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Immigrant Subjectivities & Commodity Culture:
Cultural Citizenship, Americanization &
Immigrant Autobiographics
in the Late-Twentieth Century United States
by
Carlos Fernando Camargo
B.A. (Florida International University, Miami) 1988
M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1991
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
English
in the
GRADUATE DIVISION
of the
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
Committee in charge:
Professor Richard Hutson (English), Chair
Professor Hertha Sweet Wong (English)
Professor Sau-ling Cynthia Wong (Ethnic Studies)
FALL 2003
2
The dissertation of Carlos Fernando Camargo is approved:
_________________________________________________________________Richard Hutson, Chair Date
_________________________________________________________________Hertha Sweet Wong Date
_________________________________________________________________Sau-ling Cynthia Wong Date
University of California, Berkeley
FALL 2003
3
IMMIGRANT SUBJECTIVITIES & COMMODITY CULTURE:
CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP,
AMERICANIZATION & IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS
IN THE LATE-TWENTIETH CENTURY UNITED STATES
Copyright 2003
by
Carlos Fernando Camargo
1
ABSTRACT
Immigrant Subjectivities & Commodity Culture:
Cultural Citizenship, Americanization & Immigrant Autobiographics
in the Late-Twentieth Century United States
by
Carlos Fernando Camargo
Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature and Language
University of California, Berkeley
Professor Richard Hutson, Chair
This study takes the literary works of immigrant writers and autobiographers as
occasions to explore and theorize the relationship between identity formations in
narratives of Americanization and the social discourses and material practices that make
these texts possible and related genres intelligible during periods of high migration in a
global labor market system. In particular this study is concerned with tracing the
generative tensions and contradictions of ideological discourses surrounding nation, self
and representation in the United States in the last quarter of the century in order to
demonstrate the "material force" of ideational and ideological discursive formations
within a culture structured around relations of exchange and commodification—i.e
advanced late capitalism. In brief, by investigating the discursive formations around
notions of self, nation and life-story in the autobiographical narratives of immigrants,
this study attempts to account for the emergence, development and imperatives of what
some scholars have labeled a "culture of autobiography" in evidence throughout U.S.
cultural formations within the last three decades of the 20th century. Additionally, this
study attempts to map the development and response of U.S. immigrant autobiography
to heated public debates over immigration at the 20th century's end, echoing the heyday
2
of a similar nativist assault in fin-de-siecle 19th century America lasting into what social
historian John Higham has characterized as the “Tribal Twenties” in his classic study of
turn-of-the-century U.S. nativism, Strangers in the Land (1964). Lastly, this study
documents the ideological triumph of economies of exchange underwritten by
commodity relations at the present historical juncture which call for an accounting of the
reifying and utopian possibilities and constraints of all cultural formations, but most
especially those of emergent immigrant and ethnic formations since these, as this study
will argue, provide a unique perspective on the economic, cultural and social cleavages
within the discursive and material fabric of the United States. Immigrants are
Americans writ large. Added to this socio-literary dynamic is the advent of what
immigration historians Castles and Miller call "the age of migration" providing us with a
unique opportunity to examine the role and expansion of commodity relations at both
phenomenological and structural planes because the commodities now in motion and in
circulation speak, write and represent themselves: they are the men, women and
children who have entered this country as immigrants, refugees & asylees.
Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature & Language
University of California, Berkeley
__________________________________________________________________Richard Hutson, Chair Date
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION..................................................................................................................... I
TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................................ II
LIST OF FIGURES ..............................................................................................................V
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................................... VI
PART I: NOVUS ORDO SECULORUM: AD AUGUSTA PER ANGUSTA ....................................1
CHAPTER 1: CONCEPTUALIZING NARRATIVE AGENCY: UBI BENE IBI PATRIA................2SYNOPSIS: IMMIGRANT GENRES...........................................................................................2TRANSCENDING THE DICHOTOMY: THE TALES WE TELL.................................................3
ETIC AND EMIC NARRATIVE SELVES— SUBJECTIVITY AS FUSION OF BIOGRAPHY& HISTORY ..............................................................................................................................4THE DUALITY OF STRUCTURE: BEYOND THE INTENTIONAL FALLACY TOWARDSTEXTS IN CONTEXT ...............................................................................................................6
OPERATIONALIZING HABITUS IN THE ANALYSIS OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICS OFAMERICANIZATION..................................................................................................................10
HABITUS AS SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: NARRATIVE & SOCIAL REGENERATION,RENEWAL BY KILLING A SELF ..........................................................................................15
CHAPTER 2: IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS IN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC &AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION ..................................................................................... ..............23
VARIETAS DELECTA: DRAMAS OF BEING & BELONGING................................................23NOMEN EST OMEN..............................................................................................................25INTER CAECOS REGNAT LUSCUS.....................................................................................27QUE NOCENT, SAEPE DOCENT. ........................................................................................32MELODRAMAS OF INDIVIDUATION & CONSOLIDATION ..........................................34REPETITIO EST MATER STUDIORUM... .............................................................................36VULNERANT OMNES, ULTIMA NECAT. ..........................................................................39
CHAPTER 3: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA............................................42SYNOPSYS: PERFORMANCE, PERSONALITY AND IDENTITY DEFENSE IN ..................43LIFE-STORY & AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE ...........................................................43LIFE STORIES: WHAT DO WE TELL WHEN WE TELL THEM? ...........................................46DEFENSE MECHANISMS IN LIFE-STORY FASHIONING: INTERVIEW EVIDENCE .........49BEYOND THE INTERVIEW: DEFENSE MECHANISMS IN THE LIFE STORY ....................53WHO HEARS THE STORY?........................................ .............................................................58AUDIATUR ET ALTERA PARS!................................................................................................60CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................................................63
PART II: IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS: HISTORIA EST VITAE MAGISTRA. ........64
CHAPTER 4: NARRATIVE PURSUITS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FABULAE .............................65THE SOCIO-CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF NARRATIVE IDENTITY &SUBJECTITIVIES IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE...................................................65NARRATIVE INDIVIDUALISM: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DEUS-EX-MACHINA.....................68
iii
THE SOCIO-CULTURAL IMAGINATION AS BASIS FOR SOCIO-LITERARYPERSPECTIVE: SELF-PRESENTATION, MIMESIS & NARRATIVE PURSUITS.................70CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................................................79
CHAPTER 5: IDOLS OF THE TRIBE & FABLES OF AMERICAN NATIONAL IDENTITY:SPEAKING OF IMMIGRATION ......................................................................................................82
ONE PERSON'S STORY IS ANOTHER PERSON'S METAPHOR ........................................83ASSIMILATION ........................................................................................................... ...............85ETHNIC RETENTION................................................................................................................90ACCULTURATION ....................................................................................................................94ETHNIC GROUP -- OR GROUPNESS?.................................................................................102
CHAPTER 6 : LOST IN INTERPELLATION: CHANG-RAE LEE’S NATIVE SPEAKER ..........106THE NARATIVE PURSUITS OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL TRICKSTER .........................106NARRATIVE SYNOPSIS: LOST IN INTERPELLATION ............................. ..........................106THE LONG PLANE RIDE: CHILDHOOD & YOUTH, OR WHEREIN THE PRE-REFLEXIVECOGITO GOES BAD...............................................................................................................107RHETORICS OF DESCENT & DIFFERENCE: TROPES OF FAMILY & FILIALSUBJECTIVITIES ....................................................................................................................109IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS: THE AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHIC IMPULSE..................115THE ETHNIC OTHER: MY MONSTER, MYSELF? ...............................................................117IMMIGRANT BRICOLEUR AS NATIVE-INFORMANT ...................................................... ....118ENGLISH ONLY!: LANGUAGE AND THE NATIVE SPEAKER ............................................121NARRATIVE RESOLUTIONS AND PLOTS OF MARITAL CONCORD ...............................123
PART III: AMERICANIZATION: PER ASPERA AD ASTRA...........................................126
CHAPTER 7: THE MAKING OF AMERICANS: ELITE & POPULAR ARTICULATIONS OFNATIONAL SUBJECTIVITIES .......................................................................................................127
THE POLITICAL MODEL - AN 'IDEAS NATION' ...................................................................128THE DECLINE OF THE 'IDEAS NATION' ..............................................................................131MULTICULTURALISM.............................................................................................................133THE CULTURAL MODEL........................................................................................................134AN AMERICAN CULTURE?....................................................................................................136THE FRONTIER: CRUSADE, CRUCIBLE AND CRIME .......................................................137THE MELTING POT ...................................... ..........................................................................138THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF AN AMERICAN CULTURE ....................................................139ASSIMILATION AND ACCULTURATION ..............................................................................140THE ETHNO-RACIAL MODEL................................................................................................142SURVEYING U.S. PUBLIC OPINION.....................................................................................144WHO’S YOUR GRANDDADDY? OR WHO GETS TO BE AMERICAN, CULTURALLYSPEAKING ... ............................................................................................................................149
THE BREAK-DOWN OF AMERICAN OPINION ..............................................................150SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.......................................................................................153
CHAPTER 8: CINEMATIC DISCIPLINING OF THE IMMIGRANT OTHER ON THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER ....................................................................................................................... ....156
SYNOPSIS: ..............................................................................................................................156INTERTEXTUALITY: NARRATIVE, FILM AND SOCIAL DISCOURSES OF IDENTITY.....157GEOGRAPHIES OF THE BORDER SELF AND SOCIUS IN CINEMA................................159FRONTIER FANTASIES: HYPOTHETICAL SELVES & THREATENING OTHERS ...........161LOCATING THE BORDERS OF SELF: BOUNDED IDENTITY & SPLIT SELVES ............163DISCIPLINARY NARRATIVES: WHY SIZE MATTERS, OR DOES IT SCALE?..................167THE IMMIGRANT BODY AS BORDER: ABJECT OBJECT?................................................170IMMIGRATION DISCIPLINE: REMEMBERING THE SOUTHERN “OTHER”......................172THE AMERICAN “SOUTH”: DISPLACED ANXIETY IN BORDER NARRATIVES...............173CINEMATIC CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................... ..........176
iv
PART IV: CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP: E PLURIBUS UNUM. .......................................179
CHAPTER 9: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AMERICAN AENEIDS: IMMIGRANT ........................180
FAMILY FICTIONS AS TROPES OF SELF—OR, HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST .............180
THEIR ACCENTS BY DREAMING IN CUBAN ...........................................................................180TENSE TROPICS: TROPES OF FAMILY & HOST COMMUNITY ......................................180ARTICULATING THE NARRATIVE SELF WITHIN THE IMMIGRANT SOCIUS .................187QUALIS PATER TALIS FILIUS. ..............................................................................................193HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, AND GOT THEIR GROOVE...........203SPANISH-AMERICAN PRINCESS: VENI, VIDI, VICI. ..........................................................213DREAMING IN CUBAN WHILE LIVING ON THE HYPHEN ........ .........................................219EXILE DREAMS: THE BREADED LEVIATHAN & CUBA LIBRE!........................................221SUGARCANE SHADOWS ......................................................................................................227REVOLUTIONARY FAMILIES AND THE MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY.......................228
CHAPTER 10: U.S IMMIGRANT SUBJECTIVITIES & NARRATIVES IN THE SHADOW OFTHE COMMODITY.........................................................................................................................234
TOWARDS A SOCIO-LITERARY PERSPECTIVE:.............................................................. .235LE LY HAYSLIP'S MORAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP & THE POLITICS OF ABSOLUTIONIN WHEN HEAVEN AND EARTH CHANGED PLACES AND CHILD OF WAR, WOMAN OFPEACE......................................................................................................................................238THE AESTHETICIZATION & PRIVATIZATION OF LOSS AND RAGE IN EVA HOFFMAN'SLOST IN TRANSLATION.........................................................................................................240ALL IN THE FAMILY: LIFE ON THE HYPHEN WITH PÉREZ FIRMAT:CUBA'S SON INAMERICA, OR WHAT BECOMES A CUBAN MACHO MOST? ...........................................244THE POLITICS OF RACE AND FAMILY VALUES IN MARK MATHABANE'S KAFFIRBOY, KAFFIR BOY IN AMERICA , & LOVE IN BLACK AND WHITE..................................247ILLEGAL DREAMS AND LABOR PAINS: THE SHADOWED LIFE A MIGRANT LABORERIN RAMON PÉREZ'S DIARY OF AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT...............................250
PART V: COMMODITY CULTURE: SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI. ............................254
CHAPTER 11: WHAT IS COMMODITY CULTURE, AND WHERE CAN I GET IT ON SALE?...255
MY SO-CALLED LIFE: LABORING IN THE SHADOW OF THE COMMODITY ..................255WHAT’S A HAND WORTH THESE DAYS? OR, THE COMMODIFICATION OF THEBODY........................................................................................................................................256PERSONS, BODIES AND THINGS........................................................................................259THE LOGIC OF DEMONIC CAPITAL & DE-HUMANIZING WAGE-LABOR........................261THE OCCULT HISTORY OF THE RISE OF VAMPIRIC CAPITALISM................................265WAGE-LABOR AND GLOBAL COMMODIFICATION ...........................................................269WHY SELL YOURSELF SHORT? ..........................................................................................272CHANGE IS THE CHALLENGE, NOT NEED ........................................................................275
WORKS CITED & ENDNOTES .................................................................................278
WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 2 .............................................................................................278WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 3 .............................................................................................279WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 4 .............................................................................................283WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 6 .............................................................................................285WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 9 .............................................................................................288WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 10 .............................................................................. .............290ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER 11.............................................................................................292
v
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1--Texts in Contexts..............................................................................................................75
Figure 2- Context ...............................................................................................................................79
Figure 3 - Sedimentation: From Habitus to Ideology ...............................................................237
Figure 4 - Acculturation Process........................................................................................ ...........237
vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Intellectually this study owes its critical interdisciplinary approach and scope to
the influence and teaching of Prof. Richard Hutson and of the Bad Subjects Collective
founded by Joe Sartelle at UC-Berkeley in the pre-bubble 1990s, before email and chat
rooms were all the rage. Additionally, it is informed by and has developed out of the
teaching practice and critical pedagogy I learned from Prof. Kathleen Moran and Prof.
Christine Palmer of the American Studies Program at UCB. From them, I learned to
decode texts in any context—and actually like it. From Richard, I learned to follow my
intellectual bliss. And, from Joe, I learned about bliss, period.
1
PART I: NOVUS ORDO SECULORUM: AD AUGUSTA PER ANGUSTA
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights,that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, derivingtheir just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of theseends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizingits powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness.
—(Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence of theUnited States of America, July 4, 1776)
.
IMMIGRANT SUBJECTIVITIES
“The woof of time is every instant broken, and the track of generations effaced.Those who went before are soon forgotten; of those who will come after,
no one has any idea: the interest of man is confinedto those in close propinquity to himself”
(Tocqueville, Democracy in America)
2
CHAPTER 1: CONCEPTUALIZING NARRATIVE AGENCY: UBI BENE IBI PATRIA
SYNOPSIS: IMMIGRANT GENRES
Writing this chapter has been particularly challenging – and has been described by onecolleague as my “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. This seems rather over-ambitious,but I am trying to bring together some ideas that might be considered as sitting uneasilytogether. In this chapter I introduce the conceptual framework I adopt in the study. Thisframework involves the elaboration of three key areas from social theory, PierreBordieu’s notion of habitus, the notion of ideology and its relation to underlying socialideas, and Michel Foucault’s analyses of discursive formations. I spend some timearticulating the significance of these three key themes because it seems to me to be veryimportant that wherever possible I clarify what might be misunderstandings. I want toargue that authorial decisions made by immigrant autobiographers are not solelyrational and self-directed (authorial) choices made by completely autonomous socialbeings. Looking objectively at the situation once evinces that there are influences andstructures of thought and feeling which impose themselves on immigrantautobiographers as they craft their life narratives. It is these influences and structures ofthought and feeling that are included in the notion of ideology, following Marx andWilliams. It is this level of thinking that is usually avoided in many formalistic studies ofimmigrant autobiographical practices, especially so in classroom practice, largely Iconjecture because of the political nature of the ideas it represents. However, theproposed Goffmanian, socio-literary approach to autobiographical narrative provides agenerative critical axis for narratological analysis of autobiographies as constitutinghistorical and biographically significant autobiographical social situations.
Critiquing ideology though is not enough to give us a clear picture of the messy swampof human interaction. I find my way through this swamp with Pierre Bordieu and hisnotion of habitus as my guide. Michel Foucault brings to this venture his idea that thereis some underlying structure and rationale to the process of discursive formation. I donot conceive of this chapter as a “Morrison’s Cafeteria” entree; but, rather it is a cordonbleu arrangement of complementing and mutually enhancing components, theintegration of which is considerably more satisfying and powerful than any of the parts.I hope you, the diner, will agree.
3
TRANSCENDING THE DICHOTOMY: THE TALES WE TELL
Sie wissen da nicht, aber sie tun es(They do not know it, but they do it)
(Karl Marx, Capital)
People know what they do, they frequently know why they do what they do, butthey don’t know what what they do does.
(Michel Foucault quoted in Dreyfus and Rabinow and Dowling 1991; FLM 1991Gender, Class and Subjectivity. pps 2 – 8)
It is because subjects do not, strictly speaking, know what they are doing that whatthey do has more meaning than they know.
(Pierre Bordieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p 79)
I write today for a reader who exists in my mind only phantasmagorically.(Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory, p 182)
In this section I discuss the link between the form of social structure and the nature ofauthorial agency, which acts as a precursor to my intention to study the structure ofimmigrant autobiographers’ understanding of their work and practice from within asocial perspective as mediated by their serial attempts at autobiographic self-fashioning.In particular, my approach assumes an interplay between structure and agency, and thisinterplay needs to be conceptualized and operationalized. I see this interplay asassociated with Antony Giddens ‘duality of structure’, but identify some limitations anddrawbacks in the form of his conceptualization. Resolving these limitations requires anapproach that is capable of uncovering determinants and influences that act between thesocial and the individual leading to a dialectical and dynamic constitution of both selfand society through autobiographical narrative forms. These determinants andinfluences appear in subsequent sections of this chapter as habitus, ideology anddiscursive formations.
4
ETIC AND EMIC NARRATIVE SELVES— SUBJECTIVITY AS FUSION OF BIOGRAPHY &HISTORY
Current perspectives on immigrant autobiographics appear to be caught in a
dichotomy, where approaches either suppress the significance of authorial agency or
ignore the structural determinants of the social world outside of autobiographical
production under question (cf: Boewlhower, Sollers and Dearborn). The need to
consider the interplay between social structure and authorial agency was identified by
Karl Marx when he claimed that
The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach included) isthat things, reality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of theobject, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice,not subjectively. (Marx 1844b, p 3)
Hence, the social world is to be seen as a practice, as human activity. I have
described in Chapters 1 and 2, my desire to know more about the mechanisms by which
society reproduces itself and how autobiographical practices and immigration self-
fashioning, in particular, contribute to social reproduction at the objective (genre-centric)
and subjective (text-centric) levels of articulation. I wish to do this, not by looking at
some wider overarching social practices, but to look into a critical site and understand
better how it is that covert social control & ideological domination may be sustained
through the way immigrant autobiographers conceptualize their work and their social
relationships in “presentations of self in everyday life” to borrow a phrase from
Goffman’s seminal study on self-fashioning as symbolic interaction, impression
management and social control mechanisms social formations evolve to reproduce and
maintain themselves over time (1952). Or, following Erchak in The Anthropology of
Self and Behavior, a standard college text in the field of psychological anthropology:
Societies produce the kinds of people they need: the socialization process withina culture shapes behavior and personality in children in order to produce the kind ofbehavior and personality in adults that will serve the general welfare while providingsatisfying lives for members of the culture. (emphasis in original, 1992, p 48)
5
Thus, the basic exigency is to understand certain aspects or components of authorial
agency and their relationship to social structure and ultimately its impact on immigrant
autobiographics. This is tied to notions of domination and oppression, and involves a
conception of power and influences. Henry Giroux sees this as part of a critical
interrogation of “how human beings come together within historically specific social
sites such as schools in order to both make and reproduce the conditions of their
existence” (Giroux 1997a, p 71). Underpinning this interrogation is an assumption that
must form the foundation of a critical examination of autobiographical practice – the
dynamic and dialectical relation between structure (genre) and agency (text). This forms
a central plank of Pierre Bordieu’s approach to ideological inquiry—a foundational
prism for the present study:
There exists a correspondence between social structures, between theobjective divisions of the social world – particularly into dominant anddominated in the various fields – and the principles of vision and divisionthat agents applied to it. (Bordieu, 1989a, p 7 quoted in Bordieu 1990a, p12)
This process of construction and reproduction is not well-examined or understood in
specific sites and seems to lack clear conceptual and methodological tools for analysis.
Critical sites are those in which the very day-to-day struggles for identity and power are
all played out. One such site is the immigrant autobiographical narrative and it’s
pedagogical deployment in the language instruction classroom. I chose this site not only
because I am by profession a Writing-Across-the-Curriculum educator and socio-literary
scholar, but also because it is a critical site in the constitution of self and identity as my
years of classroom practice and research confirm, and herein seek to convey to a larger
public. In order to carry out such an interrogation I need to identify and conceptualize
the ideas with which to describe the appropriate micro and macro structures and
6
mechanisms employed by immigrant autobiographers in fashioning narratives of
personal transformation, migration and growth.
THE DUALITY OF STRUCTURE: BEYOND THE INTENTIONAL FALLACY TOWARDS TEXTS INCONTEXT
One of the most enduring problems of modern social theory and its application
in the study of literary texts is to account for and theorize the nature of authorial agency
and its role in the maintenance and construction of social and generic structures. That is,
to theorize why do we do what we do, and just what is it that we do and how we are
influenced by others and by the wider social forces to which we are subject before one
even sets pen to paper to craft a narrative self. Anthony Giddens gives an example of his
approach to this structure/agency distinction, that allows one to by-pass a naïve
intentional fallacy, through what he terms the “unintended consequences of intended
action” (Giddens 1976 2nd Edition 1993, p 84). He uses the terminology “duality of
structure” to denote the inter-relation between agency (text) and structure
(genre/context) in the social sphere, which I here apply to the narrative realm, and I
shall illustrate this with three quotes:
By the duality of structure I mean that social structure is both constitutedby human agency and yet at the same time the very medium of thatconstitution.(Giddens 1976 2nd Edition 1993, p 128)
In social theory we cannot treat human activities as though they weredetermined by causes in the same way as the natural events are. We have tograsp what I call the double involvement of individuals and institutions:we create society at the same time as we are created by it . . . Social systemsare like buildings that are at every moment constantly being reconstructedby the very bricks that compose them.(Giddens 1982, pps 13 - 14)
Structure is the medium and outcome of the conduct it recursivelyorganizes; the structural properties of social systems do not exist outside ofthe action but are chronically implicated in its production andreproduction.(Giddens 1984, p 374)
7
There is a clear debt to Karl Marx in the development of Anthony Giddens’
‘structuration theory’, which Giddens recognizes as
an extended reflection upon a celebrated and oft-quoted phrase to be foundin Marx . . ‘Men make history but not in circumstances of their ownchoosing’.(Giddens 1984, p xxi)
Following Giddens lead, I would add that immigrant autobiographers are in no less of a
predicament vis-à-vis their own migration experience and the generic narrative
strategies at their disposal to craft narrative subjectivities that fit neatly and intelligibly
within a canon of American Subjectivities that range the historical spectrum from
Benjamin Franklin’s confident and action driven vita activa in an Revolutionary &
Enlightenment milieu to today’s post-modern and Advanced Late Capitalist consumer
millieu as fashioned by a less confident and “alienated” Eva Hoffman with respect to her
own incorporation and socialization into an American Habitus: and the trauma of being
lost in translation” in pursuing vita contemplative to find HER American Self:
“The extremes of immigration and of living in a second language are a kind ofexacerbation of the experience of being alienated from oneself, and of havinglanguage de-familiarised. I suppose this is something that every writerexperiences, but it becomes exacerbated in a second language, so that the sense ofone’s own otherness becomes all too natural... Writing Lost in Translation wastherapeutic for me, but that was a surprise. I didn’t set out for it to betherapeutic. And I didn’t know it would be. What was therapeutic was not only asense that I had found a voice, but that the book was received very generouslyand I had the feeling that I had been heard. And that enabled me to put theproblem of immigration to rest much more than before, because I think that oneof the obsessions driving me was the sense that nobody really heard orunderstood this particular experience.”(Extracts from the radio series are based on the book — Foreign Dialogues, MaryZournazi, Pluto Press, 1998)
Yet, I do not want to present this approach as unproblematic or uncontentious with
respect to the Hegelian dilemma of gewornfenheit—existential angst over choosing
among World-as-found versus World-as-fashioned. However, a central issue is the
necessity to try to understand and describe the contribution that human subjects make
8
to the enduring social forms, norms, genres and subjectivities, and in turn how literary
engagement in the social world might influence a immigrant self-representation and
semiosis through speech acts that comprise action (in the Arendtian sense) in the
constitution of immigrant autobiography as a genre-qua-genre or meta-genre. This
requires teasing apart the duality, rather than clouding it or negating it. That is, how can
the immigrant autobiographer be seen as deriving the logic of their practice from the
social world? Central to this project is the notion that autobiographical engagement in
the social world is a multi-layered complex phenomenon, in which we must eschew
simplistic notions of overt domination or repression, and conversely simplistic notions
of power, agency or authorial intention:
Domination is not the same as “systematically distorted” structures ofsignification because domination - as I conceive of it - is the very conditionof existence of codes of signification. “Domination” and “power” cannot bethought of only in terms of asymmetries of distribution but have to berecognized as inherent in social association. Thus - and here we must alsoreckon with the implications of the writings of Foucault - power is not aninherently noxious phenomenon, not just the capacity to “say no”; nor candomination be “transcended” in some kind of putative society of the future,as has been the characteristic aspiration of at least some strands of socialistthought. (Giddens 1984, pps 31 - 32)
Anthony Giddens’ development of structuration theory is an attempt to overcome the
dualism in the agency/structure dichotomy by “squashing together structure and
agency into one tightly-constituted amalgam” (Willmott 1999, p 7). The problem with
such an approach is that it leaves the effects and interplay between structure and agency
as indistinguishable, and “we are left with an unfortunate but ineluctable conflation of
structure and agency” (Willmott 1999, p 7). To overcome such a conflation we could opt
for the alternative approach of “analytical dualism” (Willmott 1999, p 7), an approach
which does not assume some primacy or determinism inherent in structure, but seeks to
develop a social ontology capable of uncovering determinants and influences that act
between the social and the individual leading to a dialectical and dynamic constitution
9
of both self and society, and by extension to any autobiographical fashioning or
identitarian project like creating property and social capital through engaging in a
public act of self-display and projection involved in today’s market for Biography and
Non-Fiction titles down at the Barnes & Noble’s or online at Amazon.com. My interest
in this chapter is to present a view of how people might be driven to operate and
interact with each other and therefore structure their social relations; how individuals,
personalities and subjectivities are formed and how they coalesce, conflict and
interweave to sustain capitalist social relations, which in turn constitute the relations of
production. In order to do that I begin by looking at how we ‘think’ in the sense of how
we come to think about and structure what we do which then leads us to do what we do
in relation to others. This is not going to be a psychological study however, but an
exercise in looking for how we can conceptualize the social theoretical frameworks
through which individuals operate. There is a significant area of research in the
immigrant literature and autobiographics from Lisa Lowe’s Immigrant Acts to Ma’s
Immigrant Subjectivities which looks at the structure of immigrant autobiographers’
cultural knowledge and rhetorical repertoires, which is helpful in identifying immigrant
autobiographers’ conceptual and cognitive structures along a material and socio-literary
axis of Extravagance and Necessity outlined by Sau-ling Wong. Like Wong, I find formal
merit in the work of the Ethnicity School, but ultimately find it’s ahistorical and thematic
approach to immigrant autobiographics simply misses the point. What we need is to
“penetrate beyond the discourses and consciousness of human actors to the conditions
and foundation of their day-to-day experiences” (Giroux 1983, p144).
10
OPERATIONALIZING HABITUS IN THE ANALYSIS OF ANAUTOBIOGRAPHICS OF AMERICANIZATION
But a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.(Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, “The Boxer”)
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please, they donot make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances
directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.(Marx 1852, p. 103)
Disposition: a tendency of an object or system to act or react in characteristic waysin certain situations.
(Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy)
In this section I present my rationale for using Pierre Bordieu’s habitus and the approachI adopt in working with it to elaborate the organizational structure of immigrantautobiographers’ thinking. The habitus forms a central plank of my theoretical andmethodological framework in this study and I offer a four-fold operationalization of itthat can help us come to an understanding of immigrant authorial agency and practice.Because one aspect of the habitus is embodied social structure, it forms a coherentbridge between a structuralist analysis of society on the one hand and human practiceon the other. The other aspects of the habitus (dispositions, structuring and symbolicviolence) similarly indicate ways in which I can develop a framework for analyzingimmigrant autobiographers’ self-reflective discourse to uncover the practical andcompositional logic therein.
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HABITUS AS THE BASIS FOR SUBJECTIVITY IN NARRATIVE
I will begin with a consideration of the significance and operationalization of the
habitus – a more generalized construct than Basil Bernstein’s ‘code’ which has really
only been operationalized in educational settings (Harker and May 1993, p 173). We do
need to consider the generative grammar of educational practices and such a generative
grammar is offered by Pierre Bordieu’s habitus, which avoids the determinacy of Basil
Bernstein’s code through the paradoxically useful indeterminacy of the logic of human
practice (Bordieu 1990a, p 77). Crudely (and possibly unhelpfully brief) the habitus is
EMBODIED SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN PRACTICE AND THOUGHT and thus it is a notion that
transcends the dichotomy and distinction between structure and agency. Social structure
becomes embodied by individual, textual practice as an effect of secondary socialization
(or enculturation) and consequently the resultant social practices and authorial
interventions deployed or marshaled in constructing an Apologia pro vita sua through
the medium of narrative relations and interactions immigrant autobiographers thus give
effect/affect to and sustain these underlying social structures.
In this section, I will address what I see as the significant elements of the
applicability of the habitus in deconstructing immigrant autobiographers’
understandings and negotiation of the American Habitus. These are: the habitus as the
embodiment of social structure, the habitus as habit and dispositions, the habitus as a
structuring device and the habitus as symbolic violence. These form the elements in the
agency-structure symbiosis characteristic of my operationalization of a Bordieuian
approach and are fundamental elements in the framework I am constructing in this
chapter towards a socio-literary perspective. I will look at each of these in turn. It needs
to be borne in mind that the habitus is not only a sociological construct for
conceptualizing and theorizing the nature of human practices. It is also a method for
analyzing and describing those practices and understandings held by practitioners,
hence its practical application in this study.
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THE HABITUS AS THE EMBODIMENT OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Pierre Bordieu uses the habitus to replace ‘rules’ with a strategic “feel for the
game” (Bordieu 1990a, p 9). Rogers Brubaker sees the habitus as important within
sociological thought because it represents:
the system of dispositions that mediate between inert structures and thepractices through which social life is sustained and structures arereproduced or transformed. (Brubaker 1985, p 758)
So conceptually, the habitus is Pierre Bordieu’s approach to theorizing how people enact
and embody dominant ruling ideas as well as in transforming and adapting them to
their purposed in the act of self-representation. Aaron Cicorel refers to this aspect of the
habitus too:
Studies of socialization have for the most part ignored Bordieu’s distinctiveway of calling attention to how power or forms of dominance arereproduced in settings like the family and the school such that they havelasting effects on future behavior and the way in which dominant groupssustain themselves. Neither however have Bordieu nor most students ofsocialization, language development, and educational processes examinedthe local ways in which a habitus reproduces dominant beliefs, values andnorms through the exercise of symbolic power and by bestowing culturalcapital; in particular, the way children perceive, acquire, comprehend andimplement power. Bordieu’s notion of habitus, however provides apowerful tool for examining domination as everyday practice; but thisnotion must be cognitively and linguistically documented. (Cicorel 1993, p111)
Hence, the significance of the habitus is that it “constitutes the means whereby
individuals are adapted to the needs of specific social structures” and by extension
narrative genres (Callinicos 1999, p 293).
THE HABITUS AS HABIT AND DISPOSITION
Pierre Bordieu himself often fails to offer a clear definition of the habitus -
because he claims it is indefinable and inaccessible outside of human practice. In much
the same way, it is difficult to define “autobiography” without referring to specific
13
practices in specific contexts. Generic definitions can prove constraining rather than
helpful. In Distinction, Pierre Bordieu describes the habitus as
both the generative principle of objectively classifiable judgements and thesystem of classifications of these practices. It is in the relationship betweenthe two capacities which define the habitus, the capacity to produceclassifiable practices and works, and the capacity to differentiate andappreciate these practices and products (taste), that the represented socialworld, i.e., the space of life-styles, is constituted. (Bordieu 1979: 1984, p 170)
To some extent, this is a helpful development; or habitus is what we use to classify and
judge and at the same time it is the collection and make up of those judgements and so is
deeply implicated in our daily practices. One way forward is to consider the habitual
nature of the actions that make up our practice. Where do these habits come from?
Largely they derive from our up-bringing and social background and all that goes with
it such as beliefs, perspectives, interpersonal relations throughout the processes of
primary and secondary socialization:
The habitus acquired in the family is at the basis of the structuring of schoolexperiences; the habitus transformed by the action of the school is in turn atthe basis of all subsequent experiences. (Bordieu and Wacquant 1992, p 134)
Hence, the role of the school and autobiography-as-schooling-genre are critical in the
development of wider social organization. The habitus becomes transformed within the
school, yet with its possibilities limited. It tends therefore to be reproductive rather than
transformative. The habitus is not deterministic yet it is dependent on the social field--
different practices may be produced by the same habitus in different fields. The habitus
thus mediates rather than determines (Bordieu 1990a, p 116).
Between the child and the world, the whole group intervenes with a wholeuniverse of ritual practices and also of discourses, sayings, proverbs, allstructured in concordance with the principles of the corresponding habitus.(Bordieu 1972, p 167)
The habitus is thus a reflection of social structure, but also illustrates how we become
constituted via generalized social dispositions that represent a repertoire of subjectivities
and identities available to immigrant autobiographers.
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THE HABITUS AS A STRUCTURING DEVICE
This seems to offer some specificity to the notion of ideology, which I see as
related to rather than contrasted with the habitus. Or habits are not mechanically
produced, we have idiosyncrasies, or own inventions and creations picked up on the
way, partly depending on what we ‘choose’ to focus on and what we ‘choose’ to ignore.
Of course we may not actually consciously choose at all, rather, we may be (pre)-
disposed, conditioned etc.
We can always say that individuals make choices, as long as we do notforget that they do not choose the principals of these choices. (Wacquant1989, p 45)
The habitus and its relation to practice seem to be based not upon causality, (and
potentially, by implication, intentionality) but on relations. Ludwig Wittgenstein
problematizes the notion of causality following a Humean strain:
The proposition that your action has such and such a cause, is a hypothesis.The hypothesis is well-founded if one has had a number of experienceswhich, roughly speaking, agree in showing that your action is the regularsequel of certain conditions which we then call causes of the action. Inorder to know the reason which you had for making a certain statement, foracting in a particular way, etc., no number of agreeing experiences isnecessary, and the statement of your reason is not a hypothesis. Thedifference between the grammars of “reason” and “cause” is quite similarto that between the grammars of “motive” and “cause”. Of the cause onecan say that one can’t know it but can only conjecture it. On the other handone often says: “Surely I must know why I did it” talking of the motive.When I say: “We can only conjecture the cause, but we know the motive”this statement will be seen later on to be a grammatical one. The “can”refers to a logical possibility. (Wittgenstein 1958, p 15)
This seems a reasonable position to take, and one that is consistent with a Bordieuianposition.
It is because subjects do not, strictly speaking, know what they are doing thatwhat they do has more meaning than they know. (Bordieu 1972, p 79)
It does seem reasonable to argue that the dispositions we come to assume are quite
intimately connected to the frameworks that guide and organize or thinking about the
self and the nature of the autobiographical writing practice, as Seth Kreisberg suggests:
15
Ideology and hegemony work directly on the body as well that is on thelevel of or everyday unconscious experience. On fundamental levels, whowe are, what we want, what we need, and thus what kinds of socialrelationships we seek out and create are shaped by the patterns and dailyroutines of our everyday lives. In part this occurs through the process bywhich ideology seeps deep within our personalities into the depth of ourunconscious, shaping our personalities, needs and desires. I want to arguethough that the process by which social practices become sedimented andreproduce themselves, while connected to ideological processes ofreproduction are also distinct from these processes. People tend to relate toothers in the same way others relate to them. We tend to act in ways we seeand experience others’ actions. Experience solidifies into habit, in facthegemony is most encompaszing when a dominant hegemony reflects andis expressed in everyday experience and in a range of social practices andstructures in a society. In this society relationships of domination aremaintained by just such a correspondence of consciousness and experience,which while never total and static is still powerful and broadlyencompaszing. (Kreisberg 1992, p 16)
Seth Kreisberg raises an important issue here and touches upon the relationships
between subjectivity, habitus and ideology. The relationship between subjectivity-as-
personality, habitus and ideology is not greatly theorized in immigrant autobiographical
practice and socio-literary criticism and part of my aim is to construct some mapping
between them. This is a central issue, because an understanding of how our dispositions
are shaped and organized by social structure and conversely how our dispositions
mirror those structures is crucial in exploring the agency/structure relationship as it
manifested in immigrant self narratives.
HABITUS AS SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: NARRATIVE & SOCIAL REGENERATION, RENEWAL BYKILLING A SELF
One of the key elements of Pierre Bordieu’s approach to understanding the role
didactic social practices like schools, textbooks and education practices and even
autobiographical speech acts play in social reproduction is symbolic violence (Bordieu
1972), a forceful phrase for quite a subtle idea. Symbolic violence occurs where the
arbitrary cultural norms of the dominant groups are presented not as arbitrary, but as
the legitimate and natural norms of narrative and social behavior: the classic example
16
being the White-Ethnic Americaniztion narrative tradition within which Faber,
Yierzerska, Cahan, Singer, Hoffman and Perez-Firmat write, and which can be thought
to have reached an apogee in the early part of the last century with the publication of
Mary Antin’s The Promised Land (1912) but remains a vital stock of the American
canonical repertoires available to newcomers to the United States. Important concepts
for Pierre Bordieu here are recognition and misrecognition. Symbolic violence is not
simply covert oppression, but involves resignation, a recognition of boundaries, but a
misrecognition of these boundaries as natural rather then oppressive. Power relations
are obscured, and this creates a narrative ‘false consciousness’ or “méconnaissance”
(Bordieu 1979: 1984, p 387). Translating this as ‘misrecognition’ loses the subtlety of
Pierre Bordieu’s original concept. Participants do not conceal or disguise a practice, but
render it invisible through reconstruing as something else that “goes without saying”
(Harker, Mahar and Wilkes 1990, p 19). An example of this would be the description of
certain immigrant autobiographical forms of language and phrases such as “Americans
in the Making” and so on. Use of such categorizations in turn impinges on the
formulation of the habitus of the ethnic and immigrant autobiographer, they become
constructed or constituted by such structures and thereby their individual trajectories
are specified through both objective structures in the socio-linguistic and cultural
systems and the interaction with the American habitus of others. Pierre Bordieu
considers this a symbolic form of violence that places constraints on the compositional
strategies available to immigrants further delimiting equality of opportunity with
respect to expanding the American canon of acceptable subjectivities through the
mutual recognition that Charles Taylor argues are the basis of social life and commity
(1988). Yet the discourses surrounding Americanization and acculturation into the North
American mainstream give the construal (that is the reconstrual) of wanting to do the
best for the newcomers, that restricting the autobiographical repertoires is not only
appropriate, but is in the best interests of Americans. A immigrant autobiographer’s
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habitus becomes constrained or bounded by linguistic symbolic violence into
considering and positioning themselves as less able or not-yet-American and placing
them structurally in relation to others. This might then impinge upon their own view of
self, society and ideological belief about power, social structure, nature of self-narrative,
one’s positioning as cultural learner, social actor under conditions not of one’s choosing,
etc.
In being called an injurious name one is paradoxically given a certainpossibility of social existence, initiated into a temporal life of language thatexceeds the prior purposes that animate the call. (Butler 1997, p 2)
We have to see the name as part of the totality of the autobiographer’s social existence
and interactions. Does it fit with my view of myself? Does it fit with how I perceive
other’s view of me? (Althusser 1971. Orig.1970). This process of enforcement of
legitimate order plays its part in the structuring of the habitus. The habitus, partially
formed by early family experiences, influences the way in which the world outside of
the home, ethnic homeland or ancestral past, present or future is interpreted.
Conversely, the way symbolic violence is enacted in the Americanization process
influences in its part the way family life is interpreted as evinced by Hayslip’s journey
from “Child of War” to “Woman of Peace” (1989) and Hoffman’s appraisal of her
primary socialization & the role of the family and educational intuitions in mediating
one’s experience and expression, in fundamental ways:
“My immigration was very much my parents’ decision. I was thirteen at the time.We were living in Communist Poland, and we were Jewish, so there were all thesegood reasons to emigrate. I think my parents felt that they were doing it for thechildren to a large extent but, for many reasons, I absolutely baulked at it. I didn’twant to emigrate. It was in a way the wrong time... I was being yanked out of myworld and the process of growing up — out of childhood and the beginnings ofadolescence which I felt were very happy...” (Zournazi )
Eva’s pre-migration resistance is fuelled by perceived deprivation of vehicles for
secondary socialization offered by presumed or “imagined” co-national or co-ethnic
community that provides cultural markers and behavioral indices via peer-group
18
norming and trust-building both of which convey the acceptability of the practices as
well as working to exclude alternatives as unnatural or unthinkable. Power may not be
exercised or enforced directly or explicitly in everyday verbal and other exchanges, but
may be exercised more implicitly through a range of more subtle strategies that the
immigrant autobiographer may be unaware of – and which raises some problems for the
socio-literary researcher.
Empirical issues arise around a more immediate sense of consciousness andthe various ways in which participants of interaction can be said to beunaware of exercising power or seek to convey the idea of not exercisingpower. What strategies are employed that resist displays of power or thatseek to neutralize it? (Cicorel 1993, p 192)
Accordingly, cultural works by immigrant autobiographers will be positioned by
their involvement in the American socio-literary system in which symbolic violence is
enacted, and will react differentially. Aaron Cicorel is arguing that while there may be a
lack of awareness of the exercise of power - and by association, symbolic violence –
immigrant autobiographers may adopt strategies that seek to position themselves within
or to distance themselves from displays of autobiographical pride, social power or
immodesty. In viewing autobiographical practice as a form of social and symbolic
interaction and thereby adopting a socio-literary perspective with respect to
autobiography-qua-social-situation I align my efforts and consider them complementary
to recent efforts to bridge the dichotomy by sociologist Diane Bjorklund in her
comprehensive survey of two centuries worth of autobiographical writings by
Americans in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Bjorklund grounds her analysis and conclusion on sound historical review of the
structural and ideologically-situated discourses that seek to offer an autobiographer a
platform upon which to enact a performance of self that fashions a narrative subjectivity
that is articulated and generated by tensions between the text of Self (consciousness-for-
itself) and the context of Socius-as-Other (consciousness-in-itself):
19
“Unless autobiographers intend for their life stories to be privatedocuments only for themselves, they are communicating with a futureaudience of readers. Autobiographers are not only constructing the storiesof their lives, they are also strategically presenting the self. We can usefullyapply Erving Goffman’s (1959) analysis of impression management toautobiographers since they are a tempting to persuade readers that they, insome crucial way, admirable people.
In viewing autobiographies from a symbolic interactionist perspective, Bjorklundcorrectly argues that…
”putting together an autobiography is not simply a matter of recalling andrecording the facts of one’s personal history. As an action ofcommunication, it entails problems of composition andrhetoric—something openly acknowledged by many autobiographers.Autobiographers select “events” and “facts” from their lives that fit into acomprehensible narrative. Thus, as the anthologist Edward Bruner (1984,p. 7) also observed, ‘Life histories are accounts, representations of lives, notlives as actually lived.’ The definition of self in autobiography is shaped notonly by historical changes in the available vocabularies of self…but also bythe constraints, complexities, and opportunities of the social situation ofpresenting an autobiography. The autobiographer considers thecomposition of the intended audience, the current ‘climate of opinion’concerning what is an acceptable self, and the conventions of storytellingand autobiography. The writing of an autobiography is a social act---bothas a part of the “community of discourse” and as a type of social interactionin which one tries to influence others (Barbour 1992). (1998, p 17).
By envisioning an Iserian “idealized reader,” autobiographers can construct an “implied
reader” serves as both foil and touchstone for Americanness. As Bjorklund adds,
“[a]lthough the audience is not physically present and this is usually no face-to-face
interaction between autobiographers and readers (allowing no immediate feedback as in
a conversation), the autobiographer do take into account the reactions of the expected
audience” (ibid). A further extended excerpt from Bjorklund’s Interpreting the Self, will
help expand on the significance of grasping the historical evolutions in the constitution
of American selves and the role immigrant autobiographers play in extending,
subverting and perpetuating an uniquely American narrative of rhetorical
parthogenesis:
“The genre of autobiography provides us with a valuable written record ofhow people have thought about the self. By comparing autobiographiesover time, we can behold the diversity in this bountiful feast of self-
20
narratives, yet we also can see clearly how these stories of unique livesnecessarily link to a larger cultural discourse about the self. We discern theindividual voices of the autobiographers, but we also discover culturespeak through the self. These self-narratives, however, have even more tooffer when we also recognize them as rhetorical accomplishments.Autobiographers use vocabularies of self, not only to make sense of theirlives but also to present a praiseworthy self to their audiences. They arenegotiating their place in relation to cultural norms and values. We can seethem do so, for example, when they try to avoid obvious boasting, whenthey declare they are telling the truth, and when they worry about wastingtheir readers’ time with an uninteresting story. Autobiographies, therefore,give us an opportunity to examine the complex interplay of the micro levelof social situation (as autobiographers strategically relate themselves tonorms and values) with the macro level of the historical and culturalvocabularies of self.” (1998, p 158-159)
And, she goes on to demonstrate the importance of viewing autobiography-as-such as
an “action” following Goffman in viewing self-representation as constituting impression
management within the context of a “social situation” and mapping to a Burkean
“rhetorical situation” or Austinian “speech act”:
“This cultural discourse furnishes not only ideas about the nature ofselfhood but also evaluative standards for model selves and model lives.Autobiographers show us which evaluative standards they are attemptingto meet as they offer the stories of their lives publicly. They are aware thatothers will evaluate their actions, and the potential for feeling pride, shame,or embarrassment as a result gives them good reason to try to guide thereaders’ judgements of their lives. From this perspective, we canunderstand Philip Roth’s (1988, p. 172) claim that autobiography is‘probably the most manipulative of all literary forms.’ Or the literary criticJohn Sturrock’s (1993, p. 19) more kindly worded assessments thatautobiography is “he most sociable of literary acts.” (1998, p 159)
In constituting the canonical immigrant hagiography, immigrant makes use of available
discourses and genres in circulation at the time or that they have come to embodied
model or play out a script that provides a dramaturgical, hence, ethical dimension to
their self-pronouncements. Immigrants reside in an existential and ideational cognitive
space that bifurcates their self-reported vision and identity through a cross cultural and
bilingual worldview that structures and is generative of their understanding of the roles
migration and identity change has had on their respective life course and its attendant
narrative. As Hoffman corroborates…
21
The immediate condition of writing Lost in Translation was marginal to thesubject of the book... But I had been preoccupied with the subject oflanguage and self-translation for a long time. What I wanted to talk aboutwas not just language but the conjunction of language and identity, andthat to do that I needed a case study — and the case study I knew best wasmyself. It needed to be done from within a subjectivity since it was so muchabout subjectivity. I decided to write it as a memoir — quite reluctantlybecause I am not a confessional person at all... (Zournazi, ibid.)
The clinical distancing evinced in the “case study” approach to self-representation
employed by Eva Wyrda, the narratee and authorial avatar (cf. Booth, Rhetoric of
Fiction) of Hoffman’s Americanization story premised on a life “lived in a new
language’ is ideologically, hence, symptomatic of therapeutic discursive practices in
vogue in 1980s United States where Hoffman’s narratee takes degrees in English
Literature and Language from Rice and then Harvard leading to her positioning as an
“émigré “ and exilic oracle to her New York bourgie friends and Texan boyfriend in
“The New World” triptych of her translation (Lost in Translation, p 198). She further
corroborates this therapeutic autobiographical intervention in a radio conversation with
European radio commentator Mary Zournazi:
“Writing is an attempt to close the gap on the sense of being estranged frommyself. In my case, this estrangement happened very much in daily perceptionsand daily life. In a sense, writing is the attempt to find a language that is embeddedin yourself and that somehow can express the self directly. I know that is a kind ofdream and not completely attainable, but it is the attempt to find a language whichsort of bubbles up directly. I don’t know if I have a coherent philosophy oflanguage. But my notions of language have to do with its relationship tosubjectivity. The one lesson of my experience is that the first language seems to beattached to identity with a kind of absoluteness, so that it seems to be coeval withidentity and with the world; words seem to stand for the things they describe.Subsequent languages don’t have that kind of absoluteness — I mean that one isaware of a second language much more qua language qua its own system. (ForeignDialogues, 1998)
Hoffman identifies the linguistic register as her site of struggle and contestation towards
self-expression and self-definition. By so positioning her narrative subjectivity, she
endorses a worldview that exemplifies C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination”
wherein she overtly and tacitly acknowledges the dual role of socius in the constitution
22
of the self and its narrative posts. One could accurately characterize an undermining
undercurrent to Eva’s quest for individual voice through an self-analysis that highlights
the embedded and sedimented nature of language. The warrant to her argumentative
thread is a an implicit recognition of the ontological primacy that “socialization rather
than self-initiated cultivation of self” has throughout the life course for which she
attempts a narrative depiction (cf. Bjorklund, p 127).
Moreover, Hoffman’s reflections on her autobiographical acts a decade after the
fact, paint a picture of existential trauma resulting from psychologically powerful
experiences occasioned by migration at age 13—much like Mary Antin before her, as
Eva reminds us in the “Exile” section of her autobiography where she recounts her
Errand into the Linguistic Wilderness:
“The first real condition which spurred me to write about my immigration was thepeculiar experience of being virtually without language for a short while. It wasbecause I came to Canada without English and because Polish became completelyunusable, and for reasons which probably did have to do with the circumstances ofmy immigration and psychological factors. I somehow hid my Polish. I suppressedit. So I was without language — I was without internal language, and that was aterribly traumatic experience which I never quite forgot and which haunts me still.
I think this kind of radical state of language loss lasted... well I don’t know,perhaps not even a year. But it was a very quick lesson in the vital importance oflanguage to one’s identity. It was not a state which could be sustained, so I startedto try filling the gap with English. But that was a terribly long process, I mean inthe sense that the language didn’t quite belong to me, that it wasn’t quite inside,that it wasn’t mine. I would say this lasted — I know it is shocking — for abouttwenty years. (Zournazi, op. cit.)
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CHAPTER 2: IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS IN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC &AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION
VARIETAS DELECTA: DRAMAS OF BEING & BELONGING
The paperback edition of Fae Myenne Ng’s 1993 novel Bone is blurbed “national
bestseller” on the outside and, on the inside, boasts the several pages of “more acclaim”
that are designed to lure readers like a two-thumbs-up movie review. The hyperbole is
the expected fare for advertisements and letters of recommendation, but the content of
the praise seems less routine. “This is the inside view of Chinatown,” writes Edmund
White, “one never presented before so eloquently.” But White’s praise of Ng’s depiction
of Asian experience is followed by a notice from the New York Times which offers a
most American seal of approval: “With the buoyant parting image, Ng invites
comparison to F. Scott Fitzgerald and the last line of The Great Gatsby.” Likewise, blurbs
on Chang-Rae Lee’s paperback Native Speaker feature the work not only as Korean but
also as an echo of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, while Lee himself begins the novel with
an epigraph from Walt Whitman. Ethnic American authors have met with criticism for
not representing their culture accurately, but the disparate nature of these reviews, I
think, raises the question of which ethnic group, precisely, such works actually do
represent. “Though it is often regarded as a very minor adjunct to great American
mainstream writing,” Werner Sollors writes in Beyond Ethnicity, “ethnic literature is, as
several readers pointed out in the past, prototypically American literature” (8).
The distinctly “ethnic” and the distinctly “American” are closely related in
autobiographical and fictional works on immigration and assimilation, but I want to
suggest that it is precisely this negotiation between ethnic and American cultures that
makes these works so American—i.e. basically playing out a drama of individuation and
groupness--the essence of immigrant autobiographics in the United States. Robert F.
Sayre reminds us “American autobiographers have generally connected their own lives
24
to the national life or to national ideas. As Scott Fitzgerald wrote in the 1930s, America is
not a land or a people. ‘France was a land, England was a people, but America, having
about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter’” (149). Autobiographies, then,
are stories of the ideas individuals live by, and the principal American idea or myth is
one of self-creation. No one participates more fully in this self-creation than immigrants,
who must of necessity reject or reevaluate their heritage, their parents, and their former
life. Hence, the stories and histories recounted in immigrant autobiography are
American self-invention writ large.
Given this cultural emphasis on self-creation, it is no wonder autobiography
plays such a large role in the American literary tradition. From captivity narratives to
Benjamin Franklin to Henry Adams to Gertrude Stein, the American bookshelf is filled
with individuals telling their own stories. Sayre notes “autobiography may be the
preeminent kind of American expression. Commencing before the Revolution and
continuing into our own time, America and autobiography have been peculiarly linked”
(147). Evaluating the connection between autobiography and American culture, Sayre
considers landmark autobiographies (those of Franklin, Whitman, Adams, and
Frederick Douglass) rather than “the memoirs of military leaders and statesmen” or
unsung private individuals, explaining that “the former is perhaps too much a citizen;
the latter takes his citizenship more or less for granted. Thus neither has been so
valuable to other Americans as the autobiographers to whom citizenship, in the broadest
sense, is a major issue in their total development” (168). Given this criterion, it seems
logical to expand Sayre’s ideas to include immigrant autobiographical writing, for
perhaps no one is more concerned with citizenship in extremis than the immigrant. Here
the issues of citizenship are played out explicitly, for high stakes.
Autobiography also seems a natural genre for self-creating Americans not only
in content but also in form. Telling the story of one’s life requires one to shape or
reshape events, picking and choosing, in order to create a new self or persona who
25
proceeds along a distinct trajectory -- in short, the literary form is another version of self-
invention.
The American tradition of individualism is much noted and long established:
Alexis de Tocqueville noted the emergence in America of individualism (as opposed to
what “our fathers [knew as] egoisme (selfishness)” (192)), a drive to separate from
society at large and to function as a distinct entity. Tocqueville saw individualism as a
fact but not necessarily a virtue; in a culture governed by this philosophy,
“the woof of time is every instant broken, and the track of generations effaced.Those who went before are soon forgotten; of those who will come after, no onehas any idea: the interest of man is confined to those in close propinquity tohimself” (194).
Examining late-twentieth century life in terms of Tocqueville’s diagnosis, Robert Bellah
in Habits of the Heart identifies two essential aspects of American individuation as
“leaving home” and “leaving church,” a sometimes-temporary separation from the life
and values of one’s parents in order to forge one’s own distinct personality. “Separation
and individuation are issues that must be faced by all human beings,” he admits, “but
leaving home in its American sense is not. In many peasant societies, the problem is
staying home -- living with one’s parents until their death and worshipping parents and
ancestors all one’s life. [...] For us, leaving home is the normal expectation” (57). One
may maintain a warm relationship with one’s parents, and return to their home or
beliefs, but American culture demands that they be examined critically and accepted by
choice.
NOMEN EST OMEN
For many “native” Americans, these separations are somewhat metaphorical,
involving perhaps a cross-town move and one’s own choice of career. But no one leaves
“home” and “church” as dramatically as the new American, whose physical separation
from the country of origin and submersion into a new culture create a need to reinvent
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the self as distinct from parents and heritage. The example of Mary Antin, a Jewish girl
whose family immigrated to Boston from Russia in 1894, dramatizes this.
In The Promised Land, Antin describes existence in the Russian Pale as
“medieval,” suggesting not only backwardness but also a time in which much of life was
predetermined; people followed the roles laid out for them by their parents, and the
social system was rigid. Watching the treadmill horse at the bathhouse in her hometown
of Polotzk, Antin could see a microcosm of life in the Pale.
