What's in a Name?

Bharati Mukherjee employs the importance of names, the importance of the sign, signifier, and the referent. Throughout this novel, Mukherjee frequently provides names as symbols of irony and confrontation.

A few examples include:

“Comes from the Old English. Slaughter Field,” he offers, uninvited. Page 9.

Irony in names: Mr. Abraham talking about “Other” but that is the irony, because of the monotheistic history of Abraham.

“Rebecca Easton was dead, she must have taken a Nipmuc name. Hannah Easton Fitch Legge was dying.

As the novel continues, the reader must be acutely aware of the names as they change and grow. There are several characters and the name alterations only complicate it.

Antigone and Single Parents

“Indeed! For of our two brothers, Creon

gives honorable burial to one,

but dishonors the other. They say that

he hid Eteocles beneath the earth

with well-deserved pomp and circumstance,

as one honored among the dead below;

but the corpse of Polynieces, who died

so sadly, they say it has been declared

to the citizens that no one may bury

or mourn him, but must see him unlamented,

unburied, a sweet find for birds to feast upon.”

--Antigone, Sophocles’ “Antigone”, 25-25

            Single parents have been a hot topic in communities and legislation for some time now. Governments hold meetings and panels to “speak up” for the single parents. What is ironic, however, is that the single parents can’t physically be there. Individuals attempt to represent single parents, but the lack of physical presence tremendously damages the single parents’ ability to represent themselves.

            So, there’s a huge misunderstanding. The “representatives” arrive and speak out as a kind of proxy for the single parents but what can truly replace the physical presence of the occupier of the “issue” at hand? The bottom line, explains Jane Juffer, is that the body (physical presence) must be accounted for, not just the mind (the value of the mind is a separate discussion, here the discussion pertains to the lack of physical presence).

            I would like to discuss two examples I find particularly relevant to Juffer’s deconstruction. The first is Sophocles’ “Antigone”, the second is the recent tragedy of the ship wreck off the coast of Italy disastrously resulting in the death of two beloved White Bear Lake residents.

            I will first briefly explain the context for the tragedy “Antigone”:

Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus (former ruler of Thebes), is caught in a trap between justice and livelihood. Creon, her power hungry uncle recognizes the death of both Oedipus’s sons (Antigone’s brothers) but only gives proper burial to Eteocles, intentionally leaving the body of Polynieces unburied and unmoved out on the battlefield for punishment to Polynieces treason against his fate.

            A burial is a high part of honor and tradition in Greek culture. To intentionally leave a person unburied is one of the greatest insults one could inflict on another person and their lineage.

            So Antigone, in pursuit of upholding her brother’s honor and in an epic quest for justice, ventures dangerously onto the battlefield to find and bury Polonieces’s body. The risk of her getting caught would result in death by stoning.

            Thousands of years ago, the respect and understanding of the importance and honor of the body was enough to die for.

            Fast forward to present day with the shipwreck tragedy off the coast of Italy, resulting in the death of two Minnesotans. Before anyone discovered the bodies, the family of the couple held prayer services and memorials to commemorate their lives. However, recently, the coast discovered the bodies.

            The Pioneer Press quotes the family after they learned of the discovery:

“We will now be able to move forward and bring them home to rest” – Pioneer Press.

The article also states:

“Erickson said the recovery of the couples’ bodies helps the parish enter the next stage of healing” – Pioneer Press

Undoubtedly, the essence of a person (mind, personality, and spirit) is quintessential to any person’s relationship with them, however, a relationship with a person physically present is different than the memory of their spirit or mind.

            Juffer captures the root of issue with representation of single parents. Single parents need to and deserve to represent themselves rather than have a stranger represent an idea that the stranger is Other to. Unfortunately, Antigone and the Heil family receive some type of closure while single parents remain stuck and misrepresented.

            Bodies are important.

