Libra: The astrologist's favorite book

So we've finally gotten to sections in Libra where Oswald and the conspirator's plots are intersecting and they're interacting. I'm writing this going into what I assume will be the chapter on Kennedy's assassination (In Dallas). Here are my thoughts:
I don't love Delillo or his style. He is playing with postmodernism which I like and think is cool, but there are moments where I feel he is being esoteric and coy with the information he gives us and the cryptic phrasing, in a way that is interesting but frustrating. For instance the dialogue. Delillo rarely gives us moments where we see "..." Blank said, which is frustrating because it's easy to lose track of who's talking. However, with that complaining out of the way, here's what I do like a lot--and it's some of the postmodernism stuff on narrative and objectivity.
So throughout the book, Delillo is playing with the fact that all his characters are all over the place, and hard to pin down in the historical record. One of the things that is interesting about all the main players from the actual historical record is that there are so many theories. People believe Jack Ruby was in on the murder of JFK and that's why he killed Oswald, people believe he was just a patriot, people believe his Jewishness had something to do with it (this could just be anti-semitism, I didn't look into it), that his role with the cops was suspicious and that they were in on it, that he was in debt to the mob and that's what pressured him into doing it, etc. There are a lot of narratives. And Delillo--a good postmodernist--is hesitant to not explore and accept all the different possibilities, so he sets them all up. He has Ruby talk about how he struggles as a Jew in Dallas, is incredibly insecure about his masculinity and patriotic, friends with the cops, having money troubles, and talking to the mob (and willing to talk to the FBI, so maybe he'll get contracted by the CIA). All of the possible narratives are given a starting point when we first meet Ruby.
Then look at Oswald, who is constantly in flux as a person who is anti-Kennedy and Pro-communism and Castro, but also someone who served in the American military. He is full of contradictions as a person and is easily influenced. When Ferrie takes him to the astrologist and they talk about the characteristics of a Libra, we get this made more explicit. Oswald is balancing "positive Libra" which is headstrong, and full of belief, and also "negative Libra" where he is impulsive and easily influenced by whoever is around him. This is not only an interesting analysis of Delillo's character Oswald, but also addresses the problem with him in history, which is that he doesn't make a lot of sense. He has all these conflicting narratives, seeming simultaneously headstrong and susceptible, both steadfast and impulsive.
Not to mention David Ferrie, a man who explicitly says that he "believes in everything" after taking Oswald to the astrologist. He believes in science, he believes in magical explanations. He takes in every possible explanation and tries to build a world-view out of all of them.
These things aren't just confusing attempts at dealing with historical people being difficult to pin down, they are deliberately postmodern characterizations. The fact that no narrative is above another (even though Delillo is proposing a narrative, he isn't proposing it as one that supersedes another theory), leads Delillo to try to show that any narrative can be set up via historical data, and characterizations. Jack Ruby can be traced to so many different motivations, so, therefore, they are all valid, in fact his motivations were probably multi-faceted, and so it's important for Delillo to explore all of them. Just think of Nicholas Branch, someone with all the information, having trouble creating an accurate narrative, because so many different narratives can be backed up by information. Nicholas Branch--though I didn't talk much about him in this post--is truly just Delillo just exploring historiography as postmodernism. Honestly it is one of the most interesting parts of this book.

Kindred: Historical Fiction Fictionalized

So in Kindred, we see a traditional historical fiction being subverted by the use of time travel, and my question is why? What is the value in this science-fiction-action of a normal historical fiction?

Well, first we must ask ourselves why the use of historical fiction (outside of fiction is how Butler normally writes) to make a point about American slavery. It is possible to make her point in an academic way--that point being the comparison of the slave era to the modern era and how we can't forget or remove the past from the present, along with more--with a formal essay. However, she chooses to write a fiction. Why?

