Issuu

/BREE-oh/z noun Vivacity; liveliness; spirit. An individual energy.

The discipline of Comparative Literature is based on the assumption that the study of single texts and cultures is enriched by knowledge of the texts and cultures surrounding them. It views literature from a broad and inclusive perspective in which philosophy, anthropology, history, language, and literary theory come together, and where drama, the visual arts, and modern media suggest crucial comparisons. This journal aspires to embody these ideas. Brio is a student-founded publication that combines literary criticism with fictive works and visual art. We accept submissions from the entire NYU community.

Memory — 4 Two Ways of Becoming Lost — 5

A Home Becomes Strange — 6

Summer Pinwheel — 13 Ella - 14

Untitled 1 — 16 Untitled 2 — 16

Dive — 17 The Apocalyptic City: Thirteen Fragments from the End of Time — 18

day I will be back here — 33 Snapshot — 34

The Sirens: Self, Performance, and Desire — 35

Untitled — 45 2080 - 46

Memory Memory pangs. And my God knows this is the habit of the Soul. Fear, sighs, replies in tiny doses, prayers rise like smoke off morning coals. Within these early morning moments music is faint and words are sacred. Fully aware of sins. Forsaken I roam the mind's terrestrial forests. Again more doses, and I'm ready. Christ's voice, a temporal note, pale tones. Monastic habits, modern settings, all summed within a single dose. Alexander Pogrebinsky

Two Ways of Becoming Lost

We are going into exile, he tells her. We will have yellow helmets and eat rice without cooking it, crunching the grains, and our teeth will grow stroriger. I'll look at you across the dead apartment where we'll hide and you'll look at me, and I'll understand some of your accusations. It will be summer, though, where we'll go, and there will be piers for us to find, open places to lie down in. We won't have to make anything at all.

She sits, sewing. The thread is attached to the hem of his heavy coat and she is sewing coins into its lining. She sews them heavier. He is pinned. * Put up a smoke signal, he says, or we'll be stuck here. What do you think I want? She says.

The island is not an island because it is connected to land. They cannot leave, there are tall electric fences, the ground sometimes shivers tightly. They call and order food delivered to them. The man arrives on a bicycle and they forget to see how he comes through the fence. They pay him and eat from the plastic containers, not disguising the noises of their mouths and tongues. Diana Kole

A Home Becomes Strange: Scenes from the Classroom

Date and Time of Visit: Wednesday, April 22,10 A.M. -12 P.M. / Hours to date: 17 Today in class we worked some more on past tense verbs. 1 taught the construction "used to" to describe past habitual actions. 1 planned to ask the students questions about their childhood to get them to practice the new sentence construction. Before we started our discussion, my co-teacher, Connie, asked who had children. All but one of the students raised their hands. I don't know why 1 was so surprised. After all. I'm teaching adults. 1 guess 1 hadn't really thought of my students as parents. *

I live in classrooms. 1 have for as far back as 1 can remember. Sitting Indian style in a semicircle in front of a chalkboard. Poised attentively behind a desk, my feet dangling above gray carpet. Slouched, with one hand to hold my head up and the other to take notes and doodle. Shifting in a squeaky lecture hall chair. Positioned around a seminar table, leaning back and crossing my arms. 1 fill in student for occupation. 1 know classrooms. 1 can guess what will hang on the walls, how the desks will be arranged, whether there will be a blackboard or dry erase board or projector screen. 1 know the feeling that goes with each type of classroom, the smell (depending on how far into the semester), the lighting, the way 1 need to talk and the way everyone else will talk. When 1 stepped into the biet ha'tarboot^ on my first day at Ulpan Akiva, I hardly recognized where I was. The white tile floor, the Hebrew alphabet poster that outlined the top of the whiteboard, the khefi table formation—these things I knew. Still, the room felt completely unfamiliar. Ulpan is an intensive Hebrew language program, developed soon after Israel's creation to help the influx of new immigrants integrate quickly into Israeli society. The program instructs on much more than basic reading, writing, and conversational skills. Shlomo Haramati of the Israeli Ministry of Education explains in his article "Teaching Hebrew to Immigrants in Israel," that in addition to the Hebrew language, "basic Jewish cultural values and an education towards good citizenship" make up the core of the ulpan program.^ On my first day as a student at Ulpan Akiva, I sat in a chair on the left side of the room, near the door. In the back right corner, a group of thirty year olds laughed in French. A woman across from me yelled Russian into a cell phone. A 1 This was the name of the building where my class took place. In English, it translates literally to "the culture house." 2 This set-up involves three tables: two set up parallel across from each other, and one that joins the two perpendicularly at the back. It's like an L-formation with another leg attached, forming the shape of the Hebrew letter khet—n. 3 Shlomo Haramati, "Teaching Hebrew to Immigrants in Israel," The Modem Language Journal 50:8 (1966), 526 (http://www.jstor.org/).

white-haired man a few seats down from the Russian woman picked cookies one by one out of a small package. I didn't recognize the brand. Our teacher Gilah walked in and asked everyone to take a seat. She introduced herself: Shalom. Ha'shem shell Gilah. Ani m'Netanya. Ma' shimcha? She used the loud voice and big gestures of The Language Teacher. Then came the first day introductions, uttered in accented Hebrew. We went around and everyone said their name, age, where they were from, and where they lived in Israel. I was the youngest, and one of three Americans. Between the twelve of us, we spoke six languages, not including Hebrew. I was one of the only "tourists," what they called the nonimmigrants. Gilah broke up all of the clusters of students who spoke the same language, scattering the French amongst the Russian and German and English. She instructed us to turn to the person on our right and introduce ourselves again. Name. Age. Occupation. Country of Origin. Current residence. The room shook with voices—competing to be heard over the others, trying to get the grammar and mimic the accent. We struggled to understand each other as much as we fumbled through dictionaries for the Hebrew words. Even our pauses sounded different—eeehhhh or uuummm or ouuuuuu. Our speech made me extremely self-conscious. I thought about what the English of non-native speakers sounds like. I imagined what a native Hebrew speaker would hear listening to our conversations: "I MICHAEL. I only FIFTY-THREE. I from CHICAGO, but now I live here. In AMERICA I give work with offices. UHHM. I gave work with paper and—how is it said PRINTING SALES REPRESENTATIVE.^ I do not know how to say that. For now I not working. I look." "Name NATALIE. My name NATALIE. NATALIE Russia. Husband dead. I widow. Widow. Man no more alive." On that first day, I felt the room I used to call home become strange. A little over a year after learning in ulpan, I found myself in the same foreign space. This time on the other side, as teacher. I volunteered assisting in an advanced ESL class at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in New York City. My students came from Burma, Bhutan, Ivory Cost, Afghanistan, Tibet, and Thailand. Their ages ranged from seventeen up to fifty. Some students could barely read or write or talk; a few were nearly fluent. I recognized in them the frustration of trying to express complex emotions without the words to do so. I also recognized the cultural indoctrination—my co-teacher applauded coffee drinking and hamburger eating. The immigrant classroom stands apart from all others. It elicits an artificial performance —the "unnatural," close encounter between people who might not come into contact otherwise, guided by a set of questions and facilitated by a teacher. Yet it is the locus of something very real. It acts as a receptacle for the * The IRC provides humanitarian relief abroad and resettles refugees in the United States. As part of the resettlement program, refugees can take free English classes at the IRC office.

frustration, urgency, trauma, anger, humor, melancholy, eagerness, tension, hopefulness, nostalgia, and disorientation that mark the experience of immigration. It mediates language barriers and demands self-definition and selftranslation. The multilingual immigrant classroom simultaneously polarizes and unifies. It levels out hierarchies of age and education-level, yet reinforces difference in its juxtaposition of such diverse people. * * * Date and Time of Visit: Wednesday, March 25,10 A.M. -12 P.M. Hours to date: 13 We gave the students a crossword puzzle about the different branches of government, something they had gone over on Monday. At first things weren't going so well. Some of the students hadn't been to the last class and had no idea what the words-meant. The lower level students had a really hard time understanding how to actually do the puzzle. A couple of Burmese students worked on the assignment together, talking in Burmese. Miryam got really annoyed and said, "You're in America! Talk English. Your language is distracting me."

My classmates and I sat Indian style in a semicircle around Ofer. He passed out lyric sheets of Hebrew folk songs I had learned back in 3’’'^ grade in Mrs. Kaboodi's music class. Ofer played a chord on his accordion to call our attention. "Chaverim, Chaverim! Sheket b'vakasha. Takshivoo. At Ulpan Akiva, we learn language with our entire body. With our ears, our stomachs, our hands, our feet. You need to sing and dance b'Ivrit to learn Ivrit, nachon?" In the ulpan classroom, the adult performs the child. Classroom activities invoke those of elementary school. And often the students do not have the words to express themselves beyond an elementary level. Playing the role of Teacher at the IRC derailed my conception of the classroom. I could not get over how surprised I felt when I realized that most of my students at the IRC had children, some only a few years younger than me. It felt strange not only because they were my students, but because they spoke like students too. They did student things. They learned colors and the days of the week. Irregular verbs and spelling tormented them. Ofer passed out lyric sheets. Most everyone looked uncomfortable or apathetic. They mumble-sang so no one would hear them. One person sang very loudly, even tried throwing in some harmonies. A few laughed and joked with one another. Ofer came over and played his accordion by them, and they instantly stopped and went back to singing. I hadn't sung folk songs to an accordion for years, and I could only imagine how long it had been for some of my classmates. * * *

Date and Time of Visit: Wednesday, April 29,10 A.M. -12 P.M. Hours to date: 7 When I asked Kunchok if I could interview him for my literacy profile paper, he qualified his yes with a warning. He told me he was no good at talking. Kunchok's insecurity struck me. I chose him precisely because of his talking. Though Kunchok falls on the lower skill end of our advanced ESL class, he never shies away from participating. I remember the first time he stood out to me. My co-teacher called on Kunchok to give an example of the construction "I never used to He came up with "I never used to pizza." We pressed Kunchok for a verb: "You never used to what pizza? Drive pizza? What do you do with pizza?" Kunchok tried again: "I never used to drive pizza." The whole class erupted with laughter.

