Thanks to Eric for the various discussion questions he provided the other night. Here are some other tidbits/links that you may find worth pursuing: since the novel's primary setting is in southern India, you may want to read about the Malabar coast; the presence of the Portuguese in India and the role of Vasco de Gama also play significant roles in The Moor's Last Sigh; finally, since he will increasingly develop into a villain via the character of Mainduck, you might wish to learn about Bal Thackeray, the head of Shiv Sena (a party he founded in 1966) and someone who has been called the "godfather of Bombay" for more than thirty years (actually, it was Thackeray who had the city renamed Mumbai some years ago). Also, if you don't quite know what a palimpsest is, you might want to procure a working definition of the notion! Regarding all of the contexts, we have some fundamental questions to consider (some of which we got started on this past Tuesday): Why would Rushdie use Arab Spain to reimagine contemporary India? Why would he choose to focus on a Bombay characterized by its Portuguese heritage and by the presence of Jewish and Christian minorities on the Malabar coast? How does The Moor's Last Sigh update the politics of Midnight's Children? The Moor, of course, is born in 1957 (so he's ten years younger than Saleem) to a Jewish father and a Portuguese Catholic mother; he's also the descendant of Vasco de Gama, the early Jews of Cochin, the last Moorish caliph, and possibly -- and crazily (see p.176 & following) -- Prime Minister Nehru.
Given the pepperiness of this novel, it's also interesting to think about the spice trade (i.e., Sydney Mintz's book on sugar comes to mind, as does Timothy Morton's book on "the poetics of spice"). The discussions of pepper early in the novel call our attention to the history and travels of products that the colonies supplied to the metropolises of empire ("'not so much sub-continent,'" Aurora would say, wittily, "'as sub-condiment'" (4-5)), which is another aspect of the genius of this novel (it calls attention to the notion of consumption in other ways, too; I'd still like for us to look at the ambivalent assessment of capitalism and globalization in the "Under World/Over World" sequence on pages 184-7). This line-of-inquiry connects with Paul Gilroy's work, too, since before the passage of cultural productions across the Black Atlantic there was the passage of bodies (slaves-to-be) and goods like sugar and spices. Complicated questions and issues ensue from this convergence.
Well, enough for now. Thank you for your hard work, collegiality, and consistent contributions to our lively (and, remembering the Walrus mustaches, unpredictable) Tuesday night discussions. If you're on the move during this Spring Break week, travel safely, and I wish all of you some restorative hours over the coming week! See you on the other side ...
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Enjoyofying TMLS?
Hey all. A word from the frontlines of this week's reading, I guess: I don't know about you, and I'm only just now into the second hundred pages of The Moor's Last Sigh, but at numerous times during the first hundred pages I found myself thinking that this nearly appears to be Rushdie's tightest, most captivating novel in terms of pure storytelling. It seems positively inspired at times, despite the fact that the vision of India has by this time (1995) darkened for him significantly. I read somewhere that this is the first novel he composed on a computer, so perhaps that explains the even more pronounced linguistic playfulness in this novel. Anyway, it has me thinking about technique. We recently noted our appreciation for the warmth and poignance of that deathbed scene between Chamcha and his father at the end of The Satanic Verses, which made me wonder if, for all its brilliance, Rushdie's writing doesn't often invite or enable this particular kind of emotional enlargement of our selves (which comes from caring deeply about the characters) during the reading process (does that make sense? do you agree?). The rewards he does offer (which are multiple, to be sure) are of a different kind/register.
I've been noticing the comedy so far in The Moor's Last Sigh, particularly in the dialogue -- I'm not sure Rushdie's dialogue would often be singled out, but damn if it isn't often hugely funny and inventive and, despite its 'hyperbolized' strangeness, somehow both real and rhythmically compelling (look at the exchange between Aurora, Vasco, Sunil Dutt, and Nargis on p. 138, for example). I got a kick out of the sex scene between Aurora and Abraham, too ("you will not learn from me the bloody details of what happened when she, and then he, and then they, and after that she, and at which he, and in response to that she, and with that, and in addition, and for awhile..." (89)); Rushdie manages to avoid cliche and find freshness (via comedy) in a common task for the fiction writer, while also mining the discomfort we'd all feel in trying to describe our parents having sex!
Regarding last week's discussion of Haroun and Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories," I wonder what some of your "rabbit-hole" reading experiences have been in your life (the reference, of course, is to Alice in Wonderland, but invoking rabbits reminds me of the fact that at this very moment my son is reading Richard Adams's Watership Down, a novel that is literally about rabbits and that was probably, I'm now reminded, one of those magical reading experiences for me when I was young). When was the power of effective "sub-creation," to quote Tolkien, so great that when you finished a book the feeling was more of one from moving from reality to fantasy rather than the other way around? I guess The Lord of the Rings would have been another one for me (and isn't it odd/wonderful to think that the created world of the book can seem more real than the world you return to when you close the book?!).
And then there was Jordan and Kaylen inviting us to find our own answers to Haroun's question of "What's the use of stories that aren't even true?" Would any of you recommend writers/essays/books that in various ways answer that question in smart and persuasive ways? I always think of the cultural critic & essayist Sven Birkerts, who writes about the glories and pleasures of reading in often inspiring ways: for example, in The Gutenberg Elegies: "Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence we crawl through, returning, once we have wandered, to the very place we started" (146). Elsewhere, he proposes that "to open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one's life or of one's orientation toward it. The distinction must be recognized, for when we read we not only transplant ourselves to the place of the text, but we modify our natural angle of regard upon all things; we reposition the self in order to see differently.... We are, for the duration of our reading, different, and the difference has more to do with the process than with its temporary object--the book being read. As with meditation, both the pulse rate and the breathing seem to alter; the interior rhythms are modified in untold ways" (88,89). I wonder what kind of repositioning of the self, specifically, Rushdie's fiction allows us ...