I knew what a horse’s life should be, entangled with the life of a master:adventurous, troubled, thrilled; petted and opposed, the buzz of beasts and menin the market place; to-morrow the yielding turf under tickled flanks, and thelone whinny of scattered mates. How empty the existence of the treadmill horsebeside this! As empty and dull as the life of almost any woman in Polotzk, had Ihad eyes to see the likeness. (78)
The medieval aspects of life in the Pale trapped its residents in strictly defined roles, and
had Antin continued to live there, she too would have been pigeonholed. As a Jewish
girl in the Russian ghetto, she would have had few opportunities for education and few
choices in her future. The community would have determined her role, just as sobriquets
were determined socially, often communally. “Family names existed only in official
documents, such as passports,” she explains. “Among my neighbors in Polotzk were
Yankel the Wig-maker, Mulye the Blind, Moshe the Six-fingered” (36). Had she stayed in
Polotzk, Antin might have become “Mashke the Short,” but the move to America
recreates her as “Mary Antin.” “I felt important to answer to such a dignified title,” she
writes. “It was just like America that even plain people should wear their surnames on
week days” (150). Whereas popular nicknames were bestowed based on one
distinguishing feature, and locked the bearer into a role that may or may not have been
flattering, Antin’s American name did not limit the possibilities of her identity.
While the move to America opens possibilities for Antin, the knowledge of how
to achieve these possibilities is not always easy to obtain. Because her parents are also
new immigrants, and unfamiliar with the culture they now live in, they are no longer
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reliable role models for their children. Instead, both parents and children must look
elsewhere for instruction, and the new immigrant “is corrected, admonished, and
laughed at, whether by interested friends or the most indifferent strangers; and his
American experience is thus begun. The process is spontaneous on all sides, like the
education of the child by the family circle” (143). Others now dispense parental wisdom;
mothers and fathers model the lifestyle of the old world, and children must look
elsewhere if they are to learn how to be American adults. The parents, on the other
hand, “in their bewilderment and uncertainty, [...] needs must trust us children to learn
from such models as the tenements afforded. More than this, they must step down from
their role of parental authority, and take the law from their children’s mouths; for they
had no other means of finding out what was good American form” (213). Immigrant
parents were repudiated in favor of the new culture, but it’s important to note that
Americanization has as much to do with the process as the result; that is, without
parents as reliable models, members of the younger generation were forced to forge
their own way, by necessity. It was up to them to determine for themselves how to
behave and what to become. “Native” Americans are not exempt from this picking and
choosing among the values of peers; “if we are to be different from our fathers and also
different from the white marble gods they found in Plutarch or the grizzly patriarchs
they chose from the Bible, then we must imitate contemporaries” (Sayre 155). Sayre cites
Scott Fitzgerald, John Adams and even the famously “self-made” Benjamin Franklin as
examples of this phenomenon (156), which is not necessarily limited to those new to
American culture. Each generation, as Tocqueville suggested, reinvents itself.
INTER CAECOS REGNAT LUSCUS.
It’s no wonder, then, that adolescence and immigration are so closely linked in
Eva Hoffman’s memoir Life in Translation. A Polish Jew transplanted in 1959 to Canada
and then to the United States, she comments that her experiences are in some ways
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uncannily similar to those of Antin, although context has made some changes. “A
hundred years ago, I [too] might have felt the benefits of a steady, self-assured ego, the
sturdy energy of forward movement, and the excitement of being swept up into a
greater national purpose. But I have come to a different America, and instead of a
central ethos, I have been given the blessings and the terrors of multiplicity” (164). While
Antin tells a “success story,” Hoffman focuses on the hardships of a change of
hemispheres during adolescence.
She describes her alienation: “Inside its elaborate packaging, my body is stiff,
sulky, wary. When I’m with my peers, who come by crinolines, lipstick, cars, and self-
confidence naturally, my gestures show that I’m here provisionally, by their grace, that I
don’t rightfully belong” (110). Hoffman blames her discomfort on her membership in an
outsider culture, but it also has to do with the pains of growing to adulthood – few
adolescents are fully comfortable with themselves, regardless of whether they’ve
immigrated. Still, her difficulty serves to illustrate the similarity of adolescence and
immigration, which is the separation from the parents’ lifestyle.
Hoffman sees herself as a misfit, but, she writes, “perhaps it is my [...] cherishing
of uncertainty as the only truth that is, after all, the best measure of my assimilation;
perhaps it is in my misfittings that I fit. Perhaps a successful immigrant is an
exaggerated version of the native. From now on, I’ll be made, like a mosaic, of fragments
– and my consciousness of them. It is only in that observing consciousness that I remain,
after all, an immigrant” (164). In a country of individualists, everyone is in some way a
misfit, and intentionally so. “If we are all other […] then we may also explore the
otherness in ourselves, which is the theme of many American autobiographical
conversion stories” (Sollors 31). Hoffman, as an “exaggerated native,” is simply highly
conscious of this culturewide emphasis on distinctiveness and separation, thanks to the
double adolescence that separated her both from Poland and from her parents.
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For Vivian Gornick, a second-generation Russian Jew, separation from the
parents (and especially, for her, the mother) is the essential issue, and in her memoir
Fierce Attachments, it is framed in terms of immigration. Early in the work, Gornick’s
mother recalls a former upstairs neighbor named Cessa. “Want[ing] to be modern,”
Cessa cut off her long hair, meeting with punishment from her father and husband (5).
Gornick’s mother recalls, “‘I say to her, “Cessa, tell your father this is America, Cessa,
America. You’re a free woman.” She looks at me and she says to me, “What do you
mean, tell my father this is America? He was born in Brooklyn”’” (5-6). Being American,
Gornick’s mother suggests, entitles people to throw off their parents’ old traditions and
make their own choices. Cessa’s response highlights the continuing problem of
separation from the parents; even though her father was born in Brooklyn and the
family is officially American, she is not exempt from this process. Being American
means not that Cessa, or anyone, can or should follow the “American” lives of her
parents, but that it is up to her to negotiate between the life her parents prefer and the
life she would like to live.
Cessa’s problem is escaping from a patriarchal system, but Gornick’s problem
throughout Fierce Attachments is her connection to her mother. One typical dilemma
Gornick exemplifies is that the greater opportunity available for each new generation
necessarily creates a separation between parent and child. This is particularly true of
education, which parents typically value and want for their children but which, Gornick
shows in discussing her years at the City College of New York, drives a wedge between
them. “Benign in intent, only a passport to the promised land, City of course was the
real invader,” she writes.
I lived among my people but I was no longer one of them. I think this was truefor most of us at City College. We still used the subways, still walked the familiarstreets between classes, still returned to the neighborhood each night, talked toour high-school friends, and went to sleep in our own beds. But secretly we hadbegun to live in a world inside our heads where we read talked thought in a waythat separated us from our parents, the life of the house and that of the street. We
30
had been initiated, had learned the difference between hidden and expressedthought. This made us subversives in our own homes. (105)
Education is an almost unquestioned value, prized for its potential to help
people “get ahead,” but the flip side of this, typically unrecognized until it happens, is
that if the child is getting ahead, the parent is being left behind. This is true of Gornick’s
family; she recalls that her mother “hadn’t understood that going to school meant I
would start thinking: coherently and out loud. She was taken by violent surprise. [...] I
had never before spoken a word she didn’t know” (108).
Interestingly, Gornick links the ideas of individuation and creativity, her ability
to write. In a session with her analyst, she describes her creativity as a narrow rectangle
under intense outside pressure. “Why only that small bit of good writing inside a
narrow space, and all around the rhetoric of panic and breathlessness,” the analyst asks.
“That rectangle, I finally explained. It’s a fugitive, a subversive, an illegal immigrant in
the country of my being. It has no civil rights. It’s always on the run. [...] I can’t
naturalize the immigrant” (190). Gornick’s rectangle of creativity is a rectangle of
personal space, and it is “on the run” because of her fierce yet not always healthy
connection to her mother. When the analyst asks why she can’t “naturalize the
immigrant,” Gornick pictures her mother, “her face soft, weak, sadly intelligent. She
leaned forward intently. She was as interested in the question as I. But I remained mute.
I had no answer” (191). The idea of immigration is here the idea of separation and
individuation, finding a distinction from the mother while maintaining some
connection. In order to create, to produce something unique, Gornick must learn to
stand apart from her mother, “immigrating” from the culture of her family to one of her
own making.
The work’s central struggle, that between mother and daughter over the
daughter’s life, reaches only an ambivalent conclusion. The book closes after an
argument, when
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My mother breaks the silence. In a voice remarkably free of emotion -- a voicedetached, curious, only wanting information -- she says to me, “Why don’t yougo already? Why don’t you walk away from my life? I’m not stopping you.”
I see the light, I hear the street. I’m half in, half out.
“I know you’re not, Ma.” (204)
In terms of immigration, the scene dramatizes the desire both to let go of and hold on to
what might literally be called here the mother culture. The mixed feelings here are a
moving and fitting conclusion to the content of Fierce Attachments, but in a larger
context, I would suggest that the question may be closer to settled than this ending
suggests, and that Gornick really is at least partially detached from her mother. In The
Situation and the Story, Gornick describes the shaping of experience that takes place in
writing a memoir, emphasizing the need to put space between the self and the subject.
“In fact,” she writes, “without detachment there can be no story” (12). Two connections
to ethnic autobiography may be made here. First is that minority groups have a natural
perspective of detachment, since they must negotiate life within a larger culture that is
not their own. Hoffman writes that “it is only in that observing consciousness that I
remain, after all, an immigrant” (164) -- her “misfittings” give her a sharp perception of
the culture around her, and the ability to write clearly about it. Second is that the process
of immigration or naturalization is necessarily a detachment, and furthermore, this is a
creative process. Probably no American is more archetypal than the “self-made” man or
woman, and assimilation is a re-envisioning and remaking of the self.
Furthermore, the act of writing an autobiography is its own kind of “self-
making,” sculpting raw material into a coherent story with a distinct (and usually
upward) trajectory. Autobiography is the act of self-creation on paper. In writing Fierce
Attachments, Gornick recalls, she had to “pull back -- way back -- from these people and
these events to find the place where the story could draw a deep breath,” and from this
distance, she realized that “this point of view could only emerge from a narrator who
was me and at the same time not me” (22). This included rejecting a diary she had
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written at the time of the events described in Fierce Attachments. “The writing was
soaked in a kind of girlish self-pity -- ‘alone again!’ -- that I found odious” (22). To write
her memoir, Gornick rejected the “alone again!” that was a recorded part of herself in
order to create a distinct persona and a coherently crafted book.
QUE NOCENT, SAEPE DOCENT.
Fictionalization is only one step from the “detached” persona of the author of
autobiography, and I want to turn now to the idea of Americanization in more markedly
fictional works. Sau-ling Cynthia Wong documents major strands of the criticism of The
Woman Warrior, noting that “a number of Chinese-American critics have repeatedly
denounced The Woman Warrior, questioning its autobiographic status, its authenticity,
its representativeness, and thereby Kingston’s personal integrity” (248). These concerns
are related; Wong cites one critic who states baldly that if Kingston does not describe
Chinese life with documentary accuracy and fidelity (that is, if she fictionalizes), then
she does not give readers a true picture of Chinese-American culture -- in short, that she
is not suitably representative of her ethnic group. Critiquing The Woman Warrior, Ya-jie
Zhang writes that the work “did not appeal to me when I read it for the first time,
because the stories in it seemed somewhat twisted, Chinese perhaps in origin but not
really Chinese any more, full of Immigrant autobiographics” (17). Zhang, reading the
work as a Chinese, finds various points that do not match her picture of Chinese culture,
from the retelling of the Hua Mu Lan story to Kingston’s use of the word “ghosts.” She
is able to accept and appreciate the text only when she understands it as “Chinese-
American” rather than “Chinese.” What I want to focus on here is Zhang’s identification
of the imagination as specifically American. Born in California, Kingston could hardly
be expected to have the perspective of one born and raised in China, and so the work is
necessarily “Chinese-American” in this way. However, Zhang does not say that The
Woman Warrior is full of Chinese-Immigrant autobiographics; instead she implies that
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the imaginative qualities of the book are dependent on the American side of this scale.
Anyone who has Chinese heritage but lives outside China might be said to have to
imagine China in order to write about it, but it somehow sounds different to suppose
that a Chinese-Canadian person would have to use “Canadian imagination” to write a
book like The Woman Warrior.
Immigrant autobiographics, I would suggest, has an aggressive quality that
Zhang is commenting on here. Whereas Jade Snow Wong accounts for her third-person
autobiography by explaining that, “even written in English, an ‘I’ book by a Chinese
would seem outrageously immodest to anyone raised in the spirit of Chinese propriety”
(xiii), the American side of Kingston’s imagination not only allows her to write an “I”
book but also to consider that “I,” its perceptions and imaginations, more important
than the “real world” of verifiable facts. Seeing things as they could be rather than as
they are seems an essential part of Immigrant autobiographics. It may not be a
coincidence that Benjamin Franklin is famous both as an autobiographer and as an
inventor; both of these qualities imply shaping the world rather than submitting to it,
and these two qualities seem to fuse in creating the archetypal American, particularly
since Franklin’s autobiography makes famous the concept of self-invention.
Probably the most well-known American literary self-creation from the world of
fiction, rather than autobiography, is Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As a novel, the
work is able to depict the paradigmatic self-created American while dramatizing the
tragedy of that self-creation. When the former James Gatz of North Dakota is reborn as
Jay Gatsby, he is descended from no one but himself. “His parents were shiftless and
unsuccessful farm people,” Nick Carraway notes. “His imagination had never really
accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long
Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (104). Gatsby has, in a very real
way, imagined himself into being. Furthermore, he has done so with a distinctly
Immigrant autobiographics; it’s peculiarly American to imagine yourself rich and
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famous in New York while your parents are mediocre in the Midwest, and peculiarly
American (or Franklinesque) to attempt this goal by laying out a program of self-
improvement like the young James Gatz’s:
No wasting time at Shafters or (a name, indecipherable)No more smokeing [sic] or chewingBath every other dayRead one improving book or magazine per week (181-82)
Gatsby’s father, displaying this list to Nick when he arrives in New York for the
funeral, takes great pride in it, and in his son’s self-improvement, even while admitting
that “we was broke up when he run off from home” (181). What Mr. Gatz does not see is
the cause of his son’s death, the faith in imagination and in the future to the exclusion of
an understanding of reality and the past. It is this split from the past that produces
maladaptation: “Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners,” Nick
says, “and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly
unadaptable to Eastern life” (184).
MELODRAMAS OF INDIVIDUATION & CONSOLIDATION
With this prototypical fictionalization of the American experience in mind, I
want to consider what immigrant autobiographics might mean in two recent novels
concerned with ethnicity and assimilation in America -- Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker
and Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone.
The epigraph Lee has chosen comes from Walt Whitman, and the rest of the
work has moments of similarity to the poet. When protagonist Henry Park, working
undercover at the office of politician John Kwang, takes over Kwang’s ggeh, he also
inhabits a Whitmanesque personality. Henry becomes “a complier of lives” (279),
collecting family information and the amount each has contributed to the money club,
and listing it all on a spreadsheet.
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I am remembering every last piece of them. Whether I wish it or not, I possessthem, their spouses and children, their jobs and money and life. And the more Isee and remember the more their story is the same. The story is mine. How Icome by plane, come by boat. Come climbing over a fence. When I get here, Iwork. I work for the day I will finally work for myself. I work so hard that oneday I end up forgetting the person I am. I forget my wife, my son. Now, too, Ihave lost my old mother tongue. And I forget the ancestral graves I have left on ahillside of a faraway land, the loneliest stones that each year go unblessed. (279)
Henry identifies with, embraces, even embodies the mass of people who have led
lives he recognizes and understands, and this identification with the masses is the
source of Lee’s identification with the all-embracing American poet. Sayre’s explication
of Whitman illuminates this connection. America, he explains, is an idea, and one that
the poet accepted willingly. “The paradoxes of America […] were to be his personal
paradoxes as well. He would share in all the success and suffering of the nation as a
whole. He would emulate America, and he would become the ideal common man (also
a paradox) whom other Americans could imitate, remember, and one day celebrate.”
(160).
Lee’s Henry Park, in his undercover operations, has a similarly inclusive
personality. Assimilation has given him a familiarity with the business of being multiple
people at once, and this familiarity facilitates his assumption of different roles and
personae on different assignments. “I had always thought that I could be anyone,
perhaps several anyones at once,” Henry muses. “Dennis Hoagland and his private firm
had conveniently appeared at the right time, offering the perfect vocation for the person
I was [...]. For that I felt indebted to him for life. I found a sanction from our work, for I
thought I had finally found my truest place in the culture” (127). Henry’s job requires
him to build new personalities from the ground up; he writes fictions (or “legends,” as
they are called in his line of work) and then embodies them. “The legend was something
each of us wrote out in preparation for any assignment. It was an extraordinarily
extensive ‘story’ of who we were, an autobiography as such, often evolving to develop
even the minutiae of life experience, countless facts and figures, though it also required a
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truthful ontological bearing, a certain presence of character” (22). Like autobiographers
and like Whitman, Henry writes himself into different roles as the occasion demands.
REPETITIO EST MATER STUDIORUM.
In “The Sleepers,” Whitman writes, “I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the
politician, / The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box, / He who has
been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day, / The stammerer, the well-form’d
person, the wasted or feeble person” (340), and Henry, in various ways, has a similarly
inclusive personality. Lee’s epigraph to Native Speaker, however, comes from a later,
less optimistic section of the same poem. “I turn but do not extricate myself, / Confused,
a past-reading, another, / but with darkness yet.” This moment of stasis and confusion
demonstrates the problems and complications of, to use Sayre’s terms, sharing the
paradoxes of America. Any American Everyman must by nature have moments of
schizophrenia.
Furthermore, both Native Speaker and Bone exemplify the ways in which “the
track of generations [is] effaced” (Tocqueville 194). In Bone, Leila describes Grandpa
Leong’s “makeshift” funeral: “If Grandpa Leong had been a family man, he might have
had real tears, a grieving wife draped in muslin, the fabric weaving around her like
burnt skin” (82). Particularly for the Chinese, a funeral should consist of much grief and
much ceremony, in respect for ancestors and for tradition. Most important of all was the
ultimate disposition of the remains. “Hopefully – and there was hope if there were
children – when his children were grown and making their own money, they’d dig up
his bones, pack them in a clay pot, send them – no, accompany them – back to the home
village for a proper burial” (82). But all of this depends on a family, and Grandpa Leong
is not so lucky. When Leon, his son and Leila’s stepfather, decides to visit his grave, he
cannot find it in the cemetery. Leila takes his background information – American and
Chinese names, village, birth and death dates – to the Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent
37
Association to see what she can learn. The man there tells her Grandpa Leong’s bones
have been moved. “He told me overcrowding had become a problem at the cemetery
and most oldtimers had only leased their burial plots for three, five, or nine years,
hoping to be sent back to China by relatives. ‘More often than not,’ the man said, ‘the
dead are forgotten. People get busy. Times change, even feelings. It happens’” (76).
Grandpa Leong’s unclaimed bones are now mixed with other Leong bones under one
family headstone, as irretrievable as Leila’s Chinese past.
The living, breathing Leon himself is scarcely easier to identify. “Leon was
always getting his real and paper birthdates mixed up; he’s never given the same
birthdate twice. Oldtimer logic: If you don’t tell the truth, you’ll never get caught in a lie.
What Leon didn’t know, he made up” (55). Seeking accurate information to give to the
Social Security office, Leila sifts through her stepfather’s suitcase of old papers: rejection
letters, photos, newspaper clippings, check stubs and receipts. He has saved everything.
“I’m the stepdaughter of a paper son,” Leila realizes, “and I’ve inherited this whole
suitcase of lies. All of it is mine. All I have is those memories, and I want to remember
them all” (61). Leila is many steps removed from any traditional ancestry or bloodline.
Leon is not her father, but her stepfather, and furthermore, he is “a paper son” more
than a flesh-and-blood person, someone whose life has been made up, and made up
again, on scraps of paper.
It’s in the conclusion of Bone that the New York Times reviewer finds a
connection to The Great Gatsby. The “buoyant parting image” is of Leila packing up her
belongings to move from her mother’s home to her boyfriend Mason’s.
The last thing I saw as Mason backed out of the alley was the old blue sign,#2—4—6 updaire. No one has ever corrected it; someone repaints it every year.Like the oldtimers’ photos, Leon’s papers, and Grandpa Leong’s lost bones, itreminded me to look back, to remember.
I was reassured. I knew what I held in my heart would guide me. So I wasn’tworried when I turned that corner, leaving the old blue sign, Salmon Alley, Mahand Leon – everything – backdaire. (193-94)
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At this point, Leila finds a balance between looking back and looking forward. Unlike
Vivian Gornick, half in and half out of her mother’s doorway, she is able to take
something from the past and use it to move forward. Likewise, Fitzgerald closes The
Great Gatsby with an image that ties together past and future.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedesbefore us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster,stretch out our arms farther. … And one fine morning –
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past(189).
While Fitzgerald concludes with Gatsby looking to the future, and Ng with Leila looking
to the past, both conclusions hover in between past and future with no strong
connection to either, optimistic but not quite decisive.
When Tocqueville writes that “the woof of time is every instant broken” when
people prize individualism, he is not only referring to a break from past generations, but
a split from the future: “of those who will come after, no one has any idea” (194). This
isolation is dramatized in ethnic American fiction by a death in the younger generation.
For Henry Park, it is his son Mitt, and for Leila Fu, her sister Ona.
As the product of an interracial marriage, half Asian, half white, Mitt learned
“words like mutt, mongrel, half-breed, banana, twinkie” from the neighborhood boys
(103), but “by that last summer Mitt was thick with them all. Friends for life, or so it
must have seemed” (104). Mitt is accidentally killed in a “dog pile,” crushed by the other
boys.
Second-generation Chinese-American Ona, on the other hand, is older and more
deliberate; Leila explains starkly that “my middle sister, Ona, jumped off the M floor of
the Nam,” a housing project in Chinatown (14). “‘Better a parent before a child, better a
wife than a husband,’” their mother cried after the suicide, highlighting the topsy-turvy
relationships individualism sometimes produces. “‘Everything’s all turned around, all
backward’” (15).
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This common figure of a death in the next generation is, I think, a way of
presenting the radical disconnect caused by assimilation and individuation. While
individuals may see their own lives as proceeding along clear paths, individualism
devalues membership in society at large; people do not see themselves as parts of a
whole, and therefore do not necessarily see society as proceeding along a clear path.
Antin’s treadmill horse may have been bored and depressed, but it functioned in a clear,
useful, and well-defined way. Outside of this system, if you create yourself, then your
children will also create themselves, and your own legacy is uncertain, or possibly even
nonexistent.
“The oldtimers believed that the blood came from the mother and the bones from
the father,” Leila says. “Ona was part Leon and part Mah, but neither of them could
believe that Ona’s unhappiness was all her own” (104). According to oldtimer logic, Ona
should resemble her parents, but her decision to date Osvaldo against their wishes is an
act of individualism rather than obedience. Of course, Leila and Nina also “leave home”
in other ways, but Ona’s death gives a shape to the melancholy aspects of individuation.
It literally leaves her parents without an heir. Breaking away from their Chinese heritage
changes not only the relationship to the past, but to the future.
VULNERANT OMNES, ULTIMA NECAT.
Hisaye Yamamoto, in “Life Among the Oilfields, A Memoir” (1979), is blunt
about such injury to children when cultures mix. Yamamoto begins her recollection of
the 1920s and ’30s with an epigraph from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Notebooks:
They rode through those five years in an open car with the sun on theirforeheads and their hair flying. They waved to people they knew, but seldomstopped to ask a direction or check on the fuel, for every morning there was agorgeous new horizon … They missed collisions by inches, wavered on the edgeof precipices, and skidded across tracks to the sound of the warning bell. (86)
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Yamamoto goes on to describe the “warning signs” of the Depression that she can now
piece together as the result of distance in time – “unaware” of it then because “we
probably did not have that far to fall” (86). The historical significance of her friend’s
snitching her brother’s share of candy, or of seeing children pick through a garbage can
for food, escaped her at the time and were, in their way, like “living alongside derricks
and sump holes […]. If we could not ignore their considerable presence, we accepted
them, worked and played around them, and made respectful allowances for the peril
connected with them” (93).
Another, different, example of unawareness comes the day her brother Jemo is
hit by a car as it speeds, oblivious, through the oil fields. “He was only stunned,”
Yamamoto writes, but there were still hospital bills, which the couple driving the car
refused to pay.
When I look back on that episode, the helpless anger of my father and mymother is my inheritance. But my anger is more intricate than theirs, warped byall that has transpired in between. For instance, I sometimes see the arrogantcouple from down the road as young and beautiful, their speeding open roadsteras definitely and stunningly red. They roar by; their tinkling laughter, like a longsilken scarf, is borne back by the wind. I gaze after them from the side of theroad, where I have darted to dodge the swirling dust and spitting gravel. And Iknow that their names are Scott and Zelda. (95)
Yamamoto’s response to the incident echoes Leila’s description of Ona, part parental
inheritance and part personal perception. Her connection to American culture – closer
than that of her parents – allows her to identify the careless driver as a particular
heedless American type, which intensifies her anger; if the driver (like Whitman) is seen
as the idea of America, then Jemo’s accident becomes an assault on the idea of Japan.
However, the dynamic is not so simple, and not only because the Fitzgeralds are headed
for a crash of their own. In her memoir, Yamamoto recalls being as heedless of the stock
market crash as the Fitzgerald characters in her epigraph are; only in retrospect can she
see the trouble around her. Yamamoto’s identification with the Fitzgerald model is
uneasy, but real.
41
Ironically, the end result of assimilation to American individualism does not
necessarily culminate in the disappearance of ancestral culture. If the second generation
declares its independence from the parents by rejecting their culture in favor of
Americanization, the third generation may separate from its Americanized parents by
returning to the roots of the grandparents, and embracing the lost ethnicity. Thus, while
in Gish Jen’s novel Mona in the Promised Land, Mona disturbs her assimilated Chinese
parents by becoming Jewish, her sister Callie disturbs them every bit as much by
becoming … Chinese. Her father would “rather see Callie study engineering [o]r
accounting” at Harvard (129), but instead, she’s learning to speak Chinese. By the time
she becomes an adult, she has become “so Chinese that [her parents] Ralph and Helen
think there is something wrong with her. Why does she wear those Chinese padded
jackets, for example? They themselves now wear down parkas, much warmer” (301).
Mona is suspicious of the degree of Callie’s rebellion, since she has always “[led]
a straight A life,” but Callie protests. “I left home too, she says sometimes. I’m my own
person. I made my own choices” (302). The only difference is that Callie “leaves home”
by returning to the home her parents left. Werner Sollors writes that the third generation
“is, at the same time, more American and more ethnic than its predecessors. In fact, not
being like their immediate predecessors – the parents – is what helps to authenticate
third-generation members, who yet avoid oedipal confrontations by aggrandizing their
own position as rooted in meaningful origins” (230). In other words, Callie – or Kailan as
she calls herself after embracing Chinese culture – is still acting like an American even
when she backpedals on the issue of assimilation. In choosing to be unlike her parents,
Callie continues to enact the drama of individuation that has marked American culture
since the country’s beginning.
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CHAPTER 3: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
“It is evident to anyone who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are eitherideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions andoperations of the mind; or lastly, ideas formed by the help of memory or imagination ... That neitherour thoughts nor passions nor ideas forms by the imagination exist without mind is what everybodywill allow ... and to me it seems no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on thesenses, however blended or combined together cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them”.
“It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men that houses, mountains, rivers and in aword, all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by theunderstanding ... For what are the aforementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? Andwhat do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it plainly repugnant that anyone ofthese, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived”.
[Berkeley, George (1685 - 1753) from Of the Principles of Human Understanding]
“No man is wholly responsible for his own metaphysics; a large part of the structure of it he inevitablytakes over from the period and the community of which he is a part. The insight, which his geniusgives him, must play upon the landscape which surrounds him, but it may be an insight whichilluminates more significantly other landscapes than his own. And that I think is true of Berkeley'sinsight that the world of our perception is the real world. When Berkeley sought to counteract thematerialism of his time, by presenting perception as daily converse with God, he was met by Dr.Johnson's stamp of his foot on the pavement, by the Free Thinker's shrug of his shoulder, and by theindifference of the scientist. Today the affirmation that the real world is the world of our experiencecomes to us in no such bizarre form. Berkeley saw the real world partially in our perceptions, butcompletely in the mind of God. From this he drew the moral that we should govern our conduct by themeaning and purpose of the world, which God had revealed to us through many channels. We can notdraw any such moral from the identification of our experience with reality. We possess no vision givenin the mount which completes our perspectives. The moral that we can draw is of a frankly oppositesort. Just in so far as we can control our experience we can control the world, just in so far we can becreative in our own experiences, we can be creative in the world. We can be thus intelligently creativeonly in so far as we conform to the order which is revealed in our past experience. We control natureby obeying her. And we have been doing it at a great rate. The world in which humanity lives today,especially in the western world, is as different from that of the eighteenth century as were two geologicepochs. We can determine what plant life and what animal life shall surround us; and to a large extentwe do. We can determine what shall be the immediate incidence of cold and heat upon our bodies. Wecan determine what sort of a human race shall be bred, and how many of them. All the conditions,which we believe, in large measure, determined the origins of species are within our power. We can doall of this, but we have not accepted the responsibility for it. And, I take it, this is the moral that weshould draw from the identity of the world of our experience and the real world. If we can control themeans we become responsible for the new ends, which they enable us to form. And we have come farshort of accepting that responsibility. We fashioned the marvelous world of the twentieth century, andthen undertook within it to fight an eighteenth-century war. The hands were the hands of Esau, butthe voice was the voice of Jacob.