Connections between the move to a foreign country and rebirth pervade immigrant narratives. First, immigrants become new people on paper. Ellis Island officials change foreign names to more "American" sounding names. Those without birth certificates receive new ones, often with a made-up birthday. Then the cultural adjustments the new country demands fashion a person who looks and acts very differently from the "original." The trope of "second birth" has a foot in psychoanalytic theory as well. The chapter "Migration and Language" from Leon and Rebeca Grinberg's book Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile, demonstrates the connection between infancy and the immigrant condition, specifically in relation to language acquisition. The Grinbergs describe how the immigrant, surrounded by an unknown language, "can function as a child again."® Psychoanalytic theory posits that in our infancy,^ language becomes the "object of jealousy, hate, and passionate desire."'' The Grinbergs liken the immigrant to a "child who does not understand the secret language of his parents."® Thrown into a reality dominated by an unknown language, the immigrant regresses to the infantile feelings of jealousy and hatred. However, the immigrant does not learn the language of the "adult world" with the same ease as the child. While the child naturally learns the idioms, the "accent, intonation, and rhythm"® of a language, the immigrant struggles to obtain such intuitive knowledge. The child's eventual acquisition of a language ushers him into the world. Immigrants' imperfect acquisition of a language marks, even isolates them.

5 Grinberg, Leon, and Rebeca Grinberg. "Migration and Language." Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale UP, 1989) 109. ® The origin of the word infant, the French word enfant, literally means "unable to speak." Grinberg, 106. * Grinberg, 110. ’ Grinberg, 100.

If we think of speech as the defining characteristic of the non-infant, the classroom becomes a sort of birthing canal. It sees the immigrant—frustrated, determined, struggling—through a painful process of maturation, starting from a regression to infancy. Immigrants with little knowledge of the foreign language mimic the child's broken, incomplete speech. At Ulpan Akiva, the activities of the class levels followed a very pronounced progression—the lowest level read children's stories, the highest level discussed newspaper articles. If we look at Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation, a text that details Hoffman's emigration from Poland to Canada and then to America, we see how the language becomes a marker of her transformation from Polish Ewa to American Eva, and how the classroom often facilitates the transformation. Hoffman immigrated as an adolescent, and therefore her experience of being made child again differs from that of the adult immigrant. Still, moving to a foreign country forced Hoffman back to a state of violent rebirth. On her third night in Canada, Hoffman has a nightmare that she is drowning. She wakes up "in the middle of a prolonged scream," one she calls the "primal scream of [her] birth into the New World."^^ In their book, the Grinbergs describe screaming and crying as "attempts to free oneself from something overwhelming.. .linked to all experiences of separation."^! understand the ultimate "experience of separation" as the leaving of the womb (the mother), or, in the case of the immigrant, the leaving of The Motherland. The Grinbergs distinguish screaming and crying as preverbal reactions — in this way, they are inherently infantile. They note that the "first time a child hears his own voice is when he screams."!^ Starting from the moment of violent rebirth, Hoffman finds her way into her new status as foreigner. Though Hoffman does not find herself in a space like the ulpan classroom, her experiences in the classroom—in Canada, then college and grad school in America — largely shape her fractured, multifaceted adult identity. The first instance comes when Mr. Rosenberg brings Hoffman and her sister to school. She and her sister stand "clutching each other"!^ in the schoolyard as the other kids run around them. Here, Ewa acquires her new name: "We've been brought to this school by Mr. Rosenberg, who, two days after our arrival, tells us he'll take us to classes that are provided by the government to teach English to newcomers. This morning, in the rinky-dink wooden barracks where the classes are held, we've acquired new names. All it takes is a brief conference between Mr. Rosenberg and the teacher, a kindly looking woman who tries to give us reassuring glances, but who has seen too many people come and go to get sentimental about a name."’! From her first day at school, Hoffman Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990) 104. 11 Grinberg, 105. 12 Grinberg, 105. 11 Hoffman, 105. 1'* Hoffman, 105.

moves through the process of learning new words and expressions. While she faces the severe disadvantage of deficient English skills, she gains an understanding of Language that a native-speaker struggles to intuit. Just as the immigrant classroom upsets traditional hierarchies, its defining act—the learning of a foreign tongue — subverts the unquestioned relationship of Language and Truth. Before, Hoffman never doubted that "riverhood" imbued the Polish word for "river." But faced with the English word "river," which, for Hoffman, "does not give off the radiating haze of connotation,"i5 Hoffman cannot deny that "words are just themselves."^^ The immigrant has a privileged knowledge, but not necessarily a happy one. The disconnect between words and reality unnerves Hoffman; it drains her world of "significance...colors, striations, and nuances.''^^ * * * Date and Time of Visit: Wednesday, April 1st, 10 A.M. -12 P.M. Hours to date: 15 This week, Kathryn was out, so we had a substitute teacher. I was surprised to find out that she was an NYU student too. She told me that she had written a spring-themed lesson plan. We started out by reading the William Wordsworth poem "Daffodils." There were moments when my co-teacher would make mistakes that I wanted to correct, but I felt very self-conscious about it. I wanted to participate in a more positive way than just calling her out on her mistakes, but I also didn't want the students to learn something incorrect. For example, she called "a" a preposition instead of an article. Later, when we were reading the poem, she conflated the words "wander" and "wonder." She had an Australian accent, and it could just be that the two sound the same to her. She taught that "wander" meant both to think and to walk around aimlessly. I had to correct her. I couldn't hold back. How else would my students know the difference between the two words? * * *

I pulled the creased notebook paper from my backpack and smoothed it out in front of me. I glanced over the chords I had jotted down the night before. My classmates all waited expectantly. Gilah leaned against the whiteboard and smiled. "Nu, nu? What will you play for us?" I snapped the black case open and pulled out my ukulele. I had figured out how to play Ba Shana Ha'Ba'ah, a famous Hebrew song that we all had known before we sang it in class with Ofer. On my last day at Ulpan Akiva, we had a class party. Everyone brought food, we watched a short movie, and at the end, I played my ukulele. Ba Shana Ha'Ba'ah translates literally into "In the Year that Comes," or, more naturally, "Next Year." True to its title, the song details how wonderful life will be in the coming year: Next year / We'll sit on the stoop / And we'll count the migrating birds / 15 Hoffman, 106. w Hoffman, 107. 17 Hoffman, 107.

Children on vacation / Will play a game of catch / Between the houses and the fields / Chorus: You'll see, you'll see / How good it will be /Next year." I had sung the song countless times in music classes, at school assemblies and at camp, but the lyrics, charged by the context of the ulpan classroom, took on a new meaning. The migrating birds contrasted to those counting them, settled and grounded on the stoop in front of their house. Just hold on a little longer until next year, the song promised. Coincidentally, I played my ukulele for my class on my last day at the IRC. That day, I taught the entire lesson on my own. We reviewed definite and indefinite articles, discussed our favorite holidays and celebrations, and talked about Diversity. Connie wanted me to play some Passover songs for the class, but I could not think of any songs in English. Instead, I played "This Land is Your Land," a song they had learned in class on Monday. My students clapped and sang the chorus with me. I had never heard all of the verses until I sang them that day. One in particular stood out: "In the squares of the city / In the shadow of the steeple / Near the relief office / I see my people / And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' / If this land's still made for you and me." I wondered if any of my students understood those words. They asked me to play the song again after I finished. Over the course of the month I spent learning at Ulpan Akiva, I listened to my classmates struggle to recreate themselves tn a foreign language. They spoke in mixed up verb tenses of what they left behind and what they hoped to make for themselves in Israel. They used the wrong gender article to talk about paperwork they still had to fill out, or the relief of walking down the street and not having to hide their kippot.'^^ When we sang Ba Shana Ha'Ba'ah all together on that last day, I sang aware of the words, just like I did on my last day at the IRC. More than any other I have experienced, the immigrant classroom transforms. After that first time when the room I called home became strange, my life changed directions. A year after ulpan, I moved from Ohio to New York. Lost and overwhelmed, I felt utterly foreign—yet I recognized, even welcomed, the unnerving feeling of wandering around an unfamiliar place. A few months later, playing The Language Teacher, I witnessed the peculiar alchemy of the ulpan classroom once more. And when my students asked me to play "This Land is Your Land" again, I obliged.

Jennifer Furman

The traditional head covering Jewish men wear. Otherwise known as a yarmulke or skullcap.

