Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences CUJHSS June 2019-13/1
Owner, on behalf of Çankaya University/Çankaya Üniversitesi adına Sahibi, Rektör Prof. Dr. CAN ÇOĞUN, Rector, Çankaya University General Manager/Sorumlu Yazı İşleri Müdürü Prof. Dr. BUKET AKKOYUNLU, Çankaya University Editor-in-Chief/Dergi Baş Editörü Assist. Prof. Dr. MUSTAFA KIRCA, Çankaya University
Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences (CUJHSS ) is an open-access, double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal which is published biannually in June and December. The Journal accepts manuscript submissions in English. Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences is listed or indexed in the MLA International Bibliography , the MLA Directory of Periodicals , Index Copernicus Master List , CiteFactor , Arastirmax Social Sciences Index and Asos Social Science Index . All submitted articles to the journal are checked out with iThenticate program for similarity index.
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İletişim Çankaya Üniversitesi, Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Genel Yayın Yönetmeni, Öğretmenler Caddesi No.14, 06530, Balgat, Ankara. Telefon (312) 284 4500/266, e-posta [email protected]; [email protected] web sitesi http://cujhss.cankaya.edu.tr/index_en.php. Communication Çankaya Üniversitesi, Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Publishing Manager, Öğretmenler Caddesi No.14, 06530, Balgat, Ankara. Phone (312) 284 4500/266; e-mail [email protected]; [email protected] Webpage: http://cujhss.cankaya.edu.tr/index_en.php. Basım | Printed and bound by Teknoart Digital Ofset Reklamcılık Matbaacılık İth. İhr. San. ve Tic. Ltd. Şti. Cevizlidere Mahallesi 1288 Sokak No.1/1 Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey Basım Yeri | Printed in Ankara
ISSN 1309-6761 ©2019 Çankaya University, June 2019 (13/1) Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences
13/1 June 2019 Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Owner, on behalf of Çankaya University/Çankaya Üniversitesi adına Sahibi Rektör Prof. Dr. CAN ÇOĞUN, Rector, Çankaya University General Manager/Sorumlu Yazı İşleri Müdürü Prof. Dr. BUKET AKKOYUNLU, Çankaya University Editor-in-Chief/Dergi Baş Editörü Assist. Prof. Dr. MUSTAFA KIRCA, Çankaya University Guest Editor for the Issue/Misafir Editör Dr. MOHAMED SAKI, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France English Language Editor/İngilizce Dil Editörü Dr. HYWEL DIX, Bournemouth University, UK Editorial Assistants/Editör Yardımcıları Dr. GÜLDEN TANER, Çankaya University, Turkey MUSTAFA GÜNEŞ, Çankaya University, Turkey Editorial Board and Field Editors/Yayın Kurulu ve Alan Editörleri BUKET AKKOYUNLU, Çankaya University, Turkey (Educational Sciences) ROGER L. NICHOLS, University of Arizona, USA (History-Am. Indian Studies) HYWEL DIX, Bournemouth University, UK (Cultural Studies) ERTUĞRUL KOÇ, Çankaya University, Turkey (Translation Studies) ÖZLEM UZUNDEMİR, Çankaya University, Turkey (Comparative Literature) ASLI GÖNCÜ KÖSE, Çankaya University, Turkey (Psychology) MUSTAFA KIRCA, Çankaya University, Turkey (English Language and Literature)
Scientific Advisory Board/Bilimsel Danışma Kurulu ADELHEID RUNDHOLZ EZGİ TUNA MERVE TOPCU Johnson C. Smith University, USA Çankaya University, Turkey Çankaya University, Turkey A. ALEV YEMENİCİ GÖLGE SEFEROĞLU NAZMİ AĞIL Çankaya University, Turkey Middle East Technical Koç University, Turkey ALİ DÖNMEZ University, Turkey NESLİHAN EKMEKÇİOĞLU Çankaya University, Turkey GÜRKAN DOĞAN Çankaya University, Turkey BERKEM SAĞLAM Maltepe University, Turkey NEVİN GÜNGÖR Çankaya University, Turkey H. CANAN SÜMER Hacettepe University, Turkey BİLAL KIRKICI Middle East Technical NİL KORKUT NAYKI Middle East Technical University, Turkey Middle East Technical University, Turkey HAMİT COŞKUN University, Turkey BURÇİN EROL Abant Izzel Baysal University, ONORINA BOTEZAT Hacettepe University, Turkey Turkey Dimitrie Cantemir Christian CARNOT NELSON ISMAİL H. DEMİRDÖVEN University, Romania University of South Florida, USA Hacettepe University, Turkey PATRICK QUINN DEBORAH CARTMELL İSMAİL İSMAİLOV Cambridge University, UK De Montford University, UK Avrasya University, Turkey ROGER L. NICHOLS DOUGLAS ROBINSON JOHANN PILLAI University of Arizona, USA Hong Kong Baptist University, Çankaya University, Turkey SILA ŞENLEN China MARGARET SÖNMEZ Ankara University, Turkey ELISABETTA MARINO Middle East Technical UĞUR ÖNER University of Rome, Italy University, Turkey Çankaya University, Turkey ELMAR HUSEYNOV MATHEW GUMPERT ÜNSAL YETİM Avrasya University, Turkey Boğaziçi University, Turkey Mersin University, Turkey EROL ÖZÇELİK MEHMET ALİ ÇELİKEL W.J.T. MITCHELL Çankaya University, Turkey Pamukkale University, Turkey University of Chicago, USA
Table of Contents
Editor’s Preface ...... i
ARTICLES
Power of Recognition and Redistribution: An Analysis of the Advocacy Strategies of the National Alliance for Mental Illness ...... 1 Tanınma ve Adil Dağılım: NAMI Bağlamında Akıl Hastalarını Müdafaa Stratejilerinin Analizi Patricia Boyd
Endless Becoming: Identity Formation in Michèle Roberts’ Flesh and Blood ...... 14 Sonsuz Oluşum: Michèle Roberts’ın Flesh and Blood Adlı Eserinde Kimlik Oluşumu Krisztina Kitti Tóth
Occidentalism as a Strategy for Self-exclusion and Recognition in Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf ...... 27 Mohja Kahf’ın The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf adlı Eserinde Kendini-dışlama ve Tanınma Stratejisi Olarak Oksidentalizm Ishak Berrebbah
The Complexities of Carnival Identities in Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance ...... 39 Earl Lovelace’in The Dragon Can’t Dance Adlı Eserinde Karnaval Kimlik Sorunsalı Ann Marie Simmonds
Recasting Africanness: Ignatius Sancho and the Question of Identity ...... 50 Afrikalılığın Yeniden Tanımı: Ignatius Sancho ve Kimlik Problemi Banjo Olaleye
Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse ...... 62 Anakronistik Söylemin Sınırı ve Merkezi Olarak Maduniyet Patrick Matthew Farr
Labels, Stigma Management and Social Identity Formation of a Mountain People in Central Panay, Philippines ...... 79 Etiketleme, Stigma Yönetimi ve Sosyal Kimlik Oluşturma: Filipinler’de Cenrtal Panay Mary Acel D. German
RESEARCH NOTES
The Sauk and Mesquakie Cultural Resistance to Settler Colonialism ...... 93 Yerleşimci Sömürgecilik Karşısında Sauk ve Mesquakie Yerlilerinin Kültürel Direnişi Roger Nichols
Recognition of Cultural Identity in Banat (1867-1918) ...... 100 Banat’ta Kültürel Kimliğin Tanınması (1867-1918) Ioana Banaduc
Contributors to the Current Issue ...... 109
Editor’s Preface
Mustafa Kırca Editor-in-Chief Çankaya University, Turkey
Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences has reached its 13th volume this year with the contributions of the scholars who shared their valuable studies with us, the reviewers who devoted their valuable time and energy to evaluating and commenting on the papers, and the colleagues and friends at Çankaya University who put their efforts to realize this project. This current issue has been devoted to the politics of recognition and social theory, and has been intended to cover a wide variety of interdisciplinary studies from multiple fields that fall within the scope of the Journal. Nancy Fraser uses the term “recognition-theoretical turn” to describe a tendency to tackle many pressing real-life issues such as discrimination, exclusion, social justice, political equality, gender equality. The articles in this issue revolve around the problematic of (mis)recognition, cultural identity, and politics of identity formation, self- realization, and subjectivation as studied at the intersection of different areas of the human sciences. We, as the editorial board, would like to thank wholeheartedly all the authors for their scholarly contributions and the team of referees for their reviews. We owe special thanks to Dr Mohamed Saki from the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France for his tremendous work as the guest editor for this volume. We also like to thank the Board of Trustees and the Presidency of Çankaya University, and the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for their continuous support. Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences is an open-access, double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal which publishes national and international works in humanities and social sciences. Sharing and expanding the new perspectives in humanities and social sciences is of primary focus for the Journal, which aims to reach wider audience through its fully open-access policy. We aim to facilitate a more expanded and participatory academic discussion on the theoretical and/or applied scholarly work and to inform scholars and public about recent developments in the fields that fall within the scope of the Journal. Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences is a continuation, albeit in a slightly shifting focus of interest, of the Çankaya University Journal of Arts and Sciences continuously published between 2004 and 2010. We, as of June 2019, are proud to publish this issue of the Journal, which has years of publishing experience behind it.
CUJHSS, June 2019; 13/1 Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara ii | Editor’s Preface and Acknowledgement
Acknowledgement
We, as the Editorial Board of Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences , would like to thank the undermentioned reviewers of the journal’s previous issues, who have volunteered to help with the process of blind reviewing and to devote their valuable time to evaluating submissions, for their insightful comments and efforts towards improving our manuscripts:
Prof. Dr. Ramona Mihaila , Vice Rector for International Relations, Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University, Romania Assoc. Prof. Dr. Onerina Botezat , Director of the Center for Linguistic and Intercultural Research, Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University, Romania Dr. Hywel Dix , Principal Academic in English, Bournemouth University, United Kingdom Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Matulewska , Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland Prof. Dr. Mehmet Özcan , Department Chair, Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Turkey Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bilal Kırkıcı , Director of School of Foreign Languages, Middle East Technical University, Turkey Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ioana Horea , Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Languages for Specific Purposes , University of Oradea, Romania Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hasan Baktır , Managing Editor, KARE Internal Journal of Comparative Literature , Erciyes University, Turkey Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aslı Özlem Tarakcıoğlu , Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli Üniversitesi, Turkey Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ferit Kılıçkaya , Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Turkey Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ülkü Çetinkaya Karakoyun , Ankara University, Turkey Assist. Prof. Dr. Elif Ersözlü , Hacettepe University, Turkey Assist. Prof. Dr. Elif Öztabak Avcı , Middle East Technical University, Turkey Assist. Prof. Dr. Hülya Yıldız Bağçe , Middle East Technical University, Turkey Assist. Prof. Dr. Selen Aktari Sevgi , Başkent University, Turkey Assist. Prof. Dr. Şule Okuroğlu Özün , Süleyman Demirel University, Turkey Assist. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Ölçü Dinçer , Erciyes University, Turkey Assist. Prof. Dr. Sibel Korkmazgil , Cumhuriyet University, Turkey Assist. Prof. Dr. Leyla Burcu Dündar , Başkent University, Turkey Assist. Prof. Dr. Rabia Nesrin Er , Niğde Ömer Halisdemir University, Turkey Dr. Şerife Dalbudak , Bilkent University, Turkey
Power of Recognition and Redistribution: An Analysis of the Advocacy Strategies of the National Alliance for Mental Illness Tanınma ve Adil Dağılım: NAMI Bağlamında Akıl Hastalarını Müdafaa Stratejilerinin Analizi
Patricia Boyd Arizona State University, USA
Abstract This study considers the strategies the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) uses to advocate for those living with mental illness in the United States. As a grassroots organization, NAMI works to achieve social equity for that population by redressing injustices that are based on stigma. I illustrate the ways in which NAMI defines the injustices of stigma as problems of both maldistribution and misrecognition in ways that hearken to Nancy Fraser’s arguments for the need to treat distribution and recognition as integrally interconnected in creating social problems. Throughout the article, I use Fraser’s analytical framework to analyse how the organization works to remedy those two injustices through affirmative, transformative, and non-reformist reform strategies. The effective and insightful use of these strategies makes them a good example for other organizations. Keywords: Nancy Fraser, redistribution, recognition, reform, social injustice, NAMI.
Öz Bu çalışma, Amerika’da “National Alliance for Mental Illness” (NAMI) adlı Ruhsal Hastalıklar Birliğinin akıl sağlığı sorunları yaşayan hastalara müdafaa sağlamak için kullandığı stratejileri değerlendirmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Köklü bir organizasyon olan NAMI, ayrımcılığa dayalı adaletsizliklerin üstesinden gelerek hastaları adına sosyal eşitliği sağlamak için çalışmaktadır. Bu çalışma, NAMI’nin ayrımcılığa dayalı adaletsizliği adil olmayan gelir dağılımı, inkâr ve farklılıkları tanımama sorunu olarak tanımlamasını Nancy Fraser’in adil dağılım ve tanınma kavramları bağlamında değerlendirmektedir. Fraser’e göre sosyal sorunların oluşumunda bu kavramlar içiçe geçmiş ve bağlantılı olarak ele alınmalıdır. Fraser’in kavramları ışığında, NAMI adlı organizasyonun bu sosyal sorunlara bu çalışmanın da odağı olan olumlu ayrımcılık, yenilikçi olmayan, dönüştürücü ıslahat stratejileri sayesinde çözüm getirebildiği iddia edilmektedir. Çalışma konusu bu üç stratejinin benzer kuruluş ve organizasyonlar için örnek oluşturabileceği savunulmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: NAMI, Nancy Fraser, yeniden dağılım, tanıma, reform, sosyal adaletsizlik.
Introduction How can we remedy the injustices that occur in contemporary society? How can we map the parameters of a particular injustice and determine the best ways to resolve it, without creating more harm than good? In “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation,” Nancy Fraser
CUJHSS , June 2019; 13/1: 1-13 © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara Submitted: June 1, 2019; Accepted: June 19, 2019 ORCID#: 0000-0003-2304-8704; [email protected] 2 | Patricia Boyd argues that in order to successfully redress injustices and restore justice to any given situation, we must challenge the ways these two concepts (redistribution and recognition) are currently being divided in the claims for justice currently being made. Instead of embracing the current trend of privileging recognition over redistribution, Fraser contends that “justice today requires both redistribution and recognition. Neither alone is sufficient … the emancipatory aspects of the two problematics should be integrated in a single comprehensive framework” (9). Throughout her work, Fraser advocates that we need to enact a definition of justice that includes the beneficial parts of both redistribution and recognition combined. Fraser’s two-fold distinction between redistribution and recognition is particularly effective in showing us how these false distinctions work in the world and the ways in which the distinctions limit the possibilities for changing the injustices created by the insistence that these two paradigms are separate from each other. While Iris Marion Young and others have critiqued Fraser’s two-fold distinction as creating false dichotomies, what Fraser’s project actually does is illustrate how these distinctions are being used in the world. By using the lens of redistribution and recognition, we get a better sense of the complexities of mental health injustices so that sustainable and effective solutions can be enacted. The National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) is a solid example of an organization that has clearly adopted and enacted the principles evident in Fraser’s definition of justice. As advocates for those who have mental illnesses, NAMI presents the injustices surrounding the treatment of people who have mental illness as a two-pronged one—a problem with the way that mental healthcare resources are made available (or not) to those who need them which is an issue of redistribution and a problem with stigmatization of those who have mental illnesses and the impacts of that stigmatization which is an issue of recognition. It is only when we address both of those problems that we can transform the injustices into implementable solutions that address the complexity of the issues facing people with mental illness. It is clear from analyzing the advocacy strategies that NAMI employs consistently across issues that its proposed and enacted solutions are creating participatory parity suggesting “social arrangements that permit all (adult) members of society to interact with one another as peers” (Fraser 36). Analyzing NAMI’s strategies highlights the ways in which redistribution and recognition paradigms can be collaboratively synergized. In this article, then, I first examine Fraser’s claims for the need for combining recognition and redistribution in order to solve injustices. I then analyze aspects of NAMI’s advocacy strategies in order to illustrate the ways they evidence the effectiveness of weaving together redistribution and recognition in order to thoroughly conceive of the problem and present remedies that address the problem in a way that is sustainable and productive. NAMI’s strategies can serve as examples to other organizations like the National Institute for Mental Health, an organization funded by the U.S. government, to guide their policies and to avoid the pitfalls of separating redistribution from recognition.
Power of Recognition and Redistribution | 3
Fraser’s Recognition and Redistribution In “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation,” Nancy Fraser articulates moral, social, and political theories that she argues are useful in remedying injustices that face our culture today. In her work, Fraser examines two major problematics of justice—one of recognition which “targets injustices it understands as cultural, which it presumes to be rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation, and communication” (13) and one of redistribution which focus on “injustices it defines as socio- economic and presumes it to be rooted in the economic structure of society” (13). The politics of recognition is typically linked to identity politics while the politics of redistribution are typically linked to class politics. According to Fraser, in the past, critiques of injustices have centered heavily on economic injustices created by class differences, affecting the distribution of resources. Fraser argues that in our post-socialist age, however, there has been a growing privileging of recognition over redistribution. Through this lens, problems are interpreted to be matters of representation and language, without little to no consideration of the economic or resource-based aspects of particular injustices. Critiquing this trend, Fraser argues instead for a “two-dimensional conception of justice” (35) which “treats distribution and recognition as distinct perspectives on, and dimension of, justice. Without reducing either dimension to the other, it encompasses both of them within a broader overarching framework” (Fraser 35). Further, Fraser points out that these problematics have been overly simplified, limiting our capacity to understand the complexity of how injustices work and what they produce and prohibit. For instance, the paradigm of recognition includes not only issues of identity politics but can also include “deconstructive tendencies, such as queer politics, critical ‘race’ politics, and deconstructive feminist, which reject the ‘essentialism’ of traditional identity politics” (Fraser 12). And the paradigm of redistribution can include not only traditional class-based issues but can also include “those forms of feminism and anti-racism that look to socio-economic transformation or reform as the remedy for gender and racial-ethnic injustice” (Fraser 12). For social injustices in a post-socialist world, recognition and redistribution are not only broader than some conceive them to be but also impact and shape each other and therefore must be addressed together. Instead of separate entities, then, the two are intertwined in creating and redressing injustices today. As Fraser argues, both paradigms “should be integrated in a single comprehensive framework” (Fraser 7). For Fraser, considering both problematics in tandem with each other yet still delineating clear distinctions between them requires using a lens of perspectival dualism that “enables us to grasp the full complexity of the relations between … maldistribution and misrecognition, in contemporary society” (Fraser 66). Perspectival dualism takes a two-dimensional approach, “treating every practice as simultaneously economic and cultural, albeit not necessarily in equal proportions” (63). When we approach a societal problem through the lens of perspectival dualism, we can determine the factors that are preventing all members from being heard and considered in the public sphere. “Perspectival dualism allows us to theorize the complex connections between two orders of subordination grasping at once their conceptual irreducibility, empirical 4 | Patricia Boyd divergence, and practical entwinement” (Fraser 64). Fraser, thus, argues that it is an “indispensable conceptual tool” (64) for helping us understand the complexities of social injustices and for exploring possible remedies to them. In response to the question “which remedies for maldistribution and misrecognition should proponents of justice seek to effect?” (73), Fraser discusses three plausible strategies—affirmative, transformative, and non-reformist reforms. Affirmative strategies work to resolve injustices by addressing a particular feature of a structure without challenging the underlying structure. These strategies target “end-state outcomes” (Fraser 74). An example of an affirmative response to misrecognition is mainstream multiculturalism which “proposes to redress disrespect by revaluing unjustly devalued group identities and the group differentiations that underlie them” (Fraser 75). The use of this strategy, however, can oversimplify people’s identities and can pose difficulties in addressing the ways each individual is multiply positioned (Fraser 76). Transformative strategies, on the other hand, work to resolve injustices by deconstructing the structure which undergirds the end-state outcomes. Transformative strategies address root causes” (Fraser 74) and insist that the very structure needs to be challenged, instead of working to make it more palatable for people to live within the current structure. For instance, in addressing racial injustices, transformative strategies deconstruct “the symbolic oppositions that underlie currently institutionalized patterns of cultural value” (75). Instead of valorizing devalued identities as multiculturalism does, transformative strategies question and challenge the foundation that create and sustain the inequalities. While Fraser acknowledges the potential power of transformative strategies, she acknowledges that they are difficult to enact. To resolve the issues facing both affirmative and transformative strategies, Fraser posits a third option—non-reformist reform. In Fraser’s framework, non- reformist reform strategies are “policies with a double face: on the one hand, they engage people’s identities and satisfy some of their needs as interpreted within existing frameworks of recognition and redistribution; on the other hand, they set in motion a trajectory of changes in which more radical reforms become practicable over time. When successful, non-reformist reforms change more than the specific institutional features they explicitly target” (Fraser 79). She claims that these types of strategies can solve some of the difficulties faced by the other two in that it both addresses the discriminatory injustices by helping claim value for those discriminated identities and it can, cumulatively “set in motion a trajectory of change in which more than the specific institutional features they explicitly target” (Fraser 79). By adding other possibilities to an injustice, non- reformist reforms can cumulatively change structures over time by altering “the terrain upon which later struggles will be wage” (Fraser 79). Therefore, non- reformist reform strategies can effectively mediate between the goals and practices espoused by affirmative and transformative strategies. Ultimately, Fraser argues that given the complexity of the injustices we face today, when considering what redresses should be made, we need to take “an integrated approach that can redress maldistribution and misrecognition simultaneously” (Fraser 83). She emphasizes that an adequate theory of social justice must account for the distinctions between the two problematics as well as map the relationships Power of Recognition and Redistribution | 5 between them. When taking this approach, we can devise a careful understanding of the nature of the injustice and consider workable solutions. In the next sections of the essay, I use Fraser’s social theories to study the strategies that NAMI uses to redress injustices those with mental illness face. I illustrate the ways that NAMI draws on all three reform strategies—affirmative, transformative, and non-reformist reform—in order to provide a map of the current ways they are understanding the problem as well as perceiving the solution. I do this in order to illustrate that Fraser’s theory of recognition and redistribution are, in fact, quite effective in helping us map ways to redress social injustices.
Overview of NAMI The National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) is the “nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization” made up of “more than 500 local affiliates who work in your community to raise awareness and provide support and education that was not previously available to those in need” (www.nami.org). As an organization, it works to create “a world where all persons affected by mental illness experience resiliency, recovery, and wellness” (“The Public Policy Platform” 6). It also “fights to ensure that people who are not experiencing recovery, but instead coping with hardship such as homelessness, substance abuse and incarceration, receive every support possible to put them on the path to recovery” (“The Public Policy Platform” 6). NAMI bases its work on a particular definition of mental illness: “in accordance with current scientific evidence, mental illness is essentially biological in nature sometimes triggered by environmental factors such as trauma, countering the myth that these conditions are failures of character and will. Mental illness affects behavior and behavior can affect mental illness, but mental illnesses are not behavioral” (“The Public Policy Platform” 3). As NAMI posits, one of the main injustices facing those living with mental illness and their families is the pervasive cultural stigmas that circulate around those with mental illnesses. The difficulties with stigmatization are many, as “stigma reflects prejudice, dehumanizes people with mental illness, trivializes their legitimate concerns, and is a significant barrier to effective delivery of mental health services” (“The Public Policy Platform” 2). Because of stigma, NAMI claims, “individuals and families are often afraid to seek help; health care providers are often poorly trained to refer people to mental health professionals and/or mental health practitioners, and services are too often inadequately funded” (“The Public Policy Platform” 2-3). Clearly, NAMI acknowledges that stigma has impacts not only on the identities of people living with mental illness but also on their material realities and hence are bivalent. Thus, NAMI analyzes stigma as both an issue of misrecognition and maldistribution and does not fall into the trap that Fraser says many fighting injustices do—focusing on recognition to the exclusion of redistribution. The institutionalized cultural values that stigmatize those with mental illness have real, material effect through the creation of situations in which resources are withheld from people who need them. Attitudes toward those with mental illness that blame them for their illness and see mental illness as issues of 6 | Patricia Boyd moral character and lack of knowledge about resources that are available lead many people to not “seek treatment or remain unaware that their symptoms could be connected to a mental health condition” (www.nami.org). In order to redress these bivalent injustices, NAMI works to create participatory parity for those with mental illnesses through four strategies: educating diverse groups of people about mental illness, advocating for those living with mental health conditions and their families, listening to those who call their hotline for information on mental illnesses, and leading increased public awareness through sponsoring community events (“About Us”). The organization’s visions for and practices in advocacy are of particular interest to this essay because there NAMI most directly impacts U.S. society through altering public policy in a way that redresses both misrecognition and maldistribution. Through their advocacy work, NAMI tries to transform current cultural attitudes toward and practices related to mental illness in American culture. As the organization describes it, “NAMI advocates for effective prevention, diagnosis, treatment, support, research and recovery that improves the quality of life of persons of all ages who are affected by mental illness” (“The Public Policy Platform” 6). In its public policy advocacy work, NAMI focuses on a wide range of injustices, including mental health insurance coverage, SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) and SSI (Supplemental Security Income) payments, mental health screening, discriminatory criminal justice procedures, and unequal access to treatment. In the next section, I analyze the way NAMI approaches injustices faced by those living with mental illness through the lens of documents they have published on their advocacy work. As the following analysis makes clear, NAMI views injustices against those with mental illnesses through the lens of perspectival dualism in order to enact solutions that employ non-reformist reforms that help people navigate the system as it currently exists as well as work toward structural changes to public policies that impact those with mental illness and their families. I illustrate the ways the organization uses affirmative, transformative, and non- reformist reform strategies to advocate for those it represents. Through this analysis, we see examples of effective ways to deploy these strategies.
NAMI’s Use of Affirmative Strategies To achieve some of the changes that NAMI advocates for, it uses affirmative strategies. For example, when NAMI works to remedy Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), it recommends that equity be achieved within the system but does not argue for changes to the system. A large number of Americans are impacted by SSI and SSDI policies and regulations, with nine million people currently receiving SSDI, and, 35.2% of those recipients being designated with mental illnesses (www.nami.org). One of NAMI’s main issues with the distribution of funds is the criteria used to evaluate the claims people submit to the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) which oversees SSI and SSDI. Instead of basing its definitions and diagnostic criteria on medical research and professional organizations’ knowledge and experience, “the SSA uses its own definition of disability and its own diagnostic criteria for determining whether or not a certain individual has a disability” (www.nami.org). Power of Recognition and Redistribution | 7
Many diseases that are recognized by the professional community are not acknowledged by the SSA, so NAMI charges that its definitions are flawed and make it hard for a significant number of people with mental illnesses to qualify for needed assistance. Further, the criteria which is not in alignment with the professional communities’ criteria “are not reviewed by mental health professionals and the reviewers may know little about mental health conditions” (www.nami.org). Clearly, in the way that NAMI perceives it, the injustice is one of maldistribution since people who need and should qualify for funding do not always receive it. But it is also positioned as misrecognition for NAMI because the definitions do not thoroughly acknowledge the range of serious mental illnesses that have been identified by professional communities and thus people are misrecognized. Further, the criteria used to evaluate claims do not align with current research and professional community standards, so these SSA policies also misrecognize people with mental illnesses in this way. The solutions to these problems, then, must address both misrecognition and maldistribution in the way that Fraser insists is necessary. On the website, NAMI presents two major solutions—expanding the list of mental illnesses that qualify for aid and changing the existing evaluative criteria to match the professional community’s standards. Changing the definitions and criteria would involve challenging the current institutionalized cultural value associated with mental health conditions, and would, thus, recognize those who are currently are evaluated to be not qualified for SSI/SSDI. Further, adding to and/or changing the current evaluative criteria by drawing on professional community’s definitions along with having professionals/experts apply those criteria would also work on the level of redistribution. When the definitions and criteria change and when the people applying the criteria change, there is no doubt that who receives funding will likewise change. Both solutions exist in the realm of affirmative reform because these recommendations “correct inequitable outcomes of social arrangements without disturbing the underlying social structures that generate them” (Fraser 74). Throughout NAMI’s discussion of this injustice, however, the structure of the SSI/SSDI system is not questioned in NAMI’s proposed changes. Clearly, NAMI’s proposed changes do not question the root causes for the financial difficulties, and affirmative change can achieve certain goals, but it is limited in scope.
NAMI’s Use of Transformative Strategies In addition to proposing and using affirmative strategies to address the injustices facing those with mental illness, NAMI also adopts the strategy that, Fraser argues, is most difficult to implement—that of transformation. The use of this strategy is evident in a report called “Engagement: A New Standard for Mental Health Care,” in which the organization presents the results of research they did to determine how successful mental health care in the U.S. is. In particular, throughout the report, the organization focuses on the ways that system is at engaging with those who need it because “trusting and respectful relationships are the basis for recovery” (“Engagement” 3). Engagement is defined as “the relationships between people with mental illness and service providers, families and the broader community” (“Engagement” 3). In order to get a better sense of the nature of the 8 | Patricia Boyd complex problems with engagement and to identify areas that need to be redressed, NAMI invited a diverse range of people to participate in listening sessions where these individuals shared their experiences with the problems and brainstormed potential ways to redress them. NAMI insists that the solutions can only be found when the multiple stakeholders are invited to participate in the conversation, giving everyone an important voice in determining what needs to be changed. The results from the listening sessions made it clear that the diverse participants all agreed that the mental health system was failing those who need it. The participants’ responses led NAMI to conclude that “outdated policies and practices are significant barriers to engagement in mental health services and supports. Overcrowded hospitals, large caseloads, time constraints imposed by payers, lack of training and lack of coordination across systems are some challenges that impede providers, programs and systems from engaging individuals and families” (“Engagement” 12). These material realities that impact the kind of engagement that people with mental illness have with health care professional are, according to NAMI’s representation of them, structural. As NAMI explains it, “mental health systems of care are often designed in ways that fail to meet the ends of the people being served. Directly or indirectly, policies, procedures and practices exist that distance individuals with mental health conditions and their families and disregard opportunities for engagement” (“Engagement” 13). The consequences of this distancing and disregard are potentially life-altering and destructive: “Lack of effective engagement can have serious consequences when a condition gets worse: hospitalization, incarceration, homelessness and early death” (“Engagement” 13). This range of issues results in many of those who need the care not receiving that care. As with the other injustices examined in this essay, NAMI adopts a perspectival dualist stance toward the problems with engagement in the mental health system. Both misrecognition and maldistribution come into play in creating the current injustices. The report cites shortage of mental health professionals, too large of caseloads for mental health professionals, and “rigid adherence to program rules and regulations” (“Engagement” 14) as parts of the problem that are caused by maldistribution. Yet, the report also cites uncaring mental health professions who show a “lack of respect for individuals and families” and an “inability to convey a sense of hope for recovery and achieving life goals,” (“Engagement” 14) which align more with misrecognition. For NAMI, these two factors combine to create a hostile system that undercuts people’s desire and needs to receive help for their mental health conditions. In addition to looking at the problem through the lenses of maldistribution and misrecognition, NAMI’s perspective on the solutions also adopt perspectival dualist approach, requiring that both maldistribution and misrecognition are addressed. The remedies the organization posits can only be achieved through intensive structural change. At the heart of the solution is NAMI’s call for creating a culture of engagement for the mental health system, a change that would require changes in both distribution and recognition: Adopting a culture of engagement requires a reorientation of how we provide and pay for mental health services. Moreover, it requires a Power of Recognition and Redistribution | 9
fundamental change in how we view mental illness and people who live with mental health conditions. This cultural shift is essential to promoting connection to care and the hope of recovery for Americans who live with mental health conditions—from those who are experiencing first symptoms to those who have struggled with severe and complex conditions for decades. (“Engagement” 19) I quote this passage at length because it highlights not only the perspectival dualism that the organization uses to frame the solutions, but it also illustrates that these changes require intensive structural change. Both funding and thinking need to change in order for the system to help the diverse range of people who live with mental illness. As part of the solution, the report advocates for the U. S. mental health system to “adopt 12 principles for advancing a culture of engagement” (“Engagement” 18) which embrace both recognition and redistribution. A representative sampling of these 12 principles are as follows: • “make successful engagement a priority at every level of the mental health system. Train for it. Pay for it. Support it. Measure it” (“Engagement” 18). • “Promote collaboration among a wide range of systems and providers, including primary care, emergency providers, law enforcement, housing providers and others” (“Engagement” 18). • “Shape services and supports around life goals and interests. A person’s sense of wellness and connecting may be more vital than reducing symptoms” (“Engagement” 18). First and foremost, these remedies require a focus on problems with misrecognition. These solutions require changes in the values assigned to mental illness and in the priorities that the system emphasizes. For instance, using a person’s wellness as the measure of success would require a conceptual shift in the “society’s institutionalized patterns of cultural value” (Fraser 17). NAMI also acknowledges that the solution to the problems facing engagements in mental health systems must involve the redistribution of resources. For instance, the report advocates training for mental health professionals which would include information about engaging with the population they serve. Doing so would require funding and knowledge, two significant resources. It also urges for the U. S. mental health system to invest in research that, among other things, studies “retention and dropout rates for individuals receiving mental health care” (“Engagement” 18). This funding would provide data that would help the system to better its ability to reach and retain people with mental illnesses who need the services the system has to offer. Thus, from NAMI’s perspective, the remedies to the injustices associated with lack of engagement in the system are a complex mix of recognition and redistribution. The solutions NAMI proposes are complex and require transformative reform, as Fraser describes it. Throughout the report, NAMI argues that the problems with engagement are systemic. “The cultural shift embodied in the steps and principles above may appear simple and intuitive, but it has significant implications” (“Engagement” 19). These implications are transformative in nature. It is not a matter of simply changing a policy or adding definitions to the mix. Using 10 | Patricia Boyd affirmative reform would not allow the organization to achieve the lofty goals this report lays out. Instead, what is required is that the current system be deconstructed and rebuilt, based on the lives and experiences of people with mental illness along with scientific research and medical professionals’ knowledge. This goal will require systemic change. If, for instance, different systems and providers are to work together to provide better care as is recommended by NAMI, systemic change must occur. If services are to be shaped around people’s life goals, institutional structures must be changed since current institutional practices do not necessarily align with such a belief. If engagement is made a priority as NAMI recommends, the system needs to change since that is not currently its priority. While individuals within the system can certainly choose to act in a caring manner and have an important effect on the experience of those receiving treatment, achieving the goal of a culture of engagement requires more than just changes in individuals; it requires changes in institutions. What would this change look like? The report stops with recommendations for the principles that should drive change, but in it, NAMI does not lay out a specific plan for implementing them. The vagueness of report’s conclusions echo Fraser’s warning that transformative reform is difficult to implement.
