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Helen Talalaev. Alternatîvâ valoda Dþenetes Vintersones românâ “Gut Symmetries”: lingvistiskâ ..
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guage, a language that would respect basic sexual difference. As Irigaray outlines, to
develop the language of communication, “touching upon [has to] intervene, a touching
which respects the other proffering him/her attentiveness, including carnal attentiveness.”
25 Special attention is needed towards the tone and rhythm of speech as well as to
semantic and phonetic choice of words. In addition, Irigaray emphasises the importance
of changing syntax. A new syntax should choose verbs26 that do not express imperatives
or belonging, but rather dialogue and doing together but remaining separate (also using
prepositions like ‘to’, ‘between’, ‘with’, ‘together’ not to put the other person into the
position of an object; the best known example here is to substitute ‘I love you’ with ‘I
love to you’). In addition Irigaray argues for the basic duality of a subject (based on
sexual difference) which should be represented in language as well. Hence ‘they’ and
‘you’ should always entail in them either ‘he’ or ‘she’ as to signify the separation between
men and women. Such an emphasis would not alienate women and men from each
other, instead it would establish a respect for difference and other’s interior existence
and identity.
Therefore while écriture feminine argues for a specifically feminine language and
writing, Irigaray’s concept from I Love to You refers to the new language of all humans
that would respect sexual difference in everything. While the prisonhouse of
language indicates that there is no meaningful existence outside language and
Cixous’s écriture feminine underlines the specific linguistic prisonhouse for women,
then Irigaray wants to argue that by acknowledging differences in a new language,
men and women could potentially get beyond the prisonhouse and reach one another
as well as themselves with the new language of communication.
In Gut Symmetries there is an attempt to create new languages that would help
people to communicate with each other. This text attempts to acknowledge and respect
differences, especially within the bisexual relationship between Alice, Jove and
Stella. Although there is strong effort, especially from Alice, to create an efficient
communicative environment between them, they do not reach each other, mainly because
the languages they speak do not match. Within the framework of écriture feminine
as well as different feminist analyses of language, 27 women and men have basic
difficulties in communicating because women and their experiences are not represented
in language and so they cannot express themselves adequately. Irigaray wants
to go beyond such views and move towards a more positive, although perhaps also
more utopian, project of changing language in a way that would respect the differences
between and separate identities of men and women but that would also connect
them and at the same time help men and women to remain themselves. In Gut Symmetries
Alice, Stella and Jove fail (in an attempt to love differently and perhaps better
and also in trying to communicate with each other in a more effective way) and
stay alone. Following Irigaray’s ideas, the language they had did not allow them to
remain themselves within their relationship. Hence, they depart and remain alone as
to be who they want to be.
I began with the analysis of Gut Symmetries as a metafictional text that is self–
conscious about its language and claimed that such a self–consciousness opens up a
space for creating alternative languages that attempt to move beyond the prisonhouse
of language. The concept of écriture feminine was used to analyse how the narrators
strive towards different narrative and linguistic structures. The idea of the bisexuality