Nietzsche says in his 'Gay Science'-
Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Baubo, to speak in Greek?... Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live: for that purpose it is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin; to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance!
Baubo was a bawdy old woman who exposed her vagina, thus raising a laugh from Demeter who was otherwise grieving the abduction of her daughter.
Agnodice too lifted her skirts to show the Athenians she wasn't 'corrupting' their young women. She was a trained midwife who had gone to Egypt for higher studies. She wasn't engaged in any bogus maieutics, unlike Socrates, but was helping bring strong babies into the world while preserving the health of their mothers. Since then, many distinguished academics and social activists have exposed their vulvas to the world for various reasons which it is the task of critical philosophy to ponder deeply.
It is the contention of this blogpost that Martha Nussbaum's own efforts in this direction should be understood as arising out of her engagement with Tagore who, in his Nobel Prize winning English prose-poem Gitanjali wrote
The morning time is past, and the noon. In the shade of evening my eyes are drowsy with sleep. Men going home glance at me and smile and fill me with shame. I sit like a beggar maid, drawing my skirt over my face, and when they ask me, what it is I want, I drop my eyes and answer them not.
On the not unreasonable assumption that Tagore had 'tucked in' his dick and bollocks, we may apodictically aver that this bearded, Bengali, Baubo was indeed incarnating that Truth which Nietzsche says has its reasons for not showing its reasons. This turns on its head Freud's famous question- 'What do women want?'- whose answer is obviously 'Money'. But what is money? Is it not Demeter's laughter in which we rejoice because it releases us from fear of dearth? Seeds multiply seeds because vaginas remain vaginas despite their every gain begetting their every loss. It is this face we see- whose bindu is the belly button and whose chin is the mound of Venus- when we cast our eye over Tagore's oeuvre for he sits like a beggar maid exposing a vagina imputed by the artfulness of his tuck away. Of course, 'men going home' may not really have believed that Tagore was a beggar maid even if he had used his skirt to cover his bearded face. To be frank, thoroughly tucking away your testicles gets increasingly difficult as you age because your ball sack lengthens and loosens. Still, at least Tagore's incessant indecent exposure raised a smile from Bengali men of the period. I suppose they did incessantly ask him what he wanted- was it Swaraj by any chance? No? That isn't why you are lifting your skirt and drawing it over your face? What is it then? Oh. It is yet another scheme of yours to raise funds for Shantiniketan. Well, we gave at the office and so you may as well pack up and go home.
BTW, how come you are getting drowsy with sleep? Nightfall is never much later than about 6.30 pm in these latitudes. Fuck is wrong with you? Get up and go home and have your dinner. Stop exposing your supposed vagina. Iqbal is getting horny. You know what those Punjabis are like.
No comments:
Post a Comment