Looking that the Grandmother

Much of what we've been discussing in concern to the Shadow Lines has revolved around the idea of "home." As noted earlier, Ghosh's presentation of "home" is multifaceted. However numerous the presentation of the "home" is within the novel, there is a groundwork that can be laid. This groundwork includes commentary upon the idea of the "nation," the cosmopolitanism evident within these images (meaning that each image is build off of an "otherness" or is created in relation to another geography, nation, history and so on), and the political natures of these various positions granted. Individuals may be said to become politicized through various rejection and embracing of certain histories. Ila is politicized through her rejection of certain definitions of "India." Further, her desire to maintain a certain degree of self-agency is conflictive with gender and social norms exemplified through Robi. Offering a starker contrast with Ila, is the grandmother. In her actions as well as statements, the Grandmother exemplifies a difference that may be attributed to her experience of colonization.

Most prevelantly, the Grandmother's relation to "India" as a "nation" (I place quotes around both of these terms to suggest that the singularity and concreteness of either term should be questioned, but secondly to call attention to theory done by Benedict Anderson in concern to the idea of nationhood), comes up in her oppinions of Ila and also her comments on the a supposed physical border between East Pakistan and India.

I'd like to look at the Grandmother's perception of Ila first:

Ila shouldn't be there, she said, stammering hoarsely. She doesn't belong there. What she doing in that country?

She's just studying there for a while, Tha'mma, I said gently. At that time Ila was at University College in London, doing a BA in history.

But she shouldn't be there, my grandmother cried, pushing my hands feebly away.

I leant back in my chair looking helplessly at her. over the last few months the flesh had wasted slowly away from her face so that the skin on her cheeks hung down now, like dry, brittle leather.

Ila has no right to live there, she said hoarsely. She doesn't belong there. it took those people a long time to build that country; hundreds of years, years and years of war and bloodshed. Everyone who lives there has earned his right ot be there with blood: with their borther's blood and their father's blood and their son's blood. They know they're a nation because they've drawn their borders with blood. Hasn't Maya told you how regimental flags hang in all their cathedrals and how all their churches are lined with memorials to men who died in wars, all around the world? War is their religion. That's what it takes to make a coutnry. Once that happens people forget they were born this or that, Muslim or Hindu, Bengali or Punjabi: they become a faimly born of the same pool of blood. That is what you have to achieve for India, don't you see? (76)

There are several things that I want to bring out from this passage. First, the Grandmother defines "nation" through specific qualifications: death, war, geographic boundaries, churches, flags, and so on. Most notably, the Grandmother cites war. The act of war, of people's fighting for a specific nation that seeks to define its physical, ideological boundaries through the sacrifice of life may be seen as one of the strongest definitions of a nation. This line of thought is defended by Anderson, who explicates the importance of war memorials within a nation's self-definition.

The Grandmother carries this thought farther in asserting that as an individual, Ila has no right to live in London, or the UK in general. This assertion is founded within a certain history. Again, this history is defined by symbols such as cathedrals, flags, veterans, and so on. Interestingly, because Ila was born outside of the UK, and does not uphold certain stereotypical standards or historical roots with the UK the Grandmother refuses to extend citizenship or legitimacy to Ila as calling London her home. This refusal further cements that fact that individual identity formation in the novel is constantly formed in relation to specific nations and their history. There is a constant presence of "otherness" in the formation of Ila's, the Grandmothers, and many other character's identities.

At the end of the passage, the Grandmother hints at cosmopolitanism. Though the Grandmother sees this cultural trend as negative, her acknowledgment of the issue again cements the presence of alterity within the novel and the characters. Further, "home" for the Grandmother is distinctly singular. History, for the Grandmother, then, is a process of unification. Understanding that the Shadow Lines presents the reader with multiple vantage points of "home" and its definition, history may not be seen as coinciding with the Grandmother's understanding.

Ghosh, through multiple viewpoints, seems to present an understanding of history that troubles the idea of a monolithic foundation for a "nation" or "home." Further, the narrative does not follow any linear path. Often, the narrator digresses from the present into the past or future. These digressions at times occur after an event has been explained: For example, we are told the Grandmother is sick, and that she eventually dies, then we are presented with a story that occurred before she became ill. This jumping back and forth upholds an understanding of history that is not linear, is not singular (the narrator presents Ila's, his own, Maya's, and tridib's story), and thus serves to trouble the idea of history as a unifying process. Ghosh seems to uphold the notion that history is complicating, and gives the present with multiple stories.

Moreover, what is interesting is the role of identity formation within a certain definition of "home" as informed by a nation's history. As individuals encounter the history, they are left with the task of incorporating the details and varying stories of the past and creating a solid foundation that is informative socially, ethically, culturally and so on.

This combination of identity formation within a historical narrative of "home" seems to present contradicting defintions of "home" from the characters. The Grandmother's definition of "home" and her role within it is distinctly different than that of Ila's. Due to notions of history and nation, varying definitions and functions of "home" are given. These conflicts may be seen as resolved when tracing similarities within both images, therefore providing the background that Ghosh uses to uplift important and paramount aspects within this process of defining "home" within a historically heterogeneous and cosmopolitan world.

Trying to clarify things.

So obviously, I would like to offer some clarity on the issues that you brought up in your email. I don't want to spend much time on this, but I want to attempt to present the most concise and accurate thoughts possible.

The first issue you brought up is:

Do be aware of your own sentence-level wordiness. For instance, you write: "Secondly, and further, this heterogeneity of home, or multifaceted and nuanced presentation can also be said to maintain overarching themes within these images to confidently put together a background of 'home' for Ghosh and the things he finds important within these definitions." I honestly can't trace the grammatical and conceptual relationships amongst all the words and phrases in this sentence. Obviously "secondly" and "further" are redundant, but after that I just get lost. What does what to what? What do you mean by phrases like "can be said"--are you saying it? Or are you saying someone else could say that, but he or she would be wrong? Or what? Work on being as direct and straightforward as possible. Don't make me work so hard to understand you.

I'd like to offer an initial rephrasing of the above noted sentence. "In addtion to the first point there are certain reoccuring themese within Ghosh's numerous images of 'Home.' These themes create an overarching notion of "home," thereby presenting certain important aspect that stand as primary and important to Ghosh."

Hopefully, this re-phrasing accurately points to the fact that though the novel contains a multiple images of 'home,' reoccuring themes (such as identity and relation to a nation and its history) allow us to speak more specifically concerning this theme in The Shadow Lines.

The second difficulty was stated as such:

Similarly, I'm having trouble following the logic of what I gather is an important part of your thought process at the moment: "Primarily, history and its influence upon the idea of the nation seem to establish these 'homes' at a high level within Ghosh's work. Without this notion of history, and the world-forming boundaries provided within, Ghosh's work would be distinctly mingled: a work that presented characters attempting to ground identity in geographic, historic, and personal situations that exist in a space that avoids foundations explicated within Anderson's Imagined Communities. Second, as noted above Ghosh's images of home are distinctly modern: the topic of cosmopolitanism is worthy and fruitful within Ghosh's work. Third, the role of identity and the politicizing of the self (meaning connecting the influences of colonialism upon individuals) are notable within Ghosh's text as well." You're losing me here.

Okay, obviously I'm going to need to break this up farther. So I'll take it phrase by phrase and hopefully be able to offer something that is more clear and productive.

"The role that identity formation in relation to the "nation" and its history establish "home" as a paramount subject within Ghosh's work. Ghosh's characters are distinctly grounded in these themes as they expereince the multiple "homes" within the novel. "Nations" and their collective history provide outside information concerning an individual's identity. Without this foundation characters, such as Ila, the grandmother, and even Nick, would maintain identities that exist and operate in an ambigious space. This space lies outside of the boundaries provided by 'nations' and histories, as explicated by Anderson, Said, and Bhabha. Ghosh's presentation of "home" is distinctly cosmopolitan. Ila's conception of "home" is always in relation to another, 'foreign' definition of home. The narrator's conception of home is qualified by stories given by Tridib's travel's abroad. Indeed, Mayadebi's home is structured in relation to how the rest of the world lives. Her bed is for show, to only please others. Ghosh's presentation of May's home provides a concrete example of how images of 'home' are cosmopolitan.

Identity formation in the images of "home" is politicized through interaction with "nations" and histories. Ila and the Grandmother are deeply connected to 'nations' in that they understand their societal role as determined by these categories. Ila's desired freedom is granted by a nation that is not patriarchical, and gender roles are not as strictly determined through historical notions of ethnicity, religion, gender, and so on. The individual is distinctly politicized by this grounding. Again, the grandmother's assertion that there be a physical boundary marking and demonstrating the historical sacrifices and wars helps clarify this point:

My grandmother thought this over for a while, and then she said: But if there aren't any trenches or anything, how are people to know? I mean, where's the difference then? And if there's no difference, both sides will be the same; it'll be just like it used to be before, when we used to catch a train in Dhaka and get off in Calcutta the next day without anybody stopping us. What was it all for then--Partition and all the killing and everything--if there isn't something in between?

