Brain Drain Blog

Archive for the ‘Language’ Category

So far this?semester, our class?has covered:

• John Barth’s short story, “Lost in the Fun House”
• Jeannette Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body
• and Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Fight Club.?

To help define what postmodern means we have explored excerpts from:

• Simon Malpas’ book, The Postmodern (2005)
• H?l?ne Cixous? critique “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays” (1975)
• Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1979)
• Frederic Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991).
• and Linda Hutcheon’s Poetics of Postmodernism (1988)

How?do I cohesively make sense of all this????Having drank fully from the fire hose for weeks on end, I wonder… Will I digest or?blow??This post?is where?I just vomit in my mouth a little.

As Malpas explains, “at the heart of identity there is a ?thinking I? that experiences, conceptualizes and interacts with the world” (Malpas, 57). Consequently, running rampant throughout postmodern fiction is the question of this subject’s reliability as an authority?representing truth.

• Barth’s narrator, Ambrose,?is at once a child and an adult, interweaving the blind?experience of?”living in the moment”?with 20/20 hindsight?and calling attention, through various narrative devices, to the limitations of the narrating subject both as child and adult, in other words, as narrator looking in at the main character and main character being himself.
• Winterson complicates her narrator by creating a nongender-specific bisexual who objectifies?the beloved, Louise, pitting the power of subject?vs. object, one against the other, both creating and destroying the linguistic barrier to?fully realizing true love.
• Palahniuk splits?his narrator’s identity into two dueling?subjects within the same body who both objectify not only Marla, but each other, creating a power triangle rather than a single identifiable?power source.

By complicating?the subject, these authors use fiction?to turn?the subject?in on itself and reveal it’s limitations. The point for the reader is that perspective and?representation are not natural ways of reaching some sort of truth, but are cultural devices?that, until postmodernism hit the stage, were accepted?as natural. The most we can hope for, as Stephen Colbert often points out, is mere “truthiness” (or “falsiness” as the following parody explains), which is called into question each time subjectivity becomes decentered by an alternate?version of the?traditional subject. (Hello, Derrida!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNHqX27hlz8]

Sexuality is also addressed in each piece, not just in terms of masculinity or femininity, but where the two overlap. According to theorist H?l?ne Cixous:

Traditionally, the question of sexual difference is treated by coupling it with the opposition ? a culture?s values are premised on an organisation of thought in which descriptions of the feminine are determined by masculine categories of order, opposition and hierarchy. (Malpas, 72)

Lyotard says that metanarratives order the world for a particular culture and not all cultures order the world in the same way. Because of this he believes reality is not real, that it is rather ?simplicity, communicability? (75) in the name of the ?unity of experience? (72) and that the postmodern ?puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself? (81).

• Barth calls masculinity into question by addressing the subservience of women in the ’50s and how that defines the angered narrator’s role as he matures socially in contrast with what he feels differently internally.?
• Winterson’s non-specifically gendered and bisexual narrator?draws attention to the?dysfunction of defining through opposition, creating a world of confusion for the reader while, at the same time, pointing out the problem.
• Palahniuk’s split identity, one masculinized and one feminized, are?embodied within one male person which shows that neither masculinity nor femininity encompass fully what comprises the essence of a human being.

These narrators struggle with the idea?that identity is formed through the constriction of language and social mapping?according to opposing?genders. Each illustrates that society provides no useful language or ordering of our world to address these grey areas. Postmodern work obviously strives to draw attention to the gap between the grand narrative and what actually exists.

And, although there are many more threads to follow, the HUGE question of history (revered by Jameson as fact of lived experience) versus historicity (truthiness and the closest we can get to truth) is the last item I have time to duscuss. Jameson argues that the democratization of art subjects it?to the corruption of marketing and capitalism. They are inseparable?to the detriment of?world cultures and history through?depthless representation and pastiche unless we map how the depthless came to be, “in which we may again begin to grasp our new positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralized by our spacial as well as our social confusion” (54). SOOO, the question of historical validity appears repeatedly in our fiction selections.

• Barth criticizes history by describing the role of generations of copulation in constructing social understanding of sexuality.
• Winterson explores the narrator’s serial monogamy and only in breaking the tradition does he/she find love.
• Palahniuk creates Tyler Durden who desperately wants to break free from history to redefine it from his point of view.

According to Malpas, Hutcheon?argues that parody is not dead, it is now focused to use form?to reveal a failure of form. She also finds great value studying?the unrepresentable in fiction, as?much as that?which has been represented as “history,” because both employ the same narrative devices (Malpas, 25-26). In the fiction we have read, we can see this parody in action, where our authors provide recognition of the power forms hold, and turn around to employ these forms to point out the flaws within them. We’ll talk more about this next week when we read more of Hutcheon.

Other pan drippings, grey in color, that deserve to make it into the gravy bowl are

• body/soul connections
• bodily parts in gender definition,
• disease: death in life and life in death
• and many, many more.

Sadly, the repair man is here and I have to supervise the fixing of shit.

In class we began to analyze what the narrator had learned, if anything, by the end of Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body. I believe that several important massages were accepted by both the narrator and myself, as a participating reader.

In deep mourning for Louise’s lost love, the narrator says, “?I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t even get near finding her. It’s as if Louise never existed, like a character in a book. Did I invent her??? (189).

The question feels plausible since the narrator questions reality throughout. In this moment, Louise appears to be a haunting memory, if only of a fantasy, but Gail Right offers proof that Louise and her remaining souvenirs were not invented.

“?No, but you tried to [invent her],? Gail said. ?She wasn’t yours for the making??(189).

