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Pomegranate or grenade? Deleuze and Guattari's deterritorialization in the contemporary poetry of Patricia Smith and Jamaal May

2023; Wiley; Volume: 46; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jacc.13468

1542-734X

Holly Eva Allen,

South African History and Culture

With the goddess Persephone in mind, one might interpret a pomegranate as a symbol of entrapment or the underworld. In association with its material literality, one might think of a pomegranate as a simple fruit containing many edible arils and therefore argue that it represents plenty or the harvest. While these are perfectly reasonable interpretations, they are far from what is put forth by contemporary Black American poet Jamaal May in his poem “Pomegranate Means Grenade.” Instead of relying on traditional sign and signifier relationships one might assign a pomegranate, May looks beyond the usual and presents the reader or listener with a completely new correlation that employs etymology and social critique in order to create a truer symbol. Similarly, Black American poet Patricia Smith asks her reader to question what they see and what they know. Is hair just hair? Does it truly represent femininity and innocence? Perhaps, it might be a stand-in for the sort of Western-assigned, masculine-oriented strength originating from mythic characters such as that of Samson from “Samson and Delilah,” or Pterelaus, the son of King Taphius? Or, might most readers be focused solely on traditional, White, Western associations, and therefore, struggle to find deeper meaning in hair as a symbol? These unusual associations found in many poems written by both Jamaal May and Patricia Smith have such disorienting effects by which the reader begins to question their own understanding of the world around them, as well as their place in it. This repositioning is best analyzed with the assistance of Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In this classic work of philosophy-cum-psychoanalysis, multiple linguistic, social, and philosophical theories are presented that aid in the examination and understanding of work by the aforementioned poets. Deleuze and Guattari specifically make use of metaphors that center the concept of metaphorical schizophrenia when discussing the needs, goals, and perspectives of a self-regarding individual versus those of a person working within a community or with a perspective broadened by the input of another. In her work on the use of schizophrenia in both clinical and cultural theory, Professor Angela Woods notes that the practice of employing the metaphorical schizophrenia is one frequently thought to represent “the transition from the modern self—a bounded ego or psyche projecting outwards the drama of inner feeling—to a fragmented, decentred postmodern subject” (Woods 2011, 192). The error of such readings is twofold. First, referring to the metaphorical schizophrenia as “the collapse of subjective boundaries, the abolition of depth, the evacuation not only of anxiety but also of all individual feeling” is inherently individualistic to a fault (Woods 2011, 192). Discounting the communal or shared experience in this manner discounts the potential for universal evocation—a frequently discussed aim of many arts, including poetry. Second, the experience of the individual is not only apportionable, such apportionment or sharing of one's experience is mutually beneficial for both the distributor and the receiver. When poetry works to undo boundaries, it works to share experience. A search for mutual intelligibility is not, as the previously provided viewpoint posits, an “abolition of depth” (Woods 2011, 192). Rather, it is the exploration of such depths. Contemporary African American poets explore such depths with tenacity and the work of Patricia Smith and Jamaal May is no exception. May and Smith's challenging of accepted symbols and conceptions removes the reader of a poem from their current position by deconstructing the principles or associations central to said position. Freeing a reader from their original understanding opens them up to new experiences. The authors of Anti-Oedipus posit that the metaphorical schizophrenic “lives at the level of pure, unconstrained desire … his experience has revolutionary potential, while desire in a “normal” or “socialized” individual is subjugated to the established order” (Van der Wielen 2018, 7). In other words, the poets are granting their readers metaphorical schizophrenia as Deleuze and Guattari see it. It is for this reason that Anti-Oedipus functions so well as a tool for better understanding the work of May and Smith. The presumed default narrative voice in American literature and American Studies is the “White, Protestant, middle class, male” who represents “the essence of American culture” (Fox-Genovese 1990, 7). The pervasiveness of scholars centering such idolized White American narratives and oversimplifying various iterations of metaphorical schizophrenia indicates that an analysis of contemporary African American poetry with the assistance of Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is both timely and necessary. Every “object” presupposes the continuity of a flow; every flow, the fragmentation of the object. Doubtless each organ-machine interprets the entire world from the perspective of its own flux, from the point of view of the energy that flows from it: the eye interprets everything … in terms of seeing. But a connection with another machine is always established, along a transverse path, so that one