In the end, an individual's identity is grounded within a basis that is made up of overarching themes in the novel. These themes occur throughout the numerous images of "home" presented within the novel. Yet these themes also serve for political purpose. Through interaction, association and even rejection of specific "nations" and histories, Ghosh's characters embrace or reject certain social, cultural, ethnic and even religious positions.

Thinking about the image of Home in the Shadow Lines

I would like to start thinking about the image of home in Ghosh's writing. Where are we presented with images of "home"? How do the characters create and interact with these images of "home"? Acknowledging both presented images as well as character interaction with these situations, how does Ghosh define "home"? It is my hope that through exploratory blog entries such as these that I might be able to form and address an interesting and pertinent problem or issue within Ghosh's presentation of "home."

The Shadow Lines is a novel that defies traditional notions of narrative presentation. It is far from linear. Tangents, and long diatribes concerning side line issues occur often. Acknowledging the multiplicity of narrative viewpoints, two points may be made. Primarily, that this multiplicity of narratives presents multiple, legitimate images of home. This multiplicity may at times seems in conflict. Secondly, and further, this heterogeneity of home, or multifaceted and nuanced presentation can also be said to maintain overarching themes within these images to confidently put together a background of "home" for Ghosh and the things he finds important within these definitions. Each other view point that we receive is affected by the narrator's comments and thoughts. Even at some of the most isolating moments, when Ila becomes outraged because Robi won't allow her to dance (though this scene involves other important issues such as identity, gender, cultural views toward the family, women and so on, this scene is directly related to Ila's emotional situation in India as in contrast to Britain.

Have you gone mad? she said to Robi, spitting the words through her teeth. What did you think you were doing?
Look, Robi said. It's over now, lets just forget it.
We won't forget it, she said; she was screaming now, but with her voice very low, in that way women have. We will not forget it. Just tell me: what did you think you were doing?
List, Ila, Robi said, shaking his head. You shouldn't have done what you did. You ought to know that; girls don't behave like that here.
What the fuck do you mean? she spat at him. What do you mean 'girls' ? I'll do what I bloody well want, when I want and where.
No you won't, he said. Not if I'm around. Girls don't behave like that here.
Why not? She screamed. Why fucking well not?
You can do what you like in England, he said. But here there are certain things you cannot do. That's our culture; that's how we live.
She stared at him, wide-eyed, speechless. Then she spun around to face me. Do you see now? she cried. She bit her lip fiercely and the tears came pouring out of her brimming eyes.
I put my arms around her, and pulled her towards me. She rubbed her face into my kurta, sobbing, saying over and over again: Do you see now? Do you understand?--and I, uncomprehending, repeated after her: See what? Understand what? while trying to stop the flow of her tears with the back of my hand.
Then she pushed me away and waved at a taxi. It stopped, and she darted into it, rolled down the window, and shouted: Do you see now why I've chosen to live in London? Do you see? It's only because I want to be free.
Free of what? I said.
Free of you! she shouted back. Free of your bloody culture and free of all of you.
The taxi started moving and I began to run along with it.
You can never be free of me, I shouted through the open window. If I were to die tomorrow you would not be free of me. You cannot be free of me because I am within you ... just as you are within me.
Then the taxi picked up speed and disappeared along Chowringhee. (86-87)

Quickly, issues of identity, home as a geographic place (nation, nationality) and the interaction between these identities are all evident within this passage. As Ila shouts from the taxi that she is striving to live free of the narrator and robi's "culture," she attributes her "freedom" to her social position within Britain. This position is distinctly politicized through a history of colonialism (broadly), and Ila's personal cosmopolitan history. Again, as Ila shouts, she is referring to Robi's reaction to her desire to dance. A closer look at the club will be helpful in understanding both Robi's reaction and Ila's desire to dance:

To my relief, there was a loud roll on the drums and the leader of the band announced into the microphone: Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have Miss Jennifer here, to sing for you. Please give her a hand.

Miss Jennifer swam out of the darkness, bowing and bobbing, a paper-pale, matronly woman, in a skin-tight crimson sheath covered with silver spangles.

Hi Folks! she trilled in a thin, high voice, full of professional gaiety, Hi there! Come on now then, get yourself ready, you all, for a whole bagful of fun.

...

Yes, gasped Ila, that's it. Let's dance, that'll cheer us up.

Come on, she said, tugging at my hand. Get up, let's dance.

But I was clumsy and self-conscious on my feet at the best of times. And when I looked at the empty expanse of the dance floor, at pump Miss Jennifer swaying in the middle, and the hungry eyes of the businessmen staring at her, I knew that I would never be able to step on to that floor.

No, I said, shaking my head. I couldn't, not here.

She turned away disappointedly. Robi? she said. Wouldn't you like to dance?

I can't dance, he said, raising his head to look at her. And even if I could, I wouldn't in a place like this. I think you should sit down, for you're not going to dance either.

At first she was merely surprised.

I'm not going to dance? She said. Why not?

Because I won't let you, said Robi evenly.

Within this scene we have a juxtaposition of westernization, of gender roles within as exemplified by Miss Jennifer, Ila, Robi's expectation of Ila and finally of the businessmen. All of this creates a scene where complex identity formation is given a more concrete setting. For Ila, she seems to contradict common female roles within India. I do not think it appropriate to address the troubling of gender presentation and roles within India and Britain, but rather, I want to point attention to the fact that within this scene which centers around conflicts due to social, cultural roles evident in "homes" identity plays a large and formative role.

Indeed, within this scene Robi asserts and upholds certain cultural norms and ways of life. To break these rules seems a dangerous act: when Ila ventures over to dance with the businessmen there is an assortment of things to acknowledge. Primarily, Ila's actions are reacting toward Robi's declaration of not letting her act of her own volition. Dancing seems not to be the issue here. Rather, Ila seeks to assert her identity as a self-determining and autonomous agent. Further, the cultural boundaries upheld by Robi are contrasted by the figure of Miss Jennifer. She seems distinctly out of place within the scene. Or, at the very least, she seems to encompass trends of westernization within India. In fact, the entire scene seems to take place within a microcosm of western culture fitted into India. Though dangerous to speak in these terms (as if western culture may be completely encompassed within a club, and further that this image directly contrasts a monolithic notion of "India" or even third world countries), Ghosh sets of a scene where cultural boundaries are being encountered.

Acknowledging that the basic setting of the club, the presence of Miss Jennifer and Ila's push to establish self-agency through dancing with businessmen contribute to the establishment and clarification of a "western" world or home. In this case, the individual who defines the "western" world home claims self-agency, a more equal relation between genders (contrasting general patriarchal schemas) and social rules that govern individual interactions in a much more conservative manner.

Contrasting, the "India" world may be exemplified by Robi, who upholds certain patriarchal standards, defines autonomy in a more hierarchical and less self-determining schema: Ila's actions (and therefore women in India) are determined less by personal decisions and more so by pre-established cultural norms and standards.

Within this scene, we have an encounter between two "worlds" and the individuals who claim these worlds "home." What can be said in concern to Ghosh's presentation involves the clarification of these boundaries. Further, these boundaries impact and affect individual self-conceptions. Ila shouts and asserts her self-definition and identity by association with a geographic and historical situation: that of the UK. Additionally, she not only associates with the UK, she means to disassociate herself with the culture, history and ethos of India. This embracing and rejection of certain national historical, social situations helps establish the notion of what Ghosh mean when he is peaking of "home" within the Shadow Lands.

Home, it seems is distinctly connected to the "imaginary homeland" that is upheld by Benedict Anderson; involving peoples, histories, and further certain symbols, that are static, certain images of a collective. Additionally, the manner in which an individual situates herself to these "homes" speaks of the freedom and power that individuals within Ghosh's novel maintain. Though the 'homes' may be in conflict at points, there is no questioning in the legitimacy of her picking and choosing. What seems to produce difficulties and tensions is the process of claiming and rejecting a history that conflicts with the stereotypes and images that are pre-established due to ethnicity, race and so on. Ghosh's images of 'home' then, are distinctly modern and follow along with Bhabha's troubling of those societal establishments that seek to ground and quell the ambiguity and anxiety that exists in this determining of 'homelands.'

