"Apostrohe, Animation, and Abortion"

by: Barbara Johnson

In "Apostrophe, Animation and Abortion," Barbara Johnson explains the effects of rhetoric in language. She uses various examples in which she shows how apostrophe gives a voice to the absent or inanimate being; however the voice given is unclear as

to who is directly being addressed (e.g. I/you). Johnson uses examples of apostrophe to describe how animation takes forms through inanimate objects. In one particular example, Johnson gives the example of a poem by Baudelaire in which the name of the character itself is ambiguous. "Agatha" which, in addition to a name, is also a homonym for "agate" (a precious stone- F, 695) is used to describe a being in relation to an object and how the objectified image is given a voice to become subject. Another

example of animation provided shows the powerful description of the wind as a "breath of being" and "moving energy through the world." However, bringing the actions of death and destruction in the poem, animates this definition of the wind (F, 696).

The wind in this example shows the ambiguity of subject and object where determination of who the actual subject is can be determined by the reader (subject can be the poet, the reader, etc.); and this determination is still left subject to scrutiny by others reading the poem.

After providing numerous examples of apostrophe and animation through poetic works, Johnson shows how these two techniques of rhetoric are utilized in relation to writings about abortion. In an example of the Gwendolyn Brooks poem "The Mother," Johnson explains the ambiguity of who is subject and who is addressee from one stanza to the next. The play on words such as "I" can represent "the self that is possessed is itself already a "you" and not an I. The "you" in the opening lines can be seen

as an "I" that has become alienated, distanced from itself, and combined with a generalized other, which includes and feminizes the reader of the poem" (Johnson, 698). She also explains the ambiguity of "the children" and whether they are always portrayed as object in the poem or do they take on the characteristics of a subject at times? The language of the poem remains uncertain as to the central theme of abortion in the poem, does it give life to the subject (the mother in this case) or does it kill the object (the child)? In conclusion, the poem itself stays alive because the object, the child, does not.

Johnson also points out the differences between male and female writings on abortion. Women writers' experience splits in identifications because women are connected with the violence and death that occurs with the child. Male writers, on the other

hand, do not experience such a connection and have writing that is referred to as "procreative" in contrast to women's "infanticidal" language and experience on abortion.

by: Connie Silbernagel