By Sarah Elizabeth Spring, 2000 In an effort to explore the interlocked web that is one's race, class, gender and sexual identities, I have created a web of poetry and prose pieces. These pieces are tied to each other much as are the identity markers that form and inform our lives and politics. The post-modernist, post-structuralist ethos of our time can be interpreted as trying to pass these markers off as mere texts that situate us outside of position of author in forming our own identities. My goal here is to explore the ways in which we really are agents in constructing our identities. While each of the pieces contained here can stand alone, it is enriched, explicated, and deepened by the pieces which surround it. Each piece contains hyperlinked words which will take you to other pieces suggested by or related to those words or phrases. There are many pathways through this tangled web of words, just as there are many way to construct and privilege the various aspects of our own identity. As such, there will likely be some pieces that appear more than once as you traverse this curvy path. Most likely if you continue on your way, choosing different words you will escape this repetition; however, if you find yourself caught on a path you feel you have explored sufficiently you can always go to the map (as soon as I finish putting together a map, that is) to find points on the web you have not yet discovered. The pieces displayed here are, on the whole, not in and of themselves theoretical. However, many of them are informed by theory and nearly all of them are the result of a lot thinking about what it means for me to be who I am where I am. As such most of the pieces here are deeply personal. Needless to say, however, they do not reflect the entirety of my identity, rather they are partial snapsnots of who I am and what I think that means. Specifically I am exploring what it means for me to be a white, bisexual woman coming from a rural, working-class background. Because this page was constructed as my final project for Women's Studies 442: Lesbian Culture, it focuses much more on my sexuality than it might had it been put together in some other context. The last caveat I would like to add is that while all these pieces are original work, the degree to which the voices they contain map accurately onto my own voice varies dramatically. I take a certain degree of poetic license in some of the pieces and others represent standpoints that I have had in the past or standpoints that I recognize as possible standpoints given my own identity. So to begin your adventure through this identity web, just click on one of the blue words above. This will take you to a poem or prose piece with other hyperlinked words that will take you to other pieces that are related. Be warned, however, that about half the time the same hyperlinked words in two different pieces may go different places. Also some pieces contain more than one link to a particular piece. That said, go forth and explore!
Note on page format: these pages have been designed for Netscape 4.0 with a screen resolution of 800 x 600. If you're viewing it with some other browser or screen resolution it may not look the way I intended but it should still be rea dable. If it isn't email me and let me know. |