A Vestibule of Identity: 'The Argonauts' Navigates The Space Between Intricacy And Immensity

Welcome back to another post on The Crimson Feminine.

Today I wanted to discuss a literary classic that is quite a bit different from the others I have previously explored on this site. It is titled 'The Argonauts'.

What first comes to mind when you hear this title? I imagine we've both thought of Jason and The Argonauts, the Greek myth concerning a tale of betrayal and revenge, wherein Jason's uncle (Pelias) kills his nephew's father, leading to Jason being taken away by his mother for protection and is subsequently brought up by the centaur, Cheiron.

As a young adult, Jason demands Pelias to return his right to the throne, who orders him to seek the Golden Fleece to prove himself worthy. Accepting this noble challenge, Jason finds himself on a huge adventure, travelling to various islands such as Lemnos, and yoking firebreathing bulls, simply to assert his birthright- yet it is short llived, as the decaying beam of the Argo falls on an unwitting King Jason, killing him immediately.

I pondered for a while as to what the link between the myth and Maggie Nelson's book may be, with my eventual conclusion that it was a probable nod to exploring human limits (Nelson discusses her tumultuous pregnancy, details her spouse's gender transition, and how labels can exist as illuminating and pulverising at the same time). The Argo, as it existed as a physical vehicle in the fable, would exist in Nelson's tale as a metaphorical vehicle journeying through the spiritual properties of mind that shape her modern life: relationships, lesbianism, queer identity, motherhood, birth, and most of all, her exploration of rhetoric itself. Yet Maggie Nelson's own explanation of her title is, as expected, much more beautiful. She writes, 'Just as the Argo's parts must be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase 'I love you,' its meaning must be renewed by each use' which truly resonated with me in developing my own analysis: I connected and adapted Nelson's own words to a verbal expression of my own- though our bodies, identities, and political beliefs may be interchangeable, we still exist as a constant, exploring the world with our senses and modes of direction, until our boats can be remedied no more, and the boat sinks with its captain, gloomily watching the surface for ripples of a ship filled with merrier laughter and stronger timber upon the water.

Yet, one may argue, in the flaws of my interpretation, and possibly Maggie Nelson's too, though feelings sometimes seem more perpetual than existence could ever aspire to, that reinventing and renewing parts of the Argo are paradoxical. If the aim is to create something everlasting, how can something that is changed so often retain any of its original meaning and true purpose? How can the amalgamation of different mechanics used for sustainability, possibly reflect the richness of the initial adventure? How can a relationship, sustained by the repetition of 'I love you' in different fonts, tones, and intensities possibly mirror the excitement and novelty with which we first embarked upon our original liaison? Is the only way to maintain the easiness of the embryonic stages of love to board upon another relationship, referring to it with the uniformity of ‘lover’ (the singular person, filled with nothing but devotion) and undertake adventures heading for the same eternal trail as the predecessor? This is a cycle some affectionately term as 'finding the right one', or 'dating', but a cynic names 'abandonment' or 'abstaining from the recognition of human imperfection'.

To answer this, analysing Maggie Nelson's work encapsulating metaphorical voyages of identity, gender, sexuality, and love is the perfect way of making some sense of such a conundrum. I think it should be mentioned that I am a young writer myself, so although I welcome criticism of my ideas eagerly, I imagine that many readers have already formulated their own answers to the questions above, or argue that the above conclusions are nonsensical, which they very well may be- yet the beauty of analysis, especially in youth, is that it is the words of others, compounded from the limited experience of your own, that allows for terms, expressions, and phrases to be loyal guidance in exploring modern phenomena such as the complexity of identity and the limitations of language.

One theme that I particularly loved, directed at the exposition of the book, is how Nelson goes back to the roots of words themselves, as if she were writing literary theory alone rather than a compendium of ideological criticism and memoir in one. Much of 'The Argonauts' is almost a letter to her husband, the famous artist Harry Dodge, probably because it allows us to see the interlacing of their two lives and their often-interweaving struggles in terms of labels and definitions. We see this evidenced as early as page 4 in the stunning Melville House edition, as Maggie describes the early stages of their relationship together (see above, embarking on the ship), as 'before long, I learned that you had spent a lifetime equally devoted to the conviction that words are not good enough' or 'corrosive to all that is real', with Dodge calling it the 'cookie-cutter function of our minds.' This is perhaps one of the most memorable pieces of colloquiality for me within The Argonauts, mainly because it echoes how we struggle to phrase how we feel and the ways in which we trial out each phrase in the English language, hunting for a forlorn jigsaw piece. Often, in a search for description and synonyms, we sometimes declare common phrases as 'there are no words to describe this' or 'I am trying to put this into words, but I just can't!' or, my all time favourite, when we are truly out of options, is to ask our peers 'do you have a synonym for this? I just can't find the right word for it!' When relating this back to Nelson's words on her title, this idea of lostness reminds me of reminds me of traversing around hardware stores as a child, seeking for something to amend some miscellaneous appliance, yet thinking nothing of it as it never compared to the news of 'We're getting a brand new car!'

Yet is that not the equivalent when you've bought so many parts to replace the old? How can you almost fully revamp something and not consider it new, but a diversion from the original?