NAMI’s Use of Non-Reformist Reform Public In other areas, NAMI employs non-reformist reform strategies in order to provide concrete suggestions about the ways we should address the injustices faced by people with mental illnesses. A representative example of the way the organization uses these strategies is in “Public Policy Platform of the National Alliance on Mental Illness,” a report published by the organization, which presents the core injustices it works to remedy. In the report, NAMI argues that stigma is at the center of the difficulties faced by those with mental illnesses: “NAMI condemns all acts of stigma and discrimination directed against people living with mental illness, whether by intent, ignorance, or insensitivity … NAMI considers that acts of stigma reflect prejudice, dehumanize people with mental illness, trivialize their legitimate concerns, and are a significant barrier to effective delivery of mental health services” (“The Public Policy Platform” 2-3). As a problem of misrecognition, stigma is prevalent in U. S. culture in “epithets, nicknames, jokes, advertisements, and slurs that refer to individuals in a stigmatizing way” (“The Public Policy Platform” 2-3) and in literature, films, and television which frequently feature depictions of those with mental illness that are based on “degrading stereotypes and reinforce societal prejudices that serve as impediments to recovery” (“The Public Policy Platform” 3). NAMI’s definition of the injustices associated with stigmatization illustrates the ways in which some are made “deficient or inferior” (Fraser 30) and the effect those value judgments have on people’s material lives. It shows the ways in which stigmatization creates a flattening effect that simplifies the experiences of living with mental illness into a few stock images. Beyond generally condemning stigmatization, however, NAMI avoids making generalizations about the population of those with mental illnesses . In fact, it explores the unique characteristics of various groups while still managing to acknowledge a bridge that connects them all. A main goal of the report is to educate readers about this diverse range of issues that affect the lives Power of Recognition and Redistribution | 11 of people with mental—from PTSD to homelessness. Throughout the report, NAMI acknowledges the ways in which people’s identities are multiply defined and thus avoids reifying the category of “mental illness.” On the surface, it would appear that NAMI’s perspectives on stigmatization arise completely from misrecognition. However, in NAMI’s discussion of stigmatization, maldistribution is also featured prominently through the effects that stigmatization has on people’s access to equitable resources. Stigma, the organization argues, “is a significant barrier to effective delivery of mental health services. Because of stigma, individuals and families are often afraid to seek help; health care providers are often poorly trained to refer people to mental health professionals and/or mental health practitioners, and services are too often inadequately funded” (“The Public Policy Platform” 2-3). Further, training for healthcare providers and funding research that is “aimed toward the ultimate prevention and cure of these conditions” (“The Public Policy Platform” 7) are important resources that are often distributed inequitably because of social stigmas. Because NAMI views the problem of stigmatization through this perspectival dualist lens, analyzing the ways misrecognition and maldistribution operate within the framework of stigmas, it is able to highlight the complexity of the problem. NAMI’s solution aligns with this bivalent view of the problem, exploring changes that can achieve the needed changes in recognition and distribution. The report challenges stigmatized assumptions about people with mental illness, examining the ways age, ethnicity, gender along with their employment status, the languages they speak, the places to live that they have available to them all impact the kind of treatment that is needed. As the report explains it, “these differences must be respected, embraced, and accorded appropriate representation in mental diagnosis, treatment, services, and support in provider and governmental organizations as well as throughout the organization and operation of NAMI” (“The Public Policy Platform” 8). The organization proposes the need for all those who are impacted by and impact those with mental illness to be culturally competent throughout all aspects of diagnosis, treatment, and research. As NAMI explains it, becoming culturally competent is a developmental process that incorporates—at all levels—the importance of culture, an assessment of cross-cultural relations, vigilance about the dynamics that result from cultural differences, the expansion of cultural knowledge and the adaptation of services to meet cultural needs. It is also a developmental process that can improve the quality of care and mental health service delivery system for all Americans. (“The Public Policy Platform” 13)
NAMI contends that it is crucial for both mental health and criminal justice professionals to understand the diversity of those who live with mental illness. Thus, there is a need to educate both groups on how to engage effectively and helpfully when encountering diversity. This proposed solution addresses both issues of misrecognition and maldistribution. Clearly, developing cultural competence in health care providers, criminal justice professionals, and researchers can work to remedy the 12 | Patricia Boyd misrecognition associated at the heart of stigmas not so much to help those with mental illness to become self-realized, but in order to create justice for those who are stigmatized and marginalized. At the same time, though, changes need to be made to how services are distributed. The report works to encourage cultural competence so that decisions made about the allocation of resources is based in that view. First, institutional funds need to be shifted in order to provide ongoing training in cultural competence. Cultural competence, then, should shape the training about mental illness that is given to healthcare professionals, administrators, and police, and the new perspectives and awareness gained through education should then be used to guide the ways in which services are distributed to those with mental illness. NAMI’s suggestion to educate mental health practitioners, criminal justice professionals and researchers is an example of non-reformist reform because it works both on the level of identities and institutions. The ongoing education of professionals would lead to changed perceptions of those who have mental illness, this change would influence the policies, the policies would influence the services available, and the changes in services could lead to different kinds of access. The type of education that NAMI proposes is a step toward larger change, not an end in itself. There is an acknowledgement that the system needs to change, that it’s not just a matter of changing things within the system, but the solution proposed starts with changing aspects within the current structure—i.e. education which is only a step toward the long-term solution of changing the values upon which the mental health system is based and the services and access policies that derive from those foundational beliefs. Education, thus, has a double face, as Fraser describes it—the change works within the system by working to adjust the ways people’s identities and needs are addressed within the system but also works to “set in motion a trajectory of changes in which more radical reforms become practicable over time” (Fraser 79). As diversity is more thoroughly incorporated in terms of how those with mental illness are seen as well as the diversity of those who work within those systems, the system will likely change. Non-reformist reform works to use practical changes to begin to alter the structure upon which those specific practices are operating/are based.
Conclusion Analyzing NAMI’s arguments for and practices of advocacy to enact public reform illustrates the ways in which we can enact the core principles that Fraser’s theory advances. First and foremost, Fraser insists that “one should roundly reject the construction of redistribution and recognition as mutually exclusive alternatives. The goal should be, rather, to develop an integrated approach that can encompass, and harmonize, both dimensions of social justice” (Fraser 26). For Fraser, when we study any injustice, we need to look at both aspects. As the above analysis illustrates, NAMI successfully studies the connections between recognition and redistribution when analyzing the nature of the injustices and advocating for particular solutions. Further, Fraser argues that “a critical theory of contemporary society must include an account of the relation of status subordination to class subordination, misrecognition to maldistribution” (Fraser 59). In its advocacy documents, NAMI successfully explains the ways in which stigma attached to Power of Recognition and Redistribution | 13 those with mental illnesses impact the distribution of resources, showing how multiple recognition factors impact distribution of resources. Further, the organization also successfully explains the ways in which a lack of resources can lead to further stigmatization. If mental health care professionals and others are not educated about the needs of those with mental illness, if research on mental illness is not funded, if mental health services are not funded for everyone, then the ground is fertile for continued and increased misrecognition. If, for instance, criminal justice professionals are not provided training on mental illnesses, they may likely rely on cultural stereotypes and their own experiences. Further, the resource of the knowledge and experience of those living with mental illness is not capitalized on by the mental health system since those with mental illness are not given an equal voice in their own treatment much less in what the mental health system privileges and how it operates. Studying the ways in which NAMI uses affirmative, transformative, and non-reformist reform strategies provide us with examples of how the principles that Fraser lays out can be implemented to redress injustices.
Works Cited Fraser, Nancy. “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation.” Redistribution or Recognition? A Political- Philosophical Exchange , Edited by Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Verso, 2003, pp. 7-109. National Alliance of Mental Illness. “Engagement: A New Standard for Mental Health Care.” 2016, https://www.nami.org/About-NAMI/Publications- Reports/Public-Policy-Reports/Engagement-A-New-Standard-for-Mental- Health-Care/NAMI_Engagement_Web.pdf. Accessed 30 May 2019. ——. “The Public Policy Platform.” 12 th ed., 2016, https://www.nami.org/getattachment/Learn-More/Mental-Health-Public- Policy/Public-Policy-Platform-December-2016-(1).pdf. Accessed 30 May 2018.
Endless Becoming: Identity Formation in Michèle Roberts’ Flesh and Blood Sonsuz Oluşum: Michèle Roberts’ın Flesh and Blood Adlı Eserinde Kimlik Oluşumu
Krisztina Kitti Tóth Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
Abstract Working with a Chinese box narrative structure, Michèle Roberts creates a set of embedded stories in her 1994 novel, Flesh and Blood that would seem like a loose collage of unrelated stories of women at first sight, but are actually interwoven by the novel’s protagonist, Frederica Stonehouse. The multitude of histories responds to a variety of needs: personal, cultural, social or religious, all alluding to the narratable self and its desire for recognition and change. Roberts offers an alternative account of the Cartesian subject by introducing Frederica’s character as an ‘agentic subject’ who embarks on a psychological journey and moves freely through different identities. The plurality of voices presented in the text alludes to the fragmented and contextual nature of the self and shows how a contingent identity is able to escape the notion of a single and stable meaning in a literary narration. The endlessness of the embedded cyclic narration and its explicit function as a force of transformation allows Frederica to become able to eventually re-invent herself, find self-recognition and to formulate herself in her own terms, even if only temporarily. By utilising recognition theory and focusing primarily on Axel Honneth’s critical social theory of recognition and idea of autonomy, I investigate the ways in which particular characters express their expectations for appropriate levels of recognition. In choosing to weave my paper around the histories of specific characters—namely, the protagonist Frederica, who journeys from daughterhood into motherhood, and the late nineteenth-century painter character of the embedded stories, Georgina, whose story most powerfully portrays a struggle against social subordination—I wish to examine how the characters face struggles between social obligations, family roles, and individual desires and scrutinise the means by which the text questions a fixed, stable, and homogeneous identity. Roberts’s fluid view of the self emphasises the fact that we, as human beings, are formed through multiple discourses of identity and always in-process, devoid of a complete inner, secure or authentic self. Keywords: Agentic subjectivity, cross-dressing, (mis)recognition, storytelling.
Öz Michèle Roberts, 1994 yılında yazdığı eseri Flesh and Blood ’da iç içe geçmiş bir anlatı yapısı kullanarak romanın içerisine gömülü bir dizi hikâyeyi okuyucularına sunar. İlk bakışta birbiriyle çok az bağlantılı hikâyeler derlemesi gibi görünen romanda bu hikâyeler aslında ana karakter Frederica Stonehouse sayesinde birbirlerine bağlanmıştır. Hikâyelerin çokluğu, tamamı anlatılabilir benlik kavramını ve onun tanınma ve değişim isteklerini çağrıştıran kişisel, kültürel, sosyal veya dini gibi birçok ihtiyaca hitap eder. Roberts, psikolojik bir yolculuğa çıkıp farklı kimlikler
CUJHSS , June 2019; 13/1: 14-26 © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara Submitted: May 31, 2019; Accepted: June 27, 2019 ORCID#: 0000-0002-7750-531X; [email protected] Identity Formation in Michèle Roberts’ Flesh and Blood | 15 arasında rahatça dolaşıp kendi hayatını kendisi şekillendiren ‘temsili özne’ Frederica karakteriyle, Kartezyen varlık anlayışına bir alternatif sunar. Roman içerisinde aktarılan hikâyelerin sarmal anlatımının sonsuzluğu ve bu tarzın aşikâr bir biçimde bir dönüşüm gücü oluşturması amacı Frederica’nın neticede kendini yeniden keşfetmesine ve her ne kadar geçici de olsa kendi kendini tanımlamasına ve kendi şartlarıyla formüle etmesine olanak sağlar. Metinde sunulan çok seslilik, benlik kavramının bölümlenmiş ve bağlamsal doğasını çağrıştırır ve bir edebi anlatıda herhangi bir kimliğin nasıl tek ve sabit bir anlam oluşturmaktan uzak olduğunu gösterir. Roman içerisinde cinsiyet kavramının işlenmesi, bizim normatif cinsiyet beklentilerimizi ve bireylerin kendi deneyimlerini ele alır. Daha çok karşı cinsin giydiği kıyafetlerin giyilmesi, kılık değiştirip gizlenme, baskıcı çevrelerden kaçınma gibi tekrar eden temalar yoluyla sunulan Robert’in karakterlerinin deneyimleri, karakterler kişiler arası ve/veya sosyal tanımlanma arayışları içerisindeyken onların tanımlanma yanlısı ve karşıtı mücadeleler vermelerini temsil eder. Robert’in sabit olmayan—ve bazen de belirsiz olan—cinsiyet ve kimlik kategorilerini kullanımı yeni tanımlanma şekillerinin ve böylece yeni sübjektiflik modlarının oluşmasına yol açar. Benliğin akışkan bir kavram olarak görülmesi bizim insanoğlu olarak çoklu kimlik söylemlerince oluşturulduğumuzu ve sürekli bir oluşum süreci içerisinde olup kendi içerisinde bütüncül, güvenli ve otantik bir benlik kavramından uzak olduğumuzu vurgular. Anahtar Kelimeler: Belirsizlik, karşı cins kıyafet giyme, akışkanlık, tanın(ma)ma, öteki.
“The I exists in a state of endless becoming, there is nothing permanent about it at all .” Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Working with a Chinese box narrative structure, Michèle Roberts creates a set of embedded stories in her 1994 novel Flesh and Blood that would seem like a loose collage of unrelated stories of women at first sight but are actually interwoven by the novel’s protagonist Frederica Stonehouse as her initial self–narrative segues into a set of short narratives. A stylistically and structurally experimental text unfolds during the course of the novel in which different times and different values are expressed through the polyphony of voices and styles, thus unsettling the centred stability of the novel as a coherent whole. The plurality of voices presented in the text alludes to the fragmented and contextual nature of the self and shows how a contingent identity is able to escape the notion of a single and stable meaning in a literary narration. In the thirteen embedded narratives, various events, locations, and time periods are covered by the various embedded narrators. In her book Michèle Roberts: Myths, Mothers and Memories (2007), Sarah Falcus calls Flesh and Blood as one of Roberts’s “typically inventive novels” which utilises “multiple narratives to tell complex stories that cross boundaries of space and time” (129). Indeed, after fashioning herself into a storyteller, Frederica shares stories not only from her own life, as in the chapter “Freddy,” but also from the lives of those that she might have encountered; stories heard, read, and/or (re)created; stories that are part of her subjective reality and cultural imaginary. Just as Roberts’s earlier ‘patchwork’ novel A Piece of the Night (1978) in which reality and fantasy are blurred, Flesh 16 | Krisztina Kitti Tóth and Blood as well pieces together stories of various women to “uncover the hidden patterns of women’s oppression across time and place” (173), as Gill Frith notes in her essay “Women, Writing and Language: Making the Silences Speak”. As Flesh and Blood spirals from Frederica’s present, the 1960s, to the 16 th century and back again, the reader meets, among others, Georgina’s fable of cross-dressing to gain recognition as a painter in the nineteenth century, the story of Rosa, who takes the place of her mother fled into the wilderness, Eugénie’s tale of a troubling reunion of mother and child, Cherubina’s parler femme introducing Paradise, the chapter named “Anon,” which portrays a prenatal inner text of the feminine that moves beyond time and history, or Louise’s story of loveless and failed mothering. The unfolding embedded narratives between the interlocking first and last chapters provide stories that are meditations and reflections on motherhood, death, love- hate relationships between mothers and daughters, power relations, religious fervour, marriage, and sexuality. The recurring themes work as echoes and threads throughout the book, binding the different narratives of women to one another. By utilising recognition theory and focusing on especially Axel Honneth’s critical social theory of recognition and idea of autonomy defined as the capacity to lead one’s own life, I investigate the ways in which particular characters express their expectations for appropriate levels of recognition. As Christopher Zurn observes when discussing Honneth’s social theory of struggles and its continuously changing nature, “the particular roles, expectations, and concrete forms of recognition change throughout time and differ across distinct societies” (7). Accordingly, the transformations of society’s particular recognition order can be noticed in Roberts’s novel through the various ways of approaching the issues that confront women. The characters’ basic recognition needs are changing as they are always shaped by particular social circumstances or structures of a given time; different centuries entail different struggles. The play with gender in the novel aims towards our normative expectations of gender and its effect on the experiences of individuals. Expressed through the recurring themes of cross-dressing, disguise and escape from oppressive environments, Roberts’s characters experience struggles for and against recognition as they seek interpersonal and/or social recognition. In choosing to weave my paper around the histories of specific characters—namely, the protagonist Frederica, who journeys from daughterhood into motherhood, and the late nineteenth-century painter character of the embedded stories, Georgina, whose story most powerfully portrays a struggle against social subordination—I wish to examine how the characters face struggles between social obligations, family roles, and individual desires and scrutinise the means by which the text questions a fixed, stable, and homogeneous identity. For both characters, the act of cross-dressing opens up new opportunities for action. Frederica disguises herself in order to escape from her judgmental environment, while Georgina puts on men’s clothing so as to be able to take her place in the male-dominated artistic circles and find recognition in the art world. With the representation of embedded stories and gender ambiguity, Roberts examines and critiques not only the concept of a fixed gender but the concept of stable self as well, thus initiating a shift from an atomistic to an intersubjective model of the subject. In other words, Identity Formation in Michèle Roberts’ Flesh and Blood | 17 as a stable subjectivity is absent in the text, the self is introduced as a commutable entity always in-process.
A Suspended Identity: Overcoming Misrecognition By introducing Frederica’s character as an agentic subject, Roberts offers an alternative account of the Cartesian subject. The novel commences with the story of Fred on the run, confessing to having murdered her mother: “An hour after murdering my mother I was in Soho” (1). Frederica’s narrative turns into multiple tales; a set of short narratives unfold between the interlocking first and last chapters, which are titled “Fred” and “Frederica,” respectively. Only in the final chapter do we learn that Frederica’s crime consists in being pregnant with an illegitimate child and in turning away from her mother and her father and their harassing criticism. Therefore, as Ralf Hertel argues, “her murder is not that of flesh and blood but merely a metaphorical one” (133). As Falcus notes as well, the matricide can be understood as “a literal interpretation of the psychological paradigm of separation” (130). That is, with the metaphoric matricide, Frederica expresses her desire for detachment, change, and authenticity. She separates herself from the maternal bondage with a symbolic shift from daughterhood to motherhood, which subsequently leads to gaining individuation and autonomy over her life. However, by the displacement of a previous state of being, being a daughter, she is put into an ambiguous, suspended state where a quest for a positive relation-to-self can take place on novel terms. Frederica’s metamorphosis initiates in Madame Lesley’s shop where Fred succumbs to the experience of the overflowing patterns and textures but soon comes across an “irresistible” salmon color chiffon dress, which she refers to as her “savior” (4). She sets her foot in the shop’s fitting room, already introduced at the very beginning of the novel as the place “where it began” (1), and gets rid of men’s clothes: the boots, jeans, and the loose jacket giving her the look of a young man while she was on the run. Although the reader is informed about her reason for donning men’s clothing only in the final chapter where we learn that Fred is on the run to escape from her parents’ harassing criticism about carrying her illegitimate child, with the act of cross-dressing she enables herself to change into someone else: she claims to put on a disguise so that someone else can “feel the bite and sting of those words but not [her]” (174). Wounded by her inability to conform to her parents’ social convention, her skin is branded with harassing words like “EVIL and MAD” and “YOU LITTLE SLUT YOU LITTLE WHORE” (174). The stigmatised body alludes to Cixous’s “branded criminal”. As Cixous writes in Stigmata: Escaping Texts : “When marked, the innocent person is ‘guilty’” (xiv). “My flesh was branded with those words for everyone to see, I had to cover myself with a man’s clothes then run” (174), Frederica narrates. The men’s clothing thus serves as a disguise for Frederica, who refuses to be recognised as “evil and mad”. Recognition theorists such as Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth seek to interpret and justify struggles through the idea that identity is shaped, at least partly, by relations with other people. As selfhood is closely connected to and shaped in relational contexts, feelings of self-worth, self-respect, and self-esteem are possible only if one is positively recognised for who one is. 18 | Krisztina Kitti Tóth
In his essay “The Politics of Recognition” Taylor claims that identity is “partly shaped by recognition or its absence [...][n]onrecognition or misrecognition” (25), which “can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being,” and “can inflict a grievous wound, saddling its victims with a crippling self-hatred” (26). Consequently, by being misrecognised, a false or distorted identity might be formed which can completely limit aspirations and undermine authenticity, self-respect, and self-esteem. As Taylor succinctly puts it, “due recognition is not just a courtesy we owe people . . . [but] a vital human need” (26). With the act of cross-dressing, Frederica conceals her bodily features and gender to a point of irrecognisability which gives her a chance to cover her symbolic wounds and overcome misrecognition. She temporarily suspends her own identity, which can be understood as a reaction to the negative emotional experience of disrespect and a denial of inappropriate recognition. By detaching herself from an earlier fixed point in the social structure, from the state of being a daughter and part of a family, she destabilises not only prevailing identity categories but also relations of power.
Fashioning into a Storyteller: Formulating an Agentic Subjectivity Madame Lesley’s peculiar shop represents a protective place where Frederica finds a haven and can embark on a psychological journey by the act of storytelling. Here, Frederica is able to utilise the tools of language and is able to express herself freely. The shop owner Madame Lesley serves as an audience ready to be amused by the stories Fred is about to share: “Tell me about it, [Madame Lesley] said: while I do the fitting” (6). When discussing collective identities in his book Hegel's Theory of Recognition , Sybol Anderson claims that “everyone is associated with a number of collective identities simply by virtue of having shown up in the world, whether or not we identify with them or consider them salient” (4). Similarly, stories that are part of our intangible cultural heritage make up our life and can influence an individual’s horizon of judgment. Following this train of thought, the different forms of life presented in the embedded stories can be understood as Anderson’s concept of collective identities shaping each individual’s judgments, values, and choices. Moreover, Roberts draws an analogy between Frederica and Scheherazade, the storyteller–performer who continually unfolds one tale immediately after another in an inventive splicing way in order to postpone her death: “Scheherazade had told stories, night after night, to save her life. She made them up. She was a storyteller. I didn’t know whether or not the stories that jostled in my head were true, or whether I was a liar. So many different voices chattered inside me” (6). Using storytelling and thus language as a performative power, Frederica is given the ability to articulate the “many different voices,” and to enter into the other. Roberts’s choice of likening Frederica to Scheherazade serves as a means to show the potential power of storytelling and language. To utilise Todorov’s words, for Scheherazade, “[n]arrative equals life; the absence of narrative equals death” (74). Indeed, from the point of view of language, both Scheherazade and Frederica fight for the right of free expression and use language as a powerful tool to deter either Identity Formation in Michèle Roberts’ Flesh and Blood | 19 physical or psychological violence. Although Frederica seems uncertain about whether her narratives can save or transform her: “I wasn’t sure if my stories could save my life or my mother’s” (7), utilising language as a means of self- expression, she is formulated into an agentic subjectivity with “a capacity to think and to will” (Lengermann 78). Therefore, the act of storytelling provides Frederica with the means through which she is able to understand and articulate her negative interpersonal experiences and to formulate herself and her history in her own terms, even if only temporarily. To put it another way, just like Scheherazade, Frederica is empowered by the application of narrative skills, which eventually becomes an essential component of facilitating transformation, a point I shall argue later. Interestingly, Roberts’s work enters into dialogue with Virginia Woolf’s act of ‘thinking back through our mothers,’ famously declared in A Room of One’s Own (1929), in which Woolf suggests the possibility of different constructions of narrative and female identity: “For we think back through our mothers if we are women” (75). The task of thinking back through other women aims at self- recognition, but it is not a process of differentiation or negation, but rather a construction of a self in which the (m)other(s) can co-exist and interact with the self thus developing a female genealogy. Such an act provides a common ground of shared female experience through different historical eras. Roberts’s occupation with female genealogy has also been noted by Falcus, who argues for a maternal genealogy presenting women’s voices not only in Flesh and Blood but in Roberts’s whole oeuvre. The various depictions of female experience in the novel widen the definitions of identity, self, and gender, and produce interrelations between the concepts of Frederica’s identity and the narrated stories, therefore alluding to the narratable self and its desire for recognition and change. Frederica’s psychological quest of self-discovery through narration begins with a word which she carefully selects and holds like the end of a yarn she can wind up: “Out of the babble inside me I picked a word. I held it like the end of a thread, unravelled, that I could wind as I wove my way into the labyrinth” (7). This word is “love” (7) —a word with a long philosophical and literary history—and it initiates the several embedded stories of the novel. At this point it is crucial to mention Axel Honneth who, following Hegel’s, Mead's, and Winnicott’s theories, identifies a tripartite division of ethical life; a three “patterns of recognition” necessary for an individual to develop a positive relation-to-self. Continuing Hegel’s concepts of love, family, ethical unit and ethical life expressed in Philosophy of Rights , Honneth states in his book Struggle for Recognition that a fully formed identity requires recognition by others and must include the universal needs of human subjects: love, rights, and social esteem. To to borrow the words of Honneth: “For it is only due to the cumulative acquisition of basic self-confidence, of self-respect, and of self-esteem - provided, one after another, by the experience of those three forms of recognition - that a person can come to see himself or herself, unconditionally, as both an autonomous and an individual being and to identify with his or her goals and desires” (169). By the mode of recognition termed ‘love’ Honneth connotes our physical needs and emotions being met by others realising in our primary relationships including friends, family, and romantic relations. Love thus signifies the experience of being 20 | Krisztina Kitti Tóth recognised which further develops the individual’s basic self-confidence - meaning “the very basic sense of the stability and continuity of one’s self as a differentiated individual with particular needs and emotions” (Zurn 31). Without such recognition one would lack the capacity to express themselves publicly: “to speak of ‘love’ as an ‘element’ of ethical life can only mean that, for every subject, the experience of being loved constitutes a necessary precondition for participation in the public life of a community” (Honneth 38). Love thus serves as a form of mutual recognition between self and other whereby one comes to know oneself and to be oneself only in and through an affective relationship and a specific form of emotional support from another. Accordingly, Frederica’s thread and the journey of the “labyrinth” (7) seem multi- layered: she creates a position for herself as a storyteller-performer by which she is able to relate to others and eventually develop a positive relation-to-self. As a storyteller-performer, she creates a space in which she can initiate the process of creating an ontological autonomy and begin to write a subjectivity which exceeds the limitations imposed upon her by misrecognition.
(De)constructing Gendered Identities and Norms: Aiming for Intersubjective Recognition Roberts presents the story of the nineteenth-century English painter character of the chapters “Félicité” and “Georgina” in an imaginary documentary film-like scenario where the reader can experience “[o]ne more illusion of reality” (157). Georgina’s story portrays both struggles for and against recognition when in order to gain admission into a masculine group in France, she decides to wear men’s garments and introduces herself as George Mannot. Since conventional female roles are limiting for Georgina, she chooses cross-dressing to provide an outlet for her to be able to act outside of the accepted and expected behaviour patterns. To escape from social exclusion, from a kind of “social death” (Zurn 39), Georgina puts on a disguise. Her act can be understood as a necessary reaction to a form of disrespect which makes it impossible for her to understand herself as a free and equal agent and therefore deprives her of the ability to develop an appropriate sense of self-respect. By presenting a new identity to the world, she reaches a new dimension of selfhood which motivates her to pursue recognition (Anderson 73), and therefore, has a chance to cultivate the world according to her societal and artistic goals and desires. Her engagement in the practice of cross-dressing in France becomes an extension of her everyday Aesthetic dress style practiced in England: “Dressing as a man was almost simply an extension of how she dressed every day as a student painter” (162). Her profession and the conscious choice of Aesthetic dresses mark the beginning of Georgina’s rejection of attributes that made late-nineteenth-century women attractive; the rejection of “encumbering petticoats and constructing corsets” (Condra 82), as well as domesticity, passivity, and dependence. However, Frederica can only fully embrace her liberation when covered in men’s clothes since it is then that she discovers a new way of being and is able to realise herself fully in a social context: “Like George Sand before her, she found that men’s clothes meant that she was not accosted when she roamed around by herself at night” (162). By wearing men’s clothes, she is enabled to negotiate her way in the public sphere independently, without unwanted Identity Formation in Michèle Roberts’ Flesh and Blood | 21 approaches. That is, her disguise not only gives her an entrée into the “masculine world she admire[s] as superior” (163), but also creates different opportunities for intersubjective recognition. Being able to manipulate the perceptions of her surroundings, her struggle as a woman artist ceases as she escapes the socially defined limitations imposed on late-nineteenth-century womanhood. Roberts names Georgina’s act of cross-dressing as a “daring masquerade” (156), which alludes to its carnivalesque nature. Involvement in a carnival implies - as Terry Castle suggests while developing her theory of masquerade from Bakhtinian carnival - the sartorial exchange, masking, mingling of different social groups (11), as well as the abolition of rules, control, and hierarchies. Based on and drawing from performance traditions and conventions, carnivals allow people to create spaces where they can raise awareness about and challenge societal and gender roles, and facilitate reflection that might eventually bring about changes not only in the individual but also in the community. Georgina’s character therefore can be understood as a destabilising figure who challenges not only fixed gender categories but also social roles and conventions. Recognised as a male, Georgina is not treated differently among men; nobody puts her in her place or offers her unsolicited advice (162). As George, she produces new frames for her identity as well as new sets of relations. With the deconstruction of masculine gendered acts, she incorporates new habits and a list of various masculine gendered acts that create the era’s very idea of maleness appear as possibilities for her: she can “tip back her chair, crack jokes, smoke cigarettes, eat and drink what she like[s], and advance strong opinions” (163) without any consequences. Therefore, her masculinity is realised not only through the physical presentation but through action and self-conduct as well. Having fulfilled the relevant criteria, Georgina gains the power, privileges, and significance traditionally attached to male members of the society. To put it another way, as a man, she is able to acquire the rights and social status usually reserved only for men and can claim the cultural signifier of masculinity as her own, and thus is able to pursue confirmation of her status as a talented artist. By so doing, she not only achieves a healthy sense of self-esteem, but a “livable life” - to adapt Butler’s term from Undoing Gender - by being recognised by her community as a viable subject having unique value and legitimacy. However, the empowering force of disguise reveals the boundaries of gender as well since when dressing in men’s clothing Georgina imitates a pre-existing performance that has already been determined in advance; she performs a “socially scripted act” (117), to use Paddy McQueen’s words. With a focus on the separation between the corporeal and the acted gender, the Butlerian performative aspect of gender, which implies the rejection of the notion that gender comes from any internal essence or predetermined structure of being, is revealed. Georgina utilises “identificatory mobility” (Campbell 94) by dissecting masculinity into a series of behaviours and gestures that can be learnt by a female subject just as easily. Consequently, the “daring masquerade” (156) not only empowers Georgina to assert a new social identity but shows how gender is constituted and naturalised by the repetition and reiteration of certain appearance, behaviour, and action. 22 | Krisztina Kitti Tóth
Although her performance highlights the constructed nature of gender stereotypes, ultimately, she succeeds in destabilising both masculinity and femininity as stable categories of identity. To put it another way, Georgina never stops being a woman; she creates her masculine identity only in order to be able to express an essential part of herself and gain recognition in the society. In virtue of having a new status in society, she is afforded certain rights and is able to acquire a sense of self-respect; that is, the sense of being free and equal among others (Zurn 34). During the periods Georgina spends as a male painter, she is removed from the limited feminine subject position, allowing her to develop into an independent, decisive, and self-determining subject. Gender deception thus becomes the means through which a woman can achieve social recognition in a patriarchal society. Cross-dressing, therefore, provides Frederica a way to circumvent society’s power plays and boundaries without coming out in actual rebellion. Referring to a cross-dressing type of masquerade in her book Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety , Marjorie Garber notes that cross-dressing constitutes “a challenge to easy notions of binarity, putting into question the categories of ‘female’ and ‘male’ whether they are considered essential or constructed, biological or cultural. The current popularity of cross-dressing as a theme in art and criticism represents, [Garber] think[s], an undertheorised recognition of the necessary critique of binary thinking” (10-11). Accordingly, Georgina’s cross-dressing disturbs the behavioral repetitions of conventional categories of both genders, thereby producing a unique identity that challenges the limiting boundaries of traditional male and female roles. Georgina acquires “two bodies, apparently separate and different, male and female, which were joined together by the to-ing and fro-ing between them. One skin stitched to the other then ripped off, over and over again” (156). She “marries” both her male and female identity parts, thus making a commitment to the different roles and also creating a bond by joining them: “She made herself into a marriage. She married two split parts of herself, drew them together and joined them, and she also let each one flourish individually” (156). Georgina’s adaptability enables her to oscillate between genders thus resisting full integration into a particular gender- related norm. Through the double role and carnivalesque disguise, Roberts portrays a complex self that operates in transition and articulates the instability of the inhabited binary categories. Such movement offers Georgina a playful and temporary liberation from the socio-cultural norms and expectations, by which she manages to achieve liberation from her struggle against ascribed identity category and social status as a woman and is able to gain a self-determining and agentic subjectivity. Having achieved a sense of authority through storytelling, Frederica comes to recognise her own personal strengths. Just like Georgina, Frederica as well changes her garments and subsequently presents her new identity to the public. She incorporates into society wearing the chosen pink chiffon dress which stands as a symbol for her new identity; the frock gives her a “new and beautiful self” (5), a “new skin” (147), in other words, a new frame to settle within. “Madam Lesley sold me the pink chiffon frock so that I could come out in style. [....] I had a new skin to try on. I pulled it around me, a skin of pictures and words” (147)—we can Identity Formation in Michèle Roberts’ Flesh and Blood | 23 read. Referring to Frederica’s new self as a “new skin of pictures and words,” Roberts once again reflects on our intangible cultural heritage serving as a rich source and markers of identity; a context for shaping roles and identities, as well as transmitting knowledge. Roberts’s other word choice: “come out in style” (147) echoes the notion of ‘coming out’ which indicates the “public display of identity” (McQueen 170) and “focuses on issues of visibility, self-acceptance, inclusion, recognition, and autonomy” (McQueen 169). As Frederica passes through the shop’s threshold symbolising a kind of ritual boundary, she moves into a new world and thus suddenly becomes present and visible to others. Her movement corresponds to Georgina’s entré in the masculine world and indicates an integration into a community which will be responsive to, and affirmative of her new sense of self. In addition, the concept of ‘coming out’ carries a political value as well, strongly linked to the rise of identity politics in the 1960s - the time period when the novel’s frame narrative is set - during which positive recognition of one’s collective identity was the basis for political action (McQueen 169). Frederica closes her movement from her previous position of daughterhood to a responsible and authentic life with poetic offerings. First, she offers an elegy for her mother she remembers, then for a mother she lost but found again. Her lyric elegy addresses her “first great love” who used to talk to her “in a secret language of mamabébé” (173): “(this is an elegy for the mother I remember [...] She was my place once and I was hers. I didn’t give up her without a struggle” (173). Roberts’s presentation of “merged subjectivity” (100), as Anna Fisk has put it in her book Sex, Sin, and Our Selves , is in accord with Honneth’s argument on the symbiosis between baby and mother based on object relations theory and the concept of love as the first form of recognition-relationships. After remembering her “paradise garden” and “Queen of Heaven” (173), Frederica continues her elegy addressed now to her lost mother: “for my mother I lost, when the skin that bound us ripped away, our separate skins tore off and we were miserable being two being so different she couldn’t like me being so unlike herself [...]” (173). Here Roberts suggests the symbiotic connection between mother and daughter and its inevitable dissolution. Honneth emphasises such attempts as a struggle for human emancipation and comprehension of each other and argues that the primary bond of love between the infant and the mother is given up to perceive themselves as separate beings with their own physical and emotional existences. However, such individuation can only take place, as Zurn notes, “in a healthy and productive manner if accompanied all along by mutual emotional support” (24), and requires a certain amount of sacrifice. Accordingly, Frederica’s separation-individuation struggle can be considered, on the one hand, as a need of human nature. When discussing the final section of the novel in “Journeying Back to Mother: Pilgrimages of Maternal Redemption in the Fiction of Michèle Roberts,” Cath Stowers emphasises on the psychoanalytic “journeys into and away from pre- Oedipality,” a kind of rejection and return, and notes their necessity for the “subject formation of both mother and daughter” (71). However, it is crucial to consider the mother’s inadequacy as a loving parent capable of recognising her child as another; as a separate individual with potentially conflicting needs and desires. In the penultimate chapter “Louise” the reader can learn Frederica’s 24 | Krisztina Kitti Tóth mother’s point of view where a certain lack of understanding and awareness of each other’s needs are made explicit: We gave her everything a child should have: food clothes a roof over her head a good education. But it wasn’t enough. There was something else she wanted. I never knew what it was. She made me feel so terrible for not giving it to her. But how could I give it to her when I didn’t know what it was? What she gave to me was reproaches. Suffering. [...] I did my best. [...] But for her it wasn’t enough. (170) Frederica’s mother’s lack of recognition towards her daughter and her denied individuation seems evident from the quoted passage and is even more emphasised as she continues on criticising her daughter’s interest and eagerness to become an artist: “She threw away all our hopes for her” (170). Although Frederica confronts her mother with her desire for having had emotional support, the articulation of the missing experience of affectionate care triggers the opposite reaction: “She was evil, to say what she said to me. That I hadn’t loved her properly” (171). When discussing the link between successful identity formation and the experience of recognition as a precondition for public life, Honneth uses Hegel’s argument on intersubjective recognition and draws a further conclusion: “an individual that does not recognize its partner to interaction to be a certain type of person is also unable to experience itself completely or without restriction as that type of person” (37). Consequently, since Frederica’s mother is unable to reach a state where she can understand herself as a separate and distinct being, she can embrace neither her own independence nor her daughter’s otherness. In fact, her wish for her daughter to assume her anger further emphasises her incompetency of treating her daughter as a separate individual: “Anger is the stone in my heart that I have carried since childhood, the stone I must not throw, let my daughter carry it for me, let her clasp the stone and let my heart lightened” (171). Interestingly, Frederica’s elegy in the final chapter continues on a similar account: she suggests a transgenerational continuum between mother’s and daughter’s fate: “this is also an elegy for a mother I found again she thought I had abandoned her and given her up for ever but I had not I needed to go away so that I could come back just as she did)” (173). Importantly, although Frederica is about to leave behind her previous state, her last words “just as she did” connote that the necessary separation from the mentioned original symbiosis between infant and mother, in other words, an inevitable maturing was performed by her mother as well. Although the pattern of separation passed on generation to generation connotes continuity; an existence of past in the present, Frederica’s quest for identity and selfhood closes with a hope for a better future.
