So, coming to the end of Brit Lit, Professor Peavoy decided to up the reading assignments and include a couple golden oldies: Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. I knew what to expect when reading each text, but I didn’t expect to find such striking similarities between the texts themselves. Both texts, very near the surface, express a really strong anxiety over selfing.
Obviously, Dr. Jekyll has issues with his concept of self. I did see that one coming, at least. But even Jekyll’s conception of identity was surprising. “I hazard the guess,” he says, “that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens.” Dr. Jekyll’s explanation for his experiments is that he couldn’t never reconcile himself to the duplicity of his own character. He was ashamed of his duplicity, though he claims there was nothing truly shameful in the other side of himself, that he was simply to proud to let those interests of his be shown. And so he kept those interests hidden, satisfying them only in secret, and instead acting publicly as Dr. Jekyll. This “statement of the case” emphasizes the performativity of Jekyll’s identity. By choosing to perform only one aspect of his identity, Jekyll claims, he drove further apart the various parts of himself, and his experiment and potion allows him to finalize their separation. As Jekyll he can perform his “good” self and as Hyde, his “bad” self. This variableness of identity is ultimately punished within the text, as it probably deserves to be. Dr. Jekyll does use his other identity to trample children and beat old men to death. His ability to change his self is attributed to an impurity in one of his main ingredients, metaphorically tying it to the impurity of his pursuits, and of the divided nature of himself. He dies because of his experiments and his performances.
The treatment of split personalities is definitely the point of the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde character, and by extension the novella. I found this focus to be strengthened by the reappearance of doubling in other characters in the story, specifically, Mr. Utterson and Mr. Guest. Mr. Guest, fittingly, makes only one appearance in the text, really. He shows up in the section labeled, “Incident of the Letter” (wouldn’t Lacan be drooling for a title like that?) as Mr. Utterson dwells on a letter that Dr. Jekyll supposedly received from Mr. Hyde. When introducing the character of Mr. Guest, who is Mr. Utterson’s head clerk (Mr. Utterson is Dr. Jekyll’s lawyer and the main character of the novella in many ways), the narrator explains that “There was no man from who he [Mr. Utterson] kept fewer secrets…and he was not always sure that he kept as many as he meant.” Mr. Guest enters and leaves the story without being given any really character apart from that defined by his relation to Mr. Utterson. Their conversation is characterized by complete agreement and complete lack of emotion. They discuss Sir Danvers’s murder as though it were the weather. All that Mr. Guest supplies is the reinforcement of Mr. Utterson’s own thoughts as well as the voicing of those thoughts that Mr. Utterson has seemingly repressed. The relationship between Mr. Utterson and Mr. Guest seems, in some ways, like the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They seem to have access to the same pool of thoughts, be of the same opinions, the only difference being that Mr. Utterson and Dr. Jekyll both deny certain thoughts/acts that the other of the pair is willing to bring up and bring out. I find the doubling of Mr. Utterson and Mr. Guest in Robert Louis Stevenson’s purely utilitarian use of the character Mr. Guest, and think that this doubling importantly supports and strengthens the anxiety over identity expressed in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
As I said, I was more surprised to find this unusual treatment of identity in The Importance of Being Earnest. Within the first act, both Algernon and Jack reveal their Bunburying. Bunburying, a neologism of Algernon’s, is the use of an invented person in order to get away with doing whatever you want. Algernon invented Bunbury, an invalid, so that he can get out of any unpleasant obligation in order to pay a visit to Bunbury. Jack, however, takes his Bunburying further. He invented a younger brother Ernest, so that he can leave the country and his ward, Cecily, in order to go up to the city and do whatever he likes. In the city, though, he assumes the name Ernest so that he can act in ways that, morally, are not appropriate for the guardian of a young ward. To a lesser and more realistic degree, Jack does exactly what Dr. Jekyll does. Without the aid of a color-changing chemical concoction, he changes his identity and can behave, as Ernest, in ways that Jack could not behave. For Jack, too, identity is a performance. It is, though, a performance with material results. He wants to reveal his Bunburying and his real name (Jack) to Gwendolyn once she accepts his proposal of marriage, but it turns out, she only wants to marry someone named Ernest; should could never marry someone named Jack.
Algernon, too, gets in on this secret identity business, leading Cecily to believe that he is Jack’s younger brother Ernest. He proposes to Cecily and it turns out that she also could only ever marry a man named Ernest, never a man named Algernon. Confusion and humor follows inevitably, as Algernon and Jack plays various roles and the fiancés Gwendolyn and Cecily meet and the “truth” comes out.
One thing that interests me about the portrayal of identity in both Stevenson’s novella and Wilde’s play is the way in which the excess of personality and identity of a few characters depends on the lack of personality and identity of others. Gwendolyn and Cecily, for example, may as well be the exact same person. They repeat each other’s lines verbatim. They have no real distinguishing character traits. They simply fill the role of mildly clever, somewhat feisty fiancé. Women in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are even more unfortunate. They are either unspeaking victims or weeping servants. In both works, the depictions of servants also highlight the identity of the main male characters. Both Poole (Dr. Jekyll’s butler) and Lane (Algernon’s butler) are somewhat prominent characters, but they really are really only flat and functional. Wilde treats this topic explicitly, though dismissively, with Algernon’s own explicitly dismissive treatment of Lane. Lane mentions something about his past marriage and Algernon tells him that he really has no interest in hearing about Lane’s life. It is only the upper-class white males of both works that are allowed to explore their own characters.
And about the “truth” that is revealed at the end of The Importance of Being Earnest. (I guess I should have warned that there’d be spoilers before now. Well there will continue to be.) It turns out Jack was actually Ernest all along. He never knew who his parents were, and it turns out his father and namesake was Ernest Moncrieff. General Moncrieff is also the father of Algernon, so Jack/Ernest also wasn’t lying when he claimed to have a brother. At his core, then, Jack is one unified and (unintentionally) “honest” man. Though Wilde plays with multiple personalities, the story ends with this performance resolved. The “traditional” view of identity is not really questioned. Everything is back where it belongs and nothing has changed, except for a name. And really, what’s in a name?
Stevenson seems to commit a bit more to the play of multiple identities and the flexibility of these identities. I don’t know, though, what I think about the ultimate outcome of the story. Does Dr. Jekyll’s death reinforce the view that a person’s identity is fixed and singular, though possibly hybrid, or does it support Dr. Jekyll’s own view that we are each inhabited by “multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens”? Since Dr. Jekyll does get the last word on the subject, maybe we, as readers, are meant to agree with him and understand that, though we are “compound” in our nature, it’s better to hold it all together than to let it tear you apart like Dr. Jekyll.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Susan Boyle's 'Coming Out'
All this talk about sexuality and choice, but what does it mean to be asexual in so highly sexed a society as ours? I really despise those ‘Got Talent?’ shows, but I couldn’t help feeling completely paralyzed by Susan Boyle’s performance on “Britain’s Got Talent.” She’s been an international sensation, but not just because of her beautiful voice. Susan Boyle, at 47, walked on stage to an emotional flogging. Catcalling and boo-ing when she walked on stage, audience members showed absolute derision at her less than conventional aspiring singer appearance. Simon was more snarky than usual, showing exasperation when Susan explained her solitary lifestyle and to the perverse delight of the crowd, gave a little shimmy. And then she took up the microphone, and in a very powerful (yet overly dramatized moment) Susan Boyle began to look very attractive to media moguls and youtube viewers everywhere, and it wasn’t just because of her voice. Susan Boyle is 47 and has never been kissed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
We live in a world where people (women especially) are perceived as being broken, dysfunctional, or neurotic for being undersexed. It is a kind of “double bind” (Sedgwick 913). In the text, "Epistemology of the Closet", Eve Sedgwick addresses the causes and consequences of sexual-identification. Yet what about those who choose, or are born asexual? The fact that ‘sexual’ is the root of all terms of to describe orientation, is for approximately 60 million self-described asexuals, harmful. This is yet another aspect to the ‘double-bind’ of sexual terminology that forces persons to devalue their “truth” (913) on the basis of choice in sexual subjectivity. She writes, “I would suggest that an understanding of their irresolvable instability has been continually available, and has continually lent discursive authority, to antigay as well as to gay cultural forces of this century” (913). It is a sad fact, that sexual-objectification is so determinative of a woman’s worth under the voyeuristic male gaze.
Whether or not it was Susan’s choice to remain celibate is taken for granted based on her looks. Western media denotes individual worth on the basis of sexual appeal. Women who become public figures are judged by standards of prudery. In our society it is assumed that abstinence or celibacy is a deliberate rejection of sexuality for religious, medical, or pathological reasons. But if sexuality is a spectrum –why is asexuality considered so defective? Intrigued, I did a little research and found an article from the ‘National Religious Vocation Conference’ where it was declared if a person isn’t sexual, ‘they aren’t a person’ because sexuality is a ‘gift’ from God and therefore a fundamental part of human identity. Although the conception is that not having sex is a choice, then those who don’t have sex are treated as virtually nonexistent, inhuman.
Women are publicly persecuted for repressing their sex drives—and taking out their pent up emotion in the workplace, for instance. Hilary Clinton is a case study of how this works in reverse—stoicism and equanimity can also undercut your fan base. For what other purpose does Cosmopolitan sell so many copies of ‘101 sex tips to enhance your self-esteem!’? The answer is pretty clear in Adrienne Rich’s text, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Women must market their sexual attractiveness to men. Men have control over women’s sexuality because sex is power. Hence the flood of letters sent to women’s magazines where women and some men complain of the discrimination they feel in a society that renders them invisible. Yet I think Rich’s text doesn’t explain the number of male asexuals. They too, of course, seek emotional friendships and romantic desires rather than erotic ones. Many asexual/autoerotic/homoromantic/heteroromantic persons come out to their family and friends, declaring their orientation to be as valid as being straight or gay. Perhaps we ought to be rethinking a compulsory sexuality in broader terms—if celebrity sensationalism indicates anything it is that both the repression and expression of sexuality are both forms of public persecution.
And it isn’t just men, either. Women can be very harsh critics of other women. Take this popular blog posting for instance:
“The idea of keeping her in her original state is sentimental and selfish. Is she supposed to bolster your self esteem? One of her attributes is that she’s never been kissed. (She’s 47!) Should she retain her virginity along with her bushy eyebrows so that TV viewers can feel warm and squishy?”
I found this post very hard to read, because this woman’s objectification of the talented Susan Boyle felt like a mutually self-derisive project. This woman, a self-described professor of law, attributed Susan Boyle’s celibacy to her religious devotion, and brain damage. She said she could benefit from a show like “What Not to Wear” and “Extreme Makeover.” These shows are so explicitly abrasive to women, contestants are verbally assaulted for not conforming to the dress-code standards in the workplace. The contestant is always broken down, beaten into submission. And the shows always end on an emotional high-note, where the less-than-perfect people, who snap out of their emotional repression, ‘come out’ to society a new, happy person. Again, women who have ‘let themselves go’ are ‘hiding from themselves’ as though celibacy is so taboo in society that one must mask it.
I also find it infuriating that whether or not Susan should undergo a Hollywood makeover in order to ‘clean up’ her bushy eyebrows has fueled a publicity campaign. A recent NYT article offered this interesting tidbit on the extreme “not so young and not so beautiful” prejudice: “Amanda Holden (Britain’s Got Talent judge), artfully put together and seemingly unable to move her face to register surprise—said that Miss Boyle should resist submitting to a Hollywood-style makeover.” She purportedly reasoned, “the minute we turn her into a glamourpuss is when it’s spoilt.” Where does objectification end for women? Either she is supposed to get a makeover and fail to conform to the hypersexual, pop-star persona, or she doesn’t and is patronized not despite her virginity but because of it. Is this the “it” that would “spoilt?” Sanctifying her ‘dowdiness’ in this entertainment industry is equivalent to heretical stoning. Even though Susan Boyle’s life story is attractive in every other way, when it comes to surface appearances and sexuality, in this misogynist culture, she cannot win.
