Read ASToday Issue 20, 2011 as a PDF file - Arnet

ISSN 2044-8031
Issue 20
2011
Night time View Of North America by NASA Earth Observatory 2009
Mapping America - An American trilogy reviewed on page 43
In this year’s issue
is the official journal of the
American Studies Resources
Centre, The Aldham Robarts
Centre, Liverpool John Moores
University, Liverpool L1 9DE
3
Why all the
marsupials?
An Interview with
MacArthur
Fellowship
winning author
Jonathan Lethem
Conducted by
James Peacock
Tel: +44 (0)151-231 3241
e-mail: [email protected]
web site:
www.americansc.org.uk
Editor-in-Chief: Dr Bella Adams
Editor: David Forster
Editorial assistants:
Tom Donnelly, Jodie Ellis and
Harriet Stuchbury
Layout and graphics: David
Forster
The views expressed are those
of the contributors, and not necessarily those of the centre or
the university.
© 2011, Liverpool John Moores
University and the Contributors.
Articles in this journal may be
freely reproduced for use in subscribing institutions only, provided that the source is acknowledged.
10 Autobiographical Fictions
Ethnicity and
Identity in
Jack
Kerouac‘s
Satori in
Paris
16
Teaching
Motherhood,
Madness and
Murder
The Challenges
of Choosing
Modern
American
Literary Texts
Please email us at
By : Dr. Raja
Khaleel Al-Khalili
[email protected] with
21
Why Obama
can‘t close
Guantánamo
By R. J. Ellis, University
of Birmingham
Follow the ASRC on Twitter
@AStudies
or Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/AmStuds
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By Carol OrmeJohnson
Carol is currently a Peace Corps
Volunteer assigned to Azerbaijan
State Agricultural University,
where she taught an American
Studies class last fall.
26
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Rappin‘ on
Racial
Dualism
Ashleigh P. Nugent.
Employs the concept
of ‗Racial Dualism‘ as
a lens through which
to explore the racial
significance of
American rap music
from the 1990s
onwards.
By Eftychia
Mikelli
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23
Why Teach
American
Studies in a
CIS Country?
33
Letter from
New York
by Lenny Quart
Book reviews
34
An American
legend revisited
Michael Paris of the University of
Central Lancashire reviews Will
Kaufman's biography of
American roots legend Woody
Guthrie.
35
37
Culture
40
Literature
43
An American
Trilogy
History
Dr Robert Macdonald reviews 3
books on mapping America
Why all the
marsupials?
An Interview with Jonathan Lethem
Conducted by James Peacock
Jonathan Allen Lethem is a novelist whose work is a
genre-bending mixture of detective and science fiction.
In 2005 he received a MacArthur Fellowship, the socalled ―genius grant.‖ The interview took place on 25
May 2009 in Brooklyn, and I would like sincerely to
thank Jonathan Lethem for his time, patience and
generosity. This is an edited version; the full interview
can be read in the online edition of American Studies
Today.
James Peacock is Lecturer in English and American Literatures at Keele
University
Q
A
So this question of genre is
obviously an important one,
and I‘m almost nervous in
bringing up the topic because
you always get asked about it.
But it strikes me that some of
the characters are often very
conscious of the fact that
they‘re in these kinds of genre
collisions or mutations. I
mean, the obvious example is
―Light and the Sufferer,‖
when the character says, ―‗Of
course it‘s weird [. . .] it‘s
f***ing weird, it‘s science
fiction.‘‖ But you could also
argue, I think, that Metcalf
[protagonist of Lethem‘s debut novel Gun, With Occasional Music] seems aware
that he‘s in a kind of genre
fiction… Is that something
intentional, that the characters have a kind of reflexive
awareness of what‘s happening with the genre?
Well, I mean, ―intentional‖ is
a difficult word because it
sounds that I‘ve planned a
certain motif across the
course of the wanderings of
decades of story writing. Go
back to something like ―Light
and the Sufferer‖—is that a
quarter of a century old for
me now? I mean, it‘s old, it‘s
old! But I‘ve certainly observed the same thing you
have, which isn‘t the same
thing as crediting it as intentional. I write metagenerically, and the moment
someone introduced that
word I felt I could embrace it.
For me it‘s analogous to the
layers of cultural selfconsciousness that I write
about, for instance, in a character like Dylan Ebdus, who
listens to the music he listens
to with paradigms of class
and race and social positioning or social implications
around the music, helplessly.
And he still has a very deep
and, I would even say, organic relationship to music as
I do to storytelling or to
genre, but he‘s in a way
equally organically selfconscious. And I‘m that. I
mean, I think that for whatever reason the way I was
introduced to the very appealing examples of genre in narrative when I was introduced
to them—perhaps because it
was simultaneous with so
many other introductions; I
was all at once reading Raymond Chandler, Agatha
Christie, Isaac Asimov, Ray
Bradbury, Graham Greene
and Kafka—it declared itself
to me as a matter to be
looked at as well as relished…
And maybe this has to do
with my parents‘ relationship
to cultural practice in general,
with their bohemianism,
which put a lot of things in
embracing quote marks…. My
mother relished old black and
white movies, but she did that
the way a pothead who also
likes The Harder They Come
and Yellow Submarine likes a
Humphrey Bogart movie—not
entirely straight. My father—
well, he was a mid-century
American, fine arts painter.
What was the turn that defined his generation? It was
the turn from Abstract Expressionism, which was like a
pure high Modernism, to the
Pop artists, reclaiming imagery but in an ironised
sense. So I was introduced
simultaneously to the notion
that art was trying to purify
itself and reach this exalted
kind of Philip Guston, Mark
3
Rothko, high Modernist, sublime mountain top, but that it
was also somehow always
going to collapse back, as
Guston personally did, into
bubblegum wrappers and
comic books and Klansmen
and googly eyes and funny
marks on the page that reminded you of food and
funny faces. So I was just
born into this complexity.
Girl in a landscape
Q
The novel that for me was
most affecting was Girl in a
Landscape. It‘s the moment
when I realised I did actually
enjoy your work. I‘d read a
couple of novels and I‘d always felt, ―Okay, that‘s interesting‖ but I wasn‘t quite sure
that I was actually enjoying
your work until I read Girl in
Landscape. It‘s the one
where I first had that emotional connection, partly because I happened to read it
the year my mother died, in
2003. So suddenly with the
use of genre, I thought ―Ah,
okay; there‘s a psychological
thing that‘s most difficult to
comprehend.
A
Right. Well, I‘ll speak very
simply about that book. It
was for me unmistakably a
very, very definite step into
something more emotionally
direct. You know, I‘m very
proud of the three books that
preceded it in different ways.
Amnesia Moon is kind of an
ugly duckling that carries so
many of my teenage yearnings, and it‘s the sort of book I
first wanted to write. I sort of
managed to do one, and then
I realised ―Oh, I‘m going to be
forced to grow or be different
than that,‖ but it still carries
this code of my earliest yearnings. And I think As She
Climbed across the Table, in a
very indirect way, is also very
emotional and people sometimes catch it. I feel there‘s a
kind of cleverness to that
book and I feel that I pulled
off a kind of magic act with
the ending. You only get a
gift like that once or twice, so
I‘m very fond of that book….
By New York standards I‘m not particularly loud or
aggressive. But there I was constantly cast in this role
of the guy who was too loud, too sarcastic, because
people are really gentle and soft-spoken, mellow with
each other and very easily disconcerted or affronted if
you kind of get wound up….
reality here that‘s being
tapped into.‖ The critic Darko
Suvin uses the term ―novum‖
to describe the point of difference between our world and
the alternative world of the
sci-fi text. What struck me
about Girl in Landscape is
that you‘ve got the Archbuilders, you‘ve got the household
deer and you‘ve got many
other likely candidates, but
for me the most significant
novum is the mother‘s death.
It seems to me the thing
that‘s most out-there, the
4
But Girl in Landscape was a
transforming book for me and
one of the ironies is that The
Fortress of Solitude has been
understandably taken as so
deeply autobiographical, but
my mother didn‘t run away,
my mother died of cancer.
And I portray it almost with
documentary specificity in the
first part of Girl in Landscape.
I would then conceal that disclosure within something that
would strike people as being
both a western and set on
another planet. It‘s almost
like hiding in plain sight. No
one‘s ever going to know how
autobiographical I am because all they‘re going to do
is think about how absurdly
removed from the everyday
this book is. But it was also a
way of calling my own bluff; I
wanted to write a teenage
girl‘s coming-of-age story and
make it as emotionally stark
and dangerous as the best
books I saw in that genre… it
was a way of raising the
stakes. If I put my own
mother‘s death in the first
part of the book, I would have
to commit to an emotional
level that would transmit
throughout the rest of the
book. I‘d have to sustain it to
be worthy of giving the
book—burdening the book,
you might say—with that
event.
So I was never the same
writer again after that, I think.
Of course, the irony is in a
funny way that book was also
my first flop. The people who
really just wanted to see me
play forever, as confusing as
the changes between the first
three books might have been,
they could still say, ―Well,
okay, he‘s always going to be
this cool, funny, flip, ironic,
playful writer,‖ and the emotion in Girl in Landscape was
uncomfortable for a certain
constituency. I also think that
on the whole people, even
literary readers who have
made some accommodation
to the idea that there‘s some
things that science fiction
writers do that might be okay,
another planet is the line they
won‘t cross, and so no one
wants to read a book set on
another planet….
Q. But it‘s bizarre when it‘s so
obvious that the other planet
is a representation of how
everything becomes utterly
defamiliarised when somebody dies. That seems obvious.
A
But try explaining that on the
dust flap of the book!...
Brooklyn was my
Tourette’s
Q
The Planet of the Archbuilders is covered in ruins, fragments of the past. In another
interview you said that
chunks of memory also lie
around in Brooklyn. So I suppose the obvious question
is—to what extent is the
Planet of the Archbuilders a
sort of transposed Brooklyn?
A
Well, that‘s good, that‘s right
and it‘s also something else,
something much more immediate. I‘d simultaneously
fallen in love with John Ford
westerns, and the way he
uses the surrealist landscape
of the desert of Arizona and
Monument Valley—it‘s like
there‘s a Franz Kline painting
going on behind his cowboys.
When John Wayne is raging,
there‘s also this shape that‘s
raging, or waiting, or contradicting him, or agreeing with
him. And this intensity has to
do with my interest in abstract painting. It has to do
with my discovery of the real
American West as a city kid,
going out there and discover-
ing the size of the planet. I
mean, it can‘t be explained
unless you‘ve gone through
that. I don‘t know if you‘ve
ever travelled into the Australian outback or the American
West—the scale is different,
human life feels different
when put against that immensity and that abstraction. And
I‘d gone from being a city
kid… I guess I was trying to
smash together Brooklyn and
what had overwhelmed me
when I travelled in the American western states….
Q
Elsewhere you‘ve said that
Brooklyn is your Tourette‘s
and I wonder if you could say
a bit more about that because
I really like that idea.
A
This is a dangerous question
for me to answer because it
calls forth one of my hoariest
set-pieces. I mean, when I
speak in front of a crowd, I‘m
always asked, ―How did you
arrive at writing about
Tourette‘s Syndrome?... And I
have a sort of rebus that I
present… which is that I grew
up in this place (and we‘re
right in the middle of it now)
where personalities, conversations, street talk are very
energetic, ironic, brittle,
sometimes play at hostility,
and sense of humour can be
quite full of scorn, and flirt
with aggression. And then I
lived for ten years in northern
California, where there‘s a
very, very different public
ethos of speech and behaviour. By New York standards
I‘m not particularly loud or
aggressive. I wouldn‘t impress anyone here. But there
I was constantly cast in this
role of the guy who was too
loud, too sarcastic, because
people are really gentle and
soft-spoken, mellow with
each other and very easily
disconcerted or affronted if
you kind of get wound up…. I
wanted to say, ―well, yes
and‖ or ―but come on, what
about this?‖ and just as I
thought things were getting
good, they thought things
were getting very bad, and
they would say, ―Is something wrong? Did you have a
bad day?‖…
So that‘s how I related Brooklyn to Tourette‘s: Brooklyn
was my Tourette‘s while I was
in California because I left
there when I was too young
to really separate my sense of
self from where I‘d come
from. I didn‘t get it, I hadn‘t
lived anywhere else. And
when I came back I realised,
―Oh, I get to be loud and sarcastic here and people will be
turned on in return and give
me back more of the same.‖
And I thought, ―You know,
the street talk is part of me,
and I can take this observation and make the kind of exaggeration of it that fiction
thrives on. If I decide that
Brooklyn is Tourette‘s, it‘s
wrong, it‘s a mistake, but fiction loves those mistakes.‖
Regionalism
Q
I suspect you wouldn‘t want
to talk about your work in
terms of regionalism and all
that implies, but there does
seem to be a kind of urban
5
regional sensibility to some of
the novels. In Motherless
Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude you use that word
―Manhattanized‖ slightly
pejoratively in the sense that
Brooklyn seems to stand for
the embrace of the past or the
past that constantly erupts
through like Tourette‘s—
A
Yes, yes—unwilling embrace
of the juxtapositions, an unfinished quality. To
―Manhattanize‖ something is
to slick it over, and in Brooklyn it never quite works. It
isn‘t that they aren‘t trying all
the time, but the crud bleeds
up through the veneer.
Q
Does that make Brooklyn
somehow more ―real‖ than
Manhattan?
A
Well, that‘s a pitfall you‘re
inviting me into, isn‘t it?
Q
It is. I‘m sorry!
A
No, no, I‘ll say no. It‘s not
more real but its unreality is
more revealing and revealed.
That‘s what I would say….
And the thing about Brooklyn
that seems to me most definitive is that it‘s a negotiation,
and a visible negotiation.
Walking down the street is a
negotiation; trying to make
6
neighbourhoods out of these
incoherent areas is a negotiation, and it‘s undisguised. In
Manhattan the claim is being
asserted that the job is done,
that the glorious result has
been arrived at. Of course,
it‘s also juxtaposed and turbulent in its way, underneath,
and in Chronic City I try to
make that evident. But the
power of the smoothing over
is also very striking, and I
guess in my mind correlates
to American dreams of a simple, total concept of what it is
to be alive or to be justified….
Utopian experiment
Q
The other side of this question is that a number of your
novels seem to take this idea
of regionalism too far. You
explore the consequences
when people take it to a really
tiny, parochial level. Amnesia
Moon, I think, is the first example, where one of the consequences of the unnamed,
cataclysmic event is that people retreat into the local.
Then again in Chronic City
you talk about the problem,
or at least the phenomenon,
of ethics becoming local. It
seems to me that ―local‖ is
another form of amnesia.
A
This is very interesting because it‘s an area of persistent tension for me. I remember at one point coming
across an argument that
thrilled me in a way I can‘t
quite finish being thrilled by,
where the movement in politically correct anthropology
was to say that local culture
needed to be ratified, respected, that there were matters of local ethos. And
someone, problematising
what had become a kind of
mantra, said, ―So, what if the
abolitionists had accepted
slavery as a local, cultural
condition of the southern
states? Would you take it to
that point?‖ And this tension,
which is very American but is
also very much a part of
growing up in the part of
Brooklyn I grew up in, is—can
you make a meaningful zone
of operation and declare it
sufficient unto itself? These
neighbourhoods were attempts to divide middle class
brownstones from the surrounding poverty, and that
attempt was full of ethical
disasters. The only way to
sustain those assertions was
through amnesia, blindness,
blinkers….
But on the other hand, if you
look at my work, one of the
real motifs in it is the fragility,
beauty, and importance of
subcultural life. Growing up
as a child of sixties radicals
and a grandchild of American
communists in New York City,
but in Brooklyn, which is a
kind of bastard part of New
York City, I was, without understanding it fully at the
start, nestled within a whole
series of subcultures and believed them initially to be
much more dominant or lasting than many of them would
turn out to be. They were, in
fact, on the verge of extinction practically by the time I
was coming into them! But I
still feel very, very moved by
the bravery of their assertion
even if they turned out to be
relatively temporary….
not paid, they risk life and
limb to declare themselves
part of this community—and
to the people who don‘t value
it, it‘s contemptible, illegal,
destructive, and the price was
usually to destroy the lives of
the people who did it. But in
that book another subculture,
quite poignant to me, is the
science fiction convention,
where people go and for
three days in a hotel where
the staff literally finds them
America is a gigantic utopian
experiment that because it‘s
too enormous to be meaningful, it‘s too giant and abstract,
breaks down into the states or
into the communes or into
the genres or the little zones
where people try to make
something that they believe
in, that they think can work.
And these things simultaneously exemplify American
Q
So to come to Chronic City. I
was very interested in Perkus‘
eye….
A
don‘t know if you were cataloguing them, probably not,
but I tried to never use the
same word—
Q
That was my next question—
A
Good! You know, the metaphors I love most—and I
guess the ultimate example of
this in my writing is Lack in
As She Climbed Across the
Table—are the ones that feel
America is a gigantic utopian experiment that,
because it‘s too enormous to be meaningful, breaks
down into the little zones where people try to make
something that they believe in.
contemporary life and they‘re
very suspicious, because
you‘ve stepped out of the
mainstream, you‘ve gone off
into your own little kingdom… And so I think I‘ve always tried to figure out—
what‘s the right size of group
to set up your little utopia
with? Where and how can
this be done, and can it be
made to last a little while? If
you look at Fortress of Solitude, this becomes very explicitly a book about soul fans
as a subculture….
Q
Or graffiti.
A
Or graffiti. Graffiti exemplifies the creative act as a kind
of absurd—you know, any art
making is a kind of terribly
beautiful, terribly fragile and
useless or non-viable utopian
zone that‘s being set up,
where you can‘t make any
money, and people end up
pitted against each other because it‘s competitive, so the
little utopias fall apart almost
before they‘re set up. And
graffiti is a marvellously perverse one because in the view
of the people who do it it‘s
this incredibly expressive,
communal, selfless kind of art
making—you know, they‘re
each time they‘re used as
though they‘re incredibly allegorically specific, but by the
end they‘ve been used in so
many different lights that you
think, ―That was an allegorical concept or it was a symbol
that, if it was simultaneously
a symbol of a hundred different things, is it a symbol at
all?‖ It‘s like the metaphor as
lens that can be used everywhere. I mean, Tourette‘s
becomes the same thing. I
made a game of comparing
Tourette‘s to Brooklyn, to the
subway, to conspiracy theories—
idiotic, they set up their perfect world, where they finally
feel right and normal. And
then on Sunday they check
out and they go back to the
life of being a loser elsewhere; they get back on their
planes and it‘s over. But for
three days they had it going.
And this is that same dream.
Q
A
I‘m reminded of Perkus
Tooth‘s accusation that he
levels at Chase Insteadman in
Chronic City. He says,
―You‘re an amnesiac American because you have an inability to imagine these things
have happened to anyone
else,‖ or along those lines.
So it seems to be that, yes,
those small groups can be
viable if at least you have
some kind of awareness of a)
difference and b) the fact that
other subcultures or miniutopias might well be having
the same experiences as you.
