I hope the Ray film tonight will have the desired effects: that it will have given you a chance to catch your breath, to gather up and perhaps even synthesize some of the trailing strands of conversation from our previous class meetings, and to catch/derive some new permutations and colors of those strands via what the film itself offers. And then there's the imposing reading load for next week: it's probably the most demanding week of the semester in that regard, as I have warned, and if you've been able to get a start on the Bhabha essay and/or the novel during this "off" week, so much the better!
If you have any spare time, or if you want some interesting background audio emerging from your computer as you work on other things, you might check out these two videos. The first is this 8-minute video clip discussing Rushdie and the fatwa ("and how they shaped multicultural Britain"), almost exactly twenty years later. The second is Rushdie's 2006 speech to the American Jewish Congress regarding reforming Islam. He talks amusedly about those people who come up to him and tell him they have "read that book of yours" -- "and you always know which one they mean," he notes. He also relates, about fifteen minutes into the talk, the story of the Satanic Verses and its connection to the Koran, and then proceeds to explain why this episode interested him relative to his project in writing the novel you're currently reading.
See you tonight!
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
The 31st Jar
Wow, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed, very Saleem-like, as I contemplate leaving Midnight's Children to move on down the road. The cracks widen beneath us, I guess. It seems like there is still so much to talk about, so many passages on which to touch down. Well, if anyone would like to help me fill up this 31st jar, have at it. (A brief announcement, too, by the way: the Homi Bhabha article is now available on the Moodle site, as is a repaired and complete version of the Bakhtin pages from "Discourse in the Novel")
Maybe we can deploy Saleem's recapitulatory tendencies -- you know, the way he's often given to stopping to summarize (for Padma, for us) and recount where the narrative has been to date ("Let me sum up" (196)) -- to help us deal with our own cracks and to counter the linear march of the semester (Midnight's Children recedes, The Satanic Verses advances, etc.). All of which to say, let us be thinking and conversing longitudinally and retrospectively. I find myself still thinking about that fabulous Methwold section early in Midnight's Children. I just by accident opened up to that gem of a sentence on the bottom of page 125: "Rose in lapel, cream hat held stiffly against his chest, center-parting glinting in afternoon light, William Methwold stares straight ahead, past clocktower and Warden Road, beyond Breach's Candy's map-shaped pool, across the golden four o'clock waves, and salutes; while out there, above the horizon, the sun begins its long dive towards the sea." This sentence seems to respond ironically to that bygone phrase of imperial glory, "the sun never sets on the British Empire." As such, it also nearly encapsulates volumes of literature written about the passing of the Raj, the period of British rule in India (literature infused with the same kind of nostalgia and self-righteousness that Methwold is expressing as he stages his own departure; see Rushdie's comments on this nostalgia in his "Outside the Whale" essay). It's extraordinary how Rushdie can take an entire literature, then, and reduce it down to one loaded, suggestive, beguiling sentence. You could use this sentence alone to initiate and govern an entire seminar paper; it makes us realize what we're up against in this course, trying to account for five novels when we can scarcely account for the richness of one.
We didn't devote all that much time last week to Saleem's disappearance into the buddha, when the narrative moves to Pakistan to interrogate purity: "Purity -- that highest of ideals! -- that angelic virtue for which Pakistan was named, and which dripped from every note of my sister's songs!" (377). Since this novel stands so aggressively against purity (in its technique and aesthetic, in its thematic preoccupations, in its approach to personal identity, to history, to political and religious sensibilities, etc.), it makes perfect sense that Saleem and the Brass Monkey should submit to its lures. Every epic needs its trip to the underworld, I think Rushdie has said, and it seems the Sundarbans obliges as the location for the "descent." Saleem escapes the threat, ultimately, and returns to history (and India), only to be pursued by two more apostles of (Hindu) purity, Shiva and the Widow. I can't help but think back to the alternative visions: most obviously the Midnight's Children Conference when it still represented a hybrid, multilingual "third principle," but maybe most movingly that episode from early in the novel when Amina symbolically cuts through "the cloud of the disaster" (80) (which links the Muslim mob with the Ravana gang) and rescues Lifafa Das, the peepshow artist, by opening her door just as the Muslim gang is about to set upon him. In other words, in defending the rights of this Hindu artist, who has the bad luck to be plying his trade in a Muslim area, Amina takes a stand against communalism and becomes a redemptive figure in this novel, a loving bookend to the monologic, purity-seeking efforts of the Widow at the end of the novel. And I guess in this sense Amina joins Tai as a kind of tie -- between generations, between locations, between religious faiths. She herself is a kind of third principle at this moment.
