In this post I will be applying Karen Barad's essay "On Touching- The Inhuman That Therefore I Am" to analyze David Foster Wallace's short story "Everything is Green" . A semester’s worth of reading later, these two works of literature have really struck a chord with me. Something about them really resonates with my personal philosophy on life. In my comparison, I will attempt to unearth why these two works so intriguing and find new meaning that can be applied to the universe at large.
If you’re interested read on…
An immediate theme that is noticed when reading “Everything is Green” is that of feeling. The narrator discusses how Mayfly is lying to him and at the end states, “So I feel like I know.” It’s interesting that the author talks about feeling instead of just knowing. This is not to show the narrator’s uncertainty in Mayfly lying. In respect to another’s thoughts, Wallace seems to be quite aware that you can only perceive that which is external to yourself. Later the narrator “can not feel what to say.” This repetition puts further emphasis on sensing than thinking. In order to communicate with Mayfly, he needs to be “in touch” with her feelings rather than his own thoughts.
Thoughts are what is internal to the narrator. The narrator demonstrates he is in touch with his own thoughts in the following excerpt:
“I know I am older and you are not. And I give to you all I got to give you, with my hands and my heart both. Every thing that is inside me I have gave you”
With the repetition of “I”, Wallace gives the narrator an inward focus. The narrator does not talk about feeling he knows his own thoughts, but actual knowing. The narrator is actively knowing and giving in this passage. Even though the narrator talks about the external “hands” and physical “heart” he used to give to Mayfly, this still is the narrator using his body, which is a part of his self that he communicates to using his mind.
The narrator has given “every thing that is inside” of himself to Mayfly. The narrator by this means he knows that he has expressed his thoughts and put them outside of himself by saying. The narrator does not doubt his own actions. What he does not know is again, what Mayfly senses of his actions.
Additionally several of the paragraphs begin with “I say”. This is the narrator’s constant struggle to
relate to Mayfly. He does a lot of conveying of his own thoughts in an attempt to make a connection and touch Mayfly. It seems throughout the whole story that Mayfly and the narrator are out of touch. It is like Mayfly is completely shaking the narrator’s reality.
When it comes to sensing, it really bothers the narrator later on in the story. “I am feeling like there is all of me going in to you and nothing of you is coming back any more.” He doesn’t say he knows that he has truly is getting to Mayfly. This development later seems to show that he is beginning to doubt he understands himself. Which begs the question, is true understanding or touching really possible?
This plays into Bard’s idea that we can’t ever touch anything and maybe not even ourselves. Bard explains that touching is truly the body sensing the resistance of electrons. We don’t ever make contact with anything outside of ourselves due to this resistance at an atomic level, but we can sense the things that are external to us. Is there true relatability or is that even necessary?
Now if we take a step back, you’ll realize an underlying assumption. We have been speculating about what happened between Mayfly and Mitch, but we don’t know. The author gives us only a sense of what happened. Our minds do a lot of filling in the blanks for us. Maybe the nature of human thought is a search for completeness. In this world we value facts. The gaps in our thinking and relatability make us uncomfortable. We are looking at the black ink that forms the letters, but what if we looked at the spaces. Both Bard and Wallace want to shift the focus from knowing to sensing, human to inhuman, or matter to empty space.
At the end of Wallace’s tale he realizes her humanlike qualities by looking at her and the feeling becomes clear to him in just seeing her sitting. In fact, Mitch finally fully commits to his feelings in stating “Mayfly has a body. And she is my morning. Say her name”. He can sense the resistance of her physical being. They both are physical beings composed simultaneously of matter and emptiness. He finds their similarity human and inhuman. He is considering Bard’s intertwining infinities. The infinite others are like and unlike ourselves in several ways. We all are similar in each having our own unique experiences, but each experience is different. This goes along with the idea of being entangled with seemingly opposite ideas. Even touching is a response that everyone can agree they sense, but its actually the opposite of what it seems to be. Instead of this causing an existential crisis, this can be interpreted as being a part of something bigger.
As humans, we spend a lot of our life searching for how we are part of some larger being whether that is through religion or science, but we already are. This manifests itself in a responsibility to the infiniteness of other people around us. This is being conscious of our connectivity to the people around us. We can sense that we have a similarity though it is impossible to say exactly what this is. The similarities and dissimilar qualities of people we “touch” creates a relationship that we have to respond in our human way since the inhuman allows us to sense it.
Both authors intend to change our approach in thinking. Often in political thought it seems as if there is a gap in the opposing side’s thinking.
Studies have shown that when talking to people with opposing political views, people act like they are talking to someone of a different culture. We sense a distance and this leads to argument and seemingly impossible. There is maybe a larger arching lens that can be used in conversation to find a sense-able solution. We value the human-like qualities and see ourselves in everything around us, but our role in the world or universe at large needs to be taken into account as well. Instead of being seen as opposing viewpoints there is perhaps another way to view issues. We have the potential to connect with the infiniteness of others and break through these human boundaries we create for ourselves because the inhuman interconnectivity of the universe is on our side.
So with that I will end with my favorite quote by Carl Sagan,
“We are all made of starstuff.”