Yes, absolutely, one that has
a little more historical consciousness, perhaps, and is a
little more capable of encompassing imperfection or paradox…. If it can encompass a
lot of ironies and perversities,
it might be a little more
workable, too.
Q
To Prince.
A
To Prince, yes. If it‘s suddenly applied to everything,
then it stands in for consciousness itself. And his eye
certainly is, I think, one of
those, like the Lack, or like
Tourette‘s, or in a sense like
dreaming is in Amnesia Moon
or as the stone outcroppings
are in a John Ford film. They
mean everything and therefore not any one thing. But
they mean it intensely, insistently; they demand that you
go with them to that sense of
meaning….
Q
My personal favourite, on this
subject, was ―mugwump
eye.‖ Wonderful. Clearly, it‘s
that kind of multivalent symbol which may not even be a
symbol, but it seemed to me
also a kind of linguistic chal-
7
lenge to yourself, but also to
the reader, to consider what
language is capable of. It‘s
almost as if the need to keep
finding different ways to describe this makes it indescribable.
A
It‘s a slightly Lionel Essrog
thing smuggled into Chase‘s
consciousness, that he can‘t
quit describing that eye.
Q
He has to keep smoothing it.
A
Yes—―maybe I can find the
right word and I can stop
looking at it! If I could just
find the word, then I wouldn‘t
have to notice that f***ing
eye!‖…
Q
I wonder if you‘d like to say
something about ekphrasis,
the description of other artworks in the text.
A
I‘m thinking about this very
much because I‘m reading the
collected stories of J. G. Ballard. It‘s one of my pet things
and one of the things I think is
so radical about Ballard is
he‘s so interested in arts.
Fiction is often very shy about
one hand, it gives voice to
something; on the other hand
it silences it or at least subsumes it within a different
kind of text. I was thinking
particularly of graffiti, which
we‘ve touched on already, but
also the rock gig in You Don‘t
Love Me Yet.
A
And the father‘s film, which is
described for a page and a
half of Fortress of Solitude—
Because I write enthusiastically about popular culture
and import gestures from comic books and film I am
mistaken for something less than the extremely traditional writer that I am… I‘m a thoroughgoing embodiment of tradition and not a radical at all.
Q
Yes, there are lots of examples, even Laird Noteless‘
chasms in Chronic City. Is it
celebrating the power of writing, or are you also acknowledging artistic forms that
challenge the power of what
you do?
Q
8
Absolutely. I think it‘s Peter
Wagner who said ekphrasis
has a ―Janus face.‖ On the
Q
It‘s about ekphrasis, the
power of language.
A
I‘m very, very excited about it.
You see me trying to go this
way in some of my earlier
short stories that are probably
unworkable, ones I didn‘t collect, actually. There are a lot
of artists and impossible artworks in those stories, I guess
in the manner of Ballard, specifically. But also Kafka, with
The Hunger Artist. You know,
conceptual pieces and people
doing things.
Q
Music has such a special
status because it‘s so directly—
A
It‘s so emotional, so physical
and you can‘t describe it—
Q
It‘s like ―hiding in plain sight‖
again, isn‘t it, because it‘s
secret.
A
Yes, it drives you crazy, it
drives you absolutely crazy!
And in a way, ironically, I got
closer to it in Fortress of Solitude where a character
spends, at some level, six
hundred pages testifying to
the uselessness of music to
his experience, than I did in
You Don‘t Love Me Yet where
I pretend it can be present….
The absolute in visual arts
A
Well, I‘m certainly very interested—I‘m very interested in
areas of artistic practice that
the novel can knock on the
door and never cross the
threshold. I do very much like
monumentality and endlessness….
And I‘m drawn to the absolute in visual arts—Robert
Smithson‘s Earthworks,
which is an obvious point of
reference for Noteless…. I
wanted to think about what if
a really monumental Earthworks kind of artist was set
loose in Manhattan and allowed to ruin things.
the other arts.
ingful but we‘re always just
thinking, ―What are they going to put there?‖… You
know, we don‘t grant any reality to the hole in the ground,
even though it‘s been with us
for pushing toward a decade,
this unbelievable hole in the
ground. We don‘t take it as
itself; it‘s only a delayed plan.
So I‘ve lost the very beginning of this question!
And of course I was thinking
about the gigantic hole at the
bottom of Manhattan now,
where those buildings were
effectively reversed. We all
live a stone‘s throw from this
chasm which just has this
horrible authority and also
invisibility. It‘s deeply mean-
Q
It was interesting what you
said about Dylan, because it
strikes me that Fortress of
Solitude is about a man‘s attempt to find ways of remediating adolescent experience, and it repeatedly defeats him. He never really
had a graffiti tag of his own,
so his liner notes and his music journalism are a way of
remediating what he‘s experienced. And it seems to be
about that problem: they‘re
not adequate.
Q
So the last question—forgive
me for this, it‘s a clichéd
question… Let‘s just suppose
for a moment that the novel is
dying, or that it‘s become
residual practice. Do you see
ekphrasis—the use of the
graphic novel, comic books,
music, various things that you
and other writers are putting
in to your novels—as a way of
reinvigorating the novel? Or
is it just another thing that
novelists can do and have
always done?
A
Absolutely. He can‘t get
there, he‘s just always on the
other side of the pane of
glass. That‘s truer, finally,
unfortunately, to a writer‘s
situation in relationship to
music than the sort of sleight
of hand I attempted in You
Don‘t Love Me Yet, which is
to say, ―Oh, let‘s have it, let‘s
put it in the book, let‘s dance
to this book!‖ And everyone
just couldn‘t dance!
A
I would just come down so
strongly on the other side that
I‘ll just be very boring, in a
way, by not even flirting with
the question…. Because I
write enthusiastically about
popular culture and import
gestures from comic books
and film and ―joke‖ literary
forms, that handful of facts
causes me to be mistaken for
something less than the extremely traditional writer that
I am…. I‘m a thoroughgoing
embodiment of tradition and
not a radical at all. I have
acknowledged the fact of radical experiment and made
sometimes some intertextual
jokes about writing something more metafictional or
experimental than I ever have
troubled to do. My work acknowledges the existence of
those experiments but I‘m like
a nineteenth-century novelist,
really. I‘m so devoted to the
traditional means, I‘m so in
love with them—trying to
gobble up the world around
me by taking its measure in
scenes and characters and
dialogue and paragraph and
plot. Those tools are so enthralling to me. I‘m totally
committed to them, and so
there‘s nothing about my
work that I think should
threaten anyone short of the
mandarins who just don‘t
want the Fantastic Four ever
to be mentioned inside a
novel.
9
Autobiographical
Fictions: Ethnicity
and Identity in
Jack Kerouac’s
Satori in Paris
By Eftychia Mikelli
Introduction
A
bout forty years since
Jack Kerouac‘s death
his legacy remains
remarkably influential.
Recent years have witnessed a
renewed interest in Kerouac‘s
work, and the proliferation of Kerouac-related events internationally attests to the numerous ways
in which his writing is still relevant today. Book-length studies 1
and articles on Kerouac continue
to be published regularly, offering
original interpretations of previously unexplored aspects of his
work. But whereas criticism of On
the Road and other more widely
known novels has been prolific,
less attention has been paid to
Satori in Paris, a novel composed
about four years before Kerouac
died (1965), and published in its
entirety by Grove Press in 1966. 2
This article seeks to establish the
significance of Satori in Paris in
the Kerouacian oeuvre, exploring
the complex aspects of identity
formation that are addressed in
the novel.
In Satori in Paris Kerouac provides a fictional version of a tenday trip undertaken for the purpose of establishing a rapport
with his ancestry in France. The
story in the novel is about the
French-Canadian narrator‘s journey from America to France in
order to track down his family
line, which he believes to be of
noble blood. He desires to investigate his past and thus embarks
on a search for ethnic origins and
identity: ―my quest‖ (52, 92). The
Eftychia Mikelli holds a PhD from the Department of
English Studies at Durham University, where she is
currently employed as a postdoctoral teaching assistant. Her article explores the fictional aspects of identity formation in Jack Kerouac‘s Satori in Paris, departing from previous autobiographical readings of the
novel. Drawing upon Derrida‘s deconstructive theories,
it examines the ways in which the narrator‘s attempts
to establish a coherent ethnic identity are undermined
by instability and hybridization.
10
urgency to establish a stable
identity becomes vividly communicated, as the novel‘s main focus
is on the narrator‘s search for
origins. However, this quest
proves problematic, for the idea
of origins is repeatedly questioned. The narration is accordingly structured around discontinuous episodes that reflect the
fragmentation of the narrator‘s
quest.
Critical reaction to Satori has
been largely unsympathetic. Clark
argues that ―the trip had gone by
in a blur, and that word is the
best description of Satori in Paris,
a disturbing, unintentional
‗confession‘ of how badly Jack
had deteriorated‖ (203). Gifford
and Lee refer to the trip narrated
in Satori as ―a lonely, abortive
sojourn that resulted in little of
value‖ (300) and Theado states
that Kerouac ―failed to achieve
his purported goal of reaching his
family heritage‖ (176). Indeed, the
narrator‘s inability to trace his
origins lends validity to such
comments. However, it should
not be overlooked that the narrator‘s quest for origins is part of a
more fundamental attempt to
establish an (initially ethnic) iden-
tity. The wider implications arising from reflections upon the concept of identity in Satori in Paris
have rarely been substantially
addressed by critics. My analysis
aims to shed light on such considerations; disengaging Satori in
Paris from several more conventionally autobiographical approaches that have been pursued
in the past, I will explore the dynamics of the processes of identity formation that shape the
novel.
Autobiographical fictions
The fact that Satori in Paris has
been inspired by Kerouac‘s trip to
France can to an extent account
for the critical tendency to analyse the novel with close reference to the actual events in the
author‘s life. A first view of Satori
would seem to justify this; it can
be said that Kerouac himself is
partly responsible, having stated
that he has decided to use his real
name, ―because this story is
about my search for this name in
France‖ (8). 3 A preliminary exploration of the concept of autobiography is particularly useful here in
order to illuminate the author‘s
claim to identification with the
narrator and the complications
arising thereof.
Rimmon-Kenan argues that autobiography is ―in some sense no
less fictional than what is conventionally classified as such‖ (3). In
a work that bears his name as its
title, Roland Barthes points to the
impossibility of autobiography
becoming an accurate transcription of reality: ―I had no other
solution other than to rewrite myself - at a distance - a great distance, here and now‖ (142). Burke
maintains that in this, ―Roland
Barthes would seem to be breaking the timehonoured autobiographical contract - that the self
writing and the self written on
should be one and the same
self‖ (54). In fact, the temporal
distance between the actual taking place of events and their narration forbids the identification of
the two. Subjectivity is yet another significant factor; individuals have different ways of perceiving events and then preserving them in their memory:
―Autobiography expresses the
play of the autobiographical act
itself, in which the materials of
the past are shaped by memory
and imagination to serve the
needs of present consciousness‖ (Eakin, Fictions 5). A variety
of factors can intervene to reshape one‘s perception. Memory
is selective; certain events are
recalled more vividly than others,
and representation becomes increasingly problematic. Nonetheless, an autobiographical narration should not be taken as an
absolutely artificial construct,
completely severed from its author. To deny that Kerouac had
indeed travelled to France would
be foolish; however, the distinction between that and the work
delivered, the product of the mind
which gives birth to the fictional
character, should be kept in mind.
This fundamental distinction intensifies the complications that
transpire from the use of the
proper name in the novel. The
narrator draws attention to his
―from Medieval French Quebec via - Brittany stock‖ (45) and emphatically projects the noblesse of
his family line, declaring that his
―ancestor was an officer of the
Crown‖ (51). Indeed, he traces his
heritage ―back to Cornwall, Wales,
and Ireland and maybe Scotland
afore that […] then down over to
the St. Lawrence River city in
Canada where I‘m told there was
a Seigneurie (a Lordship)‖ (73).
The family heritage Kerouac has
bestowed on his narrator constitutes the propulsive force behind
the trip to France. Asserting his
noble background, the narrator
sets the scene for what appears
to be for him a most dignified
cause and a quest of ultimate
importance; he feels that by tracking down his ancestry he is fulfilling a family dream (Satori 74).
For the narrator of Satori in Paris
the attempt to align himself with
the heritage of the aristocracy of
Brittany is the ultimate quest for
identity. However, the projection
of a multiplicity of geographical
loci as ―the origin‖ is from the
start suggestive of the problems
implicated in the narrator‘s attempt to establish an ethnic identity.
―I had no other solution other than to rewrite myself at a distance - a great distance, here and now‖
passport ―which says: ‗John
Louis Kerouac‘ because you cant
go around America and join the
Merchant Marine and be called
‗Jean‘‖ (Satori 95); the tension
between these two names is suggestive of more general confusion with regard to representations of Franco-American identity
in the novel.
In his initial attempt to foreground an ethnic identity, the
narrator sets out to track down
his ancestry, which he believes to
be of aristocratic origin: he mentions ―nobles, of which I am a
descendant (Princes of Brittany)‖ (Satori 16). He takes great
care to stress that he comes
Despite the narrator‘s intentions,
a number of predicaments blight
his project. At the Mazarine Library of Paris he is informed that
the records that he was looking
for had been destroyed by Nazi
bombings (22/52-3), then at the
National Library he is not provided with the material he wants
because the employees there
mistrust him: ―they all smelled
the liquor on me and thought I
was a nut‖ (33); he cannot find
anything at the National Archives
either (51). He subsequently
misses his plane to Brittany and
therefore has to travel by train (57
-9). Eventually, he comes to realize that he cannot attain the de-
11
sired results ―because Johnny
Magee around the corner as anybody knows can, with any luck,
find in Ireland that he‘s the descendant of the Morholt‘s King
and so what?‖ (52). Later, he bitterly wonders: ―who ever thought
that in my quest for ancestors I‘d
end up in a bookie joint in
Brest‖ (92), openly acknowledging the vacuous nature of his pursuit. The fact that his search takes
him to a bookie joint parodies the
narrator‘s initial purpose of tracing his aristocratic lineage. Finally,
he openly admits: ―my dreams of
being an actual descendant of the
Princes of Brittany are shattered‖ (112). In this light, proclamations like ―the Little
Prince‖ (54) and ―the Prince of
Brittany‖ (114) strike an ironic
chord. The narrator has been
looking for a solid marker of ethnic origin that would help him
trace his genealogy; eventually he
comes to realize that this is perpetually deferred. The narrator‘s
insistence on tracing his lineage
is particularly striking, considering that America has traditionally
welcomed ethnic diversity, promoting the importance of individual effort over ethnic background.
That Kerouac‘s narrative is driven
by a desire to establish his ethnic
origins therefore constitutes an
ironic comment upon Cold War
America‘s lingering preoccupation with race, emphatically foregrounded in projections of otherness in novels such as On the
Road and The Subterraneans. The
narrator of Satori seeks an ethnic
identity outside America; he has
to be dislocated in order to be
able to safeguard his effective reentry into the country. The hybridized nature of his identity
gives rise to a number of complications, and the inconclusiveness
of his search for origins reveals
his marginal experience of ethnicity. In this context, the fact that he
brings back to his mother a trivial
Breton butter bucket as a souvenir (82) can be interpreted as an
ironic gesture, and his quest now
becomes ―adrift in the increas-
12
ingly meaningless sea of ethnic
signs and symbols‖ (Harney 377).
Hybrid identities
Not only is the narrator‘s quest
destabilized by the inability to
reach an origin, but it also becomes difficult to define the exact
nature of the identity he wishes to
trace. The French and American
elements that the narrator identifies as major components of his
ethnic identity are in constant
tension, and he is unsure whether
he should think of himself as predominantly American or Breton.
He initially takes pains to establish his Breton ancestry and distinguishes himself from other
Americans in Paris, reflecting on
the dismal state of an American
he sees in a restaurant, and exposing the comic effect of two
American sisters‘ efforts to buy
oranges (38-40). However, despite
this attempt to dissociate himself
from his American background, at
other instances the narrator emphatically represents himself as
an American, and furthermore, a
tourist: ―So how can an American
tourist who doesnt speak French
get around at all? Let alone
me?‖ (31). Later he describes
himself ―as a New Yorker‖ (37),
whereas earlier he had stated that
he lives in Florida (11). Thus, even
with regard to his American identity there is no fixed point of reference. The narrator‘s American
persona is further outlined in
phrases like: ―looking like any
decent American Boy in trouble‖ (69), ―am a tourist‖ (76) and
―it‘s not my fault, or that of any
American tourist or even patriot,
that the French refuse the responsibility of their explanations ‖ (85). Such images do not only
conflict with his projections of
French identity, but also bear witness to forceful tensions inherent
in its American representations,
themselves already complicated
by the hybridized nature of
American identity.
The tension is further intensified
as the synthesis of the narrator‘s
various identities proves problematic; he interchangeably
moves from one to the other, unable to decide which of these
(already ambiguous) identities
suits him most. This oscillation is
further highlighted in the alternate use of French and English
throughout the narration, for example when a large paragraph in
French is followed by its lengthy
English counterpart in a passage
that spans almost two pages in
length (63-4). Such linguistic instability is suggestive of a more
general tension in perceptions of
ethnicity, also emphatically foregrounded in the narrator‘s attempt to emphasize his Breton, as
opposed to French, background.
Breaking language down to the
level of phonemes, he professes
that Standard French language
has really been changed by
the influx of Germans,
Jews and Arabs […] and I
also remind him […] that in
those days you said not
―toi‖ or ―moi‖ but like
―twé‖ or ―mwé‖ (as we
still do in Quebec and in
two days I heard it in Brittany) […] François‘ name
was pronounced François
and not Françwé for the
simple reason that he
spelled it Françoy, like the
King is spelled Roy, and
this has nothing to do with
―oi‖ and if the King had
ever heard it pronounced
rouwé (rwé) he would not
have invited you to the
Versailles dance but given
you a roué with a hood
over his head to deal with
your impertinent cou, or
coup, and couped it right
off and recouped you nothing but loss. (45-6)
Pitting Standard French against
what he takes to be ―generic‖
Breton, the narrator draws attention to a series of linguistic developments that undermine the coherence of Standard French linguistic identity. Against the ad-
mittedly hybridized French language the narrator positions the
allegedly pure Breton one. However, the clarity of the meaning of
―Breton‖ is soon called into question when, after having been
―original‖ centre. In this context
coherence cannot be achieved,
either due to an overabundance
of linguistic traces or because
these traces are never sufficient.
