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Archive for the ‘Postmodernism’ Category

The town gets renamed Struggle?

It?s honest. Too honest. It gets the hairs up on the back of my neck. I suddenly realize I?m not comfortable with all that honesty, perhaps because it?s such a rare occurrence.

This novel brings to mind how many times I?ve cringed at names while searching for a place to live. Having moved 13 times in my life, I?ve had visceral reactions to places like Newark (too often pronounced Nork), landing instead on the nearby Lincoln Street in Cranford. Perhaps choosing a house on that street name was my throwback to growing up with Harding, Kennedy, and Madison Avenues in the small town of Angola, NY.?(There, presidential power was?a delusion of granduer.) On the other hand, what 28th Street lacked in character was compensated for by the neighborhood of Murray Hill in a city with a choice of names, Manhattan, New York (never mistaken for Nork), The Big Apple, THE city.

According to our narrating nomenclature consultant:

What he had given to all those things had been the right name, but never the true name. For things had true natures, and they hid behind false names, beneath the skin we gave them. (182)

I wonder what, in honesty, I would name the places I?ve been? Angola. Social Cesspool, Backward Bend. I say this with mildly playful and wildly arrogant confidence because, well, the demographic there is hardly diverse. Point Breeze on Lake Erie was often referred to as Point Sleeze on Lake Dreary. The town is listed on epodunk.com. New York City, on the other hand, is too big. Too many things must be encompassed by just one name. I could never come close. (In fact, I just thought of another I hadn?t listed above, The City that Never Sleeps.)

Oddly, Struggle could be the name of any village, town, city, or country. Its the one word that represents every person?s internal workings and every relationship between people within its boundaries. It is the past, present and future. In essence, the name couldn?t be more perfect.

The problem is that people don?t want perfection or honesty. As our narrator reminds us:

Everything is bright and mysterious until you know what it is called and then the light goes out of it? Once we knew the name of it, how could we ever come to love it? (182)

Honesty doesn?t provide hope for moving beyond struggle. It isn?t pretty or imaginative and yet it is the quagmire we all must face. The anti-apex.

(My apologies for the late arrival of this misfired synapse. I hit ?save? rather than ?publish? on Friday. ?Tis the season for abnormally high levels of brain drain.)

Whitehead draws some interesting connections between renaming a town, an adhesive bandage and a toy village. When asked about the town, our narrator says:

Winthrop is a traditional place-name, insisting on the specific history of the area and locating it in one man. The man embodies an idea, and the name becomes the idea. Standard stuff. The name New Prospera is what you might call the contemporary approach. Break it down into parts, and each part is referring to a quality they want to attach to the town. They bring the external in, import it you might say, to the region. (105)

Can Winthrop, one man who has long since passed on?as has his?defunct barbed wire company, represent an entire history of a town?s existence? Can the name New Prospera change what type of town the place becomes, erasing history and potentially creating something new?

Ehko International?s toy village, retooled, recrafted, revisiting the past in all that it had been and all that had been lost, according to the narrator, cannot be renamed. With the red, white and blue bricks of possibility, to create a new theater would also create new cinema, to dismantle the police station could perhaps dismantle crime, as if making a thing at once further?s it?s existence as well as calls into play it?s dichotomy. ?In the end, nothing was so pleasing as the image on the cover of the box and this was a lesson to be learned? (122).

This is symbolic of the struggle between the town?s third faction vying for power over the first two (with overlap between all three), rallying for the original name of Freedom. As Regina says, ?If I ask you your name and you tell me something other than what it is, that?s a lie? It should go back to Freedom. That?s it?s true name? (127). Perhaps it is a lie. Perhaps it is merely a new stage of history. One thing is for sure, everybody is talking about the full history of the place and that history, including the part about Freedom?is not lost… yet.

Enter the second to last toe on the narrator?s foot. Having stubbed it, our nameless nomenclature consultant places Apex, a multicultural adhesive bandage, over the injury. As he describes it:

The brown adhesive bandage was such a tone that it looked as if he?d never had a toenail at all. That he had never stumbled. Did it hide the hurt? Most assuredly so. (131)

Like the town, can the new name brand hide the hurt of those disappointed citizens who will lose the identity battle? Doesn?t the the name New Prospera fall short of assimilation as does the clear adhesive Band-Aid? Does?it matter?

My guess is that it matters a great deal. Apex may have hid the hurt, but I suspect that the toe continued to fester considering the fact that we know it was amputated. As with the town, a name may hide the hurt feelings of those who lose the battle for each name, and yet those citizens with attachments to what lands in the discard pile will fester with resentment. If the town?s name does return to Freedom, I suspect New Freedom will be in order. If New Luna, the soft drink, was a bit of foreshadowing, this is one way?of encompassing the history and possibility all in one. As the narrator says, ?The good ones always come back? (51). We shall see.

What?s in a name? In Apex Hides the Hurt, Whitehead?s narrator becomes a nomenclature consultant, stumbling upon the power of naming things while between jobs. He learns that a powerful and persuasive identity emerges once a product is named and the one who creates the name is also empowered. Prior to the naming, both the thing and the parties involved with its production are non-entities. Success depends upon what the name conjures in the public sphere and whether or not it is widely accepted. While Whitehead uses the conceit of corporate colonization throughout the novel, I also see a religious theme.