Finally, although this one deals with "stories" that are "true," I love the language Jane Hirshfield finds for justifying the importance of reading poetry: "A good poem makes self and world knowable in new ways, brings us into an existence opened, augmented, and altered. Part of its work, then, must also be surprise -- to awaken into a new circumference is to be startled.... Through a good poem's eyes we see the world liberated from what we would have it do. Existence does not guarantee us destination, nor trust, nor equity, nor one moment beyond this instant's almost weightless duration. It is a triteness to say that the only thing to be counted upon is that what you count on will not be what comes. Utilitarian truths evaporate: we die. Poems allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience, but to perceive, within their continually surprising abundance, a path through the grief of that insult into joy." That notion of making the "world knowable in new ways" reminds me a bit of the great line in the Tolkien essay when he argues that "we need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity -- from possessiveness" (77). This seems to be an important part of Haroun's epiphany, too, and may be part of the gift we receive from this novel if it's one that works for us.
I've been noticing the comedy so far in The Moor's Last Sigh, particularly in the dialogue -- I'm not sure Rushdie's dialogue would often be singled out, but damn if it isn't often hugely funny and inventive and, despite its 'hyperbolized' strangeness, somehow both real and rhythmically compelling (look at the exchange between Aurora, Vasco, Sunil Dutt, and Nargis on p. 138, for example). I got a kick out of the sex scene between Aurora and Abraham, too ("you will not learn from me the bloody details of what happened when she, and then he, and then they, and after that she, and at which he, and in response to that she, and with that, and in addition, and for awhile..." (89)); Rushdie manages to avoid cliche and find freshness (via comedy) in a common task for the fiction writer, while also mining the discomfort we'd all feel in trying to describe our parents having sex!
Regarding last week's discussion of Haroun and Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories," I wonder what some of your "rabbit-hole" reading experiences have been in your life (the reference, of course, is to Alice in Wonderland, but invoking rabbits reminds me of the fact that at this very moment my son is reading Richard Adams's Watership Down, a novel that is literally about rabbits and that was probably, I'm now reminded, one of those magical reading experiences for me when I was young). When was the power of effective "sub-creation," to quote Tolkien, so great that when you finished a book the feeling was more of one from moving from reality to fantasy rather than the other way around? I guess The Lord of the Rings would have been another one for me (and isn't it odd/wonderful to think that the created world of the book can seem more real than the world you return to when you close the book?!).
And then there was Jordan and Kaylen inviting us to find our own answers to Haroun's question of "What's the use of stories that aren't even true?" Would any of you recommend writers/essays/books that in various ways answer that question in smart and persuasive ways? I always think of the cultural critic & essayist Sven Birkerts, who writes about the glories and pleasures of reading in often inspiring ways: for example, in The Gutenberg Elegies: "Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence we crawl through, returning, once we have wandered, to the very place we started" (146). Elsewhere, he proposes that "to open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one's life or of one's orientation toward it. The distinction must be recognized, for when we read we not only transplant ourselves to the place of the text, but we modify our natural angle of regard upon all things; we reposition the self in order to see differently.... We are, for the duration of our reading, different, and the difference has more to do with the process than with its temporary object--the book being read. As with meditation, both the pulse rate and the breathing seem to alter; the interior rhythms are modified in untold ways" (88,89). I wonder what kind of repositioning of the self, specifically, Rushdie's fiction allows us ...
Finally, although this one deals with "stories" that are "true," I love the language Jane Hirshfield finds for justifying the importance of reading poetry: "A good poem makes self and world knowable in new ways, brings us into an existence opened, augmented, and altered. Part of its work, then, must also be surprise -- to awaken into a new circumference is to be startled.... Through a good poem's eyes we see the world liberated from what we would have it do. Existence does not guarantee us destination, nor trust, nor equity, nor one moment beyond this instant's almost weightless duration. It is a triteness to say that the only thing to be counted upon is that what you count on will not be what comes. Utilitarian truths evaporate: we die. Poems allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience, but to perceive, within their continually surprising abundance, a path through the grief of that insult into joy." That notion of making the "world knowable in new ways" reminds me a bit of the great line in the Tolkien essay when he argues that "we need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity -- from possessiveness" (77). This seems to be an important part of Haroun's epiphany, too, and may be part of the gift we receive from this novel if it's one that works for us.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
God's Postman (a 3/13 recap)
Well, greetings again, from the anchorage of the weekend. Gibreel laments that "being God's postman is no fun" (114), reducing the sublime to the mundane in classic Gibreel fashion, but being God's postman in our own cultural moment might include being God's blogger. Thus, keep posting your verses here. My mind is certainly still astir following last Tuesday's class meeting, and in fact it seems to be filled with a rich stew of debris like that which falls from the sky in the novel's opening moments -- debris that awaits capture, settlings, recombinations. And yet we must move on, alas. Ah, but wait, Bhabha has told us we needn't inhabit the linear temporality, that we can instead celebrate and nurture the temporal disjunctures! We can actually keep talking about The Satanic Verses in the post-Satanic Verses era! And right about now you're thinking I'm as hopeless a nut as Gibreel, the avenging angel ...
No, seriously, I do hope our conversations become recursive and inclusive across our various texts, especially as we must inevitably start considering paper topics and lines of inquiry for research. I'm not even sure where to begin with that aforementioned debris, so maybe I'll start with some of the lingering questions/comments that filled our conversation this past Tuesday. I've continued to think about the anger that informs Chamcha's behavior in the novel's concluding sections (specifically his curious role in initiating Gibreel's dissolution). I went back and tried to track the progression, and I can nearly feel comfortable with the argument that endorses Chamcha's anger/role because Gibreel has become a threat that needs to be neutralized/stopped. Rekha Merchant (around 333?) offers him a chance to become a hybrid divinity (i.e., one that emphasizes the many rather than "one one one") but he rejects that (and her), saying "It's a trick. There is no God but God.... I won't deal with fogs" (346). Then, later, he chooses clarity over hybridity, closure over open-endedness: "Clarity, clarity, at all cost clarity!" (364). His messianic zeal that develops here and that then informs his subsequent actions aligns him with the other totalizing figures in the novel (Thatcher, the Imam, Ayesha, etc.), and he becomes the antithesis to the migrant self eventually sought by Chamcha. I'm trying to see Chamcha's anger towards Gibreel, then, as being validated similarly to the anger evidenced in the Club Hot Wax and on the streets of Brickhall (in defense of the wrongly accused Uhuru Simba). I always think of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell when I read this novel (of course, since it's actually invoked at one point), and specifically the proverb to "Damn braces, bless relaxes." Sometimes violence and diabolical energies are absolutely necessary.
