THE APOLLONIAN
A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (Online, Open-Access, Peer-Reviewed)
Vol. 2, Issue 2 (September 2015) || ISSN 2393-9001
Chief Editor: Girindra Narayan Roy
Editors: Subashish Bhattacharjee & Saikat Guha
Special Issue on Reading Queer in Literature, Film and Culture
Part II: Literature and Queer
Research Article:
A Case of Difficult Textuality: Queer as Everyday Normal in
Edward Albee’s The Goat
Bhushan Aryal
Find this and other research articles at: http://theapollonian.in/
The Apollonian 2.2 (September 2015) 117
A Case of Difficult Textuality: Queer as Everyday Normal in
Edward Albee’s The Goat
Bhushan Aryal
West Virginia University, US
Edward Albee’s provocative 2002 play, The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? (A Note toward a
Definition of Tragedy), does many things simultaneously.1 As the title indicates, the
play claims its place in the tradition of Greek tragedies, and its direct reference to
Shakespearean work is unmistakable.2 Written with the luxury of the playwright’s
seasoned craft, the play also evokes philosophical systems in its witty terse everyday
exchanges.3 But what is distinctive and provocative about the play is its treatment of
human sexuality and the sexuality’s relationship with subjectivity and language.
Martin Gray, a happily married heterosexual man, falls in love with a goat, Sylvia, at
a time when his professional success is at the pinnacle. Though the play does not end
happily for him as Steve, his wife, kills the goat, his transformed subjectivity and the
incidents in the play demonstrate that human sexuality is essentially a queer
phenomenon—something that demands difficult exercise for its disciplining into
straight performances.4
In her major study, Joy Shihyi Huang contends that the play is about the
emergence of alternative human subjectivity, produced particularly in the context
when human subject faces its ultimate alterity—the animal. Placing the play in the
broader self-other philosophical framework, Huang argues that the play asks
difficult questions about the nature of human self and subjectivity, the structures
whose self-understanding and formation depend on their negative correlations with
animal others (128-131).5 Matthew Murray reviews The Goat as ‚unusual and
intriguing major play‛ with ‚unusual subject matter‛ offering ‚strangest theatre
experience.‛ Alvin Klein concludes his review of the play stating that ‚we may not
fully know what he is getting at. But we do know that he is asking for acceptance, for
redefinition of what is natural.‛ Ben Brantley thinks that the play ‚is about a
profoundly unsettling subject, which for the record is not bestiality but the irrational,
The Apollonian 2.2 (September 2015) 118
confounding and convention-thwarting nature of love.‛ While the play has
generated a substantial criticism ranging from the issue of how far liberal societies
can go in their tolerance of non-normative behavior to how the play redefines
human-animal relationship, it is strange that critics and reviewers eschew the play’s
obvious queerness. Certainly, part of the reluctance may have originated from the
fact that Albee himself does not use the term in the play and also has argued that
bestiality is just a context like decorative flowers rather than a major theme of the
play. Despite this hesitation, the play demonstrates that human love and sexuality
are not fully disciplinable phenomena, thus making a case for how human sexuality
is fundamentally queer in nature and how understanding this fact entails a different
mindset and language.6 The obvious bestiality in the play not only disrupts the
normative claims of heterosexuality but also questions any normalizing attempts
even of non-straight sexual practices. In other words, the play preserves the
queerness for the queer.
As Carla Freccero, in her book Queer/Early/ Modern, argues queer ‚is difficult
to define in advance‛ (5). Discussing how the deployment of term has ‚undergone
myriad transformations and has been the object of heated definitional as well as
political debates,‛ she highlights ‚its relative undefinability, its strategic usefulness
as a term that in many situations can be said to elude definition‛ (5). Adapting
psychoanalysis and post-structuralism in order to advance a culturally and
politically nuanced understanding of queer, Freccero thinks that the term has
‚something to do with a critique of literary critical and historical presumptions of
sexual and gender (hetero)normativity, in cultural contexts and in textual
subjectivities‛ (5). The heuristic strength of the term emanates from the fact its
reference goes beyond ‚the sexual identities and positionalities, as well as the
subjectivities, that have come to be called lesbian, gay, and transgender‛ to include
‚perverse and narcissistic‛ traits (5).