Another character who stands out to me in this regard, and what a relief he is when he appears, is Deshmukh, the "scavenging peasant" who whistles amidst "the terrible fields" (427) -- the killing fields -- and who describes himself as a "vendor of notions by trade" (428). It's the sobering yet clarifying Deshmukh (a distant echo of Tai the Boatman?) who helps return the buddha back to history and to Saleem, and who again espouses the alternative to the purity-seekers: "Ho sirs! Enough fighting has been already. Be normal now, my sirs. I beg. Ho God" (429). In this sense, could it be that this character/moment would be at least a partial answer to question #3 on Xhaty's/James's handout (i.e., "What ... keeps us from 'lifting away' and/or 'falling deeply into' the chaos or dream world of Saleem? Who in particular helps ground us in the story?")? I like Roger Clark's assessment (from Stranger Gods: Salman Rushdie's Other Worlds) in this regard: "Deshmukh is a moving, down-to-earth character who brings the emotional content of Saleem's narrative back into the contours of space and time, back into this world of geography and history, location and memory. In this sense, he closes the door of an other world which is beyond logic, and ushers the reader back into a world which at least has the potential to make sense."
I could go on, but I fear now that I may be misleading you into thinking that the governing aesthetic of this blog is the long posting! As always, I hope to see more of you in these parts, trying to combat the fissiparousness of the texts and the semester, tying up loose ends, raising questions, citing passages, rehearsing possibilities for final papers, etc. I'll see you Tuesday night for Satyajit Ray's great film, Pather Panchali.
Maybe we can deploy Saleem's recapitulatory tendencies -- you know, the way he's often given to stopping to summarize (for Padma, for us) and recount where the narrative has been to date ("Let me sum up" (196)) -- to help us deal with our own cracks and to counter the linear march of the semester (Midnight's Children recedes, The Satanic Verses advances, etc.). All of which to say, let us be thinking and conversing longitudinally and retrospectively. I find myself still thinking about that fabulous Methwold section early in Midnight's Children. I just by accident opened up to that gem of a sentence on the bottom of page 125: "Rose in lapel, cream hat held stiffly against his chest, center-parting glinting in afternoon light, William Methwold stares straight ahead, past clocktower and Warden Road, beyond Breach's Candy's map-shaped pool, across the golden four o'clock waves, and salutes; while out there, above the horizon, the sun begins its long dive towards the sea." This sentence seems to respond ironically to that bygone phrase of imperial glory, "the sun never sets on the British Empire." As such, it also nearly encapsulates volumes of literature written about the passing of the Raj, the period of British rule in India (literature infused with the same kind of nostalgia and self-righteousness that Methwold is expressing as he stages his own departure; see Rushdie's comments on this nostalgia in his "Outside the Whale" essay). It's extraordinary how Rushdie can take an entire literature, then, and reduce it down to one loaded, suggestive, beguiling sentence. You could use this sentence alone to initiate and govern an entire seminar paper; it makes us realize what we're up against in this course, trying to account for five novels when we can scarcely account for the richness of one.
