Feminist Approaches to Iberian & Latin American Literatures

Gender Performance in "Persona" (Morejón)

2008-05-07T13:27:55Z

I would like to consider here the idea of subject-formation and gender that Judith Butler describes in the context of the poem “Persona�? by Nancy Morejón.

]]> In the selection from Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler proposes gender not only as a construction, but more exactly, as the repetitive “citation�? of behaviors that are culturally attributed to each gender. Thus, as the following quote explains, a “girl�? is a person who performs, who “cites�? the appropriate “girly�? behaviors. As Butler explains, this citation isn’t a mere choice, but rather a requisite behavior which constitutes the subjectivity of that person; that is, a female who doesn’t perform as a “girl�? risks having her subjectivity and personhood called into question. Furthermore, historically there have consistently existed forces which regulate and enforce the performance of these gender appropriate behaviors, thus having the effect of naturalizing them.

“To the extent that the naming of the ‘girl’ is transitive, that is, initiates the process by which a certain ‘girling’ is compelled, the term or, rather, its symbolic power, governs the formation of a corporeally enacted femininity that never fully approximates the norm. This is a ‘girl,’ however, who is compelled to ‘cite’ the norm in order to qualify and remain a viable subject. Femininity is this not the product of a choice, but the forcible citation of a norm, one whose complex historicity is indissociable from relations of discipline, regulation, punishment. Indeed, there is no ‘one’ who takes on a gender norm. On the contrary, this citation of the gender norm is necessary in order to qualify the ‘one,’ to become viable as a ‘one,’ where subject-formation is dependent on the prior operation of legitimating gender norms.�? (Butler 232)

In the Morejón poem “Persona�?, the “I�? (the speaker in the poem) brings into question her own subjectivity: “Which of these women is me? […] Why am I me? Why are they them?�? In this poem, as the “I�? questions herself, as she considers different women, she contemplates these women in terms of the behaviors they perform: the black woman who runs, the “early morning wanderer…being hunted / and wasted / and resold�?. Though she questions her identity, the possible options she considers are traditionally symbolically female—that is, they are citations of the “norm�?, allowing them to be understood as female.

The poem also alludes to the repetitiveness of the performance of these behaviors: “Who is that woman / the one in us all fleeing from us all / fleeing her enigma and her long origin / with an incredulous prayer on her lips, / or singing a hymn / after a battle always being refought?�? That “woman in us all�? and the “battle always being refought�? seem to suggest not only the norm created by the performance of gender (“us all�?), but also the relationship of women to men (the “battle�?) and the repetition of it (“always being refought�?).

The poem also suggests the notion of enforcement and regulation of gender norms that Butler discusses, for instance, in the figure of the “young Andalusian don�?. Here, the relationship between male and female is displayed; clearly the woman is dependent on the don—the intersection of social and economic factors here work together to create a forced dependency on the part of the woman, which in turn serves to enforce and regulate her performance of “appropriate�? gender.

Belli & Kozameh performance

2008-05-06T23:43:43Z

“Performances function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated.�? (Taylor 2)

]]> “Performances function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated.�? (Taylor 2)
“[It] carries the possibility of challenge, even self-challenge, within it. As a term simultaneously connoting a process, a praxis, an episteme, a mode of transmission, an accomplishment, and a means of intervening in the world, it far exceeds the possibilities of these other words offered in its place.�? (Taylor 15)

In Gioconda Belli the matter of performance is seen on the way she allows us to visualize the woman’s search for social transformation in order to feel as one, as a woman. It is a woman that (re)creates express through a social commitment a way find herself and also a meaningful life.

Kozameh’s writing in Steps Under Water is the self-challenge Taylor mentions. She brings back memory, through a painful way as she mentioned, “intervening the world�? making us aware of her history. Her performance was to represent the losses and to give voice to al of those who were left mourning in a past that is impossible to be brought back.

“On another level, performance also constitutes the methodological lens that enables scholars to analyze events as performance. Civic obedient, resistance, citizenship, gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity, for example are rehearsed and performed daily in the public sphere.�? (Taylor 3)

Could we say that Lavinia and Kozameh are both performing sexual identity and citizenship respectively?

PERFORMANCE AND MOLLOY

2008-05-06T08:13:27Z

I would like to start off by pointing out that Diana Taylor’s call to a shift towards “performances [‘] function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated…�?(2) serves as an alternative to these hegemonic histories that we have been discussing. Its emphasis on the ‘ephemeral’ forms of knowledge indeed includes those that have been excluded from these documented transmissions of history: women and the indigenous people (in nation building) as discussed by Gutierrez Chong. Without archival material, these two groups have almost been regarded ahistorical, therefore, with Taylor’s ‘additional sites’; their contribution in the making of histories of their nations can be reassessed and acknowledged – as the absences and gaps in the histories are filled.

