I shall focus on one text, which I reprint in full:

In attempting to enter a deconstructive dialogue with this text, one must first set aside certain prejudices - indicative more, in their reliance on past modes of differentiation, of cliché in the critic than in the text - to allow a broadening of one's approach, so to speak (if I may be permitted to use 'speak' in this written context without implying any predilection toward oratory), throughout one's ability to engage with the signs used. We may, therefore set aside such terms as 'doggerel' and 'childish'. The former, naturally, with its connotations of an intellect enhanced by knowledge of archaism is hopelessly skewed as a term of critique - while the second, with its implicit subjugation of the young, has no place in a purified system of interrogation. No, our initial objections must be subsumed if we are to enter fully into the discourse the text demands.

We see then, at surface, an austerity of purpose in the poem's construction. Monosyllables, a single repetitious rhyme and the odd division of lines into the two syllable/one syllable/three syllable format. The division subverts as it clarifies - the undivided line (composed of three iambic feet) is 'cut up' into an almost Japanese mode, reminiscent of the three line haiku. The text enters therefore into a discourse between western and oriental modes, it is at once traditional and other, poetic and nonpoetic, familiar and uncanny. The question is posed - where is clarity? In the Shakespearean structures of anglocentric patriarchy or in the subjugated identity of an eastern intent? Does the reader force the unfamiliar into a single 'read' line in order to comprehend the signified meaning, or can s/he accept the line divisions and understand all the same? Furthermore, should the latter prove true, what remains of our assumptions concerning the iambic hegemony? Of course, there is no resolution in the text. The 'Cat' remains, at the finish, in position, animal, without language and unable to guide us either way.

This 'cat', however, cannot be pigeonholed so easily. It is a locus for a poetic structure and as such, has many locations outside the poem, all of which contribute greatly to the interpretations we pursue. It is animal first, and powerful in that. It's own lack of communication skills asks, nay requires, that we interrogate its function - how can this mute figure be a hero of verse?

We may look first to certain aspects of 'cat'ness. It is in possession of nothing that is 'dog'. But what is a 'dog'? the usually constructed characteristics of the canine are linear in the extreme - we are likely to imagine such concepts as 'loyalty', 'stupidity' and 'obedience' and to make associations with hunting, with pack mentality and with the growling, barking follies of an unexamined 'heroism'. These are also attributes of literary maleness. In the 'cat' then, we see, constructed in opposition to this an imposition of femininity - a nonlinear, clever and more authentic heroism. This is 'cat', 'yin', 'feminine' acting within the text, and placed by it in a position of great complexity which we shall return to in a moment.

Further, the term 'cat' is reminiscent of African American poetics and idioms of the early twentieth century. The Jazz and Bop cultures of former slaves famously used 'cat' as an affectionate term for a fellow male. This sits uncomfortably at first with our prior construct of a 'feminine' 'cat', but we may permit that. The use of Cat in Jazz was a strictly revolutionary practise implying an elegance and style superior to the non'cat' and making a powerful claim for post-slavery black identity. The 'cat' was a subversive element, a black man more possessed of a masculine aesthetic than his white overlords, more potent, less controllable than his 'sambo' forefathers. Again, there was an absence of 'dog' in this terminology - the dog, slave, sambo being rejected in favour of the graceful feline - stalking the night, if that image is not too troublesome in its unspecificity. Of course, this plays with white fears, emphasising the sexual war between black and white, making 'Cat' very much a phallic statement and thus, by any system of classification, a political one. It should also be noted that the practise of 'cat' worship in Egypt - reaching its apotheosis in the body of the sphinx - allows for a poetical elevation, in the text, of the monuments of Africa to a position equal and against those of eurocentric power.

Given this dual political meaning then (of a Black and feminist agenda), the last two lines of the poem take on a whole new dimension. The 'cat' performs a single action, that of 'sitting' on a 'mat'. The question of what this signifies is a complex and important one.