Unfinished and Unfinishable: An Always-Becoming Subject By the end of her psychological journey, Frederica perceives herself as an agentic subject who takes responsibility for realising a good life for herself as well as for her family. She recognises herself as someone who is capable of motherhood and articulates confidence in her own capacity not to repeat her mother’s entrapment. By doing so, she echoes Honneth’s mode of recognition termed ‘esteem’ which Identity Formation in Michèle Roberts’ Flesh and Blood | 25 relates to recognition of one’s traits and abilities, and underpins the process of becoming fully individualised. Following her mother’s elegy in the last chapter, Frederica expresses her unconditional love towards her unborn daughter. With such articulation the initial relationship of recognition between child and mother is immediately born: “(this is a love song for my daughter not yet born, who swims inside me dreaming unborn dreams, my flesh and blood, made of love in the land of milk and honey, the land of spices and stories)” (174). The love song indicates the ability to recognise and perceive her daughter as a subject worthy of being loved. Shortly, the love song is followed by a prayer in which Frederica expresses her assurance and hope for the future and the transformation of the present as well. She promises her baby not to be harmed or burdened neither by herself nor by her partner, Martin, but to be recognised for being who she is : “(a prayer for my daughter that I shall be able to contain her grows, inside me and outside me, that I shall be able to see her through while she needs me then let go, not to bind or fetter her but to see her as she is, different the same, to love her with imagination and plenty)” (175). The prayer in parenthesis can be understood as a symbol of the new values and norms based on love, mutual recognition, individual self- assertion and development as Frederica aims at acknowledging the distinctiveness of her daughter and hopes to develop an undistorted recognition relation with her. In the lyric prayer, Frederica creates a “trusted space,” to use Zurn’s term, in which the fear of the other dissolves and one receives positive recognition for their own traits and accomplishments and can develop according to one’s needs. Zurn writes about such a state as a place “where each acknowledges the other as a vital, living, embodied physical being with its own particular urges and emotions, through a steady background of emotional support that allows for the healthy individuation of each away from the original state of felt symbiosis” (30). Furthermore, Frederica’s quest for self-recognition is not only a personal one aimed at producing a feeling of self-confidence or well-being but takes a broader, more social perspective. The novel’s final lines express her vision for a more perfect social order which aims at changing an insufficient status quo towards a more just recognition order; a hope for a shift in views and a new social structure. Roberts’s usage of the unstable—and occasionally uncertain—categories of gender and identity opens up new forms of recognition and thus new modes of subjectivity. However, Frederica’s and Georgina’s new identities and positions in life cannot be considered as teleological ends in themselves. By presenting Frederica’s and Georgina’s characters as agentic, performative, and always- becoming subjects, Roberts undermines an essentialist understanding of identity and thus formulates a novel way of self-understanding which resists the allure of wholeness, unity, essence, and self-mastery. The plurality of voices presented in the book suggests a world constantly changing and adapting to new circumstances. Thus, a fluid view of the self emphasises the fact that we, as human beings, are formed through multiple discourses of identity and always in-process, devoid of a complete inner, secure or authentic self. Like a Cixousian sentence, the text is manipulated from back to front by its infinity; it turns into a stream with its own direction (Jacobus 80). The novel 26 | Krisztina Kitti Tóth finishes on an alternative account therefore leaving it open to other women, other storytellers to continue: “We were young, and full of hope. It was the sixties. So we walked back through Soho and into the next story:” (175). Roberts offers an open- ended future which can be understood as a refusal of stability as well as a call for other life-stories to continue; a call for future generations that will be similarly challenged and changed through the interpretive politics of social struggles for and against recognition.
Works Cited Anderson, Sybol C. Hegel’s Theory of Recognition: From Oppression to Ethical Liberal Modernity . Continuum, 2009. Baur, Michael, and Frederick Neuhouser. Fichte: Foundations of Natural Right . Cambridge University Press, 2000. Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender , Routledge, 2004. Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology . Routledge, 2004. Castle, Terry. Masquerade and Civilization , Stanford University Press, 1987. Cixous, Hélène, and Jacques Derrida. Stigmata: Escaping Texts . Routledge, 2010. Condra, Jill. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Clothing through World History: Volume 3. Greenwood Press, 2008. Jacobus, Lee A. Helene Cixous: Critical Impressions . Gordon and Breach, 1999. Hertel, Ralf. Making Sense: Sense Perception in the British Novel of the 1980s and 1990s . Rodopi, 2005. Honneth, Axel. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts . MIT Press, 2004. Falcus, Sarah. Michèle Roberts: Myths, Mothers, and Memories . Peter Lang, 2007. Frith, Gill. “Women, Writing and Language: Making the Silences Speak.” Thinking Feminist: Key Concepts in Women’s Studies , edited by Diane Richardson and Victoria Robinson, Guilford Press, 1993. Fisk, Anna. Sex, Sin, and Our Selves: Encounters in Feminist Theology and Contemporary Women’s Literature . Pickwick Publications, 2014. Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests. Routledge, 1991. Lengermann, Patricia M, and Jill Niebrugge-Brantley. The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory 1830-1930 . Waveland Press, 2007. McQueen, Paddy. Subjectivity, Gender and the Struggle for Recognition . Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Roberts, Michèle. Flesh and Blood . Virago Press, 1994. Stowers, Cath. “Journeying Back to Mother: Pilgrimages of Maternal Redemption in the Fiction of Michèle Roberts.” In Mothers and Daughters . Ed. Andrea O’Reilly and Sharon Abbey, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000. Taylor, C. “The Politics of Recognition.” Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition , edited by Amy Gutmann, Princeton University Press. 1994. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Poetics of Prose . Translated by Richard Howard, Cornell University Press, 1977. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own . Edited by Susan Gubar and Mark Hussey Orlando Harcourt Inc., 2005. Zurn, Christopher F. Axel Honneth: A Critical Theory of the Social . Polity Press, 2015. Occidentalism as a Strategy for Self-exclusion and Recognition in Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf Mohja Kahf’ın The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf adlı Eserinde Kendini-dışlama ve Tanınma Stratejisi Olarak Oksidentalizm
Ishak Berrebbah Coventry University, UK
Abstract Arab American women’s literature has emerged noticeably in the early years of the 21st century. The social and political atmosphere of post 9/11 America encouraged the growth of such literature and brought it to international attention. This diasporic literature is imbued with the discourse of Occidentalism; this not only creates a set of counter-stereotypes and representations to challenge Orientalism and write back to Orientalists, but it also works as a strategy for self-exclusion—by which Arab Americans exclude themselves from wider US society—and paves the way to self- realization. Taking Mohja Kahf’s novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006) as a sample of Arab American literature, this paper examines the extent to which Arab American characters including Téta, Wajdy, and Khadra represent and identify white Americans from an Occidentalist point of view to exclude themselves from wider American society, and promote their self-realization and recognition. The arguments and analysis in this paper are outlined within a social identity theoretical framework. Keywords: Diaspora , exclusion , recognition, representation, stereotypes.
Öz 21. yüzyılın ilk yıllarında Arap Amerikalı kadın yazını büyük önem kazanmaya başlamıştır. 11 Eylül sonrası Amerika’daki toplumsal ve siyasi atmosfer bu edebiyatın büyümesini beraberinde getirmiş, uluslararası bir önem kazanmasının yolunu açmıştır. Bu diaspora edebiyatı Oksidentalist bir söylemle doludur; bu durum sadece Oryantalizme meydan okuyan ve Oryantalistlere cevap veren bir dizi karşıt- stereotipi ve temsili oluşturmakla kalmaz, aynı zamanda Arap Amerikalıların kendilerini Amerikan toplumunun genelinin dışında tuttukları bir kendini-dışlama stratejisi olarak da işlev görür; böylelikle kendini gerçekleştirmenin de yolu açılmış olur. Bu makalede, Arap Amerikan edebiyatının bir örneği olarak Mohja Kahf’ın The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf adlı romanı üzerinden, Téta, Wajdy ve Khadra gibi Arap Amerikan karakterlerin kendilerini Amerikan toplumundan ayrı tutarak beyaz Amerikalıları ne kadar Oksidentalist bir bakış açısıyla yansıttığı ve tanımladığı, bu sayede kendilerini gerçekleştirmeleri ve tanımaları irdelenmiştir. Bu çalışmanın öne sürdüğü argüman ve analizler sosyal kimlik kuramı çerçevesi temelinde şekillenmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Diaspora, dışlama, tanıma, temsil, stereotip.
CUJHSS , June 2019; 13/1: 27-38 © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara Submitted: May 25, 2019; Accepted: June 24, 2019 ORCID#: 0000-0002-4355-2214; [email protected] 28 | Ishak Berrabbah
Introduction The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006) is an example of the kind of Arab American women’s literature that has emerged remarkably in the beginning of the 21st century. It is written in a form of a bildungsroman that revolves around the life of an Arab-Muslim girl named Khadra Shamy and her journey of self-discovery. She comes to the USA with her parents from Syria as immigrants. Khadra grows up in a strict Muslim community in the city of Indianapolis where the children are brought up believing in one definition of Islam and rejecting all differences. The novel portrays the hardship that Muslims characters of different nationalities go through in the USA to better position themselves in the wider American society. It discusses a wide range of issues and concerns that affect their daily life in different aspects—mainly political and cultural. As the novel progresses, Khadra goes through several experiences, giving her the ability to exploring her true self as opposed to the identity that she embraces from her parents and reconsidering the meaning of life from different angle. Mohja Kahf weaves her novel in a way that shows the extent to which diasporic figures find it difficult to understand their self-identity and develop sufficient sense of belonging given their dual identities. She is an example of the type of Arab American authors who discuss and assess the discourse of Orientalism and its repercussions in their literary production—it is difficult for them [Arab American authors] to produce their literature without challenging Western stereotypes and Orientalist assumptions that circumscribe their identity and self-understanding. The discourse of Orientalism was first introduced by Edward Said in his seminal book Orientalism (1978) . In his own words, Orientalism is “an instrument of Western imperialism, a style of thought, based on an ontological and epistemological distinction between the Orient and Occident […] and a Western strategy that aims at dominating, restricting, and having authority over the Orient” (2-3). The discourse of Orientalism to some extent revolves around the manifestation of biased perception and subtle persistent prejudice against Arabs and Muslims in the Orient to construct their inferiority which consequently affects their sense of identity. Importantly, such a discourse had its intense form in post- 9/11 which resulted in cultural, political, and social changes around the world and, in the USA in particular. It is practiced through multiple outlooks designed with, as Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad affirms, “tendencies of prejudice, otherness, discrimination and misunderstanding” (3) which in turn create a space to “categorise the identity of a Muslim on the basis of such agenda and representations” (Yaqin and Morey 20). Many Arab American authors, however, in a response to their lived experiences, embrace certain strategies in their writings to challenge, resist, and even debunk that Orientalist thought. As such, Occidentalism comes as one of the prominent strategies which Arab American authors consider to be an effective counter-discourse to Orientalism and an approach that enables them to write back from the margin to the center to re- configure their identity and self-realization. In this paper I aim to explain the extent to which Mohja Kahf, in her novel, tends to politicize her Arab American characters’ identity, image, and their struggle for recognition through stereotyping white Americans within an Occidentalist framework; she seems to construct a conclusion that stereotypes and Occidentalism as a Strategy for Self-exclusion and Recognition | 29 representations are part of cross-cultural and even cross-civilisational dialogue. Stereotyping and representing the other promote a process of self-identification, self-exclusion and paves the way to better understand one’s own identity and achieve self-realization on the basis of the discourse that lies between Us [Arab Americans] and Them [White Americans]. The power of stereotypes and representations is echoed by Kahf in her novel as a reality that determines intra- relationships as well as inter-relationships between people of different nationalities and ethnicities. The analysis of Occidentalism as strategy for self- exclusion and self-realization in Kahf’s novel, and the arguments in this paper, are based on social identity theory with perspectives of several prominent scholars and theorists such as Henri Tajfel and Joep Leerssen, to name a few.
Occidentalism: a Counter-discourse and Strategy for Self-exclusion Identity is a key word and problematic concern in diaspora studies; Madan Sarup reflects on the nature of identity when he says that “it can be displaced; it can be hybrid or multiple. It can be constituted through community: family, region, and the nation-state” (1). Sarup’s definition of identity meets to a great extent the status quo of Arab Americans whose major concerns oscillate between the problems of stereotypes and the complexity of hybridity that cause confusion in understanding their self-identity; the idea of the other is a significant milestone to define the identity of the self. Occidentalism is a style of thought that defines the other; it is a practice constituted in third world countries in order to complete the process of decolonization, more particularly in its cultural aspects. It is a “counter- field of conceptions and representations which were developed in the Orient to construct the idea of the West from a non-Western perspective” (Elsherif 624; Lindstrom qtd in Carrier 36). It reverses the dichotomy between the two polarities into the West as the other and the Orient as the self . Such discourse “discusses the relationship of inferiority-superiority complex between the Orient and the Occident” (Hanafy 29). In other words, if Orientalism is the product of the centre [West], Occidentalism is the creation of the margin [Orient]. The image of the West has changed through time; it was first portrayed as a “monotonous landscape of industrialism and rationalism and now it is painted as a scene of social anarchy and idleness” (Bonnet 12), or from Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit’s historical perspective, “an enemy” (5). The purpose of Occidentalism, moreover, is to resist the process of Westernization and encourage self-liberation from the control of the other, or, as Diana Lary argues, it comes in a form of a “reaction to the Western imperialism and colonization” (9) and also a “challenge to the discourse of Orientalism through the unsettledness of Occidentalism as a style of representation that produces polarised and hierarchical conceptions of the West and its others” (qtd. in Bonnet 7). It should be noted, however, that Occidentalism can be expressed through both positive and negative points of views and “is not an academic discipline per se but merely a way or a style of conceiving and representing the Occident, not in an academically scientific manner but mostly in a literary, artistic or polemical manner” (Salhi 256). 30 | Ishak Berrabbah
Arab writers and intellectuals of the diaspora, especially women, have been deeply affected by the experience of cultural encounter with the West and the discourse of representation and counter-representation. The USA in particular has been subject to Occidentalist discourse, generated by Orientals, especially Arabs. Rasheed El-enany opines upon the deteriorating vision that the Arabs hold of the USA when he argues that the representations and images of the USA in Arab literary creations “started to change radically towards the negative in the post- colonial era; it has rapidly come to be seen as a malign and hostile neo-colonial power due to the hardening of the American policies since the events of 9/11 and subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003” (154). The representation of the Occident, particularly the USA, are reflected within political, cultural, and moral stereotypes. The political-occidental representations of white Americans in Kahf’s novel is apparent through Arab American characters’ points of view and conversation. Kahf, on the one hand, inserts in her narratives an Occidentalist portrayal of the USA as a racist and hostile neo-colonial power that oppresses non-Western countries; the narrator states that “blacks were oppressed by America just like third world people” (118). Wajdy, on the other hand, claims that white Americans “make everyone else in the world suffer while they live like lords […] they create terror in other people’s countries while they live in safety and luxury” (118-119). These statements not only suggest the extent to which the USA is viewed through the lens of Arabs, but it also expresses postcolonial and imperial dialogue based on the dichotomy of us versus them —a longstanding dilemma in the Orient-West relationship. The Occidentalist point of view as seen in previous passages can be interpreted as a reflection that denotes the result of “the post-9/11 colonial presence of the USA in the Middle East that contributes to the replacement of negative images of the old colonial powers (i.e. French, English, and Italian) with new American ones” (Eid 4). Téta, Khadra’s grandmother of Syrian origin, affirms the bad image that white Americans have amongst Arabs and Muslims after the killing of Zuhura, an Afro-American Muslim character, by a racist American group. She claims that they are “terrorists wearing white masks” (117). Téta’s Occidentalist view of white Americans illustrates the opposite discourse of representations that Arab Americans steer against the USA. Khadra, in another instance, demonstrates her Arab political identity through her Occidentalist opinion of the USA as a cause of conflict in the Arab world and the Orient. Her Occidentalist vision permeates her essay about “how hypocritical America was to say it was democratic while it dropped dictators like the Shah in Iran and supported Israel’s domination of Lebanon” (123). Khadra, therefore, portrays the USA, her country of residence, as an entity that represents the essence of political intervention and anti-democracy; her stereotypical image of the USA as hypocritical meets Hassan Hanafy’s definition of Occidentalism as “not a history of events, but a description of essences” (121). Furthermore, Khadra fuels her concern about the political upheavals in the Arab world with the Palestinian case. In her conversation with Blu Froehlig, a Jewish female character who emerged from a highly observant orthodox religious upbringing, Khadra defends the rights of Palestinians to live in dignity and security. She passionately claims that Israel, with the help of the USA, “was illegally made by terrorists emptying out villages and forcing a mass exodus of Palestinians” (320). Occidentalism as a Strategy for Self-exclusion and Recognition | 31
The sense of Occidentalism echoed by Khadra towards US policy in the Arab world and her preoccupation with the Palestinian case reveals to a great extent her Arab nationalist identity. Gaby Semaan, in agreement with Naff (1985) and Shain (1996), draws attention to the role that the ‘Palestinian Cause’ has in “uniting Arabs and also reviving the national identity of Arab Americans, thus effecting their experience” (21). Indeed, Khadra’s nationalistic debate over the impact of the US malign foreign policy in the Arab world causes her to deal with experiences of prejudice, especially from her American teacher Mrs Tarkington—Khadra got low grades with big red D’s and was not allowed to discuss what is political or religious neither in her essays nor classroom discussion (123). Such an experience recalls Gayatri Spivak’s concept of the Subaltern who, according to Khadra, “cannot speak” (351). Spivak in her extensive essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” suggests a theory of subalternity by which, within a postcolonial context, she refers to the subaltern as the oppressed or the one who is positioned in an inferior class and does not receive adequate feedback and attention from the superior other. Although Khadra holds American citizenship, she is still seen as an entity that represents the Third World due to her Arab origin and Islamic affiliation and therefore she is silenced and ignored when she expresses her Occidentalist political thought to Mrs Tarkington who, in this case, acts as the superior other. Moreover, Spivak draws attention to female identity as a burden that worsens the status of the subaltern in the colonizer-colonized dialogue; she says that “If, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow” (Spivak 287). Khadra, in this sense, does not struggle because she belongs to the Third World community only, but also, because of her gender. Consequently, such experience forms her identity as the subaltern . It is relevant, in accordance to what happened between Khadra and Mrs Tarkington, to weave a link between Occidentalism as an expression of the inferior other and the subalternity as a strategy to reinforce the superiority of the imperial counterpart. Additionally, Wajdy, in his Juma prayer that he managed at the Afro-American Salam Mosque, conveys a message fuelled with Occidentalism from a positive point of view about America. In one of his speeches he says that “inside America there are many good qualities. Law and order, cleanliness, democracy, freedom to work and honestly seek the provision of the lord—freedom to practice religion. These are Islamic qualities, America is like Islam without Muslims” (144). Although expressed positively, Wajdy, through such Occidentalist representation of the USA, provides an account of his Americanized version that is not warmly received by his Muslim fellow brother Taher who, addressing Wajdy, says: “you are just discovering that you are American and you want to wave a flag now? […] I have been American all my life. And I still don’t want to wave no flag” (144). Interestingly, Brother Taher’s response is supported by Brother Derek who chimes in and continues the argument by stating that “Muslims and Arabs been here [America] longer and this country was built on our backs. I don’t see anybody trying to give us silver platter” (145). The Occidentalism-based debate between Wajdy, Brother Taher, and Brother Derek showcases the various types of representations of the USA by this ethnic minority and also, the different political 32 | Ishak Berrabbah stances that define Arab American identity; such a debate reveals the ambiguity of the term “Occidentalism” in that it constantly refers to either Americanization as a means of alienating the I from its origins, i.e. to categorize the self as American first and Muslim second, or, to anti-Americanization which defines the term as anti-hegemonic discourse and self-identical concept. It is possible to justify Brother Taher and Brother Derek’s stance against America with Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit’s points of view about anti-Americanism; they state that “it should be pointed out that anti-Americanism is sometimes the result of specific American policies which are normally used as a shorthand of US imperialism. Some people are agnostic to the USA simply because it is so powerful” (8). The opposition to American foreign policy is to a great extent a celebration of the mother identity and an affirmation of the unity that ties the Arab diaspora together not only in the USA, but also around the world—this is evident in Wajdy’s speech at the mosque where he appeals to his Muslim and Arab fellows to resist the detested US foreign policy: “not for a minute think that we will stop protesting against the immoral and unfair policies of America outside, in the Muslim world” (144). Through his speech about America Wajdy marks Occidentalism as a source of hybrid identity, or in other words, a ‘double view’; on the one hand he cherishes the American values and worthiness of its civilization with a stance of being American, and on the other hand he supports the Islamic rivalry against American foreign policy in the Muslim world—the world of his origin. Wajdy through his Occidentalist variations of belonging creates for himself a space that Homi Bhabha calls as “in-between the designation of identity”; Bhabha argues that the “interstitial passage between fixed identification opens up the possibility of hybridity that entertains a difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (4). Wajdy, in this case, promotes and negotiates a difference between himself as an American citizen and his Arab fellows through Occidentalism which, in accordance with the sensitivity between the Arab world and the West – mainly Europe and the USA, leads to establishing a new form of inter-communal socio- political boundary that outlines relations between diverse identities. The term thus is practiced by both people who call themselves American and people who do not. Equally important, Wajdy’s double view of his belonging, i.e. Arab-Muslim and American, can be critically examined as a manifestation of his double consciousness – this multi-layered consciousness perfectly describes his identity as being divided into multiple parts, making it difficult to have one unified identity, i.e. he views his identity through different lenses. The concept of double consciousness was first introduced by W. Du Bois in his article entitled “Striving of the Negro People” (1897) which was published in The Atlantic . He used this term to describe Afro-Americans’ experience of being both black and American; he labelled it “a peculiar sensation”. Wajdy’s peculiar sensation, as such, is a construction of both the Occidentalist perception of the USA and the identification of himself as an Arab-Muslim. Occidentalism to a great extent can be regarded as a strategy for cultural and social division and self-exclusion; it promotes the relationship between Arabs, particularly Muslims, and white Americans as unstable and divided along ethnic and cultural lines. The division that lies between the aforementioned groups can Occidentalism as a Strategy for Self-exclusion and Recognition | 33 be justified through the rejection of assimilation of the former group [Arabs] to the wider group [white Americans]. Park and Burgess defined assimilation as “a process of interpretation and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons and groups and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life” (735). This definition equates assimilation with the social process that brings an ethnic minority into the mainstream of the American life. Kahf, however, provides opposing characterizations of assimilation through Arab American characters who implement a rudimentary anti-assimilation process and resistance to a cultural fusion through their representations and stereotyping of white Americans. Ebtihaj, an Arab-Muslim female character, demonstrates her cultural non-belonging and anti-assimilationist agenda through her Occidentalism-based reaction towards Khadra and Eyad’s attempts to assimilate into the American lifestyle by sleeping over at American neighbours, spending the night out and also for their breaking the rules of the proper Muslim family. In a moment of anger she shouts: “Do you think we are Americans? Do you think we have no limits? Do you think we leave our children wandering in the streets? Is that what you think we are? Is It? (66-85). Then she bursts into sobs. Ebtihaj’s reaction can be illustrated through Elsherif’s argument that “Occidentalism is part of the process of liberation of consciousness from blind imitation. This revolution in consciousness is supposed to lead to actual liberation and consequently to the construction of an independent identity” (625). Following this, the narrator in Kahf’s novel lays out one of the problematic questions Muslims usually ask: “Who were the Americans?” Giving a response to this question, the narrator identifies Americans with the “ white people who surrounded them,” a “crashing sea of unbelief in which the Dawah Centre 1 bobbed, a brave boat” (67). This statement denotes the struggle of Arab Americans as an ethnic minority to cope with the social, political and cultural streams of the wider American society. It points out that Arab American characters are compelled to resist the tendency of assimilation if they truly tend to preserve and contain their origins and mother-identity. In the same vein, Kahf positions her female protagonist as a child who practices a significant simplistic absorption of Occidentalist views by which Khadra endeavours to define, in terms of representations, the American other, particularly the white one as stated previously. Khadra projects her voice ironically to represent white Americans as heterogeneous by dividing them into four categories: nice Americans, nasty and filthy Americans, ignorant Americans, and typical Americans. This categorization establishes a tendency to “perceive individuals from same social group [Muslims] as more similar and homogenous than the members of the out-group [white Americans]. This occurs particularly when the size of the in-group [Muslims] is small in relationship to the out-group [white Americans]” (Stangor 12). With such regard, Kahf’s female protagonist depicts Muslims as a homogeneous group and white Americans as a heterogeneous one. It is possible to justify the reason behind the representation of white Americans as heterogeneous group as part of the process of writing back to
1 It is a form of Islamic organization that invites people to understand Islam as outlined in the Quran and the Sunnah. 34 | Ishak Berrabbah the centre. In other words, it is a response, and mainly as a reaction, to the discourse of Orientalism through which Westerns tend to perceive Muslim communities as entities in constant clash, divided, and made up of diverse affiliations i.e. religious, cultural, and nationalist, etc. Kahf’s application of Occidentalism in her narratives, as such, can be regarded as a form of resistance to the Western stereotypes and representations of Muslims in particular and the Orient in general. The narratives in Kahf’s novel tend to define white Americans through stereotypes and representations in the same way that the latter did for the people of the Orient. The process of stereotyping white Americans goes further when the narration in the novel provides a counter-discourse to Orientalism with an elaborate Oriental essentialization of white American other—a description of how Arab American characters, particularly Khadra’s family, view and represent white Americans from a moral, social, and cultural perspective. The description of white Americans is perpetuated within an Occidentalist aura: American cussed, smoke, and drank, and the Shamys [Khadra’s family] had it on good authority that a fair number of them used drugs. Americans dated and fornicated and committed adultery. They had broken families and lots of divorces. Americans were not generous or hospitable […] they ate out wastefully often […] Americans believed the individual was more important than the family, and money was more important than anything […] All in all, Americans led, shallow wasteful, materialistic lives. (68) The representation of Americans as drawn in this passage, besides its propensities to cultural and self-exclusion, can be well explained through an imagological theoretical approach. Imagology revolves around the portrayal of identities in literary fiction; it is mainly studied within the European literary canon to make the discrepancies between nationalities visible through stereotypes. Such an approach can be applicable in analysing Kahf’s attempt to create a sense of image- based ethnotype which, according to Joep Leerssen, looks to “invoke self-other oppositions” (17). Leerssen continues to argue that: The rhetoric of ethnotyping often involves a so called effet de typique : the characteristics presented as being meaningfully representative of the nation as a type, are in fact selected and highlighted because they set that nation apart from others […] what is specific about ethnotypes is that they single out a nation from the rest of humanity by ascribing a particular character to it. (17) Leerssen’s hypotheses of ethnotyping falls within Kahf’s Arab American characters’ portrayal and representation of white American other with specified characteristics to set them apart from Muslim humanity. As a result, she puts both white Americans and Arab American characters in dichotomous positions in which the identity of the self and the other, on the basis of a group of stereotypes, is determined through social and cultural exclusion. Leerssen’s hypotheses may function as a continuity of Louk Hagendoorn’s idea (2010) that ideological representations and stereotypes lead to social and cultural differentiation which in turn “contributes to a ranking of out-groups [white Americans] closer or further away from the in-group [Muslims] depending on how socially desirable the out- Occidentalism as a Strategy for Self-exclusion and Recognition | 35 group is perceived by the in-group” (Snellman et al. 84). Thus, on the basis of the way Arab Americans perceive white Americans, the latter dominant group is considered as undesirable, farther from the Muslim in-group—this is a type of “bias that is generated from intense stereotypes” (McGarty et al. 4). In addition, the in-group and out-group distinction process is further maintained through idealizing the Muslim community in Indianapolis as good humans who help each other, save refuges and practice the right religion. In fact, Muslims are portrayed in the narratives as good citizens living in the country (26-31). Kahf’s narratives give further a positive account of her Islamic society in her novel by referring to the views of the Dawah Centre workers. For them Islamic society is “the hope of every believing Muslim today. In it, everyone would be good and God- fearing and decent and hardworking; there would be no corruption or bribes; the rich would help the poor; and all would have work and food and live cleanly, because an Islamic state would provide the solution for every social ill” (62). Though it is expressed ironically to some extent, the process of glorifying the image of Khadra’s society through stereotypes as shown in this passage is, as Tajfel and Turner (1979) drew upon, a technique for self-enhancement—that is, “accentuating or magnifying differences on relevant dimensions may serve to underscore the positive features of some in-group [Muslims] with respect to out- group members [white Americans] thereby contributing to a positive social identity” (qtd in McGarty et al. 7) i.e. it works to debunk and correct the American and Western misrepresentation and misconception of the Islamic identity and the image of Muslim community. Henry Tajfel’s views upon social identity theory (1978) clarify the process of distinction between Muslims as in-group and white Americans as out-group. He suggested that the assemblage and groups which people belong to are a significant source of self-esteem and pride; in order to enhance the self-image it may be necessary to meliorate the status of the group to which we belong. We, therefore, divide the world into us and them through a process of categorization which is, according to Tajfel, known as the in-group [us] and the out-group [them]. Social identity theory proposes that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to improve their self-image. The axis and the central hypothesis of social identity theory is that group members of an in-group will look to find negative facets and aspects of an out-group to enhance the self-image and clarify the identification. Moreover, otherization through stereotyping is the key factor that leads to such identification and difference. It is, from Tajfel’s point of view, the axis that creates social categorisation, social identification, and also social comparison (McLeod 2008). The Muslim and white American groups, as depicted in Kahf’s narratives, exemplify the underlined arguments in social identity theory over the process of in-grouping and out-grouping respectively. Kahf’s narratives, through her process of stereotyping both Muslim and American characters, give insight into her “in-group favouritism,” as Charles Stangor calls it. Stangor explains this notion as a method of differentiating us from t hem ; this distinction “generally occurs in a particular direction, such that the in-group as a whole [Muslims], as well as individual members of the in-groups are seen as having particularly positive characteristics, whereas the members of the out- groups [white Americans] are seen to have relatively less positive or more 36 | Ishak Berrabbah negative characteristics” (130). Relevantly, in-group favouritism as explained by Stangor may to a great extent reflect of what it is termed as ethnocentrism; it is defined as “a kind of ethnic or cultural group egocentrism, which involves a belief in the superiority of one’s group including its values and practices, and often contempt, hatred and hostility towards those outside the groups” (Bizumic 2; Bizumic et al. 887). It results in glorification of the in-group’s culture that serves as a reference point from which other alien cultures are evaluated and judged; this glorification is further manifested by Khadra as she surveys the crowd of white Americans and Muslims in the Speedway. Despite her realization that she is American too and a member of the Hoosiers 2 in the city of Indianapolis, she maintains the comparison and distinction between the two groups in the scene, i.e. Muslim and white American Hoosiers. She says: “they’re us and we’re them . Hah! My folks are the perfect Hoosiers ” (438). The rubrics of ethnocentrism are further strengthened by Occidentalist assumptions that occur in a discussion between Ebtehaj and Aunt Saweem in Mecca—the holiest city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that the Shamy family travels to for pilgrimage. Aunt Saweem, a conservative Saudi female character, tends to catalogue the Arab- Muslim understanding of white American woman. She declares that “American women had to be sluts: that much was clear from the way they dressed” (170). Ebtehaj, though she dislikes such offensive stereotyping, also confesses that “the American culture kills the natural instinct of a woman for modesty, and teaches her instead to expose herself. To please men” (171). Ebtehaj implicitly argues that the American culture has a significant role in spoiling the value of a true woman. On the basis of such conversation, Occidentalism is positioned as a cultural counter-discourse to Orientalism; whereas the veil for white American viewer is a symbol of oppression, backwardness and women submission, the American style of dressing for Muslim viewer is a sign of the lack of modesty and absence of chastity; white American woman’s style of dressing, in this dialogue, serves as an important marker of identity and difference and as a terrain of cultural and social contestations. Such dichotomous paradigms of stereotyping and representations generate a space for a clash of cultural representations between white American and Muslim entities of alterity, hence exploring the identity. In similar context, in a moment of discussion headed by Wajdy and his mother Téta about how unclean and filthy white Americans are, the former, with a funny tone, expresses his opinion that holds an aura of post-colonialism, he says: “And they think they are more civilized than us, and tell us how to run our countries” (69). Wajdy’s claim does to some extent minimize the American other through stereotyping with his intention to enhancing the self-esteem of his Arab-Muslim identity. This reflection can be illustrated through the theory of social identity (Tajfel et al. 1997; McGarty et al. 7; Leyens et al. 61-62) which states that the out- grouping process is achieved through enhancing the self-esteem and image of the in-group [Muslims], and simultaneously, disvaluing and discriminating the out- group [white Americans]. This falls exactly within Wajdy, Khadra, and Téta’s cultural, social and moral attempts of negatively stereotyping the white American other. In other words, Kahf creates her Arab American characters with differing views of white Americans and the USA, very much dependent on their personal
2 It is a popular label that refers to the people from the U.S. state of Indiana. Occidentalism as a Strategy for Self-exclusion and Recognition | 37 context, to explore the Arab-American self and identity that comes as a result of defining white American other from a stereotypes-based vision—Occidentalism— a counter-discourse. In addition, the application of Occidentalism in Kahf’s novel, besides challenging Orientalism, serves the purpose of projecting both otherness and selfhood; on the one hand it can be regarded as a representational strategy to affirm the dichotomy between Arab Americans and white Americans and achieve self-exclusion, and on the other hand, it is a set of beliefs with which to better define and understand self-identity. Conclusion Kahf’s application of Occidentalist discourse in her novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf functions as a complementary of and a continuity to Edward Said’s Orientalism. On the one hand, she perpetuates the opposing discourse [Occidentalism] as a form of resistance and reaction to Orientalism, and on the other hand, she expands its essence and potentiality that stereotypes also divide the world, create social and cultural rifts, and define identities. In other words, she delivers a message through her narratives that the politics of stereotypes and representations are not only controlled by the imperial other— in this case white Americans, but people of the Orient, namely Arabs and Muslims, also perpetuate the clash between the two polarities through stereotyping and representing the Occident and its others. The discourse of Occidentalism, as perpetuated by Arab American characters in the novel, is therefore a representational strategy designed with negative stereotypes as motivated justifications for social, cultural, and mainly moral exclusion from wider American society. Consequently, such exclusion reinforces the dichotomous structures of the world and its civilizations. By this, Kahf seems to sustain Samuel Huntington’s hypothesis Clash of Civilization first introduced in 1993. He points out that world’s civilizations in the contemporary era are in constant conflict and that “the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural” (1993). His hypothesis maintains the idea that new configuration of conflicts will occur along the boundaries of different cultures and patterns of cohesions will be found within the cultural boundaries. As such, Kahf denotes that clash of civilizations is fuelled with the politics of representations based on a set of cultural, moral, political and social stereotypes. The outcome of such stereotypes, as expressed through Occidentalism in the novel, effectively contributes to inaugurate the process of self-exclusion, recognition, and also ethnic identification. Works Cited Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture . Routledge, 1994. Bizumic, Boris. “Ethnocentrism.” In Vocabulary for the Study of Religion, Edited by Segal, Robert, 1, Brill Academic Publishers, 2015. Bizumic, Boris, and John Duckitt. “What Is and Is Not Ethnocentrism? A Conceptual Analysis and Political Implications.” 33, Political Psychology , 2012. Bonnet, Alastair. The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History. Palgrave McMillan, 2004. Buruma, Ian, and Avishai Margalit. Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti- Westernism , Atlantic Books, 2005. 38 | Ishak Berrabbah
Du Bois, William. “Striving of the Negro People.” The Atlantic , 1897, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the- negro-people/305446/. Accessed 10 May. 2019. Eid, Mohamed. Arab Occidentalism: Images of America in the Middle East . I.B Tauris and Co. Ltd, 2018. El-Enany, Rasheed. Arab Representations of the Occident: East-West Encounters in Arabic Fiction . Routledge, 2006. Elsherif, Amr. “Occidentalism and Cultural Identity.” International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , vol. 5, Routledge, 2015. Haddad, Yvonne. The Muslims of America . Oxford University Press, 1991. Hanafi, Hasan. Introduction to Occidentalism . Eldar Elfanneya, 1991. Huntington, Samuel. “The Clash of Civilization?” Foreign Affairs , 1993, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1993-06-01/clash- civilizations. Accessed 12 Apr. 2019. Kahf, Mohja. The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf . First Carroll and Graff, 2006. Lary, Diana. “Edward Said: Orientalism and Occidentalism.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association , vol. 17, 2006. Leerssen, Joep. “Imagology: On Using Ethnicity to Make Sense of the World.” University of Amsterdam, 2016. Leyens, Jacques, P, et al. Stereotypes and Social cognition . SAGE Publications, 1994. McGarty, Craig, et al. Stereotypes and Explanations: The formation of Meaningful Beliefs about Social Groups. Cambridge University Press, 2002. McLeod, Saul. “Social Identity Theory,” 2008, https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html. Accessed 29 Apr. 2019. Morey, Peter, and Amina Yaqin. Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11 . Harvard University Press, 2011. Naff, Alixa. Becoming American: the Early Arab American Experience . Southern Illinois University Press, 1985. Park, Ezra, P, and Earnest Burgess. Introduction to the Science of Sociology . University of Chicago Press, 1969. Said, Edward. Orientalism . Pantheon Books, 1978. Salhi, Zahia. “The Maghreb and the Occident: Towards the Construction of an Occidentalist Discourse.” In Orientalism Revisited: Art, Land, and Voyage , Edited by Ian Richard Netton, Routledge, 2012. Sarup, Madan. Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World . Edinburgh University Press, 1996. Semaan, Gabi. “Arab Americans: Stereotypes, Conflict, History, Cultural Identity and Post 9/11.” Intercultural Communication Studies , vol. 2, 2014. Snellman, Alexandra, and Bo Ekehammar. “Ethnic Hierarchies, Ethnic Prejudice, and Social Dominance Orientation.” Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology , vol. 15, 2005. Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture , Edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, 1988. Tajfel, Henri, and john Turner. The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations . Academic Press for European Association of Experimental Social Psychology, 1978. The Complexities of Carnival Identities in Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance Earl Lovelace’in The Dragon Can’t Dance Adlı Eserinde Karnaval Kimlik Sorunsalları
Ann Marie Simmonds American University in Dubai, UAE
Abstract If one were to identify three elements of Caribbean society that are integral to the region’s identity, they would be creole, calypso, and carnival. All three are interrelated but it is the latter, Carnival, that has shone a spotlight on the Caribbean and its people, through its adoption and reimagination in wider international spaces. In this paper, I look at Earl Lovelace’s landmark novel, The Dragon Can’t Dance , and discuss the way in which the three principal Afro-Trinidadian male characters construct their identity through the medium of Carnival. With changes to Carnival, these characters struggle to define themselves in relationship to a society and festival that is in flux. The novel is a detailed look at the way in which disenfranchised men seek to gain power through performance. It is also a reminder that today, as in 1979 when the novel was first published, the issue of identity and what it means to be Trinidadian, Caribbean and male is something the region continues to grapple with. Keywords: Carnival, identity, masculinity, Trinidad, performance.
