Throughout Cereus Blooms at Night, nature is often used to convey morals or portray characters in a certain light. “Mala’s companions were the garden’s birds, insects, snails and reptiles” (Mootoo 127). In this passage, the living things Mala is described to be friends with are organisms that which most people are disgusted by. All of these creatures are viewed as dirty, useless, and inconvenient, yet Mala gives them love. She takes care of things that others do not think about. This could reflect her own experience with others misunderstanding her. Mala, rumored to be a murderer, gets tossed aside by practically all other faculty besides Tyler. Mala also gets forgotten by members of her family. These creatures symbolize their connecting with misunderstanding and abandonment. Earlier in the novel, Ambrose describes Mala as a “protector of snails and all things unable to defend themselves from the bullies of the world” (Mootoo 119). Because these creatures are not well-liked, they are often vulnerable. This passage portrays the creatures as vulnerable—the protected—, and Mala as powerful—the protector.

   I believe these creatures Mala cares for reflect her own vulnerability to her father’s abuse. In a way, Mala is attempting to protect herself by moving this idea into other habits in her life. Because Mala understands things like abuse, misunderstanding, and abandonment, she relates to these creatures others hate so much. Perhaps Mootoo is suggesting that often it is those who suffer that are the most charitable because they have true empathy. Those who suffer are those we will find protecting others.

In Shani Mootoo’s novel, Cereus Blooms at Night memory becomes a concept that not only affects Mala emotionally, but also physically as Mootoo links Mala’s childhood to her adulthood as if they were lived by two separate people. As Miss Ramchandin’s house is being invaded by police officers and watchdogs, destroyed by machinery and large vehicles, she remembers running away as Pohpoh beginning to “feel what she was normally oblivious to: her face and neck, wet with sweat and tears, bruises on her legs, skin that felt as though it had been torn off her back in thick chunks…fear was breaking her, was unprying her memory”(174). Miss Ramchandin’s home reflects nature at its finest; free to expand, grow and develop without external influences. While it is being destroyed and invaded, Miss Ramchandin’s memory is directly related in that she remembers herself, her own natural body as a child being forcefully invaded by her father. “She  was reminded of what she usually ignored or commanded herself to forget: her legs being ripped apart, something entering her from down there, entering and then scooping her insides out. Her body remembered” (175). The physicality of this text, mentioning her body parts – face, neck, legs, skin, allows the reader to understand that the pain from the memory affects her entire being. After being raped by her father, every limb of her body has been contaminated or destroyed. The action in this text – torn off, breaking her, ripped apart, entering her, scooping her insides out, is rough, vulgar, and violent. The word choice not only reflects the ways in which the police officers are treating her sanctuary of a home but also the way in which her father treated her. She had become so accustomed to not feeling or doing her best to forget, that the rush of memory was painful and physical – she felt the physical abuse that she had done her best to ignore.

A recurring storyline throughout Shani Mootoo’s book, Cereus Blooms at Night, is Mala’s plight to save the snails from being killed by the other, more powerful people around her. As Ambrose Mohanty explains it, “we fancied ourselves the protectors of snail and all things unable to protect themselves from the bullies of the world” (Mootoo 119). Mala gravitates to these snails, among other creatures because she too is ostracized by society. Mala understands that because they are too slow, or too slimy, or not cute enough, there is not space for them and they ultimately must be killed. However, she wants to prevent them and ergo takes it upon herself to save them. These shared feelings of isolation correlate to a shared feeling of queerness, of sexual deviancy, of not fitting into the hegemonic mold that society has laid out for you. Michael Warner conceptualizes these feelings as he frames queerness as anything that stands in opposition to the sexual norm. As he says, “so Clinton might at least theoretically see himself as having something in common with people in all the other categories on the ‘wrong’ side of the list” (27). He Warner describes Bill Clinton and his “sexual relations” with Miss Lewinsky as queer because they do not follow the sexual norm (outside of marriage, sodomy, etc.). Ergo, Clinton and his acts with Miss Lewinsky are in this queer category, along with sex workers, polyamorous people, people in the BDSM community, people who have sex before marriage, etc. Unlike Clinton, who often refused to bridge the gap between him and sexual deviants (see also DOMA, DADT, welfare reform, etc.), Mala intends to join this fragmented group. But this active ostracization of people ho do not conform to preconcieved notions of gender and sexuality, due to a compliant and symbiotic relationship between the government and law enforcement. As Sedgwick says,  “the complicity of parents, of teachers, of clergy, even of the mental health professions in invalidating and hounding kids who show gender dissonant tastes” (2). Seeing these snails as inherently queer, anyone out to kill them is someone who upholds systems that oppress LGBTQ+ identified people. Ambrose Mohanty also reflects on who they had to protect the snails from. He names Walter Bissey, the town bully from Mala and his past, now a judge. Bissey used to make fun of Mala for her perceived queerness, that was apparently contagious from her mother. It’s so interesting how people how received joy from killing animals and bullying people for being queer often then become judges, police officers, and legislators. These people with political biases usually work within the system, which is made to benefit them already, and craft it to make it very difficult for LGBTQ+ people. They pass legislation on internet security and refuse to acknowledge the trans unemployment rate. This cycling of oppressive attitudes in the political world fuels the vicious cycle of the depletion of LGBTQ+ political power. These prejudices and personal biases go beyond simply offending others; they fan the flames of the subjugation of the LGBTQ+ community.

