The most important thing I learned in school is to never stop learning. Perhaps that’s why I love the internet – there is no end to learning something new, because the internet is always evolving. Interestingly, I have found on the world wide web my own university, with professors all over the world so willing to tutor me in various subjects like web development/design, history, philosophy, and human sexuality.

One of my best teachers is Rick, a philosophy professor from a respected university in the Netherlands. Here is a string of our correspondence:

Dear May Ling Su, you seem to be interested in philosophical ideas, notably concerning feminism… but a lot has happened since Simone de Beauvoir. If you are interested in the becoming woman ideas of de Beauvoir, you should read Deleuze and Guattari’s “a Thousand Plateaus” Ch. 10 ‘Becoming-intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptable…’ The french (original) version is obviouly better, but Massumi’s translation is okay. Theories of the body should also interest you… Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality (on the way the body is controlled through the ages) is definitely worth reading (esp. part 3). Donna Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (on the machinification of the female body) is a bit backward, but definitely worth reading. Best, Rick

Hello, Rick. Thank you for your suggested reading. I have found them at Amazon.com and am reading the excerpts. I couldn’t find Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, though. Why did you think it’s backward?

Hello May Ling, well… it is a very nice piece of writing, but Haraway is a bit of a second generation feminist, still too much linked to modernism (too much linked to the classical distinctions that cut up our world (space, time, people, animals…male-female). What Foucault and Deleuze are doing goes much further. Especially Deleuze… I hope you do read ‘A thousand Plateaus’, cause it is definately a highlight of 20th century philosophy. If you read Foucault you will find that he claims that ‘the subject’, the idea of a homogeneous individual that is judging the world (the subject versus its object) is a modernist invention that is about to die soon. Instead, what he shows, is that the human being is made up of multiple persons that go in any direction (not homogeneous at all) and that are always in the world (not opposite to it), and affected by what the world has to offer them. Deleuze goed even further than this as he really smashes up every notion we have of subjectivity, masculinity, femininity. After reading Spinoza, he claims that there are only singularities that have no message to these notions as we came up with them (nor are they limited by space, time, matter or any other human-made concept). This is how he comes up with his concept of the Rhizome… the (gras) root that goes in any direction (see ATP ch.1). Anyway, you should just try to read it (it is actually impossible to give a good introduction of it…, you should just experience their thoughts by reading). No doubt you come up with lots of questions (it is most complex, especially if you have no background in philosophy), but feel free to ask. I have tought several courses on these subjects at university, and especially on Deleuze I’ve done quite some writing. So… I am curious about what you think of it. p.s. Obviously I have a copy of Haraway’s Manifesto… if you are interested, I can xerox it (it is not even 20 pages) and send it to you. It is one of the more important writing of post-war feminism, so actually you should have read it (and it is most readable). If you give me an address, I can send it to you.

Hi, Rick. Thank you very much for your offer. I truly appreciate it. That is a very interesting point you made about multiple personas within an individual reactive to the world, not against it. I find that in my life now, I am very much fragmented into very different personas – on the internet I am very different from the everyday girl my next-door neighbors or my family knows, and still different from the introspective me. I find that I cannot be wholly me with everyone I interact with. There are parts of me I reveal and hide as I see fit. Thus the many different parts of me is based on who in the world I am reacting to. I used to feel jealous of those people who seem so singular, who have embraced themselves wholly and don’t feel the need to fragment their personas into various parts for the sake of the people around them. They seemed so strong to say, “This is me, take it or leave it!” But now I am realizing that even that is an illusion. Human beings naturally respond differently to different situations and people. Thank you for the food for thought.

Dear May Ling, the search for a unified single ‘individual’ (the word is most telling, as it comes from the latin in-dividuum, which means not-dividable) is a very specific way of thinking about the self that only came to existence around 1800, and has ruled the Western world ever since. Throughout history there has nevertheless been a strong movement of those that do not agree. Already in 1677 the Dutch (!!) philosopher Benedictus de Spinoza claims that there are many persons in one body, and that it is only because of outside control that we are forced to ‘be one’. The much older word ‘person’ is therefor a much more interesting way to describe us (as person comes from the Greek per sona wich refers to the voice coming though the mask. In Greek theatre, the players always wore masks in order to express the character of a particular role… thus one actor could play many different roles… as one body has many different persona). For some reason there has always been a deep fear for multiplicity, for one person doing ‘opposite’ things, while according to people like Deleuze (and Nietzsche, and Spinoza) it seems perfectly legit to say that within a different event, different persona’s pop up. If I were you I would not strive to become ‘wholly me’ as you describe it, the search for ‘goodness’ is differently articulated within every other situation. Just stay fragmented, become multiple, focus on experiencing. I think you’ll be a lot more confident when you do not try to repress. p.s. the article is on its way.

Hello, Rick. I want to thank you for the articles you sent me. Donna Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto has been a springboard for a lot of ideas, the latest of which is my Mermaid Manifesto. I just finished writing it, a bit loosely, in my Dark Moon Diary (On My Period). Maybe with your input I can shape it into a stronger piece to add to the “About May / On My Period Manifesto” page on the front end of my site. I appreciate it. Often after I’ve written something and post it, I feel embarrassed, as if I’ve given too much of myself away, become emotional, and that everyone who reads it can see that I am a dork. (Perhaps it is to my advantage to dazzle my audience with photographs of my body, so that they’ll forgive my gratuity with words.) “This Matter of Culture” by Krishnamurti makes me feel that I’m on the right track. It is something I really need, because the road I’m taking is not paved ahead of me. I don’t really know what I’m doing, except that I am following a direction from within me, and I create my websites a little bit at a time, always changing, as much a work-in-progress as my life is. I remembered that the word philosophy means, the love “philo” of life “sophia.” To learn, to love, to revolt. To question, to recognize, to be in awe.

