JAC Volume 16 Issue 2

This is a piece of writing about layers, concerned with excess. Excess of voices, excess of selves—it is a piece of writing concerned with the way language contains excess . I realize through reading Angela's¹ writing, through reading my writing—looking at the lines and pages that have been cut, discarded—that there are so many voices that must be excluded from this essay.

Thinking about my audience for this essay—a journal, an academic journal—I make choices in my writing. At first, each choice seems to involve a violence, an abandonment, a marginalization of the least authoritative voices, the whispers, the voices which seem too monstrous, threatening to break the surface, to contaminate, to take over.

In my students' writing, it is these "other" voices which excite me. Perhaps it is because in my development as a writer, it has been through exploring my "other" voices that I have found the authority to negotiate a writing self within the structures I once found alienating and difficult. I have not abandoned the desire to bring my writing or my students' writing to the realm of intentionality and communication. The term "revision" is often synonymous with a language of cutting away, of controlling. If communication (communication as conveying "what I meant to say") is a goal of writing, some violence is necessary.

But the more I teach, the less willing I become to inflict the violence demanded by a rhetoric² based on notions of reading which deny the interac—tive relationship of reader and text, and ignore the "always already fragmentary nature" of even the most accessible and "clear" forms of writing (Seitz 818). Instead of working each piece of my students' writing towards completeness, towards "the final draft," I poke at cracks in the surface, survey gaps, pushing for more text, more words. I encourage my students to claim authority in writing based on something other than their communicative effectiveness in academic discourse.³ In doing so, perhaps I inflict a different violence and take on a riskier role as a teacher. Opening, always opening, instead of circumscribing, closing off. There is a tension between these two forces in writing. One I have not resolved as a teacher, or a writer, or a woman.

Hélène Cixous writes, "Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies—for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal" (1233). I perceive "Writing as a Woman" as an ability to accept the multiple voices—however contradictory or numerous—occurring in the self, and in writing. For both Angela and me, our refusal to acknowledge and accept our manifold selves—some demanding, some selfish, some creative, graceful, outrageous—is mapped in our frustration and disgust with our bodies. A disgust with excess, with thighs and stomachs that we cannot control. Our frustration, fear, and anger are written on the body, along with our awareness of our multitudinous selves.

There is a gap between Cixous' theoretical Woman and the lives of Angela and me—of our discussion of our relationship to food, to writing, to our bodies, to perfectionism and relationships. Cixous writes:

I do not wish to strengthen the effects of the past by containing the glorious excess of Cixous within my own reservations—within my own fears. Yet to speak of them seems important to me:

April 1993

Spring 1995

I mark the beginning of this project as the summer of 1992—the first months I spent as a graduate student and new teaching assistant at FSU. During the six weeks of the required teacher-training coursework, I began a conscious exploration of my writing style and my construction of a "teacher-self." In a literacy autobiography, I tried to articulate my growing sense of how my body and my writing were connected. Although I was supported by my readings of the French Feminists in this endeavor, I wasn't able to take the step from theory into practice, from Cixous to my own compulsion to try on my jeans every time I sat down to write.

The following spring, Angela was a student in my Writing About Literature class.⁵ In the same semester I was taking a graduate course in rhetorical theory. The first full draft of this essay was completed in that course, nurtured by a small group of writer over several weeks of drafts and revisions.⁶ I discussed revising this essay for publication with Ruth Mirtz, who taught the course, and was very supportive of my work. But I did not turn to revise this essay until a graduate writing workshop almost two years later.

The day I was to bring my essay to the class to be discussed the next week, I raced through the computer file making a few changes, hurrying to print out a draft and make ten copies before class time. Arriving to the workshop a few minutes late, I handed out my essay and then settled down to discuss the writing for that day.

During a break I flipped through an extra copy of my essay and winced. I had forgotten how personal it was, how much of myself I revealed. The group I had worked with two years ago had been together for weeks before they had seen drafts of this piece; this new workshop was larger, and it was early in the semester. When we came back together after the break, it was all I could do not to grab my essay back. I left the workshop feeling vulnerable and upset.

