It's hurricane season so let's bunker down

No posts because I have been writing all my theory notes in one blog draft. It's coming eventually, but I took a break with a novel. Well, more than one novel so there will be quite a few more posts coming. Anyways.

Hurricane Irma has passed us and left me with a pantry full of hurricane snacks. I read Katherine Dunn's Geek Love (1989) with an armload of Sun Chips, cookies, and goldfish. Nom.

It took me a minute to make my way through this book. I was talking to my mom on the phone earlier about it. I told her--and I can say this to my mother because she birthed me and gets credit so this doesn't count as bragging--I have read 700 page novels in a day no problem. I was doing that in middle school (my parents and teachers used to quiz me because they didn't believe that I could finish the novels so quickly. I was. I am just an obsessive person.). This novel is 348 pages and it took me a couple of days. The pacing and the structure just didn't work for me, but it was more than that. Dunn attempts to immerse you in a world with neither sign posts nor detailed descriptions. Yes, there is imagery. Yes, there are passages of description. But these are the images and details of a POV who is used to seeing all of this. There is no translator for the reader. I often had to re-read passages simply because I had no idea what had happened or who had said something or what the motivation was. I still feel like this is an unfamiliar world and unfamiliar characters.

I hate that because I really did find the idea interesting. It's the pushback against eugenics! Finally! So I'm going to focus on some of those ideas.

Okay, so the anti-eugenics book. If we can make perfect babies then we can make imperfect babies; if we can make "normal" babies then we can make abnormal babies. Now we know ideas about beauty and normalcy are subjective and often simply cultural constructs. In recent years, the disability activists have made major headway in changing the way we think about and discuss disability, but in the 1980s, these conversations we're only just beginning. Instead, we were still grappling with the legacy of WW2, the sterilization movements, and even Cold War concerns over radiation. Who was going to be influencing our children, babies? And even if it was only ourselves, how would we be influencing them? Advancements in medical technology allowed us the feeling of greater control over the process: ultrasounds in the 1950s gave us a window earlier on, new medicines provided cures, and psychologists bestowed supposed insights into the healthy child's consciousness. We could build the perfect child, the perfect citizen.

Arturo Binewski is neither a perfect child nor perfect citizen--despite what his naive mother and father may believe. Both outrageously arrogant and cripplingly insecure, Arty demands constant attention from his family, fans, and followers. The need for attention transforms into the need for blind loyalty and utter control. His power stems from his difference--a variation of the typical understanding the heighten normalcy, the superhuman, is the epitome of power.

His individuality becomes a sort of danger. Their family defines "freakishness" as a form of individuality and individuality is powerful. But individuality is powerful because everyone wants to believe that they are special. Arty takes it all one step further and preaches that his individuality is the only individuality that is fulfilling. He encourages his followers to alter themselves to look like him so that they may find meaning. He preaches body modification and, in a way, post-birth eugenics.

The transition is easy for Arty. His family has been practicing micro-eugenics for years. His parents experimented with different drug cocktails for each pregnancy, yielding unique results each time. His own sister, Oly, engages in her own form of eugenics by trying to produce a special baby with her brother (albeit without his knowledge). Arty tries to control his twin sisters' reproduction as well to punish them with a child. In this family, children are special but they are special because they are commodities.

Gone are the days when children were a valuable workforce. The family often talks about the children "working," but we don't ever see them work in the traditional sense. Instead they are commodities for the carnival: they are shows themselves and their work includes the traditional children routines of practicing piano, learning to speak properly, and learning to swim. The children do not provide labor but value. They are products to be sold again and again.

The children are aware of this. They keep track of their ticket sales and use this numbers as validation. They compete with one another to establish who is the most valuable product. Oly accepts that she is value-less and devotes herself to increasing Arty's value. Chick's talents as a telekinetic are difficult to commodify without attracting the attention of government officials. Like Oly, Check's specialness is harnessed to elevate the power of the others--namely Arty. They believe they can empower themselves by further marketing themselves as these products.

In some ways, this seems as much of a response to second wave feminism as it does to concerns over child welfare. In the late 20th century, white middle/upper-class women try to free themselves from being unpaid domestic labor and seek value elsewhere. The sexual revolution of the 1960s offered one way. But the sexual revolution created a sexual market in which women were the product. Sexual objectification carried its own set of issues and women were confronted with a choice: to accept the male gaze and embrace their own commodification or subvert the male gaze and challenge understandings of female agency. But to challenge is to reject the system; what exists outside the system? How can women create a new system for themselves? How can the Binewski children? Arty attempts to create an alternative for himself through Arturism. The twins seek agency through sexual objectification--a translation of the commodification they have experienced their whole lives only now with themselves as the head. Oly seems unable to exist outside the system for a majority of the book.

If Oly cannot exist outside the system, she must perpetuate the system. And how do you perpetuate a system based upon genetics? You reproduce. And so Oly takes Arty's sperm and impregnates herself to continue the cycle. She says so much, telling her daughter, "the only reason for your existing was as a tribute to your uncle-father . . . I planned to teach you how to serve him and adore him. You would be his monument and his fortress against mortality." Children become our path to immortality because they carry on our systems.

At the end of the novel, the whole family has exploded--literally. Rather than grieving the loss of her children, their mother wants to start over. She runs to her husband's corpse ranting, "Broken . . . Al . . . . after all our work . . . we'll start agin . . . you and me." She refers to children as their hard work. They have lost their products and she wants to re-produce them. She wants to re-create the system but it is too late.

I'm still working out Oly's role at the end, but this is cheery enough for now. Brandi is now here post-hurricane and preparing for her own prelims so I'm going to pay attention to her.

#geeklove #katherinedunn #eugenics #family #childhood