Abstract
The goal of this research is to present a phenomenological analysis of Riana Scheepers’s short story “Katvoet” (in Katvoet, 2009) by referring to the theories of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Iris Marion Young and Simone de Beauvoir. The word katvoet is a combination of the Afrikaans words for cat and foot, and is also an Afrikaans idiomatic expression referring to somebody walking carefully, or gently, and this already gives a perspective with regard to the nature of the story. An association between the human and animal takes place where the perceptions and experiences of the woman’s world and the animal’s world are assimilated, and phenomenology provides an interesting angle from which this can be analysed. This short story gives the opportunity for an interesting view on the different relationships of a woman: the relationship between woman and animal, woman and her body, woman and nature, woman and her unborn child, woman with her newborn child, as well as a woman’s relationship with the pregnant body.
Phenomenology studies the structures and types of experience that a human can have, from the first-person point of view (Smith and Thomasson 2005:1). “Intentionality” refers to the characteristic of an experience that it is an experience of some kind of object, emotion, memory or perception, and what particular meaning, or significance, this has to the human (Smith en Thomasson 2005:1). Husserl’s concept of the “lived body” refers to the idea that the body is active and living, and is the point of view from which the world is perceived; the body is the instrument that the human uses to synthesise and perceive the world (Cerbone 2006:101–6). According to Simone de Beauvoir human experiences are defined by the situation in which the human finds him- or herself, and this explains the way women’s experiences are defined by the situations and the structures that society constructs (Young 1990:42). Husserl’s intersubjectivity(intersubjektivität) refers to the subject’s interactions with other subjects, and the experiencing subject realises that she is not the only experiencing subject and that the world is shared with other experiencing subjects (Drummond 2007:114; Jensen 2013:ix).
In pregnancy a woman experiences her body as both Self and Other, simultaneously as subject and object. The inside and outside of her body becomes continuous and the boundaries of her body fluid. When the woman touches her pregnant waist she experiences a double sensation: her waist is both the Self and the Other, or the subject and the object, and when she touches her pregnant waist it is the touching of the subject, but also the touching of the subject-as-object (Young 1990:164). The foetus is both part of the woman’s body and the Self, but also separate, and therefore the Other (Rich 1976:47). During the birth process the boundaries between the inside and outside of the woman’s body are transcended and the ambivalent co-existence of the woman and the foetus ends.
According to Agamben (2004:26–7) it is the human’s inner animal nature and relationship with the animal that makes the human human; it is this inherent animal nature that has to be transcended for a human to be able to live as a human. The human can do this only by acknowledging the inherent animal: the “anthropological machine” is a tool through which the human can see the differences between herself and the animal and therefore acknowledge those aspects of herself that are animal (Agamben 2004:26–7). The characteristic that differentiates humans from animals is that animals live nakedly without any consciousness of being naked, and therefore they also do not have any knowledge of good and evil (Derrida 2008:4–5). In nature the only animal experience is the experience of being naked, and therefore there is no distinction between nakedness and not being naked, whereas the human identifies that she will feel ashamed of being naked as she has a sense of nakedness, and therefore the human is shy about not being naked (Derrida 2008:5).
Phenomenologically the short story discussed offers the first-person perspective and the woman as focalisor through which the reader is directly exposed to the woman’s experiences and the significances of her experiences. The woman’s body is the “lived body” as she as woman attains all of her experiences, human and animal, through her body. The experiences in her body are unified through her and also through the meanings that the experiences have for her. The woman’s experiences have mainly the meanings of authority, ownership, freedom and the association with an animal nature, and these meanings form part of that which creates her experience world. The woman’s body is characterised by her active, living and experiencing practical involvement, and therefore the body can be described as the “lived body”. In “Katvoet” the woman is intersubjectively involved with the cat, her husband, other animals, and her unborn child, as well as with the child just after birth. These relationships are complex and loaded with significance with different aspects of her subjective world that are drawn into different situations.
During her pregnancy the woman becomes aware of her body’s ability to create and her relationship with her body changes. The relationship with the unborn child is simultaneously that of a relationship between the Self and the Other, subject and object, me and not-me, self and alien, the past and the future, as well as the inside and outside parts of her body; these dichotomies are reconciled and transcended through the woman’s becoming-animal and her movements in nature as a liminal space. The woman’s relationship with the animal in her is strengthened as she does not suppress her animal nature, and therefore the animals in nature accept her presence. Her behaviour becomes more animal throughout the short story, until she returns home after she has given birth to her child in nature and, to a degree, returns to the human world. There is, however, still an animal nature that is reflected in the final sentence of the short story.
The way that the woman and nature and their relationship are presented in the short story also leads to interesting insights about the concepts of nature and woman. Although the woman detaches herself from the patriarchal society by entering nature, one could ask whether the patriarchal structures are not actually being reinforced in the short story: the concepts and binary oppositions nature and culture, and human and animal, are humanly constructed concepts and oppositions that are reinforced by Western ideas and the patriarchal society. The almost idealised and romanticised way in which the woman and nature are depicted reinforces the woman’s connection to nature, rather than a connection with culture, or society. Furthermore, it is rather the woman’s body and her inherent animal nature that are connected to nature, and not the man’s body or his potential animal nature; therefore it is a confirmation of society’s constructions of the concepts of nature and woman as opposed to a presentation of culture that does not distinguish between nature and culture, and man and woman. Nature is defined in words and language, by man, and this is also reinforced and clear in the short story’s use of language and descriptions. Furthermore, the relationship between the woman and animals is portrayed in a fairy-tale, mythical way, and this depiction of the animals and nature shows an anthropocentric and anthropomorphised representation that stands in contrast to the woman’s becoming animal. This and her relationship with animals are essentially represented from the human’s perspective that is created by patriarchal language and culture.
This research provides a new perspective on the phenomenon of the body, bodily ownership, woman, the experience of pregnancy and the experience of the woman’s pregnant body, and is significant in Afrikaans literature. Phenomenology offers an interesting perspective on these phenomena and a fresh angle for the analysis of a text.
Keywords: animal; body; cat; Edmund Husserl; embodiment; female body; Iris Marion Young; “Katvoet”; “lived body”; Maurice Merleau-Ponty; nakedness; phenomenology; pregnancy; Riana Scheepers; Simone de Beauvoir; woman
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