There comes a point in the academic year when every event becomes momentous. A little past the halfway point in any given semester, the classes you attend stop being “that thing you do at 4 pm on Thursdays”, and become the third, next to last, and eventually, last time you do something that has, by that point, become as natural a part of your day to day life as eating breakfast.
It has become much the same with maintaining this blog. As I had never worked on anything like an academic blog before, it started out as quite a strange and new experience, but, looking back over my time on the MA in Irish Writing and Film programme, it has become as natural a part of my routine as attending lectures and writing papers. However, the road from “the scary, strange, and new blog” to “just another part of the MA” was, if not really rocky, marked with some successes and failures. So, now that I have reached the momentous stage of the academic year, it only seems appropriate to spend a little time seeing how I got here. I guess the best place to begin to assess how successful my work on this blog has been is at the beginning:
I’m Wilde about Irish literature.
My primary goal with this blog is to have a testing ground to work through my research ideas as I move towards the ever-ominous dissertation at the end of my MA. Currently, I am interested in considering the formal similarities between Irish literature and African-American literature. As I have begun researching this project in earnest, I have taken an interest specifically in the ways the African American experience has been used as a kind of rhetorical reference point to describe the damage brought about by British colonialism in Ireland. While I have pinpointed manifestations of this trend in the works of James Joyce and Roddy Doyle, I am currently focusing my research on establishing this trope in the works of other authors (ideally playwrights). Ultimately, I hope to also consider responses to this trend in African-American literature and to use this jumping off point to work towards teasing out a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between these two literary traditions.
However, I do not intend to use this blog simply as an instrument to broadcast my progress on my dissertation. Beyond posts related specifically to my dissertation, I plan on challenging myself to apply some of the ideas and theories I will be exploring in my research in less overtly academic (or at least traditionally literary) capacities. I plan to consider trends in pop culture and current events as they relate to my research in Postcolonial theory and Nationalism, with the hope of always keeping theory in a more immediately tangible context.
I might throw some memes in too, you know, for the lulz.
Ignoring the somewhat posturing tone, I will say I did a good job stating some opening goals for my blog. Luckily, my plans for my thesis have become much more concrete with time; though, as my later posts will attest, I have not always done a good job keeping my thesis research center-stage on my blog. In fact, that probably has a lot to do with my being nervous about the blog for the first few months of the programme. Primarily, I just was not sure what constituted an acceptable topic for an academic blog post. As a result, I ended up playing it safe with my first few posts by reflecting on some of the academic seminars I attended at UCC. This gave me a great opportunity to ease into the more casual speculation of an academic blog as I let the presentations I attended spark my imagination and lead me to ruminate on my own interests. For example, my first proper blog post “‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me(?)’: Thoughts on “The Art of Being Together: Shakespeare and Friendship” begins somewhat awkwardly:
Prof. Stanivukovi began the workshop by positing that investigating the meaning and nature of friendship is, in many ways, the primary goal of many of Shakespeare’s plays. He provided ample evidence to support this idea, pointing to the friendships of Romeo and Mercutio, Hamlet and Horatio, and Antonio and Bassonio and observing that many of the conflicts that drive these plays stem from intrusions into these friendships. These intrusions tend to take the form of either a competing romantic relationship or economic concerns.
While helpful enough as a general introduction and a summary, I do think this is a good example of my discomfort when first starting the blogging process. I mentioned that my introductory post was “posturing”. It took me until about halfway through this discussion to break through the barrier of stilted language. However, I do think that when I turn my attention to what Prof. Stanivukovi’s talk made me think about my own work, the post becomes much more interesting and dynamic:
this leaves me ruminating on some of the Modern and Postmodern works that resolve themselves (in as far as such works ever resolve themselves) through successful relationships. Interestingly, this brings to mind three rather far flung works: James Joyce’s Ulysses, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and Jamie O’Neill’s At Swim Two Boys. In Ulysses, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus are, in many ways, saved and rejuvenated by their short relationship as Dedalus defends Bloom from the capers of his friends and Bloom helps Stephen safely navigate the perils of the “Nighttown” episode. In fact, it occurs to me that their relationship is not unlike that of Prince Hal and Falstaff in Henry IV parts one and two, as the seemingly lower class and clearly much more worldly Bloom must stand in as a new father figure/mentor to Dedalus. Of course, the fact that the bond between Frodo and Sam was the only thing that made the destruction of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings really possible is fairly obvious even to people whose sole experience with the book is through GIFs and memes taken from the Peter Jackson trilogy.
At Swim Two Boys probably presents the most complex picture of friendship as it dramatizes the establishment of the homosexual relationship as a fully realized bond, deeply related to yet distinct from more Classical ideas of friendship, through the musings of MacMurrough and the burgeoning, if tragically brief relationship between Jim and Doyler. Looking at At Swim Two Boys in the context of Prof. Stanivukovi’s workshop is actually quite exciting, as it places O’Neill’s exploration of the homosexual relationship into a much longer tradition, and helps one to consider some of the wider ramifications of Shakespeare’s own consideration of the lines between affectionate friendship and desire in works like As You Like It.
As is evident here, when I begin to think about all of the ramifications of this presentation and how it relates to other texts and ideas, my imagination is sparked, and I become much more comfortable with the blog. I think this first post is a good example of how I settled into the blog writing format and generally became more comfortable with developing my own ideas though this unique medium.
My second post “‘Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff’: Thoughts on ‘Remembering Past Futures'”, is, in many ways a repeat of the first. Dr. Laird’s talk was fascinating and helped me consider my studies from a new perspective. Looking back over the post, what stands out to me the most is when I begin to apply elements of Dr. Laird’s discussion to my Irish Film module assignments:
I have been particularly challenged by thinking about a potential topic for my Irish Cinema paper. While listening to this talk, however, I began to think of how certain elements of this interest in what might have been, or a literature that actively interrogates the routes of history relates to Peter Lennon’s The Rocky Road to Dublin. Particularly I began to ask myself how the film’s emphasis on music functions as a distinctly cinematic way to contemplate the passage of time, music being an art form based on organizing and structuring the passage of time in distinct beats and measures. All of these questions and musings are only in their vaguest state for me at present, but it is reassuring to begin to have a sense of direction.
This sticks out to me because the paper I turned in for the course ended up having nothing to do with this idea. I quickly tossed it aside even though I do think that it is a worthwhile way to think about Peter Lennon’s film. To me, this is one of the great things about my experience on this MA. Taking coursework, attending these talks, and maintaining this blog, I am given the perfect opportunity to think in creative ways about the ideas that I am exposed to. In particular, this blog gives me the chance to articulate those ideas, even when they don’t go on to become fully-developed papers.
