dbl012fret

i have been rereading "intimate journal," by nicole brossard. so much to chew on here, and so many good lessons concerning how to begin the act of uncovering the soil of heterosexist construct in order to begin inventing or reinventing a sense of the self outside the constraints of simple unity. i suspect this work much more difficult for straight men because there is so little evident advantage to the work for them. also, they are so caught in the trick, or lie, of centrality that they rarely have to question the construct. anyway, here are a couple passages i've found most useful this morning:

"One evening, coming back to the hotel, an image came to me of two parallel societies: men's society and women's society. Each of them had their own hierarchy, their little and great miseries. I was troubled, very troubled, and I tried with a great many drawings, graphics, and scales of value to understand how to avoid hierarchy, the abuse of power, the little and great miseries. It was difficult and tiring and yet I have not stopped trying to understand ever since; not society but what is hidden in thought, how thought works to bring into being the society we know and are subject to." 65

"The blanks, what are called white spaces, are in fact so full of thoughts, words, sensations, hesitations, and audacities that it can all be translated only by a tautology, that is to say, by another blank, a visual one. It is in the white space that anybody who writes, trembles, dies, and is reborn. Before and after the blank space everything goes well, because there is the text. And it fills up a life so well, a text does! Every text is a sample, that is to say a small amount displayed in order to give an idea of the whole. A text serves as an example. And each text is exemplary too, because it bears witness to a process of thought, in its simplest expression as in its most explorean trajectory." 65-66