We didn't devote all that much time last week to Saleem's disappearance into the buddha, when the narrative moves to Pakistan to interrogate purity: "Purity -- that highest of ideals! -- that angelic virtue for which Pakistan was named, and which dripped from every note of my sister's songs!" (377). Since this novel stands so aggressively against purity (in its technique and aesthetic, in its thematic preoccupations, in its approach to personal identity, to history, to political and religious sensibilities, etc.), it makes perfect sense that Saleem and the Brass Monkey should submit to its lures. Every epic needs its trip to the underworld, I think Rushdie has said, and it seems the Sundarbans obliges as the location for the "descent." Saleem escapes the threat, ultimately, and returns to history (and India), only to be pursued by two more apostles of (Hindu) purity, Shiva and the Widow. I can't help but think back to the alternative visions: most obviously the Midnight's Children Conference when it still represented a hybrid, multilingual "third principle," but maybe most movingly that episode from early in the novel when Amina symbolically cuts through "the cloud of the disaster" (80) (which links the Muslim mob with the Ravana gang) and rescues Lifafa Das, the peepshow artist, by opening her door just as the Muslim gang is about to set upon him. In other words, in defending the rights of this Hindu artist, who has the bad luck to be plying his trade in a Muslim area, Amina takes a stand against communalism and becomes a redemptive figure in this novel, a loving bookend to the monologic, purity-seeking efforts of the Widow at the end of the novel. And I guess in this sense Amina joins Tai as a kind of tie -- between generations, between locations, between religious faiths. She herself is a kind of third principle at this moment.
Another character who stands out to me in this regard, and what a relief he is when he appears, is Deshmukh, the "scavenging peasant" who whistles amidst "the terrible fields" (427) -- the killing fields -- and who describes himself as a "vendor of notions by trade" (428). It's the sobering yet clarifying Deshmukh (a distant echo of Tai the Boatman?) who helps return the buddha back to history and to Saleem, and who again espouses the alternative to the purity-seekers: "Ho sirs! Enough fighting has been already. Be normal now, my sirs. I beg. Ho God" (429). In this sense, could it be that this character/moment would be at least a partial answer to question #3 on Xhaty's/James's handout (i.e., "What ... keeps us from 'lifting away' and/or 'falling deeply into' the chaos or dream world of Saleem? Who in particular helps ground us in the story?")? I like Roger Clark's assessment (from Stranger Gods: Salman Rushdie's Other Worlds) in this regard: "Deshmukh is a moving, down-to-earth character who brings the emotional content of Saleem's narrative back into the contours of space and time, back into this world of geography and history, location and memory. In this sense, he closes the door of an other world which is beyond logic, and ushers the reader back into a world which at least has the potential to make sense."
I could go on, but I fear now that I may be misleading you into thinking that the governing aesthetic of this blog is the long posting! As always, I hope to see more of you in these parts, trying to combat the fissiparousness of the texts and the semester, tying up loose ends, raising questions, citing passages, rehearsing possibilities for final papers, etc. I'll see you Tuesday night for Satyajit Ray's great film, Pather Panchali.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Fissiparousness, Prestidigitators, & Chutney
I've just emerged from the stunning Sundarbans section and I'm finding myself (once again) utterly captivated by this novel. The single most memorable scene for me this time around is probably the one where the Buddha (not yet Saleem again) and the "bisected" Shaheed are up "in the muezzin's roost." After the savage critiques of purity and religious fundamentalism, it's just an extraordinary moment when that mosque seems spontaneously to testify to the abuse that is occurring in its name: "Coming to the rescue, feet dancing on ants, the buddha bumped his elbow against a switch; the loudspeaker system was activated, and afterwards people would never forget how a mosque had screamed out the terrible agony of war" (434).
How are you all doing, I'm wondering, with the proliferating engagements with the actual events of the subcontinent's history and wars? In the second half, for example, you're learning a good bit about the nature of Pakistan's formation, the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, the independence of Bangladesh, the Emergency in India and Indira Gandhi's growing power and self-aggrandizements, etc. I guess this is why I thought John Keay's book on Indian history or one of the many books by Stanley Wolpert would be very helpful to you as a reference. I think there must be a great paper topic out there, too, involving the presence/role of Kashmir in Rushdie's writing. His family, of course, is originally from Kashmir, Midnight's Children begins in Kashmir in what often appears to be the register of mythic time, Aadam Aziz must return to Kashmir to die, etc. Kashmir also crucially informs, of course, "The Prophet's Hair" from East, West, and also figures prominently in a more recent novel (that we're not reading), Shalimar the Clown. What does Kashmir seem to represent in Rushdie's imagination?
