Women's Poetry and The Sexual Politics of Babel

Women's Poetry and The Sexual Politics of Babel Karen Van Dyck In this article I explore the connection between babble and Babel, two states of language which accentuate deterritorialization, that is the foreign and unempowered status of the writing or speaking subject.1 By babble I mean the confusion within one language usually associated with infants who have not yet mastered the language, or a Cassandra figure who has lost control of the language. By Babel I mean the confusion caused by a multitude of different languages and the problems of translation that ensue. Although the Oxford English Dictionary in its definition of "babble" reports that it cannot trace any direct connection with Babel, it does admit that "association with that may have affected the senses." In the popular imagination both babble and Babel are seen as nuisances, posing as they do the impossibility of one to one equivalencies between words and things. It is this similarity that prompts me to consider how the specific babble of recent women's poetry in Greece might provide some insights into the more general question of Babel and translation which critics from Roman Jakobson to Walter Benjamin to Jacques Derrida have analyzed.2 In a larger work I trace the ellipticism of recent women's poetry— in particular Rea Galanaki's, Jenny Mastoraki's and Maria Laina's— back to the seven-year dictatorship which ended in 1974 (Van Dyck 1990). My hypothesis is that what began more generally as a ploy for evading censorship under the dictatorship actually became a distinguishing feature of women's poetry after the regime's fall. While most poets, with the lifting of censorship, assumed that poetry could speak clearly again and say what it meant, women poets continued to write poetry that was difficult to decipher. This babble, initially marginalized , or doubly marginalized, if we consider modern Greek literature's own marginal status in relation to other major literatures, has, in the 1980s, slowly begun to gain recognition as a viable alternative writing style. Let us first examine how women's poetry turned its minor status Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 8, 1990. 173 174 Karen Van Dyck into an empowering strategy of resistance, and then what its various styles of deterritorialization might teach us about translation more generally. Women's Poetry and Deterritorialization For centuries "good" women poets were thought to have "risen above" their gender. The term «γυναικεία γϕ αφή» [women's writing] has a history of derogative or, at least restrictive, meanings. Traditionally "women's writing" represented women's experience, as defined by men. Immanuel Roidis' discussion of women's writing at the turn of the century makes this very clear; women's writing should be, «πεϕ ίεϕ γόχειϕ ωνκαιμαγειϕ ικής»[aboutneedleworkandcooking]. When women's writing ventured into the public sphere Roidis derided it as «απόπειϕ αι πιδηκισμοϕ » [attempts at imitation]. The Chinese saying he quotes makes his position clear: «Άμα q όϕ νιθα αϕ χίση να λαλή ως πετεινός, σφάξε την αμÎ-σως» [If the hen begins to crow like a cock kill her immediately] )1913: 85).3 Women in the private sphere were meant to keep things running smoothly by reproducing sons and writing about domestic life, so that men in the public sphere could get on with what was oddly considered to be more originary, and less derivative, the task of production. Although Roidis was exaggeratedly anti-feminist, his views of women's writing have nonetheless influenced generations of women writers and may be one reason why poets like Mastoraki and Laina are still reticent to call themselves "women poets." Because of its minor status reek women writers themselves deny the category "women's writing" any specificity. They respond facetiously or dismissively to questions about "women's writing." Jenny Mastoraki, for example, said in response to the question. "Do you write women's poetry?": Και βÎ-βαια. Όπως ο βολιώτης γιατϕ ός ασκεί βολιώτικη ιατϕ ική και οι πειϕ αιώτικοιφοϕ Ï• νοιβγάζουνπειϕ αιώτικοψωμί.(1982:65) Of course. In so far as a doctor from Volos practices Voliot medicine and a bakery from Piraeus bakes Piraean bread. This is a response which Laina has since quoted in response to similar questions. Although women's poetry is no longer regarded as a ghetto of tender sentiments, and many critics even mention the importance of writing by women in the 1980s (Vitti 1987: 450; Maronitis 1987: 24), they still largely deny it its historical...