Flâneuses, Bodies, and the City: Magic in Yoko Tawada`s Opium für

Transcription

Flâneuses, Bodies, and the City: Magic in Yoko
Tawada’s Opium für Ovid. Ein Kopfkissenbuch
von 22 Frauen
EKATERINA PIROZHENKO
U NIVERSITY
OF
I LLINOIS AT C HICAGO
Yoko Tawada is one of a growing number of German-speaking minority authors whose linguistic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds differ substantially
from those of their mainstream counterparts. She was born in Tokyo in 1960.
In 1979, she came to Germany for the first time via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Tawada graduated from Waseda University in Japan in 1982 with a major in Russian Literature and then moved to Hamburg, where she lived until
2006. After receiving her Master’s degree in contemporary German literature
at the University of Hamburg, Tawada obtained her doctorate from the University of Zurich under the supervision of Sigrid Weigel. Her dissertation,
Spielzeug und Sprachmagie in der europäischen Literatur, was published in
2000. In addition to her literary work, Tawada has also written scholarly essays on, for instance, Paul Celan and Goethe. In 1999 she was a Max Kade
Distinguished Visitor (writer-in-residence) in the Department of Foreign
Languages and Literatures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In
2006 Tawada moved to Berlin, where she continues to live as a freelance writer. Tawada is one of the few authors who writes in two languages – German
and her native Japanese – and is acclaimed in both of them. Her first publication, Nur da wo du bist da ist nichts, came out in 1987, and since then she has
published one or two books per year. Tawada has been awarded numerous
prizes for literature, including the prestigious Akutagawa prize (1993), the
Adalbert von Chamisso prize (1996), and the Goethe Medal (2005).
In this paper, I will analyze the position of women as flâneuses in Tawada’s
Opium für Ovid. Ein Kopfkissenbuch von 22 Frauen. I draw parallels between Tawada’s narrative text, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Walter Benjamin’s
concept of flânerie. I focus primarily on women, more specifically on female
bodies within the urban landscape, and on Tawada’s renegotiation of the dichotomy of subject and object. I argue that Tawada’s flâneuses are different
from the traditional flâneurs mainly because they experience cities through
their bodies more so than through their minds. In addition, I will show that
Tawada’s flâneuses do not experience cities as «other,» but instead disregard
the boundaries between their bodies and the urban environment, constantly
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Ekaterina Pirozhenko
incorporating the «city body» into their own bodies and vice versa. Tawada’s
flâneuses are postmodern, postcolonial, and transnational beings who – as I
will show – rebel against the European authoritarian notion of a subject within the city. I will also deal with elements of magic and intoxication as thematic
points in Tawada’s work.
Tawada’s Opium für Ovid. Ein Kopfkissenbuch von 22 Frauen narrates the
metamorphoses of twenty-two women. The prototypes for these women are
taken from Ovid’s epic Metamorphoses. In his poetic text, Ovid narrates the
metamorphoses of gods, people, and animals, and indeed that of the whole
world, which involves a metaphysical aspect. Ovid introduces the philosopher Samos who teaches the Roman king Numa Pompilius about the constant and eternal change of things, about souls that travel from one body to
another, and about bodies that change their physical shapes.1 Indeed, there
is a scholarly debate whether Ovid’s intention was to connect the physical
transformation of characters to philosophical conceptions of nature and thus
to overcome humanity’s fear of death by introducing the notion of eternally
traveling souls.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses center on bodily transformations. Interestingly, the
physical changes do not correspond to Samos’ suggestion of traveling souls
that change bodies since Ovid’s characters do not leave any «old» bodies behind. Rather, their own bodies are transformed into new bodies. Ovid’s characters are transforming bodies per se.2
The theme of metamorphosis is one of the key concerns in Tawada’s work,
especially when it comes to bodily transformations. Written characters and
texts are also «bodies» for Tawada. They belong to a bodily world or the
world of objects that can be interpreted. Furthermore, constant metamorphoses indicate that there is nothing stable in our world. This instability especially attracts Tawada since it is a main source for creativity, imagination, and
the formation of individual identity.
Before I turn to feminist perspectives and Tawada’s approach to Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, I want to consider the connection between imagination,
body transformation, literature, and the contemporary world. At the beginning of the Common Era, Ovid wrote in his Metamorphoses that everything
changes: weather, seasons, landscapes, animals, people, and gods. This change
is a natural, dynamic process. He goes so far as to say that there is no place for
death, only for transformation of the material:
Everything changes and nothing can die, for the spirit wanders wherever it wishes
to, now here and now there, living with whatever body it chooses, and passing from
feral to human and then back from human to feral, and at no time does it ever cease
its existence. (527)
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The Ovidean world is prescientific, which means that there is no distinction
between science and myth. «Magic» transformations of people into plants,
birds, or animals are, for him, also natural changes. In her article «Metamorphic Changes in the Arts,» Sabine Coelsch-Foisner writes that in Ovid’s text,
«Culture and cosmos are governed by the same principle of change» (44).
«The stories in Metamorphoses characteristically abound in processes of seasonal, diurnal, climatic changes. [There are many correspondences between]
the human world and the world of plants, animals, minerals, creating a pervasive sense of hybridity» (43). The notion of hybridity is significant not only
because of the lack of the binaries science vs. myth, science vs. culture, or
human vs. animal, but also because of its connection to the passing of time.
All transformations happen in time; something changes in appearance, shape,
form, condition, etc. from what was «before» into what is «now.» The old
manifests itself in the new such that the past and the present coexist with each
other in a hybrid form.
There is a difference, though, in the metamorphoses of gods as compared
to people. If gods create their new shapes through their own power, people
are subject to «magic» forces. Further, as the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, in addition to definitions of the term metamorphosis in biology, zoology, pathology, chemistry, and biochemistry, transformations can be caused
by «supernatural means.»3 Each metamorphosis is a unique, unpredictable,
spontaneous, miraculous event that transgresses biological natural laws of
evolution (like aging). Metamorphosis is usually irreversible.
Coelsch-Foisner connects features of metamorphoses to cultural development in our contemporary world. She points out that in the twentyfirst century we are unable to think about biological, «natural» changes in mythological terms. There is no magic for us. Thus, the term metamorphosis means for
us a fixed, predictable, and foreseeable change (44). However, we can see a
given culture as metamorphic:
These parameters: uniqueness, unpredictability, spontaneity (lack of cause and effect), transgression (of norms and laws), hybridity (the old survives or shines through
in the new), plurality (one soul has several shapes) constitute the crux in re-conceptualising metamorphosis as a paradigm of cultural change in an intellectual climate
on the one hand dominated by scientific concepts of man, identity, history, society,
culture, art, on the other hand marked by an erosion of these very concepts. (42)
Taking into consideration Coelsch-Foisner’s notion of our culture as metamorphic, Tawada’s Opium für Ovid would be a great example of multiple
kinds of hybridity. The old «shines through»: Tawada’s text is a dialogue, not
only with Ovid and not only in its rewriting of Greco-Roman mythology
from a feminist point of view, but also a dialogue with Benjamin, as it presents
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a rethinking of the female subject’s positioning in the city. It also rethinks
antiquated Greco-Roman myths and their application in the contemporary
world. The text suggests a coexistence of dreams and reality that influences
society. It demonstrates a cultural transformation of the perception of female bodies. It represents, also, a transformation in understanding German
literature, what it is and how authors who are not native speakers and not
ethnic Germans transform German literature and German national identity.
Tawada’s Opium is about the dialectic of otherness and sameness in terms of
women who in some ways stay the same but get a new body, women who
perceive their bodies differently, or women who are perceived in the city as
«others» due to their «foreignness,» even though they have almost all the attributes of the native culture. In addition, Opium is a text about instability
and about ambiguity.