Öz Karayiplerin bölgesel kimliğine esas olan üç özelliğini belirleyecek olsak, bunlar kreole, kalipso ve karnaval olacaktır. Her üç kavram da birbirleriyle bağlantılıdır fakat özellikle Karnaval, daha geniş mekânlarda uyarlanabilmesi ve yeniden tasarlanabilmesiyle Karayiplere ve halkına ışık tutan kavramdır. Bu metinde, Earl Lovelace’in önemli romanlarından The Dragon Can’t Dance incelenerek üç ana Afro- Trinidadlı erkek karakterin nasıl Karnaval aracılığıyla kendi kimliklerini yeniden inşa ettikleri ele alınmıştır. Karnavalda değişiklikler yaparak, bu karakterler, değişken olan festival ve toplumla ilişki içerisinde olan kendi kimliklerini belirleme mücadelesi içerisindedirler. Roman hakları gasp edilmiş erkeklerin nasıl performans aracılığıyla güç kazanmaya çalıştıklarını detaylı bir şekilde anlatır. Aynı zamanda, kimlik edinim probleminin ve Trinidadlı veya Karayipli bir erkek olmanın ne anlama geldiğinin, romanın ilk yayınlandığı 1979 yılında olduğu gibi bugün de bölgenin boğuşmakta olduğu problemlerden olduğunu hatırlatır. Anahtar Kelimeler: kimlik, karnaval, maskülenlik, Trinidad , performans.
Introduction Etymologically, the word “Carnival” derives from Italian carnavale and Latin canelevare, meaning the removal of meat. With its origins in medieval Europe, Carnival was a festival of abandonment that included unlimited eating and
CUJHSS , June 2019; 13/1: 39-49 © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara Submitted: May 30, 2019; Accepted: June 28, 2019 ORCID#: 0000-0001-5648-5965; [email protected] 40 | Ann Marie Simmonds drinking as well as a rejection of societal codes of conduct. Marked by excessiveness, Carnival allowed diverse peoples to interact and to create an alternative way of life. The mood was one of celebration and laughter; social hierarchies were overturned as voices and bodies usually rendered silent and invisible took center stage. Dabydeen describes the carnival in 18 th century England as constituting “an atmosphere of drunken merriment, vulgarity and violence” (40). He also notes that it was mostly the laboring classes who participated in Carnival, which they viewed as a release from toil and a way to subvert societal structures that had placed them at the bottom of the societal ladder. Therefore, if only symbolically and temporarily, Carnival, from its inception, was a site of resistance for the dispossessed and disenfranchised. The arrival of European, specifically French, colonists in the 16 th century marked the beginning of a Caribbean Carnival. In the New World as in Europe, Carnival festivities were an important part of the social fabric. However, within the context of a plantocracy, Carnival’s symbolism differed greatly depending on one’s status. “Carnival for whites was fun and frolic; for Africans, it was religion and the celebration of freedom” (Liverpool 36). Unlike the Medieval Carnival with its attempt at a temporary egalitarianism, the Caribbean Carnival starkly reinforced social and racial stratification and highlighted key differences between groups. European settlers used Carnival to satirize the Africans’ dress and mannerisms. In turn, the Africans ridiculed the elites’ dress, actions and dance. Caribbean Carnival therefore has always existed against a backdrop of societal, specifically socioeconomic and racial, tensions. This paper examines the relationship between Carnival and Caribbean masculine identity in Earl Lovelace’s novel The Dragon Can’t Dance , a seminal work described by some as the quintessential Carnival novel.
Historicizing and Theorizing Carnival The Russian theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin, saw the carnivals of Medieval Europe as a mechanism for inverting and subverting the political, legal and ideological authority of both church and state. In Rabelais and His World , Bakhtin theorized that Carnival was a sort of revival/renewal in which everyone could participate as they “built a second world and a second life outside officialdom … in which they lived during a given time of the year” (7). There was a suspension of hierarchal rank, privileges and norms, with everyone seen as equal which meant that during carnival, the laws of carnival’s own freedom became applicable instead of the restraints or conformities of everyday life (10). Carnival created an alternative social space that was characterized by freedom and equality. In the Bakhtinian understanding of Carnival, an upside-down world was created, in which those at the bottom were liberated from the fear of imposed rules. If one looks at contemporary Caribbean Carnival celebrations, the principal tenets of Bakhtin’s Carnival remain applicable. Class distinctions are suspended as people celebrate and dance together at the myriad events held throughout the Carnival season. Through costuming and masking, Carnival participants can gender bend and assume roles that are antithetical to a pervasive binary performance of sexuality. In this way, participants create the “second world” The Complexities of Carnival Identities in The Dragon Can’t Dance | 41
Bakhtin refers to. And since Carnival behavior is primarily unpoliced, there is a freedom in dress and expression absent from everyday life. Carnival was and is a response to challenge power. Danow provides an apt description of Carnival as “an established period in time when certain cultures engage in a spirited celebration of a world in travesty” (3). Modern day reiterations of Bakhtin’s Carnival can also be seen in the Gay Pride Parade or the 2008 Pute Pride Parade in Paris, where prostitutes demanded that their profession and human rights be recognized. Such collective and visible responses support Hall’s claim that in Carnival, not only does “the low invade the high” but that there is a revelation of “the interdependency of the low on the high and vice versa, the inextricably mixed and ambivalent nature of all cultural life” (8). However, Richard Schechner’s reminder that “Bakhtin’s model of Carnival was developed in terms of the medieval European practices as Bakhtin reconfigured them while living in the dangerous totalitarian world of Stalinism” highlights the need to go beyond Bakhtin’s theory (3). Caribbean, and specifically, Trinidad Carnival, developed under very different historical circumstances: All the evidence supports the view that Trinidad Carnival originated with the Africans who were enslaved on the sugar plantations of the island; that the majority of customs associated with the festival are African in form and function . . . and that the Carnival festival, as developed and practiced in Trinidad over the years, is to a large extent – to use the words of Father Cothonay – ‘remembrances of African life’ (Liverpool 36-37). The Carnival that would subsequently spread throughout much of the Anglophone Caribbean – was essentially African, a marked distinction from the European Carnival. Another distinction that must be made between Bakhtin’s Carnival and the Caribbean Carnival relates to the issue of control. From its inception, Trinidad Carnival was never truly free. Before Emancipation, Blacks were not allowed to join in the Carnivals with Whites but given their separate celebratory space. Ironically, from time to time, the white slave owners would join them in dancing, but this could not be initiated by Blacks. Post Emancipation, a law was passed that restricted the Carnival celebrations to two days instead of the three days previously allotted. Black female bodies were “under surveillance” by the authorities since it was thought they violated the rules of etiquette governing how women behaved in public spaces. Even Carnival music did not escape censorship. Hebdige speaks about a proposal that song lyrics be submitted to the police for prior approval (40). Caribbean Carnival therefore remained highly monitored and controlled well into the late twentieth century. Bakhtin’s theory also ignored the temporality of Carnival. Although to some extent liberating and countercultural, Carnival is ultimately a system that sustains the dominant ideology. Its liminality or transitional nature means that although it inverts the preexisting social order, its end signals a return to that order. Carnival is therefore a sort of release valve, existing in a weird middle ground between licentiousness and holiness, excess and abstinence. On the other hand, scholars such as Schechner and Rohlehr argue that Carnival’s marginalization has now morphed into broader mainstream acceptance. Writing in the late 1970s when many Caribbean islands had either achieved or were on the road to independence, Manning noted that Carnival was advertised in the travel literature as “a baroque, 42 | Ann Marie Simmonds garish extravaganza” (198). Decades later, Carnival is even more commercialized, providing a major source of income for Trinidad and much of the Caribbean. Thus, while the festivities themselves are limited to a set period, Carnival itself is a pervasive part of Caribbean culture. With its “authorized transgression of norms,” Hutcheon notes that Carnival, in order to invert norms must also recognize them (99). It is this recognition that has led to an uneasy but necessary truce between Caribbean Carnival and its naysayers. A crucial component of Carnival for Bakhtin is “grotesque realism”. The body is presented “not in a private, egoistic form…but as something universal, representing all the people” (10). He goes on to state that within the context of Carnival, “all that is bodily becomes grandiose, exaggerated, immeasurable” (10). Physicality is central to Carnival as bodies are in constant motion and in touch with each other, regardless of social standing. This grotesque physicality has the potential to incite societal and political change. But here too another question is raised regarding Bakhtin’s Carnival, that is, its revolutionary nature. As noted by scholars such as Umberto Eco, much of Carnival is based on the parody of rules and rituals. However, since these rules are already recognized and accepted as part of the social fabric in the first place, they lend themselves to parody. One of the prerequisites of a good Carnival therefore is “that the law must be so pervasively and profoundly interjected as to be overwhelmingly present at the moment of its violation (Eco 6). Thus, while Carnival is representative of unruliness, it is a state sanctioned and authorized unruliness, out of which the possibility of permanent social transformation seems unlikely. Evidently, a wholesale application of Bakhtin’s theory of Carnival to contemporary Carnival, and specifically Caribbean Carnival, is not only impossible but highly problematic. The dynamics that are at play within the ritual of the Caribbean Carnival have very distinct subtexts from those theorized by Bakhtin. But his theory cannot be wholly dismissed since, as previously noted, both European and Caribbean Carnival challenged hegemonic dynamics of power. In the same way that the lower classes were full participants in the medieval Carnival, transplanted Africans were pivotal in the evolution of Trinidad and Caribbean Carnival. Thus, while scholars such as Puri view Carnival as a culture of resistance and others such as Burton argue for a culture of opposition rather than resistance, a general consensus exists that both Bakhtinian and contemporary Carnival have not only been subversive, but also transformative. Today, Carnival is celebrated across the Anglophone Caribbean as well as in cities such as Notting Hill, Toronto, Brooklyn, Miami, and Leeds where populations of Caribbean immigrants reside. Though each is distinctive in ways that reflect the local culture, they are fashioned in some way after the Trinidad Carnival. The scholarly work and documentation concerning early Carnival celebrations in the Caribbean point to Trinidad as the origin of both the festival and the musical genres of calypso and soca, i.e. Carnival music. It is therefore impossible to discuss Carnival without Trinidad, and no Caribbean author has focused more on the social function of Trinidad Carnival than Earl Lovelace. The Complexities of Carnival Identities in The Dragon Can’t Dance | 43
Carnival and Masculine Identities in the Dragon Can’t Dance Born in 1935 in Toco, Trinidad, Earl Lovelace’s first novel While Gods are Falling , was hailed by C.L.R James as a new type of writer with a new type of prose. His fiction has always been deeply embedded in Trinidadian society, and having lived all his life on the island, minus time spent studying in the United States, his perspective is that of one who has seen the island’s and the region’s transformation from within. He therefore offers a literary insight different from Caribbean writers such as Derek Walcott, who penned their works about the Caribbean while living outside the region. Another hallmark of Lovelace’s work is its positioning among the lives of ordinary people in Trinidad. Whether he is focusing on the influence of the Baptist Church in a rural village as in his novel The Wine of Astonishment , or the effects of Carnival on the residents of an urban slum as in The Dragon Can’t Dance , Lovelace’s themes and language (he often uses Trinidadian English Creole) depict a society in flux, a society born out of slavery grappling with a search for its identity or as Fanon puts it, “a national consciousness”. Pivotal to all of Lovelace’s novels are two overriding themes: “the liberation of the individual from imposed rules and attitudes” through a “salvaging of the real self” and “the discovery of meaning and value through an imaginative rendering and fulfilment of cultural forms that have evolved out of the lives of the peoples who have met in these islands” (Ramchand 5). It is this search for the self, a masculine self closely aligned to the cultural form of Carnival that permeates his 1979 novel, The Dragon Can’t Dance . The Dragon Can’t Dance is a nuanced literary representation of the construction and negotiation of masculinity in the Caribbean, specifically in Trinidad (Lewis 165). Set in the urban impoverished community of Calvary Hill, the novel takes place in the 1960s, the decade when Trinidad gained independence, when steelband music became cemented in the social fabric, and when the commercialization of Carnival threatened to undermine the festival’s original meaning as a symbol of protest. Lovelace dedicates each chapter to an individual character, using their role in Carnival and the wider community as chapter headings. Therefore, instead of naming a chapter Aldrick after the protagonist, Lovelace uses the title “The Dragon”. The character of Sylvia is discussed in “The Princess” while the aging Carnival queen Miss Cleothilda is the focus of “Queen of the Band”. Characters’ identities are bound up in Carnival and Lovelace shows how Carnival has forged these individual identities while also challenging them to reexamine their relationship to Carnival. This is indeed the case for the three principal male characters: Aldrick, Fisheye, and Philo. The central character, Aldrick Prospect, can at times be placed firmly into a hegemonic type of masculinity (Lewis 166). This, according to Connell, is an ideal or dominant form of masculinity, based on strength and aggression and a degree of social status (78). As the dragon master, Aldrick holds a position of respect in the Calvary Hill community. Every year, in preparation for Carnival, he sews a new dragon costume that he wears on Carnival day to present his “self that he lived the whole year” (Lovelace 44). He believes the costume provides him with a link to his ancestors: The making of his dragon costume was to him always a new miracle, a new test not only of his skill but of his faith… it was only by faith that he 44 | Ann Marie Simmonds
could bring alive from these scraps of cloth and tin that dragon, its mouth breathing fire … It was in this message that he asserted before the world his self. It was through it that he demanded that others see him, recognize his personhood, be warned of his dangerousness. (35-36) By bringing the costume to life, Aldrick’s sense of self is connected to the dragon, the dragon dance, and on a broader scale, to Carnival. Preparing for and celebrating Carnival is instrumental to Aldrick’s existence. It is his opportunity to be visible and to be heard. According to Martin, the Dragon role originated in 1908 as a hellish illustration that was inspired by Dante’s The Inferno (225). The mask corresponds albeit metaphorically to the suffering endured by African slaves under the yoke of slavery. As he dances through the streets, the costumed Aldrick frightens onlookers and delights in their fear. His performance is a reclamation of the power lost by his ancestors but regained by him via the fearsome mask he wears. Aldrick also retains a sense of power through his rejection of the money offered by the Carnival spectators. Traditionally, the offering of money was seen as a way to appease the Dragon’s wrath and would occur “after the traditional climax of the Dragon dance…known as the crossing of the water… when its passage was blocked by water in drains or gutters” (Harris 117). But by refusing to accept money for his performance, Aldrick assumes a position of moral superiority. Although Carnival is controlled and commercialized, he will not be; instead he dances the Dragon dance for the sheer pleasure of the act itself and what it symbolizes. This philosophy of non-possession, to not succumb to a capitalist notion of payment for services or ownership and the responsibility this entails, is another component of Aldrick’s identity as a resident of Calvary Hill. Though a dragon, he is also “a hustler, working nowhere; and the only responsibility he was prepared to bear now was to his dragon” (Lovelace 44). In conversation with his friend, the calypsonian Philo, he says “You see me here. I is thirty-one years old. Never had a regular job in my life or a wife or nutten. I ain’t own house or car or radio or race horse or store. I don’t own one thing in this place, except that dragon there, and the dragon ain’t even mine. I just make it” (110). At the end of each Carnival season, Aldrick discards the dragon costume. By his very lifestyle, he rejects those hegemonic notions of masculinity that call for a goal-oriented ideology (Lewis 168). Yet, this is in line with the dominant thinking on the Hill which on its surface, despises all attempts at material possession. There is almost an unspoken adage that to possess is to be possessed. For this reason, Aldrick refuses not only material trappings, but also the prospect of a relationship with Sylvia, the carnival princess. Throughout the novel, Aldrick harbors feelings for Sylvia, a seventeen- year-old tenant of Calvary Hill. However, these feelings prove problematic as they require him to consider the possibility of disruption to his autonomy: To him she was the most dangerous female person on the Hill, for she possessed, he suspected, the ability not only to capture him in passion but to enslave him in caring, to bring into his world those ideas of love and home and children that he had spent his whole life avoiding. So he had The Complexities of Carnival Identities in The Dragon Can’t Dance | 45
watched her swing back and forth in the yard, not even wanting to meet her eyes, keeping his distance, not even trying to get her into his bed, for he knew that she could make him face questions that he had inoculated himself against by not working nowhere, by not being too deeply concerned about anything except his dragon costume that he prepared for his masquerade on Carnival day. (31) But the more he distances himself from Sylvia, the more anguished he becomes. Sylvia harbors romantic feelings for Aldrick, all but offering herself to him. Aldrick however feels that his economic circumstances prohibit him from entering into a relationship. He is unable to reconcile his desire for her with his dragon role. As he sees the face of Carnival changing all around him, Aldrick struggles with his identity. He is afraid he has nothing to offer Sylvia, he is afraid she will possess him, and he is equally afraid that his romanticized view of Carnival has left him unable to see the annual festival the way he used to. It is against this background of struggle with the self that leads Aldrick to ultimately find himself in prison, serving a five-year sentence. Disappointed with the transformation of Carnival, he joins a rebellion patrol, the Calvary Nine. In a reimagining of the 1970 Black Power uprisings in Trinidad, Aldrick and some other men organize a short lived and poorly executed rebellion against the authorities. Upon his release from prison, Aldrick makes up his mind to never again participate in the Carnival with his dragon mask which he now sees as “a mere masquerade with no political, cultural, or social significance” (195). Instead he gets a job as a sign painter and for the first time, approaches Sylvia. His admonition to her that she “wants to be a self that is free” can also be viewed as self-admonition. He asks her to reject the safety net of material security with Mr. Guy just as he has rejected the security of his dragon costume. The novel concludes with the status of their relationship somewhat unsure. However, the same cannot be said for Aldrick, who, now unmasked, is able to rethink and renegotiate his identity outside of Carnival, but more importantly, outside his Carnival costume: Lovelace recognizes the necessity of veils but points to the saving virtue of being conscious of one’s veils as veils, as well as to the dangers of allowing the veil to become a permanent mask. For if the latter occurs, the self is denied; or else it becomes impossible either to begin to know one’s self or to be known by other selves. (Ramchand 8) Aldrick’s disillusionment with Carnival is shared by another character, the bad john, Fisheye. “Notions of masculinity in the island of Trinidad are historically linked with the figure of the bad-john” a term that is strongly associated with the yard or ghetto, an environment inhabited primarily by lower class Afro- Trinidadians (Ramchand 313). The bad-john is a warrior who rebels against any system that seeks to regulate his behavior or control him. In the context of Carnival, both Dragons and Bad Johns are characters local men play. While Aldrick performs an exaggerated manliness via his dragon costume, Fisheye does so through physical violence. He finds himself through a “hyperactive virility displaying itself in all its pathology” (Badinter 20). At nights when Fisheye lies restless, he has to “get up and go and burst a man head” in order to make sure he 46 | Ann Marie Simmonds is still himself” (Lovelace 50). His – like Aldrick’s – is a kind of hegemonic masculinity defined by aggression but for him, every day is Carnival. In the same way that Aldrick finds his identity through his participation in Carnival and his wearing of the dragon costume, Fisheye’s identity has been shaped through his participation in the steelband. This according to Lewis, is “yet another metaphor for the construction of masculinity” (175). His assertion is that “the fashioning of melody in the crucible of steel drums, wooden sticks, rubber tips and fire, constituted the alchemy through which young boys became men, and where they experienced their ‘manness’ and enacted their warriorhood” (175). Fisheye is therefore able to use the rivalry between competing steelbands as a way to do battle: In this war, in this army, Fisheye at last found the place where he could be a man, where his strength and quickness had meaning and he could feel pride in belonging and purpose to his living, and where he had all the battles he had dreamed of, and more, to fight. While he was with them, Calvary Hill became a name to be respected. (Lovelace 54) Fisheye and his band continually clash with other rival steelbands, the Bad John leading the way and “entering bodily into the violence boiling in the guts of the city” (54). He is therefore disillusioned when the warring steelbands make peace, as he finds himself a warrior without a war. Eventually the band suspends him for his continuous fighting despite the truce that has been brokered. Without his membership in the steelband, Fisheye’s life loses its sense of purpose. This is the catalyst for his formation of the rebellion patrol which Aldrick joins. In many ways, Fisheye seems destined to become the man he is. He comes from a family of men described as being good with their fists. His father, a stickfighter turned preacher, taught Fisheye and his brothers to fight from an early age. This leads to a conflation of intimidation and violence with masculinity. Through the stickfight or kalenda which could be traced back to Guinea, there was a “psychological release of tensions; frustration engendered by domination, and violent expressions of anger” (Liverpool 31-32). By the time Fisheye arrived in the capital city of Port of Spain from Moruga in southern Trinidad, he was “at eighteen, already too young, too strong, too eager to prove himself a man to have escaped the violence in which men were tried and tested in that town” (Lovelace 62). Unlike Aldrick who donned his dragon costume only during Carnival to discard it soon afterwards, Fisheye is never able to rid himself of his violent tendencies. The violence and aggression of the steelband clashes permeate his personal life; he is physically abusive to his girlfriends, son, and stepson. But Carnival is temporary and Fisheye’s hypermasculinity needs a constant outlet. Like Aldrick, his disillusionment with the ‘new’ Carnival propels him to rebel. But unlike the dragon, there is no reformation for the Bad John at the novel’s conclusion. While he brings himself to admit that being a bad John is a joke, “this business of being bad,” that it is an “old long time thing” and that a man must “learn how to live,” he represents the least progressive aspect of masculine identity (Lovelace 190). Having seen every day as Carnival, he remains a warrior in need of something against which to fight. He struggles to come to terms with the commodification and commercialization of steelbands and Carnival in general, a transformation that leaves old warriors like himself, ostracized. The Complexities of Carnival Identities in The Dragon Can’t Dance | 47
Carnival’s metamorphosis is fully embodied in the character of Philo in The Dragon Can’t Dance. Like the dragon and Bad John, Philo’s identity is bound up in Carnival; he is a calypsonian. Calypso is a musical genre that developed from African musical sources such as song commentary and ritual music (Winer 116). According to Rohlehr, “the roots of the political calypso in Trinidad probably lie in the African custom of permitting criticism of one’s leaders at specific times, in particular contexts, and through the media of song and story” (2). Liverpool believes that the genre “was not the descendant of any one particular form of song, but owed its origin to the numerous songs, rhythms and dance traditions present in Trinidad during the time of African enslavement” (204). Like Carnival, calypso emerged as a cultural art form that spoke to the plight of African descendants in Trinidad, and the calypsonian’s role became even more important post Emancipation. Calypso was therefore seen as a marker of identity, specifically an Afro-Caribbean identity as the lyrics addressed issues relevant to each island, the Caribbean, and the larger Black diaspora. As the self-proclaimed voice of the people, the calypsonian gave voice to the plight of the underprivileged masses, enjoying a position of respect in the community. This however is not the case with the character, Philo. He never receives the respect Aldrick does, despite his full participation in Carnival. This is due in part to his physical appearance; he is “skinny, ordinary and unmuscular” (229). In addition, he continues to pursue Miss Cleothilda, the former Carnival queen, even after seventeen years of rejection. Labeled “a jackass in a jackass skin,” Philo, unlike Aldrick and Fisheye, embodies a type of subordinated masculinity that according to Connell is characterized by physical, and to an extent emotional weakness. At the age of forty-two, he remains a struggling calypsonian who sings about social change but finds little to no commercial success. This changes with his release of a sexually suggestive calypso titled “the Axe Man”. Over the decades, a pattern has emerged wherein calypsonians release two types of calypsos during Carnival: the social commentary that is mostly local (read national, regional or Black) in its focus, and its more upbeat, less seriously themed counterpart. The bottom line is that the social commentary calypso does not attract the kind of broad based and commercial popularity of the party calypso (Best 31). Philo is tired of following calypso tradition since in his view, his songs about social change and local politics have yielded neither success nor recognition. He pens “the Axe Man,” a song about sexual bravado and prowess in which the Axe Man cuts down any tree in his way. The tree is a metaphor for female sexuality, the Axe the man’s penis but more so, his ability to conquer any woman. The song becomes hugely popular and Philo finds himself catapulted into a level of fame and success that had previously eluded him. He also finds himself alienated from his community who now view him as a traitor to the music and to Carnival. By selling his song to foreign sponsors, he has also sold himself, another victim of the continued commercialization and foreign influence on the local art form. And although he makes genuine efforts to retain his position among the residents of Calvary Hill, he is shunned and alienated leading him to ponder: What did they want him to do? Continue to stand on the Corner watching people? What did they want him to do? End up like his father singing and 48 | Ann Marie Simmonds
playing the Arse on Local Talent on Parade? The show didn’t exist anymore…He had to move on, and they couldn’t, wouldn’t leave the Corner… he had to get away, to move in larger area of space, to move, to move. (Lovelace 232) This movement is not only symbolic but literal. Philo relocates to the bourgeois neighborhood of Diego Martin, further alienating himself by violating the norm of non-possession to which Aldrick and other Calvary Hill residents subscribed. For a while, he plays the role of the dandy, and here Lovelace presents readers “with a concept of masculinity filled with fantasy, sexual conquests and material gain” (Lewis 181). But at the end of the novel, Philo returns to the Hill, welcomed not only by his mates but even more symbolically, Miss Cleothilda. He releases another song, this one more in line with his former social commentary, an act that can be seen as a kind of compromise. As a calypsonian, he realizes that his music can work outside prescribed social boundaries of ethnicity, race or nation, as does Carnival. He is therefore able to come to terms with his class background and reconnect with his community, without fully abandoning or disparaging his newly gained affluence. This navigation of a middle ground is not the all or nothing game that Aldrick and Fisheye play, which is why Philo seems more at peace than the other principal male characters when the novel concludes.
Conclusion With its roots in African cultures and expressions, Carnival remains an integral part of Caribbean society. Emerging as it did in a society that had enslaved African peoples, Carnival was a symbol of resistance, a means of giving voice to societal dissatisfaction, a way of masking/hiding and being invisible, yet completely visible. It was therefore not surprising that it would be so instrumental in shaping the identity of the Caribbean and its people. As seen in The Dragon Can’t Dance , Carnival not only constructed the society but it also to some extent, constructed varying versions of masculinity. The novel shows characters struggling to redefine themselves in an ever changing milieu where outside forces threaten to undermine and devalue what for them has become a marker of identity: the Carnival. Written in 1979, the novel was ahead of its time, its themes of identity formation, negotiation and reevaluation still evident today in a region where men and women continue to grapple with entrenched masculine heteronormative ideals. And even today, there are dragons, Bad Johns, and calypsonians – each trying to find themselves as they are forced to negotiate and compromise, all while seeking to remain true to the spirit of Lovelace’s novel, which is ultimately, the spirit of Carnival.
Works Cited Badinter, Elizabeth. X Y On masculine identity . Columbia University Press, 1995. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World . Translated by Hélène Iswolsky, Indiana University Press, 1984. Best, Curwen. Culture @ the cutting edge: Tracking Caribbean popular music . University of the West Indies Press, 2004. The Complexities of Carnival Identities in The Dragon Can’t Dance | 49
Connell, Raewyn. Masculinities . University of California Press, 2005. Dabydeen, David. “Man to pan.” New Statesman & Society, vol. 26, 1988, pp. 40-41. Danow, David. The spirit of carnival: Magical realism and the grotesque. The University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Eco, Umberto. “The frames of comic freedom.” Carnival! Edited by Thomas A Sebeok, Mouton Publishers, 1984, pp. 1-11. Hall, Stuart. “Introduction.” Carnival: hysteria, and writing: Collected essays and autobiography, edited by Allon White, Oxford University Press. 1993. Harris, Max. “The impotence of dragons: Playing devil in the Trinidad Carnival.” The Drama Review , vol. 42, no. 3, 1998, pp. 108-123. Hebdige, Dick. Cut n’ mix: Culture, identity and Caribbean music . Methuen, 1987. Hutcheon, Linda. A theory of parody: The teachings of twentieth-century art forms . University of Illinois Press, 2000. Lewis, Linden. “Masculinity and the dance of the dragon: Reading Lovelace discursively.” Feminist Review , vol. 59, 1998, pp. 164-185. Liverpool, Hollis. “Origins of rituals and customs in the Trinidad carnival: African or European?” The Drama Review, vol. 42, no. 3, 1998, pp. 24-37. Lovelace, Earl. The Dragon Can’t Dance . Persea, 1979. Manning, Frank. “Carnival in Antigua (Caribbean Sea): An indigenous festival in a tourist economy.” Anthropos , vol. 73, 1978, pp. 191-204. Martin, Randy. “Dance and its others: Theory, state, nation, and socialism.” Of the presence of the body: Essays on dance and performance theory , edited by Andre Lepecki, Wesleyan University Press, 2004, pp. 47-63. Ramchand, Kenneth. “Calling all dragons: The crumbling of Caribbean masculinity.” Interrogating Masculinity: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses , edited by Rhoda Reddock, University of West Indies Press, 2004, pp. 309- 325. Ramchand, Kenneth. “Why the dragon can’t dance” An examination of Indian- African Relations in Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance.” Journal of West Indian Literature , vol. 2, no. 2, 1988, pp. 1-14. Rohlehr, Gordon. Calypso and society in pre-independence Trinidad . Rohlehr, 1990. Schecnher, Richard. “Carnival (theory) after Bakhtin.” Carnival: culture in action – the Trinidad experience , edited by Milla Cozart Riggio, Routledge, 2004, pp. 3- 12. Winer, Lise. “Socio-cultural change and the language of calypso.” New West Indian Guide , vol. 60, no. 3/4, 1986, pp. 113-148. Recasting Africanness: Ignatius Sancho and the Question of Identity Afrikalılığın Yeniden Tanımı: Ignatius Sancho ve Kimlik Problemi
Banjo Olaleye University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Abstract The prejudice against blacks, a designation which in eighteenth-century British context describes all non-white people, including people from India, Africa, and the Caribbean, is what I tag Africanness . Africanness describes the supposed inferiority of black races. It was the predominant ideology in eighteenth-century Britain that blacks are immoral and unrefined people who lack mental abilities. In Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African , Ignatius Sancho, demonstrates his education, his Christianity, his morality, and many other traits that contradict what most Europeans assumed “Negurs” (128) to be. Caught between identities—African, slave, immigrant, Briton—Sancho represents an insider-outsider observer of British culture and literature. This paper focuses on Sancho’s demonstration of refinement and intelligence as factors that strategically situate him as a man who defines, belies and redefines Africanness to his society, setting the stage for the anti-racism discourse that followed his death. Keywords : Africanness, blacks, eighteenth-century, London, identity, slavery.
Öz On sekizinci yüzyıl Britanya şartlarında Hindistan, Afrika ve Karayipler’i de içeren tüm beyaz olmayan, siyahi ırklara yöneltilen önyargıyı Afrikalılık olarak tanımlayabiliriz. Afrikalılık siyahi ırkların beyazlardan daha aşağıda görülme varsayımını ifade eder. On sekizinci yüzyıl Britanyası’nda hâkim olan bu ideoloji siyahileri ahlaki ve zihinsel açılardan yetersiz ilkel varlıklar olarak görür. Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African , adlı eserde Ignatius Sancho, çoğu Avrupalı’nın onu “Negurs” olarak aşağılamasıyla çelişen eğitimi, Hristiyanlığı, ahlaklı oluşu gibi birçok kişisel özelliğini yansıtır (128). Afrikalı, köle, mülteci, Briton kimlikleri arasında sıkışan Sancho, Britanya kültürü ve edebiyatını içerden-dışardan gözlemleyen bir bakış açısı sunar. Bu çalışma, Sancho’nun, kendi kültürüne Afrikalılık kavramını tanımlayan, reddeden ve yeniden tanımlayan ve böylece ölümünün arkasından, ırkçılık karşıtı söylemlere giden yolu açan bir yazar olarak görülmesini sağlayan nezaket ve zekâ gibi kavramları nasıl ele aldığını inceler. Anahtar Kelimeler: Afrikalılık, siyahi, on sekizinci yüzyıl, Londra, kimlik, kölelik.