[George Herbert Mead. "Bishop Berkeley and his Message", Journal of Philosophy 26(1929), pp. 421-430]
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SYNOPSYS: PERFORMANCE, PERSONALITY AND IDENTITY DEFENSE IN
LIFE-STORY & AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE
In modern societies, adults typically prvide their lives with some sense of unity
and purpose by constructing self-defining life stories that serve as their identities. Such
stories are told to others and to an internalized audience or listener who serves as an
ultimate judge and interpreter of the narrative. Defense mechanisms specify narrative
strategies that persons use to shape how their lives are told to others and to their
internalized audiences. Life events and experiences are incorporated into a life story to
the extent that the internalized audience can make sense of the telling. Defenses function
to make some stories more tellable than they might otherwise be and to keep other
potentially storied accounts from ever reaching the status of being told. This I argue is
the essence of narrative selves in autobiographical discourse in general, with
“immigrant autobiographics” providing a special case in point—if not the Ur-moment in
identity construction following Heimert, Bailyn, Rogin & Bercoveitch—since it
highlights the transition from an ego-concept of Auslander to New American in the
protagonist, narrator, author and implied reader of an autobiography.
We do not know when it first occurred to human beings that a single life might
be told as a story. But the affinity between stories and human lives seems so easy and
natural as to lead some scholars to suggest that the prime reason for the existence of
stories is to convey the vicissitudes of human intention and desire organized in time
(Bruner, 1986; Mink, 1978; Rouse, 1978). According to Bruner (1986, 1990), the telling of
stories is the principal mode through which people make social sense of human
behavior and motivation—their own included. Human actions are rendered sensible to
the extent that such actions can be assimilated to a narrative that can be told and
understood in a particular social and cultural context (Cohler & Cole, 1994;
44
Polkinghorne, 1988). To say, therefore, that a particular behavior makes no sense is to
suggest that one cannot discern a convincing story to account for that behavior. To say,
furthermore, that a person’s life itself makes no sense—that the life writ large cannot be
understood by that community of human beings who seek to understand it—is to say
that one cannot create a story or series of stories that convincingly organizes the
collection of events and attendant characters, settings, actions, and reactions that appear
to make up that particular life. These kinds of claims about behavior and human lives
are fully contextualized in culture and history. Lives make sense according to the stories
that prevail at a given time and place, that is, according to the canonical plots and
characterizations that people in a given society and at a particular historical moment
consider to be conceivable and acceptable. Thus, each of us seeks to understand who he
or she is with respect to a complex socioliterary tradition within which our lives are
inevitably and unwittingly embedded (Denzin, 1989; McAdams, 1996).
Since the time of Freud, social theorists of many different stripes have
endeavored to collect and analyze the stories people tell about their lives in order to help
people understand themselves better, to relieve suffering or alleviate symptoms, and to
enhance the collective, scientific understanding of human behavior and experience. But
it has only been within the last 20 years or so that theorists have taken seriously the idea
that people’s life stories themselves exist as psychological constructs worthy of
systematic scrutiny on their own terms (McAdams, 1995a). Thus, while psychoanalysts
have been listening to life stories for almost 100 years, Schafer (1981) was one of the first
to conceive of the psychoanalytic process itself as akin to assisted storytelling and to
interpret the analyst’s mission as helping the client to develop a new and better story
about his or her life. Psychotherapists from other traditions have recently developed
narrative approaches to counseling and clinical work; indeed, the term narrative therapy
has gained considerable currency in professional and lay circles (White & Epston, 1990).
Within academic personality psychology, to take another example, investigators
45
such as Allport (1942), Block (1971), Murray (1938), and White (1952) urged researchers
to adopt biographical methods in the study of human lives. But it was not until the
emergence of conceptualizations such as Tomkins’s (1979) script theory, McAdams’s
(1985) life-story theory of identity, and Hermans’s (1992; Hermans, Kempen, & van
Loon, 1992) view of the dialogical self that personality theorists proposed theories about
human lives that were explicitly couched in narrative terms. According to McAdams
(1985, 1993, 1996), for instance, a person’s life story is itself an internalized and evolving
psychological structure that functions primarily to integrate a person’s life in time, so
that the life may be experienced as having some semblance of unity and purpose. In the
modern world, McAdams argues, an adult “has” identity in his or her life to the extent
that he or she can successfully formulate and internalize an integrative life
narrative—complete with setting, scenes, characters, plot, and themes—that synthesizes
the reconstructed past, perceived present, and anticipated future. Identity, then, is the
internalized life story or collection of stories that the modern adult carries around in his
or her mind in an effort to make his or her own life sensible to the self and to others (see
also Giddens, 1991; MacIntyre, 1983; Polkinghorne, 1988).
What, then, is the role of defense mechanisms in the development and
articulation of a person’s life story? A defense mechanism is defined as a mental
operation that keeps unacceptable thoughts, impulses, and wishes out of awareness
either to safeguard the individual from excessive anxiety, to enhance self-esteem, or to
protect the integration of the self (Cramer). Defense mechanisms are seen as part of
normal personality functioning, but excessive or inappropriate use of particular defenses
can contribute to psychopathology. In keeping with the recent emergence of narrative
theories in personality psychology, this article considers the possibility that defense
mechanisms may be viewed as narrative strategies that shape howa life is told, both to
the self and to others. In narrative terms, the whole concept of defense is inextricably
linked to the notion of story tellability. Defenses function to make some stories more
46
tellable than they might otherwise be and to keep other potentially storied accounts
from reaching the status of ever being told. In order to understand the working of
defense in life-storytelling, furthermore, one must consider a crucial question for
narrative identity: To whom is the life story told? This article proposes that life stories
are fundamentally constructed and told with an internalized audience, listener, or
spectator in mind. Thus, defenses work in the context of both (1) an evolving story or set
of stories that individuals construct to make sense of their own lives and (2) an
internalized other who functions as the prime audience, critic, and evaluative source for
determining the extent to which a given story is to be seen as sensible and acceptable.
LIFE STORIES: WHAT DO WE TELL WHEN WE TELL THEM?
There are many different kinds of stories that can be told to make a human life
meaningful. Indeed, the multitude of possibilities is so vast and each person’s life is so
unique that some investigators consider any effort to find commonalities across people’s
lives and their life stories to be sheer folly (Marcia & Strayer, 1996). In the extreme, one
critical position has it that each story that a person tells about his or her life is a one-of-a-
kind moment in discourse, that every story has a virtually limitless supply of possible
meanings, that each life is set in a confusing swirl of stories and story fragments out of
which little sense can be made, and that any effort to organize or catalogue other
people’s stories involves little beyond the investigator’s sometimes hegemonic
projection of his or her own conceptual framework upon the subject of inquiry (Gergen,
1992; Sampson, 1989; Shotter & Gergen, 1989). But a more moderate and pragmatic view
encourages researchers to examine particularly salient narratives that would appear to
organize in psychologically important ways some human lives at some times and in
some places (Gregg, 1991; McAdams, 1993; Singer & Salovey, 1993). Even while
acknowledging that every life story is unique, investigators may still be able to discern
similarities across narratives and to make psychological and sociological sense of how
47
and why certain people at certain times develop certain kinds of stories for their lives
(McAdams, 1996; Rosenwald, 1988).
Following this pragmatic line, Carlson (1981, 1988) drew upon Tomkins’s (1979)
script theory to contrast two common life-story forms, the nuclear script and the
commitment script, that may be found in some classic autobiographical accounts. Linde
(1990) illustrated how some contemporary American adults import implicit stories of
self-development from popular psychology in accounting for change in their own lives.
Maruna (1997) content-analyzed published autobiographies of 20 ex-criminals to discern
a prototypic narrative of reform—a general life-story format that virtually all of his
subjects drew upon to explain how they got into crime and how they eventually were
able to get out of it.
McAdams, Diamond, de St. Aubin, and Mansfield (1997) contrasted the life
stories of 40 adults who had distinguished themselves for their generativity (a strong
concern for and investment in benefitting the next generation [Erikson, 1963]) to those
stories constructed by 30 matching adults who scored relatively low on assessments of
generativity. Each subject in the study was interviewed according to a standardized
format in which he or she described in detail (1) the main chapters in his or her life story,
(2) key life-story scenes such as high points and turning points, (3) significant characters
in the story, (4) plans and hopes for the future, (5) basic beliefs and values, and (6) the
extent to which the story illustrates a central message or theme. Deriving hypotheses
from the writings of Colby and Damon (1992) on the lives of moral exemplars and
Tomkins (1979) on commitment scripts, the authors content-analyzed the interview
protocols and identified a prototypical life-story form that consistently distinguished
between the respective stories articulated by the two groups. The highly generative
adults were more likely to reconstruct the past and anticipate the future as variations on
a prototypical commitment story in which the protagonist (1) enjoys an early family
blessing or advantage, (2) is sensitized to the suffering of others at an early age, (3) is
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guided by a clear and compelling personal ideology that remains stable over time, (4)
transforms or redeems bad scenes into good outcomes, and (5) sets goals for the future
that aim to benefit society as a whole and its institutions.
With respect to the commitment story, McAdams et al. (1997) argued that highly
generative adults choose, in part, to tell their life stories in this manner because this kind
of narrative effectively sustains and reinforces their efforts to contribute in positive ways
to youth and the well-being of the next generation. For example, the encounter with
suffering at an early age foreshadows the generative adult’s later efforts to care for
individuals in need. The invocation of an enduring personal ideology provides the
moral steadfastness needed to sustain the adult’s care and commitment during trying
times, reinforcing the adult’s efforts to transform bad events into good outcomes. Many
different kinds of life stories might conceivably sustain an adult’s generative efforts, but
one can see that the kind of commitment story identified in McAdams et al. (1997) might
prove especially efficacious in this regard.
Life stories are not simple veridical reports about what “really happened” in a
person’s life. They are instead imaginative renderings of life into narrative form in
which the past is reconstructed to meet current needs and goals and the future is
anticipated in light of the reconstructed past (Adler, 1927; Cohler & Cole, 1994;
Hermans, et al., 1992; Howard, 1991; McAdams, 1996; Polkinghorne, 1988; Sarbin, 1986;
Singer & Salovey, 1993). While life stories are surely and necessarily based on the facts of
a person’s life as the person knows and experiences them, they are also artful and
selective narrations that surely and necessarily bear resemblance to myth, folklore, and
fiction. Like stories in literature and everyday interaction, life stories serve to entertain,
instruct, and, most importantly, to integrate diverse elements of the self into a unified
and purposeful whole (McAdams, 1985). In the study by McAdams et al. (1997),
therefore, the commitment stories provided the highly generative adults with a
language or discourse for the self that supports a caring, compassionate, and responsible
49
approach to social life, especially with respect to the adult’s involvement in caring for
youth and subsequent generations. Other sorts of life stories support other kinds of life
strivings, goals, beliefs, and attitudes (McAdams, 1993, 1995b, 1996).
DEFENSE MECHANISMS IN LIFE-STORY FASHIONING: INTERVIEWEVIDENCE
The method of choice for life-story research is the structured interview. The issue
of defense first arises in considering the quality of the interview protocols. Common
questions posed about the interview include the following: How do you know that the
research participant is telling you the true story? Isn’t it likely that the person is simply
telling you what he or she thinks you want to hear? What is the person hiding?
There are no perfectly good answers to these fundamental questions. But a
sensible way to address them in a given life-story study is to acknowledge first that
research subjects consciously and unconsciously tailor their responses to fit the context,
employing standard defense mechanisms and other strategies to do so. There can be
little doubt that participants in life-story research—like participants in many forms of
social-science research—employ denial, projection, intellectualization, and other
strategies outside their awareness in order to keep anxiety at bay and enhance esteem in
responding to the interviewer’s questions. Indeed, Vaillant (1977) coded interview
responses as well as other case materials for the relative salience of a number of different
defense mechanisms, ultimately showing that mature defenses tended to be associated
with better psychosocial adjustment overall. The interview is a presentation of the self to
a particular audience, and defense mechanisms help to assure that the presentation
comes off in a socially appropriate and, in many cases, moderately self-serving manner.
Although it is surely difficult to determine precisely if and in what way
defensive processes impact life-narrative accounts, the researcher may do well to
examine particular aspects of the account that are most likely to yield important
50
evidence. Alexander (1988) has delineated nine guidelines for extracting data from
interview and biographical materials. Some of these guidelines would appear to be
especially relevant for detecting the workings of defenses. Alexander argues that life-
narrative material that is most likely to yield useful interpretations may be revealed
through the detection of (1) primacy (that which comes first in a narrative account), (2)
frequency (that which appears often), (3) uniqueness (that which is singular or odd), (4)
negation (that which is repudiated, denied, or turned into its opposite), (5) emphasis
(that which is underscored or stressed), (6) omission (that which is conspicuous by its
absence), (7) error (that which appears to be a mistake), (8) isolation (that which sits
alone, does not fit), and (9) incompletion (that which appears not to be finished). From
Alexander’s list, negation, omission, error, isolation, and incompletion would appear to
be especially relevant criteria for the detection of defenses in life narrative. Life-narrative
accounts that are strongly shaped by defensive processes may appear to lack good story
form, leaving the listener feeling that something in the account just does not make sense.
The story may deny the obvious or appear to omit that which should be conspicuous.
Significant passages of narrative may seem strangely disconnected from the whole. The
story may seem incomplete. The storyteller may make obvious mistakes.
A good example of the working of defense mechanisms in life-story interviewing
can be found in Wiersma’s (1988) study of women who undertook new careers after
spending considerable time as mothers and homemakers. Reviewing the initial
interviews, Wiersma was disappointed to encounter stereotypical accounts filled with
clichés and non sequiturs. The women first explained their career changes by telling
well-worn cultural stories that Wiersma found unconvincing:
As I listened to subjects’ initial stories, they seemed empty, stereotyped,and implausible. Their similarities were uncanny. These women first announceduniformly that this was the best thing that had ever happened to them. They saidthey had now become “legitimate,” “responsible,” “independent,” “grown up,”“powerful,” and “strong” by making a narrow escape from an oppressive pastthat was, at best, a socialization into meaninglessness and, at worst, a harrowingexperience. By some unspecified mechanism that it was clearly taboo for me to
51
ask about, they claimed they had discovered either a “true self” or even a “newself” which resulted in their present euphoric state. And, as if my credulityhadn’t been strained far enough, they also declared that this entiremetamorphosis had taken place by sheer coincidence—that there had beennothing planned in this entire tour de force. (Wiersma, 1988, p. 209)
Because these initial narrative accounts resembled tidy clichés designed for easy
public consumption, Wiersma (1988) termed them press releases. The press release
concealed the many complex and highly individualized stories of struggle and angst
that Wiersma was eventually able to ferret out through extensive follow-up interviews
of the same women. “The press releases seemed to be only potential, or partial stories, or
even story fragments,” Wiersma concluded (p. 217). With respect to defense, the press
releases would appear to be the result of the mechanism of denial. Cramer (1991) writes
that denial often functions on a cognitive level through the imposition of a simple,
pleasant fantasy onto a more complex and anxiety-provoking reality. In the narrative,
the fantasy may provide the basis for pollyannish denial, resulting in the “life is
wonderful” story. Wiersma’s women adopted a kind of pop-sociology fantasy, prevalent
in the cultural rhetoric of the day, about having escaped societal oppression to
experience perfect freedom and joy in the professional world. Only by refusing to settle
for these initial accounts and pushing hard to reach a deeper level of narrative was
Wiersma eventually able to discover the more nuanced and emotionally complex stories
that the press releases were originally designed to conceal.
Another example of denial in life-story interviewing may be found in
McAdams’s (1993) account of the story of Julie McPherson. As in Wiersma’s study, Julie
initially reacts to the interview by speaking in clichés and stereotypes. While her press
release is not as cheery and upbeat as those offered by Wiersma’s women, Julie’s
account is similar in its failure to offer narrative material that would readily differentiate
her from her cohort. She is a typical 39-year-old market analyst, she maintains, married,
childless, going along in life in a very even-mannered way, with few deep concerns and
52
few strong motivations. The interviewer poses one question after another, but Julie
continues to respond with vague generalizations. “I am just like everybody else,” she
wants to maintain. “There is nothing special about me.” A fantasy of the perfectly
conventional life serves to deny the pain that makes her actual life different from others,
that individuates her and gives her story its unique flavor. The conscious realization of
her uniqueness may itself be painful, for it may reinforce her fear that she is separate
from others and alone in the world. Finally, with the interview’s last scheduled question,
the defense of denial seems to give way. As Wiersma was able to obtain more nuanced
stories in subsequent interviews, it was not until the interviewer wrapped up the one
and only session with Julie by asking her about the overall theme of her life story that
one is able to glimpse behind the mundane press release:
All right. Well, we talk a lot about stability and stuff like that, or relinquishingresponsibility. That’s my utopia. I want to be taken care of. I will tell you a storythat will tell you where I want to be when I grow up. About two years ago, I wasin the hospital for two weeks. I was sick, but I wasn’t in pain. I was in a room bymyself; I was in isolation. I couldn’t have any visitors [at first]. I wasn’t onmedication; there was no discomfort. I was there for two weeks, and I chose mymeals off a menu. I got up every morning at six o’clock and took a shower, puton a little makeup, put on a clean nightgown, sat down, had my breakfast, readthe paper, read a book till noon, watched Julia Child at noon, turned off the TV,read a book or whatever until five or so, and then my husband came to visit meor I had dinner served. That couple I talked about earlier in the interview wouldcome to visit. Then everybody’d leave. At ten o’clock, I’d turn off my lights andgo to sleep. After two weeks, I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go homeand be faced with laundry and housecleaning and dogs that had to be taken outand a husband that had to be waited on. And that to me was like I was taken careof. I didn’t have to cook a meal. I told them what I wanted. I only had to takecare of myself personally, and other than that, I went to bed at ten o’clock; I wentto sleep; I didn’t have to take a pill or anything; I woke up promptly at six,without an alarm. And I know I was upset when I had to go home. That’s thetheme. (Quoted in McAdams, 1993, pp. 171–172).
Behind the press release, Julie reveals a story whose central theme is the desire to
be taken care of. On the brink of midlife, she feels overwhelmed by her many
responsibilities and she longs desperately to be nurtured the way she was when she was
a child. The hospital scene is a real-life fantasy that runs counter to the press release of
living a conventional and more-or-less contented middle-class life. In the context of the
53
interview, pollyanish denial worked as a narrative strategy keeping her from telling a
more troubling story that captured certain truths about her life. Had the interview ended
one question earlier, the investigator would have had few clues about how this defense
had shaped Julie’s narrative response. Even with the addition of the hospital scene,
however, the interpretation of her life-story account in terms of defense mechanisms
remains an exercise in informed speculation. And even when the researcher enjoys the
luxury of further probing and subsequent in-depth interviews, as in the case of Wiersma
(1988), it remains extremely difficult to sort out how defenses shape the storied accounts
that people offer. Interviewing, therefore, remains an imperfect method for life-story
research, for reasons that include, but by no means are limited to, the issue of defense.
But all methods are imperfect, and one is hard-pressed to find a more appropriate
method for discerning life stories.
BEYOND THE INTERVIEW: DEFENSE MECHANISMS IN THE LIFE STORY
Wiersma’s (1988) concept of the press release alerts researchers to the likelihood
that defenses such as denial operate to conceal stories about the self that might be told to
the interviewer because such stories are too painful, complex, or revealing. In the
example of Wiersma’s women changing careers and in the case of Julie McPherson, the
researchers were successful in getting beyond the press release to obtain a purportedly
deeper and more psychologically informed life narrative. This is not to suggest,
however, that the researchers had finally uncovered a “basic” or “true” story that was
heretofore hidden by the “false” and superficial press releases. It is certainly possible
that the new, more complex stories concealed other, even more complex or personally
problematic narratives. Furthermore, there is nothing especially “false” about the first
stories that were solicited. While Wiersma may have found the sociological clichés her
women offered to be psychologically disappointing, she also acknowledged that the
women believed these stories to be true, even after telling alternative stories, and that
54
the press releases helped to sustain and reinforce life choices and commitments.
Similarly, Julie McPherson’s vague generalizations about a conventional life were not
proven false by the hospital scene. Both the press release and the counter-story are parts
of a larger life story that Julie McPherson has constructed in an effort to provide her life
with meaning, purpose, and unity. Identity includes both the public performances and
the private musings that make up the stories people live by (McAdams, 1993).
The reasoning above suggests that, vis-à-vis life stories, defense mechanisms
play a larger role than simply influencing what kinds of narrative accounts people offer
when interviewed. Such strategies as denial and projection surely shape what comes out
in the interview, but one might also contend that they shape the life story itself. To put it
another way, defense mechanisms not only influence how participants respond to life-
story questions in a research interview (a methodological conundrum), but they also
likely influence just how the person has structured his or her own self-defining life
story—that is, his or her very identity—whether he or she is ever interviewed or not. A
key assumption in McAdams’s conception of identity as a life story is that the person
comes to the interview with a life story already developed. The interview is designed to
get at that story. But the interview is an interpersonal interaction itself, replete with
demand characteristics and other situational factors that shape the account that is given
in important and sometimes inexplicable ways. Therefore, this imperfect method
provides narrative data that, at best, approximate in a very rough way just what kind of
story or stories exist as psychologically real structures in a person’s personality.
Defenses play a role, therefore, in the entire investigative process—by influencing the
nature of the interview account itself (the data) and by influencing the construction of a
self-defining life story in the first place (the psychological construct that is indicated,
sometimes vaguely or indirectly, by the data). McAdams (1993) presents the case of
Richard Krantz to illustrate how a single life story can combine strong themes of power
and love. But Krantz’s story is also a good illustration of how the defense mechanism of
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intellectualization serves as a narrative strategy for creating a story of the self. Richard
Krantz is a 38-year-old attorney who, since he was a child, has greatly valued the life of
the mind. The central protagonist in his life story is the rational man who can think
clearly and solve problems in a logical and coolheaded manner. Richard works hard to
arrive at precise and reasonable answers to complex questions. To convey his political
orientation to the interviewer, Richard arrives at a formula: “I am twenty percent
Libertarian, forty percent progressive Democrat, and forty percent Socialist” (McAdams,
1993, p. 204). On the topic of religious beliefs, he provides a framework that is cerebral,
intellectualized, and impersonal:
I think that if there is a God, that God probably was created by man, and is not asupreme being, apart from its existence by man. If men cease to be—or humanscease to be part of this world—then God would probably die along with them.God is the internal belief we all have in our selves, or many of us have in our self,that represents the force for good. God is the good motivating force in ourlives—if there is such a thing, and I’m not even sure there is such a thing, but ifthere is such a force in our lives, that’s what I would call God. (Quoted inMcAdams, 1993, p. 204)
Richard was the only child in a family that prized education. He reports: “I spent
a lot of my childhood alone, and my companions were books more than they were other
kids” (p. 205). Books have catalyzed the growth of a keen and precise intellect, a mind
that values clarity and organization over everything else. In all things, Richard seeks to
be organized and clear. A high point in his life story is his wedding, which he and his
wife-to-be organized all by themselves:
My wife and I entirely planned our own wedding. From A to Z we did it allcompletely. We moved into a new apartment and invited sixty people over forsix weeks later and we had the wedding in our apartment. We arranged forsomebody to marry us; we arranged for the catering; we arranged for the chairs;we arranged for everything. We chose the ceremony; we did everything. It wentwithout a hitch. It took ten minutes and it was over with. We had a partyafterwards, and I loved it because I wasn’t really nervous. I knew I wanted tomarry this person. I thought everything had been really well planned out, andhere was the high moment of our lives at that point in time, and we were incontrol, our show, nobody was telling us what to do. . . . It was this wonderfulexperience of getting married and being married with no glitches. (Quoted inMcAdams, 1993, p. 205).
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In Richard’s life story, the clear and well-organized intellect is the most powerful
tool available to human beings. It is what makes him a powerful force in his social
world. But things don’t always get resolved without a glitch, even for the
intellectualizing hero. Among the many different goals Richard has for his life, one of
the strongest is to “make the world a better place for somebody or some people” (p.
205). This goal is the prime motivator for his work as a class-action attorney. Richard
represents clients who feel they have been cheated or abused by industry or
government. It is also a prime motivator for his volunteer work at a local food pantry.
“You have to make an effort, big or small, to leave the world a better place than you
found it,” he says (p. 205). The problems he faces because of these efforts, however, are
not always resolved by rational thought, and this causes Richard considerable grief. His
reaction is to become very cynical. The narrative strategy of intellectualization would
appear to reach its limits when it runs up against intractable and irrational human
problems in the world. As he approaches midlife, Richard sees the conflict in stark
terms:
I admire Clarence Darrow. He was incredibly cynical about things. He was askedhow somebody who was as big a cynic as he was could do what he did. Hewould still take on these cases involving supposedly hopeless people fightingagainst the system to keep from being in prison. Why did he do this when hewas so cynical about human nature and he believed people were not necessarilyborn good and were not necessarily motivated by good? And he said, “It’sbecause my intellect hasn’t caught up with my emotions yet.” I’ve found that I’ma lot like Darrow in that regard, because I’m incredibly cynical. I’m not all thatpositive that the world is going to be a better place when I die than it was when Iwas born into it. I’m not sure that we won’t find ourselves on the brink ofannihilation through our own stupidity, and I’m very concerned about that, andvery cynical. . . . I’m not that far from being so cynical that I’m going to say thehell with it all. (Quoted in McAdams, 1993, p. 206)
As a narrative strategy, intellectualization supports a life story that stars a clear-
minded protagonist who masters life’s many challenges through analysis and planning.
But the same strategy can lead to cynicism and despair when the protagonist seeks to
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sustain commitments to helping others in a less-than-rational world. Those challenges
are of a different order than planning a wedding, or even sorting out one’s personal
ideology in formulaic terms. Richard, however, appears to be up to the challenge, as he
shifts narrative strategies to rely on a new defense: identification. Cramer (1991) shows
how children and adults employ identification to resolve a host of developmental
challenges and life problems. For Richard, identification provides a narrative strategy
for transcending the cynicism that intellectualization brings. Richard identifies with the
most famous class-action lawyer in American history, Clarence Darrow, and suggests
that even through Darrow was cynical, like Richard himself, Darrow was able to
persevere in his efforts to help the disadvantaged. Richard also invokes Martin Luther
King Jr., whom he regards as a “great hero” whose life proves that “standing up for
what you believe in can make a difference” (p. 206).
But an even more significant source for identification is probably Richard’s
mother. He describes her as the most important influence in his life story. “She taught
me about my heritage, and she taught me my values,” he says. “My mother was the
social activist in the family, as well as the organized person in the family, and I think
I’ve inherited some of that from her, and I think that’s probably something I’m passing
down to my son, as well, so it’s continuing the lineage” (p. 206). As a source of
identification, Richard’s mother personifies the organized activist: an idealized blend of
strong intellect and compassionate, in-the-world action. The identification with his
mother does not erase Richard’s cynicism. Instead, the defenses of intellectualization
and identification work together to create a complex story that ultimately affirms
organized social action in the face of difficult obstacles and incessant doubts. “In the rest
of my life, I want to be able to fulfill the goals of being a good family member, husband
and father, and trying to make a positive impact on society,” Richard states. He states
that “I think I am trying to do that” through his volunteer and professional work, by
being a “member of society” who is involved in “social and political work,” and by
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manifesting “social and intellectual creativity” that he uses to motivate “people to feed
the hungry” and to improve their families and the communities within which they live
(p. 207). Richard’s life goals fit well with the commitment stories characteristic of highly
generative adults in McAdams et al. (1997). It is noteworthy that a significant number of
those highly generative adults also appear to employ the defense of identification as a
narrative strategy, invoking heroes and heroines with whom they identified and who
served as generative role models in their lives.
WHO HEARS THE STORY?