Well, I'll still surely have a couple recapitulatory comments to share on Tuesday, so you should feel free to do the same, before we move on to Haroun and the battles of the Gups and the Chups ...
No, seriously, I do hope our conversations become recursive and inclusive across our various texts, especially as we must inevitably start considering paper topics and lines of inquiry for research. I'm not even sure where to begin with that aforementioned debris, so maybe I'll start with some of the lingering questions/comments that filled our conversation this past Tuesday. I've continued to think about the anger that informs Chamcha's behavior in the novel's concluding sections (specifically his curious role in initiating Gibreel's dissolution). I went back and tried to track the progression, and I can nearly feel comfortable with the argument that endorses Chamcha's anger/role because Gibreel has become a threat that needs to be neutralized/stopped. Rekha Merchant (around 333?) offers him a chance to become a hybrid divinity (i.e., one that emphasizes the many rather than "one one one") but he rejects that (and her), saying "It's a trick. There is no God but God.... I won't deal with fogs" (346). Then, later, he chooses clarity over hybridity, closure over open-endedness: "Clarity, clarity, at all cost clarity!" (364). His messianic zeal that develops here and that then informs his subsequent actions aligns him with the other totalizing figures in the novel (Thatcher, the Imam, Ayesha, etc.), and he becomes the antithesis to the migrant self eventually sought by Chamcha. I'm trying to see Chamcha's anger towards Gibreel, then, as being validated similarly to the anger evidenced in the Club Hot Wax and on the streets of Brickhall (in defense of the wrongly accused Uhuru Simba). I always think of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell when I read this novel (of course, since it's actually invoked at one point), and specifically the proverb to "Damn braces, bless relaxes." Sometimes violence and diabolical energies are absolutely necessary.
Well, I'll still surely have a couple recapitulatory comments to share on Tuesday, so you should feel free to do the same, before we move on to Haroun and the battles of the Gups and the Chups ...
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Cross-pollination
I was doing a little reading today for my linguistics class on the history of the English language, and the Norman invasion and the battle of Hastings came up, which made me think of those early scenes with Rosa Diamond. (pp. 133-135) Maybe everybody already knows this and it was only revelatory to me, but the Anglo-Saxon defeat at Hastings by the French Norman invadors marked the beginning of 300 years in which England basically became a colony. Norman French and Latin became the languages of power and prestige, and by the time England regained independence, its language and culture were extremely hybridized in the wake of 300 years of occupation and intermarriage.
What's interesting is that Rosa welcomes the phantom of "(William) the Conquerer in his pointy metal-nosed hat," and just when she thinks the ghosts are all in her imagination, she sees Gibreel awaken with his mouth full of snow rather than sand, and she's ecstatic.
From here, I'm not exactly sure where to go, but it seems to have something to do with the notion of a more recent invasion, not by armies of soldiers from across the channel, but by armies of migrants from England's former colonies, that, after 900 years, will once again forever transform and further hybridize Britain.
Posted by Eric Lynn (Sorry, I wasn't able to sign in because I'm using my wife's laptop and all the settings are in Korean.)
What's interesting is that Rosa welcomes the phantom of "(William) the Conquerer in his pointy metal-nosed hat," and just when she thinks the ghosts are all in her imagination, she sees Gibreel awaken with his mouth full of snow rather than sand, and she's ecstatic.
From here, I'm not exactly sure where to go, but it seems to have something to do with the notion of a more recent invasion, not by armies of soldiers from across the channel, but by armies of migrants from England's former colonies, that, after 900 years, will once again forever transform and further hybridize Britain.
Posted by Eric Lynn (Sorry, I wasn't able to sign in because I'm using my wife's laptop and all the settings are in Korean.)
Monday, March 12, 2012
Islam as Nation: Finding Its Slippage in The Satanic Verses
I'd like to suggest another angle from which Bhaba's DISSEMINATION essay might be applied to The Satanic Verses. It requires the leap of consideration of religion as nation. I'll posit that an organized religion, such as Catholicism or Islam, may be treated theoretically in similar terms as nation, that it is similarly an essentialist entity that is written and narrated in a liminal space between pedagogy and performativity, a "cultural construction ... as a form of social and textual affiliation" (Bhaba). And it is through a comparable "process of splitting that the conceptual ambivalence of modern society becomes the site of writing the" religion.
That religion is by its nature pedagogical is clear. Consider the Zen send-up of organized religion, The Cat in the Temple:
Point taken. The "homogeneous, visual time of the horizontal" religion resides in its catholic (small c) historicity. However, the codes of conduct, rites, and rituals of religions are not static turgid codes, but dynamic beasts ridden by the people. Further, the geographic and cultural boundaries of Islam, for example, are little more fixed than those of nations. And, finally, the memberships of religions are plastic and similarly subject to modernist, feminist and postcolonial temporalities.
The Satanic Verses may not be about Islam, as Rushdie asserts in In Good Faith, but as he makes clear in that same essay, parts of the novel do indeed address the slippage that exists between the pedagogy of the religion and the performativity of many of its followers. Specifically, the novel and the essay both address the disconnect between the pedagogy and performativity as it regards women. Note that the role of women in society has been the central area of discourse and debate in the Muslim world over the last three to four decades, not unlike in the Catholic nation. Rushdie's contribution to this discourse in The Satanic Verses has been overshadowed by other obvious front-burner issues, but it has not gone unnoticed. The novel has offered an important voice in the debate and has done so by painting the slippage, back to and before the "beginning of time."
That religion is by its nature pedagogical is clear. Consider the Zen send-up of organized religion, The Cat in the Temple:
One day, a cat came into the temple, and began meowling, which disturbed the daily prayers. The Master ordered that the cat be tied up outside the temple. After the prayers, the cat was released to go free.