It is not surprising that Tawada chose Ovid’s epic as a starting point for
her text. Kathleen Anne Perry reviews Ovid’s Metamorphoses from a feminist
point of view and sees in it a challenge to the concept of absolute Truth:
Metamorphosis is the crucial phenomenon for Ovid’s thought precisely because it
explodes the notion of a stable, unchanging truth to which men can refer as if to a
polestar. If everything is changing and moving, then so are man’s preferred points
of reference, and his knowledge is purely relative. This relativity destroys the supremacy of logic, and of rational discourse, and prepares the way for the reign of the
imagination in poetry. (77)
Tawada’s text is a product of the world’s instability. Imagination prevails in her
text, with no fixed position for her characters. In this way, the world becomes
dynamic and magical. According to Tawada, literature makes the magic of the
world more accessible. Myths are still a living tradition. As Thury writes, «We
continue to incorporate mythological themes and messages in our culture today. Even our modern mass media reflect the motifs and characters which can
be found in ancient stories from around the world. Myths are as close to us
today as the adventures of Indiana Jones, the Starship Enterprise, or The XFiles» (3). Thury states that myth depends on a cultural context. Myths can be
told differently and transformed according to historical periods. As she further suggests, «While mythic ideation strives for the general, the idealized, the
circular, modern writing emphasizes the particular and the individualistic»
(671). In Tawada’s texts, the particular and the individual are expressed by the
perception of the city from the point of view of twenty-two women.
In Tawada’s Opium für Ovid, some women meet with each other, some do
not; some are fantasy creations of female characters who are writers, while
others are not. However, all of them experience some sort of transformation.
It might be the bodily experience of pain, gaining weight, pregnancy, paraly-
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sis, the change of gender perception, or the perception of the body as being
invisible. Tawada constructs these transformations of female bodies and feminine identity beyond stereotypical notions of beauty and youth. She represents them as poetical, sensual events in the realm of magic. The metamorphoses take place in a dreamy world of opium-like intoxication and carry a
sense of happiness with them. Tawada’s narrative is surrealistic. She does not
operate with the categories of logic, objectivity, and «reality.» Her world is a
poetic fantasy.
In one of her interviews, Tawada states that metamorphoses and hybrid
creatures attract her the most. She has looked for a variety of such metamorphoses in different sources: in classical Greek mythology, African legends,
and Asian myths (Brandt 11). Like Christa Wolf’s novels Cassandra and
Medea, Tawada’s Opium is written about women from a female perspective.
It can be interpreted as a dream of what women can be if they are not defined
through the male gaze and presence, when women are amongst themselves
and when they are free of family and social obligations. Tawada’s style also
deserves attention: she connects stories of twenty-two women in such a way
that each woman is present in the story of another woman; there is no consistently omniscient narrator; and the narration itself is decentralized and surreal. Tawada’s playfulness is embodied in switching from first- to third-person
narrative, from omniscient narration to narration from the point of view of
one of the women. Tawada’s Opium is very complex, and her style is hard to
define. In this sense, I agree with French feminist writer and philosopher Hélène Cixous, who wrote in her essay «The Laugh of the Medusa» that «[i]t is
impossible to define a feminine practice of writing, and this is an impossibility
that will remain, for this practice can never be theorized, enclosed, coded –
which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist» (253). Cixous thematizes Greek mythology, language, dreams, femininity and masculinity, and feminine writing
(Écriture féminine). She insists that «woman must write woman» (247), and
that feminine writing comes through their bodies. Cixous describes her own
writing practice as follows: «When I write, it’s everything that we don’t know
we can be that is written out of me, without exclusions, without stipulation,
and everything we will be calls us to the unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love. In one another we will never be lacking» (264). Similar
to Cixous, Tawada creates a text about women and their bodily experiences.4
Their bodies are transformed in the city. They do not «lack» anything because
they are complete.
In her interview with Bettina Brandt, Tawada states that feminist approaches to writing are important for her, and she rejects the genre of family novel.
She herself describes Opium as follows:
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When we think about «women in literature,» we typically picture women in the
role of mother, sister, or lover. In Opium, on the other hand, I created twenty-two
women who depart from these family roles. Some have been divorced for a long
time, others never wanted a family in the first place, and most have completely forgotten their mothers. These twenty-two female characters don’t lead what is commonly referred to as a «typically feminine life.» They are not related; they are outside the family context, and they are completely free. I was interested in how these
unconventional women perceive the city, and what a female perception might mean
in that specific context. (Brandt 12)
Keeping in mind Tawada’s intention to create twenty-two women outside of
traditional feminine roles free of any boundaries, I will analyze the female
perception of the city and of women in the city. Tawada chooses the city of
Hamburg. She mentions different parts of the city in her text, such as Altona,
Speicherstadt, Ottensen, Barmbek, Alsterpark, Winterhude, Sternschanze,
and others. Her female characters go for walks in the city, observe people,
sit in café houses, use the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, get lost in the labyrinth of the
city, and reflect on consumerism, tourism, and foreigners. How different is
this female perception from the male gaze of a flâneur?
In a very traditional canonical understanding of the term flâneur (and it
is especially true for the concept of flânerie in the nineteenth century) the
flâneur acts as a subject; he is the bearer of a gaze. He strolls in the city and
controls the urban landscape. He interprets the city like a text according to
his views and owns it while passing on his vision of it. There is nothing which
remains unnamed. He is a creator, and he names events, objects, and passersby. The city is an object of his scrutiny, and he is a researcher. Therefore, there
is no place for magic. Male flânerie is a science. Even though the flâneur is a
subject, he is disembodied. He walks, but very rarely is his body perceived by
others, and he never reveals his own bodily feelings. He has eyes and a voice,
and he embodies an impersonalized camera lens.
Jonathan Crary, however, rereads the body of the observer in the nineteenth
century as a visual apparatus, while the notion of gender does not play any role
for him. Anne Friedberg shows that the body was a fiction for French feminists: «For Irigaray ‹the look› replaces the body, separates itself from it, and
renders the body immaterial» (33). For Irigaray, it does not matter if the body is
male or female – the look or gaze is crucial. Like other scholars (Crary, Benjamin, Pollock, Wolff, Buck-Morss), Friedberg maintains that the male flâneurobserver in the nineteenth century subjected women’s bodies to his gaze. Like
Kevin Hetherington, Friedberg sees the emergence of the female flâneur, the
flâneuse, in the period of the decline of the Parisian arcades and the emergence
of the new department stores, where women could stroll without escort:
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The female flâneur, the flâneuse, was not possible until she was free to roam the city
on her own. And this equated with the privilege of shopping on her own. The development in the late nineteenth century of shopping as socially acceptable leisure
activity for bourgeois women, as a ‹pleasure rather than a necessity,› encouraged
women to be peripatetic without escort. (36)
Friedberg connects the term of a flâneuse and a female subject to consumerism and to the notion of class. The female observer was a consumer-shopper
and unmistakably bourgeois, while experiences of other women remain on
the periphery. More important for Friedberg’s argument is the fact that shopping «relied on the visual register and helped to ensure the predominance of
the gaze in capitalist society» (37). In this sense, the body – whether engendered or not – is not at the core of consumerism, but rather the gaze. Consequently, flânerie was instrumentalized by a consumer society in order to
sell more and more goods. It was not just «looking at» and idling, but also
establishing a relation between looking and buying, between need and desire,
where desire could replace need. Flânerie itself became a form of commodity.
Strolling in the department stores suggested a new illusion of spatial and temporal mobility. The idler was virtually «transported» to other countries, continents, and times, while looking at goods on display from different countries.
Shopping windows could offer the illusion of «foreignness» and «travel» in
time and space.
In his essay Der Flaneur, Benjamin writes that the flâneur is unthinkable
without the Parisian arcades with their luxury goods, that he needs to see consumers, goods, a phantasmagoria of illuminated shopping windows to «botanize» the city. Benjamin calls the city and the arcades the flâneur’s habitus,
where he is both at home and at work and where he «botanizes»: «Habitus
des Flaneurs, der auf dem Asphalt botanisieren geht» (538). Flâneur is a city
researcher doing empirical work. He scrutinizes the society, collects impressions, makes observations, and interprets the world around him. Benjamin
implies that only men can act as city scientists. Some of Tawada’s female characters in Opium für Ovid also play the role of city researcher, such as Galanthis.5 Tawada’s Galanthis walks in the city and «studies» shops: «Es gibt Tage,
an denen Galanthis sich hellwach fühlt. Sie studiert dann einen Laden nach
dem anderen, kniet und streckt sich den ganzen Tag vor den Regalen, schleppt
Prospekte herum und geht abends noch eine Stunde spazieren» (23). However, this kind of «study» leaves out any results. Galanthis is occupied with
window shopping. She observes objects on display without buying them or
coming to any conclusion about them. Tawada also draws attention to the
fact that the wish to take a walk depends on Galanthis’ mood. In the case of
the flâneur, it seems he is always on the streets, as if flânerie were his main
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occupation. Galanthis, on the other hand, is driven by her occasional mood:
«Es gibt Tage, da möchte man nicht einer geraden Straße folgen. So fährt
Galanthis nach Ottensen, wo sie nichts zu erledigen hat, schlendert müßig
herum, biegt ohne Grund ab und verirrt sich in eine krumme Gasse» (23).
