[Fragments]
Philomela at the Sparagmos
Frank’s true identity lingers on silence until the last part of the novel, but previously it’s possible to find out some clues given by Banks that can be helpful in order to construe this silence. In the very first chapter Banks introduces the reader to Frank’s world (“The Sacrifice Poles”) and the situation of his brother Eric, who had escaped from a mental hospital and represented a big conflict to Frank, being Frank’s official identity taken from him. Frank states: "I represent a crime… I was never registered. I have no birth certificate, no National Insurance Number, nothing to say I’m alive or have ever existed". (Banks; 1998:13-14). Frank exists because of a stolen identity which shows the impossibility for him to be revealed or exposed truly-as something which cannot be spoken or written-: “the female body” (Cixous; 1976). However, when Frank’s father attempts against him(her) also attempts against Eric; thus both children remain fragmented (castrated entities?) despite their gender; because to enter the Symbolic the child must sacrifice him/herself through castration, which is to deny the body’s pulsions and thus remain detached from satisfaction.
Being detached from the body --and according to Cixous women exist twice detached-- the psyche begins to display its crumbling and inner disorders through the individual’s behavior and speech; this new given body enters the scene by way of differing perceptions of the world: psychosis, schizophrenia, hysteria and madness. In the case of Frank and Eric Cauldhame both are depicted as people having a deviant behavior towards the world, and the ideolect is the way they approach language (constructed by the mind, the most important device to construct the world): "My father couldn’t abide a son of his not being a credit to him in some way; my body was a forlorn hope for any improvement, so only my mind was left." (Banks; 1998: 14)
In this novel, Iain Banks provides two ways in which the fragmented subject comes up to the the-name-of-the-father world and resists it: Frank (the one who stays inside) and Eric (the one who walks off). In the case of Frank, he is the one who builds the called WASP factory and set a serie of rituals there, this, as a manner to establish his own power over the world for him created. The WASP Factory is the form in which Frank communicates and signifies him/herself as an integrated entity; without it, he would feel precarious and completely alienated. The WASP Factory is a way to return to the Real because: "[It] is beautiful and deadly and perfect". (Banks; 1998:118); it’s a place for the forbidden: pleasure and death (both, pulsions) and creativeness (the mother).
Outside the island and far away from the factory, Frank is just an “inert” person. In chapter 4 Frank is described as being outside the island for one night, there he gets drunk and under this state, he suddenly begins to embody the impossibility of words and of being significant to others:
(…)And I, with more brains than two of them put together and information of the most vital nature, couldn’t get a word out.
There had to be a way. I tried to shake my head clear and take some more deep breaths. I steadies my pace. I thought very carefully about words and how you made them. I checked my tongue and tested my throat. I had to put myself together. I had to communicate. (Banks;1998: 81)
Inside the factory and in the territory around, Frank performs rituals as a way to develop a parallel world. He lit candles inside skulls (old Saul), sets altars with heads of gulls, rabbits, owls and many other animals, and burn wasps in order to get an Oracle’s response to his questions and his way to produce fate; being the ritual: "The moment in which “cosmos” first emerged from 'chaos'…transporting us back to the crucial, creative moment… In the Ritual ordinary things become 'hierophanies'. One tree becomes 'the tree of the world', one pool or lake becomes 'the primordial waters': a transcendent space is carved out of a fallen world". (Coupe; 2003:60).
(…)And I, with more brains than two of them put together and information of the most vital nature, couldn’t get a word out.
There had to be a way. I tried to shake my head clear and take some more deep breaths. I steadies my pace. I thought very carefully about words and how you made them. I checked my tongue and tested my throat. I had to put myself together. I had to communicate. (Banks;1998: 81)
Inside the factory and in the territory around, Frank performs rituals as a way to develop a parallel world. He lit candles inside skulls (old Saul), sets altars with heads of gulls, rabbits, owls and many other animals, and burn wasps in order to get an Oracle’s response to his questions and his way to produce fate; being the ritual: "The moment in which “cosmos” first emerged from 'chaos'…transporting us back to the crucial, creative moment… In the Ritual ordinary things become 'hierophanies'. One tree becomes 'the tree of the world', one pool or lake becomes 'the primordial waters': a transcendent space is carved out of a fallen world". (Coupe; 2003:60).