Summer Pinwheel

Vanessa Moore

Ella

He didn't tuck the back of his shirt in when he stumbled out the front door at around 7:45 that Thursday evening. He had seen the gray sticking out underneath his green jacket in the mirror, but forgot. Just tucked the front. The green pants were wrinkled, so was his face. He patted his hair as he rushed from the bathroom to the foyer, quick as he could, grabbed his cane. He didn't know why his comb wasn't in his pocket. He didn't notice the television left on in the den the next room over. It announced the latest news update. The Jack Daniels handle he had placed on the floor was halfway gone. On top of the antique end table there was a marble coaster, and next to the coaster was a stout glass that held the warm remains of some melted ice, and next to the melted ice was a picture frame of Dear Ella, how I made it through all that and she was failed by her heart, my poor Dear Ella, he thinks every time he sets down his glass. He had been lucky to wake up. The phone had rung, and he was running an hour late. They were expecting his empty sleeve. He told them he would speak about it, how quickly it happened, how he didn't know it even happened those first thirty or so seconds, adrenaline, he would say, thank God for adrenaline. And chuckle. He would joke about how it was still there for him when he first got up in the morning. (He will be honest with them, it still hurts.) It's okay, the pain just reminds me how I never could throw a Hail Mary. They would smile to him and admire him for taking it all in stride, for embracing his condition as if he had two full sleeves to do it with. But I'm not the only one, he would have to say. Roy Matvekson was less lucky than me. I still keep in touch with his children. Phil G was more lucky —he only lost a couple fingers. Phil G would raise up his hand and say Cheers. But here we are, he would say. And Poor Dear Ella lost her heart while I get another. He didn't have to reach the car door to remember. He saw the rusting handle and threw his cane down on the ground. He shuffled to the brown chipped door and saw them there in the ignition. Goddamn the lord in hell, he thought. Why the hell now, he took his hand and tried to Stick his fingers through the window crack, how stupid, how the hell am I so stupid, and made sure that all the doors weren't locked. Nobody at the Waterman's across the street. Nobody and nothin' but brown fields. Already an hour late, probably Susan on the phone at the church, they're all waitin' — is everything okay? Goddamn that shell and that draft and that war and dear. Dear Ella, goddamn god for letting her die and leaving me with whiskey and the keys in the goddamn car. It's your fault Ella, for leaving me with the dear keys and truck that you found in the newspaper that Sunday. It would be good for the business, you raised your eyebrows when you told me, makes all the hauling easier. With the news on the television and the bacon, that's what really killed you poor Ella. I never hauled a damn thing in hell, just backpacks and guns and hate and being so tired. Never hauled anything, and now the damn keys. 14

When he crouched over he lost his footing a bit but recovered. He picked up the rock and threw' the Hail Mary. He turned the ignition on and brushed the shards into the floorboard. Just have to knock all the pieces off, he thought and did so, they'll just think the window's down. He slammed the door shut and adjusted the mirror. He turned it to see his condition. Sweaty, didn't shave, didn't have time. Have to tell them I was asleep like I was, tell them it's the medication they got me on for this damn arm that won't go away. He inspected his shirt. The reds and greens and yellows, the rank, the tear at the left shoulder he never got fixed, the Purple on his Heart. He looked down at the broken glass in the floorboard underneath his feet and the empty space of no window, and Oh Ella, got out of the car, picked up his cane, and sat in front of the television with the marble coaster and a cold glass.

Zachary Bridgeman

Untitled 1 on hold this morning a sprig of thought broken off at the stem rinsed and soaked in tap water, shaken and gently pressed dry, waiting to become a little ridiculous next to the freshly squeezed grapefruit juice

Untitled 2 we suck romance out of a bottle like it is the best soda pop ever and only sold chilled from a faceless man with a dull metallic cart and a sign that shouts "here today, gone tomorrow" half a dozen empty bottles later, we toss them into a Hefty bag, place them out on the curb and hide behind closed curtains, waiting to see who would come to recycle them

Yi-Ching Lin

Dive

Yi-Ching Lin

The Apocalyptic City: Thirteen Fragments from the End of Time Last Things First The setting for the apocalypse is the city. Across the spectrum of cultural production—from novels and paintings, to films and video games, to tracts and sidewalk monologues — our imaginings of the end seize as if instinctively upon the city as not only the target of cataclysm but the locus of aftermath. For a sizable tranche of our fictions, it seems, the city exists to be destroyed. Again and again — gleefully, mournfully, in warning and in celebration—it is burned, toppled, inundated, irradiated, infected, abandoned, and otherwise scoured, scarred, and transfigured. Something in the urban invites an ending, makes it seem inevitable, imminent, or perhaps always already at hand. Something in the face of the city, in the decay and renewal of its surfaces, in its juxtapositions of mass and space, its novelty and history, its arrogance and vulnerability, and in the agon of its tensions and mediations suggests the apocalyptic. Buried at the Greek roots of "apocalypse" is the promise of revelation: an unveiling of ultimate purpose. Beneath the city's cacophonous slew of signals it is possible to detect, like an attenuated version of the oneiric disclosures to which visionaries are privy, intimations of the end. And yet apocalypse is not simply something which happens to the city, an upheaval visited upon it from without. Apocalyptic ends and becomings, rather, are intrinsic to the very form of the urban. Destruction and horror are bound up with how we think about the city, how we manage it, how it manages us, and how we think ourselves within it. The apocalyptic city shapes our experience of time. It conditions our responses to debts from the past and structures our stock of hope in the future. Narrativizing the end allows us to situate ourselves in a cognizable and meaningful present. The city encodes both our aspirations to permanence and our recognition of decay. It is a concretization of the inescapably provisional character of existence. This is a collection of provisional writings for our provisional cities. The logic underlying this project is centrifugal: it proceeds by spiralling out of control, aiming for no more than a dispersal of fragments. The force at the heart of this movement derives from the relation between fictions dealing with the apocalypse and the apocalyptic potentiality which inheres in the form of the city itself. At stake is whether the city can be treated not merely as a subject within the genre of apocalyptic imaginings, but as a genre in its own right. If the urban is a code, a generative form characterized by the continual revelation of destruction and becoming, then does the city give rise to the apocalypse in and from itself? Set in configuration, these fragments ask whether we are justified in reading the city as an apocalyptic genre.

A Haunted System What precedes the city? An especially striking aspect of foundational myths is the degree to which they coincide thematically with stories of creation. The widely influential Babylonian epic Enuma Elis (echoes of which can be discerned in the Old Testament) recounts the progression from an unnamed and therefore unordered realm of primeval strife to the establishment of Babylon. The grounds for the city are prepared—literally—when Marduk vanquishes the personification of chaos, Tiamat, and divides her body to create heaven and earth. This act of cutting is the originary decision which rends ambiguity and permits order. If we pursue this reading, the city signals a break with primordial formlessness. As an economy of order, it operates by drawing boundaries, codifying distinctions, and channelling energy. The inauguration of the city is also the inauguration of system—form is wrested from chaos and a partial bulwark is erected against flux. Another, much older Mesopotamian poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, demonstrates the antiquity and deep-rootedness of our psychological investment in the city. Distraught by the loss of his friend, the titular character embarks on a search for immortality, only to find that, of all human endeavours, it is building which comes closest to conferring eternal life. Here we can detect some of the earliest indications of the spiritual and aspirational dimensions of the built environment—and it is surely not by chance that many of the structures with the greatest claims to permanence are temples and tombs. By building, humans become godlike. But it is in recognition of death—and the ultimate impossibility of our aspirations to immortality—that the great city emerges. In our myths and conjectures about the founding of "civilization," even this term on its own implies the centrality of the city as a form beaten out of the primordial chaos of nature. The efflorescence of human culture is enabled and marked by a system predicated on the inevitability of the end. Crucially, however, the legendary Gilgamesh is credited with having built a monumental wall to protect his people from attack and incursion. Although the built environment is our best realization of the lust for immortality, organization, and control, it also discloses, through its very presence and scale, an unshakable anxiety. The city is a system perennially under threat. Encoded within its structure, as Kevin Mills observes, is "an ongoing struggle between chaos and order. Chaos, whether associated with the darkness of the night, with the boundlessness of the ocean, or with the wildness of desert regions, is an ever present force which constantly threatens to overwhelm the ordered world" (18). Founded out of disorder and destined for apocalypse, the city spans the time between chaos and chaos. From walls, gates, and moats to Le Corbusier's "Radiant City" and Ralph E. Lapp's designs for dispersed, nuke-resilient settlements, the city exists in anticipation of attack. The urban is shaped by survival strategies: it is a defensive huddle, a negotiation with capricious nature, and a check against outsiders. Although a city's temples, religious or otherwise. 19

aspire to permanence, their symbolic authority makes them choice targets for angry deities or invaders. The second class of urban structures with a claim to persistence comprises works undertaken in the expectation of violence: walls, castles, hardened military installations. Both a yearning for life and a submission to the omnipresence of death are constituents of the urban fabric. An apocalypse marks a boundary, a point of crisis beyond which prediction fails. As a symbolic system, the city is crossed by the plexus of apocalypse. It is a zone where lines are continually drawn, violated, and redrawn, where pretensions to stability are always also gestures toward their opposite. An endlessly fecund, shifting genre—but a network of constraints all the same — the city cannot help but suggest the breaking of its own form. It is condemned, as Tom McCarthy observes, to be eternally "haunted by the spectre of its ruin" (277). The dualism of the city lies in the tension set up between the re-economization of ruptures, clashes, and discontinuities and the energy field which allows for their emergence and amplification. Discussing the symbolic content of ruins, Paul Zucker writes of "walls and towers ... inextricably fused into primeval masses of chaotic boulders," a prospect he considers "sufficient to make us conscious of the contrast between Nature and the organizing power of the human spirit" (5). The logic at work in the city, however, is not adequately described by a contrast or dialectic between order and chaos. Rather, it functions in the nature of a chiasmic relationship, a mutual interpenetration or irresolvable entanglement. When Max Page explains why the obliteration of New York has been so frequently represented, he decides that it must stem from the fact that it is "unimaginable for us, in reality, not to have this city" (Page 228). But what is also implied is precisely that we cannot help but imagine the end. New York is an aspirational city, a conglomeration of temples, and a mythic focal point: the weight of its presence makes it a tempting target. It is at once a concretized synecdoche for our culture and a fantasy space for that same culture's apocalyptic strain. The aspirational city is always shadowed by the ruined city. In destruction, building acknowledges its uncanny and irrepressible double.