Note: It seems Susan did get a makeover according to the NYT, describing her new look as “wooden” when she appeared as a guest on “the Early Show.”
We live in a world where people (women especially) are perceived as being broken, dysfunctional, or neurotic for being undersexed. It is a kind of “double bind” (Sedgwick 913). In the text, "Epistemology of the Closet", Eve Sedgwick addresses the causes and consequences of sexual-identification. Yet what about those who choose, or are born asexual? The fact that ‘sexual’ is the root of all terms of to describe orientation, is for approximately 60 million self-described asexuals, harmful. This is yet another aspect to the ‘double-bind’ of sexual terminology that forces persons to devalue their “truth” (913) on the basis of choice in sexual subjectivity. She writes, “I would suggest that an understanding of their irresolvable instability has been continually available, and has continually lent discursive authority, to antigay as well as to gay cultural forces of this century” (913). It is a sad fact, that sexual-objectification is so determinative of a woman’s worth under the voyeuristic male gaze.
Whether or not it was Susan’s choice to remain celibate is taken for granted based on her looks. Western media denotes individual worth on the basis of sexual appeal. Women who become public figures are judged by standards of prudery. In our society it is assumed that abstinence or celibacy is a deliberate rejection of sexuality for religious, medical, or pathological reasons. But if sexuality is a spectrum –why is asexuality considered so defective? Intrigued, I did a little research and found an article from the ‘National Religious Vocation Conference’ where it was declared if a person isn’t sexual, ‘they aren’t a person’ because sexuality is a ‘gift’ from God and therefore a fundamental part of human identity. Although the conception is that not having sex is a choice, then those who don’t have sex are treated as virtually nonexistent, inhuman.
Women are publicly persecuted for repressing their sex drives—and taking out their pent up emotion in the workplace, for instance. Hilary Clinton is a case study of how this works in reverse—stoicism and equanimity can also undercut your fan base. For what other purpose does Cosmopolitan sell so many copies of ‘101 sex tips to enhance your self-esteem!’? The answer is pretty clear in Adrienne Rich’s text, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Women must market their sexual attractiveness to men. Men have control over women’s sexuality because sex is power. Hence the flood of letters sent to women’s magazines where women and some men complain of the discrimination they feel in a society that renders them invisible. Yet I think Rich’s text doesn’t explain the number of male asexuals. They too, of course, seek emotional friendships and romantic desires rather than erotic ones. Many asexual/autoerotic/homoromantic/heteroromantic persons come out to their family and friends, declaring their orientation to be as valid as being straight or gay. Perhaps we ought to be rethinking a compulsory sexuality in broader terms—if celebrity sensationalism indicates anything it is that both the repression and expression of sexuality are both forms of public persecution.
And it isn’t just men, either. Women can be very harsh critics of other women. Take this popular blog posting for instance:
“The idea of keeping her in her original state is sentimental and selfish. Is she supposed to bolster your self esteem? One of her attributes is that she’s never been kissed. (She’s 47!) Should she retain her virginity along with her bushy eyebrows so that TV viewers can feel warm and squishy?”
I found this post very hard to read, because this woman’s objectification of the talented Susan Boyle felt like a mutually self-derisive project. This woman, a self-described professor of law, attributed Susan Boyle’s celibacy to her religious devotion, and brain damage. She said she could benefit from a show like “What Not to Wear” and “Extreme Makeover.” These shows are so explicitly abrasive to women, contestants are verbally assaulted for not conforming to the dress-code standards in the workplace. The contestant is always broken down, beaten into submission. And the shows always end on an emotional high-note, where the less-than-perfect people, who snap out of their emotional repression, ‘come out’ to society a new, happy person. Again, women who have ‘let themselves go’ are ‘hiding from themselves’ as though celibacy is so taboo in society that one must mask it.
I also find it infuriating that whether or not Susan should undergo a Hollywood makeover in order to ‘clean up’ her bushy eyebrows has fueled a publicity campaign. A recent NYT article offered this interesting tidbit on the extreme “not so young and not so beautiful” prejudice: “Amanda Holden (Britain’s Got Talent judge), artfully put together and seemingly unable to move her face to register surprise—said that Miss Boyle should resist submitting to a Hollywood-style makeover.” She purportedly reasoned, “the minute we turn her into a glamourpuss is when it’s spoilt.” Where does objectification end for women? Either she is supposed to get a makeover and fail to conform to the hypersexual, pop-star persona, or she doesn’t and is patronized not despite her virginity but because of it. Is this the “it” that would “spoilt?” Sanctifying her ‘dowdiness’ in this entertainment industry is equivalent to heretical stoning. Even though Susan Boyle’s life story is attractive in every other way, when it comes to surface appearances and sexuality, in this misogynist culture, she cannot win.
Note: It seems Susan did get a makeover according to the NYT, describing her new look as “wooden” when she appeared as a guest on “the Early Show.”
Friday, May 1, 2009
Girls, boys, and chimpanzees
I would like to open this post with a few defensive remarks, that may, perhaps, forestall the angry mob that will probably show up to throw me off of Scripps.
First off, I am, in fact, a real live feminist. I have worked for feminist organizations, I am a card-carrying member of a few more. I have public appeared as a contraception superhero in the pursuit of women’s rights—and that meant a plastic cape, in July, in Georgia. It was over 100 degrees. Let no one doubt my commitment to equal rights for the fairer sex.
Second, natural does not equal good, nor does unnatural equal bad. Humans do all sorts of fantastically unnatural things all the time, like flying, that I approve of. Creatures in the natural world regularly do things, like murdering their step-children,that I think are a poor model for human behavior.
That said, I was absolutely shocked at the number of people who, in response to our readings on gender theory said they couldn’t understand why humanity decided to divide along “arbitrary” gender lines, male and female, rather than, say, by eye color.
May I offer the following answer: Duh. It is because people, like the vast majority of vertebrates, come in males and females. There is a very, very simple reason for that: sexual dimorphism works.
This requires a bit of background: Imagine, for a moment, that you are God, and in the process of designing the humble rabbit. (This is not how evolution works, or course, but work with me). You have two basic options for reproduction: sexual or asexual. Curious, you decide to try both out. You make two species, absolutely identical except for their mode of reproduction, and drop two of each on a field. Let’s call them SexBunnies and CloneBunnies.
For the sake of simplicity of math, let’s say you haven’t got around to inventing carnivores yet, the field can hold exactly 200 rabbits, and they can reproduce 2 rabbits per pregnancy, once a month. You set them down in mid-December (you haven’t got around to inventing seasons yet either).
January comes along, and the set of SexBunnies has a pair bouncing baby bunny, that the female carried. The CloneBunnies, on the other hand, don’t have to find mates, so they both get to have a pair of baby bunnies! There are now 4 SexBunnies, and 6 CloneBunnies By February, expect 4 new SexBunnies—and 12 more CloneBunnies. Come April, the field will be nearly full—with 32 SexBunnies, and 162 CloneBunnies.
So why do animals sexually reproduce at all, if it is so much less efficient? Because sexual reproduction has several huge advantages, like increased genetic variation, so that when Bunny Pox hits your field, there is a higher chance that a few of your SexBunnies are naturally resistant. However, another huge advantage is sexual dimorphism leads to efficient distribution of labor between the two sexes.
You see this distribution among tons of animals. In many species, especially among birds, males and females look entirely different (though boys tend to be the pretty ones). In communal, food-sharing societies, like that of primates, there tend to be different roles for males and females.
So why is it that humans have sexual dimorphism? Because it works. Because seven million years ago, when the first anthropomorphic primates of the Hominini tribe evolved, life was hard. Really, really f***ing hard. Difficult in a way that modern humans, who have antibiotics and refrigeration and buildings and wheeled vehicles and agriculture and domestic animals and weapons and fire cannot even begin to imagine. Most of the bipedal primates died off. For a long time, Homo Sapiens teetered on the brink of extinction—at several points, there may have been less than a thousand members of our species. Thue hunter-gatherer lifestyle is one of ceaseless work and constant near-starvation.
So why is that men tend to be stronger and taller than women? Because all that muscle mass is difficult to maintain, and it takes tons of calories. If your entire species is muscled like that, everyone dies of hunger. If only half of the species has it, you need less food, and have a better chance of surviving—so men became the hunters. Why is it that women are traditionally in charge of childcare? Because we have uteruses and produce breastmilk—it isn’t as if we could leave the baby at home with our husbands and a bottle of formula. Pulling even a small percentage of your labor force of the vital work of food production to carry and raise children is dangerous—so only half the species tends to do it, and not all at the same time.
There are actual, real, measurable, biological difference between men and women and those differences exist for a reason—and that reason is not some vast conspiracy to make people with breasts feel bad. It is because sexual division of labor creates increased survival rates, so evolution selected for it—to this day, men tend to better at spatial-awareness tasks and women tend to have a better sense of taste (in food, not fashion) because men hunted and women gathered.
Note that I said tend. Of course, there have always been variations. We reproduce sexually, we produce varied offspring—that is one of our strengths as a species, in terms of survival rates. It is also fairly clear that some things, like which sex gets to wear pointy shoes, are totally meaningless cultural constructions. Other constructions of male-female difference, though, cultural or not, exist because they worked.
The world is different now. I don’t need the special advantages of maleness to be an accountant or a surgeon or a programmer. (For that matter, wouldn’t actually need these advantages to be hunters—I am sure there were a few prehistoric girls that grew up eschew childrearing and hunt mammoths, but I am talking about maximum efficiency here). Men don’t need estrogen to be able to rear babies or teach preschool or be nurses. For the very first time in human history—in the history of primates, really—sexual equity can actually increase the chances of our species surviving. That is really, really awesome. Amazing! Astounding! A true testament to infinity diversity of life!
Nevertheless, pretending that there are no differences between men and women (and for that men transgendered individuals—they probably serve a useful evolutionary purpose too), or that these differences have no biological basis is intellectually dishonest, and probably ultimately unhelpful. In my opinion, it is also morally questionable.
I should be able to make a real moral/ethical argument that I, as a human being, simply on the basis of my humanity, deserve the same rights and responsibilities as a man, regardless of the fact that the average man can do more pull-ups than me. I should not need to make recourse to the silly argument that I only can do less pull-ups because I am a helpless victim of cultural conditioning that taught me that pull-ups weren’t feminine. Yes, that cultural pressure probably does exist, but it ought to be irrelevant to my argument. Similarly, I can make a decent argument that we shouldn’t kill each other without needing to make recourse to the bible.
In short, men and women are different—but that doesn’t need to matter. Accept it, marvel at it, and move on. Don’t pretend it isn’t real!
I will now await the angry mob.
Oh, and while I am pissing people off anyway, only captive bonobo chimpanzees regularly have sex for fun and live in "peaceful", female-dominated societies, probably because they are bored and slightly crazy. In the wild, they are even more violent than regular chimps. Leave the poor bonobos out of it.
First off, I am, in fact, a real live feminist. I have worked for feminist organizations, I am a card-carrying member of a few more. I have public appeared as a contraception superhero in the pursuit of women’s rights—and that meant a plastic cape, in July, in Georgia. It was over 100 degrees. Let no one doubt my commitment to equal rights for the fairer sex.
Second, natural does not equal good, nor does unnatural equal bad. Humans do all sorts of fantastically unnatural things all the time, like flying, that I approve of. Creatures in the natural world regularly do things, like murdering their step-children,that I think are a poor model for human behavior.
That said, I was absolutely shocked at the number of people who, in response to our readings on gender theory said they couldn’t understand why humanity decided to divide along “arbitrary” gender lines, male and female, rather than, say, by eye color.
May I offer the following answer: Duh. It is because people, like the vast majority of vertebrates, come in males and females. There is a very, very simple reason for that: sexual dimorphism works.