In either case, the influx of novelty is never exhaustive; further supplementarity occurs
and language remains perpetually
unstable. It is a similar instability that
characterizes the
narrator‘s national
identity, which is
always in need of
completion, as a
variety of, often conflicting, ethnic fragments is repeatedly
called upon to make
up for the a priori
lack of a generic and
pure national origin,
itself an ideological
Jack Kerouac © Tom Palumbo
construct.
overwhelmed with information,
Therefore, it does not come as a
he exclaims: ―what the hell […]
surprise that the narrator‘s initial
everybody‘s suddenly a
claim that ―this old name of mine
Breton!‖ (93). The narrator mo[…] is just about three thousand
mentarily expresses a belief in
years old and was never changed
the ―originary‖ nature of Breton
in all that time and who would
identity, only to realize that the
change a name that simply
hybridization it has been subject
means House (Ker), In the Field
to over the centuries problema(Ouac)‖ (72), is subsequently contizes any claims to ―originality‖.4
tradicted by a reference to an alThe vacuity of the narrator‘s
ternative spelling: ―why did the
search for a coherent ethnic idenpilot pick old Keroach? (Keroac‘h,
tity is thus exposed. An integral
early spelling hassle among my
ethnic identity cannot be attained,
uncles)‖ (95). These different verbecause it is constantly subjected
sions also point to the instability
to the Derridean notion of
of identity, which seems to be as
―supplementarity‖. Derrida arsusceptible to change as the varigues that ―one cannot determine
ous spellings of the narrator‘s
the center and exhaust totalizaname. In an attempt to trace his
tion because the sign which reorigins, the narrator provides a
places the center, which suppledetailed exposition of numerous
ments it, taking the center‘s place
variations on his name, evoking
in its absence - this sign is added,
family and place names, and an
occurs as a surplus, as a suppleassortment of ―fatherlands‖ (73).
ment. The movement of significaIn this context the importance of
tion adds something, which rethe etymology of the proper
sults in the fact that there is alname is undermined, exposing
ways more‖ (99). Both Breton and
the ironic overtones implied in
Standard French are infused with
the decision to name the narrator
a variety of new linguistic ele―Kerouac‖. A poignant comment
ments that are intended to comon notions of identity, the versapensate for the lack of an
tility of the proper name challenges the idea that a unified and
stable ethnic identity can be
achieved, and also questions the
common critical assumption that
the author Kerouac and his narrator‘s persona can be taken as
identical.
The proper name cannot be associated with a fixed signification,
and its various linguistic substitutions forcefully introduce into the
narrative:
the moment when language invaded the universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence
of a centre of origin, everything became discourse
[…] that is to say, a system
in which the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is
never absolutely present
outside a system of differences. The absence of the
transcendental signified
extends the domain and
the play of signification
infinitely. (Derrida 91)
The variations on the name invalidate conceptions of ―Kerouac‖ as
a generic, original and independent identity; ―Kerouac‖ only
makes sense when defined
against ―Kernuak […] Kériaval
[…] Kermario, Kérlescant and
Kérdouadec […] Kéroual‖ (73),
and ―Keroach? (Keroac‘h)‖ (95).
Identity now can only be understood within a system of significations, which are also subject to
variation. This constitutes a major
point of rupture with the notion of
a coherent ethnic identity. Ethnic
identity is dispersed in an infinite
play of signification, which, according to Derrida, came into
force ―at the moment when European culture […] had been dislocated, driven from its locus, and
forced to stop considering itself
as the culture of reference‖ (93).
If one were to seek such a moment in Satori, one would be
tempted to position it in the nar-
13
rator‘s ancestors‘ departure from
France, speculating that the dislocation to which the ―Kerouacs‖
have been subjected, both spatially and linguistically, has dissociated them from firm points of
reference. However, such reasoning would be problematic in line
with Derridean thought. I have
already pointed out that the
Breton/French languages, as individual expressions of European
culture, are not free from external
influences that have unsettled
their referential authority. Therefore, it is more appropriate here
to talk about a continuous, originless process, whereby the proper
name, also conventionally a signifier of ethnic identity, is deprived
of a fixed corresponding signified.
This leaves us with a ―structure of
infinite referral in which there are
only traces - traces prior to any
entity of which they might be the
trace‖ (Culler 99). In this context,
the notion of identity is further
destabilized, and the traditional
function of the proper name is
openly challenged. Culler argues
that ―effects of signature, traces
of the proper name/signature in
the text, produce a disappropriation while they appropriate‖ (192).
The limitations of the narrator‘s
effort to use the proper name as
license to appropriate a national
identity, however, soon transpire.
Bereft of even the illusion of unity,
―Kerouac‖ is left pending in an
infinite play of substitutions of
the proper name, and, consequently, of ethnic identity.
Although the narrator‘s influences are largely American, he
nonetheless still carries elements
of the French-Canadian tradition
he has been exposed to by his
family. The narrator is both Jack
Kerouac, the implied American
author who goes to France, and
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, the
descendant of French immigrants; these already problematic
identities are in constant tension,
prohibiting the formation of a
coherent Franco-American identity. The hybridization of lan-
14
guage reflects the more general
hybridization of identity to the
point where no pure elements
can be singled out. In Satori in
Paris the narrator is unable to
reach a unified identity, because
it is ultimately impossible to define its constituent parts; what
ensues is ―the disillusioned realization that the ethnie he wanted
to return to was gone. It existed
mostly as rhetoric, his own rhetoric‖ (Harney 378). The vacuous
nature of the search for an ethnic
identity in Satori is thus emphasized, and a series of associations
that problematize the concept of
identity beyond ethnic considerations is introduced.
further exploded, as an array of
identities is laid in a paratactic
order that suggests their interchangeability. This disorderly
pastiche of identities is expressive of fragmentation. Despite the
negativity implied in the narrator‘s realization that his identity
has become a composite of fragments, he nonetheless does not
hesitate to experiment with projections of identity for the purpose of stylistic exercises, and
playfully describes himself as
being ―crazy as that raccoon in
Big Sur Woods, or the sandpiper
thereof, or any Olsky-Polsky Sky
Bum, or Route Sixty Six Silly Elephant Eggplant Sycophant and
The narrator is both Jack Kerouac,
the implied American author who
goes to France, and Jean-Louis
Lebris de Kérouac, the descendant
of French immigrants.
The constructedness of identity
and its subsequent potential to be
modified is further exposed when
the narrator assumes the persona
of ―Duluoz‖, ―a variation I invented just for fun in my writerly
youth (to use as my name in my
novels)‖ (101). The elusiveness of
identity becomes more striking as
the narrator steps in and out of
personas in free association:
THIS COWARDLY BRETON
(ME) […] this Kerouac who
would be laughed at in
Prince of Wales Land […]
this boastful, this prune,
this rage and rake […] ―this
trunk of humours‖ […] this
fear-of-death tumor […]
this runaway slave of football fields, this strikeout
artist and base thief […]
This, in short, scared and
humbled […] descendant
of man. (77-78)
Any claims to solid identity are
with more to come‖ (75). The
playful tone of this utterance notwithstanding, the incoherence of
these caricaturesque identities
ultimately parodies the narrator‘s
(admittedly illusory) quest for
identity. The narrator even refers
to the Innkeeper of the Victor
Hugo Inn as ―Neal Cassady‖ in
this blurring of boundaries (83).
Identity thus becomes discontinuous and loses its power of referentiality. In Satori in Paris it is not
only ―the referential basis of
autobiography‖, but identity itself
that is inherently unstable. The
quest for an ethnic identity is constantly interrupted and does not
yield the desired results, as
―locked out of a fading ethnoculture, ridiculed by his own filiopietistic search, Kerouac experiences
a rupture in ethnicity‖ (Harney
375). Perhaps more importantly,
however, the concept of identity
is itself problematized, as conventional notions of autobiography
give way to a recognition of the
fictional dimensions it contains.
Notes
Conclusion
On the Road was written has re-
It thus transpires that the initial
claim that ―as in an earlier autobiographical book, I‘ll use my real
name here‖ (8) bears no special
weight, save that of irony. This is
further emphasized by the realization that ultimately there is no
point of origin to be traced, as ―to
reenter the house of origins
would require the death of memory‖ (Eakin, Touching the World
229). Reconstruction of the past
through the memories of the present is an unreliable procedure
that tears one further away from
any intention of reaching ―the
origin‖, already an illusion amidst
hybridization and blurred
boundaries. In this context, the
proper name loses its significance,
allowing for further play upon the
unstable notion of identity, as
American, Breton, literary and
fictionalized identities fuse and
inconclusively wrestle.
The ambiguity as to the narrator‘s
ethnic origins leads to a more
general crisis in identity construction. Language cannot bear
claims to stability and purity, urgently communicating the dispersal of the notion of identity. In
Satori in Paris the concept of
identity is scrutinized, dissected
and broken down. In a 1960s context of rapid social transformations, Kerouac exposes the complications that arise from the attempt to establish a coherent ethnic identity. Sensitive to the cultural processes of his era, Kerouac is alert to the emerging Civil
Rights Movement. Satori in Paris
is deeply concerned with the interactions between ethnicity and
identity and converses with articulations of ethnicity instigated
by the proliferation of ethnic
voices in America at the time. In
its problematization of the concept of a unified identity, the
novel addresses vital questions
about the nature of identity, often
capturing a postmodern sensibility.
1
The 1951 Scroll on which
cently been on display at various
venues throughout America and
in 2008 it was exhibited in the
Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the
University of Birmingham in the
UK. The British Arts Council sponsored the London International
Poetry and Song Festival (LIPS II)
in 2007 as a celebration of Kerouac‘s On the Road and the Beats,
and in 2008 the Harry Ransom
Humanities Research Center held
a Beat exhibition which included
a Beat film series.
2
McNally notes that initially
the novel ―was printed in successive issues of Evergreen [Review]
that spring [1966]‖ (322).
3
The other works in which
the narrator is named ―Kerouac‖
are Lonesome Traveler and Book
of Dreams.
4
The New Encyclopaedia
Britannica is revealing of substantial racial blending that casts
doubt over the notion of a ―pure‖
Breton identity:
The Celts are the first historically identifiable inhabitants of Brittany, but they
probably intermingled with
the earlier peoples […]
Conquered by Julius Caesar in 56 BC, the region
became part of the Roman
Empire as Armonica […]
After the Romans withdrew,
Celts from Britain moved
into the region to seek refuge from the Anglo-Saxon
invaders of the 5th and 6th
centuries […] Brittany became part of France when
Anne, heir of Brittany, married two successive kings
of France. (534)
―Breton.‖ The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Micropaedia. 15th
ed. 2003.
Burke, Seán. The Death and Re-
turn of the Author: Criticism and
Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault
and Derrida. 2nd ed. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1998.
Clark, Tom. Jack Kerouac: A Biography. 1984. London: Plexus, 1997.
Culler, Jonathan D. On Decon-
struction: Theory and Criticism
after Structuralism. London:
Routledge, 1993.
Derrida, Jacques. ―Structure,
Sign and Play in the Discourse of
the Human Sciences.‖ Modern
Criticism and Theory: A Reader.
Ed. David Lodge and Nigel Wood.
2nd ed. Harlow: Longman, 2000.
89-103.
Eakin, Paul John. Fictions in Auto-
biography: Studies in the Art of
Self-Invention. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1985.
Touching the World.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Gifford, Barry, and Lawrence Lee.
Jack‘s Book: Jack Kerouac in the
Lives and Words of his Friends.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979.
Harney, Steve. ―Ethnos and the
Beat Poets.‖ Journal of American
Studies 25. 3 (1991): 363-380.
Kerouac, Jack. Book of Dreams.
1960. San Francisco: City Lights
Books, 1981.
---. Lonesome Traveler. 1960. London: Penguin, 2000.
---. On the Road. 1957. London:
Penguin, 2000.
---. Satori in Paris & Pic.
1966/1971. New York: Grove
Press, 1985.
---. The Subterraneans. 1958. New
York: Grove Press, 1966.
McNally, Dennis. Desolate Angel:
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. Roland Barthes
by Roland Barthes. Trans. Richard
Howard. Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1977.
―Beat Film Series.‖ Harry Ransom
Center. 22 Feb. 2009 ˂http://
www.hrc.utexas.edu/events/2008/
beatfilm/˂.
Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation and America. New York: Random House, 1979.
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narra-
tive Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. 2nd ed. London: Routledge,
2002.
Theado, Matt. Understanding
Jack Kerouac. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000
15
Teaching Motherhood,
Madness and Murder:
The Challenges of Choosing Modern
American Literary Texts
By Dr. Raja Khaleel Al-Khalili, Assistant Professor,
Department of English, Hashemite University, Jordan
Many of the classical texts of American
literature by women writers present a negative
image of women as inferiors in a patriarchal
society. This presents a problem for instructors
wishing to choose texts as a liberating
experience for both teachers and students. Dr
Al-Khalili looks in particular at Mary Wilkins
Freeman's "The Revolt of Mother‖, Charlotte
Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall Paper and
Susan Glaspell‘s Trifles.
T
here are many challenges of
teaching American literary
texts to undergraduate students
in the United States and abroad.
Many of the professional challenges in constructing a course
syllabus for an American literature class have to do with choices
related to the teachers‘ preferences, students‘ abilities and the
texts‘ appeal. Most instructors are
aware of their research interests,
their students‘ needs, and the
cultural values of particular institutions, but still struggle with
choosing American texts for
classes that are either intended
for a general survey of American
literature or for more specialized
courses which focus on a certain
genre such drama or the short
story. In addition, there is a difficulty facing instructors in choosing literary works from representative historical periods and who
to include as major authors of
16
American literature. However,
there is a consensus by most instructors due to contemporary
changes in the Humanities in the
United States and abroad to include a number of female writers
in their courses because they
want to provide a much-needed
institutional context for understanding narratives of marginalization, which is in the opinion of
many instructors an important
element in an American literature
class.
Other important factors also have
to do with current trends in teaching American literature worldwide. Most teachers have realized
that since the late eighties anthologies have undergone a
surge in the number of women
authors who are now canonized
and frequently taught in American literature classes in the
United States and abroad. The
background to the factors that
shape a canon can be summarized by Charlotte Templin in
―Canons, Class and the Crisis of
the Humanity.‖ Templin reviews
critical opinion on canon formation, class considerations, and the
shaping of a course in the Humanities. According to Templin,
John Guillory in ―Cultural Capital:
The Problem of Literary Canon
Formation‖ emphasizes ―cultural
capital‖ as a more important factor in teaching literature than the
canon‘s representation of social
groups. In other words, the canon
is not as important as the school
itself which makes such decisions
on who fills the teaching positions and consequently what gets
to be taught. Guillory, though,
still believes that having women
writers on the syllabus does empower women and minorities to
become agents of change. As for
most female instructors I have
encountered in my teaching career, the argument about canons
is fairly settled and most feel obligated to include more women
writers on an American literature
course syllabus.
A search on the web as well as
the many course syllabi provided
in English departments attest to
the notion that a number of instructors do include female writers in courses dealing with
American literature. Furthermore,
several important anthologies
have a number of female writers
as part of their selections. A sample of texts which appear frequently in anthologies and are a
great favorite among instructors
are Mary Wilkin‘s Freeman ―The
Revolt of Mother,‖ (1891) Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow
Wall Paper, (1913) and Susan
Glaspell's Trifles ((1916) as representatives of American women
writers. However, a closer analysis of the texts reveals selections
centered respectively on thematic
issues of motherhood, madness,
and murder which have become
in the opinion of students I have
taught in the United States and
Jordan as synonymous with the
only topics of interest by American women writers.
Revolt of Mother‘; M. Cutter
―Frontiers of Language: Engendering Discourse in ‗The Revolt of
Mother‘‖; and, Josephine Donovan ―Silence or Capitulation: Prepatriarchal ‗Mother‘ Garden.‖ The
text is especially appealing to
female students both in the
United States and Jordan because motherhood is considered
a universal theme. Students are
surprised to find out from the
Motherhood
The first choice which frequently
appears on a course syllabus in a
survey of American literature is
Mary Wilkins Freeman, ―The Revolt of Mother.‖ The short story is
an appealing text found in most
anthologies and is usually taught
in both general courses focusing
on American literature and in
some courses emphasizing modern American prose at undergraduate level. Generally, most
students I taught in the United
States and Jordan discussed ‗The
Revolt of Mother‘ as a narrative of
a common domestic battle in an
American family and the dispute
over building of a barn as providing a rural setting. The short story
achieved a moderate success because a good number of students
were eager to point out the thematic role of motherhood in fighting male domination in a patriarchal society.
The literary criticism available on
the topic which students often
bring to class also emphasizes its
thematic concerns of motherhood.
The following critical essays reveal the story‘s concern with the
role of women: Brian White ―In
the Humble Fashion of a Scripture Woman‖: The Bible as Besieging Tool in Freeman‘s ‗The
writer‘s biography that Mary Wilkins Freeman had not been a
mother herself and yet motherhood is an important theme in
her work. As for male students, a
general feeling permeates among
them of being left out of the discussion. In fact, one student taking a class in Modern American
Prose at a Jordanian university
jokingly pointed out if the choice
of authors was to purposefully
exclude male students from any
discussion. His remark was reiterated after reading The Yellow
Wall Paper which was the following item on the syllabus.
Madness
The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is another
favorite selection in a course entitled Modern American Prose. The
text which is usually explained in
a footnote as dealing with a medi-
cal condition called ―hysteria‖ is
explained in the footnote in The
Norton Anthology of American
Literature as a loose word for a
number of symptoms, particular
to women, and indicated illness
(833). Charlotte Perkins Gilman
wrote an essay in 1913 explaining
the reasons behind writing the
story entitled, ―Why I Wrote ‗The
Yellow Wall-Paper‘?‖ According
to Gilman, her disease was diagnosed by a famous physician as
―hysteria‖ and the medical advice
she received and obeyed for
about three months almost
caused her ―mental ruin‖ (844).
Therefore, her purpose is informative and ―that it was not intended to drive people crazy, but
to save people from being crazy,
and it worked‖ (845). In recent
medical terminology, the symptoms reveal a condition identified
as ―postpartum depression,‖ a
condition prevalent among mothers following childbirth.
The short story received multiple
reactions and almost all undergraduate students irrespective of
year, level, gender, or culture
were unanimous in their bafflement and discomfort with the
medical detail and discussed
―The Yellow-paper‖ as a feminist
text promoting attentiveness to
women‘s problems or focused on
the story as an example of Gothic
literature. Most students regarded it as an aphorism about
madness and backed up their
analysis by critical works available on the topic including: John
S. Bak, ―Escaping the Jaundiced
Eye: Foucaludian Panopticism in
Charlotte Perkins Gilman‘s ―The
Yellow Wallpaper‖; Carol Margaret Davison, ―Haunted House/
Haunted Heroine: Female Gothic
in ―The Yellow Wallpaper‖; M.
