Author: hochheij

The perception of gender and what gender entails in multiple aspects is a debate brought up in Judith Butler’s article titled, Gender Trouble. As I will be focusing my research through a feminist lens, Butler’s interpretations and ideas lend a helpful hand to my analysis of East Asian feminine literature. Although Butler presents her argument as gender being a form of construction, her research points out some interesting points on what society deems to be feminine actions and masculine actions. Consequently, it is the outward appearance and the way one puts oneself into society and how one wish to be perceived that ultimately defines gender and each individual.

I will continue to use Yoko Ogawa’s collection of Novellas, The Diving Pool, as my link to my research as I have mentioned it in previous blog posts, and it is the literature that originally inspired by thesis. Femininity, if we are talking about it in the sense of the heterosexual norm, is presented with the idea of having the ability to perform sexual actions with a male partner and presumably be attracted to males. According to Butler, this heterosexual norm is the socially accepted portrayal of the female body and the male body, in terms of outward appearances and presentation to the public. In Butler’s words, one of the “dimensions” of gender identity is “anatomical sex,” which can refer to either the act of sex, or the physical parameters that make up the male and female sexes. Either way, the defining terms of being female and/or male is determined almost completely by the physical and aesthetic.

The first novella in Ogawa’s novel is titled the same as the book as a whole, The Diving Pool, which takes the perspective of a young Japanese High School girl who has an obsessive crush on a boy who is part of the diving team. The protagonist, who is unnamed, fits into the heterosexual female normative as the duration of the novella is engulfed by her intense obsession over this boy. She sits alone in the bleachers during his practice and watches his body and continues to describe it to the reader in detail. The fact that the protagonist is adhering to the norm and as well as putting too much emphasis on physical/outer identity and appearance embeds her in a firm feminist reading and also fits her into the category of anatomical sex in both terms explained above. She is both interested in sexual acts with this boy and sees him as beautiful because of his masculine body.

What is interesting about Ogawa’s first novella is the use of words and imagery that evoke the womb and the woman’s body, further exemplifying the idea of the female body as a sexual object and one that is defined by appearance. When a woman is pregnant, that is also indicative of a sexual act with the opposite sex, and also a clear aesthetic indicator that this individual is, in fact, a female. The beginning of the novella begins with the protagonist explaining the feeling of the pool room as she waits for the boy, “it’s always warm here: I feel as though I’ve been swallowed by a huge animal. After a few minutes, my hair, my eyelashes, even the blouse of my school uniform are damp from the heat and humidity, and I am bathed in a moist film that smells vaguely of chlorine.” (p.3). As the protagonist describes her body parts, we picture each with the idea of femininity in mind, and this will shape her for the rest of the story. Her description of the heat and moisture that stick to her skin remind the reader and seem reminiscent of a womb, and perhaps even the process of giving birth with sweet and bodily fluids making a body feel moist.

Although Ogawa conforms to the identity that Butler is trying to break down, it is an important perspective to look at the diving pool because of the way it is deeply ingrained in telling stories from a protagonist that is also deeply feminine. Ogawa also tends to draw on the aesthetic and how thing, people and situations look and feel, and all come from protagonists that are very alike when looked at through this feminist lens.

In my research, I am exploring the female body in ways that it is perceived by society, and how this can evoke grotesque and “uncanny” reactions. In Yoko Ogawa’s novel the Diving Pool, one of the novellas is titled The Pregnancy Diary. Within this novella, the protagonist keeps a meticulous record of her pregnant sister’s behavior. From the start of the novella, the reader gets a sense that the protagonist has a peculiar way of seeing anything to do with pregnancy and the female body. Her ways of noticing details and describing them is almost clinical, and it is the same when she describes her sister, as if she is not someone she is close to, but merely a scientific experiment she is curious to know the outcome of.

When the protagonist and her sister, who are both unnamed, were young, they would visit a maternity clinic called the “M Clinic,” because they were curious about what was inside. The protagonist describes what she sees inside the window not in terms of the excitement and joy of a pregnancy, but rather through a cold and calculating lens. She describes a stethoscope as “a thin, twisting tube, dull silver fittings, pear-shaped rubber bulb of the cuff made it look like a strange insect nestled among the other instruments.” (p. 60). The interesting insight provided by these few lines can be aimed at female bodies and pregnancy.

