What Tiresias Said to Odysseus Over a Steaming Trench of Blood.

Alt text: a picture of Brianna Ghey eating a chocolate bar while wearing a striped jumper. She is smiling.

This piece was read at the Aberdeen memorial for Brianna Ghey by Katherine Irvine. This version has references so that we can look back on this and prove it happened, that all of it happened. What Tiresias Said to Odysseus Over a Steaming Trench of Blood.

'A sweet smooth journey home, renowned Odysseus,

that is what you seek

but a god will make it hard for you...

Even so, you and your crew may still reach home,

suffering all the way.' (Homer, 1996: 252)

Brianna Ghey is dead.

In ‘Spectres of Marx’ Derrida says that ‘no ethics, no politics, whether revolutionary or not, seems possible and thinkable and just that does not recognise in its principle the respect for those others who are no longer or for those others who are not yet there, presently living, whether they are already dead or not yet born.’ (Derrida, 2006: 29)

Brianna Ghey is dead and there is nothing I can do, nothing we can do to bring her back.

She is a ghost already, a spectre, one who is no longer there.

Another one of our dead, another weight to carry with us.

This is not an appeal to Nihilism or a plea to pity. A girl died, a girl who liked to lip sync to pop songs, a girl who, regardless of her own pain, helped others. (Hunte, 2023)

This is not an appeal to Nihilism or a plea to pity.

‘No ethics, no politics’ can not pay service to the dead but, as Derrida reminds us, the dead, the ghosts we carry round, may not be born yet. ‘before the ghosts of those who are not yet born or who are already dead’ this is a call to remember Brianna with action, with a thirst for justice not only for her but for all the trans youth unborn, those yet to come.

Returning again to Derrida I find him arguing ‘without this non-contemporaneity with itself of the living present, without that which secretly unhinges it, without this responsibility and this respect for justice concerning those who are not there, of those who are no longer or who are not yet present and living, what sense would there be to ask the question "where?" "where tomorrow?" “whither?’ (Derrida 2006: 29-30) Without a commitment to the dead, those of our past, those of our future, our unborn, our living but not yet dead, there is no tomorrow, no ‘where now.’ In her opinion piece on Brianna’s death the barrister Robin Moira White says that ‘we know where dehumanising tactics take us, who uses them and who has used them historically…when an “other” is no longer regarded as “human,” then it is far easier to kill them’ (White, 2023) and kill them we do. We leave them breathing their last, filled with pain, far from those they love and who love them. We leave them full of fear, physical pain and alone and we tell ourselves that we are somehow protecting young people in doing so. Brianna Ghey is beyond our help now but our dead are not only the dead of our past or our freshly made corpses but those yet to be born.

Brianna Ghey’s death must come to mean something, her blood must not have soaked into the earth for nothing. We have to remind those who speak of their concerns that they left a sixteen year old girl bleeding to death in a park while national newspapers debated her right to exist, called her a danger. (Kelleher, 2023; Craggs, 2023)

We can not bring Brianna back, she has gone to her rest, gone for a long sleep where the bullies can not touch her (Ali, 2023) but our ‘yet to be born’ need us, the generation to come.

Do not let Brianna’s death be for nothing.

I write this at my kitchen table crying, the dead weighing heavy on me. To Brianna I quote Marsha P. Johnson (herself also killed, Brianna’s sibling, her guide to what comes next) ‘pay it no mind.’

References:

Ali, J. (2023) Brianna Ghey: Trans girl said she’d been excluded from school days before death. Pink News. Available at: https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/02/14/brianna-ghey-trans-teen-excluded-from-school-days-before-death/?fbclid=IwAR31K5jVzapSoDxI3b5BBnzLSBfX_G5tihgsky--JhBchD1Dx-gW2Ki1KEI (Accessed on the 14th February, 2023)

Craggs, C. (2023) Brianna Ghey had her whole life ahead of her, but even in death, she's facing transphobia. Available at: https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/brianna-ghey-charlie-craggs-opinion?fbclid=IwAR3sdZG2EgYhwi3MsAqYCRfTAKzcDvZYYHo5Yb0hEwIDUaaMI74_BA1nSps (Accessed on the 14th of February, 2023)

Derrida, J. (2006) Spectres of Marx. Translated from the French by Peggy Kamuf. New York and Abingdon; Routledge Classics.

