As the toxic stench of Trump fades further in our nevertheless-still-traumatized nostrils, how better to continue the year here at Papyrocentric Performativity than with an exclusive extract from the forthcoming compendium Morbidlier Miriam: Interviews, Out-Takes and Interrogations Around the Psychoanalyst of the Century (TransVisceral Books 2021)? Huh?
The “Psychoanalyst of the Century” is, of course, that long-standing Papyrocentric favorite Dr Miriam B. Stimbers, whom we join as she and a closely committed colleague contemplate core issues around what many believe to be Dr Stimbers’ finest work to date: the epoch-erecting, paradigm-pulverizing Jane in Blood: Castration, Clitoridolatry and Communal Cannibalism in the Novels of Jane Austen (University of Nebraska Press 2014)…
Rebecca Rubinberg: Miriam, can I just say at the very outset that it is so good to see you back and looking so well after the unfortunate events of late 2020? [Editor’s note: Miriam slumped into a coma in September 2020 due to unendurable trauma around white racism and white supremacy.]
Miriam Stimbers: Thank you, Rebecca. It’s good to be back for me, also.
Rebecca Rubinberg: You know, your coma was a difficult time, a truly difficult time, for me, for so many of your friends and admirers. One moment we’d be experiencing a jolt of joy in terms of the political situation. You know, it would strike us: “He’s gone, he’s gone! That pure-bred SOB is gone, gone, gone! He’s finally gone!” Next moment, we’d crash back to earth in terms of our friendship with you: “Hey, but Miriam’s still in a coma!”
Miriam Stimbers: Many people have said this to me since my recovery, that their joy around his departure was constantly counterpointed by their distress around my coma-situation. And I thank you all for it. It’s truly humbling to think of how many good people, decent people, had me in their thoughts on such a regular basis.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Regular as clockwork, Miriam. But we also had you on our reading lists! So many people have said to me that they began re-reading your books during your coma, in a kind of psychic solidarity. We weren’t just thinking of you – in a sense, we were thinking as you, whilst reading your books. And, of course, we all redoubled our efforts to introduce your books to new readers, to as many new readers as possible.
Miriam Stimbers: Again, thank you, thank you so much.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Believe me, promoting your work is no hardship. I’ve always loved – and particularly so in your case – I’ve always loved introducing new folk to one of my favorite authors. As I’ve always said: we can only read a classic for the first time once. But we can do the next-best thing as many times as we like. And the next-best thing is persuading someone else to read that classic for the first time. Your back-catalog is bursting with classics, but one book invariably comes to mind when one is considering the much-vexed “Best Book” question in terms of the Stimbibliography, as your close-knit fan-community have come to call it. That one book is, of course, Jane in Blood: Castration, Clitoridolatry and Communal Cannibalism in the Novels of Jane Austen (University of Nebraska Press 2014).
Miriam Stimbers: Again, thank you, thank you so much. I’m glad that so many people have appreciated Jane in Blood and have said so many good things about it.
Rebecca Rubinberg: It’s easy to say good things about Jane in Blood, Miriam! Very easy. But let’s just get one small but essential issue thoroughly engaged before we discuss the book further. That wonderful word in the subtitle, “clitoridolatry” – am I saying it right? – yes, “clitoridolatry”. Almost invariably people who notice that word in the subtitle, that truly wonderful word, will ask: “What the hell does it mean?” ’Cept they don’t usually say “the hell”! You know the kind of folk I associate with! So let’s engage that small but essential issue. “Clitoridolatry” – what does it mean?