As pregnancy is an internal process, science has developed in order to understand the process. However, pregnancy is typically seen as something to be celebrated, the beginnings of a new life. The protagonist, however, sees this site, where pregnant women reside, as something cold and grotesque, evoking strange imagery that seems unsuitable to something that should bring excitement. Pregnancy is reduced to being a piece of medical equipment crouching on a cart and resembling an insect, something that is repulsive and something that should be avoided or killed. Although Ogawa does not outwardly say that pregnant female bodies are seen as strange creatures distorted by the science of nature, she implies it by telling the story of a pregnant woman through the eyes of a girl who sees the world in a cold and calculating way.

During this same instance, the two sisters were sometimes able to catch glimpses of the women on the third floor who had presumable just given birth. The rare sightings suggest that they are coveted and held prisoner, as if to be a form of scientific research that must be kept a firm hold of. They are described as wearing no make-up and bathrobes and having expressionless faces. The protagonist then wonders to herself “why they didn’t seem happier at the prospect of sleeping above an examination room full of such fascinating objects.” (p. 61). The pregnant women are described as essentially stripped of their “femaleness” by the lack of makeup and also the fact that they are now without a baby inside them. The baby is external and its own being now, creating the woman as an empty husk, relieved of her one duty on this earth. The are expressionless because they no longer have a purpose and no longer have an identity; they are neither mother, pregnant, nor woman.

Furthermore, the fact that the protagonist dismisses these ideas, she immediately thinks of the examination room and how she would be happy to be in the M Clinic, not to be pregnant, but because she loves the instruments that have aided in stripping those women who appear like apparitions of their identity as female.

I believe that Ogawa oppresses these meanings deliberately, but not so as to throw the reader off of them, but rather to inquire about it. Without challenging the reception of the pregnant female body, how is society to learn what it means to be a pregnant female, and how that identity changes over the entirety of the pregnancy. It is not simply a sequence of events in which the fetus grows and develops and the doctor performs routine tests. It is an identity that transforms woman into mother, and gives her the capacity to care for another being more than any other.

The main focal point, and perhaps trigger, for my emerging project was Yoko Ogawa’s book The Diving Pool, and the elements of the grotesque that she expertly incorporates into it. As the book is written by a female author, and tells three stories from the perspective of female protagonists, I thought that a feminist lens would be an appropriate way to approach this. Yet, I also do not want to ignore the fact that what mostly caught my attention in these three novellas was their intricate attention to the human body, and specifically the female body and the connection of the grotesque to them. By incorporating this unpleasant and repulsive element, Ogawa adds another side to the feminist lens. Is she trying to lend a look at how society perceives women’s’ bodies? Is she trying to draw our attention to the women’s function in reproduction (as one of the novellas centers on the pregnancy of the protagonist’s sister)?

I proceeded to find a tentative answer to this question by consulting Freud’s The Uncanny. Freud begins his analysis of the Uncanny as something that “evokes fear and dread,” or discomfort in the beholder (p.123). He claims that the uncanny is experienced through aesthetic, and therefore is a kind of aesthetic disorder. As these things that are considered uncanny are the opposite of beautiful, they are categorized as grotesque, which perhaps Ogawa is trying to hang over the women in her novellas to make a point about how society perceives the female body. The need for the female to be more thoroughly covered in public, lest she show too much and reveal herself to the public eye could be a contributing factor for this display in Ogawa’s book.

To further the point that Ogawa is reaching for a feminist lens, or that her novellas could be interpreted in such a way, one could mention Freud’s comment on the basis of the term, “uncanny.” According to Freud, “one may presume that there exists a specific affective nucleus, which justifies the use of a special conceptual term,” (p.123). This special term Freud refers to is the “uncanny,” but what struck me with this sentence was the use of the word nucleus to represent the uncanny. We know that this nucleus is “affective” in creating the effects of fear and discomfort in the ones that witness the aesthetic deformity, which for now we will assume is the female body. Next, the use of the word “nucleus” right after affective suggests that this aesthetic disorder is, in fact, at a cellular level, in other words, a genetic defect. Men and women each have different cells (chromosomes) that make an individual genetically male or female. If Freud states that this disorder of the uncanny lies at a cellular level that is affective, this could be applied to the fact that the female body is considered grotesque simply because of an affective difference in genetics. Not only is this difference effective, it is also “specific”, as if it needs to be just right and very calculated.