Delashmit and C. Longcope,
―Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper‖; Janice Haney-Peritz,
―Monumental Feminism and Literature‘s Ancestral House: Another look at ‗The Yellow Wallpaper‘‖; Beverly A. Hume,
―Gilman‘s ‗Interminable Gro-
17
tesque‘: The Narrator‖; Greg
Johnson, ―Gilman‘s Gothic Allegory: Rage and Redemption in
―The Yellow wallpaper‖; Eliza-
beth Dolan Kautz, ―Gynecologists,
Power and Sexuality in Modernists Texts‖; Jeannette King and
Pam Morris, ―On Not Reading
Between the Lines: Models of
Reading The Yellow Wallpaper‖;
and, Shawn St. Jean, ―Hanging
‗The Yellow Wallpaper‘: Feminism and Textual Studies.‖ The
result of discussing madness as a
major theme of the very popular
short story leaves most students
with a certain feeling of
―depression.‖
evitably referred to in many articles as some of the following examples illustrate: Ein Karen Alkalay-Gut in ―Jury of Her Peers:
The Importance of Trifles‖; Martha C Carpentier‘s ―Susan
Glaspell‘s Fiction: Fidelity as
American Romance‖; Suzy Clarkson Holstein in ―Silent Justice in
a Different Key: Glaspell‘s Trifles‖; Phyllis Mael in ―Trifles: The
Path to Sisterhood‖; Leonard
Mustazza in ―Generic Translation
and Thematic Shift in Susan
Glaspell.‖ Students in their discussion occasionally refer to the
available articles to supplement
their argument on how the play
revolves on acts of murder committed by women. Moreover, the
biography of Susan Glaspell is
also referred to by students and
shows the impact of Glaspell‘s
journalistic career on her literary
work. Moreover, her commitment
to solving social problems that
face women reveals her enthusiasm for bringing to the audiences‘ attention the depressing
conditions women face in rural
Murder
The third recurrent theme in creative works written by American
female authors, or so it seems, is
murder as most instructors
choose to discuss Susan
Glaspell‘s Trifles in courses surveying American literature. The
domestic drama, Trifles is a favorite among both teachers and students and appears frequently in
most anthologies. The play‘s absent protagonist is a case of how
domestic violence and female
bonding develop among women.
Numerous criticisms of the play
cover a wide range of topics, but
at the same time the play‘s thematic concern with murder is in-
18
America. However, for most students of literature, Susan
Glaspell‘s play leaves readers
with a feeling of women writers
as emotionally involved with
women as being inferior in society and their literary creativity is
sort of ―locked up‖ in a limited
array of thematic concerns as
writers.
Combating negative values
The inability to escape the
―narrow‖ topics of interest by
American women writers of
course can be justifiable in light
of understanding the positions of
women in society at varying historical stages in America. Students are aware of women‘s inferior status in patriarchal societies
both past and present; therefore,
the literary work by women writers becomes an important factor
in addressing women‘s inferior
positions. Yet, at the same time,
one could not but feel remorse on
how literary creativity by women
is by circumstances limited to
themes of inferiority and consequently students find creative
work by women as substandard.
The sense of disappointment is
recurrent among most students I
taught regardless of their cultural
background and they express
their feelings concerning American female writers‘ lack of creativity especially when comparing
them to other male canonical
writers on the syllabus who show
a myriad of thematic concerns.
Even when established writers in
the American literary canon such
as Hemingway, who gained an
international status, write about
male prowess, the topic attracts
both male and female students. In
fact, one female student stated
that she enjoyed reading his work
more than the other writers on
the syllabus of Modern American
Prose because it was painful to
read the other selected female
authors, which included Mary
Wilkins Freeman and Charlotte
Gillman. Her observation is not a
new one and I have often heard it
many times before by both male
and female students in the United
States and Jordan.
As a female instructor, however, I
feel obligated to include women
writers in my courses and at the
same time find it difficult to expect undergraduate students to
understand the necessity of exposing them to female authors
without denying the fact that the
range of topics offered by American women writers serves to promote negative feelings and
seems centered on topics related
to women. However, one can not
underestimate the responsibility
of including female authors which
is an asset to many instructors
working in English Departments.
American literary texts written
by women should be included in
any American literature class
even though they leave the
students with the disappointed
notion of female writers having
few themes in their creativity
compartment.
not also forget that the recent
incantations of inclusion by many
female instructors have almost
coexisted with a policy of exclusion of the near past. Therefore,
teaching texts by female authors
is a way of seeking recognition
and respect and provides a tool
against discrimination. The demand on instructors to be more
pragmatic and to aspire for more
comprehensive ideally diverse
subjects by women writers is part
of that struggle. Nevertheless,
one should remain optimistic
about the positive outcomes of
teaching American literary works
produced by women writers. After all, if literary texts by women
writers impart a thematic personal devastation in a sullen
mood, we as readers are forced
to look on the dreadful stories
and reexamine their value in their
lack of appeal to undergraduate
students irrespective of level or
cultural background. Therefore,
the choice of texts becomes an
ambitious and labor intensive act
presenting a set of challenges
and it begins with exposing the
unappealing thematic concerns
as a step in initiating a dialogue
on the works of women writers.
positive changes in colleges and
universities. It spawns a growing
awareness of the need to include
a diverse body of previously neglected literature. It also casts
lights on challenges that have not
been successfully addressed in
social and political institutions in
the United States and abroad.
After all, the increase in the diversity of the faculty and its inclusion
of women instructors does not
prevent negative attitudes and
prejudice towards them from festering. In fact, the choice of texts
by female instructors and the inclusion of neglected types of literature is an important indicator
of how negative attitudes can
quickly become a point against
them. Therefore, female instructors should not dismiss the works
by female writers as not worthy
of attention especially in light of
In conclusion, American literary
texts written by women should be
included in any American literature class even though they leave
the students with the disappointed notion of female writers
having few themes in their creativity compartment. Most students eventually do become
aware of how such ―limited‖ concerns are beyond a writer‘s control and the dissatisfaction with
the topics only reinforces the impact of marginalization on the
creative process. The frustrations
are real and as a female instructor,
I cannot but help sense that the
selections do point to themes
which I grouped as ―motherhood,
madness, and murder.‖ The most
commonly selected works by female authors in courses in American literature in a general survey
course or a more specialized
The sense of obligation to include
American women writers prevalent among female instructors to
include women writers in courses
in literature has brought with it
the ideological emphasis on decisions to focus on male canonical
writers. Furthermore, the emphasis on choosing texts endorses a
faculty member‘s sense of their
role in shaping their institution
and in creating a sense of affiliation with the school, colleagues
and students, and it also provides
a ground for a truly liberating
intellectual project where there
would be rare chances of dichotomies and unanimous decisions
would be implemented to include
American women writers.
Therefore, being part of an institution that promotes including
women as instructors, I feel a
sense of accountability in choosing texts written by women because choices spawn a self examination on the teacher‘s role of
shaping conceived notions. First,
as instructors we should not
evade our responsibility in considering texts produced by American women writers as integral
and not renegade and the process
of choosing texts as an emancipatory vision of a potentially liberating exercise for both the instructor and students. Therefore, instead of feeling as a mentor having a strident voice bewailing the
inevitable current throes of prejudice, one could become an active
member in combating values that
were until recently discredited
and considered unfit. One should
19
course invoke some students to
suggest that a course syllabus
should probably avoid having
many female authors on the list
since most of the anthologized
names are unappealing. The challenges are to combat conceived
notions voiced by undergraduate
students both male and female
who propose a course should
predominantly include ―white,
dead males‖ of American literature because the writers are more
diversified in their topics and
their themes are more appealing
to undergraduate students both
in the United States and abroad.
Works Cited
Alkalay-Gut, Karen. ―Jury of Her
Peers: The Importance of Trifles.‖
Studies in Short Fiction. 21. 1
(1984): 1- 9.
Bak, John S. ―Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucaludian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman‘s ―The Yellow Wallpaper.‖
Studies in Short Fiction.
31.1 (1994): 39-47.
Carpentier, Martha C. ―Susan
Glaspell‘s Fiction: Fidelity as
American Romance.‖ Twentieth
Century Literature. 40.1 (1994): 92
-114
Cutter, M. J. ―Frontiers of Language: Engendering Discourse in
‗The Revolt of Mother.‘ ‖ American Literature 63. 2 (1991): 279292.
Davison, Carol Margaret.
―Haunted House/Haunted Heroine: Female Gothic Closets in ‗The
Yellow Wallpaper.‘ ‖ Women‘s
Studies 33. 1 (2004): 47-75.
Delashmit, M. and C. Longcope.
―Gilman‘s The Yellow Wallpaper.‖ Explicator, Fall91, Vol. 50
Issue 1: 32-33.
Freeman, Mary Wilkins. ―The Revolt of Mother.‖ Baum, Nina. The
Norton Anthology of America
Literature. Vol.C. New York: Norton, 2003.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. ―The
Yellow Wall-paper.‖ Baum, Nina.
The Norton Anthology of America
Literature. Vol.C. New York: Norton, 2003.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Library, 1996.
Guillory, John. Cultural Capital:
The Problem of Literary Canon
Formation. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995.
Haney-Peritz, Janice.
―Monumental Feminism and Literature‘s Ancestral House: Another look at ‗The Yellow Wallpaper.‖ Women‘s Studies 12. 2
(1986):113-129.
20
Holstein, Suzy Clarkson. ―Silent
Justice in a Different Key:
Glaspell‘s Trifles.‖ Midwest Quarterly 44. 3 (2003): 282-291.
Hume, Beverly A. ―Gilman‘s
‗Interminable Grotesque‘: The
Narrator.‖ Studies in Short Fiction, Fall91, Vol. 28 Issue 4: 477485.
Johnson, Greg. ―Gilman‘s Gothic
Allegory: Rage and Redemption
in ―The Yellow Wallpaper.‖ Studies in Short Fiction 26. 4 (1989):
521-530.
Jospehine, Donovan. ―Silence or
Capitulation: Prepatriarchal
‗Mother‘ Garden in Jewette and
Freeman.‖ Studies in Short Fiction 2.1 (1986): 43-49.
Kautz, Elizabeth Dolan.
―Gynecologists, Power and Sexuality in Modernists Texts. Journal
of Popular Culture 28. 4 (1995):8191.
King, Jeannette; Morris, Pam.
―On Not Reading Between the
Lines: Models of Reading in The
Yellow Wallpaper.‖ Studies in
Short Fiction (1989) 26.1 :22-32.
Mael, Phyllis. ―Trifles: The Path to
Sisterhood.‖ Literature Film Quarterly 17.4 (1989): 281-284.
Mustazza, Leonard. ―Generic
Translation and Thematic Shift in
Susan Glaspell‘s ―Trifles‖ and ―A
Jury of Her Peers.‖ Studies in
Short Fiction (1989) 26.4: 489-496.
St. Jean, Shawn. ―Hanging ‗The
Yellow Wallpaper‘: Feminism and
Textual Studies.‖ Feminist Studies 28. 2 (2002): 397-416.
Templin, Charlotte. ―Canons,
Class, and the Crisis of the Humanity.‖ College Literature (1995)
22. 2: 151-157
White, Brian. ―In the Humble
Fashion of a Scripture Woman‖:
The Bible as Besieging Tool in
Freeman‘s ―The Revolt of
Mother.‖ Christianity and Literature 58. 1 (2008): 81-93.
Why Obama can’t
close Guantánamo
By R. J. Ellis, University of
Birmingham
One of President Obama's promises at his
inauguration was to close the detention camp
at Guantánamo Bay. Three years later, it
remains open. Professor Dick Ellis explains
why.
In
2003 George W. Bush offered a black and white
depiction of the detainees held
within Guantánamo Bay. Having
removed all their legal and constitutional protections and imposed
an absolute executive authority,
Bush baldly asserted that they
were ‗bad people‘. Yet, ironically,
by reducing them thereby to bare
existence, Bush also visited upon
the USA both dilemmas and
threats that Barack Obama still
struggles to resolve.
In part Bush‘s actions sought to
render Guantánamo‘s ground
suitably neutral, by defusing the
controversies which
Guantánamo‘s long and chequered history and recurrent invasions had generated, starting
with Columbus‘s second American voyage in 1494 and including
a British incursion in 1741 (during
the War of Jenkins‘ Ear against
Spain), intended to preserve Britain‘s dominance of the transatlantic slave trade. Disturbingly, in
this respect, Guantánamo contains an undetermined number of
detainees who had literally been
sold into captivity (as if into slavery) to secure $5000 bounties
offered by US agents to anyone
capturing those that could be
held to be suspicious foreigners
along the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border. As one of these, Ahmed
Errachidi explains, he was ‗sold‘
to a middleman acting for the
USA, literally, ‗becoming his‘, like
a slave.
However, Bush particularly
wanted to evade the legal debates stirred up by the controversial lease the US imposed after
helping Cuba gain independence
from Spain in the 1890s. Intended
to last indefinitely, this lease was
terminable only by a establishing
a mutual consent that was
unlikely to materialize, given
Guantánamo Bay‘s dominance of
key Caribbean shipping lanes.
The base was simply too important to the USA for it ever to be
given up.
Chop-logic
Nominally functioning as
Guantánamo‘s tenant, the US
secured an imperious power over
this part of Cuba. Effectively
leased in perpetuity, the base
could only be held to remain under Cuban sovereignty by sleight
of rhetoric. But this arrangement
enabled the Bush administration
to elide Guantánamo‘s awkward
historical legacy by arguing that
the base, though under US control, lay beyond the reach of Constitutional protection, as it was
not part of the USA but belonged
to Cuba.
This chop-logic not only allowed
the Bush administration to integrate Guantánamo‘s camps into
an otherwise secret archipelago
of such US internment camps,
but to do so in a highly disturbing
different way: openly. It cleared
the way for the imposition of executive power over the camps,
following Cheney‘s argument that
after 9/11 the President‘s authority needs to be ‗effective … in the
national security arena‘. Consequently a military order was introduced in November, 2001 dictating that the US military at
Guantánamo had the right to detain inmates indefinitely, to deprive them of access to civil
courts, and to try them for war
crimes by a military commission.
Additionally, the Geneva Conventions were suspended, allowing
Rumsfeld to introduce interrogation techniques going beyond
Geneva‘s provisions.
Such an assumption of absolute
executive authority eliminated
any need to negotiate controversial legal precedents, such as
were long debated during the socalled ‗Insular Cases‘ of the early
1900s. These debates had established that the US Constitution
need not follow the US flag into
its unincorporated territories, but
did this on the basis of a racist
argument: that these unincorporated territories‘ populations were
‗unfit to receive‘ such constitutional rights – an uncomfortable
echo of how the Dred Scott
judgement had removed African
Americans from constitutional
protection before the American
Civil War, by arguing that African
Americans were ‗not … ―citizens‖
within the meaning of the Constitution‘ and so were ‗not entitled
to sue in that character in a court
of the United States‘. In other
words, they could be held as
slaves.
A hybrid network
Under Bush, this racist legal argument did not need to be revived.
His executive control of
Guantánamo eliminated the need
21
to make this argument – an elimination symbolically marked by
freely allowing the media to take
photographs of the detainees in
Camp Delta during its very first
days. The message was that all
was open and above board. But
this transparency disguised how,
as one anonymous CIA source
observed, in 90% of cases the
detainees were not ‗dangerous‘ at
all but ‗people that don‘t have
anything to do with it‘. If we accept this figure of 90%, we are
talking of circa 680 people. All of
them had lost any access to a
Court of law.
Yet the Bush administration‘s
search for black and white certainty by performing these strategic manoeuvres failed. Symptomatically, the administration
came to regret the open access
first granted to media photographers. The Guantánamo camps‘
detainees, rendered stateless and
deprived of all human rights,
could only recuperate their humanity via other external contacts,
outside of the US controlled
Guantánamo camps. So the
camps inevitably become the hub
of an ever-more complex network,
taking in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Haiti, the UK,
Spain, Jamaica, the Philippines,
Canada, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia,
Diego Garcia, Turkistan, China,
Russia, Chechnya.
Bush thereby created in the
Guantánamo camps a hybrid network. It had the capability of expanding rapidly out across the
world. Yet it also possessed a
compactness, organised around
the central hub of Guantánamo‘s
camps. This makes it a highly
dynamic yet robust corner-stone
of both growing international
protest and global terrorist expansion. Ironically, the US should
have been aware of such potential. In 2002, Bush had established
the Information Awareness Office
under John Poindexter, aimed at
countering asymmetric threats –
terrorist threats and the like – by
developing expert monitoring of
22
all forms of digital communication. Because of understandable
fears about mass surveillance,
Congress removed the IAO‘s
funding in 2003, but the fact that
some of its projects continue indicates the executive‘s awareness
of the original project‘s potential
to secure ‗Total Information
Awareness‘ by monitoring all emessaging. This ought to have
led to some understanding of the
network stimulated by the
Guantánamo camps‘ existence.
But this does not seem to have
been the case. Nor was there an
apparent exit strategy, as Obama
has been discovering. Bush‘s assumption of executive power,
rendering detainees stateless,
created intractable problems
about their relocation: unable to
be rehabilitated within the USA
without severe legal consequences and with repatriation left
as a near impossible and sometimes dangerous option. Obama‘s
first proposal was to devise a new
internal system of justice to handle their cases. Predictably, its
introduction has proved so controversial that, ironically, it could
not operate within the territory of
the United States. Faced with the
likelihood of successful charges
of torture being levelled, the US
executive will almost necessarily
decide that some of the camps‘
detainees must for the present
remain in suspension, or at best
be released into unexpected compliant locations, such as Bermuda,
where Guantánamo‘s Uighurs
were sent in June 2009. Such a
choice of destination well illustrates how Guantánamo poses
intractable problems. Bush‘s
search for black and white executive certainty has ensured that
Guantánamo will not readily go
away. Nor will its dynamic, hybrid
network, as Obama is discovering.
Acknowledgment
This is a much shortened and
edited version of an article that
appeared in Comparative American Studies. To read the full version, visit the journal‘s website:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/
content/maney/
cas/2010/00000008/00000003/
art00002
My thanks to the editor, Nick
Selby and to Maney Publications
for permission to reprint this
shortened version.
Why Teach
American Studies
in a CIS Country?
By Carol Orme-Johnson
T
here are three good reasons
to teach American Studies in
a former Soviet country: to provide accurate information and
correct misapprehensions about
the United States; to show how a
democratic government can be
held accountable to its citizens; to
teach critical thinking. I had the
good fortune to teach a 39-hour
American Studies class to second
year university students in Ganja,
Azerbaijan, in 2010, and I accomplished these three goals in that
class.
At the beginning of the class, the
students had more information
about the United States than I
expected, but had many gaps in
their knowledge. They had seen
American movies and advertisements for American products,
some of which they owned.
Much of what they knew about
the United States came from
popular music and censored
news reports. Most of the students I taught had never traveled
outside the country or met an
American before (though they
subsequently met Fulbright
Scholars who came to our university). Classifying America as big,
but being from a country the size
of the state of Maine, the students
really had no concept of its scope
CIS The Commonwealth of
Independent States, is a loose
confederation of the former
republics of the Soviet Union.
and the richness of its resources.