The next week, none of my fears were realized. The responses were supportive, personal, and thought-provoking. One comment that struck me as critical to the piece came from more than one reviewer, and was in response to my writing on revision: "revise—to cut away, pare down, do you need this sentence, paragraph . . ."

In the margins, one responder wrote: "What about revision to add."

And through draft after draft of this piece, my impulse has been to do that—to work in each responder's words, to pull in more layers, to suggest the possibility of an endless dialogue. In "Castration or Decapitation" Cixous writes, "A feminine textual body is recognized by the fact that it is always endless, without ending, there's no closure, it doesn't stop, and that often makes the feminine text difficult to read" (53). And so the challenge in "finishing" this piece has been to valorize neither excess nor the violence of tight prose. Working on a piece over three years affirms my joy in the process of writing—yet without the violence of closure my words remain white on the page, unreadable beyond any audience but my own.

June 1992

Writing about food again now there is a surprise aren't you tired of this by now? You need to run you need to exercise oh is that why you don't want to think about it fear of fat again? Oh that's boring. Ok, I'll let this mean voice write a little bit longer but come on this is not where I want to be . . . I delight in food it is a joyful thing it also scares me. Writing goes that way too, what if I don't get it done, what if it's bad. I'm scared to start and so. . . . don't read what you've written. just write where am I going what do I want to say what about where writing is coming from, what kind of place. food is there too. What about when (Wendy no big deal here I was bulimic in high school and first year of college) I was throwing up and never cried because all of the feelings were gone, is writing about losing control, am I afraid of losing control of self is fear of orgasm and fear of writing the same is it a control thing is food a control thing, for sure control of my body, control of my flesh which threatens o infect what do I think will come out that I can't handle if I write? Is it a fear of being judged? body being judged? "She's fat?" "She's a bad writer?" same thing? What . . .

WENDY—I'm not sure about this sharing of writing. this is my part of myself that I have a hard time dealing with, but I have this urge to go, "I'm fine!" because I don't want you to think that I am not ok cause I am oh blah blah blah.

April 1993

In my journal for Wendy's class the words are scratchy and written quickly, with a pen running out of ink and a hand trying to still the rest of the body with writing. That summer, as a member of the TA training course, I wrote in a "journal" for the first time; I'd been assigned journals before, but I was the typical night - before - write - twenty - journal - entries - changing - colored - pens - every - few - pages - kind - of - student. What made this journal different? Part of it was that I was training to be a writing teacher, I was in graduate school, and I was excited and invested in constructing a "teacher self"—but in retrospect, I think the journal worked because it was on a continuum with the rest of the class—the journal wasn't the only piece of exploratory writing that we did, the writings for the entire class were exploratory. The shift in my perspective on my identity as a writer was enormous—after spending a senior year being told (by professors that I respect and like) that my writing was too exploratory, learning a rhetoric of control, of cutting away excess language and excess thoughts—I found myself in a discourse community which valued my rambling, thoughts-on-paper approach.

Wendy's responses were also a change from earlier reactions to my work. She returned my investment in my writing with invested responses. She was rarely evaluative. She was an interested and thoughtful reader, encouraging me towards self-acceptance ("oh—again, give yourself the permission you so readily give to Brad") and further thinking ("and now how about applying/practicing all these exciting ideas in your classroom? I'm looking forward to seeing where this thinking takes you"). In response to my admission of issues with food and weight, Wendy also wrote: "You, me, many of your women students at one time in their lives . . . a sad silence (generally) in American life." Wendy's personal response to the journal entries made me feel as if my risks in my writing were valued. Importantly, she let me know that a topic which is often marginalized or even worse, stigmatized, within academic discourse was an acceptable area to explore.

