The Argonauts

Describing an old woman she used to see at a Turkish bathhouse, Nelson considers the way in which society views elderly women. In many instances, the very idea of this kind of woman feeling sexual desire is treated as horrific, but other depictions—like the poet Allen Ginsberg’s attempts to imagine himself as his mentally ill mother’s lover—are more complex and even “generous” (56).

As Nelson explores her relationship to literal and figurative mothers, she introduces Christina Crosby: the professor who taught Nelson feminist theory and supervised her thesis despite feeling “a measure of repulsion—at [Nelson’s] interest in the personal made public” (60). Years later, Christina told Nelson a story about a group of students who, “frustrated by the poststructuralist ethos of her teaching” (59), took over the classroom one day and asked everyone to write their identities on their name-tags. The episode reminds Nelson that when she was in school, many of Christina’s students wanted her to “come out in a more public and coherent fashion” (59). Nelson can see both sides of the issue, but is personally grateful she “got sober before [she] got wireless” (61). She admires the candor of people who “intrepidly push at [the] limits” (61) of social media, but fears what she might have revealed under the influence of alcohol.

Next, Nelson discusses two shows she and Dodge attended: an arthouse porn film that spoke to her sexuality in “ways [she] couldn’t name” (64) and a burlesque show they attempted to go to when Iggy was a baby. They were unable to see the latter because the bouncer said Iggy’s presence would spoil the adult atmosphere. Nelson acknowledges the value of “adult nights out” (67), but also felt at the time that the male bouncer was policing female sexuality in some way.

This leads Nelson to Freud’s “Wolf Man” patient, who witnessed his parents having doggy-style sex. Freud’s interpretation focused on the man’s presumed fear of being “castrated” like the mother, while some (male) queer theorists have read the patient as identifying with the mother in a “coded fantasy of gay male sex” (69). By contrast, feminist critics like Susan Fraiman have noted that all these interpretations overlook the mother’s pleasure. Fraiman therefore proposes the figure of the “sodomitical mother”—a mother who also embraces “sexuality in excess of the dutifully instrumental” (69). As an example of “sodomitical maternity,” Nelson describes a 2012 art installation entitled Puppies and Babies, which juxtaposes pregnant and non-pregnant bodies, sexually explicit and non-explicit scenes, children and pets, etc., all united by a common thread of “caretaking” (72).

Finally, Nelson returns to the subject of “homonormativity.” Nelson remains uneasy with conformity, but also suggests that it might actually be the “binary of normative/transgressive that’s unsustainable” (74). Nelson discusses an argument advanced by queer theorists like Lee Edelman, which centers on the idea that reproduction preserves the status quo by weaponizing the supposed needs of future children. According to Nelson, however, it’s not our responsibility to future generations so much as it is the co-opting of that responsibility that poses the problem:

[B]asking in the punk allure of ‘no future’ won’t suffice […] as if all that’s left for us to do is sit back and watch while the gratuitously wealthy and greedy shred our economy and our climate and our planet (76).