Mushin-Sho

Prefatory Aside:

I don’t remember who said it, but a professor told me that once the highest complement one can receive from a colleague is that you are open to critical feedback. Trying to live up to that ideal is quite the challenge, however. I have just received my papers from last semester with my teachers’ comments; they are spot on. Both papers received similar comments, that the argument is “suggestive” but “incomplete.” This is mild criticism, hopeful in tone and helpfully calling for greater thought. My confidence, however, took a slight blow and for the past few hours I have been trying to stabilize. Why such a reaction to such mild feedback? Well, partly because graduate students are neurotic and depend on praise like insulin. More importantly, it is a reminder of how much I don’t yet know, how much of my own extrapolations and theorisings have already been written down. This is, I remind myself, a part of the process. But knowing that you don’t know stinks.


Kim:

I assigned myself this text over the break to move my “Basic backgrounds” project. These are readings that everyone is familiar with, that are often alluded to and are a part of the general cannon of my ‘field,’ which is yet to be specified. Kim, I thought, is going to be an exercise in controlling my gag reflex as I am forced to ingest all the orientalist tropes. And there are plenty of those, even when clothed as Oriental-philia. The text, however, is much more nuanced and interesting than I anticipated. What follows are a few excerpts and my ruminations on them. Considering the canonicity of this novel, I assume that much of what I will say is, as one professor recently remarked about a paper, “ground well tread upon.”  


“ ‘If I live and God is good, there will be a price upon my head, for I am a Son of the Charm—I, Kim.’
    A very few white people, but many Asiatics, can throw themselves into amazement as it were by repeating their own names over and over again to themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation as to what is called personal identity” (181)

Even a cursory reading of the passage must note the use of the essentialist identity categories, “white people” and “Asiatics.” That such terms are deployed in a paragraph contemplating identity itself is an interesting phenomena, one ripe for (auto)deconstruction. I want to focus on Kim specifically, “the orphaned son of a drunken Irish sergeant and a nursemaid mother, [who is] brought up by a Eurasian opium eater” (xix, intro to B&N edition). The dark skinned youth is able to pass easily for a ‘native,’ while also dawning the costumes of a Sahib (Englishman), Muslim, Hindu & Tibetan monk, amongst others. His ability to perform all these identities is key to his espionage practices.
  

“Perform” is, of course, the key word here. I wish I were better acquainted with Butler and those who take up her argument to offer a solid gloss on ‘performativity’. Instead, let me say how I think this is working in the text. Kim’s identity performance is always adjusted to the needs of the situation. His language, clothing and manners are, generally, adjusted to match his interlocutor so that he can be deferential, equal, or authoritative as needed. There are interesting exceptions where Kim thinks in either Hindi or English despite the exigencies of the situation; following these up would require more time than I can offer at the moment. Despite Kipling’s frequent use of essentialist identity categories, then, Kim sometimes slips into the wrong identity. That is, there seem to be multiple essential cores within Kim, none of which are entirely under his control, if those eruptions are any evidence. Given the vagaries of his birth, childhood and profession, moreover, Kim often asks himself “What is Kim?” Framing this question as a “what” rather than “who” is part of the answer. As I began to say earlier, Kim is an unfixed performance, a “what” not a “who.” Language is a key to Kim’s performance, but it also unlocks the syntax of identity.

In the passage quoted above, Kim is enamored with the thought of being hunted (becoming something of a prize, another ‘what’) and joining in the “Great Game” of espionage. He makes two distinct identity statements. First, “I am a Son of the Charm,” referring to the locket he and fellow spies wear. This mode of belonging has a certain existential weight to it, at least if we pay attention to the phrasing. “I am….” His rebirth as a spy, the son of a network, is a mode of Being, an all-permeating professional existence. Except to his four direct superiors, however, only a number marks this professional identity. Imagining people introducing themselves like that, “I am E.24,” is strange and a kind of existential self-negation, the denial of a ‘soul’ even while identifying with it. Second, and more accurately, there is this articulation of identity; “I, Kim.” The absence of the “am” negates the kind of existential identification he made with his profession. The “I” and “Kim” are not necessarily linked, allowing the proper name “Kim” to become an identity without Being. This, I think, is Kim’s understanding of performance: identity without Being. I like this phrase; it has a certain sexiness to it. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it actually means anything. First of all, it could be tautological. I am trying to argue that Kim’s identity is a performance, but define performance as identity without Being. Weird. Second, using a philosophical term like ‘Being’ without invoking Heidegger, or the volumes of thought before and after him, is blasphemous. The phrase could hold value but needs much more thought in its account.
 

