Brain Drain Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Disgrace’

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.

So, we return this week to J. M. Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace, and?the lower-than-snake-shit-in-the-track-of-a-wagon-wheel main character, Dr. Lurie…

DAVID AS COLONIZER
David is the epitome of a colonizing political force, defining women?in terms of?”other.”?He sees them as uncivilized?and ignorant sexual beings?until,?once conquered by his desire, they benefit from the experience of knowing him. ?Melanie is complicit in this sordid experience only to the extent that?African citizens were robbed of their homeland during apartheid, or Native Americans?lost their?Great Turtle Island. They were all manipulated and conquered. David is but one player of many in a long social history of oppressing women. His type is the catalyst for the trials they face.

David’s point of view?resembles?remnants of racial opinion in America, at the very least. He is speaking with Lucy after she has been raped, telling her:

Either you stay on in a house of ugly memories and go on brooding on what happened to you, or you put the whole episode behind you and you start a new chapter elsewhere. Those, as I see it, are the alternatives. (Coetzee 155)

This smacks of the sentiment prevalent in the South after Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves. Yes, we know you’ve been used to our benefit. You have been raped of your culture, your identity, your religion, your language, your parents, your wives, your husbands, your children,?your health… But can’t you just get over it and move on??Oh, you can stay here and brood for the rest of your life,?OR you can go back to Africa. Those are your two options, as we see it. This same attitude seems prevalent in the relationships between David and all his women – his daughter included.

LUCY AS A COMMODITY
When?David’s daughter Lucy is raped, her sense of being is forever changed. Only when it happens to “one of his own” does David try to protect her from men no different than himself. Still, she decides to stay on the farm, regardless of?the debilitating?fear that she will be violated again. She says in regard to her transgressors:

I think I am in their territory. They have marked me. They will come back for me … what if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that is how I should look at it too.

This idea of payment in terms of a sex/gender system is discussed in?Gayle Rubin’s theory?”The Traffic in Women.”

Women are given in marriage, taken in battle, exchanged for favors, sent as tribute, traded, bought, and sold … Women are transacted as slaves, serfs, and prostitutes,?but also simply as women. (Rubin 1673)

First off, Lucy’s acceptance of her role as payment suggests the strength of social structures oppressing women in Africa. To keep the life she creates and loves, she considers the cost as imposed by these men. It is also possible that these men didn’t take payment of their own accord. David?alludes to?Petrus’ involvement, which?seems to be substantiated when Petrus confidently claims the power to protect Lucy from a recurrence. If this is true, has Lucy?become a commodity for trade – as a woman? Has Petrus offered the sex/gender of?his neighbor?for his own personal gain? We can only suspect at this point, but I thinks it’s a pretty good hunch. He is a man with two wives, after all, and?what they mean to him is “pay, pay, pay.” Pretus won’t acknowledge that Lucy is the one who pays the highest price. She may be poisoned with HIV and has no idea yet?if AIDS is in her future. If so, will she even have a future in a country so limited in health care.

A side note that deserves further examination:
The sex/gender role is played out between two men and a woman. In light of Lucy’s sexual preference, does this deepen the wound?

LUCY AS BEING
Lucy’s decision to stay on the farm, regardless of the?danger,?lays claim on her being?much in the same way that?Fanon returns to Negritude.?

I defined myself as an absolute intensity of beginning. So I took up my Negritude, and with tears in my eyes I put its machinery back together again. What had been broken to pieces was rebuilt, reconstructed by the intuitive lianas of my hands. (Fanon 138)

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. (As Dr. Phil says, we cannot change that which we do not acknowledge.) Lucy also embraces the duality?of her being,?encompassing who she was before as well as who she?is?after transgressions were commited?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.?

OBLIGATORY RANT
Interestingly, David is such a goddamn baby when he loses an ear. Lucy has her very soul damaged, questioning whether or not it exists, and she is still far braver than her wuss-ass father. This book might redeem itself yet… but?will it tell us WHY women?bear the shame of violation when it is men who are committing the crime?

by?J. M.?Coetzee

Reading around the blogs, its always interesting to see?what other people find outrageous or dysfunctional. I?don’t get?why?Professor David Lurie is?so shocking as a character. I need guidance from you good wholesome folk. I know I’m far too desensitized.

For five years I lived on the road with a?band?who had little respect for their wives and girlfriends… but enough ego to highly respect themselves every morning, afternoon and night. Don’t get me wrong, not everyone on the music scene was this way, but the numbers were high. It was fun as hell, wild, crazy, fast, loose and free. Rules need not apply.?And when I wasn’t chugging in the RV from Legends Lounge, Las Vegas to some joint in Pocatello, Idaho (Who Da Ho??I ain’t Da Ho.?You Da Ho.)?I was flying with some pretty twisted pilots and flight attendants leading double lives. Who?could trace what they did in different time zones? None of them made apologies for it. In fact, as retirees, they still long for those days. This is why I don’t find the good professor so intrigueing. I’ve known him personally on far too many levels.

So let’s get down to it. As for theoretical references,?this line?caught my eye.

His temperment is fixed, set. The skull, followed by the temperment: the two hardest parts of the body. (Coetzee 2)

This sentence is preceeded and followed by evaluative comments on temperment (appearing 5 times in?the lower?half of page 2). 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/supplement of “other.” Being is who you are before that happens.

Lurie holds?fast to?that sense of being, even under pressure from?the commitee. When the members try to impress upon him the importance of his remorse, he tries to impress upon them that he has none to offer. Who is worse here? Sure, this guy Lurie is a sexual deviant, but at least he’s honest. The Commitee, representative of a societal norm, is just as wrong in this case. They are willing to sell Lurie’s?remorse to the public, as long as Lurie makes it saleable, and shove Lurie’s predatroy behavior under the rug.

When we talk of power struggles,?consider this line about Melanie:

She?is too innocent for that, too ignorant of her power.

Um, of course he had been praying on her ignorance. At least here he comes straight out and recognizes it. If he doesn’t allude to her power, letting her in on the secret, he can continue to use her.

Twisted.