I think this is a relatively straightforward question, but it has multiple levels. The first of these parts is just the making of historical fiction allows the reader to relate in a more emotional basis, and therefore feel the sympathy and anger at slaves and masters respectively. Strangely the historical fiction creates less distance between the present and historical because we are forced to react to it on a deeply personal level, which academic writing or just a history wouldn't force because it doesn't necessarily try to be emotional. If one is reading about facsimiles of people in a fiction, we try to read about them as if they are people that we might meet. Whereas textbook history doesn't create people as 3-dimensional people and we can distance ourselves from them.

Take for example Dana's looking at history in the epilogue. When she is trying to track down all these people she met, and she is using the historical record of the slavery era, but the record is entirely economic. It's names of people that were bought and sold. And despite the fact that we are aware of the horror in the abstract, looking at those documents don't actually induce emotional responses. However, the fictional narrative induces emotions, because it reminds us of how the people were actual people, not just names on a document. And when we are emotionally invested, we can be persuaded in a more human way, than with non-emotional academic writing.

So that is why historical fiction works better than just straight history or academic argumentation. However, Butler doesn't just write a historical fiction, it's science fiction. There's time travel involved, which I think makes the point I mentioned earlier better than any other method. If Kindred is trying show how we cannot remove ourselves from the past, then what better way than to literally bring the past and the present together via Dana and her time travel. Dana's modern perspective allows her to criticize the culture of the antebellum south, but also to see similarities. This is shown when she sees how Rufus and Kevin's similarities. Similarly, when Kevin goes back and feels weirdly ok with some of the things, trying to find a positive, thinking about exploring the west, etc., it is a moment where we see how Kevin's modern perspective makes him dislike the era. However, because the slave era, and present day (for the book) have similarities, and the culture's are very clearly built on each other, Kevin feels strangely at place in the time-period. There are countless scenes like this (which I will discuss more of in the essay I'm writing on this subject), but perhaps the most summative example of the time travel's abilities, is the depiction of Dana feeling off about the strange "I'm home" thought she had about the Weylin plantation. Because she is upset by herself since she has a modern perspective and despises this time period, but the fact that she was able to be initiated into the culture and daily life of the plantation so quickly, and then almost felt like it was home, points to the non-alien culture of the time. It is similar enough to the present that a couple of months was all it took.
(In case you are wondering, my essay will discuss the central idea of kinship--not addressed in this post--within the book, and how it ties into the way the book approaches historiography to make its point.)




      

This is late, but "So It Goes"

I realize I'm posting this after we're nearly done with Kindred, and I also realize that much of the stuff I'm about to say, I have said in comments before, but whatever. I wanted it on my blog. 

What's Vonnegut trying to get us to think about Billy and his perspective? In other words, how much should we agree with "so it goes"?

I don't know but here's what I think so it goes can mean. I think that it can be both a defense of war and a criticism of war. In a way it becomes paradoxical. On the one hand "So It Goes" justifies being passive about violence, because violence will happen. If things just are "so it goes" then we aren't responsible for fixing them. But at the same time, "so it goes" can also mean that we cannot justify war, because it's a very Tralfamadorian thought, and Tralfamadorians have no concept of cause and effect, things just are. So if war just is, it might mean that we can't do anything about it and therefore don't need to try. But also without cause and effect, there is no way to justify violence, there is no cause or reason for the violence. So it goes is both anti-war and pro-war/passive, weirdly. 

Now let's think about Vonnegut. He says that his book fails as an anti-war novel. However, it is an attempt at an anti-war novel. And that would point to us thinking of "so it goes" as anti-war. However, it fails, because the main character seems to be very much in the passive stance to war kind of "so it goes" (not pro-war, just passive). And I think that that's what Vonnegut is doing, he wants us to see both sides, and respect aspects of both of them. For Vonnegut, I think that the passive side might be very comforting because it relieves him of some kind of "survivors guilt". However, he also probably wants his readers to be anti-war, and so he might be asking us to respect the passivity of him, but also to be active ourselves. 

I don't know if Vonnegut is actually using "so it goes" as an out for his own guilt, and using the book to get us to understand him, and also be active. But I do think that the book is anti-war, and therefore Vonnegut is asking us to criticize passivity, the "I couldn't have done anything" mentality, and to be active. That's why Billy isn't heroic. He's not a hero, just a main character. Because we aren't supposed to agree with him. So overall I'd say that "so it goes" is not a mentality that he agrees with. 