The next day, the cat returned, and again, the Master directed that it be tied up outside the temple. This day, out of compassion, the Master ordered the Disciples to put a bowl of water and a bowl of food outside for the cat.
The next day, the cat returned, and again was tied up outside and given a bowl of water and a bowl of food.
This continued, day upon day, month upon month, and on and on…
Eventually, the Disciples moved on, and new Disciples came. And eventually, the Master, who was very old, grew older, and finally died.
A new Master came, as did new Disciples.
Eventually, the cat, who was very old, grew older, and finally died.
So the Master ordered that a new cat be found, and tied up outside the temple.
Centuries later, many great works had been written about the importance of having a cat tied up outside the temple during prayers.
Point taken. The "homogeneous, visual time of the horizontal" religion resides in its catholic (small c) historicity. However, the codes of conduct, rites, and rituals of religions are not static turgid codes, but dynamic beasts ridden by the people. Further, the geographic and cultural boundaries of Islam, for example, are little more fixed than those of nations. And, finally, the memberships of religions are plastic and similarly subject to modernist, feminist and postcolonial temporalities.
The Satanic Verses may not be about Islam, as Rushdie asserts in In Good Faith, but as he makes clear in that same essay, parts of the novel do indeed address the slippage that exists between the pedagogy of the religion and the performativity of many of its followers. Specifically, the novel and the essay both address the disconnect between the pedagogy and performativity as it regards women. Note that the role of women in society has been the central area of discourse and debate in the Muslim world over the last three to four decades, not unlike in the Catholic nation. Rushdie's contribution to this discourse in The Satanic Verses has been overshadowed by other obvious front-burner issues, but it has not gone unnoticed. The novel has offered an important voice in the debate and has done so by painting the slippage, back to and before the "beginning of time."
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The Weekend's Final Gleanings
Greetings again, everyone. As the weekend slips away (and we lost an hour, besides!), I have just a few more items to pass along to you. First of all, thank you for your patience last week in class. I hope my personal situation/sadness over losing Lucy (seen above, in perhaps the one picture by which I'll most want to remember her: early in her thirteenth year, she even manages to get that fourth paw airborne!) wasn't betrayed too evidently by a sense of waywardness; that is, I hope we accomplished enough and that the class session had a sense of shape (it's all a blur to me now). It was a strange thing to acknowledge to myself, but I think last Monday was probably one of the three saddest days of my life so far. Some/most of you will respond by saying I'm very lucky to be able to say that -- since this only involved losing a dog -- and indeed I am, especially after living some 16,000+ days, but, well, it's a lot more complicated than that, too. I guess it's one of those "It's the blight man was born for / It is Margaret you mourn for" kind of occasions: I'm grieving for a dog, yes, but also for a whole lot more. Given the numbers involved (i.e., 3 truly profoundly rotten days out of 16,000+), I wonder why my main take-away from this past week is to be reminded that life is about loss (the loss of Lucy portends other losses, other vanishings, other sorrows, other closed doors, other partitionings of my life). And, yet, that's where I'm at right now. Fortunately, I have three young boys to serve as an antidote.
Anyway, I fear this will be the kind of sadness with staying power, and that I'll be reeling for a good while. My wife and I can't even vacuum the rugs right now for fear that all of Lucy's blond hairs will eventually be gone. And yet, I can't help but think of (and draw hope from) that scene in Pather Panchali when Apu throws the beaded necklace into the pond (the one Durga denied having stolen earlier in the film). As we watch it disappear below the surface, we interpret it as one of Apu's moments of grieving, as well as a way of protecting his memories of his sister; knowing, though, that he has been learning how to write during the progression of the story, we also might think of this as a kind of metaphorical moment: something is sinking down deep so that, just maybe, it might be pulled up again later ("emotions recollected in tranquility"?) and transmuted (via writing?), into something that will provide solace and affirmation. I'm hoping Lucy's loss promises the same for me, eventually. You all are writers, so I suspect you know what I'm getting at. Anyway, onwards ...
Having invoked PIco Iyer in a previous posting, I went ahead and added that first chapter of The Global Soul to the moodle site. And although I know you hardly have time for any more secondary readings, I also put up there a chapter ("'Jewels Brought From Bondage': Black Music and the Politics of Authenticity") from Paul Gilroy's book, The Black Atlantic, which I thought might be of interest to some of you (now or eventually), and which probably intersects productively with specific scenes like the Club Hot Wax and with Rushdie's general project of exploring hybridized identities in late twentieth century London. Finally, a couple of web resources: you might find Paul Brians' online guide to The Satanic Verses to be especially useful (I should have thought to pass this one along to you last week). I also just chanced upon this story about Rushdie's presence at Emory University these days, which, most recently, involved a marathon public reading of Haroun and the Sea of Stories (maybe that should be a model for our class on the 20th!). You'll also find some other Rushdie-related links embedded in that story. Finally, do consider the invitation below (in the "Up in the Air" posting) to share an interesting passage and just a few sentences of commentary from your reading of the novel over the past week, and do also stop by and read Ted's phantasmagorical tour of The Satanic Verses in his posting. See you on Tuesday night.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Up in the Air
I keep talking about those Sinai-like cracks, and I certainly felt/saw them widen within and beneath me this past Tuesday night as we parted with still so very much to talk about relative to The Satanic Verses. We got things off to a productive start, certainly, especially with the Mahound section (strand B according to the Kundera structural/rondo logic, which, by the way, can indeed be found in Testaments Betrayed: Essay in Nine Parts). Clearly we'll have to pay some foundational attention to strands A (contemporary London and Bombay) and C (the Ayesha pilgrimage) next week and I'm hoping we can work directly from a rich cross-section of specific textual moments next week. To that end, shall I/can I call upon you to find a passage in the novel that speaks to you in some way and to share with us a modest observational, critical close-reading of your chosen passage here on the blog? (At some point, too, we should probably find occasion to point out and discuss the verbal/linguistic felicities of Rushdie's prose as evidenced in this text).