“Wearing the dress made Otoh carry himself gracefully” (pg. 121).

This sentence contains many interesting aspects of Cereus Blooms at Night; Otoh is a biological female but has always presented and been regarded as a boy by the community.  Even his parents forget that he is biologically female and consider him as their son.  What then makes this interesting is Otoh’s lack of reservation about changing his appearance to present as female, for the sake of sneaking in and visiting Mala.  This is significant, as it says something about Otoh’s character; it implies that Otoh is comfortable switching back and forth between male and female, though he prefers to present as male, and does not view male/female as a set binary.  Otoh simply grabs the dress off of the clothes line and puts it on without any apparent psychological distress.

Wearing a dress highlights the novel’s emphasis on non-binaries and the power of gendered objects, especially dresses.  Earlier in the novel, Tyler, another character that is implied to be transgender, puts on a dress and shows himself off to Mala.  Wearing the dress allows Tyler to begin to explore the space between the male/female binary, where he considers himself to belong.  While Otoh is comfortable exploring this space, Tyler feels uneasy at some points, like he was wearing the dress as a mere joke.  Tyler and Otoh both experience powerful effects from putting on the dress, however, where Otoh “carries himself gracefully,” which could be taken to mean in a more feminine way, and Tyler feels more in tune with his true identity.  Male/female genders are considered to be on a spectrum in this novel, and objects, like dresses, that are heavily associated with one gender allow non-binary individuals to explore this spectrum.

“When Mala heard the wall being pulled apart, she bit her lower lip and stared out across the yard, losing herself in the shapes of the mudra tree, Save Pohpoh, she chanted. Save Pohpoh,” (Mootoo, 180).

This section of the reading really interested me. One of the reasons is the obvious “illusion” of the younger Mala in order to correct the wrongs of her past. Mala recreates herself when the police come to investigate what made Otoh run away. This “illusion” (this is in question because everyone can see her when she runs away). This “younger” Mala is made to relook at her father when does not hold the power he had over h when she was a child. It is actually interesting that in his death, she kept him there, almost in control of him even in the afterlife (I do not know much about the religions in where this book took place, except for Christianity, so I’m unsure if there is cultural tradition behind burying a body). If there is traditions regarding this, at least in Christianity it is to help the spirit rest well, then she definitely holds a power over him. This may explain why she kept the body. She shows the “younger Mala” the body to show the control over their father she has now. To prove that the pain is over and she can go on peacefully (almost like  old spirit of the past). Another reason this is an interesting scene/scenario in the book is because the “younger Mala” gets to escape the realities the real Mala had to face. She flys, which is something Mala ha always dreamed of as an escape into another place away from her father. This is a bit of a stretch, but I would like to believe that in this fantasy, there is a bit of reality. For example, we know the police only make comments about  girl running in order to mock Mala. However, what if there really was a younger girl in the same situation as Mala, that had a chance to see that one day she too would be free? She would be free from the horrors of someone abusing her and be able to “fly” away. Again, this is a stretch, but I would like to believe that the author creates this little girl in order to show to readers that revisiting the past can bring a sense of freedom and the “older” Mala can represent the older and wiser protecting the young and naive.

 

Queerness, ephemeral and inherently tied to transgression, is extraordinarily difficult to define. Sedgwick wants us to think of queerness as thing to be embodied, as a term that can only be used in the first person. Halberstam, alternatively, perceives queerness as a potential in everything that is transgressive. In this view, all things have the capacity to be queer as long as their state of being opposes what is expected and normative. Mûnoz wants us to reconsider these understandings of queerness as a state to be embodied, and instead insists that genuine queerness has never been achieved. Of queerness, he Mûnos writes: it “is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality” (1). Between this quote and the title of his book—Feeling Utopia—Mûnos establishes that queerness is less of an identity and more of a societal status that has yet to be realized.