Though there seems to be a multitude of factors that play into Ghosh's presentation of "home" (History, geographic, politics of the self, identity, colonialism, and so on, following discussions and encounters pursued by the Subaltern Studies school), there are a few items that may be selected as primary, due to explicit-ness within the text. Primarily, history and its influence upon the idea of the nation seem to establish these "homes" at a high level within Ghosh's work. Without this notion of history, and the world-forming boundaries provided within, Ghosh's work would be distinctly mingled: a work that presented characters attempting to ground identity in geographic, historic, and personal situations that exist in a space that avoids foundations explicated within Anderson's Imagined Communities. Second, as noted above Ghosh's images of home are distinctly modern: the topic of cosmopolitanism is worthy and fruitful within Ghosh's work. Third, the role of identity and the politicizing of the self (meaning connecting the influences of colonialism upon individuals) are notable within Ghosh's text as well. Ila's outburst would be less exemplary if her statements were not grounded in the fact that individual decisions and interactions maintain a high importance within the novel.

Hopefully, the reflection above provided a good basis to consider possible issues in the presentation of 'home,' its interaction with individual identity within Ghosh's work. Soon, I'd like to offer an exploration in concern to the character of the grandmother.

Bhabha: The Other Question: The stereotype and colonial discourse

In this essay, Bhabha (B), addressing the ambivalence found within the process of stereotyping within the colonial discourse. He primarily looks at the process of colonial discourse and then analyzes the structure of stereotyping itself. Claiming that stereotypes operate out of ambivalence, through the usage of skin as the signifier within a schema that is heterogeneous, B claims that the stereotype is a act that is self-contradictory, and in fact does not exist.

B begins by looking at how the stereotype is currently understood through a notion of fixity: stereotyping, and "othering" is a process by which individuals, or groups are given identities and societal positions, values and so on through certain and specific qualities. Yet, B means to trouble this notion of stereotype:

"Yet the function of ambivalence as one of the most significant discursive and psychical strategies of discriminatory power--whether racist or sexist, peripherla or metropolitan--remains to be charted."

To begin, he looks at the idea of colonial discourse within itself, and the power relations that coincidingly exist in this schema. He begins by setting up the idea of creating the colonial subject and object. This relationship is dependent upon a basic otherness:

"Only then does it become possible to understand the productive ambivalence of the object of colonial discourse--that 'otherness' which is at once an object of desire and derision, an articulation of difference contained within the fantasy of origin and identity."

Colonial discourse then, is a schema dependent upon the notion of difference yet enacted through an "economy of pleasure and desire and the economy of discourse, domination and power."

From these points, B means to draw attention to the fact that colonial discourse is a productive process of othering, through a schema of colonial fantasy and power. Within this system, there are signifiers and signs. B goes on to draw a line between previous conceptions of stereotyping, which seems to be essentializing and B's constructed differences within a schema of heterogeneity, and ambivalence of identities. B goes on to point out that skin, the most obvious sign is deeply connected to power, and the process of othering. This is what is interesting, is the work done by B demonstrating that the stereotyping is related to the imaginary process within individuals. The act of identifying and understanding that object:

"The objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the bassi of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction. Despite the play of power within colonial discourse and the shifting positionalities of its subjects (for example effects of class, gender, ideology, different social formations, varied systems of colonization and so on), I am referring to a form of governmentality that in marking out a 'subject nation', appropriates, directs and dominates its various spheres of activity. Therefore, despite the 'play' in the colonial system which is crucial to its exercise of power, colonial discourse produces the colonized as a social reality which is at once an 'other; and yet entirely knowable and visible."

This fact leads the reader nicely into B explication of how the stereotype is formed and then rationalized within an overtly ambivalent environment of meaning and identification.

From this point, B goes on to address Said and Foucault's conceptions of intentions of polarities as well as use of power within the colonial discourse. Through this critique and commentary B means to uplift the role of ambivalence within discourse (within representation). Here, one of the main issues that he points out is the fact that both Said and Foucault's assumption that colonial discourse produces a system that is closed, and complete: albeit opperating through subject-object narratives and oppressive power systems. B means to once again bring out the importance of, and obviousness of the heterogeneity that characterizes the process of stereotyping. Much of this work is important for B's argument because it raises the groundwork where B can focus and point his argument to the system of colonial discourse. He looks at how colonial stereotyping involves fetishizing and power within the discourse. This inherently involves a identification process that B means to eventually connect to the Lacanian imaginary stage.

"My anatomy of colonial discourse remains incomplete until I locate the stereotype, as an arrested, fetishistic mode of representation within its field of identification, which I have identified in my description of Fanon's primal scenes, as the Lacanian schema of the Imaginary. The Imaginary is the transformation that takes place in the subject at the formative mirror phase, when it assumes a discrete image which allows it to postulate a series of equivalences, sameness, identities, between the objects of the surrounding world. However, this positioning is itself problematic, for the subject finds or recognizes itself through an image which is simultaneously alienating and hence potentially confrontational."

From this point B delves into the fact that the stereotype pivots on this notion of ambivalence denied through identification and fixity of the stereotype. Through specific signs, (race, history, class, ethnicitiy and so on), the colonial object is given meaning and a position. However, this process is not done in isolation, but rather the subject is involved too. Here the subject goes through the imaginary phase where she sees the colonized and identifies it with a specific meaning. However, this process of similarity, yet simultaneous projection of meaning and othering, is tainted and constantly infused with a notion of "lack": "Like this mirror phase 'the fullness' of the stereotype --its image as identity--is always threatened by 'lack.' This lack is qualified and understood as an ambivalence of fixity of meaning due to a heterogeniety of meaning for the colonial object. B help clarify this all:

"Although the 'authority' of colonial discourse depends crucially on its location in narcissism and the Imaginary, my concept of stereotype-as-suture is a recognition of the ambivalence of that authority and those orders of identification."

In the end, B asserts that stereotyping is:

"a much more ambivalent text of projection and introjection, metaphoric and metonymic strategies, displacement, overdetermination, guilt, aggressiveity; the masking and splitting of 'official' and phantasmatic knowledges to construct the positionalities and oppositionalitys of racist discourse."

And again, upholding the notion of ambivalence and misidentification within a heterogenous system, and bringing all of these points to a whole:

In the objectification of the scopic drive there is always the threatened return of the look; in the identification of the Imaginary relation there is always the alienating other (or mirror) which crucially returns its image to the subject; and in that form of substitution and fixation that is fetishism there is always the trace of loss, absence. To put it succinctly, the recognition and disavowal of 'difference' is always disturbed by the question of its re-presentation or construction. The stereotype is in fact an 'impossible" object. For that very reason, the exertions of the 'official knowledges' of colonialism--pseudo-scientific, typological, legal-administrative, eugenicist--are imbricated at the point of their production of meaning and power with the fantasy that dramatizes the impossible desire for a pure, undifferentiated origin.

First Response to Possible Paper Idea: Cosmopolitanism in Ghosh

An interesting article that I read concerning Ghosh's The Shadow Lines, is titled: "Cosmopolitanism at Home: Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines." This article looks at the relationship between images of home and their relationship to images given of cosmopolitanism as found in the novel. The author advocates that Ghosh means to critique contemporary thought concerning cosmopolitanism by demonstrating a new sort of cosmopolitanism found at home: this is best demonstrated through the narrator's final interaction with May and her presentation of interaction with and being connected to the world through domestic actions. This contrasts Ila's earlier representation of cosmopolitanism that is found in through her recalling Cairo through a memory of the airport bathroom.

Though the article is interesting and yields important insights into the fiction of Ghosh, I feel that the topic of cosmopolitanism is a bit disconnected from what we've been looking at over the semester. However, connected to this argument is the issue of representation of the home within the novel, through memory. The narrator's process of remembering home, the actions that take place there and how it is distinctly influenced by colonial influences is something that I think is extremely interesting. This can be connected to Bhabha's notion of hybridity, along with Said's Orientalist projection of "exotified" india through historical accounts of Egypt and so on, and further Prakrash's account of Images of the third world. I think there is much to draw on, concerning presentation of the home through our readings this past semester.


Really, I want this post to offer the issue of looking at images of home presented within Ghosh's fiction, as well as Pterodactyl. I think Pterodactyl will offer further troubling of those images, revealing, and expounding upon the fact that any image presented maintains further complexities and facets that can and are politicized.

I have another article that want to get through tonight and will hopefully offer reflection upon as well. But I am intrigued about this idea, it offers good length, interesting topics and questions and amble information to draw upon from our work this semester.

Bhabha: The Commitment to Theory

Within this essay Bhabha accomplishes many things, yet he seems to focus upon two main subjects and issues: the troubling of political and ideologica discourse and then the differentiation between culture difference and culture diversity. I want to focus upon the first, then expand on the second. And finally raise a few questions of confusion and items that might need clarity.

