Semicolon Spring 2013

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SEMICOLON

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The Arts and Humanities Essay Journal Spring 2013

The Semicolon 2013

Essay Journal

Editor-in-chief: Meagan

Puterman Creative Managing Editor: Marta Boutchma Academic Managing Editor: Calum Beedling Copy Editor: April Tanner Layout Editor: Stephanie Grella The Semicolon is generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Student Donation Fund. The editors would like to thank the Donation Fund Committee, the students who submitted essays, and the professors who volunteered for the review board.

The Semicolon accepts A-grade essays written for courses within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. For information and copies, please contact the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council in University College 112F.

Copyrights remain with the artists and authors. The sole responsibility for the content in this publication lies with the authors and artists. The content does not reflect the opinions of the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council (AHSC) or the University Students’ Council (USC). The AHSC and USC assume no liability for any errors, inaccuracies, or omissions contained in this publication.

Letter from the Editor

Essay writing can often make you feel like a vagabond.

At first it seems so daunting, and there are still times when I submit

essays feeling like the outcome could really go either way.

If you’re an Arts and Humanities student, you were probably

like me and came out of high school thinking you were the John Lennon

of essay writing. To my disappointment, the first essay I ever got back at

Western was given a grade of 67% and I was beginning to think that I

would need to switch faculties. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to please my

professors without my trusty high school fill in the blank essay outlines.

Practice makes perfect, however, and I am successfully graduating from

my fourth year in Arts and Humanities- essays and all.

Essays are tricky things, which are only made trickier by the

continuum of expectations of professors and the subjectivity of teaching

assistants. I hope that after reading this journal you can make better sense

of what an A grade essay looks like, and understand from the professor

panel what the major achievements of each essay are, so you can apply

similar techniques to your own work.

This journal contains some of the best of the best in our faculty.

Each essay has been left in the original condition it was in when it was

graded to help you truly comprehend its merit. I hope you are able to

learn from this journal and can apply your new knowledge to your future

essay writing endeavours.

-- Meagan Puterman

Editor-in-Chief

Contents

Professor Bios............................................................................................................................................2 A Message from the Student Writer-in-Residence..................................................................................4 Classical Studies Beyond Narration: The Role of the Chorus in Aeschylus’ Oresteia.....................................................................................................................6 The Role of Relief Sculpture During the Trajanic Period....................................................................................................................................10 The Fall of the Tuscan and the Emperor................................................................................................................................................................15 Dr. Suski’s Advice......................................................................................................................................................................................................21

English Plants and Death: Mortality in Patricia Young’s “Sophie’s Lament”...................................................................................................................24 Mr. Marion Bloom: The Indefinable Allroundman in Joyce’s Ulysses...............................................................................................................26 Towards a Unified Society: Public and Private in Adrienne Rich’s The School Among the Ruins..................................................................30 Dr. Bentley’s Advice.................................................................................................................................................................................................35

Film To Serve and Protect: The Canadian National Anthem......................................................................................................................................38 A Discussion of Contemporary Latin American Cinema: The Maid/La Nana................................................................................................40 My Own Private Idaho: Realism and its Discontents...........................................................................................................................................43 Dr. Coates’ Advice....................................................................................................................................................................................................49

French Le Joual et le Parler Québécois : Une Brève Diachronie.....................................................................................................................................52 Le stéréotype dans Nedjma de Kateb Yacine........................................................................................................................................................57 L’épanouissement personnel de Renée Néré dans La Vagabonde.......................................................................................................................61 Professor Boyi’s Advice............................................................................................................................................................................................65

Linguistics Gendering in Media Reporting of Politics............................................................................................................................................................68 Role Reflection: The Portrayal of Gender Roles with Syntactic and Lexical Choices in Margaret Atwood’s “Marrying the Hangman”..72 Corrective Feedback for Second Language Learners...........................................................................................................................................76 Professor Marin’s Advice..........................................................................................................................................................................................79

Modern Languages and Literature All Plots Tend to Move Deathward: Reality, Artifice, and the Human Condition in Don DeLillo’s White Noise.....................................82 An Unexpected Guest from the Dark Continent: The Noble Savage Redefines Colonialist “Enlightenment”.............................................86 Like Joan of Arc or Aphrodite: The Ideal Women ‘Borrowed’ from Botticelli by Lichtenstein......................................................................89 Dr. Mihailescu’s Advice.............................................................................................................................................................................................94

Philosophy Esoteric Morality: A Response to Moral Nihilism................................................................................................................................................96 Should marriage be restricted to the union between one man and one woman or should homosexual couples be allowed to marry?...99 What Should Jim Do?..............................................................................................................................................................................................102 Dr. Thorp’s Advice....................................................................................................................................................................................................104

Visual Art Laocoon and his Sons: The Aesthetics of Anguish..............................................................................................................................................108 “Figuring” Out the Past: An Interpretation of the Valdivia Figurines.....................................................................................................111 Tarsila do Amaral: The Quintessential Brazilian Modern Artist?.....................................................................................................................116 Dr. Hatch’s Advice....................................................................................................................................................................................................122

Women’s Studies The Political and Ideological Conception of Women’s Bodies...........................................................................................................................124 Feminism and Animal Activism............................................................................................................................................................................127 Cultural Veils.............................................................................................................................................................................................................132 Dr. Allen’s Advice......................................................................................................................................................................................................136

Professor Classical Studies: Aara

Panel

Suksi

With interests in Greek mythology, literature, and politics, Dr. Suksi teaches courses in the Classical Studies department. Dr. Suksi is currently the Department Chair and is teaching courses on Greek poetry and drama.

English: David

Bentley

Dr. Bentley is a professor in the department of English Language and Literature. He has been recognized for his achievements in both research and teaching with awards such as the Ontario Premier’s Discovery Award and the 3M National Teaching Fellowship. As well, Dr. Bentley is the Director of the Canadian Poetry Project and the Editor of the Canadian Poetry Press.

Film: Paul

Coates

Dr. Paul Coates is a professor in the Film Studies department. He teaches courses in the subject of Film Theory.

His interests lie in Polish cinema and more generally in European cinema.

French Studies: Henri

Boyi

Professor Boyi teaches courses in French Studies employing both traditional and modern learning strategies to effectively instill the language in his students. He has recently been recognized for his humanitarian work by being awarded the Western Humanitarian Award. Professor Boyi runs a class that involves Experiential Learning through education about Rwanda and including educational trip there to witness and participate in the culture first hand.

Linguistics: Claire

Marin

Professor Claire Marin is a member of the Anthropology Department. Her courses are in the subject of Linguistics with a focus in phonetics and teaching English as a Second Language.

Modern Languages and Literature: Calin-Andrei

Mihailescu

Teaching in the Comparative Literature department, Dr. Mihailescu has a wide variety of interests and areas of study. Some of these include Philosophy, Critical Theory, and Film Theory. Most recently, Dr. Mihailescu published a book entitled Happy New Fear!

Philosophy: John

Thorp

Teaching courses on Plato and the Presocratics, Dr. Thorp’s interests lie in Greek Philosophy and science. Dr. Thorp is also interested in the Philosophy of Religion and Free Will. He is also a member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy.

Visual Art: John

Hatch

Dr. John Hatch’s focus lies in contemporary and modern art. He received his doctorate degree from the University of Essex and has since completed research concerning the influences of science on art. Dr. Hatch is currently the Associate Dean of Academics for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

Women’s Studies: Andrea

Allen

Dr. Allen is a professor in the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research as well as at Huron University College. Her research involves topics including LGBTQ Studies, Black Feminism, and Religions of the African Diaspora to name a few.

Adventures in Essayland: 15 Rules for Writing a Better Essay •“I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by.” --Douglas Adams Start developing your ideas as soon as possible, and work on your essay a little bit every day. Even if you commit thirty minutes to it daily, you’ll accomplish so much gradually that you won’t feel nearly as stressed when the due date rolls around. Also, the quality of your work will be that much better because you will have given yourself a lot of time to develop your arguments and strengthen your ideas.

•“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” --Herman Melville

Choose an essay topic that you are really interested in. Not only will it make it easier for you to write the essay, but it will also make you more excited and willing to work on it.

•“I get by with a little help from my friends.” --The Beatles

Talk to your professors and TAs about your essay! They are excellent, knowledgeable resources who are more than happy and willing to help you. Voicing your thoughts to another person will help you better understand your argument, and talking about it will often allow you to discover things you didn’t notice before. Your professors and TAs are very experienced with writing essays: they will be able to guide you in the right direction, and might even recommend resources that would be useful for you to consider in order to further develop your ideas.

•“Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.” --Ayn Rand Write a strong, argumentative thesis. Just because a thesis is written in a concise and clear manner does not mean that the ideas within it are not complex. Furthermore, it is very important for your reader to understand what you are arguing, and be able to follow your thoughts throughout your paper. Also, make sure that your argument is unique and factual—good theses are ones that are take risks and are debatable.

•“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.” --Ralph Waldo Emerson Get creative with your research, and draw inspiration from a variety of different sources for your essay: books, journal articles, the internet, archival materials, microfiche, films… The list is endless. Not only will this make researching more interesting, but it will also strengthen your essay writing, as well as provide you with a plethora of differing views to consider for your argument.

•“You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like

ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” --Ray Bradbury

Write down all of your initial ideas. After you have analyzed the text/piece of art and have conducted your research, create a plan-of-attack for your essay. Organizing your arguments into categories will greatly aid you when it is time to start writing your paper. Creating the outline before you begin writing will also make your essay that much stronger because it will allow you to plan out your thoughts so that they come out in a logical, comprehensive manner.

•“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” --Ernest Hemingway

Use a variety of different words and rich vocabulary throughout your essay – but don’t use unnecessarily long and complex words if you can avoid them. Using a diverse selection of words and phrases throughout your essay creates interest for your reader, however, if a smaller word suffices over an elongated, superfluous word, use it.

•“Writing is like sausage making in my view; you’ll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what’s gone into it.” --George R.R. Martin

Don’t wait till the last minute to give credit to your sources. Create your Works Cited page right away. Continue to add sources to it and put them in alphabetical order while you are writing your essay. This way, the task will not seem nearly as tedious, and you will not seem nearly as tedious, and you will not accidentally forget to cite someone else’s work. accidentally forget to cite someone else’s work.

•“An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald When you are researching, look for critics who dispute what you are arguing. See if you can include some of these counter-arguments in your paper. Presenting the opposing arguments and then proving why they are flawed will allow you to further demonstrate that you are correct in your reasoning. This is a fantastic way to strengthen your overarching argument, as well as your essay as a whole.

•“You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up.” --Toni Morrison Make sure your quotes are properly integrated into your essay, and that they make sense when they are read alongside the rest of the sentence. Additionally, make sure you have fully analyzed each quotation, and that you have clearly explained why it is important to your argument.

•“Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald Things to avoid: exclamation marks, ampersands, slang and colloquialisms, abbreviations (for example, e.g. or i.e.), pronouns like “I” or “we” (unless you have specifically been instructed to use them), and one-word sentences.

•“It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.” --C. J. Cherryh Edit, rewrite, and then edit it again. Remember that a first draft is never perfect, and that proofreading is a crucial part of successful essay-writing. Read your paper over multiple times, and watch out for spelling mistakes, unnecessary or incorrect uses of punctuation, incomplete citations, and missing words.

•“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” --Robert Cormier Take advantage of peer-editing and the many writing services offered on campus. Along with talking to your professors and TAs about your essay, be sure to visit the Writing Support Centre and the AHSC’s annual Essay Clinics. As well, asking a friend who is not in the course that the essay is for to read your paper will help you determine if your ideas are comprehensive. It is important to know if an average reader who is not as knowledgeable about the subject of your paper will still be able to understand your argument.

•“Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.” --Sylvia Plath

Compose grammatically-correct sentences and, where possible, avoid using the passive voice. Learning to omit the passive voice is often challenging, but is an important skill to develop. For example, instead of writing “They were asked profusely not to use the passive voice by their professors” use “Their professors asked them profusely not to use the passive voice.”

•“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

--Stephen King Read your paper out loud to yourself when you’re finished writing it. It might feel strange at first, but hearing the way your words sound will help you notice accidental usages of sentence fragments, awkward phrasings, poor grammar, and run-on sentences.

--Alex Carrillo-Hayley Student Writer-in-Residence, Winter 2013

Classical Studies

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CLASSICAL STUDIES

6

Beyond Narration: The Role of the Chorus in Aeschylus’ Oresteia

BY RACHEL CRAWFORD

CS 3100

90%

In past years, scholarship concerning the three plays of Aeschylus’ Oresteia has focused on the themes of justice and revenge – or of corruption in the traditions of xenia and sacrifice. Such commentaries usually focus on the named characters of the plays for evidence, regarding the Chorus as a representation of the audience’s expected reaction to the words and deeds of these more analysed personalities. In the Oresteia, however, Aeschylus assigns a more complicated role to what might otherwise be seen as tragedy’s musical accompaniment, granting the Chorus such agency that it becomes a unique and powerful dramatic force which is, in fact, responsible for creating some of the greatest moments of crisis within the three plays.

In his article “Interaction between Chorus and Characters in the Oresteia, D.J. Conacher argues that “there are three passages in the [trilogy] in which the interaction between character” and the Chrous “effects a substantial change of attitude in one or both of the elements involved” (323). Conacher takes much of his evidence supporting this claim from the kommoi of the plays, which are “passages in which chorus and actors sing in turn” or “an actor responds to the lyric stanzas of the chorus in anapestic or iambic verse”. He uses the passages to argue that the purpose of the Chorus in the confrontation with Clytemnestra after Agamemnon has been murdered, the lament at Agamemnon’s tomb, and the trial of Orestes by Athena is to draw speeches from the named characters, thereby revealing the many facets of their motivation and to redirect that characters’ thoughts of he or she is not on the correct path.

The notion that the Chorus’ function is to provide the other characters with someone in whom they can confide is, perhaps, closer to the truth than considering it a means by which the playwright might introduce the setting or include allusions to other myths – although that is certainly another part of their role. It does not, however, completely capture the essence of what makes the Chorus such an intriguing convention in ancient theatre. In terms of speeches, the Shakespearean soliloquy is equally effective in conveying the inner turmoil of the character who speaks it without producing on on-stage substitute for the listening audience. In the first soliloquy of Hamlet, the troubled prince is able to articulate “how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/Seem to [him] all the uses of [the] world” quite well considering he does not have a Chorus to whom he might speak – although it could be suggested that his friend Horatio would be a perfect candidate for the position (Shakespeare, lines 133134). If the Chorus’ purpose is to draw these speeches from the lips of the characters, it is perhaps no mystery that it has not survived in modern theatre. The soliloquy is a more efficient and reliable form, as characters need not speak the truth when speaking to other characters, but tend to voice their deepest secrets when they believe themselves to be alone.

It would be a mistake to consider the Chorus of The Libation Bearers to be some unnecessary form of proto-soliloquy. Even when the elements of song and dance are left aside, the Chorus has the advantage of its ability to interact with the characters and even influence the action of the play. When Electra is sent to her father’s tomb with offerings, she asks the Chorus to “counsel” her concerning “what fair word” she can use to “invoke [her] sire . . . when ‘tis from . . . [her] mother that they come” (Morshead, 70-71). The Chorus obligingly answers Electra’s plea with direction to “speak solemn words to them that love” and to pray for an avenger “who shall the slayer slay” (71-72).

The Chorus steps further outside the boundaries of narration when that avenger appears. After their reunion, Orestes and Electra lose sight of their task in an extended lament for their father’s death and the pitiable circumstances that they find themselves in because his murderers have taken over his kingdom. The Chorus redirects this lament towards revenge, scorning the siblings’ wishes that Agamemnon had “lain/One among the common slain,/Fallen by Scamander’s side” during the battle at Troy (82). His wish, the Chorus tells them, is

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“easy, but vain” (83). “The law” in situations such as the one they find themselves in “is sternly set” and “blooddrops shed upon the ground/Plead for other bloodshed yet” (83). There is no time for the siblings to waste on mourning a crime while the slayers still enjoy its spoils within the palace.

It is during the taking of revenge itself, though, that the Chorus of The Libation Bearers truly shows its agency and asserts its position as a group of characters. While Orestes is luring Clytemnestra and her lover to their deaths, the Chorus encounters a nurse who has been sent to summon Aegisthus. This nurse tells the Chorus that her “mistress bids [Aegisthus] bring a spear-armed body-guard” with him, but the Chorus quickly cautions her not to do it (98). It instructs her to say “the news is good” instead so that Aegisthus will come alone and undefended, making it easier for Orestes to slay him (98). This act all but ensures the success of Orestes’ plan.

The Chorus of Argive elders in the Agamemnon is more passive, but no less intriguing, than the captive women of The Libation Bearers. In Conacher’s article, this Chorus too plays the role of an active proto-soliloquy as it brings forth the question “an individual’s responsibility for a consciously chosen deed of violence which may be seen as the fulfillment of the will” of a god in it confrontation with Clytemnestra after the murder of Agamemnon. At first, Conacher argues, Clytemnestra gladly takes responsibility for and boasts of the thing that she has done (324). The Chorus, however, forces her to defend her actions against the threat of “the curses of [her] land” (Morshead, 54) until she contradicts herself and lays the blame on “Atreus and his feast of blood” for which she claims “the old Avenger . . . in the semblance of his wife/The king hath slain” (57). This is an important thematic which may support the Furies’ claim that Orestes was not justified in slaying his mother, but it does not fully express the importance of the Chorus. As in The Libation Bearers, the function of the Chorus within the narrative of the Agamemnon is more complex.

As characters, the Argive elders are the driving force of the suspense in the latter half of the play after the king has made the fatal mistake of entering the palace with his wife. Their first such contribution is in the dramatic irony that arises from their discourse with Cassandra. In this scene, Cassandra attempts to warn the Chorus that “’tis Agamemnon’s doom [they] shalt behold”, but the punishment dealt to her for denying Apollo’s advances prevents the Chorus from understanding her prophecy (46). It can be assumed that the Athenians for whom the play was first performed would have been familiar with the myths and epic poetry surrounding the Trojan War, and would know that Cassandra is correct in telling the Chorus that Agamemnon is about to die.

Some might suggest that this should give the play a sense of hopeless inevitability – of simply waiting for Agamemnon’s death – but that is not necessarily the case. The 2008 film Valkyrie, directed by Bryan Singer, plays with a similar theme of the inevitable tragedy quite successfully. It dramatizes one of the many failed attempts made by the Germans to assassinate Adolf Hitler during the Second World War. Just as Aeschylus was expected to remain within the narrative tradition of Agamemnon’s violent welcome after his return from Troy, Singer had a responsibility to portray historical events as they are recorded – and as many viewers of the film accept them to have occurred. What makes both the Agamemnon and Valkyrie masterpieces of their forms is that they entice their audiences to believe, if only for a moment, that a fixed tragedy can be avoided. In Valkyrie, this tentative belief comes from the fact that the planned coup was derived from an actual clause written into the workings of the Third Reich which was meant to transfer control to the Reserve Army as swiftly as possible in the case of an emergency such as Hitler’s death. The manner in which Operation Valkyrie is portrayed in the film gives viewers the sense that the coup can succeed even with Hitler alive if those involved can work quickly enough despite that viewer’s knowledge that the Third Reich was not defeated in this way. In the Agamemnon, the impossible possibility of tragedy averted begins with the false hope that the Chorus might understand Cassandra’s prophecy, and reaches its height when the Chorus begins to argue over whether it should storm the palace and come to Agamemnon’s aid. In both cases, the true tragedy is the characters’ failure to act in time.

In The Furies, the final play of the trilogy, the Chorus takes on the role of primary characters. The matter of what type of characters they are, though, could be considered a fit topic for debate. Many readers have sided with Orestes and considered the Chorus to be the villains of the play. After all, the first two play have led them to feel sympathy for the young avenger, and the Furies have rewarded his perceived heroism by hounding him and tormenting him with visions “for of choice he did his mother slay” (Morshead, 127). Strangely, this would appear

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CLASSICAL STUDIES

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to make the Chorus of The Furies less interesting to scholarship. Conacher, for instance, dedicates only ca. three of the twenty pages of his article to examining their role and says only that it has been shifted from that of a persuasive force to that of a force to be persuaded to join the system of justice. Even while serving as the primary source of confrontation in its exchanges with Apollo, Orestes, and Athena in turn, the Chorus cannot achieve the quality that it possessed in the Agamemnon. The audience knows that Athens is home to the judicial system which Athena seeks to establish just as it knew that Agamemnon had to die. The trouble is that it could be assumed that the citizens of Athens harboured no secret desire to see that outcome changed as it might have in the case of the Argive king’s murder.

R.W. Livingstone disagrees with this position. In his article “The Problem of the Eumenides of Aeschylus”, Livingstone ponders whether a man who “kills his mother at the order of a god, because she killed his father”, can “be held guilty for an act which racial custom demanded” or if it is better to let “matricide go unpunished” (Livingstone, 120). In this, Livingstone believes that the Furies have a “right and duty to avenge a mother” which “is no less certain than a son’s right and duty to avenge his father” (120). The Furies, then, could be considered to be protagonists as much as Orestes. But who is the villain? One option is to say that the audience must choose which of the two to support, as though acting as the jury for the trial unfolding on the stage. Another is to look towards Apollo and Athena.

In this reading of the play, the central conflict becomes a “conflict of two rights – of justice absolute and inexorable with the relative justice of a civic community” (120). If this is the case, the Chorus makes a better argument than the younger gods in favour of absolute justice by pointing out that Orestes has killed his mother and acknowledges his guilt in doing so. In his part of the trial, Apollo has “deplorable bad manners” (121). His first argument belittles Clytemnestra by claiming that “a son killing a mother is very different from a woman killing a king” (121) because there is no honour in killing a man when he is “enwound and trapped” in an “endless mesh of cunning robes” (Morshead, 136). Second, he attacks the nature of motherhood by saying “not the true parent is the woman’s womb/That bears the child; she doth but nurse the seed” (136). Finally, he bribes the judge in full view of the court with promises that he will “glorify [Athena’s] town” and the “children’s children of Athenian seed” (137). The Chorus counters these arguments by pointing out Zeus hypocrisy in holding “a father’s death/As first of crimes” when “he of his own act/Cast into chains his father” (136). This rebuttal is foiled when Athena uses her “right to add the final vote” to “award it to Orestes’ cause” because “no mother bore [her] within her womb” and she has “vouch[ed] [herself] the champion of the man/Not of the woman” (140). The defeat shows that, paradoxically, while it has more agency in the final play of the trilogy, the Chorus loses much of its power to influence the events of the narrative when it becomes a ‘full’ character. In fact, it could be said that the Chorus has reverted to the position it held at the end of the Agamemnon – for it gives in to Athena’s threat of Zeus’ thunderbolts and her promise of fame in Athens as easily as the Argive elders are cowed by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

In this light, it should not be suggested that the Chorus of Greek theatre was in some way prevented from reaching its full potential as a character. There is something unique about the position of the Chorus, straddling the line between narration and action, that suffers when it is made into the enemy – or the tragic hero – as it is in The Furies. When strategically placed near the background, the Chorus becomes an invaluable dramatic tool with which the playwright can manipulate the actions of the characters and the reactions of the audience. Perhaps the tragedy of tragic theatre is that is has lost this convention over the course of its evolution. The delight of musical theatre aside, Hamlet might have found the motivation to take revenge on his own father’s killer if there had only been a whole chorus of Horatios to persuade him.

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Works Cited

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Aeschylus. The Oresteia Trilogy. Trans. by E.D.A Morshead, Ed. by Alan Weissman. New York: Dover

Publications, Inc., 1996. Print.

Conacher, D.J. “Interaction between Chorus and Characters in the Oresteia”. The American Journal of Philology

Vol. 95, No. 4 (Winter, 1974) pp. 323-343. Web. Livingstone, R.W. “The Problem of the Eumenides of Aeschylus.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies Vol. 45, Part 1 (1925) pp.120-131. Web. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. by M.R. Ridley. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1938.

9

Dr. Suksi’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 9/10 Clarity of Prose: 10/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“This essay addresses a well-chosen and focused question: that of the role of

the chorus in Aeschylus’ Oresteia. It engages the scholarship on the topic in a way that demonstrates real comprehension with a genuine and thoughtful response. Comparative material from film and Shakespearean tragedy is used with skill to make the point about the importance and agency of the chorus. The whole essay is written with a consistently clear and graceful voice, unencumbered by unnecessary wordiness or jargon, and throughout it remains focused as it builds a persuasive argument. No fireworks here, just a confident, intelligent and well-organized treatment of the question.”

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10

The Role of Relief Sculpture During the Trajanic Period

BY LAUREN KLAPAK

CS 3550

89%

During the reign of the emperor Trajan, AD 98-117, relief sculpture flourished in Rome and the surrounding provinces. Relief sculpture was utilized as a visual method of communication between the emperor and the public; it conveyed Trajan’s political ideology and motivations, while simultaneously propagating a realistic but ultimately stylized image of the emperor, designed specifically to reflect the policies and values he advocated for. Under Trajan, the Arch of Beneventum (modern Benevento) was constructed, the Great Trajanic Frieze found on the Arch of Constantine, and the Column of Trajan celebrating his victories in the Dacian Wars, which is located in Trajan’s Forum, all display highly detailed relief sculpture which conveys the political ideologies and self-image of Trajan. Apollodorus of Damascus is the credited architect behind Trajan’s Forum and Markets. In this paper I will discuss the relief sculpture of the above monuments and demonstrate how their various details represent Trajan’s projected image. In order to obtain a thorough understanding of these works, a familiarity with Trajan and his background is necessary.

Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan reveals that Trajan was a modest, dignified, judicious emperor, who presented himself foremost as a citizen, and championed accessibility and moderation (Dunstan 2011, 313). Trajan was called optimus princeps, or “best chief ”, accurately reflecting the public’s opinion of their emperor (Ramage 2008, 207). Numismatic evidence shows that Trajan “is of doubly divine descent” due to the deification of both his biological and adoptive father, represented by double portraiture (Kleiner 1992, 209). Trajan legitimized his right to rule through divine and hereditary lineage; his claim to the position of emperor was met without a whisper of opposition (Bennett 1997, 42). It was extremely important for Trajan to distance himself from his predecessor Domitian (Bennett 1997, 56); since Nerva did not last long on the throne, Domitian’s brutality was still widely remembered throughout the empire. Domitian’s reign is characterized by “bloody persecutions” and “puritanical fanaticism” (Bennett 1997, 27). Instead, Trajan associated himself closely with Augustus by using similar imagery, iconography, and titulature (Kleiner 1992, 208). Augustus called himself “first among equals,” which is very similar to Trajan’s title of optimus princeps. The presentation of Trajan’s family (Ulpia) also needed to be controlled and stylized as their appearance would affect the public’s perception of the emperor. Trajan’s family is depicted as “a united house, impervious to court intrigue because of its contented subservience to Trajan” (Roche 2002, 51). The display of morality and unity effectively demonstrates the benefits of obeying Trajan as emperor.

According to William Dunstan, Trajan’s administrative policies centered on respect and dignity for the senate (2011, 312). Trajan recognized the power and influence the senate exercised over Rome and its occupants.

By being on good terms with the senate, Trajan was better able to propagate his public image through their support and approval. His alimenta program of his social and financial policies was emphasized through its depiction on significant monuments, such as the Arch of Beneventum. The purpose of this program was to provide free grain to those citizens in poverty, especially children who have the potential to become members of the army (Dunstan 2011, 312). Trajan was also occupied with aggressive imperialism and the expansion of Roman rule through two campaigns against Dacia, one in AD 101-102, and again in AD 105-106. Both of these Dacian wars are represented in the relief sculpture on the Column of Trajan. Rome is portrayed as the force of order triumphing over the barbaric disorder.

Trajan’s building program inside and outside of Rome is impressive and expansive. Trajan created public Baths, the Via Traiana which connected Beneventum to Brundisium (modern day Brindisi), the hexagonal port and harbour at Ostia, and the Markets of Trajan, to name a few. Relief sculpture is found prominently on architecture such as the Arches of Beneventum and of Constantine, and in the Forum of Trajan.

The Arch at Beneventum is a monumental building consisting of over fourteen relief panels. It was

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constructed in AD 114 by the Senate and People of Rome (SPQR). Ada Gabucci notes that the “reliefs of the arch illustrate scenes of peace on the city side and war scenes of the side facing the countryside” (2002, 47). Trajan was creating parallels between victorious peaceful Rome and war against the uncivilized. This is important as it demonstrates the Augustan connection Trajan was emphasizing through the association of peace in Rome.

Above each of the bottom scenes on both the left and right panels are Victories slaying bulls. This image is significant because of the connotations the symbols carry. The Victories represent military victory while the sacrificial bulls were “slain in honour of that Victory” (Kleiner 1992, 209). This very same motif of Victories slaying bulls is seen on the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis in Athens (Kleiner 1992, 209). Trajan connects himself with “codified images of power to enhance his own rule” through “an association with the revered Greek civilization known for its advancement and development” (Kleiner 1992, 209). Trajan manipulates relief sculpture to legitimize his rule through the use of the imagery of power and control. He is showing the people of Rome that he is so powerful as to even usurp the iconography of dominant cultures such as Greece. Trajan acts like his predecessor Augustus, who also manipulated Greek culture to show the strength and power of Rome under his leadership.

In the city side attic panel of the Arch of Beneventum, Jupiter is depicted handing Trajan a thunderbolt.

This relief is highly relevant as it signifies Jupiter imparting Trajan with his own divine power (Hamberg 1945, 67). Here, Trajan legitimizes his rule through divine association and approval. Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, is also depicted on the city side attic panel. Associations to Romulus strengthen this divine right to rule as he is an important mythological figure of Rome’s history, representing “sacred and ideological values” (Torelli 1997, 161). On the city side lower panel, an adventus is depicted. Trajan is being formally welcomed into Rome after a victorious military campaign.

On the direct opposite side of the arch (country side), Trajan is seen shaking hands with a barbarian chief. Trajan’s diplomatic victory with an uncivilized force demonstrates his ability as a capable ruler. On the attic panel above this scene, Trajan’s ability to conquer force through arms is shown; he can be triumphant diplomatically and physically by means of military strength. In this relief panel a personification of an unknown country kneels at Trajan’s feet (Hamberg 1945, 74). Kneeling is a conventional sign of submission, in stark contrast to the handshake seen in the panel directly below.

Relief sculpture is also found on the inside passageway of the Arch. This relief sculpture depicts Trajan’s social policy of the alimenta program. The south panel of the central bay depicts the distribution of grain to impoverished children, a political gesture which presents Trajan in a positive manner; his social policy has various benefits which include potential increase in the future army and foundations for new colonies, allowing for the expansion of Rome (Torelli 1997, 152). This state relief portrays children, which Kleiner notes are the first children to be seen on a monument since the Ara Pacis Augustae (1992, 224). There is a great difference between the representation of the children in the Arch of Beneventum and the Ara Pacis. The Ara Pacis children are barbarian princes and prospective heirs for imperial succession of the imperial family. Trajan’s Arch depicts the destitute children of Italy. The depiction of children associates Trajan with Augustus but the difference between the children shows Trajan as a man of the people. The central bay reliefs showing these children demonstrate that Trajan is concerned with improving the lives of all citizens, not just the lives of the elite. On the north panel directly opposite of the alimenta program is a sacrifice. It was customary for an association to exist between a sacred act and a political one (Torelli 1997, 148). A political act is “validated” by a sacrifice (Torelli 1997, 148).

Trajan is intersecting the political world and the religious world, making Rome a codified empire. Hadrian completed the attic panels of the Arch, including himself in some of the reliefs, emphasizing “his relationship to his powerful predecessor” (Ramage 2008, 225). The Arch of Beneventum is a strong visual reminder of Trajan’s extensive power and influence beyond the city.

An extensive frieze dating from the Trajanic period is found in panels on the gateway of the Arch of Constantine. These fragments can be placed together to form part of one long continuous frieze which is known today as the Great Trajanic Frieze. On the Arch of Constantine there are “four slabs constituting two sections of what was a one-hundred-foot-long monumental frieze with figures ten feet tall” (Kleiner 1992, 221). This

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frieze depicts Roman troops battling against uncivilized barbarians. Trajan continues to demonstrate the concept of the superiority of Rome over barbaric and uncivilized forces from the Arch of Beneventum into this frieze, a concept rulers such as Constantine wished to emulate. Order is aligned with the victors, while disorder is seen to have disastrous consequences.

Trajan is depicted on horseback, his mantle billowing out behind him, arm raised to strike the barbarians he is charging through. He is actively participating in the battle which stresses Trajan’s dedication to Rome and her empire. Trajan is depicted with equipment which links him to other important figures on the frieze. For example, the personifications of Virtue and Honour are wearing a similar mantle as Trajan, and he himself is wearing the same helmet and leg-wear as the soldiers around him (Touati 1987, 39). Trajan is presenting himself as the intermediary between the physical world of humanity and the abstract immortal world of the gods (Touati 1987, 39). This is significant because Trajan shows himself as one of the people, but he is elevated above the norm through his divine associations. Like Augustus, he is equal with the people but first among such equals. This image of active participation demonstrates one aspect of Trajan’s political platform; on the Column of Trajan, he is shown only directing and supervising the Roman troops (Kleiner 1992, 221). The dual portrayal of participation and supervision on these monuments serves to portray various aspects of Trajan: he is seen as both part of the body of citizens and also as an important and capable military leader.

An adventus is also depicted on the Great Trajanic Frieze; Victory crowns a triumphant Trajan as he is welcomed back as a conqueror into Rome by no less than Roma herself (Hamberg 1945, 57). This motif of “a sovereign crowned by the goddess of victory” is a standard of “triumphal art” and is seen “as a form of homage to the Emperor” (Hamberg 1945, 57). This relief furthers Trajan’s projected self-image of a military man supported by the divine, legitimizing his authority.

Within the frieze there are “fixed iconography of individual figures,” particularly in the Dacian “reactions to, or consequences of, Roman superiority” (Touati 1987, 28). The Dacians are depicted as worthy opponents but are ultimately inferior against the power of Rome. The frieze depicts Dacians in acts of submission, urging their horses to flee, and as captives (Touati 1987, 28). This is propagandistic imagery, designed to demonstrate the power of Rome under Trajan’s military prowess. The Great Trajanic Frieze is “concentrated on a symbolic representation of events” and “less concerned with documentary story-telling” as seen on Trajan’s Column (Touati 1987, 29). The “story-telling” of Trajan’s Column, however, still performs the function of representing historical events and the superiority of Rome.

Trajan also had a new forum bearing his name built. The Forum of Trajan is between the Capitoline and Quirinal hills and could be entered through the Forum of Augustus by way of an elaborately decorated triumphal gate (Dunstan 2011, 354-55). The close proximity of Trajan’s Forum to Augustus’s Forum shows a desired association and affiliation with the man who brought peace to Rome; Trajan is clearly promoting a self-image of peace and prosperity. There were colonnades on either side of a courtyard with statues of Dacian captive soldiers; behind the colonnades are exedrae. On either side of the Column of Trajan were two libraries, one housing Latin texts, the other Greek works (Ramage 2008, 211). The Basilica Ulpia was opposite of the entrance into the forum.

A temple to the deified Trajan and his wife was added by Hadrian (Dunstan 2011, 355). The similarities in the layout with the Forum of Augustus are striking: exedrae are on either side of the porticoes which span the length of a large open rectangular space (Kleiner 1992, 213). Furthermore, the caryatids of Augustus are replaced by Dacian captives in the Forum of Trajan (Kleiner 1992, 213). The architecture and their relief sculptures in the Forum and on the monuments outside of Rome proclaim power, wealth, prestige, order, prosperity, and achievement. James E. Packer notes that the purpose of the relief sculpture “was to assure the viewer that the stability of the Roman world yet endured” (2001, 183). The relief sculpture was intended to portray “the newly achieved perfection of the pre-existing artistic- and, by implication, political- forms” (Packer 2001, 183). The ideology of Trajan is conveyed through these images of power, order, and stability; Trajan is the preserver of peace and harmonious order in the Roman world through any means necessary, be it a diplomatic victory, a military campaign, or social reforms within Rome itself.

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The use of Victories in relief sculpture has various connotations. The image of a personified Victory hearkens back to ancient Greece. They are represented in Trajan’s relief sculpture because they signify defeat of the enemy, political victories of the emperor, and evoked a sense of pride and loyalty (Packer 2001, 190). On the Column of Trajan, there is a figure of Victory writing on a shield, which Hamberg believes are signs of victory, as the preceding images “depict the termination of the first war” (1945, 111). Depicted on the Great Trajanic Frieze, is Victory flying down to crown Trajan with a wreath of victory; this same image is shown on the barrel vault of the Arch of Beneventum (Hamberg 1945, 57). Winged Victories are straightforward, traditional symbols used to display Roman victory. The use of such a symbol clearly associates Trajan as a triumphant conqueror, capable of leading Rome to victory against potential threats. Victories are “ancient Greek personifications of the defeat of the enemy,” thereby aligning the Victory symbol with Trajan’s military campaigns against Dacia, while simultaneously symbolizing victory over death (Packer 2001, 190). Furthermore, Victory also recalls “the sacrifices made to the genius of the emperor” as they are often depicted (as seen above) sacrificing bulls (Packer 2001, 190).

Certain images were continuously circulating Trajan’s major monuments. On the Column of Trajan, Jupiter is striking the enemy with a thunderbolt, just as he is depicted holding a thunderbolt on the Arch at Beneventum. The Great Trajanic Frieze on the Arch of Constantine shows a battle over uncivilized forces, almost certainly Dacia. This relates to the Column of Trajan which is a victory monument chronicling the history of the Dacian Wars and to the Arch of Beneventum’s entablature which depicts Trajan conquering Dacia (Hamberg 1945, 65-67).

The Column of Trajan is a masterpiece of relief sculpture, dedicated in AD 113 in the Forum of Trajan.

There are window slits on the Column, allowing for the inner staircase to be lit. On either side of the Column were two libraries allowing for the spiral relief to be better viewed. The libraries are a form of public munificence; Trajan is giving back to the people. The spiral band of relief depicts over one hundred fifty episodes from Trajan’s Dacian expeditions (Dunstan 2011, 356). Each of the individual scenes depicted on the Column present a complete story of the emperor’s military victory, thereby promoting Rome as a strong conquering empire headed by an equally strong and capable leader. In military scenes, Trajan is often shown in the adlocutio gesture with his hand on the pommel of his sword. These strong images show Trajan as a forceful man in control. As the only figure in a sea of soldiers to have his hand raised, adlocutio is a prominent gesture, one that attracts the viewer’s attention to him and forces acknowledgement that this man is important above all others.

Victories, griffins, and sphinxes are frequently portrayed on the Basilica Ulpia. The griffins are the attendants of Nemesis and stood for divine vengeance (Packer 2001, 190). Sphinxes are also the “messengers of divine justice” (Packer 2001, 190). These apotropaic figures send the message that Trajan has divine support which legitimizes his rule and elevates him to be held in fear and awe by the people of Rome. Augustus frequently used sphinxes in his artistic program as well as acanthus leaves; Trajan’s use of such established iconography clearly “echoed the propagandistic content of neo-Augustan classicism” (Packer 2001, 187). These frieze figures “conveyed ideology so clearly” that they were “needed only to decorate, not inform” (Packer 2001, 187). The fertility and fecundity which Augustus and Trajan both utilize represent the prosperity and continuity of Rome.

Trajan utilizes the role of relief sculpture as a form of communication. The high level of detail of the architecture evokes order, wealth, power, and stability. The relief sculpture found on highly visible monuments such as the Arch of Beneventum, the Great Trajanic Frieze, the Forum of Trajan, and the Column of Trajan, all serve to further his desired self-image as a capable leader who preserves the peace and prosperity of Rome.

Trajan’s military exploits were depicted frequently; he is shown as defending the power of Rome and expanding Rome’s greatness. This demonstrates his military prowess and leadership skills. He is shown to be adaptable to all situations: in the Great Trajanic Frieze he is depicted as an active participant in battle, while the Trajan seen on the Column in his Forum is calm, cool, and collected. This presence of order triumphing over barbaric disorder reinforces the image of a stable empire under a competent ruler. Trajan incorporates his social policies such as the alimenta program into the relief sculpture. Subtle reliefs such as acanthus plants found in the decoration in the Forum, link Trajan with fertility and fecundity; he is portraying himself as preserving and furthering the

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benefits of civilization. The winged Victories and other personifications such as the griffins, sphinxes, and deities show divine support for his right to rule as emperor; by showing such a close connection between the divine and emperor, Trajan is legitimizing his right to rule and increasing the status of his image to the public. The numerous public works, monuments, buildings, and the attention to the detail of the relief sculpture of each, show Trajan as an emperor interested in the betterment of the people of Rome.

Works Cited

Bennett, Julian. Trajan, Optimus Princeps: A Life and Times. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.

Dunstan, William D. Ancient Rome. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2011. Print.

Gabucci, Ada. Ancient Rome: Art, Architecture and History. Ed. Stefano Peccatori and Sefano Zuffi. Trans: T.M. Hartmann. Los

Angeles: Getty Publications, 2002. Print.

Hamberg, Per G, and Kathleen M. Pain. Studies in Roman Imperial Art: With Special Reference to the State

Reliefs of the Second Century. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells boktryckeriaktiebolag, 1945. Print.

Kleiner, Diana E.E. Roman Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Print.

Packer, James E. The Forum of Trajan in Rome; A Study of the Monuments in Brief. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001.

Print.

Ramage, Andrew and Nancy. Roman Art: Romulus to Constantine. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.

Roche, P.A. “The Public Image of Trajan’s Family.” Classical Philology: The University of Chicago Press. 97.1 (2002): 41-60.

JSTOR/L’annee philologique. Web. 3 October 2011.

Torelli, Mario. “‘Ex his castra, ex his tribus replebuntur’: The Marble Panegyric on the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum.” The

Interpretation of Architectural Sculpture in Greece and Rome. Ed. Diana Buitron-Oliver. Washington: University Press of New

England, 1997. 145-177. Print.

Touati, Anne-Marie Leander. The Great Trajanic Frieze: The Study of a Monument and of the Mechanisms of Message Transmission in

Roman Art. Stockholm: Svenska Institute i Rom, 1987. Print.

Dr. Suski’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 8/10 Clarity of Prose: 10/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“This paper is particularly distinguished by the clear and graceful writing style, fully in command of its idiom and quite free of grammatical errors. The topic is well introduced and the information, presented as a result of solid research, is clearly organized. Although the subject is visual culture, this paper goes beyond mere description to provide insightful and sophisticated analysis of the monuments.”

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The Fall of the Tuscan and the Emperor

BY CONNOR SWEAZEY

CS 3450 95%

18 October 31CE marks the downfall of the two most powerful men in the Roman Empire. That day upon the Palatine senators and magistrates listened to Emperor Tiberius’ letter concerning his adjutant, Lucius Aelius Sejanus. Dio Cassius, whose work survives as the most complete account of the event, retells what it read.

