Phillipson's humorous description of an intellectual family making a cake is leavened by her fondness for her subjects
This week's poem, "Relational Epistemology" by Heather Phillipson, is almost as full of philosophical nuggets as the rich cherry Genoa cake it celebrates is full of raisins. The poem appears in the artist-poet's new collection, Instant-Flex 718, the title of which refers to a kind of glue used in bookbinding. Perhaps it's also a metaphor about the fusion of body and mind – a central concern for Phillipson, and for contemporary philosophy.
Modern thinkers in the field of epistemology (the theory of knowledge) often argue, very sensibly, that their discipline should take account of the ways in which forms of knowledge interconnect. The "relational" of the title signals an everyday meaning, too. Like many young writers' poems, but with a finer edge than most, this one is built around family interaction. The household under scrutiny is talkative and articulate, a kind of super-Simpsons whose paterfamilias is every bit a match for his wife and offspring. When he paraphrases Merleau-Ponty, the French philosopher who viewed the body as the centre of perception, he voices lyrically one of the poem's principle conundrums: "the toucher touching touched".
"Phenomenology at the dinner table was not unusual," as the speaker quips, in one of her seemingly throwaway remarks. Rarely were intellectuals so charming, even as mild insults are bandied ("All men are not idiots … but …"). Phillipson's clan members demonstrate a self-mocking sense of humour and a desire to co-operate. Yes, they must be fictional. But I'd still like to have tea with them.
A short anecdote introduces the father. The speaker's My Little Pony toy has been turned into art-work, and, if that wasn't enough, there's Kafka at bedtime. Her tone is deadpan, suggesting that it all seemed perfectly normal. The father's opening words ("It's whatever you want it to be") possibly answer a plaintive "What is it?", posed as the daughter surveys the mutilation/ transformation of her toy – a favourite question of audiences confronted by contemporary art, but a question about the nature of reality, too.
When the mother speaks, her style is bracingly didactic. Her mixture of feminine and feminist realism underpins the speaker's own cool self-confidence. She is presented entirely through what she says, and what she inscribes in the copy of Someday My Prince Won't Come, clearly an essential text passed from mother to daughter. Sceptical about theory, which seems to be equated with male modes of thinking, mother hands on advice which the poem itself variously addresses, an ars poetica in miniature: "Darling, don't be limited/ by propositional modes of representation! xx." Lest we forget the poet's craft in the enjoyment of her ideas, the effectiveness of the line-break here is worth noting.
The father, it seems, would not disagree with the mother's views. The couple is not stereotypical. United by the "methodological" approach, they companionably share the cake-making (at least, he steadies the mixing-bowl while she sifts the sugar). The home-made, many-splendour'd cherry Genoa leads effortlessly to Wittgenstein's raisins, and further conflict-resolution, led by the mother. She is ultimately able to "absolve" Wittgenstein, whose theory, in this case, can be tested on the taste-buds.
That there can be experience unmediated by language seems to be the crucial insight. Of course, the poem works the other way, as it has to. Poetry creates experience for its readers out of language (though the experience depends on our own previous experience, of course). It also registers the sensuous textures, the sounds and colours of words, even if their meaning is unclear or unknown.
Theory, in theory, could be an easy target for a narrative grounded in cheerful domesticity. The poem's solution is to avoid the hefty drench of irony. Terms like "signifiers" and "methodological" and even "so called" are not included for a cheap laugh: the poem acknowledges the value of precisions and abstractions in making their vocabulary part of the lexis of family chat. And that's where the humour of the writing meets its intelligence, aided by the distanced but affectionate tone of the narrator.
Like a good, complicated cake, "Relational Epistemology" harmonises its many flavours. And those philosophical raisins not only stimulate the reader's grey cells, but leave an added lexical fragrance on the palate.
Relational Epistemology
'It's whatever you want it to be,' said my father
after he bisected My Little Pony and used her in a sculpture.
At bedtime he read me Kafka's short fiction.
'All men are not idiots,' my mother advised,
'but beware of Structuralists;
life will never be a matter of signifiers and signs.'
She gave up her copy of Some Day My Prince Won't Come
with a dedication: 'Darling, Don't be limited
by propositional modes of representation! xx'
Preparation of Rich Cherry Genoa was methodological.
My father paraphrased Merleau-Ponty: 'the toucher touching touched.'
His hands around the mixing bowl, she sifted sugar.
It helped them contextualise the relationship between Self
and Other. Phenomenology at the dinner table was not unusual.
My brother queried so-called 'pepper', so-called 'ketchup',
ingested as if objective fact. The colour 'red' is not universal.
Mainly, my sister slept at any hour.
'See!' said my mother,
'The claim that all experience might be mediated by language
is one all women know to be preposterous.
And besides, Wittgenstein is dead.'
Over dessert, however, she absolved him
on account of her cake and his raisins. 'It's like Ludwig said,
raisins may be the best part of a cake
but a bag of raisins is not better than a cake.
My cake isn't, as it were, thinned-out raisins,
as you will know from experience.'