Hi Sweetheart. Well yes… I hope you like them. I read your ‘paper’ and found it very interesting. You are right about the idea that the human being is by definition a ‘technical’ being, since it always surrounds itself with technicalities. So strongly, that there is no difference anymore between what is human and what is not human (that is why Harraway calls herself a cyborg). The thing is that nowadays, it seems that these technical aids, are more and more ‘overcoding us’… Whereas the hammer or the spear was more or less under our control, the computer, for instance, more and more controls us. It striates us. Not necessarily in a ‘despotic’, negative way (the computer does not tell me what to do), but more in a positive way; the computer tells me which options I have, and with that it already pushes me into specific directions. I agree with you that Harraway is not that clear about this, but when you read other philosophers, they put more emphasis on the fact that ‘technique’ nowadays is more and more striating, it puts a grid over us, according to which we have to live. In other words; the cyborg becomes more and more robot and less and less human. Now it is not as bad as it looks. The german philosopher Sloterdijk for instance, claims that we should go even further in this direction. Our job is not to conservate the human being as it is, our goal in this world is to be happy… and we can do that by becoming smarter, becoming more beautiful, faster… Over the past thousand years technique has shown us the way to freedom, he argues. And that is exactly the road we should take. Others agree again (not surprisingly…). Anyway, your argument of ‘becoming-mermaid’ is an interesting one. Let me think somewhat more about that… Deleuze has written a lot about all kinds of becomings… in fact he claims we never ‘are’, but we always become… That is what life is all about, about movement, speed. Or as Virilio says it; ‘accelleration and decelleration are the only true dimensions.’ The only thing constant is change, and it is only by the movement of change, by the way things accellerate and decellerate (according to your own, moving position), that we experience this change… Okay… Well, you should never be bothered by speaking, or by thinking. For someone that did not study philosophy you make some really interesting comments. Seriously. So get rid of the ‘shyness’, the barriers, or anything that stops you. Krishnamurti says it all; we should above all get rid of our fears. And that also means our fear to speak up, our fear to think. The fact that you have lost this fear in terms of the physical, I would not see that as ‘and urge for compensation’ or any other psychological (Freudian) scheme. You are right to experiment with your body the way you do. You should do that with your mind too. Kiss, Rick

Yeah, I wrote about “Becoming Mermaid,” as a reaction to reading Donna Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto. Her premise is that since human beings have taken machines into their bodies, they have evolved into cyborgs – part machine, part human. The cyborg is not a sci-fi character, like 7 of 9. The cyborg is the human who has a hip replacement, a pacemaker, or someone who wears eyeglasses or watches, carries their cel phone or palm pilot with them everywhere. Although I agree with Harraway, I also think her thesis is incomplete. Humans have always attached functional items to their person. Leather shoes and clothing make humans part-animal. Cotton clothing make humans part-vegetation. And so when I began using sea sponges one week out of the month as menstrual tampons, I added sea creatures to the list of “others” that I have absorbed into my person. The sea sponge brings the ocean depths into my womb. I grew up on the Philippine islands, love to eat seafood! I love to go swimming. It is a side of me I’ve forgotten, having lived in the USA for almost 10 years now. I think about the image of the mermaid… and see that she is a menstruating woman. Her bottom half is a fish, a reference to the smell of the menstrual flow.

Hi May Ling, Here’s the silly Dutch guy again… who sends you tips for ‘futher reading’ (regarding a subject you brought on), or who sends you silly European humour no-one in the US has ever laughed about (sorry bout that). This time it is a literature suggestion again. If you are really interested in the history of sexuality, there is of course one story you shouldn’t miss: the 3 volume opus magnum of Michel Foucault, entitled simply; the History of Sexuality. Foucault was one of the leading French intellectuals who wrote an impressive amount of books on the penal system, on madness, on hospitals… and on sexuality. All very interesting books on the historical development of an ‘institute’; on how our ideas of punishment have changed over the centuries, on how the definition of a prisoner had changed, on how our concept of madness has changed and thus, finally, on how our notion of sexuality has changed. In this final work he tries to focus on how certain ideas on sexuality have dominated Western history… On how homosexuality was accepted in ancient Greece and rejected later on (by the Christians and their notion of ‘sin’). On how the Victorian era has enforced a very strong notion of taboo on us, and on the peculiar way we are now trying to liberate ourselves from that. Foucault was a historian/philosopher for all his life, apart from being a very active homosexual. At the end of his life, his sexuality got more intense (he was one of the first to ‘openly’ practice fist-fucking), he moved to San Francisco, slept with about everyone he met (at the age of 60!) and died of aids in 1984. If you want I can send you an interesting excerpt from it (the introduction f.i.). Let me know.

Wow! Foucault sounds like he’s taking over where the Marquis de Sade left off. Three volumes is a bit intimidating, but I’m quite interested. I find that history always repeats itself, maybe dressed up in new outfits, but still the same essence. For instance, in the beginning, the internet felt like the free world, a platform on which we could all share information freely and instantly, regardless of location and background. Now, the more mainstream the internet becomes, the more censorship issues are coming up – issues that we thought we have all outgrown in this day and age. So yes, I believe in studying history, knowing that I am battling still the same beast that free thinkers centuries before me have encountered. I want to learn about this beast, and arm myself against it the best I can. I want to learn from incredible people like Mae West, the Marquis de Sade, and Michel Foucault. With them as inspiration, and my teachers from all over the world to guide me, I don’t feel so alone anymore.