Still, performativity is often invoked as a way to escape fixed identity categories and the epistemic pressure to see “what you really are”; this is especially true when negotiating gender and sexuality. More broadly, performance is a way of negotiating power as exerted by discursive regimes. In Kim, power manifests as full-fledged orientalism. The whole espionage plot line is guised as knowledge-seeking of the innocent scientific variety, ethnography and mapping. There is, of course, nothing innocent about a drive to ‘map’ the natives into their proper places, and Kipling’s text overtly links these tools to the imperial project. Indeed, the semi-climactic event has Kim stealing maps and geographical surveys away from a French and Russian duo; the mission is said to be in the service of protecting the colony. Given Kim’s ‘nativism’ and abhorrence of rules, shaping him into a disciplined spy is a difficult project, an elucidation of which gives us an insight into how an imperial sensibility reproduces itself.
Kim’s formal schooling, away from the master spies Hurree Babu, Mahbub Ali, and Lurgan, takes place at St. Xavier’s, the eminent private school for colonial elites. He shows a “great aptitude for mathematical studies as well as mapmaking” and wins a book as a prize, The Life of Lord Lawrence, a biography of the first Baron, viceroy and governor general of India (160 + footnote). That is, Kim’s excellence in those skills necessary for his espionage specifically, and imperial sciences generally, have earned him the right to closely study the life of a great imperialist. How wonderfully incestuous! He is then deployed––“ ‘removed on appointment’ ” (161)––on some safe training missions with Mahbub Ali. They journey to “the mysterious city of Bikanir” (166). Kim uses a rosary to keep track of distance, a compass for orientation, and a “survey paint-box” to illustrate his surroundings. Mahbub Ali asks him to make a written report as well, telling Kim that, “It must hold everything that thou hast seen or touched or considered” (166). The arrogance of this request is striking and instructive. Kim’s whole experience can, and must, be transcribed, transmitted and received as it is to his superiors. Language, and writing specifically, is not representational here, it is a transparent carrier of meaning. This is precisely the logic behind colonial travel writing, or written reports of the ethnographic and geographical societies; language can not only represent mere landscapes and city architecture but also “the temper and disposition” of the native peoples (166). Kipling again, and I think quite consciously, links such ‘scientific’ missions to their military counterparts.
    

Mahbub tells Kim that his report must be treated with great care, as much as if he knew it was going to the Commander-in-Chief coming “by stealth with a vast army outsetting to war” (166). Kim laughs that no army greater than a thousand men could come through the area, due to the lack of water sources. Mahbub tells him to write that down as well. Indeed, the ethnographic mission is the stealth army, a reconnaissance mission gathering data appropriate to the imperial project.

I must close this because other (graded) projects wait. A couple of closing thoughts I wish I could have followed up on:

First, returning to Kim’s performativity, his ability to conduct these missions stealthily is based on his ability to pass for ‘native.’ It is not, unlike his French-Russian counterparts, based on his privileged position as a wealthy Sahib, but as a poor disciple to Tashoo Lama. There are two thoughts here. Despite all the language of essentialism, Kim’s ability to ‘be’ a native is no more than emulating a series of surface level features: clothing, colloquialisms etc… I said something of this above. The category “Native” becomes nonsensical, or at least staves off essentialism. Second, Kipling’s text is a reminder that colonialism requires local help. Creating native elites as a buffer between the metropole and the colony is an old idea, but one that plants the seeds of revolt. The hesitant solidarity between the Hindu/Atheist Hurree Babu and the Muslim Mahbub Ali is one indication of this.

Finally, there is another knowledge-seeking mission throughout the text, Tashoo Lama’s search for Enlightenment. When, in the final few pages, he finds (or achieves) it, the experience is described in transcendental terms or, rather, a transcendence that is immanent everywhere. “I saw them at one time and in one place; for they were within the Soul” (277). The Lama experiences a release from his body, from time and space. Within this experience, however, he also experiences every body, every time and space. I’m not sure what to do with this but it bears further thought.  

I begin with Benedict Anderson and Salman Rushdie for reasons I have already articulated.  

Moving to Tropic of Orange will bring us back to the Americas and continue the magical-realist writing style. Yamashita’s Americas, however, include no white-male perspective, despite the use of seven character perspectives. If Saleem Sinai drives toward nationalism despite innumerable fissures, both in his own body and in the society he attempts to represent, then Tropic is a rejection of Saleem’s mission. That is, the book’s fragmented and marginal perspectives never allow one to settle on a single story of the nation. We are, instead, given multiple, semi-autonomous storylines; they are threads that sometimes knot together and sometimes just rub. This formal layering of narratives and narrative styles––the shift in prose structures in remarkable––performs a critique of the drive toward the national story generally, while also taking on NAFTA specifically. Indicting the Trade Agreement for maintaining systemic poverty, Tropic rejects one’s ability to think the nation without locating it in a transnational world system. I am not sure I would trust my ability to communicate all of this to my students, but I have our Detroit surroundings as a tragically ready example.

If I have succeeded in the past two sections, then transitioning into Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient should not be too disconcerting, despite shifting in time to WWII and the location to an Italian villa. There are, at least at present, two key thoughts I want to continue into this book. First, I want to continue to think through marginal spaces, those disavowed, even temporarily, by all nations. The title character was once a desert explorer whose friends were limited to those interested in the same work. These associates, however, belonged to many different countries, all allegiances to which were forgotten in that arid landscape. Such unacknowledged spaces, then, need not simply be tragic if we can see their ability to create bonds among different peoples. The hospital/ villa in which the story is told performs a similar role. Secondly, we can use Ondaatje to think through how a seminal event in American history, WWII, and the dropping of atomic bombs, can be written through a marginal perspective. I am thinking specifically of Kip’s reaction to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We will, hopefully, be able to tie space and narrative perspective together to see the forgotten stories of WWII and write the spaces left in its wake.

Finally, and perhaps most adventurously, I want to bring my students to Murambi, The Book of Bones, a narrative about the Rwandan genocide. Saleem, and his drive to write a nation, will have become something of a punching bag by this point. The aim now, however, will be to recover that project in the guise of this statement: If we posit the Rwandan Genocide, through Diop’s text, as a misrecognition of fellow citizens, then perhaps more nationalism isn’t always a bad thing. We must be careful here not to slip into a sloppy relativism (“nationalism is sometimes good sometimes bad”) and consider how group identity is formed in the text. Is there a Hutu nation posited?  How does the “Hutu” identity come to be historically, and how do its militant advocates narrate it?

