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You both recently reviewed StreetSigns’ production of Helene Cixous’ The Perjured City. I have no issues with your evaluations of the production as a whole, but I was shocked by one commonality.
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It amazes me that you find it strange that one of the leading proponents of feminism in her time should choose motherhood as a vehicle. She has chosen an appropriate path that goes by way of the rage of Electra, the despair of Iphigenia, the resolve of Antigone. Her work demands more than the usual Americanized venting of collective angst. It is a challenge, a deftly crafted argument designed to put on trial those who are generally untouchable. I might ask, would the presence of a sudden ACT-UP rally or a collective shooting-up have added, or been superfluous, to the argument? (One might also add, an argument supported by two gay furies, and a literal spelling-out that “all AIDS victims are innocent” in this production.) All of the disenfranchised were included in Cixous’ graveyard, and I find it troublesome to think that you may have excluded yourselves. Your argument is one that the wolves of the world, the Forzzas and Jean-Marie Le Pens, love–watching us bicker over who is most deserving of pity, and laughing as we make speeches for ourselves about injustice, while those truly responsible quietly slip away.
