No Basis to Compare

"We want to establish the centrality of Africa in the department. This, we have argued, is justifiable on various grounds, the most important one being that education is a means of knowledge about ourselves. Therefore, after we have examined ourselves, we radiate outwards and discover people and worlds around us."
-Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, "On the Abolition of the English Department"

Lifting this section of Ngugi's essay in his piece, "A Modest Proposal: On The Abolition of the English Department at Messiah College," Powers states, "We want to establish the centrality of the Christian imagination in the department." I am not sure that the same logic can be used to argue the abolition of an English department in East Africa as can be used to argue the abolition of one in the Northeastern United States. On either account, I am also not sure that I completely agree with the idea that self-knowledge precludes the encounter of the world and the knowledge of other people. Perhaps this is true when a natural self knowledge has not been allowed to emerge. However, I tend to think that encountering the world is the very thing that allows for true knowledge of self, for only when we have experienced different ways of living can we evaluate our own culture and lifestyle. Yet, allowing that the premise which both Ngugi and Powers operate upon is correct, I cannot help but believe that it is too much of a stretch to apply Ngugi's argumentation to Messiah College. The argument that Ngugi and his colleagues make to abolish English departments in African universities and reestablish the importance of African literature and indigenous language is the result of and reaction to a profound colonization in African history-- a deeply felt imposition, infringement, and foreign domination which affected every aspect of life for Africans living in colonized countries. The post-colonial state is very unique to the African continent (even among other regions of the world which were also colonized).

The depth and breadth of the effects of European imperialism upon Africa are hard to conceive from our Western context. Some might argue that the historic repression of Christianity (and perhaps even just the repression of Christianity in the States in academic circles within the last century) is somehow comparable to the repression that indigenous culture and language have experienced. Some might argue that the inability to be oneself-- that is, an English department of a Christian school expressing fear at the idea of being explicitly Christian or Africans denying the African part of their post-colonial identity-- is just as harmful and restrictive to one group which struggles with self-knowledge and identity as it is to the next. Yet, I do not believe that these situations should ever be considered as even semi-equivalent. I think that most Christians who find themselves at Messiah College have not experienced the feelings of shame and confusion in regard to their spiritual identity that Africans have who find themselves studying literature at African universities. While the implications of a parallel between Ngugi's writing and our own cultural context may be interesting to explore, the parallel itself is weak and misleading.

The Racial Mountain

In his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Langston Hughes writes about how many young black poets desire subconsciously to be young white poets because the white experience has been presented to them by people (both black and white alike) as superior to the black experience. Hughes speaks about how whiteness, especially for middle and upper class blacks, has come to be synonymous with "beauty, morality, and money," and how blacks have not been taught to see the beauty of their own culture and people. Hughes encourages then that blacks embrace the rich fabric of their culture which has been historically denied. He exhorts the young Negro artist to not accept the renunciation of all things black and exaltation of all things white but rather to reclaim the voice of his people and take pride in his blackness. Yet, Hughes demonstrates the imposing height of the mountain that must be climbed, the difficulties of embarking upon this journey which must be made toward asserting Negro identity.

It seems that beyond Hughes' specific message for African Americans in this piece, he encourages people universally to write from their own experience, embrace their identity, and not fear who they are. He opens with this anecdote:

"One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, 'I want to be a poet-- not a Negro poet,' meaning, I believe, 'I want to write like a white poet'; meaning subconsciously, 'I would like to be a white poet'; meaning beyond that, 'I would like to be white.' And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself."

This last line struck me as particularly poignant. As I have been processing different thoughts about race, culture, and identity within the past few years, I have come to recognize within myself a desire to be of a different race and different culture. I would never say that my own struggles with racial/cultural identity are in anyway comparable to the African American experience that Hughes describes in his essay, but nevertheless, this last line sparked my thinking. I think that I have so often longed to be of a different race because I am ashamed of the connotations of my white skin; I am ashamed of the abusive privilege and power that it holds when traveling and even within the US, and I am ashamed of how white skin has historically been oppressive in cultures all throughout the world. I am ashamed to be associated with not only my skin color but also with the specific kind of whiteness that Hughes highlights as the ideal which blacks were taught to desire-- American, middle class, suburban, cultural whiteness. I would like to shed the assumptions and stereotypes that come with that association. Having grown up in a mostly homogeneous town in suburban America, I have come to realize that I do not have a strong sense of cultural identity. My racial identity crisis extends beyond the color of my skin to include my culture and nationality. I long to be able to claim a culture which is built upon traditions and a strong sense of community rather than upon a shared experience of making frequent trips to the mall, watching certain television shows, and eating processed foods. Anyway, my own ramblings and cultural critique aside, I wonder how Hughes would respond to my desire to be Hispanic, or black, or Indian...surely, it is unhealthy for any person "to be afraid of being himself." Yet, is this hesitancy to claim and find my identity within my own culture somehow more justified because it is born out of an awareness of how that culture has dominated/colonized other cultures? Is there a different mountain to climb on the other side of the racial coin?