Rufus' Villainy

Rufus and Tom Weylin are dangerous in very different ways. Tom cannot be manipulated, but also has no feelings or emotional reasons for atrocities. Whereas Rufus can be manipulated through his emotions, but also can be much more erratic and vicious. And Rufus' qualities do not seem to me like the typical slave-master (or future slave master) villainous qualities. He treats Dana well much of the time, he interacts and talks to these people that he supposedly considers property, as if they are people (albeit lower people than himself). And yet this makes the villainy scarier. Take for example his treatment of Alice.

Rufus wishes Alice loved him, he "loves" her, and her specifically. He actually cares about her, and yet still thinks of her as property, and therefore has no problem thinking of rape as a viable solution to his problems. With both Alice and Dana, Rufus shows a simultaneous belief in the personhood and property-hood of the black people around him. He treats them terribly but does care about them, their thoughts, etc., just only to the point where they do what he wants.

What this does is creates a villain in a slave narrative in a very "realistic" (I don't know if it's actually realistic, but it feels that way to me) way. Because for me it's hard to imagine a person interacting and talking with people the way that slave owners would have had to, and not on some level understand that they had thoughts and feelings. And yet they still held them as property, and still treated them as such in most ways. A slave owner would have had to have known that a slave that he ever talked to had feelings, and still might have raped or done some other thing to them. And that to me is a much scarier and more upsetting depiction of slavery. What Butler shows is a person who understands that someone feels, but still treats them like property and totally gives no shits about their thoughts, and that is terrifying. It is an utter lack of caring, which is made scarier by a slave owner who clearly thinks of Alice and Dana as people much of the time. And as much as it sucks to say it, that's scarier to me than a person who doesn't care but also never even thinks of the slaves as people.

Fun Music Things in Mumbo Jumbo

So in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo Jes Grew is Jazz, Blues, Ragtime, etc. It is Black expression, but much of what is used to depict that is how it has to do with music and dancing. This isn't new information to any of you, but I just wanted to explain some of the fun things he does with music. To make his point about the oppression of Jes Grew. 

First off, in LaBas' story he tells there are all kinds of things about Moses and music. When Moses begins to learn about Jes Grew he learns from Jethro, a man who plays his instrument (guitar?) like no one else. He plays it with deep loud powerful resonance--the way Jes Grew intends music to be played. So Moses wants to play that kind of music. He learns some, and then wants to learn the better, older music, in the Book of Thoth. He goes to ISIS, but Jethro warns him that he will not gain the true music. So Moses goes and gets the music and comes back and plays it but it is flat and weak. It is here that Reed does some interesting stuff. Moses says that he would revitalize the Black Mud Sound, which is dying. He becomes a soloist, "music wouldn't just be used as a background to dancing but he would be a soloist and no 1 would be allowed to play a whistle or bead a drum", and he plays and he uses an "applause sign" (Reed 182-3). What this does is it shows Moses becoming what we might think of as a classical musician. The idea of a virtuoso is a classical music idea, and while Jazz had solo's it didn't discourage dancing. He becomes a white musician, who get's angry when the crowd is rowdy (which happened, Beethoven once walked out of a concert because the crowd wouldn't shut up). He put's up an applause sign, making it not real music, but rather like old white radio music. These are examples of Moses as a white musician, selling out, not being a true Jes Grew artist. 

There are also subtler things going on. When Moses is first learning music from Jethro he would "write it all down", which is a dig at white musicians writing Jazz. Jazz is often not written out. There are jazz "charts" not "scores", with chords and some rhythms and ideas, but nothing written out on sheet music with perfect traditional accuracy. White jazz is often written out completely, like Bill Evans who is an excellent jazz musician but someone who wrote it out. To drive home the point of Moses as the equivalent of a white man stealing black music, Reed gives us the description of Moses "gyrating his hips", which was a movement associated with Elvis, who was a white man who stole “RocknRoll” from Chuck Berry a black musician (whom I believe Ishmael Reed probably prefers to Elvis), just as Moses stole Jes Grew’s music but performed it worse. So in all this, not only is Reed outright stating how Moses is failing at Jes Grew music, he is using very specific ideas about white music, and white appropriation of black music.

