chat radio:

A discourse can poison, surround, close off, and imprison, or it can liberate, cure, norish and fecundate. IT is rarely neutral.

Irigaray

I have been relating this work to my interest in the French feminist school of writing- particularly the works of Cixious, Irigaray, and Kristeva. I find their work so inspiring-the deft mixing of poetry, philosophy,  personal narative, social critique - so enchanting, so rich- (I write below- I speak for myself alone here- aside from conversations i had with my collaborators:  there are allusive correlations and strata's difficult to grasp, I roam through ecriture feminine like a drunk elephant, like a infant that has had to much lemonade...)

Chat- a most feminine phenomena, much belayed as useless, futile, base and low pointless, a weakness.

Chat holds a potential that needs to be recognised- primarily by its users.

What do I mean by chat? The ditsy spurious back stabbing low brow repetitive-to-the-point-of-totally-predictable stick-in-the-mud-does-my-bum-look-big-in-this polite-but-vindictive skirting around of important subjects? No. I am thinking more of engaged and open conversation- a banter that is self aware, or at least conscious of its unconscious....

In the feminine ecriture project, there is a desire to liberate the female subject form patriarchal language- to let the feminine subject write herself, above and beyond the controls and limitations of a 'metalanguage'.

I feel that in the practice of chat we can hear the disregarded beginnings of- not a new language, but a different kind of communication- a plurality, the presence of the subconscious, and the willing to seek meaning together in partnership 'with other', all indicating a potential shift in our relation to the 'symbolic'. Roland Barthes writes of the ecrivain- the writer who actively seeks the involvement of the reader to co-cooperatively generate meaning and the scriptable reader who is responsive to the open-ended text or conversation. The positive role of chat within community itself as a means as sharing relaxation, the assertion of common ground, a chance to share wisdom tell stories and speak ourselves – to establish and exchange meaning- offers another way of seeing chat as a much needed tonic to the business talk/competition and dismissal types of communication used in sensible adult society - mirrored in the authoritative, masculine single-voiced codes of mainstream radio- communications that render powerless by small fascism's and devices of subjugation.

Julia Kristeva, writing in Stabat Mater, says that words are both “too distant” and “too abstract” to articulate experience and situation outside of that which is 'legitimzed' ( for example womans' birth, motherhood, a feminine sexuality). I wonder if there might be a kind of liberation hidden in the mechanics of chat- this is a kind of speech that follows Derrida in his thought that a language user can never take possession of what they write or say: that the encoded 'setting down' descriptive and linear communication of 'the Law' might be disrupted by- the active participation- the pleasurable embodied- the self referential-the the- that there may be a route into- into- into- into- I don't know, but sometimes I think I feel it there...

Dale Spender writing on the feminist issue of language :"The crux of our difficulties lies in being able to identify and transform the rules which govern our behaviour and which bring patriarchal order into existence. Yet the tools we have for doing this are part of that patriarchal order. While we can modify, we must none the less use the only language, the only classification scheme which is at our disposal. We must use it in a way that is acceptable and meaningful."

I am not comfortable with the word 'acceptable'- refusing to comply with mastery is never going to be acceptable- Helene Cixious urges us in Sorties to 'break into' language, explode the law of its discourse and make it 'fly'.

Felix Gutarri, writing in The Three Ecologies, (1990) argues that practices of freedom need to be social practices. Finding our voices /learning ourselves / becoming- this is not a 'selfish arts act'- it is a everyday activity that is essential for individuals and societies should they wish to evolve beyond the difficulties facing us as a race now.

it will be a question of literally reconstructing the modalities of group being [ l’e’treen-groupe], not only through ‘communicational’ interventions but through existential mutations driven by the motor of subjectivity. Instead of clinging to general recommendations we would be implementing effective practices of experimentation, as much on a micro-social level as on a larger institutional level. 

This radio work for me is a continuation of my education- the process of learning by doing- of 'writing myslef' (slippage after Joan Retallack in The Poethical Wager- in recognition of  the mysterious processes of person hood). I have never collaborated so intently before. It has effected me.

Radio has a public use- that of sharing ideas and thoughts for the benefit for all. I hope with all my heart to continue my work on that medium, and develop the thoughts and feelings i have into something transmittable and that a dialogue- a conversation, much chat- is forthcoming. Through this medium 'we' can find, locate, and adventure further into resonant space together.