They knew a little history and had
heard of George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln. They knew, for
example, that Lincoln freed the
slaves but really had no idea how
slavery worked. They knew that
President Barack Obama is Black
but had no understanding of the
road Black people had traveled in
the US between the end of slavery and his election. Teaching
American history, physical and
human geography, and government helped fill in some of the
gaps. The class covered the following subjects, in this order
through the semester
(see Table 1)
Azerbaijani education
Azerbaijan is a secular Islamic,
post-Soviet country struggling to
Carol is currently a Peace
Corps Volunteer assigned
to Azerbaijan State
Agricultural University,
where she taught an
American Studies class
last fall.
develop under a government burdened by corruption and intolerant of dissent. The Azerbaijani
education system emphasizes
rote memorization, and the students had little or no experience
analyzing, much less criticizing,
events or ideas or policies. The
conservative society outside the
capital city in Azerbaijan limits
options for ordinary people. For
example, though women do not
have to cover themselves as in
strict Muslim countries, they are
still subservient to men. A man is
always served first at the table
and is expected to make the decisions for the family, often without
consulting his wife. A woman
who is not married by the age of
twenty five is considered pathetic,
and unmarried motherhood is
incomprehensible. When they
Table 1 - Semester topics
Hours
Subject
6.0
Physical and economic geography, especially agriculture
7.5
American history 8,000 BCE to 1980
4.5
Population: immigration, religion, race
9.0
Government, including Constitution, 3 branches, elections,
major Supreme Court decisions, and Watergate scandal
1.5
Daily life
9.0
Arts: watch ―West Side Story,‖ read ―Gift of the Magi,‖
read ―Death of a Salesman‖ and view slides of decorative
arts and architecture
1.5
9/11: precursors 1979-2001, events of 9/11/2001, aftermath
23
marry, many couples continue to
live in the same house or very
near the husband‘s family, and
parents continue to have great
influence over their married children‘s lives. Also, children care
for their aging parents in their
homes. Azerbaijan is over 93%
Muslim (1), and the majority of
non-Muslims live in the capital
city or in tight enclaves. Most
people in the outlying regions
know only a very small number of
people of other religions. In general, opportunities for educational
and professional advancement
depend entirely on personal contacts and influence, not on individual achievement. Obviously,
Azerbaijan is quite different from
the United States.
Human diversity
I chose to devote time in this
class to a discussion of human
diversity in the US in order to
highlight the contrast to the much
more homogeneous society in
Azerbaijan, and to reveal the
cross-currents underlying American society. Of course, any description of the diversity of the
American population includes
statistics about the large and
growing percentage of non-White
Americans, but statistics do not
tell the whole story. The assorted
mixture of people from many
different places is part of the picture. Repeated reference during
the history section to the waves
of immigrants from different
parts of the world at different
times, supplemented with photographs of various ethnic groups,
was designed to explain the tensions among the groups in the
rapidly growing country in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The United States is not really the
way it seems in so many advertisements. For instance, the 2parent-2-child nuclear family is no
longer the norm (2). A description of the various family structures prevalent now – including
unwed mothers, divorced/
24
widowed parents, married people
choosing not to have children,
people having children without
marrying, blended families with
step-parents and half-siblings,
single sex couples with or without children, and older people
living alone – gave a greater understanding of what the diverse
society is truly like in the United
States. This variety of family
structures is very different from
the traditional society in Azerbaijan and was new to the students.
Religious diversity was harder for
the students to understand than
racial and ethnic diversity. They
were very surprised to learn that,
although the majority of Americans are Christian, all the world‘s
religions are represented there.
When religion was discussed in
relation to a 2007 study by the
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (3), which found that 44%
of adult Americans have changed
their religious affiliation from that
of their childhood, one student
expressed his surprise: ―You
mean that you can change? You
can change your religion?‖ Meeting a teacher who had changed
her own religious affiliation in her
forties was itself a radical experience for these students.
Background to 9/11
Students were unaware of the
background leading up to 9/11
and had surprisingly little factual
information about the events of
that day. Today‘s students were
not alive in 1979 when the Iran
Hostage Crisis began and did not
understand the hostility that
event provoked among Americans against Iran and other radical Muslims. A review of Osama
bin Laden‘s ―jihad‖ against the
U.S. and attacks against American embassies and military targets overseas in the 1990s, with
repeated headlines about radical
Muslims killing Americans
around the world – for no reason
except that they were American –
helped to set the stage for 9/11.
Some students had been taught
various conspiracy theories about
9/11, for instance, the US government was actually responsible for
the hijackings. It was not until
they learned about the evidence
proving al Qaeda responsible for
the hijackings and resulting
deaths and about the previous
events from 1979 onward that
they could understand why some
Americans disliked or mistrusted
Muslims. They could begin to
see that American hostility is, at
least partly, the consequence of
the actions of a few radical Muslims, not government brainwashing.
Focusing on the history of the
Civil Rights Movement gave the
students an example of how
rights on paper are meaningless
without the means of enforcement and how the people themselves could transform their society and their laws. The students
learned that although slavery officially ended in 1865, severe discrimination against African
Americans was legal for the next
100 years, until the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act
of 1965, and major Supreme
Court decisions of the 1950s and
1960s. It was the actions of African Americans themselves,
through protests, voter registration, and court cases that brought
about change (4). By the late
twentieth century, they had
achieved equality under the law
and substantial improvement in
the everyday life of the average
Black person (5). Their actions
influenced both the views of numerous White Americans and the
decisions of members of Congress to pass important new legislation, displaying democracy in
action. The role of the independent Supreme Court in requiring
some unpopular changes in the
way Black people were treated
demonstrated the strength of the
three separate branches of government and the centrality of individual rights in American government.
Human rights
The concept that a right given on
paper but not allowed in practice
is not a real right was a new concept for these students. (The
Azerbaijani government takes the
opposite position, that people
have great freedom, on paper,
and anyone who protests that the
rights are not real can get in serious trouble.) Students saw that
only when enforcement of that
right became possible did the
right become actualized.
Opportunities to encourage critical thinking occurred throughout
the class. When discussing the
government, students described
the US as the model of democracy and mentioned that the Azerbaijani Constitution is based on
the American one. When asked,
however, what the disadvantages
of democratic government are,
not only could the students not
imagine any, but they were
shocked by the implication that
democracy, as it is found in
America, is not perfect. In the
arts section they learned to look
for deeper meanings. For example, immigrating to the United
States appears rosy but has been
very difficult for some peoples, as
illustrated by the movie West
Side Story. Arthur Miller‘s play
Death of a Salesman exposes the
flaws in the great American
Dream of economic prosperity. In
this way, students learned that
fiction can reveal societal truths.
Critical thinking
In the US, critical thinking can be
applied to the actions of the government itself. Public outcry was
partly responsible for ending the
Vietnam War. Slides showing the
graphic, unflattering presentation
of the war in the media and depicting the major protests across
the country against the war demonstrated the force of public opinion contrary to a matter of national policy. This is an example
of how in a true democracy the
government is subject to the will
of the people. Similarly, the abil-
ity of reporters from the Washington Post and other papers to persist in digging for information
about what really happened in
the Watergate break-in, followed
by a thorough investigation by
the legislative branch of actions
by the executive branch, demonstrates how a truly free press
makes it possible to hold the government accountable. Students
living under a repressive regime
had no previous understanding
that holding the government accountable to the people is a basic
element of democracy.
ported, and to try to protect
against the undesirable elements.
In keeping with the goal of teaching critical thinking, the class
should clearly portray the aspects
of American government and
culture that need improvement.
Teaching students thus to take a
hard look at the world outside
gives them a new ability to analyze their own society. Imparting
that new ability is alone reason
enough to teach American
Studies abroad.
Teaching American Studies is not
a vehicle for boosterism. Students in Azerbaijan and in many
other CIS countries are eager to
learn about the United States.
Things American, from music to
jeans to university degrees are
tremendously popular, infusing
American Studies with that
―cool‖ factor as well. Students
may want to copy much from
American culture, but it is not
possible to import only the positive aspects. Some rich outgrowths of American culture,
such as gospel music, are too
rooted in the locality to replant
elsewhere without major mutation, and some weeds, such as
the materialism that accompanies
capitalism, will inevitably sneak in.
American sellers try vigorously to
market their products abroad,
whether appropriate for the foreign society or not. Students
must learn to identify what
should and can be copied or im-
Central Intelligence Agency, World
Fact Book: Azerbaijan, https://
www.cia.gov/library/publications/the
-world-factbook/geos/aj.html, accessed 6 June 2011.
Boosterism: A tendency to
‗boost‘ or seek to raise the estimation of (oneself, one's town,
product, etc.) by praise; the
expression of chauvinism.
Notes
Encyclopedia of American Studies.
Web. http://eas-ref.press.jhu.edu/
view?
aid=493&from=browse&link=browse
%3Fmethod%3Dalpha%26letter%
3DF%26type%3D, accessed 12
October 2010.
U.S. Religion Landscape Survey,
Pew Forum on Religion and Public
Life, 2007. Web. http://
religions.pewforum.org/reports, accessed 3 November 2010.
U.S. Department of State, “Outline
of American History.” Web. http://
usinfo.org/oah/ch12.htm#civil, accessed 9 November 2010.
Thomas N. Maloney, “African
Americans in the Twentieth Century” Economic History Association.
Web. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/
article/maloney.african.american,
accessed 7 June 2011.
OED.Com
25
Rappin’ on Racial
Dualism
By Ashleigh P. Nugent
I
n his 1993 article ‗Racial Dualism at Century‘s End‘, Howard
Winant adapts W.E.B. Du Bois‘s
concept of racial dualism.[1] Winant explains that racism is still a
prevalent feature of contemporary American society, and uses
racial dualism as a theoretical
tool with which to explore divisions between and within black
and white racial groups. The following article employs ‗Racial
Dualism‘ as a lens through which
to explore the racial significance
of American rap music from the
1990s onwards. Specific reference
is made to the rappers Chuck D,
Ice Cube, Yo-Yo and
Eminem. These artists candidly
discuss race and racism and shed
light on the divisions that constitute racial dualism. In drawing
attention to racial dualism, these
rappers have arguably allowed
some ‗fusion‘ to develop.
In explaining how racial dualism
manifests in contemporary
American society Winant says:
There are now two ways of
looking at race, where previously there was only one.
In the past…everyone
agreed that racial subordination existed…But today
agreement over the existence of racial subordination has vanished…Indeed,
the very idea that ‗race
matters‘ is something
which today must be argued, something which is
not self evident.[2]
With overt white supremacist
racism now being a stigmatised
ideology, the opinion that con-
26
temporary America is a ‗colorblind‘ society has become almost
hegemonic.[3] The ‗color-blind‘
rubric purports that race is no
longer linked to social mobility.[4]
However, the existence of white
privilege and black subordination
has not been surmounted. [5]
Rather, American racism operates
as structural or institutionalised
racism. That is to say, a racial
hierarchy has become deeply
embedded in the state institutions
and general mindset of the populace via accumulative inequality
passed on through generations.
[6] So, white racial domination
now seems ‗natural‘ and operates
under a kind of invisibility.[7]
‗Color-blindness‘ overlooks structural racism and the inequality
experienced by those in subordinate racial categories.
Chuck D:
raising awareness
If the continuation of racial subordination was disputed during the
1990s, rap music is one place
where American racism was
openly and regularly addressed.
One rap group that had the discussion of racism high on their
agenda is Public Enemy. In 1990
Public Enemy released their third
album, Fear of a Black Planet. The
final track on that album, ‗Fight
the Power‘, was used on the
soundtrack of Spike Lee‘s film Do
the Right Thing (1989). In the second verse Chuck D, the group‘s
lead vocalist, asserts:
It‘s a start, a work of art
To revolutionize, make a
change nothing‘s strange
People, people we are the
same
No we‘re not the same
‗Cause we don‘t know
the game[8]
Here, Chuck D aims to use rap to
‗revolutionize‘ by increasing
awareness of the fact that ‗we are
not the same.‘ This statement
addresses the disparity between
those who do and those who
don‘t know ‗the game‘, or those
who control ideas and behaviours
(state institutions) and those who
are controlled (the general populace). In asserting that ‗we don‘t
know the game‘, the collective
‗we‘ arguably addresses both the
black community and the wider
community who may believe that
race is no longer a salient issue.
vidual acts of racism.
Chuck D‘s tirade is intended to
shock the listener by portraying
celebrated white male heroes as
antagonists. This shock tactic entices the listener, so accustomed
to Elvis being hero worshipped,
to sit up and listen. White America did listen. The Fear album
reached number ten in the US
billboard charts and certified
platinum sales. In accomplishing
mainstream appeal, rap music
now invited listeners of all races
During the 1990s, rap music
[was] one place where American
racism was openly and regularly
addressed.
Chuck D goes on to elaborate the
nature of the ‗game‘ in the next
verse:
Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me
you see
Straight up racist that sucker
was
Simple and plain[9]
Racism in the media
The ‗game‘ that Chuck D exposes,
then, is the racism at play in
America‘s media industries,
which manifests as the recurring
representation of white males as
the archetypal heroes. In his 1997
book Fight The Power, Chuck D
explains that ‗the attack was directed towards the institution of
Elvis…I was dealing with racist
America portraying that Elvis invented that level of quality soul,
bluesy rock ‗n‘ roll singing when
there were brothers before
him.‘[10] So, what Chuck D aimed
to illuminate is media-based
structural racism that places
white males at the top of the hierarchy whilst disregarding cultural
input from non-whites. His main
focus, therefore, is institutionalised racism as opposed to indi-
to consider and discuss the institutional racism at work in American society.
naive to assume that songs can
be influential enough to end racism. Their message can, however, open up a dialogue and encourage critical thinking regarding the issues raised: ‗It‘s a start,
a work of art.‘
The listener as voyeur
Some critics, for example, David
Samuels, have viewed rap‘s message, and its popularity, with
cynicism. In his essay ‗The Rap
on Rap – The Black Music that
isn‘t Either‘ (2004), Samuels
claims that Public Enemy‘s ‗white
listeners became guilty eavesdroppers on the putative private
conversation of the inner city.‘[13]
According to Samuels, white suburban listeners can only ever listen to black protestations of racism as outsiders, confined to the
role of voyeur through their consumption of Public Enemy‘s message. Moreover, Samuels points
out that Public Enemy are also
outsiders to the urban black
cause because of their middleclass suburban backgrounds.
In explaining why he choose
‗Fight the Power‘ as the soundtrack for his film Do the Right
Thing, Spike Lee explains that
‗Public Enemy first started out
identifying the problems. ―Fight
the Power‖ [however] was starting to move into solution based
rap.‘[11] Chuck D suggests that
the knowledge that he expounds
may act as a solution to end black
repression. In ‗Fight the Power‘
he asserts:
What we need is awareness
We can‘t get careless…
Mental self-defensive fitness
[12]
These lyrics suggest that Chuck D
wanted to inspire his audience to
overcome their naivety regarding
the structural racism that sustains
racial disparity. Popular music
unites people across racial and
other boundaries in the act of
appreciation. Angry, shocking or
polemical lyricism entices the
listener to think about what is
being said. It would, of course, be
While voyeurism may indeed motivate some rap fans, this is a limited viewpoint since it overlooks
the way in which those outside a
situation can take a sincere and
active interest in it. Being middle
class and working alongside
whites does not invalidate a black
group‘s opposition to structural
racism that places all blacks in
subordination to whites, regardless of class. Furthermore, the
idea that one must adhere to binary thinking regarding who are
27
insiders and outsiders can be unhelpful when trying to overcome
disparities based on just such
binary categories: black/white,
urban/suburban and so on. A music fan should not be expected to
restrict their listening to music
made by those in the same racial
and class-based group as themselves.
On another album released in
1990, Chuck D asserts: ‗The term
they apply to us is a nigger. ...
Same applies with a PhD.‘ Chuck
D shows here that race is a more
insidious category than class, for
whatever blacks achieve socially
and economically, they are still
undermined. Chuck D makes this
statement on ‗Endangered Species‘, a song on which he features
as a guest of the renowned gangsta rapper, Ice Cube. Gangsta rap
is a term that came into popular
usage in the late 1980s and first
appeared in an American broadsheet, the Los Angeles Times,
following the success of Niggaz
with Attitude (NWA) [14], a group
for which Ice Cube was formerly
the chief lyricist.[15]
On his 1990 debut solo album,
AmeriKKKa‘s Most Wanted,
which went platinum within five
weeks of release, Ice Cube confronted racism in different terms
to Chuck D. Rather than offering
solutions and playing the role of
educator, Ice Cube played the role
of the angry, young, black male,
which is a stereotype synonymous with gangsta rap.
‗Endangered Species‘, actually
denigrates the growing trend in
contemporary rap music to offer
solutions. Ice Cube rages:
Peace, don‘t make me laugh
All I hear is motherf***ers
rappin‘ succotash
Livin‘ large tellin‘ me to get
out the gang
I‘m a nigga gotta live by the
trigger
How the f*** do you figure
That I can say peace and the
gunshots will cease?
Every cop killer gets ignored
28
They just send another nigga
to the morgue[16]
Ice Cube illustrates the futility of
solution-based rap in the face of
institutionalised racism, which
takes shape, in this instance, in
the form of police brutality. He
maligns rappers that talk about
peace and by accusing them of
‗livin‘ large‘, he aims his rebuke at
black, middle-class rappers and
middle-class critics of gangsta rap.
Whereas they may be able to live
well, as an urban youth Ice
certed action that division…tend
[s] to preclude.‘[18] Of course, a
rap song cannot fix these divisions, but Ice Cube and Chuck D
intend to play their parts: ‗It‘s a
start.‘
In ‗The Rap‘, David Samuels overlooks the complexities in Ice
Cube‘s album and reduces it to
pushing ‗the limits of rap‘s ability
to give offence.‘[19] He goes on
to state that, ‗the ways in which
rap has been consumed and
popularised speak not of cross
The disparity between the life
experiences and expectations of
the black middle class and the
black poor is wider than it was
during the era of segregation.
Cube‘s character feels compelled
to take on the gangsta role to survive.
Cleverly, Ice Cube voices these
allegations on the very song that
features Chuck D, a renowned
pioneer of solution-based rap and
a middle-class rapper. The juxtaposition of these two rappers, the
politically conscious and the
gangsta, suggests that those in
the black community with different opinions can work together. The two artists, therefore,
offered a creative solution to Winant‘s concept of black racial dualism. Black racial dualism describes ‗The divergent experiences of the black middle class
and the black poor [which] make
a unitary racial identity seem a
distant dream indeed.‘[17] Winant
points out that the disparity between the life experiences and
expectations of the black middle
class and the black poor is wider
than it was during the era of segregation. Winant suggests that
the circumstance of racial inequality demands that the black
community forge ‗a level of con-
cultural understanding…but of
voyeurism and tolerance with
racism.‘[20] He believes that consumption of negative stereotypes
of the black community is evidence of the consumer‘s complicity with racism. For Samuels,
white youths are maintaining
their supposed supremacy over
blacks by their consumption of
these stereotypes. I would contest
that the mainstream audience
have long been consumers of
degrading and violent imagery
played out by whites and, moreover, Ice Cube does tie in his hostile narratives with genuine social
commentary. That is not to say
that everything portrayed by Ice
Cube is a positive or even a helpful representation of the black
community. Ice Cube is more
concerned with clearly illuminating problems, rather than with
offering solutions. Such is the
method that he adopts when addressing the issue of black male
privilege.
