Permanent Revolution

“The term Permanent Revolution has its roots in Marxism; I have gleaned from it what I want for purposes of foregrounding prose experiment as crucial to those who identify as women; +, by extension, to proximate others on the ever widening scale of gender distribution. To recognize that gender minorities are – as are other diverse minorities – in a permanent state of emergency as concerns life + the expression of it is necessarily to reshape how we narrate as a species.” ¹ 1 Scott, Gail. Permanent Revolution. Book*hug, 2021, p. 5.   

“Where there is no emergency, there is likely no real experiment.” ² 2 Permanent Revolution. p. 60.

“I was convinced, for example, that relative linear movement of plot did not correspond to the way we think, talk, live. I was looking for a relationship between my need to ‘explode’ language, syntax, in line with what I perceived as my fractured female being. I was also fascinated by how desire circulated through the masks that my women friends + I seemed to adopt in our various roles: mother, writer, militant, lover, friend. This seemed to preclude the development of unary female characters in prose, + consequently, of plot in any conventional sense.” ³ 3 Permanent Revolution. pp. 95–96.

Montréal-based writer Gail Scott, born in 1945, grew up in a bilingual rural community in Eastern Ontario. She studied English and French literature before beginning her writing career as a journalist in 1967. During this time, she edited and co-founded multiple political and cultural small press publications; she subsequently taught journalism at Concordia University from 1980–1991. She has written four novels (Heroine, 1987 ⁴ 4 Scott, Gail. Heroine. Coach House, 1987. ; Main Brides, 1993 ⁵ 5 Scott, Gail. Main Brides: Against Ochre Pediment and Aztec Sky. Coach House, 1993 .; My Paris, 1999 ⁶ 6 Scott, Gail. My Paris: A Novel. Mercury, 1999. ; The Obituary, 2010 ⁷ 7 Scott, Gail. The Obituary. Coach House, 2010. ), the last of which was a finalist for Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. She is also the author of a short story collection, two essay collections, and four English translations of French-Québécois novels, one of which (The Sailor’s Disquiet, 2000 ⁸ 8 Delisle, Michael. The Sailor’s Disquiet. Translated by Gail Scott, Mercury, 2000. ) was shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General’s Literary Awards. She co-authored La Théorie, un dimanche (1988) ⁹ 9 Bersianik, Louky, et al. La théorie, un dimanche. Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 1988. , a fiction/théorie essay collection, and co-edited Biting the Error (2004) ¹⁰ 10 Burger, Mary, et al., editors. Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative. Coach House, 2004. , a New Narrative anthology. ¹¹ 11 Moyes, Lianne, editor. “Brief Biography of Gail Scott.” Gail Scott: Essays on Her Works, Guernica, 2002, pp. 231–234.

Permanent Revolution is an experimental essay collection that explores the connection between writing and socio-political issues. Scott uses an unconventional writing style ¹² 12 See the “Style & Aesthetics” section of this reader’s guide for more on Scott’s writing style. that allows her to raise questions without prescribing definitive answers. The first section of the book, “The Smell of Fish,” presents contemporary essays, mostly written in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, that explore current and ongoing social upheavals in relation to Scott’s own writing and life. The second section takes its title from Scott’s 1989 essay collection, Spaces Like Stairs, and features a selection of essays revised for republication. These pieces, originally composed in the ‘70s and ‘80s, reflect on experimental writing in the context of the feminist and separatist Québécois movements of those years. In this way, Permanent Revolution presents two halves of one whole: halves separated by several decades but woven together by thematic threads and the backdrop of Montréal. The newer essays in the collection echo, recast, and develop ideas that first burgeoned in her earlier writing, while the revised older essays illuminate evolutions in Scott’s ever-shifting context and praxis. 

Permanent Revolution is in conversation with queer New Narrative ¹³ 13 See the glossary of this reader’s guide for an explanation of New Narrative. and Québécois feminist fiction/théorie, ¹⁴ 14 See the glossary of this reader’s guide for an explanation of fiction/théorie. two movements concerned with the representation of minority subjects in writing. As Scott says, “both queer and feminist writers resisted the death of the author on the grounds that we didn’t want to get killed off before we existed.” ¹⁵ 15 Moyes, Lianne, editor. “In Conversation: Gail Scott, Lianne Moyes and Corey Frost.” Gail Scott: Essays on Her Works, Guernica, 2002, p. 213. Consequently, instead of removing author subjectivity from their texts, these movements focus on challenging patriarchal and conventional narrative forms by foregrounding subjectivity in all its complexity. Permanent Revolution continues these discussions while taking into account the socio-historical developments that have occurred since the ‘70s and the current political landscape: the collection broadens its concept of gender and sexuality and considers the intersection of feminism and queerness with race, social class, and culture. Moreover, Scott views linguistic and gender inequalities within Canada through the larger scope of settler colonialism and Indigenous rights. 

