Textualization of History As Trauma: the African American and Modern Greek Paradigm
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE ROLE OF THE (POSTCOLONIAL) INTELLECTUAL/CRITIC: TEXTUALIZATION OF HISTORY AS TRAUMA: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN AND MODERN GREEK PARADIGM. DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Eleni Mavromatidou, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2008 Dissertation Committee: Professor Amy Shuman, Advisor Approved By Professor Valerie Lee Professor Gregory Jusdanis ________________________________ Professor Adeleke Adeeko Advisor English Graduate Program ABSTRACT My dissertation focuses on the political novel (by political I refer to novels which render alternative as well as oppositional to western patriarchal capitalist representations of history and subjectivity). I have selected novels which create new realities and new psychoanalytic languages (forms) through which to depict historical events and political structures as intensely traumatic and understand their psychological effects upon subjects. One cannot study history unless it becomes specific not only in terms of dates, places, and events but also in terms of the economic, ideological, and political causes behind these events and especially in terms of the psychological repercussions upon the Subject of history herself. The political novels I have chosen to discuss come from two very apparently different cultures--but in reality similar in the ways they experienced cruelty, exploitation, and alienation as Postcolonial others--the African American and the Modern Greek. The African American political novel, written by mainly Black female writers, records the effects of slavery and the subsequent racism that followed the lives of African American people after the post reconstruction era. The Modern Greek novel, written by insurgent Hellenic writers, has as its subject matter the recording of the history of the civil war between Left and Right ideologies and practices, and of an oppressive and bloody 7 year dictatorship that exiled and imprisoned a considerable number of the resisting Greek population. Both cultures attempt to re-write their history through a conscious attempt at self definition and self determination which they juxtapose to the reactionary representational modes their colonial masters had produced up to that time. Dedicated to Amy: Who knows Karl, Ernesto, and Aris Paul D asks the slave, Sethe how she managed to “Run off Pregnant….All by yourself too.” She replies: “Almost by myself. Not all by myself. A white girl [called Amy] helped me.” Beloved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS What I owe the dead: those tortured, alienated from the mainstream, fractured in body, psyche and spirit at times-yet never defeated citizens of history, whose lives and deaths have helped me forever searching for my ethical gravitas, for maintaining a sacred wrath against exploitation, injustice and un-freedom. The studying of Black culture has nourished me in the most difficult times as an alien mother. My living outside the academia, helped me understand more clearly what African Americans women are talking about, both in their novels and in their theory. What I owe the living: My children, Ektoras and Alexis, who are smart and compassionate; embodied works of art; full of beauty! My family in Greece for their transatlantic help and support. My friends, Pat Barnett and her whole family, Amy Shuman and Amy Horowitz, and Paul Eisenstein, who provided me with ample love and material support. I could not have survived without that. Those who have harmed me, for they have shown me that my knowledge of history is the right path; their ethical inconsistency one more verification of my treading the right path. iii My advisor, Amy Shuman, whose belief in me, even in my lowest and darkest moments, helped transcend the sense of absurdity my marginal place in the academic world has caused me in delaying its confrontation. My teachers, Mac Davis, Vassilis Lambropoulos, and Gregory Jusdanis who enriched my American learning experience immensely and in different ways. Professor Valerie Lee, who has offered me recognition and appreciation and whose leadership has been a positive role modeling for me. Prof Gregory Jusdanis, and Prof Adeleke Adeeko who were so patient with my application shortcomings and inadequacies. The English department at OSU in general which was for me a great space of inclusion and affirmation, and most of all, freedom for my politically and ethically tortured self. iv VITA March 19, 1955……………………Born-Thessaloniki, Greece 1984……………………………….B.A. English Literature and Linguistics, Aristotle University of Thessloniki 1990-1993…………………………M.A. Literature, Kent State University 1994-1998-2005-2008…………….Graduate Teaching and Research Student, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Research Publication 1. "The Horror of Collective Suffering: the Failure of Representational Discourse: or the Ways of Informed Maternal Instinct." 