My next post was one of my favorites. “Joyce and Walcott: Colonial Modernity and the Death of Difference” is the first post that was devoted to really developing ideas related to my MA dissertation. In particular, I am proud of how I managed to craft a fairly well developed argument that was still succinct enough to function as a blog post. Furthermore, I was pleased that I managed to make a few brief quotes from T.S. Eliot’s “Ulysses, Order, and Myth” suffice to build a theoretical framework for my discussion without getting to bogged down in secondary sources. Ultimately, my dissertation has moved quite far away from a comparison of James Joyce and Derek Walcott, but I do think this post marks an important stage in my development as an MA student. I interrogated, rather than recycled, the ideas canonical figures such as Eliot and James Campbell to forward ideas that were uniquely my own.
After “Joyce and Walcott” I felt much more comfortable writing for my blog, and this led me to try my hand at writing a little more on popular culture and current events. This was a core goal stated in my introductory post, and I thought it was very important to make my blog a testament to the wider relevance of the kind of research MA students like myself do. (un)Luckily enough, U.S. politics gave me the best talking point for the importance of Humanities research in November. Despite my trepidation about “think pieces” attempting to explain the rise of Donald Trump, I wrote “The 2016 U.S. Election as a Defense of a Humanities Education” out of a certain sense of urgency to defend myself as an English graduate student in a world that, seemingly, was rejecting the values that I was infesting considerable time and energy into. Looking back on the piece in the larger context of my development as an academic and blogger, I think reveals a distinct confidence in tone and disposition.
It occurs to me that my posts about Paul Beatty’s book The Sellout as well as the latest Star Wars film, Rogue One were as much continuations of my discussion of the recent U.S. Election as they were attempts to apply critical reading to contemporary culture. That stated, I do think they gave me a chance to work through ideas related to Postcolonial theory, and problems of racism and oppression outside of the often stifling confines of strictly academic discourse. For example, in “The Sellout: Or a Small Christmas Gift to Me” I discuss a passage from the novel:
after a discussion about representation in automobile commercials, the protagonist thinks to himself, “the only thing you absolutely never see in car commercials isn’t Jewish people, homosexuals, or urban Negroes, it’s traffic” (139). The book never takes the easy way out, simply implying that racism, inequality, and oppression are purely the results of hatred and bigotry (even if they are still present forces) but that they are also the results of the push to achieve some kind of ideal reality, a reality probably most aptly referred to as The American Dream. It is easy to clear a stretch of highway and convince people that with the right car all doors are open, but The Sellout is about the the traffic pile-up on either side of that commercial shot. It is a book about the difference between reality as it is lived, as it is written about and reported, and how it is perceived, because at the end of the book you have to ask yourself, did the protagonist segregate his hometown, or just put up signs acknowledging the segregation that was already there, just outside the view of the commercial camera.
It occurs to me now that when I refer to “the push to achieve some kind of ideal reality . . . aptly referred to as The American Dream” I am actually approaching some of David Lloyd’s understandings of colonialism and racism as intrinsically tied up in the Capitalistic project. Lloyd is becoming a guiding theorist for my thesis work, so it is interesting to see how some of the concepts he has helped me understand and articulate more clearly and specifically are gestured to in this post.
My post on the new Star Wars film, “Rogue One: The First Star War Movie?” was, again, a continuation of some of my concerns from my post about the election. Particularly I read the film as speaking to the tension within American society today:
what is [most] revealing about the film is its probing of the nature and ethics of resistance. In Rogue One we do not see the unified, always in the right, rebellion. Rather, we see disjointed factions that cannot agree on the best way to keep evil at bay. For filmmakers of the stated political persuasion of the film’s writers Chris Weitz and Gary Whitta this obviously reveals a certain fear concerning the American Left’s disorganized and panicked response to the rise of Donald Trump and the kind of conservatism he represents. More importantly, it speaks to America’s heated debate about the “right” way to protest, sparked by concerns over the Confederate Flag flying in the South in the summer of 2015, and carrying right through the year in the form of Black Lives Matter protests, Colin Kaepernick, the prepping of “militias” to combat a “rigged” election, Anti-Trump protesters, and of course the new hallmark of Christmas, anti-Starbucks outrage. Viewers must choose between the tactics of militant extremist Saw Gerrera,
Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera
and the more stayed, political approach of the Rebellion proper. The film, in a surprising revision of usual portrayals of protest, seems to favor Saw’s methods, as his kinda sorta adopted daughter Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) leads a violent, guerrilla attack on the Empire against the Rebellion’s orders in the film’s climax. I wouldn’t go as far as to argue that Rogue One is endorsing a violent approach to protesting trivialities like Starbucks’ cups in this move, but I do think the film is encouraging those who might want to “go rogue” (see what I did there) that to successfully resist, they must make those in power uncomfortable in a meaningful way.
I think it is worth stating that at this time I was actually considering centering my dissertation on the Nationalistic writing of many of the 1916 rebels. As a result, I was drawn to the way the film presented rebellion; specifically, the film gave me an interesting test case to see how the discourses surrounding protest and rebellion take shape (especially given the real-time responses to the film and to this very post I had a chance to see). I think this set of current events centered posts really gave me a chance to work out my ideas in a context that does not have the some kind of anxieties surrounding it as formal academic inquiry. Furthermore, I think it marks the point at which I became comfortable with maintaining my blog and confident enough to venture out into untested waters.
I think my most recent blog posts show a practiced confidence. I am particularly proud of “I, Too, Sing Ireland” as a very nice intersection of my personal interest in music and my academic interests. Furthermore, I was simply pleased with the quality of my prose:
Langston Hughes’s 1926 poem “I, Too” is pretty famous as far as 1926 poems go. It deals with themes that are familiar to anyone who has read much African-American poetry, most notably the fact that despite scant representation African Americans have contributed significantly to American culture, a culture that, generally, doesn’t want to admit such debts. This is most evident in the poems opening line, “I, too, sing America”, which opens a dialogue with Walt Whitman’s earlier “I hear America Singing”, a poem that would have had a much more canonical status in Hughes’s day. Hughes’s poem essentially says ‘we built this country too, and you should expect to hear more from us soon’.
Hughes’s dilemma is easy to understand. How does one find one’s place in a culture hesitant to admit that place exists, or, to give America the benefit of the doubt and pretend that the intentional exclusion of minorities is less-than-intentional, how does an individual from a minority group express their love of country and contribute culturally to it?
Easy answer: become your country’s first international rock star.
I am very happy with this introduction, which blends my interest in African-American literature, Irish culture and problems of racialization in a way that, I think, still remains quite approachable. In my opinion, this is probably my strongest stand-alone post. While it is not directly in service to my dissertation like “Joyce and Walcott” is, I think it is a good example of what an academic blog post ought to be.
