Van die 20ste eeu af begin vroueskrywers reeds al hoe verder wegbeweeg van die kombuis as suiwer huishoudelike dimensie & ontgin dit toenemend as kreatiewe ruimte, as ruimte waar aspekte soos gender, mag & kreatiwiteit ondersoek kan word.
Die assosiasie, mens sou selfs kon beweer die kompetisie tussen voedsel & taal kan op sy eenvoudigste teruggevoer word na die feit dat beide die sone van die mond moet deel. In 'n onderhoud verduidelik Sneja Gunew dit as volg:
Lacanian theory, to some extent mediated by Kristeva, suggests that a subject first begins to form a boundary to the self in relation to 'abjection' so that the subject-in-process expels whatever is considered to be alien to the tentative boundary of the self. (It's never completely stabilized of course). The concept of the abject has become very influential. The most abject object, for example, is the corpse, in that it is paradigmatic of what must be seen as totally outside the boundary of the self. Food of course plays a role in all this. Some of the examples given by Kristeva (Powers of Horror) is how the child begins to understand what it is in relation to food, whether this food is the mother's breast (milk) or whether it is its inevitable separation from the mother, a separation that is manifested by the rejection of milk and other kinds of food. How that kind of relationship to food, in the sense of what we take in or what don't we take in, is somehow a threat to a 'clean and proper' body, how this registers in terms of one's entry into the symbolic realm and language (or social relations). When one rejects the milk as the first food in order to establish oneself as an individual, one symbolically rejects the maternal. It becomes more complicated if we differentiate between the actual mother and the more abstract maternal function. This has an important implication for language because of the 'talking cure' in psychoanalysis. Since we cannot access the unconscious, we can only access language (language in the form of speaking or writing). Through language, we are able to access (to some degree) our unconscious processes, what Kristeva refers to as the 'semiotic' phase. Kristeva once stated that all writings are an encounter with abjection. Currently, I am looking specifically at the ways in which we think of language and corporeality in relation to people switching from one language to another. How does psychoanalytic theory help us to understand a process that many people in the diasporic context experience when they shift from one language and one culture to another when they are already fully formed subjects in that first culture and language? How does this phenomenon affect the body? How do subjects talk about this phenomenon in relation to the body? Shirley Lim's Among the White Moon Faces is one example I discuss (Gunew 2003). It is a kind of violence which occurs at the corporeal level. In some ways, it shows the contradiction involved when these two kinds of subjects come together. Of course, this matter is a more complicated process since it might involve a paternal figure, the father, not just the 'mother tongue'. Another example I use is the first volume of Edward Said's autobiography (Out of Place) where he discusses a movement between French, Arabic, and two versions of English (British and American). When a father moves through this diasporic process, he is the one being abjected, suffering a decline in status and the language that goes with it. Other examples are Hiromi Goto's two novels, Chorus of Mushrooms and The Kappa Child which deal with language and its loss.
‘n Interessante aspek van die verse in Otters in bronslaai, & dan veral die tweede afdeling, is die wyse waarop Krog voedsel gebruik as metaforiese boumateriaal, & waarop een aptyt verplaas word deur ‘n ander. Freud het beweer dat seksuele begeerte sy oorsprong het in die bevrediging van ons honger na voedsel.
Vir Angela Carter is voedsel & eet onlosmaakbaar verweef met seks & mag. Harriet Blodgett skryf in “Mimesis and metaphor”:
Yet, observably, men are more inclined to link food with sexuality than women, who attach it rather to female roles and status in their writing… Women use food imagery for diverse purposes: to speak of personal and social behaviors and psychological problems, art, sex, sexual politics, poverty, nationalism, murder mysteries and more, especially domesticity.
Die kombuis as die hart van die huishouding, die plek waar die vrou funksioneer as vrou & moeder, waar kommunikasie plaasvind, is ‘n ideologies gelade ruimte.
Cooking, broadly conceived as female context, appears to offer some persuasive explanation why women maybe drawn to food imagery. Women’s imaginations are experientially linked to food as inspiration for mimesis or metaphor since women are, after all, the infant’s first food giver and customarily gendered as the family cook and meal arranger thereafter.
(Blodgett: 2004)
In ’n onderhoud met beroemde TV-kok Nigella Lawsen laat sy haar as volg uit oor die relasie tussen voedsel & erotiek:
At the back of my Feasts book there is a picture of me holding a baguette, and Charles said: “I like the picture of you holding your phallic symbols.” I said: “They are just loaves of bread.
She tries to dissect the association of food with sex. “I suppose it is appetite. And I do feel that the notion of women eating makes men lascivious. There is the male fantasy of the mother and lover all in one.”