Another element of the uncanny is also the fear of castration, and as Freud states, “ losing a precious organ,” suggesting that the male sex organ is what creates power and normality as opposed to females who don’t posses one. The anxiety and fear associated with the castration complex falls parallel to the fact that the uncanny also evokes feelings of fear and anxiety. Freud claims “one finds it understandable that so precious an organ such as the eye should be guarded by a commensurate anxiety. Indeed, One can go further and claim that no deeper mystery and no other significance lie behind the fear of castration,” (p. 140). In other words, the fear of losing the male sex organ denotes a male as male. Without this symbol of masculinity, the man has no identity and subsequently no power. Women do no posses this organ and therefore start off with no power, or less power than men. As said before, the basis for the uncanny lies in the cellular differences of men and woman, which then leads to physical difference in appearance; the aesthetic disorder.

Not only have common patterns in the physical writing been apparent, but common themes in Tony Morrison’s book, Beloved, have also made themselves known. In broad retrospect, common themes that have been recurring in this text have been ones such as the warping of time, and it’s fluidity in the text. There is also the matter of pain, whether it is physical pain, or the mental pain of remembering the past.

All of these aspects become apparent in the section I have chosen for this post in Beloved on page 113. The theme of warped and fluid time is represented in a way that creates a sense for the reader that there is no linear path that the book follows. Characters can die or leave the scene, but they will always come back and keep circling around like vultures waiting for the opportune time to strike. On page 113, the third person narrator takes on the persona of Sethe as she remembers Baby Suggs, deceased at this point, as she sits in the Clearing that Baby used to frequent. Although Baby Suggs is dead, and we know this through Sethe’s “rememory” of her, she somehow creates a physical presence as she is seemingly “touching the back of [Sethe’s] neck,” with fingers that are “gathering strength,” (p.113).

The idea and physical manifestation of Baby Suggs also speaks to the point of pain, not just the manipulation of time to bring characters back from the dead. It is Sethe’s pain and longing to have Baby Suggs back that calls her into a sort of physical form that is able to knead the back of her neck. Not only does the pain of loss bring Baby Suggs back into being, but she also brings with her anguish, or a pain of her own to inflict upon Sethe. As if the pain of loss cannot go unaccompanied by physical pain. As the fingers push “harder, harder… Sethe was actually more surprised than frightened to find she was being strangled,” (p.113). The fact that Sethe is “surprised” rather than “frightened” is what was striking about this sentence. The pressure of Baby Suggs’ presence at first brings her peace that soon turns into pain and surprise.

This simple schema seems to be a recurring theme in Sethe’s life. When she escaped Sweet Home, she was only consumed by the relief and peace she found in the house with Baby Suggs, but despite this, the past came creeping up not far behind and inflicted its pain on Sethe. It was a pain that was inescapable and triggered by the smallest of instances and impossible to predict. The next stage was the surprise and not fear. She was surprised by the schoolteacher and his entourage and resorted to killing her children, but she was not frightened. It is similar with this instance with Baby Suggs’ ghost supposedly strangling her, that she is used to the cycle and almost expects pain to be right around the bend.

Her surprise leads Sethe to go “tumbling forward from her seat on the rock, she clawed at the hands that were not there,” (113). The word tumbling echoes the rapid changes in Sethe’s life, and the fact that none of these are her own decision. It is only when she does make the decision to escape that she has the time to stop and remember all the terrible things done to her, and the ability for her to let the pain in. The word clawed also speaks to pain, as the word itself evokes this sensation, and also desperation. “Clawed” paired with the remainder of the sentence, “at the hands that were not there,” creates a sense of pain for things that are ghost-like, no longer there, and therefore in the past. Sethe suffers from pain from her past, present and future because of the pain she endured as a slave.

In Laura Mulvey’s argument titled Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, I focused mainly on her second section, which was titled Pleasure in Looking/ Fascination with the Human Form. In this section Mulvey addressed the voyeuristic nature of the cinematic experience and how it is intended mainly for male audiences. She mentions the fact that the female body becomes more of an object that a human being that is set in front of the audience simply for erotic pleasure. I noticed two repetitions of words in this section that I believe pertain highly to this argument, which aims to promote feminism and the wrongs of cinema toward the female figure. These two words are “scopophilia” and “ego,” which both pertain to the act of looking.

