Fluid Identity and Feminine Language: Irigarayan Subjectivity from Nancy’s “Vague” to Sexton and Rich
Fluid Identity and Feminine Language: Irigarayan Subjectivity from Nancy’s “Vague” to Sexton and Rich Abstract This essay examines how Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy’s English poem “Vague” enacts a fluid, fragmented female subjectivity in dialogue with Luce Irigaray’s feminist project ( This Sex Which Is Not One , 1977). By analyzing lines that refuse fixed identity—“Cracked mirror but vintage... Fragmented self but with an ancient soul”—the paper argues that “Vague” embodies Irigaray’s concept of parler-femme : poetic language that resists phallogocentric unity in favor of multiplicity and embodied difference. To contextualize “Vague” within feminist poetic lineage, the essay also highlights how Anne Sexton ( “Her Kind” ) and Adrienne Rich ( “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” When We Dead Awaken ) similarly deploy fragmented voices and alternative imagistic registers to subvert normative female roles. In doing so, these poets contribute to a feminist poetics that privileges fluidity...