“It was a long one,” Dio writes, “and contained no wholesale denunciation of Sejanus.” Yet the emperor’s final words were clear. Sejanus was guilty of treason. After a moment of disbelief, the senators “all with one voice denounced and threatened” the tyrant who acted in Tiberius’ place for the last five years. They ordered Sejanus’ immediate execution and then tempered their revenge through their own reign of terror against his family and associates (Dio. Rom His. 58.10-11). The senators commanded his images to be destroyed as well and declared his name, scratched from the coins commemorating his consulship, forever condemned. Sejanus was to suffer damnatio memoriae. Yet the Roman people, no less joyous over the Tuscan’s downfall, remained dumbfounded as to why Tiberius suddenly turned against the man whom he once called his favourite (Juv. Sat. 10). Historians also continue to disagree over what exactly transpired to bring about the fall of Sejanus that day. Tiberius justified his decision “in a brief and sketchy autobiography,” claiming that Sejanus forged a conspiracy against his heirs which, as will be argued, was indeed a genuine conspiracy (Suet. Tib. 61). However, before the discovery of such a plot, the emperor’s real decision to remove the Tuscan, whom he valued above all others, was perhaps one he reluctantly made to appease the Roman nobility and one he made that ultimately became devastating for himself as well. Historians do agree that Tiberius never desired to be princeps. Tiberius’ father, a man of ancient and noble Roman birth, in 39BCE surrendered his mother in matrimony to the man later known as Augustus. Before Tiberius moved under the auspices of his new father-in-law, however, he matured surrounded by the nobility in his father’s house. Such exposure during his upbringing and until his father’s death in 33BCE implanted a long tradition of Roman aristocratic values into Tiberius, which ultimately influenced his future decisions.

Under Augustus’ reign, Tiberius proved his merit as a prominent military general, but few, himself included, expected him to succeed Augustus as princeps. Yet after the death of Agrippa in 12BC and the number of potential successors grew thin, Augustus began to see Tiberius’ role and ability more politically. Augustus thus strengthened the bond between Tiberius and himself by forcing Tiberius to divorce his plebeian wife Vipsania, who Tiberius continued to love and regret losing throughout his life, and made Tiberius enter into an unhappy marriage with his daughter, Julia. The surrender of Vipsania, in such a manner, was the first of a series of losses that would desolate Tiberius’ character. Yet Tiberius also knew that the loss of his love was one that, however reluctantly, he had to accept. Historian Ronald Syme explains that “it was the duty and the habit of the Roman aristocrat to subordinate the tender emotions to the advancement of the family and the good of the Republic.”

Regardless of how he felt, Tiberius’ duty as part of the nobility thus demanded that he acquiesce and sacrifice his wife of lesser birth for one of more dignified ancestry.

Tiberius increasingly grew isolated under a regime that he never truly felt he belonged to. In 9BCE his beloved brother died while on campaign in Germany and, indeed, he never made amends with his mother for leaving his father and the two remained on bad terms (Suet. Tib. 7). Even his relationship with his two sons, Drusus and Germanicus, remained predominantly poor (Suet. Tib. 52). Such loneliness, along with his desire to avoid conflict with the younger, more promising heirs of Augustus, prompted him to remove himself from public and political life in 6BCE by retiring to the island of Rhodes. Following the death of Gaius Caesar in 4CE however, Tiberius alone stood as a legitimate heir for Augustus and he reluctantly returned from retirement. Ten years later, after the death of Augustus, Tiberius, already at the age of fifty-five, ascended to the throne. Thus

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having outlived most of his peers, Tiberius’ growing loneliness made him crave friendship nearly as much as he desired retirement; it was a fiend that he found in Sejanus.

Dio writes that the “similarity of their characters” drew Tiberius towards Sejanus (Dio. Rom His. 57.19).

Indeed, they each possessed an equal cunning, which historians later criticized as manifest of their evil intents.

Unlike Tiberius, however, Sejanus was born in Etruria to a father of equestrian stock. He first entered the political scene in 14CE, serving alongside his father as praetorian prefect. The following year, after his father left to govern Egypt, Sejanus became sole leader of the Praetorian Guard, the emperor’s personal bodyguards. In this position, Sejanus grew to possess more influence over Tiberius than any other person in Rome and, according to the flattery of one of his contemporaries, he became an “incomparable associate in all the burdens of the Principate” (Vell. CoRH. 2.127). Taking such a statement into account, ancient historians, save Suetonius, all agree that Tiberius had genuine affections for Sejanus and relied on him greatly. Tacitus, for instance, claims that Sejanus “won the heart of Tiberius so effectually by various artifices that the emperor, ever dark and mysterious towards others, was with Sejanus alone careless and freespoken” (Tac. Ann. 4.1). Tiberius’ favouritism towards Sejanus also provoked the jealously of Tiberius’ son Drusus. Modern historians have even related the genuine affection that Tiberius showed for Sejanus as the same Augustus shared with Marcus Agrippa. Like Sejanus, Agrippa too was born an equestrian and advanced to unprecedented heights as a result of his alliance and friendship with Augustus. Thus, the partnership between Augustus and Agrippa allowed Tiberius and Sejanus to justify the latter’s rise in the imperial court. “Not only in private conversation but before the senators and the people, [Tiberius] spoke highly of [Sejanus] as the partner of his toils,” Tacitus writes, “and allowed his statues to be honoured in theatres, in forums, and at the head-quarters of our legions” (Tac. Ann. 4.2). Moreover, when Tiberius finally departed from Rome in 26CE to afford his own retirement, Sejanus proved the emperor’s trust in him after shielding Tiberius and saving his life during a dangerous rock fall in Campania.

By the time he made this journey through Campania in 26CE and away from Rome, Tiberius must have giving up any pretense to wait for an heir. Having lost his sons Germanicus in 19CE and Drusus in 23CE, Tacitus suggests that Tiberius came to realize how far he remained from the retirement he craved. “He began to declaim against the laborious life of the capital, the bustling crowds and streaming multitudes,” Tacitus writes, “he praised repose and solitude, with their freedom from vexations and misunderstandings, and their special opportunities for the study of the highest questions” (Tac. Ann. 4.41). Thus, he could no longer wait in Rome for any of Germanicus’ three sons to become of age and receive enough experience to succeed him as emperor. Consequently, Tiberius set out to retire on the island of Capri. Moreover, the location of his new villa symbolized the solitude he forever felt. Tiberius, according to Tacitus, was “particularly attracted to that island because it was accessible by only one small beach, being everywhere girt with sheer cliffs of great height and by deep water” (Suet. Tib. 40). For a time, his sole connection with Rome and away from his seclusion remained with the only person he could trust – Sejanus.

Ancient historians disagree over the extent of Sejanus’ ambitions and the character of the conspiracy that developed after Tiberius left Sejanus to manage affairs in Rome. Suetonius, although admitting that Sejanus plotted some kind of revolution, describes Sejanus as merely an instrument of Tiberius’ evil machinations to destroy the family of his son Germanicus (Suet. Tib. 65). “He had advanced [Sejanus] to the highest power,” Suetonius writes, “not so much from regard for him, as that he might through his services and wiles destroy the children of Germanicus and secure the succession for his own grandson, the child of his son Drusus.” (Suet. Tib. 55). Because of all the evidence, as previously stated, that suggests Tiberius had genuine affection for Sejanus, however, such a possibility is doubtful. Josephus, in comparison, believes that Sejanus set “a very dangerous plot” against the life of Tiberius (Joseph. AJ. 18.6). This belief has perhaps carelessly been echoed by many modern historians, despite the fact that Josephus is the only source that suggests Sejanus ever planned a conspiracy against the emperor’s life. The more probable plot that Sejanus formed is recorded by Dio and Tacitus.

Dio, having the most complete account of the conspiracy, believes Sejanus attempted to secure his position by incensing Tiberius against Germanicus’ family (Dio. RH. 57.22). Likewise, although his full account of the conspiracy does not survive, Tacitus in passing mentions that Sejanus had “treacherous designs against Caius

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Caesar,” the last standing son of Germanicus (Tac. Ann. 6.3). Dio and Tacitus are therefore in agreement that Sejanus plotted against the children of Germanicus.

Another problem with arguing that Sejanus would have ever plotted to overthrow Tiberius, as Josephus and many historians would argue, rests in finding any possible motive Sejanus would have had to do such. So long as he remained in Tiberius’ favour, the Tuscan reigned supreme. If Tiberius’ life suddenly ended, Sejanus’ beguilers would have never hesitated to cast him adrift. For instance, the letter in the autumn of 31CE effectively revoked Tiberius’ patronage of Sejanus and, as a result, the senate and the people of Rome quickly abandoned or destroyed the man no longer under imperial protection. Senators especially found it difficult to accept the rise of a homo novus. They believed that each promotion Tiberius granted to Sejanus, in the words of Tacitus, “polluted the nobility of his house” (Tac. Ann. 3.29). Thus “It would seem that Sejanus’ best chance of continued advancement,” as many modern historians contend, “lay with Tiberius remaining princeps until his natural death.”

For the same reasons they resented his rise, the senate certainly would have refused to ever accept Sejanus as emperor in Tiberius’ place, but Sejanus did have one other option. He may have planned to reassert his influence through marriage in the imperial family. Such an option likely prompted him to divorce his wife Apicata in 23CE and seek Tiberius’ permission to marry Livia Julia, Drusus’ widow, two years later. Thus, as his ambition must have desired, he sought to establish his influence over the son of Livia Julia and his new step-son Tiberius Gemellus, another of Tiberius’ grandsons. Then, after the imminent death of the aging Tiberius, Sejanus could retain his power by serving as regent over Tiberius Gemellus if he were to become emperor.

In a letter responding to Sejanus’ request for marriage, which Tacitus has preserved in his Annals, Tiberius acknowledged that senators would react unfavourably to such a marriage that allowed “a mere Roman knight” into the imperial family. “Those magistrates and nobles who intrude on you against your wishes and consult you on all matters,” Tiberius wrote, “openly give out that you have long overstepped the rank of a knight and gone far beyond my father’s friendships, and from their dislike of you they also condemn me.” (Tac. Ann. 4.40). Tiberius’ reply addressed a number of concerns. Firstly, in mentioning the “magistrates and nobles who” believe Sejanus to have “overstepped the rank of a knight,” it can be safely inferred that he was well aware that the senators were uncomfortable with the rise of his equestrian friend into such prominence. Secondly, the mention of his “father’s friendships” alludes predominately to Augustus’ similar relationship with Agrippa. Where senators during the reign of Augustus remained willing to accept the rise of a homo novus, senators under the reign of Tiberius were unwilling to make a similar exception. This can likely be attributed to Tiberius’ worse relationship with the senate and, certainly, Sejanus’ lackluster list of military achievements waned in comparison to Agrippa’s accomplishments. And finally, by saying that the unpopularity of Sejanus led to criticism against himself, Tiberius conceded that promoting and protecting Sejanus left him in a predicament. Such a predicament most definitely encouraged him to delay allowing Sejanus to be betrothed to Livia Julia until 31CE, and it also proves that Tiberius once again harbored hesitations about displeasing the nobility.

Before becoming engaged to Livia Julia, Sejanus first had to remove the sons of Germanicus and the other heirs to the throne – Nero, Drusus, and Gaius. Moreover, Agrippina, the mother of the boys, also needed to be removed because, like Drusus before her, she opposed Sejanus’ advancement and influence over the imperial family. Lucky for him, Sejanus possessed one crucial advantage: Tiberius and Agrippa did not get along. From this vantage, the Tuscan began his attack. Tacitus retells that Sejanus warned Tiberius that recent discord was a result of “the party of Agrippina, and, unless they were checked, there would be more” (Tac. Ann, 4.17). Sejanus consequently convinced Tiberius to destroy Agrippina’s allies until turning to her and her son Nero in 29CE. The next year, Drusus too fell victim to Sejanus’ plot and became a prisoner exiled from Rome until his death shortly after. By 31CE Sejanus was at the height of his power – having served alongside Tiberius as consul and becoming betrothed to Livia Julia in the same year; only Gaius remained as an obstacle to his ambition.

Despite the evidence suggesting Sejanus’ involvement in a conspiracy, historians again disagree why Tiberius suddenly abandoned Sejanus. Dio, for instance, argues that Tiberius turned against Sejanus because he grew jealous of Sejanus’ popularity (Dio, Rom His. 58.4). This possibility has been refuted by recent historians,

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however, because Tiberius himself promoted Sejanus and his affection towards the Tuscan, as argued before, appears to have been genuine. Moreover, Tiberius remained well aware of Sejanus’ unpopularity, especially among the nobility, so he likely disregarded any possibility that the Romans would ever chose Sejanus as emperor.

Similarly, Velleius Paterculus, a contemporary of Sejanus and Tiberius, and his claim that the Tuscan was popular among all of his peers is also suspect, because the senate was certainly embittered by the Tuscan’s rise and Velleius’ work, for all intents, is inclined more towards flattery than accuracy. Alternatively, Josephus asserts that a letter delivered to Tiberius from Antonia, Germanicus’ mother, allegedly exposed Sejanus’ conspiracy (Joseph. AJ. 18.6). Modern historians had accepted Josephus’ account of Antonia as genuine but recent scholars have refuted its authenticity. It is unlikely that Suetonius, Dio Cassius, and Juvenal would fail to mention Antonia’s letter exposing the conspiracy if it had played such a pivotal role in turning Tiberius against Sejanus. Furthermore, if Josephus’ account is to be accepted as true, the probability that Anontia’s obscure letter alone was enough to turn Tiberius against his favourite remains slim. Historian Ann Boddington, for instance, argues that “Tiberius would hardly proceed against Sejanus on her word alone” because “he had reason to distrust the family of Germanicus, and his suspicions may well have included Antonia.” Granted, Tiberius may have held his own suspicions that Sejanus was out to destroy Germanicus’ family and achieve power for himself, but there is scant evidence suggesting that these were confirmed before the fall of Sejanus. A more appropriate argument, which at least one historian has made, proposes that Tiberius betrayed his favourite as a result of aristocratic pressure to do so.

Tiberius understood well that there was aristocratic opposition against Sejanus. Indeed, on at least one occasion he responded irritably to pamphlets, signed by consular ranked Romans, explicitly denouncing Sejanus for his reign of terror against the Roman nobility. Even the imperial family, Drusus and Agrippina specifically, often complained about Sejanus’ advancement and it is entirely probable that they shared many of these complaints with Tiberius. The Roman nobility, most prominently within the senate, never accepted the rise of this homo novus, especially because they knew he advanced from the destruction of many of their fellow aristocrats. Boddington makes the persuasive argument that the members of the nobility, fearing Sejanus would remain in power after the death of the Tiberius, eventually persuaded the emperor that it was time to remove the Tuscan. Thus, threatening to revoke their support of the Principate if he refused, the nobility left Tiberius with little decision. On the one hand, Tiberius could betray the only man he felt a kinship with and preserve his dynasty; on the other hand, he could refuse and watch the support of the Principate crumble. Recalling the reluctant surrender of his first wife, Tiberius once again realized that his aristocratic “duty” demanded that he “subordinate” his “tender emotions” for the good of the empire.

Tiberius then began sending contradictory messages to Rome, which Dio claims to have “at one moment… heartily [praised] Sejanus… and” the next “heartily [denounced] him.” Dio credits these as a show of Tiberius’ trickery, but these mixed messages may have just as easily been representative of Tiberius’ torn feelings about overthrowing his favourite (Dio. Rom His. 58.6). When he finally sent his decision to Rome, even the reputed long-winded and fickle nature of the letter on 18 October 31CE suggests that Tiberius made a decision not purely on his own accord and perhaps one he never wished to make.

According to historian John Tarver, the execution of Sejanus on 18 October 31CE and its bloody wake were pieces of “political vengeance.” So Tarver claims, “it was a revival of the old quarrel between the Senatorial and Equestrian parties.” After all, the decision to execute Sejanus and the first of his suspected accomplices arrived from the senate and not Tiberius. Four days after the death of Sejanus and following the execution of her children, Apicata’s last act before her suicide was to send a letter to Tiberius, confessing Sejanus’ part in poisoning his son Drusus in 23CE. At that moment any suspicion Tiberius may have held that Sejanus ever plotted against his heirs would have been realized. Thus, this discovery led Tiberius in his autobiography to justify abandoning Sejanus because of the latter’s plot against his heirs. However, Suetonius, with due cause, dismisses Tiberius’ justification as false. For one, Tiberius continued to attack the family of Germanicus, save Gaius, well after Sejanus’ death (Suet. Tib. 61). Certainly, it would be hypocritical of Tiberius to accuse someone

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else of attacking his family when he himself was guilty of such an offense. In addition, although Tiberius may have had suspicions, any knowledge of Sejanus’ plot against the imperial family was likely only confirmed after Apicata’s testimony, as previously argued. The exposure of the plot provided a convenient justification for why Tiberius abandoned Sejanus, long after Tiberius made his actual decision aimed at abating the Roman nobility.

“The fall of Sejanus,” Tarver concludes, “was [also], in fact, the fall of Tiberius.” Indeed, Tiberius’ decision to destroy his only remaining friend must have been devastating enough, but the discovery merely four days later that the only man he thought he could trust had plotted behind his back left him in ruins. Tarver summarizes that “in spite of so many years of public service and of single-hearted devotion to the interests of others, Tiberius found that at the age of seventy-two he stood alone in the world, hated and mistrusted by all.” Allegedly he refused any further contact with Rome and never stepped foot outside his villa for nine months following the fall of Sejanus. Although such claims can assuredly be an exaggeration, it is clear that the fall of the Tuscan effectively completed Tiberius’ desolation.

Raised under his father’s house, Tiberius was exposed to the values of the Roman nobility which first forced him to submit to his duty and surrender Vipsania. After losing his love and many that he cherished, he fell into isolation at Rome and reluctantly ascended to the throne, already old and alone. Consistently he sought a retreat from the duties of emperor and relied on the comfort of the friendship and partnership he forged with Sejanus. Yet the Roman nobility, ever concerned about the rise of a homo novus, pressured Tiberius to remove Sejanus, threatening to terminate their support if he refused. Thus, in an attempt to preserve the Principate, Tiberius sided with the nobility and sacrificed his favourite, conveniently foiling Sejanus’ conspiracy against Gaius in doing so. The emperor consequently descended into his solitude after the fall of his favourite, cursed by the knowledge that he betrayed and, after the discovery of Sejanus’ plot against his family, was betrayed by the only man to whom he trusted. For the last six years of his unpopular reign the emperor remained in self-imposed exile at Capri, absent from Roman affairs. Perhaps even upon his deathbed and knowing that the end of his long, lonely life drew near, Tiberius never found solace in what had conspired on 18 October 31CE. Bibliography

Primary: Dio Cassius. Roman History. Trans. Earnest Cary and Herbert B. Foster. United States: Harvard University Press, 1924.

Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews. Trans. William Whiston. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, 1987.

Juvenal, Satire 10. Trans. Susanna Morton Braund. United States: Harvard University Press, 1924.

Seutonius, Life of Tiberius. Trans. J.C. Rolfe. Cambridge: Mass Harvard University Press. 1997.

Tacitus, Annals. Trans. John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica. 1955.

Velleius Compendium of Roman History. Trans. Frederick W. Shipley. United States: Harvard University Press, 1924.

Secondary: Baker, G. P. 1967. Tiberius Caesar. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Boddington, Ann. “Sejanus. Whose Conspiracy?” TAJP. 84.1. January 1963. pp. 1-16.

Champlin, Edward “My Sejanus.” Humanities 31.5. September 2010. pp. 18-21, 52-53.

Marsh, Frank B. The Reign of Tiberius. London: Oxford University Press, 1931.

Nicols, John. “Antonia and Sejanus.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 24.1. 1975. pp. 48-58.

Rogers, Robert S. Studies in the Reign of Tiberius: Some Imperial Virtues of Tiberius and Drusus Julius Caesar. Baltimore: The Johns

Hopkins Press. 1943.

Rogers, Robert S. “The Conspiracy of Agrippina.” TPAPA, 62. 1931, pp. 141-168.

Seager, Robin. Tiberius: 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 2005.

Shotter, David. Tiberius Caesar. London; New York: Routledge. 1992.

Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press. 1939.

Vagi, David L. Coinage and History of the Roman Empire, Volume One: History. Chicago; London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. 1999.

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Dr. Suski’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 7/10 Clarity of Prose: 8/10 Overall Strength: 8/10

“This paper begins with a dramatic narrative moment that immediately pulls

us into the world of ancient Roman political intrigue to set up the question of why Tiberius turned against his favourite, Sejanus. The paper then makes a reasoned investigation into the possibilities, based on excellent research that incorporates many primary sources into the reconstruction of events. A coherent narrative results that offers a plausible and persuasive account of the reasons for Tiberius’ sacrifice of his only friend.”

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Dr. Suski’s Advice

1. Do not make a claim about trends or neglected areas of scholarship, unless you are certain they are true. E.g. “The question of gender in Aeschylean tragedy has been largely ignored by scholars.”

2. Do not detract from the focus and interest of your paper by beginning it with a paragraph about how your topic has been an area of fascination from the dawn of time.

3. Do not sprinkle the paper responding to them in some way.

with quotations from articles, without actually

4. Do be willing to acknowledge the limitations of your method of inquiry, and the complexities of the question you are investigating. Very few scholarly questions about culture can be answered with a neat interpretation.

5. Do not hand in your paper typos or errors in spelling and syntax.

without carefully reading it to eliminate

English

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Plants and Death: Mortality in Patricia Young’s “Sophie’s Lament”

BY ALYSSA PANDOLFO

ENG 1022

92%

When regarded shallowly, “Sophie’s Lament”, a poem written by Patricia Young, expresses the narrator’s frustrations at not having a “boyfriend”, or a person who cares about her. On a deeper level, however, it can be seen that this narrator, Sophie, also reflects on her mortality, portraying it using words linked with death. These two aspects of the poem are illustrated through the use of nature and death imagery: plants, especially the ones that are viewed as life-giving, are associated with death, showing their ephemerality. Through her comparisons between her and the dead plants, Sophie depicts her awareness of her own mortality, and shows that she wishes to prolong her life through a legacy, or through memories.

The phrase “[t]oo soon I’ll wither” (17) is used to show how Sophie believes that she will die sooner than she would like. The word “wither” can either refer to a plant or a part of the body. If a plant is withering, that means that it “become[s] dry and shrivelled” (“Wither” def. 1), while a withering part of the body “become[s] shrunken or wrinkled from age or disease” (“Wither” def.1). Through this double meaning, it can be seen that like the plants, Sophie will gradually approach death, and eventually die. This can be viewed as a realization of her mortality. Additionally, plants generally have a short lifespan, showing that Sophie believes that she will die earlier than she would like. This idea is emphasized through the rhythm of the line. Pyrrhic units are used before and after “wither”, seen in “Too soon I’ll” (17) and “a dry seed” (17), giving a lightness or softness to those words. Wither, however, has strong stresses on both of its syllables – it is a spondee, which is generally used for emphasis. Also, the word “wither” is disyllabic and is surrounded by monosyllabic words, causing it to be accentuated emphasized. There is assonance seen in the words “[t]oo soon” (17), which precede the word “wither”.

The o-sounds used prolong the words, reflecting Sophie’s want to prolong her life. The plant and death imagery are seen in the phrase “a dry seed rattling inside / an old cigar box” (17-18), not only demonstrate Sophie’s want of children, but also what she fears will happen to her once she is dead. A seed is what plants use to reproduce, so it holds the potential for new life and growth; however, the seed that is mentioned is dry. One interpretation of this may be to show Sophie’s awareness of her mortality – she compares herself to this seed, and realizes that if something as life-giving as this seed will die, then she will eventually die as well. Another may be that the seed without water is incomplete, and thus cannot grow into a plant. This is comparable to Sophie – without a boyfriend or a lover, her eggs cannot be fertilized, and she cannot have offspring. Without children or a lover, she will have no one to be remembered through, or to carry on her legacy.

Another combination of nature and death imagery is seen through the line “Nobody wants to walk through the cemetery to bring me dead tulips” (2), which shows Sophie’s wish to prolong her life through memories. Tulips are associated with life, as they bloom in the spring, which is the season of rebirth. These tulips, however, are dead, showing that although they are associated with life, they will eventually die. Although this line is ambiguous – the tulips may be considered dead because they are cut and will not continue to grow, or they may be actual dead tulips – in both interpretations, the idea of their ephemerality is expanded. If the tulips are interpreted as being cut flowers, this furthers Sophie’s belief that she will die too soon, like the tulips. The fact that she wants a person to walk through the cemetery to bring her these flowers is also important. It may be interpreted that Sophie is talking about when she will be dead, and this act of bringing flowers to her grave is a way of remembering her. Thus, it can be inferred that although Sophie wishes to prolong her life, she realizes that she will eventually die, and wishes to live on through the memories of someone who loves her.

In Patricia Young’s poem, “Sophie’s Lament”, nature and death imagery are used to depict Sophie’s awareness of her own mortality. The nature imagery used is associated with life, which is then directly contrasted with the death imagery, showing the plant’s ephemerality, as well as hers. Through this realization of mortality,

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Sophie’s wants of prolonging her life through a legacy as well as through memories are explored, explaining why she is desperate for a lover, and the possibility of living on after death through him.

Works Cited

“Wither.” Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press. n.d. Web. 2 December 2012.

Young, Patricia. “Sophie’s Lament.” An Auto-Erotic History of Swings. Winlaw, BC: Sono Niss Press, 2010. 72.

Dr. Bentley’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8.5/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 9/10 Clarity of Prose: 7.8/10 Overall Strength: 8.8/10

“This is a well-organized and sharply focused reading of a poem where

great strength lies in its close analyses of the poem’s imagery and technical devices. It contains strong opening and closing paragraphs; and it makes effective use of the OED.”

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Mr. Marion Bloom: The Indefinable Allroundman in Joyce’s Ulysses

BY ELIZABETH APPLETON

ENG 4520 93%

“Joyce’s Bloom, the most famous twentieth-century male literary androgyne” is frequently examined because of his subversive ability to identify with both, or neither, of the “divisions of our species into male and female variants” (Sadowski 146, 139). Throughout James Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom travels around the city of Dublin, and has a staggering amount of external and internal encounters with male and female realities. The characters within the novel believe that gender is definitive of character, but readers can come to view it as both secondary and impermanent. Bloom demonstrates a fluidity of gender, emphasized by his wife Molly’s similar androgyny (Sadowski 143), that prompts some critics to label the already racially “other” Bloom as effeminate; some, like Piotr Sadowski, consider him to be androgynous, while some, like Vicki Mahaffey, reject the idea of categorical genders entirely. Humans have an innate desire to categorize everything, and Bloom’s gender resists this need; ninety years after the novel’s publication, scholars still disagree about the designation and importance of Bloom’s gender. Vicki Mahaffey writes that the “categories [in Ulysses] are mixed, controversial, changing, and alive” (161). Joyce has created a male character who is both ahead of and outside of his time; Bloom is a man who accepts his appetites and those of others, who would not want a designation of androgyny to be confused with asexuality, and who does the best he can to be content. After examining his odyssey of realities, hallucinations, relationships, interactions, and destinations through the studies of various scholars, it becomes clear that an external classification of gender in Ulysses is unimportant to the main character: all Bloom needs to be certain of is that he is where he belongs (17.2332).

When analysed through the lens of “Gendered-Jewishness” by Neil R. Davidson, Bloom appears “locked [not only] in the isolation of a marginal subject-position to both the abject colonial Jewish and Irish identities” (126) but also to traditional masculinity. This otherness is best captured in the Cyclops chapter of Ulysses: when Bloom identifies Ireland as his nation, the citizen spits (12.1431-2), and shortly after, when he claims to belong to a race that is “hated and persecuted” (1467), a man in the bar tells him to “stand up to it [injustice] then with force like men” (1475). In this passage, Joyce draws attention to the ignorance of traditional Irish masculinity through his characterization of Bloom. The Jewish race is seen by the other men as effeminate because it has suffered for so long, while no judgement is brought upon its persecutors. The narrator mocks the idea of Bloom taking action, saying that he would make a perfect picture “if he only had a nurse’s apron on him” (1477-8).

Bloom believes that a traditional exercise of force is “no use” and claims “ that that is really life” is love (1481-5); this conclusion cements his difference. Kimberly Devlin, who identifies in Bloom a “partial androgyny” argues that by creating Bloom, “Joyce implies that passivity should not be unequivocally characterized as weakness” (85). Further exploring his otherness, Davidson remarks that Bloom is “a racial/gender colonial negative-space, void of a valid male voice in the Irish homosocial community” (126). He is mocked by the other men because he takes a traditionally feminine view of violence, refuses to drink and buy drinks for others, and because they cannot identify with his otherness; however, after years of marriage, in comparison to the other wives in Dublin, Molly does not regret her choice of husband (Devlin 84).

Bloom’s characteristic differences are appreciated by some, as when Lenehan comments that: “He’s a cultured allroundman […] He’s not one of your common or garden […] There’s a touch of the artist about old Bloom” (10.581-3). Perhaps here, Lenehan comes closest to the mark by identifying Bloom as an “allroundman”; if man here is taken to stand for humanity, Bloom could be an unidentifiable representative of all people, with a pan-European background and an ability to empathize with both women and men. Molly, who in an equal and opposite way has her feminine charms “masculinized by social independence and promiscuous impulses” (Sadowski 146), admits to herself that she “liked him because [she] saw he understood or felt what a woman is”

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(18.1578-9) and he was unlike her other admirers (13.1210), some of whom were as boorish as Penelope’s suitors in the Odyssey.

Bloom is so uncommonly understanding of Molly’s needs that he is able to go out and purchase a smutty book for her (10.665-6), and this is only one instance in which the Blooms’ marriage, as examined by Sadowski, challenges traditional marriage values in a variety of interesting ways. Sadowski argues that both Bloom and Molly are androgynous and that it is the combination of their gender similarities and oppositions that allows them to function separately as two halves of a relationship, and yet still feel love for the other person (147). He mentions that Plato “referred to androgyny as a separate, third gender superior to the main two” (144) and he continues his article based on this assumed superiority. Androgynous personalities, he explains, “combin[e] the masculine systematizing mind with the feminine empathizing disposition” (145). While I agree that a theory of Bloom’s androgyny requires Molly to also be an androgyne, a reading of the final chapter of Ulysses reveals that she is neither systematic nor empathetic, although she does have a dominance and force of will not commonly associated with women of her time. Despite the fact that Sadowski’s argument relies on the fixedness of the Blooms’ genders (which is disproved by Bloom’s reflection on his changing sense of self as: “Me. And me now” (8.917)), it redeems itself when he qualifies her androgyny as a combination of “womanly sensuality and manly confidence” (154) rather than simply as the inverse of Bloom’s androgyny.

Lacking such manly confidence, Molly’s husband the allroundman fails “the two traditionally most important tests of masculinity: physical prowess and sexual conquest” (147). As soon as he appears in the book, it is clear that he fills the traditionally female role by making breakfast for Molly and views his daughter’s letter with an “appealing combination of motherly tenderness and fatherly concern” (148). Suzette Henke proposes that Bloom’s maternal nature could have been another draw for Molly, who only had a father, and would be missing “mother-love” (Devlin 73). Molly is also given an unusual amount of social independence, which is made most noticeable through the way other characters refer to her. A letter from her lover names her as “Mrs. Marion Bloom” (4.244) rather than Mrs. Leopold, and at times, Bloom is even identified in relation to her: “Bloom […]

Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, […] the soprano. She’s his wife” (6.693-4). It is very unusual that Bloom is known to Dubliners as Molly’s husband; ordinarily, women were recognized in relation to their husbands, a norm indicated by Father Conmee’s notice of “the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P.” (10.17). Sadowski notes that “the elusiveness of Bloom’s social identity is as much a function of his mixed ethnic origin as of the androgyny that underlies his unusually soft, gentle, unmanly character” (150).

It is this unmanly character that allows Bloom to empathize with women. Eve Sedgwick presents her theory of a male homosocial continuum in her work Between Men. The word homosocial describes “social bonds between persons of the same sex” (1) that need not be sexual: the continuum functions as a path from the purely social to the purely sexual, and people can move freely along it. Because intimate relationships between women are not immediately greeted with homophobia, the homosocial continuum for women functions in most societies (3); however, because men are resistant to the idea that sex is waiting at the end of a progressable path, there has not been a widespread acceptance of a male continuum in society since ancient Greece (4). Although Bloom could be examined in his relations to Stephen and Boylan from a homosocial standpoint because cuckolding “is by definition a sexual act, performed on a man by another man” (Sedgwick 49), I have chosen to place Bloom on a heterosocial continuum. Most men in Dublin seem not to see relations between men and women as progressive, rather they are careful to draw clear separations between mothers, wives, and whores. As a man who does not feel like a part of his society, Bloom puts up none of these roadblocks for himself. Fighting back against his initial judgement of a diseased prostitute as a “wretched creature” he realizes the likelihood that a man is “ultimately responsible for her condition” (16.729-732).

More personally, Bloom can appreciate the fact that his daughter Milly is growing up and becoming her own person, whereas when one of Simon Dedalus’ daughters asks him for money, Simon responds saying: “You’re like the rest of them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor mother died” (10.681-2).

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Bloom, on the other hand, feels for Dilly Dedalus who looks shabby and hungry (8.41). He also sympathizes with Mrs. Breen because she has a terrible husband (8.318) and thinks throughout the day of Mrs. Purefoy suffering in childbirth (10.589). These three women are not thought of sexually and Bloom expects nothing from them; he concern is purely altruistic. Although he is heterosexual, he views them as people, to be helped rather than acquired, and interacts with them from a heterosocial standpoint.

Since the death of his second child, Bloom has not had a satisfying sex life, but he understands the emotional difficulty of the marriage and the reader never sees him push Molly for sex. Interestingly, Molly wishes that her unusually compassionate husband was more physical because he never embraces her except in sleep (18.1400). This lack of assertiveness is sometimes associated with traditional femininity, and Bloom is further feminized by occasional textual suggestions that he is experiencing his “monthly” (15.210) or is menstruating, as discussed by Austin Briggs. I am more inclined to see this temporary weakness as a sympathetic reaction to the struggles of women around Bloom: it has been proven that some men suffer sympathy pains when their wives are in labour (Telegraph), and I would attribute Bloom’s pain to a similar phenomenon. When compared to men like Boylan, who view women as objects to consume (10.327-335), Bloom’s capacity for homo- and hetero-sympathy makes him unique and a truly modern man.

Despite this seeming advocacy for gender liberalism, Vicki Mahaffey notes that Joyce’s “is not an activist stance” (137). The novel should not be received as a work of activism, but rather as testament to Joyce’s observational skill; in Leopold Bloom, readers see a realistic man in a believable marriage. Joyce seems to identify with the notion of continuums rather than fixed designations, and the anti-hero Bloom is granted a freedom of social and sexual movement within his larger identity. This flexibility is, as Devlin notes, essential to the Blooms’ marriage which is “precariously balanced on alternations in activity and passivity from both parties” (81). Other characters, like the feminine Gerty and Mrs. Purefoy or the masculine Citizen and narrator of the Cyclops chapter, are exaggeratedly gendered in order to highlight Bloom’s ambiguity. Unlike a Cyclops, Bloom is always able to see from two perspectives. Much like sexual relations on Sedgwick’s social continuum, Sadowski suggests that gender can also be viewed on “a continuum of psycho-behavioural traits and dispositions rather than two separate and unconnected feminine and masculine psychological complexes” (142). The exaggerated genders presented in the novel are caricatures, and while it is widely believed that most people are either more masculine or more feminine, it is perfectly acceptable that Bloom should demonstrate characteristics from both genders.

The eternal outsider, Bloom is different even from the men he respects the most, like Stephen, with whom he does not share “Name, age, race, [or] creed” (17.403). He is indefinable on all of these points: he is Molly’s husband, L. Boom, the “manchild […] childman” (17.2318), who is denied an Irish identity by the other men of Dublin, and cannot claim to be fully Jewish with his penchant for pork and lack of Jewish maternal lineage.

He is not forcefully masculine, but rather goes quietly to bed with his unfaithful wife, realizing that he can do nothing in the middle of the night to solve this situation that was not only “inevitable” but is also “irreparable” and therefore cannot be helped by Odyssean violence (17.2194, 2201). Joyce captures one day in twentieth-century Irish society, and presents this character who outdoes Odysseus, the epic hero: Bloom returns to his rightful place in bed, able to talk to his wife and plan for the future, without rage and without murder. Joyce “redefines a male hero as neither brave nor vengeful but as cautious, realistic” (Mahaffey 144). According to Joyce’s model, a full-bodied character, hero or anti-hero, cannot be written as predictably “masculine.” Gender is most accurately viewed as a continuum that one can move along over the course of a lifetime; rather than a set of pink and blue labels, gender is a series of choices that are neither permanent nor determining.

While the application of binaries is an interesting way of getting into the text, it is not necessary. Infants learn to group objects into categories like shape or colour to facilitate memory, but it is not realistic to reduce human identification to an impulse rooted in elementary categorization techniques. Vicki Mahaffey claims that gender is an “artificial category” (17.1005) and whether or not that is true, I would like to suggest that, in the case of Leopold Bloom, it is an irrelevant one. In Nausicaa, Bloom attempts to identify himself impermanently, in the sand, by scratching “I. AM. A.” (13.1258-64) but decides that he does not have the space to explain himself. Joyce made the decision not to finish that sentence, perhaps because it cannot, and must not be finished. A few letters

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in the sand cannot stand for 650 pages of character development, and a 650 page day cannot stand for a lifetime.

Ulysses provides its readers with a modern and foreign rejection of classification. Leopold Bloom, an isolated heterosexual man whose “mansmell” (13.1036) is of lemon soap, is defined by what he is not. Molly chose him “because [he was] so foreign from the others” (13.1220), because he is not really, categorically speaking, Jewish, Irish, hero, villain, powerful husband, bumbling cuckold, intellectual, simpleton, prude, pervert, macho, or effeminate. At the end of his journey, he returns to his profaned marriage bed to curl up not as his wife’s master, but as a “manchild in the womb” (17.2318). In order to appreciate Bloom’s full potential, a reader must stop trying to assign labels to him and simply allow him to extend “his firm full masculine feminine passive active hand” (17.289-90) and guide them into Ulysses.

Works Cited Blamires, Harry. The Bloomsday Book. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1969. Print.

Briggs, Austin. “Why Leopold Bloom Menstruates.” Bloomsday 100: Essays on Ulysses. Ed. Morris Beja and Anne Fogarty. Gainesville:

University Press of Florida, 2009. 41-61. Print.

Davidson, Neil R. Jewishness and Masculinity from the Modern to the Postmodern. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.

Devlin, Kimberly J. “En-Gendered Choice and Agency in Ulysses.” Ulysses in Critical Perspective. Ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie and A.

Nicholas Fargnoli. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. 70-87. Print.

Joyce, James. Ulysses. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler. New York: Random House, Inc., 1993. Print.

Mahaffey, Vicki. “Ulysses and the End of Gender.” European Joyce Studies 10: Masculinities in Joyce: Postcolonial Constructions. Ed.

Christine Van Boheemen-Saaf and Colleen Lamos. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. 137-176. Web. “Men ‘suffer sympathy pains during pregnancy.’” The Telegraph. 14 June 2007. Print. 4 Dec. 2012.

Sadowski, Piotr. “Androgyny and (near) Perfect Marriage: A Systems View of the Genders of Leopold and Molly Bloom.” Style 44.1/2

(2010): 139-61. Literature Online. Web. 1 Dec. 2012.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1985. Print.

Dr. Bentley’s Feedback:

Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 9.2/10 Originality: 8.8/10 Clarity of Prose: 9/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“This essay makes excellent use of a relatively large number of theorists and critics to analyze the depiction of Bloom’s gender in Ulysses. It begins with an engaging opening paragraph and it ends with a paragraph that is critically satisfying and set off by some nice stylistic flourishes.

Throughout, it is very well written- crisp, stylish, economical. It also has a catchy title.”

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Towards a Unified Society: Public and Private in Adrienne Rich’s The School Among the Ruins

BY ALLYSA BOLZON

ENG 4620

87%

In July of 1997, poet and theorist Adrienne Rich became the first person to refuse the National Medal for the Arts. In an article explaining her reasons for refusal, she stated that “there is no political leadership in the White House or the congress that has spoken to and for the people who, in a very real sense, have felt abandoned by their government” (101). As a lesbian and a feminist, Rich has been a voice for those who have been marginalized by society. In her poetry, she combines the political and the personal to convey her belief in art’s social presence “as a breaker of official silences” (Why I Refused 99). In her 2004 volume of poetry The School Among the Ruins, Rich explores what it means to live in a global culture. By analyzing “The School Among the Ruins”, “Dislocations: Seven Scenarios”, and “Tendril”, it becomes clear that society can never be unified as long as it lacks a vocabulary for thinking about human suffering as communal and public rather than private.

In the 1978 essay “Disloyal to Civilization: Feminism, Racism, and Gynephobia”, Rich introduces the phrase “white solipsism”. By this, she means a way to “think, imagine, and speak as if whiteness [describes] the world” (299). She goes on to say that white solipsism is not necessarily the belief that one’s race is superior to another, but is rather a tunnel vision that does not allow one to see the world from a non-white perspective in a meaningful way (306). Solipsism can lead to a preoccupation with oneself, which in turn prevents one from “connecting with the experience of others” (306). This solipsist thinking is evident in “The School Among the Ruins” by the subtitle that indicates that this war torn society is in “Beirut. Baghdad. Sarajevo. Bethlehem. Kabul.

Not here of course”. This thinking can also be labeled “American solipsism”. Extrapolating from Rich’s definition of white solipsism, American solipsism may be defined as viewing the world as if everyone is American. This kind of thinking is dangerous, because those Americans suffering from American solipsism would be unable to empathize with the kind of war torn society found in “The School Among the Ruins”. In “The Baldwin Stamp”, Rich states that “after the September 2001 attacks, [American] leaders [informed them that their] nation is hated because [they] are so free, so exceptional, so envied in [their] way of life” (52). This statement demonstrates the inability for the American government to see the world from another country’s point of view. They are absorbed with their own ideas of right and wrong, which excludes them from understanding the rest of the world. “The School Among the Ruins” is set on “a street on earth” (14), though the subtitle excludes America from that category. America is distinctly set aside from the war torn society, and is therefore unable to empathize with the state of affairs in other countries. In the third part of “Dislocations: Seven Scenarios”, “only the solipsist seems intact in her prewar building” (10) while the rest of the world is ravaged by an infection that “drinks…/ whatever it can” (1-2). The solipsist cannot be touched by this infection, because she lacks that communal language that unites her with others. She lives in her private “prewar building”, which is reminiscent of the Garden of Eden prior to the fall. Her mind separates her from the rest of the world, which causes a tension that cannot be resolved. The world will be unable to move past the state of sin as long as there are those that refuse to acknowledge the true state of society. Only by joining the ravaged world would the solipsist have the capacity to understand human suffering, and work toward a communal language that unifies the world. In “USonian Journals 2000”, there are “white people doing and seeing no evil” (40). The solipsist is blind to the suffering of the world. If the white solipsist sees the world as if white experience is the only experience, there will be no way build a common language that unites the public and private spheres.

