Silence, Language and Empire

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| Leave a comment

Post colonialism appears to be the most varied section in critical theory, as it incorporates many subjects and issues at once. It is interesting to see how much literature translates the conditions of the situations that helped produce or develop an empire. Reading C. C. Eldrige’s “The Revival of the Imperial Spirit” shows the power of literature in reviving the empire. Similarly, In Edward Said’s “Jane Austen and Empire,” Said says “Perhaps then Austen, and indeed, pre-imperialist novels generally, will appear to be more implicated in the rationale for imperialist expansion that at first sight they have been” (1115).

What I liked about Edward Said’s essay is his use of deconstruction by finding the gap (Antigua) in Mansfield Park and bringing it into question. While reading the essay, it seems to me that Austen is portraying two different worlds, the Antigua and Mansfield Park. Antigua is as Edward said describes it “is like London or Portsmouth, a less desirable setting than a country estate like Mansfield Park, but producing gods to be consumed by everyone” (1120). This geographical separation plays a role in forming a division of culture, class and knowledge. Because Antigua, an island in the West Indies, is where Sir Thomas usually travels to, he does not necessarily speak about it after he arrives at Mansfield Park. Through reading Mansfield Park, I always questioned Sir Thomas’ role in the household and abroad. The reader is not informed about Sir Thomas outside Mansfield Park. Said says “Fanny Price reminds her cousin that after asking Sir Thomas about the slave trade, ‘There was such a dead silence’ as to suggest that one world could not be connected with the other since there simply is no common language for both” (1124).  It is interesting to see how this silence indicates the separation of both places and translates as a language in itself that indicate difference.

 

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Race is a social construction

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| 3 Comments

I think the subject of race is interesting. I believe there is only one race and that is the human race. I also believe that race is just a categorization that labels a person or a group of people making them different from one another. I think that putting people in certain categorization of race is almost the same idea we learned from Foucault’s essays. That is the idea of categorizing a person, which results in distinguishing him or her from others, is an exercise of power. We do not recognize our differences until we give these differences a name and bring them into consideration.

According to Rivkin and Ryan , In 1990s it is stated that “race is more a cultural and social category than a natural, genetic , or biological one” (961). Race is  not biological but cultural and a social construction. In “The Social Construction of Race,” Lopez says, “ race is neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing, plastic process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of daily decisions” (966).  This is a quote I found very important in pointing out the fact that race is merely socially constructed and not biological.  Lopez argues that it is difficult to assume that race is  biological. In addition to that, it is hard to categorize a group of people based on physical features.  This is because this kind of classification will extend to classifying people according to skin-tone, which is something impossible to achieve. Lopez explains, “this grouping is threatened by the subtle gradation of skin color as one moves south or east, and becomes untenable when the fair-skinned peoples of Northern China and Japan are considered” (967).  Lopez believes that the earlier grouping of “races” “is rooted in the European imagination of the middle ages, which encompassed only Europe, Africa and the Near East” (967). What these classifications do is they abandon other regions and therefore exclude other “races” or groups of people (967).

This link supports Lopez’s argument, it shows the fallacy of categorizing humans according to physical features.

 

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Female Masculinity

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| 2 Comments

According to Rivkin and Ryan “The path-breaking work of anthropologists like Gayle Rubin and historians like Alan Bray and Michel Foucault bore out the point that gender is variable” (886).  This topic is prevalent in Feminist Criticism theories. These two topics both consider the notion of gender to be an identity that a person can select. In “Female Masculinity,” Judith Halberstram states, “Masculinity must not and cannot reduce down to the male body and its effects” (935).  She supports her argument with examples of famous images of masculinity in movies and literature. She believes that masculinity was formed and constructed through the media. Halberstram finds it difficult to label a person with masculinity.

This is because “many other lines of identification traverse the terrain of masculinity, dividing its power into complicated differentials of class, race, sexuality, and gender” (936). Halberstram goes on to explore the notion of the “Tomboy” and how it was perceived in society. She explains a phase that most teenage girls go through, which identities their gender. Like Gayle Rubin, Halberstram believes that “gender conformity is pressed onto all girls, not just tomboys” (938). Moreover, she asserts that society is more willing to accept female masculinity than male femininity, she says  “it becomes hard to uphold the notion that male femininity presents a greater threat to social and familial stability than female masculinity.” It is interesting to think about this notion of male femininity for a little bit. In the eighteenth century, according to Margaret Doody, states “the soothing mediation of ‘sensibility,’ as the eighteenth century developed it, ascribe previously ‘feminine’ qualities to normal male psychology and behavior, and assured us of a smoother social interaction during a time of great economoic and social disruption” (Doody 63).  Doody further explains the notion that gender is a social invention and not a biological one.