And what else should be on our agenda, I wonder, including sections/moments/issues from the first half of the novel that we may not have properly covered last week? The Midnight's Children Conference, probably? The representation of Padma, as well as her role in momentum and success of Saleem's project? The importance of Shiva to the narrative?
Anyway, I hope you all are enjoying the novel, and are holding off your own cracks that will start to widen as the various demands of the semester start to claim you (your mental state may approximate that of the buddha's in the Sundarbans eventually!). I'll see you tomorrow ...
How are you all doing, I'm wondering, with the proliferating engagements with the actual events of the subcontinent's history and wars? In the second half, for example, you're learning a good bit about the nature of Pakistan's formation, the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, the independence of Bangladesh, the Emergency in India and Indira Gandhi's growing power and self-aggrandizements, etc. I guess this is why I thought John Keay's book on Indian history or one of the many books by Stanley Wolpert would be very helpful to you as a reference. I think there must be a great paper topic out there, too, involving the presence/role of Kashmir in Rushdie's writing. His family, of course, is originally from Kashmir, Midnight's Children begins in Kashmir in what often appears to be the register of mythic time, Aadam Aziz must return to Kashmir to die, etc. Kashmir also crucially informs, of course, "The Prophet's Hair" from East, West, and also figures prominently in a more recent novel (that we're not reading), Shalimar the Clown. What does Kashmir seem to represent in Rushdie's imagination?
And what else should be on our agenda, I wonder, including sections/moments/issues from the first half of the novel that we may not have properly covered last week? The Midnight's Children Conference, probably? The representation of Padma, as well as her role in momentum and success of Saleem's project? The importance of Shiva to the narrative?
Anyway, I hope you all are enjoying the novel, and are holding off your own cracks that will start to widen as the various demands of the semester start to claim you (your mental state may approximate that of the buddha's in the Sundarbans eventually!). I'll see you tomorrow ...
Monday, February 13, 2012
Edward Said Interview: Out of Place
Edward Said talks with writer Phillip Lopate about his book, Out of Place, a memoir of his childhood and formation into the itinerate conscience of the intelligentsia and figurehead of postcolonial politics that we know him as today.
http://bombsite.com/issues/69/articles/2269
"Edward Said has been for decades a major literary critic and, in academic circles, a pioneer of postcolonial studies. His seminal work includes Orientalism, Covering lslam and Culture and Imperialism. He is also a noted, sometimes controversial, political activist, championing the Palestinian cause. His own background, raised in a Christian Palestinian family in Egypt and Lebanon, with English and American cultural aspirations, led to a richly confused sense of identity and displacement, which he has now explored in a compelling memoir, Out of Place —perhaps his best book, certainly his most personal and least polemical. Having known Said casually for years as an exquisitely charming if somewhat testy man, I interviewed him at his Riverside Drive apartment (courtesy of Columbia University, where he is a distinguished professor), whose interior with its spectacular river views handsomely follows the curve of the building’s facade."
http://bombsite.com/issues/69/articles/2269
"Edward Said has been for decades a major literary critic and, in academic circles, a pioneer of postcolonial studies. His seminal work includes Orientalism, Covering lslam and Culture and Imperialism. He is also a noted, sometimes controversial, political activist, championing the Palestinian cause. His own background, raised in a Christian Palestinian family in Egypt and Lebanon, with English and American cultural aspirations, led to a richly confused sense of identity and displacement, which he has now explored in a compelling memoir, Out of Place —perhaps his best book, certainly his most personal and least polemical. Having known Said casually for years as an exquisitely charming if somewhat testy man, I interviewed him at his Riverside Drive apartment (courtesy of Columbia University, where he is a distinguished professor), whose interior with its spectacular river views handsomely follows the curve of the building’s facade."
