Yet some of the most powerful music by women originates in confusion rather than certainty. Identity is seen as open space rather than structure, full of the clamor and turmoil of divided impulses and contradictory desires. So this torn subjectivity is expressed through language that's fractured and frayed, that oscillates between incoherence and visionary lucidity. Flux can be liberating, a welcome release from the rigidity of identity. But the experience of being decentered can also be terrifying and incapacitating.
Some psychoanalytic theorists regard schizophrenia as a language problem.
But opening the 'I' to a mob of unruly desires and dreads is risky. The poet flirts with ego- loss and derangement, walks a tight rope over the abyss of unreason. For those whose sense of identity is shaky at best, the experience of being a multitude rather than a single, solid self can be shattering. Rimbaud writes this letter and he says . . In some ways, Patti Smith is the ultimate female rock rebel.