I was shelving the other day….

…and I came across Flesh by my fantastic Senior Sem prof., Hollis Seamon.  Like any other student, I have Googled H.S. to see what she has out there (we have to do it for the authors we read, why not the profs who teach us?!), so I was aware of this book’s existence.  What I was not aware of, however, was the subtitle: A Suzanne LaFleshe Mystery. 

Funny, since one of the collections of linked stories we are reading is The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe.  H.S. is so not pompous, and I am now totally psyched that not only are we reading one of the stories she has written, but that it was awesome enough that it became the title story for the collection. 

By the way, Flesh is great.  She tells the most average things with amazing beauty, and it takes place in Albany, NY.  I detect a bit of her own dissertation experience.  I started it during my lunch at APL, and I wish I had time to read the whole thing now!  It’s definitely going on the shelf for the end of the semester.

over exposure

Okay, my job officially sucks.  I just had a guy expose himself to me at work.  He’s one of the ‘drunk guys’ and comes in regularly.  This time, however, he had something else on his mind besides making a phone call.  ewww.  However, because my job is what my job is, this is not the first time this has happened, the police were not called, and the offender has been banned for one month.  And people wonder why we have security guards. 

So, my confusion continues.  This sort of experience is borderline ‘normal’ for myself and co-workers.  Where can the line be drawn that protects me from sexual harrassment?  I am not allowed to behave in a manner such as this towards patrons, why are they permitted to offend me?  We have a customer behavior policy.  Yet, the customers do not receive it and are likely to be unaware it exists.  I do not encourage sexual innuendos, but obviously someone in society does, because I am ‘hit on’ daily, despite the fact that I wear something very much like a wedding band and claim to be married whenever someone asks (yes, Greg is aware).  Furthermore, this seems to be a females-0nly problem at my workplace.  Male co-workers have no idea what ‘the look’ is, but ask anyone who can wear skirts without violating the dress code, and sympathy abounds. 

So, what do I do?  I get paid too well to quit, unless someone knows of a part-time job that pays over $10/hr. allows me to have freedom in schedule-making, and is in some way useful in the eventual obtainment of a career.  damn it.

Cho’ momma is so funny

“The Chippendale’s dancers are gay. They’re gay. Because there is no such thing as a straight man with visible abdominal muscles. You have to SUCK COCK to get that kind of muscle definition.”

“Because I wasn’t Asian enough - they decided to hire an Asian Consultant. Because I was fuckin it up as an Asian. She would follow me around: “Margaret! Use chopsticks! And when you are done eating, you can put them in your hair. Now you’re wearing shoes which is something we don’t do in the house. Now I’m just going to leave this abacus right here…”

“I am not gonna die because I failed as someone else. I am gonna succeed as myself. And I’m gonna stay here and rock the mike until the next Korean-American, fag hag, shit starter, girl comic, trash talker, comes up and takes my place!”

I can’t even imagine where to begin.  While the other people I forced to watch the DVD with me didn’t totally get it, I spent the entire hour-and-a-half with my pen and paper…”oh, that is sooo performance, why does she do her female voice like that?” etc.   While some of the references were above my head (sorry!), such as Karl Lagerfeld or “Facts of Life,” once I got into her performance it did help me to better understand the performativity of individual categories of identification.  However, I was looking for it.  The others I watched the DVD with were less than impressed.

The gay man.  Please draw your attention to quote #1.  Every gay man was rather ‘effeminate’ and spoke in a particular manner, and apparently all moved in the same way.  The ‘gay man driving’ thing was soooo nasty.  Oh, and my efforts to appreciate the ‘balls in pantyhose’ scent, bad idea on my part!