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Open Sesame
Hey all -- I hope you're enjoying the weekend and the first half of Midnight's Children (hopefully not so much, though, that you are expectorating your own long red jets of betel-juice onto your apartment walls). "Expectorations" are actually relevant to the Bakhtin reading, which includes the by now familiar elaboration of the carnivalesque. It will also be appropriate as a follow-up to The Arabian Nights reading from last week, which was littered with its own exaggerated renditions of bodily functions and overturning of social and political hierarchies. There are also a few readings listed from Imaginary Homelands for this Tuesday, too, but I'm aware of the reading load for the week and I'm inclined to begin seeing these IH essays as supplemental (and nearly optional) readings (unless otherwise noted). I'll certainly be referring to them at times, and they will undoubtedly find ways of cross-pollinating effectively with the primary reading. By the way, given how densely allusive and frenetic Rushdie's narratives can be, you might think about beginning some manner of personal indexing initiative as you proceed through Midnight's Children and beyond; it's never too early to start hatching and tracking ideas for your final papers, and archiving page numbers and passages will be very beneficial to you as the reading piles up and the semester matures.
Are there any residual comments out there regarding The Arabian Nights, I wonder? It's such a quirkily fascinating entry on the schedule that maybe we won't quite realize its full value and place in the semester's program until we look back a bit retrospectively. I certainly value it as a work that offers art and storytelling as an alternative to violence. That's why, I guess, Scheherazade's particular response to paternal authority is so notable before the tales themselves get going; her father tries to invoke his authority (and the cautionary tale he tells her involves a punitive relationship between a man and his wife) and she responds by boasting she can tell stories to beat his. The power of the word ("Open Sesame!"), the power of the story, the power of wit, poetic skill and improvisation are valorized time and again in this work. As we consider pre-Islamic and early Islamic culture and society, too, this is a fact that resonates. Islam was just a few centuries old when the oral versions of these stories started circulating: it was a time, perhaps, when the religion's dogmas were not yet quite established, when there was cross-cultural understanding, when Christians, Jews, and Muslims weren't as given to making distinctions between their respective faiths. One suspects that such multi-dimensional pluralism may be an important part of the appeal of The Arabian Nights in Rushdie's adult imagination.
Our conversation about the interplay between the frame story and the nested tales also makes me that much more interested in the ethical dimensions of this text: not only is there Scheherazade's project to change and rehabilitated Shahrayar, but there's also the broader implications surrounding the tales' tendency to criticize tyranny, to extol forgiveness, to counteract self-centered identities, and to posit alternative societies and realities. Maybe this is a thread to which we can return when we get to Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Somehow, too, I think our discussion of the formal aspects of The Arabian Nights can profitably be carried further: the division of the work into nights, the various experiences and understandings of time in the tales, the competing ideas of linearity and simultaneity, the twin strategies of interruption and continuity, the forward movement and the recursiveness, the narratological rhythm, the narrative strategies that invoke such ideas as boundaries, transitions, perspectives, empty spaces, intervals, separations, connections, gaps, divergences and diversions, opposites and contradictions ...
I don't think we discussed the role of the verse/poetic material within the tales, either. This is another area where the translators become an issue: Lane mostly omitted the verses, Dawood eliminated them altogether, and Burton translated them into an inflated style. They were, in any event, according to Haddawy, "intended to heighten the action, raise the literary level, and intensify the emotional effect," and many of them trace back to the most prominent classical Arab poets. The Prophet Muhammad, by the way, is reported to have said that "verily eloquence includes sorcery," thus suggesting an uncertain line between writing a poem and casting a spell (and thus earning him a place in any history of classical rhetoric).
One last little aside, regarding the humor of The Arabian Nights: I chuckled when I encountered the title of "The Tale of the Second Lady, the Flogged One." Another tale that seems like it could resonate in the context of our course and Rushdie's work, too, is "The Tale of the King's Son and the She-Ghoul" -- the one where the King is amazed to consider that the head of the sage Duban will speak to him after being lopped off. The detached head does indeed speak, instructing the King to read the book, but the latter must lick his fingers to turn the pages of a book that has been poisoned and that contains no stories. Here it's the blank pages -- the absence of narrative -- that kills ...