In both black and feminist narratives, the drama of 'sitting' is a conflicting one. Who is a 'sitter'? what is hir intent? In an age influenced by the protocols of oriental tradition, we have come to view the aesthetics of sitting in a class of passivity, along with 'lying' or 'slouching'. It is perhaps an act of humility before a master or a deity or even one merely of sloth and laziness - we think of a white boy 'sitting around'. However, this is a uniquely white male perspective, for the female or African American, sitting is a politicised gesture made all the more so by an identity forged in history.

Even our initial assumption about eastern 'sitting' as a passive discourse is false - to sit is to meditate and to meditate is to proactively participate in a dialogue of 'redemption' with the archetypes of one's society and cultural identity. For the feminist, sitting can be viewed as an act of defiance, claiming the traditional male space of the sofa for herself, bringing into question the narratives of 'cooking' and 'cleaning' which have afflicted the emergence of a true femininity in the occident. For a woman to sit is to be a 'bad' woman in the patriarchal sphere, but a 'good' 'woman' in the feminist one. It also reinforces the binary constructed between the sitting 'cat' and the running, yapping 'dog'. A 'sitter' cares not to please any 'master', she will not fetch for him that instrument of oppression, his stick.

This reading is reflected in our construction of a Black text. Sitting here is even more important, being a direct opposite to the 'standing' of a slave as he works the plantations of his 'owner'. We may perhaps envisage the archetypal slaveowner, 'sat' in a 'chair' on his 'porch' in the 'south'. For a 'cat' to take this hallmark of luxury is a clear political assault on the notions of privilege. More recently, of course, the Black 'sitting' narrative has found more concrete antecedents in the 'sit-in' protests of the civil rights movement. The 'cat' in the text is a Vaneigemian revolutionary, demanding access to the normality denied him. The austerity of the text's aesthetic emphasises this. There is no embellishment of the 'cat's' action, no elevation through adjectives and adverbs to the vaunted status of white 'hero', only the simple, noble, statement of, assuming the narrative voice is trustworthy, fact.

We have therefore, a text of revolutionary fervour, a subversive rejection of all that is held sacred by white eurocentric power structures - an almost eschatological interrogation of a culture that can only imagine itself secure as it ignores the other all about him. The 'cat's' force as an image comes directly from its being unremarkable, we all have our concept of 'cat', but we must, to preserve our peace of mind, subjugate the truth of its 'cat'ness - keep at bay the alien in our midst. Even its act of political 'sitting' can be ignored, rationalised within our formal and inadequate 'cat' structure so that the rebellious element of its 'sitting' is emasculated and rendered impotent.

This tragedy is reported in the final line of the text. After the momentous assertions of its triumphant set up, the text presents a grim view of the actual nature of any discourse of heroism. Yes, the 'cat' may sit, may imitate hir white male oppressors, but hir lot is eternally lesser. There is no sofa, no 'chair' on a 'southern' 'porch' - only a 'mat', that bed associated with the medieval fool. The 'cat' becomes as Falstaff - a superior in everything but rank and tragically disenfranchised because of it. The text becomes in its denouement a greater thing than the mere folk tale it had been - it is an essentially postmodern and prescient artefact, interrogating its subject matter, even as it elevates and praises it. Is the 'sitting' enough? The oppressed reader is challenged, as is the conscientious white male, to engage with the nature of hir rebellion - can it survive a process of examination? Is the throne seized a mat only?

We see then, that this text contains not only a functional illustration of rhyme and rhythm, but the complete history of the twentieth century and the conflicts - still unresolved - between the remnants of Eurocentricity and imperialism and its three great challengers, the east, the black and the female. There can be no resolution, here, and consequently, no exclusion.

As a final point, we may perhaps make another attempt to construct the text in terms of a major dialogue - that between the academics of science and of art. The 'cat' is here too a figure of symbolic significance. Any reader in recent science will be aware of the cat of Schroedinger, an illustrative device that shows the strangeness of the quantum universe. Many will also know that the illustration was designed by Schroedinger to demonstrate the absurdities of modern physics, before his mathematical satire was taken up and lauded by later minds. The 'cat' in this context takes up a whole new significance, the light of which I shall allow to fall where it may.

( CLAYTON )