“Because I wasn’t Asian enough….”  This is a problem facing individuals of all ethnicities who have been displaced (if that is what it can be called) .  Today at work I had a conversation with one of the security guards about the flack that he has been getting due to the fact that after high school he let go of his ‘thug’ identity in favor of a different image.  Now, he is being criticized for not being ‘black enough.’  My roommate’s mother is German and her father is Greek, with both of them actually coming from their respective countries.  However, my roommate is not ‘Greek enough’ for her dad’s family or ‘German enough’ for her mom’s.  We went to the Russian deli and bought farmer’s cheese.  People only go to the Russian deli to buy farmer’s cheese in order to make Pascha (traditional Easter cheese thing).  But, we are sooooo American.  And we spoke English the entire time.  We received a serious ‘evil eye’ from the owner, maybe it’s related to the fact that last time my roommate was there, she was asked “Vhere are you fram?”  and she responded with, “Michigan.”  I’m Russian Orthodox but know less than 50 words in Russian, and my accent is enough to make any Real Russian flip shit.

How can we win?  Is is about winning?  Wouldn’t the best choice be to allow everyone to behave in whatever manner they feel most comfortable and refrain from categorizing them?  I would argue that such is not possible, for we, as a basic human need, want to categorize ourselves, because in identifying with others we are able to feel like we belong somewhere and are not floating about existence entirely on our own.  We are not made to be completely individual; there have to be at least connections with others that can be drawn.

Even Margaret Cho (Mo Ran Cho) isn’t completely free from the identification process.  She does her best to convince her mother and herself that she is just who she is.  But, as she admits, who she is is simply a, “Korean-American, fag hag, shit starter, girl comic, trash talker.”  Hey, it might not be mainstream, but she is identifying with these various groups as a means of defining herself.  And, even if she doesn’t wholly recognize it, she is performing her ’self’ in a manner that allows her to define herself as such.

Disgrace Rocks the House

I am not sure that I’m even capable of expressing how happy I am to be working with a text that has characters, a plot, and accessibility. It also takes half of the previous amount of time necessary to prepare for class, too. For this reason alone, I can love Coetzee.

While I wholeheartedly feel that David is a dirty asshole, he deos make for an interesting conflicted character. He has many questions about who he is and what his place in life is that I can understand. I think that it is interesting that we all require definitions and positions for ourselves in order to understand ourselves, but at the same time, this definition that leads to understanding also leads to limitations of what we feel we are capable of or allowed to do. Oh no, I think I just used Derridian theory. Anyhow, David feels defined and limited by his role of professor, because he does fit the role and is knowledgeable on the subjects he is teaching, but at the same time, he is not just a teacher, he is also a writer, a poet, and an artist (at least in his mind).

In Disgrace there is an interesting pairing of roles and value. As an intelligent and artistic man, David feels that he has a value that exceeds his role as an educator. When he is talking with his ex-wife, Rosalind, the narrator writes, “Perhaps it is the right of the young to be protectede from the sight of their elders in the throes of passion. That is what whores are for, after all: to put up with the ecstasies of the unlovely” (44). This particularly struck me because David is clearly implying that in the role one plays as ‘young’ (for it is certainly a demographic group as well as an occupation), one has the right to be protected from certain pleasantries. However, if one gives up this role and instead takes on the responsibilities of a prostitute, he or she is no longer valuable enough to be protected from pleasantries. Sick man.

Another interesting ideology is David’s pairing of beauty, economy, and the perpetuation of the system. In an attempt to seduce Melanie, he states, “‘a woman’s beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.’ She does not own herself. Beauty does not own itself. ‘From fairest creatures we desire increase that thereby beauty’s rose might never die.’” (16) Why does there have to be ownership of beauty at all? It is because if someone owns it, there is an implication that someone else does not, thereby making it desirable. But, interestingly enough, the possessor of the beauty is not the owner of it. As Rubin would argue, beauty is not defined by the woman as an individual, but by society, and is used to give her a corresponding value in the effort to utilize her in the economic market. To incorporate Althusserian ideas, such a process is necessary in the effort to maintain the system that is in place and perpetuate it.

Who am I, where did I come from, why am I here, and what is the meaning of my life?

I have been used. No, actually, I won’t say that (yet). I am beginning to feel a minuscule amount of power and competence in my struggle to not only make it through theory, but know it well enough to use it. I’ve used it against other, non-English majors, but he has only dismissed me by saying that things are what they are and ‘you English people spend too much time thinking about things.’

