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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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, 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.

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.

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?

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?

I was very intrigued by Edward Said's analysis of how physical spaces in Mansfield Park mimic the imperialistic ideology of the English state, to which the characters ascribe.  I felt that he used an interesting technique in taking Austen's description of Fanny's reaction to her Portsmouth house and applying it to the greater English cultural consciousness of the relationships between space, sociability, and awareness.  It is certainly provocative to look at how cultural ideologies are subtly reproduced in the hearts and minds of participants; Said even seems to indicate that Austen herself did not realize the way in which she was reproducing a discourse of imperialism.

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?      

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.