Even with Wendy's encouragement, I still found it difficult to take risks in my writing. I remember doing a radical re-vision (some type of stylistic risk or change to help you re-see your writing) and I was petrified. I kept asking, "is this ok?" I would stand and watch Wendy talk with other students after class, trying to think of what I wanted to ask—trying to give language to my fears. Can I write about my family, what scares me, what I care the most about? Can I integrate theory and personal narrative? Is a short piece of "creative" writing an acceptable response to an academic text? But I didn't know the questions to ask, then.

I finally wrote the "radical" revision by saying to myself over and over "You're being radical here. It's ok. Keep going." Radical. Of the root. Trusting what I had understood as writing, always—this exciting, on-the-edge process of not knowing what I will say next, what words will happen in the next moment. Working through my own fears of losing control, of "being radical," made it possible for me to value Angela's writing, to accept the gloriously imperfect texts of my students, and to push my students toward the moments in their writing which threatened, tempted, them to be "radical." And I am certain that I couldn't have written this essay without the letting go that has taken place in the last year—allowing myself to write, allowing myself to consciously choose the structures and direction of my rhetoric.

When I picture myself as an uncontained child, my arms outstretched—and from what I have been told I know it was my "What do you want from me?" expression, what do you want, I felt safe asking at two or three or maybe four years old, not afraid of disappointing anyone. I have never been quiet. I have never been thin, thin as a rail. Never. My image of my self has always been loud, bawdy, laughing, screaming, sometimes saying the wrong thing, saying too much—so when did I learn to dread the overflow of self? Why, when I am so obviously happy amidst chaos and mud-puddles, why am I looking over my shoulder for the "well -adjusted normal woman . . . with a divine composure." I am still not certain how the issue of control plays in my thinking, not certain how writing and food and control became so entangled . I have been trying to write this piece since the teacher-training summer. I couldn't write it then—my writing was just starting to change, to feel valued in ways other than the traditional academic discourse model. My authority in writing was still caught up in my flat reflection in the mirror—seamless, but never perfect, always out of my control. . . . In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler writes:

January 1993-April 1993

Part of me is worried that I am not ready to discuss the problem I am having, part of me does not even think I have a problem, and part of me thinks I am going to go insane if I do not get the thought of food off of my mind. Angela

A part of me thinks I'm ok—and that I am past the worst. A part of me knows that if I gain any more weight I will be terribly upset. Having my teacher-self tell you about my eating disorder made me much more nervous than I thought it would, Angela. I do think our conversation yesterday was wonderful—I enjoyed talking with you, and I don't feel as if I risked too much with you personally. You have risked a lot in this writing, risked for yourself. I wonder how much of my nervousness had to do with you—with how together you seem—with your blondness, with your thinness, with my own fear that you think that I'm fat (there, I've said it). I identify with you on so many levels, and I guess another level is simply this—we aren't aware that at times we intimidate others! But mostly, Angela, I think it was the blurring of boundaries. Yesterday I told you about my feelings this summer, "I can't teach if I'm fat, I just can't . . ." as if my weight cancels out everything else. As if it could. Dawn

I have to confess that I thought it was somewhat strange that you mentioned to me the freewritings I had so discreetly and unwillingly placed in my folder. I had almost taken them out and replaced them with less personal responses to the Roth and Kano articles.⁷ I was somewhat shocked that I was not overlooked as another silly student with a problem. Of course, I am glad I was not overlooked because I have now been given the opportunity to deal with one of my teachers on a more personal basis. I guess this might seem strange, but I think we have a lot in common, and at a school with 30,000 students and hundreds (thousands) of teachers this is quite strange. I know that there are unwritten boundaries between teachers and students, but I think these are surpassed when we talk as friends. I am still amazed that I have talked to you on a personal level because on a personal level it seems somewhat awkward, yet I am glad we have talked. Angela