Does the narrator ever fully understand his or her objectification of Louise? I think yes. The last passage of the book speaks to this conclusion:

The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in the room. Beyond the door where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, its getting late. I don?t know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields. (190)

If, as the narrator says, ?it?s the clich?s that cause the trouble? (189),?or the language that?confines us, then the?confines or walls are exploding in a moment of clarity. Windows have turned to telescopes searching beyond the language, magnifying the world outside. This is the place where Louise and the narrator can finally exist together. The entire universe is theirs for the taking.

But is this a happy ending? It all depends on whether or not Louise’s final appearance is real. If so, one might think yes. Both the narrator and Louise have finally escaped the boundaries of subject, object, power and submission, using the term ?we? to capture the equality of the lovers let loose in open fields. Still there is a sense of urgency in ?Hurry now.? It?s as if the ability to escape the shackles of language is fleeting. One cannot avoid defining thought with language for long.

Then again, can we trust Gail? She’s never met Louise. What if Louise is not real? The last paragraph begins with ?This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room,? I returned to?the?novel’s beginning?for further insight.?From that perspective, the escape truly is brief. In the room where the story starts, we find the narrator avoiding heartbreak again by falling back into the same cycle of clich?s with Gail that were experienced with Jacqueline:

Still waiting for Mr Right? Miss [Gail] Right? And maybe all the little Rights? ? I am desperately looking the other way so that love won?t see me. I want the diluted version, the sloppy language, the insignificant gestures. The saggy armchair of clich?s. It?s all right, millions of bottoms have sat here before me. The springs are well worn, the fabric smelly and familiar. I don?t have to be frightened, look, my grandma did it ? my parents did it, now I will do it won?t I, arms outstretched, not to hold you, just to keep my balance, sleepwalking to that armchair. How happy we will be. And they all lived happily ever after. (2)

If this?is where the novel ends, stuck back in?the cycle with only a breif peek into the fantasy of Louise,?it becomes painfully obvious that the narrator nor the reader can remain free from the boundaries of language, the boundaries that keep us separate from love and from our beloved.

This book raises so?many questions. How can one operate outside language, even with its flaws? How would the story be told? The minute we try, the trap snaps shut once more. Even if Louise were allowed her own quotes, wouldn’t they be?filtered through the narrator’s reactions? Perhaps we must tell every story from two or more perspectives, but how does that effect our own as author or narrator? If Louise and the narrator exist outside of language, how do they communicate? Have they become one and the same – just knowing? Has anything really changed? Louise, if real,?still doesn’t speak upon arrival except through her body, through touch. Perhaps that’s the key to truth, experience without words.

Again I’m left wondering, what do we do with this? Even when we strive to reach beyond the comfortable clich?d armchair for something more, when we can?glimpse?the possibilities of the Universe and want to run freely in the open fields of equal love, we aren’t quite sure?how to step through to the other side linguistically.

Much like this…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Xu3BYaR_8]

In The Postmodern, Malpas says:

at the heart of identity there is a ‘thinking I’ that experiences, conceptualises and interacts with the world … This ‘I’ has been questioned, challanged and problematised by more recent modern and postmodern theorists. (57)

This ‘thinking I’ is certainly problematised by Jeannette Winterson in Written on the Body. By withholding the gender of the narrator and writing that narrator into numerous sexual experiences, the reader is left to his or her own devices in decoding the mystery. Faced with two choices, the reader can insert the association of his or her choice and move on or allow shifting assumptions to wash over the conscious mind.

As Malpas explains, according to theorist H?l?ne Cixous’ in her critique of modern subjectivity “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays”:

Traditionally, the question of sexual difference is treated by coupling it with the opposition … a culture’s values are premised on an organisation of thought in which descriptions of the feminine are determined by masculine categories of order, opposition and heirarchy. (72)

To consider Winterson’s audience, reader reactions within our class seem fraught with desire to code the narrator’s gender. Some folks are downright frustrated and?combing sentences?for any?give-away. Obviously to reveal the strength of this?desire is important, but why? Without a gender definition,?is it?impossible to contextualize the significance of the novel’s events?

Having read the?book’s back cover, I knew that the narrator’s gender would never be revealed. This could be why I never grew frustrated. Certainly it was an odd experience seeing my perceptions slip from one gender to another. I became increasingly aware that situations and characteristics attributed to the same character conjured different results. By no means did I “get” what was happening?to me, but the following passage by Malpas outlines that experience rather well:

One is not simply a woman or man, with all of the cultural coding that goes along with this. Instead, Cixous argues that a feminist criticism must explore the ways in which differences within a subject can be continually opened up to new forms of exploration and challenge. To this end she presents the idea of a feminist writing, an ?criture f?minine, that is able to affirm these differences, resist the closure of a male-oriented logic, and present subjectivity as a structure of continual renegotiations that transform the categories of patriarchy. (73)

Allowing myself to ride the gender wave with fluidity, I found what Winterson hasn’t written is most important. Where power?exists and determines what is “acceptable,? or at least “attributable,” lies in our perception of how?the masculine and feminine are defined by language. (Hello Saussure, my old friend.)?Winterson’s brilliance?demonstrates the subversive by using that very device.?The notion of the free-’thinking I’?is exposed for?all its cultural baggage. The reader? is offered an opportunity to see?how their own assumptions?are based on linguistic code, the power of Western culture’s structure of ordering.?Within the story, while the narrator is?able to?convert Russian to English as a professional translator, he or she is also ?betrayed by the failings of language as it applies to the?properties of love.?The resulting?awareness of linguistic confines illuminates the more naturally occurring bisexuality or grey areas within?the gender dichotomy, i.e. recognizing in masculinity the presence of sensitivity, or within?feminity an ambitious determination. (73)

The questions now is, what do we do with our new awareness??Do we get all radical and create?an entirely new?language, or do we collectively assign new meaning to old words? Before answering, maybe we should read “Is There Anything Good About Men?” by Roy F. Baumeister, Professor of Psychology & Head of Social Psychology Area, Florida State University. As he argues, if men are perceived to occupy?positions of power, it must also be recognized that they?occupy the majority of prison cells, make up the greater portion of the homeless population, and are often portrayed by the media as buffoons. Culture is a?tool employed by all for daily understanding. It is not necessarily bad in its limitation, if only we take the time to study what it reveals about our thoughts and motivations.

