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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
the binary concepts to determine, indicate, and label what one can socially be.18 In this regard, as opposed to the enforcement of social exclusion, the image of “Chain” is more preferably seen as social recognition imposed from the given understanding of the ideals which serve to define and manacle those who demur against the public.
Doomed to be shaped is a social reality of a network of how one another are therefore related together.
III. The Social Order that “Baptizes” Us
The linguistic and semiotic power of the social order conceived of in Dickinson’s writing is revealed as somewhat unescapably overwhelming and
irresistible. In a sense, it seemingly serves to ignite within us a certain surge of senses of incompetence and helplessness in the face of its effectiveness. The awareness of desperation, in particular, somehow verily reminds us of a similar rush of sentiments that is equally voiced and recorded in her another poem “I started Early – Took my Dog –” (J 520). As the poem describes,
I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
18 The poem suggests one of the gestures of definition poems, which Jed Deppman calls “Dialectical”
(“Amherst’s” 125). The Dialectical gesture is epitomised through paralleling two opposing terms for comparison and contrast. For details, see Jed Deppman. “Amherst’s Other Lexicographer.” Try to
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國立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
The Mermaids in the Basement Came out to look at me –
And Frigates – in the Upper Floor Extended Hempen Hands – Presuming Me to be a Mouse – Aground – opon the Sands –
But no Man moved Me – till the Tide Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt And past my Boddice – too –
And made as He would eat me up – As wholly as a Dew
Opon a Dandelion’s Sleeve – And then – I started – too –
And He – He followed – close behind –
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國立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
I felt His Silver Heel
Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes Would overflow with Pearl –
Until We met the Solid Town – No One He seemed to know – And bowing – with a Mighty look – At me – The Sea withdrew –
The poem is commented as elaborately delineating the dramatic intensity of fright, and, perhaps, surrender perceived in one’s unavoidable encounter with the “Sea.”
Many critics tend to hereby interpret the “Sea” as a representation of death pregnant with some destructive and overwhelming force in its furtive and a bit ghostly pursuit.
The perilousness of the “Sea” is not just specified by the staggered emergence of the
“Mermaids in the Basement,” which insinuates a certain extent of fatal seductiveness, and of the “Frigates – in the Upper Floor,” whose masterly extending “Hempen Hands” come to threat a seashore visitor (Stocks 86; Weisbuch 203-204). The
eventual disappearance of the companionship of the “Dog” in a sense also testifies to the menacing impulse of the “Sea.” Yet, for some, the “Sea” can be at times also even detected as an overpowering device for enacting one’s metamorphic process which
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promises “pearly bliss” (Weisbuch 204).19 Whether blissful as rebirth or evil as death the approaching “Sea” can be, the “Sea” remains an imperative clue of locating and magnifying the submissiveness of an individual who is anyhow not able to claim a sense of subjectivity or to take any active control for his/her own transformation.
The social order functions similar to the “Sea” in the poem in terms of its transformative power. However, in a further consideration of Baudrillard’s concept of simulation, the way of how the social order enacts the power of metamorphosis is more critically nuanced. The poem as an exemplary depiction of the overflow of the transformative drives shall deserve more exploration for its further significance. I suggest that, while overwhelmingly imposing its transformative effect, the social order serves the functional and executive ascendency of coding, decoding, and recoding a pathetic individual into the certain eccentric existence of an identity new but alienated to its original form. The poem, in this manner, serves to visualise the coding/decoding/recoding process in the metaphorical sense that one is baptised to be qualified for the solid (but problematically eerie) familiarity of some social domain, in terms of certain mannerism, customs, positions, and so forth.
Notably, for Baudrillard, power that law and order characteristically flaunt is
19 In his analysis of the poem, Robert Weisbuch identifies the “Sea” as transformative, comparing the poem with Shakespeare’s Tempest in terms of the literary topos of the cathartic scenario in both works.
See Weisbuch p. 205.
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more complexly understood as “a simulation of power” (22), which describes the absurdly dismantling end of the authenticity and autonomy of the established order in the confrontation with simulation. In Baudrillard’s view, the established order in essence has no ability to control, counteract, or exterminate the infinite occurrences and recurrences of simulation which demonstrate a mixture of real events with the artificial signs (20-21). With such an inability, Baudrillard states that,
power itself has long for a long time produced nothing but the signs of its resemblance. And at the same time, another figure of power comes into play: that of a collective demand for signs of power—a holy union that is reconstructed around its disappearance. (23)
Here, a focal point is made clear. Not only does the allegedly authentic order actually embody the logic of the artificial production of the signs of power.20 More
significantly, the semiotic precession of its power is also intensified in the infinitude of the circulation of self-demanding signifiers of the collective desire, the one which points to a public demand of societal anticipation for the sign—the simulacra—of power.