Reconstructing the Past?

According to Annette Kolodny, literary history is a fiction, and we can really reconstruct the past as it really was.

"But we never really reconstruct the past in its own terms. What we gain when we read the 'classics,' then, is neither Homer's Greece nor George Eliot's England as they knew it but, rather, an approximation of an already fictively imputed past made available, through our interpretive strategies, for present concerns. Only by understanding this can we put to rest that recurrent delusion that the 'continuing relevance' of the classics serves as 'testimony to perennial features of human experience.' The only 'perennial feature' to which our ability to read and reread texts written in previous centuries testifies is our inventiveness-- in the sense that all of literary history is a fiction which we daily recreate as we reread it."
-Kolodny, "Dancing Through the Minefield"

When discussing some of the "animating questions of Christian hermeneutics" in class, we debated whether interpretation is primarily designed to understand the meaning of a text in its original context or in our present context. Many agreed that, whether consciously or not, we cannot help but look for application in everything that we read. Whether the text that we are reading is the Bible or the Sunday paper or "The Odyssey," the way that we interpret these texts is inevitably characterized by our search for relevance or connectedness to our own lives. Is this selfish? And if so, is that selfishness avoidable? My first reaction to the question of whether or not we primarily aim to interpret a text in its original context was "yes," but after considering Kolodny's point about our inability to reconstruct the past as it was, I might have to admit that interpretation is radically shaped by our situated-ness in the present time. Perhaps even if we wanted to, we could never fully achieve an interpretation of a text in its original context because we are too far removed.

Thus, we cannot look to "classic" texts either as authoritative portraits of past societies or as indicators of the common threads of human experience because these texts are not fully available to us. Even if we read a text heavily relying upon footnotes and historical data, we can do nothing but invent and imagine the context in which the author wrote. There are too many connotations and meanings engrossed in the language and cultural references of the day that escape us... there are too many elements that compose what it means to live in a specific time and place that render classic works inaccessible to the modern reader. We can only mold historical texts by what we now know; we can only begin to understand through our present lens. But, Kolodny would argue, we must embrace that lens and not fool ourselves about our interpretive abilities. As much as we would like to believe that by reading and studying, we can be transplanted into the world of George Eliot's "Middlemarch," we must know that we cannot interpret that world as Eliot saw it or intended it. We can only translate into our present experience. I wonder if Kolodny's argument might suggest that it is best to read works written in our own cultural/historical contexts, by our contemporaries, because we are the only ones who will ever understand it to the fullest possible degree? In acknowledging where our interpretive abilities lack, what then becomes our driving motivation for reading the "Classics?"

More Thinking On Gender

As I was reading Cixous and reflecting more about Woolf's ideas on the androgynous mind and the distinctions between male and female writing, I came upon this statement:

"I write woman: woman must write woman. And man, man."

I am not sure exactly what this idea implies. Does Cixous mean that, as a writer, she must write out of her experience as a woman? That her writing is characterized chiefly by her femininity? Or that she must write for an audience of women? Or that she must write female characters? Or that only women have the authority to write about themselves? Operating upon the assumption that Cixous means that women should write about the female experience and men about the male experience, I began to think about male authors who write female protagonists and female authors who create male protagonists. Do writers do this for the challenge or does assuming the opposite gender's voice come naturally to some? Is writing a different gender more of a challenge than writing a different race? A different age? What kind of exercises might male writers undergo in order to channel a woman's voice? And what authors have been the most successful in this gender-switching experiment?

I decided to do a google search for authors who had written about characters of the opposite gender. I did not find much organized material on the subject besides a few chatroom discussions, but in the process I came across a very interesting link, and accompanying article in The New York Times Magazine:

The Gender Genie
"Sexed Texts"

The "Gender Genie" is supposed to be able to calculate with surprising accuracy whether the author of any text, 500 words or more, is a male or female. A simplified version of an algorithm developed out of Bar-Ilan University in Israel and Illinois Institute of Technology, the "Gender Genie" completes a word analysis of a text and based upon the frequency of the use of certain keywords, guesses the author's gender. I copied and pasted my last three blog entries into the "Gender Genie," and each time, it guessed incorrectly that I was male. Though I was not overly impressed by the test's accuracy, I was intrigued by the idea that even within the smallest words of our language (with, if, not, the, is, at, me, etc), a difference in usage according to gender might arise. I doubt that Woolf would encourage her readers to be aware of language use to this extent in order to achieve the elusive "androgynous mind." Yet, the question is still an interesting one: how does a woman avoid writing too much like a woman? And what does it mean to write too much like a woman? There is clearly a difference in the way that men and women write, but where does this difference start, if not in the use of the most functional words of our language? The impression that I got from reading "A Room of One's Own" was that Woolf believes that the difference in masculine and feminine writing style comes down to directness and perhaps even structure. Whereas men are more direct and explain in a point by point manner, women (and especially Woolf herself) are more indirect and have a more circumspect way of getting across their point.