machine interrupts the current of the other or “sees” its own current interrupted. (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009, 6) In interpreting “the entire world from the perspective of its own flux,” the “organ-machine” is likely to define any given thing that it beholds in terms associated with its own flow (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009, 6). Other than the self-centered concern with flow, the viewer of said object might be concerned with and influenced by the “socius” as Deleuze and Guattari define it. In their usage, the socius is the major social force or ruler of any given social construction, such as a tyrant over the people or, in the case of capitalist systems, the need for labor imposed by the very existence of capital (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009, 140). Hold a pomegranate in your palm, imagine ways to split it, think of the breaking skin as shrapnel. Remember granada means pomegranate and granada means grenade because grenade takes its name from the fruit; identify war by what it takes away from fecund orchards After being asked to picture a pomegranate in the very first line, a reader or listener might be tempted to draw from personal experiences or opinions. Does the reader enjoy pomegranates? Do they have a fond childhood memory in which a pomegranate was eaten? These immediate memories and thoughts tied to the individual experience is the “focus on its own flux” of the reader as organ-machine (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009, 6). However, it is equally possible that the aforementioned mythological association comes to mind, or perhaps other fables, stories, and celebrations from around the world, such as the festival of Yalda in which pomegranates are proudly displayed as symbols of fertility. This second category of thoughts and impressions is not derived from individual experience or opinion, but from associations established for the listener or reader by those around them and the greater socius. These socius-impressed concepts, however, are rejected by May, who tells us to keep in mind that “grenada means pomegranate and grenada means grenade” (May, 2013). By discussing the etymology of the word “pomegranate” and its connections with more violent concepts, May asks us to question not only how we perceive pomegranates and the sign–signifier–signified relationship established therein, but also the nature of war. In other words, May is warning the reader not to be shortsighted by their own experiences nor the beliefs or associations prescribed by the socius. May sees and communicates some truth inherent in the signifier. This truth is communicated in the lines that follow which critique the military industrial complex and the prevalence of violence in Western culture: “You are writing a stampede/into my chest, the same anxiety that shudders/me when I push past marines in high school/hallways, moments after video footage/of young men dropping from helicopters/in night vision goggles” (May, 2013). Scholars wanting to dig deeper in their analysis of May's work will have to do so alone. Searching major resource databases and online libraries for writing on Jamaal May will likely turn up only his original work. The veritable dearth of academic writing in May's work is, on the one hand, surprising considering the quality of said work. On the other hand, the fact that May is a contemporary poet means that scholars have not had a long time to discover him nor write on his work. Additionally, the aforementioned focus on the “White, Protestant, middle class, male” character and writer means that the analysis of May's work might be unfairly delayed by cultural biases (Fox-Genovese, 1990, 7). this hair. This vibing wire, these bellowed threads of thundering, no, do not dare to poke a prying finger into dark you do not understand. Our hair is blade when we decide that it should be—the fools who died within its kink would speak of smother if they could. Our hair is not your savior. Not your kumbaya, your ticket in. When it began, so smashed and sleek with blood, we knew that it had fist. Our hair can't be polite. Once we were slaves. Our hair was furious. Here Smith sees hair as more than the Saussurean sign most might see. Though she does not see hair merely as hair, she also does not explore the signifier or word “hair” as May explores “pomegranate.” Rather, Smith looks at history and the attitudes of the socius in attributing a deeper meaning to hair. For Smith, the hair of a Black American is indelibly tied to the communal history of all Black Americans. A history that is marked by slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, and more. These violent centuries Smith depicts with descriptions such as “sleek with blood,” violent centuries which have made Black hair “furious” (Smith, 2021). While the very concept of hair in Western culture might be associated with femininity and therefore prescriptive passivity, Smith presents the reader with hair that is loud with the noun phrase “bellow threads” and even violent as a “knife” or a “fist” (Smith, 2021). Desiring machines are binary machines, obeying a binary law or set of rules governing associations: one machine is always coupled with another. The productive synthesis, the production of production, is inherently connective in nature, because the first machine is in turn connected to another whose flow it interrupts or partially drains off, the binary series is linear in every direction. Desire constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented. (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009, 