Planck time – a basic unit of measure. In string theory, there is an assumption about the existence of a smallest element, a time string, which cannot be subdivided. But physicists have no proof that such entities do indeed exist. We are therefore left with the open question of whether infinity has a meaning in the physical world. 8 Amir D. Aczel, The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, The Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity, p. 176. If I want to prove that A implies B, I must show it using a finite number of logical manipulations. My proof can be written on a page, 20 pages, or even 300 pages, but not an infinite number of pages […] If you infer that your argument relies on an infinite sequence of choices, then mathematicians may view your proof as problematic. 9 Amir D. Aczel, The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, The Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity, p. 198. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorum: ‘there will always be propositions that cannot be proven within the system. Even if a theorem is true, it may be mathematically impossible to prove.’ His ‘Russian doll’ analogy sought to prove whether there is a largest possible doll: ‘soon after he touched the forbidden concept of the alephs and actual infinity, Gödel—like Cantor a few decades earlier—began to exhibit symptoms of mental illness.’ 10 Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, London: Vintage Books, 2011, p.3. I was trying to get away from the received idea that women always write about ‘experiences’—the compass of what they know—while men write wide and bold – the big canvas, the experiment with form! […] In any case why could there not be experience and experiment? Why could there not be the observed and the imagined? 11 Hélène Cixous, The Hélène Cixous Reader, p. xvi. No one fragment carries the totality of the message, but each text (which is in itself a whole) has a particular urgency, an individual force, a necessity, and yet each text also has a force which comes to it from all the other texts. 12 Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1975, p. 8. ‘Is radio extended towards its highest possibilities. Yet it also made a most successful stage play.’ (Sunday Times) […]‘He was a crucible for the magic of words […] he strips from words their old used, dulling sleepiness, and gives them a refreshed and awakened meaning, a new percussion.’ (Dame Edith Sitwell) Dylan Thomas’s own description of his writing is as: ‘prose with blood-pressure.’ […] ‘If I had to choose one word to describe the quality that has ensured the survival of the play after the ordeal of translation, I would choose ‘vitality’ […] The play, whether heard in the mind or from a stage, is meant for the ear, which, unlike the eye, imposes no limits upon the imagination.’ (Daniel Jones, August 1974). 13 Hélène Cixous, The Hélène Cixous Reader, p. 213. Isis watches over the rites of passage through the gates, from death to life, from the book of the dead (mort(e)s) to the book of words (mots) for it is she who reunites the pieces of Osiris’ dismemberment, re-forms the body from all parts and from each part draws, shapes, invents an entire body. 4 Scene Voices14 Page 0 Opening Ritual Stonemason 6 Part 1: Enclosure 1 ….. 8 2 Men count Pythagoras,15 Woodman,16 Hippanus17, Euclid,18 Zeno of Elea19 9 - 12 3 The Shape I’m in She/Not I 13 Part 2: Metamorphosis (magnification) 4 Good ….. 15 - 17 5 Rabbit holes She/Not I 18 - 19 6 Two Faced Cow Janus #1, Janus #2, Freud,20 Rego,21 Kant22 20 - 21 7 Song of Two Freaks Cal,23 Barbin,24 Eliade,25 Cixous,26 She/Not I 22 - 23 8 She/Not I Reflects She/Not I 24 9 Fit Hambidge,27 Zeising28 25 - 26 10 He’s an Anima She/Not I 27 11 Camera Shy Schiele,29 Rodin,30 Mulvey31 28 - 29 12 A Lass and A Lack Cunnington,32 Galliano,33 McQueen,34 Lacan,35 Woodman, She/Not I 30 - 32 13 She’s Not My Type Eve, Magdalene, Athena, Medusa, Andromeda, Electra, Persephone, Eloa 33 - 35 14 Oh Mama Ma, She/Not I 36 - 37 15 Swing Galileo,36 She/Not I, Satan, Great Ma 38 - 39 16 Still Sophia, She/Not I 40 - 41 17 Down and Dirty Alchemist, She/Not I 42 18 Mid ….. 43 - 44 19 ⏐ Write H D,37 Calle,38 Cixous 45 14 Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, p. 170. I often hear voices. I realize that drops me in the crazy category but I don’t much care. If you believe, as I do, that the mind wants to heal itself, and that the psyche seeks coherence not disintegration then it isn’t hard to conclude that the mind will manifest whatever is necessary to work on the job […] But in the past, voices were respectable – desired. The visionary and the prophet, the shaman and the wise woman. And the poet, obviously. Hearing voices can be a good thing […] Going mad is the beginning of a process. It is not supposed to be the end result. 15 Pythagoras of Samos (569-520 BC): Philosopher, mathematician, mystic, scientist. 16 Marion Woodman (1928-): Canadian mythopoetic author, women’s movement figure, Jungian analyst. 17 Hippanus (5th century BC): Philosopher. 18 Euclid (circa. 300 BC): Greek mathematician. 19 Zeno of Elea (495-475 BC): Philosopher. 20 Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): Austrian neurologist, psychoanalyst. 21 Paula Rego (1935-): Portuguese born, British painter. 22 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): German philosopher. 23 Cal (1960-, 1974-): Hermaphrodite protagonist of Jeffrey Eugenides’, Middlesex. 24 Herculin Barbin (19th century): French hermaphrodite. 25 Mircea Eliade (1907-1986): Romanian historian, fiction writer, philosopher, professor. 26 Hélène Cixous (1937-): Professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher. 27 Jay Hambidge (1867-1924): Canadian born, American artist, proponent of dynamic symmetry. 28 Adolf Zeising (1810-1876): German psychologist, with interests in mathematics and philosophy.