In high school I relied heavily on my image—by the time I finished my senior year (this sounds like bragging but somehow it was my image) I was Secretary of Student Council, Treasurer of Interact, involved in numerous other clubs, Captain of the Cross Country team, Varsity Tennis, named as an outstanding senior by the faculty, taking four AP classes, and unbelievably enough, I was voted Homecoming Queen and I managed to be Co-Salutatorian. My friends made me happy, but my obsession did not go away. Of course, you are saying I am lying or my life has been a bed of roses, but of course neither is the case. Angela

You know I'm not thinking either of those things. I spent my first year at UNC-CH questioning why I had done anything in high school—I realized how much I needed the approval of teachers, of boyfriends, of friends, in order to survive. My senior year in high school I was the producer of our video yearbook, I had a job at the local CBS station, I was on student council, in the Chamber Choir, on the varsity soccer team, swam the 500 on the swim team, and performed in two of the musicals—in one of them I had a lead. And of course all of this success allowed me to keep going, but I was never satisfied—I could never stop. Recently, I realized through reading your writing and thinking about this project that I have refined my strategy in approaching life, but not significantly changed it—rejection does not scare me but I still depend on acceptance. I am always thinking, "How long until I disappoint this person?" I wish I could just relax and enjoy when things work out but I seem to crash after big successes. I always seem to be catching up or starting new things, I can't stop and breathe or else . . . or else what? I don't know the source of my fear! I don't know why I have to get it all (whatever "it all" is) done. Dawn

I think I would be the happiest person in the world if I were only thin. Then why out of all my accomplishments—many that seem so much more difficult than this—can't I overcome hunger? Will I always want more—better—best—perfection? Angela

I remember my senior year in high school I had this "Multiples" jumper (all of those pieces that coordinate together—belts and sashes, etc.) and I have an image of myself walking down the hallway, by the gym and the women's bathroom, right before the west cafeteria. Ms. Marks, the tiny dance teacher, said "Dawn—you have lost weight! You look great!" The Multiples jumper was baby-blue with a pink sash, and I wore pink "Limited" scrunchy socks and white CIAO shoes. Many of my women-friends were dancers—I spent a lot of time comparing myself to the anorexic looking women who hung around the dance rooms in leotards and tights. To have my dieting efforts validated by the dance teacher, who was surrounded by thin women all day and was one herself—must have been the height of acceptance for my fifteen-year-old almost-verging-on-bulimia-self. There is a picture of me, from the summer after I graduated from high school—I am wearing a pink Esprit mini-skirt that flares out with a pink half-top and jacket—there is a line down the front of my stomach, it was firm, my legs are slim, my abdomen flat—I gave the picture to my friend Svati to see, here, this is what I looked like when I threw up three times a day. Dawn

I am often aware of myself when I write, and sometimes this is frustrating and sometimes I am so happy to be working through my problems. Realizing what difference my body really makes—right now—while I am writing. "Held constant"—does this not in some ways sound like a wonderful image—as if something, anything, were stable. And success—how much harder does it seem to be successful with a pressure that is always there—always ready to overcome. The complete wonder and exhilaration of my Levi's 501 that slipped on and hung—no bending, stretching, or forcing my body to fit into jeans two sizes too small. The clothing you describe—the Multiples jumper, the pink skirt and half-top—and the picture—the memory of that past self. Almost as if when I see old pictures of myself I am seeing someone else too. Angela

I try not to judge other people for weighing more than the "model" figure so why do I judge myself?

I remember staring at myself in the mirror hating my body with a passion that was complete and total.

Even now I weight with anxiety whenever I pull my jeans out of the wash, to see how they will fit.

At this moment I want to jump up from the computer and try on my Calvin Klein jeans. I get furious and choked up at the thought of my Gap jeans that fell off of me last year, of the purple shirt tucked into blue jeans with my woven belt, of purple jacket over jeans and t-shirt . . . and I miss the easiness of my favorite pair of shorts and a t-shirt and my baseball hat.