Throughout The School Among the Ruins, there are caregivers who suffer at the hands of society. Miriam Marty Clark postulates that doctoring functions as a synecdoche for “moral engagement without borders” (63),

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which stands in contrast to white solipsism. In the seventh section of “Dislocations: Seven Scenarios”, a “physician without frontiers” (14) battles the tension between his public and private world. The “last domestic traces” (2) of the apartment are awaiting disposal, which represents the demolishment of home as a private experience. In contrast, the physician has “three continents to cross” (8). His home has become the larger world, which means that he places the burden of the world on to himself. Because there is no language for communal suffering, the physician is unable to carry the burden that he places on himself. He is “bleeding from internal wounds / he diagnosed” (12-13), because he has abandoned the private realm in order to engage with the world.

His internal world becomes external, which is visually represented by his blood. The physician is unable to unite public with private because like the solipsist in her prewar building, he is isolated. In this case, the physician carries the burden of communal pain. The world cannot be unified unless there is a language for this pain in society.

Without this common language, the physician is never able to reconcile his public and private life.

The caregiver role is expanded in “The School Among the Ruins”. The teachers “sang them to naps told stories made/ shadow-animals with [their] hands” (77-78). Like the physician, the teachers attempt to shoulder the burden in their war torn society, but in the end their efforts are not effective due to the corrupt environment in which they are forced to work. Rich uses juxtaposition and ambiguous language to demonstrate the drastic split between public and private and the destruction of an effective education. In “The School Among the Ruins”, “closets [are] unlocked, locked / questions [are] unasked, asked” (9-10). These sharp distinctions within the lines create a dramatic split that punctures the flow of the lines and causes the reader to pause at the contrasting images. Public and private should live side by side in harmony, but the contrasting words punctuated by commas are indicative of the split. The children are unable to be provided with definite answers due to this fragmentation. Rich also uses words that change meaning throughout the poem. Rich uses the word ‘last’ at the end of two consecutive lines at the beginning of the poem. The first ‘last’ indicates the end of the school lesson, while the second ‘last’ indicates a continuation. This change of meaning represents the instability in this war torn society. Due to solipsist thought, the same word is interpreted differently by different people, which eliminates a shared understanding. The poem begins with an ending, which enforces the fact that the classroom and the world is disjointed and lacks a balance between public and private. Due to the fact that society lacks the vocabulary for communal human suffering, the exhaustion and failure of these caregivers to provide adequate care is inevitable.

The genders of the caregivers throughout “The School Among the Ruins” are also important. In 1978, Rich wrote that “when women are… given access only to certain “service” positions…it is chiefly women who… absorb the anger, the hunger, the unmet needs, the psychic and physical pain of the human lives which become statistics…in the hands of scientists, government officials, administrators” (Disloyal to Civilization 302). A reordering of gender roles is necessary so society does not “see the old political order reassert itself in every new revolution” (When we Dead Awaken 42). A re-ordering is evident in “The School Among the Ruins”. In section three, the teacher is identified as a male. It is the male teacher who takes on the burden of despair in his classroom, which demonstrates a positive change that has taken place in the world. However, the image of the male as a caregiver could be seen as a further split between public and private. The “school [is]…in session day and night / [and] children sleep / in the classrooms” (28-30). Rather than finding a balance between public and private, the private realm has been completely been replaced by what is public. The caregiver assumes the role of the parent, which places the caregiver in a position where he cannot engage fully with either his role as a teacher or his role as a parent. He cannot answer the questions that the students ask him, because he cannot reconcile the split in his world. Rich uses the image of the womb in order to expand on her parenthood imagery. In her 1977 poem “Transcendental Etude”, the speaker of the poem laments “the wrenching-apart…that woman’s heartbeat / heard ever after from a distance” (62-63). The mother’s womb is the epitome of the private realm. To be in the mother’s womb is to be protected from the cruelty of life, and one’s entrance into the world is an introduction to pain and suffering. However, this is a split that every human being experiences. In “Tendril”, the speaker is on a business trip, and aches for the comfort of home and of a “womb’s languor” (23). To remain at home is to be safe, but Rich argues that society cannot remain in the private realm consumed with their solipsism. Society must push the

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boundaries into public life and work toward a unified world instead of individual security. If every human being experiences this initial split with their mothers, society must have a language to describe this mutual suffering in order for people to be able to part with their mother’s body and reconcile the conflict between public and private.

Though the male teacher is indicative of this removal from the private realm, the split is necessary in this instance in order for individuals to unite over the common pain they experience.

Rich extends the idea of the parent and caregiver in “The School Among the Ruins” with the image of the cat. The cat figures as a representation of the female caregiver, which is evident by the fact that they “call her / Sister” (67-8). The cat represents hope because she is able to sustain herself, but also represents the suffering of the caregivers. The children acknowledge that the cat will teach them, yet the cat lacks the ability to speak.

The children mirror the cat at the end of the poem by being unable to write. The children learn their material by heart, which means that they cannot engage with the world and form their own views and opinions. The image of the turtle who teaches the children responsibility also reinforces the idea of teaching without words. Both the turtle and the cat become the representation of the lack of society’s communal language. The children learn forget how to write because their caregivers are unable to communicate the lessons they would like to teach.

A theme that Rich repeatedly returns to throughout her writing is the importance of history. In “Blood, Bread, and Poetry”, she discusses how Americans are “taught a particular version of history, the version of the propertied white male” (49). This biased history is how white solipsism begins, and the first step to combat it is to understand the reality of their education. One must understand that “the way things are could actually be a social construct, advantageous to some people and detrimental to others, and that these constructs could be criticized and changed” (50). This kind of history acts as an alienating force from one’s roots, which is how society becomes isolated within the private realm. The way to reverse this isolation is to return to the history one was taught and to re-learn and re-write it. In “Tendril”, the speaker attempts to come to terms with her own fallibility.

She struggles to “find meaning in the past but the future drove a vagrant tank a rogue bulldozer / rearranging the past in a blip / coherence smashed into vestige” (70-73). She cannot find access her past because she has been isolated from the true reality of her situation. Because she cannot make sense of her past, it is impossible for the speaker to make sense of her future. Her past shapes the rest of her life, and reinforces the distinction between public and private that disallows her to reconcile her past, present and future. In “The School Among the Ruins”, there are no metaphors or similes. The language is incredibly straightforward, which figures as a way to uncover the truth through poetry. Poetry has a strong traditional element of using metaphors, and by changing a part of poetry’s past, Rich urges the readers to examine their own past and face the harsher, bare reality in her poetry without the cover of metaphor. This language indicates that this is a time for action. “The School Among the Ruins” can be read as art struggling to achieve its goals in the face of world violence and chaos. In the 1983 “Blood, Bread, and Poetry”, Rich speaks of how W.B. Yeats taught her that poetry can have a basis in politics (48). Rich believes that poetry can and should reflect the time and context of a given moment. Like the caregiver, the artist must shoulder the burden of suffering, and should aim to reverse this by revisiting history and attempting to reach a common language that will unite the public and private spheres.

The importance of questions is central to reinventing society. Rich argues that the government does not speak for the people, so it is essential to challenge their agendas and question their aims in an active way. In “USonian Journals 2000”, the opening section entitled “Citizen/Alien/Night/Mare” describes how the speaker is unable to stop the change that is turning America into an unrecognizable place defined by greed (37). This rapid change causes the reader to feel isolated and helpless in the battle to find meaning and connection in the world.

The section “Incline” enforces the importance of abandoning those failed paths to unification. It is this “fake road, its cruel deception…[that the individual has] to abandon”(42). The individual who wishes the find a communal language with which to communicate must recognize what does not work, and must use this to form new connections and ideas. In “The School Among the Ruins”, a question mark is the only full stop in the poem. This highlights the message that society must not stop questioning the state of the world until they have achieved unity. The lack of full stops drives the reader forward and increases momentum. The lack of punctuation also makes the question mark a focal point of the poem. The reader must pause and contemplate an answer to the questions

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that Rich poses. The teacher urges students not to “stop asking…why” (74). Asking questions is the only way society can transcend its current state. In “Tendril”, the poem ends with a question mark. As this is the last selection in The School Among the Ruins, this means that the entire anthology ends with a question. As readers ponder and reflect on Rich’s work, they must read her poetry in the form of a question. Questions are of supreme importance in Rich’s work because she believes it necessary for poetry to reach out and stir people to action. Rich believes that “only the actions of real people testing potential meanings in their own social worlds can bring the work to life” (Werner 243). Rich recognizes that the world will continue to change after her death, so she must rely on her readers to absorb her ideas and continue the search for a communal language. Craig Werner recognizes the value of poetry that demands a response:

Only by accepting the risks inherent in call and response can we hope to connect with potential

allies and overcome the debilitating isolation. Only by comparing specific experiences of

suffering and resistance can we hope to identify and understand the common enemy. (Werner 245).

Challenging the current political and social system by reaching out to others and understanding others’ experience is how a unified language will be possible. Society must abandon their failed attempts at the reconciliation between public and private, and ask the challenging questions of society.

In “Some Questions from the Profession”, Adrienne Rich says that two forces have the power to connect differences. “One is solidarity, the recognition that we need to join with others unlike ourselves to undo conditions and policies we find mutually intolerable…[and] the other force is the involuntary emotional connection with other human beings” (131). To achieve these aims, one must discard their solipsist thinking and recognize the world as unified and communal rather than isolated and divided by race, gender, sexual preferences or religion. In “USonian Journals 2000”, Rich presents a mission statement: “It is directed toward the investigation and abrogation of cruelty in every direction” (42). This mission statement is the essence of Rich’s poetry, which is particularly evident in her 2004 anthology The School Among the Ruins. Though “The School Among the Ruins” was written prior to September 11th 2001, the poem seems to foreshadow the events that take place. America must realize that they are not immune to the suffering that exists in the rest of the world. Rich’s poetry “means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power that holds it hostage” (Why I refused 99). Rich’s work reaches out and urges readers to examine their history, their relationships, and the way they view the world. Rich poses questions such as “what is to be done?...What will suffice?... If art is our only resistance, what does that make us”?

These are the questions that society must ask in order to move out of their private realm and into a realm of common human experience and compassion.

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Works Cited Clark, Miriam Marty. “Human Rights and the Work of Lyric in Adrienne Rich.” The Cambridge Quarterly 38.1 (2009): 45-65. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Blood, Bread, and Poetry: The Location of the Poet.” Arts of the Possible. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2001. 41-61.

Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Dislocations: Seven Scenarios.” The School Among the Ruins. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 85-91. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Disloyal to Civilization: Feminism, Racism, Gynephobia.” On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. New York: W.W. Norton &,

1979. 275-310. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Some Questions from the Profession.” Arts of the Possible. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2001. 128-137. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Tendril.” The School Among the Ruins. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 103-110. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “The Baldwin Stamp.” A Human Eye. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2009. 49-56. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “The School Among the Ruins.” The School Among the Ruins. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 22-25. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Transcendental Etude.” The Dream of a Common Language. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1978. 72-77. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Usonian Journals 2000.” The School Among the Ruins. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 37-43. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “When we Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision.” On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1979. 33-50.

Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts.” Arts of the Possible. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2001. 98-105. Print.

Werner, Craig. “Trying to Keep Faith.” The Virginia Quarterly Review 82.2 (2006): 241-46. Print.

Dr. Bentley’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 8.5/10 Originality: 9/10 Clarity of Prose: 9/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“The opening paragraph is immediately engaging and the concluding paragraph is fully satisfying. The author very effectively uses Adrienne Rich’s prose statements as a window onto her poems, but also brings ideas of her own into the mix, notably the variation on “white solipsism”. All in all, the essay is very well written and organized.”

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Dr. Bentley’s Advice 1. Do not use “use”, and so on.

2. Do

orotund words such as “within” where “in” will do, “utilize” instead of

not begin sentences with “Also…”, “Additionally…”, and so on.

3. Avoid involved!

faulty subject-verb agreement, especially when collective nouns are

4. Do not use inconsistent personal pronouns to characterize the writer of the essay- that is “one”, “I”, “we” within the same couple of sentences.

5. Do

not use stray and absent apostrophes.

Film

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To Serve and Protect: The Canadian National Anthem

BY ADRIENNE BOOKBINDER FILM 3373 92%

On a conceptual level, the ‘nation’ becomes a universal ideology so deeply embedded in our perception of reality that its purpose is taken for granted and difficult to identify. “Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way around.” (Hobsbawm, 10). In other words, we emotionally identify with our subjective sense of nationality since it is appointed to us at birth, and its meaning is learned and experienced thereafter. One’s interpretation of nation is shared among fellow citizens but to varying degrees of commonality, since individuals’ life trajectories take on different form. To reveal why a nation promotes sensations of a strong collective identity through a shared sense of nation-hood, I will first explain the historical importance that came to emphasize nation building and then will analyze the Canadian national anthem “O Canada”.

Through its lyrical composition and national routine practice, the Canadian national anthem supports Benedict Anderson’s definition of nation. A nation is imagined since its members, “will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”

(Anderson, 6). Whether or not the collective national identity is felt evenly among its members, the feeling is nonetheless, inevitably alive. This is because the shared feeling of sameness between members of a nation is not one of identity but one of experience. Nations and nationalities do not function as a category of criteria like age or race; their purpose is not to categorically define an individual’s identity. Rather, nations and nationalities serve the same purpose of religion- to promote a collective experience among all members as a means to regulate, control, and provide security.

The Enlightenment and the invention of the printing press gave way to mass- communication in a globalized world. The once fabricated sense of ‘commonness’ within religious communities became disrupted when the validity of religious faith was challenged with the validity of empirical observation. Individuals’ previous good faith in God to provide structure and freedom to their lives was replaced with their faith in the sovereign state to provide the same. (Anderson, 7). Previous theological faith had become universally dominated by the likelier promises of a nationalist faith. The authority of a sovereign God, religious scriptures and songs, and the sense of a definitive membership to a particular belief was replaced with an ultimate power of the state, constitutional laws, a national anthem and objective boundaries mapped out to contain the national.

The Canadian national anthem is composed in a voice of “the people”, O Canada, Our home and native land!, which commands a sense of togetherness among those dispersed across the land. “O Canada” induces a social contract between the state and its citizens. A devout exchange of promises: of power, protection, belonging and freedom from the state to the citizens, and of security and power from the citizens to the state. True patriot love in all they sons command, With glowing hearts we see thee rise the True North strong and free. This suggests that a Canadian, a patriot, who is ready to support and prepared to defend against those deemed as enemies, will in turn be provided will freedom, security, and rights. From far and wide O Canada we stand on guard for thee.

A sense of belonging creates social order, and a willingness to protect and defend for ones nation. “From far and wide” indicates how Anderson’s imagined community is conceptualized into an observable mass of land to help justify nation-hood. I speak of Canada only in reference to its national anthem, but the themes presented in “O Canada” although culturally specific serve to provide the purpose nations and citizens serve to each other on a universal level.

The ‘nation’ has served to protect us against the unknown in a similar way religion has provided a sense of supernatural security. The idea that the sovereign state is able to defend itself and is citizens is as imagined as the community itself. To quote Helen Keller, “Security is mostly a superstition. It does no exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.” (Helen Keller, The Open Door, 1957).

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Works Cited Anderson, Benedict. “Introduction.” Imagined Communities. New York: Verso, 1991. 1-7 Hobsbawm, Eric J. “Introduction.” Nations and Nationalisms since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. 2nd ed.: Cambridge UP, 1992.

7-20.

Keller, Helen. The Open Door. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957. N. pag

Dr. Coates’ Feedback: Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 9/10 Clarity of Prose: 9/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“A sinewily-argued piece; extremely mature and balanced both in style and weighing of arguments; evidence of wide reading, and its appropriate and original use, in final quotation.”

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A Discussion of Contemporary Latin American Cinema: The Maid/La Nana

BY ROSS HAMILTON

FILM 2247

86%

The late 1990s marked a sea change in Latin American cinema, as a new wave of filmmakers emerged across the continent, their work bringing about a ‘seismic shift’ (Wolf) in the region’s contemporary cinematic culture. Hailing from various countries, this new clutch of directors did not necessarily share the same principles and ideas regarding filmmaking, in the way that say Fernando Solanas et al had done in the late 1960s, however they were a united by a singular rejection of the Latin American cinema that had come before them. A film that exemplifies many, though admittedly not all, of the defining characteristics connecting this collection of progressive Latin American movies, which have continued to be released over the last ten years, is Sebastián Silva’s comedic drama, La Nana, the analysis of which will be the focus of this essay. Through an examination of the film itself, and by drawing from a selection of secondary sources, I will aim to gain a further insight into the context and underlying ideas behind the movement currently underway in Latin American cinema.

Released in 2009, La Nana is the Chilean Silva’s second feature-length production, and is representative of what critic Sergio Wolf deems the ‘extraordinary transformation’ in contemporary Latin American cinema in a number of ways. Perhaps the foremost of these is the film’s subject matter, seeking as it does to deconstruct the institution of ‘the maid’, which is described as ‘a ubiquitous feature of Latin American society and its cinema’ by critic Demetrios Matheou. Silva describes the maid as ‘a hidden subject in Chile’ (Diestro-Dópido), a monument to the persistent inequality that plagues modern Latin America, and as such the director’s mandate is to portray the person behind the profession, to lend ‘a Chilean perspective to this messed-up phenomenon’ (Matheou).

Where previously the maid may have appeared fleetingly onscreen, performing her duties with a smile before vanishing behind the scenes as good help should, Silva makes this hitherto peripheral figure his focus, drawing upon moments from his own life to achieve this end. Discussing his own childhood maid, the director admits to suffering ‘guilt, as I felt we were imprisoning this woman in a house’ (Diestro-Dópido), and he significantly uses his parents’ home as the film’s main location, again employing personal experience in order to lend it an ‘organic’ familiarity.

However, whilst several contemporary Latin American directors, including Lucrecia Martel in The Swamp, have attempted to separate individual characters from the institution of the domestic servant, it is by no means a straightforward feat, a fact that is demonstrated throughout La Nana by its titular protagonist, Raquel.

‘An ambiguous figure’ (Bradshaw), she is at once ‘needy and resentful’, ‘shy [and] girlish’ (Bradshaw), and her conception of her own self, initially at least, is so intimately entwined with her job that she struggles to find her own identity. Indeed, in one scene we see her trying on a sweater belonging to her mistress, Pilar, before later purchasing the same garment for herself, one of several indications of the ‘arrested development of a woman who hasn’t spent a minute of her adult life in her own persona’ (Matheou).

The somewhat subdued, domestic drama of La Nana is reflected in the aesthetic approach adopted by Silva and cinematographer Sergio Armstrong, who aimed to make ‘the audience feel like a voyeur’ (Diestro-Dópido). The film’s candid, handheld camerawork lends it a distinct ‘fly-on-the-wall look’ (Matheou), blurring the lines between invention and reality and demonstrating what Wolf terms, the ‘documentarisation of fiction’ (Wolf). This approach, and the resultant portrayal of the mundanity of Raquel’s life, is also exemplary of a shift in contemporary Latin American cinema. The protagonist’s rigid routine and lack of any meaningful social interaction creates an affecting but crucially believable setting, effectively ‘confronting the real [and] contaminating fiction with the material of the everyday’ (Wolf). In the process, Silva rejects the ‘allegorical fervour of the

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1980s’ (Wolf), the traditional approach of ‘local flavour dressed up with tenderness in order to seduce the co-producing economic power’ (Wolf). Raquel’s lifestyle is unembellished and it certainly isn’t glamourised, and the director even goes as far as to say that the position of the maid ‘still carries features of slavery’ (Diestro-Dópido).

While it would be wrong to call Raquel a slave, she is also not a true member of the family, despite having lived with them for over twenty years. Instead, she occupies a strange grey area between employee and relative, too attached to the family to seek fulfilment elsewhere but not close enough that she can be personally satisfied; ‘she is intimate with authority, but emphatically beneath it’ (Bradshaw). It is the uncertainty and emotional repression that Raquel experiences as a result of this situation that ultimately causes her aggression toward the family’s new maids, a fact which goes unnoticed until it is finally recognised by Lucy, who holds Raquel and asks, ‘My God, what did they do to you?’.

However, these personal issues, which are primarily underpinned by Silva’s broader commentary on class, also draw in part from the theme of interracial tension, another common aspect present in many contemporary Latin American films. While La Nana doesn’t reach ‘the outer limits of xenophobia’ (Wolf) in the manner of Adrián Caetano’s Bolivia, Raquel’s gibes at her Peruvian counterpart Mercedes carry with them a racial overtone (‘She’s got to understand, we’re not in Peru!’), and her habit of disinfecting the bathroom after her rival’s showers possesses an underlying nastiness that exceeds mere personal dislike. Once again, Silva’s use of the house as a setting becomes significant. In a way it represents Raquel’s own sovereign territory, and she in turn exhibits a sort of warped nationalism regarding the space. Until her revelation with Lucy, she distrusts ‘foreigners’ who are brought into her own environment, and is completely resistant to anything that will upset the social balance within what she perceives as ‘her’ house and ‘her’ family.

Ultimately, the facets of La Nana concerning class, race and the documentarisation of fiction combine to form a film that provides a great indication of the cultural and political transformation undergone in Latin American cinema as a whole over the last decade and a half. Whilst ‘the shaping factors were not the same’ (Wolf) throughout the continent, Silva and his contemporaries, united by a ‘horror of the cinema of the past’ (Wolf), have succeeded in creating films that challenge and subvert the cinematic establishment, both technically and in terms of subject matter. Confronting the institution of the maid, the director creates a character in Raquel who is portrayed realistically; who is ‘scary yet subtle’ (Bradshaw), and ‘defies our expectations at every turn’ (Matheou), and as a result he presents us with a film that embodies the underlying spirit of Latin American cinema today: a resounding rejection of the ‘aestheticisation of the real’ (Wolf).

Bibliography Bradshaw, Peter. ‘The Maid’, The Guardian, August 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/26/the-maid-review> [Accessed

November 2012].

Diestro-Dópido, Mar. ‘Latin American Cinema: The View From Downstairs’, Sight and Sound, 20.9 (Sept. 2010).

Matheou, Demetrios, ‘The Maid’, Sight and Sound, 20.9 (Sept. 2010).

Wolf, Sergio. ‘No Turning Back’, Sight and Sound, 20.9 (Sept. 2010).

Filmography Bolivia. Dir. Adrián Caetano. Cinema Tropical, 2001.

The Maid [La Nana]. Dir. Sebastián Silva. Elephant Eye Films, 2009.

The Swamp [La Ciénaga]. Dir. Lucrecia Martel. Lita Stantic Producciones, 2001.

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Dr. Coates’ Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8/10 Analysis: 8/10 Originality: 8/10 Clarity of Prose: 9/10 Overall Strength: 8/10

“Clear, concise and well-organized; efficient use of research; thorough and effective analysis and contextualization of the key features of the film.”

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My Own Private Idaho: Realism and its Discontents

BY ERIN NUNODA FILM 2200 95%

“It was one of the main ideas behind his hustling, that he needed to be held, to be touched. He didn’t necessarily need to have sex. But he needed to be close.” Gus Van Sant

In a famous aphorism, Andre Bazin described the relationship between film and the natural world as “asymptotic” (Bazin 82) in nature, meaning that it could approach reality to infinitesimal distances, but could never touch it, it could never immerse itself in its phenomenological aura. Moreover, in inverse terms, film could also never escape certain photographic aspects of its production. Bazin, and many other realist critics of the post-war generation (of which one could certainly include the polemical writings of Cesare Zavattini), aware of the destructive power of propaganda, depicted this representational conflict as profoundly dialectical: the clash of the decadent aesthete of formalism and the morally righteous purveyor of “the real”. However, the various ruptures (and, perhaps, possibilities) that performativity engendered were not always interpreted through such moralist taxonomies.

Siegfried Kracauer (himself a refugee from Nazi Germany) proposed that “paradoxical as it may seem, the stagy, normally against the grain of the medium, assumes a positive aesthetic function if it is made to enhance the unstaged” (Kracauer 306).” Kracauer, who writes extensively on the merits of cinematic montage, is therefore suggesting that interest should not lie in the narrative as totalizing or complete, but rather in the juxtaposition of ideas: of the ways in which the tendencies could mingle with and perhaps even transform each other.

Mikhail Bakhtin described this phenomenon as linguistic “polyphony” a structural feature that is often discarded in favour of a singular, transparent voice (comparative to the classical narrative). In this sense, the sociological status of displacement (or, of embodying more than one mode in the generic sense), creates an aporia of sorts for the film medium: of how an image can represent absence, the negation of ontology or the hermeneneutical ambiguity (both on the level of spectatorship and narrative) that results from the breakdown of empirical experience.

Of course, “breakdown” assumes a kind of diachronic progression, a gradual fall from the utopia of epochs past, and perhaps what the post-war realists reveal is not so much a paradigm shift but rather an epiphany: that film history is full of fissures.

The fact that all film theorists must contend with is film’s partiality: it exists discursively not only amongst other texts, but is also in dialogue with the world it seeks to represent, and with the audiences who desire to look at it. In this sense, film is (in the Hegelian formulation) always in the process of becoming, with the filmic contents in danger of dividing against themselves. This sort of aesthetic or narrative syncretism, which can locate structural incoherence in even the most classical texts, has provided a fundamental challenge to realist conceptualizations of art, not only on the terms of basic, mimetic representation, but also on an intertextual level that points to various self-reflexivities or dialogisms in a primary text.

Hypertext, the term that structuralist Gérard Genette used to describe a work that “transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends” (Stam 551) upon an anterior text, becomes particularly useful when examining filmic realities that are increasingly like a mise-en-abyme, a Baudrillardian universe that can only refer back to myths, citations and symbolic constructs. At the same time, particularly when examining schematics of marginality or difference, epistemology assumes as a philosophical inquiry profound affective associations, in particular the desire to understand and relate to human beings outside one’s self. Realism thus becomes the subject of history, in that it is deeply indebted to the possibilities of its era (what Dudley Andrew deemed a period’s optique), and yet it is also the creator of history, determining what forms or artistic works may be granted legitimacy. Poetic values, like verisimilitude or decorum, are thereby culturally coded, with spectacle or excess characterized

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as equivocations, or perhaps (as Hamid Naficy would suggest) markers of “the accent,” a kind of aestheticized difference.

My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991) thus provides a challenge for theorists seeking modular reconciliation or structural unity, not only because it emerged out of a politically contentious era (for which representation became a central concern) but also because it thematizes a kind of ruptured bricolage that is inherent (if not necessarily accepted as such) in the conceptualization of America, particularly for those outside the mainstream. On its more cursory level, this is the story of two hustlers: Mike, a poverty-stricken (in all sense of the word) naïf, and Scott, an idle scion, biding his time amongst the destitute demimonde until he can come into his fortune. However, in contrast to the downtrodden mythos that such descriptions conjure, the film’s tone is primarily (although not solely) that of the playful carnivalesque: time and space are elliptic, uncertain qualities, flirtations are made with the grotesque or the satiric (“America the Beautiful” played over a surreal encounter of father and son), allusions are made to a multitude of picaresque images, most prominently the Eastcheap chapters of Shakespeare’s Henriad (Prince Hal, Henry IV and Falstaff are all present in vernacular guises), nostalgia is invoked both as an affective construct and as a jokey collection of kitsch, Wyethian time-lapse landscapes are juxtaposed with Warholian, monochromatic title cards, the masculinist road movie is queerly coded as a matrocentric tragedy.

Nevertheless, if one were to look closely, all of Siegfried Kracauer’s “inherent affinities”, or the photographic techniques specific to cinematic realism, are present here: the unstaged (Van Sant cast real hustlers to play various minor characters, some of whom speak about their experiences directly to the camera), the fortuitous (peripatetic events occur unmotivated by causal structure), endlessness (represented by the personified road, the archetypical American purgatory), the indeterminate (the aesthetic is equal parts baroque and naturalistic, the wholeness of subjectivity is frequently interrupted by performative or surreal elements) and the “flow of life” (the protagonist is passive, he is the one trapped in the alterity of Deleuze’s “affection image”: unable to act, literally strewn from one location to another). Moreover, the film shows a tremendous affection for what Kracauer lionized as “the street” (Kracauer 301), the nexus of odd characters and haphazard contingencies, the place where environmental and psychological desolation inevitably collide.

However, even if this is the case, what is one to make of the strange, faux-Bard patois that certain characters speak, or of the Campy, mannered artifice of the various johns, or the encapsulation of the baroque, heterotopic milieu that the hustlers inhabit (complete with garish, quasi-Sirkean colour schemes) or of how the film depicts sex acts as a series of immobile projections: beautiful, distant and irretrievable as indexical records.

However, these various cinematic devices, engendered to produce a fable-like, unheimlich environment, do not necessarily negate the realistic tendency so much as complicate it. Cinematographic opulence is overlaid across detritus, both of the city (cheap restaurant, abandoned hotels) and of the rural heartland, and although the performances are informed by varying degrees of iconicity, none of it comes off as eminently false.

This is primarily due to the fact that Van Sant positions Mike (River Phoenix) as a liminal figure: he exists between artificiality and authenticity, comedy and tragedy, femininity and masculinity, theatricality and realism.

Mike, whose position at the locus of commercialism and raw naturalism (in other words, postmodern formalism and “authentic” realism), is the archetypical embodiment of the abject: the intermediary stranger who is both incorporated and rejected by his society, not only by the services he endeavours to provide, but also due to his sexual indeterminancy. Mary Ann Doane suggests that sex work itself is indicative of modernity, not only in its brash commercialization of the flesh, but also in the ways it eradicates earlier cultural marriages of sexuality and the aesthetic. “The prostitute represents the collapse of sublimation as a concept and hence the downfall of the ‘sublime’; the end of an aura and the decline of love…she exemplifies or embodies what becomes the task of characterization in the twentieth century (particularly in the cinema) the humanization of the commodity.” (Doane 267)

What one could propose then, is a subtle conflation of the cinematic body and the body politic: that written on images is not only an account of a populace, but also the physiognomy of performance and prosopopeitic fiction. An inventive, formalistically fascinating sequence near the beginning of the film has Scott, Mike

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and the other hustlers play act as animate magazine cover boys. Emblazoned in pornographic archetypes, each appears as a clever inversion of Mulvey’s scopophilic model: the androgynous (yet still aggressively male) to-belooked-at-ness simultaneously palpable and parodic. Yet, Scott’s voice is the most prominent, reiterating a point that he makes several times throughout the film: “I only have sex with guys for money.” In other words, he is not actually gay. In addition to pointing towards the intersecting realms of concupiscence and consumption that define sex work (which, the film thankfully does not depict as degrading), the sequence also problematizes certain aspects of male identity, in particular the complex dialectics of “being” and “acting” that function as a kind of masquerade. One of the theoretical problems posed by realism (in film and elsewhere) is its supposed transparency: it assumes that all information can be revealed, that the indexical object is waiting to be disclosed.

“Sadism demands a story,” Laura Mulvey explicated in her seminal “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” deftly (albeit limitedly) deconstructing the politics of the gaze. “[Sadism] depends upon making something happen, forcing a change in another person” (Mulvey 721): in other words, it is analogous to Aristotlean dramaturgy. Part of the family romance (onto which Idaho is inscribed in its various parental sublimations and intergenerational conflicts) is the notion of the progressive bildungsroman: that, in the road movie’s terms, the journey will eventually lead to fulfilment and suture away from the origin place. Yet, Idaho presents itself as the diametric opposite: people change, but not in the terms of positive growth; goals are reached, but not the ones desired by the protagonist; love is found, but it can never be actualized. This is, by art cinema principles (see: Bordwell, “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice”) more expressive of reality as contingent, unsatisfying or propelled by random incident.

Deleuze (perhaps in conversation with the same structuralism that inspired Mulvey) speaks of this particular predilection as unique to the masochistic: a behaviour that he associates with an interest in aesthetic or sexual suspension. Idaho draws repeated attention towards these immobilities: the afore-mentioned sex scenes (one a threesome between Scott, Mike and Hans, the other between Scott and his future wife) but also the ironically staid road, which Mike repeatedly personifies (“it looks like a fucked up face”) and claims as representative of his general condition (“this is my road”). In group scenarios (like the Shakespearean interludes), Mike tends to disappear into the background, enacting a kind of sonmnabulism and ceding control to Scott. Only later on is it revealed that some of this deference is a result of his attraction to Scott, which he has apparently sublimated into the homosocial milieu of the hustlers.

In this sense, masochism becomes in Deleuze’s construction more interested in what is not disclosed, what must be kept veiled underneath several mediating layers of discourse. Deleuze also insinuates that masochism develops out of a desire for reincorporation with the maternal, Mike’s essential fantasy that he projects onto the landscape of the Pacific Northwest. “The masochist’s experience is grounded in an alliance between the son and the oral mother…femininity is posited as lacking nothing and placed alongside a virility suspended in disavowal.” (Deleuze 67) Leo Barsani, arguing on similar terms about the correlation of maternal identification and latent homosexuality, describes such a phenomena as “detraumatizing sexual difference,” (Barsani 61) and thereby setting the stage for an identity unbound to the Rule of the Father, including its emphases on “real” masculinity.

Moreover, it could be argued that in the film’s many plays upon what is and is not shown, it is thematizing the queer ontology that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick referred to as the “epistemology of the closet,” or the increasing interstitial nature of identity when it is informed by “wider mappings of secrecy and disclosure, and of the public and private.” (Sedgwick 71) Queerness, as opposed to gayness, is thus less about an essentialized identity, and more about spaces between identities, both in their linguistic expressions and in their symbolizations of being.

The New Queer Cinema, of which Idaho is now characterized as representative of, was a movement fuelled by post-structuralist theories, both in the realm of gender politics and in realist representation. The proliferation of AIDS, and with it a multitude of viciously pejorative, homophobic stereotypes, of course was also a factor in its development. According to Monica Pearl, “the narrative no longer works: the story of self versus foreign object does not apply. The self as whole, sacrosanct, inviolable and definable became, even for those who were not ill, an illusion of self and subjectivity that could not be sustained.” (Pearl 24) The filmic reality in Idaho is similarly

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permeable: driven as it is by oneirism, theatricality and various spatiotemporal fractures. It is, in its own sly way, about a kind of cinematic disobedience.

Slavoj Zizek, offering a concise articulation of fantasy as defiance, proposes that “a fantasy is simultaneously pacifying, disarming (providing an imaginary scenario which enables us to endure the abyss of the Other’s desire) and shattering, disturbing, inassimilable to our reality” (Zizek 18). Arguably then, the star discourse (like that of the auteur or any other theory that is anti-objective in nature) violates classical realism by underscoring a kind of overdetermined presence, illuminating iconicity and notating a palimpsest that is inscribed upon a person over and over again. Interestingly (especially in the discussion of postmodern artifacts), these silk screens can also be imprinted on other individuals: hence the extratextual parallel between Phoenix’s Mike and the cycle of similarly conflicted, often queerly coded 50s male sex objects, in particular James Dean. The fascination with these images arises out of a paradox: that each presents a reified, typical portrait of masculinity, while also effacing this kind of gender fixivity through epicene physicality or vulnerable (albeit excessive) emotionality. Many inhabit troubled sexual universes of impotent or quasi-incestual parent/child relations (Mike is implied to be his brother’s son, for instance), and one often gets the impression when looking at these actors of wounded boys trapped in the husk of men. If pop art proposes the paradoxical reconciliation of the animistic and the quotidian, then perhaps Van Sant’s juxtaposition of Phoenix and Reeves with non-actors reveals further instabilities in the realistic mode that play upon iconicities, personas and the previous configurations of genre.

For instance, Reeves’ gaze is blank and his speech is affectless (his trademark), but Scott exists primarily as a symbol: he represents, perhaps like the archetypical Father, the inevitable predaciousness of heteronormative society. Scott, the scion with a determinant home, is predominately associated with male paragons (Bob, the Falstaffian “king of the streets” and Mayor Favor, the object of juvenile derision), in contrast to Mike, who is perpetually homeless and whose aberrant, matrocentric identification belies a traditionally masculine genre. Van Sant’s positioning of Mike’s story as an attempted restoration narrative, coupled with its phantasmic interpretation of the mother as superego, lends the film another level of affective resonance. Arguably, the film is less of a road movie than a melodrama in the classically American sense: it is, like the western, about the conflict between individual desire and social determinism. Perhaps the most crucial scene in the film occurs about halfway through: Mike and Scott, having journeyed out from Portland to Idaho looking for Mike’s mother, are seated around a campfire. Attempting to confess his love to Scott, the latter’s heterosexism, echoed throughout the film, comes to its apotheosis:

Scott: Two guys can’t love each other.

Mike: Yeah…well, I don’t know. I mean, for me…I could love someone, even if I wasn’t paid for it. I love

you, and you don’t pay me.

Scott looks at him, face blank as usual and bestows upon him a feeble hug. Shortly thereafter, he solidifies his orientation by taking up with an Italian woman, whom he makes love to as Mike listens silently from below.

“The liberation of the road is always constructed against the oppression of hegemonic norms” (Cohan and Mark 1) and yet, one must note that the unbridled freedom of these films can be met with only two conclusions: the first of which is marriage, a restoration that cannot be secured in the circumstances of Idaho. The second is that which is hidden in the industrial paradise of the road: the spectre of death, of impermanence and negative recurrence. Death is the characteristic theme of Van Sant’s oeuvre, not just in its literal manifestation, but also in its narrative capacity: that it implies the end of being, silence, abandonment, the failure of teleological structuring. Idaho concludes with two literal deaths: those of Scott’s dual father figures, but also the end of Mike’s “spring” stage of youthful naïveté. At the synchronic funerals, one solemn and contained, the other ribald and plurivocal, Mike looks back for a moment at Scott, his eyes laughing in contempt, for the first time unashamed.

The road is the figurative somatic tissue of industrial America: it represents the desire for incorporation and access, and is thus symbolic of both Mike’s personal anomie and of the dialectics of representation. In this sense, one could easily support the theor that Idaho has no pretences towards realism at all, and is rather a kind of allegorical fable: about the relegation of outsiders, and the impossibility of contact with the past. In this sense, perhaps the road movie is not so much a genre as a temporal construct, a means of traversing the affective

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distance between negation and possibility, thereby composing an ontogeny of America, both in its vestiges of past phenomena (the tales of innumerable immigrants out west) and in its powerful imaginary (the untameable refuge of the frontier, the nation as parochial family).

In this sense, they embody the German conceit of sehnsucht: the desire for utopian experiences (in Mike’s case, his reunion with his mother, and implicitly with an American landscape that abhors him) but also the recognition that the capacity for their actualization is beyond our reach. Much is the way with realism, a form which attempts to resolve the aesthetic complications of immediacy and materiality, of the reconciliation of disparate identities and contradictory forms, of the desire (as Van Sant sees as the impetus behind Mike’s prostitution) to be touched. One is reminded of the anadromous salmon who feature heavily in Mike’s reminiscences of “his” Idaho, of those who journey far, but must always return to the place of their birth.

Works Cited Andrew, Dudley. Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995. Print.

Arthur, Paul. “Kings of the Road: My Own Private Idaho and the Traversal of Welles, Shakespeare and Liminality.” Postscript: Essays in

Film and the Humanities. 17.2 (Winter 1997): 26-38. MLA International Bibliography. Web. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1941. Print.

Barsani, Leo. Homos. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Print.

Bazin, Andre. What is Cinema? Vol. II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Print.

Corneille, Pierre. “Of the Three Unities.” The Continental Model. Ed. S. Elledge and D. Schier. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1960: 117-31. Print.

Deleuze, Gilles. Coldness and Cruelty. New York: Zone Books, 1991. Print.

Doane, Mary Ann. “Sublimaton and the Psychonalysis of the Aesthetic.” Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. Ed.

Mary Ann Doane. New York: Routledge, 1991. 249-268. Print.

Flatley, Jonathan. “Warhol Gives Good Face: Publicity and the Politics of Prosopopoeia” Pop Out: Queer Warhol. Ed. Jennifer Doyle,

Jonathan Flately and Jose Esteban Munoz. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. 116-25. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1976. Print.

Frye, Northrop. “The Archetypes of Literature.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitich. New York:

Norton, 2001. 1445-57.

Indiana, Gary. “Saint Gus: From Portland to Hollywood, the Director and His Camera Remain Candid.” Village Voice Oct. 1, 1991, 62 65.

Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film. London: Oxford University Press, 1960. Print.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed.

Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 715-25. Print.

My Own Private Idaho. Dir. Gus Van Sant. Perf. River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves. Criterion, 1991. DVD.

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Naficy, Hamid. “Situating Accented Cinema.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy

Corrigan and Patricia White. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 978-98. Print.

Pearl, Monica. “AIDS and the New Queer Cinema.” New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader. Ed. Michele Aaron. New Brunswick:

Rutgers University Press, 2004. 23-41. Print.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Print.

Stam, Robert. “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed.

Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 542-57. Print Zavattini, Cesare. “Some Ideas on the Cinema.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Timothy

Corrigan and Patricia White. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 916-24. Print. Berkeley Zizek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989. Print.

Dr. Coates’ Feedback: Ideas and Content: 10/10 Analysis: 10/10 Originality: 10/10 Clarity of Prose: 9/10 Overall Strength: 10/10

“Great theoretical sophistication, poise and stylistic verve; very well-researched; broad vocabulary, range of reference and original allusion; multi-faceted and imaginative examination of the topic.”

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Dr. Coatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Advice 1. Use apostrophes splices.)

2. Do

correctly. (Do note use poor punctuation in general â&#x20AC;&#x201C; e.g. comma

not improperly match singular/plural subjects.

3. Where much research has it swamps your own analytic voice.

4. Use 5. Do

been performed, do not use it so extensively that

footnotes and endnotes properly.

not fail to underline or italicize titles.

French

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Le Joual et le Parler Québécois : Une Brève Diachronie

BY LAURA JOHNSON

FS 2405 94%

Le français québécois est un dialecte du français aussi acceptable et compréhensible au monde francophone que celui de l’anglais parlé aux États-Unis au monde anglophone (Salien, 1998). Bien que chaque personne parle d’une certaine manière, un idiolecte (Figure 1), la façon de parler en général est très similaire dans une région (Figure 2) (Verreault, 2000). Ainsi, la distance physique est la clé de la divergence d’une langue. C’était la séparation de la Nouvelle-France de la France qui avait un tel impact de l’évolution du français québécois (Bouchard, 1998). Quand les colons ont déménagé en Nouvelle-France, ils ont apporté leurs propres dialectes provinciaux. De plus, le contact proche et fréquent d’une langue avec d’autres peut les influencer, d’habitude on emprunte du nouveau vocabulaire et de nouveaux sons (Poplack et St-Amand, 2009). Les Anglais, en particulier après avoir accédé au pouvoir, ont donné tant de mots et d’expressions au français. En outre, les Québécois ont emprunté plusieurs mots des autochtones, qui ont leurs propres noms des plantes, des animaux et des lieux. Cependant, c’est l’anglais qui continuait à influencer le français au Québec, pas les langues amérindiennes.

Quand les Québécois sont entrés dans l’industrie, où la langue anglaise était dominante, le français québécois était en contact vraiment proche et fréquemment. Donc, le sociolecte du joual est né (Bouchard, 1998). Une brève diachronie du français québécois démontre les ascendants historiques qui sont les fondements du français québécois et qui lui fournissent un puits de richesses linguistiques.