A life story is a psycho-literary performance that is tailored for an intended
reader, listener, or audience. At the methodological level of the research or clinical
interview, the respondent tailors his or her narrative account to meet what he or she
interprets to be the demand characteristics of that performative situation. The tailoring is
both conscious and unconscious and, as has been noted above, may involve defense
mechanisms of various kinds, especially denial. At the level of identity, however, the life
story exists as an internalized performance whose internalized audience functions as the
main reference point from which the self is understood. In her study of women
embarking on new careers, Wiersma (1988) noted that the press releases she
encountered appeared to have been “mulled over, honed to perfection, and ‘negotiated’
long before I arrived on the scene.” The women were “speaking to an audience who
understood them,”Wiersma remarked (p. 231). That audience consisted of other women
in their cohort and those perceived to be part of the Women’s Movement at the time of
the study, many of whom shared the subjects’ assumptions about gender equality, the
oppression of domestic life, and the liberating power of paid employment. The press
release was rehearsed and fashioned with respect to that conventional reference group
of like-minded women. The story played well to this audience. But it did not play well
to Wiersma, who insisted that the subjects in her study delve into those alternative
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stories that were intended for other more personally idiosyncratic audiences. The skeptic
might conclude that the investigator searched long and hard for stories that would play
well to Wiersma herself—the audience of the investigative clinical theorist. But from
Wiersma’s perspective, the life-story accounts she obtained in subsequent interviewing
moved beyond the defenses used to preserve the stereotyped story to tap into deeper
levels of meaning with reference to internalized audiences that were more
psychologically significant in the women’s lives.
A simple but profound truth about stories is that they are told. It is in the nature
of stories that there exist both a teller and a recipient of the telling: the audience, listener,
viewer, reader, or whatever. Stories are composed and performed with an audience in
mind. As such, stories are always culturally, socially, and interpersonally anchored. To
the extent, therefore, that a person’s identity is a life story, identity itself is similarly
anchored to a socius. And to the extent that such a story is internalized as a
psychological structure that provides a person’s life with some degree of unity and
purpose, the socius with respect to which the story is oriented is an internalized
audience, listener, viewer, reader, spectator —the internalized other to whom, in a
fundamental sense, the story is told. Many different theorists have proposed that human
behavior is guided by internalized agents of various sorts. Freud’s (1923/1961) superego
is perhaps the most well-known example. As an internalization of the Oedipal parents,
the superego performs the function of observing the self and monitoring psychic activity
with respect to internalized standards for good and bad behavior. Following Freud,
object-relations theorists (e.g., Fairbairn, 1952; Guntrip, 1971) and psychoanalytic self-
theorists (e.g., Kohut, 1977) have proposed a variety of models for psychological
functioning in which significant persons (“objects” and “self-objects”) in one’s
environment are internalized in one way or another and their personified mental
representations thereafter influence and monitor psychic activity in various ways. For
example,Kohut (1977) speaks of internalized parental imagoes that help structure the
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self, and Watkins (1986) speaks of internalized dialogues that take place between various
personified agents of the psyche. From a sociological perspective, Mead (1934) argued
that full socialization involves the internalization of the generalized other. The mature
man or woman is able to take stock of his or her own social behavior by adopting the
imaginary vantage point of society writ large. For Mead, the self is constructed through
determining how others in general are likely to view one’s own behavior, attitudes,
values, and so forth. In an especially provocative passage, William James (1963) spoke of
the internalized social “judges” or “tribunals” that men and women invoke as they
develop toward an imagined social and moral ideal. The ultimate judge, the ideal
spectator is God, whom James likens to a final audience to which the “gregarious”
human being feels compelled to speak, act, and perform:
All progress in the social Self is the substitution of higher tribunals for lower, thisideal tribunal [God] is the highest; and most men either continually oroccasionally, carry a reference to it in their breast. The humblest outcast on thisearth can feel himself to be real and valid by means of this higher recognition.And, on the other hand, for most of us, a world with no such inner refuge whenthe outer self failed and dropped us would be the abyss of horror. I say “for mostof us,” because it is probable that individuals differ a good deal in the degree inwhich they are haunted by an ideal spectator. It is a much more essential part ofthe consciousness of some men than of others. Those who have the most of it arepossibly the most religious men. But I am sure that even those who say they arealtogether without it deceive themselves, and really have it in some degree. Onlya non-gregarious animal could be completely without it. Probably no one canmake sacrifices for “right” without some degree of personifying the principle ofright for which the sacrifice is made, and expecting thanks from it. (James,1892/1963, pp. 178–179).
AUDIATUR ET ALTERA PARS!
The idea of an internalized audience or listener for one’s life story shares
conceptual space with the above perspectives offered by Freud and the object-relations
theorists, Mead, and James. Because it is in the nature of stories to be told, a person
develops a self-defining life story in adulthood with an implicit audience or listener in
mind. Following James, that audience may be a kind of ideal spectator personified as a
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personal God. For others, Mead’s concept of a generalized other may be more
appropriate in that they articulate their identity with respect to a personified abstraction
of a broad swath of their social world. For still other people, the audience may be more
particular, representing parents, spouses, children, or even valued colleagues and
friends. The development of identity over time, therefore, should involve both the
development of the life story itself and the development of the intended audience for
that story. Especially dramatic transformations in identity may be occasioned by a
reconfiguration of the intended audience. For example, a man who has composed his life
story with his wife as his intended audience or spectator may search for a new
internalized audience after she dies. But this kind of transformation in the adult years
would appear to be rather rare, especially as people move into midlife and beyond.
Once an audience is internalized and stories are composed to speak to that audience in
particular, it may be extremely difficult to make dramatic changes in the manner in
which people render their lives meaningful through narrative.
It is with respect to this hypothesized internalized audience for the life story that
defense mechanisms may be seen in yet another light. Some forms of defense may
involve the inability to tell personal experience in story form because there is no
internalized audience available that will understand the story, will sympathize with it,
or will approve of its internalized performance. Like Freud’s superego, the internalized
audience may pass moral judgment on a potential narrative, compelling the person to
render that narrative untellable. But the audience may also function at levels even more
basic than that of the moral and ethical. The audience determines just what indeed is
understandable in narrative. Some experiences may not be tellable in story because the
intended audience does not have the language or the schemas or the
cognitive/emotional wherewithal to comprehend the story. Life events and experiences
become tellable to the extent that the internalized audience would be able to make sense
of them. Therefore, some experiences remain separated from the self—that is, cut off
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from the main life-story structures—because the assumed audience for the telling of
those experiences could not or would not hear or view such a thing. Different varieties
of defense may be used to accomplish this.
The single mother who has devoted her life to raising her oldest son, who
desperately seeks that son’s approval as he grows older, and who eventually sets that
son up as the internalized audience for her life story of maternal sacrifice cannot
construct a story in her mind about how that son has deeply disappointed her or how
that son no longer cares for her, nor maybe she for him, because she unconsciously
knows that her son could never understand such a story. And because he would never
understand it, she cannot understand it either, and she cannot tell it. In terms of defense,
denial or isolation or repression creates the inability or refusal to story an experience
because an appropriate audience for the telling cannot be found. The married woman
who has built her identity around her family and set up her husband as the main
internalized audience for her life story cannot incorporate the sexual affair she is having
with a coworker into her current identity. There is no story available for her that will
make the affair understandable to her husband, and perhaps even to herself as well. So
she splits the experience off from the main story line of her life. In terms of defense, she
may employ the narrative strategy of isolation (Engel, 1962) or dissociation (Vaillant,
1977), establishing a separate line of storied experience that cannot, for the time being,
be reconciled with what she fundamentally believes herself to be or to have been. The
young Christian man who has set up the church authority as the main audience for his
emerging life story cannot tell the narrative of his nascent fears that he may be a
homosexual. The internalized audience would not be able to validate such a telling.
Therefore, the young man becomes especially sensitive to the possibility that many men
in his environment may have sexual designs on him. The defense of projection may
work well to alleviate anxiety, keep the desired story developing on track, and mollify
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an internalized audience that is looking for a strong male hero and a conventional
narrative of heterosexual achievement.
CONCLUSION
While there exists today a great deal of talk and excitement about new narrative
approaches to personality and social psychology (Cramer, 1996; Gregg, 1991; Hermans
et al., 1992; McAdams, 1996; Singer & Salovey, 1993; Tomkins, 1979), psychopathology
(Howard, 1991; Sarbin, 1986), and clinical work (White & Epston, 1990), rigorous
empirical research has lagged behind. To the extent that researchers have adopted
narrative approaches to the study of lives, they have tended to work on describing the
kinds of life stories that can be obtained empirically and linking those story types and
story themes to independent personality variables and demographic characteristics (e.g.,
Carlson, 1988; Demorest, 1995; Hermans, 1992; Maruna, 1997; McAdams, 1985;
McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfield, & Day, 1996;McAdams et al., 1997; Singer, 1995).
Virtually no research, however, has examined the process of formulating a life story, a
process that would appear to be shaped by defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms
may work as narrative strategies that help to determine not only how a life story is told
but also what stories are deemed tellable. As researchers begin to consider the
psychological process of identity formation through life-storytelling, they are likely to
encounter the workings of defense mechanisms such as denial, projection,
intellectualization, rationalization, isolation, and identification. Research into life stories,
therefore, could benefit from a concerted examination of the literature on defense
mechanisms, and the empirical study of defense could also benefit from considering
insights into human personality and identity offered by recent narrative theories and
frameworks.
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PART II: IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS: HISTORIA EST VITAEMAGISTRA.
“Perhaps it is my [...] cherishing of uncertainty as the only truth that is, after all, the bestmeasure of my assimilation; perhaps it is in my misfittings that I fit. Perhaps a successful
immigrant is an exaggerated version of the native. From now on, I’ll be made, like amosaic, of fragments – and my consciousness of them. It is only in that observing
consciousness that I remain,after all, an immigrant”
(Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation)
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CHAPTER 4: NARRATIVE PURSUITS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FABULAE
According to common narratological and psychological wisdom, identity refers
to a characteristic of the individual. We "possess," "acquire," and "have a sense of
"identity, for example. Similarly, the narrative processes that are often claimed to
underlie identity construction are also typically viewed as attached to the individual, the
product of a type of in-the-head thinking, linguistic construct or other mental structure.
This chapter argues that an individualist approach to the understanding of narrative and
identity obscures the co-constructed, contextually embedded nature of these constructs.
A socio-cultural alternative is offered, arguing that as a narrative pursuit, personal
identity can emerge interstitially only as one moves actively between private and public,
personal and cultural, past and present.
THE SOCIO-CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF NARRATIVE IDENTITY &SUBJECTITIVIES IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE
Literary theorists, social critics, educators, therapists, social scientists, and others
broadly interested in, to borrow a phrase from Arendt, the “human condition” are in
general agreement that "there may be a special affinity between narrative and self such
that narrative can be said to play a privileged role in the process of self-construction"
(Miller, Potts, Fung, Hoogstra, & Mintz, 1990, p. 292). In spite of this consensus,
however, the term is also found in ways that increasingly force one into a choice
between two competing frameworks regarding the origins of narrative phenomena tout
court.
The first of these frameworks regards narrative as a specific mode of thinking, a
cognitive scheme. For instance, following the pioneering work of Propp, it has been
suggested that a basic narrative form, realized within folktales, provides evidence for
the "universal structuring of human memory" (Mander, Scribner, Cole, DeForest, 1980,
p. 21) according to narrative-like schemes or mental operations. Indeed, some writers
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conclude that the mind itself is "a narrative concern" (Sutton-Smith, 1988, p. 12). The
second framework for the term "narrative" tends to locate its origins not in an innate
characteristic of mind, but in the wider culture of which such minds are a part. Here,
narrative is defined largely as a stylized, culturally acquired textual form. In the former
framework, narrative points toward an innate characteristic of mind while, in the latter,
it denotes a cultural form external to the individual.
This apparent contest over the true origins of narrative has provided the fuel for
Donald Polkinghorne's volume, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences (see also
Polkinghorne, 1991). In this book, Polkinghorne writes that
“the question of interest...is whether the narrative scheme is an innate structureof consciousness, like the grammatical structure suggested by Chomsky, or alearned linguistic form, a cultural product like haiku poetry?" (Polkinghorne,1988, p. 23).
I would like to suggest that such questions risk leading us into an intellectual and
epistemological cul-de-sac. Seduced ultimately by the sirens of the perennial nature-
nurture debate, the quest for final origins inevitably diverts us into a game of
philosophical ping-pong. On the one hand, as we contemplate the structure of
individual cognition, we incline toward a Chomskian-like position where knowledge
(innate narrative structures, for example) is viewed as essentially pre-formed, wired,
within us. In this climate, suitable questions present themselves as "What are the models
by which we can understand the individual knower?" "How does the individual mind
work?" Eventually, we face the fact that in seeking answers to such questions we have
begun to regard the mind as a more or less de-contextualized, cranium-bound,
mechanism—if not Cartesian automaton. In this frame, although culture may be seen as
influencing the mind, mind and culture otherwise retain their fundamental
separateness.
Dissatisfied, we therefore entertain notions of culture-in-mind of human society
as no longer a mere influence on mind but, instead, as one of its actual constituents.
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Although knowledge in this alternative view is again preformed, it is seen to reside
externally in, for example, the cultural genres which individual minds appropriate like
immigrant autobiography. Unfortunately, by following this path, we eventually
confront the antithetical risk to that just discussed: as boundaries of mind protrude
beyond the individual to include its social and historical constituents, we run the risk of
sliding into a type of social determinism in which endogenous or biological factors
threaten to play no role at all.
In their book, The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson, & Rosch consider such
dilemmas (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). They attribute the very real anxiety that
can result to humans' continuing search for an "absolute ground" of knowledge. They
write
the tendency is to search either for an outer ground in the world or an innerground in the mind. By treating mind and world as opposed subjective andobjective poles, the Cartesian anxiety oscillates endlessly between the two insearch of a ground (p. 141).
Similarly, the quest for an absolute ground of narrative, either as a structure embedded
in the mind or as a stylized cultural tradition like life-narrative, is ultimately a crazy-
making pursuit. It is based upon this irresolvable polarity of inner versus outer,
endogenous mind versus external culture. However, once we move past the
reductionism inevitable in assigning primary origins of narrative to either pole (i.e.,
nature or culture), we are free to move on, to explore other ontologies within which we
might begin to conceptualize an alternative view.
In this chapter, I attempt to define a socio-cultural theory of narrative in which
narrative's dialogical and intimate connections to personal identity are made apparent.
A socio-cultural & socio-literary perspective—with antecedents in Fiedler’s Prodigy and
Reynold’s Underneath the American Renaissance (1989) is a view in which literary and
mental phenomena, among other things, are understood as constituted by (that is, not
merely by influenced) their cultural, historical, and social contexts, contexts which
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themselves are deeply and fundamentally human—i.e. socially-mediated. This view
offers a means of analyzing the basic dimensionality of narrative, that is, the personal
aspects equated with narrative as well as the social and historical embeddedness that is
narrative's very hallmark—when biography and history in autobiographical discourse,
as C. Wright Mills urged in his The Sociological Imagination. It also foregrounds the
ways in which narrative language practices or genres, in particular the pragmatic
functions of story telling in life narrative, occasion and constitute the ongoing
construction of American personal identities in their social, cultural, and historical
contexts giving rise to narrative subjectivities that encapsulate allowable and say-able
selves. For purposes of this discussion, the terms "narrative" and "story" will denote an
account of personal experience, following the materialist literary tradition launched by
Aristotle when he equated the plot of a narrative with the character recognized
throughout the dramatic action (Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 1957).
NARRATIVE INDIVIDUALISM: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DEUS-EX-MACHINA
An individualist approach to narrative, what I will call narrative individualism,
underlies the intellectual cul-de-sac mentioned earlier. Like all theory, narrative
individualism is based on certain fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of self,
language, and meaning. First, it presupposes a basic dualism of self and world.
According to this view, within our "deep interior" there resides a bounded, world-
independent Self (Gergen, 1991; Boelhower, 1996; E. San Juan, Jr, 1993), an entity for
which narrative serves as but one medium of expression. To author a personal life-
narrative is, in this frame, to employ narrative-qua-genre as a vehicle for the transport of
personal thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. This myth manifests itself linguistically
through the deceptively simple article "the" by which we convert an Emersonian Self
from a fluid experience of human-sensuous activity into a fixed, bounded entity (when
for example, we refer to the self). Such usage feeds a narrative individualism in which,
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as mentioned, narrative's primary function is that of expressive vehicle for a bounded,
endogenous self.
Second, narrative individualism presumes a correspondence view of language.
That is, narrative individualism presumes a one-to-one standing, an identity, between
the words I use and that which my words are presumed to represent, whether such
signification be of internal ideas or external objects. From this perspective, again,
language is a transparent medium, a container for the safe transport of ideas. From a
correspondence view, an author or narrator creates texts essentially by filling words
with his or her own images and ideas. Although an author may appropriate words,
signs, and symbols for purposes of communicating, the "signal" (i.e., the author's
meaning, or pace Wimsatt & Beardsley, dare one invoke the author’s intention ) and
"conduit" (i.e., the words, signs, and symbols by which meaning is communicated)
remain essentially separate. From this perspective, narrative becomes the conduit by
which a private self is made public.
Third, in accordance with the previous two assumptions, from the view of
narrative individualism meaning is believed to ultimately reside in the mind of the
individual author. It is an essentially private phenomenon, communicated to others
through narrative forms which themselves remain external to and separate from the
author's meanings and intentions. Narratives "tell" what we mean while they do not
affect or constitute those meanings in any fundamental way.
As all theory must, narrative individualism thus privileges a certain view
regarding the nature of "the real" from which certain assumptions flow. The
fundamental given of this ontology is that there exists a knowable world of things and
events, representable through the medium of language, from which we, as selves,
remain fundamentally separate. The nature of self varies, of course, depending on
whether one takes an empiricist or rationalist view. The implications are the same,
however: the phenomena of primary importance are attached primarily to the
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individual. In other words, the individual remains the valued site for the ultimate
realization of personal narrative as well as for our understanding of how narrative
relates to issues of identity.
THE SOCIO-CULTURAL IMAGINATION AS BASIS FOR SOCIO-LITERARYPERSPECTIVE: SELF-PRESENTATION, MIMESIS & NARRATIVE PURSUITS
A socio-cultural view offers a very different conception from the individualism
just discussed. The organizing principle of a socio-cultural conception is, as I see it, the
assumption that the causes of human phenomena cannot be reduced to fixed cognitive
or cultural factors. Accordingly, I will suggest that both narrative and identity emerge
from the confluence of five integrated dimensions: (a) time, (b) artifacts
(language/signs/symbols), (c) affect, (d) activity, and (e) self-reflexiveness. I will review
each of these in turn. I will also discuss how, through these dimensions, narrative and
identity are not separable entities but, instead, serve to mutually and discursively
constitute one another. This rejects the possibility of a "pure" narrative form, a structure
that somehow stands apart from the identities, which populate it. Conversely, it also
rejects the notion of an identity existing in isolation from the narratives by which it is
rendered intelligible.
By way of general disclaimer, although I believe it is safe to assume that Homo
sapiens share these five dimensions I am about to elaborate, there is no predicting how
they will be realized at any one time and place. There is an infinite complexity to the
world that makes such prediction impossible. Although vitally important, a thorough
study of the qualifying effects of culture and history on these dimensions of narrative
identity and autobiographical discourse are beyond the scope of this chapter. I now
discuss the first dimension of a socio-cultural construction, the dimension of time.
TIME- The telling of personal stories always occurs in the present (although
their content may, of course, refer to either past, present, or future). Telling –or,
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narrating-- is vastly more than a simple reporting of events, however. Since the full
implication of events is never completely manifest at their occurrence, their personal
meaning is perpetually subject to change as the identity and situations of those who
experience them change and develop.
The central implication of the time dimension for narrative is that the events in
one's life can be made meaningful only in relation to other events. The sewing together
of events (past, present, and future) for purposes of meaning-making, autobiography
and identity construction is ultimately a narrative pursuit. Thus, there is no human
requirement for congruence between physical time (i.e., time as it truly is) and time as
we experience it. For us, the phenomenological passing of time requires only those
events by which time is personally marked, by which the important episodes in one's life
are demarcated. These boundaries are never fixed. Instead, the defining of relevant
events, roles, and relationships is always accomplished only in accord with current
constructions of identity. And these are always changing.
AFFECT - A socio-cultural approach views emotion as being irreducible to its
physiological and/or psychological components, contrary to what essentialist views
might suggest (e.g., Ekman, 1982; Izard, 1977; Tomkins, 1982). Although some pre-social,
physiological component is obviously present in the experience, emotions become
interesting from a socio-cultural standpoint for how they acquire meaning and force as
"pragmatic acts and communicative performances" within particular discursive contexts
(Abu-Lughod & Lutz, 1990, p. 11). Since it can be shown that there are culturally and
historically diverse emotions as well as different interpretations across cultures of what
we might consider the same emotion (Armon-Jones, 1985; D'Andrade & Strauss, 1992;
Harre, 1986; Lutz & White, 1986; Lutz & Abu-Lughod, 1990), the spectrum of human
emotion is considered an open rather than closed question.
The incorporation of affect into questions of identity acknowledges that we
assume a feeing-attitude toward our existence. But such attitudes are hardly automatic.
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Through affective discourse, we are continually instructed in our emotions, guided by
an other (a parent, peer, or teacher, for example) through whom we are taught what one
"ought" to feel in certain situations. The implication is that we continually learn how to
feel, how to form, sustain, and break off relationships. The crucial aspects of this
learning are that it is social (ocurring in interaction with others according to cultural
norms), constructive, and mediated by those tools (i.e., sign, symbols, words, gestures,
etc.) available within a particular time and place.
ARTIFACTS (LANGUAGE/SIGNS/SYMBOLS) - For the socioculturalist or the
socio-literary theorist, language is not a passive channel for the communication of self-
contained, personal meanings, a medium autonomous from the purposes to which it is
put (Vygotsky, 1962). Instead, words are regarded as a class of psychological tools that
"are a part of and mediate human action" as discursive technologies of self (Wertsch,
1991, p. 29). Cultural artifacts, material or immaterial, do not simply express underlying
cultural truths. Instead, they feed back into the culture in ways that fundamentally
change it.
In constituting an identity, individuals take up aspects of their world (artifacts
such as language but also including behavior, dress, gesture, cultural roles, and other
conventions) which, importantly, pre-exist them but which also provide the material for
the ongoing construction of personal identity and narrative subjectivities (see Shaw,
1994). The most vital aspect of this process is that it always occurs in relation to others
(Gergen, 1994; Harré & Gillett, 1994).
Thus the question arises: are personal narratives cultural artifacts? I would
answer in the affirmative. But I would add that they represent artifacts of a higher order.
The uniqueness of autobiographical narrative as an artifact stems from its tendency to
organize lower order artifacts (e.g. single events, objects, or stream-of-consciousness
productions) into some kind of meaningful socio-literary framework.
SELF-REFLEXIVENESS - Luria (1981) writes that "animals have only one world,
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the world of objects and situations. Humans have a double world" (p. 35). This second
world is the world of culture. Through culture and language, Homo sapiens are able to
deal not only with those things which lie beyond our immediate perception, we can also
imagine and communicate with others about times other than the present. Through
language and various other items in the "cultural tool kit" (Wells, 1996), we are able to
tell personal stories that speak from the position of an 'I' in the here-and-now about an 'I'
that is not identical but, in fact, occupies another time and place. This idea is central to
dialogic views of self where self is no longer considered a monolithic construct but
ultimately a "dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I positions" (Hermans,
Kempen, & van Loon, 1992, p. 28).
I use the term "self" to refer to the core of this personal auto-reflexive capacity,
this auto-conscious center. This is the dimension through which we experience ourselves
as moving phenomenologically through time. At the same time, I use the term "identity"
to index the higher order, culturally constituted person - a person that exists for both self
and other. The fact that self is a co-terminus and fundamental component of identity,
and not something separable which has or acquires an identity, is implicit in the fact that
a sustained social identity is impossible without an equally sustained private sense of
personal continuity (Gover & Gavelek, 1996, p. 2).
ACTIVITY- A socio-cultural perspective seeks to contextualize autobiographical
narrative by arguing for the inseparability of narratives from the system of social
practices which constitute them. Such practices might include narrative conventions,
story-telling styles & pragmatics, interpersonal relationships, cultural rules and
traditions, economic practices, and so on. What follows from this is that the meanings of
human experience available for autobiographical inscription or contemplation are never
fixed. Instead, meaning is discursive, inhering in narrative practices and
autobiographical personae themselves. In autobiographical narrative as an embodied,
pragmatic act, we find that our personal stories and subjectivities emerge from the fluid
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inter-relationship between self and world and, thus, can actually mean different things
at different times—casting an Arendtian flavor to human action. Yet, too often in
practice, its more the case as Casey (1986, p. 219) notes that problems can arise when
one's stories become overly rigid. In the case of such fixity, one risks conspiring in a
certain "stuckness," an inflexible view of the world that resists adaptation and change.
For the socio-culturalist, such rigidity is not merely a characteristic of the individual but
would entail some or all aspects of the larger story-telling context.
In sum, viewing personal narrative as part of a larger system of discursive
activities highlights the simple fact that, in order for identities to be viable, we must tell
stories which "fit" the larger system of which we are a part. The narrative pursuit of
“foundations of self” in nation, group or religion perforce demands a defensive and
projective self-presentation most acutely for immigrant autobiographers. Further, the
power and authority governing one's likelihood of authoring a certain type of story is
not confined to the site of the teller but is variously dispersed.
A DIAGRAM- As inadequate and oversimplified as schematics can be, I would
like to offer a diagram that attempts to visually integrate the various dimensions I have
discussed (see below in figure #1)
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Figure 1--Texts in Contexts
First, we recognize a context or environment. This context is comprised of
physical, social, and cultural components in all their multi-layered complexity. The
significant point here is that environments are not merely a static accompaniment to
one's life. Instead, environments themselves are always changing (although the
timeframe for contextual development is typically quite different than for that of the
individual, who is both preceded and outlived by the physical and cultural
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environment—I imagine Foucault in accord with this view of discourse-speaking-for-
us). Cole writes "human beings live in an environment transformed by the artifacts of
prior generations, extending back to the beginning of the species" (Cole, 1989, p. 7). A
basic principle of socio-cultural theory is therefore that we construct our identities by
both borrowing from and transforming a world inherited from previous generations
through culturally proscribed genres of self employing available
technologies—especially, so today since the WWW offers new dimensions to self on the
Internet.
Moving to the center of the diagram, characteristic of each individual person is
the dimension of self-reflexiveness, a self-conscious awareness of being an origin, if not
author, of one's thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. As mentioned, it is here that we
phenomenologically experience a sense of self-sameness, an awareness of ourselves as
moving through time. Further, through semiotically mediated self-reflexive thought,
Homo sapiens are predisposed to turning back upon ourselves. We have the capacity to
consciously reflect on ourselves in an attempt to understand, evaluate, or change who
and what we perceive ourselves to be at a given point in time.
Next, in a socio-cultural view, the border between individual and context is not
physical (as marked by the skin, for instance). Instead, a semiotic boundary, or generic
interface, constituted by the enactment of gestures, symbols, signs, etc. comprises the
bridge between personal identity and one's social and cultural context. Both differences
and similarities are established at this limen between the individual and the social
through the medium of autobiographical discourse.
For example, as part of an unrelated research project, I recently asked a group of
40 and 50 year-olds from an Adult Basic Education program in a vocational English as a
Second Language class to share a story with me about themselves. The only stipulation
was that these stories be personal and of a certain type, based on a particular mood or
affect which I was to specify ("sad," "happy," "scary," for example). For instance,
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"Lourdes" was asked to share an "exciting" story about herself. She responded by
sharing a breathless account of being the flower-girl at her great grandmother’s recent
wedding. What is pertinent here is that because of the culturally and historically
constituted nature of semiotic boundaries, when I asked Tammy for an "exciting story",
she had no difficulty in producing a narrative replete with all the traditional elements of
what we might consider an adventure. Similarly, when I asked "Ana," another student,
for a "scary story" about herself, I received a story structured very much like the genre of
dramatic thriller.
By virtue of the semiotic boundary between us, a boundary that connects as well
as differentiates, no explicit confusion arose between myself and these Adult English
Learners (AEL) learners regarding the meaning of affective terms such as "exciting,"
"sad," or "scary." For the same reason, the presumption of shared understanding was
automatic regarding what I intended by the phrase "a story about yourself," not to
mention what I meant by a "sad" or "scary" story. Finally, at an even broader level,
Lourdes’ story was made intelligible by the fact that both Lourdes and I automatically
take for granted that the other understands what it means to be a flower-girl in a
Western-style Mexican wedding ceremony.