While theory presents an opportunity to look at the world through a new and different lens, a strong tendency also exists to reinforce beliefs I have always held. By examining the writing I have produced throughout the semester, a core theme is revealed time and time again. The only truth is that there is no absolute truth. For this reason I cannot label nor limit myself as one type of theorist, or even a combination of several. Because theory opens a window into the era when it was produced, I find value in every one whether or not I agree with every aspect it presents at present. Of all the theorists, Derrida, Fanon, Rubin, and Haraway have captured my interest most within my blog, yet all call to me as they reveal the social constructs of reality.

When I first encountered Derrida?s theory of deconstruction, I found the text incredibly dense. Deciphering which ideas were his and which belonged to philosopher Levi-Strauss proved difficult. In my frustration, I italicized and quoted every instance of Derrida?s name as if it were a curse word. In my confusion I was prone to believe that:

?Derrida? uses the term ‘bricolage’ to admirably describe Levi-Strauss? method of study. He likes that Levi, a jack-of-all-trades, finds no central set of rules with which to study his myths but uses the known aspects at hand like tools.?

I later learned that Derrida was not applauding this method of crafting theory. Bricolage was Derrida?s way of deflating Levi-Strauss? absolute definition of metaphysics. From what I understand now of Derrida?s opinion, no allusion to cursing required, the function of bricolage is neither good nor bad. It simply is what it is. Bricolage allows for no absolute center, no one truth, but instead ?can always be completed or invalidated by new information? (Derrida 922) much like Levi?s essays themselves. I fully appreciate that we must move forward using what we have at our disposal. At the same time, we must also allow for the understanding that truth is relevant only until supplemented by new information, essentially creating a new center.

If I label myself a post-colonialist, although I prefer not to, this would explain my affinity with this theory. The intellectual event that created a shift from a European center was the culmination of World War I, the holocaust, scientific discovery and modernism as a new art movement (Barry 67). These details are less evident in the language of Derrida?s essay, ?Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.? It is mentioned most directly where he says, ?ethnology could have been born as a science only at the moment when European culture . . . had been dislocated . . . forced to stop considering itself as the culture of reference’” (Derrida 918). This ideas becomes far more obvious through the explanation in Peter Barry?s Beginning Theory where he says:

in modern times a particular intellectual ?event? which constitutes a radical break from past ways of thought ? ?man? as the Renaissance slogan had it, was the measure of all other things in the universe: Western norms of dress, behavior, architecture, intellectual outlook, and so on, provided a firm center against which deviations, aberrations, variations could be detected and identified as ?Other? and marginal. In the twentieth century however, these centers were destroyed and eroded. ? In the resulting universe there are no absolutes or fixed points, so that the universe we live in is ?decentred? or inherently relativistic. Instead of movement or deviation from a known center, all we have is ?free play.? (Barry 66-67)

As I have learned in Modern Poetry, distrust of language as a center, particularly since it had been used as harmful propaganda, spurred literary works such as Woolf?s ?Mrs. Dalloway? and Eliot?s ?The Wasteland.? Language, the broken tool, is reordered and thus newly centered. Creativity also experienced a new freedom of personal and political expression in the forms of painting, sculpting, performance and poetry. Painters Dali, Picasso, and Loy broke free from their identity as painters by writing poems and as poets they painted, freeing themselves as a total being. This idea can also be applied to the limitation of our national borders. As I see it, under control of the Bush Administration, America today is in dire need of a similar decentring away from the Empirical. Like the bumper sticker says, ?I love my country but I think we should start seeing other people.? We must allow for decentralization in order to stop the oppression in places like Darfur. As this cycle begins once more, Derrida appears to be a theorist for all time.

Interestingly, decentralization is something that I had latched onto prior to reading Derrida. On January 23rd I wrote, ?rather than the traditional approach of unifying the diversity in art, something Bakhtin obviously abhors, he prefers that we celebrate our creative differences.? Bakhtin knocked criticism of authorship off its center by supplementing the idea of heteroglossia within a text. This created a new consideration for both the author and the voices of the characters simultaneously. On February 2rd in regard to the value of language I questioned:

Although this seems to prove that Saussure?s value system is a good place to start, is societal value so absolute? What if value shifts slightly between the process of expression and interpretation, dependant upon the individual?s world of reference.

Granted, while these ideas are not fully formed, they positively hint at shifting centers. By the time Derrida?s assignment appeared on the syllabus for February 3rd, I was well on my way to requiring a well structured theoretical argument to articulate my own point of view.

Once I grasped Derrida, his theory began to appear in every day application. At the end of my initial post I wrote, ?This is MY hypothesis, and it too will either be verified or invalidated by new information in class.? Interestingly, while parts of my first interpretation were incorrect, I had grasped the greater message. There is no absolute truth because new information will always combine with the old to form a new center. On February 5th, in a test post practicing the inclusion of video, I used the concept in jest:

In my Saussure post, I unfairly present my cat, Kringle, as a flesh eating monster. I now offer you his softer side, ?Derrida Style.? Decentralizing that singular murderous aspect, allowing for supplemental information, you can now arrive at a more accurate truth.

