Rac(e)ing Questions III

26      The above texts, by depicting a diversity of social pressures brought to bear on the sufferer, whether because of prejudice, misunderstanding of cultural specificities, or other oppressive forces, enable the reader to consider the predicament that has led to such "abnormal" behaviour. Rather than the conduct of the above protagonists being construed as "mad," it could be interpreted as the "symptoms" of a kind of "postcolonial disease" (Hussein 19) or "the schizophrenia of the colonial experience" (Peters 45), and as such should be read as a language that speaks of dissatisfaction, anger and confusion. The "treatment" Kay's protagonists receive, whether medical or social, is shown to be part of the cause and in this way could be described as iatrogenic. It has been well publicised by R.D. Laing and others, that the ways in which mental disorders are managed (with ECT and drug therapy for example) can create disturbing complications that perpetuate the behaviour previously considered "mad." I would suggest that these texts are articulating the notion that such "treatment," in all senses of the word, is a key component in the genesis and development of the protagonists' psychological state.

27      Another way in which sufferers can articulate dissatisfaction or anger with their social environment is through the medium of obsessions and self-harming behaviours. Like "Shell" above, several other stories in Why Don't You Stop Talking narrate the lives of protagonists who become fixated on objects or ideas. However, unlike Irene whose shell obsession is purely imaginative, some of Kay's other characters translate their obsessions into reality by expressing a wish to cut themselves or abuse their bodies in some way. Such sensitive issues, rarely broached in fiction, have been, until relatively recently, much maligned and misunderstood by the medical profession and sufferers' families alike. For example, although the authors of Self-Mutilation admit that this kind of behaviour can be a cry for help, they also believe that the "treatment" for those who self-harm should involve a punitive element (Ross and McKay). Recently, however, deliberate self-harm (DSH) and obsessional behaviours are seen in more sympathetic terms. Gloria Babiker and Lois Arnold in The Language of Injury - Comprehending Self-Mutilation state: "More than perhaps any other human action, self-mutilation speaks of distress, torment and pain" (1). In a Laingian sense, DSH must therefore be seen as a behaviour that needs to be understood rather than condemned. Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach claim that obsessions should be seen as "distractions from the real underlying feelings of distress" and are "attempts at solutions to painful problems" (174). For those black women who have the added feelings of alienation and estrangement from themselves and society and who may have no channel for their anger, self-injurious behaviour may be the only available "solution," and as such needs to be seen as significant.

28      Such pain and frustration is clearly felt by Irene in "The Woman with the Knife and Fork Disorder" (85-108). Having been left by a bullying husband, despised and victimized by her only daughter, Irene's mental pain becomes unbearable. Initially her anguish manifests itself in an obsession with cutlery, culminating in a belief that the knives and forks in her kitchen are "acting up" (89). Her unnatural focus on cutlery reaches the point where these inanimate objects become anthropomorphized in her mind:

She went to put a knife away in the knife section. When she next looked down that same knife had somehow cut loose and joined the teaspoons, lying blatantly across them, almost smiling, a wide silver smile. (88)

Irene's obsessions are treated with the anti-depressant Prozac by her doctor, a referral to a psychiatrist and the suggestion that she should have a brain scan. Whilst the doctor obviously sees the problem in purely physiological terms, Irene knows that her "disorder" may have something to do with the oppressive drudgery of her life that has meant she has been "drying her dishes and putting them away for years" as well as a (metaphorical) "broken heart." Inhabiting an unloving family environment, as well as feeling lonely because the friends she had shared with her husband, "plumped for Iain after the separation" have thus created an "unliveable situation" (85, 99, 102).

29      According to Babiker and Arnold, doctors are less likely to refer black patients for counselling or psychotherapy, and "[T]hose who self-injure are thus given fewer opportunities to translate their expressions of distress from the 'language of the body' into verbal communication" (48). In Irene's case, this lack of opportunity to articulate the "real" cause of her problems is channelled or translated into her obsessional delusions. Because her attempts to "speak" through symptoms do not elicit helpful responses from her doctor (or her daughter for that matter), she considers another outlet, seeking solace in the idea of cutting herself. We are told: "Irene was seized by an overwhelming desire to take a sharp knife and stab it into her heart. The desire was so strong she could almost see herself doing it" (101). Although the act of self-harming exists only in her imagination, it is the prospect of pain that brings excitement and the beginnings of psychic relief: "She could visualize the dynamic and dramatic red of her own blood, sputtering, stuttering, saying see, see, see, I told you so" (102, my emphasis). By cutting herself, not only will she be able to assuage her mental pain, this quotation shows how the action itself will also "speak" for her, thus highlighting the linguistic component inherent in self-harming behaviours.

30      By literally inscribing the body, the ensuing scars can tell a story of inner conflict. Unlike the legitimate scarrification that results from rites of passage in certain cultures which could be read as symbolically telling a positive story of belonging, the scars that Irene wishes to make paradoxically could be interpreted as signs of unbelonging. Babiker and Arnold state that: "[M]any people somatize rather than speak […] produce(ing) physical pain at moments when they cannot tolerate psychic pain" (8, my emphasis). In this way Irene's wish to "mark herself" and to "[R]ip her own useless, pathetic skin till it split, till she was wounded" (101) is thus a method of both easing and articulating her inner pain.