Marketing?seems rather god-like to me, particularly in correlation with Catholicism. The parental-client produces an unrecognized blob-child whose identity is nil until baptized with a chosen name. Only then is the possibility of eternal life breathed into the child-product, the seed of hope for the perpetuation of the system.

The original names of Adam and Eve, according to the book of Genesis, were handed down by God, the father himself. God then told Adam to name the animals and he would rein over their kingdom. In both cases, he who names holds?the power. Eve surely got the short end of the stick… but so did Jesus, so to speak. Then again, if the one with the most names wins, Jesus takes the prize. I digress.

In Apex Hides the Hurt, the job of naming goes to the all powerful and knowing marketing firm with a finger on the pulse of parishioner demographics. Our narrator ?came up with the names and like any good parent he knocked them around to teach them life lessons? (3). This is God the father?s test, offering?up free will only to see if his children will sin against him or remain true when faced with life’s obstacles.?

The relationship between god, parent and child (a holy trinity of the non-traditional sort) is not over once the name is assigned. The identity of all three hinges on the?loyalty of each individual part. For this reason, the parental-client makes a covenant with the marketing firm, accepting certain commandments. ?They had to stick to the rules if they were going to use the name? (38). After all, god is only as strong as the faith of his obedient disciples. Without a faithful and devoted flock, god?s power is bankrupt.

Naming is just the first part of the life cycle. The ability to create identity offers an “insurance policy to reassure people or make them feel less depressed so they can accept the world”(44). Faith in the marketing god heals what ails the good people of this earth, offering?a promise?for their general betterment and salvation.?

Spreading the word is the other side of the coin. The flock must increase to better serve god and also to offer fellowship and support to those in need (of bandages, pills and such). This is where branding comes into play. Name recognition and ?sacred logos? (37) offer comforting reminders to the populace. ?It was not the first time he had been saved by the recognizable logo of an international food franchise, its emanations and intimacies? (37). In moments of faltering faith and despair, whenever two customers or more are gathered in ?The Admiral?s? name, all is again right with the world.

Yes, we can rest assured that the corporate God is always here, reminding us of his presence with the ever-reliable change of season at Outfit Outlet. Our narrator ?had heard of people who had made regular pilgrimages to the windows? (41). Devoted sheep in awe of this great mystery offer generous tithes into the great collection plate?with?the high hope that they will have sacrificed enough of themselves to reach nirvana one day.

The?following is a rambling research proposal of sorts.

In my paper, I?ll be examining the film “The Last King of Scotland.” The?movie is about a?1970′s real?Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin,?whose life is exposed through his relationship with?the main character, a?fictional Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan. Garrigan, although based on the collective real men in Amin?s council, varies in cultural origin and significantly influences several less-than-real events within the film.?Through this main character, the?film moves away from historical representation at the same time it attempts to provide access to it.?Reacting to the film’s powerful story, a?Ugandan extra on location interviewed in the DVD special features says he is glad that Ugandan children can watch this film and finally learn about their national history. But is this history? What are the implications of historeographic metafiction?in a culture?beyond the borders of?America, and what are it’s limitations? (Real thesis to come.)

To answer, I’d first like to brush Jameson’s??Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism? up against Ugandan reactions to the film?s release, examining the postmodern as a means of political and capitalist consumption of culture in Third World countries. When Hollywood, in the name of profit, represents ?history? through a predominantly white, fictional lens, what are the implications? Are there limits to what historiographic metafiction can or should responsibly do? To pick out the problems within the actual production, it will be interesting to watch the movie twice more, once strictly for content and once with the director?s commentary switched on. More on this later…

The other side of the coin is Hutcheon?s point that history has always been representation, and true access to reality has only been an assumption. In this regard, historiographic metafiction has the?ability to reveal more than the victor?s historical narrative. According to an interview with the film?s director, he suggests that the fictional Scottish Doctor allows a more personal window into dictator Idi Amin, a man who has traditionally been known more-so through mythical stories than fact all along. (I?ll have to watch again to get the exact quote.)

Amin is an interesting problem unto himsef. It is known that, during the time of Amin?s rule, journalist access was limited to panel interviews with this man alone. His?account was the sole authority of the state of his country. Witnesses to Amin?s slaughter within the country were unreachable and outsiders were unsure whether the mass killing was real. Amin also presented his own personal limitation, offering one side of himself to the press and exhibiting quite another behind closed doors. Fiction certainly provides more perspective into Amin as a character, but this not to be mistaken?for reality.

Considering these varied ideas, has historiographic metafiction offered distorted interpretation or greater understanding? Preliminary research has already produced a quote pertinent to Jameson?s point. According to “In Uganda, ‘Last King of Scotland’ Generates Blend of Pride and Pain Crowds Flock to Oscar-Honored Film About Idi Amin” By Craig Timberg
of the Washington Post:

For Ugandans too young to have clear memories of Amin’s reign, “The Last King of Scotland” gave them a welcome dose of insight into their own national history.

“After seeing the movie,” said Alice Mwesigwa, 32, “it was, ‘Wow, this is real.’ “

More appropriately phrased, this movie is merely a believable representation of the real.?Mwesigwa’s reaction is problematic in that?the?story is not “real.” According to Jameson, this form has?foregone the signposts that had traditionally signaled?fiction from reality.