I personally simply love the way Rushdie uses the metaphor of floating debris in the opening scene, and the way that debris is composed of both material and immaterial things (e.g., "remnants of the plane" and "debris of the soul"; "drinks trolleys" and notions like land, belonging, and home). In a course that's so much about things being "up in the air" (identity possibilities, power dynamics, historical truth, personal histories, narratorial reliability, etc.), this scene is devastatingly appropriate. I recall, too, that great section in the first chapter of Pico Iyer's The Global Soul (which we're scheduled to read for Week 14 but which we won't have much time to discuss) in which Iyer describes that "High above the clouds, in an alternative plane of existence--a duty-free zone, in a way, in which everyone around him was a stranger--the Global Soul would be facing not just new answers to the old questions but a whole new set of questions, as he lived through shifts that the traditional passenger on ocean liner or long-distance train could never have imagined. " New questions that need answers. It's no surprise when, a few pages after the crash of the airliner, Rushdie's narrator poses the central question of the book: "How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is?" (8).
The Iyer connections in The Satanic Verses continue in a passage like that one on page 41, when Chamcha considers the distance between Bombay and London, between Indianness and Londonness. In one sense it's "five and a half thousand as the crow," but in another sense it's "not very far at all." This novel will be about movements between these two cities, and everything that movement implies for identity. It sounds very Joycean, too, to think of identities being unmoored and recombined in cities, to think that one of the prime effects of cities is to bring stories and narratives together.
I also always relish the visual nature of that scene that ends Chapter 3 of Ellowen Deeowen: "The monsters ran quickly, silently, to the edge of the Detention Centre compound, where the manticore and other sharp-toothed mutants were waiting by the large holes they had bitten into the fabric of the containing fence, and then they were out, free, going their separate ways, without hope, but also without shame. Saladin Chamcha and Hyacinth Phillips ran side by side, his goat-hoofs clip-clopping on the hard pavements: east she told him, as he heard his own footsteps replace the tinnitus in his ears, east east east they ran, taking the low roads to London town" (176-7). That's just wonderful writing, and it so sharply makes London a radically unstable notion (linguistically via the "Ellowen Deeowen" signifier, spatially, symbolically, etc.).
I often teach Heart of Darkness in my British Lit survey class, and isn't this a kind of reverse Heart of Darkness paradigm, with the colonized Other (monstrous in the eyes of the "motherland") marching east to recolonize/reverse colonize the city. It's a companion image to the "two brown bodies" that fall from the sky in the novel's opening moments, both dramatic literalizations of the postcolonial moment.
I personally simply love the way Rushdie uses the metaphor of floating debris in the opening scene, and the way that debris is composed of both material and immaterial things (e.g., "remnants of the plane" and "debris of the soul"; "drinks trolleys" and notions like land, belonging, and home). In a course that's so much about things being "up in the air" (identity possibilities, power dynamics, historical truth, personal histories, narratorial reliability, etc.), this scene is devastatingly appropriate. I recall, too, that great section in the first chapter of Pico Iyer's The Global Soul (which we're scheduled to read for Week 14 but which we won't have much time to discuss) in which Iyer describes that "High above the clouds, in an alternative plane of existence--a duty-free zone, in a way, in which everyone around him was a stranger--the Global Soul would be facing not just new answers to the old questions but a whole new set of questions, as he lived through shifts that the traditional passenger on ocean liner or long-distance train could never have imagined. " New questions that need answers. It's no surprise when, a few pages after the crash of the airliner, Rushdie's narrator poses the central question of the book: "How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is?" (8).
The Iyer connections in The Satanic Verses continue in a passage like that one on page 41, when Chamcha considers the distance between Bombay and London, between Indianness and Londonness. In one sense it's "five and a half thousand as the crow," but in another sense it's "not very far at all." This novel will be about movements between these two cities, and everything that movement implies for identity. It sounds very Joycean, too, to think of identities being unmoored and recombined in cities, to think that one of the prime effects of cities is to bring stories and narratives together.
I also always relish the visual nature of that scene that ends Chapter 3 of Ellowen Deeowen: "The monsters ran quickly, silently, to the edge of the Detention Centre compound, where the manticore and other sharp-toothed mutants were waiting by the large holes they had bitten into the fabric of the containing fence, and then they were out, free, going their separate ways, without hope, but also without shame. Saladin Chamcha and Hyacinth Phillips ran side by side, his goat-hoofs clip-clopping on the hard pavements: east she told him, as he heard his own footsteps replace the tinnitus in his ears, east east east they ran, taking the low roads to London town" (176-7). That's just wonderful writing, and it so sharply makes London a radically unstable notion (linguistically via the "Ellowen Deeowen" signifier, spatially, symbolically, etc.).
I often teach Heart of Darkness in my British Lit survey class, and isn't this a kind of reverse Heart of Darkness paradigm, with the colonized Other (monstrous in the eyes of the "motherland") marching east to recolonize/reverse colonize the city. It's a companion image to the "two brown bodies" that fall from the sky in the novel's opening moments, both dramatic literalizations of the postcolonial moment.
Saleem and Saladin, Buddha and Goat-man
I mentioned, I think, in an earlier posting that "every epic needs its trip to the underworld," and somehow it seems as if there could be an interesting line of inquiry (final paper?) to be found in comparing the metamorphoses of Saleem Sinai and Saladin Chamcha. Each seems to suffer through periods of (forced) submission to the agents of purity (which maybe somehow reminds us of Bhabha's notion of the "pedagogical" in his "Dissemination" essay?), and thus create significant narrative subsections that link these two novels in very interesting ways. Saleem, moved to Pakistan, realizes that “in the land of the pure, purity became our ideal” (355). He understands the change in his life by virtue of a comparison between two cities: Karachi, in which he is “beset … by the knowledge that the name of the faith upon which the city stood meant ‘submission,’” is set against “the highly-spiced noncomformity of Bombay” (353). In a way, I wonder if Bombay finds a counterpart of sorts in pre-Islamic (even early-Islamic) Jahilia in The Satanic Verses, described as it is (at least initially) as a nexus for nomadicism and multiplicity, a space marked by the shiftiness of sand, "the very stuff of inconstancy" (96). In any event, as Saleem tells us, “I never forgave Karachi for not being Bombay” (352). Just as a more open-minded, tolerant, pluralist version of Islam is closed down in The Satanic Verses by the emphasis on “an all-rounder in an age of specialist statues” (SV 101), Saleem laments the divisions in the Midnight’s Children Conference and, subsequently, “the impossibility of a third principle” (MC 348). Before long, as Indo-Pakistani relations deteriorate, as Jamila Singer turns ever increasingly towards the service of “blinding devoutness” (359), as the “dizzying early days before categorization” (362) become a more distant dream, as Saleem suffers in his “mosque-shadowed house” (378), and, finally, after he’s “spittoon-brained” (397) and “stripped of past present memory time shame and love” (392), Saleem is lost within the Buddha. Now a citizen of Pakistan, he “learned the arts of submission” (403) and joins the cause of tracking down “the fleeing enemies of national unity” (411).