]]> If Taylor’s emphasis is on performance (eg movements), how then do we talk about Molloy’s text (and other literary texts) as performances? Doesn’t Molloy’s text (as a written performance) betray the very notion of embodiment? Or is writing perhaps a performance of Molloy’s embodied memory?

Taylor writes: “Is performance always and only about embodiment? Or does it call into question the very contours of the body, challenging traditional notions of embodiment?�? (4) It appears that Molloy’s writing ‘not so much with her body’ is a way of ‘manipulating, extending and playing with embodiment’ – of defying the traditional notions of embodiment. She challenges the idea of ‘a completely organized system like a whole body’. She describes her body not protected by skin. In fact she has an estranged relationship with her body; “…she does go out every day for a few minutes…to attend to a body that she cares for half-heartedly. She finds IT cigarettes…she takes ITS clothes…�? (51) –clearly distancing herself from her body. Thus her body is not central to her writing.

Molloy’s pursuit of a ‘whole self/identity’ is analogous to the complexity of performance which Taylor argues “carries the possibility of challenge…it is indefinable…as a term simultaneously connoting a process…a mode of transmission, an accomplishment, and a means of intervening in the world�? (15). Molloy is equally in a process of constructing a ‘unified’ identity which remains fragmented throughout the narrative. She is all the same successful in transmitting her embodied fragmented memory. Just like performance practices that “both bind and fragment the Americas�? (16), Molloy’s fragmented body and memory bind her with the women in her life: Clara, Vera and Renata. There need not be one simple and universal definition of performance in the same way there that identity need not be constructed out of a whole and unified self, and does that even exist?

Performance in/and Kozameh

2008-05-05T19:14:55Z

Diana Taylor argues that "performances act as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated behavior" (2). This point took me to the chapter "A Flat and Jaded Description of a New Year's Eve" in Steps Under Water.

]]> In this chapter, Sara describes the tensions surrounding the second annual New Year's Eve dinner that she is about to share with the other prisoners. Referring to how the dinner was thwarted last year after one of the women loss control, Kozameh strongly depicts Sara’s compulsion to carry out the dinner rite:

“I sweat. My armpits are drenched. I feel faint, blood pressure dropping, words coming to me, over and over again. Pillaging cannibalism. Acculturation. I don’t feel good…My ears go cold. My neck. Andrea and Griselda are late in joining the others. They talk, almost whispering, as if there were no other moments in their lives. Just now, when it’s imperative that we mingle. My brow is dripping wet. I hope I get over this before somebody notices. Better not have any embarrassing moments on this December 31, at dinnertime. Grist for the piss-eye-chologists. Plenty of them. This isn’t going away. And some of them even enjoy the approval of the majorities here. This crap, make it go away. Go away.�? (125)

Kozameh’s reference to the psychologists illustrates how New Year’s Eve dinner has come to occupy a naturalized, normalized place in culture, one that is expected to remain unaffected by the less-then-ordinary conditions in which the women prisoners find themselves. Hence, Sara and the other prisoners are compelled to repeat the ritual in order to 1) remain recognizably “human,�? and 2) avoid becoming fodder for the psychologists. Thus, there is nothing “voluntary�? about partaking in the dinner, but rather, as Sara suggests, “it’s imperative that we mingle�? (125). As the intense physical descriptions of Sara’s panic and desperation reiterate, cultural performances are always “simultaneously ‘real’ and ‘constructed’�? (Taylor 4).

In “Critically Queer,�? Butler goes into much detail about how subjects become compelled to cite, specifically through her discussion of Derrida’s notion of the importance of repetition. Here Butler highlights “that discourse has a history,�? and thus “action echoes prior actions, and accumulates the force of authority through the repetition or citation of a prior, authoritative set of practices�? (227).

Although Kozameh positions Sara to be much more cognizant of the cultural power of these repetitious acts than Butler suggests is probable, the tensions between her inner resistance, physical effects, and outward compulsion to cite illustrates how despite the inherent contradictions within the performative, a guise of naturalness becomes maintained:

“Veronica looks at me, I smile at her because I’m sure she spots a shade of paleness in my face. I smile and hopefully manage to hide something with my grin. But I’m not trying to keep a straight face. I’m trying to keep this show of lack of composure under wraps because it’s not a question of blowing my image. That’s it: collaboration with one’s self. With one’s own image. Because the book on me would be predictable: ‘Sara, petite, bourgeoise with ideological weaknesses. Blood pressure drops during New Year’s get-together’. Very funny�? (127).

This “collaboration with one’s self,�? however, also points to the inherently intersubjective and permeable nature of the performative; if we are compelled to “cite,�? that is, perform, in certain ways, then we are always already presuming the presence of anOther. In this light, Taylor’s notion of performance as an act of transfer relates directly to her question of whether performance “call[s] into question the very contours of the body�? (4). But how does this relate to her notion of “accion,�? which she describes as “more directed and intentional, and thus less socially and politically embroiled than performance�??

