Abstract
This chapter is a minor literature in that it performs the language of a minority in a major language . In other words, it is feminine , monstrous , as it is of the body and rarely a part of headstrong, masculine academic writing . It feels. This chapter avoids essentialising head or body, one over the other, asserting that both are needed in academic writing . A partnership. A co-mingling. This chapter performs the re-territorialisation of feminine texts within academic writing by relegating the masculine explanations for what is written to the cliff/footnotes. It embraces blogging as a form of mass [academic ] culture that breaks down the walls of high [academic ] culture by asking the audience to become an active, rather than passive, consumer of academic texts. This chapter writes in a way which provokes emotions (I know, I’ve tested it) as active engagement with text, but also continues Cixous’s agenda of advocating for a place for feminine literature within cultural studies. There are multiple ways into this text. Breaks in the flow , sections which stand alone, depth and shallowness. Dip in and out where you will, take what you need, and leave what you don’t. All I ask is that you feel.
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Notes
- 1.
Deleuze and Guattari define a minor literature as “the literature of a minority makes it a major language ” (p. 16). This chapter performs the re-territorialisation of that feminine texts within academic writing by relegating the masculine explanations for it to the cliff/footnotes, so there are also multiple ways into this text. It embraces blogging as a form of mass [academic ] culture that breaks down the walls of high [academic ] culture by asking the audience to become an active, rather than passive, consumer of academic texts (Steinberg, 2006). This chapter writes in a way which provokes emotions (I know, I’ve tested it) as active engagement with text, but also continues Cixous, Cohen, and Cohen (1976) agenda of advocating for a place for feminine literature within cultural studies.
- 2.
This chapter draws on the language manipulation of Nin (1977), one of the first female writers to compose texts intended for female erotic pleasure. In doing so, this chapter asks, what could be more monstrous in academic writing than erotica, the basest of mass culture?
- 3.
It should be noted that English speakers may be unfamiliar with the idea of feminine and masculine language commonplace in French, the language spoken by the bulk of the theorists whose work underscores this text. It is within this understanding that the distinction is made. Foucault (1985) describes the difference between an understanding of the virtuous masculine and the immoderate feminine in his genealogy of sexual power, arguing that these conceptions of morality are still prevalent in the modern world. This chapter takes Foucault’s notion of sexual power and transposes it into writing .
- 4.
Ahmed (2017) directs us to closely consider our feelings. What they specifically feel like and what they socially construct around us and others.
- 5.
The Chthulucene is a term coined by Donna Haraway through which she challenges the notion of the Anthropocene in contemporary Earth sciences. The Anthropocene , according to Nobel Prize Winner Paul Crutzen who is said to have coined the term (Tola, 2016) is an epoch of human influence on the geological and atmospheric makeup of Earth (Steffen, Grinevald, Crutzen, & McNeill, 2011). Haraway formed the neologism, Chthulucene as an activism against the continued humanism in research that situates human agency as central to all things. Chthulucene is taken from the Greek monsters of the chthonic or hellish, subterranean realms—those associated with snakes, worms, creepy crawlies and octopuses.
- 6.
Cixous, Cohen, and Cohen (1976, p. 885) wrote a manifesto on the female body and its connection to female writing , arguing that the sexual norms that decide what is and isn’t beautiful are based on a masculinist understanding. She flips the idea of Medusa being ugly and fearsome to suggest that the Olympic mythologies, through which we know her story, are representative of “the language of men and their grammar” (p. 887) and that there are feminine forms of writing that would tell a different story.
- 7.
Wollstonecraft-Shelley (1996, p. 30) is arguably the first feminine writer of the Chthulucene who describes how Victor Frankenstein came to understand what makes things live by watching how things die. The story of Frankenstein walks the fine line between death and passion which is what this chapter argues is the essence of composing with the Chthulucene .
- 8.
Kaur (2016).
- 9.
The following stories are largely taken from my weblog, View from a Hovel (Barnes 2017b) with some editing and additions. I have been exploring other entryways into academic writing through my blogging by experimenting with genre. Through this work, I have come to believe that there is more potential for disseminating research through blogging than simply summarising academic papers. Blogging has the potential to actively connect past and present scholarship through hyperlinking and actively engage future scholarship through the capability of reader commenting (Barnes 2017a).
- 10.
Deleuze (1986).
- 11.
The book of my childhood. View from a Hovel [blog]. Posted August 13, 2016. Retrieved 31 May 2017 from https://courtingtheacademy.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/the-book-of-my-childhood/.
- 12.
Book of my politics. View from a Hovel [blog]. Posted 21 August 2016. Retrieved 31 May 2017 from https://courtingtheacademy.wordpress.com/2016/08/21/the-book-of-my-politics/.
- 13.
Deleuze and Guattari (1987).
- 14.
A Romantic poem by Robert Browning.
- 15.
Woolf and Black (2001, p. 59).
- 16.
It. View form a Hovel [blog]. Posted 11 May 2017. Retrieved 31 May 2017 from https://courtingtheacademy.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/it/.
- 17.
The town whose name Le Guin saw on a sign in her rear vision mirror as she drove away was Salem, Oklahoma (O). The town is well known for its association with witchcraft in both major/high literature and low/mass texts. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is set in Salem and is a story of the clash between masculinist virtue and feminine immodesty. The soap opera, a genre largely directed at women, Days of Our Lives is also set in Salem. In an interesting move to set another low/mass genre fiction, a utopia, that, in literary studies, has become high literature. In an act of cultural pedagogy (Steinberg, 2006), this story inserts a “major literature” cultural theory concept of Othering into a “minor literature ” text in a way which makes the concept both more understandable to a mass audience and asks the audience to react to it.
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
Shildrick (2001).
- 21.
Skloot (2011).
- 22.
Zevallos (2017).
- 23.
Matheson (1954, p. 136).
- 24.
King (2016, p. 782).
- 25.
Cixous, Cohen, and Cohen (1976) explains the difference between masculine and feminine texts as being those which care about the head and those which do not. This is why it is alright that Medusa lost her head because her body is what eventually produced magical beings. When she died, Pegasus and Chrysaor emerged. Harrison (1903) argues that Medusa’s potency is also only told after she has her head severed.
- 26.
Deleuze (1986, p. 28).
- 27.
Barnes (2015).
- 28.
Richardson and St. Pierre (2008).
- 29.
Richardson (2000).
- 30.
Barad (2007).
- 31.
Barad (2014).
- 32.
- 33.
Deleuze (1990, p. 8).
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Barnes, N. (2018). Composing with the Chthulucene: Desiring a Minor Literature. In: Riddle, S., Bright, D., Honan, E. (eds) Writing with Deleuze in the Academy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2065-1_12
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