While writing my research paper on Pamela, I felt that there is a significant importance in the way Samuel Richardson presents Mrs. Jervis and Mrs. Jewkes. Both of these characters share the same initials and role in the novel, as Pamela’s guardians, but Mrs. Jewkes is illustrated as a masculine woman rather than the  pretty, motherly,  emotional and feminine image presented through Mrs. Jervis. This theoretical allowed me to wonder if eighteenth century authors recognized the difference between gender and sex, why is Mrs. Jewkes created that way.

 

 

Richardson, Samuel, Tom Keymer, and Alice Wakely. Pamela, Or, Virtue Rewarded. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.

Doody, Margaret A. “Gender, literature, and gendering literature in the Restoration.”The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1650-1740. Ed. Zwicker, Steven N. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print. 58-80.

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Feminist Paradigms

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| 1 Comment

Feminism

History:  According to Rivkin and Ryan, feminist literary criticism is not bound by history and Feminism existed even before the Women’s Movement. However, it is only in the early 1970′s that Feminism prevailed academically. As a result, Feminist scholars recognized and sought to change the “universal,” dominant, misogynistic view of male writers in the educational sphere at the time(766). During this time, Feminists were concerned with studying earlier literature for clues on women’s place and rights in the past. Their focus was on either a “critique of misogynist stereotypes in male literature”or recovering “lost tradition” and “long labor of historical reconstruction”. At any stage, the goal of this study was to shed light on “the women’s experience under patriarchy” (765).

The women’s movement was also concerned with issues beyond gender difference. Topics about gender and ethnicity  flourished during the rise of feminism. African American feminist scholars studied the African American women’s experience in literature and history. Likewise, lesbian feminist scholars examined the work of lesbian writers and the suspension from the heterosexual world (766).

In the mid-1980s, several problems occurred between feminist critics. The feminists’ shift from the concentration on studying the impact of the patriarchal ideology on women throughout history  resulted in dividing feminists into two positions: the “Essentialists” and “Constructivist.” The essentialists  believed  that “natural difference between men and women that is as much psychological, even linguistic, as it is biological… there was no possible meeting of minds between the two, for each necessarily denied the other” (766-7). While the “constructionist”, believe that culture and history  is the reason behind the difference between men and women. Both of these feminist perspectives were inspired by many theoretical theories but the essentialists found more support in French Post-structuralism. Moreover, the constructivists were concerned with the essentialists’ theories about the feminine nature being the cause of women’s subordination. Thus, the constructivist feminists supported their arguments using Marxist theories (Particularly Althussers’s “social construction of individual subjectivity”) and the Post-Structuralist notion that language “writes rather than reflect identities” (768).

Quotes:

From Gayle Rubin’s  “The Traffic in Women” (1975)

The “exchange of women” is a seductive and powerful concept. It is attractive in that it places the oppression of women within social systems, rather than in biology (Rubin 779).

 

From Luce Irigaray ‘s “The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine”

The issue is not one of elaborating a new theory of which woman would be the subject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical machinery itself, of suspending its pretension to the production of a truth and of a meaning that are excessively univocal. Which presuppose that women do not aspire simply to be men’s equal in knowledge (Irigaray 796).

 

From Gilbret and Gubar “The Mad Woman in the Attic” (1980):

For all literary artists, of course, self-definition necessarily precedes self-assertion: the creative “I AM” cannot be uttered if the “I” knows not what it is. But for the female artist the essential process of self-definition is complicated by all those patriarchal definitions that intervene between herself and herself (812).

 

From Audre Lorde “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” (1984):

As a tool of social control, women have been encouraged to recognize only one area of human difference as legitimate, those differences which exist between women and men (859).

Questions:

1- Define the connection and difference between Luce Irigary’s and Helene Cixous argument on feminine writing.

2- How would you apply a feminist reading to Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train? (Essentialist- Constructivist)

3- After reading Gayle Rubin’s essay, which critical theory works best in defining Feminism? and is Rubin a Constructivist or Essentialist?