My final few posts are largely the products of finishing out my assignments and beginning to work towards my thesis in earnest. in particular, my work on”Man-Again: Breathing new life into James Clarence Mangan’s Wikipedia Entry for #EditWikiLit” and “Literature and I.T. Review” both gave me a chance to structure my thesis research, which at the early stages of general research reading is very helpful to stay on track. Ultimately, I think the blog gave me a chance to grow into a more confident critic and writer. I developed a lot of the ideas that helped lead me to my dissertation topic, and I am now a confident and competent blogger, which I think will prove extremely helpful as I will need to be able to explain my work as a researcher outside of the confines of academic specialty in the future. I think my work on this blog has given me the skills to do just that.
Works Cited
Jarman, Cody. “Chapter One”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2016/10/15/chapter-one/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
—. “I, Too Sing Ireland”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/i-too-sing-ireland/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
—. “Joyce and Walcott: Colonial Modernity and the Death of Difference”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2016/11/11/joyce-and-walcott-colonial-modernity-and-the-death-of-difference/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
—. “Literature and I.T. Review”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2017/03/16/literature-and-i-t-review/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
—. “Man-Again: Breathing new life into James Clarence Mangan’s Wikipedia Entry for #EditWikiLit”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/man-again-breathing-new-life-into-james-clarence-mangans-wikipedia-entry-for-editwikilit/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
—. “Rogue One: The First Star War Movie?”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/rogue-one-the-first-star-war-movie/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
—. “The Sellout: Or, a Small Christmas Gift to me”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/the-sellout-or-a-small-christmas-gift-to-me/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
—. “The 2016 U.S. Election as a Defense of a Humanities Education”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/the-2016-u-s-election-as-a-defense-of-a-humanities-education/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
—. “‘Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff’: Thoughts on ‘Remembering Future Pasts'”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-stuff-thoughts-on-remembering-past-futures/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
—. “‘You’ve got a Friend in Me(?)’: Thoughts on ‘The Art of Being Together: Shakespeare and Friendship'”. Anecdote on a Jarman, cjarman.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/youve-got-a-friend-in-me-thoughts-on-the-art-of-being-together-shakespeare-and-friendship/. Accessed on 22 March 2017.
My thesis, currently titled “Jumpin’ Jim Joyce: The Minstrel Show in the Mind of Joyce”, will attempt to locate an Irish reading of the Minstrel show as a cultural text. I will focus on references to and representations of blackface minstrelsy in “The Dead”, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake, approaching these texts from a hybridized critical perspective drawing on Postcolonial and Translation theory, while also focusing on Joyce’s historical and social influences in the form of earlier authors’ influence on Joyce’s interpretation and presentation of minstrel show tropes. Ultimately, I hope to argue that, to Joyce, the minstrel show was a potentially subversive performance, a kind of cultural translation that, much like his linguistic breakdown in Finnegans Wake, reveals a hybridity and playfulness that is destructive to the hierarchies of empire.
I intend to rely on Eric Lott’s seminal study of the minstrel show, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (Oxford U.P., 1993), to establish the beginnings of the minstrel show and its role in late-19th century culture. Alongside Lott, I plan to use David Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (Verso, 2007), and Ignatiev Noel’s How the Irish Became White (Routledge, 1995) in a consideration of Irish-American involvement in the minstrel show, and the resulting Irish influence on minstrel show tropes that helped lead to their popularity in Ireland. On that note, I will be drawing on Douglas Riach’s 1973 article “Blacks and Blackface on the Irish Stage, 1830-60” (Journal of American Studies 7.3) and Margaret Greaves 2012 piece “Slave Ships and Coffin Ships: Transatlantic Exchanges in Irish-American Blackface Minstrelsy” (Comparative American Studies 10.1) to reveal how the minstrel show was perceived in Ireland.
Obviously, existing studies on Joyce will make up some of the most significant research I will be drawing on in my thesis. To root my analysis in Joyce’s historical contexts, I will use Richard Ellman’s definitive biography James Joyce (Oxford U.P., 1959), as well as Joyce’s collected letters (Faber, 1966) and his brother, Stanislaus Joyce’s, memoirs, My Brother’s Keeper (Faber, 1958). I hope to use the biographical information from these sources to establish a line of historical and artistic influences that impacted Joyce’s understanding of theatrical performance, cultural exchange, colonial relationships, and translation, arguing that Joyce’s approach to these concepts would have had a notable impact on his opinion of the minstrel show.
Furthermore, I intend to build my argument on literary studies of Joyce that approach his work through the filter of Postcolonial and Irish studies, such as Vincent Cheng’s Joyce, Race and Empire (Cambridge U.P., 1995), Derek Attridge and Marjorie Howes edited collection Semicolonial Joyce (Cambridge U.P., 2000), and Emer Nolan’s Catholic Emancipation: Irish Fiction from Thomas Moore to James Joyce (Syracuse U.P., 2007). As foundational studies of Joyce’s relationship to colonialism and racism, both Joyce, Race, and Empire and Semicolonial Joyce will establish many of the founding assumptions of my interpretation of Joyce as an author intent on renegotiating the Manichean principles of the colonial and nation-building enterprises of his day. Nolan’s work, which recovers a Catholic Irish literary tradition from the largely Anglo-Irish shadow of the Irish Literary Revival will reinforce my more biographical research and help to establish Joyce’s significant Irish influences such as Thomas Moore and James Clarence Mangan.
The minstrel show’s unique location at the intersection of discussions of high and low art, dialect, transnational cultural exchange, and racial power structures makes it a useful point of entry for a consideration of Joyce that rectifies the interpretative dilemmas often brought about by the conflict between modernist theorist’s insistence on the apolitical, cosmopolitan Joyce and Irish studies scholars tendency to see Joyce as a colonial author. As such, I will also be drawing on Christine Van Boheemen’s Joyce, Derrida, Lacan, and the Trauma of History: Reading, Narrative and Postcolonialism (Cambridge U.P., 1999), and Luke Gibbon’s Joyce’s Ghosts: Ireland, Modernism and Memory (Chicago U.P., 2015), both works which have paved the way for viewing Joyce’s Irish context as foundational to, rather than opposed to, his Modernism.
I will also be supporting my argument with more strictly theoretical texts. Naturally, I intend to make recourse to many of the foundational Postcolonial studies such as Edward Said’s Orientalism (Penguin, 2003), and Frantz Fanon’s work in The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Weidenfeld, 1963) and Black Skin, White Masks (Pluto Press, 1967). However, I intend to rely most heavily on works that situate Postcolonial theory in an Irish context such as Clare Carroll and Patricia King’s Ireland and Postcolonial Theory (Cork University Press, 2003), as well as many of David Lloyd’s works, but particularly Anomalous States: Irish Writing and the Post-colonial Moment and Nationalism (Duke University Press, 1993) and Minor Literature: James Clarence Mangan and the Emergence of Irish Cultural Nationalism (California U.P., 1987). These texts will help me establish the ways in which Joyce would perceive the relationship between African-Americans as presented on the minstrel stage and the Irish, as well as to help me explore the delicate power balances inherit in the minstrel show as an act which gives a dominant group the power to author (and alter) a subaltern perspective.
