File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-fem_1995/french-fem_May.95, message 22


Date: Sun, 14 May 1995 10:41:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sherry Linkon <sjlinkon-AT-cc.ysu.edu>
Subject: Re: Irigaray & Piano


Yes, I agree that the end of The Piano suggests a kind of valorization of 
masculine language.  I read this as a suggestion that communication 
requires bilingualism.  That is, Ada's alternative languages give her 
voice and power, but with a limited effect.  She can communicate fairly 
well, through her alternative uses of conventional language, but her own 
language of the body, piano playing, reaches only others in similarly 
marginal positions.  Yet that language serves her needs and provides a 
means for her to release her sexuality and to connect with another adult 
(which she does not do otherwise).  She doesn't give up that language at 
the end, she simply begins to expand her linguistic range (ironically, of 
course, in a more conventional direction than she has previously).  

I also like the parallel between Ada's uses of language and the Maori's 
uses of language, reinforcing the centrality of marginal languages within 
the film as well as their uses as tools of resistance and the limitations 
of such resistance.

Sherry Linkon


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