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Underpaid Labor and Power

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| 1 Comment

After reading Rivkin and Ryan’s “Introduction: Starting with Zero” I could understand the concept of Marxism theory more clearly. Rivkin and Ryan repeatedly refer to Formalism and New Criticism as a political form or inspiration with more emphasis this time. From the introductions I have read so far by Rivkin and Ryan, this particular introduction (Introduction: Starting with Zero) contains a wide range of contrast with the ideas of Formalists.

I liked the fact that Marxist theory approaches literature from all angles and considers it as a basic illustration for class-division and economic status of a particular time. However, British Marxism School excluded the notion of “power” and created a branch of Marxism called “Cultural Materialism” (646). It surprises me that Rivkin and Ryan did not mention New Historicism in this introduction. In Rivkin and Ryan’s “Introduction: Writing the Past,” they note that New Historicists assume  the concept of “power” in literature where noble characters lose their authority actually does the opposite: it emphasizes the power. In contrast, Cultural Materialists view of the loss of the authority figure’s power would be the the undermining of power (506). (This is a part I found a little confusing)

In my opinion, the most interesting article in this week’s readings was “Wage Labor and Capital.” In this article, Karl Marx argues that labor is why capitalism exists, and the amount of wage received by the worker does not necessarily equal the worth of the products that the worker makes. Marx states:

The worker receives means of subsistence for his labor as a means for his labor power, but the capitalist receives in exchange for his means of subsistence labor, the productive activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he consumes but gives to the accumulated labor a greater value than it previously possessed (663).

This reminds me of big companies that produce quality products sold to the consumer at a reasonable price, later on, consumers discover that the same company did not actually pay the workers anywhere near the original price of the product. This issue is frequently raised in the news when talking about clothing industry. An example for this low wage issue would be this 2008 New York Times article report the condition of Chinese factory workers and the low wages they receive.

 

 

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New Historicism and Interpretation

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| 2 Comments

In Rivkin and Ryan’s  “introduction: Writing the Past,” it is noted that history is an important part in literary criticism. Despite the separation of history from art that was presented by New Criticism and some Structuralists’, the New Historicists argue that understanding a literary text require a background knowledge of historical context. New Historicism recognizes the importance of studying the text linguistically, but does not neglect the necessity of the history behind the terms found in a literary work (Rivkin and Ryan 505-6).

Interesting to note, a literary work can be a manifestation and a mirror reflecting culture and mind of the writer and his or her contemporaries . Even though some artists think ahead of their time with imagination, but this is where New Historicism becomes necessary.

In E. P. Thompson’s “Witness Against the Beast,” Thomson examines how English poets in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century select certain words that illuminate their own individual, political stance and knowledge. Thomson also argues that a text can be interpreted in multiple ways by providing examples of previous scholars’ interpretation of the same poem being examined (Rivkin and Ryan 540).

The idea of New Historicism is interesting to me. As I am reading a literary work, I tend to connect the events of a novel or poem to the conventions of its time. The historical background of the time, I believe, gives a deeper insight for the reader. In EN 574 Gender, Race, and Empire in 19th Century British Culture, we examined novels along with history lessons that corresponds with the themes of the novels discussed. This gave the students different opportunities with handling the text. Without consulting a historical context, I would not have known the significance of the caste system, gender roles and racial discrimination that influenced the novels we read (like Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and She by Henry Haggard).

Some novels, like Frances Burney’s Evelina, would point out to the reader the concerns and trends of the century in certain domains. In Evelina, Burney uses the protagonist, Evelina, to express her dissatisfaction with particular individuals who unknowlingly show distasteful and ill-mannered actions. Evelina suggests, “there ought to be a book of the laws and customs à-la-mode, presented to all young people upon their first introduction into public company” (Burney 84). Even though the idea of conduct books were not new by the time Evelina was published, but an editor’s note about this part says “there were plenty of books offering young people general instruction in polite behavior, but those dealing with the minute peculiarities of society tended to be satirical rather than informative. Burney’s novel fills the gap, perhaps.” (Burney 427).  Thus, this illustration reflects the necessity of more conduct books that deal with certain issues. This example also shows the trend of such genre of writing that existed mostly in the eighteenth century.

