By Lily Poorman
Maggie Nelson’s memoir The Argonauts, a performance of autotheory which explores the radicality of gender, sexuality, maternity, and family, offers a unique analysis of the role categories play in our world and the tensions they create. Nelson views categories as burdensome, forcing narrow, sectional identities upon us and reducing our being down to a checkbox. For this reason, Nelson feels the need to exist outside of these categories. However, Nelson also struggles with the impossibility of existing without them, as categorization is an innate human function necessary for our evolution and life as we know it. Thus, we are presented with the question: how does society escape categorization given we cannot do away with it? The tension between labels of queerness and heteronormativity, maternity and gender transitioning, and motherhood and intellect, as depicted in Nelson’s memoir, shows that no matter what roles one defies, categorization is inevitable. The Argonauts articulates a theory for the revision of categories, supporting the idea that because there is no existence without categorization, we must choose to alter the categories which surround our identities, shaping them to become more authentic representations of our human experience.
In examining her personal experiences, Nelson makes explicit humanity’s intrinsic obligation to categorize and the implications and limitations that stem from doing so. Even as Nelson subverts traditional genre and language accompanying her investigation of human nature, it becomes evident that categorization is still a fundamental function of the human mind. Nelson writes that some people “find pleasure of aligning [oneself] with an identity” and loosely describes the function of categorization as “the compartmentalization of space,” the organization of the individual (Nelson 14, 75). To give further context about the innateness of categorization, it must be understood that we, as a species, rely on categories to evolve, understand, and move through the immensely complex world around us that would otherwise be incomprehensible. The groups that we create and assign to nearly every aspect of our lives are compulsory and necessary. At their most basic level, categories serve as a method of survival; we categorize a hot stove as dangerous, and, as a result, we know not to touch it. We observe, react, and categorize. As our perception of the world expands, categories help us better understand ourselves and others, our gender identity, sexuality, spirituality, personality, etc. They “serve to reduce the dimensionality of information,” simplifying, for example, one’s expansive persona into a few understandable words; extrovert, intuitive, feeler, perceiver (Kallens et al. 767). The vastness of our environment and ourselves becomes much more palatable when organized and labeled.
However, in the same way we are obliged to and aided by categorization, humans also feel compelled to break away from these categories because of their constricting nature. This dynamic plays out in The Argonauts as Nelson, trying to better understand herself and those around her, views categories as rigid structures and struggles to break free of them to avoid being tethered to certain classifications forever. Nelson writes from the premise that to assign and abide by categories is to embrace stereotypes, stifle creativity, and reduce herself and others from multidimensional beings into singular dimensions; “the demand that anyone live a life that’s all one thing” is “unsustainable” (Nelson 74). Despite our involuntary need to categorize, it is not particularly desirable to shrink all of our being into one simplified description. Therefore, there is tension between these two functions, needing to categorize while wanting to escape from it, “the innate compulsion toward categorization contradicted by the transient nature of life” (Jaksic 153). Because her titles of queer, mother, wife, and writer, while pertinent, make her feel confined to their descriptions, Nelson is eager to embrace the fluidity and ever-changing nature of her identity. She is entranced by “the romance of letting an individual experience…take precedence over a categorical one” (Nelson 9).Yet, her fight for liberation and a better conception of the intersectional self is countered by her evolutionary need for categorization and reflects society’s synonymous struggle. So, regardless of our attempts to honor the complexities of the world and of ourselves, which often seem narrowed, categorization still serves as a necessary human function. The tension between categories and our fight to evade them remains.