L’influence des provinces et de la séparation de la France

Quand les colons ont déménagé de la France en Nouvelle-France, ils ont apporté l’influence de leurs patois provinciaux. Certaines provinces avaient plus d’influence que d’autres. La plupart des colons sont venus de trois régions : la Normandie, l’Île-de-France (où se trouve Paris) et le sud-ouest de la France (où se trouvent Poitou et l’Aunis) (Bouchard, 1998). Il est naturel que les régions dont les émigrants étaient les premières, la Normandie et le Poitou, aient un grand impact linguistique (Lortie, 1903). Le Tableau 1 démontre le nombre de colons qui sont venus de chaque région de la France de 1608 à 1700. À la fin du 18e siècle, la plupart des colons sont venus de la Normandie, du Poitou, de l’Île-de-France et de l’Aunis. Puisque les Normands n’étaient pas seulement les premiers colons, mais aussi les plus nombreux, c’était la Normandie dont le patois était le plus représenté (Lortie). Cependant, ni sa présence ni celle des autres provinces bien représentées ne sont restées puissantes.

En fait, les patois eux-mêmes ont disparu de la Nouvelle-France après que les soldats et les Filles du Roy seront devenus plus nombreux. Cet afflux de personnes influentes qui parlaient le « français standard » était responsable de ce mélange linguistique des patois régionaux (Bouchard, 1998). Donc le dialecte qui est né révélait « le parler moyen du peuple » (Rivard, 1903, p. 22). C’est-à-dire, la façon de parler la plus influente des colons avaient le plus d’impact. Cependant, il reste encore des mots archaïques de chaque patois du 18e siècle.

Par exemple, le mot « bleuet » (« myrtille » en France) est venu de la Normandie (Forest, 1996). Ces différences devenaient de plus en plus nettes après que la France aura cédé la Nouvelle-France à la Grande-Bretagne.

À la suite du Traité de Paris en 1763, le Québec a perdu le contact linguistique avec la France, sa patrie.

Après cela, le français parlé au Québec a commencé à diverger du français parlé en France et chaque dialecte a changé de sa propre manière (Bouchard, 1998). Donc, quelques prononciations des voyelles du français québécois moderne sont celles du français pendant le 17e siècle. Par exemple, la voyelle nasale [œ] est remplacée par la voyelle nasale en France, mais l’accent québécois a gardé cette distinction (Bouchard, 1998 ; Detey et Racine, 2012). Les mots français n’utilisent gùere le [œ]. De plus, la distinction entre les voyelles ouvertes [ɑ] et [a]

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disparaît en France. Le français québécois les garde encore pour distinguer entre des mots comme « pâte» [pt] et « patte » [pat], mais les deux mots sont homophones en France (Detey et Racine, 2012).

Un dernier exemple est la transformation linguistique qui change la voyelle [ɛ] mi-ouverte dans des mots comme « mère » et « père », qui se terminent en -ère. Jusqu’au 17e siècle, on prononçait la voyelle [e] mi-fermée, alors les mots étaient « mére » et « pére ». La diphtongue [aɛ], une autre variation de cette voyelle-là, est venue d’un patois provincial parce qu’elle avait été perdue longtemps au français (Rivard, 1903). Aujourd’hui au Québec on peut entendre la diphtongue ou plus rarement, la voyelle [e].

D’après Salien (1998), « it is the archaisms that truly define québécois » (p. 97). Ils démontrent que la langue québécoise, comme la culture québécoise, n’est pas la même que celle de la France et ne doit pas être la même. Le vocabulaire unique des provinces et les différences de prononciation enrichissent le dialecte.

L’influence des Anglais

Il n’est ni un secret ni une surprise que le français québécois soit plein d’anglicismes. Linguistiquement, il est inévitable que les langues qui sont souvent en contact s’influencent et partagent quelques éléments lexicaux (Poplack et St-Amand, 2009). Cette grande influence anglaise a des racines en histoire du pouvoir des Anglais (Bouchard, 1998). Quand la Nouvelle-France est devenue la province de Québec en 1763, les Québécois ont perdu le contact linguistique avec la France (Forest 1996). Toutes les choses légales, militaires et gouvernementales sont devenues dirigées par les Anglais. L’anglais imprégnait les villes françaises où existaient les usines et la plupart de la population anglaise (Bouchard, 1998). Progressivement, les grandes villes comme Québec et Montréal sont devenues des villes anglaises (Forest, 1996). Cependant, beaucoup de colons étaient trop jeunes pour avoir appris les mots spécifiques des apprentissages. Ils ont commencé à utiliser les mots anglais pour nommer les choses pertinentes (Bouchard). De façon tragique, « [l]es anglicismes, au Québec, remplacent les mots français. C’est autrement plus destructeur» (Forest, 1996, p. 336). De plus, c’étaient les Anglais qui ont nommé les objets que les Québécois devaient adopter, comme les mots « plogue » et « toaster », qui sont des prises et des grille-pain en France (Forest). Les Québécois ne pouvaient pas créer leurs propres termes, alors ils devaient utiliser les anglicismes.

Les anglicismes peuvent être des mots, des verbes ou des expressions. Les emprunts peuvent être directs, mot à mot ou déguisés par une transformation d’orthographe. Par exemple, le mot « bécosse » vient du mot anglais « backhouse » et signifie une toilette à l’extérieur (Forest). Il y a aussi des faux amis, les mots dont l’orthographe ressemble celui de l’anglais, mais avec un sens différent. Une caméra, par exemple, est un outil pour enregistrer des vidéos, mais le mot « camera » en anglais est un appareil photo (Forest). Cependant, ces usages incorrects par les anglophones sont fréquents et ils sont en train de changer le français québécois. Une langue, linguistiquement, est caractérisée du discours de ses locuteurs, pas des règles normatives ordonnées par une académie ou un conseil.

L’influence des Amériendiens

Les colons, après être arrivés en Nouvelle-France, ont découvert qu’il y habitait déjà des autochtones qui avaient leurs propres langues et qui avaient déjà nommé les plantes et les animaux. Dans quelques instances, les colons ont emprunté ces mots (Bouchard, 1998). Par exemple, le caribou au Québec et le renne en France sont les mêmes animaux (Forest, 1996). L’influence amérindienne est aussi évidente dans les noms de plusieurs villes et rivières. Le nom de Québec signifie « rétrécissement / escarpement » et celui de la rivière Ouiatchouan signifie « remous » (Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, 2011). Naturellement, les mots amérindiens étaient transformés pour se conformer aux règles d’orthographe français (Desâge, 1992). Les coureurs de bois qui communiquaient avec les Amérindiens étaient influencés par eux. De plus, les sœurs religieuses avaient du contact linguistique avec les enfants amérindiens à qui elles essayaient d’enseigner (Desâge).

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Le Joual

Le joual est un sociolecte du français québécois qui est né dans les usines et dans l’industrie, où l’influence anglaise était très forte, particulièrement à Montréal (Bouchard, 1998). Malgré plusieurs convictions fausses, le joual n’est ni sa propre langue, ni un créole, ni un patois (Salien, 1998). Il n’est pas le français archaïque préservé comme un objet ancien dans un musée bien qu’il ait quelques de ses caractéristiques (Ossipov, 1994 ; Salien, 1998). D’après une expérience menée par Aboud, Clement et Taylor, les Canadiens français considèrent le joual un registre de la classe ouvrière qui est plus bas que le français québécois (1974). De 1959 à 1975 le joual était un sujet populaire des débats publics et privés. Quatre-vingt-dix pourcent des textes publiés pendant ces années étaient négatifs. (Bouchard, 1998).

En réalité, le joual est un sociolecte emblématique du Québec utilisé pour l’accent ainsi que la communication (Salien, 1998). Bouchard (1998) décrit l’histoire qu’il porte: [Le joual] représente symboliquement, à ses débuts […] : l’état de colonisés (langue anglicisée), le sentiment de retard culturel (l’archaïsme), le peu d’instruction (ignorance de la syntaxe, du vocabulaire français), le manque de raffinement (la vulgarité), l’isolement culturel (langue incompréhensible pour les étrangers) la perte des racines, voire de l’identité [...] (p. 237)

Son importance et son impact sont évidents dans les oeuvres de littérature. Pendant les années soixante, plusieurs écrivains ont utilisé le joual pour se battre contre la pensée que le joual et le français québécois étaient le français dégénéré (Ossipov, 1994). Les Belles-soeurs par Michel Tremblay est un bon exemple d’une pièce controversée écrite en joual (Charlebois, 2012).

Il est intéressant de noter que le mot « joual » est une variation de la prononciation du mot « cheval » (Ossipov, 1994). Le joual a ses propres phénomènes linguistiques différents que ceux du français québécois, beaucoup desquels sont des archaïsmes. On peut entendre « oé » [we] au lieu de « oi » [wa] comme dans le mot célèbre « moé » (Salien, 1998). Cette prononciation archaïque est celle de l’ancienne famille royale française (Drouin, 2008). De plus, on ajoute souvent un [t] à la fin des mots qui se terminent en une voyelle. Le mot « ici » peut devenir « icitte » et s’est originé, en fait, de l’Anjou (Forest, 1996 ; Ossipov, 1994).

Cependant, il y a d’autres prononciations qui ne sont pas purement phonétiques. L’influence des patois provinciaux restent dans le joual. Le mot « pantoute », par exemple, vient de l’expression « pas en tout » (pas du tout) angevine (Forest, 1996). Les transformations du pronom « il » à « y » et du pronom « elle » à « a » sont venues de la Bourgogne (Rivard, 1903). Un autre exemple d’un archaïsme est le mot « s’assir » au lieu du mot « s’asseoir » (Rivard). En outre, Le Petit Dictionnaire du Joual donne quelques exemples des contractions (« t’à l’heure » (Turenne, 1962, p. 84)) et des anglicismes (« un cowboy » (p. 65)).

Le dialecte du français qui se trouve au Québec accentue son identité culturelle et globale. Son lexique contient l’influence historique de la province. Les patois provinciaux des colons ont mélangé avec « le français standard » en ce temps-là et la séparation géographique de sa patrie était la première chose de la divergence du français. Les Québécois ont gardé les prononciations qui ont changé en France. Quand je suis allée au Québec pendant l’été, j’ai appris à différencier entre la prononciation de [ɑ] et [a], par exemple. Bien sûr, on ne peut pas écarter l’influence anglaise puissante qui s’est produite à cause du contact fréquent linguistique. J’ai découvert que le beurre d’arachide, par exemple, s’appelle aussi le beurre de pinotte, un anglicisme du mot anglais « peanut ».

Les mots amérindiens sont aussi dans le vocabulaire et sont immortalisés comme les noms des villes comme Chicoutimi, des rivières et du Canada lui-même. Enfin, bien que le joual soit associé à la classe ouvrière, on peut le trouver dans la littérature où il est un symbole de toute l’histoire du Québec et des influences sur le français québécois. Dans l’ensemble, on devrait célébrer, pas critiquer, les différences dans ce dialecte du français et la culture qu’il représente.

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La Bibliographie Aboud, Frances E., Richard Clement et Donald M. Taylor ( 1974 ). « Evaluational reactions to discrepancies between social class and language. » Sociometry 37.2 : 239-250. Jstor. Page consultée le 27 octobre, 2012. http://www.jstor.org.proxy1.lib.uwo.ca/sta ble/2786378 Bouchard, Chantal (1998 ). La langue et le nombril: Histoire d’une obsession québécoise. Montréal : Fides.

Charlebois, Gaeten. ( 2010 ). « Les Belles-Soeurs. » The Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia. En ligne. Page consultée le 29 octobre, 2012. http://www.canadiantheatre.com/dict.pl?term=Les%20belles-soeurs Delâge, Denys. ( 1992 ). L’influence des Amérindiens sur les Canadiens et les Français au temps de la Nouvelle-France. Revue Lekton 2.2, « L’acculturation » : 103-191. UQAC. Page consultée le 28 octobre, 2012. DOI : http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1522/030138126 Detey, Sylvain et Isabelle Racine. (2012). Les apprenants de français face aux normes de prononciation : Quelle(s) entrée(s) pour

quelle(s) sortie(s) ? Revue française de linguistique appliquée 17.1 : 81-96. Academia. Page consultée le 30 octobre, 2012. http://www.academia.edu/1634379/Les_apprenants_de_francais_face_aux_normes_de_prononciation_quelle_s_entree_s_ pour_quelle_s_sortie_s_ Drouin, Jennifer. ( 2008 ) Native Shakespeares : Indigenous appropriations on a global stage. Dionne, Craig et Parmita Kapadia ( éds. )

Hampshire : Ashgate Publishing. Google Books. Page consultée le 29 octobre, 2012. http://books.google.ca/books?id=8yMX jEITfw0C&dq=joual+mo%C3%A9&source=gbs_navlinks_s Forest, Jean. ( 1996 ). Anatomie du québécois. Montréal : Triptyque.

Lortie, Stanislas Alfred. ( 1903 ). De l’origine des Canadiens-français. Dans la Société du Parler français au Canada, Quebec (éd.),

L’origine et le parler des Canadiens-français. (pp. 5-12). Québec : Paris H. Champion.

Ossipov, Hélène. ( 1994 ). « French variation and the teaching of Quebec literature: A linguistic guide to la littérature joualisante. » The

French Review 67.6, « Special issue on Québec » : 944-953. Jstor. Page consultée le 13 octobre, 2012. DOI: 10.2307/397645 Poplack, Shana et Anne St-Amand ( 2009 ). Les récits du français québécois d’autrefois : Reflet du parler vernaculaire du 19e siècle.

Revue canadienne de linguistique 54.3 : 511-546. Project Muse. Page consultée le 18 octobre, 2012. DOI: 10.1353/cjl.0.0060 Rivard, Adjutor. ( 1903 ). Le parler franco-canadien. Dans la Société du Parler français au Canada, Quebec (éd.), L’origine et le parler

des Canadiens-français. (pp. 13-30). Québec : Paris H. Champion.

Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean (2011). « Mots d’origine amérindienne. » En ligne. Page consultée le 28 octobre, 2012. http://www.saguenay lacsaintjean.ca/fr/informations/mots_amerindiens Salien, Jean-Marie. ( 1998 ). « Quebec French: Attitudes and pedagogical perspectives. » The Modern Language Journal 82.1 : 95-102.

Jstor. Page consultée le 10 octobre, 2012. DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.1998.tb02601.x Turenne, Augustin. ( 1962 ). Petit dictionnaire du «joual » au français (4e éd.). Montréal : Les Éditions de l’Homme.

Verreault, Claude. ( 2000 ). « Français international, français québécois ou joual : quelle langue parlent donc les Québécois ? » Culture

française d’Amérique : 119-131. Érudit. Page consultée le 10 octobre, 2012. http://www.erudit.org/livre/ce fan/2000-1/000583co.pdf

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Professor Boyi’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8.5/10 Analysis: 8.5/10 Originality: 8.5/10 Clarity of Prose: 9/10 Overall Strength: 8.5/10

“This is an excellent essay that provides readers with very important linguistic information

Quebec French, its variations and its origins and its evolution. The essay is written in beautiful and super correct French.”

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Le stéréotype dans Nedjma de Kateb Yacine

BY NADINE ABDULKARIM

FS 4100

91%

Le roman Francophone sert très souvent à corriger les erreurs présentées dans les romans exotiques des colonisateurs français, que cela soit au niveau des clichés ou des effacements culturels. En tant qu’auteur, Kateb Yacine voulait surtout souligner et rejeter les stéréotypes que la colonisation française a posés sur son peuple (Arabe mais plutôt Berbère) dans ses œuvres. Il utilisait des techniques littéraires comme une narration non chronologique, un français soigné et plutôt poétique, et des personnages complexes pour tisser une représentation de l’Algérie à son époque. Le thème central du roman, ainsi que dans toutes les autres œuvres de Kateb Yacine, est la dichotomie entre le stéréotype et l’archétype. Le concept d’une Algérie non développée est fortement présent dans le roman, dont le titre Nedjma est également le nom de l’un des personnages principaux, celui de la fille de Si Mokhtar, objet de désir pour les quatre personnages centraux ; Rachid, Mourad, Lakhdar et Mustapha.

Yacine présente Nedjma comme l’archétype d’une Algérie en plein développement avant la guerre civile mais qui, suite aux manifestations nationalistes, retournait peu à peu à ses racines autochtones Berbères (Amazighe).

Le lecteur trouve le stéréotype du nationaliste algérien violent dans les personnages des quatre frères, que Yacine échange plutôt en tant qu’archétype symbolique de l’algérien qui lutte pour l’indépendance de son pays, c’est à dire contre la colonisation longue et injustifiée des français et contre les arabes musulmans (dont le pays puise ses influences dans sa conduite social et ses inégalités sexuelles). Le stéréotype même du colonisateur se retrouve dans l’histoire à travers les personnages de M. Ricard, M. Ernest et Suzy. En effet, Yacine caricature ces derniers en les représentant comme les colonisateurs français typiques qui gardent à cœur leurs aprioris sur les algériens et qui ne se sentent chez eux ni en France, ni dans leur pays d’adoption. Les différents stéréotypes, présentés par Yacine dans Nedjma, amènent le lecteur à remettre en cause ses aprioris sur l’Algérie, dont certains d’entre eux sont injustifiés car issus de la littérature colonialiste française. L’auteur démontre également que la femme prend de manière progressive une place importante dans son roman.

Il faut tout d’abord définir un stéréotype et un archétype littéraire et en quoi ils s’insèrent dans la littérature Francophone. Amossy et Pierrot présente le stéréotype comme une représentation négative qui utilise des clichés et des idéologies et qui catégorise et généralise autour d’un thème. Daniel Castillo Durante affirme cela en disant que «Le stéréotype obéit en revanche à une logique d’évidence qui exclut a priori toute tentative de réélaboration. ». Le stéréotype est donc, du moins dans le roman de Yacine, une fausse image péjorative créée à partir de schémas culturels préexistants qui représente un groupe de personnes et acquise la plupart du temps par l’intermédiaire d’une autre personne plutôt qu’avec une expérience directe avec la réalité. L’archétype, en revanche, est plutôt une réflexion positive ; c’est une image ou un modèle qui représente un groupe et qui est promu par le groupe même sans être défini et déformé par un autre.

Le début du roman aborde la vie de deux personnages colonisateurs; M. Ricard, et Suzy. Indubitablement le personnage de M. Ricard est présenté comme un entrepreneur (colonisateur) violent et obstiné, avec aucune croyance morale et éthique, même s’il est protestant. Présenté sans prénom pour ainsi montrer la différence d’autorité entres les Français en Algérie et le reste de la population, M. Ricard est veuf et alcoolique; il commence à boire avant 6h du matin et devient saoul pendant son mariage avec Suzy, fille de M. Ernest. Yacine le développe comme le colonisateur dans le roman, symbolisé outre mesure dans la scène ou il abuse la bonne algérienne (qui représente le peuple algérien) pendant son mariage. Le point culminant de cette scène est un évènement central du roman qui va changer la vie des quatre frères lorsque Mourad tue M. Ricard directement après avoir été témoin de l’abus contre la bonne. Suzy est un personnage cruel, fille de M. Ernest (lui même orgueilleux) et fiancée de M. Ricard, elle se comporte de manière stéréotypée envers les algériens, comme Yacine le démontre lorsque Mourad est en train de marcher près d’elle. Le simple fait d’exister dans le même monde que Suzy

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le met sur sa défensive, quand elle le tutoie pour lui dire de la laisser. Le monologue mental de Mourad expose tous les stéréotypes connus des algériens sur les colonisateurs et est d’autant plus mis en évidence par le comportement de Suzy :

«Et voilà […] je redeviens le manœuvre de son père, elle va reprendre sa course à travers le terrain vague comme si je la poursuivais, come si je lui faisais violence rien qu’en me promenant au même endroit qu’elle, comme si nous ne devions jamais nous trouver dans le même monde, autrement que par la bagarre et le viol. […] elle qui n’est pas de leur monde ni du mien, mais d’une planète à part, sans manœuvres, sans paysans […]»

Suzy continue avec sa cruauté quand elle manque de respect envers la bonne et sa religion (islamique) en lui forçant à boire du rhum. N’étant pas habituée à ce breuvage, la bonne réagit mal et M. Ricard commence à abuser lui aussi d’elle. C’est ce premier acte de violence de Suzy qui déclenche une suite de réactions, se culminant par le meurtre de M. Ricard par Mourad. Le stéréotype de l’algérien inférieur se manifeste à travers Mourad par une réaction de colère nationaliste (mais non idéologique).

Le nationalisme est omniprésent dans le roman et Nedjma en est un des personnages clé. Elle est le véritable noyau de l’intrigue et de la réalité algérienne. Nedjma symbolise l’Algérie avant son retour à ses racines autochtones (tribu de Keblout), qui lutte pour l’indépendance et qui lutte pour se libérer de la colonisation.

La personnification de l’Algérie en une femme est extrêmement importante et se met en opposition avec l’idée du patriotisme (avec le mot racine de ‘père’) pour l’idée du nationalisme. Il est intéressant de noter que Nedjma est un nom arabe qui veut dire ‘étoile’, et qui représente celle que l’on peut trouver sur le drapeau nationale algérien. Il est aussi intéressant de noter que lorsque Nedjma est de retour dans son village natal, son nom va être changé avec un nom Berbère, symbolisant ainsi sa transformation en une fille de Keblout (De l’Algérie «ouverte» à l’Algérie «fermée»). Yacine met en scène volontairement une femme comme personnage central de son histoire (tenue en haut comme une étoile) pour revendiquer l’importance de ces dernières (et surtout de la mère) souvent oubliées dans les discours stéréotypés. En plus, il y a un attachement personnel au personnage de Nedjma ; Kateb Yacine était amoureux de sa cousine Nedjma, qui était aussi déjà marié. Nedjma est la solution nationale archétypique aux multiples stéréotypes contre les algériens. Conçus à partir de la haine (le viol de sa mère française), la fille de Si Mokhtar (un arabe non algérien) se fait enlever par Rachid et son père de la maison de sa tante pour qu’elle puisse retourner dans sa tribu. Au final, un africain noir envoyé par le peuple d’un village des montagnes (Nadhor), tue son père pour qu’elle puisse retourner à ses sources (le village Berbère) nationales et pour qu’elle ne soit plus sous l’influence du « pays ouvert ». Elle est un personnage sourdine, mais son silence ne l’empêche pas de communiquer ses pensées et ses émotions (par exemple quand Lakhdar et Mustapha ont la chance de la séduire mais décident de ne pas exploiter cette opportunité). La scène la plus importante qui met en lumière sa transformation (à mettre en relation directement avec la transformation de l’Algérie) est lorsqu’après avoir été kidnappée, elle prend un bain sous la surveillance de l’africain noir et de Rachid. Cette scène représente la purification de l’Algérie, qui prend un nouveau départ (l’indépendance) pour retourner à ses traditions permanentes Berbères. Nedjma est gardée dans les montagnes, le «pays fermé» des autochtones, pour être protégée du monde extérieur et être gardée à bonne distance du lointain «pays ouvert» de la cote algérienne.Yacine affirme que «L’Algérie n’a pas fini de venir au monde», et le démontre avec l’archétype de Nedjma. La femme (et plus particulièrement par l’intermédiaire de la mère) est aussi abordée de façon très progressive dans ce roman, avec Yacine qui leur donne une importance prépondérante dans la société algérienne.

Si Mokhtar, père de Nedjma, est aussi un personnage très important car il représente et rejette certains stéréotypes. Il tue le père de Rachid pendant la nuit de l’enlèvement de la française (qui sera la mère de Nedjma).

Il est originaire d’Arabie Saoudite et est un «bon vivant» plutôt qu’un musulman strict, ce qui est un stéréotype qu’on attend des Arabes. Il joue le rôle d’un conseiller auprès de Rachid plutôt que celui d’un père, prenant ainsi une position moins familiale. Le fait qu’il soit Arabe et non Algérien mais qu’il soit né sur la terre ancestrale des indigènes et que la mère de Nedjma soit Française, est le symbole même de la naissance d’une nouvelle Algérie, construite à partir de deux groupes étrangers.

Avec le symbole et l’archétype de Nedjma établi, le lecteur peut analyser les personnages des quatre frères avec leurs supposés stéréotypes qui les définissent et il peut voir comment Yacine les rejettent pour les remplacer

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avec des archétypes nationalistes. Dès le début du roman, le lecteur apprend que Lakhdar était emprisonné (il s’est échappé) pour avoir frappé M. Ernest. L’emprisonnement est le châtiment réservé au stéréotype de l’algérien violent. En effet, Mourad est également emprisonné pour le meurtre de M. Ricard, Rachid est emprisonné pour ne pas s’être présenté à son service militaire et Mustapha pour sa participation à des activités politiques. Les actes qui font que ces hommes soient emprisonnés sont des actes nationalistes et de justice qui s’opposent aux colonisateurs européens. La perspective colonisatrice (stéréotype) dirait plutôt que Lakhdar et Mourad sont des non civilisés violent tandis que l’archétype de Yacine les présenterait comme des fières nationalistes. Les quatre hommes sont amoureux de Nedjma (qui est déjà mariée) et ne peuvent y accéder. Ceci démontre comment les nationalistes n’ont pas accès a l’objet de leur désir: l’indépendance. Ils luttent pour cela mais également pour un retour aux traditions.

Les stéréotypes disséminés par les colonisateurs français ont poussé Kateb Yacine à écrire Nedjma, d’une part pour les réfuter mais également pour y amener des corrections par l’intermédiaire des archétypes qui représentent mieux l’Algérie de son époque. Les français (M. Ricard et Suzy) sont l’exemple du colonisateur tiraillé entre deux identités et l’héritage d’un système esclavagiste en Algérie. Rachid, Mourad, Mustapha et Lakhdar ont tous le portrait du nationaliste algérien. Ils ont pour but commun l’unification de leur pays malgré les différentes religions et ethnies présentes dans la région, avec Nedjma (l’Algérie) au centre. L’archétype de Nedjma renforce l’intention d’un retour à l’origine Imazighen et à la préservation des traditions qui ont résisté à la colonisation.

Bibliographie Ruth Amossy, A.H Pierrot, Stéréotypes et clichés. Langue, discours, société, Paris, Nathan, 1997 Jacqueline Arnaud, Recherches sur la littérature Maghrébine de langue française le cas de Kateb Yacine, Tome 1, Paris, Éditions

L’Harmattan, 1982 Kristine Aurbakken, L’étoile d’araignée : une lecture de Nedjma de Kateb Yacine, Paris, Éditions Publisud, 1986 Daniel Castillo Durante, Du stéréotype à la littérature, Montréal, XYZ, 1994 Jean Déjeux, La littérature maghrébine d’expression française, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1992 Marie-Pierre Fernandes, De l’autre cote avec Kateb Yacine, Villeurbanne, Éditions Golias, 1996 Hafid Gafaiti, Les femmes dans le roman Algérien, Paris, Éditions L’Harmattan, 1996 Kamal Salhi, The politics and aesthetics of Kateb Yacine : From Francophone literature to popular theatre in Algeria and outside, Wales,

The Edwin Mellen Press, 1999 Saïd Tamba, Kateb Yacine, Paris, Éditions Seghers, 1992 Alek Baylee Toumi, Maghreb Divers: Langue française, langues parlées, littératures et représentations des Maghrébins, à partir d’Albert

Memmi et de Kateb Yacine, New York, Peter Lang Publishing, 2002 Kateb Yacine, Nedjma, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1956

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Professor Boyi’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 9/10 Clarity of Prose: 9.5/10 Overall Strength: 9.2/10

“This is an outstanding essay with very clear and coherent ideas developed in a very elegant style. The content is very well presented and the organization of the essay is excellent. The author’s mastery of the French language is exemplary, almost exceptional at this level.”

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L’épanouissement personnel de Renée Néré dans La Vagabonde

BY SARAH EMMS

FS 3601

81%

« Vagabonde, soit, mais qui se résigne à tourner en rond, sur place, comme ceux-ci, mes compagnons, mes frères… Les départs m’attristent et m’enivrent, c’est vrai…» (Colette 129). Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette a écrit La Vagabonde pendant qu’elle était une danseuse aux music-halls de Paris et donc le roman fait ressemblance à sa vie et les difficultés qu’elle avait. La vedette, Renée, cherche pour l’attention et la célébrité qu’une peut trouver sur la scène et elle aime la façon de vivre comme danseuse qui voyage toujours. Elle utilise la scène pour échapper de la peine de son premier mariage ; la lumière artificielle de la scène se protège des fautes dans sa vie. Quand elle rencontre M. Dufferein-Chautel, elle essaye d’aimer encore et son amour rend elle aveugle aux problèmes de sa vie. Quand elle fait une tournée, elle commence à se questionner à cause de son rapport avec M. Dufferein-Chautel. Elle utilise le temps de séparation de lui de découvrir qui elle est et qu’elle voudrait de la vie. Mon but est de prouver qu’il y a deux choses nécessaires pour l’épanouissement personnel de Renée : son rapport avec M. Dufferein-Chautel et la lumière réelle qui est vraie à la vie. Elle utilise la lumière réelle de comprit qu’elle a besoin de la lumière artificielle de la scène pour vivre; la scène est essentielle pour elle. À cause de son épanouissement personnel, Renée se rend compte qu’elle est destinée à être une vagabonde qui cherche toujours les lumières artificielles mais protectives de la scène.

Au début du roman, Renée est au music-hall et elle se maquille devant un miroir; elle cache son identité de cacher la peine de son premier mariage. Sur la scène, elle peut être n’importe qui qu’elle veut être. Elle peut créer une nouvelle identité chaque nuit si elle veut. Elle utilise la scène d’échapper sa vie quotidien mais quand elle fait ça, elle perd son propre identité: « Est-ce toi qui es là, toute seule, sous ce plafond bourdonnant que les pieds des danseurs émeuvent comme le plancher d’un moulin actif ? Pourquoi es-tu là, toute seule?» (60). Renée n’a pas un sens d’elle-même. Parce qu’elle doit créer un nouveau personnage chaque nuit, quand elle se maquille comme ce personnage, elle se perd. Parce qu’elle se perd chaque jour, elle n’a pas la chance de savoir qui elle est maintenant qu’elle est seule et libre de la peine de son premier mariage à M. Taillandy. Elle doit se libérer de l’ombre de lui de trouver la lumière pour la réflexion d’elle-même. Mais elle ne peut pas le faire. Elle doit construire des murs invisibles dans son cœur chaque nuit de se protéger des insultes et des yeux inquisitives des spectateurs. Elle ne rend pas compte qu’elle construit des murs et donc, quand elle retourne au miroir après les spectacles, elle ne se reconnait pas. Lafon a dit que « on retrouve d’ailleurs, dans les premières pages de la Vagabonde, une autre version du dialogue face au miroir qui, au delà de l’interrogation sur l’image reflétée (« cette conseillère maquillée qui me regarde, de l’autre côté de la glace »), met en question l’identité d’une femme… » (Lafon 77). Cette question d’identité est centrale au roman et aussi à l’époque à cause des changes qui accompagne le début de siècle. Par exemple, la psychanalyse de Freud a créé les idées autour du désir, du contrôle et de la personnalité. Les discussions comme ça ont influencé les romans de temps et cette influence est évidente ici au personnage de Renée. On peut voir qu’elle a la difficulté avec le désir et avec sa personnalité. Jacques Dupont a dit que « Colette a construit un récit ordonné selon une perspective analytique, dans la continuité d’une réflexion narcissique de l’héroïne, devant son miroir, sur elle-même, sur son passé, sur les diverses formes du retentissement de son passé dans son présent, sur l’entrée dans sa vie d’un homme « comme il faut »…» (24). Cette construction de l’identité de Renée crée un personnage qui cherche toujours pour son identité mais qui est bloqué à la trouver par ses circonstances. Par exemple, elle déclare qu’elle est « vagabonde » mais elle a un appartement avec une domestique qui le garde. Comment est-ce qu’on peut être « vagabonde » si elle a des attachements à une ville, un appartement, un chien et une servante? C’est presque impossible. Renée fait des tournées, mais elle doit retourner à Paris après chacune parce qu’elle a des attachements à la ville. Si elle voudra vraiment d’être vagabonde, elle devrait laisser ses attachements pour être libre. Puis, si elle pourra devenir libre, elle pourrait se

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trouver plus facilement pendant ses voyages. Renée doit travailler plus fort de comprendre son identité et comment les actions qu’elle fait le soutenir et arrêter son épanouissement personnel.

Quand Renée rencontre M. Dufferein-Chautel, sa présence complique son voyage à la découverte d’ellemême. Quand elle est avec M. Dufferein-Chautel, elle ne se regarde encore au miroir. M. Dufferein-Chautel devient son miroir « inattendu » (134) et elle écoute les compliments qu’il lui donne, mais elle ne cherche pas l’amour de soi-même qui peut produire aussi les compliments à la place de lui. Non seulement elle arrête sa recherche d’elle-même, mais également, à la place d’elle-même, elle concentre sur lui. Elle regarde lui avec beaucoup de soin, plus qu’elle a utilisé pour elle-même : « Il a fallu un rayon de soleil bien franc pour m’enseigner un jour que, sous tant de noir, mon amoureux a des prunelles d’un gris roux, très foncées… » (135). Elle tourne à lui pour la lumière, pas la scène. C’est problématique parce qu’elle tombe dans le même pattern des actions qu’elle a fait avec son premier mari. La lumière réelle de la vie rend elle aveugle à la fait qu’elle perd sa liberté qu’elle veut quand elle est avec lui. Elle est bloquée par son incapacité de se voir et de voir comment les autres la voient.

M. Dufferein-Chautel est un autre attachement qui interfère avec l’aptitude de Renée d’être libre comme vagabonde. Il empêche Renée de se trouver. En cette façon, on peut dire qu’elle arrête et est arrêtée par des autres de se développer pour être libre comme vagabonde.

On peut envisager le problème sous un autre angle en voyant que la lumière réelle rend Renée effrayante parce qu’il y a des temps quand la lumière réelle révèle des images qu’elle ne veut pas voir : « Fermons la fenêtre, fermons la fenêtre ! Je tremble trop de voir montrer, à travers le voile de la pluie, un jardin provincial, vert et noir, argenté par la lune levante, où passe l’ombre d’une jeune fille qui enroule rêveusement sa longue tresse à son poignet, comme une couleuvre caressante… » (171). Ici, l’image de la fille représente une version de Renée qu’elle n’aime pas parce que cette version suivit son désir, symbolisé par la couleuvre, et pas son cœur. Renée a demandé de « fermons la fenêtre » parce qu’elle veut être aveugle à sa trahison d’elle-même. Elle peut voir, de temps en temps, qu’elle fait des mêmes actions qu’elle a fait avec M. Taillandy et elle veut l’arrêter avant qu’elle se perd comme avant. Quand elle rend compte qu’elle est destinée de répéter ses fautes si elle continue avec ces actions, elle décide de faire une tournée de causer une séparation entre M. Dufferein-Chautel et elle-même. Elle sait qu’elle a besoin de temps seul où elle peut concentrer sur ses personnages pour la scène qui se protège et sur elle-même afin de se retrouver. On peut dire qu’il y a une chance que M. Dufferein-Chautel pourra aider Renée, pas blesser, parce qu’il est un homme honnête et gentil, mais comme elle est vraiment vagabonde, il la blessera n’importe quoi qu’il fera. N’importe quel homme couperait les ailes de Renée, notre oiseau chanteur, parce qu’elle est destinée à être libre et seule.

Pendant sa tournée, Renée écrit à lui presque chaque jour. On peut penser que les lettres vaincraient l’objet de la séparation parce qu’ils sont constamment en contact ; toutefois les lettres aident Renée avec son voyage à l’épanouissement personnel parce qu’elle a la preuve tangible de ses fautes. Elle n’a pas le choix d’ignorer ses fautes parce que les lettres se demandent. Dans une lettre, M. Dufferein-Chautel a envoyé des photos de lui et du chien de Renée et elle les aime : « Envoyez-moi encore d’autres photographies, dites ? J’en ai emporté quatre, je les compare, je vous y examine, avec une loupe, pour retrouver, sur chacune, malgré le léchage des retouches, les lumières travaillées, un peu de votre être secret… Secret ? ma foi, non, rien en vous ne donne le change » (246).

Ici, on peut voir que Renée commence à regarder attentivement sa vie avec M. Dufferein-Chautel. Leur séparation aide Renée parce qu’elle peut voir qu’elle est attachée à lui à cause de son nécessité pour les photos. Ce moment est le début de son épanouissement personnel. Un peu plus tard, elle dit que « Va-t-il me reconnaitre dans ce désordre ? Non. Je m’y dissimule encore » (265), qui indique qu’elle comprit qu’elle est au processus de changer. Cette citation indique aussi l’espace qui grandit entre M. Dufferein-Chautel et elle et qu’elle rend compte qu’il y a d’espace. La séparation des deux amants a créé un espace pour le grandissement personnel de Renée. Elle a eu besoin d’amant pour démontrer qu’il est possible d’avoir un rapport qui est santé pour les deux personnes au rapport, mais elle a eu besoin aussi de la séparation pendant le rapport pour prouver qu’elle n’a pas besoin d’amant. Quand elle dit que : « Non, je ne vous appelle pas. C’est ma première victoire » (267), elle commence à rendre compte qu’elle doit se séparer de façon permanent de M. Dufferein-Chautel. Elle comprit qu’il prévente son indépendance. Chaque fois qu’elle ne lui appelle pas, elle regagne un peu d’elle-même. Elle conquit, petit à

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petit, l’obstacle qui est M. Dufferein-Chautel, qui représente tous les hommes dans le monde. Renée dégage son propre chemin à la découverte d’elle-même.

Tandis que le voyage continue, Renée découverte qu’elle déteste la lumière réelle : « C’est trop de soleil, trop de lumière à la fois, le ciel et vous m’accablez sous vos dons ; je n’ai la force, aujourd’hui, que de soupirer : « C’est trop !... » » (260). Elle rend compte, à la sous-conscience, que la lumière réelle n’est pas bonne pour ellemême parce qu’elle utilise la lumière artificielle de la scène tous les nuits pour ses spectacles, et ça c’est la lumière quotidien pour elle. Paradoxalement, la lumière réelle est un obstacle à l’aptitude de Renée de voir ses problèmes avec son rapport avec M. Dufferein-Chautel et avec elle-même. On peut dire que ce n’est pas possible d’avoir la lumière joue le rôle de l’obscurité, mais pour Renée, elle le fait. Parce qu’elle utilise la lumière sur la scène de se rendre aveugle comme protection des yeux des spectateurs, la lumière est un mur pour elle. Renée utilise la lumière artificielle de se maquiller avant ses performances quand elle crée ses personnages. On peut voir qu’elle utilise cette lumière à son avantage pour se faire nouvelle. Chaque nuit est une chance pour le change pour Renée ; ce qu’on doit se demander est si elle garde des changes personnels qu’elle fait chaque nuit ou si elle revient à la même être. Je pense qu’elle utilise la scène d’essayer des changes personnels qu’elle veut faire et quand elle quitte la scène et retourne à la vie quotidien, elle retourne à la même essence, mais avec une nouvelle perspective.

De cette manière, elle se trouve petit à petit. En addition, pendant le voyage, Renée a l’aide de son ami, Brague, pour le processus de la découverte de soi-même. Brague fait Renée penser à elle-même : « Regard-toi, ma pauvre amie, regarde-toi ! Tu n’es pas, il s’en faut, une vieille femme, mais tu es déjà une manière de vieux garçon » (275). Il dit à elle qu’elle doit se regarde de voir les changes personnels qu’elle a faits. Il l’encourage de changer les maniérismes de devenir mieux. Il ne veut pas elle de devenir vielle et dépassée. Brague introduit l’idée d’une nouvelle tournée en l’Amérique de Sud après cette tournée parce qu’il voit qu’elle est vagabonde qui doit être libre et qui doit continuer à se développer. Il veut aider elle avec sa quête pour elle-même. La tournée permit Renée de se trouve.

Quand Renée retourne chez-elle, il n’y a pas de soleil et la glace dans son appartement a « une buée humide » (285) qui obscure sa réflexion ; ce n’est pas un problème pour elle parce que la tournée et la séparation finale de M. Dufferein-Chautel ont aidé elle à rendre compte qui elle est. L’appartement de Renée est un attachement pour elle, mais parce qu’elle est sûr de son personnalité et son être maintenant, il n’interfère pas avec sa voyage à la découverte d’elle-même. Elle peut laisser facilement son appartement et sa domestique parce qu’elle est indépendante maintenant. Parce que Renée s’est découverte, elle a un sens fort d’elle-même. À cause de ça, elle peut essayer des autres personnages à la vie réelle, pas juste sur la scène. Ici, elle devient une ombre : « Je laisse, à chaque lieu de mes désirs errants, mille et mille ombres à ma ressemblance, effeuillées de moi… Mais le temps la dissoudra comme les autres, et tu ne sauras plus rien de moi, jusqu’au jour où mes pas s’arrêteront et où s’envolera de moi une dernière petite ombre… » (287). Elle comprit aussi que quand elle fait des changes personnels, il est possible que les autres personnes ne se reconnaitront pas. Elle l’accepte parce que n’importe qui elle devient, elle est elle-même, pas l’idée d’un autre à qui elle serait être. Elle n’est pas la femme de M. Taillandy, l’adultère qui abuse la confiance de sa femme. Elle n’est pas l’amant de M. Dufferein-Chautel, l’héritier qui ne comprit pas la souhaite d’être une artiste pour la vie. Elle s’est conquise. Elle est une artiste. Elle est une vagabonde.

Mon but était de prouver que Renée avait des obstacles, spécifiquement M. Dufferein-Chautel et la lumière réelle, sur son chemin à la découverte d’elle-même. Elle a conquis ces obstacles et au processus, elle a appris qu’on doit persévérer de réussir. Elle a persévéré pendant son voyage et le résultat est qu’elle s’est découverte.

Maintenant qu’elle se sait, elle doit se suivre d’être heureuse pour le reste de sa vie. Elle doit rester vraie à ellemême. Elle nous enseigne qu’on doit rester vrai à soi-même pendant la vie parce que si on reste vrai à soi-même, les autres personnes peuvent avoir la confiance que vous serez fidèle à eux. Elle est vagabonde, destinée à aller sans but dans le monde entier pour toute sa vie. Sartre a dit que : « L’homme est condamné à être libre, » mais pour Renée, la liberté n’est pas une condamnation, c’est une action de grâce.

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Œuvres citées Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle. La Vagabonde. Paris : Albin Michel, 1990.

Dupont, Jacques. Colette. Paris : Hachette, 1995.

Lafon, Dominique. « « Les Charmes du mirage Colette. » Études littéraires 26.1 (1993): 73-86.

Professor Boyi’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8/10 Analysis: 8.5/10 Originality: 8/10 Clarity of Prose: 6.5/10 Overall Strength: 8/10

“This essay has very good ideas that are clearly expressed. The author made a sound critical analysis that shows a high level understanding of the work under study.”

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Professor Boyiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Advice 1. It is important wordiness.

2. The essay a conclusion.

that the content be clear, coherent, and original.

has to be well organized with a good introduction, a development and

3. The use of at a high level.

the language, in general, and the choice of words and phrases should be

4. There should not be cisms, and sentence structure.

5. Use

Avoid

mistakes pertaining to grammar, spelling, angli-

a dictionary to avoid unnecessary grammatical and spelling mistakes.