Additionally, Minor Literature, will serve as a significant text to establish Mangan’s faux-oriental translations as an influence on Joyce’s understanding of the minstrel show, and, as a result, opens the door to applying elements of translation theory to my thesis. Currently, I am hoping to use Walter Benjamin’s work in Illuminations (Fontana Press 1992), alongside the linguistic observations of George Steiner in After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (Oxford U.P., 1998) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in “The Politics of Translation” from her collection Outside in the Teaching Machine (Routledge, 1993) to structure an interpretation of the minstrel show as a translation that reveals the ultimate instability of colonial and racial relations.
Finally, I intend to use databases provided by the Boole Library, such as Project Muse, but I am also interested in incorporating materials from public online archives such as the University of Virginia’s online collection Blackface Minstrelsy 1830-52 (utc.iath.virginia.edu/minstrel/mihp.html). I hope to experiment with some Digital Humanities distant reading tools such as Voyant (voyant-tools.org) in my approach to Finnegans Wake to help organize and chart common minstrel show terms and tropes as they appear in the text. Ultimately, most of my research materials are available at the Boole library, either physically or through its online offerings. In the event that the library does not have any necessary materials for my project, I intend to make use of the ALCID scheme to avail of other Irish libraries.
The Textualities 2017 Conference for UCC English MA’s is officially past. This feels quite overwhelming, as the conference has loomed as one of the most significant landmarks of the MA since I first learned about it in September.
All in all, it was a very fun day, and I was very proud of my work on the presentation, as well as the work of all my fellow-students.
Pre-conference, I was on the web design team; specifically, I was responsible for making a page of bio entries for my own MA, Irish Writing and Film. Luckily, I already had some useful WordPress experience thanks to this very blog, which made the job a breeze. It was an educational experience learning how best to liaise with the other project groups on the Conference (such as the social media group in particular). I was very happy with the work my fellow-students put into preparing for the conference. I felt like everyone was very invested in making sure the event went off without a hitch. If you would like to see my contribution, as well as learn about some of my wonderful classmates, please see here.
On the day of the conference, I was glad to be going on the first panel. I have never been one for sitting around stewing, so I was glad to be able to get up and make my contribution right out of the gate. I probably stumbled a stuttered a few times, but I was quite happy with how my presentation went. I committed to not using note cards, partially because stopping to read note cards sometimes throws off my train of thought when speaking in public, but also because I wanted to commit to staying as open and focused on my audience as possible. On that note, my audience was clearly very attentive, which certainly helped me feel confident about the presentation.
And, of course, having the support of my fellow-students was very helpful.
I think the most helpful part of the conference experience was getting to know more about the thesis research of my fellow students. I know that as I work forward on my research, I’ll be keeping an eye out for anything I come across that might be particularly relevant or helpful to anyone else. It is also helpful just to know more about the genuine interests of my classmates. While I got a sense of what a lot for other students liked in class, it was always limited by what any specific module was on; I might learn what their favorite texts from a course was, but less about what genuinely interests them. I feel like hearing about my fellow students thesis goals gave me a better understanding of what drew them to pursue graduate study in the first place, which, in a way, helps me understand why I am pursuing it as well.
Also, while it was a day for studies and work, it was also a nice day for some fun. I really enjoyed getting to spend the day with my classmates, and my wife, Madilyn, even got to watch as well (she helped me out by live-tweeting my thoughts on my own presentation for me in real time:
“Are all these slides going to work??! Am I waving my hands too much? Better grab the podium”
Ultimately, I’m moving forward from the conference feeling energized about my thesis and looking forward to the work to come over the next few months.
In case you are curious, you can check out my presentation here! (sorry that it isn’t featured directly. Apparently WordPress no longer supports Prezi embeds.)
Prezi Citation Information
“A Celebrated Ethiopian Ballad”. 1842. The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, Special Collections, The Johns Hopkins University. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, utc.iath.virginia.edu/minstrel/migallsof.html. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“Dan Emmet Portrait”. Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dan_Emmett_portrait.jpg. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“Dan Rice”. Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dan-Rice.JPG. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“Dion Boucicault Photo 1”. Wikimedia Commons, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DION_BOUCICAULT_PHOTO_1.jpg. Accessed on 2 March 2017
“Frederick Douglass c1860s”. Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Douglass_c1860s.jpg. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“James Clarence Mangan”. Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Clarence_Mangan.jpg. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“Joyce, Race and Empire Cover”. Cambridge University Press, admin.cambridge.org/academic/subjects/literature/english-literature-1900-1945/joyce-race-and-empire?format=PB. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“Mr. T. Rice as the Original Jim Crow”. n.d. the Harvard Theatre Collection, The Houghton Library. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, utc.iath.virginia.edu/saxon/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=utc/xml/pretexts/gallery/miillsoa.xml&style=utc/xsl/utc_figs.xsl&ent=mihtcill1&n1=tpage&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“Original Christy Minstrels”. Freemans Journal. 20 May 1871. pp. 1. Irish Newspaper Archive, archive.irishnewsarchive.com.library.ucc.ie/Olive/APA/INA.Edu/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=FMJ%2F1871%2F05%2F20&id=Ar00104&sk=644A8901. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“Stage Irishman”. ansionnachfionn.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/dear-old-oirland-where-the-oirish-doth-play.jpg?w=320, Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“Stephen Foster Portrait”. Wikimedia Commons, upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/StephenFoster.jpeg. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“The Coal Black Rose”. 1830. the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, Special Collections, The Johns Hopkins University. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, utc.iath.virginia.edu/saxon/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=utc/xml/pretexts/gallery/miillsoa.xml&style=utc/xsl/utc_figs.xsl&ent=lsm017078&n1=tpage&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
“Thomas Moore after Thomas Lawrence”. Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Moore,_after_Thomas_Lawrence.jpg. Accessed on 2 March 2017.
For the recent Wikipedia Editathon I chose to freshen up the entry for Irish poet James Clarence Mangan. This assignment was particularly well-timed because I have been reading into Mangan’s faux-oriental translations for my thesis and editing the Wikipedia page helped me structure some of my general background readings on Mangan.
To begin with, Mangan’s page was not quite a stub, but it left a lot to be desired. I can’t say I blame the original author. Mangan is a bit of an enigma. Please click here to see the full page as I found it.
I came into the assignment a little overwhelmed. There was (and still is) a lot of the page I feel needs improvement. Primarily, however, I thought the pages sloppy citations and poor structure were its greatest shortcomings. How could an author’s biography really be broken down into only two section: Early Life and Literary Career?
This really is most of the original page
So, I decided that for the in class session I would focus on reorganizing the page, while fleshing out the skeletal information provided. I think the most important thing I added during the Editathon session was a section devoted to Mangan’s reception and legacy. The original version of the page only addressed Mangan’s reception in a disorganized peppering of information throughout the existing “Literary Career” section. By collecting that information in one section (and adding some needed details and sources), I think I made the page much more useful.