According to ?Absolute Power, A chameleonic Forest Whitaker dominates an awkward Idi Amin biopic? by Ella Taylor of the Village Voice:

The Last King of Scotland deals with real events filtered through Giles Foden’s 1998 novel, in which Garrigan serves as a composite of numerous white advisers with whom Amin surrounded himself, then mercilessly cut off when they no longer served his purposes.

To unpack this description is to reveal the multiple layers of removal from the real:

• Actual events as they happened
• Distillation of Amin?s?advisors down to the fictional Dr. Garrigan
• Foden?s narrative process
• Conversion from novel to screen play
• Collective influence of director, producer and actors
• Further editing
• Viewer interpretation

Contamination of the real is inherent in any narrative, yet this particular?process is influenced by a great many people who had never personally experienced Amin?s regime.

An interview in Boldtype ?Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland? reveals the tricky process of narration prior to the further imposition of film placed upon the real. Although the English author spent much time in Africa as a child, witnessing bodies in the rivers and other horrific sights, he had no personal access to Amin.

BT: Is your portrait of Amin based on research, memory, imagination, or a combination of all three?
GF: All three, but trying to keep the research at bay was a problem. I kept discovering these amazing things about Amin which I wanted to put in the book. This was disturbing, as I felt like I was being “dictated” to, or suffering the kind of demonic possession that Amin believed existed. Still, I guess I must have pulled through: mainly I tried to hang onto to the idea that this was a story. I wanted to make people turn the page.

While Foden?s research lends authenticity to the narrative, his selection of facts shapes what is told and, in the end, he reminds us that this is?ultimately a story designed to sell and entertain.

At the end of “The Last King of Scotland” there is a scene where the fictional Dr. Garrigan, viewed as a traitor, is being tortured by Amin. He gets hung on what look like meat hooks through the chest and, as he hangs, the imagery is similar to Christ hanging on the cross. In fact, he refuses to scream – as if he is taking on the sorrow of the thousands Amin had slaughtered and refusing to give Amin the satisfaction of watching him suffer. Garrigan is eventually rescued as Amin’s attention is distracted and when he asks the man who takes him down why he did it, the Ugandan says that if Garrigan escapes, perhaps the story of the Ugandan people with finally be heard, particularly because?Garrigan is white and has the power to draw the attention of nations who can help. In the end, the implication is that Uganda is rescued by the white savior.

Is this a tool used to sell the film to American audiences or is it a commentary on how the world refuses to recognize the plight of Africans unless told by whites? I can see how both are plausible. Perhaps this is where the power of historeographic metafiction offers a view into the untold and unheard story of those people slaughtered. At the same time, it reinforces the power of the dominant culture.

According to the New York Times: World Africa video, “The Last King of Scotland Opens in Uganda? by Jeffrey Gettleman, much care has been taken by the film crew to portray events as authentically as possible. Filming within the country and using Ugandan extras allowed Forrest Whitaker to speak with the people about their memories.?In his portrayal of Idi Amin, Whitaker’s?accent and actions?also provide?a certain amount of authenticity, according to Jingo,?a native?actor and American movie translator in Uganda. Many have remarked that Whitaker had become Amin. (Quotes to follow.)

Gettleman’s article, “A Film Star in Kampala, Conjuring Amin?s Ghost,”?also reveals that the representation may not be far off the mark:

?This is not a bad attempt at history,? said Henry Kyemba, the author of ?A State of Blood,? a book he published in exile in 1977 about his years as a minister in Amin?s government.

Kyemba, having been a minister to Amin, is probably the best barameter of the films success in?capturing any similarity to the real. His experience lends an authority that most viewers can only imagine. Still, he is but one man with one perspective in an organization of many who had a deadly impact upon an entire?nation.

The film’s significant social impact is obvious as Gettleman’s?video references the prevalence and popularity of the illegal pre-release thanks to the DVD underground. Nationwide accessibility is available for 20 cents as opposed to the inaccessible $5 admission to Uganda?s only theater. Although it is difficult to?gauge?the widespread social impact, the only thing known for sure is that postmodern globalization is merging cultures and overwriting that which it erases. Perhaps, while this is inevitable, it can be handled respectfully and responsibly as “The Last King of Scotland” attempts to do.

Side note:
While?the above?reports put a positive spin on the film’s?reception and acceptance in Uganda, it will be interesting to see?whether I can find a different angle or if I?ll be?forced to read?between the capitalist glorification of American publications.

So much for the seedling? as I wrote, the darn thing continued to grow. I can picture Dr. Middleton rubbing her hands together with a satisfied and somewhat sinister smile saying, “This was my plan all along.”

SPOILER WARNING!

The grand finale of Galatea 2.2 has gummed up my works. Too much input. My neural net is still churning and I mean this in the most profound and complimentary way.

In the end, the joke is on everyone. The true bet between Lentz, Powers and the scientific team is never whether a machine can learn to think, but whether a human can make meaning where none exists. Powers, the Center?s token humanist, is taken for a ride in believing that Helen, his beloved neural net, is cognizant? or is he? Helen?s abilities surprise even Lentz, the largest skeptic of all. While the joke on Helen is that the human condition is vile, corrupt and undesirable, most interesting is the joke played on the reader, having believed the fallacy alongside Powers the entire time.