Oh, brother, a litany of missed clothing (it's not even close to the whole of it) I have gained weight in the last year and thinking about all of those clothes is like saying good-bye to selves, saying good-bye to the flirty self of the polka dot dress, the put-together casual self of my shorts and shirts—clothing is all so stressful now, none of the easy lines of "when I was thin" but hiding hiding hiding.

I remember saying, Oh I can't teach if I am fat I absolutely cannot. As if all of my strength, all of my ideas and writing abilities and love for my students and love of writing and energy and creativity and directiveness that got me to England and traveled all over Europe and figured out how to make phone calls in Eastern European countries, and that applied to graduate schools and gets accepted to conferences and is a good friend and a good daughter, as if every single one of those things is CANCELED CANCELED CANCELED by my weight, by the flesh I don't even like to talk about, go away, I mean, it's morning, I am writing here and what—I'm going to have to shower get dressed and I am screaming here, WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO MATTER you would think after all of these years (jesus it's been over half my life) I would be over this, I mean shouldn't I be? I mean weight doesn't rule my life, I am just angry it isn't easier, the fact that I know it is all in my head doesn't make me feel better (surprise surprise) but let me ask you this (and that is another me I am directing this too) WHAT ARE YOU HOLDING ON TO? why do you need fat?

Fat, what do I need you for?

Because, Dawn, without me you would be almost frighteningly successful. Without me, you would be astonishingly productive. Dawn

Acceptance is something I have a hard time with—I do not trust others because I do not trust myself. I need to realize that I have control over so much, and yet I constantly feel out of control. I have control over who I choose to be friends with, who I choose to date, who I choose to listen to, and who I choose to believe. So what is food that I am unable to have control over it—I have denied my hunger for so long—I let myself decide on hunger as if it were in my control, and it is not. I will starve myself, and then I will eat regularly—but eating at certain times rather than when I am hungry—or I will binge. I will eat and eat until I am so sick I want to puke—and I do sometimes—but I have too much respect for my body to actually throw up every time I eat. (Ha!) actually I think it scares me so much that I try to convince myself it won't need to happen again because I can control my hunger. Roth talks about society and how it "teaches us to mistrust ourselves. Society tells us that we've got to diet to lose weight. Society warns us to be afraid of ourselves. This is new territory; you've got to be ready to be a trailblazer. You've got to want to trust yourself more than you want to be thin." I never thought of it like this. I never thought of needing to trust myself first—I always thought I would trust myself once I lost the weight, and I could not trust myself until I had succeeded. I am not cured—yet—but I am at least realizing where I am going wrong, and the importance of sorting out my feelings. Asking myself Why are you eating when you are not physically hungry? What are you really hungry for? I have certainly not stopped wanting to be thin, perfection is part of my nature—I do not consider myself perfect, but my best is as perfect as I get, and I think I would be my best ten pounds lighter—I do realize, though, I will not be a better or happier person just by losing weight. Angela

I am at once out of control and obsessed with control. And I don't like writing those words "I threw up"—I would rather people not know that I really got to a point where it seemed easier to throw up, to eat and know that it "didn't count." I don't think it really works as a weight loss thing, but it corrected my mistakes—it's not just about food (of course!) it's about control, about perfectionism. Dawn

My first official diet is a memory left to a fourteen-year-old child who wanted to impress everyone as a freshman in high school. Maybe I just wanted the security of being noticed. I was raised in a family in which healthy eating habits and plenty of exercise were encouraged, and I never gave any thought to worrying about being thin until ninth grade. That year was a tremendous adjustment to me from middle school. I felt competition to be thin from almost every girl around me. Angela

I don't remember my first official diet—I know that I was seven years old and at school being weighed by the doctors at School #2 in Linden NJ, and I was in the third grade probably and I weighed 89 pounds and I started to cry. Somehow I knew that was horrible, a horrible weight to be. Dawn

