I enjoyed reading Morrison’s “Black Matters,” specifically thinking about the end of class conversation two weeks ago concerning form and style of criticism when written by men vs. women, or Marxist vs. other criticism. (I liked Morrison’s style, and especially the fishbowl paragraph as it deviated from the style of the rest of the chapter, but maybe proved her being a ‘writer’ – so, she doesn’t just read as a writer, but also criticize as a writer).
The importance Morrison puts on imagination is also interesting. She seems to advocate for imagination in stories with or about black presence in both writers as producers and readers as receivers of those stories, and so consequently also in the critic? I wonder how that process of imagination plays out as two actors, writer and reader, are involved and then what that imagination would be when the network is extended to add a third, the critic. More generally, what would this criticism look like, like Hartman’s “Wayward Lives,” for example?
I was interested in the distinctions Morrison makes between writer versus reader versus literary critic but particularly the relations between the reader and the literary critic. This made me think about the different hats we wear in academia. When are we reading as readers versus as a critic, and is there any notable distinciton between the two when it comes to the act of reading? Maybe for the literary critic there is an awareness of what they will want to circle back to and write about during and/or after the act of reading is completed, but I think there’s an interesting question of how the act of reading positions itself for the reader versus the critic. For Morrison, at least, “books revealed themselves rather differently to me as a writer” (3).
What is contrapuntal reading? Said is famous for introducing it, but uses an example rather than providing a methodology. With the advantage of hindsight, what can we say that methodology would be? Does it work for art forms less full of objects than the novel—music?—or for constituitive structures besides colonialism?
What I appreciated most about Toni Morrison’s piece was her acknowledgment of the distinct importance of analyzing what “racial ideology does to the mind, imagination, and behavior of masters” and the revelation that “the subject of the dream is the dreamer.” (12, 17) With regards to the former, I imagine many would agree that one’s personal experience being interpellated as marginalized under systems of oppression would, while not necessarily enabling one to intuit exactly how they function, grant some immediate insight into such structures and their various machinations. As such, I too find it much more interesting to investigate the ways in which literature and media obfuscate and depoliticize these categories of identity such that the fishbowl is made invisible to themselves yet subconscious guides and influences their beliefs and behavior. As for the latter, I wondered if this dictum could be read as an attempt to resurrect the author, or at least problematize its death. Moreover, in what ways are psychoanalysis and intentionalism implicated in a writer-oriented approach to literary criticism that (rightfully?) recognizes the conscious and unconscious decisions they made “to talk about themselves through and withing a sometimes allegorical, sometimes metaphorical, but always choked representation of an Africanist presence[?]”
If I understood it correctly, it seems to me that the Fanon piece could be seen as arguing for a kind of literature that sits between the comparative- strictu sensu- and the notion of World literature argued by Damrosch. “It is at the heart of national consciousness that international consciousness lives and grows.”(Fanon, 52)
I guess my question is: can Damrosch’s World Literature exist without removing the element of national consciousness Fanon speaks of ? Where role would translation have?
how do we read ethically—especially with attention to power, history, and violence—without falling into a kind of hermeneutic paranoia where every detail becomes symptomatic, suspect, or allegorical?
Both Fanon and Said expose a futility in “counteract[ing] colonialism’s attempts” (Fanon, 44). Fanon denounces the enactment of “exhibitionist demonstrations” such as “delving into the past of a people” to prove national culture, while Said diverts critical attention from (justice-inflected? progressive?) readings of 19th- and 20th-century English imperial novels (Fanon, 44). In different contexts, Fanon and Said both refuse the site, the mode, and the conditions drafted by the oppressor — both refuse to perform any systematic correction of the colonial lie. This refusal drives Said’s “Orientalism,” too: “What interests me most as a scholar is not the gross political verity but the detail, as indeed what interests us in someone like Lane or Flaubert or Renan is not the (to him) indisputable truth that Occidentals are superior to Orientals, but the … evidence of his detailed work within the very wide space opened up by that truth” (15).
When reading, and when teaching, how do we navigate a literary work that exists in the “very wide space opened up by that truth”? How do we counteract it, without falling into the trap of merely correcting the oppressor?
I second Serena’s question from above – that is, what exactly is Said’s contrapuntal reading? The following seems to be one of its central aspects: “In reading a text, one must open it out both to what went into it and to what its author excluded. Each cultural work is a vision of a moment, and we must juxtapose that vision with the various revisions it later provoked…” (67).
Additionally, are there any fruitful similarities contrapuntal reading may have with other views of reading or approaches to texts we’ve covered so far this semester? Said’s approach certainly places a similar emphasis on the dynamism or the structure of power (with)in, behind, outside, etc. texts in a similar way that Foucault might, and its contrareity to the “given” or its against-the-grain-ness bears a resemblance, it seems to me, to deconstruction’s “resistance,” one might say, to “accept” the logocentrism(s) of a text (or that text’s claim to transparent meaningfulness qua disclosive-of-“reality”).