For?my?own ignorance,?I blame adulthood. Had I been a child, I would have seen the prank. Pardon my jest, repeating a philosophy conjured by Powers, but having finished his novel, I now understand. The innocence of childhood protects us from the?horrors of?humanity. Once innocence is lost, we shield ourselves from?the harsh?reality of our existence using fiction to process that which we cannot understand. We only hope to stumble upon answers. That hope?is our only redemption.

I find fascinating a work of fiction that moves beyond the scope of entertainment, using its own structure to examine its worth. It becomes particularly potent for this English Lit. major as I am forced to ask myself:

• What value does the study of literature hold?
• Is meaning inherent within a text or do we make meaning as we back-propagate new data through the filters of lived and learned experience?
• Does the difference of inherent or made meaning ultimately matter as we struggle to understand the point of our existence?

Since called upon to decide, I say this. I believe that ideology makes meaning on a cultural level. Within that ideology, literature holds a great deal of power, particularly in its ability to persuade. From fables, myths and war propaganda to presidential elections and the civil rights and environmental?movement, people will always chose the side most representative of their individual reality. Without literature, we would never have the ability to share such complex ideas or decide what our personal reality requires to exist.

For these reasons, having a deep understanding of literature, both the ways in which it operates and its limitations, grants us the power to move toward the goals we deem fit. While this in no way ensures collective agreement, or the chance to single handedly change the world, we have, at the very least,?the power to organize?around a small seed of understanding and find companionship or, as Powers hopes, love in that one simple connection. To read, to be read, to exchange ideas and make meaning as it applies to the here and now of our existence? This is only the beginning of my thoughts on?what literature is to me.

And?with that ponderance I leave you, offering my sincere gratitude for taking the time to make meaning of what I?ve had to say.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by the makers of Viagra?and Geritol.

Which reminds me… This is one of those books, like Don Quixote, that should be read three times in life, somewhere around the ages of?22, 35, and 60. I find that my young classmates identify with A. at 22,?interpreting?Powers as rather lecherous. Still feeling 22 at heart, I (at 37) suffer from the same disbelief as Powers – that so many years have passed and so little has been learned. I only hope that, by my next reading, I will have staved off the bitterness suffered by Lentz, disheartened by literature and the world at large.

Between the pages of 155 and 268, our narrator, Powers, and Dr. Lentz struggle with their traditional masculine roles, feeling that they must care for and protect their women. Lentz feels responsible for his wife Audrey?s stroke occuring directly after their argument while?he was intentionally unreachable.?Guilt ridden?for not taking enough care, he visits her waning consciousness with daily devotion at the Center. Powers also cares for his lost and confused C. but learns that:

The more care I took, the more I turned her into the needy one. And the more I did that, the needier she became. We construed her neediness between the two of us. And that was not care on my part. That was cowardice. (240)

Together, Powers and Lentz search for some sort of answer to the masculine condition through the production and training of Helen, the beloved and experimental neural net in Galatea 2.2. Lentz, although he can?t change the past, has the desire to change the future, developing a way to back up the brain in the case of memory failure. Powers interprets and mulls this goal:

We could eliminate death. That was the long-term idea. We might freeze the temperament of our choice. Suspend it painlessly above experience. Hold it forever at twenty-two. (170)

We have yet to learn what Powers gains from the experiment, but perhaps Donna Haraway might offer a clue.

Pulling out the ol’ Norton, I brushed up on Donna Haraway?s ?A Manifesto for Cyborgs?, several quotes of which were rather pertinent to Helen. First off, ?a cyborg is a cybernetic organism? a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction? (2269). Already, in this one definition, the cyborg blurs the boundaries of human, animal?and machine as well as reality and fiction.

Since?Helen is essentially a new ?other,? her existence could be constued as?a cultural encounter similar to, for example, that of Europeans and Native Americans. It is assumed from the ideology at hand that one must dominate the other. That said, how is it possible to avoid the dominant/male and submissive/female trap that haunts the majority of historical human existence? According to Haraway, the power lies within the technology.

The cyborg has no origin story? they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential. (2270-2271)

According to Haraway, Powers and Lentz are “inessential” as fathers.?Once they load the data, Helen thinks on her own. Although Powers has coded Helen with gender, it is within the power of the cyborg to blur the boundaries of such a dichotomy as the masculine and feminine. Once blurred, perhaps some revelation will be made to both about the roles of men and women in society.

While this unique?lesson of love?between man and machine has yet to be revealed , one thing is certain. Helen has already invoked much discussion about what constitutes human intelligence, blurring the distinction between true knowledge and switch flipping. Are we nothing more than weighted switches constantly back-feeding input through our neural nets, or is there something inherently human that sets us apart from a machine?

I’ll be turning pages rapidly to?find out?

Let me just say that, as my 37th year?speeds?toward the platform and is?due to arrive in a paltry?seven days, I’m not crazy about this novel’s claim about?the 35th year:

You begin to think, ‘Well, I more or less understand how things work. Do I really want to disassemble tens of thousands of semi accurate beliefs on the off chance that I might be able to bring one small receptor field into better focus?’ (111)

With a projected 50 years left, give or take a decade, that’s a long time to sit on my ass and?give up the quest. Let the disassembly continue… Full Speed Ahead!

That said, let’s move on to pages 48-153 of the novel.