5) The aforementioned connection is one that exists between poet and reader or listener in which the poet has successfully augmented the understanding of the latter, assisting them to see or comprehend what otherwise might be impossible, if not improbable. In this case, the poet would be the desiring machine taking part in “productive synthesis” where the item of production is a set of experiences and associations unique to the Black American experience that shift the meaning of particular ideas or things. Therefore, the “desire” in question is the shifting perspective of the latter individual. It should be stressed that all poetry, and all art, does something analogous to this. All art is real and has real effects on a viewer, a reader or a listener. In terms of poetry, if a poem is of a traditional and conservative cast, then that poem will inscribe … stable subject-positions and relations with the world (and with society) into a reader's body. Conservative poetry reterritorializes readers, whereas innovative poetries deterritorialize readers. (Clay, 2010, 79) Poems that challenge everything from a reader's understanding of hair to fruit certainly are not employing traditional symbols, predictable patterns, or stable subject positions. I used to want to be this bad at a job. I wanted to show up pissy drunk to staff meetings when the power point slides were already dissolving one into another, but I had this bad habit of showing up on time and more sober than any man should be when working audio/visual hospitality in a three star hotel that was a four star hotel before he started working there. It's a big job just getting’ by with nine kids and a wife I been a workin' man dang near all my life I'll be working long as my two hands are fit to use I'll drink my beer in a tavern, Sing a little bit of these working man blues I keep my nose on the grindstone, I work hard every day. It is notable that the title of the song is specifically “Working Man Blues” and that the only mention of a woman in the entire song is the singer's wife who, according to the narrative presented, is financially supported by the man in question. Numerous other pieces of American media, from the 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness to the animated sitcom King of the Hill, associate men's labor in America with honesty, fatherhood, responsibility, and duty. May presents a drastically different point of view from the opening line, “I used to want to be this bad at a job” (May, 2015). The very idea that a man who works hard would want to do just the opposite contrasts with the American archetype of the honest, humble, hard-working man. What is more, associations with working men and alcohol, present in the aforementioned song and very commonly depicted on King of the Hill, do not match up with May's narrator, who is both a hard worker and a sober one. In this way, May is not just presenting new associations or interpretations of symbols, he is opposing American views on gender, work, and the benefits of capitalism. I learned that I'd work any job this hard, ache like this to know that I could always ache for something. There's a hell for people like me where we shovel the coal we have mined ourselves into furnaces that burn the flesh from our bones nightly, and we never miss a shift. Capitalism is the only social machine that is constructed on the basis of decoded flows, substituting for intrinsic codes and axiomatic of abstract quantities in the form of money. Capitalism therefore liberates the flows of desire, but under the social conditions that define its limit and the possibility of its own dissolution, so that it is constantly opposing with all its exasperated strength the movement that drives it toward this limit. At capitalism's limit the deterritorialized socius gives way to the body without organs, and the decoded flows throw themselves into desiring-production. (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009, 140) The fact that capitalism self-perpetuates in a cyclical manner intended to “limit … the possibility of its own dissolution” is strikingly reminiscent of the image of the damned laborer shoveling coal into the very furnace that burns them (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009, 140). Jamaal May is therefore not only deterritorializing the reader by way of deconstructing capitalist-socius-induced associations concerning labor and gender, but he is also questioning the very capitalist-socius itself. In essence, he is bringing the reader closer to some semblance of truth through the deconstruction of said symbols, closer to a place of understanding beyond the induced socius-derived desires and toward the desiring production of a freed individual or so-called “body without organs.” But why the moon rose so cruelly, neither of them would say. Though a listless jazz buzzed obediently beneath their day, and he had seen the hand-in-hands dotting the dim streets. And she had heard the morning skillet scorch its Mississippi sweets, its globs of fat. Now, time to be closer — here, on the verge of May. But why the moon drooped so cruelly, neither ventured to say. Some readers may be aware that Lawndale is a particular neighborhood in the greater Chicago area. As explained on the “North Lawndale History” webpage of the Steans Family Foundation website, North Lawndale experienced a major influx of Black Americans from the south during the 1950s and 1960s, after which “there were a series of economic and social disasters for this increasingly