Like a flâneur, Galanthis walks aimlessly, letting the streets lead her. However, in contrast to a flâneur, she is not looking for visual irritations. Instead
she saunters for the sake of physical movement. Here, the bodily experience
of idling is put in the forefront. Therefore, Tawada focuses on women’s feet.
For instance, Thetis, one of the characters in Opium and a silver-footed sea
nymph in Greek mythology, can walk the whole day looking only at her feet.6
In addition, walking in Jenischpark, the unnamed narrator finds a piece of
wood that looks similar to a foot, and she reflects on the feet of women she
knows: Galanthis has pale and flat feet, while Salmacis has small feet (105).
The narrator has an idea to portray a foot in the shape of a woman whom she
calls Clymene, which means «Fame.»7 In Tawada’s Opium, Clymene is a linguist who travels to many cities and is constantly on the move. She is literally
«walking feet.» Clymene is a nomad without a tribe rather than a migrant. If
migration implies a total change of habitat, nomadism implies periodical and
cyclical movement.8 Being on the move, however, brings the association of
restlessness and homelessness, which Tawada resolves by connecting physical
mobility to a linguistic one. Clymene does not feel homeless because she lives
in languages: «Ich dachte, wir wohnen in den Sprachen. Deshalb habe ich nie
das Gefühl, dass ich obdachlos bin, selbst wenn ich wochenlang unterwegs
bin» (105). Clymene is a linguist and a poet and she works a lot with dictionaries. Once, when she is with Daphne in a bookstore, a thick dictionary
accidentally falls on her foot (100). Being alone at home, Clymene takes off
her socks and erotically caresses her foot: «Sie streichelt ihn langsam, in jede
Richtung einmal, sie schaltet das Licht aus und streichelt weiter» (103).
Tawada expands the theme of feet to a discussion of shoes, which is innovative if one takes into consideration that the shoes of a male flâneur are
unlikely to be mentioned. Due to the endless walking of her characters, their
shoes become worn out very quickly. Their soles touch the street pavement,
and their insides touch women’s skin. Galanthis has a feeling of intimacy with
her old shoes. The shoes break boundaries between streets and her body, the
private and public spheres. For example, Galanthis calls any place her «home»
depending on where her shoes are.9 Being on the street, she can always feel a
part of her home on her feet, whereas being at home, she brings a part of the
city on her shoes into her private sphere.
While they idle, the awareness of their bodies distinguishes Tawada’s female characters from the traditional flâneur. Women in Opium are not walk-
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ing camera lenses, but they are walking bodies. For instance, physical movement forward is, for Galanthis, an obsession and a need. If she stands, she
consumes more energy than by walking: «Galanthis schwitzt, wenn sie steht,
weil sie zu viel Kraft verbraucht, um nicht hinzufallen. Das Laufen fällt ihr
hingegen sehr leicht. Sie kann drei Stunden lang pausenlos in schnellen Schritten gehen» (24). Her body reacts with sweating. Her sweat translates visual
aspects of the city into the fabric of her undershirt: «Der Schweiß zeichnete
Landschaften auf den Stoff» (24). The dynamics between women and the city
leads to a bodily reaction to the environment. It is reflected in sweating and in
experiencing pain. The city emerges as a sphere where women’s bodies are exposed to injury. For example, Galanthis is run over by a car, and the unnamed
narrator receives injuries on a regular basis: «Eine Woche später lag ich wieder
verletzt und verlassen auf einer Landstraße in Schleswig-Holstein» (19). Due
to pain and injuries, these strolling women pay attention to shopping windows of pharmacies. For instance Leda,10 a pharmacist and Galanthis’ doctor, studies products in the pharmacy’s window display: «Leda steht vor dem
Schaufenster einer Apotheke und studiert die neuen Frühjahrsprodukte»
(19).
The danger of injuries on the street and of potential pain does not restrain
women from strolling in the city. In Tawada’s Opium, some characters are
driven by Thanatos to self-destructive and risky acts. Their ultimate goal,
however, is to encounter Thanatos’s twin brother Hypnos and to be transferred into another «reality.» The narrator describes her state after the car
crash and her injuries as follows: «Dann fiel ich in einen Schlaf wie man einen
Hang hinunterrollt. Ich hatte nie zuvor ein vergleichbares Gefühl erlebt, und
mir fiel nur das ganz unpassende Wort Glück ein» (18). Losing consciousness
and falling asleep promises happiness that is comparable to opium intoxication. If Galanthis, after her street injuries, finds herself in hospitals where she
gets drugs and then goes to pharmacies for the same reason, Salmacis, on the
other hand, falls into a sleep obsession. She spends more than 12 hours a day
in bed. Her passionate sleep offers her happiness and transition to a magical
world of dreams, similar to the magical effects of opium.
In the state of intoxication, the first-person narrator that binds as a red
thread all stories in Opium perceives visual information differently: «Im
Rauschzustand verwirrt mich das Optische am meisten. Denn alles, was
sichtbar ist, scheint unverändert zu sein, dennoch ist augenfällig, daß es im
Rausch nicht mehr das ist, was es war. Sein Schweigen sticht mich» (53).
At first glance, it may seem paradoxical that objects that are seen have not
changed; at the same time, these objects are not what they used to be. Here,
however, Tawada shows that objects are polysemantic. If one takes a look at
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them from another angle, their surface will offer a new dimension for reading.
Objects do have a language, yet they keep silent. The task of an observer is not
to interpret or to understand the meaning of the objects, but rather to read
and translate the constantly changing surface of these objects and to confront
the ambiguity of the world of objects over and over again. I will elaborate on
the relationship of surface and ambiguity in connection with Benjamin below. Here, I would like to draw attention to the fact that in Tawada’s case, the
body of an observer/flâneuse contributes to the understanding of ambiguity because the body itself changes continuously while constantly interacting
with the world of objects by touching, smelling, sweating, etc. Therefore, it is
very difficult to draw a line between the flâneuse’s body and objects, and the
border between them becomes more fluid.
Other female characters in Tawada’s text are attracted by ambiguity as well,
such as the writer Coronis,11 who comes from one of the countries under a
dictatorship and is married to a «local man» (der Einheimische), as she calls
her husband in Hamburg. Coronis’s vision weakens, and she needs eyeglasses. While an optometrist thinks that Coronis is afraid of eyeglasses and tries
to calm her by saying that people mistakenly interpret eyeglasses as a symbol
for aging, Coronis, quite to the contrary, believes that a life without eyeglasses would be boring. Coronis can perceive the surface of objects as ambiguous
due to different eyeglasses: «Ich sehe jedesmal was anderes. Durch häufigen
Brillenwechsel Mehrdeutigkeit erleben, soll das der Sinn einer Brille sein?»
(83). Tawada combines, here, body and culture – vision and visuality. Coronis’s weakened vision is a «defect» of her body; she needs eyeglasses in order
to see clearly and diminish the bodily «defect.» At the same time, Coronis’s
obsession with different eyeglasses has nothing to do with her nearsightedness, but rather with her visuality in terms of the interpretation of visual information. With the diverse eyeglasses, she chooses how to see the environment. Her choice has nothing in common with prejudices; rather it is a way of
understanding the world in its variety and ambiguity.
Tawada likes to use the metaphor of optic devices that frame a view or function as a lens in her texts. For instance, she plays with the concept of «Japanese eyeglasses» in her short story «Eigentlich darf man es niemandem sagen, aber Europa gibt es nicht,» in which the Japanese eyeglasses are fictional
and symbolize fictional Japanese sight. This means that Japanese perception
does not exist because a pure Japanese culture does not exist (Talisman 50). In
«Rothenburg ob der Tauber: Ein deutsches Rätsel,» also a short story from
the Talisman collection, Tawada mentions a so-called Fuchsfenster and a camera lens that helps, on the one hand, to frame a view, and, on the other hand, to
make objects appear smaller and less threatening, like in a puppet theater (Tal-
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isman 33). In Opium, Coronis tries to do exactly the same when she wants to
perceive the women in a subway through a lens – through a theatre program
that she rolls into an «opera glass,» so that women would appear like dolls or
marionettes on a stage (79).
