Sunday, November 8, 2009

History and Racism

Linda Daly
It seems that we have entered into a diatribe on cultural wars along with that of questions of identity, use of language and effective transmission of ideas meaningful in the literary tradition. Gates seems to be very critical of black creative writing, saying as an example that there is not apparent black history showing it to be part of the western frontier. Yet for those of you in the Morrison class, we just read Morrison's book Paradise, which is about blacks entering the western frontier of Oklahoma, when it was up for grabs and how all black communities were in fact established there. This is based on legitimate history which blacks were part of.

Multicultural literature, like all literature according to Gates at least by the middle of the nineteenth century, was not great unless imbued with "national spirit and "historical period" (1891). Certainly multicultural literature is part of world culture in this age of globalization, as none of us can escape the other and "we are already contaminated by each other" (Appiah 354, quoted within the Richter article on 1476). Therefore to suggest multicultural texts are not part of the western tradition is apparently spurious. Yet this begs the argument about putting meat into a curriculum that lends itself to knowledge based on depth, not just a collection of ideas. Achieving a true understanding of the original history of the standard absolutist ideas of western civilization does take considerable investigation. Being able to read in the language of the original great books while not commonly done, is not without merit, as Joyce made us all eminently aware. To understand black identity is also to understand in some depth, black history both in Africa and this country, political, social, religious and cultural. Just as this is so of European western traditions. This seems self evident.

Greenblat's ideas that we only listen to a ghost by listening to ourselves and that we only hear many ghostly voices by listening to many voices, is not entirely accurate in my opinion. When a ghost speaks, history speaks, we remember and interpret, as history has done so, because of hardwired archetypal formations, experience and education. We listen to a ghost with the same point of view that we listen to any character, through our eyes and mental storage of information,including historical, along with the text clues. Therefore, many voices really are a part of all of our individual assessments of a ghost.

Bhahha article on post colonial criticism suggested that rigid ideas about race, racism and culture has generally been needed in order to establish "a repertoire of conflictual position (that) constitute the subject in colonial discourse" is thought provoking"(300). It is often true, but authors such as Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler have tried to move the reader beyond this. It is as Bhahha suggests a conversation that occurs in the "margins," not only involving otherness but common humanity and individual choices, which can defy our concepts about each other.


Works Cited



Homi K Bhahha. 'The Other Question: The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse' from Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: A Reader. 2d ed. Ed. K. M. Newton. New York: Palgrave, 1997. Print.

Greenblalt, Stephen. "Shakespearian Negotiation: The Cessation of Social
Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley; University of California Press, 1988. Print.

Guillory. "From Culturalist Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation: Multicultural Interlude: The Question of a Core Curriculum." Richter, David H., Ed. The Critical Traditions: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford, 2007. Print.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "Writing, Race and the Difference it Makes" The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford, 2007.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "Dialogue Between Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Houston A. Baker Jr." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford, 2007.

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