31st Annual Conference on Literature and Film: "Documenting Trauma, Documenting Terror." Florida State University. February 4, 2006. 2. “A Quilt of Voices, A Symphony of Colors: Discovering the Benefits of a Diverse Reality: Understanding the Uniqueness of a Culturally Global America.” The Gathering: Cultural Competency in Business, Education & Health, Ridgewater College, Willmar, Minnesota, August 18, 2003. 3. “A Postcolonial Reading of African American and Hellenic Literature” Presented at Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, MN, December 5, 2002. 4. "Intrusion as an Agent of Change in Morrison's Tar Baby and Song of Solomon," Carnival of Thought, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, March 18, 1995. v 5. "Hermeneia, Diermeneia, Interpretation, Representation: a Methexis of Meanings in Plato's Ion." in English Studies Yearbook, Aristotle University, Vol.3 1992- 1993. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ……………………………………………………………………….ii Dedication …………………………………………………………………….iii Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………iv Vita ……………………………………………………………………………vi Table of Contents ……………………………………………………………..vii Chapters: 1. Preface …………………………………………………………………1 1.1 Introduction ………………………………………………………..17 2. RECORDING HISTORY RECORDING TRAUMA THROUGH THE POLITICAL NOVEL: BELOVED AND MISSION BOX ……………………...41 2.1 Imperialist Economic Exploitation and the Postcolonial Narrative in Beloved and Mission Box 2.1.1. BELOVED ……………………………………………….48 2.1.2 MISSION BOX ……… …………………………………….59 2.2 Dialogic Testimony as Circular Crisis of Truth-telling in Beloved and Mission Box ……………....92 2.2.1 BELOVED ……………………………………………….97 2.2.2 MISSION BOX ……………………………………………..….. 104 vii 3. THE AFTERMATH: THE POLITICAL NOVEL AS A DIALOGUE BETWEEN SUBJECT AND HISTORY: The Individual (Personal) or the Collective (Public) Psyche? …………………….…………………………………………………………….…..115 3.1 African American Post Slavery Experience of Internal Colonization ….124 3.2 Hellenic Post Civil War Experience of Imperial Colonization …………156 4. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………..…177 5. Bibliography ………………………………………………………………..185 viii CHAPTER 1 PREFACE “The writer’s function is not without arduous duties. By definition, he cannot serve today those who make history; he must serve those who are subject to it.” (Albert Camus 1957 Nobel Prize Address) "sweetly we slept in this world and we woke up violently in another” Theo Angelopoulos Ulysses Gaze Located in a postmodern, post communist, a-pre-emptive-war-waging highly imperialist America, I tarry with the negative as Hegel has taught me: “Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being” ( Phenomenology 19). Acrobat-like, I balance delicately between the political impulse and its negating madness one. It is as if I need the Marxist spirit of Brechtian art and the physical cruel sensuality of Artaud via Kristeva’s abject: “the abject is the violence of mourning for an ‘object’ that has always already been lost. The abject shatters the wall of repression and its judgments” ( Powers of Horror 15) in both my real and academic lives. Bombarded by the “intolerable lightness” of the entertainment industry, I find “sweetness and light,” to put Matthew Arnold’s idea of the sublime on its feet, as I discovered not in high culture, in other words, but on the narratives of dispossession, oppression and exploitation. The 1 same way I did not merely enjoy the highly artistic and humorous, often politically correct, Coca Cola commercials, but viewed them in the context of the exploitative labor relations of its production. Sometimes I find some recognition in the voice of tupac, “God Bless the Dead,” or the concerts of RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE and SYSTEM OF A DOWN, and the surprising historical Hollywood productions such as the Cohen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There will be Blood . What saves the day is that the production of great art is never prescriptive. In historical terms, the enforcement of prescriptive rules in art production is a fascist practice whether dictated by capitalism or communist societal formations. Socialist realism, the set of rules enforced by Stalinist cultural practices, contradicts the position of a Marxist thinking of culture. Marx himself, as Eagleton mentions in Marxism and Literary Criticism, asserts that “Milton produced Paradise Lost for the same reason that a silk worm produces silk. It was an activity of his nature” (Marxism and Literary Criticism 45). My reading of Beloved