Introduction Critics of Ignatius Sancho’s Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (1782) agree on one thing: he is an African man of letters. Africans in eighteenth-century Britain, even up to the twentieth century, were not just black people born in Africa: they were people, as Vincent Carretta notes, whose designation was based
CUJHSS , June 2019; 13/1: 50-61 © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara Submitted: February 13, 2019; Accepted: May 16, 2019 ORCID#: 0000-0003-2943-8252; [email protected] Recasting Africanness | 51 on the dark colour of their skin (anyone that is not “white”), and they included Indians and people of Mediterranean descent ( Letters 191). Sancho considers them as people in a “state of ignorance and bondage” (96). In The Monthly Review: or, Literary Journal (December 1783), Ralph Griffiths describes the belief of “half- informed philosophers, and superficial investigators of human nature, that Nēgers , as they are vulgarly called, are inferior to any white nation in mental abilities” (347). The prejudice against “blacks” in eighteenth-century Britain is what I tag “Africanness”. Africanness describes the supposed inferiority of “black” races. It was the predominant ideology in eighteenth-century Britain that blacks are immoral and unrefined people who lack mental abilities. In Letters , Sancho demonstrates his education, his Christianity, his morality, and many other traits that contradict what most Europeans assumed “Negurs” (128) to be. This he is able to do by positioning himself as an observing outsider, “a lodger” (231), a moralist “judging the practice of “your country”—that is, Britain (188), even though the country was Sancho’s as well since he had lived there all his life. Through his observer and moralist role, Sancho is able to demonstrate that he is not “Savage” (188) or any of the other characteristics assumed to apply to his race. This, in my opinion, is what situates Sancho as a man on a mission to recast Africanness. This essay argues that Sancho’s Letters focus on a black man’s revelation and re-presentation of blacks in eighteenth-century Britain—the lowest and most segregated stratum of British society. The problematics of reading Letters as a black man’s rebuttal of racial prejudice and slavery are in situating the intention of the author in a work that has been greatly influenced by, at least, the editor. Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (1782) is a posthumously published collection of the correspondences of Ignatius Sancho, collected and edited by Frances Crew, with an introduction and biography by Joseph Jekyll. Crew and Jekyll were eighteenth-century British Abolitionists whose main aim was the abolition of the slave trade. Crew states that “Her motives for laying them [ Letters ] before the publick were, the desire of shewing that an untutored African may possess abilities equal to an European” (Letters 47). In other words, Crew has edited Sancho’s Letters , as evidence of the intellectual ability of a black man, to serve in the eighteenth-century British debate over the abolition of the slave trade. There is very little, if any, evidence that suggests Sancho’s intention of publishing Letters the way it was published. Even though Vincent Carretta in his article, “Three West Indian Writers of the 1780s Revisited and Revised,” has argued that Crew “may have censored some of Sancho’s views” about slavery and racial discrimination in Letters (81), the edited text still contains many details about Sancho’s reactions to salient issues (issues like slavery and racial discrimination, for instance) that concern blacks in eighteenth-century British society. The complication of reading Letters , then, is in the near impossible task of distinguishing between what Ignatius Sancho had written originally and what Crew, his editor, censored, replaced, deleted and/or included, especially since only very few of Sancho’s manuscripts have been discovered. The few available have revealed a considerable number of variants between what is in the original manuscripts and what is obtainable in the edited text. Vincent Carretta’s (2015) edition of Letters has tried to reconcile some of these variants, but the limited number of manuscripts available leaves much undone in this regard. All quotations from Letters in this paper are from Carretta’s 52 | Banjo Olaleye
Broadview edition (2015). Due to Crew’s interventions, and while it is almost impossible to state Sancho’s exact intention of writing, the frequency and consistency of Sancho’s messages across Letters are highly suggestive of his efforts towards recasting Africanness. Brycchan Carey, in his paper, “‘The Hellish Means of Killing and Kidnapping’: Ignatius Sancho and the Campaign against the ‘Abominable Traffic for Slaves,’” has discussed the possibility of Sancho writing to intentionally participate in the anti- slavery debate in eighteenth century Britain. Carey notes that even though “Sancho could not have joined a formal abolition society,” he may, however, have been conscious of the “incipient abolition movement” of the 1760s and 1770s (82), the period when Sancho wrote most of his letters. To Carey, “ Letters can thus be seen as a sustained work of sentimental rhetoric emerging from the literary tradition of anti-slavery that Sancho clearly knew well, and available as a further and persuasive text in that tradition” (93). While this argument situates Sancho as a man whose period of writing coincides with the time some of the earliest anti- slavery literature in Britain was written, it, however, does not dictate Sancho’s definitive intentions, nor should it, since Sancho died before Crew collected his letters for publication. Carey’s conclusion that Letters “offers many personal and political arguments against slavery, and shows some evidence of having been constructed, perhaps by Sancho himself, with those arguments in mind” (93), thus begs further research for such evidence. Sancho’s rhetoric includes his moments of direct criticism of racism and of the slave trade, his distinction between “civilized” and “native,” his stance as an outsider to English society, his determination to honour Christian principles, and his respect for general morality. Some of Sancho’s (or his editor’s) personal and political arguments will be considered in this paper, going beyond Sancho’s outcry against slavery to encompass his rebuff of racial prejudice in eighteenth-century Britain. One of the ways Sancho speaks to eighteenth-century English society is in exposing the ignorance and hypocrisy behind slavery. Sancho writes Jack Wingrave about the ignorance of his belief in the “treachery and chicanery” (187) of the “Blacks” in Bombay, India—recall that I have earlier stated that in eighteenth century Britain, being black simply means not being white. “Black,” in this eighteenth-century context, is therefore, a racial classification to describe non-European people (and their descendants, which may include people with mixed ancestry) from the Caribbean, African and Asian colonies of Imperial Britain. Carretta has also noted in Letters that “Someone born in India was as likely to be called Black as someone of African descent” (191). Sancho, however, calls “Blacks” who live in their homeland, whether in Africa or South India or in the Caribbean, “Natives”. While writing to Jack Wingrave about the hypocrisy of “the practice of your country,” Sancho refers to the “acts of deception—and even wanton cruelty” of the first European settlers in India (188). Sancho reminds Jack Wingrave of the initial observation of “the first christian visitors” that the “Natives” of India were “simple, harmless people” (187). He claims these white explorers and the conniving Kings pushed the “Natives […] to turn the knavish— and diabolical arts which they too soon imbibed—upon their teachers” (187-8). Sancho (or his editor) also claims that “your country’s conduct [Britain] has been uniformly wicked in the East—West-Indies—and even on the coast of Guinea Recasting Africanness | 53
[modern day West-Africa] (188). He asserts that the “grand objective of English navigators—indeed of all Christian navigators—is money—money—money” (188). Discussing slavery in Africa, Sancho accuses the “petty Kings” in Africa of killing and kidnapping men of their own kind for these white British in exchange for “strong liquors […] and powder—and bad fire arms” (188). Sancho here shares the blame of slavery equally between “English navigators” and the “petty Kings” in Africa. In sharing this blame equally, Sancho denounces the idea that blacks are exclusively, naturally “knavish” and “diabolical”. His argument here calls for whites’ reconsideration of their belief in the uniqueness of “Savage” qualities to Africans. Sancho’s moral words confute the belief of advocates of slavery that, in the words of Vincent Carretta, “blacks were incapable of the moral refinement allegedly displayed solely by whites” ( Letters 33). This belief, which I tag Africanness, is debunked by the realities of Sancho’s existence. Here is Sancho, a black man with intellectual abilities, who not only exhibits traits of moral refinements (Christian virtues) but also encourages others in his society to take on these traits. These traits, which can be called Sancho’s Britishness, were all acquired due to Sancho’s upbringing in Britain, which may explain Sancho’s prejudice in distinguishing between blacks living in Africa, who, he probably thinks, do not have moral refinements and are influenced by their own culture and traditions, and himself— a black Briton. In distinguishing between blacks living in Africa and those living in Britain, Sancho uses different appellations. While Sancho uses names like “Black” (96), “Blacky” (75), “Negurs” (128), “Moors” (128), “Blackamoor” (206), “Nẽgers”/ “Negroes” (333), “African” (262) when referring to blacks in Europe, he refers to blacks born, raised and living in Africa and Asia exclusively as “Natives” (188). Sancho does not have the best words for these “Natives”. Each time he refers to them, the words that follow usually convey pity. They are the poor ones with “the tears and blood” (171) who have learnt “treachery and chicanery” among other “vices” (187) from white explorers and traders. They are “the poor ignorant Natives” who have “learnt to turn the knavish—and diabolical arts […] upon their teachers”—their teachers being Europeans (188). They are “the poor wretched natives—[who] blessed with the most fertile and luxuriant soil—are rendered so much the most miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing” (188). “[T]he horrid cruelty and treachery of the[ir] petty Kings” (188), and the “national madness” of the people is evident in their “hellish means of killing and kidnapping” (188). Sancho calls them “Savages” (188), and any discussion about them “sours” his “blood” (188). Notwithstanding Sancho’s personal prejudice against the “Natives,” the fact that he is able to exhibit his Britishness, in itself denies the Africanness associated with blacks in eighteenth century Britain. Perhaps, the Britishness Sancho exhibits is one of the reasons why Markman Ellis (2001) sees Letters as exceptional. Ellis believes that “rather than being an example of assimilation, obsequiousness or mimicry, as many of Sancho’s recent critics have contended, the form and substance of Sancho’s Letters repeatedly declare a culturally combative exceptionalism that makes his book both transgressive and radical” (212). Letters is transgressive because it shows a black man’s concern for demonstrating his education, his Christianity, and his morality, among many other traits that deny what most Europeans assumed “Negurs” to be. It is also radical because it articulates anti-prejudice and anti-slavery comments, 54 | Banjo Olaleye making it, in the words of Carretta, “the first published challenges to slavery and the slave trade by a person of African descent” ( Letters 32). Letters thus transgresses Africanness as the ideology behind slavery and prejudice, and sets Sancho as a champion of its recasting. Sancho’s intentional act of positioning himself as an outsider passing a moral judgement against “your country” [i.e. Britain] (188) is strategic. Sancho, the same man who writes to fellow black Briton Charles Lincoln about the latter’s noble “spirit and true courage in defence of our country” (294), is the same man who tells Jack Wingrave and, elsewhere, Meheux about his observation of “the practice” (188) and “malady of your country” (88). He tells Mr. Rush, “I am only a lodger— and hardly that” (231). In his letter to Mr. Jack Wingrave, for instance, he writes: I am sorry to observe that the practice of your country (which as a resident I love—and for its freedom—and for the many blessings I enjoy in it—shall ever have my warmest wishes—prayers—and blessings); I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country’s conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East—West-Indies—and even on the coast of Guinea. (188) Sancho has enjoyed the benevolence of British society, being one of the most successful black Britons in his time—one who might be expected to have far less cause to talk against the British system. Sancho had lived almost his entire life in England, yet when it comes to passing a critical comment on English society he chooses to be an outsider. His self-positioning as an outsider in Britain is, however, not an indication of his acceptance of his identity as one of the “natives” (188) of Africa. In fact, when he talks about “natives,” he distances himself from them, referring to them in the third person—“they,” “simple, harmless people,” “the poor wretched natives,” “a people,” “their national madness,” “Savages” (188). He positions himself as an outsider to both Britain and Africa when he is about to pass a critical comment on British society in order to validate the objectivity of his observation. He may be of African descent, but his English upbringing makes him less of a true “Native,” just as his colour makes him less of a true Briton, even though his qualities may prove otherwise. His upbringing, his religion, his ideas, his education, his lifestyle all culminate in his Britishness, which makes him too English to be a “Native” of Africa, while his colour makes him a racial outsider to British society. He is thus, neither completely here nor there. Rather than a disadvantage, Sancho employs this peculiar quality in the development of his argument. He distances himself from the segregation, killings and slavery—“the uniformly wicked” practices of Englishmen in the East—West-Indies—and even on the coast of Guinea (188), just as he distances himself from the “national madness,” “horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty Kings” in Africa (188). In sharing the blame of the heinous acts in slavery equally between Africans and English explorers, Sancho establishes two things. One, the shared ignorance between the “simple, harmless people” (187) of Africa and the misinformed or under-informed white Britons like Jack Wingrave, who innocently take what they are told about Africanness at face value without much inquiry into the subject. Two, the abilities of all men to turn wicked especially when they yield to the desire for material possessions, like “money” for the British, and “liquor,” “powder” and “fire-arms” for the “Natives” of Africa (188). These two inferences Recasting Africanness | 55 demonstrate to Sancho’s readers that blacks are not naturally savages, as whites’ notion of Africanness suggests, nor are Europeans blameless. Sancho is concerned with the motives and quality of people’s minds. His concern plays out throughout Letters especially when he writes to admonish his recipients. In his letter to Julius Soubise, the Duchess of Queensberry’s servant, dated Oct. 11, 1772, for instance, Sancho advises Soubise to “search into the motive of every glorious action—retrace thine own history—and when you are convinced that they [good white Britons] (like the All-gracious Power they serve) go about in mercy doing good—retire abashed at the number of their virtues—and humbly beg the Almighty to inspire and give you strength to imitate them” (95). He also tells Soubise: Vice is a coward;—to be truly brave, a man must be truly good; […] detest a lye—and shun lyars—be above revenge;—if any have taken advantage of your guilt or distress, punish them with forgiveness—and not only so— but, if you can serve them any future time, do it. (98) Sancho’s advice here is for Soubise to seek to develop himself by focusing on training his mind to be truly good. Sancho’s notion of “truly good” might be unavoidably influenced by the British/Christian ideal he is familiar with as a result of his upbringing in Britain. Notwithstanding, his advice to Soubise demonstrates that he values self-development. Sancho wants Soubise to study not just people’s actions but their motives as well. He is of the opinion that an individual’s motive will reveal the virtues beyond just the good of the person’s action. To Sancho: the truest worth is that of the mind—the blest rectitude of the heart—the conscience unsullied with guilt—the undaunted noble eye, enriched with innocence, and shinning with social glee—peace dancing in the heart— and health smiling in the face. (73) For a man/woman to be of a “truest worth,” therefore, he/she would have to develop his/her mind. His position here suggests that every act is borne out of a motive, and that motive is a thing of the mind. In other words, all actions an individual takes have the possibility of revealing the person’s mind. An honourable man/woman is thus the one with an honourable mind. Sancho sees slavery and prejudice, what I consider offshoots of Africanness, as revelations of the prejudice of the minds of people who practice them. He writes: “Look round upon the miserable fate of almost all of our unfortunate colour—superadded to ignorance,—see slavery, and the contempt of those very wretches who roll in affluence from our labours superadded to this woeful catalogue” (98). The “catalogue” Sancho here talks about is white Britons who are advocates of slavery and who are prejudicial in their dealings with blacks. Sancho’s comments about these advocates suggest that he blames these Britons for their prejudice as much as he blames “Natives” for their ignorance. Again, Sancho’s notion of ignorance would have been influenced by his British upbringing that denigrates the culture of outsiders. Sharing the blame, however, repudiates these advocates’ justification of slavery in Africa on the basis of their opinion on blacks’ Africanness. Similarly, Sancho believes respect should be accorded to not just any man/woman, white or black, but to those deserving of such honour. Sancho’s belief resonates in his letter 56 | Banjo Olaleye to his close friend John Meheux, a clerk in the India Board. To Meheux, Sancho writes: “As to honours, leave it with titles—to knaves—and be content with that of an honest man, ‘the noblest work of God’” (143). Sancho’s words here suggest that formal honours are like titles given to knaves who do not deserve them, and that Meheux should be content to be an honest man. He emphasizes this by drawing a quotation from Pope’s An Essay on Man 4:247: “An honest man’s the noblest Work of God”. Perhaps Sancho’s letter to his friend Jabez Fisher is more revealing of his belief in respecting only individuals with good minds, irrespective of race. He writes to Fisher: I, who, thank God! am not bigot—but honour virtue—and the practice of the great moral duties—equally in the turban—or the lawn-sleeves—who think Heaven big enough for all the race of man—and hope to see and mix amongst the whole family of Adam in bliss hereafter—I with these notions (which, perhaps, some may style absurd) look upon the friendly Author— as a being far superior to any great name upon your continent. (165) Here, Sancho indirectly calls whites who do not respect people of a lower class bigots. He considers their actions as “unchristian” as those who partake in slavery (165). He does not consider them honourable. In fact, he writes about “how very poor the acquisition of wealth and knowledge are—without generosity—feeling— and humanity” (166). An example of a person Sancho regards highly is Phillis Wheatley. To Sancho, Wheatley is the unappreciated “mind animated by Heaven,” “a genius” superior to her slave master (166). Wheatley was an African-American poet and the author of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral . In the eighteenth century, during the debate over the proposed abolition of the African slave trade, her name was as frequently mentioned as that of Sancho as proof that blacks were educable and possessed literary talents (166). Sancho respects Wheatley because she has developed her literary skills despite the circumstances of the slavery she was in. He calls her a “Genius in bondage” (165). Another person Sancho recognizes in this letter is the unnamed author of a book Fisher sent to him. The reason is simple: The “Author” has written about “the unchristian and most diabolical usage of my brother Negroes—the illegality—the horrid wickedness of the traffic—the cruel carnage and depopulation of the human species” (165). Sancho considers this presumably white 1 author “a being far superior to any great name upon your continent” (165) because of his “humane” and “friendly” attitude towards blacks. Sancho’s respect for Wheatley, the author and Fisher, who is also white, demonstrates two things: first, respect for people should not be based on race; and second, respect for people should not be determined by class—Wheatley was, at this time, a slave, and at least Fisher, if not both of the other two, was a middle-class man. By referring to people of different race, Sancho, again, has shown that the problem is not that blacks do not possess literary abilities, but some whites have refused to see the value in the literary works by blacks like himself and Wheatley, and the virtues they exhibit by writing these works despite their deplorable circumstances. The failure of these whites to
1 Vincent Carretta, the editor of Letters , identifies this “Author” as either Anthony Benezet, a Philadelphia Quaker and abolitionist, or Granville Sharp, a leader of the Abolitionist movement—both of them are white antislavery writers ( Letters 166). Recasting Africanness | 57 acknowledge blacks like Wheatley and Sancho as geniuses is why Sancho sees them as people “without generosity—feeling—and humanity though they are splendid—titled—learned” (166). Presenting Wheatley as a “genius in bondage,” again, recasts the notion that blacks are not educable or do not possess literary talents—Africanness. The irony in Sancho’s words is intended to challenge “the enlightened Christian” (188) to live up to the standards of Christian “Religion” by dealing fairly with blacks. His bid, as a Christian black Briton, is to enlighten Jack Wingrave who is supposed to be an “enlightened Christian” (188). He tells Jack Wingrave: I mentioned these only to guard my friend against being too hasty in condemning the knavery of a people who bad as they may be—possibly— were made worse—by their Christian visitors.—Make human nature thy study—wherever thou residest—whatever the religion—or the complexion—study their hearts.—Simplicity, kindness, and charity be thy guide—with these even Savages will respect you—and God will bless you! (187-8) His irony here is clear to the recipient. Jack Wingrave, in one of his previous letters to his father, had called “Blacks” “a set of canting, deceitful people, and of whom one must have great caution” (Letters 190). In another letter, Jack had said “that the account which Mr. G—gave […] of the natives […] is just and true, that they [“blacks” in Bombay] are a set of deceitful people, and have not such a word as Gratitude in their language, neither do they know what it is” (190). Sancho implies that Jack Wingrave is one of the unenlightened white Christians in Britain who misrepresent Africans. Correcting this misrepresentation defines Sancho as a man concerned with recasting Africanness. Sancho’s role in recasting Africanness is evident in his mission to encourage a society guided by Christian values. Jekyll, whose “The Life of Ignatius Sancho” was published in a full edition in 1783, describes Sancho as an African man whose literary works should be read as a literary effort to “combat” the “harsh definition,” “vulgar prejudice and popular insult” against his “unhappy race” (52). The “harsh definition,” “vulgar prejudice and popular insult” Jekyll refers to here are all consequences of a belief I have earlier defined as Africanness. This belief, for instance, is the ideology behind racist names like “Negurs” (128). Sancho speaks of prejudice as an inhumane phenomenon, one which is unchristian at the very least. On several occasions in Letters , Sancho opens the “window in his breast that the world might see his heart” (98). For instance, he tells popular Anglican minister and prolific author, William Dodd, about “a noble act of policy, founded on true humanity, to stimulate the endeavours of every individual towards acts of benevolence, and brotherly regard for each other. Actuated by zeal to my prince, and love to my country” (167). In this statement, Sancho maintains true humanity is racially unbiased, and should be the driving principle of every individual, one that should equally influence patriotism. True humanity, to Sancho, is the one that does not discriminate between individuals. This point is similar to the one he discusses with banker John Spink. In his letter to Spink dated June 6, 1780, and detailing his account of the Gordon Riots, Sancho says: “I am forced to own, that I am for a universal toleration. Let us convert by our example, and conquer by our meekness and brotherly love!” (272). 58 | Banjo Olaleye
Sancho’s statement here demonstrates a desire to see segregation abolished, a desire that can only be achieved when people practice Christian teachings on meekness and brotherly love. While the “toleration” Sancho mentions here refers to religious toleration for British Catholics on the occasion of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots, it is however, not unlikely for Sancho to have appropriated “tolerance” as the answer to all forms of prejudices (religious, racial, etc.). As a solution to racial prejudice, the universal toleration Sancho advocates will be a social system that will see people of all races live peacefully with each other in mutual respect. In another instance, he tells the ex-slave Julius Soubise, “tread as cautiously as the strictest rectitude can guide ye—yet must you suffer for this— but armed with truth—honesty—and conscious integrity—you will be sure of the plaudit and countenance of the good” (98). His advice to Soubise here reveals his belief in Christian virtues as the force of true humanity. Truth, honesty and conscious integrity are the Christian virtues Sancho believes will make Soubise a man of honour. For Mrs. H.—a woman Carretta believes might be Mrs. Howard, who was Sancho’s fellow servant while at the Montagu’s household—the Christian virtue that makes her an honoured woman to Sancho is kindness. Sancho tells Howard that “You have a pleasure in doing acts of kindness—I wish from my soul that your example was more generally imitated” (170). From the letter, though without specifics, we know that Howard is being thanked “for repeated favors” to Sancho (170). Sancho is thus extolling the Christian virtue of kindness Howard exhibits through these acts of favour—a virtue he suggests many lack in Britain, hence his wish that Howard’s kindness be “more generally imitated” (170). Elsewhere, he tells Jack Wingrave, the son of Sancho's friend John Wingrave, the London bookbinder and bookseller: Make human nature thy study—wherever thou residest—whatever the religion—or the complexion—study their hearts.—Simplicity, kindness, and charity be thy guide—with these even Savages will respect you—and God will bless you! (188) The Christian virtues Sancho prescribes to Jack Wingrave are simplicity, kindness, and charity. These are the virtues he believes will help him appreciate people better—especially black people, about whom Jack Wingrave has written disparaging comments. Sancho’s belief is that an individual who strictly adheres to Christian values will not only be considered honourable in the society but will also be a source of “inspir[ation]” and “strength” (98) for others in the society to do the same. Practising these Christian values will stop people from performing acts of prejudice against blacks, and encourage them to have respect for every individual, irrespective of race. In this effort to dismantle prejudice, Sancho sets in motion a mission to recast Africanness. Sancho appropriates verses of the Bible to reinforce his message on the equality of all races. As an evidence of the equality of all races, Sancho, with his allusion to the biblical creation story in Genesis 2, presents Adam as the progenitor of all human beings. Sancho, here, appropriates this biblical account to explain that “the whole family of Adam” includes “all the race of man” (165), and that “Heaven [is] big enough” for all “to see and mix” “in bliss hereafter” (165). Sancho also alludes to the biblical parable in Luke 10:30-37, when he compares the “titled” men in his society to “the Priests and the Levites in sacred writ, [who] passed by—not one Recasting Africanness | 59 good Samaritan amongst them” (166). In the Bible , Jesus used this parable to condemn the discriminatory attitude of Priests and Levites towards others. These people consider themselves holier and, therefore, better than the rest, but in a simple test of compassion, they failed. They failed to help a dying man, leaving him by the road side as they walked past him. Sancho seems to be drawing a parallel between the condemned discriminatory acts of the Priests and Levites, and the racial discrimination of “titled” people in his society—that is, those with wealth and power, an example of which could be “member of each house of parliament” (165). Like the Priests and Levites, these “titled” people, who are supposed to be good Christians, have also failed to have compassion for blacks. Their lack of compassion is instantiated in the “horrid wickedness of the traffic [slavery]” and their “unchristian and most diabolical usage of” blacks (165). By appropriating biblical allusions, Sancho is engaged in redefining blacks as human beings of moral and intellectual sensibilities who are as equally descendants of Adam as whites. What is more, the letters and notes of some of Sancho’s readers in the eighteenth century testify to the influence of Sancho’s words in recasting Africanness. One man that got the crux of Sancho’s message is Edmund Rack. Rack decided to seek Sancho’s permission to publish some of his letters “in a collection of Letters of Friendship ” (335) “on account of the humanity and strong good sense they contain” (335) . Rack writes to Sancho: My worthy though unknown friend, Nothwithstanding we have not any personal knowledge of each other, yet I flatter myself thou wilt excuse this address from one who equally loves and reveres a virtuous character, in whatever name, society, or class of men it is found, without distinction. I am fully persuaded that the great God, who made all the nations that dwell upon earth, regards the natives of Africa with equal complacence as those of this or any other country; and that the rewards annexed to virtue will accompany it in all ages and nations, either in this life, or in a future happier world which is to come. (335) Furthermore, in this letter, Rack tells Sancho that there is nothing in them [the letters] that can do thee the least discredit: on the contrary, the sentiments they contain do thee great honour, and, if published, may convince some proud Europeans, that the noblest gifts of God, those of the mind, are not confined to any nation or people, but extended to the scorching deserts [uninhabited wilderness, not necessarily dry] of Guinea, as well as the temperate and propitious climes in which we are favoured to dwell. (335) From this, it is evident that Rack fully understands Sancho’s mission to recast Africanness in the minds of “proud Europeans” (335). Rack’s concluding paragraph summarises Sancho’s objective succinctly: “Mercy knows no distinction of colour; nor will the God of mercy make any at the last day” (335). From this excerpt, it is evident Rack understands Sancho’s message on a number of things: the equality of all races, his celebration of personal Christian virtues, his position on the need for the improvement of each individual’s mind, and the misconception that moral and intellectual abilities are exclusive to whites. Rack, noting the 60 | Banjo Olaleye possible role publishing Sancho’s letters could play in combating racism in eighteenth century Europe, decides to publish these letters in order to convince “proud Europeans” that blacks also possess moral and intellectual abilities, and that some Europeans’ belief to the contrary is misguided. Perhaps, one of the most revealing comments on Sancho’s stand against racial discrimination can be deduced from the note of Sancho’s friend, William Stevenson. Stevenson, a printer, bookseller, and banker in Norwich, gives us an instance of his experience with Sancho: I have often witnessed his patient forbearance, when the passing vulgar have given vent to their prejudices against his ebon complexion, his African features, and his corpulent person. One instance, in particular, of his manly resentment, when his feelings were hurt by a person of superior appearance, recalls itself so forcibly to my mind that I cannot forbear mentioning it: We were walking through Spring-gardens-passage [near Charing Cross], when, a small distance from before us, a young Fashionable said to his companion, loud enough to be heard, “Smoke Othello!” This did not escape my Friend Sancho; who, immediately placing himself across the path, before him, exclaimed with a thundering voice, and a countenance which awed the delinquent, “Aye, Sir, such Othellos you meet with but once in a century,” clapping his hand upon his goodly round paunch. “Such Iagos as you, we meet with in every dirty passage. Proceed, Sir!” (359) In this excerpt, the man’s inability to separate the colour of Sancho’s skin from the quality of his person is just one of the reasons Sancho calls him “Iago” (359). Iago, the main antagonist in William Shakespeare’s Othello , shares many character traits with the “vulgar” and “illiberal” people Sancho detests. For instance, the manipulative tendencies of Iago can be compared to those of the “English navigators” who give the “petty Kings” of Africa “liquors […]—and powder—and bad fire-arms—to furnish them with the hellish means of killing and kidnapping” Africans during the “abominable traffic for slaves” (188). Iago’s manipulation is also analogous to the attitudes of the “titled” (166) men Sancho writes about in his letter to Fisher. Sancho’s immediate response to this unnamed man, beyond showing his antipathy for racial discrimination, demonstrates his knowledge of Shakespeare—an evidence to the intellectual abilities of a black man. The manner of his response to this man also confounds Africanness—that is, the common white notion that blacks are naturally unrefined. The career of this black Christian writer and his Letters can be regarded as the origin of blacks’ literary involvement in anti-racism discourse. Apart from being the first black man to write against slavery in Britain, and the first black man to vote in a British election, by writing Letters, Sancho also opened up the possibility of blacks writing about oppression and abusive behaviour towards them. Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano, for example, soon became famous black Abolitionist writers for their works detailing their experiences as slaves, and condemning slavery. Though many Abolitionists in eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century Britain did not regard blacks as equal to whites, they did in general believe in freedom and often even equality of treatment for all people. The equality of all races is, still today, central to the message of all anti-racist Recasting Africanness | 61 movements the world over. Letters can thus be regarded as the first reorientation manual of Africanness by an African that demonstrates the education, Christianity, morality, and observations of his own life. In refuting the notion that intelligence is determined by race, upholding the need for self-improvement of every man in every race, and as illustrated through Sancho’s existence as an African man of letters, Sancho’s Letters recasts the prejudices facing eighteenth-century blacks in Britain.
Works Cited Carey, Brycchan. “‘The Hellish Means of Killing and Kidnapping’: Ignatius Sancho and the Campaign against the ‘Abominable Traffic for Slaves.’” Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and Its Colonies, 1760-1838 . Edited by Brycchan Carey, Markaman Ellis, and Sarah Salih, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Carretta, Vincent. “Three West Indian Writers of the 1780s Revisited and Revised.” Research in African Literature , vol. 29, no. 4, 1998, pp. 73-87. Ellis, Markman. “Ignatius Sancho’s Letters: Sentimental Libertinism and the Politics of Form.” Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic , Edited by Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould, UP of Kentucky, 2001, pp. 199- 217. Griffiths, Ralph, and G. E Griffiths. The Monthly Review, Or, Literary Journal. vol. 68 , 1783 . Jekyll, Joseph. “The Life of Ignatius Sancho.” Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African , Nichols, 1782. Sancho, Ignatius. The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. Edited by Vincent Carretta, Broadview Editions, 2015. Shakespeare, William. Othello . Penguin, 2005. The Bible . Authorized King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998.
Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse Anakronistik Söylemin Sınırı ve Merkezi Olarak Maduniyet
Patrick Matthew Farr Independent Researcher, USA
Abstract Subalternity is a concept that has taken on many different meanings across multiple schools of thought. Beginning with Gramsci, subalternity described the unique position of rural workers as powerless and problematic to the Marxist dialectic. Following the English translation of Gramsci, the Subaltern Studies group extended the position of the subaltern into the post-colonial heterogeneity of rural space. Within this context, through Gayatri Spivak’s concept of the subaltern as rural post- colonial woman, subalternity becomes a condition of speechlessness. From Spivak’s reworking of subalternity, US third world feminism has developed a theory of difference and a mode of resistance. Meanwhile, Gramsci scholars have criticized these transformations of Gramsci’s concept of subalternity as anachronistic. They contend that each of the appropriations from Gramsci have further obscured Gramsci’s concept of subalternity producing a theory far from that envisioned by Gramsci. However, as specified by Gramsci, faithful readings and applications of outdated concepts becomes an “anachronism in one’s own time” (Gramsci, Selections , 628). Thus, while the Subaltern Studies group, Spivak and US third world feminism have resignified Gramsci’s subalternity from the rural south of Italian agricultural workers to the voicelessness of the post-colonial woman, their resignifications of subalternity are a development of theory that transcends the texts of Gramsci. This paper argues that Spivak’s and US third world feminism’s revision of subalternity avoids the Gramscian anachronism while developing a theory of both the state of subalternity and the escape of subalternity on “the long road toward hegemony” (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason , 310). Keywords: Subalternity, anachronism, Spivak, Gramsci, voicelessness, feminism.
Öz Maduniyet ya da alt-sınıfa ait olma farklı ekollerde birçok farklı anlamda kullanıla gelen bir kavramdır. Gramsci ile başlayan maduniyet kavramı, Marx’ın burjuva ve proletarya diyalektiğinde taşralı işçilerin güçsüz ve problematik durumunu tanımlamak için kullanılmıştır. Gramsci’nin İngilizceye çevirilerinin ardından Subaltern Studies Group olarak bilinen çalışma grubu, madunluk kavramını koloni- sonrası dönemde bir zamanlar sömürgeciliğe uğramış ezilmiş toplumları tanımlamak için kullanmıştır. Spivak’ın taşralı, koloni-sonrası kadınları da madun olarak tanımlamasıyla, maduniyet bir suskunluk durumunu tanımlar hale gelmiştir. Spivak’ın terimi bu şekilde tanımlamasının ardından Amerika’da 3. dünya feminizmi bir tür direniş modeli geliştirmiştir. Gramsci ekolüne dahil olanlar maduniyet teriminin anlam değiştirerek kullanımını anakroniktik bulmaktadır. Anlamca bu değişimlerin her biri maduniyet kavramının daha da muğlak hale gelmesine yol açmış ve Gramsci’nin ilk tanımladığı şekilden uzaklaştırmıştır. Ancak Gramsci’nin de söylediği gibi güncelliğini yitirmiş kavramların aslına sadık okumaları ve uygulamaları “kendi zamanında bir anakronizm” oluşmasına yol açar (Gramsci,
CUJHSS , June 2019; 13/1: 62-78 © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara Submitted: May 22, 2019; Accepted: June 28, 2019 ORCID#: 0000-0002-9059-9381; [email protected] Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse | 63
Selections , 628). Bu sebeple, Subaltern Studies Group, Spivak ve Amerikan 3. Dünya feminizmiyle Gramsci’nin madunluk kavramı İtalyan tarım işçilerinden uzaklaşarak koloni sonrası kadınların sessizliğinde yeniden tanımlanırken, bu yeni maduniyet tanımları Gramsci’nin metinlerini aşan bir teorinin gelişimini beraberinde getirmiştir. Bu çalışma, Spivak ve Amerikan 3. Dünya feminizmiyle değişen maduniyet, hem bir durum “hem de hegemonyaya giden uzun yoldan” (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason, 310) bir kaçış olarak kuramsallaşırken, Gramsci’nin anakronizminden de uzak kalabilmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Maduniyet, anakronizm, Spivak, Gramsci, sessizleştirme, feminizm .