 

Burney, Frances. Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print

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Psychoanalysis and The Author

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| 4 Comments

Shifting from the focus on “literariness” of content and form to examining the author’s (and character) psychological state of mind in Psychoanalysis. In this approach, Freud suggests that literature is a form of “dreams, neurotic symptoms, consist of the imagined, or fantasied, fulfillment of wishes that are either denied by reality or prohibited by the social standards of morality and propriety” (Abrams 320).  Through reading and examining Sigmund Freud’s essay “The Uncanny,” which describes what the author feels about a certain part of his or her life in the past. Many critics in the previous literary movements we tackled reject this aspect. Freud identifies  “The Uncanny” as something that is unfamiliar and strange to one’s life that  is seen as “frightening” to many people (419).

After reading the analysis on a novel with a psychoanalytic lens (422), I feel that the assumptions made in The Mad Woman in the Attic makes sense to me. In the section about  Jane Eyre, critics believe that the figure of Bertha Mason was a metaphor for female oppression. The trouble followed by the presence of Bertha signifies the possibility of demonizing the woman who is not “angelic” by the 19th century gender propriety standards.

I  believe that an author can illustrate internal feelings and desires indirectly  in his or her work . This article (Thanks to Martinelle for informing me about it) reports a discovery of a short story written by Bronte herself that was dedicated to Bronte’s tutor ,who is  a married man, whom Bronte fell in love with. This affection was made public in 1913 after “Paul Heger gave permission for four letters she wrote from Yorkshire to her teacher to be published”(Davies 9).

With this event in mind, it almost makes sense to me that Jane, as a character, was what Bronte (unconsciously and indirectly) wanted to become. According to the source, the man’s wife attacked Charlotte Bronte after she discovered the secret letters. Jane chose a married man; his wife expresses her oppression and anger with the affair through aggressive actions towards Jane and Mr. Rochester alike. Through the class difference between Jane and Mr. Rochester, it gives emphasis on the hopeless relationship between them. In addition, the educational conversations between them (Mr. Rochester and Jane) signify the teacher-student atmosphere in the novel.

 

Abrams, M H, and Geoffrey G. Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny” Eds. Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004.419-429.Print.

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Understanding Postmodernism

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| 2 Comments

First I should explain that I struggled with understanding Lyotard’s “The Postmodern Condition,” more than Derrida’s “Differance.” Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Post-modernism, according to Abrams, is a term used to refer to post- Second World War writings and art. Abrams defines the connection between Post-Modernism and Post-Structuralism saying, “Postmodernism in literature and the arts has parallels with the movement known as postructuralism in linguistics and literary theory; post-structuralists undertake to subvert the foundations of language in order to demonstrate that its seeming meaningful dissipates, for a rigorous inquirer, into a play of conflicting indeterminacies, or else undertake to show that all forms of cultural discourse are manifestations of the reigning ideology, or of the relations and constructions of power, in contemporary society” (Abrams 227).

In “The Postmodern Condition, “Jean-Francois Lyotard believes that “Post-modernism favors seeing the world in more rhetorical terms as a field of contending smaller narratives” (Lyotard 355). This means that both movements, Post-modernism and Post-structuralism, disagreed with the “grand narrative” and argued that there is no absolute way of viewing things.

First he explains and defends science or “knowledge” in the “Legitimation of Knowledge,” which Lyotard suggests that in order for “knowledge” to find its legitimacy, it has to be applied and practiced (Lyotard 357). He refers to this idea again in “Delegitimation,” and says that in order for language to be understood, it must be communicated and performed in a linguistic interaction (Lyotard 361).

Lyotard finds a way to define why science is attacked, and as previously noted, he extends the performative examples to emphasize the need to have “proof”. In “Delegitimation” Lyotard explains the reality of uncertainty or skepticism in different fields of discourse (Science in particular); he says, “there is nothing to prove that if a statement describing a real situation is true”(Lyotard 359). He then gives example of how language itself has different rules by quoting Wittgenstein’s description of language as a town (Lyotard 360). Lyotard explains why by arguing that societies are connected linguistically, but they are individually different; having “different rules” but borrow terms that expands language and knowledge.

What I understood here is that Lyotard is trying to make abstract knowledge into concrete by repeating the necessity of “performance” in different fields of knowledge and not only science.  Therefore, based on the title of this essay, the condition of post-modernism is to provide proof and concreteness of information to achieve a better understanding of knowledge.