That's it. Just a lot of observations. The last one I'll leave you with is the quote "distinguished musicologist Fats Waller was to comment later". He then proceeds to quote Fats Waller. Now Fats Waller was an early jazz musician and comedic entertainer. So this is just a way of taking white academia and forcing it to acknowledge someone who is incredibly knowledgeable about music, but not academically trained about music. This part didn't fit with everything else, but i thought it was interesting. 

My Problem With LaBas' Metanarrative

Throughout Mumbo Jumbo we forced to reevaluate our thoughts about our understandings of black and African cultures. We all grew up with the Atonist mindset having a lot of control over how we think and perceive things. And for the most part, I think the book does a really good job of pointing out that bias. This, of course, culminates in Papa LaBas' speech in Chapters 52 about the origins of the Atonists and Jes Grew. I think it's an incredibly compelling narrative about how the Atonists were created to fight Jes Grew, and that the west adopted it and continued to destroy and oppress Jes Grew. However, one thing stuck out to me: the usage of Moses in the metanarrative, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt frustrated that Ishmael Reed's analysis isn't more complex. 

I understand that part of the point of this narrative is to paint western history with the same 2-dimensional brush that has been used on non-western history. However, that does not mean it is unfair to criticize the narrative. My problem is that LaBas's story feels much more complex and thought out and complicated then the Atonist's version of history would be. The character's in LaBas' story are 2-D but the story is much more complex, so it doesn't feel incorrect to expect a more complicated analysis--especially when I feel like that analysis could make the Atonists even clearer as a threat. 

The first thing that stuck out to me was the lumping of Moses and Judaism in with Atonism and Christianity. It has been fairly well established that Christianity is a product of Atonist interference, at least it's spreading throughout the world. However, the book, for the most part, neglects to discuss how Judaism and Islam fit into this narrative. Only at the end do we get the lumping of Moses with the Atonists. We have his adoptive mother as an Atonist, believing in the brilliance of all things Greek and Western.  This doesn't make sense to me, because the Jews were slaves, to the Atonists in power--namely Moses' adoptive family--they were not the people in power, and it doesn't make sense that the Atonists can be both Moses' parents (in power) and the people that Moses freed from those people. Not to mention, that the Atonists are hinted at being the causes of the World Wars, the second of which involved Hitler (perhaps the most extreme Atonist of the 20th Century) trying to kill all the Jews even though they are apparently also Atonist. And if you want to take the argument that Judaism leads to Christianity and that's the link, then one must realize that Islam also stems from the monotheistic traditions that start up in Judaism. However, Islam is definitely not Atonists, because the Crusades were waged by Christian Atonists. 

The problem for me is that the lack of clarity about those two groups weakens what is an otherwise very powerful understanding of the meta-war between Western and African culture. The Atonists are always in the background erasing and destroying and undermining Jes Grew, but if we can't understand who the Atonists really are and what to think about the other monotheistic religions linked to Christianity, then we can't understand our own Atonist biases with as much complexity. 

DISCLAIMER: I thought the section was fascinating, and I really enjoyed reading all the stuff about Moses and the rewriting of that history. It just struck me as something that, on the one hand, was 2-dimensional and therefore poignant in that way, but on the other hand it's 2-dimensionality undermined a different point Reed was trying to make. I wish the book had taken the time to figure out where they fit in, and to discuss them. (For all the mentions of the crusades and Mutafikah, Islam is not talked about much, and definitely not much in terms of this metanarrative). 

Apologies if that was unclear. I wanted to get the thoughts out there. 

A Postmodern History

Hayden White discusses the constructed nature of history. While he respects that history is concerned with "real events", he says that the methods of construction are very similar in history and in fiction. Both construct narrative around events in an attempt to provide logical or meaningful cause and effect. However, he also goes into the idea that even the idea of narrativity in history is constructed, by culture. He points to examples of history that did not attempt to provide cause and effect, but just lists of events--called Annals. White isn't trying to discredit history though, as shown by the disclaimer at the beginning that he realizes that history is based in events from actual space-time.