Reeds in “slaai” blyk Krog se unieke gebruik van die voedselmetafoor as slaaimaak op sensoriese & sensuele wyse metafoor word van die seksdaad & “tossing the salad” ’n heel ánder betekenis gee. (Mens dink ook onwillekeurig aan die uitdrukking om in “iemand se slaai te krap” wanneer jy by ’n ander se liefdesake inmeng.)
met ‘n skerp mes
kap ek jou haarlose tamaties op
so ook die fyngeplooide pietersielie
& die uierige naeltjie.
die komkommer kraak kerfvars onder die lem
gemeng met sout, peper, speeksel & olie
geroer in semenwit mayonnaise
dien ek dit op
in die gladde koel blaarslaai van jou boude
(“slaai”, 29)
In hierdie vers word die voorbereiding van ’n slaai verbind met die liggaam van die geliefde in erotiese beelde, sodat die liggaam van die geliefde as begeerlik & eetbaar voorgehou word. Eweneens in die vers “daarsonder” (1981: 33) sê die spreker:
… met elke ereksie
proe jou tong heeltemal anders
(“daarsonder”, 33)
In Margaret Atwood se roman The Edible Woman besef die protagonis Marian dat haar heteroseksuele verhoudings op ‘n manier ontmenslikend is. Volgens Sceats wys Atwood daarop dat vrouens deel het aan hulle onderdrukking deur hulle passiwiteit. Marian leer dat “sexual politics means eat or be eaten” (Sceats, 99).
By Krog is die vrou die aggressiewe speler. Sy is nie slagoffer van die manlike aptyt nie, sy is die een wat die mán verorber: tegelyk ‘n daad van aggressie & deernis, sélfbevestiging & eenwording. Daar is by Krog ‘n rebelsheid in die kombuis wat ‘n interessante korrektief bring op ander meer konvensionele kombuis-narratiewe.
Tematies ondersoek Krog in Verweerskrif (2006) steeds dieselfde temas: huisvrou wees teenoor digter wees, die huwelik, liefde, skryf, maar met groter weerloosheid en 'n feller direktheid, selfs kruheid in die taalgebruik. Dit is 'n bundel waarin die manlike diskoers sonder omdraai bevraagteken en selfs ondermyn word, waarin sy haar nogmaals losskryf van die kanon. Krog se verkenning van haar vroulikheid en van vrou-wees verkry in Verweerskrif groter nuansering sedert sy in Gedigte 1989-1995 gedeklameer het “ek is 'n vry fokken vrou”.
In die skitterende vers “Oggendtee” is die maandstondbloed wat na jare meteens “soos ink” (en dus verbind met kreatiwiteit) weer vloei, “iets vreemd / bekends”
asof 'n hele boord in haar keel op
roei. geluk lek oral in. haar lyf
stoot luike oop na appels
en koeltes wat waas van voëls
sonbesies en snikhete vertes
(p. 27)
In die oproep van vroeër vrugbaarheid en beelde van volheid, is die vloei van die bloed en die ink 'n pragtige, standhóúdende verweer.
Maar die voorbereiding van die slaai, & by implikasie die seksuele relasie met die man, is een wat ook geweld insluit. Ina Rousseau se gedig, “Die huisvrou”, (Taxa, 1970) is eweneens ‘n uitstekende voorbeeld van die geweld wat net onder die oppervlak van die alledaagse in die kombuis lê.
Of “The surgeon husband” deur Helen Dunmore waarin ’n vrou se voorbereiding van ’n salm in die kombuis afgespeel word teen dié van haar sjirurg-man wat besig is om ’n baba in die lewe te bring, alles teen die agtergrond van sluimerende verraad. Die gedig word tegelykertyd ook ’n ars poetica, ’n besinning op die skryfproses sélf:
The surgeon husband
Here at my worktop, foil-wrapping a silver salmon
– yes, a whole salmon – I’m thinking
of the many bodies of women
that my husband daily opens.
Here he lunges at me in wellingtons.
He is up to his armpits, a fisherman
Tugging against the strength of the current.
I imagine the light for him, clean,
and a green robing of willow
and the fish hammering upstream.
I too tug at the flaps of the salmon
where its belly was, trying to straighten
the silver seams before they are sewn.
We are one in our dreams.
The epidural is patchy, his assistant’s
handwriting is slipping. At eleven fifteen
they barb their patient to sleep, jot ‘knife to skin’,
and the nurse smiles over her mask at the surgeon.
But I am quietly dusting out the fish-kettle,
and I have the salmon clean as a baby
grinning at me from the table.