Miriam Stimbers: At its simplest, it means clitoris-worship.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Wow. Clitoris-worship. Clitoridolatry means worship-of-the-clitoris. A wonderful word, a wonderful concept. Clit-or-id-o-latry, worship of the amazing, the awesome, the oh-so-often-and-unjustly-overlooked clitoris. And I hope we’ll explore issues around the clitoris, around clitoridolatry, around Jane Austen and the clitoris, in a little more depth before the end of our time together. In the meantime, let me say this, Miriam: if creation of that wonderful word and exploration of that wonderful concept were all you did in Jane in Blood, it would make the book pure gold. Yes, pure gold. Enough to justify your career ten times over, believe me. But that word and that concept are only part of Jane in Blood. A central part, an essential part, but only a part! Wow. Accordingly, I have to say it. “Classic” is not a strong enough word for Jane in Blood. Uh-uh. No way. “Core classic”, no, that’s not strong enough either. I’d go with “cataclysmic classic”. Clitoridolatrically cataclysmic classic! How does that sound?
Miriam Stimbers: It sounds both tongue-twisting and very flattering.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Flattering shmattering, Miriam! I am being sincere here, totally sincere. Jane in Blood is a cataclysmic classic, a clitoridolatrically cataclysmic classic. And I’m not the only one who believes that. Indeed, I know that, on a daily basis, there are many new folk who come to believe the same.
Miriam Stimbers: I’d like to think so.
Rebecca Rubinberg: No, you gotta know so, Miriam. There are, there most definitely are, many new folk who, on a daily basis, are introduced to Jane in Blood and instantly recognize it as a cataclysmic classic. And I do my best to swell their numbers, believe me! As I’ve told you before, one thing I love to do is this, it’s that I hand new folk a copy of Jane in Blood and I say, you know, I say casually, “Try this, see what you think”, and I watch them open it and begin reading. And I just wait, I really do, I just wait for the magical moment at which I see their jaws drop. And invariably their jaws do drop!
Miriam Stimbers (laughing): Well, so you’ve always told me.
Rebecca Rubinberg: And I wouldn’t lie to you, Miriam. Never would I lie to you. And I’ll just add this: 2’38”. That’s the longest it’s taken so far for a jaw to drop. I time them, you see. I hand them a copy of Jane in Blood and I say “Try this” and I watch them and I time them. I time them from the moment they open the book till the moment their jaws drop. Chang! Just like that, down drops the jaw. And 2’38”, that’s the longest I’ve seen so far, I kid you not. But the average time till jaw-drop must be well under a minute. On my gyno’s life!
Miriam Stimbers (laughing again): Well, it’s a challenging book.
Rebecca Rubinberg: It is certainly that – and much more beside! But do you yourself believe, as I do, as many, many of your admirers do, that it is your best book?
Miriam Stimbers: I truly couldn’t say. I could say, perhaps, that it was – that it has been – my most fulfilling book to date. You know, it’s been the book in which I felt that I had come closest to saying all I wanted to say in the best possible way I could. So yes, I could say, I would say, that it’s been my most fulfilling book to date.
Rebecca Rubinberg: It’s fulfilled you, Miriam, and it’s fulfilled me, and it’s fulfilled many, many people. But not all people, by no means, because not everyone responds to it positively. Some people, most people, respond positively, very positively. A work of genius, I’ve had people tell me. An unforgettable book, a groundbreaking book, a work of scholarship like no other they had ever read or imagined possible. Yes, positive responses, many, many positive responses. But as you yourself are only too well aware, with those many, many positive responses come not a few negative responses.
Miriam Stimbers: Yes.
Rebecca Rubinberg: For example, I’ve had one individual – and forgive me, but I’m going to be completely candid around what he said. I’ve had one individual – I won’t name him here, you know him, I won’t name him – I’ve had one individual tell me that Jane in Blood is bullshit. Yes, his exact words. Complete bullshit, he told me, bullshit on steroids, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Forgive me, but that’s he said. And he said more. Shouted rather – jabbing a finger aggressively, very aggressively in my face. This Stimbers, he shouted, what is she, some kind of crackpot? Is she on mind-altering drugs? I mean, look at her spouting this bullshit, this complete bullshit, over so many pages. Or maybe she’s a joker, a satirist? Because where’s her evidence? There is no cannibalism in the novels of Jane Austen, communal or otherwise, he shouted. None, none, none, none whatsoever. There’s no castration, there’s no clitor-whatever-the-fuck. It’s bullshit, complete bullshit. Forgive me, but that’s what he said. And/or shouted.
