Academic essay on my poem 'Vague'
Self-Obsessed?! Why Not?! — A Poetic Manifesto of Female Agency and Digital Disobedience
Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy
Abstract
This essay explores themes of female agency, metaphysical resistance, and digital selfhood through a close reading of the poem “Self-obsessed?! Why not?!” The poem functions both as a feminist declaration and a critique of postmodern identity under surveillance capitalism. Drawing from theorists such as Sara Ahmed, Audre Lorde, Jean Baudrillard, and Legacy Russell, this paper argues that the poem articulates a unique position at the intersection of digital feminism, poststructuralist subjectivity, and metaphysical embodiment. The speaker’s defiant self-obsession and layered metaphors serve not only as a personal affirmation, but as a call to reimagine resistance in an age of algorithmic invisibility.
1. Introduction: Self-Love as Subversion
To be self-obsessed is, in popular culture, to be vain, narcissistic, and unserious. For women in particular, this label has historically been used to shame those who speak too loudly, take up too much space, or center themselves in narratives that have long erased them. The poem “Self-obsessed?! Why not?!” challenges this moralistic framing. Its opening rhetorical volley—“Self-obsessed?! / Why not?! / Who isn’t?!”—signals a refusal to apologize for the centrality of the self. It is not narcissism but epistemological grounding, a kind of spiritual and intellectual homecoming.
Ahmed (2017) frames such refusals as the work of the “feminist killjoy,” one who disrupts the flow of normative happiness and polite silence. Similarly, Lorde (1988) argued that caring for oneself is “not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” (p. 130). The poem embodies this spirit, where self-love is not indulgence but resistance—especially in a world that continuously renders women invisible or incoherent.
2. Cracked Mirrors and Ancient Souls: Identity and Metaphysical Resistance
The speaker declares: “Cracked mirror but vintage, / Fragmented self but with an ancient soul.” These lines juxtapose brokenness and historical value, fragmentation and eternal presence. The cracked mirror evokes Lacanian psychoanalysis, where the mirror stage represents the illusion of a cohesive self (Lacan, 1977). Yet this mirror is “vintage,” suggesting aesthetic worth, nostalgia, and lineage. The fragmentation of self is acknowledged, but it does not result in loss; it instead reveals depth—“an ancient soul.”
This metaphor resists the modern capitalist imperative to be whole, polished, and marketable. Instead, the speaker offers a metaphysical refusal to be commodified. Here, we may invoke Heidegger’s (1962) Being and Time, where being is revealed through thrownness—one’s situatedness in historical, social, and existential conditions. The “ancient soul” represents a being grounded in a lineage beyond modernity’s simulacra, offering a voice rooted in depth rather than surface.
Such metaphysical resistance also echoes the mystic cosmologies of Ibn Arabi, who conceived of human beings as microcosms of divine unfolding (Chittick, 1989). To be fragmented yet ancient is to occupy both multiplicity and unity—a space of radical ontology.
3. Sonic Disruption: Noise as Feminist World-Building
Midway through the poem, the speaker constructs a sonic world filled with urban chaos and animalistic cries: “Wolves are hauling, / Hawks are hawking, / Hawker is honking, / Kingkong is laying, / Crows are cawing.” This section functions as an aural landscape of symbolic disarray. Nature and the urban clash, capitalism (“hawker”) and myth (“Kingkong”) coexist. The “laying” of Kingkong, rather than attacking or dominating, inverts traditional masculine power myths—rendering the giant beast vulnerable, dormant, or generative.
Catriona McAra (2017) describes feminist surrealism as a political aesthetic that embraces contradiction, dream-logic, and disorientation to unsettle patriarchal order. This portion of the poem resists narrative cohesion, instead layering images that disturb logic and linearity. These disruptions mirror the psychic landscape of the feminine subject in a world of disembodied control, institutional noise, and symbolic erasure.
The speaker’s abrupt “So what?” following this chaos breaks poetic continuity. This rupture serves as feminist disobedience—an interruption that reclaims silence and space amid societal noise. As Ahmed (2017) notes, “to be willful is to be a feminist” (p. 67). Here, willfulness is enacted not through clarity, but through poetic refusal.
