One of my friends would argue until she's blue in the face that Early America is largely ignored by academia, and we should look deeply into the rich history surrounding this long period instead of writing it off as precursor to The American Revolution and the 19th Century American Renaissance. Greene's piece not only reminds me of my friend's sentiments but also brings to mind our recurring conversation about dominant narratives and revisionist history. To me, the value of this work is unquestionable. However, I often wonder who should be doing revisionist history? Who has the authority to speak for the marginalized group? What are the risks? What are the advantages from looking in from the outside?
After reading "Can the Subaltern Speak?" by Spivak, I've been haunted by these questions. She essentially says the subaltern can't speak, and intellectuals should be aware of using the subaltern as part of their own political or academic agendas. Now, I would agree that the subaltern is an extreme case in light of our conversation about literacy, but the task of representing other people fairly and ethically is one that seems central to our research.
We've looked at some instances where outsiders go into a community to study the people and left that community worse off--I'm thinking of Heath specifically. I can recall hearing people say during class, "Why didn't she include this? / What did she leave out?" At first, these questions are dismissed in view of her academic background. Given her robust vita with multiple publications and an impressive educational pedigree, Heath seems to have authority to write on this matter. Yet, in the spirit of full-disclosure, there's a part of me--probably those working class roots--that wants to say: "Who is she to talk about these people?" Since then, ethnographers seem to be more transparent about their backgrounds and ideological leanings, but even with this open approach, there are still problems.
Greene has extensive experience with her subject and is also Hispanic. I can see why she would want to revise the Anglocentric Early American narrative with the rich contributions the Spanish gave to America's intellectual history. It is engaging work and helps to get a fuller picture of American history and literacy. However--I feel somewhat uncomfortable asking this--Am I wrong to think that Greene has more credibility to speak on this matter because she's not only a collegiate scholar but also Hispanic?
Maybe some more background on my line of thought will help you understand why I'm asking this question. Last semester, I surveyed some Feminist and Queer theories, and this semester I’ve had to read some Engels. What they have in common, generally speaking, is that they value representation and action directly from people associated with their culture. Engels applauded “true” working-class movements and begrudgingly endorsed the bourgeois-tainted strand of English Socialism. Radical Feminists and Queer theorists generally rejected the mainstream culture and claim that outsiders should not represent them. While these are class, gender, and sexuality issues, I also know that this argument extends to race.
So, I’m left wondering: who am I able to represent? Who are you able to represent? Is it a level of personal comfort? Does it have to do with the past, socioeconomic background, expertise of study? Maybe I just feel more comfortable making claims about literary texts than I do about living people.
Todd,
ReplyDeleteYou are posing important, perilous questions here - questions that are fundamental to the work I/we do. There questions are perhaps most pronounced within particular intellectual/disciplinary/methodological traditions. These questions, in many ways, constitute the discourse communities of composition and cultural rhetoric in which I was trained. One of my mentors, along the way, was a student of Spivak who often explained (accurately or not) that Spivak lamented some of the unexpected consequences of her work. She, translated through her student and other writing beyond "Can the Subaltern Speak," was surprised by the suggestion that her arguments were meant to stop/evict scholars from developing ethical ways to discover. Within the conversations of feminist rhetoric and feminist research in which I live, the additional outer layer to this tension becomes - what about the ethics of action/passivity? Of our participation, our complacency, or perhaps our complicity when refusing the struggle in despair?
All this to say - you pose crucially important questions here. Please offer them up for conversation tomorrow, framed with our concerns.
TS
Todd,
ReplyDeleteThese are good questions. I think that teachers are often asked to represent so many issues to our students that we gloss over assumptions that we make about what we are representing. Maybe the solution is to remind students that one cannot ultimate speak about these texts in the same ways that the individuals in the texts might, but that it is still informing, even empowering to consider the situations that are presented there. It could be that the application of standpoint theory might work well here, as it acknowledges that there are varying perspectives at play within our social environments. Even then, I feel that representation is fluid. I can’t speak for all people of color, not all black people, all Georgians, or all women, but I feel I still make contributions to these communities and others. Even claims formed from a literary perspective are not free of this entanglement. I mean, imagine any of us teaching world literature from only the perspective of our identifying experiences.
Maybe the idea of personal comfort is the one that should help to inform this decision; in other words, if an academic is very familiar with a subject matter, s/he will be more comfortable working with that knowledge base (though I suppose one could assume a level of comfort about a subject matter without knowing much about it). Representation can ever be so neatly partitioned that we don’t run into questions of authority; maybe the benefit comes from trying to puzzle out those issues with others.
N
Thank you very much for your thoughtful comments.
ReplyDeleteDr. TS: I think it's fascinating to hear about your mentor's experience with Spivak. I know that "Subaltern" is not the entire body of Spivak's work, but, similar to what we talked about a few weeks ago, when texts are sent off into the world, they take on lives of their own.
N: I really like this idea of contributing from personal communities. That's a good way to look at it. However, what happens when you want to engage with another community? Can you gain ethos in that?
In another class, we talked a lot about the post-colonial development of another theory, Cosmopolitanism--how do we as individual from separate cultures connect with others in a globalized world? what are the ethics? Who should do the representation?
We made a lot of fun of Pier One Imports in that class. However, we did agree that people can connect with each other across cultural borders--even if that connection is just a financial transaction or service(American tourist: "Jay voo-dray Bow-Coo Day Fro-MAH-ge See Voo Play.")
Sorry. I brought up too much theory in this post so I had to end on a silly note.