Scott also situates her book within the context of Canada’s unique linguistic situation. Permanent Revolution is an English text framed by the bilingual city of Montréal, where Scott lives and works as part of an Anglo-Québécois minority within a Franco-Québécois majority, which is itself a minority in Anglo-Canada. Rather than limiting the scope of the text, this specificity allows for a rich and multi-faceted look at Canada’s literary world. Scott also makes comparisons between Canada and the U.S., rooting the collection in a wider English-speaking North American context. Geographical setting is important, as Scott sees it as significant for both identity and writing, which she explains in her own words:  

Identity

Scott speaks of identity, especially marginalized identity, as hybrid. That is to say, no one’s identity is singular. Everyone experiences some kind of doubleness or multiplicity. Speaking of her woman friends, Scott describes their simultaneous (and at times contradictory) roles as “mother, writer, militant, lover, friend.” ¹⁷ 17 Permanent Revolution. p. 95. Identity is also unstable: individuals are constantly shifting between these roles as they move through their days. They acquire new roles and shed old roles as their contexts change. Scott’s “sutured subject» ¹⁸ 18 See the glossary of this reader’s guide for an explanation of the writing subject/sutured subject. is an attempt to express this flux of identity in language, which contrarily tends to fix things into permanence. ¹⁹ 19 See “Language & Translation.” The sutured subject allows minority subjects to be authentically expressed in literature, which is crucial: without this allowance, they run the risk of remaining misrepresented against the backdrop of a dominant culture.

Contradictorily, Scott and other New Narrative ²⁰ 20 See the glossary of this reader’s guide for an explanation of New Narrative. and fiction/théorie ²¹ 21 See the glossary of this reader’s guide for an explanation of fiction/théorie. writers realized early on that “[p]olitical agency involved at least a provisionally stable identity.” ²² 22 Glück, Robert. “Long Note on New Narrative.” Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative, edited by Mary Burger, et al., Coach House, 2004, p. 26. Despite their belief that no identity is truly stable, in order to be taken seriously, feminist and queer writers had to publicly present at least a tentatively fixed self. The sutured subject was also a response to this demand because it provided something unified to point toward, one voice that could house this belief in a shifting multiplicity. This is also the work that a word like “Fe-male” ²³ 23 See the glossary of this reader’s guide for an explanation of Fe-male. or a statement like Eileen Myles’ “I’m the gender of Eileen” ²⁴ 24 Cox, Ana Marie. “Eileen Miles Wants Men to Take a Hike.” The New York Times Magazine, 13 Jan. 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/eileen-myles-wants-men-to-take-a-hike.html. does: it provides an umbrella under which all the different layers of one’s identity can be included without being essentialist or reductive. This is one example of the kind of experimentation that Scott sees as key for minority writers, and it exemplifies how writing can be related to ongoing social issues.

Question 1: How might creating a new word to identify oneself be freeing or limiting? How might this act contribute to defining one’s identity, and is this act more for oneself or for others?

Question 2: What literary devices or stylistic choices does Scott employ to express the sutured subject?

Activity: Create a new word, image, or sound that captures two different (or conflicting) aspects of your identity. Explain your choices. When discussing with your classmates, consider the difficulties of trying to merge two separate elements into a single representation, and reflect on how minorities do this every day.

Language & Translation

Scott is suspicious of language: for example, she notes that the word feminine is a masculine noun in French (le féminin), which highlights the unreliability of language. ²⁵ 25 Permanent Revolution. p. 16. For Scott, language often hides inherent biases that can undermine attempts to challenge conventions and norms. Consequently, she suggests that “all language has to be seen as material to work on” ²⁶ 26 Permanent Revolution. p. 121. and that it cannot be taken at face value. Therefore, in exploring how to express minority subjects she also considers language, asking, “what would writing that was also a questioning of words + sentences in relation to each other do to the shape of a story or novel?” ²⁷ 27 Permanent Revolution. p. 99.