Said writes that, despite the glaring historical fact of empire–and the setting of empire in many Western novels–few critics have taken up the topic in their literary analyses. Do we still find this to be the case today?
“Writers are among the most sensitive, the most intellectually anarchic, most representative, most probing of artists. The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power. The languages they use and the social and historical context in which these languages signify are indirect and direct revelations of that power and its limitations.” (Morrison 15)
I was mainly just wondering how we can distinguish the writers that Morrison is referring to here, versus the ones that Fanon talks about. Even though Fanon talks about literature, he is often criticizing the authors, while Morrison is praising them for the power they hold.
Said stops just sort of saying that “the novel..or the culture [of British sensibility] “caused” imperialism” with the more anodyne statement that “the novel, as a cultural artifact of bourgeois society, and imperialism are unthinkable without each other.” He also later mentions “an unusual organic continuity that can be seen between the earlier narratives not considered to have much to do with empire and the later ones explicitly about it.” To what extent do revisionist or reparative works like Wide Sargasso Sea or Mrs. Caliban, or The Remains of the Day, or even Downton Abbey (though I haven’t seen it but I’m told it gives equal treatment to the servants as it does to the aristos) complicate or address or maybe even heal the caustic enabling relationship Said outlines between the novel and imperialism? Or are these newer works part of the unusual organic continuity of English literature?
Morrison begins her essay with a description of the process of becoming a writer: “In that capacity I have to place enormous trust in my ability to imagine others and my willingness to project consciously into the danger zones such others may represent for me” (3). Writing, here, is figured as a process of projection onto an imagined other. I think Morrison begins here because the rest of the piece takes seriously the fact of projection to put forward a theory of reading (as a writer) which can examine white anxiety around blackness in the canon. The implication of such a statement, I think, instantiates a kind of radical indeterminacy of the individual. It means acknowledging the complete impossibility of separating your object from your assumptions. Moten’s work would be helpful here in trying to parse the effects of this line of thinking. He might phrase this as a question of what happens if we displace the “desirability” of the individuated subject. Morrison makes the point clearly when she writes “The fabrication of an Africanist persona is reflexive; an extraordinary meditation on the self” (17). Interpretation here becomes an issue of projection. If one can only know the self as it attempts to delineate an object outside of itself that is always already only a projection of the assumptions contained inside the self, how can we enter into a symbolic register without immense violence?
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12 Comments
Joanna
I enjoyed reading Morrison’s “Black Matters,” specifically thinking about the end of class conversation two weeks ago concerning form and style of criticism when written by men vs. women, or Marxist vs. other criticism. (I liked Morrison’s style, and especially the fishbowl paragraph as it deviated from the style of the rest of the chapter, but maybe proved her being a ‘writer’ – so, she doesn’t just read as a writer, but also criticize as a writer).
The importance Morrison puts on imagination is also interesting. She seems to advocate for imagination in stories with or about black presence in both writers as producers and readers as receivers of those stories, and so consequently also in the critic? I wonder how that process of imagination plays out as two actors, writer and reader, are involved and then what that imagination would be when the network is extended to add a third, the critic. More generally, what would this criticism look like, like Hartman’s “Wayward Lives,” for example?
Francesca
I was interested in the distinctions Morrison makes between writer versus reader versus literary critic but particularly the relations between the reader and the literary critic. This made me think about the different hats we wear in academia. When are we reading as readers versus as a critic, and is there any notable distinciton between the two when it comes to the act of reading? Maybe for the literary critic there is an awareness of what they will want to circle back to and write about during and/or after the act of reading is completed, but I think there’s an interesting question of how the act of reading positions itself for the reader versus the critic. For Morrison, at least, “books revealed themselves rather differently to me as a writer” (3).
Serena Solin
What is contrapuntal reading? Said is famous for introducing it, but uses an example rather than providing a methodology. With the advantage of hindsight, what can we say that methodology would be? Does it work for art forms less full of objects than the novel—music?—or for constituitive structures besides colonialism?
Alex Lleras
What I appreciated most about Toni Morrison’s piece was her acknowledgment of the distinct importance of analyzing what “racial ideology does to the mind, imagination, and behavior of masters” and the revelation that “the subject of the dream is the dreamer.” (12, 17) With regards to the former, I imagine many would agree that one’s personal experience being interpellated as marginalized under systems of oppression would, while not necessarily enabling one to intuit exactly how they function, grant some immediate insight into such structures and their various machinations. As such, I too find it much more interesting to investigate the ways in which literature and media obfuscate and depoliticize these categories of identity such that the fishbowl is made invisible to themselves yet subconscious guides and influences their beliefs and behavior. As for the latter, I wondered if this dictum could be read as an attempt to resurrect the author, or at least problematize its death. Moreover, in what ways are psychoanalysis and intentionalism implicated in a writer-oriented approach to literary criticism that (rightfully?) recognizes the conscious and unconscious decisions they made “to talk about themselves through and withing a sometimes allegorical, sometimes metaphorical, but always choked representation of an Africanist presence[?]”