With those ideas in mind, it begs the question: What would a history with awareness of this construction look like?

Let us for the moment assume that White's ideas are correct (I hold that these ideas are true but I am aware of controversy). What seems to be the problem is that narrative will always have bias, and White even claims that beyond that, the nature of language is going to provide bias. So how does one undo that bias? My proposal is to first write history from as many perspectives as you can. Start with the annals, try to not narrativize, but just give the things that happened, without any cause and effect. Obviously, there will be cultural bias going on when you decide which events to leave in, but it would provide the reader with a stronger "factual basis" before reading the "stories". One could then explain the point of the annals, as a way of immediately getting the reader to confront their own cultural understanding as non-objective. Tell one story, then provide another, then another. Take the narrative and explain the other perspectives. This allows the reader to have more agency in understanding history. One of these histories could even be that authoritative, "objective" textbook history. However, when you put them all on equal playing fields, you remove the ability of history to argue effectively, so you can then add another thing to this history.

At the end of each perspective, or even claims within the different perspectives, one can provide their complete view, completely lacking in the supposition of objectivity, their personal thoughts. Which still allows one to put forward an argument. Because one of the problems of postmodernism is that it renders the--for example--story of the civil war when told from Confederate sympathizers, and the story from members of the union, on equal footing. This, I would argue, is a problematic thing because I think it is completely fair to undermine the narrative of the Confederacy. So the personal thoughts is where a historian can do that and make a claim for social justice, or whatever topics they wish to address.

This doesn't fix all the problems that postmodernist discourse reveals about history. However, it does help with what I feel are the most important ones. It helps with arguing with supposition of objectivity. It helps with cultural bias and understanding the construction of culture. However, it does fall into the trap of postmodernism--that it asks you to not hold any beliefs as higher than others, but we are incapable of not doing that, and in fact probably should. I have a personal "truth", or "moral code" by which I live, and while I try to take into account cultural relativism, and construction of narrative and ideas, I don't pretend to be able to fully commit to postmodernism. And neither does my proposed history.

Understanding Evelyn Nesbit and Tateh: Why Is It So Uncomfortable?

Brian Mchale's Postmodernist Fiction is interesting because it tries to define postmodernism through—among other things—complex language with difficult meanings. This strikes me because that tactic, in and of itself, is postmodern. We read in Docx that two important points of postmodernism are that all structures are constructed and that we ourselves are constructions as well. When taken with Mchale's work it becomes clear that everything is a construction of language. Docx alludes to this by mentioning Wittgenstein, a philosopher famous for work in the importance of language and how it pertains to thought and our ideas. In essence, everything we think and feel is a construction of how our language allows us to process information. 

And Mchale discusses this when he talks about Ingarden's 4 strata about ontology. These strata are all about language. The first is the literal idea of the sounds words make allow us to distinguish between them, i.e. the basic building blocks of language being that we have multiple sounds. Then he talks about the actual meanings of words, and how the words we choose "actualize parts of our concepts of objects" (Mchale 31). In other words, the actual words used in writing and speaking describe the objects. However, Ingarden says that the words take on a different meaning through the mind of the reader, or hearer, and in that, we can see that language constructs meaning. If I say a pot is blue, to someone who doesn't know what blue is they won't be able to "concretize" the meaning of that and it will be lost. Similarly, if I say someone was assassinated it has a different connotation of betrayal than just murder. And in that the reader's understanding of words—and also the author's understanding—shape how the narrative is told. Nothing can be objective because everything is processed through our language and our connotations.

Ragtime utilizes this rethinking of language, when as a way to challenge the reader's understanding of the world it takes place in--which incidentally perfectly lines up with McHale's argument of postmodernism asking ontological rather than epistemological questions. When describing Jacob Riis' photographs, Doctorow makes the point of saying "housing for the poor was Riis' story" (18), which has a double meaning: it is both Riis' story that he is following as a reporter, and his internal story, his narrative, which we know because Doctorow continually satirizes the seemingly altruistic attitudes of the middle-class towards the poor in this book. This is an early example of the way that Doctorow plays with language, but it's nothing compared to later. 

