The Rogue Quotation Mark

Cathleen Casey. Passierschein.

About Passierschein on page 295: Passierschein is based on safe conduct passes, used during World War II and dropped by thousands all over Europe to convince Nazi Germans to turn themselves in. I wondered what it would be like for women to have safe conduct passes.

This paragraph from Judy Chicago’s Through The Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist (1975) formed the basis for my artwork:

“One woman presented a performance that had to do with being asleep next to her boyfriend, dreaming that a man had come into the room and was stroking her leg slowly, panting with lust and excitement. She awoke, frightened, but as soon as she sat up, he disappeared. Was he real or was he an ever-present specter, whose need encroached upon her even while she was asleep? Again, she dozed, saw him, woke up screaming. Again he disappeared. She became more and more confused and felt there was no safety, no escape from male presence, which surrounded her, consumed her, invaded her, even in sleep.”

That hadn’t happened then. That wasn’t, you said. That turned   the fluid text upon itself, undefended, triumphant to misplace, deface, to cripple the chthonic, shove it craftily   aside. “The fractured yard,” “the holographic moon,” the “the” untested, an unarticulated article, uncrafted   and poised at the door. “The door”—upon which you entered, entering, saw your opening. The “the” on highway billboards,   on lit and vicious Strip signs, high and mighty, built for screed— a rush to throttle you under. You at the door, or better yet, me—   to fend off the cops, who came when I phoned about your argument, who came, only to be sent away. “Everything’s fine.” I said what you   said for me to say. I, standing at the door amid the buzzing sound. Thousands of bug-eyed, crafty locusts   all having descended that summer evening. The cops— two—stood mystified at the door while my eleven-year-old   shadow—cast by the sloe-eyed girl I once was— as that shadow grew to obscure and mar what dwelled   inside. The “the” immense, to indicate detachment, to detach place from name: “the wish,” “the truth.” Words   flood the threshold, spill out inchoate, yoked, effluent.