CHILDHOOD REALITY V. ADULT DELUSION

One would generally assume that children would have a stronger imagination than adults, the ability to?create their own reality and imaginary friends, but that isn’t what is being said in this novel. As I mentioned in?a previous post, “something between childhood and becoming an adult shifts the understanding of language, makes it less literal, less real.” I found this idea interesting when Powers described a?book that permanently?influenced him?while he was still young?(19).?This same type of reference appears later, when Lentz and Hartrick?dupe Powers about Imp C’s ability:

A babe in the woods would have seen through this… I myself would never have bitten, had I still been a child. Yet I’d believed. I’d wanted to. (123)

Powers can no longer see the real, but why? Perhaps, as our narrator describes,?it is his adult desire to want to believe.

In childhood, facts are collected?much like?William and Peter Hartrick’s?alphabet and international flags.?Conceptual meaning hasn’t yet been assigned, as Hutcheon would point out.??Unlike the boys,?Powers?associates everything with narrative rather than fact. When speaking about their mother, Diane,?Powers says “I didn’t know the first thing about her” (136) but?”I recognized?this?woman…?from a book I read once as a novice adult” (137).?This referential knowing is not real. It stems from a concept learned elsewhere?during Powers’?early adulthood rather than from what actually stands in front of him?in the moment.

Powers recognizes the impact of narrative on his thoughts and the ways in which those thoughts then shape his reality. “Here was the home I would never have. Shaped by a book, I’d made sure I wouldn’t. I’d forced my heart’s reading matter to come true” (138). To deny himself access to Diane or?a home based on a particular?book leads me to believe that, had he read another?book (or no book), things might have turned out?differently. Like ideology, the story has the power to order Powers’?thoughts, but also to confine him within that story.

SUBJECT V. OBJECT

Confinement within the story becomes problematic for all the main characters in this novel. Diane, Lentz, C.?and even Powers?become splintered identities in terms of subject/object. As said above, Diane is a stereotype in Powers’ internal narrative. First?she is?scientist, then mother, then “she became a different woman” (136) after she put her children to bed and?sat in her living room. None of these images allow access to the real Diane, for Powers or the reader. Lentz too is seen solely as mad scientist until Powers?recognizes him as husband and father thanks to the calendar on the door. Still, he doesn’t know who Lenz truly is or why he’s such a sad,?angry man. These characters are nothing more than objects seen through the one limited?lens of the narrator.

Powers and C. are special cases in the subject/object dichotomy. Powers, when proofing his latest book, says:

My eleventh-hour triage demoralized me even more than the first writing. I felt a despair I had not felt while still the teller… What lost me, while listening to my own news account, was learning that I didn’t have the first idea who I was. Or of how I had gone so emptied.?(117)

Is Powers really so emptied and lost?within his own identity? The word?”emptied” implies that Powers was?once full.?When?he writes about himself as?the subject, he?is unaware that this identity crises exists because it doesn’t yet. It is when he no longer writes but reads, making the switch from subject to object, that he feels some sort of self identity loss. It is the mechanism?of narrative?that induces the loss, unable to capture the whole of who Powers is, even in his own attempt to portray himself.

Perhaps Powers?has stopped?disassembling his?”tens of thousands of semi accurate beliefs” at 35,?having learned?little since his relationship’s end with C.?Prior to this autobiographical fiction,?Powers becomes the subject of C’s story and she becomes the object, driving?the wedge?of death into their relationship. Powers knows?this to be true?when C. says, “It’s your story… It makes me feel worthless” (108). He begins to question:

What did the finished thing mean? That book was no more than a structured pastiche … One that by accident ate her alive… She would never again listen to a word I wrote without suspicion. (108-109)

Even after living the consequence of setting the divisive dichotomy of subject/object in motion with C., Powers inflicts that same divide within himself and feels the power and pain from both sides.

Of course,?objectification is okay when you’re Powers, the author of this novel,?portraying the narrator as the author and narrator of his own novel. Only by making this move does narrative no longer mean objectification alone. Narrative, in this manner,?becomes self-reflexivity, or has… self-reflexive Powers. (Insert “bad joke” groan here.)

PS: If C was with Powers in U., E., and B., who do you think A. is in her 22nd year?? Son of [a] B!! I can?t seem to work it out yet? but I sure do sound like a mathematician when I try.

The first 48 pages…

I found A Brief Biographical Sketch (excerpted and adapted, with the author’s permission, from Understanding Richard Powers by Joseph Dewey) helpful in understanding the extreme similarities between the author and narrator of Galetea 2.2. In essence, Powers’ life is the source of his fiction and fiction thus becomes his life. This is not unlike the photography of Nikki Lee. Each quite literally lives the art that they create and questions representations of the real. Although this is interesting in and of itself, for the purposes of this post “Powers” refers to the narrator, not the author, unless otherwise indicated.

The novel begins with the sentence, “It was like so, but wasn’t,” and screams for a sneak peek at the last page for clues. I refuse to give in. According to this book, there is no short cut to learning – even for neural nets. Let?the synaptic links painfully struggle to?materialize, one at a time.

LANGUAGE

The plot centers around teaching language, and subsequently the canonical list of Great Books, to a neural network in order to understand how the brain orders and accumulates information to learn. We didn’t get to talk much about language limitations in class, but there are so many references to it throughout the book, I find myself tracing each instance.