I also had a chance to contemplate Mangan’s critics
Admittedly, I was a little nervous during the session. My computer was struggling to connect to the internet and this created some technical difficulties. The page did not update correctly as I worked on it (mostly problems with inputting sources) and, most frighteningly, refused to save my changes. This certainly slowed my progress.
Luckily, I left my page open and saved my changes in another building after class.
I guess the surest sign that the assignment was a success is I kept editing the page after class. While I only added the Reception and Legacy section in class, I decided to add a few more details, as well as a Style section. The page still isn’t perfect, but I am very proud to have made the page more useful to students, and wiki-addicts everywhere.
I was lucky enough to attend Dr. Mel Hidalgo’s recent talk on Feminist Chicana Literature here at University College Cork. The talk was engrossing and interesting, particularly because I went into it completely unaware of Chicana literature and the movements associated with it.
Dr. Hidalgo began by contextualizing Cherrí Moraga (the author who formed the bedrock of Dr. Hidalgo’s talk) within the larger history of Chicana/o culture. Specifically, she gave a nice introduction to Movimiento Chicana Feminism, a movement that began in the early 1970s and was, in many ways akin to other minority Civil Rights and Nationalistic movements like the Black Panthers. Movimiento’s Feminism was partly inspired by machismo of the larger Chicano movement and was an attempt to balance the problematically patriarchal tone of that movement. For me, this brought to mind the relationship between a writer like Sonia Sanchez and the kind of militant masculinity seen in other major Black Arts Movement writers like Amiri Baraka. In continuation with that line of thought I was also left wondering where the strong dissenting female voices of early Irish Nationalism might be found. I’ve often pondered the fact that, despite some overwhelming differences, there are some resonances between Pádraig Pearse and Baraka’s attempts to root a minorities identity in its masculinity. I can’t help wondering if an Irish Movimiento might be lost to history (or, of course, maybe I just need to do more research).
Yolanda Lopez “The Artist as the Virign of Guadalupe”
Continuing in her talk, Dr. Hidalgo compared post-movimiento Feminism (the movement that Moraga was part of) to Movimiento Feminism by comparing Yolanda Lopez and Alma Lopez’s approaches to representing the Virgin of Guadalupe. Yolanda’s work was typical of Movimiento Feminism as it focused on a woman in action. Alma’s, however, allows her subject to just be. In particular, it allows embraces the body and sexuality of the subject in a way that early Movimiento Feminism did not. In particular, this acceptance of sexuality allows Post-movimiento Feminism to be more inclusive of the LGBTQ community, which, according to Dr. Hidalgo, prefigures the concept of intersectionality popularized in more contemporary versions of Feminism that emphasize the relationship between the struggles of women, the
LGBTQ community, and even CIS men and ethnic
Alma Lopez “Our Lady”
minorities as a result of patriarchy and the power dynamics of hegemonic masculinity.
Ultimately, Dr. Hidalgo forwarded Cherrí Moraga, in particular her writing in “Queer Aztlán”, as a reappraisal of the relationship between individual sexuality and patriarchy as well as the relationship between Chicana/o people and the very land where they live. Moraga draws on the idea of Aztlán, the original lands of Mexico that included much of the American Southwest before the Mexican-American War, to explain a sense of belonging among Mexican-Americans that manages to overpower the White American narrative that deals with them so exclusively in terms like “alien” and “illegal.” More importantly, Moraga uses Aztlán to explain a sense of loss in Chicana/o literature, as much of the original lands of Mexico have been lost to the U.S.
Naturally, Dr. Hidalgo mentioned the relevance of Moraga and Post-movimiento Feminism to America’s current political climate. In fact, it was in her concluding remarks about Post-movimiento writing as a search for a kind of “decolonizing Nationalism” that the real importance and potential of Post-movimiento writing became apparent to me. America, and many other nations, are clearly facing the demons of their latent Nationalism. In many ways I don’t think that Nationalism is inherently bad, at least as far as it exists as a pride in one’s community, but I do think, in its current form, it is diseased. If the conversations sparked by things like Post-movimiento writing can help mold a identities that don’t draw strength from oppression and abuse, then I hope that those conversations continue.
Works Cited
Hidalgo, Melissa. “Moraga’s “Queer Aztlán” and the Urgency of Chicana (Lesbian) Feminist Critique.”31 January 2017, University College Cork School of English, University College Cork. Lecture.
Langston Hughes’s 1926 poem “I, Too” is pretty famous as far as 1926 poems go. It deals with themes that are familiar to anyone who has read much African-American poetry, most notably the fact that despite scant representation African Americans have contributed significantly to American culture, a culture that, generally, doesn’t want to admit such debts. This is most evident in the poems opening line, “I, too, sing America”, which opens a dialogue with Walt Whitman’s earlier “I hear America Singing”, a poem that would have had a much more canonical status in Hughes’s day. Hughes’s poem essentially says ‘we built this country too, and you should expect to hear more from us soon’.
Hughes’s dilemma is easy to understand. How does one find one’s place in a culture hesitant to admit that place exists, or, to give America the benefit of the doubt and pretend that the intentional exclusion of minorities is less-than-intentional, how does an individual from a minority group express their love of country and contribute culturally to it?
Easy answer: become your country’s first international rock star.
Despite how conventional Ireland’s first major Rock band, Thin Lizzy, may have sounded, there was nothing conventional about their frontman, Phil Lynott. Lynott was a black man (technically of mixed race) raised without a father (and often with his mother away), a none too common quality in 1960s Dublin where he was raised, or in the generally pasty world of Hard Rock.
According to Philip Lynott: Renegade of Thin Lizzy (aka, sadly the best biography of Lynott I could get my hands on),Lynott playfully embraced his idiosyncratic background. In fact, the author, Alan Byrne, seems to go to great lengths to emphasize that Lynott thought nothing of his unusual situation, despite the fact that there is an overt reference to just how strange it was to have a black man who identified specifically as Irish in Lynott’s time on nearly every page of the book’s first two chapters. Byrne states that Lynott’s mother, Philomena, was “unable to cope with the sustained pressure of being an unmarried white mother to a mixed race infant” (14). He even includes an interview with an early band mate of Lynott’s who claims he “had a chip on his shoulder about being black in Ireland” (31), which Byrne quickly goes on to dismiss by citing a time Lynott joked about being Irish with some American policemen, who Lynott says “wouldn’t believe him if he told them” where he is from (31).
I’m not really interested in investigating why Byrne seems so interested in minimizing the importance of Lynott’s race. However, the very fact that he can’t minimize it, that he couldn’t make it more than a few pages without bringing it up (despite clearly wanting to dismiss it) is evidence of just how much of an impact being both Black and Irish had on Lynott.
