File(s) under permanent embargo
‘Eggs, Hair, Seeds, Milk'
• Background: Distinguishing New Materialism ‘from a post-structuralist focus upon [linguistic] texts,’ Nick J. Fox & Pam Alldred note that ‘The materialities considered in new materialist approaches include human bodies; other animate organisms; material things; spaces, places and the natural and built environment that these contain; and material forces. […] Also included may be abstract concepts, human constructs and human epiphenomena such as imagination, memory and thoughts; though not themselves “material”, such elements have the capacity to produce material effects’ (2019). The relationship between material elements and non-material elements with material effects (pre-eminently, language as abstraction) is yet to be fully elaborated within the field of New Materialism. The experimental short story ‘Eggs, Hair, Seeds, Milk’ contributes to this elaboration through its thematization/enactment of language’s relationship to material entities.
• Contribution: ‘Eggs, Hair, Seeds, Milk’ is a 3000-word Magic Realist short story told from the p.o.v. of a woman who is performing the part of a tree in a children’s pantomime. Clustered around her, on stage, other characters are 'performing' other material objects. Meanwhile, the materiality of Elizabeth’s own body — perhaps she is pregnant (or wishing to be) — adds to the constellations of material things, and words, surrounding and embodying her. The whispered on-stage words, between the actors, encounter only other materialities, as listed in the story’s title. Thus, the story initiates a confrontation between the ‘material’ and the ‘non-material’, which results in an allegory of a key debate (as above) within New Materialism.
• Significance: The title of the story – as a list of highly fecund, material things – provides the ‘raw materials’ for a story about how life comes into being in the inter-relationship of the ‘material’ and the ‘non-material’ (to the extent that language, as abstraction, is ‘non-material’).
• Contribution: ‘Eggs, Hair, Seeds, Milk’ is a 3000-word Magic Realist short story told from the p.o.v. of a woman who is performing the part of a tree in a children’s pantomime. Clustered around her, on stage, other characters are 'performing' other material objects. Meanwhile, the materiality of Elizabeth’s own body — perhaps she is pregnant (or wishing to be) — adds to the constellations of material things, and words, surrounding and embodying her. The whispered on-stage words, between the actors, encounter only other materialities, as listed in the story’s title. Thus, the story initiates a confrontation between the ‘material’ and the ‘non-material’, which results in an allegory of a key debate (as above) within New Materialism.
• Significance: The title of the story – as a list of highly fecund, material things – provides the ‘raw materials’ for a story about how life comes into being in the inter-relationship of the ‘material’ and the ‘non-material’ (to the extent that language, as abstraction, is ‘non-material’).