This requires a bit of background: Imagine, for a moment, that you are God, and in the process of designing the humble rabbit. (This is not how evolution works, or course, but work with me). You have two basic options for reproduction: sexual or asexual. Curious, you decide to try both out. You make two species, absolutely identical except for their mode of reproduction, and drop two of each on a field. Let’s call them SexBunnies and CloneBunnies.
For the sake of simplicity of math, let’s say you haven’t got around to inventing carnivores yet, the field can hold exactly 200 rabbits, and they can reproduce 2 rabbits per pregnancy, once a month. You set them down in mid-December (you haven’t got around to inventing seasons yet either).
January comes along, and the set of SexBunnies has a pair bouncing baby bunny, that the female carried. The CloneBunnies, on the other hand, don’t have to find mates, so they both get to have a pair of baby bunnies! There are now 4 SexBunnies, and 6 CloneBunnies By February, expect 4 new SexBunnies—and 12 more CloneBunnies. Come April, the field will be nearly full—with 32 SexBunnies, and 162 CloneBunnies.
So why do animals sexually reproduce at all, if it is so much less efficient? Because sexual reproduction has several huge advantages, like increased genetic variation, so that when Bunny Pox hits your field, there is a higher chance that a few of your SexBunnies are naturally resistant. However, another huge advantage is sexual dimorphism leads to efficient distribution of labor between the two sexes.
You see this distribution among tons of animals. In many species, especially among birds, males and females look entirely different (though boys tend to be the pretty ones). In communal, food-sharing societies, like that of primates, there tend to be different roles for males and females.
So why is it that humans have sexual dimorphism? Because it works. Because seven million years ago, when the first anthropomorphic primates of the Hominini tribe evolved, life was hard. Really, really f***ing hard. Difficult in a way that modern humans, who have antibiotics and refrigeration and buildings and wheeled vehicles and agriculture and domestic animals and weapons and fire cannot even begin to imagine. Most of the bipedal primates died off. For a long time, Homo Sapiens teetered on the brink of extinction—at several points, there may have been less than a thousand members of our species. Thue hunter-gatherer lifestyle is one of ceaseless work and constant near-starvation.
So why is that men tend to be stronger and taller than women? Because all that muscle mass is difficult to maintain, and it takes tons of calories. If your entire species is muscled like that, everyone dies of hunger. If only half of the species has it, you need less food, and have a better chance of surviving—so men became the hunters. Why is it that women are traditionally in charge of childcare? Because we have uteruses and produce breastmilk—it isn’t as if we could leave the baby at home with our husbands and a bottle of formula. Pulling even a small percentage of your labor force of the vital work of food production to carry and raise children is dangerous—so only half the species tends to do it, and not all at the same time.
There are actual, real, measurable, biological difference between men and women and those differences exist for a reason—and that reason is not some vast conspiracy to make people with breasts feel bad. It is because sexual division of labor creates increased survival rates, so evolution selected for it—to this day, men tend to better at spatial-awareness tasks and women tend to have a better sense of taste (in food, not fashion) because men hunted and women gathered.
Note that I said tend. Of course, there have always been variations. We reproduce sexually, we produce varied offspring—that is one of our strengths as a species, in terms of survival rates. It is also fairly clear that some things, like which sex gets to wear pointy shoes, are totally meaningless cultural constructions. Other constructions of male-female difference, though, cultural or not, exist because they worked.
The world is different now. I don’t need the special advantages of maleness to be an accountant or a surgeon or a programmer. (For that matter, wouldn’t actually need these advantages to be hunters—I am sure there were a few prehistoric girls that grew up eschew childrearing and hunt mammoths, but I am talking about maximum efficiency here). Men don’t need estrogen to be able to rear babies or teach preschool or be nurses. For the very first time in human history—in the history of primates, really—sexual equity can actually increase the chances of our species surviving. That is really, really awesome. Amazing! Astounding! A true testament to infinity diversity of life!
Nevertheless, pretending that there are no differences between men and women (and for that men transgendered individuals—they probably serve a useful evolutionary purpose too), or that these differences have no biological basis is intellectually dishonest, and probably ultimately unhelpful. In my opinion, it is also morally questionable.
I should be able to make a real moral/ethical argument that I, as a human being, simply on the basis of my humanity, deserve the same rights and responsibilities as a man, regardless of the fact that the average man can do more pull-ups than me. I should not need to make recourse to the silly argument that I only can do less pull-ups because I am a helpless victim of cultural conditioning that taught me that pull-ups weren’t feminine. Yes, that cultural pressure probably does exist, but it ought to be irrelevant to my argument. Similarly, I can make a decent argument that we shouldn’t kill each other without needing to make recourse to the bible.
In short, men and women are different—but that doesn’t need to matter. Accept it, marvel at it, and move on. Don’t pretend it isn’t real!
I will now await the angry mob.
Oh, and while I am pissing people off anyway, only captive bonobo chimpanzees regularly have sex for fun and live in "peaceful", female-dominated societies, probably because they are bored and slightly crazy. In the wild, they are even more violent than regular chimps. Leave the poor bonobos out of it.
Michelle in the Media
Michelle in the Media
Any woman strong enough to stick by their husband’s side throughout a presidential campaign deserves respect. However, Michelle Obama is an exemplary role model in many other obvious ways. Having graduated from Princeton cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts it amazes me that all I hear about in the news regarding this First Lady are her outfit choices. Furthering her education, Michelle went on to finish Harvard Law School allowing her to be only the third First Lady with a postgraduate degree. Being a woman with hopes of becoming a lawyer, I truly feel Michelle Obama’s academic and career accomplishments gave me the respect I have for her as opposed to her daring, sleeveless choices. I feel that the underlying sexist undertones of American society are stripping Michelle Obama of the appreciation she deserves. Further, she should not have to be portrayed as intellectually inferior to avoid intimidating the public. Here, Michelle Obama is being penalized for her abilities. On a larger scale, it seems as if the media is serving as an oppressor to all black women allowing “the oppressors [to] maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions” (Lorde, 115).
Featuring Michelle Obama on countless magazine covers is no doubt an honor, but the featured articles and chosen pictures embrace this “institutionalized rejection of difference” (Lorde, 15) as pointed out by Audre Lorde. On the cover of Vogue magazine, Michelle Obama sits beautifully in a magenta sleeveless dress. Intrigued by the caption “THE FIRST LADY THE WORLD HAS BEEN WAITING FOR” I eagerly buy my copy. After having read the article I found myself disgusted at the aspects of Michelle’s life selected for the piece. Her Jason Wu designed dress is discussed in detail, as are her plans to be a better mom and housewife for the Whitehouse, but her plans for the future are briskly addressed. This is rejecting Michelle’s academic accomplishments and position of power because the United States is not yet ready to believe that black women are capable of succeeding just as white or black men are. Why can we not be motivated by others success? Why is this racism, “the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance” (Lorde, 115) what sells magazines?
What I wish I would have found inside of this article, or any article within a magazine targeted for young and impressionable women, would address Michelle’s journey. Understanding her past is key because “too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all” (Lorde, 115). Thus, most people would rather remain ignorant of Michelle’s past struggles due to race, gender, class, etc as opposed to gaining a deeper understanding. She is not part of this “mythical norm” which “is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure,” (Lorde, 116) and I feel that women could learn so much from her if these healthy deviations were examined and discussed.
Overall, we need to learn from each other. We do not have to be the same, we simply have to appreciate where everyone has been and gain as many perspectives as possible. More shared knowledge promotes understanding and will aid in our course of positive social change. But we cannot keep focusing on Michelle’s material beauty, because “it is not our differences which separate women, but our reluctance to recognize those differences and to deal effectively with the distortions which have resulted from the ignoring and misnaming of those differences.” (Lorde, 122). I am aware that Vogue is a fashion magazine, and that the article was obligated to address something pertaining to its origin. My issue comes from the recurring theme of Michelle’s stereotypically “womanly” assets always being emphasized, from her clothing to her housekeeping techniques, when this woman is smarter than well over half of our population.
Any woman strong enough to stick by their husband’s side throughout a presidential campaign deserves respect. However, Michelle Obama is an exemplary role model in many other obvious ways. Having graduated from Princeton cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts it amazes me that all I hear about in the news regarding this First Lady are her outfit choices. Furthering her education, Michelle went on to finish Harvard Law School allowing her to be only the third First Lady with a postgraduate degree. Being a woman with hopes of becoming a lawyer, I truly feel Michelle Obama’s academic and career accomplishments gave me the respect I have for her as opposed to her daring, sleeveless choices. I feel that the underlying sexist undertones of American society are stripping Michelle Obama of the appreciation she deserves. Further, she should not have to be portrayed as intellectually inferior to avoid intimidating the public. Here, Michelle Obama is being penalized for her abilities. On a larger scale, it seems as if the media is serving as an oppressor to all black women allowing “the oppressors [to] maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions” (Lorde, 115).
Featuring Michelle Obama on countless magazine covers is no doubt an honor, but the featured articles and chosen pictures embrace this “institutionalized rejection of difference” (Lorde, 15) as pointed out by Audre Lorde. On the cover of Vogue magazine, Michelle Obama sits beautifully in a magenta sleeveless dress. Intrigued by the caption “THE FIRST LADY THE WORLD HAS BEEN WAITING FOR” I eagerly buy my copy. After having read the article I found myself disgusted at the aspects of Michelle’s life selected for the piece. Her Jason Wu designed dress is discussed in detail, as are her plans to be a better mom and housewife for the Whitehouse, but her plans for the future are briskly addressed. This is rejecting Michelle’s academic accomplishments and position of power because the United States is not yet ready to believe that black women are capable of succeeding just as white or black men are. Why can we not be motivated by others success? Why is this racism, “the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance” (Lorde, 115) what sells magazines?
What I wish I would have found inside of this article, or any article within a magazine targeted for young and impressionable women, would address Michelle’s journey. Understanding her past is key because “too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all” (Lorde, 115). Thus, most people would rather remain ignorant of Michelle’s past struggles due to race, gender, class, etc as opposed to gaining a deeper understanding. She is not part of this “mythical norm” which “is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure,” (Lorde, 116) and I feel that women could learn so much from her if these healthy deviations were examined and discussed.
Overall, we need to learn from each other. We do not have to be the same, we simply have to appreciate where everyone has been and gain as many perspectives as possible. More shared knowledge promotes understanding and will aid in our course of positive social change. But we cannot keep focusing on Michelle’s material beauty, because “it is not our differences which separate women, but our reluctance to recognize those differences and to deal effectively with the distortions which have resulted from the ignoring and misnaming of those differences.” (Lorde, 122). I am aware that Vogue is a fashion magazine, and that the article was obligated to address something pertaining to its origin. My issue comes from the recurring theme of Michelle’s stereotypically “womanly” assets always being emphasized, from her clothing to her housekeeping techniques, when this woman is smarter than well over half of our population.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Pearl Harbor and 9/11
In Audre Lord’s 1984 essay “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” Lorde first opens her work by exposing the western European’s mindset. She argues that much western European history has conditioned humans to think of human characteristics or differences in terms of a binary oppositions: superior/inferior, good/bad, up/down. Therefore, age, race, class, sex, and sexual preference are also thought of in those terms. The youth, Caucasian, rich, and heterosexual are usually placed in the position of superiority, while the elderly, non-Caucasian, poor, and homosexual are placed in the position of inferiority. This binary mode of thinking, therefore, leads to the many “isms” that exist in society, such as ageism, racism, and sexism. Hence, she argues that the “isms” are essentially the same, that they are created from the same root. Lorde states that:
Racism [is] the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over the other and thereby the right to dominance. Ageism. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism. (Lorde, 885).
