(This is part of the preparation I've been doing for discussion on Tuesday....)
We’ve talked about Lacan and the feminine/masculine positions, and we’ve seen that the feminine position is ambiguous toward use of language, never in control of language.
What, then, do we make of Kempe’s speech, particularly her prayers? Pg. 39-41, “The creature, being in her prayers, having mind of this matter, Christ said unto her spirit….” She repeatedly prays to Christ, who tells her what will happen in the future, who will die or not, etc. Kempe’s prayers seem to have a great deal of power to predict what will happen in the world and to change even the will of God. She prays for a man who is sick, and as a result “he lived many years after in good health and prosperity” (40). She prays for a “wicked woman” who “shall be dead” as Christ tells her, but as a result of her prayers “our Lord granted her mercy for the soul” (40).
We’ve mentioned how Custance in “The Man of Law’s Tale” prays frequently, but we haven’t really talked about how prayer may differ from normal speech or about why it seems to be so important to these female characters. It might seem that prayer is simply Kempe’s way (and Custance’s way) of gaining masculine authorization for her actions—true, the masculine authority in her case is God himself, but she’s still just another woman under male domination.
These are interesting questions -- I think we can understand prayer as an authorizing act for Kempe, especially when we consider how the text otherwise positions her speech acts. For example, even the narrating of some of her acts of intercessory prayer is accompanied by a disclaimer: "These are written to show the homeliness and the goodliness of our merciful Lord Christ Jesus and for no commendation of the creature" (40). This, I think, shows the essential difference between prayer and other forms of speech. Margery's prayers are directed toward God, rather than a male authority on earth; when her prayers are granted, it's ultimately God who is performing the saving act. It's interesting to think about this relationship between Margery in the feminine position, addressing God, who is the ultimate exception to the symbolic order, whereas the masculine position only fantasizes of being the exception.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, her speech acts directed toward her fellow (often male) Christians are frequently censored, even when they are religious in nature. Her pilgrimage companions expressly tell her to stop speaking of holiness, and they accuse her of breaking her covenant when she sat at the table and "repeated a text from a Gospel" (48). What is it about Margery's speaking position that causes her fellow travelers so much discomfort when she speaks from the Bible?
One other thing that has occurred to me so far is the function of divine love. Earlier in our readings from the Neighbor, Santner allows that divine love could act to authorize the miracle of neighbor-love. During one of Margery's conversations with Christ, she is told that "There may no man hinder me from loving whom I will and as much as I will; for love, daughter quenches all sin ... and therefore, daughter, you may no better please God than continually to think on his love" (37). I'm really intrigued by the emphasis on "continually," in light of our discussions about what a continuous Santner-ian miracle, or endlessly renewing Kristevan uncanniness, might look like. Margery Kempe seems to be living it, but I'm not sure whether I understand her interactions with others as neighbor-love.
Evelyn, thanks for jumpstarting the discussion on Kempe!
ReplyDeleteI am also interested in how the text's portrayal of suffering and excess complicates our understanding of the feminine position of language. Christ tells Kempe that “the more shame, despite, and reproof that you suffer for my love, the better I love you” (60). It seems that part of Kempe’s suffering involves the inability of language to express/contain her ardent devotion and love for Christ. Can Kempe’s tears be understood as an excess of this struggle? Kempe’s position as a Christ-like mediator is certainly consistent with her experience of stigmata, “wonderfully turning and twisting her body on every side, spreading her arms abroad as if she should have died” (52). Could this also be interpreted as a form of excess? If so, how could the excess induced by a struggle with language allow Kempe to more wholly suffer as a mediator or intercessor, thus becoming more beloved by Christ?
Per Scott's comment, I am particularly intrigued by the suggestion that Kempe’s constant state of prayer might be understood as a "Santner-ian miracle" or Kristevan "uncanniness." I was drawn to the way people respond to Kempe, esp. the use of the word "marvel" (i.e. on p. 71 when the confessor is miraculously able to understand Kempe in her own language), but I am also unsure of how some of Kempe's interactions with others might translate to neighbor-love.
(p.s. Evelyn, if you get this before Tues., could you please shoot me an email at blcarlso@indiana.edu so we can touch base before class? Thanks!)
I’m not sure that Kempe operates in the authorized, that is, masculine position, so much as she performs excessively in the feminine position. Professor Lochrie notes that Kempe negotiates a pretty fine line. On the one hand, she doesn’t want to be burned as a Lollard, and firmly denies any attachment to the movement. On the other, she won’t keep quiet.
ReplyDeleteBut we must keep in mind who she’s speaking to. Usually, Kempe seems to preach to the choir. That is, she goes from place to place presenting herself and her visions to holy people, such as Julian of Norwich. Such presentation seems conversational, not a formal breach of any inhibition. At any rate, it seems she didn’t get herself killed which means she did not force herself into the masculine position, in the eyes of the church.
Instead, Kempe seems much more intent on performing an unassailably holy feminine position. Much of her salient utterance is not even speech, but rather weeping and wailing. Her passion, so excessive, in fact, that it loses her friends.
Kempe seems intent on receiving neighbor love. That is, she insists on preferential consideration in accordance with that which God lavishes upon her in her visions. She attempts to be privileged as the One, as Zizek would have it. To achieve this, she throws herself with violent force into the feminine position. Her feminine passion and chastity are displayed so vehemently (and her motherly and uxorial obligations hidden from view with equal force) so as to recommend her as the perfectly feminine.
So how does divine love work in this text, and what's the relationship between divine love and the feminine position? We said in class on Tuesday that we might think about divine love in relation to Reinhard's diagram, as both the model of the symbolic order and also as the not all (Neighbor, 72-74). Similarly, the text seems to position Margery as both authoritative--upholding the symbolic order insofar as she is advising and consulting with priests, admirers, and anchorites, etc, accurately predicting events, learning from books, authoring (if not writing) a text--and also excessive, in all the ways Bethany listed.
ReplyDeleteBoth positions are, in a sense, enabled by God, but only the latter is in the not-all position. Crucially, that is because of an intersection between love of God and love of neighbor ("the subject loves the neighbor only by means of the love of God and loves God only by means of the love of neighbor" (Neighbor 73)). This all works as an interpretive key to Kempe's text if we remember that "neighbor" signifies not necessarily (and not only) another person but also and necessarily our strangeness to ourselves.
All of that makes sense to me and it's why I'd say, in response to Trevor, that it's not that Margery is "perfectly feminine", but instead that she is contingently in the feminine not-all position when she is "dallying" with God or others (note that dalliance can mean everything from serious conversation or small talk to amorous talk and sexual intercourse -- so shades of jouissance in that latter definition).
But what about love? Why is it *love* of God and *love* of neighbor in Reinhard's chart, rather than just those positions/concepts? If we were to take Kempe's text as a guide on this point, the key seems to be that attachment to the symbolic order ("all manner of loves on earth...all those loves and goods of any earthly thing" (102)) bar one from the strangeness and shattering that, for Margery, are the defining features of divine love. The scene that seems to encapsulate this is where "two men held her in their arms till her crying was ceased, for she might not bear the abundance of love that she felt in the precious sacrament" (102). This may not get us any closer to a full answer to the question about what love signifies, both in MK and in the theories we've read (relationship btwn love and uncanniness and miracles, for example, is still not entirely clear), but it would be great to think that scene through with you all.