Homer (1996) The Odyssey. Translated from the Greek by Robert Fragles. New York and London; Penguin

Hunte, B. (2023) ‘We’re Her Trans Sisters’: Friends Pay Tribute to Stabbing Victim Brianna Ghey. Vice News. Available at: https://www.vice.com/en/article/7k8gja/brianna-ghey-killing (Accessed on the 14th of February, 2023)

Kelleher, P. (2023) Brianna Ghey: The Times condemned for using teen’s deadname in ‘appalling’ coverage. Pink News. Available at: https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/02/13/brianna-ghey-trans-girl-killed-the-times/?fbclid=IwAR09UKjfXXyfiJlzTwpfy_SujosUu7wqn9Rrhi69-D7eSu7r5C7PJEt-VuI (Accessed on the 14th of February, 2023)

White, R. M. (2023) Brianna Ghey’s death was a tragedy waiting to happen. The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brianna-ghey-trans-girl-stabbed-death-b2281353.html (Accessed on the 14th of February, 2023) A note on Tiresias

Tiresias is the great seer of Greek mythology who was transformed into a woman by the goddess Hera and lived seven years as her priestess. Tiresias' wisdom is attributed to their transgressing of gendered and sexed roles.

The 'trench of blood' in the title refers to the eleventh book of the Odyssey where Odysseus descends into the afterlife to obtain a prophesy from Tiresias.

'Finding a Way Out/ Finding a Way In:' Talk Delivered at Sydney Conservatorium of Music

(Image description: Screen cap from a video showing a slide reading 'Finding a Way Out/ Finding a Way In: The Problem of Labour and its Radical Possibilities in the Artist/ Audience Relationship)

This is an upload of my pre-recorded talk for 'Reimagining Musical Programming' at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

It constitutes a reworking of my talk for 'Sonic Rebellions' that takes account of the work on this project completed after that first talk was give.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a53aZmJURn8

‘How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land’

(Image description: a black square.)

I wrote this short piece two years ago and counting but I think it still has relevance today in the wake of a mass shooting targeting the queer community while they gathered to remember the dead on trans day of remembrance. Partly I wanted to rescue this for the relative obscurity of my old Medium account, partly I think it is still relevant and not only to queer people but to all oppressed people who wish to speak out against their oppression..

The full title of this piece is: ‘How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land:’ the ownership of trans narratives and the violence of their oppression.'

I often find myself, as a Christian, returning to Psalm 137 when faced with the anger of others. This psalm is more widely known for its elegiac tone than for it’s actual content:

By the rivers of Babylon - There we sat down and there we wept When we remembered Zion.

It is not this i remember the psalm for and why I return to it.

Yesterday i discovered that the Independent journalist and Medium contributor Gemma Stone had been doxed and her information passed on to sites where she would be cyberstalking (see here) and i was reminded of why I love and return to Psalm 137 so much.

2.

‘How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.’

In a now deleted post Debbie Hayton, a noted anti-trans campaigner, argued that Gemma had asked for this because she didn’t supply her personal details and it was therefore open season on her identity.

We could talk here about victim blaming or we could say that Debbie Hayton feels that Gemma’s narrative belonged to her, that Gemma belonged to her body and soul and if she refused to submit to this then she would be forced to do so.

Gemma’s narrative became the property of those who oppress her and those like her and though I have not saw any Gender Critical Feminists support Debbie I have saw none condemn her.

3.

‘O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back What you have done to us!’

It wasn’t only Gemma silenced today.

The journalist Owen Jones highlighted the case of a young Trans Man who the trans hate group Object misgendered in death and we where treated to Cis commenters telling us that ‘there is negativity on both sides.’ If we are to have our narrative and even our names taken from us in death then are we not the refugees of the Psalm remembering Zion?

We, by the long way round, return to what I treasure in Psalm 137 and why I return to it again and again.

4.

‘Happy shall they be who take your little ones And dash them against the rock!’

When the oppressed speak they do not speak with the language of the drawing room or the debating chamber, they do not use polite forms or logical arguments. The voice of the oppressed is a cry to the heavens and, to the oppressor, looks like violence. To the oppressed it is the soul crying out for freedom.

The oppressor must always turn to the oppressed and criticise their language, show how shocked they are at the violence within their cries for justice.

Let us return to the Psalm again: when you read the final lines who do you find the most objectionable — those who wish for bloody revenge against their oppressors or those who oppress them?

Gemma has been silenced, a child’s death has been cheapened by bigotry and hate ‘how could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?’

The great Liberation Theologist Dom Helder Camara said ‘The poor are the authentic source for understanding Christian truth and practice.’ I think we must listen to the oppressed, listen to those who’s voices cry for freedom for (to quote Oscar Romero) ‘those who trample the people must be in conflict with the church’ particularly if that ‘church’ is Feminism.