Purity, national unity, submission, categorization: these read like keywords, like hot links that connect Midnight’s Children with The Satanic Verses. So does, mercifully, the word “anger,” because it’s anger, right, that allows the Buddha to return to being Saleem (“But then I was angry…. I had begun once again, to feel” (MC 441)), and that reduces the horns and abjectness of the deviled Saladin, who is “humanized … by the fearsome concentration of his hate” (SV 304); it’s righteous anger that brings both back out of invisibility and into an engaged relationship with the problems and questions that face them. Maybe there’s even a strange kind of shared narrative role played by Deshmukh, the “vender of notions” (428) and the diverse inhabitants of the Shaandaar Café. Deshmukh enables the killing fields of Bangladesh to become, as the Shaandaar does as well, a kind of therapeutic zone, a zone of resuscitation. Maybe the logic of each story required that these characters needed to be purged and remade before they could be connected to potential change (change which I guess is a little less ambiguous in the case of Chamcha and the later novel).
Purity, national unity, submission, categorization: these read like keywords, like hot links that connect Midnight’s Children with The Satanic Verses. So does, mercifully, the word “anger,” because it’s anger, right, that allows the Buddha to return to being Saleem (“But then I was angry…. I had begun once again, to feel” (MC 441)), and that reduces the horns and abjectness of the deviled Saladin, who is “humanized … by the fearsome concentration of his hate” (SV 304); it’s righteous anger that brings both back out of invisibility and into an engaged relationship with the problems and questions that face them. Maybe there’s even a strange kind of shared narrative role played by Deshmukh, the “vender of notions” (428) and the diverse inhabitants of the Shaandaar Café. Deshmukh enables the killing fields of Bangladesh to become, as the Shaandaar does as well, a kind of therapeutic zone, a zone of resuscitation. Maybe the logic of each story required that these characters needed to be purged and remade before they could be connected to potential change (change which I guess is a little less ambiguous in the case of Chamcha and the later novel).
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
In Regard to The Satanic Verses
Cover of The Satanic VersesThe Carnivalesque Phantasmagoria Ride of Religious Fury
by Theo Cecil DeCelles
Welcome all to the roller coaster mutant ride somewhere past the crispy zesty rainbow. I present to you the most thrilling ride here at Six Six Six Flags called Rush to Die inspired by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Was the rainbow you just walked over on a wobbly catwalk real or was the rainbow just a cheap Disneyland rip-off that uses lasers and poof? As you can see the thrill ride appears to be quite dangerous but folks don't be daunted. Over there is an optical illusion where you riders might derail and crash into a jailhouse hell called British Immigration.
There at British Immigration, amusement park employees wearing Nazi uniforms claiming authentic English ancestry are torturing the new English immigrants with pitchforks. "How dare they let in these devilish rogues into the purest land in the world, even if we can't decide if we are Norman or Anglo-Saxon, these tinted skinned aliens are probably in line with the third coming of the Antichrist that was a Paki, he turned our tasty fish and chips into chips and curry," they may say. If the roller coaster actually doesn't derail, you will find the ride soaring into the clouds where you will see mirages of robotic goddesses hanging from wires. Some will declare, "How do they do that? Are helicopters jangling the three Arabian goddesses Lat, Manat, and Uzza?" Ah, the world of illusion is quite mysterious. Even prophets, messengers, and businessmen cloying for the top know how to deceive the masses. Anybody can convince anybody of seeing mesmerizing mirages of authoritarianism with film effects, sponsored by Coca-Colonization.
Once you descend with the Angel Gibreel out of the clouds, the ride stops and you will need to walk into a floating ancient maze made out of sand. Sandcastles in the sky get me high. There is a replica of a temple in Jihilia. In the temple there are three hundred and sixty idols including images of al-Lat (The Goddess), al-Uzza (Strong), and Manat (Fate), and Allah (The God). They will not be singing the song It's a Small World. The devilish at Six Six Six Flags will never dare torture you with a song so sweetly passive-aggressive than all of hellfire. There in the temple you will see such Earthly beauty that even you, the flocks of moral aptitude, will be tempted. To the left al-Uzza will mesmerize you with the morning and evening star. Beside her, the springtime sun will rise above al-Lat. Manat is the goddess of death. I quite like her. The moon will rise above her, and if you dare violate any graves that she protects, beware you will be cursed. To the right is Allah and what does he look like? You will have to go on this ride to see. You will be given a choice, shall you go with the goddesses, or shall you go with Allah? To the left or the right, and why can't it be in between? What would the world have been like if Islam submitted to three goddesses and a god? What if the ancient tribe of Quraysh didn't stop circling the Ka'bah in Mecca with chants to the three goddesses only to submit only to Allah? What if those who submitted never would have destroyed the temples of the goddesses? Should have, would have, could have, there are too many haves in those questions that it bores me, now onward to the more theoretical part of the thrill ride for the brainy. Trust me it's a scream!