Bhabha's initial question may be summed up: "Are the interests of "Western" theory necessarily collusive with the hegemonic role of the Wester as a power bloc?" Within this statement, Bhabha means to uplift the tendentious nature of each system to be self-contradictory. Interestingly, Bhabha notes the social use of each, noting that worth and given meaning to each of these fields depends on attention garnered from society. How each functions is important to Bhabha. For the functionality of each suggests meaning and position within a society, culture, nation and so on:

They are both forms of discourse and to that extent they rpoduce rather than reflect their objects of reference. The difference between them lies in their operational qualities. The leaflet has a specific expository and organizational purpose, temporally bound to the event; the theory of ideology makes it contribution to those embedded political ideas and principles that inform the right to strike. The latter does not justify the former; nor does it necessarily precede it. It exists side by side with it--the one as an enabling part of the other--like the recto and verse of a sheet of paper, to use a common semiotic anlogy in the uncommon context of politics. My concern here is with the process of "interveneing ideologically', as Stuart Hall describes in the role of "imaginging" or representation in the practice of politics in his response to the British election of 1987. For hall, the Notion of hegemony implies a politics of identification of the imaginary.

Continuing, Bhabha illustrates the relationship between politics and ideology, bringing out important points of encounter. There is a sort of space, where discourse and ideology, language and the representation of such lie--this space--is where Bhabha means to place focus, and put attention.

This approach, as I read it, introduces us to an exciting, neglected moment, or movement, in the 'recognition' of the relation of politics to theory; and confounds the traditional division between them. Such a movement is initiated if we see that relation as determined by the rule of repeatable materiality, which Foucault describes as the process by which statments from one institution can be transcribed in the discourse of another.

Here, Bhabha means to speak to the relationship between politics and theory, and the manner in which they depend on each other. Calling back to Derrida's differance, Bhabha sums up this relationship as "the difference of the same." This is where Bhabha begins to elaborate on the relationship itself. He beings by looking at the nature of theory: language, ideology, semiotics, representation, and so on. Theory, "in a doubly inscribed move, simultaneously seeks to subvert and replace." Theory's attempt to supplant, replace, re-present and so on exists in relation to the very thing that it striving to remove. This relationship, though obvious, puts forth a proposition that Bhabha requests: he wants us to "rethink the logics of causality and dterminacy through which we recognize the 'political' as a form of calculation and strategic action dedicated to social transformation." Further, the 'political' that theory calls attention to is delegated through an identification of the logics of causality: it seems that Bhabha is asking us to rethink how we approach and understand political discourse and the political subject as determined by systems of identification that are bent on alterity, otherness, heterogeniety. By rethinking these categories as determined and intimately connected with history we may begin to see the relationship between political and ideological discourse as developing side by side, as opposed to preceeding and following.

The rethinking of the logics of causality, politics and then the strategic action of either the political or ideological discourse leads to the obvious troubling of the representation of either of these categories:

The textual processof political antagonism initiates a contradictory process of reading between the lines; the agent of the discourse becomes, in the same time of utterance, the inverted, projected object of the rgument, turned agaisnt itself. ... What the attention to rhetoric and writing reveals is the discursive ambivalence that makes 'the political' possible. From such a perspective, the problematic of political judgment cannot be represented as an epistemological problme of appearance and reality or theory and practice or word and thing. Nor can it be represented as a dialectical problem or a symptomatic contradiction constitutive of the materiality of the 'real'. on the contrary, we are made excruciatingly aware of the amvinalent juxtaposition, the dangerous interstitial realtion of the factual and the projective, and, beyond that, of the curcial function of the textual and the rhetorical.

With this troubling of these categories, through the assertion of rethinking the logics of causality (understanding the importance of writing and textuality), which leads us to understanding that the 'political' as a calculated form of societal transformation and affection (meaning maintaining purpose to cause effect in society) Bhabha leads us to a good explanation of the troubling of these categories:

It is this to-and-fro, the fort/da of the symbolic process of political negotiation, that constitutes a politics of address. Its importance goes beyond the unsettling of the essentialism or logocentrism of a recieved political tradition, in the name of an abstract free play of the signifier.

Stemming from this call to rethinking and re-evaluating our categories concerning political and ideological discourse, Bhabha leads us to the fact that these categories as now understood depend on alterity, on a agonisitic environment of "cultural difference" and "cultural diversity." Simply, it seems to me that an initial difficulty with understanding these issues arises from the idea of one emerging before another, and thus one being pre-established. Here Bhabha means to focus on the fact that much of the acceptance of these categories has depended upon a sort of understanding that one category may negate or supercede the other. Instead, Bhabha calls for a sort of third space: a negotiation that he called to earlier in referring to a sort of "to and fro." Bhabha seems to critique a singleness of terms. Instead, he asks for a heterogeneity of categories.

Such identikit political idealism may be the gesture of great individual fervor, but it lacks the deepr , if dangerous sense of what is entailed by the passage of history in theoretical discourse. The language of critique is effectivenot because it keeps forever separate the terms of the master and the slave, the mercantilist and the Marxist, but to the extent ot which is overcomes the given grounds of opposition and opens up a space of translation: a place of hybridity, figuratively speaking, where the construction of a polticial object that is new, neither the one nor the other, properly alienates our political expectations, and the changes, as it must, the very forms of our recognition of the moment of politics.

This third space, which is neither one category or the other, results as a rethinking of the logics of causality and recognition of political discourses relationship to social transformation.

Throughout the rest of his essay, Bhabha elaborates on the terms of cultural difference and cutlrual diversity. He upholds an argument for thnking of things in multiplicity, in heterogeneity, of thinking of cultures, peoples, histories, politics and ideology as developing together, of simultaneously sustaining one another, and all of this opperating within a certain amount of ambivalence.

The concept of cultural difference focuses on the problem of the ambivalence of cultural authority: the attempt to dominate in the name of a cultural spuremacy which is itsle fproduced only in the moment of differentiation. And it is the very authority of culture as a knowledge of referential truth which is at issue in the conpet and moment of enunciation. The enunciative process introduces a split in the performative present of cultural identification; a split between the traditional culturalist demand for a model, a tradition, a community, a stable systemo f reference, and the necessary negation of the certitude in the articulation of new cultural demands, meanings, startegies in the political present, as a practice of domination or resistence.

What seems to be at stake here, is the issue of cultural identification in a post-colonial world. Much of what Bhabha speaks to deals with representation, of historical emergence, enunciation of identity that is in turn simultaneously created only out of a sort of alterity. Yet this creation, this enunciation is qualified by the process of writing, or textuality that prohibits it from any sort of ability to stand alone. The relation here is the signfier to the signified and the fact that Bhabha questions to the notion of given concetps, as opposed to simultaneously created subject, objects only in the process of alterity. Here, Bhabha offers a final clarification of cultural diversity and cultural difference.

If cultural diversity is a category of comparative ethics, aesthetics or ethnology, cultural difference is a process of significtion through which statements of culture or on culture differentiate, discriminate and authroize the production of fields of force, reference, applicability and capacity.

In a round about sort of way, Bhabha's emphasis on the differentiation between cultural difference and cultural diversity entails his concepts of hybridity, along with this assertion of rethinking the logics of causality, and furthermore, this rethinking puts forth the fact that of maintaining any single notion of cultural identity and so on is extremely troublesome when one looks at the truth of polticial and ideological discourse.

Chakrabarty (C) in his essay "Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts" puts forth interesting and intriguing thoughts concerning the relationship between European ideological, political, economic notions of development, citizenship, modernization and the corresponding influence these positions, lines maintain upon "third world" areas such as the Indian Subcontinent.

Through outlining various points C puts forth an assertion of an interpretation of history that sees the world as radically heterogeneous. Further, his article is situated in a larger context that argues of an interconnection between "History" as an academic subject, and its influence upon "real" life. This argument puts us into a conversation that coincides with the understanding that the development of philosophy as an academic subject has and continues to develop in such an isolated manner. C's fundamental dissagreement that the development of academic subjects occurs within a self-contained geographic environment ties to his assertion of an "honest" history. History may be honest in the recognition that themes, and trends are inherently oppressive, informative, and subjective toward other histories. This is outlined in Hutcheon's essay we read earlier in the year, along with Spivak's 'Can the Subaltern Speak', and even is connected to Norris' article concerning the political power and swayance of the academic field of Postmodernism. I quote C at length to illustrate this connection:

"Histories that aim to displace a hyperreal Europe from the center toward which all historical imagination currently gravitates will have to seek out relentlessly this connection between violence and idealism that lies at the heart of the process by which the narrative of citizenship and modernity come to find a natural home in "History." I register a fundamental disagreement here with a position taken by Richard Rorty in an exchange with Jurgen Habermas. Rorty criticizes Habermas for the latter's conviction "that the story of modern philosophy is an important part of the story of the democratic societies' attempts at self-reassurance." Rorty's statement follows the practice of many Europeanistis who speak of the histories of these "democratic societies" as if these were self-contained histories complete in themselves, as if the self-fashioning of the West were something that occurred only within its self-assigned geographical boundaries. At the very least Rorty ignores the role that the "colonial theater" (both external and internal)--where the theme of "freedom" as defined by modern political philosophy was constantly invoked in aid of the ideas of "civilization," "progress," and latterly "development"--played in the process of engendering this "reassurance." This task, as i see it, will be to wrestle ideas that legitimize the modern state and its attendant institutions, in order to return to political philosophy--in the same way as suspect coins returned to their owners in an Indian bazaar-- its categories whose global currency can no longer be taken for granted. "

Much of this argument pivots on the understanding of a transition narrative that C understands, roughly, as a schema that encompasses the political, social, economic, historical situation of "modern" India. Within this transition narrative there are specific themes that guide and inform the manner in which persons are to "develop," "modernize," and most importantly act as "citizens." Further, this transition narrative and the themes mentioned are guided by a sort of bourgeois domesticity and public behavior, position. The division of the bourgeois public and private is pivotal for C. in this article primarily because of the connection between economic, political, historical, ideological narratives provided through this division of the bourgeois public and private. C. demonstrates this connection through a closer look at the familial structures in Bengal:

"What the Bengali literature on women's education played out was a battle between a nationalist construction of a cultural norm of the patriarchal, patri-local, patrilineal, extended family and the ideal of the patriarchal, bourgeois nuclear family that was implicit in the European/imperialist/universalist discourse on the "freedoms" of individualism, citizenship, and civil society."