20 This understanding of the artificial production of signs is always centralised in Baudrillard’s view on society in the era of simulation. Significantly, this artificial production is recognised as the semiotic resurrection of anything called the real. As he puts it, “[t]he era of inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials—worse: with their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all
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On this point, not only do the rationality and reliability of order tragically turn to waver, but its power becomes more exclusively effective to pure signs than
anything else. The exclusive effectiveness towards the signs, in this manner, serves to dominate and even reduce, rather than maintaining, the seriousness and realness of the order. Ultimately, such a system of the less autonomous order only ends with being rendered in its presence a play of simulation, which in a sense functions merely with the interplay of signs and simulacra. With the respect to such semiotic reduction enacted by simulation, what is referred to as power can in fact turn out to be perceived as nothing but the effect of a flood of signs whose instability and fictiveness ends up with engaging its order to an orbit of dismantling and (re)constructing.
In this regard, it is not hard for us to understand that the transformative power that social order acts out can also involve a certain degree of an ability of semiotic demolishment and in such a process of dislodgement in sign-level activate the
dynamic of construction and reconstruction. Explicitly elucidated from the poem, this energisation of codifying transformation by the social order is somewhat intensely embodied in the progress of the “Sea” towards the present existence of its visitor. The
“Sea,” instead of being positioned as the opposing counterpart against the “Solid Town,” a matrix complicated with communal and social networks, is more arguably portrayed as its collaborative executive for imposing sets of codes, social and cultural,
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on its visitor who experiences his/her dismantlement submissively as if in the
ceremony of baptism. The baptising vision is somewhat odd and eerie, but impressive as well as astonishing. It is surprisingly strengthened as the visitor notices that “But no Man moved Me – till the Tide / Went past my simple Shoe – / And past my Apron – and my Belt / And past my Boddice – too –.” The approaching awareness of being immersed in the “Tide,” the rise and fall of the flow, not only depicts the up-rising movement of baptism from the very bottom of the body himself/herself to the upper part but, significantly, illuminates the absoluteness of the “Sea” suggested by her loyal submissiveness (“no Man moved Me – till the Tide”). The smallness and incompetence of an individual, in particular, are not only unfolded by the
self-awareness (or imagination) of the identity reduction to “a Mouse – / Aground – opon the Sands –.” They are also made clear by the self-comparison of identity with “a Dew / Opon a Dandelion’s Sleeve –” which is confronted with the desperate potential of being eaten up.
Interestingly, the devouring, to some extent, can hardly be simply understood as suggesting a certain degree of aggression to threat, destroy, or eliminate. More critically, with the pearly overflow of the shoes (“. . . My Shoes / Would overflow with Pearl –”), it brings to the fore a rather clear picture of an end phase of the progression of renewal which in fact clarifies the transmuting effect and force of
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certain social order. At the moment, the visitor is thus discernibly rendered a new existence with his/her identity not only reframed and recoded in the richness of blessings but also reformed through the absence21 of the “Dog,” the initial partner which seemingly suggests one’s constructive original character.22 The withdrawal of the “Sea” with a “Mighty look” and a bow, in the matter, instead of permitting a retreat or proving an escape, in fact makes the triumph of an exhaustive ceremony of inclusion which, through the ritual-like baptising mannerism, render an individual a qualified figure for his/her entry to the “Solid Town.”
In this manner, the “solidness,” or the familiarity, of the town can be rather problematic. It presents an uncannily strange view in which achieved is the resulting scenario that one is led to lose what is called original and fundamental in his/her nature. The familiarity of the shelter-like town is in fact nowhere familiar, for through the baptising ceremony executed by the “Sea” there is no one that seems knowable and recognisable (“No One He seemed to know –”). What is thought to construct as an individual, in a sense, is more arguably transferred, sacrificed, generalised, and
21 In this poem, the absence of the “Dog” can be notable in the progressive movement from the first line
“I started Early – Took my Dog –” to the concluding line of the fourth stanza “And then – I started – too –.” Here, clearly, the movement announces not only the fact of the “Dog” being absent but also an irreversible change (or growth) of the identity of the visitor who now seemingly disputes the necessity of such companionship.
22 I agree with Robert Weisbuch’s reading that Dickinson’s “Dog” in the poem is “a symbol of stable, common-sense identity, which is more exactly what the sea threatens” (204). Yet, I suggest that the
“Dog” can be a clue of showing what initially defines this seashore visitor.
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homogenised for the exchange of the “Pearl” which in a sense indicated a label of qualification for the social domain of the particular “Town.” Reading this way, it is quite clearly and surprising to us that, examined in relation to the poem, the social order does less make one simple transformed into a new form of themselves than actually detach them from what they originally are. One is reformed with those sign-produced effects as an uncannily familiar but unfamiliar subject which is only devised for the participation in some social domain.