• In the first paragraph, Powers says of his 35th year, “We got separated in the confusion of a foreign city where the language was strange” (3).
• At U., “Work at the Center divided into areas so esoteric I could not tell their nature from their names” (5).
• At the Center, ?Talk in its public spaces sounded like a UN picnic: excited, wild, and mutually unintelligible. I loved how you could never be sure what a person did even after they explained it to you” (6).
• When meeting Lentz, Powers says, “We made interstellar contact, paralyzed by the mutual knowledge that any attempt to communicate would be culture bound. Worse than meaningless” (13).
• The Dutch, according to Powers, amount to little in the area of novel-writing due to “the fault of translation.” Lentz blames it on “the limits of that Low German dialect” (18).
• Powers “still dreamed in that language. It had ruined [him] for English” (18).
• Of a flood Powers read about in a book as a child, he says, “this was my unshakable image… The word “Holland” filled me with autumnal diluvian disaster… even after living for years… in the Dutch Mountains” (19).

These types of quotes span?just pages 3-19, but there are many more. Following the order listed above, these quotes point toward:

• general linguistic separation and confusion
• lack of concept transference within the same language
• cultural boundaries rendering speech less than meaningless
• loss of meaning in translation?from one language?to the next
• the bondage of language on thoughts and dreams
• creation of real perceptions and representation of a non-reality

If language is so fallible, how can a machine avoid these linguistic pitfalls, particularly when “taught” by similarly fallible humans? What is the key to getting it right, making language more communicable?

According to Powers:

A child’s account of the flood that ravaged Zeeland shortly before I was born turned real in my head. That’s what it means to be eight. Words haven’t yet separated from their fatal content. (19)

Something between childhood and becoming an adult shifts the understanding of language, makes it less literal, less real. A return to that childhood state, when switches quickly flip through intelligent processing, may offer better understanding of how to access reality through language. To return to the beginning, new opportunity exists in discovering how a mind learns and how to better teach that mind.

Like a child, the machine too requires “someone like Lenz to supply the occasional ‘Try again’s and ‘Good Boy!’s” (31) as it essentially makes its own decisions and deductions about what is correct and incorrect. That said, with a father figure like Lenz, will the machine suffer emotional damage, adopt his bad attitude, reject him all together? We’ll have to read on and see. Good Lord, that man is frightening!

This fires my next response…

POSTMODERN POWERS

Powers, the author, takes on the mother of all self-reflexivity in this novel. While postmodernism examines the ways in which particular forms like language, photography, film and music represent reality, Powers goes one step further and examines the very tool that both creates and interprets all form… THE SYNAPSE. As Powers, the narrator, says:

After great inference, I came to the conclusion that I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what cognition was… No tougher question existed. No other, either. If we knew the world only through synapses, how could we know the synapses? (28).

In that last question, one could replace the word synapse with narrative,?and see?the bold move that?Powers, the author, is making. To examine synapse as “form” is the greatest postmodern experiment of all,?the likes of which makes my head hurt.?

(How appropriate?for this post to appear on a blog called “Brain Drain, I Think Its Sprained.”)

Like Cindy Sherman, Nikki S. Lee offers a valuable critique?of our social need?to identify and be identified in a particular way. She?broadens her scope?beyond Sherman’s examination of clich?d feminity, inserting herself, as a Korean minority,?into the setting and style of many?cultural identities.

To contextualize Nikki Lee?s work (ooh, the irony), I visited The Museum of Contemporary Photography and read?”Karma Chameleon Revisited” by D. Robert Okada and Z. Samual Podolski, The Harvard Crimson, September 28, 2001:

Lee is not stereotyping and marginalizing her subjects, but rather indicting those stereotypes, exhibiting the fluency with which we can shed and assume any of them we like. She doesn’t objectify the person, she objectifies the ideas we all have about minority identities. She shows her audience the extent to which they stereotype-and marginalize-themselves? In this way, Lee achieves two biting critiques in one fell swoop-cutting at both the stereotyped and the stereotyper. We identify others and ourselves in purely visual terms. If Nikki Lee’s “Projects” seems at first ridiculous, then, that’s the whole point. They are ridiculous, and so are we.

This passage brought me right back to Hutcheon:

The postmodern, as I have been defining it, is not a degeneration into ?hyperreality? but a questioning of what reality can mean and how we can come to know it. It is not that representation now dominates or effaces the referent, but rather that it now self-consciously acknowledges its existence as representation-that is, as interpreting (indeed as creating) its referent, not as offering direct and immediate access to it. (32)

First off, the reference to?postmodern degeneration into?hyperreality is interesting. In one sense, Nikki Lee’ s work is the ultimate hyperreality, demonstrating the ways in which we put ourselves forth into society using?visual signs, signifying?the group to which we belong. The group collectively (those who both embrace or impose) determines what that visual language is and?derives meaning?from certain body posturing, clothing?and hair style. At the end of the day, one must ask, who are we when we aren’t pretzeling ourselves to fit some mold? Can one access a “true self” any longer? Has our true self been erased by representation over?time or has?individual identity always been?based on?social construct?

Considering the work of?Hutcheon and Lee, hyperreality in and of itself is a reality, if not as a representation of the real, then as a very real representation. Visual?identity is just one more form under Lee’s scrutiny?through postmodern photogrpahy, examining what tools?we use to represent?ourselves and interpret others.?Lee is shooting holes all through the meanings we think we can derive just by looking, and yet we simultaneously see that those meanings are not meaningless because we assign power to them.