Yet, words are messy, words can ruin and corrupt, words can change and revitalise something that was never meant to age. Keeping things unsaid, with the façade of 'ignorance is bliss' allows for the human condition to never metaphorically accept a definition that refurbishes everything we are comfortable with- being told to ignore bullying is a well-known example of this, in the hope that the persecutor will pick a different target. However, we all gravely know that this does not happen- it only stops when the victim is too tired to carry on (the boat is too withered, and cannot take more reform) or the victim resists the taunts from the bully, and essentially deflates them (the boat perseveres, or simply takes a different direction from the course of the waves). In Dodge's experience, it appears that he acknowledges his humanity, his sense of self, and his realism, and he believes that our man-made words are unnecessary to consolidate an identity- as to throw words at something that is happy to simply exist under the radar of the fixed iron hammer of a name halts its existence as something free and without influence- as if one were to stop the flow of a river, or to force down the sails of a ship. Words can be ancient, overused, and rooted in tradition such as education, as it was the highly educated who were often responsible for naming, discovering, conquering, much to the distaste and misery of the lower classes. Words can be rigid, unchanging, yet it is regrettably easy to feel insecure without them defining everything that encompasses the world- yet we forget the peacefulness in times before complex thought, our primitive states, for example, existed in a veil of placidity without definitive facts, our only communication being simplistic without fear of discourse to edit meaning (the initial ship). There is gratification in such an existence, as we are united by our most common needs, and have not the need for reform and change, as there are no societal norms to impose upon us.

This idea of not being enough, or being too much in the sense of overbearing is transferred into Maggie Nelson's interpretations of motherhood, both to her son and her stepson. On page 26, she describes the unfair stereotypes that have developed over time when mothering a child who is not biologically yours: 'no matter how wonderful you are, no matter how much love you have to give, you are structurally vulnerable to being hated or resented, and there is precious little you can do about it, save endure and commit to planting seeds of sanity and good spirit to whatever shitstorms may come your way.' Some may raise eyebrows at Nelson's graphic language, but I think it perfectly surmises the identity that we have, as a society, with tales such as Cinderella, enforced upon stepparents. We have characterised them as inferior counterparts, who are never the same as the originals, the biological parents, and we have set an unattainable standard for them to reach, often expecting them to go miles further than biological parents, with the presumption that they should weather out and endure the storms that come their way, and even then, they are divided into the inflexible categories of either those who overcompensate and are the enemies of their biological counterpart, or if they are not trying hard enough, they are placed into the cage of the ugly stepmother who desires to control the children they do not deserve. Nelson also comments that she wants to make the bond between stepparents and stepchildren 'positive', which supports my idea about the limitations of the prefix 'step', when 'guardian' is a vaguer, and still acceptably legal, free, equivalent. If we did not name the ship's replacing parts as 'improvements' or 'replacements', perhaps we would still feel the same identification with the ship as we did originally.

We then glide swiftly back to Nelson's free-flowing, beautifully hazy personal narrative- pregnancy and birth. Despite not being a mother myself, I find ideas about the mystery of the womb and the idea that women can revitalise a whole new generation of humans with their own bodies staggering, and a part of feminist ideology- but not in a way that characterises us as being limited to our bodies and their uses, incapable of independent thought and ideas. Nelson writes about her interest in Sloterdijik's treatise Bubbles, describing the relationship between mother and child as belonging within this biological bubble of 'blood, amniotic fluid, voice, sonic bubble, and breath', with the bond between mother and child, the original, most primitive, and closest relationship that there can ever be, without replacements. Nelson talks about the undiscussed reality of how consuming this bond can be, almost as if the bubble were a cage, citing poet Alice Notley: 'he is born and I am undone...Two years later I obliterate myself again/ having another child... for two years, there's no me here.' This can be interpreted as a child being all-consuming in that the mother is concerned only with the survival of their child (they must do whatever is fundamental to keep the ship afloat) and that love overwhelms them completely, as if the bubble becomes their identity in itself: the baby is the object, that the bubble revolves and shelters around, and the mother is the bubble encasing it, irrelevant, background. Nelson discusses how childbirth, though one of the things that I believe (power in potentia) can be one of the many circumstances that prove women to be among the strongest beings alive, can be neglectful to cater to the needs of the modern woman- with Nelson citing Winnicott: 'She will not be able to fight for her rights because she will not understand', which was a passage that infuriated myself and Nelson as it nominates women as beings with a single track mind- to cater for the existence of others- and immediately, words become limitations once more, as if those who bear children from the beginning of time have not been able to protect themselves and their child to raise them into adulthood (to keep a ship running until its destination has been reached).

Overall, it is completely unsurprising that Nelson's book has taken the literary world by storm: it is an excellently relatable book, both by the commonplace situations that she uses, and the enjoyable metaphors woven throughout, that make for an intricately personal memoir that contemplates wider political issues, such as women's rights and the integrity of being able to discard labels in favour of simply existing.

I also think that, to answer my previous questions, that perhaps I was mistaken in thinking that the ship would go through changes for sustainability: the ship does not exist in a state of change so easily defined by words, but if one takes it as a Schrödinger's cat, it simply exists in a constant, and the replacements or reinforcements are unneeded if the ship is strong enough to weather the storms. It exists with its scars, its emptiness, its fullness, and its love all at once, a wondrous paradox. It is indefatigable, lying in the void between the intricacies of feeling and the reality of change. Reinforcements are not determined as replacements, but simply exist to reanimate and fortify a ship into a version of itself that will serve the occupants aboard in reaching their destination. It is a destined teamwork. The parts do not compete; their sole purpose is to nourish and support the whims of others. In that, we can personify each part of the ship as selfless, as parents often are. With each generation that ascends upon these vessels, it is simply their existences that are a reminder of the love that created them. Going into the technical aspect of giving this 'meaning' arguably corrupts, defiles, and limits the ceaselessness of love and relationships that have existed before we began to create the bleakness of 'definition.'