The Goddess al-Lat
From the temple you will slide down a giant golden slide to view a large movie screen that we cosmopolitan infidels of the West shudder in fear when seeing the now dead Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini with his manly finger of righteousness pointing to the heavens as he sermons "Death to America with love!" Beside him is an automaton of Maggie the Bitch. Margaret Thatcher will spout how the winner of the Man Booker Prize shows how the Commonwealth of Nations can write quite well. Then Maggie will start arguing with the giant screen of Khomeini. She looks quite dour as she waves her fist at him. Although, rumors are that General Aladeen is jealous that the Irananians get all the attention, and he yearns to replace the gigantic screen of Khomeini to advertise the Republic of Wadiya instead. Iran's current leader the handsome international playboy of the Middle East, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is rumored to have purported in a Hustler Magazine gossip column that "General Aladeen needs to learn that being a religious dictator doesn't have to be an actual dictatorship, all you have to do is know the right people that know how to give the right type of death sentences to foreign nationals." I wouldn't know whether if the story is true or not because I don't read Hustler Magazine because I don't like the advertisements.
We spent millions of dollars on this amusement park ride. You will then enter a plastic spaceship designed by Japanese anime and manga students. After the spaceship lands you will be beyond all the rainbows, beyond Saturn's rings, deep in a land called The Transit Lounge. A transitional world of liminal space. The things that inhabit the liminal space can be individuals or groups. If they are individuals then they stand outside society like footy hooligans and prostitutes. Life after death is not fair, Spoono's dreaded buddy Farishta mutates into an angel and Chamcha mutates into a freakish demon in the "in-between" world. See Chamcha the goat-man! The West sees his subhuman goatiness as so grotesque that he has to be hidden in an attic like a terrorist, but he was perhaps quite scarier before the mutation if you ask me. Being a Muslim man that is in love with being English but detests his former Indian identity is never easy to view. Don't run away when you see Chamcha magically mutate right before your eyes into a goat-man, and as his penis pulsates bigger and smaller, his horns will grow and retract. But hey, I know what you are thinking, it ain't that kind of ride.
Bollywood womanizer with bad breath Gibreel Farishta is so revered and romanticized, being rich and all, that he is exulted to the same league of the holy men, he is as holy as the ascetics, he might even be higher than those Jains that walk around naked covered in ashes and refrain from sex, and oh, that Bollywood lad Farishta is so spiritual, because India is nothing but the land of spirituality and hashish, thus Farishta's mutation grants him a halo (especially since he returns home to mother India to revive his acting career). Growing an elephant trunk would have him permanently typecast as Ganesha, but his mutation that the industrious west creates as a stereotype, which dehumanizes as well as exults, doesn't quite help Farishta's acting career. Yes sir, some have said that seeing the Angel Gibreel on a movie screen moralizing about the sins of mankind was just a bit too kitschy in an era when the Hindu gods and goddesses have onscreen powers more dazzling than Superman, Batman, and the Jedi all combined.
While in The Transit Lounge refreshments are served for a price. While there you will see an African woman's black skin mutate into translucent glass but will be shattered by the Nazi amusement park employees. See the African wild woman trying to pick her shattered life off the floor probably in the way Humpty Dumpty tried to frantically put his shell back together again before giving up. Religious fraternities, ethnic minorities, social minorities, Non-reservation Native Americans, transgender and immigrant groups are all betwixt and between and all of them exist in the freak show of The Transit Lounge. A liminal space becomes a liminal state when one is between wakefulness and sleep. In the surreal world of The Transit Lounge you are in the dream of somebody else. Who dreams the dream for other people's dreams? Perhaps it is Farishta's dream when he is 'halfway to sleep" (113). Perhaps it's the Angel Gibreel's dream, because "Gibreel in his dual role is both above-looking-down and below-staring up" (114). Angels are everywhere in The Transit Lounge as they are intermediaries in the liminal space between heaven and hell.
The three Arabian goddesses are there in The Transit Lounge waiting to entertain all of you with belly dances, along with all the other intermediaries as animatronics. You will see fantastic creatures on Mount Coney that looms menacingly sublime in the middle of The Transit Lounge. Rushdie is influenced by The Wizard of Oz, so as to appease the ticket paying masses, The Transit Lounge has been designed to be halfway between Oz and Verses, you will see monkeys with wings, trees with faces, munchkins, melting witches, a wizard and speaking lions, and you will also see a manticore, a throbbing goat-man/devil, Allah, djinns, a lecherous speaking wolf, angels and winged Goddesses as fantastical creatures galore!
Theorist Mikhail Bahktin is right-o when he says that Rushdie is carnivalesque. Indeed-o in regards to the Fatwa, what Khomeini actually did was make Rushdie even more famous, and readers bought the New York Times #1 Bestseller to read what all the fuss was about. The spirituality of the novel was ignored. Islam is criticized and celebrated as a powerful religious faith in The Satanic Verses, but many curious minds want to know... Curious minds bought The Satanic Verses to analyze the blasphemy, and any spirituality that the novel espouses will always be overshadowed by the controversy. So as you exit The Transit Lounge, look out for the amusement park employees, many that are actual illegal aliens as they make the amusement park more profitable, they are dressed in real saris and turbans beating effigies of flaming Salman Rushdie's with wet mops. Some have accused the set designer of making a poor replica of Salman Rushdie saying he looks quite weedy like a scarecrow. Throwing shoes at any of the Salman Rushdie effigies is against amusement park regulations.
Mahound's faith in Allah is so great that when Abu Simbel the Grandee of Jihilia's wife named Hind challenges Mahound for Allah to concede by having the three Arabian goddesses become daughters of Allah, or to be subservient intermediaries, or lesser than a male god (115), he faces his people and tells them that the acceptance of the three goddesses was an error, and that God is one. Mahound's faith in Allah is strong enough that he even fights the Angel Gibreel in the nude even after the angel cops a feel (125). It is the nature of the author to express the shadows between darkness and the light where novelty is created in the novel. As you make your way past the park employees, make sure you buy some gift shop souvenirs in The Transit Lounge airport that will fly you to no place like home on Bostan, Flight AI-420. Enjoy the movie that will be playing on the flight that will put your minds into a liminal state. We will play the film The Wizard of Oz paired with the film soundtrack of The Wall album by Pink Floyd. Far below the amber-scotch clouds you will see nothingbutsea.
