Poster for the film Chatterbox starring Candice Rialson
(dir. Tom DeSimone, 1977)
Many people are familiar with Eve Ensler's critically acclaimed but philosophically problematic play, The Vagina Monologues (1996). But not everyone knows of the artistic tradition to which it belongs and which can be traced back to an ancient folkloric - and phonocentric - origin.
The vagina loquens is a particularly popular motif in France. When not working on his Encyclopédie, for example, the philosopher Diderot was also writing a novel entitled Les bijoux indiscrets (published anonymously in 1748), whose story concerns an African sultan who possesses a magical ring - given to him by a genie - that when rubbed and pointed in the right direction grants female genitalia the autonomous power of speech.
This is often awkward for the women concerned, as what shameless cunts most like to speak of when given the opportunity is past amorous experience, including acts of infidelity that their owners might prefer to keep secret and remain silent about.
Now, whilst I quite like this idea of an independently-minded, free-speaking vagina, nobody likes a rat and nobody wants a snatch that snitches. Also, I have problems with the idea of locating a moral-confessional notion of truth in the vagina, thereby simply turning the cunt into another form of soul and reviving traditional ideas of sex and subjectivity.
II.
In effect, this brings us back to some of the philosophical criticisms made of Ensler's play. For example, some feminists, trans activists and genderqueer individuals are far from happy to see women being reduced once more to their biology and are dismissive of the claim that they can be politically empowered via a form of cunt-awareness.
Critiquing The Vagina Monologues from a very different perspective - but with even more overt hostility - is Camille Paglia, who regards the play as a bourgeois perversion of feminism and a psychological poison that denigrates men and celebrates victimhood.
Whilst I don't quite share Paglia's almost obsessive insistence on discussing female sexuality in terms of elemental mysteries and bloody horror, I do agree with her that Ensler's sentimental and complacent humanism in which the vagina is turned into a user-friendly safe space and given a winning personality is deeply depressing.
Ultimately, of course, it's not for me to suggest what a speaking vagina might have to tell us. But one would hope it might amuse and challenge, rather than bore to tears by merely repeating what it's already heard the mouth blabber on numerous occasions.
Either that, or, preferably, just stay mute with a noiseless soft power of its own that lies beyond all truth (unless it be the truth of zero), all identity, and all metaphysics of presence. In fact, that's precisely what I want the cunt to be; a kind of ontological black hole or site of sheer loss, as silent and as inviting as a freshly dug grave.