Here, C demonstrates how the bourgeois division between public and private is intimately connected to specific definitions of "citizenship," "modern," and so on. This argument is further stressed in previous essays we've encountered last semester concerning the collective groupings of the third world female by first world feminists, along with accounts given concerning the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized in Africa, and finally, and in a more nuanced manner, the relationship (informing politics, ideology, history, position and development toward modernity) between the colonizer and the colonized as demonstrated in Bhabha's hybridity and mimesis.

C's essay is intelligent, well written and addresses important and logical issues. Those issues include the historical development of a geographic locations "modernizing" and the assertion and adoption of certain definitions of "citizenship" and family and the manner in which the public and private is guided and informed.

C's final point in worth noting and attempting to connect to our readings of the Shadow Lines and Pterodactyl.

"I ask for a history that deliberately makes visible, within the very structure of its narrative forms, its own representative strategies and practices, the part it plays in collusion with the narrative of citizenships in assimilating to the projects of the modern state all other possibilities of human solidarity. The politics of despair will requires of such history that it lays bare to its readers the reasons why such a predicament is necessarily inescapable. This is a history that will attempt the impossible: to look toward its own death by tracing that which resist and escapes the best human effort at translation across cultural and other semiotic systems, so that the world may once again be imagined as radically heterogeneous."

This new history is most obviously seen as being denied within Pterodactyl. Further, within The Shadow Lines, the method of story telling: one that breaks conventional narrative, that jumps in time, location, and demonstrates differing motivations and points (at points seeming like series of vignettes that are disjointedly connected) coincides well with C's proposal. Most obviously, the Shadow lines, defeats itself as a typical novel, story. It turns itself inside and out, and questions the narrative truth. In a larger sense, C's new history is violent unto itself and is created in such a way as to destroy itself: as noted by C, the possibility of creating such a history in the academic environment is impossible, primarily due to the inability to "provincialize" europe and disconnect informative, influential lines of politics, economics, history, and ideology.

Said, Orientalism: Orientalism Now

I haven't completely finished the reading as of yet, but I wanted to get out some of my initial reactions to the reading and trying as much as possible to offer concrete connections and examples within the three works that we are working off: MC, Pterodactyl and The Shadow Lines.

By lifting up quotes from Said, and offering comments I hope to effectively approach this large section of text. This will allow me to get a more specific points Said makes as opposed to speaking in generalities.

Said begins by recounting what he has already accomplished and set out: that Orientalism (O) is a system of truths that operate in multiple realms: politics, culture, religion and so on. Certainly, and this was a point that I tried to raise last meeting, was that although all societies and individuals tend to operate within a schema of generalities, and labels, what seems to be important are the power systems that give base to O. The basic fact that there is domination within the system of O from the Western to the East, suggests the political creditability of O.

The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations frame by a whole set of forces that brought the orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. If this definition of O seems more political than not, that is simply because I think O was itself a product of certain political forces and activities.

What seems important to note within the passage above is the fact that O is overtly political. I understand this to mean in connection to power systems and hegemony certainly. Further, I do not think that Said upholds O as a system that was created and is static and has been altered into something new something different. In fact, Said, addresses this later:

"Thus O is not only a positive doctrine about the Orient that exists at any one time in the Wester; it is also an influential academic tradition (When one refers to an academic specialist who is called and Orientalist), as well as an area of concern defined by travelers, commercial enterprises, governments military expeditions, readers of novel and accounts of exotic adventure, natural historians and pilgrims to whom the Orient is a specfic kind of knowlege about specific places, people, and civilizations."

Here, it seems that O is understood again to be a way of looking at the world and acting, something that is informative of both how an individual conceives of other as well as herself.

O is informative of how an individual conceives of herself and others: specifically of how the West understood the East. This is not a relationship that operates through equalities, but rather one that exists and uses (in) absences and presences:

"I mean to say that in discussion of the Orient, the Orient is all absence, whereas one feels the Orientaist and what he says as presence; yet we must not forget that the Orientalist's presence is enabled by the Orient's effective absence.

Said raises an interesting point that becomes important in postcolonial studies: the role of voice within a colonial state. This is noted well within Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak" as well as Hutcheon's "Decentering the excentric." For Spivak, O may stand as the basis through which those power systems that establish the hierarchical relationships. Further, for Hutcheon, PM stands as a inherently political was of thinking and looking at the world. O. then stands as a as the ideology (for certainly, O. influences Westerners consciousnesses unconsciously) that PM strives to deconstruct and problematize.

Said spends time looking through historical account of the Orient, and analyzes the power systems that upheld them: It was shown that O. serves to inform the colonial state just as much as the colonized. This sort of binary, operating through unified, monolithic identities, breaks down when nation states are given histories that do not coincide with those notions but rather serve to emphasize a milieu that is not single but rather varied; not monolithic but rather influenced and informed from multiple sources. This can be seen in Pterodactyl: in this case O may be seen as permeating even the nationalist self identifications. Here, a history, an identity, a geography and even a way of life (conception of the world, evidenced through an ethos) can be heavily influenced by determining and authoritative and thus oppressive understandings. In Pterodactyl, the events described are problematic and controversial explicitly because a community's way of life, self-determined identity and so on conflict with a nationalist governments understanding of their social role. The famine is a drought, the pterodactyl doesn't exist, and individual's are not dying due to lack of governmental support, but rather natural, undetermined causes. This is explicitly political. This is explicitly informed through notions of how persons are conceived, in contrast to others, and finally how they are to act.


Hopefully, I'll have further, more concrete thoughts as I think over this later tonight.

Said, Orientalism: Introduction

In this introduction Said does much to define, clarify, set out, and prepare the reader for the coing discusssion. He does well in outlineing how Orientalism (O) is political, how it is presentational (in that it occupies certain positions through political presentations) and how it is inherently constructive as well.

There are several fine points in the introudction where Said offers a good defintion of O. However, I think the best may be offered here. I mean to lift up this quote in orer to highlight not simply a defintion of O, but rather to accentuate certain implications that stem from Said's understanding of how O formed and how it exists. It exists--meaning it functions more as a state rather than a lens. ( I realize this is super long. And hopefully will try and unpack what these insanely long sentences mean).

Therefore Orientalism is not a mere political subect matter or field that is reflected passively by culture, scholarhsip, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse collection of texts about the Orient; nor is it representative and expressive of some nefarious "Western" imperialist plot to hold down the "Oriental" world. it is rather a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, schaolarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philogical texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also of a whole series of "interests" which by such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscpae and sociological description, it not only creates but also maintains; it is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is , above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with poltical power in the raw but rather, is produced and exists in a nuneven exhcange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degreee by the exchange with power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern polciy sciences), power cultural (as with ideas about what "we" do and what "they" cannot do or understand as "we" do).

Much of what Said mentions above is connected to the idea of Hegemony. Said uses Gramsci's notion of hegemony, and more specifically the space that culture opperates in, to outline and explicate how O, moves or gains positions within the world. Importantly, Said notes the fact that within any sort of study, or position or outlook there needs to be a beginning. This beginning automatically excludes a certain amount of historical evnets, work, thought, basic history within itself. This choice to begin at a certain point, is something that Said notes helps delineate the notion of O itself.

Said comments upon the work of Edward Lane, along with scientific, religious, historical and cultural interest within the orient along the time of Napoleon. This is interesting in that it serves to heavily mark or outline an increase in thinking of the Orient as "other." A side note--O serves complementarilly in that it helps define and establish cultural, identity notions of the Occident as much as it helps establish an identity of the Orient.

