Articles by
 Taussig, Young,
 Bhabha, Lott,
Butler, & Baldwin
(some excellent theoretical essays)
(back to Index)
|
The readings for this week have concentrated strongly on the theme
of white male masculinity as it is defined oppositionally to the
perceived masculinity of the "Other." This white masculinity seems to
be dually constructed through anxieties expressed in sex and on fear.
There is a thread through each reading which discusses (in more or less
verbose manners) precisely what Taussig revealed in his article
Culture of Terror, Space of Death, namely "that the victimizer
needs the victim for the purpose of making truth, objectifying the
victimizer's fantasies in the discourse of the other" (138).
Thus we have a mirror in which to see (with fascinated horror) that
which we fear in ourselves. We project these fears onto our victim, and
through that act we acquire the very traits, desires, or actions we
fear. This is somewhat muddily explored in Young's Colonialism and
the Desiring Machine, where he explores the construction of
'colonial discourse' as yet another western academic tactic, yet another
form of created fantasy and desire. Bhabha's Of Mimicry and Man
uses the term "ambivalence" to describe the oscillating love/hate
relationship the colonizer seems to demonstrate towards the colonized.
It is the fictions placed upon the colonized by the colonizer that truly
defines the colonizer; their belief in the ultimate inability of their
'lessers' to ever truly be 'superior,' one with them, that maintains the
fiction of colonizing superiority. Yet it is in the creations of these
very fictions that the colonizer disrupts his own stabilizing beliefs.
Bhabha notes the use of mimicry (through the "partial gaze of the
Other") to rupture and transform the certainties of the colonial mindset
into ambiguity and mockery. Thus mimicry must be transmuted to menace,
or else the essential fragility of the colonizer's 'normative
knowledges' is graphically illustrated, as in the misuse of the bible.
On a less rarifiedly theoretical level we have Lott's White Like
Me, which straightforwardly posits the creation of American male
whiteness through appropriation of white beliefs about black masculinity
and sexuality, as expressed through blackface. Through his review of
media, Lott expresses white culture's appropriation of and debt to the
black subculture - yet also points out that much of this says more about
white views of blacks than actual black culture. Like Orientalism as a
discipline, the 'appropriated blackness' is more a white fiction; an
alternative life style used to define what white 'truly' is. Butler uses
a real life occurrence (the trial of Rodney King's attackers) in
Endangered/ Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia to
demonstrate how white fears cause a racially saturated reproduction of
vision. Through this mindset, a completely helpless black man in the
process of being brutally beaten becomes a potential brutal attacker of
whites, who must be attacked before his incipient violence and
unrestrained sexuality is released, and who thus has brought 'just
reprisal' upon himself purely due to the color of his skin. It is
telling that the female white juror saw King as being "totally in
control" of the situation shown by the video, just as it is telling that
the soundtrack, which was full of racial and sexual slurs, was deleted
from the visual. Had the connections between white fears and sexual
anxieties as projected onto blacks been quite so graphically
demonstrated, it is possible the juror's convictions of the
fundamentally dangerous nature of King might have been shaken.
Finally we have a fictional piece (Baldwin's Going to Meet the
Man), which probably most graphically exemplifies the ties between
sex, fear, and the oppositionally defined nature of both masculinity and
whiteness. The man Jesse grabs at his crotch when he feels verbally
threatened by the helpless black boy in the jail cell. The boy Jesse
witnesses the graphic torture and castration of a helpless black man who
is accused of pushing a white woman. Jesse is described as pulling
upward to see, and as drooping once the black man is dead; this is
rather phallic description. The white people at the scene are described
as sated after the torture. Sex and fear permeate the story. The fear is
of some undefined unknown as embodied by the black people - their
motives, their physicality, their constant singing are all portrayed as
mysterious and unknowable. The story itself is set within the framework
of Jesse's inability to make love to his wife until he once again
mentally castrates the black man of his memory, at which point he can
finally 'do' her 'like a nigger.'