Thin Lizzy’s song “Black Rose: A Rock Legend” (Don’t you love it when Rock songs remind you they are they are Rock songs) is a good representation of what Lynott’s career and music meant to him (at least in the opinion of your humble narrator). The song is about as Irish as a Hard Rock song can get (nevermind that kickin’ China cymbal at the end), complete with lyrics of Cuchulain and a melody consisting of a smattering of Irish traditional tunes. The song’s title, however, is most telling to me. “Black Rose” is obviously a translation of Róisín Dubh and, so, draws on the aisling poetry tradition, but it sticks out to me that Lynott didn’t decide to go with the more common “dark Rosaleen”. In short, in an imaginative turn, Lynott seems to be positing himself as the “Black Rose” (he was a rock legend wasn’t he?) and so claiming a central place in Irish culture without foregoing his Blackness. And, in case your knowledge of Thin Lizzy is limited to “The Boys are Back in Town” (a song that certainly shows that Lynott spent a lot of time thinking about the importance of fitting into a community) “Black Rose”is far from an isolated incident. The band’s earlier song “Emerald” also plays with some obvious Irish inspired imagery (also the greatest guitar riff of 1976), and, in “Vagabond of the Western World” Lynott claims the title “playboy of the western world” for himself, again claiming a role central to Irish history and identity as he invokes John Synge’s definitive play (to make no mention of the Fruedian field day that is a man who didn’t know his father comparing himself to the pseudo-patricidal Christy Mahon). Finally, despite his claims of Irish authority, Lynott seems quite unsure of his place as a Black man, even singing “I’m a little black boy and I don’t know my place” in the lesser known song “Black Boys on the Corner”, which, notably, occupies the B-Side to the “Whiskey in the Jar” single. This actually makes the single a poignant image of Lynott’s personal struggle, as a song recounting his struggles as a Black man is placed alongside a traditional Irish ballad (though notably relegated to the less significant B-side of the record).
Every Rock star (much like everyone really) is first and foremost an actor. They craft an identity and inhabit it. Sometimes this takes a pretty overt form like the many characters of David Bowie, and sometimes it’s simply the act of making a large amphitheater performance look “real” (I’m looking at you Bruce Springsteen). For Lynott, this role was an opportunity to shirk off the strangeness of being Black in Dublin in the 1960s-70s, and to claim a central role in Irish culture. Lynott’s Hard Rock bravado was about carving out a place for himself, a way to lay an unchallenged claim on Irishness where he would no longer have to worry about convincing American policemen about his nationality. So, simply put, he’d probably be pretty happy about the statue.
Works Cited
Byrne, Alan. Philip Lynot: Renegade of Thin Lizzy. Mentor Books, 2012.
This post is something of a challenge to myself. As you can probably tell, the title has a notable keyword, monthly. I am hoping to make a post (however brief a sketch it might be) documenting my progress on working towards my MA thesis (or dissertation, I’m still not entirely sure what we call it here at UCC) every month until the last source is cited. Mostly, this is to keep me working on it in a disciplined fashion, because I’ll be really embarrassed if I have to admit that I spent a whole month doing nothing but stuffing my face with Jackie Lennox chips and scrolling through the “Heckin’ pictures of DANG doggos” Facebook page.
Ehem, more to the point.
For this, my first month, I guess I’ll start by outlining where my thesis is, and I think I’ll do so by spending a little time recounting how I got here. I began with a general interest in tracing some point of connection between African-American and Irish authors. My idea was vague and, in its earliest iterations, certainly suffered from being a pretty basic comparison, checklisting the similarities in their experiences as racialized and essentialized others. However, while doing some general reading on my topic, I happened on Elizabeth Cullingford Ireland’s Others, which includes a chapter that, while it does explore some of the more legitimate points of contact between the Irish and African-American experience, cautions against taking the comparison too far.
Cullingford’s warning gave me a new focus, or structuring element for my research. I began not just to consider the overlaps between these two traditions, but, instead, to ponder the effects of the act of comparison, or barring outright comparison, the points of contact found in Irish and African-American literature.
However, at the same time, I began to be interested in loosening my focus on African-American literature in the first place. Rather, I started to contemplate focusing on African diasporic literature instead. This was about the time of Joyce and Walcott: Colonial Modernity and the Death of Difference, which, in many ways, is a brief step towards the kind of inquiry I hope my thesis will be.
Okay, so this is “the story” or at least how I got this far. What follows, is where I am.
I am interested in exploring how Irish and diasporic African authors create comparisons between one other, whether tacit or outright, and the nature of these comparisons. Thus far, I am treating these two comparisons under two broad categories: comparisons that destroy difference and those that embrace it. It is worth stressing that both these categories remain comparisons, not contrasts, they simply handle the inherent differences of the two social groups in very different ways.
Joyce and Walcott, at least currently, would fall under the category of authors whose writing destroy difference. Again, Please see my earlier post for more on that.
Currently, I am still working out who would be my go to examples for those that embrace difference. Roddy Doyle, in both The Commitments and his short story collection The Deportees is currently a strong contender, and I have some thoughts about Amiri Baraka’s plays and Spike Lee’s films that might earn them a place in this discussion.
Ultimately, I am interested in seeing what kinds of alternatives to the either/or discourse of colonialism, racism, and essentialism are opened up by these methods of comparison. Furthermore, I am left wondering what kind of influence these distinctly subaltern and peripheral literary happenings could have had on the development of the ideas of Modernism and Postmodernism as cultural/philosophic/historic/what-have-you periods.
Looking forward to next month, I am hoping to start a reading list (I’ve already made it, but need to actually start reading through it) and commit to making some organized notes and commentary on at least a weekly basis that will help me keep my work structured.
Wish me luck.
Works Cited
Cullingford, Elizabeth. Ireland’s Others: Gender and Ethnicity in Irish Literature and Popular Culture. Cork University Press, 2001.
Disney’s decision to reboot Star Wars left me with a lot of anxiety, anxiety that was not necessarily alleviated by the release of The Force Awakens; yes, I thought the film was good and even went to see it multiple times, but its obvious reliance on the plot of A New Hope was concerning. Well, now that I’ve seen Rogue One I can officially breath a sigh of relief for the franchise, if not for global politics, as I’ll explain: it wasn’t just a remake of Empire Strikes Back, so, I can rest reasonably assured I’ve not just been going to see Star Wars: The Remastered Edition.
One of the things that has given Star Wars its staying power over the years (besides capitalistic if not creative genius on the part of George Lucas and those really cool lightsaber noises) has been its pertinence. Star Wars, like many other works of popular media, is a cultural litmus, and the man behind the scary robot mask is a great indication of what most Westerners are concerned about at any given point in time. In the original trilogy, we had a simple breakdown between the good guys, who stood for freedom and democratic leadership in the form of the last remnants of the galactic senate, versus the evil Empire, presented on screen with a cold Soviet aesthetic and propensity for mass destruction in the form of everyone’s favorite “secret weapon” the size of a small moon, The Death Star. Let’s be honest, this plot has such distinctive Cold War era vibes that it led Ronald Reagan to name a space-age inspired defense system after it. Following this, we, begrudgingly, received the prequels, in which the real enemy is the sneaking abuse of societal fear by the Senator Palpatine who, SPOILER is actually the bad guy who rises to power just like Hitler, but in a film series that actually speaks to the concerns of Bush-Era America. I might add it speaks to these concerns in a distinctly more liberal register than the earlier films, and many were forced (see what I did there) to ask is George Bush a Sith Lord?
