'I refuse these givens': Embracing Multiplicity of Identity in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich

Journal of American Studies of Turkey 11 (2000) : 73-81 ‘I refuse these givens’: Embracing Multiplicity of Identity in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich Özlem Görey The world we live in is divided into clearly defined territories and oppositions. Some of these mutually exclusive and hierarchical binary oppositions that spring to mind are Activity/Passivity, Sun/Moon, Culture/Nature, Day/Night, Father/Mother. All these dichotomies spring from the ultimate binary opposition Man/Woman, which is gendered and takes the male as the reference point[1]. The symbolism of Male/Female does not refer to two different halves of humanity, but it has been used to express and maintain the hierarchical and oppositional relationship between the sexes which is divided and based on the subordination of the female, as it is always the feminine side of these oppositions that carries the negative attributes. Such a system of organization takes man as its measure in defining everything, including woman. Luce Irigaray too, like Hélène Cixous, believes that only in a different order of meaning might it be possible to construct a positive representation of feminine identity. This requires the rejection of the ever powerful notion of universal truth, as its universality is a fallacy; it is universal only from the male perspective. Adrienne Rich has been an influential figure in the arena of the feminist movement for decades not only with her poetry, but with her prose, and her person as an activist and a poet who has been deeply concerned with these dichotomies in her work, a state of trying “to be neither/nor” as she describes it.[2] Keeping this definition in mind, I would argue that Adrienne Rich rejects these traditional oppositions as universal definitions, and challenges the traditional boundaries between them. One important aspect that is vital in such a revisionist strategy on behalf of Rich is the refusal to treat female experience as marginal. Therefore, she writes as a woman and centralizes her experiences in her poetry. Rich explores the idea that Man is the Self, and Woman is his Other, and that this Otherness is the only possible location for female existence. Hence, throughout her career she has been constantly engaged in the act of exploration and discovery within a system which permits the existence of the female identity only within its own prescribed notions. This journey, however, does not aim to discover an unchanging and fixed female self. On the contrary, she should be distanced from the idea of the changeless and static self. Therefore, multiplicity of the female anatomy is always foregrounded as a key theme in her work. In her poetry we can read the idea that the female subject cannot be clearly and finally defined since subjectivity is constantly changing. The female self is a subject in process of continuous becoming. This idea of multiplicity is in direct opposition to the clearly defined notions of patriarchy which assume and perpetuate the notion of the unchanging subject. It allows the woman poet not to be imprisoned within binary oppositions, and opens up ways for the imagination of alternative systems of thought. By blurring the boundaries between these territories of binary oppositions, Rich subverts the foundations of oppositional systems of ideology. By doing so, she explores new alternatives for imagination through which female identity can be imagined, defined, articulated not in relation to the male, but in feminine terms. The alternatives she offers are based on difference. But this difference is not to be thought in oppositional terms. It can be defined as a different kind of difference. It is to be based upon non-oppositional, and nonhierarchical thinking. The poet’s questioning of the binary oppositions has the aim of making a connection between the two sides. I would argue that, however utopian, such a strategy might work towards healing the severe split between binary oppositions, and opening up ways of redefinition of critical concepts such as power and love through language. Rich herself explains how her poetry serves her explorations when she says: “Poetry is, among other things, a criticism of language. In setting words together in new configurations, in the mere, immense shift from male to female pronouns, in the relationships between words created through echo, repetition, rhythm, rhyme, it lets us hear and see our words in a new dimension.”[3] , At this point, I would like to give an outline of Irigaray’s theories that are used in this article. According to Freudian theory, we are born biologically male or female, but without the masculine and feminine gender identities encoded in us. The sexuality of the infant is polymorphous and unconfined to one specific body part. Hence, what constitutes ‘normal’ masculine and feminine sexuality is neither natural nor inherent. This aspect of Freudian theory is very important and liberating in terms of French feminist thought, as it does offer the possibility of subverting existing compulsory gender patterns. However, from this point onwards Freudian theory becomes problematic from the feminist point of view, as it centralizes ‘castration’ as the major determinant in the path of ‘normal’ adult sexuality. For both the male and the female child the first object of love is the mother. This pre-Oedipal phase of the child’s life is dominated by the body of the mother experienced as a continuance of his or her own body. There is plenitude in this continuum. However, in order for the child to acquire his or her own identity, this continuum must be broken, as subjectivity must be defined in relation to objectivity. In order for a ‘me’ to exist, there must be a separate ‘other’. What resolves this crisis is the Oedipal complex. When the boy realizes that not every human being possesses a penis, he fears the threat of castration from the father. He represses his love for the mother and identifies with the father as the figure of authority. He then can aspire to possess a woman of his own when he is an adult. For the girl however, this path is not as straightforward. On discovering that she is already castrated, she blames the mother for her physical inferiority, and adopts the father as her love object. From this point onwards her quest in life, according to Freud, becomes the search for a penis substitute. The girl still identifies with the mother, but only as a rival for the father’s love. According to briefly outlined Freudian theory, the penis is the determining factor in the construction of sexual identity. Jacques Lacan rereads Freudian theory in the light of linguistics. According to him, it is only through the system of language that we can make sense of the world. He declares the stage of separation from the mother as the ‘mirror’ stage in which the child acquires a sense of the self. Separation from the mother is completed with the child’s entry into language. Lacan terms language the ‘symbolic order’ which (...truncated)