The Feminine Individual

“The female subject is a site of differences; differences that are not only sexual or only racial, economic or (sub)cultural, but all of these together and often enough at odds with one another…. These differences cannot again be collapsed into a fixed identity, the sameness of all women as Woman, or a representation of Feminism as a coherent and available image” --Teresa de Lauretis

Individuality in Female Characters

Author Binyavanga Wainaina writes a satirical essay titled “How to Write About Africa”.  In his essay, Wainaina suggests how to write about women, imploring they “must look utterly helpless.  She can have no past, no history....Moans are good.  She must never say anything about herself… except to speak of her…suffering” (Wainaina, 93).  This description, with the rest of the essay, portrays the limited opinions and perspectives of women in African writing.  This essay demonstrates the singularity of many African female characters that are void of personality.  In tremendous contrast, Tsitsi Dangarembga, in her novel Nervous Conditions, eliminates the stereotypical “Woman” from her novel by portraying individual and complex female characters, challenging the clichéd “fixed identity” of African women.

The protagonist of the novel, Tambu, challenges the stock woman character in her desire for education and to break the mold and limitations placed on her sex by her culture.  The character of Tambu as the narrator provides an interesting spin on her identity in the novel also. Tambu narrates the story as an adult, telling the story from a retrospective mentality. She recounts her life as a young woman in her teens and her relationships with her family (specifically her brother) and her culture. Tambu tremendously desires to attend school, against the financial capabilities of her family. However, she is not stopped by these limitations and decides she will earn her own way to school, growing and selling vegetables from her garden. Tambu’s refusal to accept the limitations set upon her by her culture powerfully portrays Dangarembga’s ability to create complex identities in female characters.

Similarly, Tambu’s sister, Lucia, presents great friction against the typical mold for women through her sexual endeavors. Women (arguably in all cultures) are stereotypically expected to remain innocent (chaste) until marriage. Lucia, however, is known to have been sexually involved with several men and is unabashed by these actions.

Tambu is only allowed entrance to school upon the death of her brother. She is so obsessed with education that a part of her does not mourn the principles by which she is finally able to attend, though she opens the novel stating “I was not sorry when my brother died” (Dangarembga, 1). The subtle cultural resistance that she is up against, however, is revealed in her discussion with her uncle upon entrance to school. She states, “Lastly, he explained, at the mission I would not only go to school but learn ways and habits that would make my parents proud of me.  I was an intelligent girl but I had also to develop into a good woman, he said, stressing both qualities equally and not seeing any contradiction in this” (Dangarembga, 88).

Maiguru, Tambu’s aunt, may be the most subtly powerful character in the novel. Maiguru and her husband, Babamukuru have spent much of their adult life in England, focusing on their education. Immediately, Maiguru is set apart from the typical role of women in her education.  Her role is also a tool of foreshadowing the experience Tambu shares as she moves to her aunt and uncle’s. Tambu remembers,

When I stepped into Babamukuru’s car I was a peasant…. This was the person I was leaving behind…. At Babamukuru’s I would have the leisure, be encouraged to consider questions that had to do with survival of the spirit, the creation of consciousness, rather than mere sustenance of the body. (Dangarembga, 58-59)

This passage, however, creates tremendous irony in the actual experience of Maiguru. Maiguru experiences intense under-appreciation, especially from her husband. Her character and life is extraordinarily complex. She is a highly educated woman who desires an equal partnership with her husband. However, this is not her experience. Upon returning to their homeland, Maiguru is immediately expected to provide for her husband and family as nothing more than a servant.

            Another crucial character to evaluate is the character of Nyasha. Nyasha is Maiguru’s daughter and Tambu’s cousin. She is the epitome of the symbolism of colonization, for she is the ultimate product of two worlds: Western and indigenous, Europe (England) and Africa. Her initial relationship with Tambu (when Tambu moves in with their family) also conveys the dissonance with the native culture. Tambu, on the first night in their home, struggles with communication. An example lies in the greeting of Babamukuru at the dinner table. It states, “ ‘Good evening, Baba,’ Maiguru greeted him in Shona. ‘Good evening, Daddy,’ Nyasha said in English. ‘Good evening, Babamukuru,’ I said, mixing the two languages because I was not sure which was more appropriate’” (Dangarembga, 80). This exchange portrays the language struggle amidst the family. Maiguru, highly educated and skilled in both European culture and her native culture is prepared on their return to Rhodesia to switch to Shona. Nyasha, on the other hand, is skilled primarily in English while Tambu is stuck, concerned to mimic Maiguru or Nyasha. This conversation foreshadows the relationship the girls will have to the present culture, one confident, one confused, though ironically switched.