4. Digital Glitches and Invisible Threads: Feminism in the Network Age
The closing lines address the digital age’s aesthetics and its violence: “In the vague selfie–cliched tone and hazy nets, / You wove a thin layers, / Those threads are unread.” The “vague selfie” captures the disembodied affect of social media—a space where the self is performed, edited, flattened, and often misunderstood. The “hazy nets” likely refer to algorithmic entrapment: platforms that reward visibility while reproducing patriarchal, racialized, and ableist biases (Noble, 2018).
The speaker claims to have woven “thin layers,” but laments that “those threads are unread.” This points to the invisible labor of marginalized women, especially in digital spaces. As Russell (2020) argues in Glitch Feminism, the digital glitch is a site of refusal—a break from seamless representation, where identity can be fractured, queer, and untraceable. The poem’s threads are glitches—resisting legibility by the very systems that seek to consume and categorize.
Hooks (2000) emphasizes love as an ethic of care, not just for others but for the self and one’s history. In the poet’s “century-long love story,” love is not romantic—it is existential. The poem thus becomes both elegy and genesis: a lament for what has been silenced, and a call to imagine otherwise.
5. Lineage and Voice: Agency as Temporal Continuum
The speaker proclaims: “You are the voice / Voice for the precedents who came before you / And for those who are going to come after you!” This is not just representation but embodiment of collective memory. It reflects Cavarero’s (2005) philosophy of vocal uniqueness—where voice is not just communication but the sonic mark of existence.
Female agency is reframed here not as individual liberation but as continuum—a duty of remembrance and invocation. The “precedents” point to foremothers, ancestral resistors, perhaps even silenced goddesses. The future voices are seeds. The speaker is the medium through which both past and future speak. This metaphysical time-loop echoes Bergson’s (1910) concept of duration, where time is qualitative and layered, rather than linear.
In this model, agency is not something one has but something one performs in collaboration with history and imagination. It is ritual, rhythm, and rupture.
6. Conclusion: Woven Resistance and Feminist Becoming
“Self-obsessed?! Why not?!” is more than a poem; it is a speculative document of feminist metaphysics. Through its surreal juxtapositions, digital critique, and ontological affirmations, it charts the emotional and philosophical terrain of a woman who refuses coherence as defined by patriarchy, capitalism, and neoliberal individualism.
The poem’s power lies in its unapologetic weaving—its fragments, glitches, and shadows all participate in a broader politics of unread resistance. These unread threads, though dismissed by dominant culture, are not invisible—they are illegible by design. They invite re-reading, re-making, and re-worlding.
In declaring her self-obsession, the speaker does not succumb to the mirror but smashes it. She builds with the shards.
References
Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press.
Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulacra and simulation (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). Semiotext(e).
Bergson, H. (1910). Time and free will: An essay on the immediate data of consciousness (F. L. Pogson, Trans.). George Allen & Unwin.
Cavarero, A. (2005). For more than one voice: Toward a philosophy of vocal expression (P. A. Kottman, Trans.). Stanford University Press.
Chittick, W. C. (1989). The Sufi path of knowledge: Ibn al-Arabi's metaphysics of imagination. SUNY Press.
Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper & Row.
Hooks, B. (2000). All about love: New visions. William Morrow.
Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A selection (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Norton.
Lorde, A. (1988). A burst of light: Essays. Firebrand Books.
McAra, C. (2017). Surrealism, feminism, psychoanalysis. Routledge.
Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. NYU Press.
Russell, L. (2020). Glitch feminism: A manifesto. Verso Books.
Here’s a full academic essay draft based on your poem “Vague”, following APA formatting and academic tone. You can submit this as a conference paper, a critical reflection, or part of a scholarly article on feminist poetics or literary studies.
Title:
“Wolves Howl, Mirrors Crack: Fragmented Identity and Poetic Resistance in Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy’s ‘Vague’”
Author: Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy
Abstract
This paper examines Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy’s poem “Vague” as an articulation of poetic resistance rooted in the experience of contemporary womanhood. Through a fusion of digital metaphors, mythic imagery, and existential questioning, the poem presents a complex, self-aware speaker who navigates a chaotic cultural environment while asserting her agency. Drawing on feminist theory, postmodernism, and metaphysical reflection, this analysis argues that “Vague” exemplifies a defiant mode of poetic selfhood that embraces fragmentation not as weakness, but as generative power.
