The Codex, the Codicil and the Codpiece: Some Thoughts on Diminution and Elaboration in Identity Formation

Abstract

This article is about the way in which the processes of diminution and elaboration can be detected in gendered accounts of identity formation. Firstly, it considers the ways in which power is denied to women through a series of reductions, restrictions and controls, and looks at the ways in which men, in contrast, elaborate their identities via a range of enlargements and extensions. The codex of the title refers to the role of the ‘Law’, in Kristeva's sense of the term, in authorizing such arrangements. The codpiece offers a metaphor for elaboration and extension: a male form of extension and elaboration. The codicil, an appendage to a last will and testament, is intended to convey the position of women as appendages, afterthoughts, marginal notes. The article is an example of what Pullen and Rhodes have called ‘dirty writing’, that is to say, it is written with the purpose of allowing the intrusion of the author into the text: with a deliberate confusion of the authorial standpoint and the content. Dirty writing contaminates. This article is written with the intention of contaminating the regulatory mechanisms of the production of the codex, to reveal the enormity of the codpiece and to permit the codicil to assume a role within the codex rather than simply occupying the position of appendage to it. The article is not auto‐ethnographic, although it has elements of autobiography. Rather this article seeks to ‘undo’ gender by fragmenting the coherence of the codex. More tentatively, it seeks to lay bare the male erection which is concealed by the codpiece and to expose it for what it is: an elaborate construction — an elaborate creation masking a less adequate membership. And so this piece of writing attempts to undermine the extravagance of masculine forms of writing; of writing to produce the codpiece, writing as conceit; writing which is antagonistic to fragmented experience. It will not satisfy some, it will irritate others. The article is unbalanced, unresolved: like life itself. It is about stories, illustrations, asides, observations. It is also, with all its attempts to subvert, (with all its attempts to make it ‘dirty’), a piece of male writing.