I offer this book as the final one despite, or probably because of, my own investment in it; I will be writing a paper on the text, which is to be delivered at NEMLA. For the class, however, I want to channel my student’s emotional investment into a greater intellectual sensitivity. If the class has been successful, then we will have to think Diop’s text through an attention to Anderson’s argument, layered and disjunctive narrations, marginal spaces and their colonial inheritance, and our transnational connection to butchered children.

    The class will begin with a short story from Zora Neal Hurston in order to foreground the relationship between language and identity. By situating her in the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of Black letters more broadly, we will ask why she chooses to use black vernacular in her writings? Specifically, what are the political limits and enablments of such an aesthetic practice?
    My polemical aim is to place alternative vocabularies and grammatical structures in conversation with “Standard English,” hopefully denaturalizing the latter. Given that the class is for Education majors, my goal is to make these future teachers reflect on their profession so that what they teach is neither given nor unsullied by political implications.

    The second round of reading will be the introduction to Anderson’s Imagined Communities. This is an obvious starting place for thinking about how national identity is thought. (I concede that a proper examination of “nationalism” could/ should begin with earlier writings, but I am limited by the potential reading difficulty of such texts and, more importantly, my lack of comfort with those materials–––recently ordered edited collections and readers on the topic should help my understanding). After discussing Anderson, however, I am unsure how to order the texts and what follows is an attempt to think through my options.


Within National/ Continental boundaries:
    

    Midnight’s Children: Considering Anderson will be fresh in our minds, Saleem’s psychic connection with his nation-state seems like a good starting point. We would be forced to think through the ‘birth’ of a nation, and national consciousness, and the violence proper to such an event. Indeed, the simultaneous arrival of East and West Pakistan may help me disenfranchise the nation as the natural telos of particular spaces and their constituents. (Perhaps assigning the film Gandhi will help build an affective relationship to India and its struggle for independence. Perhaps too, America’s founding fathers can also be rethought as the “revolutionaries” they were in these conversations). Saleem’s psychic ability also has the merit of attempting to unite an incredible range of languages, classes, religions, castes, and political situations. His endeavor’s problems and successes should help us approach a central problem of national identity; how are multiple realities framed so that fellow feeling and even solidarity is possible?
    (A secret benefit for me: I am working on a paper about Midnight’s Children and will have recently finished it when this unit begins).  
    At a very practical level, the girth and difficulty of Rushdie’s text will scare off those looking for easy ways to fulfill credit requirements. Also, saving a text of this magnitude for the semester’s end, a possibility if I organized the readings temporally, will add lead weights to our legs as we try to sprint to a finish.


Third Section: Thinking Modernity and the Colonial Project:
    

    The political reading for this section is yet to be determined, although Said, Bhabha or Lenin would do well.
    Henry James’ short story “The Real Thing” will introduce the aesthetic readings for this section. The narrative, as I will frame it, helps understand the political and social ruptures created by modernity. Most importantly, I am concerned with a disappearing aristocracy, the flow of peoples across borders, the reevaluation of Englishness (or the metropole more generally), and the ways one can represent such changes. All of these issues are available in James’ story and will set up Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness well.
    I will use Conrad’s work to demonstrate the logic and vocabulary of the colonial project. In terms of nationalism, I will probably frame this as both the (English) civilizing mission and defining the Self in opposition to the Other. Following James’s work, we can also see how colonial administrators and the goods they are pillaging/ exporting belong to a rising middle class, defined both economically and culturally. Administrators, like Kurtz, can have bright futures by helping manage the periphery and their success will allow them comfortable living when they arrive home. Moreover, the goods they procure, ivory in this case, are part of consumption practices based on imports that are alive and well today. Finally, I would like to assign “Apocalypse Now” to bring the discussion “home.” Putting Iraq, Vietnam, and the Belgium Congo into conversation should be an interesting way to interrogate notions of ‘national progress’.
    We can also use this conversation to discuss the value and limitations of comparisons, both the ahistorical models deployed in mainstream media and the historically grounded analysis modeled by the class.
    On consideration, perhaps a reading of “race theory” or the “hierarchy of nations” from the late 19th/ early 20th century will give us a taste of the intellectual milieu in which these texts operate. Then again, I have to keep in mind that the class’ reading level and my own desire may not synchronize.


Fourth Section: Expatriate/ Comparative Nationalisms
    

    Again, I am uncertain which political text to use or if there should be one at all. Although the frame for the class is nationalism, I would like to provide my students with narrower and historically particular lenses through which they can read the text. Considering the primary reading for this section is Claude McKay’s Banjo, I would do well to get advice form Af-Am specialists.
    So, Banjo: I’m excited about teaching this text because student perspectives will help me think through the work. Amongst the many strands to be teased out, first is the return to a focus on language. Like Hurston, McKay’s language vocalizes a particular political project; returning to this issue will be particularly interesting after reading Conrad and interrogating colonialist vocabulary. Second, there are voices for diasporic consciousness within the text, many of which are Garveyite; the “race man” then envisions solidarity along particular lines but, according to a few voices in the text, the ultimate aim is to create an independent nation. Here is an opportunity to compare race solidarity and nationalism.
    Thirdly, Banjo also questions how marginalized peoples relate to different nationalisms. The protagonist vagabonds (itself an interesting term) are expatriates of various nations or colonies and are bombarded by French citizens deluded with their own claims of tolerance. These claims cannot be entirely dismissed but, like the condemnation of American culture that accompanies them, cannot be swallowed whole either. Exploring the tension between these competing visions will, I hope, provide us with a transnational perspective that holds multiple nations and multiple modes of unity in view. Again, I am interested in foregrounding the various Americas the text offers, including different understandings of the United States (“United Snakes” according to one character) and the “Americas” writ large––Ray, after all, is West Indian.

