tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post7364971669082113071..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Gender Trouble [Again]: If It's July, I Must be in Leeds, but it Could Have Been SwanseaCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-32705424226719426352008-06-24T17:07:00.000-04:002008-06-24T17:07:00.000-04:00I'm embarrassed to say I don't know the answer to ...I'm embarrassed to say I don't know the answer to that offhand, Eileen, and I don't have my Guthlac materials at home (my research on the saint dates all the way back to a graduate seminar paper I wrote for Joe Harris in 1989, so much of what I've gathered is pre-computer notes as well). I suppose the section is included in an edition of the Chronica Majora. <BR/><BR/>It is possible that Jane Roberts includes the relevant section as well in her edition of the poems, since that is so comprehensive -- but again I just don't have it here.<BR/><BR/>Here are two essays that you may well have found already, and are quite good; both are by Alexandra Olsen. <A HREF="http://www.umilta.net/pega.html" REL="nofollow">Saint Pega and Saint Guthlac, Hermits"</A> reproduces a roundel from the Harley Guthlac roll illustrating Pega leaving the fen 'Pega soror Guthlaci' is her label). <A HREF="http://www.umilta.net/guthlac.html" REL="nofollow">Saint Guthlac and Saint Pega in the South English Legendary</A> is even better for your purposes, since it traces the development of Pega's story and does treat the devilish impersonation ("Pe3am simulans") in question.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-3429935137029247702008-06-24T16:07:00.000-04:002008-06-24T16:07:00.000-04:00Jeffrey: is there an edition of the 13th-century G...Jeffrey: is there an edition of the 13th-century Guthlac text available, or is it something you have to view at University Library, Cambridge?Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-38038716310467315122008-06-24T15:26:00.000-04:002008-06-24T15:26:00.000-04:00Thank you Eileen, for giving me more to ponder re ...Thank you Eileen, for giving me more to ponder re place and gender, which I have recently written about (and will email you).<BR/><BR/>What hits me most about gender as place is that it opens the category or being of what is *in* place in the direction of its facticity and thrownness.Nicola Masciandarohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-28939086172460797472008-06-24T15:16:00.000-04:002008-06-24T15:16:00.000-04:00Now I wish I had the Guthlac materials at home wit...Now I wish I had the Guthlac materials at home with me so that I could return to them and reread everything said about Pega, because she is really interesting.<BR/><BR/>I'd side with your second interpretation, if only because its impossible to prove the survival of a tradition for the centuries it would take to move from Felix to Paris (or whoever). My own thought is that the 13th C story is almost Wordsworthian in its brother-sister intimacies, and that it picks up an anxiety evident in the text from the beginning: Guthlac delays his enjoyment of his sister's presence until after the horizon of death, because the pleasures of her being with him are dangerous (because so pleasurable). It's not an incest narrative exactly, because Guthlac hopes to fully enjoy being with his sister ... just not in this life. What's heroic is his moving the satisfaction of that desire to postmortem/post-body -- but he doesn't give up on or yield that desire, just postpones its satisfaction until he is ready for its rewards. <BR/><BR/>I hope I'm remembering that correctly.<BR/><BR/>So much of the Guthlac narrative is anti-familial.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-39084345789453217422008-06-24T14:14:00.000-04:002008-06-24T14:14:00.000-04:00Jeffrey: I'm so glad you brought up this detail, b...Jeffrey: I'm so glad you brought up this detail, because maybe you can help me out of a sort of quandary, or maybe not, but:<BR/><BR/>the narrative detail of the devil impersonating Pega [or of the *real* Pega being inhabited by a devil] in order to tempt Guthlac to fast only occurs once in a later thirteenth-century text [sometimes attributed to Matthew Paris, although the Guthlac bits are written in a different hand: CUL MS. Dd.xi.78, fols. 61a-92a], which seems to follow Peter de Blois's abbreviated twelfth-century Vita, and also Felix, and maybe also local vernacular stories [according to Bertram Colgrave]. It is this author, and this author only, who provides the story that, at one point, Pega was actually living on Crowland with Guthlac, and after the devil took on her appearance, Guthlac banished her from the island.<BR/><BR/>What really interests me, of course, is why this is never mentioned at all in Felix or in the Old English poems, and this makes the mention of Guthlac's self-prohibition to never see his sister while they are both alive really . . . weird. Could it be that Felix knew that part of the story but suppressed it, OR, was the self-prohibition against seeing his sister troubling enough for a later chronicler/hagiographer to *invent* the Pega/demon story to cover over other troubling interpretations of the prohibition? What do you think?Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-61114608928244527362008-06-24T13:19:00.000-04:002008-06-24T13:19:00.000-04:00It is interesting that Pega, Guthalc's sister, is ...It is interesting that Pega, Guthalc's sister, is one demonic impersonation -- and the Britons another. Race/gender nexus anyone?Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6249364246212974862008-06-24T11:58:00.000-04:002008-06-24T11:58:00.000-04:00Jeffrey: I kind of knew that substituting "gender"...Jeffrey: I kind of knew that substituting "gender" for "life" in Deleuze's thinking on life/immanence/transcendence was kind of capricious, maybe even bogus, so I agree with your initial thoughts here, but you're also right that what I was mainly trying to get at [in a kind of provocative way] that gender, like Deleuze's "life," comprises certain, as you say, "vast" movements. Of course, I also agree with Butler, as you phrase it, that gender, to a certain extent, is a "drag on movement" or a "mechanism of capture"--that it is always de-limiting in certain contexts, and not just theoretically but very materially-historically. But if we go with Deleuze on the vastness/transcendence of "life," we might also fall into a certain trap of "vitalism," I think, that doesn't always take into account all the ways in which a life, although it can sometimes feel as if it is "everywhere" [or can be theorized to be seen as such], is also always *somewhere* and limited by that "somewhere" [which might be a gender, even a transgender, a class, a geograpy, etc.]. But I guess I'm also trying to get at the idea that even *one* gender is an index of some sort of multiplicity and inter-betweenities, that, pace Butler, it is always "crossing," and when we talk about gender we are also always "crossing" [or should aim to be doing such--crossing without "landing," as it were, without "domesticating"--our terms or ourselves].<BR/><BR/>Karl: your comments are fantastic; I plan to steal pretty much all of your thoughts here and also take your advice on starting with Section II. Thanks so much. I didn't say so explicitly in my notes, but your question: what is the sex of Guthlac and his sister? is PRECISELY where I'm headed. You're right that Jeffrey, in his MIM chapter "The Solitude of Guthlac" [which is, like, the best thing ever written on Guthlac], has already addressed the issue of Guthlac's masculinity [in relation to his celibacy but also his status as a Mercian warrior prior to becoming a hermit-saint] as well as the issue of his "tiny thousand sexes" when he is in flight with his demons, and I mainly want to expand on Jeffrey's thinking and take it in other directions [vis-a-vis the mourning friend Beccel and the sister]. Now, I'm especially excited about your idea of whether there might be a "voluptuousness" about Guthlac's and his sister's "delayed desire to be with each other," and I'm going to be thinking further about that. Do you think, though, Karl, vis-a-vis your last thoughts here, that "gender" and "queer" can work well together [can "get along," as it were]?<BR/><BR/>I will tell everyone who might be at Swansea that Clare Lees and Diane Watt will be presenting on Karma Lochrie's panel on "Gender versus Sexuality," on the topic of "Queer Talking: Sex, Gender, and Collaboration," which I am assuming will have some synergies with a presentation they did together at the ASSC workshop in London in May on "genderqueer" collaboration, and I would not want to miss that. Not for anything. If I were there.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-40925330037019543152008-06-24T10:56:00.000-04:002008-06-24T10:56:00.000-04:00Two things:(1) Eileen, go to Leeds again next year...Two things:<BR/><BR/>(1) Eileen, go to Leeds again next year because I am going. All ITM readers: Leeds 2009!! Be there.<BR/><BR/>(2) I am not completely comfortable with substituting "gender" for "life" in the Deleuze quotation. It seems to me that life is such an irreducible multiplicity, something much more capacious than gender ... or maybe I've simply missed your point, and that you are arguing that gender is just as vast a movement rather than (as I understood it from Butler) a certain drag upon movement, sometimes a mechanism of capture, always insufficient, but always in some ways limited and delimiting. That is, gender is more fully entrenched within a specific social configuration/context than a life (which can be untimely/unhistorical) need be.<BR/><BR/>But I also fear that is to hasty a response on a day when I have two kids at the office with me, one in a Belle gown and one watching Pirates of the Caribbean III on a DVD player. That's a gendering for you!Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-19030661052130393002008-06-24T10:40:00.000-04:002008-06-24T10:40:00.000-04:00Looks interesting, EJ. If you're taking suggestion...Looks interesting, EJ. If you're taking suggestions, I might suggest <I>starting</I> with graph II and working out Beccel and Guthlac's sister a bit more, as your parenthetical really grabbed me. <BR/><BR/>What is the sex of Guthlac and sister? Does the sex of G's sis put his masculinity in play? Is G's being a hermit meant to be understood as a performance over his authentic warrior masculinity? Does his warrior masculinity secure his hermit sexuality against free play, as a warrior is at least tethered to a rigid sex system, at least relative to hermit sexing? (wait, I don't remember: has JJC already done this?)<BR/><BR/>And then gender questions: What are the genders of Guth and sis: (i.e. (?), what do they desire? what are they thought to desire? how are we supposed to desire them? How does their being offered to our desire contour their gender? Or ours? is there any voluptuousness about their (delayed?) desire to be with each other (in some sense)?<BR/><BR/>Of course none of this gets at the big q's Watt is posing and you're posing through Butler and your own experience. My questions, that is, leave sex and gender in their own boxes and, by extension, allow sex (and feminism: and analyses of power?) to be superseded by gender (and the queer: and analyses/paeans to pleasure?).Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-28663745531737859342008-06-24T08:41:00.000-04:002008-06-24T08:41:00.000-04:00The performance of gender as the performance of th...The performance of gender as the performance of the human; or, if you inhabit the stereotype that passes as gender tout court, you will be labeled a robot: <A HREF="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/cindy-mccain-robot-gets-n_b_108463.html" REL="nofollow">it's all here</A>. Lesson: to be human, you must imperfectly coincide with a gender (as stereotype) norm.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com