Introduction The word ‘anachronism’ come from Greek, ἀνά (ana) meaning against, and χρόνος (chronos) meaning time. This concept forms a central point within the history of ideas. Historian Quentin Skinner posits that one of the most fatal flaws in the interpretation of history and literature is the fallacy of anachronism (3-53). In this context, an anachronism is defined as interpreting events and writings through concepts of the present. Skinner states that “the distinction between what is necessary and what is the product merely of our own contingent arrangements, is to learn the key to self-awareness itself” (53). As such, to read a text and to interpret it accurately requires that the reader apply a contextual knowledge of the past and the meanings of concepts as they arise within this context. Reading in any other way, according to the project of historical knowledge, is to taint the meaning of the past with our knowledge from the present. Contrary to this central concept of interpretation, Antonio Gramsci asserts that such reading commits another type of anachronism. Gramsci asks, “How is it possible to consider the present, and quite specific present, with a mode of thought elaborated for a past which is often remote and superseded?” (Gramsci, Selections 628). The answer to this question strikes at the heart of the interpretive project. Gramsci asserts that “when someone does this, it means that he is a walking anachronism, a fossil, and not living in the modern world, or at the least that he is strangely composite… [and thus] social groups which in some ways express the most developed modernity, lag behind in other respects, given their social position, and are therefore incapable of complete historical autonomy” (Gramsci, Selections 628). Thus, through the faithful readings and applications of outdated concepts, a person becomes an “anachronism in one’s own time” (Gramsci, Selections 628). As such, while it is the task of interpretation to avoid historical anachronisms, the task of critical theory is to move beyond the concepts of the past through a critical analysis from the grounds of contemporary problematics. These two modes of reading form a paradox. On the one hand, within the history of thought, an interpretive anachronism is defined as the interpretation of texts through concepts that developed after that text was produced. On the other hand, within Gramsci’s critique, an anachronism is defined as the interpretation of contemporary problematics through concepts of the past. Both of these positions are centrally important to reading, interpretation, and theorizing. In the following 64 | Patrick Matthew Farr paper, I apply these two forms of anachronism as a paradox within contemporary discourses over the Gramscian concept of subalternity. In this endeavor, I take Gramsci’s work in two directions: first as a historically contextual position that prescribes a reading of Gramsci as an actor within his own time, and second as theorist whose concept of subalternity continues to develop. The first section begins with an exegesis of Gramsci’s concept of subalternity and of the revisions and misreadings of subalternity by the Subaltern Studies group. Between these two points of origin, the problematic begins with Subaltern Studies’ appropriation of subalternity from Gramsci, an appropriation that transformed the denotation of subalternity as a resignification of the Gramscian concept. Within Subaltern Studies’ appropriation, in Can the Subaltern Speak? Gayatri Spivak resignifies the Gramscian concept of the subaltern in order to create a new explanatory tool in the study of colonized women. Within the discourse of subaltern studies, authors such as Marcus Green represent one side of the dual discursive formation by arguing that this appropriation misinterprets Gramscian subalternity. I argue that Spivak has indeed committed an interpretative anachronism through her resignification of subalternity into a concrete particular representation of silence endured by rural women, but in resignifying this concept, she also avoids a second anachronism. The argument then turns to a discussion of the Gramscian concept of anachronism which I argue Spivak has avoided through her Derridean resignification. Through Spivak’s resignification of subalternity, she has provided a substantial theoretical framework to analyze the enforcement of silence and acts of resistance to such enforcement. Finally, the argument thus turns to describing the appropriation of the Spivakian subaltern by US feminism including Nancy Fraser, Lauren Berlant, Maylei Blackwell, and Chela Sandoval. In her later writings such as Who Claims Alterity and A Critique of Postcolonial Reason , she argues that subalternity denotes only the colonized peasant. In her denotation of subalternity, there is no metropolitan subaltern and thus, she argues, the US feminist appropriation of subalternity appears as an interpretive anachronism of the Spivakian subaltern. But if employing the Gramscian anachronism holds true as a defense of Spivak against Gramscian scholars, so too should this concept hold true for some US feminists against Spivak, namely US third world feminism. While I agree with some of Spivak’s criticisms of US feminism, I argue that in the case of US third world feminism further resignifications of subalternity do not necessarily result in an anachronism that invalidates the appropriation, but rather have the potential to further elaborate a dual descriptive of the state of subalternity and paths leading down what Spivak calls “the long road toward hegemony” (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason 310). Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse | 65
What is Subalternity? The concept of the subaltern originates in the work of Antonio Gramsci’s “Notes on Italian History,” first published in English by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith in 1971. The publication of this translation is an important piece of this story, for Hoare and Nowell-Smith’s translation, the development of Subaltern Studies moved toward a revitalized analysis of the third world. Although it is only a selection of “the Prison Notebooks,” it has been used as the standard resource for Gramsci studies in English. Yet there is a marked difference in the conceptualization and denotation of subalternity between Antonio Gramsci and Gayatri Spivak. Thus in order to provide an accurate account of the subaltern, especially Spivak’s restriction of subalternity to a particular group within the wider discourse, it is first necessary to locate the multiple significations behind the term which are amongst the most “slippery” meanings of contemporary political discourses (Louai 4-8). These significations move from Gramsci to Guha, and finally to Spivak whose resignification of the subaltern takes on the greatest importance in contemporary subaltern studies. In Hoare and Nowell-Smith’s translation of Notes on Italian History , Gramsci defines the subaltern in relation to hegemony as the class constituting those who are excluded from political participation thereby locating them in a position where they do not have access to the social and cultural institutions of the state and civil society (Gramsci 191-312). Hoare and Nowell-Smith explain in their introduction that Gramsci’s use of subaltern is undifferentiated from his use of subordinated classes, and hence the subaltern represent a non-hegemonic grouping within society whose social positions can be described as subordinate to the hegemonic (Hoare and Nowell-Smith 20). This definition shall prove problematic, but it shall also prove to be the efficient cause of Subaltern Studies. These subaltern classes are categorized within the Notes on Italian History in order to formulate a future research constituting what Gramsci enumerates as a six-part program of historical study of: 1. the objective formation of the subaltern social groups, by the developments and transformations occurring in the sphere of economic production; their quantitative diffusion and their origins in pre-existing social groups, whose mentality, ideology and aims they conserve for a time; 2. their active or passive affiliation to the dominant political formations, their attempts to influence the programs of these formations in order to press claims of their own, and the consequences of these attempts in determining processes of decomposition, renovation or neo-formation; 3. the birth of new parties of the dominant groups, intended to conserve the assent of the subaltern groups and to maintain control over them; 4. the formations which the subaltern groups themselves produce, in order to press claims of a limited and partial character; 5. those new formations which assert the autonomy of the subaltern groups, but within the old framework; 6. those formations which assert the integral autonomy (Gramsci, Selections 202-203). 66 | Patrick Matthew Farr
Central to the above research program is the study of not only the definitive conditions that locate a group as subaltern, but also the relationship of the subordinated group to a hegemonic ideological structure and the historical context in which a subaltern rises from subordination to elite status within a hegemonic order (Gramsci, Selections 202-203). As such, subalternity is always historically determined by the context of hegemonic arrangements which are never static in a Marxist historical narrative, but always remain in flux. Hence according to Hoare and Nowell-Smith’s “Selections,” the development of new hegemonic elites would appear to signify the rise of formerly unrepresented groups within social arrangements thereby creating new positions for these groups within a social hierarchy. It is in this description of the subaltern history that the transformations from one social ordering to the next are explicated as a struggle between dominant and subordinate groups. Yet even in times of struggle and social transformation, “subaltern groups are always subject to the activity of ruling groups,” for only “permanent victory breaks their subordination, and that not immediately” (Gramsci, Selections 207). After the publication of “Selections,” Gramsci’s theoretical concepts began influencing the study of culture and ideology across the English-speaking world. Ranajit Guha, one of the foremost theorists of this new wave of Gramscian theory, reinterpreted the Gramscian concept to explain the marginality that mobilized the disparate revolutionary movements fighting British rule within colonial India (Guha 1-17; Guha and Spivak 35-87). Guha, whose work became a key moment toward the development of Subaltern Studies, coedited with Spivak the first book on the subalternity in 1988, Selected Subaltern Studies . In the preface to the section on Methodology, Guha explains that the term ‘subaltern’ is used by Subaltern Studies “as a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender and office or in any other way” (Guha and Spivak 35-36). Yet while the term is used to denote this subordination and failure as a Gramscian subaltern, it is doubted by Guha that “the range of contributions to [Selected Subaltern Studies] may even remotely match the six-point project envisioned by Antonio Gramsci” (Guha and Spivak 35). Nevertheless, this is not a weakness, but rather a call to future generations of scholars to give treatment to the subaltern. In his chapter, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” Guha goes on to explain that according to the popular historiography of South Asian studies, the object of inquiry has been centered on a discourse between the colonizing elite and the nationalist elite, but between these two research programs, the “politics of the people” has disappeared in the margins of the discourse (Guha and Spivak 37-40). For Guha, the people represent the subaltern whose subordination restricts their social mobility and political voice through marginalization, and although the people have risen at times within India, the “politics of the people” have always served the interests of the elite in the end. The constitution of the elite, whether it is colonialist or bourgeois nationalist, demarcates a “structural dichotomy” that marginalizes the subaltern from the dominant group (Guha and Spivak 41-42). The structural dichotomy represents a failure on the part of the emancipatory force. Hence the study of subalternity within South Asia and around the postcolonial world requires the study of a Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse | 67 failure “which constitutes the central problematic of the historiography of [the colonial]” (Guha and Spivak 43). It is in this atmosphere that Spivak’s resignification pressed Subaltern Studies to demarcate the boundaries between the subordination of Guha’s “people” and the subaltern as woman. It was during this period of development that Spivak began working within the Subaltern Studies Group, yet while she eagerly appropriated the Gramscian term with the rest of the group, she simultaneously rejected the foundational premises of subalternity laid down by both Gramsci and Guha (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason 198-310). Spivak’s first major contribution to the discourse of subalternity, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (271- 313), poses an anti-essentialist critique of Subaltern Studies that results in a proposal for mere strategic essentialism. Extending her argument on subalternity, Spivak in A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (198-310) delineates her contention with Guha whose project, she claims, “could hardly be more essentialist and taxonomic” (271). She argues that although his definition of subalternity is grounded in the “identity-in-differential” subordination of “the people” (171), it requires a formulation of the subaltern people as constituting a “social being” that is essentially different than the dominant group (172). Although Spivak sees value in their essentialism as a possible strategy in eliminating subalternity, Subaltern Studies Group seems not efficient in providing further solutions to the discussion. Hence, Spivak’s answer to “Can the subaltern speak?”— a question she poses the Subaltern Studies Group— is while Guha’s subaltern can, the subaltern as woman cannot (Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 311-313). Spivak locates her resignification of the subaltern within the grammatalogical margins of the discourse between British and Hindi rights over the Indian practice of Sati requiring widows to commit a suicidal self-immolation (Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 300-313; Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason 289-303). These self-immolating widow/martyr women were the object of discourse between Indian men who claimed the right to continue the practice and British men who eventually placed a prohibition against the practice; women, in that context, were denied subjectivity and the voice to declare their claims over the matter (Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” 300-313; Spivak, A Critique of Post- Colonial Reason , 289-303). As such, these women could not speak for themselves and existed only within what Derrida referred to as the empty spaces at the margins of the historical narrative (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason 423- 431). From the above description of subalternity and Spivak’s adaptation of Gramsci’s subletarnity the denotation of the subaltern shifted from what appears to be a subordinated subject (proletarian) in Gramsci to a marginalized people in Guha and finally to the marginalized woman in Spivak. As such, the signification of subalternity appears to have evolved over time in an organic fashion. Nevertheless, in what follows this organic evolution of subalternity shall be problematized. Rather than as a simple evolution of subalternity, the shift in denotation from Gramsci to Spivak depends on a certain reading of Gramsci that has provided the proper circumstances of resignification, but the reading appropriated from Hoare and Nowell-Smith by Subaltern Studies is incomplete and based on an anachronistic interpretation of the Gramscian subaltern. The 68 | Patrick Matthew Farr following section shall outline this anachronism through a rereading of Gramsci that has become available since the publication of his multi volume Prison Notebooks that have become available in English. Still, although Subaltern Studies shall be deemed guilty of an interpretative anachronism, it is also argued in the following section that a Gramscian anachronism has been avoided through the resignification of subalternity. Below, I defend Spivak’s denotation as an effort to apply subalternity to the colonized woman and to critique the Western view of alterity.
Anachronisms Interpretive and Gramscian The concept subalternity of Subaltern Studies is compared to the original concept of the subaltern by Marcus Green. He argues that the original concept was subverted in part because the primary source material used by subaltern studies was taken from the abridged “Selections from the Prison Notebooks”. As explained above, for many years the Hoare and Nowell-Smith translation was the only primary source in English of Gramsci while Gramsci’s “Notebook 25,” titled “On the Margins of History: the History of Subaltern Social Groups,” was only partly translated (Green 1-2). Thus because Subaltern Studies began their project from an abridged work, their signification of subalternity was from faulty grounds leading to inaccuracy (Green 15-19). Stefano Selenu seconds Green’s criticism and argues that Gramsci himself was worried about such misinterpretations and misappropriations of his work (Selenu 102-109). Green argues that Gramsci’s “Notebook 25” gives the most complete picture of his subalternity, a picture that he argues does not accord well with the post-structuralist reading of Subaltern Studies (Green 2-3). This faulty reading is grounded in the foundational interpretive thesis of Subaltern Studies which is based on the assumption that Gramsci used the term subaltern in order to release his notebooks from the prison censors (Green 15-19). Spivak explains her interpretation of Gramsci’s term subaltern as a codeword for the proletariat used by Gramsci in order to evade the prison authorities. Spivak explains that “the imprisoned Antonio Gramsci used the word to stand for ‘proletarian’ to escape the prison censors. But the word soon cleared a space, as words will, and took on the task of analyzing what ‘proletarian’, produced by capital logic, could not cover” (Spivak, Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial , 324). Following Green’s reading of Spivak (17-19), I call this misinterpretive step the censorship thesis. As a misreading, this thesis provides Subaltern Studies with the premise leading first to their disregard of Gramsci’s theoretical interventions against orthodox Marxism and second to criticize Gramsci on the same level as Leninism. Green points out that Gramsci could not have equated the subaltern with the proletariat, for the words subaltern and proletariat are used together as distinct concepts in the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci, Notebook 3 para. 18; Gramsci, Notebook 25 para. 4; Gramsci, Notebook 7 para. 33). Hence the misreading of Gramsci’s subalternity causes Subaltern Studies to commit anachronism by equivocating the Gramscian subaltern with the proletariat and then arguing against the strawman of a Gramscian proletariat-as- subaltern,. As such, in its Spivakian formulation, the concept of subalternity moved away from both Guha and Gramsci: from Guha, through an anti- Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse | 69 essentialism as strategic essentialism, and from Gramsci, through a misinterpretation of proletariat-as-subaltern. Yet more importantly Spivak’s denotation of the term also shifts from a masculine subalternity to the subaltern as woman, a critical step in the development of subalternity as a concept. Nevertheless, the same reading that Green presents from “Notebook 25” can also be interpreted, with a close reading, from some of Gramsci’s earlier translated works . In “Some Aspects of the Southern Question” (Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings 28-50), the question of subordination is explained in specific terms of metropolitan and rural political consciousnesses. Gramsci further specifies the subaltern’s marginality is distinct from the proletariat’s marginality because of the locatedness of the Italian subaltern within the southern Italian rural peasantry. Because the hegemonic construction of ideology is developed independent of the peasants’ common experience, the peasants are forced into holding a defensive rather than offensive posture. Thus the Weltanschauung of the peasants and the struggles of which they become a part are created for them by a hegemonic structuring of knowledge that preserves the structure of the industrial center’s hegemonic dominance over the subordinated rurality of peasant life. Furthermore, Gramsci explains that even when the peasants have rebelled, the rebellion has played into the hands of the elite groups through the hegemony of a metropolitan reactionary consciousness that has pitted the subaltern peasantry against the revolutionary socialist. As with the previous discussion of Gramscian subalternity, the elite seizes the subaltern political momentum in order to put to rest the concerns and demands of the subordinated. Thus it is only through the peasants’ seizure of agency within a struggle for hegemony that the division between the dominant industrial center and the subordinated rural margins can become united against the hegemony of the state and civil society. Acknowledging the significance of Spivak’s being interpreted by different methodological perspectives, Cosimo Zeene highlights that only focusing on the Gramscian concept cannot fully capture the importance of Spivak’s resignification of the subaltern (Zene 83-99). Zene argues that instead of reintroducing a purely Gramscian concept, Spivak has reconceptualized subalternity by sketching a Foucault-Derrida positional chasm within postcolonial discourse identifying her own theoretical and physical location as an Indian and Marxian intellectual in its employment of a Derridean grammatology from a Foucaultian/Deleuzian Orientalism. He points out that it was never the intention of Spivak to provide an unbiased interpretation of the Gramscian subaltern, for the purpose of subalternity elaborated in Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is not to represent a Gramscian approach to subalternity, but rather provide a resignification that merely finds its point of origin in Gramsci. As such, according to my argument thus far, Zene’s contention with Green may be located in the very nature of anachronism. Therefore if the concept of the subaltern as used by Spivak is representative of a conceptual growth within postcolonial theory and not as a rigid Gramscian problematic, then Spivak’s anachronism is merely interpretive. Dipesh Chakrabarty explains Guha’s resignification of subalternity similarly as no mere anachronism in his own time (Chakrabarty 9-27). Hence it is through the Derridean grammatology that Spivak marks herself as antianachronistic, through reading the empty places in Gramsci. Furthermore and 70 | Patrick Matthew Farr ironically her antianachronism can be explained through the Gramscian concept of anachronism. Gramsci explains his concept of anachronism as an analysis of the problematics of the past to the present as if the problematics of the present may be answered from the past (Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings 59; Gramsci, Selections 628). In “Notebook 1,” Gramsci argues that when a person commits to those problematics of the past, that person is an “ anachronism in one’s own time” (Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings 59; Gramsci, Selections 628). Gramsci writes in “Note II” of “The Study of Philosophy:” Philosophy cannot be separated from the history of philosophy, nor can culture from the history of culture. In the most immediate and relevant sense, one cannot be a philosopher, by which I mean have a critical and coherent conception of the world, without having a consciousness of its historicity, of the phase of development which it represents and of the fact that it contradicts other conceptions or elements of other conceptions. One’s conception of the world is a response to certain specific problems posed by reality, which are quite specific and “original” in their immediate relevance. How is it possible to consider the present, and quite specific present, with a mode of thought elaborated for a past which is often remote and superseded? When someone does this, it means that he is a walking anachronism, a fossil, and not living in the modern world, or at the least that he is strangely composite. And it is in fact the case that social groups which in some ways express the most developed modernity, lag behind in other respects, given their social position, and are therefore incapable of complete historical autonomy (Gramsci, Selections 628). Spivak, to the contrary of Gramsci’s interpreters such as Green and Selenu whose rigid hermeneutic forces them back into the text, has looked into the subalternity of her own postcolonial historical and geographical context to find answers for a contemporary localized problematic that cannot be solved through an anachronistic gaze into 1920s-30s Italy. Therefore on one level Green is correct that the interpretation of the Gramscian subaltern is improperly represented in Subaltern Studies. And yet, as a critique of modernity, Spivak’s resignification of subalternity represents a movement away from earlier Subaltern Studies. Accordingly, Spivak’s resignification of subaltern is not guilty of the Gramscian anachronism. Rather, the resignification of subalternity represents a living critique that acts as a Kuhnian revolution, or paradigm shift, from the Gramscian concept to the Spivakian resignification (Chakrabarty 17). As a Copernican Revolution within Marxist discourse, Spivak’s subalternity may thus be described as a paradigmatic shift within the study of the subaltern from the Marxism of Gramsci to Spivak’s own strand of Marxian post-structuralism where the older theory has, during the course of the past twenty years, been replaced by the new instruments of the postcolonial subaltern project. From this discussion two distinct concepts of anachronism arise which according to the situational context of the anachronism remain central to critical theory. The first concept, as problematized above, is found in textual interpretation as the elaboration of a historically situated idea from concepts which were not available at the time of composition. On the one hand, interpretive form of anachronism remains important to the interpretive methodology within the history of ideas. On Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse | 71 the other hand, it is nonetheless useless in terms of the evaluation of contemporary problematics. Thus guilty of the Gramscian anachronism, the faithful interpreters of Gramsci becomes a reintroduction of historically situated problematics into present contexts as if these problematics were situated amongst the living. Meanwhile, the interpretive efforts of Subaltern Studies have developed a “Postcolonial Gramsci” (Srivastava and Bhattacharya 1-16) that goes beyond the initial signification of subaltern. On the one hand, this development provides a means to evaluate contemporary problematics. On the other hand, the development of a “Postcolonial Gramsci” is not faithful reading of Gramsci’s ideas. Thus, guilty of a misinterpretation, Subaltern Studies has resulted in an anachronistic misappropriation of Gramsci’s work through an interpretive failure. And yet, Subaltern Studies has avoided the critical failure of the Gramscian anachronism by resignifying subalternity into a concept that describes the postcolonial present. Regardless of whether or not Subaltern Studies has failed to accurately interpret Gramsci, the influence of Spivak’s concept of the subaltern in the contemporary dialogue over marginalization and resistance has had much further reaching effects than Gramsci’s, for in contradistinction to the Gramscian concept of the subaltern which in its rigidity has been mainly studied in academia, the concept elaborated by Spivak has proven to be a powerful explanatory tool in the work of contemporary critical theory to explicate the conditions of resistance within a postcolonial context. Thus as an explication of both marginalization and resistance, Spivak claims that “the subaltern thinks that either to have no access to lines of mobility is normal… or they want to get the hell out of subalternity” (Spivak, Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 65-66). The drastic shift in the denotation of the subaltern raises the problem of anachronism in the interpretation of the Marxian discourse. Beginning with Guha’s conceptual appropriation of subalternity from the Italian historical condition in Gramsci’s writings to explicate the situation of peasants in postcolonial India, the term moves out of its original temporal and geographical context. Spivak then further resituates the term from the initial anachronistic usage of subalternity by the Subaltern Studies group, and thus makes the anachronism more explicit by reintroducing the subaltern as constituting the lowest strata of woman whose silence within the postcolonial world defines her ontology.
Appropriation, Misinterpretation and the Western Subaltern From Spivak’s interpretation of subalternity blooms a powerful critique of both western feminism and the postcolonial world which has been taken up like a battle-cry by western feminists who wish to challenge the old paradigm of feminist thought. These US feminists who have appropriated the Spivakian subaltern can be put into two separate camps. The first of these groups, Nancy Fraser, Lauren Berlant, and Maylei Blackwell, represent a theoretical strand that interprets Spivak’s subalternity as a methodology of resistance, while the second one, US third world feminism, represents a theoretical strand that interprets subalternity as a description of the subaltern state while simultaneously retaining a methodology of resistance. Although Spivak argues that both of these strands of feminist thought have misinterpreted her resignification of subalternity, the 72 | Patrick Matthew Farr subalternity proposed through US third world feminism is in line with Spivak’s resignification. The first group of US feminists, including Fraser, Berlant and Blackwell, blur the lines between subalternity as a state and the movement from subalternity as a form of resistance. Fraser transforms Spivak’s subalternity from postcolonial state to oppositional counterpublics (Fraser 67-71). According to Fraser, these couterpublics mobilize the Western subaltern in order to move grievances from the private sphere into the public sphere (Fraser 67-71). Lauren Berlant implements a Spivakian subaltern in her idea of Diva Citizenship which explains a resistance practice of the subaltern as a coup within the public sphere where the subaltern does not belong (Berlant 9, 13 27, 36, 221-222). And Maylei Blackwell uses Spivak’s concept as a theoretical model for oral history as auto ethnography by reinterpreting the record spinning D.J. and listener-become-speaker practice of “represent’n” (i.e. “This is Claudia represent’n El Monte!”) as the selflocation and selfactivation of a subaltern silent voice within urban radio broadcasting (Blackwell 41-42). While these authors represent disparate strands within cultural and critical theory, they too are unified through a collective interest in the voice of the subaltern. As such, Fraser, Berlant and Blackwell describe a state outside of or a movement from voicelessness as resistance. Fraser’s counter- publics, Berlant’s Diva Citizenship and Blackwell’s represent’n require that the subject to seize the power to speak and act. This proves problematic to Spivak’s project. In the second group of US feminists, theorists such as Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, and Chela Sandoval describe subalternity and third worldism through both the circumstances and the resistance to the state of subalternity. Chela Sandoval explains that US feminists can be grouped into “what Gayatri Spivak characterizes as a hegemonic feminist theory’ on the one side and what [Chela Sandoval names] ‘US third world feminism’” on the other (Sandoval 1). Thus, US third world feminism is a theoretical constellation that began with women of color feminism as a critique of white dominated radical feminist spaces (Sandoval 4-5). The group which coined the term, the US Third World Women’s Alliance, developed a concept of third worldism existing within the borders of the US linking “differences of culture, race, and ethnicity to the fight against common exploitation by capitalism, stereotypes, and drug and alcohol abuse in communities of color” (Springer 49). Taking its name from the US Third World Women’s Alliance, US third world feminism is a diverse constellation of women of color theorists working within the liminality between womanhood, color, language, ethnicity and class. Within this liminal space, resistance becomes focused across multiple oppressions thereby explicating both state of subalternity while simultaneously remaining focused on the process of identification. Unlike the first group of US feminists, US third world feminism remains in line with Spivak’s description of the state of subalternity while simultaneously mapping the path out of subalternity. US third world feminism has reconceptualized subalternity as an anti-anachronistic subalternity like Spivak’s. Nevertheless, Spivak rejects the analysis of beth of these groups of US feminist appropriations. Spivak claims that the concept of subalternity is misinterpreted by the first world feminist through a character of resistance to the hegemonic Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse | 73 cultural structure of the west, and as such, these appropriation of subalternity is markedly different between the “third world” and the “metropolitan” (Spivak, An Aesthetic Education 57-72). Spivak argues in conversation with Suzana Milevska that the appropriation of subalternity as an identitarian framework for academic “subaltern normality” is “meretricious and criminally wrong” (Spivak, Conversations 66). Here, and in her most recent book, “An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization” (57-72), Spivak chides the subaltern normal for appropriating subalternity as constituting a mere minority identity, for according to Spivak, in the identitarian politics of US feminism, the ontology of marginality is fallaciously equivocated with the ontology of difference (Spivak, Conversations 66- 7). In A Critique of Postcolonial Reason , Spivak explains this difference through Gramsci’s concept of hegemony: Simply by being postcolonial or the member of an ethnic minority, we are not “subaltern”. That word is reserved for the sheer heterogeneity of decolonized space. When a line of communication is established between a member of subaltern groups and circuits of citizenship or institutionality, the subaltern has been inserted into the long road toward hegemony. Unless we want to be romantic purists or primitivists about “preserving subalternity”—a contradiction in terms—this is absolutely to be desired (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason 310). Here, Spivak’s explication provides the pattern of subaltern movement from the heterogeneity of the decolonized space experienced by the rural third world woman toward the representation and voice of the metropolitan experienced as a shedding of subalternity. In this context, Spivak’s use of the phrase, “the long road toward hegemony” (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason 310) holds an important place within the discourse. As a Gramscian concept, hegemony signifies ideological dominance. This ideological dominance is significant of the control of knowledge by the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, but it is also central to mapping the process that the oppressed transform the world of ideas from the current state of ideological dominion. It is exactly this “long road toward hegemony” (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason 310) that Gramsci describes in the revolutionary process through which the proletariat struggles for an ideological hegemony against the bourgeois class. Through the shedding of subalternity, the subaltern subject acquires a partially emancipated subjectivity that has begun to build power. According to Spivak, this is clearly desirable. Hence, Spivak contends that there are no subalterns in academia because academia marks the locationality of the road toward hegemony, and hence because this road toward hegemony is the exit of subalternity, the academic has no recourse for claiming subalternity. The alterity of the third world requires the subaltern status of rural peoples’ otherness through speechlessness while the metropolitan alterity of minorities resides within a fixed locationality that provides the minority subject with escape from marginality via democratic political process. Thus, the key difficulty with these feminists is that the concept no longer describes the state of subalternity but only describes the process out of subalternity. Hence, any movement outside of voicelessness toward representation means a movement out of subalternity toward power: a subject who speaks is qualitatively different from the subject who cannot speak. 74 | Patrick Matthew Farr
Furthermore, while stating that the metropolitan cannot be considered subaltern, Spivak also notes that subalternity should not be romanticized but be actively dismantled through resistance. As such, Spivak’s assessment of the first camp of western feminists is correct. According to Spivak, what follows is that because the first world subject always has at her disposal the ability to make herself heard through the fissures of imperialism, and this is as much the case with the first world woman as it is with the resistance movement within the third world. Resistance signifies the beginnings of emancipation from subalternity. While the subaltern counter- politics described by Frasier, the coup within the public sphere of Berlant, and the “represent’n” of Blackwell all signify a movement out of subalternity and into citizenship, and while this is clearly a desirable goal, it is not representative of subalternity: under conditions of resistance, the subaltern subject has begun the road toward hegemony, and even the mere mobilization of the subaltern as a voter within a representative democracy is a sign of movement toward power (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason 309-310). However, these conditions do not always hold within the US, and thus the same critique does not hold for US third world feminism. Although not consistently and explicitly speaking in terms of the Spivakian subaltern, US third world feminism’s discussions meet two requirements of the Spivak’s subalternity which are the conditions of living as a US third world woman and of resisting this marginal status in order to break the silence. This characteristic supplies a theory of subalternity as a state while simultaneously demonstrating how establishing “a line of communication… between a member of subaltern groups and circuits of citizenship or institutionality… [inserts the subaltern] into the long road toward hegemony” (Spivak, A Critique of Post- Colonial Reason 310). From this conception of the US third world woman, Chela Sandoval describes the subalternity of the woman of color in terms their alterity to the whiteness of the hegemonic feminist woman (Sandoval 3). According to Sandoval, this is different than the identitarianism criticized by Spivak in that the third world locationality of US third world feminism is not geographical, but rather situational within and in-between the contexts of US citizenship and the identity/identification (Sandoval 1-2). Sandoval explains that there is a split within US feminism of “what Gayatri Spivak characterizes as a hegemonic feminist theory’ on the one side and what [Chela Sandoval names] ‘US third world feminism’” (Sandoval 1). As ontology located both epidermically on the bodies of women of color as difference and also systemically through access to representation as marginality, the concept of the US third world describes both subalternity and difference while simultaneously prescribing a roadmap toward hegemony (Sandoval 1-24). It is through her locationality that the US third world feminist is alienated from the universal feminist subject and creates an oppositional consciousness out of her alienation. Hence, the descriptive circumstances of the US third world woman’s subalternity find its representation within the alienation from which oppositional consciousness arises (Sandoval 10-17). It is not until the oppositional consciousness takes form that the woman of color becomes audible and visible. Yet while the oppositional consciousness necessarily signifies the road toward Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse | 75 hegemony in the denotation of the Spivakian subaltern, it also denotes the subaltern woman’s movement from subalternity to agency. In her book Talking Back , bell hooks explains a similar oppositionality through a back talking speech act that signifies US third world woman’s beginning the long road from subalternity to hegemony: Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech, of “talking back,” that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject—the liberated voice. (hooks 9) At the moment of talking back to power, subalternity is left via “the long road toward hegemony” (Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason 310). The post- subalternity of the US third world feminist in her resistance to hegemonic ideology seemingly contradicts claims to subalternity, but only through her resistance to hegemony that the subaltern woman begins to move towards hegemony. Thus in the description of identity and oppression provided by US third world feminism, there is a dual Spivakian purpose of both signifying the state of subalternity while simultaneously signifying the process through which subalternity is left behind on the long road toward hegemony. This “talking back” requires the resistance of the US third world woman to the silence that she faces, and thus the requirement of the descriptive circumstances of subalternity is met in her silence as well as the circumstances of resistance to her silence on the long road to hegemony. On the one hand, the US third world feminism describes the subalternity of US marginalities while on the other hand it describes the path away from subalternity by providing a methodology to resist oppression and domination. Where the first group of feminists provided only a descriptive of resistance in their resignification of subalternity and therefore limit the claims of Spivak’s subalternity, the US third world feminists provide that Spivak’s conditions are met of subalternity while also developing a mode of resisting that state. Thus, Spivak’s complaints that first world feminists have misappropriated subalternity are accurate under certain condition, the conditions which describe the resisting subject as subaltern, but in the case of US third world feminism the dual descriptive escapes these criticisms. Spivak’s resignification of subalternity is meant to describe a particular state experienced by women in rural decolonized space. Nevertheless, the circle that began between the interpretive anachronism and the Gramscian anachronism resurfaces in the dialogue between the US third world feminist and the Spivakian subaltern. There is no failure on the side of the US third world feminists, but rather only resignification.
Conclusion Analyzing the various camps of theorists working within the realm of the subaltern, the critical theorist must constantly move between these two forms of anachronism, inside, outside, and finally to the margins. The mistake constitutes an interpretive anachronism of Gramsci that divorces the concept from its 76 | Patrick Matthew Farr
Gramscian Marxist connotations. However this misinterpretation as anachronism constitutes a resignification that has proven to be more influential and powerful than Gramsci’s concept. Furthermore, through Gramsci’s concept of anachronism as a problematic contained in past discourse reintroduced as a contemporary problematic, Spivak reinscribes subalternity as anti-anachronism by moving beyond the Gramscian problematic of 1920s-30s Italy. In conclusion, while Spivak has resignified Gramsci’s subalternity from the rural south of Italian agricultural workers to the voicelessness of the post-colonial rural woman, Spivak’s resignification of subalternity is a development of theory that transcends the texts of Gramsci. In this way, Spivak has evaded the Gramscian anachronism by not falling into the trap of pure interpretation. Instead, while committing interpretive fallacies, she has created a mode of theorizing about the heterogeneity of post-colonial space that moves outside of the purely hermeneutic reading of the Gramscian text. Accordingly, the concept of subalternity is a living concept that continues to develop. However, as a concept, subalternity must provide a denotation of the subaltern, a subject who is without power and is below all others. As such, US feminists such as Nancy Fraser, Lauren Berlant, and Maylei Blackwell have misinterpreted the definition of subalternity. In this respect, Spivak’s criticism of US feminists is accurate. However, this is not the case with US third world feminists. And as Spivak evaded the Gramscian anachronism through her dynamic reapplications of subalternity, so too have US third world feminists evaded the Gramscian anachronism through a reapplication of the Spivakian subaltern. As a state of affairs and a condition of subjectivity, subalternity describes the state of voicelessness and powerlessness. Whether this state of affairs is in rural India or the inner cities of the US, subalternity exists wherever a subject finds themselves in a state of voicelessness and powerlessness. Here, subalternity breaks through the borders prescribed by Spivak to become a mode of theorizing the state of voicelessness while also charting the path toward hegemony. As such, from Gramsci’s original concept, Spivak and US third world feminism develop this conceptualization beyond Gramsci’s denotation to encompass a critical body of research that stretches the limits of theory and praxis. Together, Spivak and US third world feminism forms a collective body of theory that both describes the state of subalternity as voicelessness and powerlessness while also describing the movement out of subalternity through resistance and self-representation.
Works Cited Berlant, Lauren. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship . Duke University Press, 1997, 2005. Blackwell, Maylei. Chicana Power: Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement . University of Texas Press, 2011. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiography.” Nepantla: Views from South, vol. 1, no. 1, 2000, pp. 9-32. Subalternity as Margin and Center of Anachronistic Discourse | 77
Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Calhoun, Craig., MIT Press, 1992, pp. 56-80. Hoare, Quintin and Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. “Preface.” Selections from the Prison Notebooks . Translaeted and edited by Hoare, Quintin and Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, International Publishers, 1971. Gramsci, Antonio. “Notes on Italian History: History of the Subaltern Classes: Methodological Criteria.” Selections from the Prison Notebooks , Translated and edited by Hoare, Quintin and Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, International Publishers, 1971. Gramsci, Antonio. The Modern Prince and Other Writings . Translated and edited by Marks, Louis, International Publishers, 1957, 1987. Green, Marcus. “Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern.” Rethinking Marxism , vol. 14, no. 3, Fall 2002, pp. 1-23. Guha, Ranajit. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India . Duke University Press, 1983, 1999 Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri. Selected Subaltern Studies. Oxford University Press, 1988. hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. South End Press, 1989. Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970. Louai, El Habib. “Retracing the Concept of the Subaltern from Gramsci to Spivak: Historical Development and New Application.” African Journal of History and Culture. vol. 4, no. 1, January 2012. Sandoval, Chela. "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World." Genders , No. 10, Spring 1991, pp. 1-24. Selenu, Stefano. “In search of a postcolonial Gramsci: method, thought, and intellectuals.” Postcolonial Studies . vol. 16, no. 1, 2013, pp. 102-109. Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.” History and Theory , vol. 8, no. 1, 1969, pp. 3-53 Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Edited by Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, MacMillan, 1988. ——. “Who Claims Alterity?” Edited by Kruger, Barbara and Mariani, Phil Dia. Art Foundation Discussions in Contemporary Culture , no. 4, Bay Press, 1989 ——. An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization . Harvard University Press, 2012. ——. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason . Harvard University Press, 1999 ——. “The New Subaltern: A Silent Interview,” Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial. Edited by Chaturvedi, Vinayak, Verso, 2000. ——. Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak . Edited by Chakravorty, Swapan, Mileska, Suzana and Barlow, Tani E., Seagull Books, 2006. Springer, Kimberly. Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968- 1980 . Duke University Press, 2005. Srivastava, Neelam and Bhattacharya, Baidik, editors. The Postcolonial Gramsci. Routledge, 2012. 78 | Patrick Matthew Farr
Zene, Cosimo. “Self-Consciousness of the Dalits as “Subalterns”: Reflections on Gramsci in South Asia.” Rethinking Marxism , no. 23, 2011. Labels, Stigma Management and Social Identity Formation of a Mountain People in Central Panay, Philippines Etiketleme, Stigma Yönetimi ve Sosyal Kimlik Oluşturma: Filipinler’de Cenrtal Panay
Mary Acel D. German University of Makati, Philippines
Abstract Throughout history, mountain dwellers in the Philippines have been attributed with a range of pejorative labels that came to stereotype and spoil the identities of mountain people collectively, including the indigenous groups in the highlands of central Panay. This paper looks into the landscape of labels and names accorded to the people and the process foregrounding the role played by “outsiders” (i.e., colonial scholars, local anthropologists, and state agencies) in the construction of identities. Ethnohistory is employed to examine the people’s social identity formation—that complex and continuous dialogue of externally-driven label constructions and articulation of internally-ascribed constructs of identities. Local narratives revealed that social identity formation in this mountain community was borne out of the locals’ need to manage the stigma of past labeling and redress misrecognition. This paper hopes to contribute to the current discourse on the sociopolitical dimension of identity formation, assertion and recognition as well as to the pool of literature on the historical experience of the mountain people of the Philippines. Keywords: Identity formation, labels, stigma, banditry, Panay Island.
Öz Tarih boyunca, Filipin dağlarında yaşayanlara, özellikle Cantral Panay’ın tepelerinde yaşayan yerel halkın içinde olduğu dağ insanlarının tamamının kimliklerini tek tipleştirip bozacak birçok küçük düşürücü ifade atfedilmiştir. Bu çalışma, bu insanlara yapıştırılan yaftaların ve isimlerin incelenmesinden ve bu süreçte “dışarıdan gelenlerin” (örn. Sömürgeci akademisyenler, yerel antropolojistler ve devlet temsilcileri) bu kimlik oluşturma sürecinde oynadıkları rolleri ön plana çıkarır. Kişilerin sosyal kimlik oluşturmalarının incelenmesinde etnik tarihten faydalanılmıştır ve kişilerin daimi olarak dışarıdan gelen etiketleme ve kendi içlerinde oluşturdukları kimliklerin çatışması incelenmiştir. Yerel anlatılar, bu dağ topluluğunda sosyal kimlik oluşumunun, yerlilerin onlara atfedilen eski etiketlerin stigma’sını yönetme ve yanlış tanımlanmayı değiştirme isteğinden ortaya çıktığını göstermiştir. Bu çalışmada hedef, kimlik oluşumu, ifadesi ve tanınması ile ilgili sosyo-politik açıdan güncel söylemlere ve Filipinlerde yaşayan dağ insanlarının tarihsel deneyimini anlatan edebi eserlere katkıda bulunmaktır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Kimlik oluşumu, etiketleme, stigma, eşkıyalık, Panay Adası.
CUJHSS , June 2019; 13/1: 79-92 © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara Submitted: May 25, 2019; Accepted: June 23, 2019 ORCID#: 0000-0003-0524-4269; [email protected] 80 | Mary Acel D. German
Introduction Mountain dwellers in the Philippines are throughout history a misrecognized group. Spanish chroniclers who explored the archipelago in the 15th to the 19th century has described them as “barbarous race,” “uncivilized,” “warlike,” “brutal,” “primitive,” and “wild,” among others (Blair and Robertson 18:37-38; 40:45, 56). These early chronicles were followed in the 20th century by the works of John Foreman and other western anthropologists who classified inhabitants of the archipelago into anthropomorphic measurements and ocular inspection of the living population. They identified some highland groups called Negrillos or Negritos and considered them “of extremely low intellect” and “weak brained race” with the physical appearance that was “sickly” and “swarthy,” to the point of describing their women as “perhaps one of the least attractive objects of humanity” (Foreman 121-122). Other American scholars took an interest in the investigation of racial variations and occupied themselves with the tedious tasks of categorizing and classifying Philippine populations into distinct sort (Barrows 368-370; Worcester 791-875; Bean 413-466). Anthropologist H. O. Beyer traced the peopling of the Philippines through waves of migration and in doing so, corroborated the earlier notion that an “inferior population” were pushed to the interior hills when the succeeding groups of “more civilized” Malays came (Jocano 39). Compared with the coastal areas and town centers, the mountains were relatively spared from the blow of colonialism due to its remote location, however, the very fact the people run to the mountains to escape from colonial authorities made the mountain areas connected to the whole colonial experience; mountain dwellers were branded as “fugitives,” “outlaws,” and “bandits” by virtue of their refusal to integrate with the mainstream population (Foreman 120-128) and the story went on generating centuries of label-constructions, misrepresentation, and misrecognition. This study suggests that the history of misrecognition was not only an offshoot of colonial experience but as well caused by hegemonic impositions of the state and the academe. Along the line of what Taylor denotes as the “dialogical relation” of “inwardly derived” and “socially derived” identities (Taylor 34), this paper foregrounds how people respond to constructs of their identities by others, articulating local contexts and self-ascriptions in the pursuit of equal dignity and recognition. This brought into play the narratives of seven informants. Elder Doroteo, the tribal leader, was engaging as he recounted the history of the village, particularly the role that banditry played in the destruction of the village and stories of its revival. His son, Elpidio, clarified ethnic names and some obscure points in the conversion of the village from mainstream to a tribal village and his engagement with state agencies in charge of these conversions. Farmers Bagaw, Pados, and Tamba shared everyday life narratives in the mountains; housewives Mary and Budak generously disclosed compelling thoughts on Catholicism and their local moral world. Secondary sources were reviewed to support and validate the oral narratives and thus confirmed the understanding that all identities have histories. Labels, Stigma Management and Social Identity Formation | 81
The Mountains Village of Busog: Periphery within a Periphery The municipality of Valderamma lies in the most interior part of the province of Antique in the western coast of Panay Island, west of Philippine archipelago. Rolling mountains enclose the town proper that one would see mountains regardless of the direction where one is looking at. The municipality is disadvantaged in many ways: limited access to government projects; underdeveloped transportation system (especially farm-to-market roads); short in livelihood industries and alternative source of income; high rate of adults with no formal education rendering them underqualified for regular employment, etc. The town of Valderamma has 22 villages or barangay s (the smallest administrative unit in the Philippines), lying in the innermost is the village of Busog named after a nearby river. Busog can be translated into “full” (as in a “full stomach”) and rightly so because the river used to be a rich fishing ground and the community’s main source of food and water supply. The village is 26 kilometers far from the town proper and cut from the center by the bigger Cagarangan River and the rugged mountain terrain. It is reached only by foot. Trek to the village would usually take 8 hours, which by the local standard is already “fast enough”. A trip to Busog would involve negotiating slippery rice paddies, dangerous cliffs, and rugged riverbanks. The village is comprised of 28-30 households with 259 registered residents (Philippine Statistics Authority), many of them are children. The locals subsist on upland farming and other forms of alternative and traditional livelihood available in the area (e.g., fishing, rattan gathering, hunting, livestock and poultry raising, etc.). Education is not accessible in the village that parents had to send their school-age children to the town proper to avail of formal elementary education. They too speak Kinaray-a, dress in the lowland fashion and in general appearance, look like any other lowlander.
