Radical Utopian Politics in Dionne Brand's "No Language Is Neutral" and "Bread out of Stone"

University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies Legacy Theses 2000 Voicing grace: Radical utopian politics in Dionne Brand's "No language is neutral" and "bread out of stone" Garrett, Brenda Garrett, B. (2000). Voicing grace: Radical utopian politics in Dionne Brand's "No language is neutral" and "bread out of stone" (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/13957 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/40590 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Voicing Grace: Radical Utopian Politics in Dionne Brand's No Laneuaee is Neutral and Bread out of Stone Brenda Garrett A THESIS SUBMInED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA AUGUST, 2000 O Brenda Garrett 2000 National Library Bibliotheque nati~nale of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaON K1AON4 Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Canada Canada Your lYe Vme referenm Our lVe Norre retersnu, The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive Licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliotheque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prgter, distribuer ou copies of ths thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format electronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriete du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protege cette these. thesis nor substantial extracts &om it Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othenvise de celle-ci ne doivent Btre imprirct; reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT There have been attempts to locate the work of Dionne Brand within a fracturing post-colonial post-structuralism. This thesis, however, locates her not within the post- structuralist imaginary, but within the romantic imaginary. Brand's romantic project is to voice grace, to voice her authentic self beneath her own overriding politic, by reflecting that self in landscape. In the process, she creates a utopian space. This utopia is not an escapist, transcendent, universal, romantic Utopia, but is a radical political utopia -- the struggle to create and maintain an alternate centre in the here and now. one centre among many in the field of resistance. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks to the University of Calgary's Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, and Faculty of Graduate Studies for providing Funding and support while I completed my M.A. Degree. A particular thanks to Dr. Pamela McCallum for taking on the supervision of this project and for her expert guidance. I am also grateful to the administrators. faculty and staff of the University of Calgary at Red Deer College Collaborative BA Program for their encouragement and understanding while I completed this project. And finally, thank you to friends and family for their support and for their patience while I cancelled engagements, ignored the telephone and neglected to keep in touch. A special thanks to Darcy Garrett for his companionship and assurance, always. TABLE OF CONTENTS .. Approval Page ..................................................................................................................... 11 ... Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 111 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. v List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... vi .. Epigraph .............................................................................................................................v~i PREFACE From Being Place to Becoming Place ...........................................1 CHAPTER 1 Anxiety of Place: Being Placed ......................................................11 1.1 htroduction ............................................................................................. I1 l .2 Speaking from the Contact Zone: Fracturing the Subject .......................... I4 l .3 Beyond the Contact Zone: Uniting the Subject .......................................... 21 1.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 36 CHAPTER 2 Making Bread out of Stone: Creating a Radical Utopian Politic ...40 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 40 2.2 Not Enough: Utopia from System to Desire to Struggle to Action ............41 2.2.1 Traditional Utopia: Utopia as System ....................................... .....I 2.2.2 Levitas and Moylan: Desire and Struggle ...................................... 53 2.2.3 Althusser: Utopia as Action ...........................................................71 2.3 Making Bread Out of Stone: Nourishment Out of the Void ......................93 2.4 Conclusion................................................................................................. 98 CHAPTER 3 How Was it for You?: Becoming Place ....................................... 100 3.1 Lntroduction ............................................................................................ 100 3.2 No Language is Neutral: Wilderness Sel E ............................................... 101 3.3 Hard Against the Soul: Re-solving the Sublime Beauty Dialectic .......... 118 3.1 in Another Place: The Highest Bliss ........................................................ 134 . CONCLUSION Livmg. Moving. Being ................................................................. 152 Endnotes ......................................................................................................................... 162 References ......................................................................................................................... 164 Appendix A: Map of Tmldad................. .... .............................................................. 169 LIST OF FIGURES Figure I . Encounters Between Cultures on the Contact Zone .........................................12 Figure 2 . Representationally Existing on the Contact Zone .......................................... 17 Figure 3 . The Utopian Contact Zone ............................................................................... 101 EPIGRAPH Ln another place. not here. a wonian might touch something between beauty and nowhere. back there and here. might pass hand over hand her own trembling life . Dionne Brand No Lanrlr~aeeis Neutral [. .] hence the highest bliss That tlesh can know is theirs -- the consciousness Of Whom they are. habitually infused Through every image and through every thought And all afi'ections. by communion raised From earth to heaven. from human to divine: Hence endless occupation for the Soul. Whether discursive or intuitive [. .I W illiarn Wordsworth The Prelude, Book 13 PREFACE From Being Placed to Becoming Place Nature never did betray The heart that loved her. -- William Wordsworth "Tintem Abbey" Poet and activist Dio~eBrand begins and ends No Language Is Neutral with a depiction of herself and her lover as utopian place structurally creating a circular text. But if we rearrange the text to follow a chronological order. it begins with a map of the relative positionality of the poet's past subjectivity. She writes: N3 language is neutral. I used to haunt the beach at Guayn. two rivers sentinel the country sand. not backra white but nigger brown sand, one river dead and teeming from waste and alligators. the other rumbling to the ocean in a tumult [. .I. (22) Brand's point of departure is her childhood home Guayaguayare on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. (See Appendix A: Map of Trinidad.) Here, the poet locates herself as placed on the beach. confined on all sides by ocean. rivers and an unnavigable interior. The basic question is how does Brand move from being placed to becoming place? There have been attempts to situate Brand within a fragmenting post-colonial post-structuralism. Teresa Zackodnik asserts that "Rather than ~ttem~~tingto resolve the ambivalent tension between self and other within, and between self and others outside, Brand privileges a dialogic of differences that makes a space for multiple voices and discourses" (1 08-209). Charlotte Sturgess, too, locates Brand in a fragmenting post- structuralism. Of Brand's Sans Souci, she asserts: [. .] the multiple displacement in the narrative, the conflict of discursive modes, the 'tunnelling' voice which is a fbnction of a subject of speech spoken though by symbolic dispersal, can but invite

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