Society would have us?believe that identity is?fixed within a particular race or ethnicity, but as Nikki Lee goes culture surfing, she demonstrates how maliable and yet influential visual cues?can be.?Perhaps she best passes?in yuppie, tourist, punk, and elderly?groups since race and ethnicity are not their sole defining factors, yet, when she inserts?herself into Hispanic and other ethnic settings, the lines of distiction are most de-doxified. We can see she is slightly different, and yet?there is?an uncanny?comfort level in the scene for both Lee and those who surround her. She has become, and has been accepted as, one of “them.”?As we observe her, we must ask ourselves what makes her different and?what makes her the same. Does she, or do we, decide??Is there so much destinction between “us” and “them” when the “us” becomes “them?”

Post Script

In an October?1, 2006 New York Times article, “Now in Moving Pictures: The Multitudes of Nikki S. Lee,” Carol Kino says of Lee, “Even after a long face-to-face conversation, it?s hard to say for certain what Nikki S. Lee is really like.”?This could be read two ways, either Lee’s art is so relavent?that she unmistakably proves?we never really know a person, even when we?think we do,?or she’s crazy. The following passage describes Lee’s film:

Titled ?A K A Nikki S. Lee,? the film purports to be a documentary about the real Nikki, a rather plain, serious young woman who is in turn making her own documentary about her alter ego, Nikki Two, the effervescent exhibitionist who appears in the photographs. Yet as the true Ms. Lee explained in an interview in her East Village apartment, ?Nikki One is supposed to be real Nikki, and Nikki Two is supposed to be fake Nikki. But they are both fake Nikki.?

Fight Club schizophrenia anyone? I’m just saying. Still, I’m with Lee. I think we’re all crazy?and simply?masquerading as sane.

The article goes on to say “Ms. Lee also played fast and loose with the dates, just as she did with the camera date-stamps on her ?Projects? photos.” I had wondered, when I saw the Lesbian Project, if it really?spanned over the course of 6 months. This adds a whole new dimention to?Lee’s art, playing with?our assumptions?about time and?about long relationships vs. short ones. Right on.

Is?this?supposed to be therapeutic? I’m just asking.?I suppose?it’s cheaper than therapy, although I don’t recall seeing it on the ENG377 syllabus.

THE LIST

posts:
2007.09.02??Modern or Postmodern? That is the Question.
2007.09.06??So, What?s the Difference?
2007.09.07??Written WITH the Body
2007.09.09??‘I’ – Thinking
2007.09.14??Where the Story Starts
2007.09.17??Post Modo Condition
2007.09.19??Fight Club – The Movie
2007.09.20? Futurism in Fight Club?(add-on to previous post)
2007.09.25 ?Why Jameson?s Piece is Postmodern
2007.09.29? Life in Dying
2007.10.02 ?Fight Club Environmentalism
2007.10.05? Making Sense (???)
2007.10.08? Cindy Sherman
2007.10.10??Linda Hutcheon?(expertise project)
2007.10.15? Nikki Lee

comments:
2007.09.01? To Esther on Post/Modern Stance
2007.09.01? To Misty on Post/Modern Stance
2007.09.07? To Kim H. on Winterson
2007.09.07? To Alex on Winterson
2007.09.17? To Michael on Winterson
2007.09.17? To Christine on Winterson
2007.09.23? To Marina on Fight Club, the film
2007.09.23? To the Class Experts on Lyotard
2007.09.29? To Hannah on Fight Club, the book
2007.09.29? To Esther on Jameson
2007.10.04??To Zena on Fight Club, the book
2007.10.04??To Tammy on Fight Club, the book
2007.10.15??To Aliya on Cindy Sherman
2007.10.15? To Melissa on Hutcheon

ANALYSIS PART I: I am the One Trick Pony

As I wrestle with what postmodernism means and how it functions, I’ve discovered that I am absolutely obsessed with limits. Reading through my blog I see frustration with and examination of:?

• language as limitation on thought
• the subject’s limited ability to represent
• limits on history as merely one version of truth
• limits on context within postmodern fiction
• and limits of form?when representing the real.

Postmodernism has revealed the ways in which?I’m?confined?within the ideological?prison of my own thought,?AND it has?simultaneously?slipped me the key to freedom. Now that I?understand how?postmodernism functions, I see?it in fiction, film, magazines?and photography. It has become?relevant in my other classes and has even?jumped out at me while watching television. I love that ideology is being exploited all over the place, but still, I have one question burning deep within my soul. It’s the one?that everyone in class either fully?understands or isn’t asking.

When Lyotard says:?

“The artist and the writer , then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done” (Lyotard, 81)

I still?need to?know… What the Hell does this mean?!?!

Moving on, the following?passage from “‘I’-Thinking” shows my concern for the limits of language and subject:

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.

Here I refer to?Cixous’ idea that?language shapes our thoughts along problematic dichotomies such a masculine/feminine, strong/weak, etc. Winterson challenges?the reader’s?need to assign?a male or female identity?to her genderless narrator, pointing out the limitation of “thought?dichotomies”?in practice. Rereading this passage surprises me after just having just?presented on Hutcheon. While my language here isn’t quite right, the idea of the self-reflexive operation?is interesting. Both the power of language to?define, and?the limitations?as?it confines are revealed simultaneously.?Perhaps we?discussed this idea in class that day, but prior to reading Hutcheon (my hero) I didn’t think I understood. Apparently I did. Go me.

