Chapter I: Recognition
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Narratives of Conflict and the Emergence of Community: Recognition, Responsibility, Reconfiguration By Maya S. Anbar Aghasi A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature) at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 2012 Date of final oral examination: 05/22/12 The dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee: Mary N. Layoun, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature Maria Irene Ramalho de Sousa Santos, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature Hans Adler, Professor, Departments of Comparative Literature and German Rachel Brenner, Professor, Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, Honorary Affiliate, Department of Comparative Literature Myra Marx Ferree, Professor, Sociology © Copyright by Maya S. Anbar Aghasi 2012 All Rights Reserved i For my mother, whose love for others, ever open door, and spirit for life taught me what it is to be human ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Recognition ..........................................................................................................20 Invisible Man: Recognition of the Self in the Uncanny ............................................................20 Al-mutashāʻel: The Paradox of Disappearance, the Paradox of the Addressee ........................51 Chapter Two: Responsibility ......................................................................................................79 Heremakhonon: Failed Quest for the Self, Failed Responsibility .............................................82 Palestine: “Shake hands!” Responsibility as an Agreement of Recognition ..........................109 Chapter Three: Reconfiguration ..............................................................................................146 Sitt Marie Rose: “We first Conquer and Defeat. Later We Talk.” Failed Communication, Failed Community ...................................................................................................................148 The Madonna of Excelsior: Creative Distortions, Community Reconfigured ........................171 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................202 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................206 iii Acknowledgements Writing is a very contradictory experience: one needs to be in complete isolation to remain focused and get words on a page, but at the same time, ideas can only come from constant interaction with people. For this reason, I would like to thank the very important people who were a part of my life in the past few years, without whom writing this dissertation would not have been possible. First and foremost, I would like to thank my mother Hala, father Samir, sister Laila, and brother Joe. Your constant encouragement, belief in my potential, and many personal sacrifices allowed me to formally pursue my love for literature, philosophy, and the understanding of other peoples and cultures in the very distant place of Madison, Wisconsin. To you, I am forever grateful and indebted. I would also like to thank my aunt Samira Aghacy. You have been invaluable support throughout my undergraduate and graduate learning. You took the time to read every word I wrote, gave me feedback on my work, and helped me improve my writing and refine the ideas I struggled with over the past seven years in graduate school. To the first teacher I encountered in Wisconsin, Professor Mary N. Layoun: words will always fail to express the gratitude I have for all you taught me. Thank you for opening my eyes when I first arrived in Madison in 2005, young and optimistic. Thank you for teaching me how to read critically, to understand the cruelty of politics, but to also appreciate the endless beauty of the world. Thank you for exposing me to literatures in many, many languages, and for sharing meals, deserts, and endless, engaging and fascinating conversations. I am humbled by your endless encouragement and advocacy for my work, and can only hope to become as wonderful a scholar, researcher, teacher, adviser, friend, and human being as you are. iv Professor Irene Santos, thank you for writing in support of my work, for patiently reading numerous drafts of my dissertation, and for encouraging me to pursue my ideas in moments of doubt. Professor Rachel Brenner, thank you for drawing my attention to the politics of our profession, and for being my intellectual liaison to a culture whose people and territory I can only access through books and conversation. I would also like to extend many thanks to Professor Hans Adler, whose support for my work began in the very early years of my graduate career and continues today. Thank you for never holding back on criticism, and for making me a better scholar as a result. I am immensely grateful to directors of the University of Wisconsin- Madison’s Sawyer Seminar at the Center for Research on Gender and Women, Professors Aili Mari Tripp and Myra Marx Ferree. Without your support, and the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which funded me as the humanities dissertation fellow Sawyer Seminar, I would not have been able to complete the dissertation. During the course of the year-long Sawyer Seminar, you not only provided me with a broad, interdisciplinary context to situate my project, but you also recognized the potential of my work in its early stages and welcomed me into a diverse, interdisciplinary, intellectual community, without which I would not have been able to complete my project. I am grateful to my intelligent peers in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for their learned conversations and discussions, their intellectual insight, and their diverse curiosities that enriched my own learning; the department administrator Diane Bollant, for her impeccable organization and patience; the UW Law Library, for providing me with part-time employment in harder times; and the wonderful people at Villari’s Martial Arts Centers in Madison, for the mind cannot be strong if the body is weak. v To the amazing woman who challenged me intellectually whilst we cooked together, who played with etymologies with me over jogs by the lake, who I danced with to take a break from grading, and whose shoulders I cried on when life did not go as planned: Emily Brown, Mary Claypool, and Jennifer Wacek. You gave me the gifts of laughter, love, joy, and friendship, and never cease to remind me of the important things in life. My Madison sisters, I am so blessed to have met you, and am forever indebted to all you gave and continue to give me. 1 Introduction In Ralph Ellison’s 1947 novel Invisible Man, the narrator writes “I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why would I be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition and recognition is a form of agreement [...]. All dreamers and sleepwalkers must pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all. But I shirked that responsibility. I became too snarled in the incompatible notions that buzzed within my brain. I was a coward...” (14). In this excerpt, the narrator raises difficult questions regarding responsibility. He admits that responsibility is demanding as he “shirks” his, but that everyone pays the price of shirking responsibility. Responsibility is difficult for him in particular because when it comes to and for whom he is responsible, he feels like perhaps he is justified in shirking responsibility, especially regarding those who do not “see” him, who fail to acknowledge him as an equal human being. The narrator of Invisible Man is an African American man living in the U.S. in the 1940s. In the novel, he moves from the Southern United States to New York City and in the process experiences the explicit and physically violent racism of the South, and the covert, demeaning and dehumanizing version in the North. He finds that in both places, he is deprived of personal agency, his voice unheard, and his existence reduced to being a representative for his “race”. In the South, he is told what to do and is violently beaten when he does not; in the North, he is a token representative, coaxed into believing what he does is his choice, but is barred from opportunity if he does not comply with the status quo. His question is therefore well taken, why 2 should he be responsible, especially to those who render him invisible, when he himself is not seen, or recognized? It is that difficult question of responsibility in which “Narratives of Conflict and the Emergence of Community” is grounded, asking, to whom is one responsible? For whom? Who is responsible? Is responsibility different for invisible victims? For those in power? How so? Taking my cue from the narrator of Invisible Man and his assertion that “responsibility rests upon recognition and recognition is a form of agreement,” the project begins not