Flight and Return In H.G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, Martian invaders land and launch their first attacks in Horsell, a suburb on the edge of the commuter town of Woking. In both the notorious 1938 radio adaptation presented by Orson Welles and the 1953 American film version, the initial encounter again takes place in the suburbs. By the time Steven Spielberg adapted the story in 2005, the target had shifted: the first scenes of carnage and devastation are set in Newark, New Jersey. In half a century the city had been refigured as a place to flee. Eisenhower's vast highway system and the dominance of car culture allowed millions of Americans to turn their backs on the unpleasantness of crowding, crime, racial difference, dysfimctional services, and the spectre of atomic ruin. The populations of many major cities stagnated or declined even as vaguely 20

defined "metropolitan areas" proliferated and spread stain-like around decaying urban cores. As Max Page relates, "Immediately after the war, newspapers regularly reported that New Yorkers were fleeing New York" (125). The phrase "inner city" took on an ominous tenor, suggesting not just danger but the inertia of irreversible decline. Writing in 1983, Alfred Kazin decried media narratives which packaged the city for those who lived outside it as "nothing but a state of war" (241). He lamented the atomization and mutual alienation which the urban had increasingly come to signify. "It is apartness that rules us here," he wrote, "and the apartness makes the threat" (242). This sense of the city as a wasted, every-man-for-himself zone ruled only through predation is a favourite device in dystopian films of the period. In Richard Fleischer's Soylent Green (1973) the cheapness of life is such that the poor can be turned into food, while in John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) Manhattan has been walled off as a federal prison. In this decidedly political brand of apocalypse, the city is a place where social losers fight out their last days bereft of hope. To the postwar imagination, the future was in the suburbs. If any apocalyptic scenario captures the paranoia of overcrowding and the urge to leave the claustrophobic confines of the city behind, it is surely the threat of plague. Members of the upper-class have long had the advantage in surviving historical outbreaks because they either reside in or can retreat to more commodious spaces. The cramped quarters of the urban underclass are continually represented as loci of disease. The minatory aspect of the masses is doubly amplified when the infection in question is embodied in walking, chewing form: zombies. In Max Brooks' World War Z, cities are quickly overrun by the undead and survivors are entreated to head north, where the zombies— now conspicuously out of their element—freeze in the bleak climes. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) departs from its predecessor by opening in an infected city. The undead make their first appearance onscreen in the warrens and stairwells of a dilapidated Philadelphia tenement, where a racist police officer seizes upon the apparently long-desired opportunity for a rampage. The film's quartet of primary characters —a news station production assistant, her traffic helicopter pilot boyfriend, and two SWAT team members —soon recapitulates America's flight to the suburbs. But what if the suburbs are already post-apocalyptic? In God's Own Junkyard, Peter Blake condemns the "mess that is suburban America" (130). Characterized by expanses of uniform subdivisions, cookie-cutter chain stores, and the greyfield realms of "ghostboxes," the suburban has the flavour of afterlife. It is nowhen and noplace. Beyond the clamour, upheaval, and organized chaos of the urban system are the Ballardian dead spaces of concrete medians, parking garages, and — shopping malls. Having escaped the city in a news helicopter, the survivors in Dawn of the Dead spot a shopping mall and decide to land for supplies. They quickly settle the space. The mall is not only a refuge but a self-contained and self-sustaining city: once its computer control 21

mechanisms have been activated it regulates the phony ecosystem and asks only to be populated. Eternally lit, filled with the strains of Muzak and endlessly looped announcements, it becomes a space outside of time. The shopping centre is a post-historical utopia: "This place is terrific," Stephen, the pilot, enthuses. "It's perfect. We've got it made here." The apocalypse, then, is marked by leavetaking: it is nothing if not the chance to make a welcome exit. Another instance in which the end of the world is narrativized as departure occurs in Harlan Ellison's short story "Hindsight: 480 Seconds." Here, too, the protagonist finds himself in an empty but automated city, one sustained in this case by hordes of tireless robots. This city, however, is the only remaining urban space on the planet, and Haddon Brooks—chosen specifically for the task because of his poetic skill—has volunteered to remain there alone "to report the death of the Earth" (178, emphasis in original). With a storm of radiation approaching, the rest of the planet's population has taken to space. Rather than leave their cities, however, the inhabitants have converted them into giant spacecraft "shaped like the Great Pyramid of Gizeh" and launched them "to all points of the astrolabe, to seed Man through the dark" (179). Here, it is the city itself—the entirety of its built environment—which flees. Each city-craft strikes out alone, destined to populate a new world and become, in an odd transposition, a foundational myth in its own right. The culmination of the city is to escape itself, to tear free of its rootedness and achieve a mobile incarnation of its aspirational logic. But apocalypse is not merely about departure: it also signals a return. Fantasies of escape are inseparable from the secret certainty that there are realities to be faced and debts to be repaid. While the admixture of cinematic and consumerist spectatorship in Dawn of the Dead promises what Anne Friedberg calls "safe transit into other spaces," this voyage is not safe for long (121). Like the city, the mall is a generative form: it shapes its own subjects. The main characters are forced into a literal isolation; they become reactive and mutually alienated —precisely the attributes typically held up to represent the threatening dimensions of urban sociality. Guy Debord's "lonely crowd," in this case, is exemplified not only by the legions of zombies, but by the atomized survivors (22). Apocalyptic fictions are as much about the inevitable return of the past as they are about flights to the future. The resurrected corpse is an ideal emblem for the revenge of history. Crucially, in Romero's Dead series it is all the recently deceased who return as zombies (this is set up in the first film as a kind of cosmic aberration triggered by a passing comet). "Every dead body that is not exterminated," warns a scientist during the interview which opens Dawn of the Dead, "becomes one of them. It gets up and kills. The people it kills get up and kill." The walking dead are driven to revisit places of significance. When Francine asks why the dead have congregated at the shopping mall, Stephen surmises, "It's a kind of instinct, a memory of what they used to do." Later, having become a zombie, he will himself return as if instinctively to the hidden

door which leads to the upper floors of the mall where the survivors have made their home. Overwhelmed, Francine and Peter—the only remaining SWAT officer —will be forced to both flee and return in one move: lifting off in the helicopter, they return to the air and to the uncertainty of an ambiguous ending. A gesture of return marks the apocalypse in Ellison's story, as well. The title implies a look back, with the 480 seconds representing the eight minutes required for radiation from the damaged sun to reach the earth. The sun's corona has been torn by a comet sweeping by like an interstellar pendulum in its massive, unfathomable orbit, and Haddon Brooks is in a sense waiting for the past to catch up with him. Hooked into a long-distance communication link with fleeing scientists, he is apprised of approaching doom in the manner of a prophet: by a "voice in his head that called the end" (182). Brooks watches the sky knowing the precise time remaining before he is incinerated. The means to the end in Ellison's story (i.e., the sudden approach of a comet) may be unpredictable, but once in motion this departure too involves the requisite return. Here, the apocalypse can be read as anticipation fulfilled. Crisis: A Lacanian Detour Describing the constitution of community space, Peter Blake identifies three primary features which make up the built environment: "utilitarian" buildings, "outdoor spaces," and "symbolic" buildings (132). It is the latter which permit a sense of place, allow for orientation, and structure the city in our minds. Our movement through the urban field, our understanding of direction and distance are typically experienced with respect to cardinal buildings: skyscrapers, temples, public institutions. The symbolic order covers the city, clothing it in a garment which makes possible both control and shared meaning. Can we read the apocalypse as the rending of this fabric? In psychoanalysis, the definitive symbol — that which grounds all others and in which symbolic authority is vested — has traditionally been identified as the father. This "Big Other," to use Slavoj Zizek's terminology, constitutes the third term in the Oedipal relationship between child and mother. Its function is not only prohibitive, but protective: by moderating both our perceptions of reality and our relationships with others, the threatening aspects of each are kept at bay. Symbolic authority, then, is a means of establishing and maintaining distance. This order, however, is subject to an unending series of violations, shifts, and ruptures which need to be continually re-economized. Each puncture in the fabric is an instant of crisis, an erosion of the governing symbol's privileged position as guarantor. Such upsets can engender panic, anomie, disorientation, the urge for recovery, or glee at the realization of a break. These apocalypses in miniature are not simply turning points, but revelations. The trauma of unveiling is suggested by the association still discernable in Jewish tradition between apocalypse and the unintentional sighting of a parent's

genitals. The symbolic fabric, pinned in place by its cardinal figures, is a means of maintaining the cover necessary for functionality. Apocalypse slips in wherever symbolic efficiency is in crisis. It inheres in the edges of order, ready to be invoked whenever defining symbols are levelled or sent into retreat. The suburbs gain a substantial measure of post-apocalyptic flavour from their conspicuous lack of "symbolic" buildings (shopping malls might seem the best candidates for such a designation, but they evacuate rather than establish any degree of "situatedness"). Crisis in the Oedipal system can be set in fruitful parallel against crisis in the urban system: we experience as apocalyptic not only the city condemned by its father but the city abandoned by him. Recall that Oedipus, before damning himself to placelessness, serves as both the saviour and the curse of a city. His flight from Corinth is also the enactment of his inevitable return to Thebes. The Oedipal crisis is apocalyptic in its revelation—an uncovering so unbearable and so unassimilable that it prompts destruction of the means to see. Apocalypse, finally, is a crisis in the continuity of the urban symbolic system. The End of History In Harlan Ellison's "Hindsight: 480 Seconds," the protagonist is a human mediator for the city's end. His skull is wired with transmitters designed to convey the entire spectrum of sensation and cognition as the world is seared by solar discharge. For a fleeing humanity, Haddon Brooks is the apotheosis of the weather report. This mode of apocalypse represents not only a culmination, but a break in history. While Francine, at the close of Dawn of the Dead, is pregnant as she lifts off to an uncertain future. Brooks is sterilized by his apocalypse: "A strange prickling assaulted his flesh and he cried out ..., "I'm done .. . there can be no other children" (183). The point of rupture marks an end to generation and the close of an era, but it is also the inauguration of new time. As Elinor Shaffer points out, apocalypse "reveals and signifies as much the new beginning or renovation as the end" (138). Figured as the necessary precursor to any hoped-for utopia, apocalypse is at once death knell and foundational myth. Paradoxically, cataclysm can be an ordering principle — it becomes a device for structuring time. As in Stephen King's The Stand, which opens with plague and ends with nuclear detonation, apocalypse can punctuate or define the arc of a narrative. The symbolic authority of ruptures is in evidence in terms such as "antediluvian" and in the dating conventions often on display in science fiction (where time is measured, for instance, with respect to a holocaust or the moment of interplanetary settlement). Like the purifying biblical deluge, apocalypse can also be cast as corrective. In this sense, it responds to and manages the horror of contamination. But purity too can engender horror. The puristic impulse, writes Vincent Scully, "insists upon tearing everything down in order to design from an absolutely clean slate." Scully impugns purity as a "fundamentally anti-urban" logic which 24

"cannot bear the complexity and the splendid mess of towns" (353). Both the terror and the attraction of apocalyptic fantasies are connected with the impossible possibility of starting over. Entropic Death Set against the apocalypse of culmination and the apocalypse of reinvigoration is the apocalypse of decline. In place of grand cataclysms or foundational breaks with history, entropic death follows the logic of dissipation. In Kevan Davis's Zombie Infection Simulator, we adopt the bird's-eye view of a god, populating a city and adjusting the parameters to unleash a plague of the undead. The deity with which we coincide, however, is more on the order of a deposed authority or an impotent Big Other—for there is no way to alter the ultimate outcome. Instead, we are held captive to a narrative of algorithmic reiteration and the inevitable exhaustion of resources, as pixelated hordes overrun the kingdom.