Miriam Stimbers: That is, if I may say, a very male reaction.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Miriam, you took the words right out of my mouth. Very male. A very male reaction.
Miriam Stimbers: Asking for evidence like that.
Rebecca Rubinberg: And for logic, also. He specifically said also that was no logic in your quote fucking bullshit thesis unquote. His exact words. No logic in her fucking bullshit thesis, unquote.
Miriam Stimbers: Yes, that’s a very male reaction, asking for evidence and logic. That isn’t how Freudian analysis works, how psychoanalysis, in the deepest sense of the words, works. Not at all. Of course, yes, on the surface, as this unpleasantly aggressive individual said to you, there is no communal cannibalism in the novels of Jane Austen. Castration, also, and clitoridolatry, yes, on the surface, they’re not there.
Rebecca Rubinberg: On the surface, yes, of course. They’re not there. But Jane in Blood dives beneath the surface.
Miriam Stimbers: Exactly. It dives beneath the surface, into the depths, into the darkness. Because I wanted to ask why – why, on the surface, is there no communal cannibalism in the novels of Jane Austen? And the next step is obvious: Okay, it’s not there on the surface, so what is Jane trying to hide? Because she’s a writer, a human being, we all try to hide things, continually, consciously, subconsciously, from ourselves and from others. And by not writing about communal cannibalism, is Jane not, in a very real sense, highlighting the absence of communal cannibalism and thereby, to the psychoanalytic eye, bringing that unwritten-of communal cannibalism to the forefront of her ostensibly innocent narrative? Because Freud teaches us that the less something is there, the more in fact it may actually be there.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Less is more?
Miriam Stimbers: Exactly. Less is more. And so it’s precisely when something is not there at all that in fact it may be most there of all.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Absence is presence!
Miriam Stimbers: Yes, as I write in the book, absence is presence. The insistence on not being there powers the creation ex nihilo, as it were. Because, in a sense, a very real sense, the less something is there, the more we can see that it’s being suppressed, the more we know that energy is being poured into denying something, into saying – saying by not saying – no, no, I’m not interested in this topic, I’m not attracted to this forbidden thing. And when something is not there at all, it’s being suppressed most of all, being repressed most of all. You can’t get more repressed than total absence. And so by insisting so vehemently on not writing about communal cannibalism, on the surface, Jane Austen is, in a psychoanalytic sense, writing about nothing but communal cannibalism. All roads lead to communal cannibalism, as it were.
Rebecca Rubinberg: And to castration, clitoridolatry, also.
Miriam Stimbers: Yes, to these topics, also. On the surface, Jane Austen avoids them completely. And that precise absence, for any sensitive psychoanalyst, must immediately raise a red flag.
Rebecca Rubinberg: A blood-red flag?
Miriam Stimbers: Yes. You put it very well. A blood-red flag. Why is Jane avoiding these very dangerous topics? Why is she censoring herself so ruthlessly, so effectively?
Rebecca Rubinberg: Because she’s scared of these topics?
Miriam Stimbers: In a sense, yes, because she’s scared of these topics, and in a sense, no, not because she’s scared, but because she’s attracted. She’s attracted to these topics, to these dangerous, these oh-so-dangerous deeds. And she’s scared of being attracted, so she censors herself, she reassures herself that, no, I don’t want to do these things, these dark, dangerous things. But really she does. She does want to do them.
Rebecca Rubinberg: She wants to castrate the patriarchs who are oppressing her?
Miriam Stimbers: Yes, she wants to castrate them.
Rebecca Rubinberg: And she wants her clitoris worshipped?
Miriam Stimbers: Yes, she wants it worshipped.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Good and proper?
Miriam Stimbers: Yes, good and proper.
Rebecca Rubinberg: But most of all, she wants to take part in a cannibal feast? In communal cannibalism?