At no point are two persons' understandings identical, of course. I could just as
easily talk about the differences between these adults and me in how culture, age, and
personal trajectory lead us to diverse knowledge and lives. Nonetheless, words and
gestures seem to create a sense that at least some degree of overlap or "shared variance"
exists. It is here, at the level of words and gestures that communication is made
meaningful. Returning to the diagram, thought, affect, and perception are positioned
within the semiotic boundary in order to signify their personal nature. But "personal" or
"private" does not mean innate or endogenous. The socially constructed aspects of
thought, emotion, and even perception are widely acknowledged (Armon-Jones, 1985;
Averill, 1985; Bateson, 1979; Edwards, 1991; Gergen, 1994; Harre, 1986; Harre & Gillett,
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1994; Lutz & White, 1986; Searle, 1995; Shotter, 1995).
Finally, identity appears as an oblong (solid line) spanning both personal and
contextual dimensions. From a time perspective, identity extends into the past through
the stories by which we make sense of our experience, both personally and as a culture.
It also extends into the future in much the same way, guided by personal and cultural
expectations (the vertical axis in Figure #1 has not been assigned a particular meaning).
The shape and location of identity is very much a function of the degree to which
one has been able to appropriate the cultural and socio-literary tools available for
identity construction and subject formation. A discursively or materially impoverished
context, for example, may preclude the development of identities that draw upon wider
cultural artifacts, artifacts through which one's identity becomes more varied and
complex.
An excellent example of this is provided by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and
Tarule's book, Women's Ways of Knowing (1986). These writers interviewed a small
group of women whom they describe as exhibiting "an extreme denial of self" (p. 24).
Common among the women is a background of material, social, economic, and
educational deprivation. These are individuals "silenced" by an environment that did
not value their words. As a result, neither did the women come to place any value in the
power of their own words and thoughts. With little encouragement or opportunity to
participate in the language practices by which we symbolically mediate our
participation in the world, by which we reflect, abstract, and make ourselves into an
object of thought, these women seemed to live and react almost totally in a self-absorbed
present (see where the identity oblong encompasses primarily personal feelings,
thoughts, and perceptions in the present). Their imagination largely uncultivated, they
were unprepared to generate prospective, future-oriented images of themselves. One
woman says simply, "I haven't thought about the future" (p. 32).
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Figure 2- Context
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, my theme is one widely shared by teachers, therapists, and others
whose work makes them active participants in the crafting of personal stories: narrative
language practices are a constituent of identity development. As we share our personal
stories with others, fantasize future scenarios, and identify with or partake in the stories
of others, we constitute and reconstitute our identities within their physical, cultural,
and historical contexts. The roots of narrative and identity thus merge, inextricably
embedded and nurtured in the soil of human action.
Furthermore, the narratives by which we understand and make sense of our lives
are not in-the-head but of-the-world. Like identity, instead of being reducible to an
essence, narratives emerge only as one actively moves between private and public,
personal and cultural, past and present. Identities are not portable but become
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intelligible only within those contexts that provide the resources for their construction.
What a socio-cultural view of autobiographical narrative and identity thus buys
us from a theoretical standpoint is permission to give up the "chicken or egg" question.
It allows us to realize that we tell stories, which are always, and forever a part of, and
themselves contain, other stories--ranging from Barthesian fun-houses to Jamesonian
prison louses of language. Thus, their origins are not assignable to a single time or place.
For instance, an account of how I come to write this chapter acquires meaning
only within the greater story of my life as lived up to this point. In turn, my life-story
has meaning only within the greater narrative of how American culture has, in part,
come to value and support the type of academic pursuits I find rewarding. Finally, this
cultural narrative is ultimately embedded in the grand evolutionary tale of humankind
and their capacity for language and society. Like Russian dolls, there is always a story
within a story (see Cole and Engestrom, 1993, pp. 18-22).
To be sure, this has tremendous ramifications for how we conduct research on
narrative and identity. What is vital from a socio-cultural and socio-literary frame is that
such research on self continue moving outward from an individual person based
understanding toward a broader socio-cultural and socio-literary frame in which
dimensions such as history, language, and culture have equal explanatory power.
Penuel and Wertsch (1985) write that the point of interest in identity research thus
becomes "how individuals select, choose, and commit to different people and idea
systems in the course of their activities" (1995, p. 91).
Since the socio-culturalist is attempting to solve different kinds of problems than
those set forth by an empiricist program, it is important to remember that one
assimilates socio-cultural research only under a fundamentally different set of
assumptions regarding what is real and how we come to know. For example, issues of
interpretation, power, and context are often valued over, or at least given equal billing
with, issues of validity and reliability. Further, analysis is focused on the genesis of
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integrated units and genres rather than the formal analysis of elements (Vygotsky, 1986).
Finally, in writing this chapter, I have the feeling that more questions may have
been generated than resolved. Still, at least one thing does seem clearer: the phrase
"personal narrative" and our notions of autobiography may ultimately represent an
oxymoron. The value of a socio-cultural perspective for teaching, helping, and learning
stems from the fact that our personal stories are not simply heard, they are used by
others in ways which make them forever a two-way street. That is, in spite of narrative's
ability to express an actor's unique worldview, one person's story remains another
person's metaphor. Through stories, we have the predilection for vicariously inserting
ourselves into the position of others in ways that make their stories simultaneously both
public and private. This is a human propensity—a Baconian “Idol of the Tribe” if you
will--that cannot be stopped, and one that has the potential to both enrich and constrict
our personal identities, autobiographical subjectivities and narrative pursuits as the
following chapter maps out.
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CHAPTER 5: IDOLS OF THE TRIBE & FABLES OF AMERICAN NATIONALIDENTITY: SPEAKING OF IMMIGRATION
The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe orrace of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. Onthe contrary, all perceptions, as well of the sense as of the mind, are according to themeasure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And thehuman understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly distorts anddiscolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. (XLI)
The idols and false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, andhave taken deep root therein, not only so beset men's minds that truth can hardly findentrance, but even after entrance is obtained, they will again in the very instauration ofthe sciences meet and trouble us, unless men being forewarned of the danger fortifythemselves as far as may be against their assaults. (XXXVIII)
--Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620)
As an ongoing effort to bound social relations at the territory’s edge, the
American nation-state can boast a record of considerable success. Not least among its
triumphs ranks the everyday assumption that the nation comprises an entity apart, its
separation from the rest of the world representing the normal state of affairs. While we
could expect the man and the woman in the street to therefore regard immigration as an
unexpected surprise, we run into problems if our own interpretive paradigms similarly
present immigration as a foreign, not native phenomenon. We would do better if we
conceptualized immigration as a characteristic of American society and its insiders, who
interact with the newcomers in ways that enhance, rather than diminish, difference. And
we should also take insiders’ understandings more seriously, since the folk view of
immigration as anomalous, immigrants as different, and difference as undesirable, helps
define the native theory of the world, which immigrants are in turn expected to absorb.
The analytic task gets tougher, because the response to immigration engenders a
reaction among the newcomers themselves, in which new identities and forms of
affiliation take hold. But the intensity of these attachments obscure their innovative,
mutable character, if for no other reason than the extraordinary utility furnished by the
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image and idea of the bounded, ethnic group. While appreciating the compelling nature
of ethnic identities, we should recall their relational foundation, and remember that
boundaries rarely enclose the same people, at all times and in all places. In the end, of
course, we confront the intellectual difficulties that inevitably impinge on those of us
who study a phenomenon of which we are also a part. This is our abiding dilemma and
our greatest intellectual challenge in thinking through the rich tradition of American
autobiographical discourse.
ONE PERSON'S STORY IS ANOTHER PERSON'S METAPHOR
Immigration, as we all know, is a defining American feature, which is where
both the attraction of the topic, and the dangers associated with studying it, is to be
found. The root problem involves the potential overlap between native (emic) and
scholarly (etic) understandings of the question at hand. Common sense tells us that the
United States comprises a bounded entity, in which the entry of immigrants represents a
foreign phenomenon, the immigrants' difference somehow anomalous, an imported
feature that is neither expected nor desired to last. Is it really unfair to contend that
much of the scholarly literature frames the matter in much the same way? After all, no
sooner do the immigrant outsiders arrive than they turn out to be ethnics. But note the
etymological roots of the term ethnicity: ethnos was the Greek word used for the
Hebrew term “goy” when the Bible was translated more than two millennia ago, later to
be applied as synonym for "heathens". When indeed the word "ethnicity" first surfaced
in the American scholarly lexicon, Warner and Srole to classify the entire variety of
Newburyport’s groups with one exception -- the “Yankees or Natives”, who were
somehow not ethnic, used it. As astute a student of the American ethnic scene as Herbert
Gans recently thought it appropriate to distinguish immigration researchers as either
insiders or outsiders, classifying insiders as those who either shared an ancestry with the
group they studied or a commitment to its persistence, as opposed to all others, whom
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he categorized as "outsiders." But if immigration is a distinguishing American trait that
is at once persistent and defines everyday understandings of what it means to be an
American, then Gans' so-called "outsiders" are no less implicated than his insiders in the
phenomenon they both study. Too much of our scholarly literature, and criticism, I'm
afraid, amounts to a literary ethnography of the “goy”, of the Other, written from the
standpoint of the insider posing as outsider, always remaining external to the analysis
itself, indeed entirely invisible.
It is also the case that we may be the victims of our own successful transition
from an Industrial to a Digital Age and its attendant rise in pop-psychology and pop-
sociology via mass media channels. Today, not only is “the medium, the message,” but
the communications revolutions of the post-WWII & Post-Cold War periods have had a
salutary democratizing effect on personal communications via phones, computers & the
Internet. Our own key “reality concepts” seem to be part of the everyday cognitive tool-
kit used for making sense of the world, as one might expect of a highly educated
population, increasingly adept at the use and manipulation of symbols and ideas. But if
social scientific and humanistic concepts inform the behavior and orientations of the
actors we study, they are then part of the process themselves, requiring us to adopt a
different, more distanced set of analytic tools. That our concepts are flawed does not
mean that they yield no purchase on the phenomenon they seek to illuminate. On the
contrary, they prove all too helpful, which is why we scurry to be the servants of power,
when called upon as “ etic experts.” However, the reflexive nature of the humanities and
the social sciences aggravates the problem: precisely because institutional actors orient
themselves toward the phenomenon through the framework we give them, we need to
transform the framework itself into an etic object of analysis, approached with a
vocabulary distinct from that used by the actors themselves—whether they be
“strangers in the land” or “natives.”
I begin from the standpoint that immigration is a native--not foreign--
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phenomenon, requiring us, therefore, to use concepts removed from the everyday
understandings that we all -- scholars and citizens -- share. I will argue that our core
analytical categories, however, lack this quality, revealing themselves to be native/emic
concepts, part and parcel of the very subject matter we wish to comprehend.
Traditionally, American sociologists and literary historians have relied upon a set of
conceptual tools in the study of immigration and its attendant literatures that slavishly
rely on critically, unexamined assumptions of American Exceptionalism manacled with
strands of hidden Universalism.
ASSIMILATION
Let me begin with assimilation, our must enduring, most influential concept in
the discussion of migration and adaptation. Having long fallen into disgrace –during the
late 1980s and 1990s, thanks in part to the discourse of multiculturalism-- assimilation is
back in style in the 21st Century. For the most eloquent and justifiably influential of the
recent defenses, we can turn to the work of Richard Alba and Victor Nee. But without
detracting in the least from their accomplishment, they jumped on a horse that was
already in full stride. Whether we take, as indicators, works designed to engage a
broader literate public, or those directed purely at an academic audience, it is clear that
numerous writers have found appeal in an idea so often rejected. What they observe is
an America too porous and too mutable to be captured by the differentialist/pluralist
vision, in which ethnic boundaries are depicted as hard and fast, just as we understand
them to have been 100 years ago. Searching for a vocabulary to describe the reality they
discern, many scholars of immigration have inevitably returned to the concept of
assimilation.
While I sympathize, I cannot get myself to agree. As Alba and Nee argued,
assimilation entails a reduction in ethnic difference, a definition that seems to accurately
describe the way in which social scientists and literary scholars have generally
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understood assimilation. However, it does seem to beg the question of how the
intellectual problematic should be defined and why.
The issues at hand clearly fall into the general concerns raised by the study of
stratification, in that our interests involve the relationship between some birth-ascribed
characteristic and outcomes later on in life or in subsequent generations. In principle, the
same framework applied when considering the influence of one trait, let's say, foreign
birth or ancestry, should hold when the interest turns to the impact of another, let’s say,
parents’ social class. But imagine that I were to propose a concept that entailed "the
decline, and at its endpoint the disappearance of a class distinction and the cultural and
social differences that express it," thus exactly rephrasing the definition provided by
Alba and Nee, but substituting the word "class" for "ethnic" (Remaking the America
Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration, 2003) A formulation of this
sort might appeal to the more egalitarian members of the Academic Left. But I am sure
that we would all agree that it also reflects my own, lamentably outdated social
democratic views, as opposed to the specification of an analytic concept around which a
field of study can be organized. More charitably, one could suppose that "assimilation"
could be usefully invoked to identify an outcome of a stratificational process of
uncertain outcome, very possibly eventuating in diminished difference, but no less
likely to lead to difference of an increased or persistent sort, or very possibly a shift in
the nature of the relevant differences. To pose the question in stratificational terms,
however, implies that difference is a normal, and not a deviant outcome; and therefore,
that the production and reproduction of difference, and not just its reduction, belongs at
the heart of the inquiry. In its very formulation the sociology of assimilation thus
reveals its assimilationist cast—if not nativist cast, following Higham’s reasoning in
Send These To Me (1975). It begins with the presence of outsiders, whose appearance on
the scene requires no explanation, and whose distinctiveness can be assumed without
making reference to those parties that perceive difference, and make it socially
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significant. Moreover, it has never seriously asked how difference might decline, or
conversely, how similarity might come to be. An obvious answer involves one of the
other, usually forgotten meanings of assimilation, namely, treating similarly. If, as I've
argued above, the intellectual problem involves the relationship between ethnic origins
and ethnic destinies, then we need to enlarge the analytical frame to include those
others, whether located at subordinate, lateral, and superior levels, that play a crucial
role in affecting both "who gets what" and "who is what." Understood this way,
assimilation is a process whose subjects are not simply outsiders, but insiders as well,
and who make "assimilation" through an interactional process that both redefines the
lines between insiders and outsiders and determines who is "in" and who is "out".
And just why one should be concerned with the disappearance of difference -- or
its converse, similarity -- has never been adequately explained. After all, similarity is a
very specific distributional attribute, in which persons with an origin in a particular
source population need to have a wide spread, so that there is extensive overlap
between them and the reference population. Why couldn’t we define assimilation as the
process whereby members of a source population converge around the mean for the
reference population? Convergence could still entail very great difference, if the source
population turns out to be much more tightly clustered around the mean than the
reference population. But clustering around the mean would be closely correlated,
though not perfectly, with similar treatment. From a normative standpoint, I don’t see
why we should care about anything else. Now there may be an intellectual or scientific
reason to be interested in similarity rather than convergence with the mean, but such an
argument I've yet to encounter. As assimilation necessarily involves the dissolution of
ethnic groups -- it is hard to imagine ethnic persistence without dissimilarity -- the
expectation of similarity seems uncomfortably close to the ideological preoccupations
(i.e. Racism & Euro-centrism) that have shaped this field of study right from the
start—whether that be Riis’ How the Other Half Lives or Thomas & Znaniecki’s The
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Polish Peasant in Europe and America.
But difference is only meaningful within a relational framework, which means
that we cannot talk about "them" without also referring to "us". The literature on
assimilation, however, cannot quite manage to identify those actors who make
difference important, nor why or how they do so. If we cannot answer such questions as
"different from whom?" can we have anything to say about difference at all?
To be fair, the scholarly literature on immigration does make some effort to
identify the target population to which outsiders are supposed to assimilate, but at the
expense of muddying things further. In contemporary parlance, we talk of a "majority"
or "mainstream," though it takes but a few seconds of reflection to realize that “there’s
no there, there” a la Stein. Detach the "majority" from its inherent opposition to the
minoritarian outsiders, and it collapses along the class, regional, religious, and
ideological cleavages that are the bread and butter of our colleagues who make a living
in the study of stratification, politics, or culture, pure and simple. To make matters
worse, "majority", in the talk confected by the students of assimilation, means "white
majority," a term that is certainly part of the everyday discourse of race and ethnicity,
but is otherwise lacking in intellectual content. Simply put, "white majority" are just two
words for continued exclusion on the basis of descent; thus assimilation into the "white
majority" simultaneously means disassimilation, since the former necessarily links the
conditions of one group's acceptance to another's rejection. Were our scholarly literature
truly interested in the nature of the U.S. system of ethnic stratification it would ask just
how the entry of immigrant outsiders might eventuate in an outcome of this sort. But
too many of our colleagues have concluded that this is a question that we can blithely
ignore.
Our older commentators did better, in part because they could talk more freely,
avoiding the circumlocutions favored by the right-thinking academics of today, ever on
guard against offending thoughts. Good old Milton Gordon -- where would we be
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without him? -- had no compunctions about naming the group to whose acceptance
outsiders were supposed to aspire. In the early 1960s, one could not only write about a
"core cultural group" but name it -- white Protestants of vaguely British descent. Of
course, identifying the target population in terms such as these simply described the
world from the standpoint of the particular communal group standing at the top of the
system, and whose centrality and dominance therefore required no further discussion.
While the perspective of one's betters certainly warrants attention, it would be good to
label it as such. The ability of any group to assert itself as "core" is bound to affect the
mechanisms by which outsiders seek and gain acceptance, not to speak of their
motivations for doing so. And in any case, that was then, this is now, everything solid --
yesterday's cultural core included -- having since melted into thin air.
My own guess is that our scholarly literature struggles with stating the target
group because it cannot quite get itself around to stating the obvious: namely, that as the
process transforming outsiders into insiders, assimilation takes foreigners and turns
them into "Americans." Of course, to put it that way makes it clear that we can no longer
describe assimilation as a shift from particularism to universality, as was the wont of the
earlier literature, and as some contemporary scholars continue to pretend. Rather we
need to confront assimilation for what it is -- a substitution of just one particularism for
another. I don't mean to impugn particularism as such: after all, the importance of
belonging is one of the few sociological maxims that we possess. And why not cultivate
a sense of membership in a national collectivity? In theory, if not in practice, the
American people are surely wider and more inclusive than other forms of ethnic
affiliation. But still the point stands: assimilation is a very peculiar scholarly concept,
resonating with that normative vision of national life which envisions a direct
relationship between the individual and the nation, unmediated by ties of an ethnic
type. As such, the ideological echo sounds all too clear: too much of our scholarly
literature on immigration and its attendant cultural formations amounts to little more
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than a mildly intellectualized version of the folk (emic) understanding of what it means
to become American, obscuring our ability to approach the phenomenon with the
critical distance it requires.
ETHNIC RETENTION
The scholarly literature on migration and the literary criticism of “multi-ethnic
literatures” typically opposes assimilationist with retentionist points of view.
Retentionism is an anachronism, mirroring many of the assumptions of the view, which
it contests, and subject, therefore, to many of the same liabilities. Retentionism needs to
posit some stable, fixed entity; after all, what would there be to retain, were there not a
coherent, self-conscious collectivity enacting and re-enacting the life of its group? There
would be nothing wrong with such a description, if only it specified the time and place.
The problem is that retentionsim freezes a single point in time, projecting it backwards
as if patterns of self-awareness and interaction had not always been changing, which, in
turn, makes the American ethnic group moment but a stage in the broader sweep of
time. Like assimilationism, retentionism begins with the assumption of a bounded,
undifferentiated group. But the reality is almost always otherwise, and all the more so, if
we move out of the groupist assumptions common to the literature on and by
immigrants, and think of the subjects of our inquiry as actors in a relational field, whose
self-awareness shifts as the pattern of interaction changes. From this standpoint,
migration necessarily yields greater diversity in the structure of interpersonal relations,
though the significance of that change varies depending on how one situates oneself,
relative to the actors at hand. Let us begin by considering the peasant migrant. This
prototypical newcomer begins from a small-scale society, where alliances are either
knitted among locals or through connections that extend to neighboring villages; self-
sufficiency, isolation, customary patterns of local social control reduce exposure to
unknown, outsiders. While existing contacts to friends and kin lubricate the movement
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to a new society, they cannot possibly reproduce the same level of social encapsulation.
The hometowners are a small element in a new context, whose size, heterogeneity, and
complexity almost surely increases the probability of exposure to outsiders. The most
relevant group of outsiders may turn out to consist of members of related categories,
removed in terms of dialect, customs, and habit, and yet not so distant as to preclude
effective contact. Notwithstanding the preference for familiarity, similarity will often
suffice. Moreover, the prohibitions or suspicions that might have constrained relations
back home no longer have the same force; the elders are not around and the power of
loneliness is frequently sufficient to overcome all other restraints. Some migrants will
end up venturing still further afield, if for no other reason than a taste for adventure and
the chance encounters made more probable by the fluidity of life in a less structured
context. As always, necessity is the mother of invention, the gender imbalance
characteristic of so many migrations providing ample reason to effect alliances of a
totally innovative kind (e.g. out-group marriage). Thus, while the balance of
relationships may shift toward connections with elements that were known, if
unfamiliar, in the home context, others would extend to categories and groups entirely
absent from the original interactional field.
For observers working from the standpoint of the host society, the only relevant
shifts are those that can be mapped on to the categories it recognizes, regardless of how
these correspond to the self-understandings of the persons whom one purports to
describe. Thus, what I might describe as the growth of an ethnic niche, using official
census data that obscure differentiations below the national-origin level, may simply be
a case of misplaced concreteness? From the standpoint of the home society, the
environment that appears so homogeneous to the outsiders is more likely to represent
unparalleled diversity. After all, relatively small shifts in the number of persons having
out-group contacts quickly diminishes the proportion of relationships that are entirely
encapsulated within the group; before too long, everyone has a contact that extends
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beyond the original circle.
While the new society offers opportunities for exposure far wider than those ever
imagined back home, a variety of factors keep the options circumscribed. At the bottom
of the labor market, like meets like -- which is to say, workers differing in ethnic and
national origins, but otherwise quite similar in social traits and related dispositions. To
the extent that ethnicity and class bear little relationship, persons who qualify as
outsiders by virtue of national origins will run into those who also lack acceptance, but
by virtue of social class position. On the other hand, the forces that create the demand
for immigrant workers tend to be the same as those that put native-born labor in short
supply (Wallterstein 2000; Harvey 1989). Past and present, there have been relatively
few members of the American working-class in those sectors of the economy where
peasant migrants have made a living. Rephrased in somewhat more abstract terms, the
potential for immigrant exposure to dominant group outsiders is limited by the degree
of overlap in the distribution of other, relevant social characteristics. Where the
occupational, educational, and geographic distributions barely overlap -- as for example,
in the case of native-born Euro-Americans and Mexican immigrants in early 21st century
Los Angeles -- these sets of strangers will frequently encounter one another as
subordinates and superiors, but far more rarely as potential neighbors, friends, or
intimates.
Moreover, exposure does not guarantee acceptance. Peasant migrants are
preferred precisely because they are despised, a quality which makes them all the more
desirable in performing a society's least desired tasks (Waldiger & Licther 2003). As it
happens, those tasks are dishonoring, which is why the stigma associated with dirty jobs
rubs on to their incumbents. And all the worse if the children of immigrants retain their
parents' stigma, while acquiring American aspirations -- in which case, we can expect
that they will be neither liked nor preferred. So migration may induce far-reaching
changes in the ethnic social structure of any source population, as Waldiger & Lichter
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argue In How the Other Half Works, without in any way yielding the diminished
differences between source and reference populations, predicted by the sociology of
assimilation (12).
To each, his -- or her -- own ethnic myth. Assimilation is the myth of the
dissolution of ethnic boundaries as told from the standpoint of the nation-state society,
which imagines itself to be a bounded, sharply demarcated, entity: The United States of
America. But the economic networks of goods, services, information, and people cut
across any single nation-state society and other like units of the world, propelling
migrants across those interactional cleavages that states try so hard to create (Mann
2002). Even while noting states' remarkable effectiveness at bounding the unit they seek
to enclose, it is our misfortune that this intellectual field crystallized just when the
interactional cleavage at the national boundary was at its height -- leading us to mistake
a contingent event for an inevitability.
By contrast, retention is the myth of persistence, projected backward from a
moment of relatively stable association and affiliation to an interactional field of a totally
different type. In a sense, one myth is at the service of the other, the assumption of
entitivity no less applicable, in the sociology of assimilation, to the immigrants than it is
to the host society. Not for nothing do we have a concept with a digestive meaning, the
very notion of assimilation implying the existence of foreign groups who are absorbed
as their boundaries are dissolved.
But the idea of retention is no less fallacious, since the networks that breach the
nation-state society simultaneously pulls the migrants out of their home environment,
progressively diffusing them across a broader interactional field. Consequently the
diversity of contacts, especially as measured against the interaction networks known
back home, vastly expands. Since only a modest proportion of the home community
ever leaves, one cannot ever recapture the same homogeneity of contact. No matter
where one settles, the new environment is sure to be a place of high exposure
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probabilities to persons whose traits would have surely marked them as outsiders back
home. On the other hand, members of the host population are incapable of making the
same discriminations as insiders, leading to fundamental attribution errors, which
provide the bases for new identities—i.e. Latino or Hispanic, and more recently, Asian
and Pacific Islander. If back home, sensitivities to regional or linguistic differences rank
high, they diminish or even collapse in the new context, thanks to the lumping efforts of
the unknowing members of the native group—as evidenced most recently, in post-9-11
attacks on Asian Americans mistaken for Arabs from Georgia to California. The ethnic
moment is the time when an interactional field, whose internal ethnic differentiations
are either slight or forgotten, takes hold; but the same forces that bring it into being will
almost surely produce its demise. In the end, ethnic retention and ethnic assimilation
emerge, not just as simplistic, but also as false polarities, two complementary ways of
obscuring the reality we wish to understand.
ACCULTURATION
Like its twin, assimilation, the concept of acculturation has shown the capacity
for absorbing innumerable intellectual beatings and yet endures. By acculturation, the
scholarly literature refers to the process by which an outsider group adopts the culture
of the society into which it has moved. The standard complaints lodged against this
particular conceptualization are too well known to merit extensive review (cf. Omi &
Winant 1992). That there may be a host society on to which could be mapped a single,
uniform culture is pure illusion; at best one can identify an amalgam of subcultures,
varying by region or class, all of which are changing over time. Moreover, the notion
that the transmission of tastes, styles, and beliefs between ethnic outsiders and insiders
follows a single direction is just simplistic—and contradicted by the cultural syncretism
that has accompanied globalization since it began in the Age of Discovery. Not only do
the immigrants import a set of influences that diffuse far beyond the initial, bounded
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category. They and their descendants engage in a new set of cultural activities - -
partially, in an attempt to respond to or make sense of their new environment -- that
turn out to have broader, innovative effects. Case in point: the Jewish immigrant tycoons
and the Hollywood they invented and sustained.
But complaints of this sort, which can be accommodated without much trouble,
only begin to scratch the surface of the problem. As it is conceptualized in our scholarly
literature on migration and identity formation, culture turns out to be nothing more than
an inventory of traits. However, a trait inventory, as anthropologist Michael Moerman
has pointed out, is merely a list and lists lack closure, which means that they cannot
provide an adequate summary of the parts, let alone the cultural "whole" which they
purport to represent. The difficulties get more serious, when one asks how to identify
the group (or category) to which the traits supposedly belong. Since ethnicity is a
relational concept, identifying some set of traits as characteristic of one group implies
something about the features that typify some other -- each of which is equally "ethnic,"
albeit in its own peculiar way. But then it turns out that "groupness" is precisely in
question, proving too variable to support any fixed set of traits. As the boundary
between groups is not given, but rather constructed, negotiated, and contested, it too
needs to be understood as a cultural product. Of course, the same holds true for the
categories -- native and foreign, American and ethnic, "white" and "Black" -- around
which the boundaries are maintained.
If categories and boundaries are both cultural, then the bedrock distinction
between acculturation and assimilation collapses. That opposition, as Herbert Gans has
written, rests on the contrast between culture and society, a difference which remains
alive and well in the specialized literature of ethnography & sociology, but fares less
well outside that native land. At the very least, we need to avoid assuming that the
relevant actors are cultural dopes, lacking a finely elaborated understanding of the
structures in which they may be encased. On the contrary, we would do better to ask
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about the everyday theories of the world with which ethnics on both sides of the
native/immigrant divide work, that is to say, the intellectual and emotional toolkits that
allow them to both make distinctions between "us" and "them", and also make sense of
the consequences that ensue.