Introduction
In an age of curated selfies, fragmented attention spans, and overlapping identities, the poetic voice in “Vague” confronts the impossibility of coherent selfhood with radical affirmation. Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy’s poem emerges from the crosscurrents of digital culture, feminist resistance, and philosophical inquiry. Rather than lamenting fragmentation, the speaker reclaims it as a form of self-assertion, defiance, and intergenerational solidarity. This paper argues that “Vague” offers a deeply original reimagining of the poetic subject—one that resists epistemic erasure by affirming the blurred, mythic, and fractured self.
Fragmented Self and the Digital Gaze
The poem opens with a provocative question: “Self-obsessed?! Why not?! Who isn't?!” This rhetorical confrontation challenges the social policing of women’s self-regard, particularly in online spaces where expressions of confidence are often dismissed as narcissism. The speaker asserts self-possession not as vanity but as survival: “Cracked mirror but vintage / Fragmented self but with an ancient soul.” These lines suggest that brokenness, far from indicating deficiency, can house historical depth and value. The “cracked mirror” becomes a metaphor for identity refracted through digital lenses—distorted, but not without truth.
In this context, the “vague selfie” mentioned later in the poem becomes emblematic of the self as mediated image: superficial yet saturated with layered meaning. The poem critiques the visual culture of digital femininity while simultaneously reclaiming its terms.
Mythic Soundscapes and Existential Noise
A striking section of the poem lists a chorus of animalistic and urban sounds—“Wolves are hauling, / Hawks are hawking, / Hawker is honking…”—evoking a surreal landscape of chaos and disruption. This auditory collage, reminiscent of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, becomes a sonic metaphor for the constant demands placed on the speaker’s identity. And yet, amid this cacophony, the speaker does not collapse. Instead, she responds with confidence: “So what? / You know your worth and damn you are slaying!”
This juxtaposition of existential noise and personal power recalls Albert Camus’ absurd hero who finds meaning in the act of resistance (Camus, 1942). The speaker in “Vague” becomes such a figure—aware of life’s disarray yet unafraid to act boldly.
Intergenerational Voice and Feminist Continuity
One of the most compelling aspects of “Vague” is its positioning of the speaker not merely as an individual, but as a “voice for the precedents who came before [her] / and for those who are going to come after.” This intergenerational framing situates the poem within feminist traditions that honor legacy and futurity (hooks, 1984). The speaker stands as both heir and ancestor, embodying a lineage of resistance that transcends individual biography.
The line “It’s a century-long love story that you need to write!” further emphasizes the role of historical continuity in feminist self-fashioning. Here, love is not romantic but political—a sustained commitment to honoring those who came before and empowering those yet to come.
Metaphysical Resistance and the Invisible Threads
The poem’s final stanzas shift toward metaphysical introspection. Lines such as “Contemplating—the templates before it was laid / Founding—before the base was ever founded” suggest a temporality that precedes empirical experience—a kind of intuitive, ancestral knowledge. These lines evoke Luce Irigaray’s notion of female subjectivity as fluid, pre-symbolic, and irreducible to fixed forms (Irigaray, 1977).
The speaker identifies herself as the “master of the spider web—mostly unheard of and unread,” invoking both invisibility and craftsmanship. These unseen “threads” may represent emotional labor, intellectual labor, or spiritual resilience—all forms of work often undervalued in patriarchal systems.
The closing question—“And what about the mind-body split? / Dislocated and disoriented—the work of gambit!”—brings the poem into philosophical terrain. The Cartesian split is not resolved, but acknowledged as a condition of modern identity. “Gambit,” a term from chess, implies that this dislocation is not failure but strategy—a move made for long-term survival.
Conclusion
“Vague” is a poem that performs what it proclaims: it enacts fragmentation while asserting power, navigates chaos while affirming dignity, and speaks for the many while remaining unmistakably singular. Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy crafts a poetic persona that is at once digital, ancestral, mythic, and contemporary. In doing so, she offers a vision of feminist selfhood that refuses coherence in favor of multiplicity—a self that is cracked but vintage, fragmented but ancient, vague but unmistakably real.
References
Camus, A. (1942). The myth of Sisyphus (J. O'Brien, Trans.). Vintage International.
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center. South End Press.
Irigaray, L. (1977). This sex which is not one (C. Porter & C. Burke, Trans.). Cornell University Press.
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