In order to make clear connections between opium intoxication, surface
(ornament), flâneur, and doll, I will provide an overview of Benjamin’s understanding of the world of objects as well as an overview of Tawada’s interpretation and application of that understanding. The connection between opium
intoxication, ornament, and surface is essential for understanding Tawada’s
positioning of women/flâneuses and female bodies within the city and for the
communication between women and the city. In my further explanation, I
mainly refer to Tawada’s dissertation and Benjamin’s Crocknotitzen and Einbahnstraße.
In Spielzeug und Sprachmagie in der europäischen Literatur. Eine ethnologische Poetologie, Tawada claims that toys have not received appropriate
attention by academic scholars. She considers toys and games as important
components of culture, and she regrets that nowadays they are mostly compartmentalized and used as pedagogical tools. Tawada refers to earlier eras
when there was no distinct separation between game and work, children and
adults, the profane and the sacred, when objects could be used in everyday
life and, at the same time, still be sacred. She quotes Levi-Strauss who claimed
that the distinction between «holy» and «profane» is a characteristic of European culture. She points out that science cannot replace magic. Referring to
Adorno and Horkheimer, she comes to the conclusion that the term mimesis
constitutes a forum where magic and art can be related to each other. Tawada
believes that there is no place for magic in the consciousness of the modern
subject. Literature, however, provides a space where magic can appear. People
are not conscious of the magic of the world of objects, but literature makes
this magic visible (226). For Tawada, magic is something that cannot be explained by science, the rational mind, or logic. In a magical world, objects
are animated and words can have a direct meaning. Tawada’s magic world is
similar to a child’s world in which objects communicate with people. It is not
by accident that Tawada connects myths and magic in her texts about women.
Myths can provide a meaning and work together with ideologies. All cultures
create their own myths, for instance myths of their origins, myths about great
heroes, or myths about their destiny. Myths in terms of Roland Barthes’ interpretation are thus constructions that guide and control people’s behavior
(111–15). In Tawada’s understanding, myths are similarly constructions that
restrict people’s ability to develop and to change according to their personal
choices. Magic, however, works against myth. Her Opium is about magic that
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deconstructs negative elements of Greco-Roman mythology – the foundation of European thought. Magic can be subversion, as it energizes the ability
to change beyond restrictive European norms, beyond given identities, and
therefore provides the ability to gain freedom. That is why Tawada’s women
are free of traditional patriarchal obligations.
According to Tawada, literature constitutes one of the spaces in European
modernism where magic can come back: «Literatur [ist] einer der Orte in der
europäischen Moderne […], an den die Magie zurückkehren kann» (Spielzeug 226). In addition, Tawada uses Benjamin’s linguistic theory about the
existence of different kinds of languages – poetic, plastic, art language, etc. –
and also the language of objects (156).12 People are not able to understand the
language of objects, but literature translates that language for them (16).
Tawada writes about the magic of the surface. She insists that the surface
of a doll has an important meaning. She refers to Benjamin’s description of
a mannequin in a shopping window (Schaufensterpuppe) in his PassagenWerk, claiming that the doll is a surface on which appearance or illusoriness
comes to the forefront. Tawada continues:
Eine Puppe stellt einen menschlichen Körper dar, indem sie vor allem seine Oberfäche nachahmt. Es gibt in ihrem Körper nichts, was menschlichen Eingeweiden
entspricht. Besonders bei Schaufensterpuppen ist es deutlich, daß die Oberfläche
ihr Wesen ausmacht. (153)
Tawada draws a parallel between such mannequins and books. She states that
books, especially those with illustrations, are toys that are similar to dolls because our three-dimensional world is transformed into the two-dimensional
surface of the book. Tawada continues discussing Benjamin’s Einbahnstraße,
in which he points out that a children’s book represents a silent surface that
does not send any messages to a child, but, more importantly, absorbs the
child into its surface. The child disappears in the book as if it were in a game
of hide-and-seek. Using the example of this game, Benjamin claims that children can experience the world of objects in its immediacy and that their perception of the world of objects is magic: «Begriffe wie ‹Magie› oder ‹Zauber›
bezeichnen bei Benjamin einen Zustand, in dem eine ‹andere› Wahrnehmung
entsteht. Auch die Kinderbücher ermöglichen diesen Zustand, den man zugleich als eine Art ‹Rauschzustand› verstehen kann» (162).
Furthermore, Tawada quotes Wolfgang Schlüter, who connects Benjamin’s
drug consumption and his passion for collecting children’s book, claiming that the fact that Benjamin dreams about collecting objects while under
drug intoxication proves his extraordinary collector’s passion. In his «drug»
études, Benjamin speaks about «Physiognomie,» which means that the sur-
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face should not be understood as an expression of the inner «truth» or that
there is a meaning behind the surface. Tawada notices that other terms are
more important for Benjamin, namely a net and a coat (Netz and Mantel):
Während das Netz aus Maschen besteht und dazu benutzt wird, Vögel oder Fische zu fangen, ist der Mantel eine Umhüllung, die schützt bzw. verbirgt. Das Wort
«Netz» kann in Verbindung mit dem Wort «Haut» eine «Netzhaut» bilden, die ein
Objekt optisch einfängt. Der Mantel hingegen bedeckt ein Objekt und macht es
unsichtbar. Insofern bilden Netz und Mantel einen Kontrast. (164)
Tawada is fascinated with the way in which Benjamin elaborates on the net.
When the net throws a shadow on a human body, this shadow has the role of
a coat that veils the body. In this case, the net and the coat are one whole, while
human skin and the shadow of the net are one whole as well. It is a «Netzhaut» («net skin» – retina). Tawada comes to the conclusion that the body
is a retina – an eye, which allows people to see objects. People can optically
perceive objects with their bodies (164). The world becomes then a «webworld/networld,» and it is impossible to distinguish on which side of the net
the outer world is. Furthermore, Tawada refers to Benjamin’s Protokolle zu
Drogenversuchen in which he claims that a person under opium intoxication
is able to penetrate into the world of surfaces that can be regarded as an ornament. The fantasy or imagination of the opium smoker is similar to the ornament itself in the sense that they both consist of small details and elements
connected to each other and are built into endless sequences (164). In addition, if a viewer pays closer attention to the ornament, he/she can discover
that it has some new details. The observer finds new ornaments in the old over
and over again:
Weil Vorhänge und Marionetten als Dinge betrachtet werden, die keine innere Welt
besitzen, fällt es leicht, sie als Oberfläche wahrzunehmen. Benjamin, der angesichts
einer Schaufensterpuppe die eigentliche ‹Oberflächlichkeit› eines lebenden Menschen wahrgenommen hat, fällt es nicht schwer, die Gesichter der Menschen als
Oberfläche zu lesen. Die Schaufensterpuppe hatte er aus der Perspektive eines Flaneurs betrachtet. Jetzt ist er Haschischraucher, der menschliche Gesichter liest. Beide Zustände sind geeignet, die Oberfläche zu lesen. Im Surrealismus-Aufsatz nennt
Benjamin beide Tätigkeiten, das Flanieren und das Haschischrauchen, in einem
Atemzug: «Der Leser, der Denkende, der Wartende, der Flaneur sind ebensowohl
Typen des Erleuchteten wie der Opiumesser, der Träumer, der Berauschte.» (165)
The surface does not have a message. It allows for many different interpretations. Benjamin compares this reading to the body of a dancer. Tawada states
that the surface of a dancer’s body – a moving surface – does not have any inner world, which reminds her of Kleist’s Über das Marionettentheater. The
Marionette is all dancer.
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Benjamin’s main concern is not to read and to interpret people’s faces and
what is behind them, or to classify them according to some qualities, but rather to discover ambiguity and polysemy of the surface and to make this polysemy readable. The method of such a reading and perception of the surface is
for Benjamin «Täuschung» – deception. In each face, he recognizes some features of faces of his friends and acquaintances. Those faces do not disappear
completely, but partially, in a dreamlike way. The same process of discovering
surfaces can be applied to the world of objects, in which case the observer
would be called «Physiognomiker der Dingwelt» (Spielzeug 167).
At this point, I would like to emphasize the connection between intoxication, ornament, and flâneuse that I promised earlier. Drug intoxication – it is
opium intoxication both in Benjamin’s and in Tawada’s texts – generates a new
perspective of looking at objects and perceiving the world of objects. Like intoxication, optic devices – such as eyeglasses or rolled-up theatre programs –
can also give rise to a new visual perception. The world around us has surfaces. However, as noted above, there is no «inner truth» behind the surfaces.
