This will not have been an historicizing essay.

But it will be historical. It is mired in history. It is min(e)d in history. It recognizes that unity is a delusion – this is why there is history, history is always two or more. Where there is history, there is no unity.

Separation is the psychogenetic crisis most particular to human males. In over a century of heroic thinking (often opposed by unspeakable, inexcusable petty-mindedness), psychoanalysis (and the artists who have followed it) have demonstrated in many ways that the male's separation from the mother, from the different body that is hers and yet that is also the source of his nature and nurture, leaves indelible artifacts of angst and hostility in his unconscious mind. The Oedipus is but one such artifact. Its resolution is only one step. In my dreams since my boyhood, I have met many monsters more horrible than the Sphinx. Even if I lived in a body without organs, if my libido were not subject to organization, I imagine I would meet monsters ineffable but insistent still that I let them speak.

And I acknowledge, unapologetically, that I believe Chaucer and Shakespeare encountered their own monsters of sexual division as well.