Performance in En breve cárcel/Certificate of Absence

2008-05-05T14:10:13Z

In “Acts of Transfer�?, Diana Taylor says: “Performances function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated, or what Richard Schechner has called ‘twice-behaved behavior’�?. (2-3)

]]> Thinking about Silvia Molloy’s En breve cárcel/Certificate of Absence, it feels as though "she", in her performance with her lovers (Vera and Renata), is transmitting the memories she has from her childhood, which also embody the sense of identity that "she" has of herself. The violence that comes afloat in her adult relationships is clearly a remnant of the violence she experienced as a child—with her mother’s detachment and her love-hate relationship with her father. Also, when her sister Clara was born, "she" describes jealousy as one of her first feelings (she was jealous of Clara’s light skin and blonde hair).

“Is performance always and only about embodiment? Or does it call into question the very contours of the body, challenging traditional notions of embodiment?�? (4)

Molloy paints a different picture when it comes to "she"’s body. Her whole body (but mainly her skin) seems to work as an identifier of her performance in life. “On the other hand she cannot imagine herself without a voice, just as she cannot imagine herself without a skin… a skin of voices to give shape to these fragments.�? (21) I think Molloy challenges the traditional notions of embodiment when "she" fragments her body/skin and, by doing so, shows the incredible fragility of her whole being—it seems that her body is just a fragment of her being; the other fragments are her mind, her heart, her memories, her passions, etc. Putting them all together would mean having one un-fragmented "she".

“Performance, as Roach points out, is as much about forgetting as about remembering.�? (11)

I think this quote applies to Molloy’s character, as we can see "she" going through life and acting as if she were remembering her childhood in every step/decision that she makes. However, at the same time, "she" seems to want to forget who she is (her identity) and become someone else (someone stronger like Vera?) Clearly, at the end, our performance IS who we are and we represent who we were/are, as well as who marked us: “Thinking of the two of them, so far way, she immediately sinks (she cannot find a better word) into the memories she has of each. There is absolutely no passion, just a need to become one with her mother and sister, to lose herself in them.�? (115)

PS: While doing some research I came accross these remarks about Molloy’s text in "Un mito nuevo: La mujer como sujeto/objeto literario" (Madrid: Editorial Pliegos, 1992) de Elena Gascón Vera. I thought I’d share them with you, but I’m sorry they are in Spanish!

“La protagonista de En breve cárcel tiene una relación mucho mas compleja con sus padres y con ella misma. Desde su infancia la sombra de una locura, probablemente inventada, le ronda como si en la locura, que ella inconscientemente desea, hubiera un posible escape del dolor que sufre por la no aceptación de su propia persona, que ella rechaza identificándola con su cuerpo y en el tropismo que, a lo largo del texto, ella hace de su piel. Esa piel a la que constantemente alude y que desearía dejar y cambiar como un traje viejo nunca apreciado ni querido.
El rechazo de su persona tiene también una explicación psicoanalítica en su deseo de agradar a los padres quienes, subconscientemente, supone que la rechazan, tal vez por nos ajustarse su propio físico a los cánones anglosajones que ella cree son los únicos aceptados por ellos. Esta creencia se ve ratificada con el nacimiento de su hermana, Clara, cuando ella tiene tres años. Clara es rubia y con ojos azules y para ella representa la belleza que cree no tener. Poco después, liberará la tortura de creerse más fea que su hermana golpeándola con un cinturón, tal vez como la secreta intención de marcarla y afearla para siempre. Esta primera violencia, originada por el dolor de no aceptarse, le acompañará a su vida adulta y le supondrá una razón más para justificar su propio rechazo y su consiguiente fracaso en el amor.�? (96)

2008-04-30T00:09:43Z

“There is a tendency to stress, the passive and traditional role, of women as opposed to a more dynamic and enterprising project of masculine world (Chong 2).

�?National identity can thus make people aware of themselves as a unique collectivity and a defender of its possessions or historic patrimony, such as territory and culture (Chong 12).�?

]]>
The quotes above from Chong made me thing about Belli and Kozameh .
In Inhabited Woman we can easily find a way to contradict such tendency. While we have Sara representing some ‘passivity’ choosing to be perfect housewife, on the other hand we have Flor who is really engaged to fight oppression and move forward with more hope for a change.
Kozameh in Steps Under Water represents the voice, not only for women, but also for her nation that has been prevented of knowing the truth of such a dark period in history for a great part of the population who still suffers with the mystery of those who disappeared.

Through the women in Belli and though Kozameh it is impossible not to recognize the possibility of knowing that their objective is to question the society and build through their voice the awareness to bring together women and the nation without being only “men [the representation of] the progressive feature of national modernity (Chong 2).�?

Women and the Nation in Belli and Morejon

2008-04-29T17:01:03Z

Guiterrez Chong demonstrates how women are used as symbols of national identity.
Guiterrez Chong show how women’s bodies are manipulated as national symbols in the arts and are often idealized to create archetypal images of nationalism. While women have been used for nationalist purposes, Guiterez Chong also shows how women themselves imagine the nation.