Miriam Stimbers: Yes, most of all she wants communal cannibalism, she wants to feast on forbidden flesh in the company of others.
Rebecca Rubinberg: And that’s what she wants most of all, because that’s what she’s writing about least of all.
Miriam Stimbers: Precisely. Less is more, least is most, absence is presence. And that’s when you see the “evidence” that the male mind is always so eager for. When you know that communal cannibalism is there in the novels of Jane Austen after all, you can decipher the linguistic codes speaking around it, you can interpret the symbolism, you can take the mask off the seemingly innocent descriptions of life in that seemingly oh-so-genteel world and discover, underneath, a seething chaos of repressed Dionysiac energies and impulses, just waiting to erupt.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Miriam, you put it so beautifully. And you put it even beautifullier in the book. Thus, for me, for so many people, you establish your quote bullshit fucking thesis unquote beyond peradventure. You lay out your thesis and you prove it. The novels of Jane Austen are not what readers, what literary scholars, have so long assumed them to be. They are lecherous, they are libidinous, they are – what was the word you used? – seething, yes, seething with repressed energies and emotions.
Miriam Stimbers: Seething with repressed Dionysiac energies and impulses. Just waiting to erupt.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Erupt, yes. As you put it in chapter 17, I believe, Jane Austen didn’t just have a vulva between her legs, she had a volcano!
Miriam Stimbers: Yes, chapter 17, pages 281 to 285, I write of the Austenic vulva-volcano, the vulvano. I was, I am, particularly pleased with that conceit.
Rebecca Rubinberg: Not without reason, Miriam! And so, contra the critics, Jane in Blood proves everything it sets out to prove. There is, there are indeed castration and clitoridolatry and communal cannibalism in the novels of Jane Austen. Absence is presence! However loudly a particular individual – whom, as I said, I’m not going to name – however loudly he might shout “Bullshit!” However many times he might claim your quote bullshit fucking thesis unquote is bereft of evidence and logic.
Miriam Stimbers: In fact, the louder he shouts, the more he confirms my thesis. That aggressive reaction, that very male reaction to the absence of quote evidence and logic unquote in Jane in Blood is precisely what Freud would have predicted. When so much hostility, so much aggression, so much energy is poured into denying a psychoanalytic thesis, these things are very good signs that the thesis is on target, is correct.
Rebecca Rubinberg: So let me unpack what you’re saying there. You’re saying that the more angrily he shouts that there’s no evidence for communal cannibalism in the novels of Jane Austen, the more he’s providing evidence that, in fact, there is communal cannibalism in the novels of Jane Austen? Yes?
Miriam Stimbers: Yes. That’s the paradox, the Freudian paradox, the very beautiful Freudian paradox. The more opposition we meet in advancing an allegedly baseless, allegedly evidence-free and logic-less psychoanalytic thesis, the more we can be sure that the thesis is in fact correct.
Rebecca Rubinberg: That is indeed beautiful, Miriam. So beautiful. The deniers deny themselves, destroy themselves. The more they insist on the nullity of a psychoanalytic thesis, the more they prove that the thesis is correct.
Miriam Stimbers: Yes. And there, once again, you have the genius of Dr Sigmund Freud.
[…]
Here ends the exclusive extract from Morbidlier Miriam: Interviews, Out-Takes and Interrogations Around the Psychoanalyst of the Century (TransVisceral Books 2021). To read the rest of the interview – and much more beside! – be sure to grab a copy of the book when it appears later this year. Sign up for updates at TransVisceral Books.
Previously Pre-Posted on Papyrocentric Performativity
• #MiToo — a review of Morbidly Miriam: The Mephitic Memoirs of Miriam B. Stimbers, Dr Miriam B. Stimbers (TransVisceral Books 2018)
• Doc Proc — a review of Botty: An Unnatural History of the Backside, Dr Miriam B. Stimbers (TransVisceral Books 2014)
• Twice Has Thrice the Vice — Miriam processes the grieving-process of losing a core fish-community
Papyrocentric Performativity 