Reading: To make a gross understatement, abstract thinking is not my strength. So, needless to say, concepts such as ‘the center is not the center’ is a bit of a struggle to integrate into my life. In my reading, I’ve pseudo-adopted a new strategy that I borrowed from one of my friends; when she took a course on Greek philosophy, the professor began the semester by saying that the ideas they would be covering were pretty difficult, and that if the students could not understand them, they should just memorize them. I think it’s working for me, to some degree, but if nothing else it has helped me to feel less non-intelligent.

My writing. It rambles. I’m not sure that I am writing my blogs as they were meant to be written. Often, I feel as though I’ve made a grand statement, only to go to class and find out that it’s a commonplace conclusion that everyone else has successfully ‘gotten.’ At the same time, however, though it’s a pain to write one before every class, it definitely helps me to retain some of what I read, otherwise I’m sure it would fly through my head in a nanosecond.

Conversation: Honestly, I have wholeheartedly attempted to have conversations about the theory we work with outside of class with other classmates. It starts off okay, but when my painfully elementary conception and understanding of the theory becomes apparent, there’s little use in continuing, because I simply don’t know it well enough to argue at any elevated level. Fortunately, I’ve had plenty of conversations that include no argument as well, instead we’ve attempted to form any elementary understanding of the theorist’s ideas (in vain?).

Group work: Much like my attempts at conversation, participation in group work sort of feels like a collection of masochists taking a course on sensual massage. Okay, maybe not that bad, perhaps our group looks more like theory students who struggle to obtain elementary levels of understanding. I’m looking forward to the theory carnival, though, because perhaps it will be different discussing theory that we have already taken apart in class, fostering at least a sense of understanding, even if it is misguided or completely wrong.

Nothing personal, but I will be happy when this class is over. It is too much like an exercise (Olympic gymnast-quality) in mental acrobatics. I see it seeping into my life and it honestly has helped my ability to read literature in my other classes, but nonetheless, I’ll be happy to receive my theory lessons in smaller doses and much greater intervals.

Fanon’s Ontology

Okay, I’m not sure if it will make sense to everyone else, but to me, it seems that my biggest challenge in literary theory is separating the argument being made from the theory that it is utilizing/is responsible for framing the argument. It’s a two-fold problem; when we worked with straight theory, it was difficult to understand due to the lack of examples, but now that we are working with something that is a bit more ‘real,’ it is easy to simply engage in an argument with the writer over a particular phrase. So, throughout this Fanon article, I struggled to look for the clues about his theory, instead of engaging my mind in a contemplation of the the state of the black (or colored or Negro or African American) man/woman today.

I think I found it: “not only must a black man be black, he must be black in relation to the white man (110)…I made myself an object (112)…the Jew is disliked from the moment he is tracked down (115-116)…I am overdetermined from without (116)…history that others have compiled for me (120)…total inability to liquidate the past (122)…I walk on white nails (126)…this is humanity at its lowest…aggression was in the stars (126)…negritude is the root of its own destruction (133)…it is not I who make a meaning for myself, but it is the meaning that was already there (134)…I am not a potentiality of something, I am wholly what I am (135)…Without a Negro past, without a Negro future, it was impossible for me to live my Negrohod (138)…I refuse to accept that amputation (140)”. See? No, you probably don’t, but I assure you that this is the essence of the article, in my mind. It is true not only for Fanon, but for literature, language, and theory as well. Theory represents something in its own right, but also is subject to the outside interpretations that are made in relation to it, it is based upon a past an future that must exist, or it would not be possible to create anything new, and it is always being subjected to criticism, but this criticism is necessary or there would be no growth in the effort to realize or understand truth.

I think that is naturally human, at least in the human society we currently have, to attempt to categorize any new information or situations that we encounter in an attempt to understand it. While this is actually very necessary in our efforts to integrate the new ideas into our lives and psyches, this categorization often leads to overgeneralization, misinterpretation, and even false conclusions. As Franz Fanon illustrates, the black man/woman has been subjected to this misrepresentation as a result of society attempting to understand the race.

Application: This struggle for the true identity for the black man continues today. As illustrated by the title of this video, the challenge, in many ways, is not overcoming the past, but in defining blackness without comparing it to whiteness:

Warning White Women About Black Women: Today we warn white women about self-hating racist black women stealing their white men.