Scott sees language as intimately connected to culture and identity. ²⁸ 28 Permanent Revolution. p. 106. She includes multilingualism as a contributing factor to feelings of hybrid identity. Living in bilingual Montréal, she speaks of the experience of living in translation: the reality of having to constantly switch between languages depending on what the situation calls for. As an Anglo-Québécois writer, she also speaks of the difficulties of having mostly non-Québécois readers:

She therefore considers translation within a broader definition. ³⁰ 30 See the glossary of this reader’s guide for an explanation of Scott’s use of the word translation. In Scott’s understanding, translation happens not only across different languages—say, from English to French—but also within one language. Translation transmits meaning across cultures, social classes, and individuals, and it involves both the writer/speaker and the reader/listener:

Question 1: What gets lost in translation? How can we try to mitigate such loss? Is this loss inevitable?

Question 2: Do you consider translation an act of violation or an act of paying homage? What might make translation feel appropriative? What might make it more respectful?

Activity: Play a game of telephone: The first person whispers a sentence into the second person’s ear. Repeat down the line. The last person says out loud what they heard. Compare what the last person says to the original sentence. Alternatively, play this game in writing. Consider what was lost or transformed during this exercise.

Scott’s essays use a juxtapositional method. She places various texts—theoretical reflections, memories, narrated scenes, snippets of conversations, excerpts from her novels, quotes from other writers, segments from interviews, journal entries—side by side, creating more of a collage than a formal essay. She emphasizes this visually by creating breaks with ALL-CAPS headers, indenting whole paragraphs, and rendering long passages in italics. This method reflects her notion that “[t]he struggle for style is the struggle to find a rapport d’adresse that speaks in conflicted directions without loss.” ³² 32 Scott, Gail. “The Porous Text, Or, The Ecology of the Small Subject: Take 2.” Chain, no. 5, 1998, p. 206. Juxtaposition allows conflicting, even contradictory sentiments to exist side by side in the text.

The effect of this method is that, instead of moving forward in a linear progression, the text meanders, spirals, returns upon itself, and shifts laterally between points. In turn, the reading experience is significantly slowed down, opening up space for readers to linger on the page, view topics from multiple perspectives, and be active participants. Instead of telling her audience what to think, Scott invites them to explore their own ideas, opinions, and conclusions. She further achieves this effect through other stylistic choices:

– use of neologisms, e.g., Fe-male, writing subject/sutured subject ³³ 33 See the glossary of this reader’s guide for an explanation of Fe-male and the writing subject/sutured subject.
– use of French-like words and spellings, e.g., unskirtable, based on the French word incontournable
– use of specialized language or jargon, e.g., bromides, vectors, fractal
– use of + as a conjunction instead of and

Such idiosyncrasies invite a different kind of interaction with the text, encouraging the reader to be active in their reading, as they revisit sentences multiple times. The text’s stylistic oddities also help the reader to distinguish particular words, moments, and ideas and create bridges across the text.

More on Permanent Revolution

• “Gail Scott reads from Permanent Revolution!”
  • A 10-minute YouTube video, uploaded by Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, in which Scott presents and reads from her book. A good way to hear the author in her own voice and get a feel for the rhythm of the text.

• Review of Permanent Revolution in Montreal Review of Books
  • An insightful book review wherein writer H. Felix Chau Bradley shares a correspondence they had with Scott about Permanent Revolution. A good place to start if feeling overwhelmed by the text’s experimental form and language.

Texts to Read Alongside Permanent Revolution

• Robertson, Lisa. Nilling: Prose Essays on Noise, Pornography, The Codex, Melancholy, Lucretius, Folds, Cities and Related Aporias. Book*hug, 2012.
  • During the virtual book launch of Permanent Revolution with Book*hug Press (here on YouTube) Scott mentions that Robertson’s Nilling was on her mind (and literally on her desk) while she was writing her book.

• Any of Gail Scott’s novels
  • Scott discusses her own novels and writing techniques throughout Permanent Revolution. Though not a prerequisite, reading her novels provides an opportunity to experience her theory in practice.

Further Reading on New Narrative & fiction/théorie

• Glück, Robert. “Long Note on New Narrative.” Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative, edited by Mary Burger, et al., Coach House, 2004, pp. 25–34.
  • A text on New Narrative written by one of its founders.

• Bersianik, Louky, et al. Theory, a Sunday. Translated by Erica Weitzman, et al., Belladonna*, 2013.
  • A collection of essays written by the leading figures of fiction/théorie.

L’Espace de la diversité recognizes the generous support of the Canada Council, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, and the Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon.  

• Supervision: Selma Guessous  
• Coordination: Emma Telaro 
• Research and Writing: Shannon Campbell  
• Editing: Danielle Carter 
• Graphic Design: Alejandra Núñez  

Espace de la diversité 

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Montréal, Québec, H2S 1H9 

Phone: 438-383-2433 

info@espacedeladiversite.org  

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