Truth may not have been the best word choice for Kringle?s totality, yet the idea of supplementary information changing the initial understanding is poignant.
?I recognized these ideas in other theorists as well, particularly in regard to identity. Gayle Rubin in ?The Traffic of Women? quotes Derrida. ?We cannot utter a single destructive proposition which has not already slipped into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest? (Rubin 1678) On February 6th, in relation to this statement, I noted that:

Rubin made me understand Derrida much better ? I saw the cultural baggage we unintentionally carry in conjunction with examination of the role women occupy in society. This was profound for me. I was suddenly struck by how I?ve lived both theories without knowing.

In my analysis, I had studied fathers giving away their daughters at weddings. I suddenly became aware of my inability to create new meaning in a failed attempt at bridal liberation during my own wedding. To call for liberation recognizes the ownership from which liberation is necessary. Through theory, the external constructs of my reality had been revealed and my understanding shifted. As a woman, I was other, woman and property in a way I hadn?t considered. Betraying my own self, I was complicit in reinforcing the fact through a presence-absence dichotomy.

While Rubin helped me to understand Derrida, both helped me to understand Fanon. On March 13th I wrote of Coetzee?s novel Disgrace, ?Lurie?s sense of being is fixed, set. Recall Fanon. The mind, in conjunction with the body, is being. This is not to be mistaken with identity. Identity is imposed in relation to and as supplement of ?other.? Being is who you are before that happens.? Fanon says of his own realization in a quote I used in my post:

I analyzed my heredity, I made a complete audit of my ailment. I wanted to be typically Negro ? it was no longer possible. I wanted to be white ? that was a joke. And when I tried, on the level of ideas and intellectual activity, to reclaim my negritude, it was snatched away from me. Proof was present that my effort was only a term of the dialectic. (Fanon 132)

To revisit the Derrida quote Rubin chose above, I see that Fanon too has difficulty escaping the stereotypical center of racism. I had noted on March 18th that ?Negritude embraces both the French meaning of black and derogatory Martinique meaning of ?nigger.? Those who accept this inclusive definition empower themselves to redefine their own meaning.? Although the concept is an admirable attempt at reclaiming identity, even this falls short for Fanon. As he speaks of black or white, the sense of ?other? is continually called into being by way of a binary dichotomy.

I had initially used the concept behind Negritude to defend Lucy?s behavior in Disgrace. While offering a way for her to redefine who she is on her own terms, I said:

Lucy also embraces the duality of her being, encompassing who she was before as well as who she is after transgressions were committed against her. This provides no comfort in the face of being violated, as Fanon too experiences, but to relinquish that sense of being, to retreat and accept the identity of victim as imposed by another, would allow only for absolute defeat.

I have just now become aware of Lucy?s reason for silence. Unlike the Negritude movement, where black men actively and vocally sought to claim a new identity, Lucy does the opposite. If she never breathes a word of her victimization, neither will she speak into existence the horrific domination and violation that has scarred her soul.

I could continue on about each and every additional instance where Derrida appears in the rest of my posts, but I find it important to shift gears before I wrap up. If Derrida says that to speak against something is to, at the same time, call it into existence, then Haraway introduces a fascinating escape from this repetitious system of binary oppositions. I say in my last blog post on April 21st:

Because cyborgs have no origin story, no dominating patriarchal tradition or otherwise, there exists possibility for freedom from these Western dualisms: ?Self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part, agent/resource, maker/made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man? (Haraway 2296). This is brilliant and beautifully Utopian. I love it. I love Haraway.

According to Haraway, communication systems and technologies are the tools necessary to recraft our selves, to disassemble and reassemble, to recode who we are. This provides an opportunity to exist somewhere within the gray areas between black and white, the genderlessness between male and female, etc. We are all cyborg. We all have the ability to slip through our confines.

?The combination of Derrida?s ?decentring? and ?supplement,? along side the questions of true identity as discussed by Rubin, Fanon, Haraway and others have already helped to interpret texts and life events I have encountered. I will carry these and many other concepts with me throughout my career and my life. I have always recognized the fact that I thrive best in gray areas and what I have been seeking, although unaware of my own quest until now, is how to break free from the confines of Western duality. I have consistently incorporated theory into my arsenal of proof for what I already believed true, that this duality is an unjust system of binding categorization. The difference is that now I am aware of what cultural apparatuses are in place to confine us within our binary systems, and my conceptual skills better articulate my displeasure in concrete terms. This has been the process by which I have learned to use theory instead of letting theory use me.

Works Cited

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. New York: Manchester University Press, 2002

Clune, Kim. Brain Drain: I Think Its Sprained.?05 May 2007. <http://atticfox.wordpress.com>.

Derrida, Jacques. ?Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.? Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. New York: St. Martin?s Press, 1989. 914-926.

Fanon, Franz. Black Skin White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1952

Haraway, Donna. ?A Manifesto for Cyborgs.? The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001. 2269-2299.

Rubin, Gayle. ?The Traffic in Women.? Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. New York: St. Martin?s Press, 1989. 1663-1683.

Again:

Why must women carry the shame of violation when men are guilty of committing the crime?

I can’t depart from?this nagging question. Lucy, her life changed forever, still won’t talk. She?can?do no more than survive, engaging with the culture of the time, marrying a man for protection,?giving up her land,?and doing it all at the expense of her “self.” I?had hoped?Coetzee would provide?the reason for?her burden of silent shame, something?beyond his provocation of the reader to?ponder the practice.?(Alliteration abounds.)