Figure 1: Zombie Infection Simulator (http://kevan.org/ proce55ing/zombies/)

In Hardcorepawn's modification. Stop the Zombies!, we are given the power to purify areas through nuclear attack. Seen from above, no natural, Kantian order reveals itself, only compulsive consumption and increasing entropy. In another of Davis's zombie games. Urban Dead, the afflicted city is named Malton, likely in acknowledgement of the space where the proliferation of simulacra plays itself out with consummate appropriateness.

Figure 2: Stop the Zombies! (http;//WWW.hardcorepawn.com/zombie3/)

Humans;0

Dead: 4000

Zombies: 0

Figure 3: Stop the Zombies! (aftermath)

From Above In John Edgar Wideman's "Ascent by Balloon from the Yard of Walnut Street Jail," the narrator imagines himself suspended over eighteenth-century Philadelphia, where a plague of yellow fever is about to break out. Gazing down upon the soon-to-be-ravaged city, he declares, "People are ants" (257). From a great height, as one's perspective coincides with that of the Big Other, it is easy to imagine the inhabitants of the city as insects, and not a stretch from there to deem them worthy of extermination. Hovering like "a giant, untethered fist" in the sky, Wideman's narrator is in a position to mete out divine punishment, which—as the Cities of the Plain discovered in Genesis—comes from above (260). Close to the time in which Wideman's story is set, Immanuel Kant adopted a similar vantage point in order, again, to hand do wn judgement. In his "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" (1784), Kant determined that chaos and mutual antagonism at ground-level resolve into natural law when cities are considered from above. Violence propels the narrative arc of history on its path of progress. Joseph Dewey, assessing the apocalyptic temper in fiction, notes tire cardinal role of "a belief in the incessant linearity of history" (12). By re-economizing ruptures and insisting that hope rests in ultimate ends, the apocalypse reasserts the continuity of the time-line.

From Below From below, one is among the ants, among the vermin, one feels the threat of extermination—but also an awareness of one's own threatening potential: to burrow, to undermine, to infiltrate. From below, one's gaze is microscopic, and the apocalypse comes, as Walter Benjamin predicts, from the past. Hope is located not in the future, but in the unredeemed claims of the victims of history. The victims live underground, waiting to emerge. The subterranean is both a space of survival and the origin of horror. The underground is post-apocalyptic. Its denizens, as Sukhdev Sandhu points out, already "inhabit the end of the world" (61). They live the end of days in a literal sense, beyond cues of time and weather. The subterranecin and the noctivagant hold the dark in common. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the monster and his gentlemanly doppelgangers share an identity as nocturnal wanderers, making late-night journeys to "the end of the world" (35). The novel's apocalyptic revelation: Hyde's violence is the inextricable underside of the bourgeois order it sustains. The Provisional City: What Survives? Just as it is a space for becoming other, the city itself is always in transition. As a genre, it is fluid, conditional, its lines always under the threat of rupture. Continual redevelopment speckles the city with cataclysms. According to Vincent Scully, modern urban space is dominated by "an aesthetics of impermanence" (45). The built environment develops in anticipation of its own

uprooting. What, then, persists after the apocalypse? Scully nominates the "immortal containers" to which we entrust our most noisome waste as the structures most likely to outlast the end of time (44). In Dawn of the Dead, the ruin of civilization does nothing to keep the shopping mall from interpellating its inhabitants—both alive and undead —as consumers. Shopping survives the end of the world. Ruins

Commenting on Caspar David Friedrich's famous Ruins of a Monastery and Church Yard in Snow (1819), Paul Zucker singles out the presence of a half-open grave in the painting as "the ultimate symbol of death" (185). The image, however, points not only toward death but at the possibility of return. Ruins make the apocalypse already present. They are evidence that the "end" is always incomplete, never utter, always only an effect of narration. Ruins are sites of emergence, charged with historical residue and signaling the interpenetration of creation and destruction. When Pompeii was buried under the ashes of Vesuvius in 79 C.E. it became an urban mausoleum. The tableaux of human remains it preserves show a city taken at the instant of peak panic, in the realization of its doom. It is a frozen apocalypse. To Pompeii, every city is post-apocalyptic and we are all living after the end of time. Through the unveiling of Pompeii, what is revealed is not simply the city but the city in its destruction. Ruins are the afterlife of the city. Enjoying the End The apocalypse has appeal. In one grand stroke it sweeps away entrenched systems and rends the veil of the symbolic order, holding out the twofold promise of revelation and freedom. Revelation, in this sense, connotes an instant of sudden illumination, a final understanding of priorities, origins, and ends. It puts paid to the feeling of straying. Revelation is also a recovery— the satisfaction of a loss and a return to the simplicity of unfractured being. But apocalypse is freedom, as well: a loosing of the bonds and a shattering of form which returns us to a state of infinite possibility. Apocalyptic scenarios, whether real or imagined, are not infrequently accompanied by a twinge of elation. This celebratory response is sometimes expressed, but more often it is secreted away as a guilty and perhaps unacknowledged pleasure. When we jump the gap we can be suddenly and profoundly aware that the ways we experience ourselves, our relations with others, and our being in the world have irreversibly altered. Cataclysm is a means of establishing or reinforcing place and time —it situates us. Disaster, as Paul Corcoran points out, can be experienced as "offering a special sense of closeness, sharing, communal identity, overcoming social barriers, eliciting previously unknown reserves of insight, strength, sacrifice, generosity, endurance and a sense of heightened reality" to such an extent that the "'end of 28

the world as we know it' [becomes] the backdrop for heroic action" (23). Cities, in this case, are especially appropriate settings for destruction because of their status as places held in common. Apocalyptic fictions — and films in particular — typically take special care to be specific in their choice of targets. We have a shared interest in watching iconic cities and buildings being obliterated. "A disaster," Max Page observes, "even when mediated through images or words, still retains an authenticity that has been the quest of modem society for two centuries" (9). The rush of enjoyment is heightened if the locale under threat is not simply real, but a part of both the real and the collective imaginary. If urban apocalypse is a (literal) re-grounding—at once a return to basic categories of experience and a leap forward into a new realm of freedom and self-invention—then where does the self end up being situated and how is this dearly won freedom expressed? In Frank Kermode's classic text TJie Sense ofan Ending, "reality" and "System," although set in opposition to one another, are both functions of the human need to narrativize. System, explains Kermode, "is a plot, a purely human projection, though not more human than its apparent antithesis, reality, which is a human imagining of the inhuman." Reality, by this scheme, comprises "the sense we have of a world irreducible to human plot and human desire for order" (105). A widespread response to crisis—to the potential puncturing of symbolic fabric promised by apocalyptic moments—is the urge to access the gap in the symbolic and achieve unmediated participation with the real. This is often figured as a return to the natural world and, specifically, to the body as the locus of experience and identity. Thus, the logic of an apocalyptic "back to zero" revolution in fantasies such as Fight Club express^ a longing for both self-negation and self-recovery. Sensation is figured as the portal to the inexpressible bedrock of existence. Tyler Durden's caustic "kiss," which inscribes the mark of membership in Fight Club, is a "guarantee, to give access to, the 'pain of existence', the minimum of tire bodily Real in the universe of symbolic simulacra" (Zizek, "Whither Oedipus?" 372). The resulting scar accompanies a recognition of mortality; "You have to know," Tyler says, "not think—know—that one day you are going to die". So, too, the walking bodies in Dawn of the Dead carry the kernel of that "indivisible remainder of the Real" which characterizes the abject and determines the conditions of embodiment (389). As Mark Seltzer emphasizes in "Wound Culture," the violence of fictions like these can be read as an attempt to break free of a symbolic order seen as stifling in its lack of distinction between "bodies and information" (266). Our cultural obsession with the tom body and the wound encodes a furious need to uncover, to witness, and to experience directly. Apocalyptic fantasies partake of what Seltzer terms "plague psychology": they combine "the trauma of witnessing" with "the triumphalism of survival" (271). The "last man" standing in such scenarios is also the most violent (276). The apocalypse, then, allows us to imagine a return to radical embodiment. Smashing the city and its normative codes permits open

