The Argonauts

Describing an old woman she used to see at a Turkish bathhouse, Nelson considers the way in which society views elderly women. In many instances, the very idea of this kind of woman feeling sexual desire is treated as horrific, but other depictions—like the poet Allen Ginsberg’s attempts to imagine himself as his mentally ill mother’s lover—are more complex and even “generous” (56).

As Nelson explores her relationship to literal and figurative mothers, she introduces Christina Crosby: the professor who taught Nelson feminist theory and supervised her thesis despite feeling “a measure of repulsion—at [Nelson’s] interest in the personal made public” (60). Years later, Christina told Nelson a story about a group of students who, “frustrated by the poststructuralist ethos of her teaching” (59), took over the classroom one day and asked everyone to write their identities on their name-tags. The episode reminds Nelson that when she was in school, many of Christina’s students wanted her to “come out in a more public and coherent fashion” (59). Nelson can see both sides of the issue, but is personally grateful she “got sober before [she] got wireless” (61). She admires the candor of people who “intrepidly push at [the] limits” (61) of social media, but fears what she might have revealed under the influence of alcohol.