Nelson first experiences this tension when she finds aspects of her existence falling outside of the constructs of queerness and falling into heteronormative ideals. In her memoir, Nelson struggles to fit every aspect of herself into the category of queer, the anti-category, which still presents itself as a category. She finds specific personal experiences, for example, her motherhood and marriage (despite it being a queer marriage), to be contradictory of what she believes it means to be queer. Nelson is conditioned to view marriage and motherhood as “a failure of the radical potentiality of queerness” resulting from conformity (Holliday 44). This is because, despite Nelson’s seeming progressiveness, she still views acts like marriage and maternity as heteronormative due to the societally-imposed and antiquated idea that what was once not permitted in the queer community can never be integrated into it. Marriage and motherhood, Nelson deduces, stifle queerness. So, because Nelson identifies with the category of queer, she feels an unwillingness to challenge it and a sort of embarrassment when she does, existing outside of it and fitting, instead, into some of the boxes of heteronormativity. At a seminar Nelson recounts in The Argonauts, she feels taken aback yet pleasantly surprised that one of the presenters, Jane Gallop, would show photos of her and her son and speak about her husband because “heterosexuality always embarrasse[d]” her (Nelson 40). According to Nelson, if she were to publicize similar work to a crowd who were unsuspecting of her queerness, her life would appear to be just as heteronormative as Gallop’s. Perhaps this makes Nelson the most embarrassed; the similarities she shares with someone she believes does not fall into the same category as her. Nelson’s queerness separates her from the heteronormative realm that Gallop is in, although they are both mothers, wives, and writers, among many other likenesses. However, in trying to distance herself from Gallop’s heterosexuality and feel valid in her queerness, Nelson finds that many aspects of her queer life fall into that category, heteronormative, a realization that disturbs her strict sense of categories. Nelson’s obsession with these categories leaves her feeling incomplete, in limbo between identities she feels she must fit into.
Although, in its radicality, queerness seeks to encompass all that is excluded from every other category, many aspects of queerness are, themselves, exclusive. In another instance of queerness versus heteronormativity, Nelson’s friend discovers a mug emblazoned with a photo of a pregnant Nelson, Harry (her spouse), and Harry’s son at Christmastime, a gift from Nelson’s mother. The friend remarks that they have “never seen anything so heteronormative,” sending Nelson into a spiral, searching for what makes the mug so “heteronormative” (Nelson 13). Is it the act of ordering a mug with a photo on it or the tradition of taking holiday family photos? Or, the fact that her family looks like a “happy” family? Nelson does not reach a conclusion, but it is clear here that the real issue is the role of categorization and, more specifically, how much Nelson, her friend, and society are bound to it. Nelson, again, is uncomfortable with the idea that parts of herself, her family, and her life could be deemed heteronormative by herself and others. As a radical anti-category, “[Q]ueerness can never define an identity; it can only ever disturb one” (Edelman qt. in Holliday 44). But the liberation of defying identities does not erase categorization as there is no way to be completely uncategorizable. While queerness houses all that does not traditionally belong to other realms, it is still a category. Moreover, Nelson’s desire to honor this version of queerness, determined by her friends, family, and society, often backfires. Certain parts of her identity, marriage, and motherhood are not disturbing; instead, they align with the undisruptiveness of heteronormativity. So, because Nelson does not always challenge and disturb, she feels she does not live up to her title, suggesting that her interpretation of queerness is not entirely all-encompassing. Even as classifications like queer try to dodge the limiting nature of categories, our interpretations of them become just as constricting.
Next, Nelson grapples with categories as she looks to connect the experiences of maternity with that of gender transitioning. Despite their seemingly different categorizations, both processes fall into the sphere of transformation. After the incident with the mug, Nelson begins discussing the queerness of pregnancy and her maternity’s connection to her partner Harry’s gender transitioning, as both events occur around the same time in her life, in what she calls “the summer of [their] changing bodies” (Nelson 79). Nelson questions whether there is “something inherently queer about pregnancy itself” as it “alters one’s ‘normal’ state” (Nelson 13). As they both undergo transformations, Harry’s body “becoming more ‘male,’ [Nelson’s] more and more ‘female,’” she uses categories to grasp these concepts and come to terms with both of their transitions (Nelson 83). Here, we see categories collapse, merging into one another without dissipation but, instead, the formation of new categories. Maternity and transition both follow a path of “becoming,” which is “not a dismissal of forms of identity,” but an individual’s ability to “seek bonds with each other,” a transformational process (Jaksic 142). Nelson steps away from the toxicity of strict categorization by equating her becoming with her partner’s while still acknowledging that categories are unavoidable and that their experiences are separate. By connecting their becoming and entering this adapted and more capacious category, Nelson is not only able to make sense of her maternity and Harry’s transition but understand how the two interact with one another. So, while, socially, Nelson’s pregnancy is viewed as the ultimate act of conformity and Harry’s transition is traditionally on the other end of this spectrum, she is able to connect their transitions without discrediting their individuality. She now views pregnancy’s intimate and transformative nature as an innately queer experience similar, but not the same, as Harry’s gender transition. Nelson’s escape from traditional concepts of queerness places her experience into a new category, becoming, and continues to demonstrate the need and perpetual existence of categorization while also suggesting that society can better respond to flexible, adaptable categories over rigid ones.