I managed to exercise enough last semester to lose a few pounds, but I have lost control more than ever now. You asked about voices, and I can honestly say I have voices in every direction every single day. I cannot remember the last day that I did not tell myself I was not eating anymore only then to tell myself I did not care, and I was going to eat more. I want to help myself, that is my first goal. Maybe then I can help others who suffer from compulsive eating (that is a hard term for me to say). I must regain control—I am struggling entirely too much with everything because I have food and fat on my mind nearly twenty-four hours a day. Angela

Labels . . . you don't like the label compulsive eater, of course it is difficult to say, I mean, jeez, I think that over the last eight-nine years the one thing that has held constant is my eating disorder, even though I haven't made myself throw up since my sophomore year in college. My struggle with weight has remained constant forever—it's also kind of a bonding thing among my closest women friends, between my mother and me . . . but there re parts of myself that I don't want it to touch, I don't want people to see or they might think that somehow it makes me not so good of a teacher or a student or a friend NO I mean the women I know who share these issues are wildly successful in everything they do, I mean wildly successful. Dawn

It is hard not to be afraid that others will not understand. "But I don't want people to see that part, right, they might think that somehow it makes me a not so good teacher or student or friend. No I mean the women I know who share these issues are wildly successful in everything they do—I mean really successful"! I laughed—you have spoken about me exactly—"Even now I weight with anxiety whenever my jeans come out of the wash, to see how they will fit" clothing speaks loudly too—I think I need to buy some new clothes, rather than sulk about the ones that do not fit—it is enough to ruin any day. In response to the end—you have touched on something I had not thought about before—on the inability to reach full potential because you hold yourself back. "Fat, what do I need you for?"—Is there actually a reason? How frightening—how believable. Angela

I started working with Angela because of our similarities—issues with eating and our bodies, high school boyfriends, a desire to help others with our writing (neither of us completely convinced it was ok to write for ourselves), and a love of the dash as our favorite quotation mark.

At times I felt, "this dialogue is strange because so much of Angela's writing is internal writing, for herself." I believe the act of writing does more for a student than my response. If a student is invested in the writing, I believe my voice can become one of many that the student recognizes.

Our voices are in dialogue throughout the writing, and at times I mark our discussion with our names—Dawn said this, Angela said this. But I realize, in the midst of this writing project, that such naming of ideas is superficial. There are paragraphs in our dialogue that I begin to read and am not certain if the writing is "mine" or "hers." I maintain the boundaries between Angela and Dawn by marking the writing with the sign of our names in order to keep Angela's work from being subsumed in my authority as the teacher. Access to power and language in the discourse community is what separates us, but I feel I can allow boundaries between each of us to remain somewhat blurry, particularly in the realm of a discussion of women and food, women and our bodies. As Wendy commented to a cartoon woman I had drawn in my journal . . . "You, me, everywoman?"

Spring 1995

Driving to lunch today, Wednesday I'm on campus all day and I treat myself to lunch, I am writing a letter in my mind to a friend, then I shift and begin to think about re-vising this paper. What I want to say, how to draw the strands together, teaching, writing the body, my own writing—risks . . .

"writing the body"—the French feminists—opened a space for me—there have been moments—reading Derrida's "Structure Sign and Play" for the first time and not understanding but holding onto the idea of play and then grasping, yes, an "authoritative" voice affirming my own sense of the arbitrariness of structures—of writing and of the classroom.

the teacher as the (arbitrary) center of the classroom, the appropriate boundaries of student/teacher discourse, the double standards of so and so at Duke can write like that but you can't, you are a graduate student; oh, well, yes, you are a writer so you can play with convention and form, but your first year writing students cannot . . .⁸

in "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," Audre Lorde writes, "I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect" (40). The speaking profits me—the presence of painful silences reminds me—my parent's inability to comment on any aspect of my appearance because to do so would be to hover near the unspeakable . . . fat

driving to lunch today, passing by my favorite Mexican restaurant, the usual self-censure passes through my mind unnoticed except for its notable lack of force—

I'm full—bursting—to get to my journal, my computer, to the letters I want to write, to revising this essay