Bearing this perspective of queerness in mind, I turn to Written on the Body. From its non-chronological form to its narrator’s ambiguous identities, this book is queer. The gender of the narrator is never made explicit—and indeed purposefully made unclear—and the variety of genders in the narrator’s partners affirms the fluidity of zir sexuality. Additionally, time is problematized as a reliable, linear experience throughout the book, particularly at the end when the narrator confesses that they “don’t know if this is a happy ending but where we are let loose in open fields” (Winterson 190). Unlike Mûnos, the novel has little certain for futurity or time of any kind—it is entirely interested in queerness as an active state of being, as a lifestyle, as a means of perceiving time and space.

If queerness is, as Mûnos suggests, “the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on…concrete possibility for another world,” then this book fails as a queer endeavor (Mûnos 1). Winterson’s book is not about the future or the creation of a queer world, but instead about queerness as a state of being. Fortunately for Winterson, Mûnos’ view of queerness is an unsustainable one, it’s one that will not lead to the production of community or spaces that queerness desires. Rather, this understanding of queer as “utopia” is one that asks queer people to continue to “feel that the world is not enough, that indeed something is missing” (1). Winterson’s narrator tells this story because ze cannot wait for some undefined future where zir unconventional love story can be told in a queer world to queer people. The world was missing this story, this queer experience of love and growth, and so ze brings queerness into our “here and now” (1). Ze is queer and that queerness is a legitimate lived experienced, whether or not we as a society have collectively “touch[ed] queerness” (1). So no, we do not know if this is a happy ending yet—but here we are, let loose and open, and to deny ourselves a “here and now” will surely do nothing but stunt “our possibility for another world” (1).

I was really drawn to the passage about Mala dealing with the light at 10am. She has a ritual of eating the bird-pepper sauce to keep her from remembering or perhaps reliving painful memories. This connection between the physical and the mental as well as past and present interested me in this passage. After eating as much as she can Tyler tells us “her flesh had come undone. But every tingling blister and eruption in her mouth and lips was a welcome sign that she had survived” (Mootoo, 134). There is a strong connection here between pain and life. The pain was a “welcome sign” that life was still going on (Mootoo, 134) as though without pain, there is no life. This reminded me a lot of Eve Sedgwick talking about surviving versus living and trying to connect that with pain and perhaps trauma. Mala has lived through a lot of bodily and mental pain, yet her coping mechanism is also pain, to undo her flesh. To add to these complications Mala punishes herself by eating things. “Her mouth and lips” and the most damaged and are perhaps, what she has struggled with most (Mootoo, 134). We can agree that language is incredibly important and that speech (what people say or don’t say) is also meaningful (very Foucault yes). Then why does Mala add pain to speech, something she seems to be keenly aware of and the hurt of silence. I’m not sure what I’m trying to articulate yet, I just think there is something in the connections of pain and life. Queer, using Sedgwick’s non-normative and self-identified definition, young people can have a lot of suffering and pain in their lives. Does it become synonymous with living? Or is there a broader obsession with pain (“Why is the measure of love loss?”)? Do we think of this scene as self-harm or coping? Where do we draw the line between using your body and harming it? And do we believe that there can be life without pain? Or does pain mean we have survived?

 

I read this article over the summer and it really spoke the to tension between pain and womanhood. If anyone else is curious how pain and self-harm are social influenced this is pretty interesting.

http://www.vqronline.org/essays-articles/2014/04/grand-unified-theory-female-pain

Utopia and Buzz Killers

My head hurts… but I think I get it now.

In reading Munoz and comparing his arguments with the queer theories of Leo

Bersani he alluded to in his piece, I think I now understand the point he is making.

Munoz begins with “Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality.” explaining that it is something that is evolving. It is on the horizon for those who follow behind today’s LBGTQ activists and theorists to identify and determine what it’s future will be. What we know in this place and time is evolving, and what it will become, the future will determine.

Leo Bersani’s book, Homos, Munoz explains, tells us of a world that now exists where queerness has become mainstream. The Gay Rights movement wanted America to listen and accept the civil liberties and rights of all those in the LGBT community, and America did to some extent. There are primetime sit-coms depicting LGBT families and daytime talk show hosts that are openly gay, making it seem that America accepts and supports the inclusion of all people. Gay icons in the arts, fashion, broadcast media, politics and intelligentsia are embraced by all but the extreme right, but still homophobia prevails. But why and by whom? Is it, as Bersani suggests, that some “anti-social queer theorists” wish to distance themselves from anything normative and mainstream and are gay-image-homophobic? Is social acceptance forcing a group identity on people that are so diverse in every possible sense of gender/biology/sexuality/emotionality that feels just as oppressive as exclusion, therefore causing a pushback in the strata of gender and queer philosophers and theorists? Did the invisibility of the previous counterculture provide a kind of security from public visibility to those who wish to remain out of the spotlight? Or does antirelationality serve to avoid labeling identities that can be fluid and transient, ever evolving as we ourselves evolve and reinvent our realities. Nevertheless, the antirelationality arguments fueled Munoz’s position that some theorist’s view this as a perversion of uncontaminated sexuality.