Alternate title: Foucault, Said, Marx and I hold hands

    I find myself in an interesting intellectual moment, an octagonal intersection in which every direction pushes and pulls yielding both pauses and openness. As my two classes, themselves dense intersections of various concerns, begin to overlap and fight for primacy––I hope neither will win––the text before me is opening, constantly unfolding, refusing for the clean closure of a given ‘reading’. Although his essay “The emancipation of the West Indies” first allowed for a meta awareness of this condition, the moment’s text is English Traits.

As soon as this land, thus geographically posted, got a hardy people into it, they could not help becoming the sailors and factors of the globe. From childhood, they dabbed in water, they swam like fishes, their playthings were boats. In the case of the ship-money, the judges delivered it for law, that “England being an island, the very midland shires therein are all to be accounted maritime”; and Fuller adds, “the genius even of landlocked countries driving the natives with a maritime dexterity.” As early as the conquest, it is remarked, in explanation of the wealth of England, that its merchants trade to all countries.

    The excerpt was chosen for its brevity, but illustrates well the numerous strands that knot themselves in this thick account. First, positing England generally and London specifically as a geographic ‘center’, despite Emerson’s own extended discussion of previous imperial capitals doing the same, evinces a naturalizing logic that intertwines, paradoxically, with a self reflexive awareness of the relativity of ‘centers.’ This naturalizing logic extends to remove agency from the ‘hardy people’ by inscribing them into a geographic determinism (“they could not help becoming sailors”) that undoes itself by requiring hardiness.
     Evidence of this natural hardiness, however, does not come merely from Emerson’s own observations but is the inevitable conclusion of the historical events, invasions-migrations, given in a section just preceding the given excerpt. The present conditions (its ontology understood broadly) are the expected conclusion of a teleological narrative, which is deployed by Emerson to give him discursive authority, power based on wielding accepted knowledge. Moreover, the sea industries are transformed into being “maritime” by a juridical proclamation which, because it follows the naturalizing logic described above, allows for the smooth slippage between geographic determinism and constructed legal claims. A similar logic frames Emerson’s deployment of Fuller’s statement, which, like the previous citation, has the pressure and authority of a ‘native informant.’ That is, both Fuller and ‘the judges’ are invoked in a citationary system that lends, simultaneously, discursive authority and ‘authenticity.’ Interestingly, Said’s concept is both reinforced and troubled by Emerson’s use of these sources because they are ‘native’ to rather than travelers through the space, but ultimately Englishmen, a discursive source already accredited.
    The strategic deployment of discursive authorities to uphold a naturalizing logic of geographic determinism also subsumes English commercial success in its teleological narrative. Emerson’s notes the fading of “English manners,” elegance and nobility the further he ventures from London to the industrial spaces of Manchester and Liverpool. Despite this, the given paragraph is blind to the drastic disparities between industrial, agricultural, mercantile laborers and the landed aristocracy because it sees through the violent lens of the singular ‘English wealth.’ Moreover, the laborers are also infantilized as the physically enlarged versions of the children who “dabbled in water…swam like fishes…[and whose] playthings were boats.” They are and always have been such. Given this, laboring child-men can be tied to the “ship-money” by law simply because they are not doing maritime work but are being maritime, which is simply understood as being English.
    Finally, only because my energy is wearing, Emerson’s paragraph constructs a theory of time that, to misuse Derrida, is “always already.” In addition to the naturalizing discourse already analyzed, the paragraph’s form performs its theory of temporality with opening and closing sentences that privilege “the conquest” by “hardy people.” English-ness and English history began their earthly incarnation in that moment; time, like the middle of the paragraph, functions only to reveal and reinforce ever present, unchanging, unchanged English traits.

There is an uncanny pleasure in watching someone you admire fulfill your admiration, confirm their greatness and your ability to appreciate it; thus it is for me with Said.

“Texts are protean things, they are tied to circumstances and to politics large and small, they require attention and criticism. No one can take hold of everything, of course, just as no one theory can explain or account for the connection among texts and societies. But reading and writing texts are never neutral activities: there are interest, powers, passions, pleasures entailed no matter how aesthetic or entertaining the work. Media, political economy, mass institutions––in fine, the tracings of secular power and the influence of state––are part of what we call literature. And just as it is true that we cannot read literature by men without also reading literature by women—so transfigured has been the shape of literature—it is also true that we cannot deal with the literature of the periphery without attending to the literature of metropolitan centers.” –Said, Culture and Imperialism 318.

I am going to offer this quote at the beginning of every semester I teach from now on; it will be my own little pledge of allegiance, my pledge of politicization-subversion–deconstruction if you will.

I doubt I will have the time or energy to write a post today, so allow me to share with you a piece of my Tamburlaine paper. This small section was written a while ago, in that state of immersion that I am attempting to return to now, and quite frankly, I am surprised by its energy.