From this perspective, examining shifts in immigrant traits becomes secondary to
understanding the evolution of their view of the world and their place in it as articulated
in Americanization narratives from Mary Antin’s The Promised Land to Eva Hoffman’s
Lost in Translation. To ask that question, however, demonstrates a greater
connectedness between culture and society than our usual approaches allow.
Immigration, after all, is a transitional phenomenon, in which immigrants slowly give
up the attachments that rooted them to their earlier lives. What the scholarly literature
describes as the "dual frame of reference" refers to immigrants' tendency to understand
their condition relevant to a benchmark that the native population does not share. Put
somewhat differently, it provides the theory by which immigrants make sense of their
condition, in an interpretation with which few persons, native to the host society, could
agree.
But meanings change as the frame of reference -- and related social attachments -
- shift. Part of becoming “American” therefore involves a change in one’s understanding
of what that state/status entails. In this respect, the crucial point of departure occurs
when immigrants and/or their children take on a native theory of American society, as
well as the associated ways of acting and feeling. Rephrased only slightly, acculturation
therefore refers to the process whereby outsiders come to understand themselves as
candidate insiders in a loosely structured democratic society where a special premium is
placed on the expression and development of the individual self. That particular change
is potentially incendiary, in part, because the practical utility of immigration involves
the repression of those needs for self-gratification deemed normative by the native
population. But the gratified American self is likely to be more than a materially satiated
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self; an American self also derives a sense of worth from a situation of presumed
equality with ethnic insiders. Therefore, the explosive potential is greater still, since fully
Americanized immigrants and their descendants will be unlikely to accept the
subordination which the new arrivals take as a given.
Of course, the way in which one understands the world is related to the tools
employed for comprehending it. For that reason, the diffusion of cultural patterns from
insiders to outsiders yields an effect at considerable variance from what our standard
accounts suggest. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, as epitomized by the so-called
"straight-line" theory, one would do better to forecast a pattern of non-linear change.
Reducing cultural difference is probably the best means for increasing sensitivity to any
disparities that persist. The better one reads, talks, speaks the native code, the easier it is
see which of its promises haven't been delivered; and the greater one has bought into the
national creed, the more bitter the disappointment if one's expectations turn out to be
unfulfilled.
Moreover, culture as theory of the world or worldview necessarily implicates
insiders in ways that our conventional literature manages to elide, if not dismiss out of
hand. The distinction between native and foreign traits only holds if we assume that the
latter are truly alien. Since the presence of social outsiders imported from beyond the
boundaries of the state is a recurrent, and therefore native, phenomenon to the United
States, the culture of its natives also encompasses their everyday, working theories of
immigrants and immigration. Put somewhat differently, the culture shared by
Americans includes a set of variable understandings of the boundaries separating
native-born insiders from immigrant outsiders, as well as interpretations of the
conditions for membership in the American people and the meanings that that status
entails.
Thus, the very recruitment of immigrant labor needs to be understood as a
culturally-informed, if not cultural, activity itself. Marxist or Marxist-inspired theories
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have it largely right: the dynamic, unequal nature of capitalist economies yields
perpetual recourse to cheaper, more tractable sources of labor from beyond the society's
bounds. Nonetheless, they assume what needs to be explained: namely, the existence of
the categories distinguishing immigrant from native labor, and the understandings
entailed in that discrimination. Let me put it crudely, if not in the least bit unfairly:
immigrants comprise a group of workers whom their employers at once prefer but also
despise. The employers' contempt is the stuff of the social psychological literature, a
body of work that points to some universal cognitive mechanisms, but cannot explain
the specific discriminations between particular groups of them and us in other than
cultural terms. But the employers' preference for immigrants can be best understood as
an everyday theory of immigrant labor, in which immigrants are perceived as that class
of worker that evaluates conditions “here” in light of how bad they are “there.” That
quality makes immigrants preferable to the native-born alternatives, who are comprised
of people that set their sights on rewards a good deal higher than those available at the
bottom of the totem pole of global capitalism. And thus we can see why immigration
needs to be thought of as a property of the national culture, as native employers value
foreigners, doing so precisely because they understand the immigrants to be different.
If understandings about immigrants and immigration comprise part of the
national culture, then those processes conventionally denoted as "acculturation" also
entail the mechanisms whereby immigrants and their descendants become oriented
toward insiders' view of ethnic outsiders. Those views need not always imply derision
or rejection, and one can trace a shift, over the course of the last century, from more
exclusive to more accepting understandings. On the other hand, our imaginative
literature and scholarship reveal a continuing perception of immigrants as different, a
preoccupation that can only suggest that such difference is a source of discomfort and
trouble. Certainly, pre-Civil Rights commentators took rejection of ethnic difference for
granted; I note that Milton Gordon identified a decline of the prejudices held by insiders
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as one of the very last stages in his assimilation typology. And the large majorities that
continue to voice opposition to large-scale immigration, if only when asked, not to speak
of the smaller, though more vocal group of nativists and restrictionists do leave grounds
for thinking that acceptance remains problematic.
Thus, in construing immigration as an occurrence of a foreign, and not native,
type, both literary and social scientific understandings construct the familiar as strange.
From the standpoint of the self-proclaimed normals, that is to say, our nation’s so-called
"majority group", difference appears undesirable. Moreover, the views of these
particular normals count, not simply because they possess the key to acceptance, and the
goodies it unlocks; acculturation itself at once orients outsiders toward the standards of
insiders, and leads them to accept insiders' standards of judgment. From this point on,
the analysis proceeds straightforwardly: As Goffman explained, the stigma associated
with an ethnic, or any other sort of difference, at once confirms the usualness of the
stigmatizer, while discrediting the stigmatized. Since one is stigmatized by association,
with the stigma spreading from the stigmatized person to his or her intimates,
disaffiliation from the more stigmatized elements provides one route of obtaining
acceptance. To quote Goffman’s Stigma, "the very notion of shameful differences
assumes a similarity in regard to crucial beliefs" (1963). Therefore, acculturation and
stigmatization can turn out to be one and the same, as immigrants and their descendants
display their growing attachment to the host society by adopting the ways of the insider
group and seeking their approval.
One can easily go further. In orienting themselves toward insiders' views,
outsiders also accept the reference group's view of themselves. The outsiders wish to do
more than simply erase the difference that separates them from insiders. They also feel
compelled to reject the very same qualities of their own group to which insiders object,
which not only belong to others of their originating kind, but regrettably are to be found
within the self. At its best, the result is the phenomenon of "double consciousness" first
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described by DuBois in his The Souls of black Folks: "this sense of always looking at
one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring oneself by the tape of a world that
looks on in amused contempt and pity." (1903, p. 4) At its worst, the stigmatized
outsiders find their way to self-hatred.
These are the terms that we do not usually find in the social scientific lexicon;
though the reconstructed American literary canon of the 1980s and 1990s abound in such
double-voicedness and dialogism. After all, can we doubt that is an unself-consciously
assimilationist sociology of assimilation, when the author of our canonical
text—Assimilation in American Life--is none other than a Goldberg turned Gordon, the
name change the symbolic equivalent of the nose job. Yes, I'll concede that name
changes and nose jobs are possibly motivated by a quintessentially American desire to
start afresh. Still, we have to admit that some distaste for one's prior self almost surely
plays a significant role. And is it just an accident -- as the ex-Marxists among us used to
say -- that in the 15 page-long, double column index to the recent Handbook of
International Migration, there is not a single entry to stigma or self-hatred?
On the other hand, the stigmatizers of immigrant America -- that is to say, the
assimilation literature's "core cultural group" – do not always have the good fortune of
encountering a human material equally susceptible to stigmatization. The peasant
migrants of the turn of the twentieth century didn't need a social scientist or literary
critic to tell them that they were expected to act as inferiors, as that was the lesson that
they had absorbed in the old world, where the peasant's stigmatized status, relative to
townsmen or aristocrats, was beyond question. And was there any reason to doubt the
claims of the insiders who sought to Americanize them? After all, the United States was
then the very acme of modernity, its material abundance and growing national power
the demonstration of its superiority, as against the immigrants and the old worlds from
which they came.
But today's immigrants have entered a different world, one where stigmatized
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outsiders have learned a few new tricks. Inversion was always one of the weapons of the
weak: it is better to be “bad.” But inversion is now utilized in self-conscious ways, with
stigma at once revalued as the positive pole of one's identity, as Christian Joppke has
pointed out, but also turned around, forcing the stigmatizers to confront their own
shameful deeds (Citizenship Between De- and Re-Ethnicization 2003). "Black is
beautiful," was a revolutionary slogan, and all the more powerful because it worked.
The ethnic revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s, so scorned by Glazer to Walzer,
illustrates a glimmer of belated recognition: the young ethnic intellectuals of the time
realized that their parents had swallowed the American dream hook, line, and sinker,
when in fact that they need not have gone so far. And while that particular ethnic
revival had no hope -- history had moved too fast -- the new post-1965 immigrants
arrived just in time to take up the cultural tool kit that the civil rights revolution had
invented and legitimated.
Moreover, today's immigrants are especially well-suited to use this particular
tool. Relative to the past, contemporary immigrants are distinguished by their
considerable symbolic capital and competence; as for the less-skilled immigrants, they
tend to find a proximal host, equipped with the necessary intellectual arsenal. So even if
the Barthian insight holds -- the influence of America's democratic, consumerist culture
quickly rendering ethnicity an empty vessel, absent of most content -- the collectivities in
which the immigrants participate have the capacity to both create and consume a
symbolic content for the vessel which they inhabit. That symbolic capacity is fateful,
since the stakes involve the relationship between “who is what” and “who gets what.”
In that contest, today's immigrants fare relatively well, since the ability to tap into
desired resources largely rests on the ability to legitimize some particular who. (Barth,
1969)
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ETHNIC GROUP -- OR GROUPNESS?
If the sociology of assimilation or the literature of Americanization prefers to
ignore the identity of the insiders to which the at best, ambivalently welcomed
outsiders, are to be oriented, it shows no similar shyness regarding the "themness" of the
outsiders whose behavior it is so intent in describing. A slightly older, less self-conscious
scholarly tradition in made that them-ness crystal clear: we were talking about the
assimilation of "ethnic groups". But it is groupness precisely that is at question. At the
very least, the degree of groupness is likely to vary, a good deal lower among those
categories of persons for whom groupness is embedded in a highly particular, place-
specific way of life, as opposed to the self-conscious sense of belonging engendered by a
process nation-building. The peasant migrants of the past came from a set of folk
societies, not yet nationalized, and therefore not possessing the common traits and
corporate sense that the nation-building project imparts. By contrast, today’s newcomers
typically arrive with a prior experience of nationalization, which means that they show
up fully equipped with the resources for understanding themselves as self-conscious
entities of an ethnic sort. Moreover, the capacity for groupness also hinges on the
symbolic and cultural resources required to articulate an explicit understanding of
groupness, that is to say, how I fit in with those "like me" and those who are different.
From this standpoint, almost all of yesterday’s migrations were lacking the human
resources needed for the articulation of ethnic differences. In comparison, the
extraordinarily high level of education characteristic of many of today's international
immigrant flows implies far greater symbolic competence, crucial for both elaborating
and legitimating ethnic identities.
While I am suggesting that we think in terms of “groupness” rather than
“group,” much of the scholarly literature and literary criticism has moved in a different
direction, largely, out of an understandable reaction to the problems bequeathed by our
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intellectual legacy. The standard critique of the older assimilationist paradigm starts
with the point Waldiger offerered in Ethnic Los Angeles, namely, that the assimilation
model seems to fit the trajectory of European origin groups, but that “the historical
experience of immigrants of non-European origin requires a different approach.” (18)
Behind the confusion lay a common enough notion: that these two immigrations
contained groupings of a fundamentally different sort. However impoverished or
stigmatized, the European immigrants shared a common cultural and racial background
with the majority whose acceptance they sought; by contrast, the non-European
newcomers were far more distinctive, and on both counts. In effect, race mattered, to
paraphrase the title of Cornell West’s well-known book, facilitating inclusion in one
case, while hindering it in the other.
Unfortunately, this formulation mistakes cause and effect: acceptance did not
occur because the European immigrants were white when they stepped off the boat;
their children became white in America, which is what then allowed for inclusion. The
older scholarly formulations of Robert Parks and the “Chicago School” of sociology
imagined the process by which immigrants became Americans as if it could be
abstracted from the system of ethnic stratification into which the immigrants entered. In
fact, Oscar Handlin wrought an earlier revolution in immigration historiography when
he realized that the “history of immigration was the history of American people,” in the
process, excising a large portion of the people he purported to describe in The Uprooted
(1951). His sociological contemporaries were not guilty of the same slip; the major
accounts of the 1960s sought to understand an ethnic order made up of the descendants
of those who had become Americans, not just by consent, but by force as well. However,
the analysis proceeded as if all groups of outsiders started equally at the bottom,
confronting barriers of similar sorts. More importantly, the underlying framework
neglected the contrastive nature of the social identities, which the immigrants and their
descendants gradually absorbed. We know who we are only by reference to whom we
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are not; likewise, for the progeny of the European immigrants, who became members of
a majority that defined itself through exclusion. But as novelist Toni Morrison has
eloquently and damningly argued in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary
Imagination, our national literature and history have been slow to acknowledge that
(white) majority implied (colored) minority (1992). And so when the descendants of the
European immigrants made an unexpected appearance in the late 1960s, they did so
under the guise of “white ethnics,” as if it were transparent just why and how white
should modify ethnic, rather than the other way around.
Of course, today we know better, though it is depressing to note that historians,
not social scientist, have been chiefly responsible for changing our views. A rapidly
expanding corpus tells us that the once swarthy immigrants from southern, eastern, and
even northern Europe eventually became white, which is another way of saying that
“race” is an achieved, not an ascribed status. One can try to reconcile this observation
with the older assimilation story, contending that racial perceptions changed as the Irish,
Poles, Italians, and Jews moved ahead, and were then able to move among the same
people who had previously held them in contempt. However, this formulation leaves
out the essential, contrastive element: in becoming white, the immigrants and their
descendants also became party to strategies of social closure that maintained others’
exclusion as noted by David Roedriger in The Wages of Whiteness (1991).
But the whiteness literature only gets us so far: After all, the man and woman in
the street will tell us that Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles, you name the group, are whites. We
then still need reference to some other set of concepts to explain what the everyday
categorization as “white” entails. The contribution of “new white studies” is to remind
us that the European immigrants were once not-quite-white, and that reminder
underscores the fluidity that the everyday notions obscure. Yet having said this, we run
the risk of describing the indeterminacy of this “not-quite-white” status in ways that fall
into the circularity of making recourse to the concept of race itself. And once we have
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underscored the mutability of racial status, our customary option of contrasting groups
of different kind no longer holds. Though we say that a group has changed its colors, we
really mean something else: it has now acquired eligibility for participation among
established groups, all the while engaging in efforts to maintain boundaries, against
some other, more stigmatized entity—for example, blackface minstrelsy functioned in
much this manner for the 19th century Irish and 20th century Jewish immigrants (Rogin,
BlackFase, White Noise, 1996).
Thus, some of the more recent scholarship too often maintains the vices of the
old. It is one thing to argue that the struggle for place in a contested, ethnic order has
historically provided ample motivations for newcomers to resolve the ambiguities over
how their racial identities are to be defined. But it is another thing, altogether, to insist
that these racialized categories represent real, substantial groupings of a fundamentally
different sort. The American ethnic system is not a container of independent units, but
rather a relational matrix, in which categories are constructed and applied through a set
of ongoing interactions in ways that affect distributional outcomes. And though
everyday language portrays insiders and outsiders as mutually exclusive, bounded
entities, the reality is often otherwise, with the nexus between ethnic category and
pattern of association varying from one dimension of social life to another. True, our
unfortunate history has produced far too many situations in which excluded outsiders
were never eligible for acceptance -- whether as co-workers, neighbors, friends, or
intimates. Yet in phrasing the matter this way, we substitute an analytic language that
modifies the absolute distinctions implied by the concept of “race.” We also convert the
relationship between “them” and “us” into a continuum, and thereby gain purchase on
the dynamic nature of ethnic life, without succumbing to the groupist illusion that has
so often clouded our vision in the past and should not carry over into imagined
communities of the American future.
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CHAPTER 6 : LOST IN INTERPELLATION: CHANG-RAE LEE’S NATIVE SPEAKER
THE NARATIVE PURSUITS OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL TRICKSTER
Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker (1995) is certainly the best-known contemporary
Korean American novel.1 It covers at least three genres: it is an excellent city novel set in
New York City, a spy novel and, most of all, an immigrant novel. There are two plots; in
one, the narrator Henry Park tells of his private life, in the other of his job as private
detective/commercial spy. So far, reviews, notices and interpretations of Native Speaker
have been dominated by two important aspects, namely whiteness and language.2 Both
subjects are important for my reading of the text as well, but I would additionally like to
focus on Henry Park's narrative identity and on immigration as a basic themes of the
novel.
NARRATIVE SYNOPSIS: LOST IN INTERPELLATION
Henry Byong-Ho Park is a Korean American in his early thirties. He seems to be
a lonely person; his wife Lelia has just left him, his parents both passed away a while
ago, he does not seem to have any friends, and at work everybody, including Henry, is a
loner. Loneliness, however, is never really made the subject of the book, since Henry
does not seem to be bothered by it—in fact, this social distance underwrites his ethnic-
minstrelsy-qua-commercial-espionage. Bit by bit, Henry tells of his past. His narration is
associative and without any real chronology. He tells of his wife Lelia, how they met,
their marriage, the death of their child. He relates childhood memories that do not seem
very happy, and he describes his work at the C.I.A.-esque "firm." Especially his last two
jobs were of importance: one of them was to find out everything about a Filipino
American psychologist called Emile Luzan, which he did by becoming his patient. For
the first time in his career, however, Henry is close to failing: he almost gives himself
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away. The other job, his last one, is also difficult for him. He is supposed to spy on the
politician John Kwang and therefore starts working as a volunteer for Kwang's election
campaign. The better he gets to know the politician of Korean origin, though, the more
he is fascinated by his personality. Only when Kwang finally disappoints him is Henry
capable to accomplish his job and deliver important evidence against him. The novel
ends in relative harmony: Lelia and Henry get back together. Henry stops his job at the
"firm," which so far had stood between them, and starts helping Lelia with her work as a
speech therapist.
This quick summary of the novel might be misleading, though. In fact, Native
Speaker is a multi-layered narrative in which events often are ambiguous, amorphous, .
The plot as described above is only the mere backdrop for a complex conflict that takes
place within Henry. In order to get a better understanding of Henry, as narrator and
focalizing consciousness in the novel, it is necessary to put together some of the bits and
pieces he relates throughout the narrative about different nodal points, topoi and fibulae
he draws upon in crafting an authorized narrative self that demonstrates both linguistic
competence and ideological conformity, if not ethno-racial or religious kinship. The
Medean “generalized Other” that Henry has introjected and been interpellated by is
both repressive and generative of the very subjectivities her operationalizes in diverse
social situations—the narratological objective correlative of an everyday presentation of
self a la Goffman.
THE LONG PLANE RIDE: CHILDHOOD & YOUTH, OR WHEREIN THE PRE-REFLEXIVE COGITO GOES BAD
Henry Park was born in the United States and is therefore an American citizen.
For him this is pure chance: "My citizenship is an accident of birth, my mother
delivering me on this end of a long plane ride from Seoul." (334) Exactly at the moment
that his immigrant parents arrive in their new country, he is born. He himself is an
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immigrant, too, but by means of a simple law he is American at the same time. This
simultaneousness of being both, immigrant and American will be symptomatic for
Henry for the rest of the novel.
From an early age, Henry confronts questions of identity. The contrast between
his Korean parents and his Korean looks and his (white) American surroundings as
Henry recalls the mystic chords of memory:
"… for a time in my boyhood I would often awake before dawn and step outsideon the front porch. It was always perfectly quiet and dark, as if the land werecompletely unpeopled save for me. No Korean father or mother, no tauntingboys or girls, no teachers showing me how to say my American name. I'd thenrun back inside and look in the mirror, desperately hoping in that solitarymoment to catch a glimpse of who I truly was but looking back at me was justthe same boy again, no clearer than before, unshakably lodged in that difficultface." 323 [emphasis added]
Henry tries to be an inconspicuous child who blends well into his surroundings.
Like his parents, he wants to be as unobtrusive as possible, not a burden to anyone--
while sub-rosa a simmering “immigrant rage” fuels the “multiverse” of “newcomer”
subjectivities:
"So call me what you will. An assimilationist, a lackey. A duteous foreign-facedboy. I have already been what you can say or imagine, every version of thenewcomer who is always fearing and bitter and sad." (160)
At an early age, Henry is thus trying to obscure his difference by becoming
almost invisible through immaculate behavior and seamless adaptation to his
environment. He will later improve this camouflaging skill and make it his profession
and code of not only silent but invisibility—hence the frequent visual rhetorics of
“seeing & being” that Sartre articulated phenomenologically in Being & Nothingness but
was earlier artistically perfected by Ellison in Invisible Man. The creation of an inter-
subjective, socio-cultural chameleon—a popular version of Sartre’s pre-reflexive cogito--
as the nodal point of entry into the range of subjectivities and hence subject position
available within the socius is reminiscent of the confidence men Melville and Twain
chronicled and thereby making charter members of the American Pantheon of 19th
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century canonic subjectivities—the social outcast, outlaw, ka ethnos, other were socially
recognized category. In his marriage with Lelia, he plays his role as husband perfectly,
too. He is everything that is expected of him, but never really himself, which leads
eventually to the end of his marriage:
On paper, by any known standard, I was an impeccable mate. I did everythingwell enough, was romantic and sensitive and silly enough, I made love enough,was paternal enough, big brotherly, just a good friend enough, father-to-my-sonenough, forlorn enough, and then even bull-headed and dull and macho enough,to make it all seamless. For ten years she hadn't realized the breadth of what Ihad accomplished with my exacting competence, the daily work I did, whichunto itself became an unassailable body of cover. (161)
RHETORICS OF DESCENT & DIFFERENCE: TROPES OF FAMILY & FILIALSUBJECTIVITIES
Henry's family is extremely important in his quest to find out who he is. He is
shaped by the influence of his immigrant parents and by living with his white American
wife. It is by drawing similarities and finding out about contrasts that Henry tries to
position himself, tries to discover what is Korean, what American, and what is maybe
both or possibly neither.
His ability to adapt perfectly to certain environments and situations is something
that Henry developed partly by himself because he noticed at an early age that
difference might cause negative reactions. Additionally from his favorite T.V. sitcoms he
learned how to resolve such identity and non-identity contests dramaturgically through
transgressive-yet-symbolic role-playing (think: Lucy-as-confectioner at chocolate
factory) and autobiographical self-fashioning (think: Ricky-and-Lucy in Hollywood).
For the most part, however, he took this behavior over from his parents. His father, for
example, always came to watch Henry play baseball, but he never cheered him on and
instead always stood quietly by. The mother never dared to ask a neighbor for lacking
ingredients and instead rather ruined a meal. Later in life, Henry sees in their behavior
the exaggerated dependence of the immigrant on the new country—an identity
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addiction that embraced the ideological Americanism of the period:
"[W]e believed in anything American, in impressing Americans, in makingmoney, in polishing apples in the dead of the night, perfectly pressed pants, perfectcredit, being perfect, shooting black people, watching our stores and offices burn downto the ground." (52/53)
Despite of his critical attitude towards them, Henry's parents remain an
important influence in his life. He often contemplates, for example, what his late mother
would have thought about certain people or situation; thus, rendering one of the many
voices of the Generalized Other through a regressive narrative frame depicting an
imagined dialogue that more accurately resembling the form and function of dramatic
internal monologues from Plato’s to Hamlet’s:
My mother, in her hurt, invaded, Korean way, would have counseled meto distrust him, this clever Japanese. Then, too, she would have advised againstmy marriage to Lelia, the lengthy Anglican goddess, who'd measure meceaselessly while I slept, continually appraise our vast differences, count up theways. (15) …She believed that displays of emotion signaled a certain failurebetween people. … I thought she possessed the most exquisite control over themuscles of her face. She seemed to have the subtle power of inflection over them,the way a tongue can move air. (31)
The mother, who never wanted to stay in the United States, sticks to old Korean
views on the Japanese and ceaselessly emphasizes the difference between their (Korean)
family and the Americans. Firmly believing in controlling emotions in the presence of
strangers, "American" openness and emotionality seemed strange to her. She did not
believe in the American dream for immigrants of color – in her opinion there was a limit
to what they could achieve, no matter how hard they tried. About Kwang, the politician,
she would have thought: "Didn't he know he could only get so far with his face so
different and broad?" Kwang's wish to become mayor of New York would have been
absolute hubris for her. She simply thought that life means endless suffering.196
Henry's father, on the other hand, is the perfect immigrant. Not unlike the typical
Korean newcomer protagonist of the late 20th century, he comes as a graduate of a
Korean elite university to the United States and finds himself working in grocery stores.
By working incredibly hard, he manages to build up a small chain of stores and to move
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with his son to a wealthy neighborhood (his wife has passed away by then). For him, the
American dream becomes true, but it does not make him a happy man, for his family is
incomplete and he does not have any time for his son with whom he does not get along
anymore. Though part of the American dream, he never becomes American. Growing
up, Henry views him as utterly Korean, as completely out of place. He is ashamed of his
father's faulty English and fights with him constantly.
The absolute alien in Henry's family, however, is Ahjuhma. She is a woman who
one day suddenly appears in Henry's life. His father arranged for her to come from
Korea to take care of their household. She lives in a separated part of their house and
spends most of her time in the kitchen. She does not attempt to learn any English at all
or to meet anybody. The only people she talks to are Henry and his father. She is, as one
of Henry's white friends from school remarks, "a total alien." (78) Henry does not like
her and only talks to her when necessary. Even when he recognizes later that for his
father she is more than just a housekeeper, she does not become part of his idea of a
family. Lelia finds it intolerable that Ahjuhma fulfills the tasks of a homemaker, mother,
and even lover, but is not accepted as such. She cannot believe that Henry, during all the
years that the woman worked for his father and him, not once asked for her name. The
woman is always simply called "ahjuhma," the Korean way of addressing an older
woman to whom one is not related: the functional analog to the ethnic Southern
“ma’am” reminiscent of Faulkner’s imagined communities in Absalom, Absalom!
(1936).7 When Lelia meets the woman, she wants to do better by her than Henry has so
far and tries to communicate with her, but is rejected by her in a rude way. The
argument Henry and Lelia have about Ahjuhma marks a moment in the novel in which
the cultural difference between them becomes palpable and is made visible and manifest
linguistically. Henry does not understand Ahjuhma, nor does he like her much, but this
is not reflected – as Lelia assumes – in his ignorance about her personal “Christian”
name, if you will. As in many Asian languages, in Korean people are often not
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addressed by their name directly as a sign of respect and social deference is registered
linguistically with a social injunction against the use of one’s interlocutor’s first name.
Language conventions, in this instance, seek to discriminate among social categories of
individuals instrumental in facilitating or enabling the narrative emergence of self. Lee
narrates how social categories become prosopopaeic linguistic masks—a narrative echo
of the masks (dramatis personae) used throughout classic drama and whose prima facie
specular logic Twain satirizes in The Prince and the Pauper—the sartorial Ur-text of the
American rags-to-riches narrative, pace Horatio Alger. There are special ways of
addressing spouses, relatives, friends, colleagues, superiors, and even strangers, and
most of the time it is more polite to address them this way than by their name. Only
younger people are called directly by their names. Lelia, who calls her parents by their
first names, does not know this. She is trying to communicate with Ahjuhma but does
not realize that she is getting too close to her, that she is not respecting her privacy, that
she is forcing her way into the woman's territory. While trying to "save" the woman, she
does not notice that the woman does not want to be saved and, most of all, does not
wish to have contact to her, the "American." At this moment of their argument, Henry
distinguishes between Americans (and that means Lelia) and Koreans (including
himself): "Americans live on a first-name basis. She didn't understand that there weren't
moments in our language – the rigorous, regimental one of family and servants – where
the woman's name could have naturally come out." (69) It is in moments like this that he
realizes how Korean he is. Even though Ahjuhma is also an "alien" for him and the
embodiment of all things Korean that he dislikes, and even though he often wishes to be
more American, he has to admit that he is not like Lelia, not like "Americans."