I consulted JSTOR and stumbled?upon Reading the Unspeakable: Rape in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace?by Lucy Valerie Graham. (Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2. (Jun., 2003), pp. 433-444.)

Graham?finds that while Coetzee?could?be categorized as a?male-author questioning the practices of rape discourse, unable to escape the trap of ambivalence, she instead believes that “not only is his reticence self-reflexive, it also leaves a certain responsibility with the reader” (434).

(That’s what I said.)

Although Graham’s focus is on Coetzee’s effort to use silence in order to question silence, what particularly interests me is?her investigation into?women’s silence?as present in?life, lit and art.?Particularly in?life, “place and time” are everything.

Disgrace points to a context where women are regarded as property and are liable for protection only insofar as they belong to men. As a lesbian, Lucy would be regarded as ‘unowned’ and therefore ‘huntable’ and there is even a suggestion that her sexuality may have provoked her attackers. Lucy insists that in South Africa, ‘in this place, at?this time’,? the violation she has suffered cannot be a public matter, and her refusal to report the crime may represent a rather extreme refusal to play a part in a history of oppression.

I find this only partly true. Life and culture certainly dictate the circumstances in which reporting such a thing matters. In a legal system unable to accurately?locate a stolen car, there is no purpose. In addition to the inability, if we?assume that the?justice of law enforcement?reflects the culture described above,?they will do nothing more than turn a blind eye. Such a refusal of help would do no more than trivialize the act, further negating Lucy’s worth in their eyes and her own as well. On these?points, I agree. What I can’t agree with is that Lucy’s silence is?a “refusal to play a part in a history of oppression.” Staying on the farm? Yes.?That is?obvious resistance against the forces trying to run her?off.?Keeping silent??That is?oppression in?its own right.?

Graham says this is not the sole reason why Lucy’s?account isn’t present in the novel. As for lit and art,?the “unspeakable act” is classically?left as such:

Although sexual violation was common enough subject matter in classical art, the violence of the act was both obscured and legitimised by representations that depicted sexual violation in an aesthetic manner. (440)

“Legitimised” is the word that?strikes me. To leave?details to the imagination is one thing, but to leave them so vague as to be blind to the wrong doing is, well, a disgrace. (Sorry.) Graham brings to light?Coetzee’s knowledge of this tradition.?Coetzee uses examples of actual art and lit to emphasize the need to read?beyond it’s limitations, something his character David eventually begins to do.

After the farm attack,?David finds?a reproduction of Poussin’s?The Rape of the Sabine Women… and asks: ‘What did all this attitudinizing have to do with what he expected rape to be: the lying of a man on top of a woman and pushing himself into her?’.

Men carrying women off in public, women cowering in submission, rioting in the streets under the dominant male in a red cape says nothing directly about the actual horrific act of rape. To seek the meaning behind the painting doesn’t gratify?David’s expectations.?He would be more satisfied with an internet bondage site?depicting?male power?and female submission. Taking?pornography into account,?it has only one purpose.?The?imagery created, if particularly horrific,?is solely for the pleasure of those who wish to dominate or enjoy being dominated, not as forms of expression for those who are victims.

As?Graham points out, David is wrapped up in another, more prominent example of art legitimising the act:

Thinking of Byron who ‘pushed himself into” and possibly raped ‘countesses and kitchenmaids’, Lurie speculates that from where Lucy stands?’Byron looks very old fashioned indeed.’ Here is a critique of the Romantic/humanist posturing that obscures, even justifies, forsaking ethical responsibility in the realm of life. And yet David, scholar of Romanticism, is left ‘attitudinizing’when he excuses his violation of Melanie Isaacs as an act motivated by Eros. (441)

David’s?speculation is interesting here. He knows that the art falls short in depicting the horror his daughter experienced. Coetzee shows?David’s smallest sliver of enlightenment through?his changing interpretation of art, providing?the reader?with the power to see the clues as David does.?Enlightenment has little effect here.?To present her trauma, even if she had the desire, Lucy still has no imagery short of?the failure of pornography,?nor useful language as she dances around the loaded term “rape.”?(Hello, Saussure.)

I admire?Coetzee’s creativity and desire to challenge tradition and culture, using the lack of realistic?representation?in art to speak out against the very lack in question. (Hello, Derrida.)?Okay, so Coetzee?wants?the reader?to question life, and art as reflection of that life, at once.?To parallel?the effect of this technique?with Lucy’s ineffectual use of silence or “oppressed truth”?to combat oppression, it doesn’t appear that it will get us very far. As readers, we’re left to question without the benefit of a solution.

I still?want an answer to my particular?query. How does being a victim of violence translate to shame in any culture, not just in Africa? We?continually see examples of peacekeeping by attempted assimilation and/or separation, yet the shame produced by violation of “body and being”?still exists.?(Hello, Fanon.) To take this stance means the power of culture is too strong to change. It must be toppled and rebuilt. (Hello, Rubin.) To change who has political power is not enough. Oppressive and ideological state apparatuses continue to survive the change. (Hello, Althusser.) So, when do we get to read a theorist who has all the answers?

PS:?Pardon my very narrow approach to Lucy’s experience, without further exploration of the complicated layers of race and gender relationships. I just couldn’t fit all that in. Seriously, read the criticism I cite. It’s worth it.