Finally, we see Nelson’s frustration with categorization play out as she struggles to fit the role of both mother and writer. Nelson views the categories of mother and writer as contradictory because the two categories are traditionally seen as mutually exclusive. Motherhood seemingly corrupts creativity, a vital aspect of Nelson’s writing, and writing takes time away from her assigned motherly duties. A good writer does not have time to mother, and a good mother does not have time to write. At the seminar with Gallop, Nelson interprets the respondent Rosalind Krauss’s argument as indicative that “Gallop’s maternity had rotted her mind” (Nelson 41). Krauss declared that Gallop’s work was weak; motherhood is nothing new or deserving of artistic attention. Nelson writes that Krauss’s argument was shaming and dismissive and, subsequently, sides with Gallop. It is clear that Nelson believes motherhood and work (writing) should be able to intersect. Nelson, like Gallop, feels she should be able to mother, write, and feel a sense of pride, not discomfort, for doing so. However, she still has difficulty balancing the two and interpreting others’ views on the subject. For instance, she discusses Peter Stoterdijk’s work surrounding the “rule of a negative gynecology,” which explains the invasiveness of society’s view on motherhood (Sloterdijk qt. in Nelson 36). Nelson interprets this as an “involution,” a “turn away from [the] mastery” of motherhood that the public opinion offers and urges, and a turn towards intimacy and immersiveness (Nelson 36). In other words, Sloterdijk and Nelson argue that a mother is not bound to the category of mother. However, Nelson also includes Peter Sloterdijk’s statement, “I cannot hold my baby at the same time as I write,” which continues to place limits on mother (Nelson 37, emphasis original). This reference provokes Nelson to wonder how she can fulfill the role of motherhood while living up to her title as a writer, a position that already presents challenges as a woman. By continuing to listen to traditional societal views and categorizations of motherhood, Nelson cannot truly experience maternity while relying on her own experiences allows for authenticity.
In all of these instances of categorical conflict, queerness and heteronormativity, maternity and gender transitioning, and motherhood and intellect, we see the same theme emerge. Nelson strives to find common ground between fulfilling the instinctual need to categorize and the societal desire to break free from it. The seeming rigidity of categories counters their necessity. However, in The Argonauts, categories are never entirely discarded but remade, and this is the solution. What must be recognized is that the “flexibility and fluidity of categorization is critically important to human creativity” (Kallens et al. 5). Nelson experiences peak clarity and creativity when she meets her natural need to categorize while adjusting those categories to be personal and pliant. Although there is no way to do away with categories, we are ultimately responsible for their creation, and therefore, we have the ability to alter them. As seen in The Argonauts, categories are only as unyielding as we make or allow them to be. As Nelson realizes this, she begins to adjust the categories which consume her to become more authentic manifestations of her complex experience.
Works Cited
Holliday, Justin. “‘The Pervert Need Not Die’: Queering Marriage and Motherhood in Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts.” CEA Critic: An Official Journal of the College English Association, vol. 83, no. 1, Mar. 2021, pp. 44–50. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mlf&AN=202122609721&site=eds-live.
Jaksic Y. Becoming (Trans)ient: Queer Motherhood and Becoming-Queer in Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. English Studies in Canada. 2019;45(1-2):141. https://search-ebscohost-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsglr.A656445683&site=eds-live
Kallens, Pablo Andres Contreras, et al. Cultural Evolution of Categorization. 2018. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/10.1016/j.cogsys.2018.08.026.
Nelson, Maggie. The Argonauts. Graywolf Press, 2015. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat00989a&AN=ford.2369384&site=eds-live.