In the end, aspects that are important in consdiering Said's conception of O are the historical, social, cultural reconstruction of the Orient; the political power that O weilds over the Orient due to the ideological, religious, social, defintions that are provided through Orientalism. Indeed, Said speaks of O as if it is impossible to think of the Orient outside or isolated from this influence. I agree. However, I would extend this not only to the Orient, but to other geographic, cultural locations as well. Interestingly, it seems that Said does not disagree with this, but rather means to hold up the point that O outlines a distinct power, and authority that O gives to the Occident over the Orient. This social and very real aspect of O is connect, yet may operate separately, from the academic theoretical ideas, foundations of Orientalism.

Gayan Prakash, "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third-World..."

By accurately critiquing the "worlding" of the "third world" through historical accounts, Prakash, upholds a historical interpretation of India's history that centers on the subaltern. Primarily, by looking at the historical accounts given through an Orientalist (monolithic, essential, narrative) Prakash presents how India was presented as "object" through texts. Second, and in response to an Orientalist perspective Prakash outlines the Nationalist perspective of history. This line of thought, sought to destabilize any essential notion of India as an object in response to the West. Though responsive, the nationalist history pictured India still in unified oneness, of containing a single national, meaning geographic and unified through certain characteristics (possibly history). Third, Prakash spends time looking at India as refigured through Marxist notions of history. These lines of thought sought to further destabilize any monolithic notion of India, in history or in nationalism; rather it sought to assert a history as determined and guided through class and power systems. Prakash notes, however, that though these Marxist interpretations may be attempting to operate on a "subjectless" plane and with especial attention given to capitalism, this is accomplished in contrast, or in light of, or in opposition to capitalist notions of development, which are birthed within a Western context, society and use through colonialism.

In the end, Prakash, asserts a notion of history along with the Subaltern Studies:

This perspective, therefore, breaks the undivided entity of India into a multiplicity of changing positions that are then treated as the effects of power relations. THe displacement of foundation subjects and essences allowed by this also enables Guha to treat histories written from those perspectives as documents of counterinsurgency--those seeking to impose colonial, nationalist, or transitional (modernizing) agendas. Writing subaltern history, from this point of view, becomes an activity that is contestory because of its insurgent readings.

Further, Prakash falls in line with Spivak in a sort of strategic essentialism.

This feature, however, is not as straightforwards as it sounds: if the assertion of the subaltern's unified consciousness, on the one hand, unravels elite projects, the claim for the subaltern's autonomous agency is rendered impossible, on the other hand, by the very definition of subalternity as a position in relations to that of the elite.

Additionally, Prakash helps clarify her stance further.

Critical practice in the Third World, must posit the subaltern as a subject in order to dethrone Europe's Implantation as the universal subject of history by territorial imperialism, even as this strategy--falling prey to its own procedures--turns the autonomous agent (the subaltern) into a positionality consisting of effects.

My personal reflections upon the text are mixed. Her essay is good, and her points are well-stated, though at points a bit convoluted. Yet she does a complete job in going over the approaches toward a sort of historicizing India. Indeed, I enjoyed her account of how a "third worlds" write their own histories. At certain points, I noticed similarities between her questioning of the act of postfoundational histories and Hutcheon's Decentering the Excentric. It was nice to focus upon India specifically, and draw similarities between the Shadow Lines, as well as MC and Pterodactyl. More specifically, my reaction to the Subaltern's studies approach to history as regarded in relationships was positive. This seems to be the most logical approach in that it acknowledges both ideology and power systems. It seems analogous to a sort of strategic essentialism, toward destablizing both latent and active colonialism. At one point, Prakash seemed to accurately describe neo-colonialism's presence in India:

but outside the First World, in India itself, the power of Western discourses is concealed and operates through its authorization and deployment by the nation-state; deeply sedimented in the national body politic, the knowledge generated and bequeathed by colonialism nether manifests itself nor functions exclusively as the form of imperial power.

All in all, Prakash's account raises questions, for me, concerning the political action of a sort of subaltern history. I do not want to question validity nor usefulness, but rather to what ends, and the proponents of this approach to history. As Prakash noted, many of the Subaltern study members live and/or have received first world education. Spivak, is a good example. I wonder, through education, how much a sort of Subaltern Studies approach has been influenced ideologically, politically by first world historical approaches toward India.

Benedict Anderson "Census, Map, Museum"

In addressing his task of tracing the genealogy of the notions of nationalism, Anderson adds to his original thesis--that states that official nationalism was molded off of the dynasitic states of nineteenth-century Europe. Anderson adds that through three areas that imagined the colonial state: the Census, the Map and the Museum. All three of these topics vary in historical significance (meaning how individuals have presented history through them) political and social uses for the then present colonial state.

The census is an interesting method of representation of the colonial state primarily in what Anderson says as not the "construction of ethnic-racial classifications, but rather in their systematic quantification." The colonial state's census is most interesting in its inability to allow for a sort of unclassifiability. Each individual was placed into a single identity, which coincided with previous classifications set by the state itself:

"Hence their intolerance of multiple, politically, 'transvestite,' blurred, or changing identifications. Hence the weird subcategory, under each racial group, of "others"--who, nonetheless, are absolutely not to be confused with other "Others." The fiction of the census is that everyone is in it, and that everyone has one--and only one--extremely clear place. No fractions."

Here, Anderson means to point to the both the Orientalist view of the colonial state as something that is constructed, but further, the role of the colonial state in the colonized lives. The forming nature that the colonial state was seen as something to produce order. Most specifically, political, cultural, social order.

Interestingly, this may still be viewed today and could be brought out in literary examples. What comes to mind is an exchange within The Shadow Lines between Ila and the main character. They are discussing politics and political movements in England and the Postcolonial state of India. Interestingly, what sticks out to me is the fact that in both circumstances considering the census representation of the colonial state and the postcolonial actual political state there are constructed categories that reflect upon the states' attempts at collecting and maintaining order. In a less affirmable tone (meaning I'm not quite sure about how this plays out) a protest is classifiable in a manner that allows politics to digest, consume and deal with. The census' attempts to maintain order, to allow for images of the colonial state to arise that coincided with the state's respective understanding of itself is still remnant in politics today, most especially within the postcolonial state.

Anderson goes on with this point:

"But the power of the grid is so great that such evidence is marginalized in Scott's imagination, and therefore it is hard for him to see that the "class structure" of the precolonial period is a 'census' imagaining created from the poops of Spanish galleons. Wherever they went, hidalgos and esclavos loomed up, who could only be aggregated as such, that is 'structurally,' by an incipient colonial state."

The relationship between the the colonial state and the colonizer is one of construction and formation, but also of mimesis.

Anderson's points concerning the map break demonstrate how the concretization of political boundaries, along with theoretical constructions of geographic space impact local areas socially, culturally. "The Mercatorian map, brought in by the European colonizers, was beginning, via print, to shape the imagination of Southeast Asians." What is most interesting to me is the conflation of sacred and profane space within the map. Anderson makes the point that the map is dependent upon efficacy of print-capitalism. The objectification of an area, in this case a sacred space of an other civilization or people, is interesting in that it siphons the sacred space into a sort of "spatial reality" as Anderson notes. Conceivably, sacred space is an area that is not constructed (granted, the nature of symbols is interwoven with a culture's power systems and the progression and election of a symbol is unarguably selective.) But rather, the previous maps in circulation were meant to uphold conceptual notions that guided a sort of inner geographical salvational context.

Further, with the colonial delegation of territories there came a sort of "filling in" of the map.

"The task of, as it were, "filling in" the boxes was to be accomplished by explorers, surveyors, and military forces. In Southeast Asia, the second half of the nineteenth century was the golden age of military surveyors,--colonial and, a little later, thai. They were on the march to put space under the same surveillance which the census-makers were trying to impose on persons. triangulation by triangulation, way by way, treaty by treaty, the alignment of map and power proceeded."

Finally, the impact of the museum upon the colonial state is most obvious in the objectification, propagation, and materialization of historical people and areas. This seems analogous to me of Nietszche's The Use and Abuse of History and N's theory on a sort of antiquarian history that upholds and praises a specific culture's history. Interestingly, this culture's history (in the post-colonial sense) is inherently constructed. We talked about the importance of this during class last semester where it seems that the objectification through photographs seems to exoticize and more importantly essentialize a culture's history. Anderson's points become interesting when he explicates "how colonial regimes began attaching themself to antiquity as much as conquest ... Monumental archaeology, increasingly linked to tourism, allowed the state to appear as the guardian of a generalized, but also local, Tradition."

Further, Anderson notes the capitalistic influence within the museumization of the colonial state

"But, as noted above, a characteristic feature of the instrumentalities of this profane state was infinite reproducibility, a reproducibility made technically possible by print and photography, but politico-culturally by the disbelief of the rulers themselves in the real sacredness of local sites."