The surfaces constitute constantly changing ornaments that can become visible under opium intoxication. Moreover, the world of objects is considered
magic by Tawada. Only children and hashish smokers can perceive the world
of objects in its immediacy and can be absorbed in its magic. The flâneuses
are like hashish smokers: they observe modifying surfaces. Tawada’s flâneuses
stroll in the city as if under opium intoxication – the first person narrator is
clearly a drug user since she discovers many things under intoxication (53,
78, 175) – and they have immediate contact with the city that stands for the
world of objects. Flâneuses collect images of different surfaces, impressions,
and stories. As the anthropologist Susan Greenwood points out, «As alternative mode of consciousness, magic can take a person via her imagination deep
within herself and also, paradoxically, out into a wider emotional relationship
with another being such as a nightingale or an owl – so much so that bodily
boundaries appear to merge» (7).13 Despite the fact that Western cultures are
influenced by Enlightenment and that people perceive themselves as rational
beings, magic or irrationality is still deeply rooted in human consciousness
and manifests itself in superstitions and celebrations of holidays (for instance,
Halloween).
As an illustration for Benjamin’s theory about collectors, Tawada introduces in Opium the female character Scylla, who collects and sells old furniture.14
Scylla is a true collector, as it is not the furniture per se nor the classification of
the furniture that is essential to her, but rather the stories that are closely related to them: «Zu jedem Möbelstück fällt Scylla eine Episode ein. Man könnte
sagen, sie verkaufe eigentlich Geschichten, der Trödel sei nur eine Zugabe»
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(57). The same approach to collecting is true for Thisbe, who works as a hairdresser.15 She collects and passes on stories of her female clients.
We do not know the name of the narrator who tells us about all these women – about Scylla, Thisbe, Galantis, Coronis, etc. It is also ambiguous if the
narrator is actually an author, as for instance in the following passage: «Eines
Tages erzählte mir die Friseuse, sie kenne eine Kundin, deren Nachbarin eine
Autorin kenne. Diese habe ein Buch geschrieben, das von zweiundzwanzig
Frauen handelte, unter anderen auch von ihr» (190). Knowing Tawada’s playfulness, she can refer here to herself. Sometimes her narrator has a very strong
presence in the text, especially in the passages with first-person narration.
Sometimes she is transformed into a narrated character. The unnamed narrator states that she does not have any desire for the physical possession of any
objects. She is a nonconsumer who wants to stroll through the city and see
objects on display in shopping windows:
Am liebsten wäre mir, die Gegenstände würden in einem Schaufenster sitzen, und
ich könnte sie bei einem nächtlichen Spaziergang begrüßen. Wenn es zufällig einem
Möbelstück gelingt, in meinen Wohnbereich zu dringen – zum Beispiel durch eine
Gewalttat namens Geschenk –, werde ich gezwungen, es zu beachten, und die Summe der Blicke, die ich ihm schenke, bekomme ich niemals zurück. (54)
The objects on display have their own life. The narrator can greet them and
expect a greeting back. Walking in the city assumes communication between
women and the world of objects. The shopping windows are also personified: they are not just looked at but also look back at women. For instance,
Ariadne experiences the exchange between her gaze and the shop windows’
gaze as follows: «Ariadne geht durch eine Einkaufsstraße. Die Schaufenster
der Läden blicken sie an, die Markenzeichen versuchen, in ihr Nervensystem hineinzuschleichen, das kitzelt. In dieser Stadt gibt es keine Gebäude,
sondern nur Schaufenster» (203). Here, as in other examples, the world of objects (city) causes Ariadne’s adverse bodily reaction. She feels as if the objects
penetrate her body and nervous system. In contrast to a male flâneur, strolling women are objects, even in the gaze of the objects themselves. In this case,
objects are animated. There are no separate worlds of objects and subjects because Tawada tries to resist these categorizations. Tawada plays here with the
word «shopping window,» Schaufenster, which consists of the word Fenster,
«window,» and the verb schauen, «to see» or «to look at.» Tawada shows that,
on the one hand, people look at shopping windows; on the other hand, those
windows also look back at people (die Fenster schauen). In the quotation
above, the narrator states that there are no buildings in the city. There are only
«Schaufenster,» a word that does not only imply shopping windows that are
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looked at by people, but rather any windows through which objects can look
at people. The city is personified and is in constant visual communication and
optic exchange with women.
The problem of being observed and being on display is a big issue for the
strolling woman. While a male flâneur is free from being objectified by gazes
of passers-by, a woman’s body is exposed to strangers’ gazes. This situation
leads to self-censorship. Thus, Leda, an illegal pharmacist, feels obligated as
a young woman to construct her bodily performance according to the demands of the city population:
Als Leda zwanzig war, schwamm sie durch die Menschenmenge – zurechtgeputzt
und kühl konzentriert. Sie fühlte sich verpflichtet, nicht mehr mädchenhaft, nicht
mehr ländlich und nicht mehr schüchtern oder erkältet auszusehen. Erst dreißig
Jahre später konnte sie aus ihrem Körper etwas entfalten, das besonders war. Man
hat das Gefühl, an jeder Stelle ihres Körpers eine Öffnung finden zu können, durch
die man einen anderen Raum betreten kann. (10)
Interestingly, Tawada connects the metamorphoses of the body and bodily
performance to aging. Young Leda tries to correspond to the notion of a city
woman. This imaginary woman has to be cool, self-confident, clean, mature,
and an opposite of provincial. She has to look different from what she really
is. Only through the passing of time is Leda able to free herself from these
stereotypes and to be more conscious regarding her body. The freedom allows her body to develop and to be open for spaces outside of the restraints
that were put upon her by the patriarchal city and its inhabitants. Tawada reevaluates aging as a positive process. The writer sees the body as a space with
openings. At the start of this paper, I mentioned that Tawada breaks boundaries between bodies and the environment. In this sense, the quotation above
is a very good example for such a fluid border. Tawada is convinced that the
body consists of many holes – mouth, nostrils, ears, vagina, anus, pores of
the skin, etc. Also, the whole body consists of small particles (molecules) that
are not tied to each other; rather they collide with each other and then push
away from each other. Therefore, the body always maintains open spaces into which surroundings can penetrate in the form of sound, fluid, food, and
smell. Consequently, the body is always changing. The environment constantly gets something back from the body (exhalation, sweat, urine, etc).16 In
addition to the physical aspect, one can read the quotation above metaphorically: aging is a process of better understanding the world, when new spaces
open themselves up to exploration. I will come back to the lack of borders
between the body of the flâneuse and the city in the section about Ariadne, in
which I will explore how Tawada deconstructs the dichotomy of subject and
object.
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As I have shown, the flâneuse Leda frees herself from the judging gazes
of passers-by and stereotypes. Another example of a strolling woman who
reflects on patriarchal judgmental attitudes in the city is a divorced woman,
Salmacis. She remembers how she was constrained within patriarchal norms
while being married to her husband. She does not want to go for a walk
alone because she always remembers her mother’s words: «Meine Mutter
sagte immer, es sehe besser aus, wenn eine Frau männliche Begleitung habe»
(73). Walking with her husband in Barmbek means to meet the expectations
of others: «Wir passen optisch wunderbar zueinander. Das haben andere
Spaziergänger festgestellt» (73). People on the street perceive her as «other,»
as a woman. Only outside of her marriage is Salmacis able to overcome the
dichotomy male versus female. As mentioned earlier, she gives herself over to
the power of sleep. While sleeping, her body becomes bigger, and she encounters androgyny. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Salmacis falls in love with Hermaphroditos, passionately wanting to unite with him. While raping him, her
body becomes one with his body: neither female nor male, but both (Ovid
138). Tawada, however, disregards the part of the story related to Hermaphroditos. In her version, the change originates in Salmacis alone, who believes
that metamorphoses can happen only in the world of dreams, outside of the
heterosexually oriented public sphere. She says, «Ich bin eine schlafende
Revolutionärin, daher glaube ich: nur im Schlaf gibt es Veränderungen» (71).
Tawada also believes that what people call «masculine» and «feminine» is already within each body regardless of its sex. Instead of strolling alone in the
city where people identify her according to her sex and where she has trouble being a flâneuse, Salmacis prefers to stroll in her dreams. Her immovable
sleeping androgynous body is a container for her strolling mind. Salmacis
idles in the dreamy world beyond physical material «reality.»
