Chelsea Swan

In I love Dick Kris Kraus is unapologetically, insanely, honest and true to the self in a way which shocked and freed me from the sense that I must be moral and unproblematic, that it was in fact revolutionary to me to just see the honest and messed up human beings that women could be while enjoying every moment of disfunction as it was really just a disfunction in terms of not adhering to societies ideas of womanhood. She says: “Because I’m moved in writing to be irrepressible …….. I’ve fused my silence and repression with the entire female gender’s silence and repression. I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world.”. There is a power in releasing the self, warts, and all, not for the audience, the male gaze, the feminist gaze, etc but just to be truth, to be whole. Theis can be pretty and not pretty and outside of the boundaries of definition, and open to all interpretations, but without an agenda or gender. To just be self, honest, and hopefully out there for others to see, is a release. She also says: “Why does everybody think that women are debasing themselves when we expose the conditions of our own debasement? ……. Isn’t the greatest freedom in the world the freedom to be wrong?” Much of feminist theory of the 1970’s was judgemental and felt like internalised misogyny. It judged women so they were at a loss however they decided to represent themselves. It was a trap, another persona, the strong white feminist. She could not be soft or intersectional without being seen a muddying the cause. Women can get caught up in these contradictory sates, and like me, take the easy “female” road to be palatable and hope none of their rights get taken off them, that the correct way will reveal itself. We get more and more interior, we create worlds in our minds, live out our desires, dare to claim space, even if it is a reality that does not exist outside of our safe spaces, our minds. “When you’re living so intensely in your head there isn’t any different between what you imagine and what takes place. Therefore, you’re both omnipotent and powerless.” To re-claim power the inner must be brave and claim the outer, destroy the outer, be whole. Kraus was aware that by conceptualising and naming an experience you validate it and that what happens at the personal level is structural. In ILD a clever women does not do as is expected, to fall victim to the pressures of convention as many a female writers did, as in The Yellow Wallpaper or The Bell Jar, and she also does not get crushed by the romantic encounter, as in Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, or aim to be married to him or have babies. Her obsession, the interior is far more fascinating to her than the reality, and she is letting that interior out, she is giving that rather than any actual relationship or male ego life.