The fallen world could be then, that of the pulsion and of the mother (a sort of paradise lost?); and the ritual emerges as a mean to re-enter this world, to recover it.
Philomela (princess of Athens) is raped by Tereus of Thrace and then she turns into a nightingale; in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Philomela’s tongue is cut off (by Tereus), both actions as a reminiscence of castration. Other versions allege that Philomela took revenge at the Sparagmos (a Dionysian celebration where sacrifice of animals were lead and also a ritual of castration) by killing Tereus’ son. "So, Philomela is not only castrated but castrating". (Maxwell; 2001:22-23) The same can be seen (as an allegory) in the character of Frank, he is castrated and becomes a castrator him/her-self: of animals and younger persons (Esmeralda or Paul). His psyche --being detached from the body-- resists by finding out new ways for signifying, and thus communicate: The factory is his idiolect; and in the case of Eric, he turns into schizophrenia where hallucinations, delusions and paranoia become his own speech to do so.
Re-signifying the (Female) Body
In the last chapter of the novel, Frank --and the reader-- discover the truth: "Part of me still wants to believe it’s just his latest lie, but really I know it’s the truth. I’m a woman". (Banks; 1998: 181-182). Frank is revealed "his" nature as a biological woman who was trained to act as a male into the Social order; she can be considered just an emasculated “I”.
In the Symbolic the woman doesn’t exist and the feminine...
Philomela (princess of Athens) is raped by Tereus of Thrace and then she turns into a nightingale; in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Philomela’s tongue is cut off (by Tereus), both actions as a reminiscence of castration. Other versions allege that Philomela took revenge at the Sparagmos (a Dionysian celebration where sacrifice of animals were lead and also a ritual of castration) by killing Tereus’ son. "So, Philomela is not only castrated but castrating". (Maxwell; 2001:22-23) The same can be seen (as an allegory) in the character of Frank, he is castrated and becomes a castrator him/her-self: of animals and younger persons (Esmeralda or Paul). His psyche --being detached from the body-- resists by finding out new ways for signifying, and thus communicate: The factory is his idiolect; and in the case of Eric, he turns into schizophrenia where hallucinations, delusions and paranoia become his own speech to do so.
Re-signifying the (Female) Body
In the last chapter of the novel, Frank --and the reader-- discover the truth: "Part of me still wants to believe it’s just his latest lie, but really I know it’s the truth. I’m a woman". (Banks; 1998: 181-182). Frank is revealed "his" nature as a biological woman who was trained to act as a male into the Social order; she can be considered just an emasculated “I”.
In the Symbolic the woman doesn’t exist and the feminine...
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Bibliography:
Banks, Iain (1998), The Wasp Factory (Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, London)
Butler, Judith (1990), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (Routledge,
London)
------------------- (1993), Bodies that matter: On the discursive Limits of “Sex” (Routledge,
London)
Cixous, Helene (1976), “The laugh of the Medusa”( Le Rire de la Meduse) Galileé, France.
Coupe, Laurence (2003), Myth (Routledge, London)
Maxwell, Catherine, The female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne (Manchester U. P.)
Ruthrof, Horst (2000), The body in language (Cassell, London)
Bibliography:
Banks, Iain (1998), The Wasp Factory (Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, London)
Butler, Judith (1990), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (Routledge,
London)
------------------- (1993), Bodies that matter: On the discursive Limits of “Sex” (Routledge,
London)
Cixous, Helene (1976), “The laugh of the Medusa”( Le Rire de la Meduse) Galileé, France.
Coupe, Laurence (2003), Myth (Routledge, London)
Maxwell, Catherine, The female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne (Manchester U. P.)
Ruthrof, Horst (2000), The body in language (Cassell, London)
