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.