indulgence of what was formerly repressed: the pleasure of violence. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hyde is characterized by an atavism, the resurgence of an earlier, unabashedly self-gratifying incarnation of man. In its contrast with the staid, reserved, and artificial bourgeois order, violence signifies a perverse freedom. One of book's several narrators confesses early on that he comes close to feeling "envy" when he ponders on the thrilling energy of the reckless double (32). Jekyll even admits, while recounting the murder of an MP (and it is crucial that this is narrated as Jekyll's experience rather than Hyde's) to "tasting delight from every blow" (128). Through Hyde, Jekyll acquires a means of living fully in the present, a pure "circumspection to the moment" (136). Set against the rigours of self-denial and bodily alienation, destruction is a draught of vitality, a chance to participate in the unadulterated reality of corporeal experience. The apocalypse is a fantasy of emergence: it unveils and enables those secret desires muffled by the rule of order. In Dawn of the Dead—and in zombie scenarios as a whole —the survivors are not the only targets in the film's fantasy world. We take sadistic pleasure in watching the undead being exterminated, particularly when a posse of "rednecks" is recruited to help police hunt them down. After an extensive gearing up scene in a gun shop festooned with animal trophies and awash in phony African safari ambience, one survivor announces, "We're going on a hunt." The four mallrats keep their gaze sharp by holding target practice on groups of mannequins. An authoritative television voice intones, "These creatures cannot be considered human." In fact, the word "zombies" is uttered only once throughout the entirety of the film; in all other instances the term is "those things," or "them." At last, the hidden and longfrustrated dream of hunting the human form can find not just simple release but celebration. At the heart of apocalypse is a fantasy of honesty. Does the apocalypse inaugurate a movement toward the real or signal a deeper retreat into fantasy? To recall Kermode, endings are simply narrative devices; they take us no closer to any notional zone beyond the human. In our apocalyptic imaginings, the allure of destruction is often harnessed as spectacle. The "end" is so integral to the way we think that little beyond representation is required to secure our fascination. We recapitulate the gesture made by Lot's wife when we turn to apocalypse as something to be watched. The better part of a century's worth of disaster movie posters advertises the pleasures of watching a fictionalized end: See New York topple! See San Francisco in flames! In Dawn of the Dead, the shopping mall becomes a microcosm for the spectacle of time's end. Far from permitting access to the real, it serves only to let its denizens defer engagement with the outside. Apocalyptic fantasies draw upon the power of endings in governing human experience, but they are still irreducibly fictions. An Epilogue in the Form of a Prologue The city is built in recognition of the end. The aspirational thrust of the built environment is shadowed by apocalypse as its necessary double. By

imagining urban cataclysm we beat into shape our experience of time, structure our communities, and ground ourselves in place. Narrativizing the apocalypse can be a strategy of smoothing over discontinuities, recapturing hope in the future, or asking what in our present has the salience to endure. But alongside fictions of eschatology and entropic decline should be laid the continual apocalypse generated in and out of the urban form. By way of traversals and channelings, through its ceaseless ruptures, recoveries, and synchronies, the city is finally the revelation that the end is always now. The city has no need to outlast the end of the world because it harbours apocalypse within itself. The setting for the apocalypse is the city.

Adrian Veerstigh

Works Cited Blake, Peter. "Excerpt from God's Own Junkyard." Building the Nation. Steven Conn and Max Page, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.130-133.

Corcoran, Paul. Awaiting Apocalypse. New York; St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Dawn of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. Perf. David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross. The MKR Group, 1978. Debord, Guy. "Separation Perfected." Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald NicholsonSmith. New York: Zone Books, 1995.

Dewey, Joseph. In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UP, 1990.

Ellison, Harlan. "Hindsight: 480 Seconds." Approaching Oblivion: Road Signs on the Treadmill Toward Tomorrow. New York: Walker, 1974.178-184. Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham-Carter. Videocassette. 20* Century Fox, 1999.

Friedberg, Anne. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Kazin, Alfred. "Fear of the City, 1793 to 1983." Building the Nation. Steven Corm and Max Page, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. 240-242. Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 1967.

McCarthy, Tom. "Meteomedia; or. Why London's Weather Is in the Middle of Everything." London from Punk to Blair. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 273-278.

Page, Max. The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Sandhu, Sukhdev. Night Haunts. London: Verso, 2006.

Scully, Vincent. "The Threat and Promise of Urban Redevelopment in New Haven." Building the Nation. Steven Conn and Max Page, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. 353-355. Scully, Vincent. "Tomorrow's Ruins Today." Building the Nation. Steven Conn and Max Page, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. 43-46. Seltzer, Mark. "Wound Culture." Serial Killers: Death and Life in American's Wound Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998. 253-292.

Shaffer, Elinor. "Secular Apocalypse: Prophets and Apocalyptics at the End of the Eighteenth Century." Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World. Malcolm Bull, ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Wideman, John Edgar. "Ascent by Balloon from the Yard of Walnut Street Jail." Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature. Charles Rowell, ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 254- 260. Zizek, Slavoj. "Whither Oedipus?" The Ticklish Subject. New York: Verso, 1999. 313-399.

Zucker, Paul. Fascination of Decay. Ridgewood, New Jersey: The Gregg Press, 1968.

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day I will be back here. Mother's breast the pleasure of your bites 1 remember them. Everything that was is now simply renewed. The old, the same.

My son's sneakers are my lover's heels Reborn. Charles the First, second Charles, I, the Third Charles my child, the fourth, my child, first Mary, holy whore. Already happened. The wrinkles on my face, are my grandson's fingers, Jose's knees. I will die. I know that one

Cecilia Lee

Snapshot

In this one you are ankle-deep in the lake, the water glistens turquoise behind you, and the sky fades into white, making the top of your head disappear. I remember this moment because it's when I realized how skinny you were. The wet suit hung loosely, not like a wet suit should, exposing bones that used to be hidden by a pizza-eating, football-playing body. You didn't look like my brother, pale and scarred instead of ruddy-cheeked and pimpled. I'd hardly believe this is you in the picture if I hadn't been there myself, witnessed day by day how you got to that withered state. I didn't know what it meant, then, you standing there in the water, your chest tube taped to your skin. I knew it was in there, even without it swinging out of you like an external artery. I remember a spark of anger in my eight-yearold mind. Why was Mom letting you do this? Swim in the lake. Ride in the boat. Jet-ski even? I'd hardly seen you leave the house except to go to the hospital for months and months. Was it because you were getting better? Or because you never would? Plastic shovel in hand, I was gripped with fear at the sight of you dripping there, a slick and sickly fish. I was afraid water would leak into your heart, terrified the sand on your feet would feed the cancer in your face. In the picture, your head is tilted slightly because there's water in your ear. I knew the water was washing away the medicine. You're bent a little bit, scratching your thigh, and I knew the tumors had bit you there, too. If someone had walked up to me then, on the beach, next to my half formed sandcastle, and told me you'd be okay, that you'd become a lawyer, learn Cambodian, and get married. I'd have thrown sand in their eyes for their insensitivity. And then tell no one of the incident. This is how I learned to be adult, looking at the shine of your head, dragging you minutes later to play checkers with me, because I wanted to, but really because I was too afraid to let you do anything else. Bethany Burr

The Sirens: Self, Performance, and Desire The Sirens, depicted in Homer's Odyssey, represent compelling figures not only to other characters within the epic but also to readers across the cultural and historical spectrum. Their physical representation and the content of their songs are sources of inspiration and interpretation for many authors. Initially represented as bird-women offering knowledge of the Trojan War to Odysseus, the Sirens eventually morph into seductive mermaids and aquatic feminine figures within various adaptations. Though the Sirens of Homer's text certainly take the form of sensual and compelling female creatures, readers who categorize the Sirens as women by virtue of the deceptive trait Homer attributes to them, engage in a forced reading. This phenomenon marks the intense strength of the conceptualization of a male/female binary contingent upon universal participation. Within later adaptations Homer's Odyssey, the transformation of interpretations of the Sirens over time indicates the increasing tendency to re-create them as entirely female creatures. While the Sirens resist this role, especially in comparison to other figures such as Circe and Calypso, readers often conflate their actions and nature with that of sexually seductive woman by default. Working within the confines of male and female gender stereotypes, the audience reproduces monumental amounts of assumptions regarding all the characters of the Odyssey. The Sirens' song, however, creates a moment in which the reader can transcend the confines of social gendering and reconsider the very nature of self, performance, and desire. The Sirens' role, while brief, leaves a deep impression upon readers of Homer's Odyssey. The first mention of them comes from Circe giving Odysseus a warning about the obstacles before him and his crew: First you will raise the island of the Sirens those creatures who spellbind any man alive, whoever comes their way. Whoever draws too close, off guard, and catches the Sirens' voices in the air no sailing home for him, no wife rising to meet him, no happy children beaming up at their father's face. (Homer 12. 44-48) Circe specifically draws the distinction between the compelling voices of the Sirens and the oppositional image of home and family. Though Odysseus remains determined to return home, he takes advantage of the rest of Circe's warning: Soften some beeswax and stop your shipmates' ears so none can hear, none of the crew, but if you are bent on hearing, have them tie you hand and foot in the swift ship, erect at the mast-block, lashed by ropes to the mast so you can hear the Sirens' song to your heart's content.

(Homer, 12. 53-58.) Circe singles out Odysseus as an individual, a theme resonating within the entire Odyssey, who is capable of enduring their song. As Odysseus continues to narrate his story, he depicts the Sirens' songs: 'Come closer, famous Odysseus - Achaea's pride and glory moor your ship on our coast so you can hear our song! Never has any sailor passed our shores in his black craft imtil he has heard the honeyed voices pouring from our lips, and once he hears to his heart's content sails on, a wiser man. We know all the pains that the Greek and Trojans once endured on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it soall that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!'(Homer 12.197-208) Through the content of their song, the Sirens demonstrate their power of historical knowledge, while their means of conveying this information is sensual and desirable to passersby. Though the relationship between the Sirens and those who travel past them is certainly significant, their words communicate the majority of their power. As illustrated through Odysseus' account of his experience, the Sirens promise knowledge of the aftermath of the Trojan War. Thus, it is not surprising that the Sirens' style and mode of speech reflect directly that of Homer within the Iliad. Pietro Pucci observes, "The Sirens' conspicuous use of lliadic traditional phrases can hardly be an accident," adding that their song "forces upon the listener the realization that they mean to define Odysseus as the Odysseus of the Iliad" (Pucci 4). Beth Cohen agrees that the "diction and content" of the Siren's song have an lliadic trait. Yet, she finds that the song's sense of "dangerous pleasure" and "fundamental" sexuality breaks from the llliadic and marks the "distinctively Odyssean" (Cohen 21). Given their lliadic and Odyssean traits, the Sirens stand as mediating figures between Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (Trans. Robert Fagles). Just like bards and Odysseus himself, the Sirens connect the content of these two epics. The significant distinction, however, is their seductive and destructive nature. While we can characterize the Sirens' song, we are without a direct characterization of the Sirens. Neither Circe nor Odysseus makes any attempt at describing their physical features. Their persuasive quality lies only through aural production. Lacking any direct description of the Sirens, readers are compelled to connect and relate the Sirens to other characters within the Odyssey in order to establish more ground upon which to understand them. The Sirens have been associated as women by virtue of their relationship to Circe. When Circe introduces the Sirens to Odysseus, Circe has already established herself in Homer's narrative as a woman known for her cunning. Thus, the reader may associate Circe's deceitful nature with the Sirens and deduce that the Sirens are cunning women like Circe (Doherty, Siren 35). The Sirens are additionally associated as women given their similarities to the Muses. "Like Hesiod's 36