Linguistics

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Gendering in Media Reporting of Politics

BY JUSTIN D’ANGELO

LING 2286 85%

Political representation is one of the greatest examples of gender inequality today; female political participation is low in virtually all countries (Joni and Norris 1993), including those who explicitly legislate and encourage equality. This has the dangerous effect of reducing the voice of women in government, which in turn marginalizes female opinion and input. In Canada, as of December 31st, 2011 women occupied 24.8 percent of seats in federal, provincial and territorial legislature, ranking Canada 40th in terms of gender representation in the world (Inter-parliamentary Union 2011). Moreover, no official party has ever managed to achieve gender parity in the number of members up for election, and currently only once has a woman served as Prime Minister. In spite of a number of programs designed to increase the participation of women in politics at all levels, participation remains stubbornly low. Research suggests that a number of factors, among them a vested “boys club” attitude, a tradition of low female participation, an occasionally hostile and gendered workplace, and media coverage (Joni and Norris 1993). Of these, portrayal in media has been one of the most extensively studied. Due to its central role in shaping political opinion and thought (Joseph 2006), it is also accused of fostering a gender regime that marginalizes or distorts female politicians. This in turn deters women from becoming involved in politics, lest they too be portrayed so negatively (Everitt and Gidengil 2003b).

Media, from newspapers to radio and television broadcasts, have widely been found to serve as a primary source in the formation of opinion and interpretation (Joseph 2006). In the case of the political coverage, it provides the main connection between the public and individual players. Interviews, discussions and advertisements are all designed to project an image of how a candidate behaves, and in so doing contribute to their success and failure (Joseph 2006). The danger of this, as Gidengil and Everit point out, is that any news organization must present from a particular point of view, based on what they believe normal or abnormal, and what is and isn’t newsworthy. Indeed, they contend that “all reporting is mediation” and that this is gendered (2003a). This means that often the news is constructed as a “masculine soap opera” (Everitt and Gidengil 2003b), using traditionally male metaphors about warfare, sports and general violence. When this reporting is on politics, it has the perhaps unintended effect of framing women in masculine terms, and either reporting that they conform to them, or if they don’t, not reporting on them at all.

Assessing the scope and mechanisms behind this has been one of the difficulties in examining the effect of the media (Joni and Norris 1993). Researchers must provide a consistent and empirical way, and to this end linguistic research tools and analysis have been at the forefront.

In their examination of media coverage of Prime Ministerial debates, Gidengil and Everit looked at the language used by two of the largest national news broadcasters, the public Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and privately-owned CTV. In order to understand the relation between aggression and coverage, they looked at both the debates themselves and the following two days of coverage on the debates. They had to control for the well-reported problem of ‘Boom-Bust’ reporting, in which the incumbent is often more closely scrutinized in coverage and therefore more widely reported on. Such was the case for Kim Campbell in the 1993 debates, and so to help avoid this biasing the data they studied debates from 1993, 1997 and 2000. They coded the debates for instances of aggressive acts, such as fist clenching and interrupting. Then, they looked at news media coverage, and coded both for metaphor usage and instances of individual coverage (2003a). By examining the aggression actually displayed against reporting of that aggression they aimed to tease out how aggression was interpreted, and compared this to the specific instances of each reporting. Finally, a conversation analysis of the content helped flesh out their findings, pointing to especially gendered passages and coverage (2003b).

Their results reflected a clear gendering both in the debates themselves and in their coverage.

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Audrey McLaughlin, head of the New Democratic Party (NDP) for the 1993 debates, stood out as one of the least aggressive debaters, only marginally more so than Lucien Bouchard of the Bloc Quebecois. In reports on the night, she saw less than 10 percent of mentions, far lower than any other debater. Kim Campbell, who adopted a more aggressive debating style in the 1993 had her behaviour reported as attacking much more frequently than any other candidate. This is surprising, as she came third in almost all aggressive debate tactics. While this might be attributed to her position as incumbent, the same trend of female aggression being highlighted and exaggerated relative to male aggression was present in 1997 as well, with NDP leader Alexa McDonough. Here, McDonough was much less aggressive in every way than Liberal leader Jean Chrétien and Bloc Quebecois leader Jean Charest but saw her slightly aggressive style was highlighted and emphasized. McDonough adopted a much less aggressive style for the 2000 debates, and in turn received a fraction of the total coverage time afforded to the other candidates.

They acknowledge that this kind of coverage is produced in response to a number of factors. The brevity of the news cycle encourages the use of cliché and metaphor and a focus on novelty or unexpectedness (Everitt and Gidengil 2003a). In the case of metaphor, the connotations of a phrase like ‘fought punch for punch’ helps explain the nature of the debate with as few words as possible (2003b). Metaphors also help connect with the audience and create an image of excitement and action. This, and the focus on unexpectedness, is especially important for television news coverage, which must compete both with other coverage of the same event and with other channels of entertainment. Women who violate expectations by being aggressive can be exploited for their novelty (2003b), even when this aggression is significantly less than their male peers. In so doing, it incentivizes aggression for female participants, forcing them to subvert expectations in order to gain valuable coverage time (2003a).

In order to get a better idea of how actual performance in the political system relates to news media coverage, Shaw alternately looks at violation of standard debate protocol and its subsequent reporting. She proposes that these violations are a source of asymmetry in the allocation of resources on the floor of the British House of Commons (2000). Men, who she finds more likely to violate rules , interrupt, attack and speak longer than allotted, allowing them to seize the floor more often and keep it for longer, with the practical effect of reducing female input. Of note is how these interruptions are often prized in news media broadcasts, where the offending member is afforded coverage and often prestige in the form of positive assessments. Here again, unless women are willing to also adopt this aggressive stance, they are penalized.

In portraying women through this dichotomy, as either hyper-aggressive or uninteresting and passive, the news media encourage the assumption that success in politics is achievable only through this aggressive style.

By framing politics as a ‘battlefield’ in which opponents ‘are beaten black and blue’ (excerpted from Everitt and Gidengil 2003b) it encourages a traditionally masculine narrative, and discourages those who fail to identify with this. As Rubin reports, this push towards the opposing poles “[Is] at least partly why Hilary Clinton [had] such a hard time finding the balance between intellect and emotion, between the tough hard-hitting fighter and the compassionate woman” (Rubin 2008). Her article in Dissent goes into detail about Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton was characterized in the media as either “...a shrew or a doormat” (2008).

Rubin’s findings are supported in a more empirical way by the work of Suleiman and O’Connell (2008), who performed a discourse analysis of Larry King interviews with a number of political interviewees, among them former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice and Mrs. Clinton. While the goal of Suleiman and O’Connell was to describe the effects of race and gender on discursive style, much of their research examines the response of Larry King to them, and their characterization of media coverage. One of the greatest differences between female participants and male is the number of interruptions and total syllables spoken by the interviewer and interviewee. Ms. Rice, who adopted an overall aggressive and masculine style, spoke almost two thousand more syllables than Ms. Clinton managed in a similar amount of time. Ms. Rice peppered her speech with various sports and warfare metaphors, a trend followed in part by Ms. Clinton, although to a lesser degree. These were often reciprocated by King, who would build on them with restatements or additional observations.

Of particular note in the Suleiman and O’Connell analysis was their finding that terms of address

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changed quite frequently according to gender. Although Larry King does not address Barrack Obama by anything other than his last name, he refers to Ms. Clinton as Hilary several times. In the case of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, he refers to him almost exclusively as Mr. Secretary, however in the case of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright he refers to her not by Madame Secretary, but by ‘Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright’, ‘Madeleine Albright’ and even ‘you’. He does however, refer to Condoleezza Rice as ‘Madame Secretary’ or ‘Ms. Rice’ consistently, although whether this can be attributed to her masculine discursive style is difficult to say.

Ultimately, what all of these articles describe is one of the most salient ways media interacts with assumptions about gender and politics: creating and enforcing a masculine narrative. Women in politics are judged according to their adherence to male norms and styles, with women ‘acting like men’ being both singled out for their purported violation of expectations of feminine behaviour and for not being afraid to ‘get dirty’. They are rewarded and vilified for this behaviour, being made to seem more aggressive than their male peers, but still receiving greater airtime and discussion. Those that do not participate in this kind of masculine behaviour are marginalized, and viewed as weak or ineffective. Masculine metaphors aid in this framing (Everitt and Gidengil 2003b), and are at least partly a result of pressures from the news cycle to produce entertaining news quickly and in an accessible style (Everitt and Gidengil 2003a). The problem is that this serves to discourage women from entering politics by casting it as a ‘man’s game’, where only women willing to behave in traditionally masculine ways will be able to succeed. In the context of low political participation all over the world, it is clear that the only way to equality in the political sphere requires a drastic change to the way media covers politics.

Work Cited

Gidengil, Elisabeth, and Joanna Everitt. “Conventional coverage/unconventional Politicians: Gender and Media Coverage of Canadian

Leaders’ Debates, 1993, 1997, 2000.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 36.3 (2003): 559-77. Web. Gidengil, Elisabeth, and Joanna Everitt. “Talking Tough: Gender and Reported Speech in Campaign News Coverage.” Political Communication 20.3 (2003): 209-32. Web. Joseph, John Earl. Language and Politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. Print.

Lovenduski, Joni, and Pippa Norris. Gender and Party Politics. London: Sage Publications, 1993.

Print.

Rubin, Lillian B. “Race & Gender in Politics.” Dissent Fall 2008 2008: 44-8. Web. SHAW, SYLVIA. “Language, Gender and Floor Apportionment in Political Debates.” Discourse & Society 11.3 (2000): 401-18. Print.

Suleiman, Camelia, and Daniel C. O’Connell. “Race and Gender in Current American Politics: A Discourse-Analytic Perspective.”

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 37.6 (2008): 373-89. Web. “Women in Parliaments: World Classification.” Object Moved. Inter-parliamentary Union, 31 Dec. 2011. Web. 01 Apr. 2012. <http:// www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm>.

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Dr. Marin’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8/10 Analysis: 8/10 Originality: 8.5/10 Clarity of Prose: 8/10 Overall Strength: 8/10

“It is clear that the author has done extensive research on the topic of the paper. The scope of the paper is manageable and well supported with current research. The writing style is clear and the writer stays focused on discussing the issues surrounding the thesis statement. References are incorporated well and quotations were used appropriately.”

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Role Reflection: The Portrayal of Gender Roles with Syntactic and Lexical Choices in Margaret Atwood’s “Marrying the Hangman”

BY KIRSTEN TUFFORD

LING 2286 80%

The poem “Marrying the Hangman” by Margaret Atwood presents a shifting world of fact and reflection, situating itself with varying time and perspective, yet asserts that it is “not fantasy, it is history” (Atwood 5).

Duality and dichotomy are common themes in works by Atwood, and “Marrying the Hangman” reflects these themes in the portrayal of the gender roles of men and women (Grace 59). “Marrying the Hangman,” originally published in Two Headed Poems, is Atwood’s poetic account of an old Quebec law stating that a man may escape the death sentence by becoming the hangman, a woman, by marrying the hangman, and how Françoise Laurent, sentenced to death for stealing, convinced Jean Cololère to become the hangman and subsequently marry her (Poetry Foundation). Imprisoned alone, “without mirrors,” and thus, “without the self ” (Atwood 6-7), Atwood portrays how the condemned woman finds a way to construct an identity through “adversary positions” of gender roles (Grace 59).

A linguistic approach to literary analysis can reveal connections between major components of the work, such as themes and composition styles, and “the details of the textual surface structure” (Fowler 123-124).

Various surface, syntactical structures can reflect a single deep, semantic structure (15). Examining composed text does not reveal natural speech activity, but an author’s understanding about the world, and the influences of that understanding (Livia 157). The roles represented in the text are not necessarily realities, but reflections of the “stereotypes” or the “pragmatic roles” which the author has internalised (147). By changing the presentation of the surface structure, Atwood depicts how the condemned woman must create her own identity, deviating and aligning herself with the traditional female gender role. Atwood’s syntactic and lexical manipulation of the surface structure of the text of “Marrying the Hangman” demonstrates the struggle between the role of passivity that society assigns the condemned woman, and the active role she takes on, in order to save her own life. It also challenges the reader to reflect on how the gender role of the woman may still apply to their own life.

Since the condemned woman must both break and abide by social gender roles, it is necessary to first discuss what these roles are in traditional North American society. The traditional gender roles Atwood presents in her poem permeate history: the gender roles of the condemned woman are also the roles being addressed during the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s when Atwood was writing “Marrying the Hangman” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 3). Traditionally, men have roles in which they are employed in a profession in the social sphere, while women stay in the home: as linguist Penelope Eckert notes in her paper “The Good Woman,” “Men do things; women be things” (167). The hegemonic woman acquires symbolic capital rather than possessions and achievements, perfecting her ‘self ’, rather than her skills or actions (167). This also represents a division of labour in which men participate in physical work, and women in emotional work (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 38).

Atwood’s condemned woman deviates from the hegemonic woman: she has an employer and works for a living (23). Yet in her desire to attain symbolic capital, the condemned woman is similar to the hegemonic woman: “to live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors / is to live without the self ” (6-7). In prison, she is alone and cannot construct her identity until the man is present, because positioning one’s “self ” among others is a necessary component of creating identity–an identity which also necessarily “emerges from the specific conditions of linguistic interaction” (Bucholtz and Hall 598). On the surface, Atwood’s poem describes the woman’s quest for freedom; however, Atwood’s manipulation of syntax and lexis reflect underlying gender roles, and an identity to which the woman must ascribe.

Atwood’s manipulation of the choice of agent and patient, active and passive sentence, and subject

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truncation, establishes the condemned woman’s agency, yet also reinforces the passivity of her gender role in society. In a sentence, nouns which are agents are the instigators of action, while patients are the receivers of the action. Thus, agency describes the action that a character perpetuates, and also their “mind style” (Fowler 15).

Discourse patterns tend to emphasize the agency of male characters, yet Atwood’s condemned woman demonstrates a great deal of agency herself, more than any other character in the poem (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 209). The entire third stanza contains sentences in which “she” is both the subject and the agent (Atwood 11-21).

When the male voice she hears “becomes her mirror” he also becomes the self that she is lacking by living in a prison without mirrors (9-10). In metaphorically taking on a male self, she also adopts the typically male character role of accomplishing action through her own means, or by using other characters as instruments (Fowler 30-31). Ultimately, the action the woman desires, she perpetuates: she marries the man that she convinces to be the hangman, and therefore, escapes death.

Yet, Atwood writes the sentences with the woman’s agency with the modal must: “she must marry the hangman [...] she must create him [...] she must persuade this man” (12-14). Though she is planning and thinking, the woman is never actually described in terms of her “doing.” This mirrors female gender roles and also gendered ideas of “all talk and no action” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 129).

Atwood’s use of passive voice further undermines the agent role which the woman constructs for herself.

Passive voice, in which the patient of a sentence takes the subject position influences the perception of agency in a literary work (Fowler 19-20). Atwood uses the passive voice primarily to describe the two characters’ dealings with the law. The woman “has been condemned to death by hanging” (Atwood 1); the man “was not condemned to death,” but “was in prison” (29-34). The passive voice conceals the hand of the law while emphasizing the blame upon both the man and the woman. Yet, the man and woman are not condemned by just the insentient law, but by the men who comprise “the law” (61). Again, Atwood depicts the asymmetry of male agency in society: though the woman may have the agency to work, to commit the crime, and to arrange her escape, it is ultimately the male-dominated society condemning her, and determining her fate. Yet, conversely, the use of passive voice can also suggest greater empathy between the speaker and the subject of the sentence, which further demonstrates the conflicting agency of the condemned woman (Ehrlich 4-5).

Truncation, in which the author or speaker eliminates the agent of the sentence, is another method by which syntactical choices can reduce agency, and one which Atwood employs (Leets 343). The title, “Marrying the Hangman,” is a significant example of transduction of the female subject. The woman is the agent in the phrase containing the mutual verb “marry” which indicates the woman’s centrality as a character, and overall agency in the poem; however, “she” is not present in the surface structure of the title. Linguistic shifts influence perception, and readers attribute greater responsibility to the patient or object, rather than the agent when the agent is elided (Leets 352). Since the woman is missing as the agent of the title, the hangman, the man in the poem, has more agency.

As well as the manipulation of the surface structure through agency, pronoun use and l’écriture féminine, two aspects of lexical choice which carry gender, serve to reflect the condemned woman’s struggle of creating her identity, and also the reader’s own situation with regard to gender roles. Atwood’s choice of pronouns reflects two separate ideas: an order of male dominance in society, as well as a method by which to engage the reader in empathizing with the gender roles in the poem. Atwood employs pronouns frequently in “Marrying the Hangman” and in fact, never divulges names, despite the poem’s basis in historical fact. In English, third person pronouns are necessarily coded with gender (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 60). The presentation of these pronouns becomes ordered with the progression of the poem: in the “He said [...] She said” sections of the poem, “he” always comes before “she”, despite the woman’s dominant presence at the onset of the poem (49-52; 78-80). This order is also apparent in the description of the woman’s crime: she steals clothes “from her employer,” but then, Atwood further explains that the woman steals “from the wife of her employer” (23-24). As well as creating an order of male before female, the use of pronouns creates more empathy for a character because it creates a sense of familiarity for the reader (Livia 151). The “he” and “she” pronouns, at once familiarising and devoid of a specific identity, allow the reader to place him or herself in the same position as the condemned woman or man, allowing

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the reader to reflect on gender roles in both the historical context and our present to ultimately decide what has changed.

Atwood’s use of l’écriture féminine reflects both the condemned woman’s confinement and ultimate release from the traditional female gender role. The style of feminist writing, l’écriture féminine, was put forth

by Hélène Cixous in her landmark paper “The Laugh of the Medusa” (Davies 59). L’écriture féminine states that “Women must write her self ” and “proclaim this unique empire” that is the body and bodily functions of women (Cixous 311-312). Atwood openly resists a feminist label and feminist writing ideals; however, many of Atwood’s female characters, including the condemned woman, represent themselves in terms of their bodies (Davies 5960). The condemned woman convinces the man to marry her using l’écriture féminine, such as “nipple,” “belly,” “thighs,” (Atwood 51) and later in the poem, “earth belly,” “open,” and “blood” (79-80). However, in doing so, she aligns herself with fertility and thus, motherhood–one of the idealised roles of the hegemonic woman (Eckert 167). The imprisoned man’s speech, in contrast, pertains to actions, places, the outer world, topics which l’écriture féminine assigns to typical male writing (Livia 148). Yet, despite the gender role to which l’écriture féminine confines the woman, it ultimately releases her from silence. Though the woman may end up in a traditional gender role, removed from the outer social sphere into that of the home, “Marrying the Hangman” follows Cixous’s desire to see women seize the occasion to speak (Davies 63). In bringing her story to life in this poem, Atwood ensures that so long as people read her poem, the condemned woman’s voice remains heard.

By observing the syntactical processes and choices of lexis in Margaret Atwood’s “Marrying the Hangman,” the conflict between the role of the active, typical male character and the role of the hegemonic woman becomes apparent. Using a linguistic perspective of literary analysis, the surface structure of text reveals underlying ideas about traditional gender roles. Although problematic due to modal expression, truncation and passive constructions, the woman has agency in the poem, and ultimately accomplishes her goal of avoiding her death sentence. Lexical pronoun choices present both a fixed order in which men come before women and remind the reader of their own position regarding gender roles. L’écriture feminine aligns the woman with the traditional roles of wifedom and motherhood, while also gives her voice and a way out of a silent, passive role. Yet, she ultimately finds herself trapped in the role that she had to present in order to free herself: “What did she say when she discovered that she had left one / locked room for another” (Atwood 69-70). However, it is a role which she actively constructs for herself when allowing the man’s voice to become her mirror. The mirror is “terrifying because it reflects and limits the self ” but necessary in the construction of self identity (Grace 59). Atwood herself holds a mirror to the woman and the reader:

“History cannot be erased, although we can / soothe ourselves by speculating about it. At that time there were / no female hangmen. Perhaps there have never been any, and thus / no man could save his life by marriage. Though a woman could, / according to the law” (Atwood 73-77).

Atwood ultimately asks the reader to reflect back on the defined roles of the condemned woman, how she manipulated these roles in order to create her own identity, and also upon the defined roles present in our own society.

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Works Cited Atwood, Margaret. “Marrying the Hangman.” Fiction of Contemporary Canada. Ed. George Bowering. Toronto: The Coach House

Press, 1980. 41-43. Print.

Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader. Ed. Mary Eagleton. Chichester: Blackwell Pub. Ltd.,

2011. 311-313. Print.

Davies, Madeleine. “Margaret Atwood’s female bodies.” The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Ed. Coral Ann Howells.

Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 58-71. Print.

Ehrlich, Susan. Point of View: Linguistic Analysis of Literary Style. London; New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

Eckert, Penelope. “The Good Woman.” Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries. Eds. Robin Tolmach Lakoff and Mary

Bucholtz. Rev a expa ed. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 165-170. Print.

Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. Language and Gender. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.

Fowler, Roger. Linguistics and the Novel. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1977. Print.

Grace, Sherrill E. “Margaret Atwood and the Poetics of Duplicity.” The Art of Margaret Atwood: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Arnold E.

Davidson and Cathy N. Davidson. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Limited, 1981. Print.

Leets, Laura. “Attributional Impact of Linguistic Masking Devices.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 19 (2000): 342-358.

Web. 25 Mar. 2012.

Livia, Anna. “‘One Man in Two is a Woman’: Linguistic Approaches to Gender in Literary Texts.” The Handbook of Language and Gender. Eds. Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff. [13] Vol. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2003. 142-158. Print.

Poetry Foundation. Marrying the Hangman. N.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2012.

Dr. Marin’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8.5/10 Analysis: 8.5/10 Originality: 8.5/10 Clarity of Prose: 8/10 Overall Strength: 8.5/10

“The essay has a specific thesis statement and the rest of the essay presents the anal-

ysis to support this statement. The thesis statement is narrowed enough to allow for an in depth analysis within the requirements of the essay. The writing style is academic and appropriate quotes are used to support the analysis. It is clear that the writer has researched the poem and analyses and has a firm understanding of these findings. She is able to weave these findings into the framework of this essay.”

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Corrective Feedback for Second Language Learners

BY CHRIS MCMURPHY

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Second language learners face one of the greatest learning challenges imaginable: learning a second variety of the medium of human communication, interpretation and definition. No language is simplistic â&#x20AC;&#x201C; indeed, all languages are tremendously complex in relation to the ease with which native speakers employ them.

And yet, despite this complexity, languages can be and are successfully acquired by non-native learners, sometimes with native-like proficiency. Achieving proficiency in a target language can be time consuming and rigorous, and L2 classrooms hence must maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of teaching methods for their students. This crucial area of second language education has spawned a great deal of focus in the SLA research community, with disagreement over which methods are most effective for learners (Sheen 2010). Corrective feedback (CF), a promising technique which has gained much momentum in recent years, is an effective facilitator of learning in modern SLA education. Corrective feedback is an overall effective SLA strategy, but with uncertainties regarding: the ideal research methodology for producing externally valid results; the relative effectiveness of the different feedback types; and the implications of learner age. Through discussion of these ongoing research investigations, the current standing of corrective feedback will be reviewed, ultimately arriving at the conclusion that current evidence supports the effectiveness of CF as an important facilitator of second language acquisition in classrooms.

Feedback, in the broader sense of SLA, is described as an interaction between native speakers (NSs) of a language and non-native speakers (NNSs) of that language, in which NSs communicate to NNSs that some error has been made which makes the given utterance unsuitable in the target language (Saville-Troike 2006).

Corrective feedback specifically includes explicit or implicit correction of the error. Types of CF include explicit correction, recasting, elicitation, meta-linguistic clues, clarification, and repetition, and can be given orally or in written form (Scott 2008). The advantage of corrective feedback is its ability to stimulate awareness not only of the existence of an error but also what that error consists of. From the perspective of usage-based theories of language, errors occur because the learner has not used a form enough or with sufficiently conscious attention so to be able to use that form competently (Ellis 2006:2). CF responds to this problem by bringing the learnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attention to the error and thus stimulating a conscious awareness of the problematic form.

But before the effectiveness of CF can be assumed, the research process itself must be scrutinized because, as in any field of research, there are methodological problems facing CF research (Lyster & Saito 2010). CF on the whole has been found to be successful, but there is variation amongst the CF subtypes and between research environments. Controlled, experimental studies yield more consistent and significant results than classroom studies, which do produce significant results but of more modest numbers (Lyster & Saito 2010). CF effectiveness is measured by testing for proficiency before and after the study is carried out. During a typical CF research study, a teacher or experimenter will use selected CF techniques on a second language learner repeatedly for a period of time, usually focusing on a particular target form which can be given careful attention (Lyster & Saito 2010). What has commonly been found in these studies is that post-tests for experimental studies show yield higher levels of target achievement for learners than are found in classroom study post-tests. This is thought to be a result of the relative control of these two experimental environments: experimental research allows for highly controlled feedback and experimenter supervision which likely enhancse effectiveness in comparison with classroom studies, in which teachers may be less consistent in giving feedback on particular forms (Lyster & Saito 2010).

Another common but crucial problem with CF studies in the past has been their external validity, or real-world applicability outside of the experiments. The simplest solution is that studies ought to be conducted

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in as natural an environment as possible - this makes classroom studies more appropriate than experimental studies. Lyster & Saito (2010) took this into consideration when conducting their meta-analysis of 15 CF studies, in which they analyzed exclusively “classroom quasi-experimental” (Lyster & Saito 2010:25) studies to ensure that their analyses would be applicable beyond experimental boundaries. It is hence clear that modern research has come to take a heightened attention to these methodological variables for the sake of yielding practical knowledge for SL classrooms.

While there is a consensus that CF is effective overall, there is thought to be differing effectiveness between types of CF. The various CF types listed above function differently in teacher-learner interaction and thus presumably have different levels of effectiveness for individual language learners. These differences include whether or not learner understands the correction made, and whether a particular CF type can effectively bring an error to consciousness so that learner can be able, in effect, to memorize a form and use it competently (Lyster & Saito 2010). Here, a review of research on the various types of CF will be made, with attention to both oral written feedback.

The most vivid research distinctions studied in regards to the various CF types are those between “implicit versus explicit feedback and input-providing (e.g., recasts) versus output-prompting feedback (e.g., prompts in the form of elicitation, clarification requests, and repetition of error)” (Sheen 2010). One study showed that, when compared in a classroom experimental study, explicit correction yielded better competence over the target structures than implicit tests (Sheen 2010). However, the study compared only one of each type of implicit and explicit feedback, so Sheen’s (2010) conclusion that explicit correction is more effective was misguided, as it cannot be applied further than between those two specific types of feedback (recasting and meta-linguistic comments, respectively). Where input-providing and output-prompting have been contrasted, output-prompting has been found to be more effective for target feature acquisition (Sheen 2010), but again, the evidence is insufficient to make reliable conclusions (Lyster & Saito 2010). Collectively, however, these studies seem to suggest that recasts specifically, which are both input-providing and implicit, are one of the leasteffective types of corrective feedback.

Classroom interaction goes beyond oral language. Written corrective feedback must also be considered for second language learners. There is an expectation amongst some researchers that written corrective feedback may be less effective overall than oral feedback, but relatively little research has been conducted with respect to oral feedback studies (Sheen 2010). Thus, the area remains largely controversial. Problematic to this area, students do not interact directly with the teacher, making it difficult to know whether or not written feedback is utilized at all. Second language learners are seldom required to write extensively in their second language, which brings doubt as to whether or not learners will review written feedback given by an instructor (Ferris 2010). But promising research analysis by Ferris (2010) suggests that there is “consistent and compelling evidence that written CF, under the right conditions, can facilitate L2 development and help students improve the accuracy of their writing, at least for the particular features under consideration” (Ferris 2010:6). Once again, the environment is found to play a crucial role in the effectiveness of corrective feedback, and this has hence shown to manifest itself in both oral and written CF.

Finally, the interaction between teacher and student can in itself potentially be responsible for a large amount of the variation observed across CF research. Age in particular seems to play a crucial role, and this is acknowledged by researchers. Lyster and Saito (2010) note that teachers treat child learners differently than adult learners, with little corrective feedback at all for children. This compounds the pre-existing developmental differences between children and adults, and across the debated age differences cited by Saville-Troike (2006), who emphasizes the lesser degree of analytical skills at younger ages, and the greater likelihood that input will be simplified for them. Relative to adults, younger-aged individuals (ie, prior to puberty) would thus be expected to benefit less from corrective feedback, as they would be significantly less able to analyze even the most explicit corrections. Corrective feedback can therefore be expected to amplify in effectiveness with age, following analytical ability.

Corrective Feedback is an important tool for second language classrooms. Through the discussion

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of CF research methodology, different feedback types, and the implications of learner age, CF has been shown to be valuable while yet in need of further research that can make reliable assertions about which variants of CF are most effective and in what context. While reviewing current literature on corrective feedback, one gains insight into the state of this field of research and into second language research on the whole – it’s thriving. The pursuit of a fuller understanding of SLA processes is no simple matter, but the pace of the research community attests to the colour and vibrancy of this field and the desire to grasp its questions.

Works Cited Ellis, N. C. (2006). Cognitive perspectives on sla: the associative-cognitive creed. AILA Review, 19, 100-121 . (Lyster & Saito 2010).

Ferris, D.R. (2010). Second language writing research and written corrective feedback in sla . Studies in Second Language Acquisition,

32(2), 181-201.

Lyster, R., & Saito, K. (2010). Oral feedback in classroom sla . Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32(2), 265-302. Saville-Troike,

M. (2006). Introducing second language acquisition. Cambridge: University Press.

Scott, E. (2008, September 3). Corrective feedback in the language classroom. Retrieved from http://www.suite101.com/content/ corrective-feedback-in-the-language-classroom-a67114 Sheen, Y. (2010). Introduction: the role of oral and written corrective feedback in sla source. Studies in Second Language Acquisition,

32(2), 169 -179.

Dr. Marin’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8/10 Analysis: 8.5/10 Originality: 8/10 Clarity of Prose: 8.5/10 Overall Strength: 8.5/10

“The essay contained a clear thesis statement and the rest of the paper did not stray from this thesis. It was well researched and showed clear understanding of both sides of the argument. The student was able to address both oral and written correction while keeping to the thesis statement. A clear, academic writing style was used and the conclusion recapped the main points of the essay.”

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Dr. Marinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Advice 1. Avoid 2. Do

too broad of topics.

not stray from the thesis statement.

3. Use

a substantial amount of referencing.

4. Proofread.

5. Do not use are too complex

words/structures which are not clearly understood or

79

Modern Languages and Literatures

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All Plots Tend to Move Deathward: Reality, Artifice, and the Human Condition in Don DeLillo’s White Noise

BY SONJA DRAGOMIR

CLC 2273 95%

“All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots” (DeLillo 26) – Jack Gladney states this assertion of universal momentum to an audience of recycled students, “assembled heads” (DeLillo 26) who congregate at the College-on-the-Hill to listen to his sermons on Hitler, a symbol which simultaneously dwarfs and bolsters the protagonist of White Noise. Set in post-industrial America, where public culture is shaped by a constant barrage of goods, services and advertisements, where daily life is pervaded by commodities which are continuously displayed, viewed and bought, DeLillo’s novel underscores modern society’s fractured individual and the struggle to cope with the universal fear of death through a “forest of technologized culture” (Bonca 40).

Gladney stuns himself with his own closing declaration, wondering if he truly believes it; yet this aphorism runs through the very fabric of the story, highlighting the protagonist’s obsession with death and his need to create a personal plot which avoids this mortal conclusion, as well as the novel’s own thematic interest in beginning and end. As a postmodern statement of consumer culture and the crises of the modern world with regards to the human condition, White Noise revolves around the fracturing of the self in modern consumer-driven society, the replacement of reality with artifice, and the nature of language itself as an organic manifestation of the need to neutralize fear; the omnipresence of death throughout the book intensifies these themes, just as, in the words of the sage lab technician Winnie Richards, death gives “a precious texture to life” (DeLillo 228).

White Noise throws into light the tangible results of living in a consumer-driven capitalist society where consumption has assumed an overwhelming position in all spheres of life. The “institutional field” (Zukin and Maguire 175) of contemporary society, a network of economic and cultural institutions, have as their foundation the production of commodities which, through a social need induced by capitalism, people desire to consume.

This Marxian “commodity fetish” (Zukin and Marguire 174) shatters the subject: with the anonymity involved in faceless consumerism, the individual is constantly made to choose not only between various products and brands, but also between various personal paths to self-realization amidst the late capitalist babble of television screens, supermarkets, and mass media outlets. Bombarded by this constant barrage of signals, signs and codes, the individual must choose what type of “package” to represent and portray, spending time and money in order to attain what is simply an ephemeral status symbol. The inherent mass crisis of identity within modern legacy is a statement of the alarming colonization of individual minds by the static or “white noise” of the information society. Jameson’s “waning of affect” (69), a fragmentation of the subject created by the hollow pastiches and depthless preoccupation with the present that so characterises modern day milieu, perfectly describes the conspicuous absence of real meaning behind the plastered, vinyl world of the postmodern. The vertiginous loss of any identifying feelings or affectations underscores the flatness of life in White Noise, where trips to the supermarket - the comforting temple of the prevailing ideology of sameness - are spiritual family rituals, and dinners involve Chinese take-out and T.V.

This cultivation of personal image can only be expected in a society so reliant on images, as White Noise exhibits; Jack’s ideas of self-representation are based upon a striving to achieve societal recognition and acceptance. In the face of the anxiety of death which haunts his steps, Jack tries to construct his own persona, an identity which would stay in keeping with his image as the head of Hitler Studies at the College-on-the-Hill. Hilter, a simulacral symbol more than a person, becomes for Jack a goal to “grow into and develop toward” (DeLillo 17).

The “dignity, significance and prestige” (Delillo 17) that Jack’s public persona exhibits contrasts with the meek, perplexed, and out of shape man behind the billowing, medieval robes and darkly shaded sunglasses which define him. Jack’s interest in Hitler as a superficial image is symbolic of his apprehension of the mortal human

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condition; a towering figure in history, Hitler represents the power to control life and death, a power which Jack can use indirectly to provide relief from his own nagging thoughts of inadequacy and fear. As the protagonist relates to Murray, a colleague and professor of pop culture at the College, Hitler is “solid, dependable” (DeLillo 89) – a towering beacon of unwavering strength in a world of shifting images, signs, and codes. A clown of the very subject he teaches, an impostor whose elaborate costume conceals the truth, Jack does not even know German; like the easy, uncritical culture industry which slowly digests every instance of reality, Jack only sees Hitler as a culture phenomenon with admirable control over life and death.

Jack’s quest for selfhood in White Noise is juxtaposed with Murray’s fascination with modern technological culture, which has supplanted the real and put in its place a “black hole of simulation” (Wilcox 346). Murray, a true postmodern, basks in the smooth superficiality of the post-industrial world and does not seek to unearth what lies beneath the surface. He does not deny the concealment of the real by the artificial, and does not even deny that it is a “question of deciphering, rearranging, peeling off the layers of unspeakability” (DeLillo 38) – not that society would want to, as he whispers to a mute Babette in the check-out line of a sprawling supermarket.

Jack’s colleague likens this supermarket to a metaphysical Tibetan transitional space between death and new life, a spiritual “pathway” (DeLillo 37) which reinvigorates society (Barrett 101). Murray embraces the media-saturated consciousness of the modern age and even finds a mystical quality in the most mundane and everyday staples of modern consumption-driven life. The lack of meaning behind flat simulacral surfaces is particularly clear in the episode where Jack and Murray visit the Most Photographed Barn in America – only to find that there is no barn. Here, the consumers’ addiction for a world transformed into mere images of itself and which only presents pseudo-events is satiated (Jameson 74). The proliferation of images without grounds in reality strikes an uneasy chord with Jack, who listens with reluctance to Murray’s profession of the needlessness of look for a meaning beyond the new semiotic order. Jack, who desperately wants to infuse his life with spirituality, cannot follow Murray’s example and see mysticism in the flat, omnipresent signs and electronic codes which dominate his life; he wants to decipher the code, wants to arrive at some knowledge of the real.

The new semiotic order in which representation becomes its own reality in DeLillo’s novel reflects Jean Baudrillard’s vision of simulacral images as following an “epidemic process” of regeneration (194). The denial of the real which runs so rampant in the modern age is a symptom of the cultural inflection that dominates our images and ideas. The progressively ominous descriptions of the Airborne Toxic Event on the radio illustrate not just the manipulation of the real but also its complete lack of relevance in the face of representations generated by bureaucratic and technological networks, networks which essentially posit their own definitions of reality as inherent truths. This totalizing tendency of hegemonic culture as models of truth and consumption is clear in White Noise, as the media’s description of the toxic cloud functions as a guideline for society’s level of anxiety towards the looming black mass. From a “feathery plume” to a “black billowing cloud,” and finally as the “airborne toxic event,” the citizens of Blacksmith rely on the radio to see for them, allowing for the perpetuation of Baudrillard’s continuously reproducing simulacra (DeLillo 111, 113, 117). Even the déjà-vu that is a symptom of exposure to the black cloud is a simulacral experience, a recollection without any foundation in the real (Wilcox 139). Only Heinrich is perceptive enough to understand that media representation is in and of itself a method of censoring reality, and that for most people, technological extensions of signs count for more than the real signs themselves. For the rest of the characters, who are fundamentally a “people of, by, and for the image,” the world is purely a simulacral limbo where there is no reality – just signals and codes which engulf the real (Bonca 26).

White Noise is about more than language as being a denotative form of communication – with the impending doom promised by the airborne toxic event and the suffocating fear of death that Jack and Babette feel, language takes on a different, more organic role: as a “massive human strategy” to cope with the pervasive and universal fear of death (Bonca 27). Thus the “white noise” in DeLillo’s novel can refer both to the capitalist static that hangs in the air of the post-industrial society as well as the toneless hum of a “human buzz” which manifests itself out of the natural human impulse for death evasion (DeLillo 84). Vernon Dickey’s ridiculous and long-winded parting speech to his distraught daughter Babette illustrates the humorous side of the human need to use language as a defence mechanism in order to alleviate or ease the anxiety that death breeds. His light-

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hearted use of language assuages Babette’s tears and instead elicits childish laughter. The use of language to “bridge the lonely distances” is also at play on a religious level, as exemplified by the Sister Hermann Marie’s lack of true faith, a secret Jack cannot wrap his head around (DeLillo 289). Even when the nun spits unintelligible German in Jack’s face because he is unwilling to understand the necessity of her fake belief, he finds her “scornful prayer” beautiful (DeLillo 320). Even though the language is stripped of meaning and Jack understands nothing, the cadence and rhythmicality of her expression comforts the protagonist after his revelation that religion is just a white noise that helps to minimize the death fear.

In White Noise, where language is just another set of symbols in the modern media-saturated consciousness of society, words no longer operate as exclusive denotations but rather provide a structure around which comfort from death can crystallize. For Jack, who sifts through the endless flux of codes for meaning within triviality, the consumerist chants become clear representations of a new type of dialogue that revolves around the symbolic nature of the post-industrial world. His epiphanies spring from the smoothly simulacral and serialized postmodern society (Wilcox 349). When Jack hears his daughter Steffie mumble “Toyota Celica” in her sleep after the frightful ordeal of the toxic event, he attributes great spiritual depth to this “moment of splendid transcendence” (DeLillo 155). It seems that for Steffie, the chant is a way of harnessing language to express anxiety and emotion, not an actual product. With television and media as the first and foremost source of direction and guidance, Jack’s children grow up internalizing the slogans and hymns of the culture industry to an even greater extent than their parents (Orr 21). The torrent of media images pouring into their brains becomes their only recourse to voice their deeply personal fears. Wilder, the “Rousseau-esque” figure who barely speaks and is not yet chained to the temporal world of the culture industry, is a symbol of purity who assuages Jack and Babette’s fear of death (Orr 27).

The author of White Noise represents language as a human project, a manifestation of the impulse to avoid the natural mortal end that is part of the human condition; thus, in addition to the views of white noise as an expression of capitalist appropriation and as the endless swirl of signifiers which bear no real meaning, by Jameson and Baudrillard, respectively, DeLillo adds his own definition to the mix. For this postmodern writer language acts as a “charm, a protextive device” which establishes a barrier between life and death (DeLillo 31).

Even though it is distanced from conventional meaning, and may not offer a solution to the confusing flux of indecipherable codes and texts, it offers humanity a solace from the oppressive knowledge of mortality (Barrett 110). Language provides a foundation, buoying up from the inside a world which would otherwise collapse.

With all its simplifying machines and serializing tools, the modern age’s legacy is far from one of ease and relaxation; the endless flow of signifiers, the gap between language and reference, and the vertiginous lack of stable ground negatively affects the human objects who drive and are driven by post-industrial, consumer-oriented world. A “mass crisis of identity” characterizes the age of skyscrapers and pre-packaged foods, an age where reality is practice and flawless simulation represents the zenith of achievement (Zukin and Maguire 180). White Noise illustrates the fear inherent in the glistening smoothness of modernity. This is an age where any sense of temporal history, limits and endings are erased and replaced with the delirium of electronic communication and the constant craving associated with late capitalism – this is Winthrop’s puritan city upon the hill, a crucible of sameness, where the individual is liquidated and society is homogenized, so that even something as instinctual as fear of death becomes a raison d’être for the fabrication of commodities; as Murray observes during an outing to the supermarket, “here we don’t die, we shop” (DeLillo 38).

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Barrett, Laura. “How the Dead Speak to the Living: Intertextuality and the Postmodern Sublime in ‘White Noise.’” Journal of Modern Literature 25:2 (Winter 2001-2002): 97-113. JSTOR. Web. 23 March 2012.

Baudrillard, Jean. “The Evil Demon of Images and The Precession of Simulacra.” Postmodernism: A Reader. Ed. Thomas Docherty. New

York: Columbia UP, 1993. 194-199. Print.

Bonca, Cornel. “Don DeLillo’s ‘White Noise’: The Natural Language of the Species.” College Literature 23:2 (1996): 25-44. JSTOR. Web.

23 March 2012.

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1986. Print.

Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” Postmodernism: A Reader. Ed. Thomas Docherty. New

York: Columbia UP, 1993. 62-92. Print.

Maguire, Jennifer Smith and Sharon Zukin. “Consumers and Consumption.” Annual Review of Sociology 30 (2004): 173-197. JSTOR.

Web. 23 March 2012.

Orr, Leonard. Don Delillo’s White Noise: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum, 2003. Print.

Wilcox, Leonard. “Baudrillard, DeLillo’s ‘White Noise,’ and the End of Heroic Narrative.” Contemporary Literature 32:3 (1991): 346 365. JSTOR. Web. 23 March 2012.