]]> She also attempts to show how women function I different roles for different types of nationalism. Tehreofroe, women can be both active participants in national struggles and transmitters of national culture.. Yet, it sometimes seems unclear on how women are feeding into previous nationalist cultures or subverting patriarchal nationalism. Can women who write and who make artistic contributions also play a role in supporting patriarachal nationalism? Here it seems that race has a key role to play as to who has also a vested interest in supporting regimes and to supporting or appropriating racialized forms of dominance, even when patriarchal.
In Morejon and Belli’s work, the body works as a geographical, gendered, racialized, and sexualized metaphor for the nation. For Belli, the nation is literally grounded in Itza’s incarnation as an orange tree. While Belli incorporates indigenous women as part of the national project, indigenous women still remain mostly invisible. Indeed, the nationalist project that has women at the forefront is not of the “original�? bearers of the land, but that of the mestiza and the Spanish invaders. In this, I am not sure if Belli is trying to create a creolization or a mestiza consciousness so much as an appropriation. In this way, I am reminded of the way in which indigenous groups here are used as figures of noble and brave symbols, yet are often treated as if they are wholly disappeared.
In both Belli and Morejon’s work, identity is constructed in part on a political identity and a consciousness and willingness to participate in a vision of nation-building. The way in which the characters “become�? is through a willingness to act and a willingness to be aware of their surroundings. For Belli, Lavinia could have stayed in her sheltered world, but she in fact, becomes through her participation and willingness to engage beyond the parameters of her privilged world. In Morejon’s Amo a mi Amo, the character also becomes more aware of her master’s role in domination and oppression, and therefore, in some ways similar to Lavinia, begins to question her own positon. In Mujer Negra, Morejon presents a history of a woman’s becoming literally through the emancipation of the nation. The references to national heroes such as Maceo function as a way to juxtapose women’s role in nation-building. However, there is also the question of if Morejon’s Mujer negra also challenges not just national identity, but an African diasporic identity. For Belli and Morejon, poetry and narrative are also ways of fashioning national identity through the evocation of female symbols

WOMEN AND NATION BUILDING - 'THE INHABITED WOMAN'

2008-04-29T16:45:52Z

WOMEN AND NATION BUILDING
In the quest to reinsert Mexican women in ‘official’ masculine history of nationalism which excludes women, Guti�?rrez Chong observes “a tendency to stress, the passive and traditional role of women as opposed to a more dynamic and enterprising project of the masculine world. for McClintock, men and women have different trajectories vis-à-vis the modern nation: ‘while women present the traditional face of nation (inert, backward-looking, and natural), men represents the progressive feature of national modernity (forward-thrusting, portent and historic)’….we do not find elements in these affirmations that undermine the importance of nationalist symbolism, which, were it not it not to exist, would make any nationalism unthinkable…[meaning that] the body or the heroic feat of women is neither a trivial nor minor affair. In short there are several roles which women assume in nationalisms, it is not only a question of seeing women as symbols or ‘garments’, but as social actors who are implicated in national processes in differing ways.�? (2-3)

]]> The view of women as passive is rather a fictional construction of women by men; after all if they are the ones (through patriarchy) who decide what gets included and/or excluded in their history, it’s very easy for them to dismiss women’s roles in nation building, on the basis of these false images of women they have created. Hence the need for a feminist intellectual practice that will place women at the centre of reconstructed historiography of nation building.
‘The Inhabited Woman’ is Belli’s bid towards this reconstruction. Itza, just like Gutierrez Chong questions this trivialization of women’s participation in these ‘public’ spaces of nationalism. Despite the fact that she out there in the battle field (away from her domestic sphere of operation) she laments “…I was not allowed to participate even though they took me into battle…There were moments when I felt my sex was a curse�? (91). She goes on to assert her heroic accomplishments “I was strong and more than once my intuition saved us from ambush. I was caring, and often the warriors came to me to talk about their feelings. I had a body capable of bearing life in nine moons and withstanding the pain of birth. I could fight, was skilled as any with my bow and arrow. I could cook…But they did not seem to appreciate these things�? (91) isn’t it obvious that women are the reproducers of a nation? That a man cannot fight to defend this country on an empty stomach? Surely this is contribution that seeks to be acknowledged. Why should nationalism be described in the hegemonic sense of heroic history?
Even though it’s difficult to give Lavinia all the credit for her brave participation in the National Liberation Movement (given the fact that she was inhabited by Itza), I wonder; is Belli trying to demonstrate that patriotism in this way overrides race and class (as Itza fights for her country through Lavinia)? Or does this inhabitation illustrate the ‘differing ways’ in which women participate in national building; Itza fights with her brave spirit while Lavinia fights with her body? Through these two characters, Belli makes the eclipsed (women and indigenous people) visible.
Gutierrez Chong underscores the different ways in which women participate in nation building through Josefa. She argues “For official historiography, her heroic act was not the transmission of ideas or ideals of winning battles or making one’s mark, it was rather the ability to emit a whisper at PRECISELY THE RIGHT TIME (9) (my emphasis). Any struggle involves planning where everyone involved plays a role (public or private). There are those who plan and those who execute the plan, and those who provide a conducive environment for the plan to occur (in the same manner that a theatre production includes those on the stage (visible) and those backstage (invisible) but both are equally important). Josefa’s was giving a signal at the right time. Belli underscore this need to keep to the plan through Lavinia’s initiation into the revolutionary movement. As she checks her rear-view mirror, she remembers “But Flor insisted on the need to follow the “security measures�? to the letter. She was never t take anything for granted�? (194). Sebastian further emphasizes the importance calculating time “You’ll get better at calculating time more accurately. It is not a good idea to arrive too early, nor too late. It can look suspicious if you drive around too much.�? (195). Now can anyone imagine if both Josefa and Lavinia missed the time? Should participation still then be judged by the visible?