Fast forward to Star Wars in its newest manifestation. I would argue that The Force Awakens only addresses contemporary concerns in as far as the promulgation of big budget franchise reboots selling consumers the same thing over and over and over again is a major concern in the age of Marvel, but in reality the movie played it safe topically. Rogue One, however, is the first of the rebooted films to take an overarching stance. This was evident before the film even premiered with certain Alt-Right figures and Trump supporters calling to boycott the film as anti-Trump after the filmmakers made some disparaging comments about Trump and posited the Empire as the kind of “White Supremacist” organization the Alt-Right would like to see itself as and that Mr. Trump has done very little to distance himself from (“Fans boycott ‘Star Wars'”).
The film itself, rather than its media coverage, certainly encourages turning a critical eye towards demagoguery, and offers a nice, diverse cast of heroes to look towards instead. However, what is more revealing about the film is its probing of the nature and ethics of resistance. In Rogue One we do not see the unified, always in the right, rebellion. Rather, we see disjointed factions that cannot agree on the best way to keep evil at bay. For filmmakers of the stated political persuasion of the film’s writers Chris Weitz and Gary Whitta this obviously reveals a certain fear concerning the American Left’s disorganized and panicked response to the rise of Donald Trump and the kind of conservatism he represents. More importantly, it speaks to America’s heated debate about the “right” way to protest, sparked by concerns over the Confederate Flag flying in the South in the summer of 2015, and carrying right through the year in the form of Black Lives Matter protests, Colin Kaepernick, the prepping of “militias” to combat a “rigged” election, Anti-Trump protesters, and of course the new hallmark of Christmas, anti-Starbucks outrage. Viewers must choose between the tactics of militant extremist Saw Gerrera,
Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera
and the more stayed, political approach of the Rebellion proper. The film, in a surprising revision of usual portrayals of protest, seems to favor Saw’s methods, as his kinda sorta adopted daughter Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) leads a violent, guerrilla attack on the Empire against the Rebellion’s orders in the film’s climax. I wouldn’t go as far as to argue that Rogue One is endorsing a violent approach to protesting trivialities like Starbucks’ cups in this move, but I do think the film is encouraging those who might want to “go rogue” (see what I did there) that to successfully resist, they must make those in power uncomfortable in a meaningful way.
And finally, to come back to my title, I feel like Rogue One is the first Star Wars film to be about war. (Skip to about 1:20 in video below for visual aid)
This is a film that questions the ethics of conflict and resistance. It isn’t a journey with implications of war like the original films, or a political drama with a military backdrop like the prequels; this is a film centered on conflict in such a way as to alter the very cinematic style of the film. Rogue One speaks in the visual shorthand of war films in a way I’ve never observed in a Star Wars film. This is clear in the early desert conflict on Jedha, an urban shootout between disguised militant rebels and the iconic stormtroopers extremely reminiscent of present day conflicts in the Middle-East. What makes the scene particularly reminiscent of a war film rather than your usual Star Wars fun is the obvious presence of civilian danger in the form of the small child Jyn rescues from the fight in a moment that was easily one of the most uncomfortable I’ve experienced watching a Star Wars entry. The war film aesthetic only becomes more obvious in the film’s climax on Scarif, a tropical jungle island, that, complete with guerrilla soldiers and dramatic air-drops, screams Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket.
This leaves me with my most uncomfortable response to the film; simply put, what can we do with all of this violence simmering in the world? The film’s warlike tone could be addressing the many, many less acknowledged conflicts of our time, be they in Syria, North Dakota, or a part of America’s continuing engagement and deployment in Afghanistan. A more optimistic part of me hopes that Rogue One, with its emphasis on covert military actions, is only working to draw attention towards the violence and war that, like the Rogue One forces on Scarif, are already at work, unnoticed, but before the public eye; however, I fear that Rogue One has clearly tapped into an extremely divided and angry public consciousness. How can we hope to diffuse those tensions without resorting to the kind of violence that I, personally, would prefer to leave in a galaxy far, far, away?
Works Cited
“Fans boycott ‘Star Wars’ over rumored anti-Trump scenes.” Foxnews.com, 13 December 2016, http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/12/13/fans-boycott-star-wars-over-rumors-anti-trump-scenes-re-shot.html?refresh=true. Accessed on 16 December 2016.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Directed by Gareth Edwards, Walt Disney Studios, 2016.
Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith. Directed by George Lucas, Twentieth Century Fox, 2005.
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Directed by George Lucas, Twentieth Century Fox, 1977.
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Directed by J. J. Abrams, Walt Disney Studios, 2016.
I decided to give myself a small Christmas present this year in the form of reading a book that is not from a class or directly connected to my research. After some trepidation about what to read, I settled on Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, as I felt I had to honor my country’s first Man Booker Prize recipient. Coincidentally, as a book that fits squarely into the canon of African-American literature (or at least, as much as anything can fit in a “canon”), it does have some relevance to my thesis.
But I promise that was an accident.
The book has been widely lauded as a satire, but I might venture to refer to it as a work of Magical Realism. The plot, to make a molehill out of a mountain, follows a protagonist only named as “Me” or “Bonbon” as he attempts to have his hometown of Dickens put back on the map (literally) after zoning changes swept the primarily black and Latino community under the rug. Our humble narrator ultimately ends up before the Supreme Court after attempting to reinstate segregation in the process. Before I offer any more details about the book or a critical review thereof, please let me emphasize, this is a very funny book.
In fairness, there are points at which, even given the books satirical or fantastical world, the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, I wouldn’t call that a failure. The book is both one of the most logical, and disorienting texts I’ve ever read. The most obvious point of comparison I could offer to it is Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a book that also works just outside the realm of realism. Everything that forces the reader out of the world of the book, be it the inexplicable horse ranches in the hood or the bloody cattle castration for the local school’s career day, only bring you further into the reality of the lived experiences of the characters and, I would go so far as to say, the cognitive dissonance of anyone living in a country that pats itself on the back for being the land of opportunity, while still failing to admit to its inherent inequalities.
