Section 7
Essentialism is inherent in the program and is thus a problem in materialist/social constuctionist feminist practice. In the poete maudit branch of the avant-garde, as epitomized by Arthur Rimbaud, the artist breaks away from the constraints of civilization by debasing his body to its lowest, earth-bound (feminine) condition in order to release his creative mind. Rimbaud, for example, describes the process as exhausting "all poisons and preserv[ing] their quintessences" (102); he takes on the worst in order to purify it. Thus, Barbara Spackman's discussion of the motif of convalescence in the Decadent tradition is significant. In Spackman's interpretation of the decadent program, the artist becomes ill then enters a convalescent state she describes as androgynous. In this state, the decadent artist must commingle his "dominant animus with the anima" in order to release his vision (feminine, irrational) from the constraints of the (rational, civilized) male principle. What she does not say but which I am proposing is that the sick state is gendered feminine, while the healthy state is masculine. Spackman explains, "Convalescence is a space in-between, a vector that points toward health and away from sickness, a copresence of symptoms of health and sickness. As a commingling of opposites, convalescence becomes the ground for figures of physiological ambiguity, of, one might almost say, physical monstrosity" (58). Because of his convalescent state, the Decadent artist has an "alternate vision" and is able to explore "a different physiology." In many ways, I observe, the alternate vision is associated with the irrationality and physical depravity traditionally linked to women.
In this regard, I think "My Little Lovelies," a poem Rimbaud includes in his lettre du voyant is significant. One stanza reads:
One night you made me a poet,
Ugly blond whore.
Get between my legs,
I'll whip you.
(Rimbaud 73)In one sense, this poem seems to directly contradict what appear to be feminist leanings in Rimbaud's notion of the female prometheus. On the other hand, the poem also suggests that Rimbaud's "muse" is a decadent woman--a whore (several of them, actually)--whom he subjects to various degradations ("I puked up your greasy hair") and angrily rejects: "And it was for you hunks of meat / I wrote my rhymes! / My love was sticky self-deceit / And dirty games!" His "love" for the whore is the poison Rimbaud takes in and transforms.
I believe that the "angry women" I am discussing here emerge directly from Rimbaud and avant-garde art of the fin de siecle and the 1960s; however, their appropriation of these traditions is filtered through many other theoretical frameworks and cultural systems. For example, filtration through French feminism would highlight the "female prometheus" and filtration through popular culture would underscore the popular, romanticized conception of the "decadent artist" to be found in, say, rock musicians like Jim Morrison of the Doors, or the myth of William S. Burroughs. Let me make it clear that I am distinguishing between Decadent Art itself, which displays few of the characteristics of the art produced by the "angry women" under discussion, and the consciousness of the poete maudit which supposedly produces Decadent art. What I am interested in is the state of mind and body which the decadent artist claims produces illumination and makes the artist a visionary.
It seems to me that the Angry Essentialists are attempting the same feat as Rimbaud. While they are attempting to make visible the damaging constructions imposed upon women over the centuries, they are also trying to release their creative energies from the constraints imposed upon them by male social/cultural/literary structures by transgressing social boundaries and descending into decadence and abjection. I ask, then, what happens when a woman artist attempts to accomplish this as "the boys" have done? Spackman says it is "clear that androgyny as the poetic condition cannot exist for the woman, for where is the animus that would supply the 'andro'? In poetic reverie, she is double anima. The presence of the animus in the woman destroys (Bachelard and Jung concur) the feminine in her; animus and anima are antagonistic forces which produce animosity" (74). Perhaps Bachelard and Jung formulate the problem that way, but I would like to suggest a continuum here which Spackman only suggests. I would argue that the whole decadent program is based upon a dualistic, patriarchal construction of male (civilization, rationality) vs. female (nature, irrationality). Within this construct, sickness (decadence, abjection) is distinctly female (anima, nature); convalescence is androgynous (according to Spackman), and health is male (animus, civilization, rationality). Thus, I ask: if male decadents have achieved visionary heights by subverting their animus (socially- prescribed male role), descending into [the male construction of] femininity (anima, nature) and arriving at androgyny, does the process work the same way for women artists? If the decadent/abject woman represents the poison to be transformed by Rimbaud's program, what happens when the puked-upon whore speaks for herself?
In part the answer depends on whether the artist represents the decadent state, the abject body as "real," or if she is mimicking the constructs imposed upon her. To the extent that she is aware of the construct of the abject/disorderly woman, Karen Finley mimics it, throwing it in the face of patriarchy; Holly Hughes does the same with the stereotype of the lesbian, with a much greater awareness of the stereotypes she is facing. But for the most part, the Angry Essentialists represent the Devouring Mother as "real" in order to assail the construction of Woman as Nurturing Mother, thereby reinforcing deterministic notions of Female Nature as gross and violent. This is not really a problem for male avant-gardists: because the decadent program depends upon the "decadent" state being defined as feminine, when a male artist is "decadent," he subverts the masculine role and becomes "feminine." Thus, Rimbaud and the male avant-gardists derive their subversive power by creating then occupying a marginal position in relation to dominant power structures. But Rimbaud and the avant-gardists do this as men who are assumed not to possess, originally, the attributes associated with this marginal position. When a woman does the same, however, she enters the very role which was designed for her--or, better yet, she is a "lesbian" (as Lynda Hart argues at length in her excellent book Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression). The point is that, while the male avant-garde presents the decadent state as positive and liberating, in dominant ideology it is the male-defined version of what a bad Woman IS, and it represents the state of Nature that Man must fight against to maintain social order. As a result, while trying to "subvert the system" as male avant-gardists have done, the Angry Essentialists often end up reinforcing a conception of the "feminine" which validates the oppression of women.
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