Mulvey describes scopophilia as the act and pleasure in looking. This word is mentioned a total of five times in the first paragraph alone. Although she mentions it in other parts of the second section, I believe her uses of it in the first paragraph are most pertinent. This word, in the case of Mulvey’s argument, is relevant specifically to the cinema and to that pleasure of male viewers and how they perceive the female body in the cinematic experience. In addition she states, “looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at,” (p. 1446). In this sentence, looking is paralleled with pleasure, which begs the question, looking at what? It is then that we read further and we realize that the reverse of this pleasure is equally enjoyable when one is being looked at. The reader can assume that the sentence is referring to humans looking at humans presumably through cinema as that is the main premises for the argument. However, it is not the female that enjoys being looked at, but the male viewer that enjoys looking at the objectified female, and it is he in return who enjoys being looked at by the same female “object.” This gaze is not one for admiration, but rather a controlling gaze on the male’s part, and thus is an instinctual link to sexual pleasure and eroticism.

This idea leads me to my next point in which the word “ego” comes into play. “It continues to exist as the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object. At the extreme, it can become fixated into perversion,” (p.1447). The word ego is repeated a total of four times in the end of the first paragraph and continuing into the second paragraph. As “scopophilia” can be conveyed into sexual pleasure, the word “ego” takes this a step further and explains that this is a basis for which sexual pleasure is oriented. A male viewer needs to feel in control and important while looking in order to be attracted to the cinematic female object. The pleasure of looking at another person in this controlling gaze is the beginnings of narcissism in which the male viewer can become hopelessly engrossed in his object of interest. Mulvey goes as far as to say that this fixation can turn into perversion. The words fixated and perversion are even used close to each other in the sentence, separated only by the word “into.” The word fixated demonstrates the intensity and the need for this visual pleasure, and perversion explains the extent to which this pleasure can contort a male viewer.

The importance of the words “scopophilia” and “ego” help the reader to understand the significance and the extent to which the cinema has become voyeuristic and intended for a male audience. It is a societal problem that we face in which the female is constantly viewed as an object and subdued into an insignificant existence. This is then extended from the cinema into our daily lives.

Louis Althusser’s article, From Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, argues that ideology is simply a tool that allows individuals to realize their conditions of existence. He states that ideology is an imaginary relationship, meaning that it is not something physical that can be proven, “ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions,” (p. 738). Rather, it is something that represents each individual and therefore influences his or her daily lives. This idea can also emphasize the need for and reliance on power dynamics in society.

This idea is represented in society through examples of religion, among other things. However, religion is an appropriate topic to discuss because it conveys relationships of power. The “idea,” as the argument presents, is that man kind can be ruled by the wishes of an unseen power is a belief that goes back to prehistoric times. Human kind gravitates toward power dynamics, and Althusser’s article presents an argument for this. He states that, “God is the imaginary representation of the real king,” (p.739). The key word in this sentence is God, the ideological and mythical being that can hold power over all living things. The idea of a god is completely manmade in an attempt to keep human beings under control and in order. If one does not obey the rules set by this idea of “God,” the repercussions are punishments in the afterlife, which is also imaginary. The bulk of this argument aims to say that God is not an actual being that can physically keep humans in line. Instead, it is something we impose upon ourselves in an attempt to hold onto civilization, as we know it.

Furthermore, Althusser strategically uses the words “imaginary” and “representation” consecutively. The use of imaginary suggests that the concept in question is one that does not exist, or created by human fiction. Representation means that it is something portrayed and physical. By using these two words together, Althusser suggests that God is something manmade and something that may not exist, but it is also something physical in the sense that it is portrayed in art, for example. It also influences a believer’s life, by creating an idea in the individual’s mind that they need to attend church to make this being happy, and to obey a strict set of laws.

The third component of this sentence is the uses of the words “real” and “king.” As opposed to God, who is imaginary, the king is someone who is real and in the flesh; he is someone physical and appointed to a position of power. However, this sentence by Althusser suggests that the king uses god as a way to stay in power and to hold onto it. Not only do these two entities of power exist on their own, they also exist side by side, and depend on one another. A king, during the eighteenth century, was brought to power through a God-given birthright. Without the manifestation of a god, there would be no king, and hence, no ruler.

The idea that a figure of power can influence an individual to honor certain laws is quite evident in this argument. Not only do we honor physical beings, but also we crave order and rule so much that we manifest imaginary beings to keep us in line, and monitor our behaviors. We are good citizens if we go to church regularly and if we obey the laws set by a physical ruler such as a king.