 

     Although assured of his own success and role, Tamburlaine exhibits a strange tension between his Scourge-ness and the awareness of himself as such. As a Scourge, his highest duty manifests precisely the moment he is completely enraptured with worldly desires; however, this immersion is always in tension with his awareness of being a scourge, or rather, a man who is called to be a scourge.
    For Tamburlaine to “abrogate his particularity so as to become the universal,” he must immerse himself in worldly desires—which for the moment will be left vague—however, his particularity, the temptation, the break, is in Zenocrate who herself oscillates between being a particularity and a structural position in the Scourge’s larger universalizing sweep (Kierkegaard 83).
    As Zenocrate pleas for her release, the tension between her structural role as to-be-empress of the East and her particularity that breaks Tamburlaine’s “telos in the universal” is placed in high relief (Kierkegaard 83). Tamburlaine’s response to her plea demonstrates the logic of this tension through both the obvious content and the formal construction of his speech. Genuinely insulted that Zenocrate and her company will not follow him, he replies, “not all the gold in India’s wealthy arms shall buy the meanest soldier in my train” (I, ii. 85-6). Insofar as his soldiers are aids to his role as Scourge they are indispensable and like his generals become a part of himself. Tamburlaine’s effort to woo Zenocrate immediately follows this declaration, and demonstrates a parallel logic but one that ruptures at speech’s end. Worth “more to Tamburlaine than the possession of the Persian crown,” Zenocrate is sought as a structural object that must “grace his bed that conquers Asia” (I, ii. 90-91, 37). That is, in his role as Scourge, Tamburlaine will become emperor and needs an empress, and as such she will be a part of Tamburlaine’s drive toward the universal. However, at speech’s close Tamburlaine offers himself to Zenocrate asserting, “this is she with whom I am in love,” a gesture that simultaneously ruptures Zenocrate’s merely structural value and Tamburlaine’s alignment with the universal; Zenocrate is made particular as his single choice for empress, and because the role is merely structural with respect to Tamburlaine’s responsibility as Scourge—it does not advance his telos in the universal—choosing her asserts his particularity and suspends his connection with the universal. The paradoxical oscillation in Tamburlaine’s relationship with Zenocrate can be better understood when contrasted with his martial relationships.
    Immediately after Tamburlaine briefly suspends his universality by singling Zenocrate, he relegates her again to a structural element by using her as proof of his larger mission’s destined success. Seeking to win over Theridamas, Tamburlaine evokes both celestial imagery and the more grounded proof of his recently won spoils, including Zenocrate. “[S]ooner shall the sun fall from his sphere than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome” because “Jove himself will stretch his hand from heaven to ward the blow, and shield me safe from harm” (I, ii. 175-6, 179-80). His mission’s divine sanction manifests itself on earth in the “heaps of gold in showers” and the “Egyptian prize,” including Zenocrate whom “[Jove] sends” to be his “queen and portly empress” (I, ii. 181, 189, 185-186). Her particularity dissolves in her twofold structural function as the wife to “the monarch of the East” and as Jove’s assurance of Tamburlaine’s success (I, ii. 184). Zenocrate fills a vacant position and serves as a messenger, neither role invoking her particularity; she is simply a part of the martial spoils. Overcome by all this evidence, Theridamas agrees to join Tamburlaine whose joyous response further distinguishes Zenocrate from his generals.
    “Thus shall my heart be still combined with thine, until our bodies turn to elements, and both our souls aspire celestial thrones” (I, ii. 234-236). The metaphor of cosmic ascendance links back to the divine sanction of Tamburlaine’s mission and also usurps Theridamas’ particularity in its universalizing sweep; the latter becomes the former’s appendage, a “partaker of [his] good or ill” (I, ii. 229). Theridamas never again breaks from or even challenges Tamburlaine, but like the other generals simply becomes the Scourge’s aid. At times, Zenocrate too is simply his aid, his “empress,” a structural role that necessitates nothing of her particularity.
    As Bajazet and Tamburlaine prepare to meet each other at battle, their respective partners are placed to engage another theater of war, that of words. Zabina and Zenocrate, wearing their partners’ crown, trade insults and prophesy their potential futures as slaves. At this moment, Zenocrate becomes a pseudo-general, an aid to Tamburlaine by giving verbal battle to her structural counterpart Zabina. Moreover, Zenocrate defends herself against Zabina’s insults by foregrounding her connection and allegiance to Tamburlaine rather than invoking her own particularity; “Call’st thou me concubine, that am betroth’d unto the great and mighty Tamburlaine?” (III, iii. 169-170). Once her partner has secured victory, Zenocrate falls silent as her structural role is completed for the moment while Zabina mourns the loss with Bajazet. However, before and after her battle with Zabina, Zenocrate’s structural value is complicated, unlike Tamburlaine’s generals, and oscillates with her particularity.
    Indeed, even as Tamburlaine places her next to Zabina, she is called to wear his crown “as if [Zenocrate] wert the empress of the world,” as the “vaunt of [Tamburlaine’s] worth;” however, these structural roles immediately follow his more problematic declaration that she is his “only paragon” (III, iii. 125, 130, 119). Although the speech in which these contradictions are housed serves to posit Zenocrate as Zabina’s structural equivalent, Tamburlaine’s “paragon” reference reveals a more nuanced image of his partner. If the word is used as a noun, then Tamburlaine sees Zenocrate as a model, complicating both Zenocrate’s structural role and the hierarchy of their relationship. She would simultaneously become an ideal, perhaps for her virginal status , and a creature that ruptures Tamburlaine’s heretofore adoration of war and—because his role as Scourge necessitates violence––his connection to the universal as a result. More likely, however, paragon is deployed as transitive verb that places Zenocrate as Tamburlaine’s parallel and rival; this is a double play, calling attention to her role as “empress” and her ability to rupture his mission, an ability predicated on her (mis)understanding of Tamburlaine’s actions as unethical. Zenocrate, in this reading, is not Tamburlaine’s ideal but rather a voice that questions the ethics of his actions, a voice that has power precisely because it is particular and not structural, a voice that is loved and loves.