Muses, the Sirens speak the language of 'knowing', but no word of 'memory' or 'remembering' characterizes their song. All the basic elements of this song - its knowledge, pleasure, and 'hearing' - are a perversion of true heroic song" (Segal 105). Commonalities with the Muses present the Sirens as significantly more endearing as opposed to Circe. Because the Muses both act as divine beings and participate in daily rituals of Ancient Greece, their associations with the Sirens create the Muses as more approachable figures. Some readers recognize this element of universality: "But the Sirens' song can be considered music that has mass appeal; after all, anyone who hears it becomes captive...The Sirens' song, then, has the power to call each and every listener to a critical focus on the past and future self, on the self in relation to society and ideology" (Peraino, Sirens 2). Similar to the bards and Muses, the Sirens are compelling creatures with their appeal rooted in relating the histories of the Trojan War. Though they demonstrate more guile than most others, they remain figures voicing pertinent and desirable truths. In addition to questions regarding the content of their songs and desirability, many authors speculate as to the biological nature and physical features of the Sirens. As previously mentioned, Homer does not include a specific description of the image of the Sirens, although many artists do so: Homer's Odyssey (ca. 700 B.C.E.) transmits an archetypal story of musical, sexual seduction, and questioning in the episode of the Sirens from Book 12. This is the first written account of the Sirens. It does not describe their visual appearance, but Homeric vase and tomb decorations persistently depict them as half human (most often female) and half bird. (Peraino, Sirens 13) Though direct evidence is lacking in the Odyssey itself, the consensus from Homer's time period remains clear. Many readers of the Odyssey also wonder how many Sirens there were: "The Greek uses a special form of the word 'Sirens' (the 'dual') which suggests there are two of them [line 52]. In other versions there are three" (Jones 115). Many adaptations and interpretations of Homer's text include multiple Sirens. Yet, the original only indicates a total of two. In translating the text, a substantial amount of material form Homer's original text becomes lost. In various texts following Homer's Odyssey, the Sirens are definite objects of interest and appeal. Moving from Homer's depiction of two Sirens as knowledge-bearing bird-women, various authors exercise different degrees of freedom in recreating the Sirens for new texts and time periods. Most frequently their bodies are modified: "Greek artists, in further anthropomorphizing the conventional Siren birds inherited from seventh-century Orientalizing art, also humanized and civilized them, creating complex magical creatures who subsumed diverse roles suitable for divine and mortal women in Greek society" (Cohen 33). An element of demystification occurs when the Sirens are converted

into more human (female) figures, thus allowing women to turn to Sirens as an empowered feminine voice. The phenomenon also comes with slightly negative qualities: "After Homer, once they had become beautiful creatures, half fish and half women, the Sirens' song lost its semantic content. Mermaids were reduced to pure sound, since their bodies assumed fishlike dumbness correlative to women's beauty" (Cecconi 101). In retrospective recreations of the Sirens, there is an overwhelming tendency to depict them as women (generally fish) who seduce men. The bird-women figures offering verbal and auditory desired objects of knowledge become lost throughout time in depictions of the Sirens after Homer. When recognizing this phenomenon, readers must also consider alternative depictions of the Sirens from Homer's time period. The rather concise mentioning of them in his Odyssey leaves the audience wondering, wanting more. Unfortunately, Ancient Greek literature does not leave too much material: "We have two different testimonies to the effects of Siren song. In the Odyssey the Sirens seduce sailors by singing of heroic deeds such as the offer to recount for Odysseus [...] In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, the Sirens are magicians who lull the winds" (Stehle 78). Both representations leave a large enigma regarding these figures, especially in regard to their physical attributes and other characteristics. The Sirens are occasionally utilized as a means of comparison: "The first sentence seems to be about to compare Hagesichora's singing favorably with the song of the Sirens, the bird-women who inhabit a rock by a distant sea. Yet the sentence almost certainly ended in a negative; Hagesichora cannot sing like them" (Stehle 78). Importantly, the determining quality of the value of the Sirens remains to be their song and auditory communication. Homer's contemporaries associate the Sirens with women figure, but do not modify their physical attributes as the previous examples above. When considering the Sirens as gendered figures, critics approach this problem differently according to their beliefs. In order to outline and understand the varying roles of the Sirens, however, it is crucial to consider the gender framework: "I have noted that a given gender system evolves over time, yet even when we attempt to 'freeze' the process of analysis. We find that such a view called synchronic... contains internal contradictions. For example, most systems contain contradictory stereotypes of gender" (Doherty, Gender 35). In other words, when applying a rigid binary of male and female to a text such as the Odyssey, inconsistencies inevitably occur. When ignoring the existence of masculine actions or attributions in feminine characters (and vice versa) - or other alternatives (e.g. bird-women), the construction of a strict distinction between male and female collapses. Though human society certainly applies stringent laws enforcing the distinction between men and women, it can be argued that art remains an avenue of escape from this: "So while philosophy can assert generalities about human behavior, about what might be true of music, sex, discipline, desire for all individuals, myth, like poetry, can record what was

the case for one individual, and potentially others" (Peraino, Sirens 12) Even if few readers question hegemonic gender systems, poetry and art allow for an amoimt of flexibility in regard to gender categories and performance. The consequences, however, remain that any given artistic creation exist within the mortal world, often making clear distinctions of male and female: "Like the myths in their ancient contexts, all of these fictions participate in the gender system and sustain or challenge our individual senses of gender identity" (Doherty, Siren 33). The tendency of readers to re-determine a text into their own social vocabulary remains dominant in literature. Though figures can call into question gender qualities, readers rarely question the system itself. Readers are uncomfortable with flexible gender roles because those roles have permeated every sphere of society. Hegemonic modes of interpretation tend to allow for no blurred lines: "These phobias, primarily about gender confusion and the displacement of the patriarchal heterosexual family, become anxieties about the integrity of the self, subjectivity, and social identity" (Peraino, Sirens 6). The slightest suggestion of ambiguity threatens to pull down a carefully crafted set of systems contingent upon the pure existence of and clear distinction between male and female. In reinforcing current gender roles, certain models are applied retrospectively: "'temporal drag' suggests that in some instances of gender performance we can point to 'originals' that are indeed copied insofar as past identities and sensibilities are consciously revived" (Peraino, Gender 60). Representations of figures such as Penelope serve to create and perpetuate this phenomenon. As a symbolic figure, she is often referred to as the epitome of womanhood, thus creating the perfect complement to her heroic husband. Configuring the Sirens into this male/female dichotomy becomes a bit more difficult: "This primary visual division of borders into die 'haves' and the 'havenots,' around which gender roles have been formed, has relegated the aural component of gender as something taken in to a secondary sex characteristic" (Peraino, Gender 59). While human females in the Odyssey remain relatively easy to categorize based on their bodies and actions, the Sirens pose more of a problem. Not only is their physical nature debatable, but the focus of their power is through their song. Despite the sexual ambiguity of Homer's Sirens, many readers place them within the female category without taking a second glance: "Juxtaposed with these subhuman (if immortal, 12.118) females are the superhuman but equally female Sirens." Though not explicit in Homer's text, it is possible and potentially productive to conflate feminine divine women with human women: "The power of these dangerous, nonhuman females is sometimes signaled by the prototypically female activities of weaving (Kirke, Kalypso) and singing (Kirke, Kalypso, the Sirens)" (Doherty, Siren 136). While these observations may strengthen the association between these immortal figures cind human females, such associations are not categorically true.

The traditional reading of the Sirens as strictly female comes from the critical trend and motivation to strengthen and empower femininity within the Odyssey. When considering only human women, the scope of gender inequality appears rather grim: "If we include the goddesses and semidivine women, the Odyssey presents a great panorama of womanhood" (Cohen 19). Though various interpretations follow this methodology, the assumption of pure female nature within these immortal figures certainly appears to strengthen the totality of the Odyssey in depicting real life: "I certainly do not mean to give the impression that feminist thought is merely reactive, a kind of supplement to the comers of male scholars. Rather, 1 hope to demonstrate that neglect (however unconscious) of gender systems has left serious flaws in most current approaches" (Doherty, Gender 93). When working within a closed system and only allowing all character to be either male or female, this logic holds true. In the realm of human politics and behavior, women suffer injustice for this: "Moreover, while they address an exclusively male audience, the Sirens do not, like Muses, speak through a male bard; they address their audience directly, as does Helen in book 4. Their portrayal, like that of Helen, thus opens up the possibility that the subject position of bard might be available to females" (Doherty, Siren 137). By conflating the femininity of immortal figures and the womanhood of human figures, this analysis empowers women in a temporary and partially false way. It provides a false sense of empowerment only allotted to those feminine figures created in the epic text of a male author. The mental division of male and female among human interactions permeates the text of the Odyssey, forcing the characters to assimilate into one of the two options. Without considering any alternative, the majority of analysis of figures in the Odyssey pertains to only masculinity and femininity: "In the epic genre, where plots are traditionally focalized by masculine heroes and narrators, it makes a kind of poetic sense that the excluded voice that guarantees wholeness should be feminine" (Cohen 89) In allotting the power of narration and interpretation to a masculine force, femininity becomes the less frequently acknowledged voice within that binary dynamic. By creating this binary as a totality, women figures end up slighted in regard to men, and figures carrying other attributes that either combine or lie outside of the masculinity/ femininity opposition become ignored. Many readers who acknowledge this phenomenon attribute it to the prevalence of binaries within societal structure: "A striking characteristic of ancient Greek thought is the tendency to organize the world by means of polar oppositions, this is, by sorting phenomena into pairs of categories that are not only different from but opposed to one another, such as hot and cold, wet and dry, active and passive" (Doherty, Gender 127). The default mechanism of creating binaries mediating through linear degrees of difference explains the assumption of the male/female distinction when readers consider various figures within the Odyssey.

