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.