Astrophysical Grammatology: A Review of
Madeline Gins' Helen Keller Or Arakawa
(originally appeared in American Book Review)
First, some questions (random access):
- How can an assigned book review resolve itself as another commodified object in a people-driven, subject-oriented network?
- Will the fact that Madeline Gins is one of my favorite writers and is virtually unknown outside a very select circle of readers make me want to do whatever I can to make her seem like the ultimate PoMo Pioneer-Goddess?
- Does Helen Keller, the figure in Gins' new novel, Helen Keller or Arakawa, represent the reader reading Gins or the writer Gins reading her long-time partner and iconoclastic artist Arakawa?
- Is Madeline Gins the Ludwig Wittgenstein of her generation?
Second, some facts (read-only):
- Gins' new book is inextricably hyperlinked to her other philosophictional vunder-works like Word Rain where the idea of narrative as an astrophysical grammatology (language as performative space with a heretofore sixth sense searching for a fourth dimension) is once again seduced by the laws and logic of the writing practice.
- In this heuristic narrative, the philosophical investigations of l,a,n,g,u,a,g,e "itself" enable the reader to see-through the standardized portrait of the deaf and blind by revealing a divine disembodiment, one that thrives on the chaos that is all-transitive and allows itself to be accentuated in the semiospheric constructs of an imagination whose mechanism for making meaning borders on the alchemical or titanically pure.
- Helen Keller sees herself inside herself. She is "a living canvas" composed of tissues of density. Her language bits flow in a series of micro-actions that become formulas for survival. Meanwhile, Arakawa, the conceptual air-designer, composes his own tissues of density within atmospheric continuums that cleave in anticipation. Somewhere in midst of this "mute" composition, the reader reads Gins as she too anticipates what can and cannot be seen while materializing her insides. The scene is held in graphic abeyance.
Third, some trends (unequivocal):
- Grammatology (the science of writing) catches sight of the novel from three vantage points: eye level, looked up to, and glanced down on
- Helen Keller or Arakawa (does it matter which?) is not interested in figuring out who s/he is or in coming up with a name to help describe what it is s/he does. S/he just wants to figure out what or who identity is
Fourth, some buzzwords (essential):
- alphabet skin
- signified or if (as in "You'd have me be insinuating myself then in and around the back of your signified or if.")
- determining body
- atmospheric resemblances
- moral volumes
- forming spacetime
- separated continuums
- distance which is a texture
- almost individual
Fifth, some dialogue (enunciated):
- "In blindness--and in my case, being deaf must contribute to this as well, I suppose--you must learn to gauge the appropriateness of actions according to probable scale of perceptibility. I am going to try to spell it out for you, rather in the manner of one who has read the book but has not had the opportunity to see the light. Being kept in the dark can be a critical gesture. If an electrical current were to make its way into the word and the word were on the page such that it was a kind of sizzling braille my fingers had access to, might I not finally find myself feeling exactly what it is you wanted me to feel?"
"As if feelings were of a specfic social order?"
"No, I'm too fluid for that. Plugged in."
"Meaning that this is a writing appliance. Assuming the nub of position is rife and, if respected, it signals."
Finally, the blurb (can't be read, only experienced):
- "A kinaesthetic universe whose tactual presence is sizeless."