These characters, Tambu, Lucia, Maiguru and Nyasha powerfully portray the individuality of people and the falsity of stereotyping women into one role. Tambu’s desire to separate herself from traditional roles and her self-reliance in affording and presencing of her own education demonstrate the ability of women to overcome social limitations. Lucia’s sexuality confronts the typical cliché of women as “innocent”, especially in her confidence and assurance in her actions. Maiguru struggles with personal expectations and the expectations placed upon her by her family and culture, a stark contrast from her life in England. Finally, Nyasha represents the ultimate Diaspora. She is lost as to an idea of “home” and does not know where her social expectations exist. None of these women contain a “fixed identity” nor a consistency in issues or sameness.

Works Cited:

Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Seattle: Seal, 1989. Print.

Wainaina, Binyavanga. "How to Write About Africa." Granta 92: A View From Africa. Winter

2005: 91-95. Print.

The Danger of a Single Story

“I recently spoke at a university where a student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel called American Psycho and that it was such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “The Danger of a Single Story”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her novel Purple Hibiscus, seeks to portray the beauty in complexity, demonstrating the importance of exposing the intricacies of a person, a family, a culture; disabling the label of stereotypes and disallowing application of  “a single story”.  Adichie employs the narrative strategies of language and ambiguity to express the intricate emotion present in the Achike’s family life. By demonstrating the complexity of this family’s life, the intricacies transcend to symbolize the complexities within the culture. The culture, just like the families that form it, are not limited to a single story.

            Adichie beautifully explains the idea of a single story through examples in her own life. She recalls the houseboy that worked for her mother when she was a child. She knew his family was poor and that her family gave them things like clothes and food. One day, her mother shows Chimamanda a basket Fide’s (the houseboy) mother made. Adichie was shocked; realizing her only story of Fide was his poverty. This single story stripped him of him humanity, she forgot that he was a person, that his family was capable of making something. Her pity and limited vision created a single story. Fide was no longer complex or human.

            Another recollection and explanation of “a single story” exists in her experiences in Mexico. As she walked through the streets of Guadalajara, she forgot that Mexicans were anything but “abject immigrants”. The media coverage impaired her vision, forcing her to seeing only a single story.

            As Adichie learned the complexities of people and the opposing single stories present in her own life, she desired to eliminate this ignorance by writing a novel of her own culture and the complexities and intricacies of its people. These complexities live in several aspects of family life, but most powerfully in language and ambiguity. Kambili Achike, the protagonist and narrator of Purple Hibiscus, and her brother Jaja share a private language. Kambili recounts, “We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know” (Adichie, 23). They are not limited to the single language of the culture.

Eugene, Kambili and Jaja’s father condemns Igbo (the native language) and encourages English (the language of the colonizers), just as he condemns traditional beliefs as opposed to Catholicism (again, the religion of the colonizers). The children are bilingual, a true skill, and the intense implications of the use of each language limit their ability to speak freely and openly for they are required to tailor their speech to situations.

This hindrance develops into a literal speaking problem for Kambili.

“Aunty Ifeoma’s little garden next to the verandah of her flat in Nsukka began to lift the silence. Jaja’s defiance seemed to me now like Aunty Ifeoma’s experimental purple hibiscus: rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the one the crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after the coup. A freedom to be, to do.” (Adichie, 16).