Dr. Mihailescu’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 10/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 10/10 Clarity of Prose: 9/10 Overall Strength: 9.5/10

“Dragomir’s take on DeLillo’s much discussed White Noise is addressed to both the “assembled heads” of recycled students, and to those who would rather use their own heads individually. Fear of death lurks at all crossroads of this contemporary society, given to technology and comfort. As Dragomir puts it, “White Noise revolves around the fracturing of the self in modern consumerdriven society, the replacement of reality with artifice, and the nature of language itself as an organic manifestation of the need to neutralize fear; the omnipresence of death throughout the book intensifies these themes, just as, in the words of the sage lab technician Winnie Richards, death gives “a precious texture to life” (DeLillo 228).” Dragomir’s prose is precise, informative, un-trembling: “like the easy, uncritical culture industry which slowly digests every instance of reality, Jack only sees Hitler as a culture phenomenon with admirable control over life and death.” She integrates quotations from DeLillo, as well as authoritative critical quotation or glosses with admirable legerdemain: “the “white noise” in DeLillo’s novel can refer both to the capitalist static that hangs in the air of the post-industrial society as well as the toneless hum of a “human buzz” which manifests itself out of the natural human impulse for death evasion (DeLillo 84).” Dragomir is an original and well informed essay writer. Her writing attempts to truly understand its target – and itself, in unassuming, classy tones.”

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An Unexpected Guest from the Dark Continent: The Noble Savage Redefines Colonialist “Enlightenment”

BY ANNA PALIY

CLC 2294

100%

In Kent Monkman’s satirical installation Théâtre de Cristal, opulence is blended with folklore to create a cultural hybrid that echoes colonial assimilation. Here, Monkman ventures to challenge the observer: who is the conqueror, and who is the “savage”? In his vision, the colonizer is Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman’s cheeky alter-ego; the savage is the white European male. Not only does Miss Chief overpass the boundaries of “straight” gender aesthetics, she reverses her role further by making the real-life agent of native oppression into the object of the native’s art, science, and erotic fantasy – she fetishizes him. She becomes the manipulator, by taking advantage of his vulnerability to relish in his physique and mannerisms. In the tinkling of the crystal chandeliers installed by Monkman, hovering over the rugged deerskin that is the cinema screen and reflecting the hue of the blood-red walls, the viewer can detect an uncanny resemblance to Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco’s confrontation of ethnographic exploitation performed in their Couple in a Cage film project. The denominator of the two works is the fundamental message. In Fusco’s words, the aim of the spectacle is to “blur distinctions between the art object and the body, between fantasy and reality, and between history and dramatic re-enactment” (40). The white man has exhibited the “exotic” for his own pleasure for centuries – now, he is exhibited right back, because, well, exoticism is a matter of perception. The inquiry which Théâtre de Cristal pursues is as follows: what factors would make the exhibition of the white man (by the sadistic Miss Chief) any different – namely, any more appalling – than the exhibition of the native (à la Gómez-Peña and Fusco)? “Primitive” and “savage” are relative terms. The denotation of these twisted words in the written history of Western culture has depended on nothing more than who happened to have a pen and journal notebook handy first. Monkman’s artistic vision conceptualizes that it was him (as native trans-female). He re-writes the historical narrative the way it could have unravelled had the “noble native” made the cross-Atlantic journey first to explore the lands of the unsuspecting white primitive “creature”.

So, what if it was the Aboriginal male who had discovered the “New World” of Europe first? What if we, the trembling white race, had been the vulnerable hosts whose lands, dignity, and bodies were to be shamelessly invaded, claimed, and exploited? Through the two cinematic narrations starring Miss Chief, The Group of Seven Inches and Robin’s Hood, Monkman achieves this hypothetical re-arrangement, adding satirical punch by incorporating a written “mock journal” pasted onto walls the colour of which is both regal (the cloaks of kings) and gory (the dried blood of ancestors).

Inside Kent Monkman’s shimmering burgundy room, the white European viewer finds himself in a cage, in the moral sense – the “gilded dungeon” of his own so-called achievement as conqueror of the New World.

Here, he arrives to a place where he is exhibited, painted, studied, and objectified as a specimen of a social experiment. The art catches him in his own hypocrisy – his presumptuous bubble bursts. Likewise, the comparable cage of Gómez-Peña and Fusco, although reversed in its role setup (the native is locked within, the white individual gazes from without), ultimately strives toward the same effect: optimally, it must provide a sobering moment during which the viewer is awakened into seeing his own presuppositions and blind spots.

Gómez-Peña and Fusco exhibit themselves as the victims. By becoming Miss Chief, Monkman goes a step further and exhibits himself as the oppressor. Both are challenges addressed toward a heritage of human exploitation. The difference is that the first is a challenge addressing the white reception of the native, and the latter is a challenge thrown toward the white perception of that same white self. Monkman assumes a dominatrix role, and this explicitness, mingled with gender and racial bending tactics, allows for his installation to convey a more

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avant-garde aesthetic effect than the Couple in a Cage project. The two entrapped fictional “Guatinaui” tribespeople starring in Gómez-Peña and Fusco’s project enter a dialogue with the empathy of the “white European males” (more inclusively, to the entire white race). Kent Monkman decides to appeal to their guilt, by forcing them into his intimidating temporary stereotype, if only for the duration of the gallery visit. Whether its irony elicits self-referential smirks of realization or whether the tragic analogy stimulates the conscience, in the end, the point is for the supposedly morally flexible observer to understand this: there is no fundamental difference, on any level, between the “caged native” or the “caged white European male”. The colonial narrative is interchangeable. Whether a sparkling is placed into a rugged tipi, or a deerskin is spread across a rococo-style boudoir, is a mere matter of imagination in the gallery, and a matter of arbitrary intersection in the grand scheme of reality. If we personify these objects and the exchanges they embody, the same paradigm does apply to humans. The result is cultural hybridity, first in aesthetics and ultimately in identity, one way or another. The means which lead to both outcomes are equally questionable. The problem is that the means were imposed by one party, while the other underwent them – and it was no fiction, no performance, no exhibit. It was real. It could have all happened very differently, had the white man not bestowed it upon himself to manipulate and propagandize historical data, and had he not had the immediate (timely, for his sake) benefit of rapid, globalizing printing methods and the media to disseminate it.

As a result of their ventures, what both postmodern “traps” – the embodied performance and multimedia expo – achieve is a brief symbolic counter-conquest. The white colonizer had conquered the native land and body, now the native will conquer the white intellect and conscience, or at least toy with it as circumstances allow. When the native was stumbled upon by the white male five centuries ago, he venerated him as god-sent, and gazed upon him with awe. Conversely, when the white man stumbled upon the native, he decided to strip him in all ways, confiscate his turf, scrutinize his body, and diminish him to the fiery pits of Otherness. Which of these perceptions is noble, and which is savage? For those exiting Monkman’s exhibit, this ideological reevaluation becomes embedded, hauntingly, as a head-spiralling afterthought.

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Dr. Mihailescu’s Feedback:

Ideas and Content: 10/10 Analysis: 10/10 Originality: 9/10 Clarity of Prose: 10/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“Paliy’s short essay focuses on Kent Monkman’s satirical and guilt instilling installation Théâtre de Cristal, and on Gómez-Peña and Fusco’s exhibit of themselves as vic-

tims. Her rich and intelligent prose is flowing pleasantly: “In the tinkling of the crystal chandeliers installed by Monkman, hovering over the rugged deerskin that is the cinema screen and reflecting the hue of the blood-red walls, the viewer can detect an uncanny resemblance to Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco’s confrontation of ethnographic exploitation performed in their Couple in a Cage film project”; or “Inside Kent Monkman’s shimmering burgundy room, the white European viewer finds himself in a cage, in the moral sense – the “gilded dungeon” of his own so-called achievement as conqueror of the New World. Here, he arrives to a place where he is exhibited, painted, studied, and objectified as a specimen of a social experiment. The art catches him in his own hypocrisy – his presumptuous bubble bursts.” Paliy’s critical view of oppression and its satire is as well balanced as a smile; her take on the native does not partake of, say, Sartre’s top-down submission of the “savage nègre” to white, Hegelian logic. She ends her excellent text such: “Which of these perceptions is noble, and which is savage? For those exiting Monkman’s exhibit, this ideological re-evaluation becomes embedded, hauntingly, as a head-spiralling afterthought.”

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Like Joan of Arc or Aphrodite: The Ideal Women ‘Borrowed’ from Botticelli by Lichtenstein

BY KATIE EADIE

CLC 2273

92%

“Images of women are an inseparable part of the œuvre we associate with the name Roy Lichtenstein.”

(Mercurio 77) His work houses some of the most iconic visions of women in Postmodernism, pulled from history and most recognizably the archetypal woman of 1950s advertising and feminine comic books. By utilizing these womanly figures he defines the ‘Ideal Woman’ across a multitude of eras: wide-eyed, pouty lipped, fair featured, she is the epitome of physical perfection, wrapped in an aura of class and delicacy. While all these things define the ideal woman she is an abstract image, a whispered concept that is difficult to grasp. This hard to define idea however, is one that is quite recognizable when a visualization representation is presented. This is why the ‘Ideal Woman’ is such a popular image within the artistic community, as it is a dynamic yet utterly recognizable fixture across cultures. Artists have been trying to recreate a purely visual – and, by association, vacant – version of this ideal for centuries, from the sensual statues from Roman times to Renoir’s impressionistic poised and pointed-toed ballerinas. Lichtenstein, a career ‘borrower’, does something amazing with this womanly ideal in his 1965 painting titled “M-Maybe” (Fig. 1), which bears strong resemblance to both the original comic strip it was taken from, and also to Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” (Fig. 2). By utilizing both 1950s images and harkening back stylistically into other artistic eras Lichtenstein creates in his piece “M-Maybe” the ultimate visualization of the ideal woman.

“In the early 1960s, Roy Lichtenstein questioned the Modernist dogma that insisted that works should be created completely original in form, style, and content.” (Mercurio 49) Starting his artistic career as a modernist, Lichtenstein began his foray into the postmodern by working in the abstract expressionist format in the late 1950s. (Britannica) By the 1960s, however, he had turned away from expressionism and toward a more realist approach, pioneering – alongside other, yet independently – Pop Art, as it is known as today. While appearing to be strictly realist, Lichtenstein still thought of his variety of Pop Art as abstract, because while it was created using traditional methods it created something entirely new. (Clearwater 13) He began this stage of his career by appropriating comics into fine art, starting with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck before finding his stride in portraying different images of women. He took select images from advertisements and particularly the comic book “Girls’ Romances”, a series that chronicled the societally acceptable forms of dating, courtship, and marriage for young girls, before shaping them into statements on the ideals of art, femininity, and consumerism. It was this, “his ability to transform all visual sources and the work of other artists into his own work” that defined him as the Pop Artist he was. (Clearwater 11)

As depicted in many of his 1960s pieces which focused on women, “Lichtenstein [had the ability to transform even a] women’s hands into innocent, natural gems, transfigured and idealized like the ‘pretty blondes’ of the time.” (Gohr 79) The ‘pretty blondes’ he painted were the exact ideal that women were supposed to appropriate, “in the early 1960s, as they were “modeled on the ideals promoted by commercial art, which the ‘normal’ women who were the targets of the ads were expected to emulate.” (Gohr 77-8) These women were beautiful, poised, appropriate, and, most noticeably, victims – scorned or abused in one way or another, usually by the men in their lives. Their images are dramatic in their sorrow and violence – “The Drowning Girl” (Fig. 3) sobs and states of her titled predicament ‘I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help’; “Crying Girl” (Fig. 4) is wet with tears, a pained look crossing her frightened face; even “The Kiss” (Fig. 5) displays a sorrowful parting couple, the woman already suffering the loss of her partner in this moment of passion. Lichtenstein’s ideal woman is often suffering, which begs the simple question, why?

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The reason for this suffering is simple, and it ties directly to the visualizations of ideal women from the past, images to which suffering is not foreign. For instance, Botticelli, while painting the comparative piece “The Birth of Venus”, a figure of beauty and innocence, cannot escape the violence and sorrow of her conception. Venus is born from a strange incestuous act of violence. Her brother Saturn castrates their father Caelus and casts his testicles into the sea. From the sea-foam generated, by the intercourse of testis and water, Venus is conceived and birthed. Even as a new born (fully adult goddess) Venus’ life is already warped by suffering. More abstractly, however, to achieve these representations of the ideal women, a real woman would have been utilized to model for Botticelli. They would have to hold the same position for hours on end, during the time it would take to get each brushstroke down on canvas. It would seem that because of this, suffering is intrinsically linked to the ‘Ideal Woman’, and that it is only appropriate that in Lichtenstein’s representation of this, as well as Botticelli’s ideal in “The Birth of Venus”, that these elements are brought into his work.

Looking at both “The Birth of Venus” and then “M-Maybe” reveals such a striking similarity in style and composition that it becomes clear Lichtenstein drew inspiration from the earlier piece. Obviously “M-Maybe” is first and foremost a reimagining of an original comic panel, this one – like many others Lichtenstein drew from – by an artist named Tony Abruzzo who illustrated for the DC comic series “Falling in Love” and “Secret Hearts”.

(Comic Vine) “It was just lucky,” Lichtenstein says of his Pop Art style, “because I was actually copying cartoons, which just did it automatically, at the beginning. But [I wanted] to bring it into high art […] but not changing its appearance very much from what seemed to be commercial.” (Berman 118) The Tony Abruzzo original (Fig. 6) depicts a city scene where the blonde protagonist walks the street, with billowing hair and pouty lips, thinking to herself ‘M-maybe he became ill – and couldn’t leave the studio!’. This character, reborn in Lichtenstein’s “M-Maybe” retains her main features, small changes being made to the curl of her hair, her eyebrows, and a general angular element added. Her outfit it changed completely and her eyes made blue while her hair is painted in a dramatic yellow, rather than the pale shade of the original. Like the original version of “M-Maybe”, “Many of the comic strips that influenced Lichtenstein from the 1960s on have been identified. As a result, we know that they were not exact copies but much more liberal interpretations of the models than some would have believed. The alterations are not arbitrary…” they are done with sureness and purpose, and must be catalogued and taken into account in analysis. (Berman 19)

One thing that is evident in the original, and is made more dramatic and obvious in Lichtenstein’s reimagining, is the ‘Venus’ pose each of the women hold. Held next to a close up of Botticelli’s Venus, Lichtenstein’s woman is identical in posture and allure. Their hair is billowing, shoulders squared, neck long and elegantly curving to the right with the tilt of a chin. Their faces follow identical lines – noses petite, lips full, eyebrows angled. The only real difference is their eyes, while following the same facial structure, Botticelli’s Venus is gazing dreamily just off centre left and Lichtenstein’s woman is looking hard right and clearly in thought. This however is the only difference between the two faces. The pose, and the execution of it in both pieces, are completely identical and therefore, in the analysis of “M-Maybe”, allusions to “The Birth of Venus” must be made. Most importantly however is the question of why Lichtenstein chose a comic that could translate so well into this pose, and also why he wanted to reimagine the classic “The Birth of Venus”?

One idea for this comes from Siegfriend Gohr in his essay on Lichtenstein and women for the book Roy Lichtenstein Classic of the New. “He treats the ‘beautiful women’ as a fetish among other fetishes[,]” writes Gohr, “Although they are [at times] naked, these figures have no sexual or erotic aura.” (Gohr 81) This is caused by the inherent vacancy of the ‘beautiful women’, synonymous with the ‘Ideal Woman’. These women are the fetish of perfection, displaying themselves before the viewer as a masturbatory indulgence into a faultlessness that can never be achieved outside of artistic representation. While the ideal woman in “M-Maybe” is not nude, she still fits into the mould of a fetish because of her similarity to a culturally accepted symbol of perfection (Venus) and also because of her action. In the painting the woman is thinking about the man in her life, why he is not there, and what is happening to him at that exact moment. She is simply a vehicle, a body that houses the desires of others and plays off of the narcissistic tendencies of those desperate to be the only thing on her mind. The woman herself is not sexual or erotic, simply the idea of her and what that idea means to the viewer.

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The ideal woman, or women, as a fetish is not something foreign to Lichtenstein’s work. In his 1994 piece “Nudes with a Beach Ball” (Fig. 13) Lichtenstein, pieces together three (fully clothed) women from three separate comic panels, undressing them, and combines them into one piece. The three, frolicking and playing together, harken back to another Botticelli, this time the three muses from his work “Primavera” (Fig. 14). These three are another example of ideal women, and yet the act of being a muse – the source of someone else’s knowledge and inspiration – once again makes these women a vehicle, this time for ideas rather than self-satisfaction. Mirrored after the ideal women of the past, this means that Lichtenstein was at least attempting, and arguable did so quite successfully, to create to create the ideal postmodern woman. The comment he makes about this ideal however is that it is not attainable and should not be sought after by the postmodern woman, as it is a fetish, a vacant shell holding someone else’s desires.

The similarities between “Nudes with a Beach Ball” and “Primavera” are much more subtle than “M-Maybe” and “The Birth of Venus”. The idea of three frolicking muses is created in the piece, however, if it were not for the predecessor “M-Maybe” being a mirror image of “The Birth of Venus” the connection of it to another Botticelli masterpiece would be harder to make. They are similar, and “Nudes with a Beach Ball” does make a playful homage to “Primavera” but they are not nearly as similar as the identical proportions of “M-Maybe” and “The Birth of Venus”. The sameness between these two pieces are too many to be discounted as coincidence completely, however, the level of significance placed upon Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” in Lichtenstein’s inspiration for “M-Maybe” can be argued.

Lichtenstein did not start his foray into reimagining modern and classical pieces of art until much later in his career, and that so it can be said that “The Birth of Venus” is not as important to “M-Maybe” as alluded to earlier. This is because it was in the 1980s and early 1990s, not the beginning of his postmodern career in the 1960s when “M-Maybe” was painted, that Lichtenstein began to take source material directly from history. “He produced several series of [paintings] that were based on the compositions, styles, and subjects of such modern masters as Cézanne, Mondrian, Matisse, and Franz Marc.” (Clearwater 10) In 1985 he painted “The Sower” (Fig. 7), a direct reimagining of Van Gohg’s “The Sower” (Fig. 8). In 1988 he painted “Laocoon” (Fig. 9), a sculpture-to-painting reimagining of the Anonymous sculpture “Laocoon and his Sons” (Fig. 10). Lastly, in 1992 he painted “Water Lilies with Japanese Bridge” (Fig. 11), a more fluid reimagining of Monet’s series of water lilies and Japanese gardens (Fig. 12). While the idea for working with classic subjects was there, percolating below the surface, Lichtenstein had yet to begin this work with any real devotion and so the connection of “M-Maybe” and “The Birth of Venus” may be more coincidence than design.

The possibility of coincidence, rather than a deliberate gesture, is the second argument against the idea that Lichtenstein was reimagining “The Birth of Venus” in “M-Maybe”. The original comic for “M-Maybe” could have been chosen at random and without the knowledge that it was the perfect image to reawaken ideas of the ideal women. While on the analytical level this simplified answer is easier to digest, Lichtenstein disproves it himself, stating about his comics that, “‘Just as the point of painting them I certainly knew that they were subject matter but there was sort of a process of selecting subject matter first and once it was selected and drawn on the canvas then it really became a process of painting in the traditional way but not with traditional means.’” (Clearwater 13) Lichtenstein did not select subjects without careful thought and consideration. He did not flip through a volume of “Secret Hearts” and stop on an arbitrary page, picking the second image from the left. Lichtenstein selected his pieces for a reason, and part of that consideration was in how he could bring the traditional – in this case Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” – into the postmodern era, an act he did quite successfully with “M-Maybe”.

“The popular imagery and the superficial resemblances of Pop Art overshadowed the diverse intentions and motivations of these artists. Narrowly defining them as practitioners of Pop often restricted their role and art historical importance to the years Pop Art dominated the art world…” (Clearwater 10) Doing this however overlooks the importance of Pop Art and how much thought and critical design went into a successful Pop Art piece. Roy Lichtenstein, one of the fathers of the movement, has proven this time and again with the careful consideration he makes of each original artwork he bases his work on. For every one of his pieces he is trying to say something, add onto what has already been put down, such as with Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” and

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“Primavera”, but then create something new out of his reimaginings, bringing tradition into the postmodern marketplace for a new era. Lichtenstein’s actions are precise and knowing. When he paints the women in his work he knows he is making a suggestion toward the ‘Ideal Women’ of the past, modernizing them and questioning not only the idea behind perfection, but also the sacrifice of self that must be made to achieve it. By carefully borrowing originals from comics Lichtenstein defines the new ideal, showing it as a fetish, vacant and pliable, and not an ideal that any postmodern woman would ever want to become.

Works Cited Abruzzo, Tony. “Unknown.” Cartoon. Static Flickr. Web. 9 Apr. 2012. <http://farm1.staticflickr.com/29/47761783_bcf00c498c_z jpg?zz=1>.

Annonymous. Laocoon and His Sons. 1506. Bluffton. Web. 3 Apr. 2012. <http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/laocoon/laocoon.html>.

Botticelli. Primavera. 1482. Italian Rennisance Art. Web. 1 Apr. 2012. <http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Primavera.html>.

Botticelli. The Birth of Venus. 1485. Italian Rennisance Art. Web. 6 Apr. 2012. <http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Birth-of-Venus. html>.

Clearwater, Bonnie. Roy Lichtenstein: Inside, outside. Miami: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2001. Print.

Cowart, Jack, and Ruth Fine. Roy Lichtenstein: Beginning to End. Madrid: Fundación Juan March, 2007. Print.

Lichtenstein, Roy. Crying Girl. 1964. Lenin Imports. Web. 1 Apr. 2012. <http://www.leninimports.com/roy_lichtenstein_gallery_8. html>.

Lichtenstein, Roy. Drowning Girl. 1963. Lichtenstein Foundation. Web. 1 Apr. 2012. <http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/0117. htm>.

Lichtenstein, Roy. Laocoon. 1988. Flickr. Web. 9 Apr. 2012. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/artimageslibrary/6198041485/>.

Lichtenstein, Roy. M-Maybe. 1965. Lichtenstein Foundation. Web. 1 Apr. 2012. <http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/0277.htm>.

Lichtenstein, Roy. Nudes with Beach Ball. 1994. Lichtenstein Foundation. Web. 3 Apr. 2012. <http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/ juan17.htm>.

Lichtenstein, Roy. The Kiss. 1962. Lichtenstein Foundation. Web. 1 Apr. 2012. <http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/juan17.htm>.

Lichtenstein, Roy. The Sower. 1985. Lichtenstein Foundation. Web. 3 Apr. 2012. <http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/juan35.htm>.

Lichtenstein, Roy. Water Lilies with Japanese Bridge. 1992. Ro Gallery. Web. 3 Apr. 2012. <http://rogallery.com/Lichtenstein_Roy/ american-WaterLillies.htm>.

Mercurio, Gianni. Roy Lichtenstein: Meditations on Art. Milano: Skira, 2010. Print.

Monet, Claude. Waterlilies and Japanese Bridge. 1899. Monet and Japan. Web. 3 Apr. 2012. <http://nga.gov.au/monetjapan/Detail. cfm?WorkID=W1509>.

“Roy Lichtenstein (American Painter).” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica. Web. 5 Apr. 2012. <http://www. britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/339710/Roy-Lichtenstein>.

Schneider, Eckhard, Avis Berman, and Bob Adelman. Roy Lichtenstein: Classic of the New. Bregenz: Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2005. Print.

“Tony Abruzzo.” (comic Artists & Creators). Web. 6 Apr. 2012. <http://www.comicvine.com/tony-abruzzo/26-38338/>.

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Dr. Mihailescu’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 9/10 Clarity of Prose: 10/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“In dealing with Roy Lichtenstein’s postmodern remakes of classical tableaux, Eadie suggestively concludes: “For every one of his pieces he is trying to say something, add onto

what has already been put down, such as with Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” and “Primavera”, but then create something new out of his reimaginings, bringing tradition into the postmodern marketplace for a new era.

Lichtenstein’s actions are precise and knowing. When he paints the women in his work he knows he is making a suggestion toward the ‘Ideal Women’ of the past, modernizing them and questioning not only the idea behind perfection, but also the sacrifice of self that must be made to achieve it. By carefully borrowing originals from comics Lichtenstein defines the new ideal, showing it as a fetish, vacant and pliable, and not an ideal that any postmodern woman would ever want to become.” The essay is well written and argued; the choice of Lichtenstein’s works is flawless; it puts secondary literature (Clearwater, Cowart, Mercurio, Schneider) to good use; it does not ramble for a second. Eadie’s piece, which shows maturity and critical detachment is original in its articulation of critical material and pictorial/textual analysis.”

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Dr. Mihailescu’s Advice 1. Do not use terrible similes (e.g. “The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.”).

2. Distinguish ‘it’s’ (it is) and ‘its’ (e.g. its own...).

3. Distinguish ‘imminent’ (about to happen) taken for ‘immanent’ (interior), or vice-versa.

4. Avoid muddled / awkward syntax.

5. Avoid long-winded / contorted / pedantic sentences (e.g. “He does not deny the imminent and real differences that exist between these historic and geographic forms of the baroque but he is convinced that these differences are not sufficient for creating a case for overstepping the common denominator of the paradigm: all these various historical apparitions of the baroque have in common the same morphology of movement and dynamism, of multipolarity and becoming, of recuperating an unmediated relationship to an untamed nature while at the same time projecting a naturalist sense of the supernatural.”).

Philosophy

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Esoteric Morality: A Response to Moral Nihilism

BY ADAM FINZI

PHIL 3720

96%

Normative ethics functions on the notion of reflective equilibrium; the act of comparing theories with their practical applications and vice versa in order to refine the theory and its real world implications. For example, a strict following of Kantianism disallows all forms of lying, a claim which may cause individuals to look back at the theory and either modify it or reject it altogether. In the case of esoteric morality however, reflective morality goes beyond affecting the normative theory itself but also causes its followers to completely reject moral nihilism, which is the belief that, “the existence of any moral value is denied,” (Wren, pg 111). For the purpose of this paper, I aim to give an account of esoteric morality and show how the view casts aside moral nihilism. First, this paper describes esoteric morality and evaluates John Rawls’ criticism of the view regarding his publicity condition. The next few paragraphs highlight the relationship between the publicity condition, ethical egoism, and moral nihilism in order to show how esoteric morality’s denial of the publicity condition results in its rejection of moral nihilism. Through this analysis of esoteric morality, I believe readers will come to realize the strengths of esoteric morality and consider Singer and Lazari-Radek’s argument as an acceptable response to moral nihilism.

Esoteric morality is the normative theory that certain actions done in secret are morally permissible.

Singer and Lazari-Radek characterize esoteric morality through certain examples such as the soldier case where,

[a] soldier is brought before a general, charged with desertion in battle, for which the mandatory penalty

is a long term of imprisonment. The soldier admits that he did desert, but begs for pardon, saying

that he does not want his two small children to grow up without a father. Only one or two other

people, who the general feels he can trust, know that the soldier deserted. The general assigns the soldier

to duties behind the front line, telling him he must never say a word to anyone about deserting, or being

charged with desertion. He tells his administrative officers to destroy all records of the charge and forget

all about it. (Singer and Lazari-Radek, pg 6).

The soldier case shows the basic principle behind esoteric morality, as although the general’s actions involve covering up the soldier’s betrayal and destroying evidence, the act is morally permissible due to it resulting in more net happiness than if the soldier is imprisoned. As well, esoteric morality supports the idea of morality being intrinsically valuable, as the general is risking his entire career to act morally. While this specific point concerning the intrinsic value of esoteric morality is further elaborated on, for now a simple understanding of esoteric morality is enough to move forward with this analysis of the normative view.

In order to inquire into the how esoteric morality argues against moral nihilism an account of John Rawls’ publicity condition is required. Singer and Lazari-Radek discuss the publicity condition in their paper when they state that,

[the] ‘publicity condition’ is a well-known aspect of John Rawls’ theory of justice. He holds that the

condition applies ‘for the choice of all ethical principles and not only for those of justice. He asserts that the publicity condition ‘arises naturally from a contractarian standpoint.’ Bernard Gert is another

advocate of a publicity condition. Morality is, for him, ‘an informal public system that applies to all

rational persons.’ By ‘public system’ he means that ‘all those whose behaviour is to be judged by the

system, understand it, and know what kind of behaviour the system prohibits, requires, discourages,

encourages and allows, (Singer and Lazari-Radek, pg 9).

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The publicity condition therefore rejects esoteric morality as it claims that moral theories are required to be known by the general public, while esoteric morality believes the opposite and that secret acts are morally justifiable. Singer and Lazari-Radek disagree with the publicity condition and disregard it because the publicity condition rules out esoteric morality simply on definitional grounds and assert that, “[we] deny it, for the simple reason that such a definition of ethics, or morality, unduly narrows the most important practical question it is possible to ask,” (Singer and Lazari-Radek, pg 9). Provided that individuals do not specifically hold the publicity condition as a necessary aspect of morality, esoteric morality remains a viable ethical theory. As such, through this evaluation of Rawls and Gert’s views on esoteric morality it becomes apparent that in order for esoteric moralists to embrace their beliefs, the concept of a publicity condition must be completed ignored.

By rejecting the publicity condition, esoteric morality leads its followers towards a disbelief in ethical egoism, which is the belief that individuals can only act in their own self interest concerning ethical actions.

For example, in The Republic Glaucon, an early ethical egoist, claims that justice lacks any intrinsic value and specifically states that, “no one is just of his own will but only from constraint, in the belief that justice is not his personal good, inasmuch as every man, when he supposes himself to have the power to do wrong, does wrong.”

(359c). Glaucon’s claim exemplifies the connection between ethical egoism and esoteric morality as the lack of a publicity condition within esoteric morality results in the inability for individuals to act in a fashion which results in better treatment by their peers. As esoteric morality pertains to moral actions done in secret, any individual who follows this ethical theory is unable to reap the benefits of being treated better by others, thereby showing that esoteric morality and ethical egoism are incompatible views. While this sentiment concerning ethical egoism does not directly explain esoteric morality’s disregard for moral nihilism, the next paragraph shows how ignoring the publicity condition results in esoteric morality acting as a counterargument to moral nihilism.

Although Glaucon’s argument is often used to explain ethical egoism I believe that a deeper analysis of his claims reveal that Glaucon advocates in favour of moral nihilism, due to his claim that individuals not only act in their own self interest when they act ethically, but would also rather act unethically if it was possible to do so without any repercussions. Glaucon discusses the idea of a shepherd coming across a ring of invisibility and argues that after becoming aware of the ring’s power the shepherd, “immediately [manages] things so that he [becomes] one of the messengers who [go] up to the king, and on coming there he [seduces] the king’s wife and with her aid [sets] upon the king and [slays] him and [possesses] his kingdom” (360a-b). As opposed to advocating in favour of the notion of ethical egoism Glaucon’s belief that human beings would rather disregard morality is more closely related to moral nihilism based on the shepherd`s actions. Although the shepherd usually acts ethically, given the opportunity, he would choose to be immoral instead and therefore places little to no intrinsic value into morality. Some critics may argue that it appears as if esoteric morality and moral nihilism have a fair bit in common, as the shepherd in Glaucon’s example acts immorally without being detected by the general public similarly to how an esoteric moralist acts morally without anyone else knowing. However, by choosing to act morally without anyone else’s knowledge, and therefore being unable to receive any material benefit for doing so, esoteric morality advocates that morality must have intrinsic value, or else nobody would engage in it. Consequently, esoteric morality is necessarily a counterargument to moral nihilism as it proves that morality possesses intrinsic value.

As discussed by this paper, esoteric morality acts as a counterargument to moral nihilism in virtue of its belief that morality possesses intrinsic value. By rejecting the publicity condition advocated by Gert and Rawls esoteric morality eliminates the possibility of esoterically moral acts being known by the general public. As ethical egoism argues that individuals act morally to receive better treatment by others, the necessity of the actions to be public contrasts with esoteric morality’s belief that certain moral actions must be done in secret. As moral nihilism’s belief that morality holds no intrinsic value results in Glauncon’s shepherd only acting moral in public, esoteric moralists disagree with this view, and place intrinsic value in morality due to individuals not receiving material benefits from their secret actions. While the view of esoteric morality is also not without its flaws, it clearly does have the virtue of being a suitable counterargument to moral nihilism.

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Works Cited Plato. Five Dialogues. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., 2002 Singer P. & Lazari-Radek. “Secrecy in Consequentialism: A Defence of Esoteric Morality.” Ratio 23 (2010): 34-58.

Wren, Thomas E. The Moral Domain: Essays in the Ongoing Discussion between Philosophy the Social Sciences. United States of

America: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990

Dr. Thorp’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8/10 Analysis: 8/10 Originality: 7/10 Clarity of Prose: 7/10 Overall Strength: 8/10

“This essay is a very clear introduction to the debate between esoteric morality and the publicity condition: it captures the issue very starkly and memorably, partly through its quotation of the “soldier case”. It relates this issue to that of moral nihilism. It is an A essay for the way in which it lets the reader get a clear grasp of the fundamental debate.”

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Should marriage be restricted to the union between one man and one woman or should homosexual couples be allowed to marry? Why?

BY ERIC AMATO

PHIL 2070 87%

In this paper I will argue that marriage should not be restricted to the union between one man and one woman, and that homosexual couples should be allowed to marry. The purpose of this paper is not to determine whether homosexual behavior is morally permissible; the arguments presented in this paper assume the morality of homosexuality. In considering whether marriage should be restricted to the union between one man and one woman one must first consider what constitutes marriage and the purpose of marriage.

In her article, “Normal marriage: Two views”, Maggie Gallagher, an opponent of same-sex marriage, set out two different conceptions of marriage. The first conception characterizes marriage as an entirely private arrangement “created by the couple for the couple”, an arrangement that the state should not be concerned about regulating. The second conception characterizes marriage as a social institution used by a state as a method of advancing particular ends within its society. Gallagher argues that, in light of the fact that the state does indeed have policies in place governing marriage, the first conception is not appropriate, since, if it were appropriate, such policies wouldn’t exist.

Based on this second conceptualization of marriage Gallagher makes a number of assumptions that support her argument against same-sex marriages. I will focus on three. First, she assumes homosexual couples are less capable of raising children than heterosexual couples; second, marriage is chiefly about procreation; and third, allowing homosexual marriages will have a substantial impact on how serious heterosexual couples take their familial responsibilities.

Gallagher reasons that since marriage is a social institution created by the state for a particular purpose, things which are inconsistent with that purpose do not need to be recognized by the state. The purpose of marriage, according to Gallagher, is to produce the best possible environment for couples to reproduce so that they are in a position to properly raise their children. The institution of marriage fosters such an environment by channeling “the erotic energies of men and women into a relatively narrow, but highly fruitful channel, to give every child the father his or her heart desires”. Gallagher argues that this type of environment, the type that normal marriages are designed to facilitate, is inconsistent with the message that would be sent if same-sex couples were allowed to get married. The message that would be sent by a society blessing same sex marriage is that children do not need both their mothers and fathers; a society that believes that choice, as opposed to biology, creates family bonds. Gallagher argues that the implications of such a message would undermine the values it takes to make good parents, and erode the “shared ideal” maintained by normal marriage, essential for the family structure that current and future generations depend on. In view of these apparent implications, Gallagher concludes that same-sex marriage is inconsistent with the objectives associated with normal marriage, and therefore ought not to be recognized by the state. However, In the process of arriving at her conclusions, Gallagher makes a number of assumptions which are false.

The first problem with Gallagher’s argument stems from her assumption that the fundamental objectives of the institution of marriage are necessarily concerned with “the procreation of children” This is false, in fact courts have recognized that marriage serves other purposes than procreation on numerous occasions. Evan

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Wolfson, in his paper “Enough Marriage to Share” describes a number of such occasions. For instance, in a 1996 trial held in Hawaii, Judge Kevin Chang offers a number of alternative objectives, that both homosexual and heterosexual couples commonly associate with marriage. To name a few: “emotional closeness”; “legal and economic protection”, “stability and commitment”. This presents a serious problem for Gallagher, whose argument against same-sex marriage relies on the notion that same -sex marriage is inconsistent with the proper childbearing environment that normal marriage is designed to promote. Evidently, the state has identified things other than procreation among the recognized objectives of marriage. So, even if we concede that same-sex marriage is inconsistent with the childbearing objectives of normal marriages, that does not mean that same-sex marriage is inconsistent with the many other objectives of normal marriages recognized by the state. While, due to obvious physical limitations, homosexual couples may not be able to offer the same childbearing as heterosexual couples, it is difficult to make an argument as to why same-sex marriages would not offer the same emotional closeness, or economic protections as normal marriages.

Second, even if the objective of normal marriages is limited to the procreation of children, it does not follow that same-sex marriages are inconsistent with that objective. Gallagher assumes that homosexual parents are less capable of raising children than heterosexual parents. It appears that this assumption rests on the notion that in order for a child to develop properly both the child’s biological father and biological mother must be present in their upbringing. Children who are raised by homosexual couples can’t by definition be raised by their biological mother and father. However according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “there is simply no evidence, scientific or otherwise, to suggest that gay parents are any less fit, or that their children are any less happy, healthy, and well adjusted.” Contrary to what Gallagher seems to assert, most evidence suggests that it is the quality care within a household, not traditional structure that matters when raising children. Gallagher’s ideal “ where a man and a woman join not only their bodies, but their hearts and their bank accounts” does not guarantee a child’s protection any more than two men in the same situation. The traditional family model is not the only one that exists, and certainly is not the only one that works. Finally, this objection does not necessarily go the issue of whether same sex marriage should be allowed. As, with “normal marriages” between a man and a woman, it is possible that the couple either does not want to have children or is unable to have children. If Gallagher’s real concern is the wellbeing of children raised by a gay couple then the appropriate way of providing that protection is through laws on adoption and child protection, not through the outlawing of same sex marriage.

Third, Gallagher calls marriage “an institution in crisis” and feels that permitting same-sex couples to marry will leave it in even worse shape. According to Gallagher, the acceptance of same-sex marriage will ignite a shift away from the traditional values normal marriages encourage that will weaken the parental and familial norms essential for good parents to be “made” Here, Gallagher makes the mistake of thinking that rejecting same-sex marriage will somehow reverse the tide on issues such as divorce and children born out of wedlock.

This trend exists and has existed within the construct of normal marriages, and is completely unconnected to same-sex marriages. Rather than preventing harm, the failure to recognize same-sex marriages only results in harm to homosexual, their families and the children they care for. Wolfson protests that “it simply makes no sense to” claim that protecting children is our top priority and then to “punish some kids” because they have homosexual parents.

In conclusion, Gallagher’s argument against same-sex marriage fails. The assumptions which form the basis for arguments against same-sex marriage are false. The state, on numerous occasions, has recognized the objectives of marriage to include things other than the procreation of children. There is no evidence that suggests that heterosexual couples are more capable of successfully raising a child than homosexual couples. The denial of marriage to same-sex couples does not help anyone, but treats homosexual people unfairly and causes harm to them and to many people that they are associated. Therefore, homosexual couples should be allowed to marry.

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Works Cited: Disputed Moral Issues A Reader (Second Edition), Edited by Mark Timmons

Dr. Thorp’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 8/10 Clarity of Prose: 9/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“This is an admirable essay, securely in the A range, because it is so clear,

straightforward, hard-hitting and convincing. It tackles a well-known kind of moral objection to gay marriage, and it does so by uncovering three of its presuppositions; it then proceeds to undercut those presuppositions pretty directly and convincingly: bam, bam, bam. The gay marriage issue is not any longer a live one in Canada, but it is still a matter of vigorous debate in many places in the developed world; this short essay seems to this reader to be a genuinely useful addition to that debate. This is a very intellectually satisfying essay: the author makes a strong case and makes it with conviction.”

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What Should Jim Do?

BY EVA MCGUIRE

PHIL 2700 90% In A Critique of Utilitarianism, Bernard Williams introduces the scenario of Jim in the Jungle. Jim, a tourist in South America, comes across armed men and twenty locals. Pedro, leader of the armed men, explains to Jim that due to recent protests against the government he and his men are about to kill the twenty locals to demonstrate the consequences of protesting. Pedro gives Jim a choice: either Jim kills one of the locals himself and Pedro will release the other nineteen unharmed, or, if Jim refuses to kill a local, Pedro will kill all twenty himself. The twenty locals understand the situation and beg Jim to kill one of them. I will try to answer what Jim should do in this scenario from a consequentialist perspective and from a deontological perspective. I will then argue which perspective I think is better.

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical system because it holds that the moral status of an action depends solely on its outcomes. This implies a teleological aspect, that is, that the moral status of an action depends on its capacity to produce a certain end. An action is right if it produces a desirable end and wrong if it produces an undesirable end. In this way, utilitarianism judges the utility of an action to produce an end. Happiness is the ultimate desirable end in utilitarianism but the definition of happiness differs among the types of utilitarianism. I will focus on the definition of happiness found in eudaimonistic utilitarianism proposed by John Stuart Mill.

Eudaimonistic utilitarianism is a response to Jeremy Bentham’s Hedonistic utilitarianism which equates happiness with pleasure, and the reverse of happiness with pain. Bentham claims that “pleasures, then, and the avoidance of pains, are the ends which the [moral agent] has in view”. Mill disagrees with the idea that pleasures are the sole aim in life so he redefines happiness. According to Mill, there are higher pleasures derived from our higher faculties and lower pleasures derived from our lower faculties. For example, a higher pleasure would be attending an opera which employs the intellect, and a lower pleasure would be eating which is derived from our natural instinct to feed ourselves. Mill argues that higher pleasures are better because people who have experienced both types of pleasure prefer higher pleasures. Therefore, happiness consists of producing as many higher pleasures as possible, in effect, of being noble.

We are not only concerned with promoting our own individual happiness but as much happiness as we possibly can because everyone is better off when everyone is happy. However, Mill is careful to respond to the objection that utilitarianism is too demanding because it requires individuals to consider the happiness of everyone when choosing their actions. Mill answers this by saying that in fact “the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all [the moral agent] has to attend to” because the good of the world is made up of the happiness of individuals. Theoretically we must be concerned with the happiness of the world but in practise we may narrow our scope and act so as to promote happiness for a few individuals. This is because the happiness of the world is in fact the aggregate of individual happiness. Therefore, if everyone concerns themselves with the happiness of a few individuals, everyone’s happiness will be covered and the world will be maximally happy.

We can reduce Jim’s situation to numbers. Jim can kill a local and make it impossible for that person to be happy, that is, to be noble. Or, Pedro can kill twenty locals which will make it impossible for them to be noble and therefore happy. Jim’s duty is to maximize happiness. It becomes obvious that Jim should kill the local because the happiness of only one is destroyed. If Pedro were to kill twenty, which is a consequence of Jim not killing one, and therefore Jim must take account of it when deliberating his action, then the happiness of twenty people is destroyed. The happiness of the world consists in the aggregate of individual happiness and each individual’s happiness weighs as much as another. The aggregate of nineteen people’s happiness is greater than the aggregate of one. To maximize happiness Jim should kill the local.

We can also argue that Jim should kill one local if we return to the point that everyone is better off when everyone is happy. On the one hand, if Jim does not kill the local, that means twenty people capable of being

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noble and making others better off are removed from the world. On the other hand, if Jim kills the local the world only loses one person capable of being noble and makings others better off. The happiness of nineteen people will extend farther than the happiness of one, therefore, Jim should kill the one local.