2008-04-28T20:35:12Z

Similar to Kristin's question, "can we read the literary texts in this course as products of women reclaiming their (own) images for their own uses," I am interested in how building upon Gutierrez Chong's suggestion that "women have been used by and for nationalism," we can see how women writers use such manifestations of nationalisms to critique and respond to their objectification and/or exclusion (15).

]]> Specifically, I am thinking of Coronado's "Freedom" and "To Spain" poems, in which she is at once implicating herself in the nation-building process, and critiquing narratives of nationalism. Indeed, if Gutierrez Chong posits "women as intellectual creators of ideas of homeland and nation" (11), Coronado's poems seem to illustrate this notion directly.

Gutierrez Chong focuses specifically on the trope of the "woman homeland," and Coronado begins "To Spain" evoking such an image:

"What is the Black slave woman doing,
is she singing or crying?
Oh, grand lady Europe,
who keeps her in your splendid service (1-4)....
I who was nourished in her very womb,
who suckled at her breast,
her ardent milk, I lovingly revere her,
and I demand to know if at the feet of her tyrant
the slave rests, sings, or weeps.
Rise up, people who also owe
your life to this dear mother" (9-16)

In this poem, Coronado makes immediate use of a racialized gender to not only utilize the nation as woman trope, but to also call attention to the hierarchy that she sees existing between her beloved Spain ("the Black slave woman") and the rest of Europe (who Coronado critiques as exploiting her homeland). While on the one hand Coronado's crude comparison of the once powerful Spanish empire to a black slave woman throws the legitimacy of her claim into question (by eliding the actualized colonial violence the Spanish enacted on bodies of the indigenous and/or enslaved), her use of this image also suggests a way of responding to the nation as woman trope. Not only does this image differentiate between the varying positionalities of women that the category "woman" erases, Coronado also utilizes this image as a way of critiquing the process of nation building. Scolding those "who also owe [their] life to this dear mother" (16) and yet cannot act as a collective unit, Coronado criticizes the ways in which "One raises his battle tent/ in a corner of Spain/and elects himself king,/ and one traces in the sand,/writing and dispensing/ the laws that he alone follows." Positing these nameless figures as akin to "aimless Arabs," Coronado once again shows how women contributed and/or reinforced their own nationalisms by staking claims against the (national) identities of others, thus eradicating the possibility of women as innocent bystanders with no stake in the process of "masculinized" nation building. And yet, conscious of the ways in which their limited rights circumscribed how they could take part in the nation building process, Coronado uses "Freedom" to critique women's oppression:

The young men are smiling,
their elders are joyful
because, they say, my sisters,
that they have gained freedom for the people (1-4)....
I am pleased...for the men.
But as for us, the women,
I applaud not, I feel nothing (16-18)...
Freedom! What does it mean to us?
What do we gain, what will we possess?
Imprisonment by tribunal
and a needle by right? (21-24)...
But I tell you, my comrades,
that the law is but for them,
that women do not count,
nor is there a Nation for this sex (42-45)

If, as Gutierrez Chong suggests, the "success of nationalism depends on transmission and diffusion" (20), then in response to Daniela's question of "what is literature's role in this building or rebuilding of a nation?" Coronado seems self-consciously aware that it occupies a very central role. Using her poem as a source of a more gender equitable nation building at the same time that she rhetorically claims "nor is there a Nation for this sex," Coronado's position as woman writer positions her as reproducer of national boundaries, active participant in national struggle, and transmitter of national culture (20), three central areas in in which Gutierrez Chong suggests women have been central to the process of nation building.