    Amidst the energetic drive to complete my Tamburlaine paper (finally), I reread both parts and found this gem of a quote:

“Villains, these terrors and tyrannies
(If tyrannies war’s justice ye repute),
I execute, enjoin’d me from above,
To scourge the pride of such as Heaven abhors;
Nor am I made arch-monarch of the world,
Crown’d and invested by the hand of Jove,
For deeds of bounty or nobility;
But since I exercise a greater name,
The scourge of God and terror of the world,
I must apply myself to fit those terms,
In war, in blood, in death, in cruelty,
And plague such peasants as resist in me
The power of heaven’s eternal majesty.” (2.4.i. 146-158)

    Tamburlaine explains the central ethical paradox of his character here; his highest ethics comes at the moment he is absolutely unethical. That is, as the “scourge of God” his very duty is to kill, pillage, boast, and a myriad other activities that counter universal ethics. (I realize Nietzsche would dismiss this notion, but he will not figure into my discussion here) Of course, one could argue that Tamburlaine is merely delusional about his mission’s divine sanction, but the ease and extent of his victories coupled with the Early Modern politics that give rise to the play testify otherwise.
    First, quite simply, Tamburlaine and his forces are invincible in both parts of the play. Marlowe extends himself to set up the ferocity, strength and magnitude of Tamburlaine’s enemies, only to have the (anti)protagonist destroy them in two lines. Much more important, however, is the historical situation at the time the play was written and the utopic (compensatory) gestures Tamburlaine’s character allows.
    In the Early Modern world, the Ottoman Empire is plainly the dominant world force, both militarily and economically. The ‘Turks’ were enormously successful and expanding, thus terrifying Europeans with fears of both military domination and religious conversion to Islam. In this setting, Marlowe writes Tamburlaine in which the title character is a Persian (another Ottoman enemy—aside from Europe) that successfully, and easily, destroys the Turks. That is, although he is based on a real historical figure, Tamburlaine functions as the realization of the European fantasy desire to vanquish the Ottomans. European sectarian divisions and relative military weakness prevent them from posing a real threat, thus the narrative calls on Tamburlaine to be the “scourge of God,” whose slaughter and conquest of the Turks is ethical precisely because such violence is his mission. (Could we also say that his actions are ethical to an Elizabethan audience precisely because they are a compensatory realization of their own longings and fears? Would this then be a Nietzschian move, to locate ethics not in Kant’s categorical imperative but in the historical situation?)

 

..more tomorrow; I hope to make a link to the abstraction of war and an amazing conversation I had with a student about his experiences as a Marine on Iraq’s frontlines.

“At a certain point, one loses the ability to distinguish between teaching and research; the dualism is a false one. Teaching at its best is a constant process of researching materials and ideas. Shared research is teaching.” ––Gregory Semenza, Graduate Study for the 21st Century

    Although I am all for destroying false dualisms, it seems to me that the distinction between research and teaching is quite vivid in early teaching experiences, namely graduate school. Interestingly, a professor recently advised me to never put my teaching ahead of my research, saying (quite rightly) that the profession simply does not value one’s teaching nearly as much as the writing. At its best, the desire to be a good teacher is (in the professor’s words) a “good person’s problem,” because it is fueled by the desire to educate, share and make a difference in people’s lives. At worst, teaching becomes another excuse to avoid the exhausting work of research and writing. My motivation wavers between these two extremes and is always in conflict with an insecurity driven overachiever mentality, which does not allow for anything less than excellence in all endeavors/ projects. However, I have definitely begun to incorporate my own interests and areas of research into my classroom; unfortunately, that practice has left my class lacking direction. This monologue is an attempt to catalogue my own pedagogical practice, flush out the too unconscious frame and its attendant gaps.
    I can broadly categorize my scholarly interests as Globalization studies grounded in issues of alterity. The impact of this broad focus (if it can be called a focus) in my classroom is simultaneously destabilizing and invigorating. Given a broad range of interests and concerns, there is too much material to taken in, make sense of, or even cover; this, in turn, can quickly deteriorate into a lack of orientation, of specific goals, and/or a general sense of disorganization. Conversely, laying out a field of sources, issues, and concepts can also be a wonderful way to garner student investment simply because they are forced to choose and make sense of the material according to their own predilections. I would like to believe that students enjoy the freedom and want to take charge of their own education; however, I also realize that Intro Comp is not an elective and is seen, at the outset, as a hoop to jump through. The logic of this pedagogical practice is grounded in my own (ongoing) experiences as a student/scholar; I teach how I learn.
    The drive toward destroying the false dualism between teaching and research is complicated by differences in the level of commitment and ability between teachers and students. This is not an effort to create a crude hierarchy that places instructors as the talented and invested few who must somehow break through apathetic students. Rather, it is an attempt to think through the instructor/ student dynamic given certain conditions, at least as I have experienced them. Since I have already mentioned something of the tension in my class content, let me say something about specificities of the form and their connection to a difference in ability. Training in various fields has augmented a natural propensity to shift from the abstract to the specific and back again. Throughout my day, I constantly examine various situations or experiences as symptoms or effects of larger abstracted phenomena, while also observing the subtle contours and shifts that particular experience has on those same abstractions. I often do the same in my classroom. That is, I spend a great deal of class time laying out various abstract concepts or connections often leaving my students in the difficult position of seeing/ making the connection with their own lived experience.

