bull

Madelena Gonzales describes post-realist fiction as being “both enchanted and disgusted by their own simulation of the narrative art, searching for the sublime by through the ridiculous, refusing to separate the readerly from the writerly, they teeter on the brink of schizophrenia and psychosis” (126). It is this psychological, or psychoanalytical, or the diverse levels of the psyche that transgressive fiction is able to penetrate, conquer, and hang for public viewing. Will Self uses Bull to represent this. John Bull explores the psychoanalytic realm of attraction (and repulsion), gender, and intimacy. Self capitalizes on the notion of vulnerability as being a key ingredient of sexual desire. John Bull slowly distorts his rough, haggard, and masculine persona to be a shy, innocent, and impossibly pure sex object, not too different from a young teenage girl who is unsure of her emerging sexual power and who is also prone to being betrayed and mislead by predatory men. Indeed, the enticing knee vagina engrosses and astounds reader with its surreal pornographic imagery. Will Self creates a story that strives to resist a culture of “remorseless eradication of any meaningful individuality” (115).  John Bull becomes something unique and unlike any other human: the man with the knee vagina. He struggles to find his identity and place in the world. Feeling total despair and isolation Bull waits “for oblivion to come” (302).  By simply creating a man who has a vagina on the back of his knee, Self simultaneously opens dialogue to many relevant issues in modern society, most noticeably he addresses the difficulty of pinpointing gender and identity in the constantly changing world we live in. Although the extreme scenario of one day waking up and feeling a vagina on the back of our knee is unlikely, Will Self tries to reintroduce the importance of our individuality. This is especially true when “Bull became once again horribly aware of his leg’s radically independent gender; its strange metabolism; its awful vulnerable yearning” (277). Regardless of Bull’s consistent masculine performance displayed “through [his] aggression and violence” (247),  Bull is able to undergo the process of redefining his existence. Will Self’s use of language to describe the fleshy metamorphosis Bull successfully translates the many prevalent themes of gender, identity, and intimacy in his “in-yer-face-ness” and transgressive style.