There are two women with a migrant background in Opium, Coronis and
Clymene. Similar to Salmacis, who was perceived as «other»/woman within
the patriarchal frames of a marriage, these two women are «others» in the
city due to their «foreignness.» Coronis, who is married to a «local man,» has
problems in the realm of the urban landscape. She would like to merge into
the urban mass; however, she always sticks out as a «foreigner:»
Coronis wird oft von Passanten betrachtet. Die Augen der Dorfbewohner
starren sie an. Die Augen der Großstädter starren sie ebenso an: in Straßenbahnen, in Restaurants, in Kaufhäusern. Das ist insofern rätselhaft, als es bei
ihr nichts Auffälliges gibt, was man als fremdländisch empfinden könnte. (90)
Coronis plays the role of a migrant flâneuse. Due to her enigmatic «foreign» look,
she is not able to idle on the streets and to use public places without being noticed.
She is constantly reminded of not belonging to Western European society, as if
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she has no right to walk in the city. She is tired of questions about her origin: «Ich
möchte Tomaten kaufen dürfen, ohne nach der Herkunft gefragt zu werden» (90).
She would prefer it if such questions were forbidden, but she understands the irony
that one cannot forbid the asking of questions in a democratic society. Tawada also
deconstructs the concept of «foreignness» by pointing out its mysterious character
since there is nothing «foreign» about Coronis’ appearance.
Further, Tawada develops the theme of «foreignness» in the city, introducing
the notion of tourism. Clymene, a constantly traveling linguist, has to face
her foreignness in other cities. Traveling puts her into the position of a person
who «does not belong here,» into the position of the «other.» The «otherness» deprives her of her right to exist and to stroll. While in a third-world
city, for example, Clymene is perceived by others not as an independent subject, but as a part of the mass of tourists:
Clymene kannte in der Stadt niemanden außer den Veranstalter der Tagung, grammatikalisch gesehen lief sie in der dritten Person herum, denn für keinen der Passanten dort bedeutete Clymene ein Du, nicht einmal ein Sie, für alle war sie ein Teil
einer anonymen Touristengruppe. Wenn Postkartenverkäufer Clymene ansprachen, meinten sie sie nicht persönlich, sie war mit jedem anderen Touristen austauschbar. (99)
A traditional flâneur within the urban landscape never doubts his subjectivity. He is always an I, whereas people around him are «they» or «others.» In
contrast, Clymene takes into account her «otherness.» She is neither I nor
you; rather she is a grammatical third person. While Clymene strolls in the
city in the third person, she is transformed into a body – it. That is why Tawada pays attention to what Clymene eats: she is absorbing the city into her
body. She does not look at the city, but digests it. Eating food – and one can
go further by interpreting the process of eating and digesting food as consuming the city – proves to be a positive act in Tawada’s understanding. Clymene
and the city are one whole; there are no physical borders between them. This
might also be a reason why Clymene disappears as a subject.
As I have illustrated through the example of Clymene, Tawada wants to
break down boundaries between subject and object, foreign and native, the
other and the same. She undertakes the same kind of washing out of borders
between the notions of male and female. In texts by Kracauer, Benjamin, Hessel, and Baudelaire, the flâneur is a well-known male urban subject, which
implies that he has a male body and male sexuality. The flâneur is also heterosexual. Women in the streets are «allowed» to be lesbian in their texts; however, they remain objects of the flâneur’s gaze. Feminist scholars who either
claimed the impossibility of being a flâneuse in the nineteenth century or affirmed the existence of flâneuses in such public spheres as department stores
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still operated within the normative heterosexual system. Tawada, however,
breaks from this tradition. She plays with dichotomies of the male and female
body and male and female sexuality, and she shows how these categories are
shaky and unstable. Her narrative style suggests that the reader should experience the text as if it were a drug. The intoxicated reader should be transferred to another reality beyond heterosexuality and patriarchy, and beyond
the European way of thinking.
One of the examples of Tawada’s characters who struggle with boundaries
is Iphis. The daughter of migrant parents from an unspecified foreign country
and Scylla’s neighbor, she also has a problem with positioning herself as a subject in the city. On the one hand, she feels alienated because of her «foreign»
name, which reveals to others that she belongs to the second generation of
migrants. On the other hand, Iphis has issues with her lesbian sexuality and
gender. She decides to be a man and signals her transformation with a «businessman’s» haircut at Thisbe’s.
In Opium, Iphis makes the decision to be a man by herself, whereas in
the Ovidean version, Iphis is transformed into a man by the goddess Isis.17
Tawada’s Iphis has to struggle with her gender identity within the city. Being a
man, she cannot decide on a name for herself, and she is not able to walk in the
city using the first-person I. The alienation leads her to address the previous
embodiment of herself as «she» and the present self as «he»:
Iphis hat immer noch keinen neuen Namen für sich gefunden. Alle männlichen Namen, die ihr einfallen, passen nicht zu einem Geschäftsmann. Außerdem kann sie
nicht mehr «ich» sagen, denn, wenn sie «ich» sagt, weiß man nicht, welche Person
damit gemeint ist. Die von früher oder die von heute? Stattdessen bezeichnet sie die
frühere Person als «sie» und die heutige als «er«. In der dritten Person spaziert Iphis
durch den Stadtteil Eimsbüttel. Einige Dinge werden von der neuen Person «er»
ausprobiert, andere werden nach wie vor von der alten «sie» vollzogen. Er geht in
ein Cafe und schaut sich um, sie bestellt eine Tasse Kaffee, er trinkt ihn schnell aus,
sie zahlt und gibt zuviel Trinkgeld, als hätte sie ein schlechtes Gewissen, und dann
gehen beide gemeinsam nach Hause. (186)
Tawada follows feminist thinkers and describes the complexity of female
identity – the sex which is not one. Looking at the quotation above more
closely, one can notice that the actions performed by «him» and «her» differ.
For instance, «he» is active in terms of trying something new, whereas «she»
has the attribute of «old» and is hesitant and more conservative. The masculine component of Iphis allows himself to appropriate the space in the café
and to look around, whereas the feminine part chooses the role of a «servant,»
ordering a cup of coffee so that «he» could drink it. In addition, «she» has a
bad conscience and also a feeling of solidarity with the café service staff. The
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dramatic gender interplay is resolved by jointly walking home. Interestingly,
Iphis’ masculine component, «he,» is still the bearer of the gaze: «[er] schaut
sich um.» He is the one who needs to see and who is irritated when he cannot or is not allowed to see something: «Eine kräftige Frau mit geblümtem
Kopftuch überquert die Straße. Er ist beleidigt, weil er ihre Haare nicht sehen
kann» (187). Tawada shows that «he» indeed represents the masculine part of
Iphis. Seeing means for «him» knowledge and also ownership. When «he» is
refused this, «he» feels rejected and powerless. Iphis remains an interesting
variation of a flâneuse. Her body is still female. The perception of the city,
however, varies depending on Iphis’s «he» or «she.» Iphis cannot perceive
herself as a competent subject in the city – as an I. The permanent fluctuations
between gender identities and Iphis’s migrant background do not allow her
to walk with self-assurance. She always reacts to and interacts with the city
environment.
Such mutual exchange between the city and the flâneuse is also characteristic of Tawada’s Ariadne. In Greek mythology, Ariadne helped Theseus to
kill the Minotaur and to find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. Tawada
connects the traditional association of Ariadne and a labyrinth with another
association, namely the city as labyrinth. Tawada’s Ariadne constantly needs
fabric or material – not only in the sense of a fabric in which she can veil her
body (and Tawada uses red silk as an allusion to Ariadne’s ball of red fleece
thread from the myth), but also as material for reading: «sie muß etwas lesen,
Briefe, Bücher, Notizen, Lesestoff» (202). Tawada transforms the city into
reading material. For Ariadne, the city is a fabric, which is both created by her
and at the same time absorbs her. She walks in a city, which is a product of her
fantasy:
Noch besser wäre eine Stadt, in der sie spazierengehen könnte, aber man muß eine
solche Stadt zuerst erfinden, es hat keinen Sinn, einfach aus dem Haus zu gehen.
Ariadne könnte eine Stadt aus dem Nichts erfinden, in der es keine Stoffe gäbe, aber
da ist diese Sehnsucht nach einem Stoff, den sie in die Hand nehmen und wieder
loslassen kann. (202)
Tawada tries to combine materiality and immateriality of a city as well as materiality and immateriality of human thought and imagination. Ariadne creates a city from nothing, and it remains immaterialized fantasy. However, this
fantastic city can become material if it is transformed into a written text. Thus
the city becomes reading material, which then further provokes the reader to
recognize immaterial city images. Tawada creates a highly ambiguous image
of Ariadne’s city, balancing between reality and unreality, materiality and immateriality. Ariadne goes for a walk in the city that she knows from her childhood. She doubts, though, whether anybody else has ever idled in this city.