 

Abrams, M H, and Geoffrey G. Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. “The Postmodern Condition.” Eds. Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004. Print.

 

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Derrida’s Definition of Deconstruction

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| 3 Comments

In the video about Derrida’s definition of deconstruction is “ to not naturalize what is not natural, to not assume that what is conditioned by history, institutions, or society is natural.” It is interesting to see the definition articulated by the founder of the term. Before watching the video and reading the essays in the book, I tried to guess what it means to “deconstruct” a text. Since structuralists believed in looking at a literary text in its “shape and form(content),” and determining the aspect of a text that makes it possible to be regarded as a piece of  literature. I can imagine that deconstruction refers to looking beyond the form of a text to restructure the claim of the text. According to Rivikin and Ryan’s “Introduction: Introductory Deconstruction”, “Derrida noted that the metaphysical system of thought simply took for granted that one could differentiate between an inside and outside without recourse to a technique such as differentiation that had not been accounted for”(260). This part encourages me to think of a text as more than just a form, but as a system of binaries “Western Philosophy, as Derrida states, has analyzed the world in terms of binary oppositions: mind vs. body, good vs. evil man vs. woman, presence vs. absence” (Johnson 341).

In Jean-Jacques Rousseau “Confessions,” I could see the differentiation element in the way the narrator speaks about “the otherness” of the opposite sex. She is portrayed as “this excellent girl” when he is talking about intimacy and physical attraction. However, “Her mind is as nature formed it” and by nature meaning the old traditional standard assumption of a woman’s intellectual insufficiency, therefore her mind is described as “it was not susceptible of cultivation.”  This kind of division, from what I understand from Derrida’s interview, is the concept of ‘naturalizing’ what is not natural or succumbing to society or history’s assumption of what is natural. However, in the end of the confession, he realizes a paradox between his and her mind and adds “The word which when she speaks, presents itself to her mind, is frequently opposite to that of which she means to make use.” Giving more emphasis on her “otherness” in the context. Surprisingly, she gives him better advice than anyone else Rousseau says, “But this person, so confined in her intellects, and, if the world pleases, so stupid, can give excellent advice in cases of difficulty”(Rousseau 267). This leads me to conclude that Rousseau’s use of conflicting ideas in the text gives a differentiating “unnatural” experience.

 

Johnson, Barbara. “Writing.” Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd., 2004. 340-347. Print.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau. New York: Modern Library, 1945. Print.

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Language and Performance

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Rawan Alnefaee| 2 Comments

In Rivikin and Ryan’s Introduction: The implied order: Structuralism, it is noted that “a structure is both like a skeleton and like a genetic code in that it is the principle of stability and coherence in any cultural system” (Rivikin & Ryan 53).  Also, in Jonathan Culler’s The Linguistic Foundation, he says “the cultural meaning of any particular act or object is determined by a whole system of constitutive rules: rules which do not regulate behavior so much as create the possibility of particular forms of behavior” (Culler 56). Culler concludes that there must be an “underlying system of distinction and conventions which makes this meaning possible” (Culler 56).

As I was reading, I noticed the similarities between these two quotes; they reminded me of Austen’s How To Do Things With Words.  I find that the two essays may be similar in the fact that the essays discuss the relationship and connection between human behavior and words. The example provided in Austen’s essay about marriage that the mere utterance of a sentence can result in uniting couples in marriage, which emphasizes the role of language being performative. In The Linguistic Foundation, Culler mentions the physical behavior towards rules. Culler provides an example of making rules that do not perform in a social context but the structure of the sentence indicates the performativity effect. Hence, sentences that do not possess meaning before will have meaning. In Austen’s view, promises can also be regarded as performative words (Austin 164).

The same example is provided by Culler’s description of the difference in cultural systems, Culler explains that “promises should be kept; though of course If one kept any promises doubts might arise as to whether one understood the institution of promising and had assimilated its rules “ (Culler 58). These illustrations of performative or “operative” sentences indicate the importance of regarding the structure of a sentence with meaning. Especially when the sentence expect the reader or listener to “act” upon the words.

 

Austen, J.L. “How To Do Things With Words.”Literary Theory, an Anthology. Eds.Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1998. Print.162-176.

Culler, Jonathan “The Linguistic Foundation.”Literary Theory, an Anthology. Eds.Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1998. Print.56-58.

 

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