‗Racial Dualism‘ also exposes the
fact that ‗black men‘s and
women‘s experience probably
differ more significantly today
than they did at any other moment since the time of slavery.‘[21] The black community
has become more entrenched in
American society, which Winant
describes as a Herrevolk democracy, where only white men are
accepted as full citizens with the
rights pertaining to such.[22] In
this society, each man holds a
position of privilege over every
woman. Male privilege within
America is therefore, at the very
least, as rife in the black community as it is in the white community.
Ice-Cube vs Yo-Yo:
Misogyny challenged
Ice Cube addresses black racial
dualism in terms of gender with
another song on AmeriKKKa‘s
Most Wanted in which he plays
the typically gangsta role of misogynist. In ‗It‘s a Man‘s World,‘
he featured Yo-Yo, a female rap
artist. The result is a comical rap
battle style scenario where Ice
Cube‘s sexist assertions and put
downs are repeatedly met with
scathing retorts from Yo-Yo:
Ice Cube: Women, they good
for nothing, no maybe one
thing
To serve needs to my ding-aling
I‘m a man who loves a onenight stand
‗Cause after I do ya, Huh, I
never knew ya…
Yo-Yo: Hell no because to me
you're not a thriller
You come in the room with
your three-inch killer
Thinking you can do damage
to my backbone
Leave your child in the yard
until it's full-grown
I'm a put it like this my man
Without us your hand would
be your best friend [23]
This song articulates black racial
dualism as it manifests along
gender lines. It is evident that YoYo does not persuade Ice Cube to
see women as equals through the
course of the track. He recognises
her skills as a rapper: ‗Yeah I admit you can flow‘, but that is as
close as he gets to forfeiting his
male privilege and acknowledging gender equality. It is the articulation of the gender divide in
the black community that is of
interest here, not the validity, or
otherwise, of Ice Cube‘s opinions.
His voice represents the opinions
held by many of his contemporaries, yet the appearance of Yo-Yo
allows the oppositional female
voice to be heard. In typical Ice
Cube style he addresses the problem, but pronounces no solution.
Early gangsta rap voiced the tensions felt by many contemporary
urban black youth who faced diminishing employment prospects.
Young blacks also faced rising
levels of incarceration, along with
the proliferation of negative images of black youths in the news
and other mainstream media
throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
These circumstances all fed into
the narratives of gangsta rap.[24]
Post-industrialisation and cutbacks in government funding for
inner city areas also had a disproportionately profound effect on
black communities.[25] White
communities were also affected,
however. The disenfranchisement
of growing numbers of young
whites during this era may be one
reason why so many white
youths developed an affinity with
rap music and its antiestablishment rhetoric and representations of disenchanted youth.
Samuels claims that ‗rap‘s primary audience is white and lives
in the suburbs‘.[26] The idea that
white suburban kids are rap‘s
‗primary audience‘ is one contested by some, including author,
social commentator and ex-editor
of the Source magazine, Bakari
Kitwana. He highlights the unreliability of the music purchase recording systems which Samuels
refers to, and the proliferation of
mix tapes and other untraceable
ways in which rap saturates black
communities.[27] Either way,
there is no doubt that rap has a
large following amongst white
youths, and this allows them to
become engaged in dialogues
regarding the significance of race
and racism.
29
In ‗Racial Dualism‘, Winant points
to the discrediting of white supremacy since the civil rights era
as a contributory factor to white
racial dualism.[28] He explains
that some have forged ways to
maintain white supremacy
through covert forms of neoconservative racism, whereas
others have embraced antiracism
through a number of forms, including ‗popular cultural forms‘,
notably rap.[29] As Winant points
out, though, ‗none of these
[sources] is free of ambiguity and
contradiction.‘[30]
Eminem:
the paradox of white rap
In a sense, white rapper Eminem,
who came to mainstream prominence with the release of his second album The Slim Shady LP in
1999, is an embodiment of the
paradoxes present in white involvement in rap. Eminem‘s
adept usage of the urban black
lexicon ubiquitous in rap shows
that whites not only consume hiphop culture, but also develop
their own identities through it.
Frantz Fanon has said that ‗a man
who possesses a language consequently possesses the world expressed and informed by that
language.‘[31] So, language has
the power to promote crosscultural exchange. As Eminem
has made evident to the mainstream audience, whites are not
merely consumers of rap music
but also architects of the culture.
However, it may be said that the
success of Eminem is evidence of
white privilege. Eminem is not
unaware of the irony of his position. In his song ‗White America‘,
released in 2002 he says:
Look at these eyes, baby blue
baby just like yourself
If they were brown shady
loose, Shady sits on the
shelf…
Lets do the math, if I was
black I would‘ve sold half[32]
Here, Eminem recognises the
structural racism affords him a
position of privilege. He is aware
of the fact that being a member of
the dominant race makes him a
more viable commodity than
black artists. His success belies
Samuels‘, aforementioned assumptions regarding rap consumer‘s voyeuristic racism. Of
course, it could be said that
Eminem‘s ‗white trash‘ persona
exploits yet another subjugated
demographic, deeming the white
underclass the subject of the
white middle-class consumer‘s
voyeuristic gaze. The fact that
rappers know how to exploit the
audience‘s desire for hard-luck
stories and voyeurism is evident. However, what is pertinent
to this article is how Eminem‘s
success illuminates racial dualism
whilst simultaneously allowing
for greater unity and understanding across racial boundaries.
In the 2002 film 8 Mile Eminem
portrays a young rapper, B-Rabbit,
who is vying for respect from the
local hip-hop community. During
local rap battles black competitors make disparagements based
on his race. Lyckity Splyt raps:
Take some real advice
And form a group with Vanilla
Ice…
This guys a hillbilly, this aint
Willie Nelson music…
You‘ll get dropped so hard
that Elvis‘ll start turning in his
grave[33]
B-Rabbit is put down here via
comparisons with famous white
artists. These associations are
intended to align him with the
institutional racism prevalent in
American media, which, as mentioned earlier, rappers, such as
Chuck D have illuminated. In another battle another antagonistic
black rapper, Lotto, states:
‘ll spit a racial slur honkey,
sue me
This is a horror flick
But the black guy doesn‘t die
in this movie[34]
Lotto wins support from the almost completely black audience
by referring to the racism represented and reproduced in American movies, thereby correlating
the white rapper with institutional
racism and in turn questioning BRabbit‘s validity as a contributor
to the rap genre.
Eventually, B-Rabbit wins the final battle, against Papa Doc, by
way of his outstanding ability and
willingness to mock his own
‗white trash‘ background. This is,
then, a narrative of hope where
racial boundaries are overcome
and cultural alliances are
prompted through skill as opposed to race. One of the put
downs in B-Rabbit‘s winning rap
states:
You went to Cranbrook, that‘s
a private school…
This guys a gangsta but his
real name‘s Clarence
And Clarence‘s parents got a
real good marriage[35]
30
By pointing out that his opponent
comes from a privileged background and has had good educational opportunities, B-Rabbit
embarrasses the antagonist and
questions his authenticity as a rap
artist aligned with the gangsta
image. So, race is used against
the white rapper, showing racial
dualism, and class is used to disconnect the black rapper from the
audience, showing black racial
dualism. These rap battles, therefore, illuminate racial dualism and
show that integrity can overcome
racial duality and also that disingenuousness, as in Papa Doc‘s
gangsta posturing, may maintain
duality.
This narrative, however, could
also be read as an allegory for
‗whiteness as disadvantage,‘
which, as Winant explains, is a
product of the neo-conservative
backlash against anti-racist policies. Elements of the white working class community have been ill
informed that declining living
standards, under deindustrialisation, are a result of welfare state
handouts and affirmative action
policies. This feeds into the idea
that whites have become America‘s last priority, and that they
are disadvantaged by such policies. Though there is ‗almost no
evidence‘ for this ‗imaginary
white disadvantage‘, the idea has
‗achieved widespread popular
credence.‘[36] Indeed, the 8 Mile
narrative shows a young white
man placed in a position of disadvantage, who finally overcomes
this adversity (in terms of cultural
acceptance) by pointing out the
disingenuousness of black, mid-
dle class rappers playing the role
of the disadvantaged. The message is not ‗free of ambiguity and
contradiction‘[37] but unity is the
end result in the narrative, and its
willingness to address issues of
race, class and duality encourage
critical discussion on these topics.
References
Conclusion
3] Howard Winant, ‗Racism Today:
Continuity and Change in the PostCivil Rights Era‘ In Ethnic and Racial
Studies Vol. 21, no 4 (1998) http://
www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/winant/
what_is_racism.html p 6
Rappers are not necessarily community leaders. Moreover, rappers‘ and rap fans‘ opinions are
as much a product of America‘s
structural racism and sexism as
any other citizen, regardless of
race. The significance of rap with
respect to racial inequality is
therefore ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory. On one hand,
it has helped united fans of different races in mutual, cultural appreciation and expression. On the
other hand, rap may at times support racist ideology by reproducing black stereotypes, as in gangsta rap. However, when rap highlights racial dualism in a ‗colorblind‘ era, it performs the function of provoking discussion,
thereby allowing for direct scrutiny of structural racism. In this
sense, rap has the ability to serve
as an illuminating and unifying
force in American society. Finally,
then, rap has encouraged dialogue and cultural understanding
by uniting fans and performers
across racial boundaries: ‗It‘s a
start, a work of art‘.
[1] W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black
Folk (Boston: Paperview, 2005) pp 912
[2] Howard Winant, ‗Racial Dualism at
Century‘s End‘. In The House that
Race Built (New York: Vintage Books,
1997) p. 88
[4]Winant, ‗Racism Today‘, p 6. In this
article, Winant describes the two sides
of color-blindness: ‗[T]he claim, first
made in 1896 and recently elevated to
nearly hegemonic jurisprudential
doctrine, that ―our Constitution is
color-blind,‖ can in fact be understood in two ways. It can mean, as
Justice Harlan evidently intended in
his ringing dissent in the Plessy case,
and as the early civil rights movement
clearly understood it as well, that the
power of the state should not be used
to enforce invidious racial distinctions. But it can also mean that the
power of the state should not be used
to uproot those distinctions either.‘
[5] Winant, ‗Racial Dualism‘, p. 88
[6] Howard Winant, ‗Dealing with
Racism in the Age of Obama‘, http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/howardwinant/dealing-with-racism-inth_b_141634.html
[7] Patricia Williams, ‗The Emperor‘s
New Clothes‘ In Seeing a Colour Blind
Future: The Paradox of Race (London:
Virago, 1997) p. 398
[8] Public Enemy, Fight the Power: For
full lyrics, see http://
www.publicenemy.com/index.php?
page=page5&item=3&num=74
[accessed November 2011].
[9] Public Enemy, Fight the Power.
[10] Chuck D, Fight the Power – Rap
Race and Reality (Edinburgh: Payback
Press, 1997) p 196
[11] Alex Ogg with David Upshall, The
Hip Hop Years – A History of Rap
(London: Channel 4 Books, 1999) p 98
[12] Public Enemy, Fight the Power.
[13] David Samuels, ‗The Rap on Rap‘:
The Black Music that Isn‘t Either‘. In
That‘s The Joint (New York:
Routledge, 2004) p. 150
31
[14] Eithne Quinn, ‗Black British Cultural Studies and the Rap on Gangsta‘
In Black Music Research Journal, Vol.
20, No. 2, European Perspectives on
Black Music (Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 2000) p 195
[15] Joel Mciver, Ice Cube – Attitude
(Surrey: Biddles Ltd, 2002).
[16] Ice Cube, Endangered Species.
For full lyrics, see http://
www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/
Endangered-Species-Tales-From-theDarkside-lyrics-IceCube/8804BAAD1540A74F4825719000
083D2A [accessed November 2011]
[17] Winant, ‗Racial Dualism‘, p. 100
[18] Winant, ‗Racial Dualism‘, p.100
[19] Samuels, ‗The Rap on Rap‘, p. 151
[20] Samuels, p 153
[21] Winant, ‗Racial Dualism‘, p
100
[22] Winant, Racial Dualism‘, p98
[23] Ice Cube, It‘s a Man‘s World.
For full lyrics, see http://
www.sing365.com/music/
lyric.nsf/It's-A-Man's-World-lyricsIceCube/9B58F645E1D1F2EC482568
D9000CEB65 [accessed November 2011]
[24] Bakari Kitwana, The Hip-Hop
Generation (New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2002) p 38
p.106
[31] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin,
White Masks (London: Pluto Press
Limited, 1986)
[32] Eminem, ‗White America‘.
For full lyrics, see http://
www.sing365.com/music/
lyric.nsf/white-america-lyricseminem/
ccbd36d256a2cd6348256bbf002e4
0f4
[33] 8 Mile. dir. Curtis Hanson. For
full lyrics, see http://
www.stlyrics.com/songs/e/
eminem1371/8milebattlevslyckity
splyt267932.html
[34] 8 Mile. dir. Curtis Hanson. For
full lyrics, see http://
www.stlyrics.com/songs/e/
eminem1371/
brabbitvslotto2ndbattlefrom8mile638976.html
[35] 8 Mile. dir. Curtis Hanson. For
full lyrics, see http://
www.stlyrics.com/songs/e/
eminem1371/8milebattlevpapado
c267931.html
[36] Winant, ‗Racial Dualism‘ p.
104 & 105
[37] Winant, ‗Racial Dualism‘ p
106.
Bibliography
[25] Tricia Rose, Black Noise
(Middletown: Wesleyan Press,
1994) p 30
8 Mile, dir. Curtis Hanson, 2002
[26] Samuels, ‗The Rap on
Rap‘, pp 147-153
(2nd ed. St Martin‘s Press, 2007)
[27] Bakari Kitwana, Why White
Kids Love Hip-Hop (New York:
Perseus Books, 2005) p 124
[28] Winant, ‗Racial Dualism‘ pp.
102-103
[29] Winant, ‗Racial Dualism‘ pp
103 & 106
[30] Winant, ‗Racial Dualism‘
32
Chang, Jeff. Can‘t Stop Won‘t Stop –
A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
Kitwana, Bakari. Why White Kids Love
Hip-Hop (New York: Perseus Books,
2005)
McIntosh, Peggy ‗White Privilege:
Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack‘ In
Working Paper 189 – ‗White Privilege
and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women‘s
Studies (Wellesley: Wellesley College
Centre for Research on Women, 1998)
Mciver, Joel. Ice Cube – Attitude
(Surrey: Biddles Ltd, 2002)Ogg, Alex
with Upshall, David. The hip hop
Years – A History of Rap (London:
Channel 4 Books, 1999)
Quinn, Eithne. ‗Black British Cultural
Studies and the Rap on Gangsta‘ In
Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 20,
No. 2, European Perspectives on Black
Music (Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 2000) pp 195 – 216
Rose, Tricia. Black Noise (Middletown:
Wesleyan Press, 1994)
Samuels, David. ‗The Rap on Rap: The
Black Music that Isn‘t Either‘ In That‘s
The Joint (New York: Routledge, 2004)
pp 147-153
Williams, Patricia ‗The Emperor‘s New
Clothes‘ In Seeing a Colour Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (London:
Virago, 1997) pp 391 - 398
Winant, Howard ‗Dealing with Racism
in the Age of Obama‘ cited http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/howardwinant/dealing-with-racism-inth_b_141634.html
Winant, Howard. ‗Racial Dualism at
Century‘s End‘ In The House that Race
Built (New York: Vintage Books, 1997)
pp 87-115
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black
Folk (Boston: Paperview, 2005)
Winant, Howard ‗Racism Today: Continuity and Change in the Post-Civil
Rights Era‘ In Ethic and Racial Studies
Vol. 21, no 4 (1998) http://
www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/winant/
what_is_racism.html
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White
Masks (London: Pluto Press Limited,
1986)
Winant, Howard ‗Race and Race Theory‘ In Annual Review of Sociology
Vol. 26 (2000) pp 169 - 185
D, Chuck. Fight the Power – Rap Race
and Reality (Edinburgh: Payback
Press, 1997)
Kitwana, Bakari. The Hip-Hop Generation (New York: BasicCivitas Books,
2002)
Letter from New York by Lenny Quart
Facts and Intuitions
T
here are many ways to get a
handle on the city. One of
them is by flaneuring, either by
setting off to take notes on what I
observe, or just drifting without a
purpose about different neighborhoods and casually picking up the
illuminating detail. Another is by
scouring newspapers for urban
facts, and demographic trends.
In the last month or so I read various news pieces that alter one‘s
image of the city. I find that the
latest statistics from the 2010 census suggest that Manhattan has
become a magnet for younger
families - the only borough, it
turns out, to register gains in both
children under 5 and in its 15-to34-year-old population. These are
families who are sufficiently well
off to afford living in Manhattan.
The increase in high-income families means intense competition
and accompanying anxiety about
entry into high status nursery and
private primary and high schools.
It‘s also why so many affluent
white families are evident picnicking with their children in Central
Park on a summer weekend. Yet,
despite this influx of families,
nearly half of Manhattan still consists of people living alone.
The city also sees the arrival of
many new immigrants, among
them Asian Americans (from
South and East Asia), who trace
their roots to dozens of countries,
and who speak more than 40 languages and dialects. New York‘s
Asian population has been by far
the fastest growing group over
the last ten years - with a 32%
increase. They now are over a
million people - 13% of the city‘s
population (and many remain
uncounted). Nearly half of all
Asians in New York are of Chinese descent - the second largest
being of Indian descent. They
remain underrepresented politically with two members of the
City Council, and one in a citywide post, the comptroller, John
C. Liu. Their median per capita
income remains well below the
city‘s average, and they have the
highest rate of linguistic isolation.
So, despite, all the high achievers,
and the ―model minority‖ stereotype, there are many Asian
Americans in need. As a result,
there is a push for broad coalitions among diverse Asian ethnic
groups by leaders of a younger
generation to provide them with a
political voice commensurate
with their numbers.
If the Asian American population
has increased, the city‘s African
American population has decreased by 5% in the last census.
In fact, New York State‘s African
Americans make up the largest
percentage of migrants from the
East and Midwest to the South - a
reversal of the Great Migration
from the agrarian South to the
industrial North that took place
from WW1 to the 1970s. Many of
the migrants are middle class,
and they go back to the South to
find better jobs as well as return
to their cultural roots.
Finally, I‘m always struck by how
subways on weekends are subject
to interminable delays and bypassed stations due to construction. Since, weekend ridership
has doubled over the past twenty
years, it makes for cars crammed
with passengers, and innumerable complaints.
These statistics offer one significant way of perceiving the city.