             In a review of Purple Hibiscus, Heather Hewitt describes communication between Kambili and Jaja as “asusu anya, the language of the eyes” (Hewitt, 9). She also presents the fear that resides within Kambili out her relationship at home: “Kambili literally has no voice, and she is trapped in a cycle of self-negation by her adoration of her godlike father and her acute need for his affirmation” (Hewitt, 9). Kambili’s character is not a simple one. She is not stuck in the single story so often presented of African culture. Bingyavanga Wainaina writes a wonderful satire called “How to Write about Africa”. In it he urges (in jest) for authors to describe their characters as “…empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause” (Wainaina, 94). Adichie challenges the process in her characters for their inner conflict and dialogue, the language they are forced to use and the language they are forced to suppress.

            The other literary technique employed is ambiguity within situations. This tool used in the novel powerfully portrays the fear and emotion the characters are experiencing, and the true human tendencies when threatening and violent situations occur. Adichie shares,

“I was in my room… when I heard the sounds. Swift, heavy thuds on my parents’…bedroom door…. I stepped out of my room just as Jaja came out of his. We stood at the landing and watched Papa descend. Mama was slung over his shoulder like the jute sacks of rice… ‘There’s blood on the floor,’ Jaja said. ‘I’ll get the brush from the bathroom.’” (Adichie, 33).

That night, after the children clean up the blood, Adichie writes, “Mama did not come home that night, and Jaja and I had dinner alone. We did not talk about Mama” (Adichie, 33). This situation is full ambiguity, leaving the reader full of questions, wondering what has occurred. Though one can make inferences, in the moment, the situation is not discussed. This ambiguity creates intense emotion and tremendously complicates the characters.

            A single story is a dangerous endeavor, for it limits and shelters. Readers are coaxed into ignorance and are not allowed the greater picture of concerns and issues plaguing characters. Humans are complex beings, single stories squelch depth and intricacies.

Works Cited:

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Purple Hibiscus. New York: Anchor, 2003. Print.

Hewitt, Heather. "Finding Her Voice." Rev. of Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngozi

 Adichie. The Women's Review of Books 21.10 (11 July, 2004): 9-10. Print.

Wainaina, Binyavanga. "How to Write About Africa." Granta 92: A View From Africa

Winter 2005: 91-95. Print.

Sometimes, things fall apart. And so we wait…for a Superman.

Turning and turning the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

--W.B. Yeats “The Second Coming”

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_Fall_Apart

The absent center, the transcendental signified. Author Chinua Achebe employs W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" to portray the disjunctive relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. The protagonist, Okonkwo, is lost in his ability to recognize the culture and community he comes from after his banishment from Umuofia (Okonkwo’s village and home). The Ibo culture he knew and loved had altered drastically with the infiltration of the English colonizers. The center of Okonkwo’s life – his theological and mental organization – had been destroyed with Western ideals, namely Christianity. Jacques Derrida sheds light on this story. The Europeans, (in this case, particularly the district commissioner employed in the closing stages of the novel), seek to observe and understand the Ibo culture. Why? And why doesn’t this work? This does not work because of ethnocentrism. “Mr. Brown” and the district commissioner (Achebe employs these characters as primary facets to observe the distorted relationship between the colonizers and the colonized) enter Okonkwo’s village for two reasons (other than physical profit and land power): to observe this “primitive species” and to enlighten “them” on civilization and culture. Upon entering the village, the fragile ecosystem (present in ANY culture) is shattered.

In walks Jacques Derrida.

Derrida recognizes this destructive pattern present in countless stories, tales and historical recollections. What is it? It is ethnocentrism. Humans seek to find the answer to infiltrating without destroying, but in the process, we annihilate and devastate that particular way of existence.

Other cultures are not Other as we so often see them to be. Rather, they are other. Ethnocentrism is destructive because it seeks to “study” another culture as "Other" with the attitude that the observer’s culture is dominant to the subject’s culture. Instead, Derrida argues, we need to study the relationship between the cultures, how different culture impact one another in yet another, larger ecosystem.

But alas, we have not yet found a way.

So we are stuck, in a turning and widening gyre, loosing touch with our roots, falling into an absent center – releasing deeper and more violent anarchy than ever before.