Through these various methods the colonial state constructed and upheld certain notions concerning itself along with the colonizers. Questions, to me, arise then to the colonized reactions (both individually--as pursued by Bhabha in his hybridization theory, and collectively). These can be evident in literature, as Rushdie paints the sort of self-identification process in MC, as well as in Pterodactyl in the struggle to determine a certain identity (though avoiding any monolithic, progressive narrative), that may confidently be asserted in contrast to the historical presentations by the map, census, museum. This different history and identity and presentation of the postcolonial state suggests common roots with Anderson's thesis on Nationality, however, it questions the difference between colonized presentations of the colonial state and instead raises the question of colonized understanding of themselves in contrast to the colonizers.

Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities: "Cultural Roots"

Anderson's chapter "Cultural Roots" attempts to set out the foundations for the beginning of sociological entities, or groups of people to conceive of themselves as a nation. He does this through an explanation of how previous ways of thinking ended: Anderson uses the examples of languages as connected to religious systems (Divine Truth in ways of thinking, views of the world, cosmologies in general), an ending of Dynasties (meaning Monarchies and societies connected to specific families) and finally, through a disconnection between a cosmology and a notion of time (History), this is evident in a sort of "end of times" notion of the present.

All of these claims sound reasonable, and Anderson does well in backing up his claims through examples in literature as well as through history. However, in this blog, I want to raise some questions concerning the first point, and then briefly explain the others, finally ending up with some questions concerning how Anderson's chapter related to White, Hutcheon, Spivak, Norris and so on. I'll say this in my email to you as well, but I would like to be able to begin our conversation on Shadow lines (including roughly the first 100 pages).

What is interesting to me is the connection between a religious cosmology and a specific language. Anderson's connection of Latin and the Christian church and Arabic and Islam bode well. There is definitely a certainty that both Latin and Arabic were (and still are: Arabic especially) languages that hold special persuasion over the Divine or a connection to the Divine. The Qur'an specifically notes that the book is given in Mohammed in Arabic, and as such is a Holy language. Further, the Qur'an notes that there are other holy books out there that are not given in Arabic, and that this sort of linguistic plurality hints at the multiplicity of groupings that the Divine is capable of communicating with. Moreover, in the Catholic church, services were held in Latin for centuries, claiming that is was a Holy language. This produced interesting and troubling sociological effects (stratification of knowledge, religious truth, and value systems in both of those categories). Anderson does well in pointing out these qualifications both within Europe and colonial locations.

What is interesting to me, and possibly something that might break down through further questioning, is the idea that there are sociological systems that exist under these language boundaries; language as connected to religious truth seems to be an extremely broad notion, and could, through an equally common occurrence and prevalent notion be syphoned down. My proposition/question deals with ethnicity. Anderson notes the connection of a language system to a specific geographic location, and that each of these 3 means of organization operate within a specific geographic location, alternating (meaning England: Latin as Iraq: Arabic) systems per location. However, I am curious to the grouping effect of ethnicity. Primarily, ethnicity encompasses geographic location, a common history, similar cosmologies (related to location and history).

-initially, however, there is a difficulty in the specificity of ethnicity. Primarily due to the fact that in Anderson's literary examples he notes a sort of connectedness without acquaintance. He notes that as a United States citizen I will not come into contact with the majority of the other citizens, yet I have this "knowlegde" of their doings, the very idea that the others are moving, operating, living within similiar sociological structures and interacting with similar things that I am. Ethnicity, it may seem is too specific of a category.

The other two grouping techniques: a connection through dynasties and then an ending of "Messianic Time," in Benjaminian terms. Understandably, these grouping terms serve for collection methods in that once these systems break down, the identifier for sociological entities needs to grasp onto something other. Finally, the transition in from Messianic time to a sort of time in the "now," which Anderson describes as empty time is well summed up in his descriptions through literary texts as well as his connection to the Newspaper. Though I am interested in how the internet changes things in this note. The death of the newspaper, which is rapidly occurring through our eyes in examples such as assimilation of newspaper companies, the death of the small town paper, along with the increase of ad space and decrease of news space on a page all speak to this example in new and interesting ways.

What I am interested in, is a connection between Anderson and the other previous author's we've come across. Thinking back to last week and White and Hutcheon who spoke to the study of history and the academic field of Postmodernism, Anderson's work seems especially interesting. Anderson is speaking to the fact that groups of people are grouped together through a sort of imaginary plane and commonalities, located within a geographic space. White and Hutcheon seem to be looking at the thought systems that come out of these groupings (Nietzsche, Spivak, Norris all speak to the thought systems that come out of this as well). It would be interesting to look at the manners in which sociological entities group themselves and its impact on the thought systems: Hutcheon's comments on the PM's focus on the ex-centric, Spivak's comments on the subaltern, even Bhabha's hybridity (noting especially the interactions between the "nations" through colonialism).

This final paragraph sums Anderson's points up well, but also raises questions (for me especially between the supposed clear-cut line between secularism and a religious sort of way of thinking).

The slow, uneven decline of these interlinked certainties, first in Western Europe, later elsewhere, under the impact of economic change, 'discoveries' (social and scientific, and the development of increasingly rapid communications, drove a harsh wedge between cosmology and history. No surprise then that the search was on, so to speak, for a new way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together. Nothing perhaps more precipitated this search, nor made it more fruitful, than print-capitalism, which made it possible for rapidly growing number s of people to think about themselves, and to related themselves to others, in profoundly new ways. (36).

I do question Anderson's supposed disconnect between cosmology and history. I am curious to what exactly he means. Does he assert that cosmology and history do not interact, interpret each other? If so, I disagree, and would aver that though institutionally, cosmology (as in the Catholic Church, or Christendom within monarchies has died out, but christianity, and especially Islam continue to and maintain a prevalent influence upon time (not messianic but "empty" time) and history (as in the events that occur within this time.)

Linda Hutcheon: Dencentering the PostModern: The Ex-centric

In a helpful and interesting essay Hutcheon guides us to what seems to be the focus of modern day Postmodernism: the ex-centric.

Primarily, there are some points that stick out to me that are interesting and pertinent to her essay: 1. The fact that the ex-centric (and Postmodernism (PM) within itself) is dependent in nature upon the very things that is purports to deconstruct or deny and so on. For example, the ex-centric by nature is dependent on the fact that it is marginal and not center. If there lacked a center, the ex-centric would cease to function as it does. And this is important as well for Hutcheon (H), the center, according to Derrida, is a function, never a empirical, real thing, but rather a function, a notion that gives people a state of mind, a completementary element. However, this does not deny the reality of the center. Sexism, partriarchy, racism, and so on all operate through the notion of the center and the marginal. What is important to note is that the center is never a monolithic, single thing. But a social, political, religious, cultural function.

2. H. notes how PM places emphasis upon the ex-centric, but she does not uphold the fact that PM in a theoretical field of the marginal, and if it is, she denies it as an appropriate one. I think this is primarily due to the nature of organizational groupings within themselves. To politically organize and create movement toward a cause due to specific grievances is to assert yourself as the center.And the marginal are distinctly marginal, in relation to the center. However, H does not the emphasis and attention that PM has given the ex-centric, and upholds this as a good and wrothy thing. But, comes back to the point, that PM constantly pivots on the notion of relational difference: the ex-centric to the center.

3. Finally, an interesting point to me lies in the nature of an ex-centric theory, and this helps clarify the relational difference that upholds so much of PM's understanding of the marginal, the ex-centric. Within the political realm, PM's focus upon the ex-centric may be viewed as reactionary, and therefore not a movement that upholds real, true goals, but instead the grievances, and the goals of the movement exist purely in relation to specific social, cultural circumstances that exist today. Though not a complete erasure of the legitimacy of the movement, what this claim does is that it removes some of the organic strength of the claims. The argument may be made that the ex-centric do not need to be placed in an equitable and just situation, but rather that the center's relationship to the marginal should be augmented.


Through various expositions with literary texts, H. elucidates how the marginal movement is exhibitied through literature. Examples such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Salman Rushdie, Gayl Jones and Joy Kogawa bring to light the varying states of the ex-centric. This is an interesting and pertinent point to bring up: the multiplicity of the ex-centric. PM is not attempting to replace the center with the ex-centric:

Postmodernism does not move the marginal to the cetner. It does not invert the valuing of centers into that of peripheries and border, as much as use that paradoxical doubled positioning to critique the inside from both the outisde and the inside.

And that, to me, is a major point of H.'s essay, that the ex-centric, based on a relational difference schema to the center and other ex-centrics is exemplified through PM literature, art, architecture and so on.

Hayden White: Interpretation in History

Wow.