But another way of seeing derives
from merely sitting on a radiantly
sunny, breezy day in the
Flaneuring: sauntering;
wandering aimlessly
newly renovated eastern half of
Washington Square Park, and
observing the scene. Everything
appears serene - in the new oval
seating areas a man strums a
guitar to himself, a jazz group
plays for some tourists sitting on
benches, and pass the hat after
their set, and I read an English
novel. There are also people lying
on the freshly planted grassy
lawns that now look infinitely
better than before the renovation,
because they include a variety of
plantings and an array of flowers
including black-eyed susans, hydrangea, and purple and white
echinacea. Besides the usual drug
dealers—fewer in number, but
still very present— the park has
suffered a summer invasion of
young tattooed, grimy, noseringed, dreadlocked young men
and women wearing backpacks
and clothes so stiff with grit that
they are known as ―crusties.‖
These loud seasonal nomads
leave their garbage (many beer
cans) on the Park‘s lawns and
underneath the benches. It‘s New
York, so it‘s implausible that any
park could be idyllic.
On another day I go to the Met.
After years of visiting I take pride
in finally having mastered my
way through its many additions
and labyrinthine turns. This august, bountiful museum has always felt like home to me. There
are rooms and small-unheralded
exhibits that I blunder into that
often turn out to be revelations. So though a swarm of people wait on line for the late fashion designer‘s Alexander
McQueen crowd-pleasing, blockbuster display, I drop in on the
minimally visited small exhibit of
night photography whose subjects range from Steichen‘s misty
woods to Brassai and Brandt‘s
photos of Paris and London‘s
night life, and Robert Frank‘s
Coney Island at night.
Still, the city is too intricate and
mystifying to be truly understood
merely by gleaning facts and absorbing experiences.
33
Book Reviews
An American legend
revisited
Will Kaufman is a leading exponent of the life and works of
Woody Guthrie, and has kept them alive through his
performances in Britain and the United States. He has now
written a biography of Woody, which is reviewed for us by
Michael Paris University of Central Lancashire.
Woody Guthrie: American Radical by Will Kaufman,
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011
pp.304, Illus. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-252-03602-6
A
nyone interested in American roots music will be familiar with the Woody Guthrie
legend. Born in Oklahoma in 1912,
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie lived
through the hard times of the
Depression years, in company
with thousands of migrant workers looking for work, he bummed
across the country singing on
street corners and in bars and
union halls for nickels and dimes
and writing songs that related the
experience of Depression America until, in the early 1940s, he
finished up in New York in the
company of folk heroes like Huddie Ledbetter, Pete Seeger and
Cisco Houston. He served in the
Merchant Marine in World War
Two, made a number of recordings for Stimson and Folkways and in the early 1950s was
diagnosed with the degenerative
disease Huntington‘s Chorea and
hospitalised. During the ‗sixties
folk boom many of his 3000 or so
compositions became embedded
in the roots music repertoire
while some, like This Land is Your
Land and Grand Coulee Dam became American anthems. Sadly
none of this national recognition
did Woody any good for he died
in 1967. Yet his songs and his
spirit live on through the work of
his many disciples most notably
Rambling Jack Elliott and Bob
Dylan, and in his songs, many of
which have become classics. The
legend of ‗America‘s favourite
balladeer‘, the ‗Walt Whitman of
Song‘ has been told and retold in
articles, books, and documentary
films but in the cleaned-up, patriotic folk hero version much has
been left out. His politics, for example, somehow got lost in the
folk boom when This Land was
popularised and turned into an
alternative anthem by the Peter,
Paul and Mary folkies. Everyone
was so busy getting rich off the
back of the author no one remembered that he had written it in
protest at Irving Berlin‘s saccharine God Bless America, and no
one ever sang the verse that went
In the square of the city, in the
shadow of the steeple
By the relief office I‘d seen my
people
As they stood there hungry, I
stood there asking
Is this the land made for you
and me?
Will sings Woody at the Liverpool John Moores University in 2008
34
Guthrie had always been a political animal, ‗I was born to be a
reddical‘, he wrote in 1952. But
the comment was typical of his
outspoken politics and showed a
healthy contempt for the forces of
reaction that held sway over
American politics at that time.
Kaufman forcefully makes the
point that Guthrie was driven by a
deep anger at the social inequalities he had seen in his travels
through Depression America and
particularly at the often brutal
treatment of the migrant workers
in California. So deep did his anger run that he was committed to
the overthrow of capitalism. Despite his attachment to Stalin,
there is no evidence that he was
ever a member of the Communist
Party. The author once told me
that he doubted whether the
Party would ever have let him in
for Woody was far too wild and
undisciplined to follow the Moscow line. Rather he was part of a
long line of independent-minded
American radicals reaching back
to the prairie socialism of Eugene
Debs, through Mother Jones and
the International Workers of the
World, the ‗Wobblies‘, (the old
‗Singing Union‘ of Joe Hill) to
Paul Robeson. He had particularly
respect for the Wobblies and the
manner in which they used song
as a political weapon to ‗Fan the
Flames of Discontent‘, as it boldly
proclaimed on the cover of the
‗Little Red Song. He was particularly taken with the songs of Joe
Hill, who almost certainly influenced his own writing. But radicalism, even the home grown
kind, was somehow twisted into
something subversive and unAmerican during the inter-war
years and by the time the Cold
War witch-hunters like Senator
Joe McCarthy came to dominate
American politics any taint of
radical opinions was the kiss of
death for an artist.
But by the 1960s Guthrie‘s popularity with the young could not be
denied but his radicalism could
and somehow his dangerous
opinions were airbrushed out of
the picture and as an apolitical,
home grown, balladeer he was
judged respectable, or at least his
songs were. As the radical folklorist Irwin Silber caustically
noted of Guthrie‘s transition to
1960s folk hero ‗They‘re taking a
revolutionary and turning him
into a conservationist‘. But whatever his affiliations, Woody songs
spoke for those who lived
through dark days and hard
times; they are direct, provocative
and still have resonance today.
Will Kaufman‘s timely study is
based on a deep familiarity with
Woody‘s music and a thorough
examination of the material in the
Guthrie Foundation and Archive,
the Broadcast Music Industry
Foundation and a host of private
collections as well as the usual
published sources. It‘s provocative, extremely well-written, witty
and well-informed and relocates
Woody Guthrie back within that
long tradition of American radicalism. It will be absolutely compulsory reading for anyone interested in roots music and American politics.
Culture
American Moderns: Bohemian New York and
the Creation of a New
Century by Christine
Stansell, Princeton:
Princeton University
Press, 2010
420 pages.
ISBN 978-0-691-14283-8
Reviewed by Richard Martin, Birkbeck, University of London
H
istories of urban modernity
at the dawn of the twentieth
century habitually turn to Paris,
London, Berlin or Vienna as the
exemplary sources of bohemian
life. In this updated edition of a
study first published in 2000,
Christine Stansell demonstrates
that between 1900 and 1920 New
York‘s Greenwich Village was the
stage for some of the most intriguing developments in politics
and culture anywhere in the
world. In emphasising how this
exciting new community arose
within an ill-defined period in
American history, Stansell proves
that American bohemianism was
not a pale imitation of its more
famous counterparts in Europe,
but in actual fact was often a
much more progressive force,
particularly with regard to gender
relations. In so doing, she provides a hugely enjoyable account
of how Greenwich Village became such an iconic site and how
New York emerged as America‘s
pre-eminent city.
In the book‘s most compelling
passages, she paints vibrant portraits of the era‘s leading radical
figures, including the anarchist
Emma Goldman, the journalists
John Reed and Louise Bryant,
and the critic Randolph Bourne.
Stansell writes with evident sym-
pathy, but no lack of critical rigour, about their intoxicating determination to live modern and
progressive lives. She pays attention to important political schisms
within New York (for example,
the debates between anarchists
and socialists) and to its latent
inequalities (such as the exclusion of black Americans from bohemian circles). As such, she offers a more sophisticated and
nuanced treatment of this cultural
scene than the overtly romantic
35
portrayal seen in Warren Beatty‘s
film Reds (1981), which focuses
its attention on Reed and Bryant‘s
turbulent relationship.
It is feminism that constitutes the
period‘s greatest achievement for
Stansell. She claims that
―nowhere in Europe – or indeed
the world, for that matter – did
modern culture orient itself to the
New Woman as its defining figure
as it did in America.‖ The new
space that was carved out for
gender relations was not without
its complications and contradictions, as Stansell acknowledges.
Nevertheless, this was an environment where friendship, conversation and sexual relations, as
well as reading and writing, were
all considered important political
activities in which women led the
way. Indeed, Stansell suggests
that the origins of the sexual
revolution that took place in
America later in the century lie in
the behaviour of these Greenwich
Village bohemians.
American Moderns ends on a sad
note, with America‘s participation
in World War I creating a climate
of oppression and censorship that
smothered progressive politics.
By 1920, both Reed and Bourne
were dead, Goldman had been
deported to Russia, while Greenwich Village lay at the mercy of
tourists and property speculators.
This is not to detract from the
inspirational legacy this cultural
milieu left behind. Stansell‘s book
will certainly appeal to all those
wishing to know more about radical politics in America, and its
relationship with art and domestic life. Illustrated with numerous
photographs and cartoons, this
book serves as a fascinating reminder of New York‘s vital leftist
tradition in the early twentieth
century and its immense contribution to the nation as a whole.
36
Carter, Dale (ed). Marks
of Distinction: American
Exceptionalism Revisited.
(Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, Dolphin Series,
[32], 2002, PB £18,00).
Pp. 339. ISBN: 8772883839.
Reviewed by Adriana Neagu,
Babeş-Bolyai University, ClujNapoca
O
ne in a continuing series of
radical critiques to come out
in the field of American Studies
after 9/11, the collection of articles under review tackles the ideologies of American exceptionalism, engaging the thesis of the
distinctiveness of America at various interpretive and disciplinary
levels. Subject to vivid re/
deconstructions in the multifarious contexts of literary and cultural studies, de Tocqueville‘s
post-revolutionary definition of
America‘s special status among
nations has in recent years come
under the conjoint fire of historical, social and political science
discourse alike. While differing in
perspectives and purport, the
approaches contributed in the
present volume share an analytical focus on the doctrinaire content of exceptionalism, viewed as
myth and grand narrative of the
US. The teleological vision underpinning American exceptionalism
is thus observed in its reverberations on the formation of American studies, literary production
and reception, as well as its repercussions upon American judicial activism. Structured into six
chapters corresponding to inter-
rogations of theories and notions
of exceptionalism from within the
angles of ―Departures,‖
―Cultures,‖ ―Technologies,‖
―Institutions,‖ ―Laws,‖ and
―Returns,‖ Marks of Distinction
provides a set of apt readings of
the essentialism embedded in the
‗city upon a hill‘ vision.
Adopting in the main a double,
diachronic and synchronic position, the articles examine the assumptions underlying the concept, on the one hand as an impressionistic belief, part of the
popular ethos of the US, on the
other, as based in historical, political and social science scholarship, as a national credo
grounded in the ideas of European Enlightenment. One of the
major strengths of the collection
lies in the well-balanced perspectives on and rationales of the exemplariness of the concept that it
contributes. As well as a seminal
model informing the agendas of
policy makers throughout US
history, legitimating the urge to
refashion the world in the image
of the US, the notion of a divinely
favored nation is equally a romanticized self-image, and an
idea fuelled by European projections. American exceptionalism
as a construct of Eurocentric vein,
it follows from the volume, is a
theme of meditation of equal relevance today. Reflections of Manifest Destiny, the ways in which it
shaped American imagination
and influenced the process of
nation building as symptomatic
manifestations of the neoimperialistic propensities of the
US, have sparked abundant controversy, most notoriously during
the George W. Bush Administration. Past what has been dubbed
‗the era of identity‘, enquiries
such as Marks of Distinction, represent a timely effort toward the
reconceptualisation of the US, in
an attempt to recover a sense of
the historical diversity of America
at the close of the ‗American century‘.
History
Rhys Isaac, Landon
Carter‘s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia
Plantation, Oxford University Press, 2005
448 pgs. ISBN 0195189086
Reviewed by Finn Pollard Lecturer, Lincoln University
I
saac states that the diaries of
Virginia planter Landon Carter
provide ―a most revealing record
of his momentous times‖ (xvii). It
is the strength of the book that
the revolution is but a facet of
that record. Rather through the
diary, Isaac recreates a whole
world down to, so far as words
augmented by many choice illustrations may conjure them, its
sounds and smells. That detail
gives fresh illumination both to
the complexities of that world
and the painful trauma of its collapse into revolution.
The book employs both an unusual narrative structure and a
complex of narrative voices, the
latter effectively illustrated by use
of different fonts. The chronology
jumps around. We begin with the
most traumatic moment in the
breakdown of the old order, when
eight of Carter‘s slaves run off in
response to Dunmore‘s Proclamation in 1776, before going back to
the first diaries of 1756 and their
somewhat more idyllic world.
Vocally, the dominant voice of the
diarist is challenged by travellers‘
accounts, newspapers, and slave
voices, and by Isaac‘s clarifications of and reflections upon
Carter‘s stories. This strategy puts
the reader far more completely
into Carter‘s world than the diary
alone could possibly do, including the perceptions, especially
difficult to capture convincingly
because of the evidentiary problems, of the slave population
(careful, persuasive use is made
of the WPA Narratives).
Through Carter‘s diary we are
immersed in the medical, agricultural, philosophical and political
mindset of his world. The heart of
the narrative though, comes from
Carter‘s daily grappling with the
problem of maintaining his patriarchal authority, particularly in
his relations with his family and
his slaves. Carter longed to be a
benevolent patriarch, was persistently challenged in that role, and
found that benevolence and the
cruelty necessary to maintain real
power in constant conflict. The
narrative chronicles Carter‘s rising frustration, as his inferiors
persistently resist those benevolent intentions. The master is
shown almost as much a prisoner
on the plantation as his subjects,
a problem which became more
acute as the national polity strove
to break its own prison in revolution. The book both captures the
parallel anguish occasioned by
both conflicts, and highlights the
way in which Carter‘s personal
traumas reflect the dark possibility beneath the optimism of that
Revolution - could those tyrannies really be broken?
The Washington Post Book World
is quoted on the cover as stating
that the book describes a world
so different from ours ―as to be
almost unimaginable‖. Isaac‘s
telling conclusion is that those
tyrannies are not wholly broken,
that that world of sexual and racial slavery is uncomfortably
close to our own. Our sympathy
for the dying, somewhat flawed
old man, is tempered by the recognition that his flaws are also
ours.
Native Strangers: Beachcombers, Renegades &
Castaways in the South
Seas, by Susanne Williams Milcairns. Auckland: Penguin Books,
2006.
288 pages. £12.92. ISBN
0143020153
Reviewed by Daniel McKay, University of Canterbury
A
nyone who recalls Tom
Hanks‘ relentlessly literal
portrayal of a luckless Fedex employee-turned-solitary islander in
Robert Zemeckis‘ film, Castaway
(2000), may find it hard to imagine marooning oneself voluntarily.
Ragged clothing, sunburned skin,
rock hard coconuts, and caveman
dwellings, to say nothing of the
want of public health services,
can hardly strike many people as
desirable. We have come a long
way from the romanticism of
nineteenth-century sailors and
gentlemen, for whom Pacific Islands constituted a welcome refuge away from encroaching industrialism back home. At its
best, island life in those days was
thought to offer a return to selfsufficiency, peaceful contemplation, and the virtues of primitivism. That, at least, was the idea.
In a luxuriantly nostalgic book,
Susanne Williams Milcairns
draws on published accounts of
beachcombers, renegades, and
castaways (the terms are largely
interchangeable) to see just how
well reality matched up to expectations. This she accomplishes
37
by peeling back the layered mythology of famous literary figures,
from Robinson Crusoe to the
HMS Bounty mutineers, all of
which served to (mis)inform
those who ‗crossed the beach.‘
The American sources draw particularly on Hermann Melville‘s
Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847),
though Milcairns sees beachcomber life as leveling the
boundaries between Anglophone
nationalities and thus there is no
‗American‘ experience as such.
Social class gets considerably
more attention in her work, as
does race. Beachcombing did not
always involve permanent exile,
but if white men ‗went native‘
entirely (getting tattooed and forgetting the English language,
among other things), they became social pariahs thereafter.
The English-speaking world made
clear that it could not abide anyone who turned their back on the
social, cultural, and aesthetic ideals of their home country; whiteness carried with it certain obligations. But islands continued to
throw up inverse Man Fridays,
which meant that they became
sites of racial slippage and
changefulness for white men, a
fascinating phenomenon that
Milcairns ought to have explored
in more depth.
Most of the benefits of reading
this book will be found by weighing the breadth and depth of the
source material rather than in the
author‘s observations. One is
guaranteed, for example, to come
away with an enticing sense of
just how many seafaring (thence
islandfaring) stories were circulating throughout the nineteenthcentury. Given the individualism
that was implied in the experience, Milcairns can afford to take
us on a tour, of sorts, through the
types of personality involved and
still keep our attention. The first
three chapters profile some wellknown beachcombers, and the
rest chart the step-by-step stages
of the beachcomber‘s journey in
roundtrip fashion. Regrettably,
38
the author‘s strength in profiling
her sources lapses into overdependence at times. Whenever a
point seems to trail off, she falls
back on character description and
categorical statements that effectively watering down individual
chapters in a verbose and repetitive eulogy.
The book will interest those students and members of the general public whose interests cover
travel writing, Pacific literature,
nineteenth-century studies, and
things nautical. It is unlikely to
provide any substantial help in
academic writing and research.
Read it for the yarns.
Evan Cornog, The Birth
of Empire: DeWitt Clinton
and the American Experience, 1769-1828 (1998).
ISBN – 0-19-514051-6. xii + 224
pgs.
Reviewed by Finn Pollard, Lecturer, Lincoln University
D
eWitt Clinton, nephew of
revolutionary hero George
Clinton, and leading New York
politician for over 30 years is
probably best remembered for
running what Henry Adams once
described as 'the most discreditable campaign' for the presidency
in American history in 1812. Evan
Cornog's new biography demonstrates the broader significance of
Clinton's career, which touched
most aspects of American development in the early national era,
but ultimately shows that he was
not the great statesman he so
desired to be.
Cornog traces Clinton's rise from
his first position as Secretary to
his uncle George Clinton, when
the latter was Governor of New
York, through service as a journeyman activist in the newly
formed Democratic-Republican
party, to his years of power in
New York City (as mayor) and
New York State (as governor).
Retelling the political evolution of
the early United States enables
Cornog to illuminate afresh three
main areas: the permanently fractious world of New York state
politics with its ever shifting alliances, the problematic New YorkVirginia alliance within the Democratic-Republican party, and
the gradual displacement of a
deferential eighteenth century
style of politics with nineteenth
century mass participation. Again
and again, Cornog's Clinton is a
man whose attempts to successfully navigate these shifting political currents are frustrated by his
vanity and lack of flexibility.
While much of this study is, as
Cornog acknowledges, a story of
what might have been, Clinton
did play a leading role in two key
developments of the early nineteenth century. During his brief
service as a U.S. Senator he
helped to pass the Twelfth
Amendment to the Constitution,
designed to prevent a repeat of
the horse-trading of the 1800
election. Of greater significance,
his was the vision and political
force which brought the Erie Canal project to fruition, with transformative effects for the future of
his state as Cornog ably demonstrates in his penultimate chapter.