To push on Daniela and Kristin's points a bit, and in dialogue with the Sommers article, I would like to ask how women writers position themselves/become positioned as critiquers and reinforcers of nationalist projects. Does the age of globalization allow for the possibility of overcoming national boundaries and interests (especially if as Daniela suggests "language" and "homeland" in the singular might no longer apply), thus allowing for more ethical and intersubjective interactions between self and other, or does globalization simply bring about new forms of nationalism (economic, capitalist, religious)?

women and nation building

2008-04-28T19:19:54Z

considering the tendency (described by both gutiérrez chong and sommer) to use images of women and their bodies in nation-building projects, can we read the literary texts in this course as products of women reclaiming their (own) images for their own uses?

how do these texts participate in nation-building projects? how do these texts interact with official nationalist discourses? i see some of these works as breaking into and contesting existing nationalist discourses. kozameh, for example, in pasos bajo el agua/steps under water, reveals aspects of argentine experience that had been buried. we know from her preface (as well as what she told us in person!) that this novel was not strictly her own personal experience but a composite of the stories of many people—however tragic, it is part of argentine identity. similarly, i think morejón’s poems “amo a mi amo�?/ “i love my master�? and “mujer negra�?/ “black woman�? expand the cuban story to include afro-cuban women.

Nation, country, homeland

2008-04-28T15:42:47Z

“It is wide spread the assumption that nationalism, has ‘typically sprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation and masculinized hope’ (Enloe, 1989, p.44 in McClintock, 1993, p. 62) or that it is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Kedourie in Leuossi, 2001, p. 230).�? (Gutiérrez Chong 3)

]]> It is interesting to read this “wide spread assumption�? and think of Gioconda Belli’s novel, as it seems that the author is trying to give her nation a new meaning throughout The Inhabited Woman. Even though we are told the story of Faguas, we know she is talking about Nicaragua and we are aware of the socio-political moment that Belli chose as a setting for her story. It is not a simple coincidence that the author (a political committed woman) would want to expand her work into the literary realm. However, I think it’d be naïve to believe that she did it without thinking of her need to tell the story of her country, of her nation. It is significant that she decided to fight for her country’s liberation of a dictatorship and that she gave her main character the same gender, but then I can’t help thinking of two questions related to Gutiérrez Chong’s quote: Did Lavinia get involved in the organization because she wanted to or because of Felipe? (A question we have discussed in class many times) And, why did Belli felt the need to include Itzá in the story? Was Lavinia’s European background somehow problematic and the author felt she had to reach out to more “native�? (autóctono) Nicaraguan roots?

So, what does “nation�? mean? And, can a novel like The Inhabited Woman or Steps under Water help rebuild a nation that went through a painful fracture? According to Doris Sommer, romance novels did help build a sense of nation in the nineteenth century:

“It is possible that the pretty lies of national romance are similar strategies to contain the racial, regional, economic, and gender conflicts that threatened the development of new Latin American nations. After all, these novels were part of a general bourgeois project to hegemonize a culture in formation.�? (Sommer 29)

In the twentieth century it is women like Belli and Kozameh that write the novels and tell the stories. But, even though they opened the field for a different kind of nation, we may have to think that they still belong to the “bourgeois project�?: How did they create their authority to write? Who was/is their audience? Is there a difference between Alicia Kozameh and Rigoberta Menchú, as far as their socio-economic background and education and their ability to convey their experiences to their compatriots?

Building a nation is an ongoing project, even for “well-established�? European countries which are now facing a big wave of immigration—according to this week’s Time magazine, Brigitte Bardot will go on trial on charges of discrimination and spreading racial hatred for writing an open letter to the French President accusing France’s Muslim population of destroying the country. So, what is literature’s role in this building or rebuilding of a nation (thinking of a country like Iraq)? Is it possible to represent all its inhabitants in today’s world (compared to what it meant the nineteenth century)?

Nancy Morejón writes: “Those leaves flying under the sky,/are singing the language of the homeland.�? Can we talk about one language nowadays? Can we even talk about one homeland (patria)?

Women and Nationalisms: Gutiérrez-Chong and Belli

2008-04-28T14:30:47Z

Gutiérrez Chong, citing McClintock, writes “men and women have different trajectories vis-à-vis the modern nation: ‘while women present the traditional face of the nation […], men represents the progressive feature of national modernity’.�? And then Gutiérrez-Chong adds: “Women are the repositories of authenticity and originality which all nations pursue, while their rights in the political terrain of legality are delayed. We do not find elements in these affirmations that undermine the importance of nationalist symbolism, which, were not to exist, would make any nationalism unthinkable. […] In fact, there is no nationalism lacking symbolism and, if such symbolism incarnates the exaltation and celebration of domestic space, then the body or the heroic feat of women is neither a trivial not minor affair. In short, there are several roles which women assume in nationalisms, it is not only a question of seeing women as symbols or ‘garments’, but as social actors who are implicates in national processes in differing ways�? (p. 2).

