In her book Transits of Empire, Jodi Byrd talks about Venus retrograde, writing that when Venus passes the Sun by inferior retrograde, that “the trace of the actual Venus remains in spite of the overwhelming totality of the sun’s encapsulating embrace.” She also writes that a retrograde creates a parallax effect—”a shift in an observer’s perspective of a distant object based on a change in vantage point.” Byrd quotes Zizek on how he defines a parallax—”the illusion of being able to use the same language for phenomena which are mutually untranslatable.” This illusion can only be grasped in a “constantly shifting perspective between two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible.”
When Byrd uses astrological phenomena as a metaphor for indigeneity and settlerism, she cautions against using the metaphor without distortion. The point isn’t to say “that Indians function as Venus or the sun and that the United States serves the vice versa.” She writes that “such a correlation would miss the larger stakes of the parallax gap and its concomitant distortive effects.” Instead, Byrd calls a parallax a cacophony—a discordant sound—that politicians, academics, and storytellers often try to spin as a polyphony—a harmonious sound. Byrd specially addresses, in her book, the cacophony between decolonization and postcolonialism. Venus has a special significance in this work. Mayan and Incan calendar were built according to the cycles of Venus. On the other side of the parallax, Venus also holds a special significance within the mythology around colonialism. It is said that the first colonizers were scientists who sailed all over the world to measure the distance from the Earth to the sun using calculations taken during Venus retrograde from different locations.
During this Venus retrograde, some people were talking on Twitter about the astrological Venus. When people talk about an astrological planet, they’re really discussing the histories and associations that the planet holds. Some people said that Venus, as a representation of civility, enacts a militarized police state to protect some people while killing others. Also in the conversation was the idea that Venus is classist because civility has historically been a property of white capitalism. Within this discourse, Venus as military and Venus as economy is characterized as a violence that is inflicted on people of color.
As the discussion progressed, other people pointed out that Venus has always been a controversial planet because it is one of the only femme planets (the Moon is also femme but actually began as male). As a representation of femininity, Venus is protected symbolically only within narratives that promote patriarchal violence. Venus actually functions as scapegoat and those with femininity are often seen to perpetuate classist behaviors that validate a capitalism in which they are not winners. Femmes are seen to carry bad materialism (consumerism, appetite, superficiality) while masculine people are seen to carry good materialism (land, tool, factories).
I feel like people do not critique the Moon in the same ways as because it historically represents the more acceptable versions of femininity — nurturing, motherhood. Venus represents desires, while the Moon can touch upon what we need.
— Caput Algol ⚔ 🥀🖤 (@austral_taur) June 27, 2020
the desire to prioritize pleasure over work is not necessarily entitled, it's LIBERATORY. venus is one of the only traditionally feminine planets, and we have a long history of women being denied access to work under capitalism and public work https://t.co/qVYnEzfUqi
— the revenge of venus (@adinarising) June 27, 2020
how about men shut up about venus
— gemini moon (@lunargemi) June 27, 2020
Patriarchy is classist. Not Venus.
— liz, internal monologue amplified (@velvethammer34) June 27, 2020
It is clear, when looking at the topics raised in this discourse, that Venus as the carceral state and as classism, is not being used to represent all femininities but white femininity. Venus, as a symbolic protectorate, does not include all femininities but only one type of femininity that is controlled by white patriarchy. White femininity is a monolith. Venus as cacophony, however, is a parallax of various opposites.
Historically, Venus and Mars have not emerged through gender as lived experience but as gender as war technology. Venus and Mars both come from ancient and contemporary metaphors of war as symbolic rape—nations are characterized as feminine and outsiders as masculine. Venus as war technology is a Venus that is authored by mostly men with socio political power. These men adopt femininity as a symbol and do not use it to talk about lived experience. Defining femininity away from white capitalist patriarchy is not an easy job—femininity has often been casted as a helping partner of patriarchy rather than as a revolutionary. Moreover, femmes of color are often perceived through both Venus and through Mars as racialized outsider masculinity but never as authentically either.
The discussion about Venus during this retrograde on astro-twitter is part of a larger cacophony. We are experiencing a carceral state that is hypervisible as protestors as being hypermasculinized (described in terms of violence and aggression). The cacophony of Venuses is also a chorus of discordant femininities—femininities that promote carceral capitalism, femininities that are experienced as anticapitalist rest, femininities that are experienced as subjugated pleasure, and femininities that choose bad materialisms.
Byrd writes that, when a parallax gap becomes visible, that the impulse should not be to find common ground, to bridge the gap—to turn a cacophony into a polyphony. Rather, she instructs us through numerous case studies in her book as ways to find how the gap came to be, writing that parallax object (femininity, in this case) is what shifts your perspective so that you can see it differently. Femininity, like the astrological Venus, is not a real thing. It is a perceived thing and only becomes visible in various states of distortion.
Transfemmes, femmes of color, and queer femmes experience cacophony when we don’t agree on what femininity means or looks like. Because Venus as war technology seeks to describe not living things but nation-states, our cacophony of Venus must remain antinationalistic. This cacophony of Venus hosts discordant femininities—femininity as network, the feminine bare life, the feminine penis, he/him lesbians, femininity as spores, abstract femininity, material femininity, etc. When we reconfigure Venus as cacophony, as parallax, and as retrograde, we’re also reconfiguring it to be something that continually shifts our perspective. When we translate a Venus of nationalism into a Venus of life, transfemmes, queer femmes, and femmes of color should be at the front of this conversation not because other people don’t experience femininity but because transfemininities, racialized femininities, and queer femininities are already complex because they begin as distortions rather than monoliths.