Thus a constant theme is demonstrated in the readings; through
ideology, through exploration of both the media and a real-life
incident, and through fiction. The construction of white masculinity is
oppositionally dependent on its projection of its own fears and
inadequacies onto the Other. Through a variety of justifications
(self-protection, economics, bringing the torch of civilization to the
savages, etc.) these same fears are later expressed as white
masculinity. Thus the usually somewhat innocuous non-white is
constructed and viewed as a menacing 'brutal savage,' and consequently
treated with savage brutality.
|
|
Manliness & Civilization
by Gail Bederman
(good book, clearly written)
(back to Index)
|
Since you encouraged me to feel free to express myself and to indulge
in exploration expressed through the readings, I intend to do so in this
paper. However, what I find myself curious about is not so much the
readings, since they made a great deal of sense, but rather our
reactions to them.
Our readings for Tuesday were chapters 1-3 of Bederman's Manliness
& Civilization. The three chapters reviewed Jim Johnson as a black
threat to white hegemonic claims of civilized superiority, discussed Ida
B. Wells' discourse on lynching and G. Stanley Hall's theories on racial
recapitulation as a counter to neurasthenia. All of these chapters were
full of information and ideas on masculinity, race, gender, culture; all
of the chapters had strong and thought-provoking ties to previous
readings... and yet we spent most of the class wandering
conversationally through economies of class, arguing about accents, or
berating the absent writer for individual passages.
Why did we do this? What is it about us, as a classroom of privileged
individuals, that prompts more attention to nit-picking and
fault-finding than to close examination of such far-reaching and
fascinating precepts as are being presented in the reading? Why is it
that so often people seem to feel that if they can point to a single
fault in an otherwise brilliantly presented argument, they can then feel
themselves to be superior and true connoisseurs of the subject at hand -
even when they're not addressing the actual subject? Examination of
discourse on a topic is (as far as I know) the only way to learn it in a
university environment. However, is it truly learning if discussion
degenerates into simple whining which does not address the issue? Is a
classroom really the place for exaggeratedly emotional or dramatic
monologues about the inequities of class, or soapboxing about the evils
of the male sex? We're supposed to be graduating soon - so shouldn't we
be able to frame, articulate, and logically discuss coherent questions
on the readings?
True, connections can be found between class, gender performance, the
definition of civilization, and several other subjects, but the class -
and the readings - are about masculinity! Why then do we not
address it; why not tie it into what we're discussing? Are we that
intent on seeing the world only through our own chosen lens of
prejudice? If so, shouldn't we recognize that, and try to analyze,
understand, and disarm it? Bigotry, however prettily couched in academic
posturings, is after all only bigotry. Or is masculinity just too
frightening to examine closely? The appeal of the 'savage' seems an
important question to me, as I see it reflected darkly all around me in
my society today. I cannot but wonder at the possible connection between
it and some of the troubles I observe in the world. I would have loved
to discuss that, to have struggled to come up with an answer for
savagery's seductive allure, or a logical refutation of its appeal to
men. Yet we never got to it - we foundered on... writing style. I also
found it bleakly amusing that during attacks on the author's writing
style the author (Gail Bederman) was consistently referred to as 'he.'
Are we then doing what Taussig has postulated? Are we projecting our own
fears upon the readings, viewing them as 'the enemy' and attacking them
hysterically because they disturb us and do not say what we want them
to?
|
|
History of Sexuality, vol. I
by Michel Foucault
(very good book, a little heavy for the layman perhaps)
(back to Index)
|
In his first volume on the history of sexuality, Foucault discusses
the apparent fascination in western societies with sex. He speculates on
why this is so, initially presenting the current, 'fashionable'
hypothesis of societal repression as the potential reason: we are only
now, in the twentieth century, waking up and shaking off the effects of
the late seventeenth century Victorian silencing and repression of all
things sexual. He then asserts the hypothesis is not correct, citing as
proofs his three main doubts. These are his doubts of sexual
repression's historical factualness (his historical question); whether
the workings of power in our society are truly prohibition, censorship,
and denial, or even categorizable as repressive (his
historico-theoretical question); and whether the critical discourse that
addresses itself to repression was in fact part of the very same power
mechanism that had operated unchallenged up to that point (his
historico-political question) [1990:10]. Instead Foucault asserts that
sexuality is part of a general economy of discourses on sex, is viewed
and discussed endlessly as the secret path to a new and better
world, and he seeks to discover instances of discursive production, of
the production of power, and the propagation of knowledge concerning
sexuality [1990:12, 35].