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This passage from Gutiérrez-Chong made me think about the character Itzá in Belli’s “The Inhabited Woman�?. This passage clarifies for me the relationship both women, Itza and Lavinia, have in the novel. The main character is Lavinia, because she is the “inhabited woman�?, and the novel’s title sets this role for her. My doubt was what Itzá represents. I saw her as an important character but since she has no body, no house (besides the orange tree where she dwells) and she is the one who inhabits Lavinia, where her importance comes from? In other words, where comes from the power Itzá has to make Lavinia to do what she herself wishes to do? . So this passage from Gutiérrez-Chong clarifies for me the symbolic place Itzá represents in Belli’s novel. Her “presence�? legitimizes the actual armed struggled against the Grand General regime in the novel. It also gives continuity to a previous confrontation between the native people against the Spaniards. And finally it gives the modern nationalist actions of The Movement the occasion to suceed this time, that is, to transform the original defeat into a victory.

Gutiérrez Chong proposes that “there is no nationalism lacking symbolism�?. In Belli’s novel, there is no exaltation of the domestic space exactly but, in my view, of the ethnic component, which is not otherwise present in the novel (although the reader assumes that all the people implicated are descendants of Itzá’s race -except maybe Lavinia, who seems to have Italian ancestors.) So, Itzá represents tradition and Lavinia modernity and both are linked by the fact of being women participating in a nationalist movement to form a “multicultural nation�?.

How then, Lavinia, from a privileged situation, and enjoying personal freedom, the possession of a house, a good job, beauty and youth, gets to the point of sacrificing herself in her quest? My answer is that her “conversion�? happened by accumulation of experiences. First, she realizes that Felipe was involved with the movement. She then sees Sebastian almost dying in her house. Then, she deals with Lucrecia and her sister. And finally she is in the waiting room in the hospital with the “other�? people, that is, people Lavinia never was in contact with before. (To all this we can add that she meets Flor, which is also a crucial event for Lavinia in the development of her conscience and political awareness.)

Lavinia finally accepts her full and complete participation in the Movimiento the day before the inauguration of the general’s house (Chap. 24) in “el cerrito verde de su infancia, al grabado de la niña viendo un mundo que consideraba suyo�? (p. 329). There is a mention of the childbirth of a woman and then: “sus compañeros, en algún lugar, se prepararían para desatar el látigo de los sin voz, los expulsados del paraíso y hasta de sus míseros asentamientos�? (p. 329). Lavinia, then, is personally convinced, and declares her own conviction contemplating the landscape: “Bien valía la pena morir por esta belleza, pensó. Morir tan sólo para tener este instante, este sueño del día en que aquel paisaje realmente les perteneciera a todos.
Este paisaje era su noción de patria, con esto soñaba cuando estuvo al otro lado del océano.�? (p. 330)

Linguistic Formations of Race

2008-04-16T17:03:44Z

While reading "Gender, Race, Raza," Antonio de Nebriya's line "Language has always been the companion of empire," (14) immediately brought me back to the Benegas poem, "She arises soaked in autumn":

About the date plums called "caquis," that she does not recall having seen on the branch. Perhaps someone showed her one, making it turn in her hand? She suspects that as was usual with her--she was a pianist--the word "caqui" entered through her ear, in a colonial uniform, beige color, excursions by jeep in the desert and concave hat with the hero looking through a spy glass." (83)

]]> Benegas' use of the word "caqui" to illustrate how language is always already infused with historical connotations and cultural ideology closely connects to Kaminsky's argument that race is unstable, relational, and context specific.

These are questions I was considering early on in the semester both through Belli's The Inhabited Woman and Zayas' Her Lover's Slave precisely because of my lack of familiarity with specific markers of race and class hierarchy in Spain and Nicaragua. As Daniela points out, while Belli outlines Lavinia's physical features as a way of marking her as mestizaje, Belli's use of clothing to position Lavinia in a certain race and class was unreadable to me. That is, while certain words ("pedigree," "white skin and dark hair") signify Lavinia's race/class to an extent, without a grounded knowledge of site-specific historical/cultural conditions I was left with only a vague understanding of how Belli intended Lavinia's body to signify. This was also the case for me with Her Lover's Slave, in which Zayas uses Dona Isabel's transformation to Zelima to signify how Isabel's performance as a Moor destabilizes notions of the fixedness/naturalness of race and class. It was not until the readings and class discussion that I was able to more fully "read" Zayas' intentional positioning of Isabel in her work (and specifically the close connections between race and religion in Spain at this time).

The use of language to construct, deconstruct, and interrogate racial formations in both of these texts serves to illustrate the instability and historical/contextual "nature" of constructions of race--constructions that are laden with contradictions that always threaten to expose such racial fictions. This, in part, is what June Jordan's "Report from the Bahamas" seeks to explore as Jordan is constantly resituating/positioning herself and her perspectives based on the context specific ways formulations of race/class/gender manifest themselves in her roles as professor and tourist. Indeed, these contradicitons and the needing to "make sense of" are also at the heart of the Williams' piece in which Williams, despite asking her mother's cousin (her godmother?) for "The truth, the truth," finally surrenders herself to "the voracity of her amnesia" (17), a historical silencing that closely connects to the Hirsch/Smith and Franco pieces we read for our week on memory. Indeed, Williams' identifies Marjorie as "a storyteller," which has strong resonances with Hirsch and Smith's call for counternarratives that challenge hegemonic accounts of history. While the Hirsch/Smith is mostly focused on gender, when read in dialogue with the readings for this week, we can see how gender/race/class/religion are always already bound into such historical retellings.