Excuse me; my research is on the other line.
    

    The unfortunate ephemerality of reading, especially in the context of grad school where you are constantly ingesting and (in theory) digesting, is that waiting one-day too long to write about a text will dissipate much of the impetus to write. Such is the case with my reading of Brent Edwards’ The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. The text is nothing short of phenomenal for a number of reasons that I can only touch on, including of course the fierce elegance and eloquence that has won Edwards my ‘man crush’. In lieu of a class presentation like summary of main methods, arguments and stakes, allow me to engage in a kind of writing exercise. I have picked out three quotes, the first of which was random but incidentally pointed to a something I was trying to say during a recent discussion group meeting; I will offer them in the order they are found in the text and extrapolate from them; this is, mind you, an intellectual and writing exercise––be kind in your reading.

“To put it another way, the contradiction is that Maran, in employing the metaphor of the “recording instrument,” thereby speaks, and speaks as a black modern voice, figuring himself even as he claims with the same gesture to be silent” (92)

    First, this is a brilliant close reading by Edwards, made possible of course by his extensive archival and translation work. More importantly, the ‘recording instrument’ metaphor is a trope often engaged in encounters with the culturally Other, especially in those encounters made possible by an “expedition” away from the metropole. This particular encounter is especially problematic in the larger historical context within which it takes place, namely the search for and practice of Black internationalism. Such a project of solidarity is, obviously, subverted by a colonialist world-view that dismantles race consciousness in favor of a hierarchy that is based at once on geography and class. That is, a colonial subject is both spatially removed from the hubs of intellectual and cultural activity, while also class-ified as exploited without the privileged (revolutionary) role of a workingman.
    More generally, the idea of “recording,” especially those private thoughts and phrases of the Other, is a prevalent and problematic trope in travel writing. I have in mind Said’s extensive and foundational critique of British travel writers who would venture out into her majesty’s empire and report back all that was already known; those savages are lucky to have us there to help civilize them. Edwards’ dismantling of the “recording” metaphor’s logic helps elucidate the false transparency with which travelers speak, a falseness that is enormously useful in locating the ‘metropole’ subject even while they ‘hide’ it. The travel narrative’s structure of address, its intended and unintended audience, the logical and cultural assumptions, and (my favorite site of interrogation) the terms used to structure their encounter with the other (e.g. savage), all play a crucial (if unintended) role in locating the metropole’s phantom subject.

“But in a complex dynamic between the craze for jazz and the desire for a feminized exoticism, shows were constructed around Baker precisely to make the point that she could represent a kind of universal feminine colonial other…..Baker’s body was the consummate “ideological artifact”….[and] served as the locus of a metonymic operation: balck, brown, and yellow bodies were all incarnated in the writhing limbs and “sculptural” gesture of Baker as interchangeable objects of colonial desire” (162).

     Here is an introduction (or re-introduction) of the metropole/ colony encounter within the metropole itself. Moreover this encounter is gendered and recorded (“incarnated”) on Baker’s body itself. Colonial literature’s propensity to gender the encounter with the Other is a well worn topic, one that finds interesting manifestation especially in the gendering of the land itself. The Americas were often portrayed as a naked (at least bare chest) woman waiting for “penetration,” a word that was often deployed to describe the process of interior land exploration. Similarly, Baker, in her metonymic role, performs this ‘nakedness’ as the colonial other ‘exposed’ or ‘unveiled,’ revealing of course what ‘we’ knew all along. That is, to return to the earlier metaphor, she ‘records’ the metropole’s (sensationalized) view of the colony and simultaneously affirms the ideological grounding of such a view through her eroticized performance. (Baker’s presence and project, of course, is far more nuanced than the rather dismissive reading I have given here)

“The most complex point in Banjo may be this suggestive double entendre (“Everybody’s Doing It”) that points both to sexuality and desire and to bodily exploitation in the modern capitalist system. “Selling black bodies” here has to do with gender and sexuality, not just race” (208).

    Appropriately, we arrive at the beginning. That is, we arrive at the primary logic driving colonial expansion, capitalism. However, this is a capitalist logic that finds myriad expression in gender, sexuality, and desire, all of which are recorded, represented and re-presented to the very system that spawns them. More clearly, the gendered erotica of land waiting to be “penetrated” is recorded and represented in literature, maps et al. These representations are re-presented to the metropole, in one form, as Baker’s body ‘sold’ as a performance whose foregrounding of the perverse metonymic colonial logic is subsumed in the desire it creates.

…too tired…

The more I read of Semenza’s book, the more I like his entire approach to the academic career. Systematizing work, laying out all those mystified processes and stages is obviously his goal in this work, however, the insights he gives into his own thinking also help a great deal. Specifically, Semenza recounts, although without nearly the emphasis I am currently placing on it, a particular turning point in his graduate studies.

After learning that the average Assistant professor has a 65 hour work week, he describes encountering two particular reactions, one of which was his own. The first, less successful, reaction saw the tenure track assistant professorship as a state of responsibility, knowledge and skill that cannot yet be grasped by the graduate student, which in turn, alleviates her of that work schedule. The other reaction, one I share with Semenza, is to say that I must work at least as hard, if not harder, precisely because I don’t have that skill and knowledge yet.

“Think like your professors not your students.”

I highlight this moment because it has been so beneficial in understanding both the orientation a graduate student should have and a real quantifiable measurement of ‘working hard.’ Obviously, putting in 65 hours a week does not mean one is necessarily more productive than one who works a paltry 50 hours; however, it does offer a crude measure of life-time one is expected to give.