In the article "Sexed Texts" which covers the findings of the "Gender Genie" more extensively, author Charles McGrath explains that language use reflects a broader gender difference in terms of what men and women speak about:

"Similarly, what the gender-identifying algorithm picks up on is that women are apparently far more likely than men to use personal pronouns -- ''I,'' ''you'' and ''she'' especially. Men, on the other hand, prefer so-called determiners -- ''a,'' ''the,'' ''that,'' ''these'' -- along with numbers and quantifiers like ''more'' and ''some.'' What this suggests, according to Moshe Koppel, an author of the Israeli project, is that women are more comfortable talking or thinking about people and relationships, while men prefer to contemplate things."

Perhaps these are the sort of things that authors have in mind as they set out to write from the perspective of the opposite gender. I would be very interested in knowing about some other studies that have been done regarding the difference in how men and women use language. I think it would be especially interesting to see if these supposed differences can be found in every language.

On the Androgynous Mind

"...it is fatal for any one who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman... Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the act of creation can be accomplished."
-Virginia Woolf

I would encourage you all to go take this gender quiz from BBC right now. It'll take precisely 22 minutes to complete, but it is worth it! It's very interesting in its descriptions of the traditional characteristics of the male and female mind, and provides some food for thought about Woolf's call for androgyny in her essay "A Room of One's Own." My generational norms class took this quiz, and we discussed the intriguing fact that on average, the variety of responses to the quiz was greater within each sex than it was between the two sexes. Essentially, women are more different from each other than they are from men, and the same goes for men! Yet, in general, men tended to score as slightly more analytically brained than women and women tended to scored as slightly more perceptively brained than men (these qualities being attributed to masculinity and femininity, respectively). Nevertheless, one of my female friends proved to have the completely androgynous brain that Woolf aspires to. On the spectrum of 100% female to 100% male, my brain turned out to be 25% female according to the test. Another male friend scored 50% female, so you just never know what your brain sex might be (surely Woolf would say, "that failing is too rare for one to complain of it").

Some conclusions that the quiz draws about the male and female brains:
"Men tend to pay more attention to space and the geometry of the world around them."
"Women are much better at noticing the details of their environment and spotting changes."
"Women tend to be more sensitive to facial expressions. They are generally better at discerning someone's mood just by looking at their eyes. Studies of children's behaviour have shown that on average girls make more eye contact than boys."
"On average, women use 15,000 words a day while men use 7,000."

At the same time as I can understand Woolf's assertion that the fully developed mind "does not think specially or separately of sex," I wonder how plausible it is for a person to write without gender consciousness. Aren't each of us continually made aware of our gender and how that gender plays an undeniable part in our daily lived experience? How could I forget that I am a woman as I sit down to record my perceptions in writing when I am not accustomed to forgetting that fact? My womanliness shapes every aspect of my being. This is not to say that I do not possess masculine traits and that I cannot, as Woolf suggests, achieve a higher state of consciousness by blending my masculinity and femininity. Yet, how much work would this entail? On what assumptions are we operating when we use the terms "masculine" and "feminine?" Woolf seems to draw one conclusion about the difference when she characterizes masculine writing as more blunt and organized from point to point and feminine writing as more exploratory and meandering in its movement between ideas. It is dangerous ground to start naming certain qualities as exclusively masculine or feminine, for as the gender quiz shows, there are women who left-brained and men who are right-brained. It seems to me that the task that Woolf calls her readers to would prove exhausting in the amount of thinking required to do it. I could picture myself attempting to write with an androgynous voice and stopping to evaluate whether every turn of phrase I create is "masculine" or "feminine." Furthermore, why must the feminine voice in women or the masculine voice in men be suppressed? I, unlike Woolf, am not convinced that gender-conscious writing is fatal.

Cultural Codes and...Facebook?

Disclaimer: The following may be indicative of the fact that I have begun to live much too much of my life in a cyber reality.

As I was reading Pierre Bourdieu's article, "Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste," I found myself thinking again and again of the infamous social networking website facebook.com. Bourdieu writes,

"Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed."