Are there any residual comments out there regarding The Arabian Nights, I wonder? It's such a quirkily fascinating entry on the schedule that maybe we won't quite realize its full value and place in the semester's program until we look back a bit retrospectively. I certainly value it as a work that offers art and storytelling as an alternative to violence. That's why, I guess, Scheherazade's particular response to paternal authority is so notable before the tales themselves get going; her father tries to invoke his authority (and the cautionary tale he tells her involves a punitive relationship between a man and his wife) and she responds by boasting she can tell stories to beat his. The power of the word ("Open Sesame!"), the power of the story, the power of wit, poetic skill and improvisation are valorized time and again in this work. As we consider pre-Islamic and early Islamic culture and society, too, this is a fact that resonates. Islam was just a few centuries old when the oral versions of these stories started circulating: it was a time, perhaps, when the religion's dogmas were not yet quite established, when there was cross-cultural understanding, when Christians, Jews, and Muslims weren't as given to making distinctions between their respective faiths. One suspects that such multi-dimensional pluralism may be an important part of the appeal of The Arabian Nights in Rushdie's adult imagination.
Our conversation about the interplay between the frame story and the nested tales also makes me that much more interested in the ethical dimensions of this text: not only is there Scheherazade's project to change and rehabilitated Shahrayar, but there's also the broader implications surrounding the tales' tendency to criticize tyranny, to extol forgiveness, to counteract self-centered identities, and to posit alternative societies and realities. Maybe this is a thread to which we can return when we get to Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Somehow, too, I think our discussion of the formal aspects of The Arabian Nights can profitably be carried further: the division of the work into nights, the various experiences and understandings of time in the tales, the competing ideas of linearity and simultaneity, the twin strategies of interruption and continuity, the forward movement and the recursiveness, the narratological rhythm, the narrative strategies that invoke such ideas as boundaries, transitions, perspectives, empty spaces, intervals, separations, connections, gaps, divergences and diversions, opposites and contradictions ...
I don't think we discussed the role of the verse/poetic material within the tales, either. This is another area where the translators become an issue: Lane mostly omitted the verses, Dawood eliminated them altogether, and Burton translated them into an inflated style. They were, in any event, according to Haddawy, "intended to heighten the action, raise the literary level, and intensify the emotional effect," and many of them trace back to the most prominent classical Arab poets. The Prophet Muhammad, by the way, is reported to have said that "verily eloquence includes sorcery," thus suggesting an uncertain line between writing a poem and casting a spell (and thus earning him a place in any history of classical rhetoric).
One last little aside, regarding the humor of The Arabian Nights: I chuckled when I encountered the title of "The Tale of the Second Lady, the Flogged One." Another tale that seems like it could resonate in the context of our course and Rushdie's work, too, is "The Tale of the King's Son and the She-Ghoul" -- the one where the King is amazed to consider that the head of the sage Duban will speak to him after being lopped off. The detached head does indeed speak, instructing the King to read the book, but the latter must lick his fingers to turn the pages of a book that has been poisoned and that contains no stories. Here it's the blank pages -- the absence of narrative -- that kills ...
Friday, February 3, 2012
101 Nights
Hi everyone. I don't know how many of you might be checking the blog yet, but I figured it was time for me to make a second appearance in these parts (as soon as things settle down just a bit more I'll aim to post more regularly). You should certainly plan to leave behind a textual trail here if you find yourself still ruminating (as I am) on aspects of the East, West stories and our conversation last week. First, an announcement of sorts: I think I've nearly already said something similar, but I think for Wednesday's class it will be sufficient to read about 101 nights. Thus, you should at least plan to read Hadddawy's introduction and up through page “The Story of the Two Viziers.” As I’ve said, I don't have a specific directive in terms of framing this reading, but in general we should be contemplating some of the contexts for The Arabian Nights, especially as part of a course on Rushdie. What do we need to talk about? I'm not sure myself, but it should be fun and as always we'll work through it together. Remember, too, the Hayden White essay on historiography and narrative (which gestures towards next week and Midnight's Children more than it pertains to the Arabian Nights) and the stray essays for the week from Imaginary Homelands. By the way, I have to cancel my office hours on Monday morning, unfortunately; I will try to reschedule them via additional hours later in the week, but do feel free to send me an email if you need to see me for some reason and want to set up a day/time.