I have a clear sense of ‘being productive’, or rather, I have a clear sense of when I have been productive. Unfortunately, productivity feels much like a muscle that, left unused and atrophied, will yield that wonderfully satisfying soreness once used even minimally. When I persist in exercising that muscle (be it productivity, concentration, writing), the greater the threshold before fatigue. Measuring productivity in terms of time, although ineffectual in measuring quality, does have the advantage of demonstrating the professionalism and dedication we need.


P.S:  Have fun with it…you know you don’t see yourself doing anything else, so make this as enjoyable as you can; in fact, make that one point by which you measure productivity

(p.s = para Shashi: I am talking to myself: Pay no attention to the didactic all knowing, all simplifying voice, because she’s talking to me…)

I’m reading through Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and despite the many intellectually interesting points raised, I find his head bashing against a specifically Western conception of the divine, troubling. What follows are some rough thoughts regarding a mystic/esoteric conception of divinity and some possible ramifications for reading Abraham’s story.

The duty becomes duty to God by being referred to God, but I do not enter into relation with God in the duty itself. Thus it is a duty to love one’s neighbor; it is a duty in so far as it is referred to God; yet it is not God that I come in relation to in the duty but the neighbor that I love.

Most basic Western conceptions of God are based on a hard and fast distinction between the divine and human beings. Christ, of course, is an exception as God’s manifestation on Earth but is unexceptional in that he is used to sustain this human/divine divide, precisely by being the exception. After all, we cannot become Christ. Thus, we have Kierkegaard’s claim that performing the duty to love one’s neighbor only achieves duty to God through a mediation, a reference that does not put one in direct communion with the absolute, as Abraham achieves.

(more…)

I’ve just started reading Victor Pelevin’s Homo Zapiens, easily one of the funniest texts I’ve read, especially for a class. Here are some favorite excepts:

On a Che Guevera t-shirt with “Rage Against the Machine” inscribed on it:

...in the area of radical youth culture nothing sells as well as well-packaged and politically correct rebellion against a world that is ruled by political correctness and in which everything is packaged to be sold.

Every time you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning wakening with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don’t even have the instrument to do it, because our mind and the world are the same thing.

My personal favorite: The idea for an advertisement.

An elegant, rather effeminate Hamlet (general stylization – unisex) in black tights and a light blue tunic worn next to the skin, wanders slowly around a graveyard. Beside one of the graves he halts, bends down and picks up a pink skull out of the grass. Close-up: Hamlet knitting his brows slightly as he gazes at the skull. View from the rear: close-up of taut buttocks with the letters ‘CK’. New camera angle: skull, hand, letters ‘CK’ on the blue tunic. Next frame: Hamlet tosses the skull in to the air and kicks it. The skull soars upwards, then arcs back down and falls straight through the bronze wreath held by a bronze angel on one of the graves, just as though it were a basketball hoop. Slogan:

JUST BE. CALVIN KLEIN

Conversation in class turned toward the autonomous actions of soldiers in the theater of conflict, the moment of actualizing orders from above does not happen because there is always deviance in two forms; intentional subversion and in reaction to contingencies. Can the soldiers, at this moment, be considered a multitude? They are after all operating as autonomous agents in the theater of battle, looking after their own self preservation.

My reply makes necessary the addition of the temporal dimension. At what moment are these soldiers multitudinous? Certainly they are not operating as a multitude while in training under the command of drill sergeants, while being mobilized to any particular theater of war. Rather, they become the multitude, or operate multitudinously, at the moment of deployment into battle and faced with Real war. Even here, when the quest for self-preservation is dominant, there is always centripetal energy attempting to draw them back into the chain of command, of hierarchy.

I am thinking here of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks is leaning against a metal barrier on the beach and experiences a lucid consciousness amidst the carnage of the D-Day landing. He is brought back by two soldiers screaming at him for orders on what to do next.

(more…)

In an effort to better understand the relationship between Virno’s general intellect and its historically specific manifestations, I pointed to this passage.

“In the multitude, there is a full historical, phenomenological, empirical display of the ontological condition of the human animal: biological artlessness, the indefinite or potential character of its existence, lack of a determined environment, the linguistic intellect as “compensation” for the shortage of specialized instincts. It is as if the root has risen to the surface, finally revealing itself to the naked eye…The multitude is this: a fundamental biological configuration which becomes a historically determined way of being, ontology revealing itself in phenomenologically.” (98)

The general intellect is then the abstract biological potential from which the historically specific moment manifests, on which the moment is dependent even while the specific moment demonstrates the presence of this potential and adds to it.

There are some problems and questions I have regarding this move. For one, are all historical moments dependent on this general intellect; is the general intellect transhistorical? In so far as this general intellect is defined as merely the biological potential of human speech, we might say ‘yes’. There are however, historical moments not determined by/ manifestations of this speech potential–Napoleon’s sneeze comes to mind–wherein not the speech act but the affective results of non linguistic communications drive the event. Here, however, I question whether the general intellect does/ must not include communication beyond speech as such. Another way to present this would be to ask in what way is a historical moment dependent on the general intellect? Is it limited to certain, multitudinous, manifestations or more generally invoked in all speech acts?

I feel like an intellectual pretzel…salt please…

From Banjo

I ain’t a big headed nigger, but a white man has got to respect me, for when I address myself to him the vibration of brain magic that I turn loose on him is like an electric shock on the spring of his cranium.

“It was nothing,” said Ginger, “but the eternal visible of imagination.”