While the queer is defined in terms of its strangeness and unpredictability,
The Goat advances the idea that queer is a normal phenomenon that straight culture
refuses to acknowledge.7 Albee establishes its everyday reality (‚normalcy‛ would
be a wrong word)8 by giving Martin a dramatically metamorphosed subjectivity
after his epiphanic encounter with Sylvia the goat, and by placing deeply reflective
dialogues in the mouth of a highly-proper straight character like Steve. When
confronted to explain his ‘perversity,’ Martin delivers his observation in such a way
that it deconstructs the coherence of straight categories of all kinds—including gay
and lesbian identities—opening spaces for unstable and unpredictable queer reality:
The Apollonian 2.2 (September 2015) 119
Martin: Is there anything ‚we people‛ don’t get off on? Is there anything
anyone does not get off on, whether we admit it or not—whether we know it
or not? Remember Saint Sebastian with all the arrows shot into him? He
probably came! God knows the faithful did! Shall I go on!? You want to hear
about the Cross!? (Albee 106)
While these lines drag the huge world of physical phenomena from deliberately
designed religious and cultural ceremonies to unwittingly executed everyday
activities into the domain of sexuality that accentuate the unstable boundaries of
erotic life and its symbolic manifestations, Martin, at another point, highlights how
monogamous heterosexuality itself is often merely a physically kept—but
emotionally impossible— commitment. He states, ‚I’ve not been unfaithful to our
whole marriage; I want you to know this; never physically untrue, as they say‛
(Albee 35). While these lines come from a man whose elevated subjectivity can
register queer emotions and actions that are otherwise invisible to common eyes,
even a representative straight character like Steve—when forced to reflect on their
exemplary marriage in the charged context of the play— reveals the difficulty of
observing the disciplines of sexuality and marital commitments.
Steve: We’re both too bright for most of the shit. We see the deep and awful
humor of things go over the heads of most people; we see what’s hideously
wrong in what most people accept as normal; we have both the joys and
sorrows of all that. We have a straight line through life, right all the way to
dying, but that’s OK because it’s a good line.. .so long as we don’t screw up.
(88)
What is striking here is the presence of ‚the shit‛ and ‚awful humor of things over
the head of most people,‛ things that disturb the heterosexual marriage in the play’s
context. Even though Steve refuses to accept their presence ‚as normal,‛ it is ironic
that she admits ‚we‛ can always screw up the straight line.
Then, the question becomes—what is it that screws up the straight line? Julia
Kristeva’s notion of abject would be helpful here. As she defines, abject is anything
that ‚disrupts identity, system, [and] order‛ as it ‚does not respect borders,
positions, [and] rules‛ between self and other, between human and animal (4). An
encounter with an abject shatters the symbolic order reminding one of the ‚fragility
of law‛ (Kristeva 4). Such an encounter revives one’s association with the prelingual, pre-symbolic ‘real’—breaking down the system of meanings.9 It is by
pushing ‚the threatening order of animals and animalism, which are imagined as
representatives of sex and murder‛ into unconscious, a culture creates its
The Apollonian 2.2 (September 2015) 120
(heteronormative) order (Kristeva 12-13). But as Kristeva argues and the Goat
demonstrates, the repressed primal animalism—the abject—can irrupt any moment,
not only de-establishing normal social order but also disrupting the system of
communication. Since heteronormative sexuality is at the heart of symbolic order, an
encounter with the abject—the shit—revives floating queer energy as well.
The indeterminacy and unpredictability of erotic energy is further reinforced
when Martin discusses another instance of ‘shit’—the abject that breaks down the
line between straight and queer, between human self and animal other, and between
permissible and tabooed.
There was a man […] [who] told me he had his kid on his lap one day—not
even old enough to be a boy or a girl: a baby—and he had […] on his lap, and
it was gurgling at him making giggling sounds, and he had it with his arms
around it, (demonstrates) in his lap, shifting it a little side to make it happier,
to make it giggle more […] and all at once he realized he was getting hard.
(Albee 104)
While in normal discourse, this kind of expression is a taboo and the act is
interpreted as undesirable and abominable one, Albee notes its existence and shows
how the erotic scope extends far beyond normally interpreted actions and categories.
As Albee says the play is based on ‚fact‛ and follows ‚naturalistic‛ trend (Quoted in
Kuhn 1), the ‘shits’— both in actions and emotions—establish the queerness of
sexual energy. The whole point is, while sexual norms try to discipline the desires by
indicating the gap between the straight line and ‚the shit‛ surrounding it, the sexual
energy and emotions always pose the threat to the normative sexual structures.