The liminal effects will be strong enough just as in the novel where Rushdie invents hybrid words as butterfly words metamorphose, “Notsleep” (114) is not just a stylized way of writing, words are morphing, becoming new, and in many cases are actually better as one word rather than three or four words. We must thank the immigrants that improve and reinvent the English language.
Three terrorists will have a debate as they hold all of you as hostages. Two males and one female, and the female will say, "Even if the English language is becoming mongrel and diverse, we must examine the holy trinity of what the first world thinks about being purely English, or even purely European, or purely all-American, the analysis of three stereotypes that western society targets us people from the third world are: stinky, primitivism, and threatening. In the name of the father of stereotype number one, we from the third world are thought to STINK and they say we are unclean for we do not shower and must use deodorant, the smell of manure and wild nature mixed with exotic spices of cardamom and curry follows us everywhere we go. In the name of the son of the three stereotypes, a primitivist stereotype that targets we the third world immigrants as ANIMALS, some of my subhuman sisters have hooves and some of my brothers have tails. In the name of the holy ghost of western stereotypes about we the third world exiles, immigrants, refugees, etc. are that we are DANGEROUS and must be kept confined in a sanatorium should we infect the rest of their society with our mongrel ways. (171) Stink Animals Dangerous S.A.D.
This ride is scary, watch out for the bomb that the hijacking terrorists will detonate, I hope that you don't panic when you unexpectedly drop from the sky in a simulation of falling from a plane, and please don't vomit, amusement park rides are not for the wary. Vertigo can be uncomfortable and thrilling simultaneously. This amusement park is a simulacra of heaven and hell. Funtoosh! "Life always changes after the fall" and everybody knows that Shaitan knows that, and that is why The Great Satan, we the people of the fallen United States are just one of many leaders of world change. Being a devil's advocate by questioning power has never been easy. Now if you excuse me, I'm on my way from Six Six Six Flags to Coney Island.
Source: Rushdie, Salaman. The Satanic Verses. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2008
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Theory from the Nation's Edge
Hi, again. You'll recall that our theoretical reading for Tuesday's class is Homi Bhabha's "Dissemination: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation." It's a demanding piece of scholarship, as you've no doubt discovered, but it'll reward your attention, and it should certainly enhance your reading of The Satanic Verses. If you can at least read the first three sections carefully (that would be "The Time of the Nation," "The Space of the People," and "Of Margins and Minorities"), that would be great. You'll also undoubtedly want to check out the end of the essay, which in just a few short pages provides a smart reading of parts of The Satanic Verses ...
Rushdie, Ray, and Ideas of India
The Satanic Verses reading proceeds feverishly apace, I'm sure, but given that we won't be able to afford any time on Tuesday night to return to Pather Panchali and given that there may be some comments you may still be inclined to offer, I figured we at least need another empty jar added here with this posting; fill it up, if you see fit. The most basic question to ask, of course, is wonder through what contexts we can talk about this film productively in a course on Salman Rushdie? How is Ray entering our conversation on "nation as narration"? The film (and its two sequels) are based on a 1928 novel, as I mentioned, but given that Ray's career as a filmmaker began during the heady years of nation-building under Nehru, it seems we're invited to consider this film in some of the same contexts through which we framed Midnight's Children. Do we get any sense for what Ray's vision of national identity is based on this film? Does he have an identifiable politics, based on this film? If not, does that mean his work (at least in this film) borders on a kind of irresponsible aesthetiticism, that he might be someone who is unwittingly catering to a Western desire to gaze at Indian poverty and see India placed within a familiar narrative of abjection (Rushdie rehearses that argument briefly in his essay on Ray in Imaginary Homelands, via the comments of that Bombay actress, Nargis)?
Imagine, though, being forced map out a conversation between Pather Panchali and Midnight's Children: how would you do it? What openings would you provide to begin such a conversation? And given that it's a film of undeniable visual (as well as narrative power), what images & moments are still lingering (and perhaps expanding) in your thoughts? I found myself transfixed by the old (ancient!) auntie, Indir, for example, and wondering if we might nearly talk about her in some of the ways we talked about Tai the Boatman in Rushdie's novel. She seems to stand in for a kind of rupture, for something very significant (the oral tradition? a rural ideal being threatened by modernity and the lure of the urban?) that is dying (and it's so interesting, too, to think about the composition of her death scene: her body is discovered by Durga and Apu in a bamboo grove that is teeming with life). Certainly we sense that is a film about the collision of worlds, of the old and the new, and this is probably nowhere more apparent than in the train scene, which could be the single most famous sequence in Ray's entire body of work. Those electricity pylons in the paddy fields, the eerily singing wires, the approaching steam engine, that black smear of smoke in the sky -- that last detail, for whatever reason, made me think back to "the cloud of the disaster" (80) that links the Muslim mob and the Ravana gang (and portends the advent of communalism) in Midnight's Children. Anyway, how do you all respond to this train scene (or others)?
Imagine, though, being forced map out a conversation between Pather Panchali and Midnight's Children: how would you do it? What openings would you provide to begin such a conversation? And given that it's a film of undeniable visual (as well as narrative power), what images & moments are still lingering (and perhaps expanding) in your thoughts? I found myself transfixed by the old (ancient!) auntie, Indir, for example, and wondering if we might nearly talk about her in some of the ways we talked about Tai the Boatman in Rushdie's novel. She seems to stand in for a kind of rupture, for something very significant (the oral tradition? a rural ideal being threatened by modernity and the lure of the urban?) that is dying (and it's so interesting, too, to think about the composition of her death scene: her body is discovered by Durga and Apu in a bamboo grove that is teeming with life). Certainly we sense that is a film about the collision of worlds, of the old and the new, and this is probably nowhere more apparent than in the train scene, which could be the single most famous sequence in Ray's entire body of work. Those electricity pylons in the paddy fields, the eerily singing wires, the approaching steam engine, that black smear of smoke in the sky -- that last detail, for whatever reason, made me think back to "the cloud of the disaster" (80) that links the Muslim mob and the Ravana gang (and portends the advent of communalism) in Midnight's Children. Anyway, how do you all respond to this train scene (or others)?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