Kos hou ten nouste verband met seks & mag. Voedsel word deur Krog gebruik om hierdie magspel uit te beeld, maar ook om die emosionele toestand van die gesinsgenote oor te dra, die konflik tussenfamilielede. Kyk bv. na “ballade vir ‘n 5-jarige huwelik” (1981: 46):
hoe lank voordat ons mekaar se vleis met naels van die ribbes ruk
mekaar se skedels in vreemde huise oor die matte rol
mekaar se genitalieë saam met uie in bredies rasper
cocktails met mekaar se oë versier…
(drink my altyd so met jou oë)
Ander verse in haar jongste bubdel (Verweerskrif, 2006) (onder meer die drie “huweliksliede” en “hoe sê mens dit”) betrek onder meer die falende seksualiteit van die man waarin sy beken dat sy “die sagte losheid van jou boude / verkies bo die jong harde beneukte jagsheid / van vroeër”), & die weergalose “die blikbul van lavigny” is dit die minnaar “van onverganklik jonkwees gedaan” wat 'n laaste stans inneem & van die vrou vir oulaas 'n dis maak:
hy weet die groot
inmekaarstort kom en druk sy kwylbek vir
oulaas vrypostig tussen persblou pruime in
Die gebruik van resepte in die skryfwerk van vrouens word intensief bespreek deur Blodgett. Sy skryf onder meer: “Recipes prove surprisingly frequent. Susan Leonardi has argued that a recipe properly is "an embedded discourse" (340), an exchange between reader and recipe-provider, requiring a context, not just a list of ingredients.”
Hier dink die leser onwillekeurig aan Krog se gedig “slaai” waar die “resep” nie slegs metafoor is nie, maar ook gebruik word om die onderlinge dinamiek van die huwelik uit te beeld. “hoe & waarmee oorleef mens dit?” word so beskou dan ‘n soort resep vir oorlewing as skrywer binne die huwelik.
Maaltye as sodanig word dan ook belangrike gebeurtenisse: geleenthede vir kontak, kommunikasie & konflik. As sodanig is maaltye dan ook sterk geritualiseerde gebeurtenisse, verál aandete (& ek meen “slaai” sentreer waarskynlik rondom ‘n middag- of aandete as mens die wyn in ag neem, die gaste, die “Royal Albert-porselein”-verwysing).
Blodgett meen dat ‘n karakter in Rebecca West se Sunflower die spyker op die kop slaan wanneer sy beweer dat aandete die belangrikste maaltyd is omdat dit vrouens die beste geleentheid gee om kontak te maak met mans, & daarmee betrek sy dan seks & hofmaakrituele.
“We think back through our mothers if we are women” (1989: 76), skryf Virginia Woolf in A room of one’s own, & dit is inderdaad so dat voedsel is ook ‘n verbintenis met die geskiedenis vorm, met die verlede, soos byvoorbeeld blyk uit “familieresep” (1981: 37) waar die ouma se vaardigheid in die kombuis gestel word teenoor die spreker se eie onbeholpenheid. Wanneer die spreker haar eie lyf beskryf, is dit in terme van kos:
ek kyk af na my platgevalle borste, my klonterige maag
die uitgesakte houtlepel van my heupe
my biltongbruin kuite
& ek dink aan ouma se bo-arms & groot sagte skoot
Ook in “selfportret” (1981: 47), met wolke wat “soos ‘n leë maag rammel (…) agter die fyn reën” wanneer die digteres/huisvrou introspeksie doen, kan sy nie anders as om haar aftakeling in terme van kos-beelde weer te gee nie:
sagte deegblasies rys onder my oë
soos ‘n vetkoektang sper die kepe van die neus af mond toe
(“selfportret”, 47)
Die Noord-Amerikaanse digteres Denise Levertov skryf eweneens in “O taste and see” oor die behoefte, selfs die noodsaak dat ons die wêreld deur ons sintuie moet verken, as’t ware met “imagination’s tongue”:
O Taste and See
The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,grief,
mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform
into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being
hungry, and plucking
the fruit.
Bronnelys
Harriet Blodgett. 2004. “Mimesis and Metaphor: Food Imagery in International Twentieth-Century Women’s Writing”. Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Beskikbaar by: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3708/is_200407/ai_n9452863
Helen Dunmore. 1997. Bestiary. Bloodaxe Books.
Sneja Gunew. May, 2003. "A Conversation between Sneja Gunew and Yiu-nam Leung". Beskikbaar by:
http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/sgunew/LEUNG.HTM
Antjie Krog. 2006. Verweerskrif. Umuzi.
Sarah Sands. "I don't want to be some kitchen blow-up sex doll". 01 December 2006. Beskikbaar by:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-420003/I-dont-want-kitchen-blow-sex-doll.html
Sarah Sceats. 2000. Food, Consumption and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Virginia Woolf. 1989. A Room of One’s Own. San Diego: Harcourt.
(c) Johann de Lange, 2010