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Even in this imagined city, the relationship between the city and a woman’s
body is at the center of attention. The city becomes an imprint on Ariadne’s
body:
Ihre Bluse ist eine Membran, ihre Jacke ein Stück Seidenpapier. Zuerst ist sie dünn
angezogen, unterwegs zieht sie weitere Schichten an. Jede Gasse, durch die sie geht,
legt sich auf ihre Schultern. Jeder Schatten, der sich auf ihren Rücken wirft, bleibt
dort kleben. Eine seltsame Feuchtigkeit dampft aus der Haut der Straßenbäume
und bildet ein unsichtbares Netz um ihren Kopf. Ihr wird es immer wärmer. Sie läßt
keinen Weg hinter sich, sondern sie zieht alle Wege an, als wären sie Kleidungsstükke. (203)
Ariadne’s body and the city’s body build a single organism. Their relationship
constitutes a biological symbiosis in which one influences the other, cannot
live without the other; they are inseparable. The city’s streets leave marks on
Ariadne’s body. They stick to her back and shoulders. She also pulls at the
streets and does not want to leave them behind. Ariadne’s strolling in the city
is probably the most vivid embodiment of the connection of Benjamin’s version of the flâneur, of the opium smoker, of the Ovidean Ariadne, and the
notion of the city as a labyrinth. In the quotation above, one finds Benjamin’s
metaphors of the net and the coat – the net as a web of surfaces and ornaments that are visible, the coat as a cover that protects objects. City streets
are coats that cover Ariadne’s body – the street’s shadows are on her skin,
creating a perfect «Netzhaut» or retina. In fact, Ariadne «sees» with her body,
and, at the same time, the city is part of her body. Thus Tawada resists the dichotomy of observer and observed, of subjects and objects. Tawada’s flâneuse
is a product of a postmodern world, where hierarchies are destabilized. Her
relationship to the city is no longer about possessing or evaluating, but rather
an organic exchange between her and her environment reflecting flexibility
and totality.
Tawada animates the city. The city has a body and acts like a living organism. She represents it as an animal that swallows the passers-by:
Ab und zu wird sie [Ariadne] von einem Loch verschluckt und aus einem anderen
Loch wieder ausgespuckt. Diese Stadt ist ein Tier mit zahllosen Körperöffnungen.
Es speist lebendige Passanten, genauer gesagt speist es nur die breiartigen Gedanken aus dem Kopf der Passanten. (203)
The city is not just a labyrinth where one can be lost, enter one hole and exit
from another, but rather the city is like a Minotaur who eats people’s ideas
and thoughts. Yet the city does not represent a monster since Tawada rejects
the notion of a city as an «other» or as an object. People are organic parts of
the city, and the city is an organic part of people’s life. They constitute a single
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body. Therefore, a personalized city that digests people’s thoughts also appropriates them and makes then part of its body.
In Ariadne’s imagined city, streets stick to her body and veil it like a dress.
At the same time, streets are part of a Minotaur who can eat people’s thoughts.
Ariadne also experiences a metamorphosis. She feels herself transformed into
a side street: «als sei sie selbst eine der stillen Gassen. Andere Menschen gehen
durch ihren Körper hindurch, manchmal nehmen sie einige unbrauchbare
Adjektive von ihr mit, oder hinterlassen dort überflüssig gewordene Gedanken. Man sieht sie nie wieder» (206). A woman’s body is like a street, and a
street is like a woman’s body; people penetrate those bodies that have holes.18
Interactions between the bodies of women and the city and the idea of being lost in the labyrinth of relationships and interactions can be understood
as the fluidity of women’s identity. Elizabeth Grosz writes, «Bodies are not
inert; they function interactively and productively. They act and react» (XI).
Because of permanent interaction between outer and inner, borders are destabilized. The female body is characterized by fluidity: «Blood, vomit, saliva,
phlegm, pus, sweat, tears, menstrual blood, seminal fluids, seep, flows, pass
with different degrees of control, tracing the paths of entry or exit, the routes
of interchange or traffic with the world» (195). Since the identity of all women
constantly changes and since women interact with the environment and experience organic exchange as in the quotation above, Tawada shows that neither
an original nor the ultimate single identity exists. Due to the lack of a stable
identity, one cannot see the «same» woman again. The narrator who tells the
stories of 22 women also begins to doubt who she is and suspects that she was
transformed into a side street like Ariadne: «Ich war auch unter den vielen
Passanten, die gerne durch diese Gassen gegangen sind. Eines Tages verlor ich
mich, wie man einen Handschuh verliert. Seitdem weiß ich nicht mehr, wo ich
gerade gehe, vielleicht habe ich mich auch in eine Gasse verwandelt» (206).
Ariadne, the narrator, and the city merge into one whole. The topography
of a flâneuse and the city merge. The dichotomy of a subject and an object is
broken. The interaction between the flâneuse and the urban environment is
so vivid that one cannot separate one from the other.
Tawada places the flâneuse in a new context. Published in 2000, Tawada’s
Opium für Ovid meets all parameters of literature coined as postmodern and
postcolonial. Postmodern cultural production is characterized above all by
the plurality of contemporary knowledge, cultures, life styles, social concepts, etc. Multiple ways of thinking and multiple perspectives coexist with
one other. In his work Unsere postmoderne Moderne, philosopher Wolfgang
Welsch, one of the important theoreticians of postmodernity, has argued that
postmodernity is a historical phase in which plurality is real and recognized
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as a core of society and is fundamentally opposed to old hegemonies and hierarchies thanks to a global democratization of society (5). Plurality also suggests multiplicity of cultures and rethinking of what cultures mean. In order
to accept minority groups in terms of their lifestyles, language, and cultural
production, one should understand the complexity of cultures as social constructs and understand that cultures are not fixed or closed entities, but are
flexible. In the age of globalization, more and more cultures overlap and create new cultural formations. The term multiculturalism was criticized for the
assumption that cultures are fixed, and it has been gradually replaced by the
term transculturalism, which implies the constant interchange, interference,
interaction, and webbing of cultures. The definition of our time as «postcolonial» implies that the relationship between colonizing and colonized countries has been revisited in terms of cultural transfers. If the former relationship between the two entities was thought to be unilateral and hierarchically
structured – that the colonizing country superimposed its culture upon the
colonized – the current view of the process of colonization has shifted toward
the recognition of mutual cultural influences – the colonizing countries are
also culturally influenced by the colonized ones.
The concepts of postmodernity and postcolonialism have had an impact
on literary studies as well. Describing features of contemporary art and literature, Paul Michael Lützeler identifies the movement toward a plurality
of styles, toward respect for historical context; a movement from scrutiny of
empirical knowledge toward artistic incorporation of playfulness; a movement from strictly «pure» styles toward preferences of popular forms and
eclectic and hybrid styles; a movement from monological discourse toward
double- and multiencoding and polysemy (33). The positioning of the subject
has also moved away from a Eurocentric, dominant patriarchal one toward an
ethnic-, gender-, and region-specific orientation. The belief in historical continuity no longer appears justified and has been replaced by the acceptance of
historical discontinuity and longing for a new dialog with history.
Taking into account postmodern and postcolonial notions, I conclude that
Tawada plays with the concepts of the European heritage.19 It is not the first
time that Tawada has gone back to Greco-Roman mythology. In 1998, she
published her radio play Orpheus oder Izanagi in which she combines the
myth of Orpheus and the world of the dead with the Japanese figure Izanagi.