Notes on Language Kinaray-a is derived from “Raya ” meaning “upstream” or upper part of the place where the source of the river is located. While the language is spoken by the majority of the population in Panay Island, the one that is considered as the dominant language is Hiligaynon the language of its financial and cultural center, Iloilo City. Hiligaynon’ s dominance could be traced back from the Spanish occupation when it became a major trade language spoken by the traders. For purposes of trade, the Chinese traders who reached Panay Island endeavored to speak the native’s Kinaray-a but could not properly pronounce the words, especially those that are highly laden with “r”. Kinaray-a scholar Leoncio Deriada explained that instead of forcing the Chinese who controlled business and commerce to master the language of the place, it was the natives who accumulated the linguistic deficiencies of the foreigners. As a result, new pronunciation evolved, which was later believed to be the precursor of the Hiligaynon language. Spanish priests also contributed to the dominance of Hiligaynon by publishing grammars and catechisms in the said language until it eventually became the widely used language of print and broadcast media in Panay. Here, Deriada illustrated how economic and cultural power could shape the language of power. When the elite adapted Hiligaynon language, Kinaray-a lost its position and dignity as the mother language and became associated with the workingmen of the farms 82 | Mary Acel D. German and highlands, i.e. the sacada (migrant laborers employed in sugarcane plantations), muchachos (household helpers) and the taga-bukid (mountain dwellers). It is therefore implied that to be a Kinaray-a speaker is not a favored self-image. Its association with the sacada, muchacho and taga-bukid make it more than an ethnolinguistic category but also a class category that dichotomized landlord-laborer, master-helper, and lowland-upland relations.
Externally-Derived Identities The Pejorative Colonial Labels Mountain dwellers of the Philippines throughout history have been rife with negative identities. They were generally described as geographically isolated, thereby projecting a picture of economic and cultural backwardness. The 15th century chronicles of Francisco Colin described them as “barbarous race” (45) and “uncivilized” (56). He called them Negrillos because like the Negroes, these mountain people have dark skin and kinky hair (54). Aside from primary accounts archived in Blair and Robertson, Foreman’s accounts in “The Philippine Islands” conveyed an array of derogatory labels portraying mountain people as “primitive,” “poor,” “fierce,” and generally “bad citizens”. Moreover, Spanish clerics also had their share in this label-construction; they were as critical of the mountain people calling them i nfieles or “pagans”—groups that remained in their “primitive ways” and suggesting an “absence of moral fiber” as a consequence of their refusal to accept Christianity (120-128). In the Southern Philippines, this historical episode of refusal to submit and distancing from the center were not just a reaction against Spanish subjugation. In writing about maritime raiding and slave trading in the south during the 18 th and 19 th centuries, James Warren directly linked inhabitants’ upland movement to fear of the moros as well as of the Iranun and Balangigi raiders from Sulu: Some look for new sites, often on elevated grounds; others abandoned the coast altogether for an equally harsh life in the “eligible, non-state spaces” of the mountain fastness of the interior where sometimes many were reduced to eating tubers and grass to survive. The Spanish labeled as fugitives, these peripheral people who were out of reach. They call them cimarrones and remontados. (82) It is apparent that more powerful groups other than the Spaniards contributed to the upland and lowland divide. As a consequence of raiding and slave trading, some of the inhabitants who moved to the highlands “never settled down again; joining the ranks of the remontados or tulisanes . For centuries, they plagued the countryside and were regarded as “fugitives” and “bandits” (122).
The “Bandit” Identity To facilitate colonization, Spanish administrators required the natives to move in a permanent and concentrated settlement in the lowland following the reducción set-up. Some refused and opted to settle away from the reduccion ; to live away from the center meant freedom from taxes and the prying eyes of Spanish Labels, Stigma Management and Social Identity Formation | 83 authorities and the Catholic Church. However, this also implied “cultural backwardness” because “they lived too far away from the Center to be able to absorb Spanish culture” (Agoncillo 80). The reduccion was a civilizing devise to make the Filipinos law-abiding citizens of the Spanish crown, and, in the long run, to make them “ultimate little brown Spaniards” adapting Hispanic culture and civilization. The more courageous unbelievers among them who rejected Spanish dominion went to the hills and became remontados (from remontar meaning “to go up”), cimarrones (“run-away slaves”), ladrones (“fugitives”), monteses (“from the mountains”) or tulisanes (“bandits” or “outlaws”) in the eyes of the Spaniards. (80) Records of fugitive bands in Panay could be traced back to the early 19 th century; local historian R. Morales Maza spoke of marauders from neighboring towns often coming to attack the province of Antique. They came in big groups to steal cattle and farm produce. This case, however, is not isolated in Panay; studies have pointed to the proliferation of fugitives in the mountain regions, especially in the northern part of the archipelago (Keesing 83, 214-215; Foreman 122). By the time the American occupied the Philippines in the early 20 th century, banditry was observed to be “far more audacious than its predecessor” (Foreman 548). American policies considerably altered the social and political landscape resulting in new forms of social relation and reshaping new social dynamics. Resistance movements took on a new expression from a mere “band of bandits” to a more organized resistance movement. The movement became a force to contend with that the American government passed the Brigandage Act of 1902 officially labeling all Filipino freedom fighters as “bandits” and “outlaws” (Uckung). To some Filipinos, however, there was never a wide difference between banditry and insurgency (Foreman 551). The Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941 was an impetus that enabled a small number of untrained, unorganized rebels to join the guerilla force in a fight against the Japanese. The Communist Party of the Philippines was the best organized and the most active group during the early years of the occupation and peasants often viewed them as the most effective and visible opposition to the Japanese (Smith 22). In 1942, the rebels merged with peasant organizations to form the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (HUKBALAHAP) or the “Anti-Japanese Army”. HUKBALAHAP or “huk ” for short became a national buzzword up to the post-war era . The huk s were engaged in typical guerilla operations, hit-and-run, and were usually conducted at night (Greenberg 61). The Japanese government as a countermeasure launched an anti-huk campaign that was both a military offensive against an armed insurgency and a propaganda blitz to combat communism. Due to this massive government campaign against the huk , the mountain people of Busog had a very strong recall of the period when huk forces flocked the mountains calling such decade as tiempo huk (time of the huk). Against the national backdrop of a postwar era characterized by socio-political instability and harsh economic realities, the mountains of central Panay became susceptible to roving groups of hungry and jobless young men who stalled the countryside to 84 | Mary Acel D. German scavenge and steal. Tiempo Huk in the village extended long, even decades after the post-war period. Banditry and the Destruction of the Village The village of Busog traced its origin from a certain Melchor Canja, a prominent buyong (kinaray-a for “bandit.”) from a neighboring town who sought refuge in the mountains of Valderamma. He met peace-loving mountain dwellers living in scattered areas and forged a marriage with one of the mountain lass. The couple bore a son who also became a buyong like his father. The family lived along the banks of Busog River; they were the ancestors of the Canja family who later on became village leaders. Based on the accounts of the tribal leader Doroteo, the village of Busog was formally established in 1951 during the peak of the Huk menace. Its first administrator was Doroteo’s father, Oyong, who ruled for 18 years. Oyong was followed by a succession of male leaders all related to the Canja family either by birth or affinity. The community coexisted harmoniously with people from the nearly barangay, especially with Culiat, its nearest neighbor. Sharing and intermarriage ensued until several years later when the peaceful community life was disturbed by a feud that became a turning point in the history of both villages. The feud started in 1986 when local politicians allegedly spread rumors and provoked hostility between the village of Culiat and Busog. Each village then took turns in stealing each other’s cattle. This cattle rustling continued for more than a year. Sometime in 1988, several buyong from Busog took all the cattle of Culiat residents. This event forced the people of Culiat to seek the help of other buyong from the village of Casilayan and raided Busog; they burned the village and massacred the residents that they chanced upon. To set scores, Busog sought the assistance of allies from other mountain village and raided Culiat. The villagers were terrified of this tragic encounter that they evacuated from the area to escape from violence; in the 1990 census, there were no houses left in the village when it had more than 100 in 1980. Some families migrated to the neighboring provinces of Capiz and Iloilo, and some went as far as the island of Mindanao south of the archipelago. A total of 18 households found their way to the town proper and settled adjacent to the dike along the banks of the Cagarangan River. In this new landscape, there were no farms to till, and the mountain people were left with no alternative livelihood except for the scarce and seasonal employment as household help and farm laborers. Life was harsh. People do not speak of the tragic experience regularly. They would often dismiss this part of their history as “a thing of the past that should no longer be brought up.” While the tribal leader declared that animosity no longer existed between their neighbors, the researcher observed that intra-village relation remained sensitive; it appears that adverse repercussions can erupt should stories of past events go unchecked. The Revival of the Village After ten years of continuous stay in the evacuation area and realizing that the mountains were already safe, Doroteo decided in 1999 to return to the mountains and rebuild the village. He recounted: “I urged my wife to return to the mountains so that our people would follow. Life is relatively better in the mountains. Harvest Labels, Stigma Management and Social Identity Formation | 85 is good. You can’t do much in the lowland. You cannot depend on paid labor forever.” In 2016, a total of 30 households had returned to the Mountain Village. The Catholic Church provided water system; series of pipes connected the stream to the village, and people no longer need to walk kilometers to fetch water. A generator was also installed and was managed by the village leaders. It made possible the regular supply of electric lights even only for 3 to 4 hours at night. There were criticisms over how the generator was managed, and tension arose among villagers, particularly against those who do not contribute to fuel expenses. This community generator that seemed to symbolize positive transformation has unexpectedly produced social pressures bearing on the quality and rhythm of community life and re-shaping social relations in the village. Conversion from Mainstream to a Tribal Village In 1997, The Philippine Congress passed Republic Act 8371 or the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA) highlighting the State’s commitment to “guarantee the rights of the Indigenous Cultural Communities / Indigenous People (ICCs/IPs) to freely pursue economic and cultural development” (Indigenous People's Rights Act). Section 18 of this law mandates the creation of tribal villages. The Legal Assistance for Indigenous Filipinos, a non-government organization composed mainly of lawyers started to facilitate in the year 2000 the conversion of Busog and its neighbor Culiat into tribal villages. Proponents of the conversion declared that the area is predominantly inhabited by indigenous people (Arquiza 20-26) and government records identified them as sulud-bukidnon , obviously in reference to the general data found in the works of Jocano and Magos. The conversion to tribal village according to the tribal leader was not easy. It was delayed “because of the municipal council’s failure to comprehend the import of the tribal village”; moreover, the approval of the conversion did not necessarily imply that elected town officials were in full support of the welfare of the IPs. Many of them remained indifferent to the reality that the tribal villages had needs distinct from the mainstream population. In this tribal village set-up, the village was governed by an elected executive and a legislative council following the Local Government Code of the Philippines plus a Tribal Leader whose authority was mandated by the IPRA. The elected officials decide over administrative matters. They held decisions about community projects like the operation and management of the community generator and others; the tribal leader, on the other hand, represents the village in IP-related seminars and gatherings at the local and national level. During casual drinking session, one could hear the tribal elder Doroteo advising elected councilors on matters dealing with erring community members and sharing with them farming tips. Busog’s conversion from mainstream to the tribal village was more than a political transformation. It provided the people not only with a new category as a political unit but a new identity as well – an IP identity. Since this was a state propelled transformation that took place in the lowland and involved only the tribal leader and IP advocates (who were outsiders of the villages), many of the residents of Busog were not aware of this conversion, and this new “IP” category neither were they aware of the ethnic names referred to them as an IP Community. 86 | Mary Acel D. German
Ethnic Names and the Role of Local Anthropologists and State Agencies Notwithstanding the pejorative colonial labels discussed earlier, the mountain people of Busog have also been assigned ethnic names to which many of them were unaware of. The researcher herself had referred to this mountain people as Suludnon based on government records provided by the local branch of the National Commission of Indigenous People (NCIP) an agency mandated to promote the interest of the indigenous people of the Philippines. The researcher proceeded with fieldworks using such category, and no one among the locals corrected her nor clarified such concept with her, in fact, the locals too used such category in their dialogue with the researcher. However, when asked what for them constituted Suludnon identity, just then that the researcher discovered that the concept is vague to many of the locals. Many admitted that they do not know about Suludnon , saying, “It’s what our tribal leader told us, that we are suludnon ”. Some never even heard of such a name; they asked, “Is that similar to being Catholic?” This confusion prompted the researcher to explore further published and unpublished local literature to validate her claim. What she found, however, were additional labels all referring to the mountain people of Panay such as Panay-Bukidnon, Tumandok, Iraynon, and Halawodnon. Local anthropologist with their longstanding interest in classifying and categorizing people they study took the lead wittingly or unwittingly in the naming of indigenous people in the archipelago. In Panay Island, two local anthropologists played a dominant role in the naming of IP groups in the upland area. They were: F. Landa Jocano and Alicia Magos. Jocano’s Suludnon F. Landa Jocano’s pioneering study on the “Kinship System and Social Organization of the Mountain People in Central Panay” (1968) propagated the category Sulud or Suludnon to categorize the groups found along the banks of Pan- ay River in the neighboring municipalities of Tapaz and Jamindan, Capiz. Given the unavailability of historical and ethnographic literature, Jocano was confronted with the problem of naming the group in the area which at that time was known in so many ways (i.e. Panaynon, Halawodnon, and Bukidnon ). He admitted that the term was a “compromised description” and that he merely adopted the category Suludnon “based on what Sulud neighbors call their neighbors rather than what individuals call themselves” (7). Suludnon came from the root word sulud meaning “inside” or “interior” thereby implying a state of being enclosed as by tall mountains. Sulud is also an action word that means “to enter” or “to go inside” whereas, suludnon is a noun denoting “people of the interior.” One informant speculated that the name might have been coined by an outsider to commemorate its entry to the area; this is congruent to Jocano’s position that the name is an outsider’s construct and not native to the community. The term later circulated through popular media and articles disseminated by state agencies mandated to look into the concerns of indigenous cultural communities like the Office of Southern Cultural Communities (OSCC) the forerunner of the NCIP. While the village of Busog is geographically connected with the areas where Jocano’s Suludnon came from, the village nor the town of Valderamma itself was Labels, Stigma Management and Social Identity Formation | 87 never mentioned in Jocano’s study. It remains a question how the former OSCC and now the NCIP were able to attribute Suludnon as ethnic name to the mountain groups in Valderamma such as those in the village of Busog and its two other neighboring villages, Culiat, and San Agustin. Magos’ Iraynon Almost three decades from the publication of Jocano’s study, Alice Magos in her article, “Sea Episodes in the Suguidanon (Epic) and the Boat-building Tradition in Central Panay” (1999) brought to the fore altogether different categories. She delineated Panay’s mountain people into four categories using the river as a point of reference: Pan-ayanon are those who stay close to the headwaters of Pan-ay river; Halawodnon are those living near the headwaters of Halawod River and Akeanon are those staying close to the waters of Akean river. For mountain dwellers of Valderamma, however, the name Iraynon , which means “living towards the interior” was given (6). State’s Adherence to Magos’ Category Earlier discussion indicated how ethnic names derived by anthropologists like Jocano and Magos became the widely held categories in the records of State institutions. Tribal leader, Elpidio narrated that the adaption of the name Suludnon was a result of a “meeting” between the representatives of National Commission for Indigenous People (NCIP) and the tribal leaders of Valderamma IPs. The parties present “agreed that Suludnon should be adopted as the ethnic name” for the people of the neighboring villages of Busog, Culiat, and San Agustin. Years later, Elpidio learned through the NCIP Commissioner that Iraynon should be the “more appropriate ethnic name.” Elpidio welcomed this new term without question because it came from no less than the Commissioner himself whom they considered as the person in authority and therefore a reliable source of information. At present, Iraynon or sometimes Panay-Iraynon is the category used by the media and cultural workers to refer to the mountain people not only of Valderamma but of the neighboring towns as well. Government initiated festivals were celebrated, and short films and documentaries were recently produced to promote awareness and obtain wider public recognition for these people. It is easy to notice the dominance of Magos’ category among the local state institution in Panay as a local bias. She hailed from Antique province and served the University of the Philippines Visayas’ as professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for West Visayan Culture Studies (CWVCS), and it is for this reason that she was able to establish a dominant position as a specialist of West Visayan culture. These scholars were the ones who influenced state decisions, and the state became the cultural brokers defining the indigenous people’s identity before the mainstream society.
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Internally-Derived Identities Katoliko and the “Righteous People” Identity
Catholicism reached Panay Island as early as the 16th century. General records showed that local religious leaders challenged Spanish authorities and stalled people’s submission to the new faith. Two religious uprisings were recorded in the nearby regions: the Tamblot revolt in Bohol (1620) and the Bangkaw revolt in Leyte (1622). In Panay island, however, resistance was not as zealous; an Augustinian priest serving Antique province wrote in 1699 to the provincial of the order that “this ministry is going well, thank God, have improved in every way, and the people are obedient and jovial” (Maza 11). One particular group of missionaries – the Mill Hill missionaries - an international fellowship of priests, brothers and lay missionaries who reached the Philippines in 1906 from England in time to respond to the problems confronting the Catholic Church during the American period were strongly felt in the province of Antique. Given a provincial population of 300 Catholics, served by four priests, the missionaries learned the local language and assisted the local clergy in the administration of the sacraments (What the Archives Say 3:9). They served the town of Valderamma since 1908, but they were not able to reach the mountain village of Busog until the early 1960s, a decade after the formal establishment of the village. Since then, masses were held once a year, during the village fiesta (the feast of San Isidro Labrador, the Patron Saint of farmers). Villagers would excitedly wait for the arrival of the Parish Priest and his party a day before the fiesta . They would look forward to this as a religious and social occasion,—an occasion to celebrate faith and an opportunity for marriage and baptismal ceremonies. It should be noted that due to the distance of the village from the town center and owing to lack of information, the villagers were not especially mindful of their obligation to register their newly born to the local civil registry. The sacrament of baptism, therefore, becomes a substitute procedure for birth registration where children acquire Christian names and where birth dates were made final and official. Unless baptized, whatever name given to the child was considered “temporary.” This makes the sacrament of baptism one of the most anticipated Catholic rituals for the locals in Busog. Parents name their children after characters of popular radio drama (e.g., Alex, Jennifer, Jiji, Jeomar, etc); after movie celebrities (e.g. Gretchen and Jestoni); or after their lowland employers and even after the name of the town mayor. The introduction of Catholicism and the eventual conversion of the locals into Catholics was a landmark occasion not only because it changed people’s belief system but also people’s perception of themselves. They readily embraced the lowland’s religion as a positive reinforcement to their self-image. Catholicism gave them a degree of semblance with the lowland population. They can no longer be branded as “pagans” and “primitive” because of this integration with the larger Catholic community. The housewives were not happy to discuss those days when their ancestors “did not yet know how to make the sign of the cross.” Pre-catholic traditions and beliefs were likewise dismissed as “wrong beliefs” that should no longer be brought up. Labels, Stigma Management and Social Identity Formation | 89
According to one housewife, religion made them “righteous people” (“matarung nga tawo” ) because to believe in Jesus Christ entails the observance of good behavior, further explaining that “misbehavior occurs when people forget about God that is why it is important for people to be reminded of their catholic faith all the time.” Catholicism provided the people with new codes and moral standards around which to build their new identity.
The “Upright Farmers” Identity The mountain areas provide for very limited livelihood choices for the mountain dwellers. This lack of livelihood opportunities was a factor that forced some of their ancestors into banditry, a way of life that stigmatized even the recent generation. While it is not in the nature of the people to aggressively argue against the derogatory labels thrown at them by outsiders, it can be observed that there is a conscious effort on their part at projecting a positive image and reject the stereotype. When asked to describe the people of Busog, they would automatically describe themselves as farmers, “people who do farming and swidden agriculture, they fish and gather mollusk as well” after which they could attach the qualifier “upright” (“ wara gahimu sayod ”) because such qualifier categorically distinguishes them from other farmers engaging in unscrupulous activities like lowland robbery or cattle hustling. “Upright farmer” therefore is more than just a description of themselves as a collective but also a rejection of the stigma-laden bandit label. To cast-off, the stigma is to show that the community engages in legitimate livelihood as hard and physically arduous as farming. Doroteo explained, “It is only through farming that one survives life in the mountains” those who do not farm therefore are suspected of engaging in illegitimate or unscrupulous economic activities. Through the expression of categories like “ Katolico, ” “righteous people” and “upright farmers” the mountain people of Busog were redefining their identity in ways that are meaningful to manage the stigma of past labeling and to carve a more “respectable” self-image within the larger society.
Conclusion This paper brought to the fore various labels—mostly externally-derived—that have been associated with the mountain village of Busog in Panay Island. At the forefront of this labeling process are the colonial scholars, local anthropologists and the state, whose interests in classifying and categorizing people and groups were premised on political, administrative and intellectual agenda of their period. Since the state and the academe are institutions of power, the various labels that they were able to derive about (and to some extent imposed on) people and groups became powerful labels with long-term consequences on peoples’ and groups’ identities. From the Spanish colonial period, the mountain people’s experiences revealed to us that identity construction is a continuing process. While the lowland gradually developed as a nascent colonial society, the mountain areas became a refuge to those wanting to escape Spanish rule. To live in the mountains and away from the 90 | Mary Acel D. German center was to turn away from the “cultural advancement” that the colonial state and the church were introducing. It is for this reason that throughout the colonial and post-colonial years, the mountain people of the Philippines has lived with derogatory labels; these labels were to a large extent reproduced by the academes —historians and anthropologist in particular. In the lens of labeling theory, the reproduction of these labels caused the people to identify with and behave in ways that reflect how they were labeled. Hence, while the mountain people do not necessarily agree to the labels as an authentic representation of their identity, they have come to live with the hegemonic and oppressing social constructions. Through the post-colonial era (and with the growing anti-colonial sentiments), labels such as huk , or buyong (bandits) were recognized as an authentic identity that villagers acknowledge to own sensitive accounts of the bandit encounters and involvement. People’s conversion to Catholicism in the 1960s allowed them to acquire a new identity in addition to what they already have. This “Catholic identity” gave the people semblance and connectedness with the lowland population, thereby blurring the lowland-upland distinction. More importantly, they strongly articulated that conversion made them “righteous people.” Such is an affirmative strategy to manage the stigma of past labeling and redress the misrecognition. The implementation of the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA) in 1997 paved the way for more sustained attention to names of identification and classification. It is through this legislation that the village was converted from mainstream to the tribal village using the official name Suludnon - an ethnic name derived from local anthropologist, F. Landa Jocano, one of the pioneers on the study mountain people in Central Panay. A few years later, the village acquired a new name, Iraynon . This was derived from Magos’ in reference to the direction where the river flows, which is to the iraya or “upstream.” The adaption of such name tells of the critical influence of local anthropologists in state policies for distinct ethnic groups - scholars who were at the forefront of studies on the mountain people of Panay were given the privileged position in the naming process by the state agencies. While the conversion of Busog to tribal barangay formalized and codified the community into an Indigenous Cultural Community, this state categorization and ethnicization are remote from the prevailing self-understanding of the majority of the village population. The fact remains that Iraynon, as a label was not collectively recognized in the community nor were the majority of the locals aware of this classification at the time of the research. Unlike other ethnic groups in the Philippines who aggressively pursue recognition of identity. This particular mountain group is relatively muted. They were unable to articulate difference or boundary-marking features that identify them from other communities except for their location. Representation of them as an indigenous group was actively carried out by the tribal leader who together with state agencies “agreed” to adopt the ethnic name. This action by the tribal leaders is understandable in the light of the political situations where an indigenous identity is a politically useful identity especially when they are linked to statutory policy to tangible benefits such as ancestral domain claim, access to free education, employment opportunities, etc. as provided by the law. The few locals who had the opportunity to learn about Labels, Stigma Management and Social Identity Formation | 91 these ethnic names do not particularly contest the idea as long as it does not evoke further negative identity. These landscape of colonial labels and ethnic names that constitutes a multitude of misrecognition comes in dialogue with the on-going identity constructions articulated by the locals. These local constructs speak not of the overt traits but of symbolic identity that they have appropriated for themselves to redefine their identity. People asserted that they have become “upright farmers” and “righteous people” because of Catholicism. Indeed, the Catholic has become an important self-identification, and it is interesting to note that while it was the Catholic institution that was historically instrumental in the discrimination and labeling of mountain people during the colonial period, the current generation of mountain people embraced the religion readily as a positive reinforcement to their identity. The Catholic identity, which is a colonial identity continues to prevail as a powerful social identity. While many cultural identities emerged out of oppositional identities involved in the dialogue of inter-group conflict and some have risen out of state actions, I argue that that mountain people of Busog are not yet in a position to aggressively pursue identity assertion, at least for the time being. Their present identity was a construction of context (along the context of spontaneous historical forces) more than of politics.
Works Cited Agoncillo, Teodoro. History of the Filipino People . Quezon City: Garotech Publishing, 1990. Arquiza, Yasmin. “On the Trail of the Tribal Barangay.” A Journey of Hope: Implementing the Indigenous People's Rights At of the Philippines III. 2005. Barth, Fredrik. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries . Boston: Little Brown, 1969. Blair, Emma, and James Alexander Robertson. The Philippine Islands 1493-1898 . Vol. 18. Cleveland: Arthur Clark Co., 1911. Colin, Francisco. “Native Races and their Customs: Of the Origins of National and the People who Inhabit these Islands.” In The Philippines at the Spanish Contact . Ed. Jocano, F. Landa. Manila: MCS Enterprises, Inc., 1975. 147-187. Deriada, Leoncio. “Literature Engineering in West Visayas.” UP Forum . 29 March 2000.
Greenberg, Lawrence. “The HUKBALAHAP Insurrection: A Case Study of Successful Anti-Insurgency Operation in the Philippines, 1946-1955.” Historical Analysis Series . 1987. “Indigenous People's Rights Act.” 1997. Section 1. Jocano, F. Landa. Sulud Society: A Study in the Kinship System and Social Organization of a Mountain People in Central Panay . Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1968. Keesing, Roger. The Ethnohistory of Northern Luzon . California: Stanford University Press, 1962. Loarca, Miguel de. “Relacion de Las Islas de Filipinas.” In The Philippines Island, 1493-1898 . Ed. Blair, Emma, and Robertson J. Cleveland: Arthus H. Clark Co., 1903. 121-125. Magos, Alicia. “Sea Episodes in Suguidanon (epic) and Boat-building Tradition in Central Panay, Philippines.” Danyag (UP Visayas Journal of the Social Sciences and the Humanities) IV.1. 1999: 5-29. Manalo, Flaviano. "Tales of the Revolt from the Foot of Mt. Madia-as." Maaram Studies on Antique . 2003: 24-25. Maza, R. Morales. "Antique Becomes a Province." Maaram Studies on Antique . 2003. Scott, William Henry. The Discovery of the Igorot . Quezon City: New Day Publisher, 1974. Smith, Robert. The HUKBALAHAP Insurgency: Economic, Political, and Military Factors. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1963. Taylor, Charles. Politics of Recognition . n.d. May 2019.
The Sauk and Mesquakie Cultural Resistance to Settler Colonialism Yerleşimci Sömürgecilik Karşısında Sauk ve Mesquakie Yerlilerinin Kültürel Direnişi
Roger L. Nichols University of Arizona, USA
Abstract This paper discusses two themes: “Place and belonging, ethnic, cultural and religious minorities,” and “How does literature depict the struggle for recognition”. It does so through an analysis of the actions of the Sauk and Mesquakie Indians living in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa during the early nineteenth century, as they were seen by their white neighbors, and through the pages of Sauk leader Black Hawk’s biography. The first such account dictated by an anti-American, unacculturated Native American. It relates the tribal annual round of fall hunting, spring maple sugar harvesting, and summer farming as the villagers used their local resources with traditional labor and ceremonies. In his autobiography, Black Hawk recounts the villagers’ responses to a fraudulent treaty which stripped the tribes of their land, and their unsuccessful three decade-long struggle to overturn that document. He discusses their annual village ceremonies and relates their connections to a particular place. He expresses the Sauk determination to remain at their principal village because it was the site of their major cemetery and the religious rites related to their ancestors practices there. When several tribal leaders agreed to relocate west of the Mississippi River, conservative Sauks objected to abandoning the grave site. For the Mesquakie, the dispute focused more of the seizure of their traditional lead-mining lands in Iowa and Wisconsin which they claimed had never been surrendered to the United States. The existing literature demonstrates how the Indians’ ideas about culture and place underlay their actions and brought ultimate tragedy. Keywords : Indians, traditions, literature, culture, place.
Öz Bu makale, iki tema üzerinde durmaktadır; bunlardan ilki etnik, kültürel ve dini azınlıklar bağlamında mekân ve aidiyet, ikincisi ise tanınma mücadelesinin edebiyatta nasıl yansıtıldığıdır. Bu amaçla, 19. Yüzyılın erken dönemlerinde Illinois, Wisconsin ve Iowa’da yaşayan Sauk ve Mesquakie yerlilerini, Sauk lideri Black Hawk’ın biyografisi üzerinden, beyaz komşularının gözüyle incelemektedir. Otobiyografisinde Black Hawk, kabileleri topraklarından koparan hileli bir anlaşmaya köylülerin karşı duruşu ve bu anlaşmayı bozmak için otuz yıl boyunca verdikleri mücadeleyi aktarır. Köylerde her yıl yapılan kutlamaları ve bunların belirli mekânlarla bağlantılarını tartışır. Saukların, atalarının dini törenlerini gerçekleştirdikleri büyük mezarlığın bulunduğu yerde, kendi köylerinde kalma
CUJHSS , June 2019; 13/1: 93-99 © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara Submitted: May 13, 2019; Accepted: June 17, 2019 ORCID#: 0000-0002-3190-5078; [email protected] 94 | Roger L. Nichols konusundaki kararlılıklarını vurgular. Kabilenin birçok lideri Missisipi Nehri’nin batısına yerleşmeye karar verdiğinde, geleneklerine bağlı Sauklar mezar bölgesini terk etmeye karşı çıkmıştır. Mesquakie yerlileri için ise, tartışma daha çok aslında Birleşik Devletlere hiçbir zaman teslim olmadığını öne sürdükleri Iowa ve Wisconsin’deki kurşun madenciliği bölgelerine el konulması üzerinde odaklanmaktadır. İlgili alanyazın, Amerikan yerlilerinin kültür ve mekâna dair düşünme biçimlerinin eylemlerini nasıl etkilediği, bunun da kaçınılmaz olarak nitelenebilecek trajediye nasıl yol açtığını gözler önüne sermektedir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Amerika Yerlileri, gelenekler, edebiyat, kültür, mekân .
Introduction During the early nineteenth century, American Indians resisted US policies and actions repeatedly. Some, like the Cherokee, organized a nation state and used the Supreme Court to oppose American actions. A few used defensive war to protect themselves. Others relied on more traditional methods such as negotiation, and when that failed turned to village shamans who offered religious leadership to support resistance. When those efforts failed, many groups fled moving across the Mississippi or into Canada. Other groups remained in their traditional homelands and tried to ignore the neighboring pioneers. The Sauk and Mesquakie of Illinois and Iowa represented the latter group while they resisted assaults on their tribal culture, economy, and sovereignty. Between 1800 and 1830, they blocked white miners’ efforts to take their valuable lead lands, resisted pioneers squatting on their village farmland, ignored federal moves to undermine their cultural practices, and rejected government demands that they halt their trading relations with the British operating from Canada. Despite being internally divided between those who cooperated with the US, and others who demanded that they continue long-established cultural practices, both struggled to retain their homeland and cultural identity. This paper examines the Indians’ motivations and tactics as they opposed the settlers and their government. The Black Hawk War illustrated the vast gaps in cultural practices and attitudes separating the indigenous people from the invading Anglo-Americans moving into the tribes’ territory after 1800. This discussion considers four basic issues that help explain what occurred to the villagers’ physical and cultural environments in the decades that followed. First, it looks at patterns of native resource use as a cause of environmental degradation. Second, it considers inter-tribal relations leading to conflict. Third, it examines American attitudes and policies. Fourth, it analyzes the intra-tribal divisions that destroyed tribal solidarity and contributed to the war that followed. My central thesis is that destruction of the tribal natural resource base, conflict with tribal neighbors, the invasion of their homeland by American pioneers, and bitter intra-tribal debates over sovereignty and cultural survival led to both physical destruction and forced removal.
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Tribal Homelands and Intertribal Relations By the 1760s, the Sauk and Mesquakie people occupied land in the upper Mississippi River Valley. Their villages stood on its banks or near to that stream in northwestern Illinois, where they utilized the local resources fully. They mined the plentiful surface deposits of lead existing near present Galena, Illinois and Dubuque, Iowa which the leaders sold to white businessmen. The villages stood on well-watered, fertile land, and they raised large crops of corn, beans, and other vegetables. The Mississippi and nearby streams provided a ready supply of fish, clams, and crabs. Nearby hardwood forests provided maple syrup for sugar as well as nuts and berries. Each autumn the villages broke into small groups and moved west beyond the Mississippi to hunt big game and trap fur bearers for the hides they bartered with the traders. Clearly, by 1800, the local environment appears to have provided the tribal people a balanced economy (Stout 251-53; Hagan 3-14). The situation of intertribal relations was problematic. Their hunting and trapping in the same places for decades threatened the animal populations. It also placed them in direct competition with nearby tribes and increased habitat destruction. As Sauk and Mesquakie sought game in Iowa, they met Dakota Sioux coming south from Minnesota into the same area repeatedly. Although technically at peace, the young men clashed with their rivals, increasing possibilities for open warfare. All three groups also faced resistance from the Iowa Otoe and other bands who objected to the outsiders’ killing their game (Wallace 1-51; Hagan 17-18; Jackson 47-51).
White Aggressions All of the Sauk and Mesquakie early experiences with the Americans proved negative. During the American War for Independence, a frontier milita force invaded their country and burned several Sauk villages. As the Spanish left St. Louis in 1804 Black Hawk stated what appears to have been a popular Sauk fear when he reported that “the Americans were coming to take possession of the town [St. Louis] and country” (Jackson 51). Although rival tribal hunters had threatened the Sauk and Mesquakie economic base, ever-increasing numbers of white pioneers posed a more serious menace to the Indians’ society. In this case, lead miners began the assault on the native homeland and environment before white farmers arrived. During the late 1780s, several Mesquakie chiefs had leased some of their lead lands in northeastern Iowa to Julien Dubuque with the understanding that the lease ended if Dubuque died or left the area. Despite that agreement, he got title to the mining lands from Spanish authorities at St. Louis. When he died in 1810 his heirs sold his presumed rights to several Americans. They hired sixty men and sent them up the Mississippi to reopen mining. The Mesquakies and Sauks objected heatedly, intercepted the miners’ boats, and threatened to kill the intruders. That forced Indian Agent Nicholas Boilvin to negotiate a settlement. He persuaded the Indians to allow Dubuque’s heirs to sell his mining equipment. Once the Americans left, the Indians burned the buildings at the mining site and threatened “never to give up their land until all were dead” (Nichols 43-44; Boilvin qtd. in Hagan 44). 96 | Roger L. Nichols
The most serious threat to Sauk land and home grew out of an 1804 incident in which four young Sauks attacked one of the Quivre River settlements in Missouri. They killed three pioneers “in a most barbarous manner” leaving the mutilated corpses “with their scalps taken off” (Cattle qtd. in Carter 62; Bruff qtd. in in Carter 76-80). Tribal leaders, fearing American reprisals, hurried to St. Louis where they admitted that their warriors had carried out the attack. They tried to settle the matter in the usual Indian manner by making payments to the victims’ families to “cover the blood”. Frontier whites rejected this customary Indian “apology,” and local authorities worked hard to dissuade the angry pioneers not to retaliate. Having admitted that their men had murdered the whites, the chiefs explained truthfully that they lacked any authority to surrender the attackers (Cattle qtd. in Carter 57-58). Here again, tribal practice differed widely from that of the whites. The latter would have arrested and incarcerated the accused, and officials refused to believe that Indian leaders lacked the authority to give them the attackers. Facing American threats of military action, the Sauk tribal council decided to send a small delegation back to St. Louis to negotiate a settlement. They took one of the guilty young men along and the whites promptly imprisoned him. The chiefs saw their duty as getting him released and keeping peace with the Americans. They reached St. Louis just as Indiana Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison arrived there.