Then this becomes the question: Is the everyday reality of queer intelligible to
‘normal’ subjectivity? The Goat forwards the idea that despite the regularity of queer
occurrence, normal subjectivity—entrenched in the disciplinary habits of mind and
associated discourses— does not register it. Martin starts understanding this
phenomenon only after the epiphanic event that transformed his subjectivity. For
instance, one major tension in the play is Martin’s failure to communicate his
transformed world view. For instance, he consistently repeats this statement: ‚You
don’t understand‛ (Albee 42).As much directed to audience as to the straight
characters in the play, this thematically central statement foregrounds the
impermeable nature of normal subjectivity that cannot note queer emotions; it is this
culturally wired blindness to certain things that keeps other things straight and
natural. Martin’s utter helplessness and failure—the tragedy of the play—does not
emanate from the fact that he slept with a goat; the tragedy lies in the fact that he
The Apollonian 2.2 (September 2015) 121
cannot communicate his transformed subjectivity with straight minds. Something
transformative has happened, and its implications can extend even beyond
sexuality—to the primal realm of human-animal relationship, to new environmental
ethics, and to one’s own authentic being. But he cannot communicate it both because
the straight mind cannot note it and also that the experience lacks the language to
express it. For instance, despite his repeated attempts to crack a break in the normal
subjectivity— represented by Steve and Ross— so that it would see what has
dawned in him is not something ‚sick, awful and absurd,‛ he remains ‚
alone…all…alone!‛ (Albee 109; ellipses original). So, the point is while it is one
thing that most people live queer lives in their own way, registering it demands a
transformed subjectivity.
As much as the impermeability of the normal mind, the language also party
obstructs Martin’s communicative attempts. The innumerable silences represented
by ellipses, unnecessary repetitions, and the broken sentences in Martin’s dialogue
not only suggest the difficult communication between the queer world and the
heterosexual normative discourse but also establish the connection between
textuality and sexuality. Describing the moment of his encounter with the goat,
Martin says, ‚I don’t know what it was—what I was feeling. It was…it wasn’t like
anything I’d felt before; it was…so…amazing, so…extraordinary! There she was,
just looking at me, with those eyes of hers, and…‛ (43, original ellipses). Expressed
in the language of normal heterosexual romantic love, this expression just evokes
ridicule and a sense of absurdity in his heterosexual audience. In fact, he cannot
explain it. He indicates that something grand has happened, but he does not find
exact words to explain it: ‚And there was a connection there –a communication—
that well…an epiphany, I guess comes closest, and I knew what was going to
happen‛ ( Albee 82). The gap lies in the fact that while for him his relationship with
the goat is not merely a relationship, but an epiphanic moment that opened a
different world to him significantly transforming his world view, for other
characters it is just a sexually charged physical intimacy. The following dialogue, for
instance, captures this tension:
Steve: I’m your type and so is she; she is the goat. So long as it’s female,
eh?
Solong as it’s got a cunt, it’s alright with you!
Martin: (Huge) A SOUL!! Don’t you know the difference? Not a cunt, a soul!
Steve: You can’t fuck a soul.
Martin: No; and it isn’t about fucking. (Albee 86)
The Apollonian 2.2 (September 2015) 122
While for Martin the relationship is of higher value—certainly without
abashing the sexual act as well—that redefines his relationship with the world, Steve
cannot see, or refuses to see, it beyond the physical plain. Indeed, for her, it is
pathological and needs to be corrected so that the straight line can be restored. But
one major aspect of the play is that despite the societal pressures on him, Martin
never admits his relationship in terms of pathology. Answering why he decided to
visit a therapy place, he says, ‚Well, when I realized something was wrong. I mean,
when realized people would think that something was wrong, that what I was doing
wasn’t […]‛ (65). Because of his double consciousness, he knows what means to see
a goat from anthropocentric erotic point of view. But for him the newly discovered
association with the goat serves a higher value. Certainly, he visits the therapy
center where he meets with other people suffering from bestiality because he knows
that his relationship won’t be tolerated. But for him, the relationship might have had
erotic moments, but primarily it is about deep communication, connection, and love.