Like in the radio play, Tawada mixes European and Japanese traditions in
Opium. She takes as a core for Opium one of the canonical texts of European
literature – Ovid’s Metamorphoses – appropriates it and transforms it significantly. Moreover, her text constitutes a dialogue with Ovid and responds to
his status as an embodiment of the European tradition and legacy. As Myung-
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Hwa Cho-Sobotka points out, the title Kopfkissenbuch indicates an appreciation of the tradition of Japanese women writers:
anderseits verweist die Bezeichnung Kopfkissenbuch auf eine Tradition der japanischen Literatur, einer berühmten Tagebucherzählung der Hofdame Sei Shonagon
aus der Heian-Zeit (793–1185), deren Blüte sich insbesondere durch zeitgenössische berühmte Frauen mit ihrer literarischen Kreativität in nie da gewesenem Maße
herausgebildet hat. Autorinnen wie Izumi Shikibu, Murasaki Shikibu und Sei Shonagon haben zwischen Ende des 10. bis Anfang des 11. Jahrhunderts das Goldene
Zeitalter der japanischen Literatur mitgestaltet und geprägt. (173)
Just as the diary of the court lady Sei Shonagon was written as a first-person narrative and consisted of small episodes in her life, Tawada connects
her first-person narrator with Ovidean mythological characters. Moreover,
Tawada’s Opium constitutes an uprising against European literary tradition.
It is not just opium for Ovid; rather it is an opium war against Ovid according
to the first-person narrator: «Ein Opium gegen Ovid, mein Opiumkrieg ist
noch nicht zu Ende» (172). It is a war against European cultural hegemony. In
many passages of the text, Tawada goes back to colonial aspects of our globalized world. Her narrator says she wants to be free of colonial power: «ich will
meine Schmerzen selbst komponieren, keine Abhängigkeit von einer Kolonialmacht» (172). Tawada addresses the colonial opium war amongst China,
India, and Great Britain.20 Her characters also negate the colonial authority
of European literary traditions as they want to be free of these ties. For instance, when asked about her opinion about Joyce, Proust, or Musil, the writer Coronis in Opium says that she does not want to have grandfathers, «Ich
möchte keinen Großvater haben […] Ich möchte keine Vorfahren haben und
keine Nachkommen erzeugen» (91). Thus, Coronis denies the patriarchal authority of European writers and pleads for the postcolonial revision of the
literary tradition. Using mythological figures from Ovid, Tawada questions
the validity of European identity and subjectivity.
Tawada’s flâneuses challenge the notion of the European disembodied observer. Her flâneuses are moving bodies that interact with the changing city
environment, that move across city borders, that eliminate the borders between private and public spaces, and that struggle for a postcolonial and transnational reading of the city. In fact, because of Tawada’s resistance to subject/
object, same/other dichotomies, her flâneuses are migrants in the sense that
they are never at the same place, but always move towards the next change.
They are also not really subjects. Tawada’s flâneuses do not have stable identities, and they are in a mutual interaction/movement/playfulness/migration
with the city environment. Tawada constructs the flâneuses’ dynamic life
force as a positive model. These flâneuses experience magical transformations,
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not mythical ones. Myth refers to our societal structure that has specific strict
prescriptions on how to live, to behave, even to think. Especially the restrictive, prescribed lifestyle and behavior come from rational prescriptions of a
patriarchal society from which women often do not benefit. Such prescriptions rob women of their potential development. The ability and the courage
to transform oneself nevertheless lead to the kind of freedom the women in
Tawada’s Opium experience. Developing this human potential to transform
oneself could be equated to letting magic into one’s life. It can lead to breaking harsh restrictive bonds. Thus, boundaries between the individual and the
environment become porous. In Tawada’s texts a woman rejects being used as
an object and asserts her subjectivity. But it is not the traditional self-centered
subjectivity of the male flâneur, but rather a kind of intersubjective existence,
in which the ‹other› is not objectified or incorporated, but offered mutual experience.
Notes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
See Schmitz-Emans 390.
See Schmitz-Emans 392.
See «metamorphosis» in Oxford English Dictionary online: http://dictionary.oed.com.
proxy.cc.uic.edu/.
The body plays an enormous role in Tawada’s writing. Moreover, Tawada herself participates in theater workshops and performances, where reading and movement of the
body complement each other.
In the Ovidean text, Galanthis helps her mistress, Alcmena, to give birth to Heracles –
for which she is punished and transformed into a weasel by the gods.
«Sie [Thetis] wanderte den ganzen Tag, schaute meistens auf ihre Füße» (118).
In Book II of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Clymene is mentioned as the mother of Phaeton,
who wants her to prove that his father is the god of the sun Helios. In other versions of
the Greek myth, Clymene is an Oceanid named Asia.
Nomadism is usually defined as a way of life or a form of social organization in which
people without permanent settlement move from place to place within a defined territory in search of better hunting, gathering, or pasture for their animals. Because international borders are more secured nowadays, tribal nomadism across state borders has
become complicated. Due to people’s social and physical mobility in the global era, the
notion of nomadism can refer to people’s disconnectedness from one particular place,
and nomadism, in the view of one observer, has become a common mode: «Nomads
live in a disconnected world much of the time as they travel between their office, home,
airport, hotel, automobile, branch office, bedroom, etc. Thus they must take the disconnected state as a ‹usual› one, instead of an ‹exceptional› one. To be disconnected is not a
failure mode, as is the current view. Rather, it is a common mode» (Goyal 67).
«Da Galanthis viel spazieren geht, halten ihre Schuhe nicht lange. Mit alten Schuhen ist
oft ein Gefühl der Intimität verbunden. Auf dem Bett liegend, betrachtet Galanthis ihre
Schuhe, die in der Ecke des Zimmers stehen. Wo ihre Schuhe stehen, ist sie zu Hause.
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10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Sie hat plattgedrückte, flache Schuhe, graue Turnschuhe und auch lange, geschmeidige
Stiefel, die bis über die Knie reichen» (23).
Leda was impregnated by Zeus in the shape of a swan in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
In Ovid’s epic, having been impregnated by Apollo, Coronis commits adultery with another man. A white crow flies to Apollo to deliver the news of Coronis’s betrayal to
him. In his rage, Apollo turns the white crow’s feathers black. Coronis is punished and
burned alive for her unfaithfulness.
Tawada calls Benjamin a «language magician»: «Benjamin ist nicht nur Theoretiker der
Sprachmagie, sondern auch ein Magier der Sprache. Er praktiziert selbst eine ‹Lektüre
der Dinge›, in der deren magische Momente aufblitzen» (Spielzeug 19).
«The word magic comes from ancient Persia – the Magi were a class of priests – and the
Greeks turned the word into mageia, later becoming magia in Latin. Both mageia and
magia had negative associations that still exist today. A dictionary definition of magic reflects this general negativity when it describes magic as ‹the pretended art of influencing
[the] course of events by occult [hidden] control of nature or of spirits, witchcraft; black,
white, natural, – (involving invocation of devils, angels no personal spirit); inexplicable
or remarkable influence producing surprising results›. So magic is a pretended art that
produces results that are both surprising and cannot be explained» (Greenwood 5).
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Scylla is initially a beautiful nymph, loved by Glaucus, who is
turned by her rival Circe into a monster and later into a rock.
In Book IV, Ovid tells the love story of Thisbe and Pyramus. While their parents forbid
them to see each other, as neighbors they can communicate with each other through a
crack in the wall. They agree to meet each other under a mulberry tree. However, due
to misunderstanding, Pyramus kills himself thinking that a lion murdered Thisbe. After
Thisbe sees his dead body, she kills herself with the same sword. Because their blood
stains the berries on the tree, mulberries are red (121–57).
I talked about bodies and their surrounding world with Tawada in Berlin in summer
2010 and am very thankful for her insights.
Since Iphis’ father, Ligdus, wants to have a boy, her mother, Telethusa, does not reveal to
him the birth of the daughter. She hides the betrayal by raising the girl and dressing her
as a boy until the time of the marriage to Ianthe approached. Responding to Telethusa’s
prayers to help her, Isis transforms the girl into a boy. After the metamorphosis, a happy
wedding takes place (See Ovid 337).
For instance: «Diese Stadt ist ein Tier mit zahllosen Körperöffnungen» (203).
Tawada is not the only author with a transnational background who plays with European identity and the literary canon in Germany. For instance, in analyzing Aras Ören’s
Eine verspätete Abrechnung oder Der Aufstieg der Gündog˘dus, Elizabeth Loentz points
out that the Turkish-German author adverts to Homer’s Odyssey: «By positioning himself as Odysseus, the hero of a building block or canonical text of «European» culture,
the narrator lays claim to a place within this tradition. The choice of the Odyssey is especially interesting due to its significance in terms of a kind of cultural currency appropriated as «European,» but stemming from a part of the world that today has marginal
European standing» (101).
For more examples of the opium and «tea» wars between India, China, and the United
Kingdom, see Cho-Sobotka 199.
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Flâneuses, Bodies, and the City: Magic in Yoko Tawada`s Opium für

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