This is an important study of a
second-tier politician of the early
national period, yet Cornog is
ultimately hampered by a problem beyond his control – the thinness of Clinton's paper record.
The book is marked by frequent
admissions - ―Clinton left little
record of his feelings about
Washington‖ (45); ―his letters and
diaries are so lacking in introspection‖ (56). Clinton's selfconcealment ultimately keeps
him out of the first political tier in
death, as his other failings kept
him out of it in life, despite Cornog's skills of recovery.
Andrew S. Trees, The
Founding Fathers and the
Politics of Character,
Princeton University
Press (2004),
232 pgs. ISBN 9780691122366
Reviewed by Finn Pollard, Lecturer, Lincoln University
T
he parameters of this study
are admirable and important: that the national character of
America and Americans remained
imperfectly defined after the
Revolution; that the founding fathers were key exemplars in the
quest for a definition; and that
politics was the crucial arena of
debate.
Four founders are examined,
each in relation to a particular
quality of character: Jefferson –
friendship; Hamilton – honour;
Adams – virtue; Madison – justice.
Their personification of each is
demonstrated through a
―particularly revealing textual
performance‖ (4) (personal letter,
defence pamphlet, diary, anonymous newspaper article), combined with a rapid survey of their
other writings. Despite flashes of
illumination, these essays suffer
from the insistence on a single
different quality per founder; a
dual tendency to ignore ambiguities and to evade the evidence;
and a failure to integrate contrary
views of Adams (notably by C.
Bradley Thompson).
Trees‘ Jefferson, ―imagining true
Americans as linked in harmonious ties of affection‖ (15), clarifies
Jefferson‘s vision of one true
people in the 1790s and after.
But analysing its key text, a 1799
letter to Elbridge Gerry, and the
famous, unsent, reconciliation
letter to Adams of 1796, Trees
emphasises these texts as evidence of a shining belief in friendship rather than of Jefferson‘s
capacity to adopt duplicitous
masks. His Jefferson‘s darkest
consequence is subsequent disunion, rather than the exclusion
of contemporary opponents from
the polity.
Hamilton appears as an elitist
politician: his personal honour,
defended by recourse to the elite
honour code, the safeguard for
his public position, is a stance
undermined because too many
readers no longer comprehended
that code. Madison attempted, in
The Federalist Papers, to be an
impartial judge of that debate,
removing all personal characteristics from the equation. Contradictions abound: Madison‘s characterless impartiality emerges as
sometimes just another mask;
neither Hamilton‘s contribution to
The Federalist, nor Madison‘s
more partisan pieces of the 1790s
are sufficiently confronted. Finally,
additional insistence on Hamilton‘s elitism, that his newspaper
essays of the 1790s ―had been
directed mainly at convincing key
congressmen‖ (66) and that his
1800 attack on Adams was aimed
at a tiny elite are not given evidentiary support, and a footnote
on the latter (178, ftnote.111) actually suggests an alternative interpretation.
The muddled relationship between private and public character is central to these individual
explorations. Extremes are present at different times, so that
Hamilton, in 1797, could admit
adultery (a private failing) while
denying corruption (a public failing) and thus preserve his public
role, while Jefferson, through the
1790s, could project his private
ideal of friendships as the central
characteristic of his public role.
Trees‘ conclusion argues for a
firm change marked by the publication of Weems‘ Life of Washington, which placed Washington‘s private morality centre
stage. Franklin‘s Autobiography
had done much the same thing,
but is unmentioned, and the chronology of change is confused
(especially as no date for first
publication of Weems is given,
and its changing editions barely
noticed). Weems book is held to
mark the displacement of the
politics of character by party politics: in fact, two parties were far
more clearly in operation before
1800, and the second party essentially ceased to exist for some ten
years after 1816.
The preface elegantly acknowledges the ambiguity of the founders‘ character creation. Elsewhere, Trees seems to want them
contained and manageable, but
his subjects persistently burst the
bounds within which he encloses
them. This would have been a far
stronger book if that contradictory evidence were thoroughly
probed, and a greater receptivity
to alternative interpretations
shown.
Colin G. Calloway. The
Scratch of a Pen: 1763
and the Transformation
of North America. New
York: Oxford University
Press, 2007.
xix + 224 pages. £10.00 (paper),
ISBN 978-0-19-533127-1.
Reviewed by Christopher F. Minty
Ph.D. candidate University of Stirling
T
he Seven Years‘ War is an
event that rarely achieves
the same attention as the War of
American Independence. Yet, one
may accurately suggest that the
39
seeds of Revolutionary discontent
were planted in the Treaty of
Paris of 1763, long before the
Boston Tea Party and a general
named Washington. Colin G.
Calloway, author of White People,
Indians, and Highlanders (2008),
has produced a compelling account in an attempt to understand
―the enormous changes generated by the Peace of Paris‖ (p. 14)
and the impact it held upon an
entire continent.
In this short text, Calloway conveys a significant amount of information in a succinct fashion,
but in doing so forcefully explains
the complex networks, communities and relationships that were
formed on the North American
interior. Historians have all too
often been magnetically drawn to
the infamous riots and nonimportation agreements that accumulated across what would
become the United States. What
Calloway has achieved in this text
is that he pulls us away from this
and demonstrates that from 1763
Indians were presented with numerous threats from numerous
nations, mainly Britain, and that
in order to protect their way of
life they had to be prepared for
barbarity and conflict.
Written in a style that allows the
reader to jump across Indian nations and Colonial settlers with
relative ease, The Scratch of the
Pen allows the reader to travel
through 1763 and comprehensively understand the complex
events that would soon begin to
gather momentum. Britain ac-
40
quired huge amounts of territory
in North America, rather than
retaining previously conquered
colonies such as Guadeloupe,
which arguably would have been
more valuable to Britain, certainly,
in the short-term. The French
were forced to relocate to territory normally under Spanish control and the Spanish departed for
the Caribbean. As the balance of
power in North America grew
increasingly difficult to comprehend and manipulate leading to
Pontiac‘s Rebellion, an event
Calloway refers to as the ―First
War of American Independence‖ (pp. 66-91), Indians were
presented with increasingly ominous overtones.
Britons saw endless possibility;
acquiring all French territory east
of the Mississippi, the chances for
growth seemed never-ending. Yet
the Peace of 1763 made no reference to the Indian peoples who
had inhabited North America long
before the social and political
invasion of European powers. As
Calloway states, ―Indian interests
were sacrificed to imperial agendas‖ (p. 169). It is a sad tale that
Calloway emotively describes.
The one criticism of The Scratch
of the Pen is that in order to sufficiently cover the nature of the
North American continent and the
subsuming troubles of 1763,
Calloway ignores the political
legislation thrust upon the American Colonies by King George III
and his government, led by William Grenville. A series of financially expedient but politically
naïve measures would eventually
shape the course of American
history with the first shots of the
American Revolution being fired
on 19 April 1775 at Lexington and
Concord, and if Calloway had
included some information on
parliamentary legislation it would
have strengthened his text. But
this was not Calloway‘s objective
and the positives attained by
reading his work far surpass this
minor point.
Calloway was awarded the
Choice Outstanding academic
book for 2007 for The Scratch of
the Pen. He demonstrates the
importance of the Peace of 1763
and how it shaped the course of
American history. The 1760s defined the United States of America and gave many people a new
identity but to those Indians who
already held a distinct identity the
1760s presented them with an
external threat that would
threaten their very existence and
Calloway restores their significance.
Literature
Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho, Glamorama,
Lunar Park, edited by
Naomi Mandel, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011
ISBN 978-0-8264-3562-0, 178
pages.
Reviewed by Graeme Humphrey,
University of Strathclyde
E
merging as a part of the literary ‗brat pack‘ of the late
1980s, Bret Easton Ellis‘s texts
remain somewhat elusive, sitting
somewhere between the postmodern literary canon and popular fiction. Considering the prominence of such postmodern literary techniques as meta-fiction
and narrative ambiguity in Ellis‘s
fiction, this position was perhaps
appropriate for Ellis in the postmodern hey-day of the 1990s.
Times have changed, however,
and Naomi Mandel‘s Bret Easton
Ellis: American Psycho,
Glamorama, Lunar Park is firmly
concerned with reinforcing the
decision of many universities to
include Ellis in their syllabi and to
finally cement his place in the
literary canon.
The book is split into three sections, – the first focusing on
American Psycho, the next on
Glamorama and finally Lunar
Park – each consisting of three
essays and an introduction by
Mandel herself, in which the major themes of the upcoming essays are highlighted. Also a brief
background of each text is given,
allowing the reader an understanding of the novel‘s context in
both culture and Ellis‘s catalogue.
In doing so, Mandel gives equal
attention to all, avoiding simply
labelling Ellis ‗the author of
American Psycho and other
books.‘ Of course, the issue of
American Psycho‘s controversy
does appear in the book (it would
be nearly impossible for it not to)
and it is quickly dealt with in
Mandel‘s introduction. However,
the scandal surrounding the
novel is left as a matter of contextualising the critical essays that
are the main draw of the book.
The essays themselves are concise, accessible and clear and
references to theory are kept refreshingly contemporary. While
references to Baudrillard, Lacan
and Lyotard are hardly surprising,
they are discussed side-by-side
with Slavoj Žižek‘s notion of subjective and objective violence in
David Schmid‘s ―The Unusual
Subjects‖ as well as Arthur Redding‘s reference to Lentricchia
and McAuliffe‘s link between writers and terrorists in ―Glam Terrorism and Celebrity Politics.‖
The real strength of the book,
however, is in the variation of the
essays. Rather than selecting a
number of essays that all point
the reader towards a single argument, Mandel has opted to put
together a collection of essays
that do not always agree. Most
notably, Michael P. Clark and
Elana Gomel interpret different
significances from Patrick Bateman‘s obsession with faxing the
blood of one of his victims to her
work in American Psycho. And
similarly, both Henrik Skov Neilson‘s and James Annesley‘s contributions to the Lunar Park section focus on authorship in the
book but while the former focuses on the novel as autofiction,
the latter uses the notion of authorship in the text to explore
Bret Easton Ellis as a brand. Yet,
ironically, in utilising such variation, Mandel has in fact allowed
the book to reach a single argument. Rather than being a collection of essays on what Ellis‘s novels mean or even why they
should be read, the book is instead a collection of essays which
demonstrate the ability to approach Ellis‘s works as canonical
texts.
The book is not without its flaws,
though. In keeping with the series‘ theme of analysing only post
-1990 North American fiction,
neither of Ellis‘s pre-1990 books is
discussed. This poses two problems for the book: while the essays are split into sections concerning each novel, many of them
draw Ellis‘s novels together in
order to better explore their respective themes. Indeed, in order
to investigate Ellis‘s famous techniques of self-referencing and reusing of characters and subjects
in different contexts, references
to his other works must be made.
However, without any critical attention given to Less Than Zero
and The Rules of Attraction, the
brief overviews that Mandel gives
of the novels in her general introduction are the only understanding that a reader new to Ellis will
have of them. Yet, these overviews merely give the reader an
idea of what the novels are about
and are not given enough space
to give any real critical comment
on Ellis‘s early work, perhaps
leaving the impression that they
are somehow less significant than
the novels discussed throughout
the book and it is this which
gives rise to its second problem.
In dismissing Ellis‘s pre-American
Psycho texts, Bret Easton Ellis:
American Psycho, Glamorama,
Lunar Park, ironically, once again
characterises Bret Easton Ellis as
‗the author of American Psycho
and other books,‘ which is exactly
the position that Mandel aims to
get away from. Of course, these
are problems posed by the limits
set by the Continuum series but,
as is made clear throughout the
book, with an author as selfreferential as Ellis, privileging
some books over others removes
one of Ellis‘s greatest strengths.
These are small issues though,
and overall Naomi Mandel‘s Bret
Easton Ellis: American Psycho,
Glamorama, Lunar Park is a brave
and admirable attempt at finally
bringing Ellis‘s work into the literary canon. The quality and the
variation of the contributions
makes the collection not only
valuable to scholars and students
concerned with Bret Easton Ellis
and American literature, but it
also provides a detailed and informative account of postmodernism as a whole. Overall then,
the book overwhelmingly succeeds in its goal of presenting
Bret Easton Ellis‘s work as deserving of a place in the American
literary canon.
Frank Christianson, Philanthropy in British and
American Fiction: Dickens, Hawthorne, Eliot
and Howells Edinburgh:
University of Edinburgh
Press, 2007,
£45.00. Pp. 256. ISBN 978 0 7486
2508 6.
Review by Dr. Lisa Rüll, University of Nottingham
C
hristianson‘s book explores
the shift from sentimental
benevolence to more politically
and economically informed altru-
41
ism; in doing so he links the disciplines of history and culture, using a framework that highlights
the relationship between philosophical and moral ideas in the context of political economies. Its
exploration of philanthropy and
the representations and meaning
of this concept within British and
American 19th century realist
literature therefore seeks to develop the existing scholarship
surrounding these topics (notably
Amanda Claybaugh and Catherine Gallagher, and earlier
Dorice Williams Elliot).
Christianson selects four authors
to explore as his case studies for
this analysis, a number that he
feels allows for ―specificity and
breadth‖ (18). He largely dedicates a chapter to each of his chosen authors and alternates between British and US writing.
Therefore, we find the first ‗pair‘
of chapters focus on Dickens and
Hawthorne respectively: Chapter
2 looks at A Christmas Carol
[1843], and particularly Bleak
House [1852-3], whilst chapter 3
considers The House of Seven
Gables [1851] and The Blithedale
Romance [1852]. This leaves the
final two chapters to examine
later realist strategies and contexts in the form of pairing Eliot
and Howells: Chapter 4 looks at
Middlemarch [1871-2] and Daniel
Deronda [1876], whilst Chapter 5
tackles the more problematic examples of Annie Kilburn [1889], A
Hazard of New Fortunes [1890]
and finally A Traveller from Altruria [1894]. These chapters look
not only at narrative storylines,
42
but more especially at the aesthetic language of the texts in
embodying social ideas and practices.
What Christianson does in analysing and situating these selected
texts in this way is clearly driven
by critical theory, demonstrated
when he declares towards the
end of Chapter One that the work
is
―building on a postFoucauldian cultural studies tradition which emphasizes methodologies that
can adequately account for
the complex and shifting
nature of cultural phenomena‖ (63).
From this it is possible to argue
that lay readers or even undergraduates will be excluded from
engaging in this study of how
―philanthropy was embedded in
its nineteenth-century context‖ (62), and how traditional gift
-exchange theory is insufficient
for analysing more than motive.
Christianson‘s target audience is
therefore firmly fixed as postgraduates and academics.
This is perhaps befitting of the
book‘s place within the series
‗Edinburgh Studies in Transatlantic Literatures‘. Using a comparative rather than nation-based approach to the topic,
Christianson‘s study explores the
shifting tones of sentimentalist to
realist writing in the twin cultures
of 19th century Britain and America, examining how such writing
articulates the attitudes of the
time in these two nations regarding poverty, social and economic
change, and moral ethics. However, his ―composite picture of
Anglophone cultural transformation in the North Atlantic‖ (19) is
not always fully convincing.
Those with an interest in the nuances of race and class identities
and how they affect forms and
experiences of poverty and philanthropy across the two nations
during this extended period are
likely to find lacunae in the critique ultimately presented here
(not least around the unspoken
impact of the Civil War and more
broadly of slavery). Moreover,
the role of religion and contemporary religious debates about
empathy and social philanthropy
amongst different cultural groups
feel under-explored. The
‗Coda‘ (194-6) may declare that
19th century philanthropy
―synthesises the ostensible contradictions between religious and
secular moral rationalities‖ (195),
but there was a clear evangelical
zeal underpinning this philanthropy, especially at the start but
also at the end of this period in
both nations. A greater acknowledgement of the ongoing role
religion played would have improved this nevertheless valuable,
if densely written, study.
An American Trilogy
Mapping America:
exploring the Continent,
Fritz C. Kessler and Frank
Jacobs. London: Black
Dog Publishing
Mapping New York:
Duncan McCorquodale.
London: Black Dog
Publishing
ISBN 978-1-906155-82-7
ISBN 978-1-907317-08-8
The American Urban
Reader: History &
Theory: edited by Steven
H. Corey and Lisa
Krissoff Boehm. London:
Routledge, 2011
ISBN 978-415-8039898-4
Reviewed by Dr Robert Macdonald Architect, Reader in Architecture, Liverpool John Moores University.
T
his review concerns a trilogy
of books about American
Mapping: The American Urban
Reader, Mapping America: Exploring the Continent and Mapping New York all trace the formation of the USA through diverse essays and maps.
The maps
illustrate
the development of
a British
colonial
backwater
into a
global and
cultural
super-power. Mapping America
and Mapping New York are divided into thematic chapters that
cover the issues of discovering,
describing, navigating and imagining the continent and the city.
These three books will be of interest to academic dedicated cartographers and casual readers with
an interest in maps and mapping.
The medium of the map is an
effective canvas on which to
transpose a nation‘s diverse
physical, social and cultural history. The extended introductions
provide many different perspectives on the mapping of the USA
and New York. The maps include
traditional historic maps as well
as maps of electronic superhighways. The night-time and sky
views of the continent are spectacular. (See illustration on front
cover). Landforms, tornado activity, seismic hazards and floods
are all fascinating subjects for
maps of natural hazards. Social
and ethnic issues are also described: Indian reservations,
tribes and settlements are
mapped and featured.
In the winter of 1947-48 Jack Kerouac made his memorable journey ‗on the road.‘ The route is
recorded by his self-annotated
map. Eisenhower‘s Interstate System is mapped in the style of H. C.
Beck‘s London Underground Map.
In terms of contemporary maps
there are maps of active Hate
Groups, Keep America Healthy
and City to City Internet Maps.
The final map in Mapping America is the famous ‗View of the
World from 9th Avenue.‘
The American Urban Reader is a
book about the history of the continent from the dawn of the19th
century when the Island of
―North Dakota is the centre of North America‖ from Mapping America pg 97
43
Aerial view of Ground Zero and the Financial District.© Library of Congress 2001.from Mapping New York pg 57
Manhattan was a largely bucolic
spread of farms, woods, fields,
country houses and villages
sprinkled amid dells. The American Urban Reader is a mix of di-
verse scholarship and primary
sources. The concept of the
American city is presented
through a collection of classic
essays covering a 400-year history. This book will be of interest
to students of planning, urban
studies and history. Given the era
of President Barack Obama, arising out of urban Chicago, The
American Urban Reader is very
timely. Few urban theorists have
achieved the status of Jane Jacobs, for ‗The Death and Life of
Great American Cities‘ is arguably
the most influential book ever
written on the subject. Herbert J
Gans defines urbanism and suburbanism as ways of life. In contrast, Mike Davies, in Beyond
Blade Runner discusses why so
many Americans fear cities.
Special offer: get 40% off Mapping America and Mapping New York. To order at
the discounted price, email [email protected] with your delivery address and quoting 'American Studies Today Offer' as the subject heading.
44