Foucault goes on to discuss what he refers to as the perverse
implantation: the advancing and multiplying of a power specifically
created to suppress the very 'vice' that is its main support and reason
for existence - a vice chosen for both its inerradicable qualities, and
its ability to expand, subdivide, and penetrate further throughout
reality. Thus power is given impetus both by its very exercise,
rewarding its overseeing control; and by the pleasure discovered fed
back to the power than encircles it [1990:43-45]. The perverse
implantation is an empirical data source he cites to disprove the
repression hypothesis. He also explores the creation of the 'scientia
sexualis': the result of a long history of titillating discourse on sex.
Foucault traces its beginnings to the Christian confessional, with its
careful and fascinated examination of the 'sins of the flesh.' The
dissemination of the procedures of the confessional to the psychoanalyst
bent on determination of scientific norms, coupled with a multiplication
of the localizations of its constraint and a widening of its domain,
contributed to the constitution of an ever-increasing discourse and
archive on the pleasures of sex [1990: 63-65]. It was a creation of an
analytics of sex; furthermore it was an analysis pursued with the same
fanatical devotion to its subject as that of any proselytizing
confessor, with the added benefit of having as subjects of their
research a people who wished most earnestly the release of
confession.
Foucault continues his examination of the power created and supported
by the 'scientia sexualis,' noting that its features can also be
uncovered in political analyses of power, and are deeply rooted in
Western history. The pervasive and expanding nature of power is due to:
the negative relation (power must always refuse, limit, and lack); the
insistence of the rule (power creates binary categories, prescribes
'order,' and lays down the rule of law); the cycle of prohibition (power
creates two alternative nonexistences, then constrains and condemns to
nullity through taboo); the logic of censorship (through the paradoxical
logic of law, power creates the inexistent, the illicit, and the
inexpressible); and the uniformity of the apparatus (on one side there
is the legislative power, and on the other an obedient subject)
[1990:83-85]. Close examination of the appearances of these features of
power in society, in relation to sexuality, demonstrates clearly the
constant and mutual discursive production between power and sexuality.
Sexual discourse both supports and creates power, which must in turn
continue to create and support sexuality and the scientia sexualis; as
sexuality grows, pervades, and expands subtly throughout society, so
does the attendant discursive power [1990:95]. That the expanding
production of discourses on sex increase the field of multiple and
mobile power relations is the exercised power's aim and objective, if
not its stated goal [1990: 98].
In the beginning of the 18th century we first note four specific
mechanisms of knowledge and power centering on sex, namely a
histerization of women's bodies, a pedagogization of children's sex, a
socialization of procreative behavior and a psychiatrization of perverse
pleasure [1990:104-105]. These mechanisms formed the beginnings of the
juridico-medical discourse on and production of sexuality as formulated
by and for the bourgeoisie. Originally the relations of sex were based
on deployment of alliance: a system of rules defining the permitted and
the forbidden, the licit and the illicit. However, as economic processes
and political structures changed, a new apparatus of power was created
and superimposed upon the old alliances: the deployment of sexuality.
Its operation was based on mobile, polymorphous, and contingent
techniques of power. As alliance reproduces the interplay of relations
and maintains the law that governs them, so sexuality engenders a
continual extension of areas and forms of control [1990:106]. This
deployment of sexuality is a product of the need of the bourgeoisie to
create its own sexuality and form a specific body based on it; a "class"
body, in the guise of marking and maintaining its caste distinction, as
did the nobility with its creation of the discourse concerning itself
with "blood" [1990:124].
Foucault goes on to discuss the two poles around which the
organization of power over life is deployed: the disciplines of the
anatomo-politics of the human body and the regulatory controls
demonstrated through a bio-politics of the population. "Bodies" are
created through the discourse of the individual body as a
machine, its discipline, optimization, docility, integration, et
al; whereas "populations" focus on the species body, imbued
with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological
processes. From the creation of this bipolar technology of power comes
the myriad and diverse techniques designed to subjugate bodies and
control populations; Foucault names this discourse of power 'bio-power'
[1990:139-140]. Through the calculated administration of bodies and
management of life within the parameters of this new bio-power we see an
attention to the investment of life, as opposed to the sovereign power's
mastery of death. The species is no longer constituted by living animals
which are capable of political existence, but rather a species whose
life is determined by its political strategies [1990:143].
