Brain Drain Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Linda Hutcheon’

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.”

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.”)

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.

Available on Amazon*

HUTCHEON ON POSTMODERNISM: A Summary

by Michael Bastian & Kim Clune

Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Theorist Linda Hutcheon?finally offers?a clear?definition of?postmodernism?as compared to the somewhat slippery and?”indefineable” definitions offered thus far. “Postmodern representation is self consciously all of these – image, narrative, product of (and producer of) ideology” (28).? She combines several concepts which all work together in the following way:

Mimesis:
For our purposes, mimesis?is?the assumption that representation is, in some way, a duplication of “the real” and also that there is a “real” to represent.?(To trace the morphing?philosophy of mimesis since the time of ancient Greece, visit the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, University of Virginia.)

Using?this definition of mimesis, Hutcheon?then says, “Postmodernism challenges our mimetic assumptions about representation” (30). This is called dedoxification.

De-doxification:
Ideology constructs and naturalizes the way a culture presents itself to itself. To de-doxify this representation is to denaturalize the contrived reality that ideology assumes as truth. Postmodernism simultaneously inscribes and subverts the convention of narrative to this end.

An Example:
Hutcheon uses Angela Carter’s The Loves of Lady Purple?to exemplify the dedoxification of femininity.??A marionette is made to represent the image of the woman prostitute in the construct of male erotic fantasy.? We are left to question, “Had the marionette all the time parodied the living or was she, now living, to parody her own performance as a marionette?”? and, “to what extent are all representations of women the ‘simulacra of the living’?”(31).???

Historiographic Metafiction:
Ultimately, the job of postmodernism is to question?”reality” and how we come to know it.?It forces us to examine the ways in which we?ve chosen (or have been made to choose) to represent ourselves. Historiographic metafiction?dedoxifies assumptions of ideology by consciously?and self-reflexively working to?accomplish?two things:

1. bringing?historical context into the text in recognition of?history’s authority?and power, and
2. simultaneously calls into question?historical limitations

By?inserting elements of?fiction?within historical context,?”fact” is exposed as an author’s assigned meaning?or subjective interpretation of an event. Historical representation is revealed?to be?inconclusive,?one more narrative employing the same devices used?in fiction.?As we understand it,?this functions the same way through all mediums of postmodern expression whether fiction, photography or painting.

For more on Hutcheon’s?historiographic metafiction,?visit Victoria Orlowski’s explanation (last entry at the bottom)?at Emory.edu.?

THEORY IN PRACTICE

• Michaels’ Observation: Photographic Discourse as Evident in the Work of Cindy Sherman

What is happening in this photo? Let?s create a narrative. We see?this?woman’s?bathing suit floating next to her. We can assume she doesn?t have a spare. She?s naked, nude, in the skinny. The only articles of clothing she?s wearing are the goggles (spy goggles) and a mask (a spy?s mask). Sherman is mimicking the actions of a spy approaching an enemy?s territory.?This?woman?doesn?t want to be seen. The pool is lit up. At the same time she is a naked woman swimming in a pool that someone could be spying on. She?s acting the part of a spy and sexually promiscuous woman. Those are antique goggles; they help to represent the historical representation of a spy. Although this spy does not represent one historical event we can narrate one. Mixing the story of the naked woman and the spy together does not work. Who is she looking at? What is she looking at? These are all questions in creating the narrative. The black and white photograph makes it seem like this photograph is representative of a historical ?real?. The move to de-doxify the reflex we have to link black and white to old is uncovered because of the use of fiction (the naked spy-woman). Uncovering this not only brings to question the power that black and white photography has over us, but reifies the power it does because of the reflexes its bringing out of us. This is called historiographic metafiction; examining the history of representing history through the use of fiction to pivot it against.

Adendum
Male erotic fantasy led me to believe that Sherman was swimming naked; her bathing suit swimming next to her. Kim pointed out, after sharing my analysis with her, that Sherman isn?t actually naked at all. The bathing suit is just distorted by the water. I created a narrative based on an ideology that I subscribe to. I assigned her femininity, false femininity, based on the image presented. The history, male erotic fantastical history, associates woman in pool with sexually promiscuous woman. We now have three fictions with which to work from, that all work to subvert the control of the form and emphasize its control over our reflexes as cattle grazing on the fields of ideologies. – Michael

(Well, Michael’s cattle reflex anyway. – Kim, who finds this all very amusing.)

• Kim’s Observation: Fiction and History as Demonstrated?in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club

Fight Club demonstrates Hutcheon’s theory well. Historical assumptions about the?subject?are called into question?alongside those of historical representation, and each are de-doxified through self-reflexive construction of this historiographic metafiction. Although one human body acts out the events of the novel,?that body is complicated by the presence of?two identities or subjects housed within it. Each has a?very different perspective and thus?drastically different representation of the same chronological events. Tyler collects?his?events and assigns meaning via his conscious state while the narrator, when he?is awake and occupying the body, assigns different meaning to the same events. In this way, perpective is limited and skewed depending upon who is in charge at the time. Additionally, because the narrator is the reader’s only source of information?about Tyler,?his?limited scope of understanding filters out?aspects of?his alter-ego.?In this way, the narrator unknowingly skews the telling of his?own history until the end when he?fully realizes that he?has become a split identity and thus the bigger picture is finally revealed to the?reader. Our ideological notions about how naturally subjectivity represents history are challenged once we realize the power the narrator has over representation as well as his limitations in revealing all sides.