—— Fun with Observations ——

I’m still hanging with Derrida. It’s all a bunch of chaotic and?shifting centers of understanding bumping up against one another. We don’t have the perfect tools of observation and theory?to get it right. Like a Rubik’s Life Cube, we spin the different combinations until, we hope, one cube twists into place along side another and?aligns in harmony. We just can’t seem to harmonize one side, let alone the whole darn thing. My?Rubik’s theory is broken too. Even if?the individual cubes?are considered centers, they all revolve around one central point,?and harmony is dependant upon separation of?color… unless you break with the traditional cube?and use the one to the right.?It’s?a perfect example of seeing people rather than color, and yet it does nothing to solve the problem of abusive?power.

Jacques “Derrida” says in his very wordy “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences:”

“… pardon me for being so elliptical in order to bring?me more quickly to my principle theme” (“Derrida”?916).?

Apology not accepted, “Derrida.”
I flip you the bird.

THAT SAID, I bagged the handout and went for the cheap score.?Chapter 3?of Barry’s Beginning Theory,? was far easier to swallow. Most consoling was the comment on page 70,

“You will not find these pages of “Derrida” [emphasis mine]?by any means easy, but?they will repay some intensive work, ideally in group discussion.”

I must admit, I need to be spoon fed here. I found greater understanding of “decentralization” when Barry described it?as an event in modern times where the norm was no longer taken for granted:

… thus ‘man,’ as the Rennaisance slogan had it, was the measure of all other things in the Universe:?white Western norms of dress, behavior, architecture … provided a firm center against which deviations, aberrations, variations could be detected and identified as ‘Other’ and marginal (66-67).

This shift?from center was caused by things like the end of WWI, the Holocaust, scientific theories of relativity and art movements. Because of these events, “in the resulting universe there are no fixed points or absolutes” and ‘all we have is free play’” (Barry 67).

With my cheat sheet in hand, its time to revisit the “Derrida” handout.
Good night and good luck.

THE NEXT DAY
(because I am SO obsessed with kicking “Derrida’s” ass.)

Derrida’s” theory?is rooted in?Philosophy, thus accounting for his discourse with philosopher Levi-Strauss. Using Levi’s example of incest-prohibition, “Derrida” argues that what seems to be “naturally” rooted in our core being is really a prohibition set up by cultural society.

The best example I can come up with to show that incest is not a “natural” prohibition is with Greek and Roman mythical gods. Incest was often a necessity as no mortals were equally worthy for marriage. In this context, we can accept the idea. Even throughout English rule, first cousins were often joined because common folk would dilute the royal bloodline, yet first cousin marriages are currently?banned in our society.?Perhaps this is why incest-prohibition is not considered an instinctual or?”natural” phenomenon, but one constructed by culture.

“Derrida” uses the term “bricolage” to describe Levi-Strauss’ method of study. He likes that Levi, like a?jack-of-all-trades, finds no central set of rules with which to study his myths but uses the known aspects at hand like tools.?This system of study offers no concrete point of view from which to begin, no center, but instead “can always be completed or invalidated by new information” much like Levi’s essays themselves. (922) I?get this idea as there are no absolutes. Truth in lit studies exists only until it is proven false, just like any other scientific method.

Ah “Derrida,”
This is MY hypothesis, and it too will either be verified or invalidated by new information in class. What I hope more than anything is that we touch on all the things I didn’t here.

Off Topic Question: If Barthes was so key and so cool in bridging Saussure?with “Derrida,” why did we skip him? I’m feeling no love here.

Leslie Marmon Silko Celebrates at SUNY Albany

On Tuesday, January 30, 2007, at 8:00 p.m. Leslie Marmon Silko performed an enjoyable reading at the New York State Writers Institute to celebrate Penguin Classics? 30th Anniversary Edition of Ceremony. This bestselling novel was Silko?s first, written in 1977. According to the New York State Writers Institute, it is ?the tale of a ?half-breed? World War II veteran and his battle against personal demons. Ceremony received the American Book Award, sold three quarters of a million copies, sparked a revolution in Native American literature, and has remained a major influence on younger generations of writers? (NYSWI). Silko has also written Laguna Woman: Poems (1974), the story collection Storyteller (1981), the novel Almanac of the Dead (1991), the essay collection, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays (1996), and the novel Gardens in the Dunes (1999). She received the Pushcart Prize for poetry in 1977, a MacArthur Foundation award in 1983, and was the youngest writer included in The Norton Anthology of Women’s Literature for her short story “Lullaby.”

In stark contrast with the scholarly suit who stiffly introduced her credentials as listed above, Silko tripped up the stage steps sporting faded blue jeans, sneakers and a dark tee shirt, waves of thick, black hair bouncing behind her. Her entrance was met with enthusiastic applause, filling the moderately attended Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center with a generous welcome. Under yellow lights on a stage bare but for the podium, Silko introduced herself on a more intimate level as a woman coming from an oral tradition of storytelling which inspired her to write since elementary school. She was going to read the portion of her book where Tayo, suffering from PTSD after WWII, is being taken to Betonie, a medicine man, because he doesn?t respond well to hospital treatment. The story is set within the Navaho Reservation in Gallup, NM. Rocking on her ankles as she spoke, Silko?s saddened voice explained that she knows from personal experience that this reservation has not improved in the 30 years since the book was first written. Promising to take questions after reading because, as she noted, she reads ?a lot? and has ?an opinion on everything,? Silko started on page 94.