As for the short stories that we now leave behind, well, despite the fact that they're considered (I suppose) one of Rushdie's "lesser works" (which says more about the scope of the major novels than it does the shortcomings of the stories), they offer us plenty to talk and think about, and certainly we got off to a good (if inevitably limited) start last week. I was grateful for your various comments, observations, and critiques, especially those that seemed so astutely to recognize the aesthetic and thematic characteristics particular to each of the three sections – I don’t know if I’ve quite noticed before how carefully Rushdie seems to have created that tripartite sensibility.
After class I regretted my own attempt to return to Radhakrishnan – not because there wasn’t still a lot of uncovered terrain in that essay, but because there ultimately wasn’t enough time to tease out the implications of some of the passages I read. And although we did, indeed, manage to touch down on each of the nine short stories, it occurred to me later that “Chekov and Zulu” probably warranted more attention, as did “The Courter,” I think. The title characters in the former story seem to be emblematic of the kind of estrangement that permeates most/all of these stories: by giving themselves these names, Chekov and Zulu are not ultimately doing anything to erase or ease the estrangement they experience and represent as foreigners in England: they're fragmented individuals, and on a linguistic level this is evidenced by their lack of a stable, coherent self to call upon. Even the sound of the names they adopt for themselves defies them: rather than the Star Trek characters they intended, their identities can be mis-categorized as either of a Russian or African nationality. To invoke language from structural linguistics, there is, we might say, a huge gap opened up between signifiers and signifieds in these stories. The courter/porter is another obvious example of the contingency of names and the instability of identity (though this can be seen to indicate a positive sense of hybridity & blending, a processual nature to identity formation, etc. -- the character of "Mixed Up" thus can be valorized in this sense as someone who symbolizes the rejection of pure origins). I always find myself wanting to talk about chess after reading “The Porter,” too. Not only is the game an alternative mode of communication for Mixed-Up and Certainly-Mary – cutting across various distinctions and boundaries (the way music does, too, perhaps) – but it becomes a kind of metaphor for characters (immigrants) who must be exacting tacticians and strategists to deal with the balance of (political) power, with their state of being unhomed, with the challenges of hardship and defeat in a foreign location …
And I remain very fascinated by the Columbus & Isabella story. One thing that's terrific about that story is the fact that its form (i.e., with shifting narrative voices that appear in wildly different registers: i.e., the serious narrator, the presence of seemingly gossipy court voices, the divided voice of Columbus himself) works in concert with the content: it's hard to identify who is speaking and to whom, and in that sense it makes the story itself a reflection of diasporic identity, Add to that the radical deconstructing of a Western historical figure we thought we know (it's interesting how many different Columbuses there are, you know? He's a hard figure to pin down in any responsible way given the mythos that surrounds him. If you want a humorous diversion along these lines, revisit this classic opening scene to an episode of The Sopranos) and you have a really stunning story. It's a story that complicates notions of east and west (e.g., it implies the subtext of the culturally and historically rich Islamic presence in Al-Andalus via the Moors; it makes of the undiscovered "New World" a kind of imaginary homeland, one that is exoticized in the imagination the way the East tends to be; it necessarily draws in issues of colonialism and tyranny, of religious (in)tolerance, of foreigners, etc.).
By the way, given that I recall someone seeming to ask about the sterilization context in “The Free Radio”: Indira Gandhi was convicted of electioneering malpractice and was banned from office in 1975. Instead of resigning, though, she chose to declare a national emergency (The Emergency, as it’s now referred to in the history books), which suspended the constitution. The Emergency ended up lasting about 18 months, and it was marked by massive troop deployments in the streets, the arrests of many thousands of political leaders, journalists, and students, imprisonments without trial, etc. It also included some particular insidious efforts by Indira’s son, Sanjay, who tried to effect slum clearances and far-reaching birth/population control through an aggressive sterilization program. This context dovetails a little with the question some of you raised about whether Rushdie may have given “the East” more of a free pass with his social/political/cultural criticism.
Anyway, that's plenty enough for now. Perhaps some of you may be inclined to pick up one of these threads and keep this particular conversation going. Those ruby slippers will undoubtedly be accompanying us for the rest of the semester. Cheerio and see you Tuesday.