Deontology holds that actions are intrinsically right or wrong. For example, it is a feature of lying to be wrong, and a feature of preserving one’s life to be right. According to Kant’s deontology, reason guides the will and its highest function is to produce a good will, which is the highest good. Having a good will is necessary to being moral. The foundation of Kant’s ethical system is the idea of the good will, and its necessary presence in an individual for that individual to be able to act morally.

Kant believed that all moral obligations are absolutely necessary; that is, they must be fulfilled regardless of context. Kant qualifies the moral worth of an action in three ways. Firstly, to have moral worth an action must be done for the sake of fulfilling a moral obligation. To illustrate, a woman may donate to the poor and we might think she has fulfilled a moral obligation to help those in need. Kant specifies that unless she donated to the poor for the sake of fulfilling her moral obligation to help those in need, her action was amoral, or, outside the moral sphere. It cannot be labelled as right or wrong. Secondly, the moral worth of an action is judged by the principle of the action instead of by the consequence of the action. By principle of the action, Kant means the reason guiding the action. To return to the example of the woman donating to the poor, we must resist the utilitarian temptation to judge her action as right, because it helps the poor, and look instead toward her principle which could be “so that I may be more highly esteemed by others, I will do good deeds”. Judging by her principle, the woman’s donation to the poor is not morally right according to Kant. Thirdly, an action done out of respect of the moral law is what makes up duty. The woman may choose to donate to the poor because she has extra cash on hand that day. Kant would say that she should donate to the poor regardless of whether or not it is the case of having extra cash, because to donate to the poor is a duty dictated by moral obligations which are absolutely necessary. The fact that a moral action is absolutely necessary means that it must be done regardless of context or details, such as having extra cash. Therefore, if it were the case that the woman would not donate to the poor if she did not have extra cash, then in the case where she does have extra cash the woman’s donation to the poor has no moral value because it does not conform to absolute necessity.

In Kantian ethics, the moral law is the Categorical Imperative. It is categorical because it is a quality of the law to either be obeyed, or to not be obeyed. It is imperative because it must be obeyed. This follows from Kant’s emphasis on the absolute necessity moral obligations have.

For the purpose of this essay, I am only going to focus on the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative which demands that we “act in such a way that [we] always treat humanity, whether in [our] own person or the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means”. Good will is the highest good, which means it is an end in itself because it cannot be any more good. Since we are rational beings capable of the good will, we must be recognized as ends in ourselves as well. Furthermore, just possessing a rational nature makes us ends in ourselves. Therefore it is wrong to treat someone merely as a means and we must always treat people as ends in themselves. To use someone as a mere means would be failure to recognize that person as a rational agent able to adopt and pursue her own ends. Any principle of our actions must consider humans as ends in themselves. If the maxim leads to treating humans merely as means, then the action is morally wrong.

Jim’s principle is something like “when I am faced with a situation in which unless I kill one person, twenty will die, I will kill the one person”. We can see even in the language of the principle that Jim is concerned with the consequences of his action, that is, if he does not kill one local twenty will die. The clause “unless I kill one person, twenty will die” can be represented as ~K T where “K” represents “I will kill one person” and “T” represents “Twenty will die”. This expression is a conditional which represents the consequences, T, of the antecedent, ~K. Kant says that when judging the morality of an action we must not give any consideration to the consequences of the action. We must dismiss considering the death of twenty people, because it is a consequence of Jim’s action, and instead we focus simply on Jim’s action of killing a local.

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Jim does not abide by the second formulation of the moral law if he kills a local because he would be using her merely as a means. By terminating her life Jim fails to recognize this person as having absolute worth, as a rational agent capable of adopting and pursuing her owns ends, because he makes it impossible for her to adopt or pursue her ends. Because he would be treating her as a mere means if he killed her, Jim must not kill her.

Both the consequentialist and the deontological perspectives have their weaknesses, but I think the deontological argument is more sound than the utilitarian argument.

The problem with the utilitarian argument is that Jim has to choose between having one person die or having twenty people die due to his actions. From this view, the difference between one dead and twenty dead is obvious: having one dead is better and one must act to bring that about. But I argue that utilitarianism reduces the difference to a matter of numbers, when in fact the difference is between Jim, an agent, killing one person and another person, a separate agent from Jim, killing twenty. It is true that Jim is a cause of Pedro killing twenty.

But this is different from Jim actually killing twenty. Even Jim’s significance as a cause can be questioned. If Jim had not happened across the situation in the first place Pedro would have killed the twenty people anyway. Jim is not a sufficient or even a necessary cause for the deaths of twenty people because they would have died even in his absence. Therefore the claim that Jim is the cause of the deaths of twenty locals is weak. Moreover, even if he were a necessary and sufficient cause, utilitarianism is still somewhat counterintuitive in the way that it does not matter who specifically does a certain action; what matters is that an agent is responsible in some way for the consequences of the action. As Williams says “But for consequentialism, all causal connexions are on the same level, and it makes no difference […] whether the causation of a given state of affairs lies through another agent, or not”. Therefore the problem is that utilitarianism does not account for certain agents being more, or less, responsible for certain consequences, based on the physical actions they took. In Jim’s case, utilitarianism does not account for him actually killing one versus Pedro killing twenty. It treats the whole situation as an effect of one of Jim’s actions, even though we could argue Jim is weakly responsible for the deaths of twenty.

The deontological argument is better because it fits with our idea to never kill. I refer to William’s idea of a commitment, which is a project with which we identify ourselves. In fact, it is possible to build one’s life around a commitment. For example, a person may commit to always caring for those he loves. If it would benefit a greater amount of people if he harmed a loved one, utilitarianism would require him to do it. This goes against the foundation he has chosen for his life. Williams says this is wrong, and assuming a similarity between commitments and duties, Kant would say this is wrong, too. We can assume a similarity between commitments and duties because like commitments, many people center their lives around certain duties, such as “never to kill” and “treat people with respect”. It is true that not all commitments fit with Kant’s strict sense of a duty, but the similarity lies in that they are both ideas about morality people adopt so as to have consistency in their behaviour. A common commitment in our world is to never kill. Assuming this is a commitment of Jim’s we intuitively think it would be wrong for him to go against this commitment. Therefore, the deontological argument is better because it is more in line with our intuition.

One weakness of deontology is that it asks us to completely disregard consequences of an action and this seems counterintuitive as well. However, on the whole I think utilitarianism will lead us to more counterintuitive acts then deontology would because in a utilitarian world any act can be justified if it maximizes happiness. For example, utilitarianism would condone a government that cuts back on services for a small amount of people, say those with serious mental disabilities, because it would lower taxes for everyone and would maximize happiness. Whereas deontology safeguards certain notions many people agree on and forbids the violation of these notions. For example, it safeguards our notion that we should never kill. Although deontology requires us to disregard the consequences of our actions, it preserves notions many people hold, and it aligns with our intuition that these notions should never be violated. In conclusion, I think we prefer an ethical system in which there is a consistency in the rightness or wrongness of acts, such as the deontological system, over an ethical system which

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can justify an action as right in one scenario and wrong in another, such as the utilitarian system.

In summary, from a consequentialist perspective Jim should kill the local and from a deontological perspective Jim should not kill the local. I argue that deontology gives a better argument for what Jim should do because it is more in line with our intuition than the consequentialist argument.

Bibliography Bentham, Jeremy. “Classical Hedonism.” In Moral Philosophy: A Reader Fourth Edition, edited by Louis P. Pojman, and Peter Tramel,

120. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009.

Driver, Julia. “The History of Utilitarianism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009). Accessed November 26, 2012. http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/.

Johnson, Robert. “Kant’s Moral Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2012). Accessed November 26, 2012. http://plato. stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/.

Kant, Immanuel. “The Foundations of Ethics.” In Moral Philosophy: A Reader Fourth Edition, edited by Louis P. Pojman, and Peter

Tramel, 219-234. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009.

Mill, John Stuart. “Utilitarianism.” In Moral Philosophy: A Reader Fourth Edition, edited by Louis P. Pojman, and Peter Tramel 158 162. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009.

Pojman, Louis P., Tramel, Peter, eds. Moral Philosophy: A Reader Fourth Edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009.

Williams, Bernard. “A Critique of Utilitarianism.” In Moral Philosophy: A Reader Fourth Edition, edited by Louis P. Pojman, and Peter

Tramel, 175-183. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009.

Dr. Thorp’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8/10 Analysis: 8/10 Originality: 6/10 Clarity of Prose: 8/10 Overall Strength: 8/10

“This is an A essay because it is an extremely gripping deployment of

the tension between consequentialist and deontological moral theories: it is gripping essentially because of the power of the particular example that is spelled out: should Jim kill one of the tribesmen or not?

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Dr. Thorp’s Advice 1. Avoid apostrophe troubles: confusion about its and it’s; also, connected to this, the use of the “grocers’ plural”: tomato’s, potato’s, lemon’s, cherry’s….

2.

Do not confuse singular and plural forms of criterion, phenomenon, etc.

3. Do not use turgid to mean turbid. Turgid prose is bombastic and inflated; turbid prose is muddy, heavy, dense and slow-moving.

4.

Do not use “harken back” when the correct expression is “hark back”.

5.

Do not use “begs the question” to mean “gives rise to the question”.

Visual Art

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Laocoon and his Sons: The Aesthetics of Anguish

BY JACQUELINE GRASSI

VAH 1040 84%

Athens endured many tribulations during the time period in which Laocoon and his Sons was created.

For instance, Athens had faced defeat at the hands of the Romans, becoming a province of the ever-expanding empire in 146 BCE. Although Greek sculpture was still in demand, the city of Athens, which was once the epicenter for culture and learning, was never able to regain its former prestige. The sudden vulnerability of Athens, coupled with their recent experience with loss and suffering, was depicted through the artwork created by artists of the time period. The outward portrayal of emotion and the dynamic, violent composition of Laocoon and his Sons showed a heightened sense of agony representative of Greek suffering of the time. Laocoon and his Sons was an emotionally unnerving sculpture that drew in the viewer with its complex relationship between enrapturing aesthetics and disturbing subject matter.

Attributed by Pliny the Elder to three Rhodian sculptors, Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros, the sculpture is based on a Hellenistic masterpiece depicting Laocoon with only one of his sons. The second son was added to the Rhodian sculptors’ creation to match the account of Laocoon’s death, which Virgil describes in the Aeneid. It is a Greek legend that ends in tragedy, wherein the most well known version recounts Laocoon as a priest to the god Apollo. Laocoon warned the Trojans against bringing the fated wooden horse inside the city, although his efforts were in vain. Nonetheless, the gods who were enemies of Troy, were angered by Laocoon’s interference and sent two sea serpents that crushed Laocoon and his two sons to death. The sheer size of the piece, seven feet and roughly ten inches, as well its detail, spoke volumes of the importance the Rhodian sculptors placed on representing suffering in their art.

Many aspects of Laocoon and his Sons expressed the epitome of agony, from the twisted torsos of the figures to the pained faces of Laocoon and his children. A sweeping diagonal line was created along Laocoon’s body, the central focus of the piece, as he strained up and away from the serpents that encircled his limbs. Laocoon’s hands grasped at the coils of the serpents to wrench them away, his splayed legs were outstretched showing how he writhed in pain. The serpents wound their long, slender bodies about the arms and legs of Laocoon and his children, and while these coils served as an aid to the eye in exploring the composition, they also were the harbingers of death to the figures they entangled. One son lied limply, bound to his father’s leg by the snakes, his head titled helplessly toward his father as if beseeching Laocoon for help. Yet, heedless of his son’s suffering, Laocoon himself had thrown his head to the heavens and his mouth was carved in such a way that evoked the sensation of a silent scream. Laocoon’s other son was on the verge of freedom from the snake’s prison, his furrowed brow and agape jaw showed his horror at his family’s suffering, knowing he, too, would meet their fate.

The bunched fabric on the pedestal, which supported Laocoon, masked its structural function and the movement of the fabric further emphasized the contortions of the bodies of Laocoon and his two sons.

The entire composition was asymmetrically balanced, being heavily weighted on the left side. This unordered, organic presentation echoed the tumultuous and raw nature of the emotions expressed by Laocoon and his Sons. The sculpture underwent compositional variations over the centuries and it was suggested that a more compact, diagonally set pyramidal design was originally intended for the piece. A more compact composition may have increased the impact of the piece, however the elongated lines of Laocoon’s body that drew the eye from the top left of the composition down to the bottom right communicated the anguish of the sculpture as well. The execution of the piece in marble was exquisite in the representation of fine details, such as musculature, which enhanced the violent torsion of Laocoon’s figure and demonstrated how even the smallest details of the sculpture were conducive to the overall portrayal of agony.

In Virgil’s Aeneid II, 19 BC, he graphically describes the assault of the serpents upon Laocoon and his

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sons. In analyzing Virgil’s description of the assault and comparing it with the sculpture created according to his words, it is possible to learn what was important to the Greek sculptors when portraying anguish aesthetically.

The snakes attacked Laocoon’s sons first, “His sons, each serpent seizes, close entwined, and fastening on the poor limbs, make their meal.” This was fairly accurate in the sculpture, as the one son had gone limp already, indicating he was attacked before his father. Laocoon rushed to help his sons, but met his fate as well, “…Himself next…They seize, and wreath in their gigantic coils; Twice round the waist they’ve clasped him…Clung round his neck in sealed embrace…” This recounting in the Aeneid was not portrayed in the sculpture. In the sculpture, the serpents curled about Laocoon, but did not wrap around his torso. Perhaps this was due to the Greeks’ fondness for the portrayal of musculature and unwillingness to hide it within the coils of the serpents. However, the description of Laocoon’s actions himself were represented quite well in the sculpture, “…O’ertop him, head and neck high-lifted…while his hands wrench at the knotted coils to part them…” The sculpture showed Laocoon’s head raised and tilted back as he screamed and his hands grasped at the snakes as he flailed to no avail. From this analysis of the sculpture, two distinctions were discerned: In approaching a tragic scene, the Greek sculptors did not shy away from the horrifying details of the image; instead, the dead son and the grappling with the serpents were portrayed with dynamic movement and spectacular detail. The Rhodian sculptors treated the portrayal of anguish with no hesitancy. Conversely, the exaggerated musculature of Laocoon’s chest demonstrated that the sculptors had yet to abandon the Greek ideals of the body. Laocoon and his Sons was a partially accurate portrayal of the events in Virgil’s Aeneid; however, the piece was equally a product of the inspiration the sculptors took from the tale of the tragedy to create a disturbing composition depicting a man and his family in their final moments.

Considering Laocoon and his Sons as a product of Hellenistic Greece however, also prompts the art historian to look at the theories of Greek philosophers and their opinions that influenced the way art was perceived in Greece. Of these philosophers, the theories of Plato were in sharp contrast to what was portrayed by Laocoon and his Sons. Plato, who was not fond of the arts, believed that “art forms like tragedy, along with sculpture, painting, pottery, and architecture, not as ‘art’ but as ‘techne’ or skilled craft. He regarded them all as instances of ‘mimesis’ or imitation.” Plato criticized imitations because they could not depict the ideal realities. As well, Plato believed tragedy taught people that even if they were good, they could still have flaws, thus it gave people no incentive to cultivate their values or virtues. Would Plato have liked Laocoon? Probably not. To Plato, Laocoon and his Sons would have been an imitation of human emotions. As well, Laocoon and his Sons depicted a tragedy where a courageous man suffered dire consequences for trying to save his city. However, today’s art historians and theorists must bear in mind that the sculptors of Laocoon and his Sons came from a very different and changed Greece than did Plato. For these sculptors, Athens was no longer in its golden age. The Greeks had cultivated a sense that the epitome of mankind, which Plato praised, was unrealistic, and so chose to focus on a different set of values which were much more realistic and grounded in natural human emotions. The depiction of raw suffering in Laocoon and his Sons is much more real than the idealized quality that Greek sculptures had previously embodied.

The sculpture, Laocoon and his Sons, was a break from previous portrayals of perfect beings. This piece encapsulated how the Greeks were no longer disillusioning themselves with false ideas of reality. Laocoon and his Sons presented raw emotion and revealed the true nature of humans, showing the movement towards representing what was real in Greek art. Athens was no longer in its position of power, living a perfect reality. The accuracy with how the Rhodian sculptors portrayed anguish in Laocoon and his Sons demonstrated how Greece had undergone a drastic change in its social ideals and had begun to look at their own reality in a new light, finding beauty in the breakdown of Athens after its fall from power.

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VISUAL ART

Bibliography Freeland, Cynthia, Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 2001.

Howard, Seymour, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Jul., 1989).

Kleiner, Fred S., Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective, 13th Edition. Boston, MA: Clark Baxter,Wadsworth,

Cengage Learning, 2010, 2006.

“Laocoon.” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly (1876-1904) XIV, no. 2 (1882) https://www.lib.uwo.ca/cgi-bin/ezpauthncg?docview/

136911355? accountid=15115.

“Laocoon.” The New York Mirror: A Weekly Gazette of Literature and the Fine Arts (1823-1842) 1, no. 4 (Aug 23, 1823): 29-29. https://www.lib.uwo.ca/cgi-bin/ezpauthn.cgi/docview/136418904?accountid=15115.

Dr. Hatch’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 7/10 Analysis: 7/10 Originality: 1/10 Clarity of Prose: 10/10 Overall Strength: 7/10

“A very well-written essay with a nicely laid out analysis that explains the work discussed

clearly.”

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“Figuring” Out the Past: An Interpretation of the Valdivia Figurines

BY KRISTYN ROLANTY

VAH 2266

91%

Material objects are a window to the past and through them we can see how ancient societies structured their lives. The Valdivia figurines of Early Formative Ecuador offer insight into traditional Andean culture. The Valdivia were a sedentary society of horticulturalists that occupied the western lowland and coastal regions of Ecuador during the Early Formative period. Valdivia was the first ceramic producing culture of Ecuador and is well known for their small clay figurines, dating from 3300 to 2100 BCE. The majority of these figurines were discovered in the archaeological sites of Real Alto and Loma Alta along Ecuador’s Santa Elena Peninsula.

Standing between three and five inches, these small figurines depict both anthropomorphic and zoomorphic beings. The majority of these figurines are considered depictions of females and identified as Mother Goddesses or Venuses, thus suggesting the works functioned as cult objects of fertility and agricultural production. The attribution of female figurines to fertility cults is a hackneyed argument, and one that is too all-encompassing and generalizing. For example, these arguments do not take into consideration the stylistic variability of the figurines at Valdivia, nor do they acknowledge the possibility that these figures might not represent females at all.

Many of the Valdivia statuettes possess both female and male attributes and express ambiguous genders. The representation of both female breasts and male phallus in these figurines depicts neither male nor female individuals, thus suggesting a third category of gender.

Gender is a socially constructed concept that is distinguished from one’s biological sex. Not all cultures conform to a binary of opposite male and female, but rather view gender as fluid and relational. Gender can be characterized as the “cultural meaning given to an individual’s physical sex.” Many cultures include a third category of gender to account for the sufficient number of individuals who fall outside of the definitions of prescribed cultural behaviour. This tradition is culturally diverse and is expressed through a variety of terms across many different languages. Early anthropologists called these individuals “berdache;” however the term berdache is problematic due to its linguistic origins and its connection to European colonial conquest. Berdache comes from the Arabic word bardaj meaning “kept boy” or “male prostitute,” and was adapted by eighteenth century French travelers who applied this word to Native American homosexual males. The term connotes racist and homophobic colonial implications and also excludes females in this category of gender mixing. Dual gendered females are sometimes referred to as Amazons; however, this term is also problematic in that it emphasizes the warlike element of the masculine role and makes reference to a mythological culture from Antiquity. For the purposes of this paper, the terms two-spirited or dual gendered will be used to signify this third category of gender.

Instances of two-spirited individuals have been documented worldwide, particularly in North American Native cultures. These individuals adopt gendered identities that are neither male nor female, but an amalgamation of the two, and many enjoy high positions in society. It is important to note that dual gendered individuals are not defined in terms of sexual preference, and a discussion of two-spirit sexuality falls outside the realm of this paper. Two-spirited individuals represent a third category of gender that challenges the traditional dichotomous social organization.

Social organization is often inferred from the archaeological record. The Valdivia figurines have most commonly been interpreted by archaeologists as females and associated with fertility cults. Females are natural symbols of fertility because of their ability to bear children and this symbolism is extended to agricultural production. Many scholars attribute these Valdivia figurines as ritual objects used to ensure agricultural success.

While the argument that female statuettes reflect themes of fertility is a valid one, it does not necessarily

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apply to these Valdivia figurines because their genders are so obviously ambiguous. Many of the figures do appear to be female. However, some possess both male and female qualities, which is why I propose that they represent two-spirited individuals.

According to Richard Lesure, thirty-nine percent of the Valdivia figurines possess both breasts and elaboration in the pubic area in the form of protuberances. How do scholars account for these protuberances? The most widely held view is that they represent penises. However many scholars voice misgivings about prescribing these figurines with both breasts and penises and have invented alternative theories. David Blower describes the protrusions as “notches” and explains their presence as differentiating leg morphology. He argues that these notches represent leg separation, not a sexual organ. A simple examination of these figurines will discredit this argument, as most have both distinguishable legs and “notches.” Constanza Di Capua suggests that the bulges symbolize the woman’s newly shed menstrual blood, yet she does not truly defend her rationale, adding that “we can never know what, for the Valdivians, was the precise significance of the rare iconography of the bulge in the pubic region.” Di Capua largely ignores the phallic symbolism at play on these figurines and instead proposes an alternative hypothesis that the statuettes represent the successive stages of female physical development.

The milestones of physical maturity are designated into five categories: pre-puberty, puberty, adolescence, adulthood and pregnancy. Di Capua focuses on the hairstyles of the figurines and hypothesizes that the shaved heads denote female initiation rites into womanhood. She contends that the state between a girl’s first menstruation and complete physical maturity was signaled by the shaving of half of her hair, and as such is represented in the figurines with these mixed hairstyles. Intriguingly, these particular figurines also have mixed genitalia. I suppose that these figurines with half shaved hairstyles and dual genitalia represent two-spirited individuals. The asymmetric hairdo could signify the inclusion of both gendered identities and a blend of both male and female hairstyles. Di Capua’s argument that the figurines correspond to phases of female physical maturity is an interesting one, yet she fails to fully analyze and take into account the phallic protrusions on these females. Additionally, the stages in bodily development could be argued in favour of third gender representations. Many dual gendered individuals change their gender over a life span. An individual can substitute genders at any point in life, depending on their social need. For example, among the Laches of Columbia, once a mother has given birth to five consecutive males tribal law allowed for one of them to be made two-spirited and assume the role of a woman.

Likewise, among the Pueblo Zuni it was common to allow boys to become la’mana’ if a household was short on female workers. The Kaska culture of northern Canada would select a daughter to become male if a family needed a son to hunt for them. In interpreting the Valdivia figurines, Di Capua’s theory of physical development can be applied conceptually through this notion of transitional gender roles and identities.

Transitional states between male and female parallel the liminal states between earthly and supernatural realms. Some of the Valdivian figurines are comprised of two heads on a single body. These figures are often interpreted as shamans during hallucinogenic states of being. Two headed figures are common representations of dual consciousness during trance. While this theory may apply, the notion of dual gendered representations is also applicable to these double headed figurines. The two heads could symbolize the two genders dwelling in a single body. Two-spirited individuals emphasize the duality of simultaneous male and female aspects within the body. Two-spirited genders should not be viewed as ambiguous or uncertain but rather as additive or doubled.

Additionally, many dual gendered persons occupied positions as shamans. They were considered mediators between worlds because of their dual nature. For example, the California Cumash termed these individuals ‘aqi and believed that they could mediate the experience to the afterlife, as the journey involved both male and female supernatural entities. In Mesoamerican belief systems, many deities such as the maize god are dual gendered, therefore placing two-spirited individuals closer to the supernatural realm. These individuals were deemed spiritually gifted on account of their gender ambivalence and many acted as community shamans. Thus, the assertion that the Valdivian double headed figurines represent shamans in a state of trance coincides with my proposal that they could also represent two-spirit individuals.

The Valdivia figurines were mostly uncovered in pieces. Some scholars suggest that they were purposely broken after ritual use. For example, Rebecca Stone considers these figurines to be female fertility objects used to

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ensure reproductive success. Once a woman became pregnant the vehicle was destroyed. I tend to agree with other scholars like David Blower who suggest these figurines have broken naturally over time. Many of the breakages are likely due to structural weaknesses and deterioration over long periods of time. The fact that these figurines were found broken does not signify that they were female. Scholars also misattribute these statuettes as females due to their location of recovery. Archaeologists found most of these figurines among domestic refuse.

Some academics attribute the concentration of figurines in habitation areas as proof that they functioned in a domestic context. Their domestic locality indicates that they were used within the household, which is traditionally accredited as a female domain. To infer these figurines were female because they were discovered in a domestic setting implies that all objects in the household were necessarily female. Additionally, assigning spaces and objects to male or female activities is generally done on the “flimsiest” of grounds. However, if we entertain this theory, it can still be said that these figurines represent two-spirited persons because these individuals traditionally adopted the gender roles of the opposite sex. Gender roles are performative in that certain duties are traditionally done by men such as hunting and warfare and other tasks such as farming and gathering are carried out by women. Dual gendered individuals choose to undertake the occupational work associated with the opposite biological sex. For example, the Zapotec muxe dressed in traditional female attire and performed female duties such as weaving with other women. Lakota winktes often adopted the role of midwives, a traditional female occupation.

Although spheres of activities can be gendered, not all cultures adhere to these strict limitations. Gender roles and duties are relative and negotiable. The domestic location of the Valdivia figurines does not necessarily designate them as females, as two-spirited individuals challenge these notions of gendered spaces.

Many of the negative stereotypes concerning gender duality stem from colonial European misunderstandings. Western conceptions of gender binaries were projected onto traditional Native societies, generating misinterpretations and often intolerance of indigenous gender ambiguity. Many documents dating from the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica misrepresent gender duality as rampant homosexuality and sinful sodomy. As we gain an understanding of the diversity of human cultures, we also gain acceptance of different social practices.

Walter Williams writes that “Our awareness of alternative attitudes and roles can allow us to appreciate the diversity of the human population.” By looking to cultures that include two-spirit social categories we can develop more flexible understandings of gender roles in our own society.

In decoding the iconographic messages from material culture, we strive to comprehend the cultures of the past. By analyzing the clay figurines from Valdivia, archaeologists and academics can make inferences regarding the social organization of Early Formative Ecuador. While many scholars suggest these Valdivian figurines symbolize female fertility objects, I alternatively propose that they represent a third category of gender.

Many cultures view gender as fluid, relative, and negotiable. Two-spirited individuals embody a third category of gender that falls outside of a rigid sexual dichotomy. The inter-sexed Valdivian figurines that possess both female breasts and male penises could arguably be artistic representations of dual gendered individuals. Just as other scholars have inferred that these figurines symbolize female “Venuses” or fertility objects, I suppose that they characterize elements of a socially constructed flexible gender system. Examining these figurines through a gendered archaeological lens can bring fresh insights into the study of ancient community organization. These iconic figures are representational of broader themes of social ordering and much can be learned from them.

Thousands of years separate us from these cultures, yet their material objects bring us closer together.

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Bibliography Blower, David. “It’s All in the Stones: Identifying Early Formative Period Transition Through the Incised Stone Figurines of Valdivia,

Ecuador.” PhD diss., University of Calgary, 2001.

Bruhns, Karen Olsen and Norman Hammond. “A Visit to Valdivia.” Journal of Field Archaeology 10 (1983): 485-87.

Bruhns, Karen Olsen. “Sexual Activities: Some Thoughts On The Sexual Division of Labour And Archaeological Interpretation.” In The

Archaeology of Gender, edited by Dale Walde and Noreen D. Willows, 420-429. Calgary: University of Calgary Archaeological

Association, 1991.

Brumfiel, Elizabeth M. “Asking about Aztec Gender: The Historical and Archaeological Evidence.” In Gender in Pre-Hispanic America,

Edited by Cecelia Klein and Jeffrey Quitler, 57-86. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001.

Dean, Carolyn. “Andean Androgyny and the Making of Men.” In Gender in Pre-Hispanic America. Edited by Cecelia Klein and Jeffrey

Quitler, 143-182. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001.

Di Capua, Contanza. “Valdivia Figurines and Puberty Rituals: An Hypothesis.” In Andean Past, vol.4, Edited by Daniel H. Sandweiss

and Monica Barnes, 229-279. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Latin America Studies Program, 1994.

Estrada, Gabriel S. “Two-Spirit Histories in Southwestern and Mesoamerican Literatures”. In Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America 1400-1850, Edited by Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough, 165-184. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South

Carolina Press, 2011.

Gero, Joan M. and Cristina Scattolin. “Beyond Complementarity and Hierarchy: New Definitions for Archaeological Gender Relations.”

In Pursuit of Gender: Worldwide Archaeological Approaches, Edited by Sarah Milledge Nelson and Myriam Rosen-Ayalon,

155-171. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2002.

Joyce, Rosemary A. “Gender and Mesoamerican Archaeology.” In Worlds of Gender: The Archaeology of Women’s Lives Around the Globe, Edited by Sarah Milledge Nelson, 201-217. Plymouth: Alta Mira Press, 2007.

Klein, Cecelia F. “None of the Above: Gender Ambiguity in Nahua Ideology.” In Gender in Pre Hispanic America, Edited by Cecelia F.

Klein and Jeffrey Quitler, 183-253. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001.

Lang, Sabine. Men as Women, Women as Men: Changing Gender in Native American Cultures. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.

Lesure, Richard G. “A Comparative Perspective on Figurines from Early Village.” Paper presented at the Sixth Gender and

Archaeology Conference, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, October 6-7, 2000.

Lesure, Richard G. Interpreting Ancient Figurines: Context, Comparison and Prehistoric Art. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Lillios, Katina T. “Reviews.” Review of Interpreting Ancient Figurines: Context, Comparison, and Prehistoric Art, by Richard G. Lesure,

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 22(2): 291-292.

Metropolitan Museum of Art department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Valdivia Figurines”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of

Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/vald/hd_vald.htm Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Double-Headed Figure [Ecuador; Valdivia] (1980.34.1).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New

York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1980.34.1 Stone, Rebecca R. Art of the Andes: From Chavin to Inca, 3rd edition. London: Thames & Hudson, 2012.

Trexler, Richard C. Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas. Cambridge:

Polity Press, 1995.

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Williams, Walter L. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.

Zeidler, James A. “Gender, Status and Community in Early Formative Valdivia Society.” In The Archaeology of Communities: A New

World Perspective, Edited by Marcello Andrea Canuto and Jason Yeager, 161-181. London: Routeledge, 2000.

Zeidler, James A. “The Equadorian Formative.” In The Handbook of South American Archaeology, Edited by Helaine Silverman and

William H. Isbell, 459-488. New York: Springer, 2008.

Dr. Hatch’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 10/10 Analysis: 8/10 Originality: 4/10 Clarity of Prose: 8/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“This essay demonstrates excellent research skills and a very good use of the

material in constructing the arguments. The author handles the complexities of the discussion in such a way that her points are always clearly made without loosing the nuances of the issues involved.”

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Tarsila do Amaral: The Quintessential Brazilian Modern Artist?

BY KACIE OLIVER

VAH 3392 94%

Tarsila do Amaral is often depicted as the quintessential Brazilian modern artist and, indeed, there is no doubt that she was a key artistic figure in Brazil in the early twentieth century. There is also no question about the analysis of her work as a crucial component in understanding the development of Brazilian modern art. Her work is identified in a series of phases, often with special emphasis on her Anthropophagy phase as the most important and most Brazilian. However, many of her advocates omit significant tensions surrounding her work in an attempt to relay a clean-cut version of Modernism. Situating do Amaral within the wider framework of Modernism regarding Mexico and Canada will help to contextualize her work by showing that there were other artists dealing with similar issues at the same time. Moreover, by analyzing the differences and similarities between her phases, in conjunction with the evaluation of her advocates’ opinions, I will identify multiple problems inherent in portraying this clean-cut version of Modernism and to the privilege assigned to do Amaral and her Anthropophagy phase. My intention is to point out that, perhaps, her work is not as radical, avant-garde or distinctively Brazilian as it is conventionally portrayed. In this sense, it is in keeping with Susan Stanford Friedman’s discussion of modernism by trying to keep the fragmentations and paradoxes alive. The analysis of do Amaral and her advocates will constitute the bulk of this essay, but first I will briefly position her in relation to contemporary movements from Mexico and Canada.

The main thread connecting art movements in Brazil, Mexico and Canada during the early and mid-twentieth century is the use of art as a tool for attaining a national identity and gaining independence from Europe by rejecting Academic conventions. There are also recurrent tensions within each region; everything is not as well-groomed as it seems. These tensions include but are not limited to: rebellion becoming the establishment, excluding many artists by privileging a few, and the vast amount of European influence in artworks that are supposedly distinctively Brazilian, etc.

In short, though each region turned to their own country for art content, the Mexican muralists were more politically-oriented, the Group of Seven was more passive and concerned with the Canadian landscape, and do Amaral, along with her second husband Oswald de Andrade, was preoccupied with producing hybridity between Brazil and Europe. The convergences and divergences can be seen in the manifestos of each.

The “Manifesto of Pau-Brasil Poetry” and “Anthropophagite Manifesto” – the two main manifestos written by Andrade – function as primarily aesthetic manifestos which omit addressing politics or social class distinctions within Brazil. Note that the conceptual framework of the manifestos of Andrade and do Amaral’s Pau-Brasil and Anthropophagy phases is analogous and indivisible. The first phase, Pau-Brasil, is about the exportation of Brazilian art and poetry rather than the importation of European art and poetry. The Anthropophagy phase is, or seems, much more aggressive in the cannibalistic visual given as a metaphor for Brazil devouring European art in order to spit out something that is distinctively Brazilian. On the other hand, the “Manifesto of the Union of Mexican Workers, Technicians, Painters, and Sculptors” (1923), written by David Siqueiros, signed by Diego Rivera and others, is not just an artistic manifesto, but functions as a political statement to motivate the working class. The Mexican manifesto is also trying to differentiate Mexico, but Siqueiros disregards Europe altogether, claiming that real global change will happen in the Americas, not Erope.

Therefore, it does not promote the notion of hybridity.

Moving north to Canada, we find the Group of Seven which looked to the Canadian landscape to create a national art – again, an echoed theme. Though a similar influence of Europe is evident, the Group of Seven did not justify its turn to Canadian subject matter because of any European fascination with Canadian culture. This is worth mentioning as this diverges from do Amaral because, as I will explain, do Amaral very much validated

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her turn to Brazil on European interests. For the most part, the group’s goal remained an aesthetic one: “rais[ing] art consciousness, and by so doing, improv[ing] conditions for artists in Canada.” In this sense it is more similar to do Amaral’s goals.

Despite these countries’ goals to try to differentiate themselves from Europe, there was still much influence coming from Europe – a common paradox that I will closely examine regarding do Amaral. The common attribute of Modernism of incorporating tradition manifests in each region not necessarily as the incorporation of traditional Academic conventions, but rather as the incorporation of the developing tradition of European modernism. This is an inevitable effect though, as Claus Cülver explains, all colonial cultures are motivated by a “dialectic of the reproduction of the other and the self-exploration” which in turn produces a “mosaic of paradoxes.” Lawren Harris of the Group of Seven admitted himself that they had yet to develop “a standard of [their] own in the arts.” It is this mosaic of paradoxes in do Amaral that I will now address.

As previously noted, do Amaral is viewed as the artistic prototype Brazilian modernist. Her work is not only seen in phases but as a progression from the start, peaking at the Anthropophagy phase, with less value assigned to subsequent phases. I now seek to clarify the privileging of the Anthropophagy phase within her artistic career as well as the privileging of do Amaral herself as the primary model for Brazilian Modernism. I propose that despite her importance, she is not as distinctively Brazilian or radical as usually described. I also propose that the phases within her work should be analyzed as transformations when considered collectively, not as a progression and then an inevitable decline, if she is said to peak mid-career. These proposals stem from the copious amount of European influence and from the idea that not one phase is better than the other as they all promote and challenge different notions of Modernism.

Firstly, though do Amaral had full intentions of creating a distinctively Brazilian aesthetic, due to the vast absorption of European modernist aesthetics, she is not as unique as scholars such as Aracy Amaral (no relation to Tarsila) depict her. Aracy Amaral, Carol Damian and Rita Shannon Koeser – the latter two in particular – promote the notion of Modernism as understood in relation to Academic traditions, and claim that do Amaral is radical and new because she rejects all those traditions. However, they fail to mention that the tradition at this time was increasingly becoming European Modernist conventions, to which do Amaral fully adhered.

In the 2010 article, “Brazil: Body and Soul,” Koeser paints do Amaral as a young, rebellious woman, brave enough to live her own life and who studied in Paris “with all the important musicians, artists and writers” and “broke all the rules in her work.” However, the courage to rebel against aristocratic parents and the Academy in Brazil does not necessarily constitute a breakage of all the rules. Traveling to Europe and learning antiAcademic strategies does not necessarily make anyone that new – this strategy can be seen as merely complying with European modernist conventions instead of Academic ones. Furthermore, Aracy Amaral describes the artwork styles, including do Amaral’s, in the Week of Modern Art held in 1922 in Brazil, as ranging from expressionism to postimpressionism and “half-baked cubism.” What is so incredibly radical about “half-baked cubism”?

Moreover, Damian and Koeser both state that do Amaral, once she discovered that the European modernist artists were fascinated with exotic, non-Western cultures, realized that she could turn to Brazil’s indigenous culture “for inspiration while applying the new ‘primitive’ aesthetics” now prominent in the European modernist vocabulary. However, the tension with this, that neither identifies, is the fact that this “new ‘primitive’ aesthetic” is a European convention. Therefore, by using this convention, she seems to endorse the primitivism that Europe imposes on her culture as she does not appropriate it in a form of criticism. This conclusion follows from the facts that she justified much of her style and content on European grounds, and that she and Andrade adamantly promoted the notion of the hybrid between European and Brazilian culture rather than just trying to be Brazilian and not consuming European art at all. In fact, in Damian’s article, do Amaral is quoted saying, “don’t think that this Brazilian trend is looked down upon” in Europe. Note the use of her word trend.

One of the main problems with Damian, Koeser and Aracy Amaral’s assessments of do Amaral is the fact that, using Koeser as an example as she is most recent, they claim that do Amaral was trying to “eliminate excess European influence and dominance in Brazilian arts and culture” while also claiming that her work was

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“incorporat[ing] the new trends of Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism to portray the Brazil she loved.” Damian also constantly draws parallels between do Amaral’s formal techniques and that of the European modern artists. Critical analysis of this contradiction shows that the breaking free of European academic conventions creates an illusion of breaking free from Europe. This is an illusion because, as previously noted, often what wound up happening is that artists of colonized cultures are instead conforming to European modernist conventions.

Do Amaral seems to fall for this illusion in particular, considering that she admits she turned to her own culture because of the European fascination with exotic cultures. Moreover, Damian explains – though does not critique – that do Amaral is the ideal Brazilian modernist whose success was credited due to the acceptance of her painting Figura into the 1922 Salon exhibition in Europe. It seems as though the more credit do Amaral received in Europe, the more Brazilian she felt – a little counter-intuitive. Although this paradox could result from the fact that these cultures were still new and had yet to develop their own distinctive style, one should not overlook the fact that European influence was still dominating, though in a different manner.

It is undeniable that her, and the other Sao Paulo artists, drew great inspiration from Brazil and should be credited for the development of Brazilian art. It is still true that her wonderfully vibrant paintings “celebrated the vast and varied landscape and indigenous traditions.” One could also read some of them as manifestations of her concern for the deforestation of Brazilian jungles and the “impact of industrialization and modernization,” even if some seem to simultaneously promote this modernization of Brazil, as seen in a painting from the Pau-Brasil phase: A Gare (1925) (Figure 1). This work depicts a very industrialized Brazil, with two estranged Brazilian trees placed in the middle to the right, overcome by the modernity of Brazil. A Gare also illustrates her incorporation of European modernist aesthetics. The influence of works by Fernand Leger, e.g., The Woman and the Child (1922), is almost immediately apparent with its similar vibrant colouring and flat, geometric shapes.

When she does aim for more three-dimensional images, she employs virtually the same shading technique as in The Woman and the Child – also seen in An Angler (1925) (Figure 2), another work in her Pau-Brasil phase. The effect of Montparnasse cubists and the European modernist convention of naïve, childlike art, and going back to the basics – the elemental shapes – is obvious in her work.

Regardless of the contentions above, her work does attempt to escape from the aestheticism that Bürger identifies as the point where the self-criticism of art was made possible. Despite her reliance on Europe for support in terms of both form and content, she definitely had a nationalistic agenda and was trying to engage in the social realm in the sense of trying to use art to gain a national identity. However, she does not engage in politics nor does her work really have a socio-political critique – a key aspect of the avant-garde. Therefore, aside from the above European associations, I have a query about her status as such a radical, ideal Brazilian artist even within her own country, and the fact that her earlier work, particularly the Anthropophagy phase, is “considered the most important of her career.” This query has to do with her status as a bourgeois woman who “enjoyed a life of wealth and privilege,” always wearing “enormous earrings and clothes made by the best designers.” Although do Amaral was searching for a “Brazilian reality,” this reality was only realized insofar as artworks and manifestos did “not simply copy foreign schools.” Therefore, that kind of “Brazilian reality” does not necessarily entail dealing with the social reality and class distinctions in Brazil. As the quote indicates, Aracy Amaral identifies the first part but does not touch on the fact that if do Amaral only ensured her work did not copy foreign schools, this still gave her freedom to be as Brazilian bourgeois as she pleased. It seems contradictory to label her work as capturing Brazil’s quintessence when it not only remains a hybrid with Europe but also remains separate from the working class of the country – the people who really contain the essence of Brazil. One can see hierarchies bleeding through her work in paintings such as A Negra (1923) (Figure 3).

In A Negra, do Amaral “celebrates the black ‘nanny’ as the source of nourishment and Brazil’s black laborers as the backbones of society.” Though Damian praises her for this, one can also see this celebration as confirming and justifying the nanny’s and workers’ places in life by saying their places are important. I also have trouble with her application of conventional ‘motherly’ imagery – harmonious with nature – and the woman’s extenuated sexual features, in this case, the breasts. This is typical in depictions of so-called ‘primitive’ women by European modern artists of this time period, e.g., Henri Matisse’s Blue Nude (1907). I comment on these aspects

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in her work because Modernism is usually seen as attempting to unmask ideologies and hierarchies, and here it seems to reveal the second part of Stanford Friedman’s second parataxis by normalizing the black ‘nanny’s’ and black laborers’ places in society. Therefore, analysis of this work shows that Modernist works do not always unmask ideology, and suggests that perhaps do Amaral should not be labeled as the most radical, ideal Brazilian modernist.

However, once her life of luxury ended and she travelled to Russia, she underwent another transformation which resulted in her social realism phase, as noted above. She became a bit more attentive to politics and critical of the class distinctions. One resulting work was Segundo Class (1931) (Figure 4). Here she depicts the faces of Russian poverty, as when she travelled she became “aware of the suffering of people everywhere.” This phase is significant too, and perhaps contains less European influence – one reason why there should not be an elevation of her Anthropophagy phase, which leads me to my last sub-topic.