William Henry Harrison and the Treaty of 1804 William Henry Harrison set out to acquire the visitors’ land. During the next several weeks he negotiated a treaty with them. The minor chiefs had no tribal authority to sell any land, but when the talks ended they had ceded all Sauk tribal territory east of the Mississippi River to the US. Despite signing the land cession, the Sauk visitors claimed they had never meant to surrender their homeland (Nichols 28-29; Hagan 17-25). In payment for all of their homeland in Illinois, the US gave the Sauks a one-time payment of $2,234.50 and an annuity of $1,000. The treaty of 1804, conducted in secret, with a few minor chiefs not authorized to make any such agreement, was one of the two most crucial events in the tribes’ history and the source of almost all later difficulties between the Sauk, Mesquakie, and the US. It appears that at the time, few if any, tribal leaders realized the treaty’s significance, or had any understanding of its provisions. One clause stated that “as long as the lands which are now ceded to the United States remain their property, the Indians belonging to the said tribes, shall enjoy the privilege of living and hunting on them” (Kappler 54-56; Wallace 19-20). However, US policy sought to sell the frontier areas to pioneers, at which point the government no longer owned the land and the Indians would lose their right to occupy it. Sauk leaders who rejected the treaty, argued repeatedly that they understood the clause to mean that as long as the land remained a part of the US the Indians could use it. As for the intra-tribal rivalries, we can see the War of 1812 had a major impact on Sauk society. Black Hawk joined the British and led many of the men off to fight against the Americans.
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Black Hawk and Keokuk During his absence a rumored attack on Saukenuk gave young Keokuk a chance to become the tribal war leader. After the fighting ended and Black Hawk returned, the two men competed with each other, and the more articulate Keokuk seized that position. Their competition helped create major divisions in the two tribes as gradually Keokuk came to lead perhaps two thirds of the Sauk and a few Mesquakie. Persuaded that the villagers’ only hope for survival was cooperation with American frontier officials, he urged them to move west across the Mississippi into Iowa. Black Hawk and a minority of the chiefs objected to this repeatedly (Nichols 76-77, 86, 92, 95). Many Sauks rejected the 1804 treaty, vowing to “do without food and live on roots rather than part with their lands” before signing any other papers. By 1829, as the US tried to push the last of the villagers across the Mississippi, Black Hawk and Keokuk quarreled openly about the future of their people. Keokuk chose to keep his followers in Iowa while Black Hawk insisted stubbornly that true Sauks would remain in Illinois to protect their ancestors’ graves. He denounced his rival as “a coward, and no brave, to abandon his village to be occupied by strangers”. He rejected leaving the village as “cowardly” and reminded his listeners that the graves nearby “contained the bones of many friends and relatives” (Hagan 127- 129). In 1831 when Black Hawk and the dissidents, now called the British Band, insisted on returning to Saukenuk, General Edmund Gaines demanded that they move west permanently. Again Black Hawk objected, telling the General that his followers were “unanimous in their desire to remain in their old fields, they wish to harvest their corn and will do so peacefully”. When Gaines questioned their motivations, Black Hawk responded that their ancestors “have left their bones in our fields, and there I will remain and leave my bones with theirs”. Despite those brave words, once the General threatened to drive the Indians across the Mississippi by force, the leaders agreed, and within days they had moved to Iowa. Despite their promise to remain west of the Mississippi, in April 1832 the British Band took the second critical action in these events.
Black Hawk War and Battle of Bad Axe It recrossed the Mississippi, moving up the Rock River to their former land. Their “invasion” of Illinois brought demands from the State’s governor John Reynolds that the Indians be driven west, his mobilizing the state militia, and the US Army’s sending troops north from St. Louis. These forces chased the Indians across northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin until the August 2, 1832 battle at the Bad Axe River destroyed most of the British Band. Of the approximately 1,800 people who dared to enter Illinois that spring fewer than 500 survived (see Jung, The Black Hawk War of 1832 ; and Hall, Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War . Both give the most up-to-date discussions of this conflict.). They had returned east, hoping to avoid war and have the chance to raise their crops in peace, but their desperate gamble became a disaster. The move followed a difficult winter, demands by the women that they 98 | Roger L. Nichols return to their well-tilled fields in Illinois, and rumors that the whites intended to castrate the men and breed the women with Blacks. Their economic base had collapsed when they lost the lead mines, their trading partnership with the British, and access to useable land. American demands for peaceable behavior had struck at the heart of clan and village social customs, while their divided leadership offered no effective way for dealing with the Americans. Lured by thoughts of home, and strong cultural ties to their village, they ignored the advice of most tribal leaders and the threats of American civil officials and army officers. Their feelings of betrayal by tribal chiefs, of having been cheated by the Americans, and nostalgia for their homes brought disaster that summer.
Conclusion The Black Hawk war resulted from differing tactics Sauk and Mesaquakie chiefs used in dealing with the invading Americans during the early nineteenth century. The Sauk and Mesquakie ideas of place had developed from their effective uses of the natural resources available to them in the upper Mississippi Valley. Their villages served as the sites for traditional cultural ceremonies that held their societies together and reinforced their tribal self-identification. The arrival of American pioneers during the early nineteenth century threatened their economic activities, their social customs, even their existence as indigenous societies. The settlers and their government seized tribal land and overran their lead mines. Federal negotiators tried to end Sauk and Mesquakie trading connections, and to disrupt and halt Indian customs such as blood revenge against traditional enemies. Those actions weakened the authority of village chiefs, and endangered customary raiding and warfare practices. As the chiefs tried to persuade the villagers to accept these attacks on their cultural practices they angered many and the controversy over how to deal with the invading whites split both tribes. The dispute led the two sides to use differing tactics. The majority accepted the need to abandon their homes and to build new villages west of the Mississippi River, but a minority refused to do so and stumbled into war. That accidental conflict brought disaster. The US destroyed most of the belligerents, and shortly after the war ended it punished those who had remained at peace by taking nearly a third of their land in Iowa. Clearly, the forces of settler colonialism dictated the course of events, the subjugation of these tribes, and furthered their cultural disintegration.
Works Cited Stout, David. “Sac and Fox.” Indians of Eastern Missouri, Western Illinois, and Southern Wisconsin From the Proto-Historic Period to 1804 , Garland Company, 1974, pp. 251-53. Hagan, William T. The Sac and Fox Indians . University of Oklahoma Press, 1958. Wallace, Anthony F. C. “Prelude to Disaster: The Course of Indian-White Relations Which Led to the Black Hawk War.” The Black Hawk War 1831-1823: Letters and Papers, edited by Ellen M. Whitney, Illinois State Historical Library, 1970-1978, pp. 1-51. The Sauk and Mesquakie Cultural Resistance to Settler Colonialism | 99
Jackson, Donald D., editor. Black Hawk, Black Hawk: an Autobiography. University of Illinois Press, 1964. Nichols, Roger L. Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path . 2nd ed., Wiley Blackwell, 2017. Carter, Clarence E., editor. Territorial Papers of the United States . GPO, 1934-1970. Kappler, Charles J., editor. Indian Laws and Treaties . GPO, 1903-1904. Jung, Patrick J. The Black Hawk War of 1832. University of Oklahoma Press, 2007 Hall, John W. Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War . Harvard University Press, 2009. Recognition of Cultural Identity in Banat (1867-1918) Banat’ta Kültürel Kimliğin Tanınması (1867-1918)
Ioana Banaduc West University of Timişoara, Romania
Abstract This paper investigates a time of high cultural intensity, namely, the modernizing of Romanian culture, and maybe even the first stage towards Western alignment. The complexity of the issues in question may also reside in the fact that the specific area of interest of this paper focuses on the Banat region and it “encounters” all the aspects caused by the need of Banat in those years to build a Romanian identity, amid a multi-ethnical space. It is a way in which the culture sheds the light on the linguistic aspects, while the linguistic investigation makes the cultural context relevant. The cultural and historical perspective involves the linguistic one, emphasizing the inter-disciplinary aspect of the exegesis. In the present research we are considering the following aspect: the spreading of culture through schools as a trigger of identity consciousness. Acknowledging Romanian language in elementary schools became an active means of recognizing cultural identity. Keywords : Romanian spirituality, Banat, cultural identity, school.
Öz Bu çalışma, Romanya kültürünün modernizasyonu ve belki de Batıya yaklaşmasında ilk aşama olarak nitelendirilebilecek, yüksek kültürel yoğunluğa sahip bir dönemi incelemektedir. Bu çalışmanın Banat bölgesine odaklanması ve bu çok-etnikli coğrafyada o dönemde bir Rumen kimliği inşa edilmesi için Banat’a duyulan ihtiyacın farklı boyutlarının ele alınması çalışmayı daha da kompleks bir hale getirmiştir. Banat bölgesi, Romanya milli kimliğine bir örnektir: Burası, “Avrupanın Kapısı” olarak görülmüştür, Habsburg ve Osmanlı İmparatorluğunun sınırında bulunan stratejik askeri ve ekonomik bir merkezdir. 1776-1867 yılları arasında Habsburg İmparatorluğu'nun, 1867-1918 yılları arasında ise Avusturya-Macaristan İmparatorluğu’nun bir parçası olmuştur. Avusturya-Macaristan İmparatorluğu tarafından bırakılan bu arazi, Avrupa uygarlığının ve kültürel modellerinin asimilasyonunu sonucunda yapay bir kültürel alan olmuştur. Banat'ın kültürel özelliği, Rumenlerin etnik kökenin, atalarının topraklarında yaşadıkları tarihi olayların getirdiği niteliklerin, köy yaşamının erdemlerine atfedilen değer, gelenekler ve folklora dayanan etnografik kültürün bir birleşimidir. Kültürel kimlik, bir kültürün Avrupa kültürleri arasında nasıl hayatta kaldığının sentezini ve bu varoluş şeklinin özbilincini temsil eder. Bu, sürekli bir kuramsal yeniden yapılandırmadır ve Banat bölgesindeki durum tarihi oluşumları üzerinden incelenmiştir. Bu çalışmada kimlik bilincinin bir tetikleyicisi olarak eğitim-öğretim yoluyla kültürün yayılması ele alınmaktadır. İlköğretim okullarında Romanya dilinin kabul edilmesi kültürel kimliği tanımada aktif bir araç haline gelmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Romanya kimliği, Banat bölgesi, kültürel kimlik, okul e ğitim i.
CUJHSS , June 2019; 13/1: 100-108 © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara Submitted: May 30, 2019; Accepted: June 18, 2019 ORCID#: 0000-0002-2779-1864; [email protected] Recognition of Cultural Identity in Banat | 101
A Hypostasis of Romanian Spirituality: The Banat Area The Banat area is the topos of study. The research is meant to be a thorough study of old material, that, by our research results, offers a revealing dimension of data about a fecund period of Romanian spirituality. The sociocultural and ideological coordinates of the time are investigated or discovered in relation with the path opened by the European Enlightenment. This coherent spiritual pattern, from the point of view of the values in study, sets in the South—East of Europe in different rhythms and shapes, because of the instability of the social and political contexts of the countries in the area. The dynamic moment of the spiritual resurrection starts from Transylvania and Banat, because the new spirit of the European Enlightenment enters the Romanian territory through those regions, and spreads towards the other Romanian Principalities. We emphasize on the connectivity, based on the spiritual national flux, and point out the characteristics of the ideology, in its manifest forms in the territory of Banat, through the press preoccupied with pedagogical issues 1. The choice of the written press is explicitly motivated by the social-cultural functionality of the press, and by the specific of such mass media, in general, and also, within the given historical frame, by the persuasive power of the press, and by the role it played in the complex process of shaping the Romanians’ identity, consciously assumed, as well as their feeling of belonging to the wider European identity (Banaduc 2017 15). The exegesis is included in the present science tendency that surpasses the purely synchronic vision due to the diachronic investigation dimension. In order to stress the diachronic aspects, we have used the comparative-historical method, the descriptive and the contextual analysis method. The factual information gathering is done by the method of excerpting text from the press of the studied epoch. For the good understanding and interpretation of the socio-cultural aspects at the basis of texts, we have used a bibliography consistent with the specialised scientific literature. Our endeavour is based on the idea of valorising culture from a pedagogic point of view, starting from the fact that preserving the national element helps keep the Romanian identity, and the Romanian language plays a major part in the process. To be more exact, we try to highlight how acknowledging Romanian language in elementary schools became an active means of recognizing cultural identity.
1 The Romanian press of Banat, preoccupied with pedagogical issues, can be considered a transition stage towards the modern pedagogical press. The articles and other materials submitted by the teachers are sometimes published in almanacs, teaching reunion annals or in the press of Transylvania and of the Principalities, those texts that were considered of higher interest. When the first periodicals with mosaic content appear in Banat, with a didactic-cultural target, the people of the school aim for these journals. In 1886 some pedagogic magazines are issued, but they are ephemeral. No pedagogical magazine is issued between the year 1888 and 1909, on the territory of Banat. In the twentieth century, in 1909, the first modern pedagogic magazine in Banat is called “the Educator”. The lack of coherence in the evolution of this publishing phenomenon was determined by the juridical regime of the press, imposed by the authorities, and also by the polemics among educators, caused by confessional belonging, politics, social status, but also by the fact that the target readers could not support financially a constant printing of such periodicals. 102 | Ioana Banaduc
Its historical evolution made Banat into a unique Romanian area, rather colourful compared to others because of the first populations of colonists brought by the Empires. This mingling of languages and populations brought together various European patterns of culture and civilization. Both nineteen and twenty-century Banat was governed by the need to state a strong Romanian identity, in a multi-ethnical space. The high level of cultural preoccupation of the inhabiting population made it easier for an objective awareness of the diversity to appear in this area, at a social level. The written papers of the time mirror a state of spiritual tolerance, as well as a common mental background, aiming towards similar goals (Banaduc 2019 434). A fragment from “Luminătoriul”: The identity of interest to protect their nationality should guide both the Saxons, the Serbs and the Slovaks, as well as the cosmopolitan Germans of Hungary to proceed together [...] and the Romanian nation shall gladly receive any assistance to earn the rights of the nationalities, which, once gained, shall not only serve the benefit of the Romanian people, but of all these sister nations, who are in our misfortunate homeland. (1881) Within the area of Banat, the philosophy of Lights bares the print of the German Enlightenment reform, because it had been imposed as an official doctrine. Vienna is the centre which shines culture upon this province. The Austrian Enlightenment is based on culture, since it was also a way to establish and empower their multinational monarchy. In this respect, clear “culturalizing” lines are drawn in Banat: institutionalizing culture, making Science popular, nurturing language and organizing an educational system in the mother tongue, through schools. In order to have enlightened citizens, the Romanian youth has access to study in the Empire’s University centres. It is the age when the Romanians discover the European spirituality. Hence, Banat appears to be animated by a spirit of emulation, within a society highly aware of the European ideals of the time. From a diachronic perspective, the regional particularities are also explained through the social-historical context proper. Between 1860 and 1918, Austrian- Hungarian dualism was established in Banat. The willingness to politically reaffirm the nationalities of the Habsburg Empire 2 becomes clear around the year 1860. Implicitly, the Romanians, too, hope to have Banat acknowledged as a national-cultural entity 3. Even though Banat is not successfully recognized as an
2 Starting with the eighteenth century, following the war between the Russians and the Turks, which ended with the Peace of Passarovitz, Banat was occupied by the Habsburg Empire. 3 On October 20th 1860, the absolutist system of government is abandoned, and the constitutional system is introduced. This form of government allowed the political affirmation of the nationalities, it guaranteed religious freedom etc. The Emperial Court of Vienna acknowledged the autonomy of Transylvania. The Law became was passed on February 26 th 1861. Following these decisions, people of culture and scholars, such: Andrei Şaguna, Ioan Popasu, Andrei Mocioni, Petru Mocioni, Vicenţiu Babeş ş.a., require from the Court to incorporate Banat into the autonomous Transylvania. The Emperor rejects the request from the Romanians, and on 27th December 1860 decides to join Banat to Hungary. On 20th September 1865, the Imperial Patent of February 1861, which assured the autonomy of the countries within the Empire is cancelled, hence, Transylvania is no longer autonomous. On 6th December 1865, the “Diet” (Parliament) issues a decree to join Transylvania to Hungary, hence starting the way of the Austrian-Hungarian dualism. Starting from Recognition of Cultural Identity in Banat | 103
Autonomous Province, the people of Banat embark on a process of preserving their cultural identity, aiming at a cultural unity among all Romanians, to set the basis of political unity. During this troubled period in the lives of the Banat people, who were forced to face the consequences of legal restraints, the national idea of illumination and self-expression through culture, reasserted its importance, and the political significations of all cultural activities become deeper. Linguist Niculescu’s theory (1978 99-115), about the existence of the cultural inter- regional circuit of the Romanian language and culture, is the foundation of this approach. In the case of Romanians, in spite of the fact that society was structured differently, from one area to another, the standards are owed to the “Romanian- ness” of origin; there is a national spiritual flow, and an identity of religion. Gheorghe Platon (17) proves that, despite political borders, there was a shift of the centre of Romanian spiritual activity, alternatively, from one side of the Carpathians, to the other, by means of an active intellectual process, which announced the path for the national idea, to the strongly affirmed identity consciousness. In the newspapers of the time, there is an explicit confession of the effort towards political and cultural emancipation: The previous century was the century of the awakening for the great- grandsons of Trajan, and the year of 1848, the gate through which us too, the Romanians, entered and joined the line of civilized people. Muntenia and Moldavia, the two countries under the yoke, have come together into the strong Romania of today; the Romanians of Bucovina have also come back to senses, and nowhere other than into the land of beech trees are the Romanian colours of the flag more proudly worn. We, the Romanians of Banat, Crişana, Maramurăş and Transylvania, have shaken the chains of the double bondage. We are no longer [...] either tributary to the Serbs, and today [...] we became a factor for the powerful ones to consider. We have our autonomous church. We have built our schools out of our own richness, we have cultural settlements of all kinds. ( The Diocesan Leaflet 1901) The transformations of those years 4 bring in contact the Romanian world, the relationships are intensified based on the unity of people, faith, in accordance with the objectives of the epoch. In this respect, we make reference to the writings from the newspapers: On foreign lands, our sent ones made an old popular saying true: Blood does not turn into water ! They became drawn together at first sight, as good brothers would, if they met years after having been parted; they would live together, supporting each other with their studies, […] and warming to the idea of salvation through political Romanian Union. […] The youth […] had come back to the country, and started to work:
1867, in the official documents, the name of the region was replaced by South Hungaria, in the name of the idea of a national Hungarian state. 4 Major events take place and these change drastically the historical evolution of the Romanians: the Revolution led by Tudor Vladimirescu, the Revolution of 1848, the Union, in 1859, of Moldavia sn Tara Romanesca, the Independence of the Kingdom of Romania, 1877 and the Proclamation of Romania as a Monarchy (Royal Kingdom) in 1881. 104 | Ioana Banaduc
Alecsandri would put together […] theatre plays, Mihail Kogălniceanu would hold public speaking sessions on national history, also starting a literary sheet, Asachi would look after the public schooling; Constantin Negruzzi wrote his stories in Romanian language; […] Eliade commanded his generation, by words and by own example, to work; alike, in Transylvania and Banat men 5 were already working, earning for progress and driven by love for those left behind on the path of culture, in a word, one could observe everywhere a movement promising of new life. (The Diocesan Leaflet 1894, 4) The identity discourse present in the written papers of the time illustrates what Herder (1973) called cultural nationalism. The cultural nationalism can be seen as a progressive history of humanity, governed by the national idea, and described by the creative personality of a group which evolves in time, a result of the efforts of countless number of generations. The quotation inserted above shows that cultural rebirth makes possible the acknowledgement of identity. Both the direct and indirect contacts of scholars with the sciences, arts, philology and literature of other peoples open the path of fruitful cultural dialogue. Niculescu states that “around the 1840s and 1850s, the Romanian language and culture, of all areas of Romanian culture, were in close contact with all Romance areas of Occidental Europe” (2003 155). Therefore, even though at a different pace, culture begins to modernize within all three Romanian provinces. The culture of those times is revigorated not by substitution of episteme, but through a complex modernizing process. Westernizing is “a thrilling ferment, an incentive, a rigorous confrontation term for the whole of our spiritual possibilities” (Marino 2004 28-29).
Aspects of the Recognition of Cultural Identity The cultural identity represents the synthesis of the way in which a culture survived among European cultures and the self-consciousness of this way of existence. From this perspective, such identity gives coherence to the discourses that legitimate the self-consciousness of our culture, namely of an age of it. The assembly of cultural identity articulations is really deep, especially in the case of levelling the identity discourse in the Romanian spaces. The symbol of the social homogeneity of the Romanian people is its national idea. Owing to this creed, the intensity of identity discourse increases and it largely contributes to the awakening of cultural and political will of all the Romanians, including to the development of a climate of spiritual effervescence, which is a proper frame for the cultural activism to manifest (a manner of intellectual pursuance of the ideal of national unity and universal integration through culture). In the area of Banat, the recognition of cultural identity means the furthering of the Enlightenment programme. What sets in is a stage of preserving the national element as a means to preserve Romanian national identity through nurturing the
5 Healthy communication among the social classes is also part of the uniqueness of Banat. There are often mentions that the groups from Banat make “the most civilized part of the Romanians, where the peasants have the highest understanding, lands, and are at the highest cultural level [...] and all the avant-garde battles of the idea of nation are held” (Goga 1935). Recognition of Cultural Identity in Banat | 105 language. Hence, the language, as an expression of historical continuity, is defined in this “century of the nationalities […] not necessarily as a means of communication, but, most frequently, as a means of spiritual unifying, an element of constituency and preservation of nationality” (David 13-14). In the written press, the part of the language as the most convincing and the clearest evidence of the ethnic unity of all the Romanians is shaped: It is the ideal domain I indirectly inherited form my forerunners and the teacher that directly passed it onto me is called and is my mother. It is the norm and the conscientious manifest of my soul. It is where the most eclectic master of my character as a gens and the strongest guardian of my individuality become manifest. ( Controla 1901) An element which completes the colouring of the phenomenon in study appears within the relation between Romanity (Roman, Latin roots) and identity, because these concepts make, at a level of ideas “a dialectic, organic unity,” finding themselves in an “interdependence relationship,” according to Victor V. Grecu. The author states that the Romanity (as in Romance languages) is the “landmark” of identity, since it shades light upon the identity traits: The concept of Romanity comprised the main ideas which represent axiomatic truths: the Roman ancestry of the Romanian people; the continuity, the permanence of the Roman element in Dacia; the unity, the kinship of Romanians in all the territories they inhabited, the Latin aspect of the Romanian language, the Roman essence of certain traditions and folklore habits, which shaped the concept of identity. (14) In the manner of the epoch, “the national politicization of the idea of Romanity” becomes the ideological basis of the entire Romanian national programme, as Doina David (13) observes. Clear directions are set to crystallize the modern culture based on a plan to refine and renew the Romanian language, to be more exact: to purify it and to make it homogenous from an etymology point of view, to unify the norms, to set the orthographic system, and to settle the problem of the neologisms. The attention given to these aspects, in the political circumstances of the time, is reasonable and it justifies the orientation towards the Latin character of our language and towards the romance roots. Even though there are exaggerations and slips because of the theoretical consciousness of the time, or due to the involvement of scholars, linguistically less prepared for such a process, of simply owing to the revolutionary inflated spirit as a result of the pressure of the de-nationalization of the Romanians, we cannot deny the joined efforts of all those involved to open a significant perspective towards solving the problems which the Romanian language faced. We have to underline that, based on valuable research (Gheţie 1975; Munteanu, Ţâra 1978; David 1980), the contribution of the Romanians from Banat, Transylvania and Bucovina to the appearance of the literary version of the Romanian language has been proven. It is also acknowledged that the Latin pattern, the Latin ideas have played a meaningful part in shaping neology elements and borrowings from Romance languages; the functional styles have also evolved, and with the help of non-Romance media the Latinity of our language has been reinforced. 106 | Ioana Banaduc
Acknowledging Romanian Language in Elementary Schools It is vital and a historical necessity, even, to educate the younger generations in the spirit of Romanian traditions and particularities through schools. School has been acknowledged as the “basis of culture” and has as goal to “form and set the character of society” ( The Diocesan Leaflet 1886). The Orthodox spirit, through the schooling policy of the Church, is the moral guiding and guardian energy when the politics of the state grow against the idea of a schooling system in the Romanian language. The teacher is a servant of culture; he or she becomes aware of his/her active part in society, knowing that science and culture are symbolic expressions of the nation’s identity, consciousness, unity and ultimately, European-ness. In this respect, the teacher sees the act of nurturing the language as: a means to serve the other objects; therefore, it shall be reduced to many systemic exercises taken from the living field of the language. Grammar shall no longer be an end, but a means to serve writing and especially, composition. Grammar is the philosophy of the language. The time that the student use to waste on memorizing definitions and analyses, shall be used for writing and composition drills. These drills, apart from setting a connection between the real world and the intellectual one, will introduce the children to the living world of the language [...]. Reading is an art placed in service for all other sciences. ( The Educator 1911) Spreading culture through the medium of language, in a patriotic sense is transforming language into a modern instrument, from the point of view of its possibilities of expression. One must also keep in mind the ability to answer, from a linguistic point of view, the needs of a culture in progress; its laws are based on its specificity (respecting its spirit). Cultivating language : “grammar is the philosophy of language” ( The Educator 1911). Cultivating language meant knowing the words existing in the language, their meanings and the ways of combining them in the construction of communication. The teaching of language aimed at adopting civilised expressions, and it underlined the formative role of language, as far as the spirit of discipline and respect towards social norms is concerned. Reading: “reading, at the core of teaching native language, is a source of the culture specific to the nation” ( The Diocesan Leaflet 1898). Although in the past the aim of reading was that of assimilating linguistic and textual patterns, validated for morphologic and syntactic accuracy, starting with the 19 th century the formative role of reading was adjusted. Thus, reading became a “cultural gesture” used in order to shape the pupil’s identity profile. This end was achievable based on the study of the Romanian literature history and took shape in the reading books. Through their texts, the reading books emphasised a programme of cultivating the young generation by “throwing in the seeds of Romanian-ness and nationality”: “The reading books must take into account the ethnic origin of a people. […] they must represent our cultural state, our way of thinking, all our ambitions and aspirations as a people” ( The Educator 1910). The education plans approved “in the meeting of the Romanian orthodox metropolitan consistory” reflected this opening. Here is a testimony in this sense: Recognition of Cultural Identity in Banat | 107
5th year. Reading will be used in order to make Romanian literature known, by reading the old authors: Pan, Barac, Văcărescu, the chroniclers […] selected biographies, historical narratives, stories about customs will be read […], 6 th year. The reading will be continued based on the reading book by studying fragments from newer authors: Mureşanu, Bolintineanu, Alecsandri, Eminescu, Coşbuc. ( The Educator 1909) When it comes to cultivating language and reading literary heritage books, the text was viewed as a bridge between literature and linguistics. The stages of understanding the literary text: qualitative linguistic deciphering of the text. This aspect presupposed clarifications of a lexical nature on the part of the educator, preceded or followed by the expressive reading of a literary text in order to teach pupils the phonetics of language. Successive readings of the text offered pupils the necessary breaks in order to reflect on it and emphasise its message, values and moral significations. Didactic methodology is centred on activity: “The child feels joy by producing something new and by working independently. S/he discovers his/her whole spiritual world” ( The Educator 1911). From this perspective, “active” is the pupil who “makes efforts of inner, personal reflection, who undertakes a mental activity of looking for, researching and rediscovering truths, knowledge” (Cherghit 73). The didactic means used by educators in order to have pupils learn the signs of language flexibility were: the variety of literary texts suggested for study and the exercises which aimed to refine expression by discovering the stylistic resources of the language. The role of exercises was to make pupils perceive the many linguistic registers which one could employ in communication, to understand that “the beauty of language means richness and variety, shadows of meaning and flexibility of language, it means the use of the stylistic resources of the language, the use of the right word in the right place” (Avram 85). We can notice the rhetorical-stylistic direction of approaching grammar. The spreading of culture through language lies under the heading of rhetoric. Style qualities, clarity, precision, accuracy, harmony, must be the fundamental qualities of literary expression. In his article, “Style exercises and compositions in popular school,” educator Gheorghe Catană started from the idea that “we must try and do our best so that everything that the pupil may learn can make him/her be able to express himself/herself in writing too, for this is the most significant purpose of teaching the language” ( The Educator 1910). The author approached writing as an essential intellectual activity which could ensure pupils’ access to the forms of the most important culture. The fundamental skills of written expression could be taught through a series of exercises: transforming dialogue into narration, summarising a piece of reading, developing a fundamental idea in detail and the main ideas given, description or optional text production, comparing texts, studying the didactic poem, the targeted categories being summary, argumentation, description, explanatory text, commentary. Pupil’s active involvement in using language in order to develop his/her creativity and the education of a “lively” relation with the literary text, are a few directions which were passed on as a methodology to the future generations as well. We can notice the modernity of the methodological points of views, some of them becoming principles of the national modern elementary education. 108 | Ioana Banaduc
Conclusion The reflexive attitude of scholars and teachers from Banat fits into a society pattern, partly imposed to them by their history, partly achieved through commitment towards tradition. Consequently, a cultural pattern is built in Banat, one that is composed by adjustment and mitigation, a reflex of discourses, with spiritual, social and historic relevance, for times governed by a strong civic spirit. The depth of these discourses acts as a ferment for cultural activism aimed at recognition of cultural identity, both on the part of teachers, and on the part of the most refined scholars. We may call this a social praxis, of form and shape typical of Banat, even though, it is a phenomenon present in all the Romanian provinces through the nineteenth century.
Works Cited Avram, Mioara. “Language and Education.” The Romanian Language , vol. 27, no. 1, 1978: 83-91. Banaduc, Ioana. “Dimension of active culture in Banat. Reflections in the Romanian press (1886-1918).” Journal of Romanian Literary Studies vol. 16, 2019: 432-437. Banaduc, Ioana. A Hypostasis of the Romanian Spirituality: Banat and the Active Culture . Pro Universitaria, 2017. Cerghit, I. Methods of education . 3 rd ed., EDP, 1997. “Controla,” 1901. David, Doina. Language and Culture. Literary Romanian Language from 1880 to 1920. Facla, 1980. “Drapelul,” Lugoj. The Flag , 1901, 1905. “Educatorul,” Oraviţa, The Educator 1909-1914. “Foaia Diecezană Caransebeş.” The Diocesan Leaflet of Caransebes —Periodical of Orthodox culture and spirituality , 1886-1918. Goga, O. “About Banat.” The Magazine of the Social Institute of Banat-Crisana , 1935. Grecu, V.V. “Identity. Unity. Integration - in the spectrum of globalization.” The Conferences of ASTRA Library , vol. 25, 2010, ASTRA. “Luminatoriul.” Illumination , 1881-1883. Munteanu, Şt., Ţâra, D. V. The History of Literary Romanian Language-Overview . EDP, 1978. Herder, J.G. Writings . Translated by Cristina Petrescu, Univers, 1973. Marino, A. The Integration of Romania in the E.U. Ideological and Cultural Aspects , 2nd ed., 2005. Marino, A. “Romanian Presence and European Realities.” Intellectual Journal , Polirom, 2004. Niculescu, Al. “The Uniqueness of Romanian Language among Romance 4.” Elements of Cultural History , Clusium, 2003. Niculescu, Al. The Uniqueness of Romanian Language among Romance 3. New Additions. Published by Clusium, 1999. Platon, Gh. “The Romanian Peasantry in the First Half of the XIX the Century. Identity Sense and National Consciousness.” The Annuary of the Institute of History of Cluj-Napoca , vol. 41, 2002: 85-96.
Contributors to the Current Issues
Ann-Marie Simmonds is an Assistant Professor in the Intensive English Program at the American University in Dubai. Her academic background is in the areas of English Literature and English Language and Linguistics. Her primary research interests are Caribbean music, Caribbean literature and English Language Teaching. More specifically she focuses on the discourse of Caribbean carnival music, and the use of music and literature in Teaching English as a Second Language. Banjo Olaleye is in the third year of his Ph.D. program in English at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. He holds an MA in English from the same university and a BA in English and International Studies from Osun State University, Nigeria. His dissertation focuses on a social reading of space and identity in eighteenth- century London through the perspective of Ignatius Sancho. Ioana Banaduc is Lecturer Ph.D. on Romanian Didactics and Teaching Practice in the Teacher Training Department at West University of Timişoara. Ishak Berrebbah is a PhD researcher at Coventry University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities. His project investigates the poetics and politics of identity in Arab American fiction produced in post-9/11 by female authors—a corpus of novels include Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent, and Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan. He was awarded full funded scholarship by the Algerian government in 2016 to pursue his doctoral degree in UK. Krisztina Kitti Tóth is a doctoral candidate of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She is currently writing up her doctoral dissertation titled Art and Artistic Performances Presented in Virginia Woolf’s Novels. She has attended several national and international conferences and workshops where, depending on the theme, she has either proposed her readings on aesthetics and performativity in the novels of Virginia Woolf or presented her other research field: fluid identity and its presentation in contemporary English narratives. She has published articles and papers in Hungarian as well as in English in several literary journals. Mary Acel German is Associate Professor at the College of Arts and Letters, University of Makati (UMak). She holds a Masters Degree in Anthropology from the University of the Philippines. Her research interests include ethnographic studies involving mountain communities and indigenous people as well as ethnicity and identity studies in both physical and virtual communities. Mohamed Saki is Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences and Senior Lecturer at Université de Bretagne Occidentale in Brest, France.
CUJHSS, June 2019; 13/1 Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences © Çankaya University ISSN 1309-6761 Printed in Ankara 110 | Contributors
Patrick Matthew Farr is an independent researcher and activist who has organized within the anti-violence movement for over 20 years focusing on violence at the intersection of hate crimes, discrimination, police brutality, domestic violence, sexual assault and the prison industrial complex. In 2013, Paddy completed an MA at the University of Arizona in Philosophy which resulted in a thesis titled “Tragic Irony: Socrates in Hegel's History of Philosophy”. Between 2013 and 2015, Paddy worked as the coordinator of the Wingspan Anti-Violence Project in Tucson Arizona, a collective organized by and for LGBTQIA survivors of violence. Paddy completed on data projects with the National Coalition of Anti- Violence Programs which resulted in the publication of four national based reports on violence against LGBTQIA&HIV+ people: “NCAVP 2013 Hate Violence Report,” “NCAVP 2013 Intimate Partner Violence Report,” “NCAVP 2014 Hate Violence Report,” and “NCAVP 2014 Intimate Partner Violence Report.” In 2016, Paddy completed a Master of Social Work which resulted in a thesis titled “Queer Victims: Reports of Violence by LGBTQI Survivors Result in Violent Assaults by Police.” Currently, Paddy is working on a book project focused on a critique of collaborations between the state and the anti-violence movement. Paddy is a psychotherapist in Eugene Oregon USA in private practice. Paddy practices psychoanalytic psychotherapy influenced by the work of Jacques Lacan, Felix Guattari and Judith Herman. With these therapeutic orientations, Paddy specializes in trauma recovery, anti-psychiatry, Latinx and LGBTQIA identities. Patricia Boyd is an Associate Professor at Arizona State University where she teaches courses in Writing Studies and Rhetoric. Her research interests include critical analyses of music in popular culture; studies of effective pedagogical strategies, particularly in the online classroom; and reflections on the use of social justice strategies in educational and other institutional frameworks. Roger L. Nichols is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Arizona, his teaching and research focused on the American West and Indians in US history. Nichols earned a Ph.D. in American History at the University of Wisconsin. A past President of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, he received four Fulbright appointments in Europe and Canada. He earned three National Endowment for the Humanities awards. Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path (Wiley: 2017), Natives and Strangers (Oxford: 2015), American Indians in US History (Oklahoma: 2014), and Warrior Nations (Oklahoma: 2013) are his most recent books. Publishing Policies and Ethical Rules
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