What are we going to do? How are we going to fix this?

The answer is simple, according to some. We will wait. For a Superman.

In 2010, Walden Media in part with Get Schooled, Participant Media, and TakePart.com released a powerful documentary called “Waiting for Superman” http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/ . This documentary traces the process of several young students across the United States as they seek acceptance to schools that will not turn them out and treat them like a cog in a machine in a factory (Bricoleur?). This film illustrates the desperate need for the United States to reform its public education system. How is this relevant? I feel this film is relevant on multiple levels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKTfaro96dg 

First, it implies our cultures’ desperation, that we are simply here, waiting for a being with superpowers to enter into our plight and save us from our struggles. We displace our disability onto a superability (Freud and Berube). Jacques Lacan has a similar point.

Jacques Lacan and Rene Descartes (a sixteenth to seventeenth century French philosopher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Descartes ) explore the idea of “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. (based off of cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am). This phrase explores the relationship of the ego and the shadow, part of how we recognize what we are is by recognizing what we are not. However, this recognition can only go so far when we define our capabilities by superhuman strength. We are not superwomen or men, we must apply our strengths and abilities to become the person we are waiting for.

Psychoanalysis: The I, the Self, and the Other.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger presents a kind of equation to his fundamental philosophies:

Questioning <--> Language <--> Thinking

Thinking <--> Questioning <--> Language

Language <-->Thinking <--> Questioning

This philosophy supports Saussure’s theory that language is not fixed, however, it contrasts it by stating that our language does have influence over our thinking. We think in language. We form questions from our thinking. Therefore we question and understand through our language. The Puritans, however, take this too far in their interpretations of divine intervention manifest in physical occurrences.

            This creates tension when we are trying to understand something else. We are a self. In that self, we have an “I” this “I” is the same “I” as the one that learned to tie tennis shoes and ride a bike. However, this “I” has grown tremendously and has evolved since the “I” we had when we were little. Because of this, the “I” is always Other to the self. Laccan does not think that we can ever comprehend the totality of the “I”, therefore the totality of the self. The self, then is always Other to our existence. How can this be? How can we grow in any way or build any type of relationships? It is in acknowledging the Other and transforming it to other that we can begin to let other people into our self, into our totality. Our totality is created by others and by our relationship with things that are Other, also.

            A recent example I witnessed this process was in the screen adaptation of Kate Stockett’s The Help. Overall, I felt the movie was an excellent adaptation of the book, however, I have one qualm. This qualm resides in the relationship between Cecelia Foote and Minnie the maid. In the book, the reader learns about Cecilia’s background and her inability to adapt to high society in Jackson. She is Other to the culture she married in to. This same culture that refuses to receive Celia has another Other constantly challenging it. This second Other is that of the African American families and individuals that work in the homes of the elite class in Jackson. The African American families are Other, they are different, foreign, dirty, diseased and subservient. They are not welcomed into the “I” of any person.

            This relationship changes however, with two women. One is Celia Foote and the other is Skeeter. Skeeter seeks to build a relationship with the women plagued as “the help” by recognizing the situation and working to address it from a common thread rather than as her, a white elite condescending herself to the Afircan American women. Instead, she acknowledges the ties that they have and works with them to move forward. She begins welcoming them into her totality (and vie versa) and in this way transforms her “I”, therefore her “self”.

            The relationship that is misconstrued in the book is the relationship between Minnie and the Footes. In the book, Celia struggles building a relationship with Minnie because she immediately jumps the separation and desires to enter a relationship of friendship rather than worker and employer. This relationship is impossible without some form of acknowledgment of the Otherness of the situation. Without acknowledging that something is Other, it cannot enter our totality. However, it is imperative not to seek welcoming something into our totality as Other. Something that is Other is always Other, something Other cannot be entered into our totality. Our “self” is dependent on our relationships with what is Other, but what is Other is not a part of our totality. In order to fully embrace Minnie as other rather than Other, she must acknowledge the commonality and seek to move forward. The screen adaptation fails to relay this process that the book includes, instead it jumps immediately to friendship.