As for the short stories that we now leave behind, well, despite the fact that they're considered (I suppose) one of Rushdie's "lesser works" (which says more about the scope of the major novels than it does the shortcomings of the stories), they offer us plenty to talk and think about, and certainly we got off to a good (if inevitably limited) start last week. I was grateful for your various comments, observations, and critiques, especially those that seemed so astutely to recognize the aesthetic and thematic characteristics particular to each of the three sections – I don’t know if I’ve quite noticed before how carefully Rushdie seems to have created that tripartite sensibility.
After class I regretted my own attempt to return to Radhakrishnan – not because there wasn’t still a lot of uncovered terrain in that essay, but because there ultimately wasn’t enough time to tease out the implications of some of the passages I read. And although we did, indeed, manage to touch down on each of the nine short stories, it occurred to me later that “Chekov and Zulu” probably warranted more attention, as did “The Courter,” I think. The title characters in the former story seem to be emblematic of the kind of estrangement that permeates most/all of these stories: by giving themselves these names, Chekov and Zulu are not ultimately doing anything to erase or ease the estrangement they experience and represent as foreigners in England: they're fragmented individuals, and on a linguistic level this is evidenced by their lack of a stable, coherent self to call upon. Even the sound of the names they adopt for themselves defies them: rather than the Star Trek characters they intended, their identities can be mis-categorized as either of a Russian or African nationality. To invoke language from structural linguistics, there is, we might say, a huge gap opened up between signifiers and signifieds in these stories. The courter/porter is another obvious example of the contingency of names and the instability of identity (though this can be seen to indicate a positive sense of hybridity & blending, a processual nature to identity formation, etc. -- the character of "Mixed Up" thus can be valorized in this sense as someone who symbolizes the rejection of pure origins). I always find myself wanting to talk about chess after reading “The Porter,” too. Not only is the game an alternative mode of communication for Mixed-Up and Certainly-Mary – cutting across various distinctions and boundaries (the way music does, too, perhaps) – but it becomes a kind of metaphor for characters (immigrants) who must be exacting tacticians and strategists to deal with the balance of (political) power, with their state of being unhomed, with the challenges of hardship and defeat in a foreign location …
And I remain very fascinated by the Columbus & Isabella story. One thing that's terrific about that story is the fact that its form (i.e., with shifting narrative voices that appear in wildly different registers: i.e., the serious narrator, the presence of seemingly gossipy court voices, the divided voice of Columbus himself) works in concert with the content: it's hard to identify who is speaking and to whom, and in that sense it makes the story itself a reflection of diasporic identity, Add to that the radical deconstructing of a Western historical figure we thought we know (it's interesting how many different Columbuses there are, you know? He's a hard figure to pin down in any responsible way given the mythos that surrounds him. If you want a humorous diversion along these lines, revisit this classic opening scene to an episode of The Sopranos) and you have a really stunning story. It's a story that complicates notions of east and west (e.g., it implies the subtext of the culturally and historically rich Islamic presence in Al-Andalus via the Moors; it makes of the undiscovered "New World" a kind of imaginary homeland, one that is exoticized in the imagination the way the East tends to be; it necessarily draws in issues of colonialism and tyranny, of religious (in)tolerance, of foreigners, etc.).
By the way, given that I recall someone seeming to ask about the sterilization context in “The Free Radio”: Indira Gandhi was convicted of electioneering malpractice and was banned from office in 1975. Instead of resigning, though, she chose to declare a national emergency (The Emergency, as it’s now referred to in the history books), which suspended the constitution. The Emergency ended up lasting about 18 months, and it was marked by massive troop deployments in the streets, the arrests of many thousands of political leaders, journalists, and students, imprisonments without trial, etc. It also included some particular insidious efforts by Indira’s son, Sanjay, who tried to effect slum clearances and far-reaching birth/population control through an aggressive sterilization program. This context dovetails a little with the question some of you raised about whether Rushdie may have given “the East” more of a free pass with his social/political/cultural criticism.
Anyway, that's plenty enough for now. Perhaps some of you may be inclined to pick up one of these threads and keep this particular conversation going. Those ruby slippers will undoubtedly be accompanying us for the rest of the semester. Cheerio and see you Tuesday.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