On the object of property

2008-04-16T16:55:32Z

The first thing that strikes me is the wonderfull articulation of academic writing and “personal�? writing. This personal writing is testimonial, also. Williams mixes both past memories and insights into new experiences and then compare them, relating them to the academic realm, to finally write an academic article.

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The academic article has an ending, but her own search, her questions do not. Her questions end in silence. This is a silence that is eloquent in its own way, because it confronts the seeker with an open space, for her to look again for more answers.

The academic article, then, is a mixture of personal memories and how they relate to the rights of people that are disempowered, like Williams was or her ancestors were.

The second thing I want to emphasize are the stories of polar bears, They resemble represed memories, like the impotent man’s in Peri Rossi’s Lovely’s. But in Williams article, the silence occupies a space and is localized, as we see in the polar bear passage. What I see in this passage is that parents, elders, try to silence some painful experiences, so that their offsprings do not get damaged like they did. Elders sometimes try to preserve the happy non-traumatized child. That might be the explanation for the prosthetic memory, which occupies the place of the “real�? memory. Is literature -as in the polar bear story- the same? Does it have healing powers? Could it be a place were “the reconstitution of the self�? happens?

Third, the rights of the “owners�? that trascend social stratification of production modes, from slavery ( slave owners were the ones with the rights in a pre-capitalist society) and in a modern capitalist system (finances, money reproduces itself). Who makes the rules, who makes the rights?. Those rights are not for the other but for themselves (the owners). As Williams herself becomes ( a yelling self different from the composed and mild-mannered one, in that same way, all mistreated people should/could reclaim their right places in society. Now, rules are supposed to be equally accepted for everyone, but they are not.

Fourth, is it in the process of writing that our self can construct a explanation? Is there a confrontation with fear necessary? Is it in the process of writing that the writer confronts his/her own dilemmas?

Morejon’s I love my master is an example that fits perfectly:

I love my master
I gather firewood to light his daily fire.
I love his clear eyes.
Tame as any lamb,
I scatter drips of honey on his ears.
[…]

My master bites, subjugates

[…]

Hearing from the old field guards talking, I leaned
that my love
gives lashings in the cauldrons of the sugar mill

[…]

¿Por qué le sirvo?

[…]
My love is like the weeds that cover the dowry
the only possession he cannot take from me.

I course

[…]

I love my master, but every night
when I cross the flowery pathway to the cane fields
where we have surreptitiously made love,
I can see myself with knife in hand, butchering him like
innocent cattle.

Gender/race in "La esclava de su amante"

2008-04-16T14:53:34Z

In “Gender, Race, Raza�?, Amy Kaminsky discusses the relationship between race and gender, and explores the ways in which gender, long accepted as a natural category, serves to legitimize and naturalize categories of race, “analyzing the instability of race itself and the part gender plays in naturalizing what gets called ‘race’ in and across cultures�? (7).

]]> Using an excerpt from Lazarillo de Tormes, Kaminsky demonstrates the ways in which language allows both difference and sameness to be articulated. Using this same idea, I would like to explore how language in “La esclava de su amante�? allows Isabel/Zelima to move between the fixed “racial�? categories of cristiana/mora, as well as the ways in which “rules of behavior can be transgressed. When they are, authority takes care that the transgressor is either punished or pardoned, so that through its intervention the fundamental structures of racially or gender-appropriate behavior can be recovered�? (9-10).

Isabel, a Christian (unmarked) female (marked), uses language to change her identity. Naming herself Zelima and pronouncing her Moorish identity, Isabel embodies that identity, in effect becoming Zelima. In this way, she is using language not as a marker of sameness, but rather a marker of difference; she is not a Christian, she is a Moor. In the context of seventeenth-century Spain, it seems almost inconceivable that any Christian would want to call herself/himself a Moor; in this way, no one questions Zelima’s “mora�? identity. Of course, her robe and the sign of “esclavo�? on her forehead help to strengthen her pronounced identity.

On the other hand, Zaida, a mora (marked racially/marked because of gender), cannot as easily use language to transgress her racial category (that is, she cannot use it to incorporate herself into the unmarked racial group). Here we see the influence of the state in maintaining racial/gender identities. Zaida, desiring to marry Don Manuel, knows that she must “officially�? become Christian—she cannot merely pronounce herself Christian, as Isabel pronounced herself Moor. As Zayas reveals, Zaida has to lie in order to be able to get permission to travel with Don Manuel, “since without that the Moors cannot go from one place to another�? (189). Here we see a possible intersection gender and race, but more importantly, an example of the state regulation of those categories.

I haven’t thought through all this enough; I’m sure there are holes in it, so please point them out!