Therefore, a feminism fighting sexism is, in a sense, fighting the same battle as a homosexual fighting heterosexism: they are both fighting against oppression. Because the oppressed are all fighting the same battle, it seems logical that they would unite to ease or alleviate oppression. However, this does not happen because, as Lorde states, “Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppressing, forgetting other distortions around difference, some o which we ourselves may be practicing.” (Lorde, 885) Therefore, she argues that the oppressed do not unite mainly for two reasons: (1.) humans have a tendency to want to be in the “superior” group and (2) the majority of the oppressed do not realize that they are fighting the same battle. Hence, many oppressed women (oppressed in terms of sexism) are oppressors themselves (in terms of ageism, racism, heterosexism…). Hence, Lorde argues that all oppressions are the same and that we should not practice or tolerate oppression. Unfortunately, many people do not realize Lorde’s point and oppression continues throughout history. Two main period of conspicuous oppression can be seen in the aftermath of the attack of Pearl Harbor and the aftermath of 9/11.
In December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, precipitating WWI. After the attack, war hysterias took over Americans, and Congress pressured President Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent. The justification for Executive Order 9066 was that the people of Japanese descent were more likely to be spies for the Japanese. However, most of the people of Japanese descent placed in the internment camps were Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were kids. Therefore, in these times, the Japanese were marginalized and viewed as “inferiors” or “bad”. However, three years later, in 1944, Proclamation 21 was passed, which led to the release from thousands of Japanese from internment camps. The Americans have realized their mistakes in marginalizing the Japanese without proof.
The mistreatment of the Japanese parallels the mistreatment of the Arabs and Muslims post 9/11. In Louis Cainkar’s Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9l11, Cainkar explores the treatment of Arabs and Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11. For her book, she conducted more than a hundred interviews of Middle Eastern Americans and concluded that, in the aftermath of 9/11, Arab men were more vulnerable to hate crime attacks and that hijab (or headscarf) wearing Muslim women were more susceptible to sexual assaults; their hijabs were considered as anti-American symbols. Not only were the Muslims more susceptible to hate crimes, but laws were also turned against them. Arabs and Muslims were more closely inspected by federal and local authority in case they might be spies for the terrorists.
In both the post Pearl Harbor and post 9/11 case, a specific group were marginalized and oppressed. And in both cases, the laws adapted themselves to reflect the oppressive environment of the time: the laws were molded to reinforce the oppression.
In the case of Pearl Harbor, the people of Japanese descent were marginalized and scorned. However, Americans did eventually learn the wrongdoings and passed Proclamation 21. Unfortunately, history repeated itself, and in the aftermath of 9/11, Muslims became the marginalized and oppressed group. Had Americans realized that the oppression and wrongdoings given to the Japanese in 1941 were the same kind of oppression and wrongdoings given to the Muslims in 2001, maybe history would not have repeated itself. Had Lorde’s point or message, that all “isms” or oppressions are the same, been more prevalent, then maybe oppression would greatly lessens.
Racism [is] the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over the other and thereby the right to dominance. Ageism. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism. (Lorde, 885).
Therefore, a feminism fighting sexism is, in a sense, fighting the same battle as a homosexual fighting heterosexism: they are both fighting against oppression. Because the oppressed are all fighting the same battle, it seems logical that they would unite to ease or alleviate oppression. However, this does not happen because, as Lorde states, “Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppressing, forgetting other distortions around difference, some o which we ourselves may be practicing.” (Lorde, 885) Therefore, she argues that the oppressed do not unite mainly for two reasons: (1.) humans have a tendency to want to be in the “superior” group and (2) the majority of the oppressed do not realize that they are fighting the same battle. Hence, many oppressed women (oppressed in terms of sexism) are oppressors themselves (in terms of ageism, racism, heterosexism…). Hence, Lorde argues that all oppressions are the same and that we should not practice or tolerate oppression. Unfortunately, many people do not realize Lorde’s point and oppression continues throughout history. Two main period of conspicuous oppression can be seen in the aftermath of the attack of Pearl Harbor and the aftermath of 9/11.
In December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, precipitating WWI. After the attack, war hysterias took over Americans, and Congress pressured President Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent. The justification for Executive Order 9066 was that the people of Japanese descent were more likely to be spies for the Japanese. However, most of the people of Japanese descent placed in the internment camps were Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were kids. Therefore, in these times, the Japanese were marginalized and viewed as “inferiors” or “bad”. However, three years later, in 1944, Proclamation 21 was passed, which led to the release from thousands of Japanese from internment camps. The Americans have realized their mistakes in marginalizing the Japanese without proof.
The mistreatment of the Japanese parallels the mistreatment of the Arabs and Muslims post 9/11. In Louis Cainkar’s Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9l11, Cainkar explores the treatment of Arabs and Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11. For her book, she conducted more than a hundred interviews of Middle Eastern Americans and concluded that, in the aftermath of 9/11, Arab men were more vulnerable to hate crime attacks and that hijab (or headscarf) wearing Muslim women were more susceptible to sexual assaults; their hijabs were considered as anti-American symbols. Not only were the Muslims more susceptible to hate crimes, but laws were also turned against them. Arabs and Muslims were more closely inspected by federal and local authority in case they might be spies for the terrorists.
In both the post Pearl Harbor and post 9/11 case, a specific group were marginalized and oppressed. And in both cases, the laws adapted themselves to reflect the oppressive environment of the time: the laws were molded to reinforce the oppression.
In the case of Pearl Harbor, the people of Japanese descent were marginalized and scorned. However, Americans did eventually learn the wrongdoings and passed Proclamation 21. Unfortunately, history repeated itself, and in the aftermath of 9/11, Muslims became the marginalized and oppressed group. Had Americans realized that the oppression and wrongdoings given to the Japanese in 1941 were the same kind of oppression and wrongdoings given to the Muslims in 2001, maybe history would not have repeated itself. Had Lorde’s point or message, that all “isms” or oppressions are the same, been more prevalent, then maybe oppression would greatly lessens.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Ravaging Agricultural Rhizomes
In a seemingly abstract but symbolically relevant way, the terminology used by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus reminded me a lot of a documentary I recently watched called "The Future of Food", so I’m going to explore that connection a little bit. The film is about the agricultural industry, a topic that I normally find intensely boring, but the implications of it were too vast not to hook me.Deleuze and Guattari explain Structuralism in horticultural terms, with the simplified concept of a tree and its root. The root refers to and grows into the tree, just as an idea is generated from a pre-existing form, from its root. This notion of a unified underlying structure, an order, is challenged by Post-Structuralism, which instead of seeing an idea or book as a root, sees it as a rhizome. A rhizome is like crabgrass: an expansive and complex root system that cannot be ruptured, because it has no singular point of importance or origin. It is an endless and almost unstoppable web of paths with no beginning, end or center. The rhizome is thus also anti-genealogy (to use another plant metaphor) since it undermines the unified notion of a family tree, or traceable, simplified hereditary genetics.
Agriculture, seed hybridization and crop genetics reminds me of the rhizome concept, in that both are always changing in ways that human beings can hardly keep track of. The Future of Food addresses the rather radical notion of patenting genetically modified plants. The individual or corporation that patents a genetically modified piece of corn then own the rights to its all of its offspring and genetic offshoots. First of all, the idea that someone can own a living organism, a strain of corn of a genetically modified mouse, is in itself a questionable legal notion. Secondly, the idea of claiming ownership to a strain of corn is pretty ridiculous, since crops and plants are constantly evolving from generation to generation, and plant breeds intermingle almost unstoppably; tracking them is nearly impossible.
The film chronicles how a small farmer ended up being sued by a big seed corporation called Monsanto, because his soy crop intermingled with their seeds. The farmer never intended for this to happen, but he wasn’t surprised that it did. Winds often carry seeds many miles to other farms (the farmer happened to be downwind of Monsanto land)—not to mention that several Monsanto trucks carrying seeds passed the farmer’s land regularly, and their tops weren’t always fully covered. However, because the farmer’s crop was mixed with the patented Monsanto strain, he needed to toss out his entire seed and start afresh—battling Monsanto in court cost him his entire retirement. The notion that every ensuing generation of the farmer’s seed would belong to Monsanto is absurd, since each generation would be a completely genetically unique strain. But Monsanto somehow legally owned the genetic material of every generation that intermingled with their genetically modified seed—the idea of even tracing this legal ownership becomes almost too intricate to wrap your head around.
The fact is, plant seeds and breeds constantly intermingle, whether or not farmers want them to. And this isn’t a bad thing, hybridization is how vegetable and fruit variation occurs, why food diversity exists in the first place. The unified notion of agriculture as a collection of single strains that can be patented and owned is almost Structuralist in its notion of ownership and territorialization. But the reality of a healthy crop is a complex rhizome-like intermingling of seeds, which results in ever-dynamic genetic mutation and variation. The notion of reducing a crop to a singular, perfectly juicy and bug-resistant gene is a dream, and potentially a nightmare: if the entire supply of vegetables was provided by one company, which used a single genetically patented seed, what would happen if that strain got a disease? Variation in our fruits and vegetables is what prevents things like the Potato Famine in Ireland; the nation was dependent on that singular strain of potato, and when it was exposed to disease, the crop failure wiped out nearly a third of the Irish population. Variation, diversity, hybridization and genetic rhizomes are necessary to keep our agriculture robust. The Structuralist notion of singularity and ownership is stunting, and even permanently damaging, our agricultural industry.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Role Models?
Today I was looking at movies on Amazon and they had a list of “Empowered Women Movies”. I was curious to see what they put on the list and among the top three were “Laura Croft: Tomb Raider”, and “Basic Instinct”. Granted the first on the list was “Thelma & Louise” which I think is a more valid choice, but I could not believe that the other two were considered “empowering”. Needless to say, I need to rant about this and I think Adrienne Rich’s “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” will allow me to do so somewhat academically.
Starting with Tomb Raider, I unfortunately saw this movie and the plot is terrible. Of course it made a lot of money anyway because it relies solely on Angelina Jolie in booty shorts. Am I supposed to feel “empowered” by a ten-minute shower scene? Although many argue that Jolie is a strong female character because she can shoot a gun, I believe the fact that the absence of any coherent plot demonstrates how blatantly the creators of this film relied on sexualizing her (as if she wasn’t sexy enough). Looking over the “characteristics of male power” it seems like this film is a modern day version of number 7 “cramp their creativeness” (5). The plot is embarrassing, and her outfits are just distracting. Can anyone be taken seriously in combat boots and hot pants? Encouraging women to look to this film for support, as indication that there are strong women out there is just sad.
“Basic Instinct” is even worse. This film centers on a bi-sexual woman named Catherine who is suspected of murder. She is portrayed as cold, manipulative, and extremely sexual. This film is the perfect example of compulsory heterosexuality. Catherine has a female lover (who is also psycho and tries to kill someone but fails), who is killed, which leads her to pursue the lead male (detective) instead. This demonstrates the idea that “heterosexual romance has been represented as the great female adventure, duty, and fulfillment” (14). The film couldn’t continue with two women together for long, one had to die so that the other could discover the true ‘adventure’.
In the last scene of the film Catherine and the detective who has been pursuing her are making love and he starts to talk about getting married and having children. As he does this she reaches under her bed for an ice pick (her weapon of choice), but stops as he changes his mind and tells her that he doesn’t want her to feel pressured. Of course, the woman that isn’t interested in marriage, and who is sexually attracted to women is a psychopathic killer. Rich states, “If we think of heterosexuality as the ‘natural’ emotional and sensual inclination for women, lives such as these are seen as deviant, as pathological, or as emotionally and sensually deprived” (13). An unfeeling killer is pretty deviant, especially one that is hypersexual, flashing her interrogator in the famous leg-uncrossing scene. This ending scene pretty blatantly lets the audience know what type of ‘person’ abhors marriage: the deviant, malicious, manipulative woman.
As if these films weren’t bad enough on their own, they are on a list of empowering films for women. The women appear to be in a position of power within the film, however in reality they are being used in order to create ‘norms’ of sexuality for the female viewers. If anything, these films categorize women, limiting their power by classifying them. Beyond this, their appearance on this list demonstrates just how integrated these thoughts of women are within our society, and how they are not only accepted, but also are supposed models for women. We are meant to internalize this, and that is a huge problem. I love Amazon, but I don’t think I’ll be taking their advice.