Irene
If I understood it correctly, it seems to me that the Fanon piece could be seen as arguing for a kind of literature that sits between the comparative- strictu sensu- and the notion of World literature argued by Damrosch. “It is at the heart of national consciousness that international consciousness lives and grows.”(Fanon, 52)
I guess my question is: can Damrosch’s World Literature exist without removing the element of national consciousness Fanon speaks of ? Where role would translation have?
dana
how do we read ethically—especially with attention to power, history, and violence—without falling into a kind of hermeneutic paranoia where every detail becomes symptomatic, suspect, or allegorical?
Alice Ascoli (she/her)
Both Fanon and Said expose a futility in “counteract[ing] colonialism’s attempts” (Fanon, 44). Fanon denounces the enactment of “exhibitionist demonstrations” such as “delving into the past of a people” to prove national culture, while Said diverts critical attention from (justice-inflected? progressive?) readings of 19th- and 20th-century English imperial novels (Fanon, 44). In different contexts, Fanon and Said both refuse the site, the mode, and the conditions drafted by the oppressor — both refuse to perform any systematic correction of the colonial lie. This refusal drives Said’s “Orientalism,” too: “What interests me most as a scholar is not the gross political verity but the detail, as indeed what interests us in someone like Lane or Flaubert or Renan is not the (to him) indisputable truth that Occidentals are superior to Orientals, but the … evidence of his detailed work within the very wide space opened up by that truth” (15).
When reading, and when teaching, how do we navigate a literary work that exists in the “very wide space opened up by that truth”? How do we counteract it, without falling into the trap of merely correcting the oppressor?
Alex Riedel
I second Serena’s question from above – that is, what exactly is Said’s contrapuntal reading? The following seems to be one of its central aspects: “In reading a text, one must open it out both to what went into it and to what its author excluded. Each cultural work is a vision of a moment, and we must juxtapose that vision with the various revisions it later provoked…” (67).
Additionally, are there any fruitful similarities contrapuntal reading may have with other views of reading or approaches to texts we’ve covered so far this semester? Said’s approach certainly places a similar emphasis on the dynamism or the structure of power (with)in, behind, outside, etc. texts in a similar way that Foucault might, and its contrareity to the “given” or its against-the-grain-ness bears a resemblance, it seems to me, to deconstruction’s “resistance,” one might say, to “accept” the logocentrism(s) of a text (or that text’s claim to transparent meaningfulness qua disclosive-of-“reality”).
Coco Fitterman
Said writes that, despite the glaring historical fact of empire–and the setting of empire in many Western novels–few critics have taken up the topic in their literary analyses. Do we still find this to be the case today?
Paraskevi Gkana-Alberico (She/Her)
“Writers are among the most sensitive, the most intellectually anarchic, most representative, most probing of artists. The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power. The languages they use and the social and historical context in which these languages signify are indirect and direct revelations of that power and its limitations.” (Morrison 15)
I was mainly just wondering how we can distinguish the writers that Morrison is referring to here, versus the ones that Fanon talks about. Even though Fanon talks about literature, he is often criticizing the authors, while Morrison is praising them for the power they hold.
Peter
Said stops just sort of saying that “the novel..or the culture [of British sensibility] “caused” imperialism” with the more anodyne statement that “the novel, as a cultural artifact of bourgeois society, and imperialism are unthinkable without each other.” He also later mentions “an unusual organic continuity that can be seen between the earlier narratives not considered to have much to do with empire and the later ones explicitly about it.” To what extent do revisionist or reparative works like Wide Sargasso Sea or Mrs. Caliban, or The Remains of the Day, or even Downton Abbey (though I haven’t seen it but I’m told it gives equal treatment to the servants as it does to the aristos) complicate or address or maybe even heal the caustic enabling relationship Said outlines between the novel and imperialism? Or are these newer works part of the unusual organic continuity of English literature?
Jodie Kahan (she/her)
Morrison begins her essay with a description of the process of becoming a writer: “In that capacity I have to place enormous trust in my ability to imagine others and my willingness to project consciously into the danger zones such others may represent for me” (3). Writing, here, is figured as a process of projection onto an imagined other. I think Morrison begins here because the rest of the piece takes seriously the fact of projection to put forward a theory of reading (as a writer) which can examine white anxiety around blackness in the canon. The implication of such a statement, I think, instantiates a kind of radical indeterminacy of the individual. It means acknowledging the complete impossibility of separating your object from your assumptions. Moten’s work would be helpful here in trying to parse the effects of this line of thinking. He might phrase this as a question of what happens if we displace the “desirability” of the individuated subject. Morrison makes the point clearly when she writes “The fabrication of an Africanist persona is reflexive; an extraordinary meditation on the self” (17). Interpretation here becomes an issue of projection. If one can only know the self as it attempts to delineate an object outside of itself that is always already only a projection of the assumptions contained inside the self, how can we enter into a symbolic register without immense violence?