In post-Homeric representations of the Sirens, the majority of adaptations create the Sirens as mermaid-type figures whose main aims are to seduce men. The ambiguity of their being in the primary text of Homer's epic becomes lost within the binary structure of male and female: "The stories of sirens, mermaids, nixies, and water nymphs who tempt men as seductresses are widespread throughout the world. One of the most famous incidents related to these powerful creatures can be found in Homer's Odyssey when Ulysses is tempted by the sirens" (Zipes 138). Ranging within adaptations in various time periods and cultures, the Sirens prevail as strictly female aquatic creatures. Mary Zimmerman's play adaptation of Homer's Odyssey depicts the Sirens as a variety of women figures: [The SIRENS enter: a NURSE, GIRLSCOUT, BUSINESSWOMAN, TEACHER, BRIDE, and, NUN, all clothed entirely in red. They bring hairs with them and sit down. One SIREN gives a note on a pitch pipe, but the text is spoken in unison, not sung] (Zimmerman 91) While the various identities here stage a relatively encompassing representation of women in society, the ultimate indication is that of a confining role. In doing this, Zimmerman creates assumptive characteristics both for men and women. Similarly, Derek Walcott represents the Sirens and the female creation of desire as mermaids enticing Odysseus sexually (Walcott 93). In both Zimmerman's and Walcott's plays, both the content of the songs of the Sirens and their physical attributes are modified and limited significantly in regard to Home/s original epic. The transformation of their physicality from bird-women to mermaids parallels the shift in the content of their song from knowledge to exclusively sexual appeal. This marks the significant impact of post-Homeric texts and adaptations on the original work itself. Home/s Odyssey remains extremely adaptable due to the audience's ability to relate to the characters, but sometimes interpretations move a bit further: Why, for example, did Sirens, birds in Homer's Odyssey, become fishes in the following tradition? As monstrous woman-faced birds they fascinated sailors to death with a narrative singing made of song and stories. Cavarero remarks that, since their knowledge about the Trojan War was the same as that of the Muse who inspired epic poets, the beauty of their singing was made of both music and words. Homer's Sirens are an example of feminine power to fascinate man with knowledge and sound, a power that was lost because of Plato and the male imagination that afterward canceled it. (Cecconi 101). This passage demonstrates the significant modifications to the characteristics of the Sirens and the constraints placed upon them over time. As the Sirens shift from ambiguously gendered immortal creatures to more human-like mermaids. 41

the content of their song becomes significantly less powerful in an enriched sense. Although the role of temptress holds a certain amount of persuasive ability, the identity of femme fatale remains confining to female figures. In Homer's text, the object of desire for sailors emanates from the Sirens' ability to convey knowledge regarding the Trojan War. The subsequent interpretations and modifications, however, construct the Sirens themselves as objects of desire and thus confine them to their bodies, which are consequently marked as female. While some readers continue to work within the framework of a binary gender system of male and female, others interpret Homer's Odyssey with fewer restrictions in regard to gender and performance. This critical mode of analysis becomes particularly significant when considering immortal beings in comparison to humans. The Sirens specifically are focal points for this argument in the obvious lack of attention regarding their physicality in Homer's Odyssey. For example, Judith Peraino takes a position of queer theory; I examine how musical technologies invite individuals to question their subjectivity and social identity; more specifically, I examine how music can lead to questioning the ideological superstructures of 'compulsory heterosexuality.' This means the organization of social identities into the two 'opposite' genders of male and female, the assumption that natural sexual desire requires a man and a woman, and the determination of other nonprocreative sexual practices as illegitimate. In exploring the ways in which music functions in this questioning process, I use the word 'queer' as a sexually freighted synonym for 'questioning.' (Peraino, Sirens 5) The position of the Sirens as creatures who are persuasive primarily through their song allows them to exist in a separate space from those dependent upon their physical attributes in order to seduce others. In relation to the Sirens, Odysseus himself participates in this ambiguously gendered dynamic: The Siren episode, I propose, is not a story of genius, craftiness, transcendence, or authorial self-reflection. Rather, it is a story of how Odysseus, while assuming he can control his transgression, gives in to a sexualized self-curiosity and, importantly, a desire to become otherwise, to question and to be questionable, to risk self-obliteration in music. This is a desire to become queer to himself. (Peraino, Sirens 19) The distinction between the desirable aspects of the Sirens' songs and those of other female characters within the Odyssey demonstrates the necessity to consider them through various lenses. The prospect of questioning the male/female binary serves not to eliminate it, but expand upon it: "To face the music of the Sirens is to engage with a monstrous queer desire, a desire that can disenfranchise and destroy, but also energize and sustain" (Peraino, Sirens 19).

Their presence within Homer's text calls into question determined gender roles between humans, but authors throughout time have eliminated a significant amount of this potential. When considering the multiplicities of opportunities for interpreting the Odyssey and its characters, readers confront various options because of the universal resonance of Homer's text. The consistent pattern throughout adaptations and interpretations of Homer's texts reflect a shift to contemporary vocabularies and social signifiers. In regard to the Sirens specifically, the significant aspect of their modification over time occurs through their gender presentation and bodies. Morphing the Sirens from immortal feminine birds to more human-like sea creatures serves to supply powerful examples of figures generally thought of strictly as women. The effect of this, however, serves to make the Sirens an object of desire from the male perspective rather than focusing on their songs as universally compelling narrations. Allowing the Sirens to assume an identity beyond the binary of male and female will result in possibilities that exist in tune with the original depiction in Homer's text. Conflating the Sirens' physiology and characteristics with that of human femininity creates a significantly weaker image of their power originally rooted in voice and song. Kathryn Lamb Works Cited

Cavarero, Adriana. Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy, and the Question of Gender. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Cecconi, Annamaria. "Theorizing Gender, Culture, and Music." Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture (9) 2005:99-105. Cohen, Beth. The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Doherty, Lillian. Gender and the Interpretation of Classical Myth. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd., 2001. Doherty, Lillian. Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the Odyssey. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Jones, P. Homer's Odyssey: A Comparison to the Translation of Richard Lattimore.: Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. Louden, Bruce. The Odyssey: Structure, Narration, and Meaning. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Peraino, Judith. Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Peraino, Judith A. "Listening to Gender: A Response to Judith Halberstam." Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 11 (2007): 59-64.

Pocock, L. G. Reality and Allegory in the Odyssey. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1959.

Pucci, Pietro. The Song of the Sirens: Essays on Homer. Lanham: Roman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998. Segal, Chalres. Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Sprentzou, Efrossini and Hon Fowler, Ed. Cultivating the Muse: Struggles for Power and Inspiration in Classical Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Stehle, Eva. Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in it Setting. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Walcott, Derek. The Odyssey. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993.

Zimmerman, Mary. The Odyssey. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2006. Zipes, Jack, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001.

Untitled

The air is hot, damp, still —it tastes of metal —of a storm coming off the Gulf. People move slowly, nailing wood over windows, securing loose roof tiles, some have already packed up and left town — heading for higher ground, heading away from the river. There is a man, thin, long-nosed with honey-colored skin. On the table in front of him is an ancient violin. He sits and watches all the preparations, all the slow-moving, nervous people. He loves the taste of a coming storm, the far-off crackle of heat lightning, the streets full of clamor now emptying, the cobbles strewn with things left behind — books, a broken doll, a half-blind lame dog. He scratches the dog behind the ears, gives it water in a china saucer, feeds it a beignet. The dog stays near him its loyalties shifted now—no longer faithful to those who left it behind. Sirens wail across the river — warning to any who might have stayed. The man stretches, his velvet coat immaculate despite the fine rain that has begun to fall. He moves under a cafe's awning—foolishly left up by some errant cafe manager. Soon it will be in shreds — ribbons of flapping green and white snapping in the howling wind — but for now it serves as a comfortable shelter from the rain which has begun to fall heavily — pounding against the pavements, crushing the flowers, uprooting smaller bushes that frame the square. The city is empty — those few who remain hide in the hot shadows of boarded-over houses, dragging valuables up from basements, first floors, some securing themselves in musty cobweb-filled attics among portraits of their great great-grandmothers, piles of books, busts of Napoleon. The man removes his fine velvet jacket and white gentleman's shirt. The dog whines up at him and he pushes open the door of the cafe, shooing the dog inside, putting out water and bread. He then closes the door of the cafe and with violin in hand walks up the rounded stairs to the top of the raised riverbank. The trees have already begun to dip and sway in the wind. Boats have come loose from mooring and the birds have gone. As the wind rises to a deafening howl, he raises the violin, brings up the bow and turning toward the city, he plays, welcoming the keening howl of the hurricane.

Yvonne Garrett

2080

Maria Liang

Editors' Note

The Brio editors would like to thank the Department of Comparative Literature for their financial and moral support. Special thanks go to Susan Protheroe for all her help, as well as to everyone who submitted —we were overwhelmed by the quality and creativity of your work. Please continue to submit, and e-mail any questions or comments to briojournal@gmail.com at any time.

Also, please visit our new site and check out some of our favorite poetry, prose, visual art, and critical essays from Brio: http: / /briojournal, wordpress.com/

Thank you for reading. We encourage you to criticize, analyze, and submit to Brio. Above all, we hope that this journal inspires new ideas and dialogue wherever it finds you.

The Brio Editors: Nicole Basile (Co-Editor-in-Chief) Sara Pevehouse (Co-Editor in Chief) Weilin Chen (Critical Essays) Rebecca Fox (Prose) Diana Kole (Poetry) Sarah Caldwell (Visual Arts) Pei-Shan Hoe (Publicity) Roxana Soroudi

Spring 2010