In this relationship, the distinction between affection and eroticism blurs, making the
latter a momentary expansion or an exception in an otherwise calm and connected
coexistence. When asked whether he was having an affair with her or has screwed
her, Martin answers, ‚I am seeing her; I’m having…an affair, I guess. No! That’s not
the right word. I am…(winces) screwing her, as you put it—all of which is . .
.beyond even […] yes, I’m doing all that‛ (44). The dramatic irony is that while
audience has the opportunity to know what he is indicating, though difficult to
pinpoint exactly, his fellow characters do not get him. The goat, the symbol of
innocence and thus of queer every day normal, is killed to perpetuate the hegemonic
normal heterosexuality. Nobody heeds Martin’s suggestion that their heterosexual
marriage can be sustained even without scapegoating the goat. For him, Sylvia and
Steve are not unbridgeable opposites, but the different points of continuum in the
same world.
The play thus does not only deconstruct the normalcy of monogamist
heterosexuality but also shows how affectionate and erotic emotions float without
respecting the hegemonic discrete categories prevalent in society. In the process, the
play demonstrates what queer truly means. By definition, queer requires to remain
an uncategorized, open-ended, expansive continuum; the play tries to capture that
essence. While queering everything may be politically unacceptable for those who
are fighting for the recognition for their non-straight sexual identities, the play
deconstructs all categories of sexuality and presents sexual phenomenon as a
floating energy with trans-physical significance. Establishing the nexus among
sexualities, textualities, and subjectivities, the play foregrounds how queer
The Apollonian 2.2 (September 2015) 123
experience is mostly ineffable despite the queer’s (hidden) everyday occurrence. Not
having the language to communicate it, the queer does not get communicated well.
In that sense, the play captures the irony of queer theory or queer practice: it can be
theorized and practiced, but only as something that cannot be named.
ENDNOTES:
1.
In an interview with Steven Drukman, Albee says following about the title and the layered
nature of the play: ‚I chose the title […] because I wanted the double goat. There’s a real goat
and also a person who becomes a scapegoat. It is a play that seems to be one thing at the
beginning, but the chasm opens as we go further into it.‛
2.
The word tragedy has its roots in Greek word for goat. See Else for further association between
goat and tragedy in Greek tradition. See Aristotle for the early classification of plays. Steiner’s
argument that tragedy is impossible in the cultural psychology of modern world would
provide a context to understand the play’s claim of redefining tragedy.
3.
The repeated use of ‚nothing‛ in the play ceases to be an ordinary negation. It rather starts
establishing dialogic connection with Martin Heidegger—especially his notions of being and
nothing. Readers may also find the echoes of Greek masters like Parmenides in such
expressions.
4.
As is well-established by now, gender as performance has been Butler’s seminal contribution.
Her ideas that gender does not have any interiority or internal logic and that all performances
are individual iterations that can be detached from any master categories provide a theoretical
opening for queer as everyday (ab)normal.
5.
For the self-other—particularly human-animal—dynamics, see Derrida. Krell makes an
excellent commentary on the Derrida’s text, particularly on its connection with Heidegger’s
work.
6.
I’m using the word ‘disciplining’ in the sense Foucault theorizes it in his book,Discipline and
Punish. Also see The History of sexuality for the relationship between modern disciplinary society
and the emergence of various sexualities.
7.
Normal not in the sense of being socially sanctioned, but in the sense of being widely available
in the realm of ‘real’ (in Lacan’s term).
8.
See Davis for how normalcy (the system of norms as normal) emerged in modern world with
the combination of statistics, eugenics, and literature.
9.
‘Real’ in the sense Lacan theorizes it.
The Apollonian 2.2 (September 2015) 124
WORKS CITED:
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Ben, Brantley. ‚A Secret Paramour Who Nibbles Tin Cans.‛ Rev. of Edward Albee’s
The
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York Times, 11 Mar. 2002. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity: New York:
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Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London:
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Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New
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The Apollonian 2.2 (September 2015) 125
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Murray, Matthew. ‚The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?‛ Rev. of Edward Albee’s The Goat
or, Who is Sylvia? (A Note toward a Definition of Tragedy). Talkin’ Broadway:
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Steiner, George. The Death of Tragedy. New York: Knopf, 1961. Print.
AUTHOR INFORMATION:
Bhushan Aryal is pursuing his Doctoral research in English (Rhetoric and
Composition) at West Virginia University, US. He taught graduate and
undergraduate courses on Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Rhetoric and
Composition, and Business and Technical Writing in Nepal from 2004 to 2011.