When Evelyn Nesbit first sees Tateh and his daughter we get yet another depiction of a middle class/wealthy person coming into the slums and trying to help, and it is made fun of in some ways. Doctorow does something powerful here, because he simultaneously depicts well-meaning, motherly behavior from Evelyn and also intensely uncomfortable behavior. The former is shown through the events described, but more interestingly, the latter is in the language. For instance, Evelyn comes into the house and bathes the little girl. It's a little weird, but not overly terrible, and it fits with this sort of motherly affection she has for the girl, however the book describes the bath in detail using words somewhat sensual/romantic words like "caressing" and describes Evelyn specifically bathing her "nut-brown budded nipples (...) her girlhood" (49). This scene is incredibly uncomfortable to read and yet she's just giving a young child a bath, and we see clearly that the child likes Evelyn and gives her a kiss, but it remains uncomfortable. Doctorow also calls the girl Evelyn's new "love interest" in a way that disconcerts because it is different than the usual use of the phrase. 

In those two scenes (and others), Doctorow raises ontological questions about the world, Evelyn and Riis' thought processes, Evelyn's relationship with Tateh and his daughter, etc. And he uses language, he uses the way that the words and their connotations affect the way we think. Riis' has a non-objective "story" to his life, a subjective thought process, and worldview because nothing can be objective in postmodernism, and similarly, Evelyn has two stories happening simultaneously because they are equally valid interpretations and views within postmodernism. One story lets her be a sympathetic, kind, character despite all the scandal around her, and the other story fits very much with Doctorow's attack of "poverty balls" and the rich acting poor to show support without committing. It is both kind and condescending, motherly and creepy. Language is the conduit for the invoking of the ideas of ontology, constructed reality, and non-superior world-views. Language is everything, and in these books, the use of connotation really highlights that. 

Explaining My Title

This is just to start off posting, this is not my "first blogpost of the semester".

The title of this blog is "Blogging Under Erasure" which felt appropriate because of this class's discussion of postmodernism. The term "Under Erasure" (in French "Sous Rature") is in reference to a method developed by the philosopher Martin Heidegger and frequently used by Jacques Derrida. It refers to writing something and crossing it out, but leaving it in the finished work, and making sure that the cross doesn't obscure the actual words written. 

Heidegger is a philosopher who worked with postmodern ideas in their beginning, as he died in 1976. Derrida is a French philosopher who worked with slightly later postmodern ideas and specifically "Deconstruction", an idea which (to my understanding) involves how language is at the root of all being and postmodernism can be understood as how everything is constructed by language and that everything is language...but I digress. 

What Derrida did with "Under Erasure" is put in a signifier for what he wanted, with the acknowledgment that it was imperfect. "Under Erasure" allows for the saying of things without committing to them, or saying things whilst showing the "audience" (for lack of a better word, depending on the context) that one understands that the ideas are constructed and not transcendent of that construction (specifically the construction of language). It is used to denote words and ideas that are inherently paradoxical within the framework of postmodernism. (It also seems like it might be used to denote ideas that lack full reflection within the framework of deconstruction or postmodernism, but that could be incorrect as I don't fully understand the concept).

I did a certain amount of research into this after coming across the term through my father, and am quite proud of the title. Perhaps I will use this technique in my own writing. I think it is fascinating, and I barely understand it, but what I can grasp seems like powerful theoretical thinking. I certainly plan to write and think about language, as I'm sure I will be asked to. Perhaps "Under Erasure" should always be crossed out, because it is in some ways trying to create a framework within postmodernism, and is therefore paradoxical; Perhaps it should not. I--after all--am not a scholar of the field. However, I did want to manage to put something "Under Erasure" within this first post, because it felt awfully meta, in a very postmodern way. 

Looking forward to this class!

Vikram