Bourdieu argues that taste is representative of social class and that the difference boils down to form and function. While the more educated class tries to distance itself from the common, ordinary function of everyday things and instead establish a stylized version of life and art which must be decoded and which operates through representations, the working class values functionality and the things being represented more than their representations. Distinguished art, dress, food, and music seeks as much as possible to remove itself from ordinary emotion and experience and to become purified and refined. Conversely, Bourdieu makes note of the fact that when working-class audiences watch movies or read novels, they reject formal experimentation which they do not know how to decode and which prevents them from fully identifying with characters. Additionally, when interpreting art, the working class instinctively looks for images to be functional, often making judgments based upon morality or agreeableness.

Though it is easy to say in hindsight that Bourdieu's observations were something I had already understood, the truth of the matter is that I had not before thought about taste and distinction in this way-- as a distancing from the natural and necessary and as an reinforcer of class and educational differences. I realized as I was reading Bourdieu that I often pride myself on my taste in music, movies, books, etc, but that the only real reason I enjoy these things is because I have been taught how to enjoy/decode them (and perhaps I seek out that distinctiveness?) Had I been exposed to an independent or indie film without having been taught what to appreciate (the way it is filmed, the symbols, the acting, the strength of the dialogue, etc), then I would surely not have immediately loved it the way I now immediately love this type of film when I see one. I would have been confused by the detachment from reality, by the emphasis on form above functionality, and by the elusiveness of the meaning. It is impossible that works of art can produce in us an experience of "love at first sight" unless we have been trained in the cultural codes that are necessary to decipher them.

Anyway, returning finally to my original point relating Bourdieu to facebook. I believe that facebook functions primarily as a means for people to display their tastes and celebrate their distinctiveness to the approval or disapproval of the broader facebook world. There are different profile categories which encourage facebook users to list favorite movies, music, books, and television shows, thus betraying their social class and probable level of education. I shudder to think that as I scan through my friends' profiles, I am merely discerning whether or not they reject the functionality of popular culture and embrace the stylistic concerns of the cultural elite. Why should we find our identities in our ability to decode and appreciate elevated art, music, and movies? Why should we market ourselves as lovers of "ethnic food" or of the reality series "Top Chef" when this signifies above anything else that we can afford luxury and do not subsist on more economical foods? How much do any of these silly distinctions actually communicate about us as individuals? Can we believe our tastes to be indicative of our personalities or merely of our culture, upbringing, education, and social class? Why do we put forth such time and effort into both developing and displaying our distinctive tastes?

Class Values and Taste

One of the points that I found most intriguing in Richard Ohmann's essay "The Shaping of a Canon: U.S. Fiction, 1960-1975" was that the American professional-managerial class of the 20th century has promoted their own interests by having the status, positions, power, and sheer numbers to select which literary works would become best sellers (some of which would eventually be canonized). What particularly interests me is Ohmann's discussion of the type of literature that drew in these "intellectual gatekeepers":

"...stories of people trying to live a decent life in contemporary social settings, people represented as analogous to 'us,' rather than as 'cases' to be examined and understood from a clinical distance, as in an older realistic convention. They are unhappy people, who move toward happiness, at least a bit, by the ends of their stories."

Ohmann also suggests that the needs and values of this class, this group of people who "went to the same colleges, lived in the same neighborhoods, talked about the same movies, had to work for their livings (but worked with their minds more than with their hands)" were influenced by novels that provided a moral landscape and advice for how to live. Thus despite their ignorance of the continued problems that existed for the working class and poor in American society (racial, class, and economic injustice), this white collar class sought out novels which provided their lives with meaning in times when they were shaken by events or personal crisis. Ohmann does a good job of tracing the historical and cultural factors which shaped the attitudes of the "intellectual gatekeeper" class: post-war affluence, American domination of the "free world," the muted sense of social conflict and inequality, increased feelings of independence and weakening of community, etc. Essentially, this class was privileged and comfortable (though curiously unhappy, or at least they identified with unhappy protagonists), and there was no one telling them that the rest of the world looked any different than it did from their limited middle class perspective. As a result of their dominance as producers, consumers, and "intellectual gatekeepers" of literature, the U.S. literary canon was formed in their time according to their aesthetic tastes.

What sorts of stories might have inspired the working class? What voices would have resonated with them, spurring best sellers had they had the power and means to control the formation of the literary canon? Stories of struggle and social injustice? Stories of the rural and urban poor trying to make ends meet from day to day? Stories that promised a better tomorrow? Stories that promoted finding fulfillment in community and familial relationships? Love stories? Rags to riches stories? It is interesting to acknowledge that we do seek out literature which illuminates our own values and concerns. We search out what is most relevant to life as we live it. And, as both Ohmann and Benjamin suggest, for those who find themselves situated in an individualistic, industrial-capitalist world, one of the most sought out themes is how to deal with loneliness and isolation.