Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Seed-beds: Crossing Theology, Feminism and Science Fiction
- II Sexual Universes
- III Father in Crisis, Mother Rises? 1. The Choric Fantasy
- IV Father in Crisis, Mother Rises? 2. (Extra)biblical Scenarios
- V (Counter) Apocalypses
- VI A Momentary Taste of Being
- Notes
- Index of Names and Terms
VI - A Momentary Taste of Being
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Seed-beds: Crossing Theology, Feminism and Science Fiction
- II Sexual Universes
- III Father in Crisis, Mother Rises? 1. The Choric Fantasy
- IV Father in Crisis, Mother Rises? 2. (Extra)biblical Scenarios
- V (Counter) Apocalypses
- VI A Momentary Taste of Being
- Notes
- Index of Names and Terms
Summary
… A momentary taste
of Being from the Well amid the Waste—
James Tiptree, JrBeing joins the terrible syncopated dance [of life and death] of its own accord, the dance we must accept for what it is, conscious of the horror it is in key with. If our heart fails us there is no torture like it. And the moment of torment will always come: how would we overcome it if it were to fail? But all of being ready and open— for death, joy or torment—unreservedly open and dying, painful and happy, is there already with its shadowed light, and this light is divine: and the cry that being—vainly?—tries to utter from a twisted mouth is an immense alleluia, lost in endless silence.
Georges BatailleLooking back on the future
We have come to the end of my wo/andering through Tiptree's science fictional heterotopia. We have been plunged into strange spatio-temporal settings—an interstellar spaceship, the vastness of outer space, indefinite time—and confronted with uncanny events. By reading Tiptree's narrative in the light of a variety of theoretical discourses, heuristic images and intertexts it has proved possible to unlock various possible layers of the text. Aaron Kaye's plot, the alien mother/daughter plot, Lory Kaye's plot— plots which were all anti-plots at the same time. Plots with cosmological, sexual, intra-psychic, moral, mythological, religious and historical dimensions. Plots, moreover, which were detected in readings which are partial and perspectival explorations—sometimes complementary, sometimes colliding—rather than successive stages in a straightforward process of uncovering meaning.
The divergent interpretations in the subsequent chapters basically evolved around what I consider to be the three salient issues of the text: namely, the painful quest for female subjectivity, the figuration of the posthuman and a multiple vision of the divine. What we have seen is that these issues are absorbed in a vehement current of negativity, that is, of violence and annihilation: in the first reading the grotesque annihilation of masculinity dominated the scene; a desperate desire for primordial oneness was excavated in the second reading; the abject directed the focus in the third…
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Alien PlotsFemale Subjectivity and the Divine in the Light of James Tiptree's 'A Momentary Taste of Being', pp. 186 - 212Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2000