While the book is obviously interested primarily in questions of race, I do think it could just as easily be read as an interrogation of how societal reality is perceived in a modern-day commercialized country. At one point, after a discussion about representation in automobile commercials, the protagonist thinks to himself, “the only thing you absolutely never see in car commercials isn’t Jewish people, homosexuals, or urban Negroes, it’s traffic” (139). The book never takes the easy way out, simply implying that racism, inequality, and oppression are purely the results of hatred and bigotry (even if they are still present forces) but that they are also the results of the push to achieve some kind of ideal reality, a reality probably most aptly referred to as The American Dream. It is easy to clear a stretch of highway and convince people that with the right car all doors are open, but The Sellout is about the the traffic pile-up on either side of that commercial shot. It is a book about the difference between reality as it is lived, as it is written about and reported, and how it is perceived, because at the end of the book you have to ask yourself, did the protagonist segregate his hometown, or just put up signs acknowledging the segregation that was already there, just outside the view of the commercial camera.
To come “full circle” as they say, one of the primary concerns of the book is the impossibility of closure (as is indicated in my epithet). One thing that so impressed me about The Sellout was how this played out an a personal level through the protagonist’s relationship with his father, a Psychology professor with a propensity for bringing his research home whose death at the hands of the local police force help catalyze much of the action of the book. Whereas most satires are high on wit and low on heart, I felt Beatty succeeded immensely at making this a book about the protagonist making sense of his grief (even if it is a grief that is never overtly stated) and coming to terms with his problematic upbringing as the ultimate social science experiment. On a more social/political level, the book questions the impulse for closure, whether it comes through reparations for past injustice or though pretending that injustice never happened. I use the word questions here quite deliberately, because the book is first and foremost a send-up of the idea that there are easy answers because, simply put, the shit doesn’t end.
I apologize in advance for contributing my own kindling to the already blazing inferno of think pieces responding to the 2016 U.S. election, but, as an English graduate student with aspirations of being a college professor of Literature in due time, I feel obligated to share what I’ve felt to be a leading factor in the anger, division, and outright conspiracy theories that have now, officially, set the course for the most powerful nation on Earth for the next four years at least. That factor is, as you might of guessed by the title, the failure of Humanities education in the United States of America.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Humanities is a blatantly disregarded discipline in the U.S. Jokes about unemployed Philosophy and English majors are so wide-spread that university departments devote considerable time and energy to simply convincing students that there is a benefit to the Humanities in the first place, with many a webpage devoted to enumerating the desirable skills provided by studying the Humanities (see here). In my own experiences as a former Writing Center Consultant, I can verify that there are plenty of students graduating from high school in the U.S. who have never written a full page of text on their own, who possess only a rudimentary grasp of grammar, and who’ve never been expected to do more after reading a book than be able to list the events of the text.
Before anyone signs out of this post here, fearful of a “grammar nazi” tirade, stay with me for just a bit longer. Some of the very same students were among the most hardworking, intelligent students that I spoke to during my time as a consultant. The problem had nothing to do with their ability, but simply what they had been expected to do.
So, you might be asking, where does the election come into play? Well I would usually categorize the skills one gets from the Humanities into two broad headings: literacy and communication. Literacy, fairly obviously, is the ability to read, but it is also the ability to understand what is read and it see its relationship to other, seemingly extraneous situations. Furthermore, it is the ability to assess the reliability and consistency of what is read. The ability to communicate is the ability . . . well to communicate.
Even I’m sick of my stuffy definitions, lets get to the point, shall we?
Let’s start with unpacking the failure of literacy in the election. This election was, at least partially, decided by conspiracy theories. Yes, there were hard line Republicans who would never dream of voting any other way, there were hard put to it working class people who heard in Trump’s message hope of a new job instead of a place in the Welfare line, and people with genuine, reasonable reservations about Hilary Clinton. Then there were people who voted for Trump because they believed Hilary Clinton is a rampant murderer and suffers from very well hidden Parkinson’s Disease (you know, that really subtle disease that Michael J. Fox suffers from). To make a brief recourse to the anecdotal, I’ve heard extremely intelligent, rational people hold this line of argument in real life, face to face, not just in the no-man’s-land of the internet. As explained earlier, literacy is more than just reading; it is the rational evaluation of what is read. It is asking whether the writer is biased and making a decision to seek additional sources to verify what you have read. Yes, the internet makes it very easy to spread fake news (see here for a Guardian article on the same theme), but, with a quick Google search, verification has also never been faster. This kind of literacy, focused on checking the validity of sources, is a central component of a Humanities education, but what are you going to do with a Humanities education, amiright?
For those of you who made it past the grammar nazi scare who are now considering signing out before this crazy liberal writes the next Communist Manifesto, again, patience, patience, the Dems and a proper definition of communication (you didn’t think that I would really let that shoddy one from earlier stand in a post in defense of the Humanities did you?) are next.
As any Rhetoric and Composition professor can tell you, good communication is clear, simple, and fact-driven (though always willing to engage emotionally), appropriate to its subject-matter, and, what has probably been the most grievous mistake for liberals and conservatives of late, it speaks to its audience, not against them. It doesn’t take long to see where self-proclaimed Democrats and the Left at large failed in almost all of these charges. Some defended their views with unnecessary critical terminology and identity theory to force an intellectual high-ground in situations where a simple “do unto others” would have sufficed, but those who failed to communicate through appropriate means failed most “bigly” (maybe that word alone suffices for why the Humanities were sadly absent in this election). If I am interested in applying for a job, I send in a cover letter, not a greeting card. I text my friends, but I call my grandfather. A key to clear communication is to choose the medium most conducive to what you want to communicate and to whom you are communicating. As a whole, I feel like the Left failed to do this this election season. Bernie-or-Busters chanted in the aisles of the DNC rather than took efforts to make their loss into a victory (something I feel Sander’s himself succeeded wonderfully at doing). Thousands of protesters are marching across the U.S. in protest of Trump’s victory, many of whom did not bother to march to vote, and, please do not mistake me, I am completely in favor of their decision to march against President-Elect Trump, but if this is the only course of action you are taking you are failing to communicate clearly.
And, finally, both sides of this argument are failing to actually address their attempts at communication to one another. It is really easy to convince a bunch of Trump supporters Trump is great, and it is easy to convince a bunch of liberals the very same about Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, but this doesn’t actually accomplish anything, and referring to those you disagree with as libtard-crybabies and nazi-deplorables isn’t really reaching out to the hearts and minds of the people. People respond when communication is addressed to them in such a way as to make them feel “on the same team” with the communicator. If you have any doubts about how important the words you choose are, simply consider the fact that a billionaire real-estate tycoon currently has a lot of middle-class factory workers convinced he understands and cares about their problems. It is up to Americans to realize that most people agree that they want our country to be a great place and work towards that together, instead of in opposition to one another.
So, you might ask, what’s the takeaway here? Simply put, the Humanities, the most widely dismissed branch of academic study in the U.S. today, is the only one that could give the American citizenry the skills needed to fight back against conspiracy theories, to articulate their political goals clearly and productively, and most importantly, to remember that the big bad “other” isn’t so other, but is really just a human, subject to the same failings as you and anyone else on your “team.” After all, it’s called the Humanities for a reason.
Anecdote on a Jarman 