My ah-ha moment came at the bottom of page 11, in Munoz’s last 2 sentences. Leading up to those last words, he says that queerness is something still out on the horizon, still out of reach, and that it has little to do with our present and contemporary view of gay identity. “My argument is therefore interested in critiquing the ontological certitude that I understand to be partnered with the politics of presentist and pragmatic contemporary gay identity. This mode of ontological certitude is often represented through a narration of disappearance and negativity that boils down to another game of fort-da.”

He compares it to a child’s game of “Fort-Da!” which Freud first reported while observing a young toddler in the home of a family he was visiting. The young child had a close and nurturing relationship with the mother, and when the mother left the child for a bit, the child would play calmly with an object, throwing it into some corner or under a piece of furniture, exclaiming “fort!” the German word for gone. The child would then look to retrieve it calling out “da!”, meaning here it is!, delighted when he found it. This self-invented child’s game served to reassure the child that good things do materialize, like his mommy.

A Queer Utopia may well be “da” in a promising future.

 

When Tyler is talking to Mr. Hector, the gardener, on page 73, Mr. Hector employs an unusual use of repetition. Mr. Hector is speaking about his younger brother who his mother sent away when they were both young due to his father’s reaction to his sexuality. He repeats words twice when speaking about his brother, “his voice was soft-soft… quiet and sing-song sing-song… I could hear it plain-plain… Pappy used to beat him bad-bad…” (pg 73). Previously, Mr. Hector had had conversations with Tyler about other topics, never mentioning his brother, and never using double-wording. The repetition of words could be written off as a nervous tick employed when talking about something personal. But, I believe that this is him reverting to his younger self during the course of the conversation. When teaching first grade I noticed that when children want to emphasize a point, they often repeat one word or a cluster of words in quick succession (Ms. Zoe I want the green pencil: green-green). The last time that the gardener saw his brother was when he was a child. After his brother was sent away he was not allowed to speak of or ask about him to his parents. He was forced to forget about a beloved family member and move on. Because he was not allowed (by his parents) to wrangle with his emotions and was in turn forced to ignore/subdue them, I think that whenever he speaks about his brother, the younger version of him comes out.

In “The Queer Art of Failure,” Judith Halberstam frames failure in terms of “ways of being and knowing that stand outside of conventional understandings of success” (2). Many of us have been conditioned to view failure as an endpoint; in other words, although it may come with important lessons to teach, the “purpose” of failure is ultimately to help set one back on the path toward success. But rather than looking at failure as a momentary misstep, Halberstam sees it as a potential way of life that can offer “more surprising ways of being in the world” (2). The show Lost reflects Halberstam’s ideas about what it means to fail, and how this failure can open up a new kind of optimism.

From the very first episode, Lost quibbles with the notion of existing in the world in a new way. After a plane crashes on a mysterious island, a group of survivors quickly realize that they should not be expecting rescue any time soon, and as a result, they must create entirely new ways of survival using the unfamiliar resources they have. In other words, they have no choice but to learn to “live life otherwise” (2). Not only must they deal with their physical separation from the “normal world” and its institutions/structures, but they also must push aside concepts of success that dictated their actions in a reality that now exists in the past. As a result, their lives on the island become a series of daily failures as they attempt to navigate a new way of existing, in a new space where the old “rules” simply do not apply.

In the show’s finale, the survivors of the plane crash—even those who died on the island—reunite in a utopic, after-life-like universe. The father of Jack (the main character of the show) appears as a ghostly presence to inform his son, “The most important part of your life was the time you spent with these people on that island…You needed all of them, and they needed you.” When Jack asks what they needed one another for, his father replies, “To remember, and to let go.” Ironically, the final insistence of the show, which has often presented mysteries of the island as if asking its characters (and its audience) to look for answers, is not on finding something but rather on letting go. This reflects Halberstam’s claim about the potential that comes with being open to “losing,” “unmaking,” and “undoing” (2). She argues, in the end, that we should not see failure as futile, but rather as a way of creating a new kind of optimism. Lost does exactly this. After spending years trying to negotiate their alternative lives on the islands with the baggage of their now alternate “realities,” Jack and the rest of the survivors of Flight 118 can only achieve happiness and be reunited with their loved ones once they “let go.” Their time on the island was not just about meeting their “soul mates,” but about learning to be okay with being lost.