…our seas are what we make of them, full of fish or not, opaque or transparent, red or black, high or smooth, narrow or bankless; and we are ourselves sea, sand, coral, seaweed, beaches, tides, swimmer, children, waves… More or less wavily sea, earth, sky – what matter would rebuff us? We know how to speak them all.
Aber es ist so, daß unsere Meere sind was wir aus ihnen machen, sie sind fischreich oder nicht, trüb oder durchsichtig, rot oder schwarz, bewegt oder spiegelglatt, schmal oder uferlos, und wir sind selber Meer, Sand, Korallen, Algen, Strände, Gezeiten, Schwimmerinnen, Kinder, Wellen. Mehr oder weniger ungefähr Meer, Erde, Himmel, welche Materie soll uns denn abstoßen? Wir wissen sie alle zu sprechen.
— Hélène Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa (Das Lachen der Medusa)Gertrude Postl is Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies at Suffolk County Community College (Ammerman Campus) in Selden, New York. She received her doctorate at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research areas include Feminist Philosophy and Gender Theory (in particular Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, and Julia Kristeva), Philosophy of Language, and the intersection of Philosophy and Literature. Among her current projects are Feminist Metaphors of Time and Space, a Feminist Politics of Subversion, the relationship between Reading/Writing and Text. All photos by Lisa Melendez.