Mommie Dearest
The Domesticity of Death in "The Others"
I am going to completely ruin the twist ending of the film “The Others.” If you wish to be surprised by the movie, I encourage you to visit surfthechannel.com or your favorite video provider to view it for yourself before continuing to read this post. It’s not very long and it’s a purely psychological thriller, no blood or guts at all, just creaking doors. It fits incredibly well with some of the feminist theory we have been exploring, and I cannot pass up the opportunity to talk about it.
As Gilbert and Gubar began to rattle off examples of the angel-woman, monster-woman dichotomy they identified in “The Madwoman in the Attic”, I attempted to do so on my own. When they introduced the idea of the domesticity of death, “The Others” came crashing into my mind. I find that the movie serves as an interesting illustration of Gilbert and Gubar’s theory, especially as the physical home comes to signify the body of the mistress of the house.
The scene is set in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, in 1945. The movie begins with the strict and religious mother, Grace, showing several new servants around her home, where she raises her two children while their father is away at war. It is a very large mansion, and Grace demands that, while moving about the house, the inhabitants close and lock each door behind them before opening another door. The reason for this becomes known when Grace introduces the servants to her children, Anne and Nicholas. They are photosensitive, and must be kept away from all light stronger than that of a candle or two lest they have an extremely dangerous allergic reaction. In Grace’s own words, the house is like a ship, and the light must be kept out like water. Due to the children’s condition, the house is usually very dark, and Grace insists on taking the servants on a tour of every inch of it, because, as she says, most of the time you cannot find your way.
Over the course of the following week or so, Anne claims to see people moving about in the house. When talking to their new nanny, Anne and Nicholas obliquely refer to how Grace “went mad.” The family begins to experience a significant amount of supernatural phenomena, and Grace attempts to find the village priest, but gets lost in the thick fog surrounding the house, ultimately winding up where she began. The paranormal activity culminates in one terrifying night, when the children discover the ghosts, whom they call “the others,” in their nursery. These “ghosts” are holding a séance, and Anne tells them about how Grace “went mad.” One of “the others,” an old woman who appears to be a psychic, then informs Grace and the children that they are dead, that Grace smothered the children and then shot herself. Huddled together with her children, Grace talks about the incident and wonders “where they are”, if they are not in Heaven or Hell. She then instructs the children to chant, “This house is ours” with her, and vows never to leave.
Grace, played by a fair, blond, and delicate Nicole Kidman, certainly resembles the angel of the house on the surface. She is slightly weak physically, often complaining about her migraines, but she is wholly devoted to the upbringing of her children and possesses a rigid moral and religious certainty. Her very name evokes a sense of ethereal divinity. She is clearly trying very hard to be a perfect mother and to raise exemplary children, despite their sickness; this makes the reality of her murders and suicide all the more horrifying. I find that the development of Grace’s character exemplifies Gilbert and Gubar’s point that “the monster may not only be concealed behind the angel, she may actually turn out to reside within (or in the lower half of) the angel” (820). To take this statement a bit further, it seems that, in the case of Grace, the angel and the monster alternately “took over,” and when the angelic Grace realized that she had allowed the monster within to take over in the act of killing her children, she killed herself in an act of angelic martyrdom.
The script of the film and Ms. Kidman’s performance allude to the frustration and anger that Grace hides behind her façade of angelic certainty. At some points, Grace even attempts to explain how the darkness of the house drives her crazy, and how she feels abandoned by her husband who is no longer around to help her take care of their sick children. Indeed, her house is so large that she is powerless to maintain it on her own, and for this reason must keep a staff of servants. The stress of keeping up the house, the servants, and the children by herself while maintaining the image of the “slim, pale, passive” angel-woman contributes to the escalation of Grace’s mental instability that eventually leads her to kill her children and herself (817). Hence Grace illustrates how “it is just because women are defined as wholly passive, completely void of generative power…that they become numinous to male artists. For in the metaphysical emptiness their ‘purity’ signifies they are, of course, self-less, with all the moral and psychological implications that word suggests” (815). The angel, then, denied the support of a male caretaker to please and to keep her passive, withers and is consumed by the monster. Interestingly enough, it is this is shift, prompted by her growing sense of her “metaphysical emptiness” and “self-less”-ness after her husband’s departure, that initiates Grace’s suicidal transformation into the “numinous,” ghostly state of being. Following this train of thought, Grace’s consciousness of her angelic passivity is what allows the monster within to take over, thus transforming her into the in-between, indefinable, ethereal state in which she exists.
Once she becomes the essentially “numinous” ghost, Grace’s identity maintains the domination/repression relationship of the dual angelic and monstrous identities. The angel seems to be usually “in control,” as evidenced by her meticulous schedule and generally gentle demeanor, and the monster, ever lurking beneath the surface, still takes over every once in a while, as when she attacks Anne during a supernatural hallucination. It is very important to note that while we can apply the angel/monster dichotomy to Grace’s actions and say, as I have, that one identity at times “takes over,” this is not a case of multiple personality disorder. Though her dual consciousness of herself is neatly played out in dramatic form, Grace exists as wholly angelic and wholly monstrous at the same time. It is in this way that the artistic portrayal of Grace’s fragmented sense of self relates to the effect of a masculinist culture on all women, as Gilbert and Gubar describe in their essay: “The sexual nausea associated with all these monster-women helps explain why so many real women have for so long expressed loathing of (or at least anxiety about) their own inexorably female bodies. The ‘killing’ of oneself into an art object…testifies to the efforts women have expended not just trying to be angels but trying not to become female monsters” (823). Grace, fully understanding after the deaths of her children that she, like Spenser’s Errour and Duessa, is part pure, part corrupt, quite literally “kills herself into [the] art object” of the angel of the house in order to restore or recreate herself as the angel, not the monster.
However, as the continuation of her dual identities indicates, she fails at existing as only angel even in the numinous state. Grace’s inability to explore her own consciousness emerges as a recurring theme throughout the film. The darkness, locked doors, and compartmentalized rooms of the mansion mirror this lack of self-exploration and understanding. Like the rooms of the house, Grace has locked off the separate parts of herself, choosing to exist only as she appears to be, but not as she may define herself. When “the others” appear to have infiltrated the house, Grace, in an emotional outburst, exclaims that she never allowed the Nazis to enter her house during the occupation of the islands, and that she will not allow others to sneak in now. This fear of discovery and penetration relates to Gilbert and Gubar’s discussion of the numinous female, existing outside of normal modes of being. The idea is importantly complicated by the fact that, at the end of the film, Grace discovers that she herself is “other,” that she is the deviant element in the physical space. If the house is her body and she must be defined by it, then it is clear why she cannot leave it, even after death. As her struggles with the angel and the monster within continue, so does her residence in her house. The house is forever in darkness on the inside and surrounded by a thick fog on the outside. Grace claims she often cannot find her way in the darkness, and she cannot travel to the village because of the fog. Society alienates Grace from itself because she is a woman and hence, “the other.” However, it renders her incapable of knowing herself, as well: she is a stranger in her own house.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
THANK YOU Joss Whedon
Now, bear with me...
Buffy is fighting Angelus in an old, abandoned, castle-esque mansion. Angelus is a vampire who was cursed with a soul and has become good, fighting alongside Buffy and her friends. However, he lost his soul and has only a small recollection of what it was like to be good. He has discovered Acathla, a giant statue that is in fact a portal to other worlds. Once Acathla is opened, all the demons and beings from other worlds will wreak havoc on our world. Buffy is trying to stall Angelus while her friends are elsewhere trying to cast a spell that will keep Acathla locked.
Angelus is able to momentarily get the better of Buffy and he disarms her of her sword. (Which now, thanks to Freud, I completely see as a phallic symbol. Literary theory has completed changed Buffy for me. Ugh.) Buffy is cornered against a stonewall, practically sitting, and at a complete loss. With his sword inches from Buffy’s face, he says:
“Now that’s everything, huh? No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away and what’s left?”
Buffy closes her eyes. Angelus lunges forward but Buffy catches the blade between her hands centimeters from her face, looks him square in the eye, and says:
“Me.”
She pushes the handle of the sword into his face, grabs her own off the cobblestone, and demonstrates her superior skills.
When reading the first chapter of Judith Halberstam’s “Female Masculinity,” all that I could think about was this scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Although Halberstam’s examples are mostly queer and female, she says that they all demonstrate that “...female masculinity has been blatantly ignored both in the culture at large and within academic studies of masculinity” (935). Although Halberstam speaks mostly to queer females, I feel that it’s wrong to state, generally, that female masculinity is culturally ignored.
Enter Joss Whedon! The first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired one year prior to Halberstam’s book. I believe that, since then, Whedon has made a huge dent in educating our culture by means of female masculinity. Following Buffy, Whedon created three more shows, “Angel,” “Firefly,” and the currently airing show, “Dollhouse,” all of which have primary, strong female characters. Whedon, who minored in gender studies, even asked the women’s advocacy group, Equality Now, for an okay on the character of the heroine, played by Eliza Dushku in his latest television show.
As Halberstam says, “...many of these ‘heroic masculinities’ depend absolutely on the subordination of alternative masculinities” (935). I found her example of James Bond incredibly funny. To be honest, I’d never thought of M in the way that she does. I don’t feel that M is “noticeably butch”. Yes, she has a short haircut. Yes, she is his boss. But how does that qualify her as “butch”? She’s a strong woman who, may I add, is married. Anyways, I understand that masculinity depends on its comparison with alternate masculinities. This can be seen in Buffy.
Enter Xander. Xander is the adorable dorky kid and definitely not the definition of a “manly man.” For starters, his two best friends are girls: Buffy and Willow. Also, the first time we are introduced to Xander, he skateboards into a pole. That definitely doesn’t give off the ideal sense of masculinity. According to Halberstam, “In Goldeneye it is M who most convincingly performs masculinity, and she does so partly by exposing the shame of Bond’s own performance” (937). In Buffy, she time and time again saves Xander who, more often than not, is running from demons or vampires, rather than facing them.
Halberstam says that, “When you take [Bond’s] toys away, Bond has very little propping up his performance of masculinity” (937). It was this line that reminded me of the fight scene between Buffy and Angelus. Whedon shows that Buffy’s masculinity is just as strong when it’s just her without the sword, without the stakes, and without her backup.
Basically, I believe that Joss Whedon’s creation of strong female characters shows that female masculinity is being recognized more and more. Buffy was and still is an icon for many, as are all of Whedon’s other masculine females: Willow Rosenblum (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Zoe (Firefly), River (Firefly), Kaylee (Firefly), Cordelia Chase (Angel), and Echo (Eliza Dushku).
Thanks Joss!Monday, April 13, 2009
Spivak's view on Frankenstein
I found Spivak's portion on Frankenstein within Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism to be particularly interesting. I believe I was drawn to this because since we have been reading essays on Frankenstein I felt capable of understanding both the theoretical aspects, and plot references of Spivak's argument. The concept of Frankenstein attempting to create an "artifical womb" (Spivak, 847) with his laboratory, and the assertion that "his real competitor is...woman as the maker of the child" (Spivak, 847) is something that I had not thought of or read before, but I do like as an interpretation. Also having been exposed to some of the controversy around which Shelley had the most authorial impact on Frankenstein, this makes me wonder further if there was specific competition within the Shelley's marriage. Spivak's notion of a woman's dual role is compared well to Said's duality within women as well revolving around sexual reproduction and moral guidance. Overall, Spivak sums up what I find to be most interesting by stating that "In Shelley's view, man's hubris as soul maker both usurps the place of God and attempts-vainly-to sublate woman's physiological prerogative" (Spivak, 848). Within this all, I think I should contemplate more about where this desire stems from within Frankenstein. Maybe since his mother died young he feels that it is a part of his life that is gone and therefore must be recreated, but I feel this needs further examination of the text and investigation of Spivak's theory in more detail.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
I would like to comment on the essay of Edward Said--since I took a Jane Austen class last semester, I feel like I have a decent grasp on the material. However, I must first make a brief disclaimer: I hate Fanny Price. I detest her on a deeply personal level, for much the same reason I hated Bella, of Twilight fame*--she is boring and shallow**. Any interpretations of Mansfield Park I make may be colored by this fact.