Don’t you worry. I’m not getting all high and mighty over this one small victory. I continually struggle?with other issues, particularly the end result of?mixing fact and fiction in historeographic metafiction. All?accross my?blog and strewn about comments to classmates are references to the movie The Last King of Scotland. Apologies “for bringing it up once again” generally accompany the post because I can’t seem to let it go. In “Why Jameson?s Piece is?Postmodern” it appears for the third time:

This movie is … about a very real Ugandan dictator, but his life is revealed through the perception of a fictional doctor… the main character with significant influence on very disturbing events within the film… Then, in the DVD special features, Ugandan extras said they are glad children can watch this film and finally learn about Ugandan history. (BIG) PROBLEM! This isn?t history!… Will Ugandan children know? I think not.

Here is where I get stuck between Jameson and Hutcheon. Like Jameson, I have this?engrained notion that context is important.?As I say later in the same post, I attribute my discomfort with this specific?historical fiction?to the fact that?this film will likely be?the only access?Ugandan children?have to their country’s history. Since?they have no?background?in postmodern analysis, they will surely mistake this representation?(one?portrayed through the lens of white culture) for the?real. This is?the result of Third World, culture consuming capitalism that Jameson talks about.

On the other hand, when it comes to my personal consumption of the postmodern, I want?the veil lifted?from the powerful ideology?that orders?my world. To understand that there is no one absolute truth, as far as I can see, is the only way to open the door to new ideas… without limitation (ha!). Hutcheon,?with her positive spin on the postmodern and its power to reveal, is – quite frankly- my hero, as I’ve already stated above. I’m not sure if I will ever resolve this internal conflict. I fully believe there is value?to?both sides of this coin.

From the argument above, my question becomes, what is real or contextual anyway? Hutcheon says that?”history” has?only ever?been a representation and access to?”reality” has only ever been an assumption. To follow this thought into the realm of photography, as I understate?when summing up?my “Cindy Sherman” post:

Interestingly,?using a doll as an unrealistic representation of a human being, although it seems to be a drastic difference of subject/object?from the first [human] pictured above, is no different in concept.?Sherman brilliantly exposes photographic “realism” as equally flawed in all.?

Sherman offers a quick and dirty example of Hutcheon’s self-reflexive form. Her photography is used to?demonstrate?the power of historic photo documentation and realism as it influences our perception of reality,?to?subvert?it using the very form we trust to be real, and to reveal the ways in which photography fails to grant acces to the real at all.?By subverting or turning the medium in on itself,?the limitations of ideology implode.?Sherman is at once artist/actress, subject/object,?woman/clich?.?When I see this mental back flip in action, it?makes my heart soar. I?want to scream?”THAT’S A PERFECT TEN!”

And yet… there is still The Last King of Scotland playing to children in Ugandan theaters. Thanks to Hutcheon and Sherman I’m left to wonder?whether concepts are more or less important?than the events that actually?happened. Is the insertion of a fictional narrator within an historical setting really any different than the history written by a textbook author with an eye toward patriotism? The more I grasp how little we’ve learned from a history we’ve assumed was real, perhaps this fictionalized account of a real dictator?bears less?negative impact?than the lessons learned from such a story.?I suppose the best we can do is handle?postmodernism?with care, limiting its political and capitalist consumption of culture?in the Third World… whatever that means.

PART II: Old Tricks, New Tricks

And the award for best posts to date goes to:

• “Life in Dying”
  I felt I made a new connection in Fight Club between body, as the limited modern form striving?to achieve a?real experience,?and the soul or idea of legend as postmodern form struggling to break free from the limitations of form. I spent FAR more time on this than any other post, engaging with?the narrative?as well as narrative- through- the- lens- of- theory, and?organizing these thoughts into essay form. Yeah, I was home alone for two days.
• “Making Sense (???)”
  Here I was able to follow several significant threads discussed in class, applying one aspect of a particular theory to every text. Addressing issues from?the complication of all our?narrators, to the problematic concept of gender, I was able to beat these topics into submission, taming my unruly, jumbled thoughts.

The award for best?comment to date:

• “To Zena on Butt- Wipe”
  This comment engaged with Zena’s question, recounted a class comment, brought in textual evidence, and also taught me a thing or two in writing it.?

The award for best classmate post goes to:

• Esther’s “I Can Spell Jameson, So It’s Not a Bad Start”
  This post came along right when I needed it, particularly since Esther posts early?if not on time. She summarizes the highlights of Jameson’s theory, adds visuals to demonstrate her argument of lacking historical reference in architecture against Jameson’s need for context, and poses a few questions for comment. You just can’t ask for more.

Based on my previous accomplishments, these next three goals?are what I plan to?strive?toward?for the remainder of?my blogging career:

• Increased engagement?with?comments
• I should get over my need to be original and address some class topics already. I’m always pushing so hard to move beyond what has already been discussed. The alternative would be to “go deep.” Wait, I do that.
• More humor. I used to be funny.
• More silly?pictures. That used to be fun too.
• Oddly, perhaps I need to spend LESS time banging out?these marathon?posts and more time on other class work – or just living life.

How to acheive these things? I could just relax. The problem is that I find this class so darn interesting.?Yeah. I happen to like?taking?our shiny, new information?out for a spin?through the?informal blog, particularly?where a?little misjudgment and hitting the guard rail is allowed. Sue me.