isolated, segregated community” (Clough, 2009). A reader who is knowledgeable about the history of this neighborhood might make certain assumptions about a poem with “A Street in Lawndale” as its title. Perhaps, they might expect a poem depicting violent riots, impecunious Black families, and similarly somber or chaotic scenes. Instead of these rather negative associations and images, Smith subverts our expectations and presents us with a poem in which passersby walk “hand-in-hand” like friends or lovers and kitchens are heavy with the pleasant scents of “Mississippi sweets” and “fats” (Smith, 2017). While the pleasant, almost idyllic portrayal of a Black family in Lawndale obviously subverts our expectations concerning location, race, and economic status, subtle hints of subversion concerned with gender and the greater socius are also present. The “he” of the poem, an unnamed man, notices “the hand-in-hands dotting the dim streets” despite the fact that these public displays of affection might more traditionally be observed or commented on by a female presence according to American assumptions concerning gender performativity and nature. After all, as Weijie Chen explores in her article How Female Characters are Portrayed, women characters in writing are typically those who might focus on the “sentimental,” honing in on romantic imagery and taking part in activities that men would generally consider “trivial” (Chen, 2010, 9). The lovers holding hands in the street adds to the pleasant imagery present in the piece and the mysterious male character who notes the scene, although opposing gendered expectations the reader might have, introduces nothing somber or dark. It is not until a few lines later that Smith finally injects a darker note into the poem with the line “But why the moon drooped so cruelly, neither ventured to say” (Smith, 2017). The moon acts as a watchful overseer that introduces cruelty or unhappiness with no discernable reason. Here, Smith is presenting the interpretation that the unhappiness one might expect to witness in a poem that takes place in Lawndale is not due to the Black Americans that live there. Rather, it is a haunting discomfort that bears down on Lawndale residents in a fashion beyond their control. Given the provided excerpt, the omnipresent and independent influence and cruelty of the moon might be attributed to any of the injustices or hardships suffered by those in Lawndale such as a loss of housing support, a lack of industry and, therefore, jobs, and “a precipitous population decline” (Clough, 2009). These factors are all elements that exist beyond the direct control of any one single individual living in Lawndale and would therefore be a relevant stand-in for the symbol of the moon Smith employs. What is more, all of these hypothesized factors are associated with bourgeois economics and the prejudiced allocation of resources that go hand in hand with capitalist systems. It might also be mentioned that the moon is a pale celestial body. This paleness, along with the watchful nature attributed to the moon, may indicate that the piece points the finger at the White, American socius or the White bourgeoisie. Just as wealthy White individuals might feel superior to those people of color living in Lawndale, and just as they might look down upon such people, imposing with a harsh and ever-present gaze, so too does the moon in these lines. This especially dark tone and critique of upper class Whiteness and the way it casts a critical eye on Blackness is not what one might expect when finding the moon employed as a symbol in a piece of poetry. Therefore, while Smith's “A Street in Lawndale” deterritorializes the reader by opposing assumptions they might hold concerning happiness, prosperity, race, and gender while simultaneously presenting the “truth” concerning the inaccurate associations and injustices imposed by the capitalist socius, it also makes use of unusual symbols to reinforce the subversion of readers' expectations. Both Patricia Smith and Jamaal May make excellent use of such symbols in their practices of deterritorialization. By asking readers to question the value of certain American cultural practices and beliefs, from the centering of oft-assumed Whiteness of both reader and narrator to the presumed efficacy and value of hard work, the poets are able to communicate some hidden truth. This is not only true of “A Street in Lawndale”, but also pieces such as “Shift,” “Nap Unleashed,” and “Pomegranate Means Grenade.” Anti-Oedipus, though thought by some to be purely abstract philosophy and psychoanalytics, clarifies these practices in poetry perfectly. May and Smith both question the limited perspective of a reader functioning only as an organ-machine focused on its own experience and socius-enforced interpretations. Their poetry, in other words, employs and addresses the key facets of Deleuze and Guattari's presented work. By using deterritorialization and the socius in poems presented from an alternative view, May and Smith liberate the reader from their delusions and introduce their own viewpoints and truths, freeing the reader to construct new associations as what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as the “body without organs” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009, 140). Holly Eva Allen has degrees in English & Linguistics from UC Davis and Claremont Graduate University. She is the founder of Horned Things Literary Journal and a prose editor with Passengers Journal. Her research interests include American horror, disability studies, poetry, and gender.