Sex and sexuality are of vital importance in this political discourse
on bio-power for the simple reason that sex is at the pivot of the two
axes that compromise the poles on which bio-power is based. Sex is a
normative discipline allowing access to the life of the body, and also a
regulator of the species, through its manifestation and control in
populations. The blood of the nobility was a symbolic reality; the
sexuality of the bourgeoisie is a discourse to be constantly
(re)analyzed. Power speaks both of and to it; it is delineated, aroused,
and employed in the polymorphous and proliferating discourses of power
[1990:145-148]. The one thing it is not is a splendid, hidden truth
obscured by repression and censorship; it is, like the power that
obsessively reforms, sustains and is created by it, a societally created
discourse.
|
|
|
Movie: The Women Outside
(back to Index)
|
In the movie The Women Outside a viewer can clearly see a
clash of cultural assumptions. In America, the prevailing norm is that
the government should assist the weak and disempowered, and also that a
culture's values have validity. Between these two societal beliefs are
the base women surrounding American bases in Korea. There it is believed
normatively by Korean society that a 'camp follower' could never be a
'good woman.' Currently Americans there more strongly embody a
hands-off, laissez faire attitude towards the predicament of the
base women; the prevailing attitude is that it's always been there and
everyone does it, so it must be all right. However, one might find
oneself wondering if this attitude is truly an embodiment of validation
of a foreign culture's values, or simply the path of least
resistance.
Of course, there is also the possibility that assuming the
predicament of such marginalized women is uniquely an American affair,
as if Americans created the problem, and must therefore solve it. An
astonishing arrogance could be discerned in such an attitude: it would
assume there are no base women around Korean army camps, and that camps
in America have no 'supportive' women surrounding them either. This is
obviously not the case. Ultimately, such situations exist because they
are tolerated by those in power, not because they are a unique
by-product (and thus also the responsibility) of America.
Nevertheless the image of the big aggressor bullying the smaller,
weaker victim is an appealing one to most people. It is always pleasant
to jump on such an emotional bandwagon; the issues seem clear-cut and
simple, and one can be sure of one's moral superiority. America is
perfect as such a target due to its recurring and debilitating guilty
conscience. Oddly enough, most Americans seem to feel they are to blame
for the actions of their ancestors, or for the entirety of their 'race,'
and thus must bear silently any vitriol slung at them, regardless of
whether such hatefulness is justified or no. Unsurprisingly, hate begets
hate, and so nothing is accomplished or changed, either by the
conscience-salving martyrdom of the 'big aggressor,' or by the anger
flung with complete lack of control or direction by those that feel
oppressed and thus embody themselves as the 'smaller, weaker victim.' As
Foucault's theory of perverse implantation points out, this embodiment
as martyr or victim will not - must not! -- change the situations which
have caused it to come about. To do so would endanger or eliminate the
subtle appropriations of power each side claims, and threaten the
simplistic and comforting oppositional roles of 'power achieved through
assumption of the position of martyr' and 'power achieved through
assumption of the position of victim.'
This is not to say that the position of the marginalized in any
society is imaginary, or that their very real pain should be ignored.
Rather, it is merely an observation: humans are complex creatures, and
have a plethora of reasons, both conscious and unconscious, for their
actions. It is satisfying in the short term to target a scapegoat; it
assures one's moral superiority and absolves one of the need to shoulder
blame or work towards long term solutions. Unfortunately, treating the
symptom will not cure the disease. To assume that only America is to
blame for the situation delineated in "The Women Outside," or to naively
believe that the elimination of racism can be accomplished solely
through legalistic prevention of the exploitation of the marginalized is
to accept a simplistic and unfortunately incomplete view of the world.
