Flesh, Bones and Other Matters

Abstract

Hi, Writing-begins, without you, without I, without law, without knowing, without light, without hope, without bonds, without anyone close to you, for if world history goes on, you are not in it, you are 'in' 'hell' , and hell is where I am not but where it is me, although I have no place, feels itself dying again through all time, where not-me drags me further and further from me, and where what is left of me is nothing more than suffering without myself, suffering uncircumscribed by self, for 'me' , left open, constantly feels the sense, the soul, the bodily and spiritual substances of the self streaming away, me empties itself, and yet, heavier and heavier, you sink down, you bottom-out in the abyss of nonrapport.1 Indeed, part of what being a 'living' author means as I understand it , is to always underway, revising one's stand or approaching the same thematic from another angle with a different set of questions. In this way I cannot quite 'stand' for 'my own work' as an evolving totality. My sense is that this very notion of one' s work' belongs to another century and perhaps also another gender (how many of us, by virtue of various divisions of labor, write episodically, discontinuously?) . My own inconsistencies may well be due to a failure to go back and try to reconcile various claims with each other. I confess, however, that my failure to go back and perform such a reckoning is what permits me to write and to think something new.2 Sara is in Montreal I am in London. 'Writing the Legal Body' this special edition for the Australian Feminist Law Journal is edited across two continents ... no actually is edited across three continents. The editorial board is in Australia. And they have been all so good with filtering through advice, supplementary reviews and enabling the selection of the cover image ... a little boy (is he a boy?) typing on an old fashion typewriter ... writing perhaps the legal body ... As the picture has been taken before this special edition was ever conceived (the colour of the film suggests that the picture was being taken in the 197 0s) I wonder what happened to this little boy ... has he grown to become a legal clerk? Did I say that I wanted to have ? Maman' by Louise Bourgeois on the cover (this giant spider installation with hatching eggs at the base of its belly ... would have been a tribute to Helene Cixous (who Sara respects and loves her work) and to Adrianna Cavarero' s work (see Hanafin in this edited collection and Bertolino' s interview in differences3)). Copyright issues and the complications of getting copy-right permission to publish a photograph of the installation stopped us from having it on the cover ... but you can ^google'4 it and see how the cover of this special would have otherwise been. Let us know which one you prefer or how does each one change the frame of the volume. This collection of essays is indeed edited across three continents made possible because of, to state the obvious, the Internet. It is Sunday 9 November 2 008, 5 days since Barack Hussain Obama became the President elect of the USA. I am trying to write the editorial commentary. I have agreed with Sara to write the commentary separately, poetically (but I meant prosaic - and I have failed to send an e-mail clarifying to Sara what I meant by poetic ... I thought it will be interesting to see what we both come up with) . So-writing the legal body' - the process of writing about something so evasive, something, somebody, a specific body, that of law - (I wonder whether it is just one body?) - something that its material presence can be traced not only in case law, not only images, not only in literary texts, not only in music (hear and not only ?? fought the law and it won' , Sonny Curtis and The Crickets 1959; The Clash, 1978 and ?? fought the law and I won' Dead Kennedys, 1980) but also in our every day life (even when we don't see, think or remember its existence) can be really achieved. …