The Anthropophagy phase should not be privileged over the other phases nor should the other phases be seen as stepping stones or decreased in value in any way for multiple reasons.

Firstly, the privileging of the Anthropophagy phase challenges conventional notions of modernism as the transient or ephemeral, as attributed by Baudelaire – though perhaps this also says something about Modernism itself too, as well as an aspect identified by Bürger. Her works like Abaporu (1928) (Figure 5), though rendered much differently than academic paintings which are conventionally associated with timelessness, are very eternal in the ancient subject matter and static figures. Despite its formal differences, Abaporu reminds me of a timeless history painting from the Neoclassical era, but rather than alluding to ancient Greek mythology, she is alluding to her own ancient mythology of the sciapod, i.e., the creature in Abaporu. Following from this timelessness, one can conclude that this phase also should not be privileged over the others from a Bürger standpoint because it does not really attempt to integrate art into the praxis of life – the key aspect for the development of the avant-garde. Furthermore, though I do not deny that Anthropophagy incorporates something that is Brazilian in the sense that it goes back to Brazil’s ancient cannibalistic tribes, it still is not strongly associated with the current daily life in modern Brazil other than in the metaphorical way. It could be argued that it might be harder for non-artists, especially of the lower classes, to identify with that kind of work because they are not consuming European art in the same way the São Paulo artists were. Perhaps the lower classes feel more over run by Europe, which is why a non-hybrid strategy suggested by Oiticica in Tropicália could be more effective.

Secondly, Anthropophagy actually seems to be more, or at least as, encouraging than Pau-Brasil of the importation of European aesthetics. Even though the point of Anthropophagy was to eventually spit out something that was distinctly Brazilian, due to the consumption of the European aesthetics, it is still really a conglomeration of the imported aesthetics. The resulting product is the hybrid that Oiticica critiques. However, this does not mean that another phase should be privileged either. Anthropophagy and all of do Amaral’s advocates promote the idea of modernism as an amalgamation of all sorts of aspects. Using the notion of cannibalism “as a means to create a Brazilian identity through cultural absorption” is most certainly modern, it just may not constitute as much of a rupture as it is often made out to be. This idea was also identified by Claus Cülver. He states that modernism in non-European cultures was still predicated on the “traditional dependence on European models” which eventually led “once more” to a Latin American culture, i.e., Brazil, to use the cannibal as a metaphor for ingesting and digesting European models in order to produce an “ultimately different expression.”

Even a brief analysis of do Amaral’s Abaporu, the first and perhaps ironically most privileged work in her Anthropophagy phase, illustrates that phase should not be privileged as more Brazilian. Abaporu is very reminiscent of Surrealism. The disproportionate hands and feet recall Salvador Dali; the spidery sun was a symbol repeatedly depicted in Joan Miró’s paintings. Surrealism resonates in the whole eery, dream-like nature of the painting. However, credit should be given to do Amaral for the enlarged feet as this was based on mythology whereby the sciapod – the mythical creature in the painting – would use “his giant foot to shield himself from the sun and rain.” However, in all fairness, there are works in the Pau-Brasil phase that both seem to incorporate just as much European influence such as the previously mentioned A Gare, and works that perhaps seem less influenced by European works, such as An Angler, which depicts a Brazilian woman in the native landscape. Thus,

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there is still European influence in both, but the point is that neither should be privileged over the other.

Moreover, though do Amaral’s advocates privilege the Anthropophagy phase, after her social realist phase described above, she returns to a renewed Pau-Brasil-Anthropophagy, not simply a renewed Anthropophagy.

An example of the Neo-Pau-Brasil-Anthropophagy phase is Primavera (1946) (Figure 6). The giant figures of her Anthropophagy phase are again in a rural Brazilian setting – a beach in particular. The childlike, geometrical aspects are gone, replaced by a more painterly style. Perhaps do Amaral had developed more her own style with less European modernism influence evident. This development is another reason why each phase should be treated separately as transformations without privileging the earlier phases.

Lastly, the idea of the cannibal – which drives the Anthropophagy phase – is not as radical and as new as it is represented. Michael Korfmann explains the idea of the cannibal is not rare in history and Dada and Surrealism were often discussed in terms of cannibalism. Therefore, it seems that do Amaral – and de Andrade, too – perhaps received more than just the formal, dream-like quality of the paintings from Surrealism but perhaps the entire notion of cannibalism. On the contrary, I do not actually think they received the entire notion of cannibalism from them, but, the relevant point here is that it is not as radical as claimed.

Given all the above tensions, even if an artist or a group of artists was essential to the development of art in a particular region or aesthetic, there will always be problems with labeling one as quintessentially Brazilian or quintessentially [insert genre here]. Of course, including everything is impossible; hence there will always be inclusions and exclusions. However, as Stanford Friedman said, it is important to be aware of these inclusions and exclusions and address them, not simply constitute the inclusion as all that is important. If you do not address the exclusions then you are basically promoting the tradition of privileging the individual, genius artist(s) over all the others which has two contentions. Firstly, this is not a modernist notion, as it dates back to the Renaissance with the rise of the individual artist, e.g., Vasari and his Lives of the Artists. And secondly, this is contrary to the avant-garde aim to integrate art into the praxis of life because it makes the artist remain separate from the praxis of life. Therefore, their elevation of do Amaral as a, or the, quintessential modernist ignores important paradoxes that should be considered in order to gain a better understanding of the context surrounding her art production.

Bibliography Amaral, Aracy. “Stages in the Formation of Brazil’s Cultural Profile.” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 21 (1995): 8-25,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1504129 (accessed November 28, 2012.)

Andrade, Oswald de. “Manifesto of Pau-Brasil Poetry.” Latin American Literary Review 14, no. 27 (1986): 184-187, http://www.jstor.

org.proxy1.lib.uwo.ca/stable/20119419 (accessed October 21, 2012).

Andrade, Oswald de. “The Anthropophagite Manifesto.” Translated by Dawn Ades. In Readings in Latin American Modern Art, edited

by Patrick Frank, 24–27. Yale University Press, 2004.

Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne. London: Phaidon Press, 1964.

Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Translated by Michael Shaw. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Clüver, Claus. “The ‘Ruptura’ Proclaimed by Brazil’s Self-Styled ‘Vanguardas’ of the Fifties.” In Avant-Garde Critical Studies, 161-196.

Rodopi, 2006.

Friedman, Susan Stanford. “Definitional Excursions: The Meanings of Modern/Modernity/Modernism.” Modernism/modernity 8, no. 3

(2001): 493–513.

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Hill, Charles C. “Group of Seven.” In The Oxford Companion to Canadian History. Oxford University Press, 2004. http://www.ox fordreference.com.proxy1.lib.uwo.ca/view/10.1093/acref/9780195415599.001.0001/acref-9780195415599-e-692?rskey=Hp

Z4LC&result=666&q= (accessed November 28, 2012.)

Koeser, Rita Shannon. “Brazil: Body and Soul.” Americas 62, no. 2 (2010): 54-57.

Korfmann, Michael. “Avant-Garde in Brazil.” Dialectical Anthropology 28, (2004): 125-145.

“Manifesto of the Union of Mexican Workers, Technicians, Painters, and Sculptors.” Translated by Dawn Ades. In Readings in Latin

American Modern Art, edited by Patrick Frank, 33-35.

Oiticica, Hélio. “Tropicália: March 4, 1968.” Translated by Guy Brett. In Readings in Latin American Modern Art, edited by Patrick

Frank, 177–179. Yale University Press, 2004.

Rhodes, Colin. Primitivism and Modern Art. World of Art. London ; New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994.

Roza, Alexandra M. Towards a Modern Canadian Art 1910-1936: The Group of Seven, A.J.M. Smith and F.R. Scott. Montreal, Quebec: McGill University, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ43942.

pdf (accessed November 28, 2012.

Unknown. Group of Seven. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/group-of-seven (accessed November 28, 2012.)

Unknown. Amaral, Tarsila do. http://www.itaucultural.org.br/aplicexternas/enciclopedia_ic/index.cfm?fuseaction=artistas_biogra

fia_ing&cd_verbete=3731&cd_item=2&cd_idioma=28556 (accessed December 1, 2012.)

Dr. Hatch’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 8/10 Originality: 4/10 Clarity of Prose: 8/10 Overall Strength: 8.5/10

“A tightly woven and detailed argument that marshals well the relevant facts, while

nevertheless retaining the reader’s interest throughout.”

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Dr. Hatch’s Advice

dates for art works discussed.

2. Do not insert anecdotal argument of the paper.

material that doesn’t have anything to do with the main

3. Do

not rely heavily on one or two bibliographical sources.

4. Do

not include fragmented citations of source material with little context.

5. Do not overly reference what you intend to do in the paper, i.e., “I propose to… “, or “my intention here is to…” It tends to disrupt the flow of the argument. State what you want to do at the beginning and leave it at that.

Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Studies

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The Political and Ideological Conception of Women’s Bodies

BY MAYA RAMAKRISHNAN

WS 1020 95%

The human body is not merely a physical receptacle of organs and biological molecules, but a complex interface through which we experience the world and a determinant in each person’s unique self-concept. While this ostensible sanctity of human life permeates North American culture, still biological differences between men and women have translated into social differences and a woman finds that there are many channels through which her identity is appropriated by society. Cross-culturally, strict political and ideological expectations have been imposed upon female bodies that challenge individuals to retain control of their self-image and uphold their freedom of expression. This mode of systematic regulation is problematic because it confines women to a homogenous standard of being and leads to marginalization of those who fail to conform. It has become particularly apparent in the realms of health, sexuality, and the workplace that women do not share equal status with men.

In the midst of the current election year within the United States, extensive news coverage has been dedicated to a number of hot-button political issues centered on women’s health and reproductive rights. There has been debate as to whether government healthcare should provide contraceptives for women given the nation’s ideological divide concerning the morality of birth control (Nelson 73). Since pregnancy is inevitable in many cases of unprotected sex, women of lower socioeconomic status who cannot afford to purchase contraceptives do not receive equal access to planned parenting and, subsequently, have children who they are not prepared to provide for (Nelson 4). This only perpetuates the cycle of poverty and limits the struggling mother’s future prospects (Nelson 4).

Similarly, reproductive rights have been contested with respect to abortion, as feminists reject legal restrictions dictating how they should use their bodies in the early stages of pregnancy, especially in cases of rape or incest (Nelson 73). This speaks to a larger argument of female disenfranchisement due to the fact that decisions of this nature are being handled by panels of primarily male politicians with inequitable female representation (Armstrong and Deadman 27). This objection aligns with a sentiment in Naomi Wolf ’s The Beauty Myth, in which she states that the subjugation of women is in-keeping with “political fear on the part of male-dominated institutions threatened by women’s freedom […]” (Wolf 36). According to Wolf, the strides made in other aspects of female emancipation allow for “possibilities […] so open-ended that they threaten to destabilize the institutions on which a male-dominated culture has depended, and a collective panic [ensues]” (Wolf 37). Evidently, such panic manifests in a backlash against women’s liberties that serves to re-establish the unspoken, but socially accepted position of females as dependent and inferior variants of males.

Closely intertwined with women’s health and an appreciation of their bodies is the theme of sexuality. The recent uproar regarding Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations to prevent cervical cancer development clearly exemplifies this connection, since the issue at stake is the health of young girls, but the contention arises out of the related sexual implications. Although there is peer-reviewed research to support the validity of this landmark intervention and statistical evidence that the incidence of HPV could significantly decline, it has been asserted that the manner of injection into the sensitive vaginal tissue of girls as young as nine is disconcerting (Colgrove 2389). Additionally, in spite of warnings that the vaccine does not prevent sexually-transmitted infections (STIs), there has been concern that it will promote early-onset sexual activity among girls who mistake it for STI prophylaxis (Colgrove 2389). Conflicting legislation has been proposed in North America that would alternately ban the vaccine or make it mandatory for the target demographic (Colgrove 2389).

Although voluntary vaccination programs were ultimately implemented in Canada, the public recoil against them is harmful because it reduces the female genital organs to a purely sexual context while

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disregarding the medical need to maintain the health of the body as a whole (Wolf 35). As Wolf states, a prescription for female behaviour has long been propagated in which “respectable women [are] sexually anesthetic […]” (Wolf 35). There is a paradox here because girls who are pressured by guardians to reject HPV vaccinations and fall in line with the ideology of virginal innocence are put at greater risk for cervical cancer in later life, which jeopardizes their fertility and may compromise their ability to fulfill the gender role of a nurturing, maternal figure that is expected of adult women (Wolf 35). The Beauty Myth explains this subdual of young women in that “youth and […] virginity have been “beautiful’’ in women since they stand for experiential and sexual ignorance” (Wolf 34). Given that children do not have legal power to give informed consent on this issue, those forced to act against their will are relegated to silent victims of body politicization (Colgrove 2390).

As females approach adulthood, the pervasive regulation of their bodies that they encountered in youth follows them into their working lives, where it takes on a different form. Specifically, it is common practice for businesses to pay female employees less than their male counterparts on the grounds that they are costing their companies money when they take maternity leave (Horrell, Rubery, and Burchell 176). However, this is often a blanket policy that applies even to those who have not yet become pregnant. In this way, it is unfairly assuming that all women will reduce their productivity in the future as a consequence of their biology (Horrell, Rubery, and Burchell 176). Wolf suggests that Western economies designed the impossible challenge of conventional beauty standards in order to deter women from gaining professional success at a time when their principal social value shifted away from domesticity (Wolf 38). She claims the patriarchy “did so to substitute both a new consumer imperative and a new justification for economic unfairness in the workplace” (Wolf 38).

In the same vein, there is a prevalent social norm that discourages women from entering traditionally male-dominated professions, such as police work, because of proposed body limitations (Horrell, Rubery, and Burchell 181). This ideology gives males an advantage, as females are taught to look elsewhere for jobs and hone a dainty silhouette, while sustaining the hierarchy of males acting as family breadwinners (Wolf 38). An apt quotation from The Beauty Myth states “behaviour that is essential for economic reasons is transformed into a social virtue” (Wolf 38). Moreover, women in the political sphere are scrutinized for displaying any level of femininity, whether it is befitting the norm or non-traditional. This could be seen during the 2008 US presidential election when Hilary Clinton faced criticism by mainstream journalists for wearing a supposedly matronly wardrobe, while Sarah Palin was ridiculed for participating in beauty pageants (Carlin and Winfrey 330). The male candidates were relatively free from gender-specific criticism, which illustrates that there may be equal opportunity for body appraisals across party lines, but this is essentially a phenomenon that institutionalizes the disparate treatment of women and men (Carlin and Winfrey 330).

As females strive for the elusive goal of gender equality, certain patterns of injustice emerge from the murky undercurrent of sexist dialogue in our society. With respect to health, sexuality, and the workplace, women face exhaustive social demands that serve as mechanisms of body control, both political and ideological. Naomi Wolf ’s The Beauty Myth provides one framework for analyzing reproductive rights, HPV vaccinations and employment inequalities, but these issues are understood in many different ways. For this reason, it is important to make feminist inquiry inclusive to all perspectives if we are to continue along the path of progress.

Works Cited Armstrong, Pat, and Jennifer Deadman. Women’s Health: Intersections of Policy, Research, and Practice. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2009.

Print.

Carlin, Diana, and Kelly Winfrey. “Have You Come a Long Way, Baby? Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Sexism in 2008 Campaign Coverage.” Communication Studies 60.4 (2009): 326-343. Print.

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Dr. Allen’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 8/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 7/10 Clarity of Prose: 7/10 Overall Strength: 8/10

“The author engages in an analytical and thoughtful discussion of topical

and current issues. Ramakrishnan underscores the relevance of her paper by focusing on the regulation of women’s bodies in the realms of health, sexuality, and in the workplace. These examples are then critically considered through the use of theory and history, thereby establishing the validity of Ramakrishnan’s arguments.”

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Feminism and Animal Activism

BY GARRY ATKINSON

WS 4461

82%

Over the course of my studies at Western University I have written extensively on the similarities between the oppression of marginalized communities and the oppression of animals. Additionally, I have argued that “vegetarian” as the subject of “vegetarianism” encounters similar boundaries to the all-inclusive “woman” as the subject of “feminism”. Finally, in 2012, I argued that science is utilized to construct a hierarchy among animals according to their position in society: domestic, facing extinction or destined for slaughter, that resembles the “great chain of being” produced during the Enlightenment period to justify patriarchy and white supremacy.

While this focus has been attentive to the ways in which women, racialized women in particular, have been compared to animals in order to justify their oppression; it is necessary to continue and further examine the issue through the realm of the media.

How has feminist activism worked through various forms of media to advance a better understanding of the conditions of animals? In what ways can feminist activism and animal activism work together to deconstruct the globalization of a patriarchal, white supremacist, capitalist, social system? The focus of this paper is to illustrate how inaccurate representations in the media under the direction of patriarchy and capitalism affect both women and animals. Primarily, I intend to explore the historical and contemporary representations of both women and animals in the media to illustrate its failure to portray accuracy and diversity. Second, I will demonstrate how the continuity of inaccurate representations in the media is crucial to the success of a patriarchal and capitalist social system. Third, I will demonstrate how the significant contributions of feminists and animal activists that consistently challenge this system are met with limited results. Finally, to reclaim the media as a powerful site of resistance I recommend a feminist perspective that works together with animal activism yet is attentive to the implications that animal activism has on women.

Historically, and contemporarily, representations of both women and animals in the media have been inaccurate and fail to capture their diversity. In Ad Women: How They Impact What We Need, Want, and Buy, author Juliann Sivulka explains that representations of women throughout the twentieth century has primarily depicted women “in narrow roles” (Sivulka, 2009, p.11). Sivulka argues that women are predominantly portrayed “as dim-witted sex objects, as perky young things in search of a man, or as one-dimensional homemakers eager to serve their husbands” (Sivulka, 2009, p.11). Similarly, in Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power, author Sandra Bartky claims a narrow representation of women exists where the “current body of fashion is taut, small-breasted, narrow-hipped, and of a slimness bordering on emaciation” (Bartky, 1988, p.31). While Silvulka’s comments center on representations of women through their relationships to men, Bartky argues that the media plays a visible attack on women’s bodies, one which is inaccurate and unilateral (Bartky, 1988, p.31). According to Bartky (1988), the “ideal body of femininity” consistently portrayed in the media inscribes “an inferior status” on women’s bodies, a status which requires their bodies be “made up” because they are inherently “deficient” (Bartky, 1988, p.38). Through dieting, makeup, surgery, and other regulatory exercises, Bartky argues that women must compete with inaccurate and unattainable “media images of perfect female beauty”, stereotypical representations of women that fail to account for the diversity of women’s bodies and lives (Bartky, 1988, p.38). The result is a “measure of shame” that is two-fold, one in which women simply cannot physically meet the standards of beauty and one in which women cannot meet the economic demands that “such a regimen requires” (Bartky, 1988, p.39). Representations of animals in the media are also inaccurate and fail to account for their diversity. According to animal rights activist and author Peter Singer in Animal Liberation, the most visible animals in the media are “dogs, cats, and other companion animals” (Singer, 2002, p.214). Singer argues that this signifies a “simple evasion” of the media to address farming practices that brutally

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slaughter millions of animals each year (Singer, 2002, p.214). When farm animals such as cows or chickens are represented in the media, Singer claims, they are inaccurately demonstrated as “running freely…all surrounded by their young, with not a cage, shed, or stall in sight” (Singer, 2002, p.215). The unfortunate reality of the lives of many of these animals, however, is that many never see the light of day (Singer, 2002). As educational television typically centers on “endangered species” in the wild, knowledge about the diversity of the lives of farm animals is left to advertisements that range “from ridiculous cartoons of pigs who want to be made into sausages” to “tuna trying to get themselves canned” (Singer, 2002, p.216). The result, according to Singer, is a series of “farming techniques that deprive millions of animals the freedom of movement” to go “unreported” in the media (Singer, 2002, p.216). The inaccurate representations of both women and animals, therefore, fails to account for the reality and diversity of their lives and holds significant consequences. While women cannot physically or economically meet the demands of representations of women in the media, animals cannot gain attention to horrific farming practices that regulate their lives.

The continuity of inaccurate representations of both women and animals is crucial to a patriarchal and capitalist system. Primarily, the inaccurate representations of women act as a form of social control (Wolf, 1991, p.13). In The Beauty Myth, author Naomi Wolf examines contemporary representations of women to illustrate “a violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement” (Wolf, 1991, p.15). Wolf argues that “the beauty myth” is the “last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact” (Wolf, 1991, p.16). Ultimately, the myth Wolf describes that serves patriarchy is constructed in the media through countless representations of an ideal woman (Wolf, 1991, p.20). The continuity of these images, therefore, maintains a male dominated system and is crucial to the progression of patriarchy. Similarly, the images that permeate women’s lives act as a driving force for capitalism, funding multi-billion dollar businesses invested in diet, cosmetics and plastic surgery (Wolf, 1991, p.21). According to Bartky (1988), three significant practices that discipline woman’s bodies through “the beauty myth” are centered on “size and configuration”, “gestures, postures, and movements”, and finally the “body as an ornamented surface” (Bartky, 1988, p.30). While these disciplines have significant consequences for women, capitalist industries have been cashing in on the “unconscious anxieties” that stem from the “ideal woman” portrayed in the media (Wolf, 1991, p.21).

For example, Wolf (1991) notes that the diet industry that regulates the “size and configuration” of women’s bodies takes in over $33 billion dollars annually, while cosmetics and plastic surgery invested in women’s bodies as an “ornamented surface”, earn $20 billion and $300 million dollars respectively each year (Wolf, 1991, p. 21).

The continuity of inaccurate representations of women, representations that depict women in a single, uniform way, therefore, is necessary to a patriarchal and capitalist system. The continuity of inaccurate representations of animals also drives patriarchy and capitalism. By portraying farm animals in the media as free, for example, alleviates the burden of questioning how food is produced or where it comes from (Singer, 2002). Furthermore, Singer argues that when people do have knowledge of where their food comes from, typical representations of animals in the media leaves the impression that animals designated for food must “live happily until that time comes” (Singer, 2002, p.215). Contrary to that belief, however, factory farming as told by Singer “far exceeds, in sheer number of animals affected, any other kind of mistreatment” (Singer, 2002, p.95). In Food Matters, author Mark Bittman claims that it is because of capitalism and mass consumption that “the world needs factory farming” (Bittman, 2009, p. 12). The exponential rise of animals designated for the table is emblematic of a multi-billion dollar industry, according to Bittman, where advertising campaigns of companies behind factory farming like McDonald’s, for example, can trade $1 billion for a single arrangement with Disney (Bittman, 2009, p.31).

Inaccurately representing animals in the media, therefore, is critical to the progression of capitalism. Similarly, Singer (2002) links the dominance over animals for food to traditional patriarchal stories of the Bible that saw the “fall of man” (Adam), not only to a woman (Eve) but also to an animal (the Serpent) (Singer, 2002, p.187).

Singer (2002) suggests that the evolution of this story permitted the killing of animals (Singer, 2002, p.187).

Contemporarily, representations of animals in the media help to epitomize masculinity and maleness, where young boys “will not grow up big and strong without meat” (Singer, 2002, p.216). It is necessary, therefore, for media to represent animals in a way that evades the reality of their oppressed lives (Singer, 2002, p. 215). The

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continuity of inaccurate representations of both women and animals is crucial to maintaining a patriarchal and capitalist system, and significantly affects both women and animals. For women, the continuity of this system marks women’s bodies as a site of control and for animals it maintains an ever-increasing dominance over their lives.

While both feminist activists and animal activists have made significant contributions that have challenged the system of patriarchy and capitalism, inaccurate representations in the media continue to dominate and affect their lives. In Efforts to Reform the Media, for example, author Patricia Bradley outlines several ways in which women have gained access to the media (Bradley, 2003). Bradley (2003) argues that women traditionally worked in the media under the guidelines and limitations of a male-dominated profession (Bradley, 2003, p.196).

During the 1970’s, however, a women’s movement to reform the media saw a slow but steady injection of women into the realm of the media, creating a space where they could challenge traditional representations of women (Bradley, 2003). Women were being accepted in positions of journalism, publishing and management, positions that had been historically dominated by men (Bradley, 2003). Ultimately, feminist activists such as Gloria Steinem saw it as an opportunity where “women and advertisers could talk to each other and improve advertising itself ” (Steinem, 2002, p.60). Feminist activists, however, met with limited success as advertisements entrenched in the patriarchal and capitalist system continued to depict women as “temptress, wife, mother, and sex object, and portray women as less intelligent and more dependent than men” (Bradley, 2003, p.212). As an example, Bradley illustrates the Virginia Slims campaign that tied the success of the suffrage movement to smoking a cigarette, telling women “You’ve come a long way baby”, literally minimizing the significant efforts of women in the early 1900’s (Bradley, 2003, 211). The pervasiveness of inaccurate representations of women continued to dominate mass media and by 2002 a study by the National Organization for Women found that the media “pandered to adolescent boys while women functioned as decoration” (Bradley, 2003, p.221). Similarly, animal activists that arose in the 1970’s made important contributions to the lives of animals, yet inaccurate representations depicted in the media continue to dominate and affect their existence. Perhaps most importantly, the rise of the book Animal Liberation by activist Peter Singer in 1975 created an “animal liberation movement” that had not previously existed (Singer, 2002, p.xvi). At the time, very few organizations had been established that were “working to implement radical changes in our attitudes and practices toward animals” (Singer, 2002, p.xvi). Singer’s book, however, generated a political movement that saw the rise of countless institutions set on regulating the treatment of animals and challenging dominant practices that significantly affected the lives of animals (Singer, 2002, p.217). Most prominently, the “American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the American Humane Association…the Humane Society of the United States…the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” all arose to become remarkable institutions following his work (Singer, 2002, p.218). The work of the “animal liberation movement”, however, was limited by a number of factors (Singer, 2002, p.218). Singer (2002) notes that several of the organizations dedicated to generating change for the conditions of animals were originally founded as “radical groups” (Singer, 2002, p.218) As these organizations expanded in terms of “wealth, membership, and respectability”, building close ties to “government…businessmen and scientists…they lost their radical commitment” (Singer, 2002, p.218). Furthermore, animal rights institutions were established as “charitable organizations”, where laws in “both Great Britain and the United States” demanded that these establishments do “not engage in political activities” (Singer, 2002, p.218). While these political obstacles limited the success of animal rights organizations, inaccurate representations of animals in the media solidified the marginalization of their success. Singer (2002) argues that representations in the media that centered on animal rights groups and “endangered species” left the public with the view that “conditions cannot be too bad, or else the government or the animal welfare societies would have done something about it” (Singer, 2002, p.217). Despite the significant contributions that feminist and animal activists have made, the pervasiveness of inaccurate representations of both women and animals in the media continue to dominate and significantly affect their lives.

While feminist activism and animal activism have been limited in their success as individual movements, in order to reclaim the media as a site of resistance it is crucial for feminist activists and animal activists to work together. The idea of combining feminist activism with animal activism is not a new concept, however, as it has a

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long history of advocates. For example, in 1906 author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a novel entitled Original Stories that promoted the fair treatment of animals, suggesting we “should not prevent their enjoying all the happiness of which they are capable” (Wollstonecraft, 1906, p.9, Singer, 2002). Furthermore, Wollstonecraft (1906) argued that in keeping animals one should “never suffer them to be tormented” (Wollstonecraft, 1906, p.3). Similarly, Singer (2002) notes that, “a number of early feminists, including Lucy Stone, Amelia Bloomer, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were connected with the vegetarian movement” (Singer, 2002, p.221). Currently, in The Extension of Legal Rights to Animals Under a Caring Ethic: An Ecofeminist Exploration of Steven Wise’s Rattling the Cage, author and activist Katrina Albright “identifies patriarchal value systems as the common source of both…violence against women and animals (Albright, 2002, p.917). While animal rights activists have traditionally advocated for an extension of legal rights to animals based on their “rationality”, Albright claims it is necessary to base their legal rights “on a feminist ethic of care” (Albright, 2002, p.917). Ultimately, Albright distinguishes the term “absent referent” as a guiding factor in combining feminism with animal activism (Albright, 2002, p.928). The “absent referent” according to Albright can refer to the act of disconnecting the life of an animal from the food on the table, or “the humanity of a women objectified in pornography”, where in both scenarios it is “any characteristic that is removed from an image, or an identity, therefore making it psychologically easier for consumers to subjugate women and animals” (Albright, 2002, p.928). Albright suggests that by drawing on the “absent referent…connections between the domination over women and the domination over…nonhuman animals”, can “begin to unite the feminist and animal advocacy movements” (Albright, 2002, p.926). Combining feminist activism with animal activism also provides a critical analysis of how animal activism affects women. Albright underlines historical tensions between animal activism and feminism, where organizations such as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have used sexist advertisements to advance the rights of animals (Albright, 2002, p.930). Advertisements by PETA, for example, often involve “nude models and the slogan ‘I’d rather go naked than wear fur’” (Albright, 2002, p.930). These advertisements, she claims, are critiqued by feminists for “objectifying women and promoting the same hierarchal, patriarchal values that lead to the exploitation of animals” (Albright, 2002, p.930). Similarly, the use of animals to undermine women’s movements has a historical context. The publication of the Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792, for example, was immediately followed by Thomas Taylor’s the Vindication of the Rights of Brutes (Singer, 2002, p.1). Taylor claimed that, “if the argument for equality was sound when applied to women, why should it not be applied to dogs, cats, and horses?” (Singer, 2002, p.1). The purpose of Taylor’s argument was to demonstrate that Wollstonecraft’s argument was “manifestly absurd” (Singer, 2002, p.1). Combining feminist activists with animal activists, therefore, provides a space that considers the historical context and the implications that animal rights movements have on women. In doing so, feminist activists and animal activists can work together to critically interrogate the inaccurate representations of both women and animals in the media and reclaim the media as a powerful site of resistance.

Inaccurate representations of women and animals have dominated the media under the direction of patriarchy and capitalism. These representations have had significant consequences on the lives of both women and animals. Historically and contemporarily, representations of women have centered on an idealistic image of beauty that consequentially situates women in the position of shame, both physically and economically (Bartky, 1988). Furthermore, it fails to account for the diversity of women’s lives. Similarly, inaccurate representations of animals that dominate the media lead to an ignorance of the horrific realities of the lives of animals designated for food. The continuity of these images, however, is crucial to a patriarchal and capitalist social system. While countless feminists and animal activists have made significant contributions that challenge this system, they have been met with limited success. The inaccurate representations have continued to portray women in a single, uniform way, and significantly contributed to the notion that the brutal slaughter of millions of animals “cannot be that bad” (Singer, 2002, p.217). In order to reclaim the media as a powerful site of resistance, therefore, it is necessary for feminist activists and animal activists to work together. As the domination of women and animals is rooted in patriarchy and capitalism, the unification of feminism and animal activism creates a significant force of resistance. By combining forces, feminism can also act to evaluate the actions of animal rights movements to

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understand historical underpinnings that have serious implications for women. Ultimately, once united, feminist activists and animal activists can begin to deconstruct the inaccurate representations of both women and animals that dominate the media.

References: Albright, K. M. (2002). The extension of legal rights to animals under a caring ethic: An ecofeminist exploration of steven wise’s

rattling the cage. Natural Resources Journal, 42(4), 915-937. Retrieved from https://www.lib.uwo.ca/cgi-bin/ezpauthn.cgi/ docview/209691032?accountid=15115 Bartky, S.L. (1988). Foucault, femininity, and the modernization of patriarchal power. Reading Women’s Lives. USA: Pearson

Publishing. pp.27-54.

Bittman, M. (2009). Food Matters. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

Bradley, P. (2003). Efforts to reform the media: print. Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism. University Press of

Mississippi. 194-221.

Singer, P. (2002). Animal Liberation. Revised Edition. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Steinem, G. (2002). Sex, lies and advertising. Ms., 12:2, 60-65.

Wolf, N. (1991). The Beauty Myth. Reading Women’s Lives. USA: Pearson Publishing. pp.13-26.

Wollstonecraft, M. (1906). Original stories. London, UK: Horace Hart Printer to the University.

Dr. Allen’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 8/10 Clarity of Prose: 7/10 Overall Strength: 8.5/10

“The paper demonstrates a sophisticated use of theories from different scholars, which provides insight into the author’s thought process. Atkinson is persuasive in his critique of the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy and the treatment of women and animals. This comparison is fraught with danger because of its implications; yet, Atkinson does not diminish women in his attempt to alleviate animals as creatures who deserve respect and the right to live.”

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Cultural Veils

BY YULIA LOBACHEVA

WS 2158 80% Cultural Veils

“In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses as artist, as Moroccan, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim.

In short, I invite viewers to resist stereotypes” - Lalla Essaydi

The Orientalism movement of the XIX century Europe has falsely defined the Islamic culture, especially through the objectification of Islamic women. Since then the West has been shaping itself as a strong opposite to the Islamic world, which is expressed through the Western societal norms and behaviour. In the XIX century Europe women were still scavenging for opportunities to express their experiences and struggling to establish their personas to be of equal equity as men. Until recently, a woman was the mysterious other to Western men.

Now, it is the Muslim woman who is the other to the entire Western world. Orientalism has visualized the myth of the Middle East as colourful and sinful, sneaking a peak into the private harems where women indulge in physical pleasures. To the Western world, the Muslim woman is both the oppressor and the oppressed, making us fear and pity her at once. Lalla Essaydi, a Moroccan-American artist, attempts to bridge the stereotypes of the Muslim women presented by both the Arab and the Western cultures, without simply critiquing those cultures.

Instead, Essaydi illustrates the constraints placed upon Muslim women by the Western gaze as well as the Islamic cultures, based on her personal experience of both cultures. Furthermore, this report will discuss the difference between the Muslim and the Western women’s illusion of freedom, exercised by women through their clothing.

The epigraph above, stating “In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses - as artist, as Moroccan, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite viewers to resist stereotypes” is a direct quotation from the artist. Although she represents herself through that statement, its metaphorical meaning encompasses the multifaceted definition of women, regardless of culture. Essaydi attempts to show that each woman must be approached as an individual and that there is no single definition of a woman (of any culture) – only the definitions of what a culture is perceived to be.

The historical representation of women in Western art and the representation of Muslim women in Orientalism portray a cultural opinion, defined by men. The harem was assumed to be a place for Islamic women to exercise sexual freedom. In the context of the misogynist Western society at the time, the expression of female sexuality was seen as betrayal to chastity and the interference with men’s socio-political duty with alluring demands1 (239-240). While the man’s character was considered as susceptible to seduction, women were seen as both the seductresses and the recipients of men’s advances (75). From the Arabic word “Haram” – sin, the Harem is a beautifully decorated place where women live in seclusion, but also a place controlled by men, where a woman can sin in many ways, according to the Islamic law. Through her art Essaydi confronts both the Western idea about Muslim women and the social placement of women in the Islamic cultures.

Figure 1 shows a group of Islamic women within a space of all-pervading calligraphy, which serves as a way to subvert silence. Essaydi uses the predominantly male ritual of henna calligraphy exercised by women to an exaggerated degree. These women are breaking the cultural restrains of feminine self-expression, without breaking the religious devotion to modesty in dress4. Essaydi approaches the Orientalist compositions, but her women are not dressed in erotic or even indoor clothing. Instead, they are draped in fabric and calligraphic text.

These women remain clothed although they are in a private space. The Orientalist paintings often presented

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Muslim women richly decorated by their dress or provocatively nude. Essaydi eliminates the rich mosaic of Islamic décor – her only décor is the text, meant to erase the traces of male dominance and social status. Essaydi’s women are no longer dressed to please men – they are dressed in the words that they themselves have written, reclaiming the tradition of henna art. Thus, Essaydi shifts the oppressor identity back to the Orientalist works, rather than to the Western world as a whole.

Essaydi identifies that the Orientalist paintings in the XIX century expressed the sexual fantasies of men, which they could not realize in the Western world. Orientalism has established the Muslim women as exotic fetish object and an emblem of sexual repression to the Western Orientalists. The harems they portrayed represented the Western male fantasy of a space designated for sexual deeds, thus establishing the Western male as the new captor of the Muslim woman’s figure. By contrast, Essaydi’s photographs emancipate those women through exposure in a space that dissolves the contradictions between the private and the public spheres. Her compositions present a strong parallel to the Western spaces, which are meant for independence, mobility and self-expression of women to the public. Essaydi retains the presence of anonymity of the Muslim women and invites the viewer to conquer the unknown without unveiling the women in a physical sense (217). The individuality of Essaydi’s women is not compromised due to the direct gaze each one of them returns to the viewer. Additionally, Essaydi provides a glimpse into the inner space of each Muslim woman through the use of feminine (and partly autobiographical) text.

Figure 2 portrays the gaze of Essaydi’s Muslim woman. Her body is not up on display for social critique, yet her gaze establishes a conversation with the viewer, who becomes an essential component in Essaydi’s photographs. In the Orientalist works, the physical thresholds of Islam defined its cultural ones. The only real physicality in Essaydi’s photographs is the women’s eyes, their skin colour and the text. In Figure 2, rather than presenting the entire face, Essaydi quarters it. The purpose of it is to break away from the notion of a woman’s face being but another attribute of her beauty. Essaydi wants the viewer to interact with the woman’s eyes and to be under her gaze. The viewer stands for the social constraints placed upon the Muslim women. Those constraints become victims under the women’s gazes in Essaydi’s work, in order to eventually become erased.

Essaydi herself embodies the voices of her women, because she is an artist who strives to establish her own voice rather than present herself as a victim of objectification and repression. Essaydi’s use of mixed media in the construction of her compositions emphasizes the fragmented and ephemeral nature of the social categories, in which Islamic women are placed by both the Western and the Islamic cultures. While the Western society interprets the Muslim women as physically restricted by her garments, and mute as a result, Essaydi’s women are anything but that. Figure 3 conveys the social evolution that a Muslim woman undergoes in an Islamic culture with age. Essaydi provides a critique of the Islamic culture as also constructed by men, as she shows the amount of fabric covering the woman’s body increases with age, to eventually eliminate the woman’s entire face. Her physical identity and the ability to express herself through her body disappear also due to the garment completely blending with the architectural background. The woman becomes a part of the decoration of the space. However, Essaydi argues that the increasing need of men to protect the woman from the public gaze happened due to the objectification of Muslim women left by the Orientalists. As a response, Essaydi invites the viewer to acquire a different kind of seeing, so that portrayals of Muslim women begin to represent other aspects of women’s lives than sexual exploitation.

The objectification of women is not absent in the Western world. In both cultures, the individuality of a woman disappears under the socially-constructed veils. Western zeitgeist dictates that a Muslim woman is always Middle Eastern, dusky-skinned beauty with a polysyllabic name, can only speak Arabic and is eternally oppressed (217). In the image-driven Western culture, the portrayals of Muslim women are usually read as with a singular meaning. Although that stereotype is true in some cases, its singular image has become the only image of the Muslim women to the Western observer. The Western media-consumer has taken on a paternalist identity, now assuming that every Muslim woman is in need of salvation (218). The Western women have taken is of a physically-liberated person able to express her sexuality through her garments. Thus, for the Western female the products she consumes become a part of her identity. The idea that clothing is able to convey a certain meaning

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in terms of women’s gender and class, but also who the women are in terms of cultural attributes, taste and even education (19).

In Figure 4 Essaydi eliminates the figure of the woman completely – the woman is not even shaped by the drapes of her clothing. Instead, women’s garments are rolled up into bundles, almost as if they are meant for laundry. Essaydi’s intent is to show that the interpretation of women through their clothing is imposed through both cultures. Despite the lack of individuality in the clothing of the Muslim women, Western women all seem to follow the same trends although they are dressed differently from one another (19). Essaydi invites the viewer to evaluate all women for aspects other than their physical attributes. The bundles of clothes in Figure 4 represent both how Muslim women feel under the strict constrains of Islamic cultures but also how the Western society sees Muslim women. The Muslim women are synonymous with scriptural texts – dictating the modes of behaviour they must assume – and the drapes, by which they cover their bodies4. Essaydi does not attempt to establish the Muslim women as separate individuals, but urges the viewer to search for individuality beyond clothes. The bundles of clothes represent the direct experience of the women, and how the women must feel towards the constant surveillance of so many gazes directed at them.

Throughout the history of Western women’s garments, the corset has played an underlying role. The corset revealed the complete structure of the female human body and its organs as well as allowed to ply the body into a perfect size and curve by displacing the woman’s flesh (174). Thus, it was a tool for the objectification of women into a mere figure. Western women have since assumed control over their figures; discarding a garment assigned to women by men represents liberation. This is the reason why the Muslim woman appears so oppressed in the West and is encouraged to discard her culturally-religious dress. In Islamic societies self-expression through dress is left for private spaces; while in the consumer-oriented Western women equate their clothes with the value of their social experiences. Garments (especially undergarments) that represent a woman figure are empty, but also serve as an excellent sales-tool. The Western woman becomes lost behind her “personalized” clothes, because they attenuate the female’s ability to assign personal meanings to her figure and minimize the possibilities for challenging the social structures that restrict women’s opportunities (174, 175).

The way that the Western world evaluates women from different cultures is shaped by social behaviour of women in our own culture. Since Western women are able to navigate their day to day activities in a liberal manner, they appear to be free in every aspect of their existence. However, there are many cultural and historical veils placed upon the behaviour of Western women that we experience today. Having lived in both the Western and the Islamic cultures, Lalla Essaydi refused to put a distinct definition upon a woman from any culture, admitting that the definition of a woman is still very much in progress. She exercises her artistic power by challenging the historically preconceived notions of these societies. Essaydi places the viewer under her women’s gaze, without attacking them, thus bridging the definitions of a woman from both cultures.

References Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art: A Critical History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007), p. 239.

Sarah Husain, ed. Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, c2006).

“Lassa Essaidi”, accessed November 20, 2012, http://lallaessaydi.com/6.html Imani M. Cheers, “Q&A: Lalla Essaydi Challenges Muslim, Gender Stereotypes at Museum of African Art”, last modified May 9, 2012, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2012/05/revisions.html Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil, The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives (London, New York: Routledge, 2010).

Jill Fields, “An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie, and Sexuality” (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007).

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Dr. Allen’s Feedback: Ideas and Content: 9/10 Analysis: 9/10 Originality: 10/10 Clarity of Prose: 7.5/10 Overall Strength: 9/10

“One of the most important aspects of this essay is how Yulia Lobacheva deftly articulates in words what Lalla Essaydi depicts with photographs. The descriptions of Essaydi’s photographs are thorough, thoughtful, and illuminating, enabling readers to broaden their understanding of the relationship between culture and gender expectations. In addition, by focusing on different representations of femininity, Lobacheva critiques simplistic depictions of Muslim cultures as “oppressive” and North American and European cultures as “liberating” for women.”

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Dr. Allen’s Advice 1.

Do not mix up to/too; there/their; its/it’s.

2.

Use apostrophes on possessive words.

3.

Do not fragment sentences.

4.

Use correct subject-verb agreement

5.

Do not overuse or underuse commas.

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For any other inquiries about the Arts & Humanities Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Council, Arts & Humanities publications or essay writing, please come to the Arts & Humanities studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; council office UC 112F.

Published by the Arts and Humanities Student Council Western University London, Ontario, Canada

2013