Palahniuk also explores society’s historical context through capitalism. By placing ficticious characters within a backdrop specific to the 90′s, we are better able to examine various concepts and perceptions of capitalism from two perspectives than we are from one. Interestingly, neither is verifyiable truth, nor are they together, but…

(I had a train of thought to explore here,?but Michael just stole my copy of?Hutcheon and left campus.)

COLLECTIVE?THOUGHTS

We find that Hutcehon offers a logical answer to?several theoretical questions. Disputing negative generalizations of postmodern disorder, incoherence, and Jameson’s accusation of “depthlessness,”?Hutcheon says postmodernism has the specific function to?reflexively question?history by employing it’s own narrative in order to reveal the holes in such perceived truth. This specificity is new?from what we’ve seen this semester. She argues that Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra, representation as a copy of a copy, and media’s neutralization of the “real” assumes that there was a “real” to begin with. She counters that??there is nothing natural about the ?real? and there never was ? even before the existence of mass media? (31).?According to?Hutcheon, we have not slipped into?a false world because we have postmodernism.

Rather than postmodernism being a departure from contextualized history, or what?Jameson calls “a ‘revolutionary’ break with the repressive ideology of?storytelling generally,” (47)?the postmodern?relies upon that very device to decenter the?ideological?notions of authenticity and subjectivity. In the moment in which the center is questioned through narrative, postmodern stories of the oppressed “other” rise to the surface, no longer surpressed by ideology and past historical influence.? Postmodernism contradicts this notion of the real and accepts that everything has always been culturally represented.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• Hutcheon says events have no meaning until certain facts are selected and meaning is assigned. Do you agree? Why?
• Since history can be fictional and fiction can reveal certain truths,?is there?a line of distinction between history and fiction at present?

OUTSIDE SOURCES
From the scholar-sphere:

• Felluga, Dino. “Modules on Hutcheon: On Postmodernity.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. November 23, 2003. Purdue U.
• Felluga, Dino. “Modules on Hutcheon: On Parody.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. November 23, 2003. Purdue U.

From the blog-o-sphere:?

Two posts from the Derivative Blog: Thoughts on Hutcheon?by a graduate student of English literature and culture at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

• ?An Enthusiasm for Postmodernism?
• Understanding the Question of Postmodern Meaning

*Brain Drain is an affiliate of Amazon.com.

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.

As our fearless leader said, once our class struggled through the conflicting definitions of?post and modern isms, “We’re drinking from?the fire hose here.”

No doubt. I can’t digest it all without drowning in confusion. So, in order to?quell the full rush of information down to a?slow trickle, I turn my focus toward the differences between modern and postmodern?text. (After all, this is an English class.)

In Malpas? The Postmodern, according to literary critic Brian McHale:

Modern fiction asks about how a world can be interpreted and changed and is interested in questions of truth and knowledge, i.e. in epistemology ?
Postmodern fiction confronts the reader with questions about what sort of world is being created at each moment in the text, and who or what in a text they can believe or rely on, i.e. questions of ontology. (24)

[Insert brilliant analysis?here one day.]?

Of?the postmodern/ontology connection, I find the argument between Jameson and Hutcheon (25-26) most interesting. They fully disagree with?what value?exists in the different ways?we interrogate our human condition.

• Jameson?is?ticked?that the PoMo world refers to a history that never happened
• ?Hutcheon is all for exploring concepts while illustrating that there is no?gaurantee of Truth in the history that Jameson cherishes.

AND, I love them both. I?experienced?each side?while watching The Last King of Scotland.?(Great movie, by the way.) The mix of history and fiction deeply disturbed me, only after I saw the movie, because I believed the entire story to be true. I explain in more detail?on Misty?s blog.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-114807005318329993&hl=en]

Has anyone else seen this movie? Did you?know?that the Scottish doctor is a fictional device used to explore the myths surrounding?the?very real Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin??Until I watched the DVD special features, I thought he was a real guy. Like many Ugandans themselves, I am in the?historical?dark when it comes to African history.

So,?how does this play into postmodern democratization??It doesn’t necessarily bring “history” to the people. Instead, doesn’t this illustrate that postmodern interplay requires a?complex education in which techniques of storytelling are at work prior to understanding what is being told? I’m feeling the elitist vibe of “T.S. Eliot and Company” knocking?at the door and can’t decide if I should open it. At the same time, I feel like the terrorizing essence of Idi Amin was better captured via the close relationship with the fictitious doctor and many?Ugandans will learn?about that man. In that case,?are the exact details of such importance? Probably not.