What White seems to have just done is to lay a foundation for a science of the academic study of history. He brought in specific terminology, used specific examples, clarified his categories, created a schema in which historians have and will work out of, and further, declared the basic "language" (meaning the method of communication between historians as well as the historian and her subject: the event, time period, collection of events and so on.) and even upholds a method of dissecting the direction or purpose of the historian and her history.

It is difficult to address such a large (in thought, terminology) without getting into a constant range of clarifying what my words mean and how my discourse is to clarify White's essay: for example, if I am to speak of a Historian's relationship to history, I am inherently speaking of the her language (tropology as White puts it), her ideology, her method of explanation (romance, satire, tragedy and so on) and finally her method of emplotment (organicist, mechanistic, idiographic, contextualist).

White's progressive explanation of each of these categories is thorough and complete. Simply, I'll try and go through each one of his his above mentioned categories.

Primarily, and most importantly (though he doesn't reach this until the final pages of the essay) a Historian is influenced by her language, its meaning (by this I mean a sort of semiotics hinting at sign and signified), its use of metaphor, metonym, synecdoche and irony. All four of these terms, White states, operate through a signification through difference and similarity. Primarily stemming from the understanding that

Following a suggestion of Kenneth Burke, we may say that the four "master tropes" deal in relationships that are experienced as inhering within or among phenomena, but which are in reality relationships existing between consciousness and a world of experience calling for a provision of its meaning. metaphor, whatever else it does, explicitly asserts a similarity in a difference and, at least implicitly, a difference in a similarity.

Further, this use of language and tropology upholds a certain direction or purpose, which is connected to the historian's ideology. This ideology asserts certain politic, motivations, directions, and so on for the historian. White notes that there are four varieties of ideologies that historians may fall into: Anarchist, Conservative, Radical, and Liberal. What is interesting to me is that White seems to be asserting that language is more powerful than ideology, but further, that seperating one's self from ideology is near impossible. It seems to me that there is a difference here between a sort of political ideology (the purpose, unconscious or conscious) that the Historian maintains and the Althusserian ideology that gives the historian her role, responsibilities, ethos, and relation to her surrounding environment.

To be sure, I agree with White in his thought that Language (semiotics) as a massively influential subject, however, I want to stress a sort of relativism that may arise in this sort of thinking, the farther back you push a concept the more it is influenced by another. And this is probably his reasoning for asserting an unlikelihood of pinning down a primary influencer for the Historian: per individual the reasoning may change, but further, it is indescribably difficult to gauge amount of influence upon a historian concerning these categories.

Continuing, White explicates various methods, or stories that these histories may take the form of. What is particularly interesting here is the differentiation between a plot, and a story (myth). White notes how stories are influenced or given by a historian's ideology and further expressed through a tropology that gives deeper meaning to the myth and the characters within it. I feel that White is correct in his understanding of how various stories are told, and the relationship with historical bias through various methods of telling the story (romantic, tragic, satrical, comedic, and so on). A certain expanatory lens gives different meaning to the story. As White noted, a historian make understand a war to be decided through a certain political move, but this political move will be understood through the story in relation to other events both before and after the event itself. And so, the flavor, or position that this event upholds is formed through certain molds or forms given by the story (myth.)

Putting all of this together and completing the process of historical interpretation is the role that emplotment takes within this process. Emplotment refers to the method in which the historian embraces certain information and neglects other, it refers to how the historian presents certain historical time periods, tangible dates or time periods, it refers to the historian's understanding of how these events, dates, important notions, concepts, people all related to one another: in sort emplotment is concerned with how historical information is presented and why it is presented. Interestingly, White noted how various methods of emplotment: Idiographic, Organicist, Mechanistic, and Contexualist. the Idiographic method refers to a more spotted , and selevtive re-telling of history; Organicist understands historical events to be in a much more narrative sense, where the parts are all related to a certain whole and everything fits well together; Mechanistic is best represented through Marx, and his notion that history is best understood as as sort of part to part relationship through a cause and effect scheme. This cause and effect scheme requires that each part be looked at in relation to another and the corresponding relationship be understood as either causual in one manner or effective in another. Finally, the contextualist understand historical events to be in relation to a broader context:

When an event is set within its "context" by the method that Walsh has called "colligation," the historian's explanatory task is said, on this analysis, to be complete. The movement towards intergration of the phenomena is supposed to stop at the point at which a given context can be characterized in modestly general terms.

Wrapping up, White's text understands interpretation by a historian to include these four areas: Mode of Emplotment, Mode of Explanation, Mode of Ideological implication and finally the mode of language. The final mode seems to be the strongest, in that it governs how metaphor, metonymy, synedoche, and irony are understood through emplotment, explanation, and ideological influence.

Christopher Norris "Postmodernising History: Right Wing Revisionism and the Uses of Theory"

In an essay that comes timely after conversations concerning Spivak's can the subaltern speak, and the question of what an issue means when it is "purely" or "just" textual, Norris addresses the issue of the use of theory, and the dangers of getting caught up within textuality and deconstructive thinking.

Beginning, Norris speaks specifically to Stanely Fish, Paul de Man and the use of theory in the fields of Law, Social sciences and history. He notes de Man's notion that theory itself tends to turn in upon itself at points if pushed far enough. Importantly, he traces the connection between literary theory and philosophy. Admitting the usefulness of multi-disciplinary studies, Norris brings to light the lack of boundaries that this creates for literary theory. This conflation of recognizable limits of fields can lead to the oversight that certain methods of thoughts have solid history processes of thought, and have, in their own sort of development, gone through specific thought processes:

So, Derrida is far from endorsing Richard Rorty's proposal that we should drop the idea of "philosophy" as a discipline with its own particular interests, modes of argument, conceptual prehistory and so on, and henceforth treat it as just one "kind of writing" among others, on a level with poetry, literary criticism and the human sciences at large. In fact his recent essay have laid increasing stress on this need to conserve what is specific to philosophy, namely its engagement with ethical, political and epistemological issues that cannot be reduced tout court to the level of an undifferentiated textual "freeplay"

Further, Norris speaks to Fish's claim that the extension of Literary theory in other fields in essence ends only extending its sort of hegemonic claim over modern day thought. Fish claims against the sort of way of thinking that upholds a sort of consensus concerning a specific way to approach fields such as Law, Philosophy, social sciences, and even history. Interestingly, Fish upholds that all ways of thinking are intimately involved with "interpretative communities". Additionally, Fish notes that, should theorists claim that their way of thinking is anti-hegemonic, there must be a sort of delusion occurring. Purportedly, these theorists who claim this anti-hegemony way of thinking must extend their ways of thinking in order to provide for this sort of consensus.

I want to jump to the most interesting part of the article to me; keeping in mind the time Norris spends on outline Britain political history and its relationship to the Critical Legal Theorists.

Claiming this sort of conflation and oversight of literary theory boundaries and individual theoretical development respectively, Norris then turns to an actual application of theory in Britain law. What remains important and pertinent to our conversation is his example of this conflation and oversight by Clark in a Right-wing revisionism. This use of literary theory to re-present history in an advantageous manner is an exaggeration of what Norris speaks to in the beginning of his essay. Clark presents British history through a right-wing lens. Understanding specific political events such as the Industrial Revolution, a political change in 1869 that lessened the power of the monarchy to, in actually, be falsified through liberal metafiction he upholds that these events drastically differently.

First, he sees the Industrial revolution, not as a period in time at all, and secondly he sees the word revolution as problematic: pointing to notions of turning away from specific failing political systems and embracing new, sometimes drastically different ones. This is false, Clark claims, seeing the the industrial revolution as merely a notion in liberal re-writing of history, and denies that the Industrial revolution was a valid developmental period in time at all. Further the political change in 1869 did not serve to lessen the power of the monarchy at all; rather it merely altered the role of the monarchy in the government, but not lessening the power of the monarchy in any way.

These drastic representations, Norris, asserts cannot be addressed through a mutually falsified liberal notion of literary theory that conflates both boundaries, and worth of manners of thinking such as Law. He asserts that Law, as a way of thinking, has developed primarily through rigorous arguments and is not founded upon purely cover metaphorical language.

In the end, Norris upholds that the only way to battle Clark's way of thinking is to maintain a certain notion of historical theory, or theory in general that upholds and claims certain kantian truths, such as Kantain truth in communication. He asserts, rightfully:

My point is that "critical theory" in the current poststructuralist mode cannot engage with such issues because it has effectively renounced any claim of distinguishing between reason and rhetoric, knowledge and power, judgments arrived at through a process of uncoerced, rational debate, and judgments resting on prejudice, dogmas or the exercise of unchecked authority. What is needed is an openness to other kinds of theory that have held out against this relativising drift on account of its conservative implications.

Balancing nicely, the issue of theory and practice Norris outline a possibility for a supposed "real world" application of theory that may be applied in Law, social sciences with confidence of acknowledging certain truths that have gone through reasonable progressions and theoretical processes.