If you Give a Mouse a Cookie...

                                   

Over determination, metonymic chain of desire, condensation, latent and manifest content, metaphor, displacement. Sigmund Freud, Millicent Bell, Kate Chopin, Saussure, and Hawthorne all represent these literary and psychoanalytic terminologies. These authors are world famous, their ideas and philosophies have transcended generations and fresh waves of thinking. Upon first learning about these terms in relation to these authors, I was challenged and thought far too hard about how these terms relate to my life. Then the proverbial light bulb went off. I had a stunning realization that these terms and ideals have been a part of my literary (thus personal) experience since before I could read. Another author had reached me far earlier than Bell, Saussure or Hawthorne. This author? Laura Numeroff in her best selling work: If you Give a Mouse a Cookie. Numeroff relates the tale of a young boy and a small mouse, and the metonymic chain of desire the boy is forced to fulfill for the meaning of the mouse’s day.

Kate Chopin's “Silk Stockings” reminded me of another work by poet C.P. Cavafy. The poem is called “Waiting for the Barbarians”.

           

Waiting for the Barbarians

Why this sudden bewilderment?

This sudden confusion?

Why are the streets and squares emptying

so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thoughts?

Because night has fallen

and the Barbarians have not come.

And some of our men, just in from the border,

say there are no Barbarians any longer!

Now, what is going to happen to us without

the Barbarians?  They were, those people, after all,

a kind of solution.

     C. P. Cavafy:  Selected Poems

This poem presents the chaos and confusion that arises from an interruption in this metonymic chain of desire, in the over determination that we have created. I learned of this poem in terms of security. We seek and desire security, but if we live in a society that seeks to attain security, we constantly need an enemy—an Other. What happens, then when the enemy no longer exists? What happens is not security, but a dysfunctional group that has lost its connection to one another for the bond that has joined them (fighting the enemy) has disappeared. They no longer share the same metaphorical “meaning” to their lives. The manifest content of this poem demonstrates the interruption in a way of thinking and the confusion that arises when our metonymic chain of desire disappears. The latent content of this poem demonstrates the trivial nature of living a life centered around displacement (the barbarians as a constant “Other” and enemy) and the emptiness that arises from living in a constant state of want.

            Then we must discuss the ideas of the signifier, the signified, and the referent. Hester Prynne, in the Scarlett Letter, is the culture’s scapegoat. She is the one that is forced into Other-ness, into separation, one who meant to be forced out of the culture’s totality. Just in recent history, C.P. Cavafy’s poem is highly relevant. The United States fought Germany, fought Communists, fought the Middle East, the Axis of Evil. Each “enemy” took the place of the previous one, for the United States needed a barbarian, an Other, a scapegoat. Here, in Puritan society, Hester Prynne is forced into this role. She is forced to wear an “A” on her shirt. This is the signifier, the word. This “A” is meant to hold a connotation of shame and dishonor, the signified. This is meant to create a separation and removal of Hester from the town. This is the referent. Hester destroyed this alleged process by transforming her mark of shame into a badge of honor—she destroys the Puritan belief that language and creation are one. Hester instead reinforces Saussure’s philosophy that there is a huge divide between language and objects. Saussere thinks that language is not fixed, that words are not generated from the referent. I think Hawthorne seeks to portray the disillusion the Puritans lived in, that they believed they controlled creation with their words.

            Author Naomi Klein of No Logo writes that corporations (houses of displacement) have the power to take things that are meaningful and turn them into something that is not. For instance, she presents the example about grass roots construction projects going corporate or the Nike or Tommy Hilfiger logos transforming from inner city pride to main stream logos that fed society’s metonymic chain of desire. In this way, I think Klein is right. These houses of displacement separate us from the meaning in things, we focus instead on the factory or author rather than the content. However, I am confused in this idea because I think more focus should be paid on the factory, especially in terms of Nike. Where are the products coming from? Who is making them? If the answers are not something I agree with, then I do not want to support the content, whatever it may be.