With a powerful, biting voice and confident posture, occasionally reaching up with both hands to tame her wild hair, Silko echoed the harsh reality of reservation life, In one instance, Tayo sees a dying cottonwood tree where he used to play. In a moment of mental escape, he remembers the comfort of the shade it once provided, that these trees were more than ?just shade,? and the way the boys would throw the berry pods at each other, feeling the rush of the seeds exploding on impact. In this moment, ?in a world of crickets and wind and cottonwood trees, he was almost alive again; almost visible. The green waves of dead faces and the screams of the dying that had echoed in his head were buried? (96). Silko has a gift for contrasts like these, contrasts that jerk her audience from a lovely, safe place and hurl them face first into the horror of surviving the war. Visions of the joyous youth are polluted with death of the undead. It may seem that Tayo is feeling at ease in this childhood reverie, yet even in burial, the faces of war haunt him. He claims they are buried, that he is nearly alive, yet the screams scream on even in his memory of them.

Told he must leave, that the old men are talking about the trouble he has caused, we are led down a bleak memory lane as Tayo recalls his childhood along his journey to Betonie. It is here we learn that Tayo has few nostalgic memories to cling to. His mother, from what he remembers, is a prostitute who left him in the care of bar patrons, giving them a dollar to feed him. Living under bar tables by day, he was always hungry. ?When he found chewing gum stuck beneath the tables, he put it in his mouth and tried to keep it. He could not remember when he first knew that cigarettes would make him vomit if he ate them? (101) When temporarily taken from his mother and kept in a room full of white walls and cribs, Tayo ?cried for a long time, standing up in the bed with his chin resting on the top rail. He chewed the paint from the top rail, still crying, but gradually becoming interested in the way the paint peeled off the metal and clung to his front teeth? (101). With her strong economy of words, Silko illustrates with fine brush strokes, Tayo?s vulnerability at not more than the age of three, the denial of his mother?s love, his desperate need of food, and his childlike resiliency to somehow survive the pain of it all. Used gum and cigarette butts are not sustenance for a developing human being, and yet the young Tayo of memory knows nothing else.

Silko peppers her story with background characters which are inherently part of the landscape. At the podium, she read with compassion about the plight of Navajos, Hopis, Zunis, and Lagunas under a bridge. These were once entire nations of people who were now scattered and searching for work among the tourist trap of the Gallup Ceremonial Grounds. ?They walked like survivors, with dull vacant eyes, their fists clutching the coins [Tayo had] thrown to them. ? They were educated only enough to know that they wanted to leave the reservation; when they got to Gallup there weren?t many jobs that they could get? (106). The Gallup landscape people are but one example of those who occupy this territory. Tayo and his mother lived like that when he was small, until a fight broke out between some unruly men and the prostitutes. ?The police came. ? He watched them tear down the last of the shelters, and they piled the rags and coats they found and sprinkled them with kerosene? (103). The police did their best to destroy these communities of impoverished people, breaking apart families in the process. Escaping to the stink of the tamarack, Tayo never saw his mother again after she was hauled away that day. Many years later, people still live under bridges. Hauling them away is not the cure.

Taking questions after the reading, most querries were structured around Silko?s personal political views. By writing about wine, poverty, prostitution, shelters, rags, comfortless smells, sounds and sights, Silko lifts the veil from the multiple horrors of racism and oppression on a very personal level. She spoke of the rape of Indian lands through Uranium mining and of the people with the introduction of alcohol and gambling. Having experienced these atrocities and their after effects first hand, it is no wonder Silko could create such an articulate and passionately crafted narrative. As Robert M. Nelson of Richmond University notes:

The disease that has infected the people, including Silko?s protagonist Tayo, is the old bane known at Laguna as Ck?o?yo medicine, which takes several new, but precedented, forms in the novel: World War II and its dreadful fallout, including such new art forms as nuclear fission and the atomic weapons capable of destroying all life (Nelson).

To each and every scarification, of both her land and her people, Silko speaks with conviction, ?Despite the appearance of war, corruption and chaos, don?t lose hope. Spiritual healing persists on parallel but different plains.? She believes this emphatically and spoke so assuredly, she convinced me to believe the same even after hearing about the atrocities in such vivid detail.

What I?ve learned about writing through Leslie Morman Silko is that it is most rewarding to write about what you are most passionate about. Experimentation with form is one thing, but the way to truly reach people and raise awareness where little light is shed is to simply write from the heart. The world of settings and images, populated with characters ripe for contemplation, is already at an author?s fingertips. That passion, as Silko has made evident, reaches through the words and strums the chords of compassion within the depths of the soul. The dank detail we fear to face in our lives must be confronted and recorded. A lifetime of detail, snippets of conversations, people we love, hate, and love to hate are already stewing under the surface. They simply need to be wrestled out of hiding and brought into the light.

Works Cited
Nelson, Robert M. ?Leslie Marmon Silko: storyteller? Joy Porter and Kenneth Roemer, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 245-56. University of Richmond, Virginia. 1 May 2007 .
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. New York State Writers Institute, State University of New York. 1 May 2007 .

If signifiers are randomly chosen to “stand in for an idea,” how do they accumulate?value in language? Saussure?believes that?the value of a word?is both conceptual and material.

SAUSSURE ON CONCEPTUAL VALUE
In his passage on 969,?Saussure says:

… all [sign] values are apparently governed by the same paradoxical principle. They are always composed :
(1) of a dissimilar thing that can be exchanged for the thing of which the value is to be determined; and
(2) of similar things that can be compared with the thing of which the value is to be determined.

CONCEPTUAL VALUE IN OUR OWN WORDS
Signs?gain value in two distinct ways. In one aspect, similarities help to define that sign and give it value. For example, the word cat?belongs to a?category containing house cat, lynx, puma, leopard, tiger, and lion.?These similarities help to define “cat” as having whiskers, fur, sharp teeth, and claws. But this is only half of the story.?