That said, I have some sympathy for Said's reading. It is odd that the Antigua estate, a major crux of the plot, is only mentioned obliquely--there are longer descriptions of carriages. Their silence on the matter is notable, and he is right to be suspicious of it. This may well constitute a tacit acceptance of the entire system. On the other hand, it may just be a lack of interest. Jane Austen's novels rarely have much to say about national politics.
That said, I have some sympathy for Said's reading. It is odd that the Antigua estate, a major crux of the plot, is only mentioned obliquely--there are longer descriptions of carriages. Their silence on the matter is notable, and he is right to be suspicious of it. This may well constitute a tacit acceptance of the entire system. On the other hand, it may just be a lack of interest. Jane Austen's novels rarely have much to say about national politics.
That said, that same silence makes it difficult for his argument to stand well. He says, at one point, "there is nothing in Mansfield Park that would contradict us, however if we were to assume..." (1117), and then goes on to lay out a great deal of assumptions. He is right to say there is no evidence against them, but there is precious little for them either. It seems to me that it would be just as valid to say that by ignoring the local parliamentary elections, Austen was subconsciously commenting on the fact that democracy works best with minimal voter participation, of that by talking endlessly of carriages, but not the horses that pulled them, she was condoning animal cruelty, because it was essential to the burgeoning middle classes.
In other words, I must echo Jessica's concerns that Said is reading too much into Austen, or rather that he is projecting modern concerns about imperialism onto an unsuspecting 19th century author.
*Yes, I read it. Yes, I am terribly ashamed
**Not in a materialist way, in a no-hidden-depths or fascinating flaws way.
*Yes, I read it. Yes, I am terribly ashamed
**Not in a materialist way, in a no-hidden-depths or fascinating flaws way.
Trying to Say vs. Saying
I, like many posters here, was interested by Said’s analysis of space and domestic culture in Mansfield Park as reflective of a larger imperial discourse… he made some very interesting observations, and took a road somewhat less traveled when it comes to interpreting Austen (I may be limited in my Austen knowledge, but I have never come across a critical writing that discussed her novels as reflective imperialism).
In reaction to Jessica’s question of whether he was “reading too far into” what the author is “saying”… What I thought was interesting about Said’s piece was that he suggested the possibility that Austen could have unconsciously left these vestiges of imperialist culture in her work. This means it's not what the author was trying to say, but rather she unknowingly said through her words. That argument carries at least some validity within the terms Said set up, since he argues that these clues weren't necessarily intentionally included, but rather the product of an all-encompassing colonial ideology Austen might never have registered as directly influencing the domestic topics she was addressing.
In reaction to Jessica’s question of whether he was “reading too far into” what the author is “saying”… What I thought was interesting about Said’s piece was that he suggested the possibility that Austen could have unconsciously left these vestiges of imperialist culture in her work. This means it's not what the author was trying to say, but rather she unknowingly said through her words. That argument carries at least some validity within the terms Said set up, since he argues that these clues weren't necessarily intentionally included, but rather the product of an all-encompassing colonial ideology Austen might never have registered as directly influencing the domestic topics she was addressing.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Reading outside the Novel
Despite academically rejecting the notion of high literature, I find it useful to question my initial sentimental response to English literature especially when it carries early feminist underpinnings. Why do such novels seem to appeal to our human sensibility or feminist ‘subjectivity’ over others? Although I am not an English major (and therefore many of Spivak’s references were lost on me), I think that both authors seek to contextualize explicitly constructed humanistic ideas within a larger imperialist subtext. For Said, notions of space, domestic pleasures, and morality are intricately linked to the economic and imperialistic subjugation of an Other. The novel is questioned as the vehicle for imperialistic validation, and notion of the author critiqued for stylistically depoliticizing a strictly political/nationalist/imperialist project. Taking cues from Raymond William’s deconstruction of geographic space in British literature as the fabric of a larger colonial landscape, Said uses spatial demarcations within Mansfield Park to explore how language is used to centralize morality as characteristic of class, and implicitly, race. He writes, “The question is thus not only how to understand and with what to connect Austen’s morality and its social basis, but also what to read of it” (1122). This brings up several questions about how we read history and biography within the novel form. Said attempts to take Austen’s imperialistic framework for what it is, while at the same time questioning how moral themes in her text have been universalized and politically neutralized. I think here Said is looking for the middle ground between literary relativism and conflating a text to project contemporary ideas onto the past. Its all a matter of how you go about finding the connections—especially if those connections are rendered transparent as the material basis of literary meaning. After all, these examples of British Literature cannot be separated from the politics of the publishing house—the PR institution of the higher classes.
Spivak, the Other, and the Frame
Before getting to the texts, here's a thought that's just occurred to me and that I find encouraging. Picking up on the comment that the essays (or at least Said's) were clearer and easier to access than some of the other theory we've read , I'd like to suggest a different possible for this accessibility. Rather than the accessibility being merely a matter of the author's style, maybe it is a result of all the texts that we've worked (and/or struggled) through up to this point. I think it's very rewarding to look down at the footnotes and back to the endnotes and realize a lot of the references are to essays we've read excerpts of, and that a lot of what we've been working on really has built upon itself. So maybe that's part of why Said is more accessible. It could also just be that he isn't Derrida.
Anyway, reading the Spivak, it seems one point to which she often returns is that "the absolutely Other cannot be selfed" (850), with selfing being an important process in her conception of both feminist individualism and imperialism. In discussing the monster of Frankenstein, I think she finds very interesting structural support for her argument: namely in the role of Margaret Saville, "who is neither tangential, nor encircled, nor yet encircling" (851). Spivak seems to suggest it is because Mrs. Saville does not respond to Walton's letters (and therefore does not encircle the text?) that "the monster can step 'beyond the text' and 'be lost in darkness'" (851). What I'm interested in is the necessity of this open frame in enabling the monster to escape the text. In Spivak's discussion of Christophene from Wide Sargasso Sea, this frame doesn't seem to be a necessity. Spivak notes that "immediately after the exchange between her and the Man, well before the conclusion, she is simply driven out of the story, with neither narrative nor characterological explanation or justice" (846). This expulsion is attributed to the same impossibility as the expulsion of the monster: "No perspective critical of imperialism can turn the Other into a self..." (846, her emphasis), and through this connection Spivak ties the character of Christophene to the character of the monster, in much the same way that it seems Christophene is tied to the character of Bertha in Jane Eyre. So what I'm wondering, is if the frame, or lack of frame, is necessary for Christophen to leave the text in the same way it can be seen to be necessary for the monster. Maybe it's not an important point at all and maybe that's why Spivak doesn't address the notion of the frame in relation to the other characters and novels. Maybe the open frame of Frankenstein is the allowance of "justice" that Spivak claims Christophene was denied, in which case maybe the question is, why does the monster receive that sort of justice when Christophene does not; is it because he is seen as more "absolutely Other" or would it be that Christophene is? I'm probably making too much of Spivak's mention of the frame. I would think that the monster would escape the story, even if Mrs. Saville had responded and so, perhaps, Spivak's claim that this lack or response allows him to escape is simply not true. So, after all that rambling, maybe my question actually is, what do Spivak's comments on Mrs. Saville's role in the monster's stepping beyond the text actually do, and can they be applied to her analysis of the failed selfing of other Others?
Anyway, reading the Spivak, it seems one point to which she often returns is that "the absolutely Other cannot be selfed" (850), with selfing being an important process in her conception of both feminist individualism and imperialism. In discussing the monster of Frankenstein, I think she finds very interesting structural support for her argument: namely in the role of Margaret Saville, "who is neither tangential, nor encircled, nor yet encircling" (851). Spivak seems to suggest it is because Mrs. Saville does not respond to Walton's letters (and therefore does not encircle the text?) that "the monster can step 'beyond the text' and 'be lost in darkness'" (851). What I'm interested in is the necessity of this open frame in enabling the monster to escape the text. In Spivak's discussion of Christophene from Wide Sargasso Sea, this frame doesn't seem to be a necessity. Spivak notes that "immediately after the exchange between her and the Man, well before the conclusion, she is simply driven out of the story, with neither narrative nor characterological explanation or justice" (846). This expulsion is attributed to the same impossibility as the expulsion of the monster: "No perspective critical of imperialism can turn the Other into a self..." (846, her emphasis), and through this connection Spivak ties the character of Christophene to the character of the monster, in much the same way that it seems Christophene is tied to the character of Bertha in Jane Eyre. So what I'm wondering, is if the frame, or lack of frame, is necessary for Christophen to leave the text in the same way it can be seen to be necessary for the monster. Maybe it's not an important point at all and maybe that's why Spivak doesn't address the notion of the frame in relation to the other characters and novels. Maybe the open frame of Frankenstein is the allowance of "justice" that Spivak claims Christophene was denied, in which case maybe the question is, why does the monster receive that sort of justice when Christophene does not; is it because he is seen as more "absolutely Other" or would it be that Christophene is? I'm probably making too much of Spivak's mention of the frame. I would think that the monster would escape the story, even if Mrs. Saville had responded and so, perhaps, Spivak's claim that this lack or response allows him to escape is simply not true. So, after all that rambling, maybe my question actually is, what do Spivak's comments on Mrs. Saville's role in the monster's stepping beyond the text actually do, and can they be applied to her analysis of the failed selfing of other Others?
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Post-Colonialism
I particularly enjoyed the clarity of the excerpt from Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said. He was very careful about emphasizing the important in evaluating each text, however flippant it may appear to modern readers, in light of the Post-Colonial understanding of Imperialism. I think that too often theorist condemn certain texts instead of using them to understand the perception of the society and culture which perpetuated things like imperialism, class and racism, and other forms of oppression. Said's reading of Austen was very subtle; obviously, the spatial resonance between Mansfield Park and Antigua and England and its colonies isn't as apparent as the romance or the gender tensions in Mansfield Park. However, the analogy works well in describing the process of Nationalism and what Gayatri Spivak referred to as worlding, that the attempt to recast Western dominance as natural and without mechanism. By walking us through the entire novel, Said cast light on Imperialism as it was without explicitly condemning his findings or manipulating it to match his theory. This only proves that Imperial philosophies permeated every aspect of society, even the domestic social structures that were Austen's primary focus. Spivak's article is was not as acessible to me. It was a little more cluttered with dense terms, and it seemed to be trying to cover too much ground by discussing feminist theories of Imperialism and individualism.
Frankenstein and Imperialism
In Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism, Spivac states that, “The discourse of imperialism surfaces in a curiously powerful way in Shelley’s novel...” (847). Shelley’s novel, of course, being Frankenstein. Yes, we have gone over Frankenstein quite a lot, but from reading this essay I was given new incite to Frankenstein’s demolition of the female monster. Before when reading this part of the novel, I had compared it to rape or violence. Spivac takes a different turn. He writes that, “(Victor Frankenstein gifted with his laboratory- the womb of theoretical reason) cannot produce a daughter...Frankenstein cannot produce a “daughter” because “she might have become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate...” (848). Saying that a daughter cannot be produced because she will turn out worse than the son, opens the floodgates for different kinds of criticism. According to Spivac, “This particular narrative strand also launches a thoroughgoing critique of the eighteenth-century European discourses on the origin of society through (Western Christian) man” (848). This new comparison broadened my understanding of different possible ways one can read just one portion of Shelley’s novel.
Space+Culture=Ideology
Does the Equation Balance?
