Writing and Violence

Julia Kasdorf talks about the relationship between writing and violence in her essay “Writing Like a Mennonite" from the book A Capella. The concept that writing can be a violent act fascinates me, because I usually think of writing as a fairly passive occupation. But when you write about something that exposes painful incidents or reflects negatively on a person, I suppose this is, in some ways, violent. If, for instance, the character Hannah from Pearl Diver would have written the true story about her sister Marian's secret failure to play out the Dirk Willems role, this could have “violently” altered people's perceptions of Marian. I'm not totally convinced that “violent” is the right word to use here, but as Kasdorf writes, “The one who disturbs a perceived truth is felt to be an agressor” (180). So the writer who exposes these dark secrets is actively doing something to conquor them, and maybe to some Mennonites, this activeness signifies an unnecessary violence. It seems odd that Mennonites would equate activity with violence or aggression, especially since the early martyrs were, in their own way, acting out instead of passively accepting other people's beliefs.

Kasdorf also theorizes that writing is a way of splintering experience from words, which links it to violence. She writes, “As the ultimate disconnection from the life world, the ultimate dissociation, writing may be the most brilliant splintering trick of all” (179). This tactic of splitting the self in two, she says, is a Mennonite's way of avoiding actually having to deal directly with some trauma or issue. I don't quite understand how this works in terms of writing. But like Kasdorf points out, when you write, you express yourself all at once rather than having to hold an actual conversation with feedback from other people or the world (though this is not the case with these blogs). When you write you're usually separate from your body; the life in writing exists only in words on the page. So writing separates the body from the issues that are expressed through words, and in doing so, acts as a defense for the author. I think this is somewhat true. For me, writing definitely feels a lot safer than speaking; I can express things in writing that I would be really embarassed to say aloud. It's kind of unsettling to think of writing as a cop-out for speaking, though. Iis this splintering of ideas from body that occurs when we write really inflicting violence on the self? And how does this all relate to Mennonites and their anti-violence stances? These are some unresolved questions I still have after reading Kasdorf's piece.