Each sign is?also given value by the differences it has from another. To refer back to a “cat,” we know that?house cats are smaller in relation to lions, a lynx has a wicked overgrowth of?ear hair, leopards have spots, tigers have stripes and, really, all but the house cat can eat you (unless it’s mine). The differences between each of these types of cat help to define the other by what they are not.

This is simply the idea of synonyms and antonyms operating simultaneously within the system of language to define each other. A word/sign has value on it’s own, but also gains value when surrounded by others. Together, they?both limit and enhance each other.

SAUSSURE ON MATERIAL VALUE
In his passage on 971,?Saussure says:

Signs function, then, not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position … it is impossible for sound alone, a material element, to belong to language. It is only a secondary thing, substance to be put to use. All our conventional values have the characteristic of not being confused with the tangible element which supports them. For instance, it is not the metal in piece of money that fixes its value. A coin nominally worth five francs may contain less than half its worth in silver. Its value will vary according to its use inside or outside a political boundary. This is even more true of the linguistic signifier, which is not phonic but incorporeal – constituted not by its material substance but by the differences that separate its sound-image from all others.

MATERIAL VALUE IN OUR OWN WORDS
Speech is?comprised of material sounds and yet uniformity of these sounds?is not solely what give?a word value.?Saussure?says that?the difference between sounds?is what separates the?sign from all others. We can enjoy the latitude of?pronunciation variation, whether?through?dialect or drunken slurring, and still be understood by the masses.?

To illustrate how a?sign’s value is not simply comprised of its parts, consider a painting. (This example has been brought to you by the oh-so-brilliant John Urbanski.) The canvas, gesso, paint and brushes used to create that painting are worth a certain dollar amount, but once hung in a gallery, the value of the completed creation increases significantly based on a social value system. Similarly, the value of words/signs must be accepted, understood and thus dictated by society,?yet some wiggle room exists for creative differences.

Professor Middleton says:

You might consider which words are more valuable in our society, and which are less valuable, based on their associations and synonyms/antonyms (as you discuss above). Can you think of a particularly valuable word? Or one that is less valuable? (which ones do we need, and which could we live without?)

?I nominate sign, signifier, and signified for the latter category. (Ba-dum-bum.)?Okay, seriously, what about our use of eeeevil “terrorist” vs. the good “freedom fighter.” Each are politically charged groups employing guerrilla tactics.?The label assigned?depends on cultural perspective. Or how about “escalation” (a rise) vs. “surge” (as in quick blast and retreat)??Both mean an increase in troops but the terms are being batted around to see which sounds more pallatable to US citizens. As for those words we can completely do without??Racial slurs win, hands down.

OKAY. SO WHAT!?!?
So,?the value of the sign is a positive fact based in differential definition. But what happens when lines cross and there isn’t enough difference to distinguish accurate meaning? On 973, Saussure says,

“Two ideas that are no longer distinct in the mind tend to merge into the same signifier.”

Dude, it’s a joke!?See the (lame) humor on?958?in the introduction to Saussure:

A homeowner answering the phone and hearing that “The viper is coming” might feel fear, but when the voice on the line explains that “he’s coming to vipe your vindows,” what had initially been a serpent becomes a benign household maintenance worker. A foreign accent?changes the sounds in a language without changing the system of differences.

Although?this seems to prove that Sassure’s value system is?a?good place to start,?is?societal?value?so absolute??What if?value?shifts slightly?between the process of?expression?and interpretation dependant upon the?individual’s world of reference.

In other words, as I write this, I know what?our group is?trying to say. The question is, as a reader, do you see?the message?as clearly as?we intended?

As a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, Saussure’s “assimilation” grabbed my attention. Trekkies know this term well, thus, I refer to Star Trek for two reasons:

a.) First and foremost, Captain Picard’s superior intelligence is WAY sexier than Captain Kirk’s overactive libido

2.) and probably far more applicable to Saussure’s theory is this: The Borg Collective, arch enemy of Picard’s individuality, expands and grows through assimilation, much like Saussure’s definition of language.

Saussure says language is developed by society as a whole, employing a collection of conventions adopted by the social body. It is then assimilated through speech into the mind of an individual. Dude, the Borg would totally love this concept. But geographical dialects, institutional influence, Ethnology? These would be surely be assimilated, stomped on and disregarded?too. Speech? Sure, the Borg?use it, but not because it is “an individual and wilful act.”I guess the Borg aren’t much for literary theory.

So, the question is posed: Can speech exist without language? Saussure thinks no, although the two?certainly influence each other. But can language exist without speech? I think yes.? – Who cares what Saussure thinks (although he said it first). I am an individual. I WILL NOT BE ASSIMILATED. I have spoken! – Speech, like sign language, is just?an expression?of ideas through signifiers. This certainly begs the question of whether we have a natural instinct to use vocal chords rather than our hands to communicate, although Saussure says that’s only a secondary consideration. Linguistics doesn’t deal with that. Linguistics deals with tracing ALL manifestations of human speech, and when it can’t be studied aurally, texts are used to uncover the history.

Sadly, as the Borg have departed from this theory, I too must go. But stay tuned! After a word from our sponsor, I’ll be right back to spout more ridiculisciousness. (<- There. I just influenced language, although technically this only happens if you assimilates the word into your own vocabulary and influence the societal whole.)

PS: The last time I visited Border’s, I noticed the staff’s new little ear thingies used to communicate with other employees. I asked the guy behind the counter if this was part of the Borg Collective. Rather irritated, he was sure to tell me, “No. I am perfectly capable of thinking on my own.”

The Borg never did have a sense of humor.

How ridiculiscious.