As I read this essay, I attempted to apply Said's analysis of space in Mansfield Park to American culture. Though the recent boom in "McMansion" housing developments has often been explained as the excess of American consumerism, might it also be construed as displaying American attitudes regarding, if not imperialism and globalization, then the seemingly more positive ideologies of universalism or cosmopolitanism? I might add that the preexisting analysis of "large houses" as "excessive consumerist/capitalist culture" seems to indicate how commonplace this mode of meaning-making has become.
Though I enjoy this kind of literary analysis and am inclined to agree with Said on his point about Austen, I wonder if any of you thought that this was "reading too far into" Austen's descriptions of physical spaces. He could be accused of straying too far from what is "actually" being said or implied in the text, as Natalie thought about his comments on Austen's beliefs regarding slavery. Does a discussion such as Said's make too many assumptions about the unconscious manifestations of ideology? How much can we legitimately argue the text is "saying"? What considerations ought/ought not be made for the "subjectivity" of the author or her characters in contrast to the greater culture of which they are a part? Can they be separated from their culture at all?
Paradox of Austen?
In Edward Said’s “Jane Austen and Empire” he argues that Austen in Mansfield Park assumes “the importance of an empire to the situation at home” and that events in the home correspond to and reflect imperialism in India (1119). He discusses the “paradox” of reading Jane Austen is the novel seems to say that slavery is “cruel stuff” but that “everything we know about Austen and her values is at odds with the cruelty of slavery” (1124). I found this statement interesting. At first I thought of taking a cue from Structuralism and say that Austen’s opinion, or rather his opinion of what Austen’s opinion is doesn’t matter. But I don’t think that is even necessary, because from the essay I don’t believe that we get a clear enough picture of Austen herself in order to say what her opinion was on slavery. His support of Austen's opinion seems more like speculation. Why can’t we just let the book speak for itself?
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Facebook as the Panoptic Model of Social Control
If only Foucault could see Facebook--I shudder at the thought. But at the same time, I feel ambivalence—Facebook is the offspring of our generation, and it is symptomatic of our cultural mentality to connect and communicate our individuality. In fact, critiquing Facebook feels somewhat futile—why? For one thing, once you become a ‘user’ and create a profile, the myth is that your profile can never be deleted. As much as my friends and I use this argument to justify not immediately deleting our accounts, there is something to be said about the anxiety within or without this social network. Central to this anxiety is the Foucauldian notion that identity is constructed for others according to a coercive model of subjectivity and surveillance. Facebook is a quintessential panoptic model because it creates the illusion of automatism where social relations actually conform to a set discourseare in fact governed by its own discourse.
After reading Foucault’s “Discipline and Punishment” I began to think about our participation on the Internet, and how Facebook renders this participation even more transparent. According to Foucault, the panoptic model of Western institutions is disciplinary to the extent that subjects internalize this coercion (PAGE). Like Panopticism, information isn’t made available to better know our world or ourselves, rather information is deployed to create us as consumers and users. Yet our participation ‘On-line’ is considered to be a kind of freedom the Internet is considered above hierarchal institutions in the real world. Is the Internet an assymetrical model of panoptic control? Foucault would argue that like the prisoner, our every click is visible and every screen backlit and surveyed (Foucault 548). Our voyeuristic participation, it could be argued, has been a slow conditioning of ‘the gaze’ from cinema to television, the Internet, instant messaging, and now—Facebook.
What are we talking about when we critique the concept of the ‘Internet’ or ‘Facebook?’ As objects of study, these networks themselves prove elusive and untraceable. Again, this is part of the panoptic model of social control. Foucault writes that political instruments for acquiring and creating a knowledge of the body are “diffuse, rarely formulated in continuous, systematic discourse…it is generally no more than a multiform of instrumentation…Moreover, it cannot be localized in a particular type of institution or state apparatus” (549) Likewise, the Internet is not one institution, nor can one institution be analyzed according to the end effect. From the participant’s perspective, there are no boundaries to the ‘actions’ of the Internet, and therefore the Internet appears to be an arbitrary creation of usership at any one point in time. In other words, through individual’s creative input, the Internet exists. But this is also flawed. Foucault’s point is that in the absence of violent control, social institutions have created an asymmetrical discourse that makes it impossible to think outside the Internet. This is a difficult notion to wrap one’s head around.
Furthermore, a Foucauldian analysis of subjectivity and surveillance provides insight into how coercive structural implications of social media are normalized. I remember the giddy excitement my seventh grade self felt when a new first instant message popped up on the browser. Then, it was slightly eerie that my friend was waiting for my reply at that very moment. Now, however I feel comfortable with the idea, and take part in a new level of intrusive behavior. As Foucault contends, “Power-knowledge is not who is or is not free in relation to the power system, but, on the contrary, the subject who knows, the objects to be known…” (550). I know the extent to which Facebook influences my understanding of mine and others’ exhibitionism, but do I realize the extent to which my exhibitionism is controlled through and analyzed within Facebook? Commercially, Facebook has revolutionized the way the Internet monitors our consumer choices and behaviors.
Not only do the pop-ads on the sidebar show Facebook’s attentiveness to the interests that I put forth on my profile, but my Facebook is an “enclosed segmented space, observed at every point…in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined, and distributed…” (Foucault 552). I am an actor in constructing my own script—through wall postings, photos, and profile information. Yet this script, in its individualized visibility, “is a trap” (554). To be a part of this surveillance system, one must first conform to a “system of permanent registration” (551), a process that requires one to submit to “binary division and branding, coercive assignment, of differential distribution…” (553). To create a profile, one must choose an identity (gender, sexuality, poltical, geographical, religious) on Facebook’s terms. In a previous class, we tried to create a profile on Facebook that didn’t identify according to gender or sexuality, and it was absolutely impossible. In sum, behaviors and identities on Facebook are in fact rule-governed, and therefore coercive.
Despite the fact that our participation as visible subjects is so obvious, there is anxiety at the sheer number of temporary observers and guilt at our own surveillance of others. Think about the number of pictures you untag for instance. You can’t delete them, why disassociate them from your name when everyone knows that was you with a mullet in the 4th grade? A leading neuroscientist thinks this is because social networking induces the “infantilisim of the mind” and “extreme narcissism.” If this is true, what does this mean for the economic or social utility of Facebook in the real world? Foucault thought that power sought to create subjectivities according to social utility and productivity. Apart from its commercial value, the time we spend on Facebook does not appear to be of any utilitarian value. Rather, if it threatens our work productivity and destabilizes identity, how can this possibly be valuable in the real world? Lets just hope Facebook continues to make poor choices in layout—or even begins to charge for use—then what point will there be in taking part? The illusion with Facebook is that these social relations are in fact created in virtual networking. I do believe they will exist before and after I log on.
After reading Foucault’s “Discipline and Punishment” I began to think about our participation on the Internet, and how Facebook renders this participation even more transparent. According to Foucault, the panoptic model of Western institutions is disciplinary to the extent that subjects internalize this coercion (PAGE). Like Panopticism, information isn’t made available to better know our world or ourselves, rather information is deployed to create us as consumers and users. Yet our participation ‘On-line’ is considered to be a kind of freedom the Internet is considered above hierarchal institutions in the real world. Is the Internet an assymetrical model of panoptic control? Foucault would argue that like the prisoner, our every click is visible and every screen backlit and surveyed (Foucault 548). Our voyeuristic participation, it could be argued, has been a slow conditioning of ‘the gaze’ from cinema to television, the Internet, instant messaging, and now—Facebook.
What are we talking about when we critique the concept of the ‘Internet’ or ‘Facebook?’ As objects of study, these networks themselves prove elusive and untraceable. Again, this is part of the panoptic model of social control. Foucault writes that political instruments for acquiring and creating a knowledge of the body are “diffuse, rarely formulated in continuous, systematic discourse…it is generally no more than a multiform of instrumentation…Moreover, it cannot be localized in a particular type of institution or state apparatus” (549) Likewise, the Internet is not one institution, nor can one institution be analyzed according to the end effect. From the participant’s perspective, there are no boundaries to the ‘actions’ of the Internet, and therefore the Internet appears to be an arbitrary creation of usership at any one point in time. In other words, through individual’s creative input, the Internet exists. But this is also flawed. Foucault’s point is that in the absence of violent control, social institutions have created an asymmetrical discourse that makes it impossible to think outside the Internet. This is a difficult notion to wrap one’s head around.
Furthermore, a Foucauldian analysis of subjectivity and surveillance provides insight into how coercive structural implications of social media are normalized. I remember the giddy excitement my seventh grade self felt when a new first instant message popped up on the browser. Then, it was slightly eerie that my friend was waiting for my reply at that very moment. Now, however I feel comfortable with the idea, and take part in a new level of intrusive behavior. As Foucault contends, “Power-knowledge is not who is or is not free in relation to the power system, but, on the contrary, the subject who knows, the objects to be known…” (550). I know the extent to which Facebook influences my understanding of mine and others’ exhibitionism, but do I realize the extent to which my exhibitionism is controlled through and analyzed within Facebook? Commercially, Facebook has revolutionized the way the Internet monitors our consumer choices and behaviors.
Not only do the pop-ads on the sidebar show Facebook’s attentiveness to the interests that I put forth on my profile, but my Facebook is an “enclosed segmented space, observed at every point…in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined, and distributed…” (Foucault 552). I am an actor in constructing my own script—through wall postings, photos, and profile information. Yet this script, in its individualized visibility, “is a trap” (554). To be a part of this surveillance system, one must first conform to a “system of permanent registration” (551), a process that requires one to submit to “binary division and branding, coercive assignment, of differential distribution…” (553). To create a profile, one must choose an identity (gender, sexuality, poltical, geographical, religious) on Facebook’s terms. In a previous class, we tried to create a profile on Facebook that didn’t identify according to gender or sexuality, and it was absolutely impossible. In sum, behaviors and identities on Facebook are in fact rule-governed, and therefore coercive.
Despite the fact that our participation as visible subjects is so obvious, there is anxiety at the sheer number of temporary observers and guilt at our own surveillance of others. Think about the number of pictures you untag for instance. You can’t delete them, why disassociate them from your name when everyone knows that was you with a mullet in the 4th grade? A leading neuroscientist thinks this is because social networking induces the “infantilisim of the mind” and “extreme narcissism.” If this is true, what does this mean for the economic or social utility of Facebook in the real world? Foucault thought that power sought to create subjectivities according to social utility and productivity. Apart from its commercial value, the time we spend on Facebook does not appear to be of any utilitarian value. Rather, if it threatens our work productivity and destabilizes identity, how can this possibly be valuable in the real world? Lets just hope Facebook continues to make poor choices in layout—or even begins to charge for use—then what point will there be in taking part? The illusion with Facebook is that these social relations are in fact created in virtual networking. I do believe they will exist before and after I log on.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The 'Conspiracy Theory' Theory
When we starting studying some of the structuralism theorists, I started looking for the hidden overarching structure behind things in my everyday life in order to find something about which to blog during the month of February. When I looked for structures in literary texts I was reading for other classes, the logic behind the theory seemed pretty straightforward. It was enlightening to see how writer where influenced by ideological structures or social structures. The editors of our text describe structural as a theory that see “culture, like language, [as] a system characterized by an internal order of interconnected parts that obey certain rules of operation,” and, once I began to notice the internal order of things I could recognize the rules of operation. This was supposed to inform my own actions, and, hopefully, help me make more intellectual choices. However, when I started looking for structures of internal order, I started feeling like a conspiracy theorist and, frankly, a little paranoid.