More effort, both physical and mental, will be needed to accurately and
completely assess the problem and to come up with and implement a
long-term solution that takes into account both the marginalized and the
discourses of power that have created their marginalization.
|
|
Movie: Tongues Untied
(very good; very moving)
(back to Index)
|
This paper discusses possible interpretations of the movie Tongues
Untied. It is unfortunately not particularly theoretically inclined
(from an anthropological point of view), but is more an exploration of
personal beliefs. It is not intended as a criticism, but rather as an
affirmation of common humanity. However, since we are in this class (in
a fashion) exploring the politics of the creation of 'masculinity' as a
societal construct, and since I believe the personal is
political, I'm going to do this anyway. Apologies ahead of time. ;-)
My initial exposure to my own bigotry occurred when I overheard a
conversation where a handicapped person in a wheelchair mentioned that
she was invisible to most people. True, they tended not to step into her
way. But the care with which they both avoided her chair and her
eyes made her feel erased sometimes. I was embarrassed, and my first
impression was to deny to myself (since I was not involved in the
conversation) that I'd ever done anything so inconsiderate.
Unfortunately that wasn't true... and I knew it. Honesty compelled me to
admit it... and my training in constructive (as opposed to destructive)
criticism made me try to discover how to change this unpleasant and
undesired internal bigotry. I gave it some thought, gathered my courage,
and went over to very carefully and politely ask the handicapped
person what she would change, what would make her feel
better, to prevent her feeling erased.
I'll never forget her response. I half expected to be snapped at as
an inconsiderate non-handicapped person trying to assuage my guilt by a
few unpleasant moments of forced speech with 'one of them.'
Instead she gave me one of the loveliest smiles I'd ever seen, and told
me that I was part-way there already. "Just look at us; just
smile when you talk to us, like you're glad you're here, instead
of like you're fulfilling some nasty duty, or talking to a child!" We
ended up talking animatedly until our next classes - she was interesting
and clever and thoughtful. She wasn't a wheelchair; she wasn't a label -
she was a person. It was incredibly liberating in a way... it
takes work to be uncomfortable and unhappy around people that you
don't understand, people that you're afraid of.
Honesty grows on you. Once I'd started smiling at handicapped people,
started speaking and treating them like individuals, I started noticing
other 'groups' that I'd tended to avoid both physically and visually. I
was initially quite trepidatious about smiling at (as the most obvious
but not the only example) black men, but I decided one day that if I was
going to be honest I'd have to admit to myself that all these groups
consisted of people too... and I gathered my courage in both hands and
started smiling at everyone I met on the street that would meet
my eyes. I was not willing to be foolish - one does not walk down a dark
alley in an inner city at night, alone, for example - but unless I was
being actively snarled at I would smile and/or greet all the people I
passed. It is amazing how well most people react to a sincere
greeting and smile. I've received some of the loveliest (and sometimes
startled and pleased ;-) smiles and replies in return... and while there
have been those that have been neutral, no one to date has been hostile.
It's a very small thing, of course... but it is a beginning, a precursor
to bigger and better things.
To return to the movie, I found it very fulfilling. It was, to me, a
smile from a man I can never meet - a chance to reach out and make a
small connection in a society that sometimes actively discourages
connections being made. It is always satisfying to see that others have
also had troubled times; that you are not alone in the pains you have
experienced in your life. It is even more affirming to see difficult
decisions and conclusions made in your own life positively mirrored by
others. True, your life cannot exactly match anyone else's. Indeed, it
is probable that one of you ('you' as both the observer and the movie
producer in this particular case) had more terrible pains, or emotional
damage that scarred more deeply... but if you (the generalized 'you')
make no attempt to comprehend another's pain, to find mutuality in and
through life experiences, then how can anything constructive and/or
communicative grow between you and any other; how can any understanding
be reached when there is nothing in common? If there is no
understanding, what is left but isolation, ignorance, or worse yet,
fear? I am not speaking here of frivolous, thoughtless claims of
understanding based solely on a wish to get someone else to open up
emotionally or verbally; nor am I saying that one should loudly (and
sometimes tediously) proclaim one's own story to be precisely the
same, qualitatively, to another's. I am here speaking only of the
unfortunately common human experience of anguish and suffering, and the
inner redemption and strength that one can find within, and that
one can cheer on in others, if one can only persist in struggling on,
and growing despite one's pain.
