Cultural contradictions in Middlesex
As I was reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, I thought how it should have won an award for its poetic use of language, and supreme storytelling. Lo and behold I look at the cover and discover that the book had won the Pulitzer Prize. In Middlesex, Foucault’s subjectivity of bodies takes on a new element. What happens when society has gender-coded a body as female, and then the body is discovered to be a male? In modern society we expect females to be feminine and males to be masculine (although this has recently begun to change with the LGBT movement). What if a body cannot meet the socially constructed notion of matching physicality (genitalia, appearance as male/female) to being masculine or feminine? Books One and Two only hint at these questions and their embodiment in Cal Stephanides. Rather, the books’ are devoted to the identity construction of other characters.
Foucault’s discipline of bodies is conjured when Eugenides describes Henry Ford’s factory workers. They become machines with their repetitive movements, precise timing, and simple tasks. “[W]e’ve all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds” (95). Similarly, others in Middlesex have conditioned themselves so that they plug into “repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.” Desdemona cooks and bakes in Detroit to keep herself busy and thoughts at bay. We often turn to food for comfort and fulfillment that is missing in other areas of our lives. I do not think it’s a stretch to say that Desdemona cooked to block up guilt inside her.
I think an interesting point to debate is the merits of sexual taboos. Incest is a cultural taboo with a biological foundation. What if the risk of genetic mutations were not factors? Are there reasons, in terms of sexuality, to not sleep with one’s brother, mother, or first cousin? Desdemona and Lefty choose to be with one another. In the beginning at least they do not have a problem with sex. Problems arise only after Desdemona believes that any child they would have would be born with a deformity.
Do all cultural taboos have a biological foundation? In part, homosexuality is viewed as “abnormal” because a union will not result in reproduction. Until very recently sexual relations between different ethnicities were looked down upon (or even forbidden). However, the idea of a race being ‘lesser,’ due to genetic differences, may stem in reality from cultural biases. After all, we tend to use findings to support ideas we already believe in. Social Darwinism gained support because people already thought that other peoples were inferior.
I know that I got a little off track, but the point I am trying to make is that Middlesex forces the reader into questioning what we think of as normal. In Books One and Two being a hermaphrodite does not appear as the central ‘weird’ thing. Jimmy Zizmo’s surprising reemergence as a Muslim prophet is arguably the strangest occurrence so far.
Tags: Foucault, subjectivity of bodies, taboos