Structuralism resembles conspiracy theories, because it takes something unexplained gives it a comprehensive and innate logic—a logic that assumes there is an ‘interested party’ who is manipulating the situation (ie the facts, the plot, the language, etc) to some degree in order to reach a desired conclusion (that is, the ‘meaning’ of the novel). Professor Suh warned us that theory would change the way we looked at the world; similarly, conspiracy theories color perceptions. Structuralism as a theory informed the way I looked at everything I did, but, as enlightening as that is, life took a very marginalized form. When my sister told me her dream, I was repulsed by the Freudian implications that arose in my theory-driven mind, my favorite Poe short story took an irritatingly nihilistic turn, and capitalism, in the form of lunch at a fast food restaurant, became the source of all evil that killed my rags to riches dream. I was bitten by the theory bug, and, like a lunatic conspiracy theorist, I was a little nutty about seeing only the abstract in every mundane daily interaction.
A scene from a television show, The Pretender, allows us to take a closer look at the delusions of a conspiracy theorist. Jarod, the titular star of the show (and not the conspiracy theorist), has the intelligence and empathy to assume the careers and roles of any person in society. He assumes the role of a surgeon after reading medical texts for a short period of time and becomes probably the best doctor in the hospital. His value was not just in picking up skills merely from books, but in recreating real-life situations because he understood how situations made people feel. He supposedly solved a test-pilot accident by mentally recreating the mindset of the pilot as the plane was crashing. This ability makes him a “pretender,” someone who can pretend to be someone else. A secret organization called the Center attempts to use Jarod’s gifts before he escapes and becomes a vigilante for justice.
During one of his assumed jobs, Jarod encounters a crazy old man, who believes that aliens try to mind read people through television. The man clearly can’t tell that Jarod is part of a real conspiracy, but he is paranoid about everyday objects like television. It turns out that this innocuous old man was a part of the Manhattan Project, and he feels guilty about the bombing of Hiroshima. So, he tries to expose the truth, any truth, that he fears is being covered up in order to commit atrocities. Jarod identifies with him, and, eventually, tells him to check out the Center and start exposing its activities. The old man misses one level of cover-up—Jarod’s work at the Center—because he is so fixated on a crazy theory.
This introduces the idea of multiplicity that Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari discuss in their breathtakingly beautiful work, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Structuralism, as a theory, doesn’t exclude the notion of having other structures that help explain any one text or subject, but Deleuze and Guattari go even farther in saying that each theory in itself is what they call an assemblage. Additionally, they recognize that such structures aren’t actually there, but are helpful in interpreting works. The perception of a real structure undermines structuralists’ analysis. Like the old man failed to recognize the subversion of a normal roles within his conspiracy structural perception of the world (normal humans and aliens attempting to harm us), he didn’t realize that Jarod was masquerading as a normal human, a test-pilot, when he is really linked to a secret organization that had its own self-interested if not malignant intentions in mind.
Deleuze and Guattari’s introduction to post-structuralism replaces the 'conspiracy theory' theory with a networking-style theory. They use the analogy of rhizomes, but it reminds me of something another English course called quotationalism. Literature is known for quoting other literary works. When an allusion is made, it signifies the entire of the other text merely by referencing it. Quotationalism allows writers, or television shows, take short-cuts or strengthen their arguments by evoking supplementary texts and recognizing the multiplicity within their original concept. While multiple allusions in literature make the work obtuse, television easily transmits thousands of visual analogies and verbal allusions in every show. Thus, shows like The Highlander gets referenced in Saturday Night Live skits about the Jonas Brothers and connect three target audiences—40-somethings, college students, fourteen year old girls—in a way that is funny but also unconsciously acknowledges the unreliable nature of framing things with structures.
If any of these audiences didn’t understand the references, the SNL jokes wouldn’t hit home, but the obscure references would still be ridiculous and therefore funny. Likewise, when we acknowledge the illusonary nature of theories, we can frame a situation in a way that makes it easier to understand without becoming paranoidly attached to that particular interpretation. Theory is a tool, and not all theories are applicable to every instance. Freud doesn't need to define all dreams, and Lacan doesn't have to have the last word on Poe. However, somewhere in the back of my mind, Freud and Lacan will be there. After all, what's a good conspiracy without that lurking doubt?
Zoe Adler: The Human Rhizom
After my preliminary reading of Deluze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus I found that I seemed to instantly connect with the notion of continuous experiences. At first, I was not completely sure as to why my interest was particularly peaked. Perhaps it was my seventh grade anarchist re emerging, working to abolish the social boundaries forcing us to “render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think” (Deluze and Guattari, 378). Or it could be the focus on introspection and individuality, proving that everything in the world is different depending on who experiences it. Maybe it was grasping the concept of a rhizome, which is made of plateaus allowing “a continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose development avoids any orientation toward a culmination point or external end” (D&G, 378) thus abolishing the notion of specific beginning and ending points. Overall I decided that my interest was initially peaked by the universality proposed, possibly appealing to my inner hippie vouching for everyone loving each other and somehow finding a connection. Taking this underlying concept I instantly thought about my web of friends and interestingly enough as I reread A Thousand Plateaus I began to draw more and more information leading me to believe I, Zoe Adler, am a rhizome, with “no beginning or end…between things,” (D&G, 378).
Social unity has always been extremely important in my life. More simply put, I love my friends and they have always been a huge part of my life. It goes beyond that though, it seems that somehow it is made evident who is destined to be my closest friends because they simply keep reappearing in my life with no discernable pattern or timeline, a kind of “cyclic unity of the eternal return” (D&G, 380). However through my constantly expanding social roots I am able to continue meeting new people while simultaneously preserving my old friendships. Another aspect of my social plateau that interests me is the fact that none of my best friends get along, which reminded me of the statement “not every trait in a rhizome is necessarily linked to a linguistic feature” (D&G, 380) implying that not all of my friends need to be tied together in any emotional form. Further it reveals that friendship and social situations do not necessarily have clear-cut reasons for happening; some of my closest friends are people who could not be more different from myself. What it comes down to is that like myself, “any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be” (D&G 380). This coincides with my desire to relate to people on new levels, and I feel that our societal environment would be changed exponentially if everyone simply attempted to go out of their comfort zone and attempt to cordially connect and relate to others. As corny as it may be, I truly believe kindness and strong social bonds are extremely important.
Now, to most it would not seem strange to have the same people in your life from the ages of about four to eighteen, but with my particular case it is fairly surprising. By attending various alternative and private schools I was never ensured that people from my neighborhood would be attending school with me. Let me explain the two main friendships prompting me to think that people return to my life for a reason.
Cayley Bowles and I first attended school together at the age of 5, but were not friends. We were acquainted with one another at a very young age, forgot about each other, and continued with our rigorous elementary school academic career. In third grade I switched schools and left Cayley behind without a second thought. We had never done anything together outside of school and therefore in my mind we were not friends, I simply knew who she was. Later, in fourth grade, my mom began working with Cayley at my old elementary school and we saw each other a bit more often. However it was sporadic, only a couple times, and ceased to continue. When middle school rolled around Cayley somehow, completely independent of one another, appeared at the same student welcome party that I did involving a quaint class of 32 girls. What were the odds? I was so surprised to see her there! We still were not very close, not to mention we could not be more different. Cayley spent half of her life in the water playing water polo, another quarter playing soccer, and then left her spare time to swimming. I have never enjoyed athletics much, and was intimidated by her tomboy appearance. We then decided to carpool out of convenience, and continued to do so for the next three years, everyday! Ultimately we went to different high schools, but would always run into each other and began to get closer. Our friendship actually blossomed at different schools, which I feel is interesting. Rhizomes have “lines that always connect back to each other” (D&G, 382) just as Cayley and I always seem to be reunited. Many could have marked the end of our friendship at the end of middle school, but that “is a regrettable characteristic of the Western mind…” attempting “to relate expressions and actions of exterior or transcendent ends, instead of evaluating them on a plane of consistency,” (D&G, 384)
Another one of my best friends, Julia Shapiro, first appeared in my second half of elementary school. Again we knew each other but were not close. She also attended my all girls’ middle school, and we became close in seventh grade. Coincidentally she lives on the same street as Cayley, also. We went our separate ways for high school, but when I switched high schools junior year it turns out that she was attending the same school. Then, we developed our friendship and have remained very close.
Although these stories sound fairly simple, it is pretty strange in Palo Alto and is unique to my family as well. Interestingly, Cayley and Julia have no interest in each other and do engage in any form of communication whatsoever. Thus revealing that there is never any discernible answer, no absolute solutions or conclusions that can be drawn because each experience depends on the individual. Lastly, it seems that Cayley and Julia seem to be appearing in my life with no fixed time pattern. There will always be deviations and I think of our friendships as continuous planes, just as a rhizome is made up of endless plateaus.
Social unity has always been extremely important in my life. More simply put, I love my friends and they have always been a huge part of my life. It goes beyond that though, it seems that somehow it is made evident who is destined to be my closest friends because they simply keep reappearing in my life with no discernable pattern or timeline, a kind of “cyclic unity of the eternal return” (D&G, 380). However through my constantly expanding social roots I am able to continue meeting new people while simultaneously preserving my old friendships. Another aspect of my social plateau that interests me is the fact that none of my best friends get along, which reminded me of the statement “not every trait in a rhizome is necessarily linked to a linguistic feature” (D&G, 380) implying that not all of my friends need to be tied together in any emotional form. Further it reveals that friendship and social situations do not necessarily have clear-cut reasons for happening; some of my closest friends are people who could not be more different from myself. What it comes down to is that like myself, “any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be” (D&G 380). This coincides with my desire to relate to people on new levels, and I feel that our societal environment would be changed exponentially if everyone simply attempted to go out of their comfort zone and attempt to cordially connect and relate to others. As corny as it may be, I truly believe kindness and strong social bonds are extremely important.
Now, to most it would not seem strange to have the same people in your life from the ages of about four to eighteen, but with my particular case it is fairly surprising. By attending various alternative and private schools I was never ensured that people from my neighborhood would be attending school with me. Let me explain the two main friendships prompting me to think that people return to my life for a reason.
Cayley Bowles and I first attended school together at the age of 5, but were not friends. We were acquainted with one another at a very young age, forgot about each other, and continued with our rigorous elementary school academic career. In third grade I switched schools and left Cayley behind without a second thought. We had never done anything together outside of school and therefore in my mind we were not friends, I simply knew who she was. Later, in fourth grade, my mom began working with Cayley at my old elementary school and we saw each other a bit more often. However it was sporadic, only a couple times, and ceased to continue. When middle school rolled around Cayley somehow, completely independent of one another, appeared at the same student welcome party that I did involving a quaint class of 32 girls. What were the odds? I was so surprised to see her there! We still were not very close, not to mention we could not be more different. Cayley spent half of her life in the water playing water polo, another quarter playing soccer, and then left her spare time to swimming. I have never enjoyed athletics much, and was intimidated by her tomboy appearance. We then decided to carpool out of convenience, and continued to do so for the next three years, everyday! Ultimately we went to different high schools, but would always run into each other and began to get closer. Our friendship actually blossomed at different schools, which I feel is interesting. Rhizomes have “lines that always connect back to each other” (D&G, 382) just as Cayley and I always seem to be reunited. Many could have marked the end of our friendship at the end of middle school, but that “is a regrettable characteristic of the Western mind…” attempting “to relate expressions and actions of exterior or transcendent ends, instead of evaluating them on a plane of consistency,” (D&G, 384)
Another one of my best friends, Julia Shapiro, first appeared in my second half of elementary school. Again we knew each other but were not close. She also attended my all girls’ middle school, and we became close in seventh grade. Coincidentally she lives on the same street as Cayley, also. We went our separate ways for high school, but when I switched high schools junior year it turns out that she was attending the same school. Then, we developed our friendship and have remained very close.
Although these stories sound fairly simple, it is pretty strange in Palo Alto and is unique to my family as well. Interestingly, Cayley and Julia have no interest in each other and do engage in any form of communication whatsoever. Thus revealing that there is never any discernible answer, no absolute solutions or conclusions that can be drawn because each experience depends on the individual. Lastly, it seems that Cayley and Julia seem to be appearing in my life with no fixed time pattern. There will always be deviations and I think of our friendships as continuous planes, just as a rhizome is made up of endless plateaus.
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