So, with the above caveats, I believe I saw in the movie Tongues
Untied griefs and epiphanies that had some loose correspondence to
those I have experienced within my own life. It was deeply satisfying to
hear the statement that anger is the easy, the safe emotion, that
it arises from silence that swallows the hurt and accepts the pain of
being viciously labeled, scapegoated, or pigeon-holed... but that
ultimately one must move past the anger in order to grow. I found
it greatly encouraging to hear the speaker on the screen (sorry, but I
don't remember which individual was speaking) describe his slow
discovery that he could not depend on others to create himself -
that ultimately he was responsible for his own creation of self;
that he had only to look to himself alone for approbation of his
life choices. No one else's approval was necessary - he could be (and
became) who he wanted to be. For me, one of the most moving parts
of the film was the scene where during the Gay Pride parade, down a side
street, a group of intolerant christians were shown - and the men
marching in the parade pointed and in unison cried out repeatedly,
"Shame! Shame!" as they passed. I find that kind of courage magnificent
- to stand up to what is supposed to be a kind and unifying force
in one's culture and to tell it to its face that it is wrong,
that it has abrogated its responsibilities and abused its power,
requires breath-taking self-confidence and self-knowledge of who one is.
I applaud those men -- they spoke the truth.
About the only thing I found sad about the movie's conclusions is
that the black men ultimately had to turn to other black men in order to
find and create themselves. However, I do not consider this a failing on
the part of the men that were the subject of the movie. Instead, I see
it as a condemnation of both the cultural hegemony, and (more mildly)
the 'mainstream' gay culture. It would be my hope that a time might
come, someday, where creation and discovery of self-identity could
healthily proceed wherever one was -- without having to turn away from
people that have a different colored skin, or turn away from a culture
that persists in illogically stating you are perverse, damaged, or sick.
It is true I am an idealist, and this is not likely to occur in my
lifetime. However, I am not willing to give in to anomie, even though I
no longer believe in quick fixes to complex societal problems. Instead I
believe the hegemony is changed by convincing one individual at a time,
slowly and with reason, instead of with hate or anger. Until I find a
better way, I shall continue to attempt to do so.
|
|
|
Movie: Zoot Suit
(back to Index)
|
The week's 'reading' was the film Zoot Suit. As the film's
narrator states, the story it told was as much a fantasy as truth. I
found this interesting - in the fantastic retelling of the story of Hank
Reina there was a chance to create a non-hegemonic view not only of the
chicano as a cultural construction one could be proud of, but
also to invigorate, in a sense, some of the other classifications of
minorities as also worthy of respect. Yet this was not done - I'm
curious as to whether it was an attempt to remain true to the spirit of
the times, or whether it was a slight demonstration of minority
xenophobia. In the dance scenes in the 'bars,' for example, the one
black couple almost always danced only with each other, and the male is
at one point told angrily by a pachuco that it's 'not your night
to be here, cochon'; the dancing women are frequently tossed by
their partners (apparently both willingly and helplessly) into the air
such that one can clearly see their color-coded underwear; the one Asian
woman is always dancing with the white sailor.
In fairness to the self-categorized pachuco Reina in the
movie, it should also be pointed out that there is a real love/hate
relationship between him and the narrator, his idealized carnal
representation of his ethnic status. At different points in the movie he
applauds it, calls it a liar, hates it, and refers to it as himself --
both his best friend and his worst enemy. It is clear the movie was
directed primarily at the chicano audience; the frequent use of
specific and untranslated dialect means a non-chicano will miss a
great deal of the dialogue and meaning. There does seem to be an attempt
to show, through use of body language, the overall emotional content of
the words, but in doing this the complexities and subtleties of people's
spoken reactions is unfortunately lost. As a single example, there are
frequent humorous comments made with a 'deadpan' face. A non-Spanish
speaker thus has no idea of the dry humor and rather cleverly pointed
wit that seems, according to the movie, characteristic of the
pachuco.
The movie was, unfortunately, a little confusing at its finish. Were
all the related endings true, different aspects of the same story, or
merely more glosses on what could have been? However, even in its
apparent confusing nature it was probably true to the character of both
life and the story it told - where does one point and say decisively,
"There. The story ends there"? The racism had not ended, even though
the protagonist's life had. In a sense it could be said that the story
never ends until the racism stops; that, as the narrator put it, Henry
Reina lives on.
|
|