If Ahjuhma embodies everything strange, foreign and alien, then Lelia is the
"native."8 Her name already signals whiteness, and when Henry meets her for the first
time, it is her whiteness he notices first: "I noticed she was very white, the skin of her
shoulder almost blue, opalescent, unbelievably pale considering where she lived [El
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Paso]." (9) Henry continuously points out the visual differences between himself and his
"American wife," for example by calling her "the lengthy Anglican goddess." (15) Lelia is
indeed quite different from Henry. While he does not talk much about his feelings, life,
or job and has many secrets, Lelia is open and direct. One might even say that in the two
persons of Henry and Lelia the contrast between Korea and the United States is
highlighted once again. Lelia, for example, is described as an almost stereotypical
American. Her character is, as Min Song has pointed out, amazingly underdeveloped
and only roughly outlined.9 The main reason for this, however, can be found in the
narrative perspective. Henry is the sole narrator and everything is seen from his
perspective and in relation to his person and focalizing narrative subjecitivities.
Borrowing Virginia Wolfe’s metaphoric line of argument in A Room of One’s Own, it is
Lelia's socio-literary role to be Henry's American mirror; marrying a white woman has
not made him more "American," but instead makes him face his difference day after day.
Lelia's directness encourages this. When they meet for the first time, in her direct way
she describes how she perceived him: "I saw you right away when you came in…You
kept pulling at your tie and then tightening it back up. I saw a little kid in a hot church."
(9) When she leaves him, she leaves behind a list describing Henry, a list "of who I was."
(1) At first, Henry takes the list extremely seriously, and it takes him some time to realize
that the list is not a complete description of his self, but only names some aspects.
Henry also describes Lelia’s parents quite sketchily and stereotypically. They are
only mentioned to explain the background Lelia stems from. Molly and Stew are
alcoholics, divorced, and rich. They both live in Massachusetts. They were open-minded
about their daughter marrying a person of color, even though Henry remembers
moments of unintended racism. When Lelia recalls that Molly always liked Henry, he
answers "'I'm her exotic. ... Like a snow leopard. Except I'm not porcelain.'" Stew –
"Groton, Princeton, Harvard Business School...Chief Executive Officer. Do not fuck with
this man." – praises Henry's "Oriental culture" and, meaning well, adds: "'You Koreans
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are really doing a number on them [the Japanese], in certain areas. You're kicking some
major butt around the world.'" (119-22) Stew and Molly obviously see in Henry a Korean
and Asian and not a fellow American.
Even though there had been difficulties in Henry and Lelia's relationship before,
the death of their son Mitt is decisive in their separation. Lelia mourns his death openly,
while Henry withdraws into his shell. She blames him for this several times and once
even stresses the ethnic difference between them by calling her mourning self a "mad
white lady in the attic" (119, my emphasis). She describes Henry as the Asian stoic who
perfectly and without any visible emotions does his duties as a mourning father. Mitt,
their perfect and happy child, dies on his seventh birthday.
Half-white and half-Korean, he embodies the chasm within his father but he does
not live it—an off-stage, spectral rendition of Hester’s Pearl. He speaks perfect English,
but – in contrast to his father – does not mind the broken English of his Korean
grandfather. On Sundays, Lelia sends him to Korean school so that he picks up some
Korean as well, but Henry does not approve: "...my hope was that he would grow up
with a singular sense of his world, a life univocal, which might have offered him the
authority and confidence that his broad half-yellow face could not. Of course this is
assimilationist sentiment, part of my own ugly and half-blind romance with the land."
(267)
"…I was the one who was hoping whiteness for Mitt, being fearful of what Imight have bestowed on him: all that too-ready devotion and honoring, and thechilly pitch of my blood, and then that burning language that I once presumeduseless, never uttered and never lived" (285).
Henry wants to spare his son the existential angst of the psychic chasm he feels
but does not realize that his son might not feel split. Mitt's perfect little life, however,
does not last long. Like a "tragic mulatto," he is doomed to die: he is crushed to death in
a "dog pile," playing with white kids from the neighborhood who, after some initial
racist remarks, have become his friends. Here, Chang-Rae Lee plays with the motif of
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the "tragic Eurasian," which can be found in many early works by white Americans on
Asians. Like tragic mulattoes in early 20th century stage and print favorites like Farber’s
Showboat or Chopin’s The Awakening, they are depicted as hysterically torn between
their good/white/western half and their evil/colored/ethnic half. Because of their inner
conflict, they are often doomed to die young. 10 Lee was mostly like aware of this
literary motif, and it is therefore most interesting that he lets Mitt, who bridges both
cultures so perfectly, die that young. This can be seen as a sign that, at least at this point
of the novel, there is no prima facie, hybrid Korean American solution – Henry is still
torn between his Korean background and his American socius. Since Henry cannot
really identify with either of these two typological poles, which are represented by the
respective members of his family, it is only natural that in the beginning of the
autobiographical novel, when his identity-conflict is most explicit, he is left without any
family: both of his parents are dead, Lelia has left him, and Mitt has died as well.
IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS: THE AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHIC IMPULSE
Henry strictly separates his private life from his job. Nobody in his family, not
even Lelia, knows how Henry earns his money. He describes his work at the "firm" as
follows:
We casually spoke of ourselves as business people. Domestic travelers. We wentwherever there was a need … In a phrase, we were spies… We weren’t the kindof figures you naturally thought of or maybe even hoped existed. … We choseinstead to deal in people. Each of us engaged our own kind, more or less. Foreignworkers, immigrants, first-generationals, neo-Americans. I worked with Koreans,Pete with Japanese. We split up the rest, the Chinese, Laotians, Singaporeans,Filipinos, the whole transplanted Pacific Rim. Grace handled Eastern Europe;Jack, the Mediterranean and Middle East; the two Jimmys, Baptiste and Perez,Central America and Africa. (17)
The "firm" thus uses "ethnic spies," native informants, who “spy on their own kind” to
find out the information demanded and paid for by their clients. Immigrants are their
prime target. There is a high demand for their work and "no other firm with any ethnic
coverage to speak of" (18). The maxim of Dennis Hoagland, head of the firm, is "to be a
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true spy of identity ... you must be a spy of the culture." (206) The firm deals with
identity narratives: a fake identity with a fake past is invented in order to get to know as
much as possible about the background and identity of the "object." Ethnicity becomes
an asset. At first, Henry considers his job his vocation. He, whose identity does not seem
fixed, loves to redefine it himself again and again:
I had always thought that I could be anyone, perhaps several anyones at once.Dennis Hoagland and his private firm had conveniently appeared at the righttime, offering the perfect vocation for the person I was, someone who couldreside in his one place and take half-steps out whenever he wished. … I found asanction from our work, for I thought I had finally found my truest place in theculture. (127)
Henry, experienced in being unobtrusive and inconspicuous from youth on and
additionally with no family and no friends to speak of (there is only Lelia left, but she
walks out on him), is especially well suited for the job of identitarian bricolage. Henry
himself describes his colleague, Pete Ichibata, as the perfect spy, but many of Pete's
attributes are also true for Henry:
Pete makes a good spook but a good spook has no brothers, no sisters, no fatheror mother. He's intentionally lost that huge baggage, those encumberingremnants of blood and flesh, and because of this he carries no memory of ahouse, no memory of a land, he seems to have emerged from nowhere. He'sbrought himself forth, self-cesarean. (173)
There is, however, one great difference between Henry and Pete, and it is this difference
that causes Henry to fail at his job as a corporate spy: he does not have any family left,
but he still remembers his parents, their lives, and their country, which seems to be his
as well. As much as he wishes to have "brought himself forth" and as hard he tries to
ignore the memories unnerving him, he does not succeed. The two jobs in which he fails
miserably are the last ones he is assigned to. Henry feels comfortable with the person he
is to spy on, he feels understood by Emile Luzan, who does not know why Henry really
became his patient. He confides more and more from his real past to the psychologist
instead of making up, as usual, a fake identity: "For the first time I found myself short of
my story, my chosen narrative." (22) Luzan touches Henry's innermost feelings when he
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assures him, "You'll be yourself again, I promise." (22) Just moments before Henry is
ready to tell Luzan everything, to tell him the truth about the reason why he is there and
the truth about his person, Henry's colleagues intervene and take over. Luzan is later
killed, and it remains unclear whether the firm's client in Luzan's case is responsible for
his death. After this incident, Henry is no longer the same:
"Is this what I have left of the doctor? That I no longer simply can flash a lightinside a character, paint a figure like Kwang with a momentary language, butthat I know the greater truths reside in our necessary fictions spanning humanevent and time?" (206)
In addition to these new insights Henry has in dealing with people, another dangerous
factor comes up when he is observing John Kwang: "I was employing my own life as
material for my alter identity." (181)
THE ETHNIC OTHER: MY MONSTER, MYSELF?
Like Henry's father, John Kwang is the perfect immigrant for whom the
American dream became true. Different from Henry's father, though, he has managed to
break out of the isolation of immigrant life and become a politician and thus a public
figure. Not only is he successful and visionary, he is somebody that is regarded a role
model for others. In contrast to Henry's father, he has managed to become "American"
and get rid of the stigma of the immigrant. His picture can be found in stores owned by
immigrants, and this makes Henry think, "You are the model by which they will work
and live. You are their hope. And all this because you are such a natural American, first
thing and last, if something other in between." (326) The difference between him and
Henry's parents can be mainly found in his self-confidence and a certain fearlessness, an
executive-self:
"He displayed an ambition I didn't recognize, or more, I hadn't yet envisioned assomething a Korean man would find significant or worthy of energy anddevotion; he didn't seem afraid like my mother and father, who were alwayswary of those who would try to shame us or mistreat us." (139)
Also, Kwang speaks without an accent, and even his body, which naturally looks
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Korean, appears differently. He has, according to Henry, "short Korean legs," but he
walks differently - "he didn't sport the short choppy step of our number, but seemed
instead to stride in luxurious borrowed lengths." (137/138) The story of Kwang's
immigration sounds like many others (210/211), but what Henry finds so fascinating
about him and his story is that Kwang "began to think of America as a part of him,
maybe even his." (211) This is, of course, what Henry and maybe every immigrant
desires – the ultimate American-Dilemma wish-fulfillment of an dream in which the
color of one’s skin does not matter anymore. Through his shining example, he convinces
people that they can be just like him, achieve the same for themselves, and hence
become part of a bigger entity, the nation – e pluribus unum. This is also the main
weapon in his campaign for his political career. His party is a party of immigrants:
"Instead he had made his the party of livery boys and nannies and wok cooksand seamstresses and delivery boys, and his wealthiest patrons were the armies ofsmall-business owners through whose coffers passed all of Queens, by the nickel anddime." (143)
He wins his voters with the American dream by embodying the American dream: "In
ten different languages you say Kwang is like you. You will be an American." (143)
IMMIGRANT BRICOLEUR AS NATIVE-INFORMANT
The more Henry observes Kwang, the better he gets to know him – and in the
end he thinks that he knows him better than anybody else (140) – the closer he feels
attached to him, the more he comes to admire him. Soon he is not capable anymore of
delivering meaningful reports about Kwang to the firm:
"With John Kwang I wrote exemplary reports but I couldn't accept thefact that Hoagland would be combing through them. It seemed like anunbearable encroachment. An exposure of a different order, as if I were offeringa private fact about my father or mother to a complete stranger in one of ourstores." (147)
Jack, Henry's closest colleague, soon recognizes this and notes, "Now, I am
seeing what you write of Kwang, the way you present him with something extra. It is
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evident that you cannot help yourself. Something takes you over." (291) He believes that
Kwang's influence on Henry is too big and that Henry cannot judge Kwang correctly
and advises him to step back from the job. As in the Luzan job, Henry feels understood
by Kwang - "[s]imply, it felt good not having to explain any further" – not only as a
human being, but also as a second-generation immigrant of color. (182)
Only after Kwang lets him down, is Henry capable of betraying him. Kwang
confesses that he commissioned an attack on his own office in the course of which two
people were killed. One of them was, according to Kwang, a spy. Kwang's political
career is in a crisis, and it is interesting to observe that the more he feels the effects of the
crisis, the more "Korean" he appears. He now resembles more Henry's father, and turns
from a family man into a loner. (296) His perfect appearance is gone; he neglects it
totally. One day he even comes to see Henry in the office, which is installed temporarily
in the basement of Kwang's house, in pajamas and a gown. He does not talk in his
perfect English to Henry anymore, but instead in Korean, and not even standard
Korean, but a dialect. While drunk he sings Korean songs, "...his Korean accent getting
thicker and heavier." (297) Kwang's character regresses, with him turning from a perfect
"American" back into the "Korean" he used to be. Interesting in this context is also
Kwang's house, which carries almost symbolic meaning: he lives in a "stately Victorian
house, … a showplace for the Kwangs' many guests and visiting dignitaries." All the
things Korean, the jars with the smelly kimchi, are hidden in the basement. The house is
an American façade with a hidden, Korean inside. Henry prefers the basement to the
upper levels, stating that the rest of the place "feels borrowed to me, unlived in." (302)
While it is typical for Henry to prefer staying in a basement, hidden away, it is
interesting that it is – at the same time – the “Korean” part of the house. 11
Even though in the end Kwang disappoints Henry, the work with him and his
many immigrant followers leaves a lasting impression on him offering him new
narrative posts and subjectivities to explore or morph into, figuring him as a protean
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changeling—like the shape-shifitng Odo on the popular space opera Star Trek: Deep
Space 9. He starts to identify more and more with immigrants and their life stories:
"I have steadily become a compiler of lives. I am writing a new book ofthe land. ... And the more I read and remember the more their story is the same.The story is mine. How I come by plane, come by boat." (279)
One of his incognito tasks while working for Kwang was to take care of the
ggeh, the "money club." Ggeh are common in Korea, but also among Korean immigrants
abroad as a means to save up money for larger investments. Each member regularly
pays a certain sum and after a while is paid out the lump sum that has accumulated.
Kwang has built up a gigantic money club, to which anyone can donate a couple of
dollars and, in needy moments, ask for money in return. Henry loves the idea and
identifies totally with it. Repeatedly evincing his interpellation, he talks of "our money
club." (280, emphasis added) With Kwang's help, he gets a better idea of the “American
Dream,” immigrants, his own family, himself, and even of Ahjuhma: "They speak me, as
John Kwang could always, not simply in new accents or notes but in the ancient untold
music of a newcomer's heart, sonorous with longing and hope." (304) For the first time
in his life, he feels the urge to speak Korean, a language he despised all his life, in order
to be able to communicate with immigrants. (316)
One of the reasons why Henry feels close to John Kwang is their similar
background. This similarity is also reflected in their outer appearances, turning Henry
almost into Kwang's doppelgänger. Proleptically, even before Henry takes on the
Kwang-job, his colleague Jack observes, "Sometimes I think you'll look like him, Parky,
in fifteen years or so." (37) Repeatedly, Henry serves as stand-in for interview rehearsals
(92, 99), and several times he is mistaken for Kwang (253, 305). These, of course, might
be accidental situations in which the respective people see an Asian man and think of
Kwang immediately. However, Henry also feels the affinity to Kwang and remarks
about their relationship: "you might say that one was the outlying version of the other."
(138) In the regression of his character, Kwang later turns into someone who resembles
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more Henry's father than the person he formerly was. This does not contradict the fact
that there is a similarity between Henry and Kwang; Lelia remarks about Henry's father:
"He's just a more brutal version of you." (58) Henry also knows what she is talking about
when she says that he is doing his "father's act:" "When real trouble hits, I lock up." (158)
It is important for Henry's development that he realizes that there is something
of himself in both men, his father and John Kwang. Being an immigrant and the child of
immigrants suddenly acquires a different meaning for Henry. Whereas before, he
always saw himself and his family adrift as lone immigrants in a predominantly white
world, he later learns to see himself as part of a group. Whereas before, being an
immigrant was a stigma for him, it now seems to be something normal, something one
can even be proud of, becoming generative of new narrative subjectivities. This of course
improves Henry's attitude towards his immigrant father immensely.
ENGLISH ONLY!: LANGUAGE AND THE NATIVE SPEAKER
His new attitude towards immigrants and to his own person becomes most
evident in Henry's relationship to language – as the title of the novel proposes. As a
child, Henry has to undergo speech therapy because of his faulty English. His therapist
is an "ancient chalk-white woman" (233) who does not manage to perfect his English.
This is amazing, since Henry was – as we know – born and raised in the United States;
and even if Korean was the dominant language at home, it has to be assumed that he is a
native speaker of English. Henry explains the fact that he remains "between" both
languages by enumerating psychological reasons:
I will always make bad errors of speech. I remind myself of my mother andfather, fumbling in front of strangers. Lelia says there are certain mentalpathways of speaking that can never be unlearned. Sometimes I'll still say riddlefor little, or bent for vent, though without any accent and so whoever's presentjust thinks I've momentarily lost my train of thought. But I always hear myselfdisplacing the two languages, conflating them – maybe conflagrating them – forthere is so much rubbing and friction, a fire always threatens to blow up betweenthe tongues. (234)
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When Lelia and Henry meet for the first time, Henry remarks: "'People like me are
always thinking about still having an accent.'" (12) Lelia responds: "'You pay attention to
what you're doing. If I had to guess, you're not a native speaker…." (12) Henry is a
native speaker, but by overly paying attention to his ethnicity-qua-stigma, he also
becomes extremely self-conscious of his speech. When he first meets Lelia, almost all of
his thoughts betray a pre-occupation with her responses to his ethnicity and his self-
image as “racial other.” He assumes, for example, that the person who introduced them
"must have thought, let my Asian friend in the suit have a pleasant moment with her."
(9) Lelia "was looking at me closely, maybe wondering what a last name like Park meant
ethnically." (10) "I asked her if she had ever kissed an Asian before." (13) Lelia, the
speech therapist and linguistic "standard-bearer" (12), is of course someone that makes
him feel very self-conscious of his language. When the two get back together again, they
communicate more physically than verbally. Since Henry feels more comfortable with
his immigrant background, we can assume that he is less conscious about his outer
appearance and language and accepts them as they are. He even starts missing his
father's English: "I think I would give most anything to hear my father's talk again, the
crash and bang and stop of his language, always hurtling by." (337) And, most of all, he
starts understanding his father: "And when I consider him, I see how my father had to
retool his life to the ambitions his meager knowledge of the language and culture would
allow, invent again the man he wanted to be. … I am his lone American son, blessed
with every hope and quarter he could provide." (333) Henry no longer wishes to be
invisible and reconciles his American and his immigrant Korean backgrounds. He
realizes that there is no fixed definition of who he is, and that a defining list, like the one
Lelia left for him when she went away, does not exist. The definitions, Lelia's and his
own, can only describe a part of him at a certain moment.
Therefore, in the end, Henry manages to make different statements about
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himself, and trivial as they may seem, they are a big step towards his recognition that his
identity consists of many aspects: "I know I'm American because I order too much when
I eat Chinese." (326) "We Koreans have reinvented the idea of luck as mostly bad, and try
to do everything we can to prevent it." (327) Watching mostly white, young males
protesting against Kwang, Henry thinks, "By rights I am an American as anyone, as
graced and flawed and righteous as any of these people chanting for fire in the heart of
his house," but at the same time he can identify with immigrants, evoking a DuBoisian
double consciousness:
"And yet I can never stop considering the pitch and drift of their forlorn boats onthe sea, the movements that must be endless, promising nothing to theirnumbers within, headlong voyages scaled in a lyric of search, like the great loveof Solomon." (335)
The last chapter has a peaceful atmosphere and reflects Henry's love for the city of New
York and his newly discovered attraction to multiculturalism. He remembers Mitt and
his parents, but now his memories are without sadness or bitterness. He cooks a hot
Korean soup for Lelia following one of his mother's recipes; and Lelia eats it even
though she does not see the point of eating a spicy hot soup on a hot day. The novel
ends with Lelia pronouncing the names of her non-native speaker students, an ode to
multiculturalism:
"Now, she calls out each one as best as she can, taking care of every last pitch andaccent, and I hear her speaking a dozen lovely and native languages, calling all thedifficult names of who we are." (349)
NARRATIVE RESOLUTIONS AND PLOTS OF MARITAL CONCORD
The identity conflict in Native Speaker is much more like conflicts found in the
"classic" autobiographical immigrant novels of Yazierska and Cahan than, for example,
in its fellow Korean American novel Comfort Woman. Lee shows a man searching for
his self, which is located somewhere between Koreanness and Americanness. In the
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beginning, he assumes that the two are irreconcilable. Loathing the former, he strives for
the latter, feeling, however, that this leaves him incomplete and with an artificially
constructed identity. In the course of the novel, the protagonist slowly starts to find a
way to embrace his Korean background as a narrative subjectivity becomes available in
the public realm and actually to be proud of being the descendant of immigrants.
Having experienced a Pauline conversion in ethnic identification and affiliation with
Kwang as a mentor, he then turns to a marital Pax Americana to underwrite the
heterosexual legitimacy of an emerging fused-self.
While there are many parallels to the identity conflict in No-No Boy or even
China Men, Native Speaker is also distinctively different from those older “canonical”
Asian American works like Fifth Chinese Daughter or America is in the Heart in that the
conflict is much more layered, nuanced and framed narratively to come to a
denouement in a male mirror-stage that reaffirms patriarchy and the rhetoric of
Confucian filial piety. Nonetheless, Henry Park is already part of the American socius in
having found his own way among the herd, he does not have to prove himself anymore.
He faces a conflict within himself rather than one against a society that does not want
him. He’s more a stranger to himself, than to the land: in fact, the narcissistic alienation,
psychic vampirism and cynical spectatorship of his “day job” as a private undercover
agent confirm his made-in-the-U.S.A.-ethnic autobiographer’s dilemma: choosing
between decrying ethno-racial chauvinism and selling the ethnic self—alienated labor, in
the classic Marxian sense. Interestingly enough, the classic American autobiographical
genre of kunslerroman-qua-immigrant-Jeremiahad following a literary trajectory
through the Calibanic works of Carlos Bulosan, Philip Roth, I.B. Singer, Bernard
Malamud and Frank Chin we can trace the emergence of a spectral narrative chronicling
melodramas of beset immigrant manhood, to paraphrase Nina Baym. This narrtivized
pre-reflexive cogito or authorial voice, Henry discursively re-discovered among
Kwang’s immigrant socius: new emplotments became possible as the canon of social
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subjectivities expands with the embrace of the Self-qua-Other: linguistic difference and
ethnoracial epiphenomenon become the engines for a generative social grammar of the
narrative subjectivities that resolve social contradictions through nodal points (i.e. the
marriage plot) around identity and authorial personae that will become the locus
classicus of fin-de-siecle immigrant autobiograpics.
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PART III: AMERICANIZATION: PER ASPERA AD ASTRA.
“To observe the character of a particular people we must examinethe objects of its love. And yet, whatever these objects,
if it is the association of a multitude not of animals but of rational beings,and is united by a common agreement about the objects of its love,then there is no absurdity in applying to it the title of a “People.”
(St. Augustine, Civitas Dei)
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CHAPTER 7: THE MAKING OF AMERICANS: ELITE & POPULARARTICULATIONS OF NATIONAL SUBJECTIVITIES
In recent years, notions of 'national identity' have been subject to far-reaching
criticism. Some observers are fearful that attempts to assign particular cultural
characteristics to different nationalities will inevitably lead to the use of crude
stereotypes. Others assert that studies structured around the nation always
underestimate or disregard cleavages within nations, such as those derived from class,
gender, ethnicity and race. Furthermore, recent critiques have suggested that although
notions of a national identity may have had a degree of validity in the past, this has now
been lost. In the contemporary era, it is said, individuals have multiple identities tied to
a myriad of lifestyles and cultural enclaves. These exist 'below' and, as the globalization
process has advanced, 'above' the nation-state. Stuart Hall has noted the ways in which
they mesh together and overlap:
'Identities are fragmented and fractured, never singular but multiply constructedacross different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices andpositions' (quoted in Isin and Wood 1999: 16)
However, despite all of these claims, the belief that there is a distinct American
identity has shown a striking degree of resilience. In recent years, it has informed
rhetorical appeals, popular commentaries, and scholarly discourse. There were, in
particular, repeated invocations of the American character in the aftermath of September
11th 2001 when both journalists and politicians recalled the writings of Samuel
Huntington, particularly The Clash of Civilizations. Although now threatened from both
without and within, Huntington argued that the U.S. had traditionally been defined by
its role as a standard-bearer for the universal values associated with western civilization
(Huntington 1998: 305).
However, although there is a continuing faith in the concept of a discernible
American identity there is little agreement about its basis. While the dividing lines
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between them lack precision, three distinct definitions or models can be identified.
Whereas some regard 'Americanism' as a set of political principles, others assert that it
has a cultural character and rests upon clusters of folkways or mores. There are,
furthermore, those who argue that only those of European origin - who share the U.S.'s
cultural roots - can be 'remade' as Americans. Given this more popular and highly
restrictive conception of “Americanness,” it is not surprising that the immigrant
autobiographer approaches her task and craft with some trepidation and more than a
little defensiveness. One could almost say that the hyper-assimilationist, century-old
paradigm of the Americanization narrative as articulated in Antin’s Promised Land
(1904) to Hoffman’s Lost in Translation (1989) is a reaction formation to—more
specifically a defensive inversion of--the undercurrent of nativist popular opinion in the
U.S. that has accompanied increased international migration in the 20th and 21st
Centuries.
THE POLITICAL MODEL - AN 'IDEAS NATION'
Both Samuel Huntington and Seymour Martin Lipset suggest that American
identity is derived from adherence to particular beliefs and principles. The U.S. is a.
propositional or 'ideas' nation. This distinguishes 'Americanism' from the forms of
identity found in nation-states or countries represented as nation-states. It breaks with
the tradition of jus soli - or the right of soil' - that ties identity to an individual's
associations with a particular or place. The notion of the U.S. as an 'ideas nation' is also a
departure from those conceptions of national identity that are derived from jus
sanguinis or 'the right of blood'. There is, for example, a sharp contrast between the U.S.
and Germany. Although Germany's 2000 Citizenship Law Reform Act provided a
limited extension of citizenship rights to the children of some immigrants, the principle
of blood descent remains embodied in German law. The descendents of Germans who
settled in Eastern Europe centuries ago can still claim citizenship of the Federal
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Republic. In contrast although the U.S. confers citizenship on the children of U.S.
citizens born abroad, lines of descent or shared cultural traditions are said by those who
represent American identity in political terms to have little place in the U.S.. As Nathan
Glazer puts it: 'we are a nation based not on a common ethnic stock linked by mystic
chords of memory, connection, kinship, but rather by common universal ideas' (Glazer
1993: 17J. Instead, paradoxically the U.S. has some similarities with the former Soviet
Union insofar as, in both, identity is a function of loyalty towards particular beliefs.
Those who question such ideas are - by definition - guilty of disloyalty towards their
own country:
'It is possible to speak of a body of political ideas that constitutes "Americanism"in a sense in which one can never speak of "Britishism", "Frenchism","Germanism", or "Japanism" "Americanism is to the American... not a tradition orterritory ... but a doctrine ... To reject the central ideas of that doctrine is to beun-American' (Huntington 1982: 25).
`Others speak of 'Americanism' in broadly similar terms. In a celebrated phrase, Richard
Hofstadter noted that 'it has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be
one', (quoted in Lipset 1991: 16).
What ideas constitute 'Americanism'? Some accounts echo Louis Hartz's 1955
critique in depicting the U.S. as a 'pure' bourgeois formation structured around
untrammeled liberalism (Hartz 1964: 71). Huntington echoes the Swedish sociologist,
Gunnar Myrdal, in talking of an American Creed—the civic religion. He emphasis’s the
place of constitutionalism, individualism, liberalism democracy and egalitarianism and
their roots in the Declaration of Independence, Protestantism, and Enlightenment beliefs
(Huntington 1982: 14-15). For his part, although Lipset argues that Americanism is based
upon liberal values such as liberty, egalitarianism, individualism and laissez-faire, he
also identifies populism -or democratic anti-elitism - as a defining feature of
Americanism (Lipset 1997: 19). To all this, commitment to other core liberal virtues
might-be added: Firstly, there is an assurance of individual rights which rests upon a
dividing line between the public and private spheres (Morone 1996: 425). From this
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perspective, there is a realm into which neither the state nor civil society can venture.
Secondly, American identity is tied to a faith in self-reliance and the prospect of upward
mobility. The notion of the American dream -exemplified in the novels of Horatio Alger
and Benjamin Franklin's words to intending immigrants - has also long been at the core
of 'Americanism'. As Franklin put it:
'If they are poor, they begin first as Servants or Journeymen; and if they aresober, industrious, and frugal, they soon become Masters, establish themselves inBusiness, marry, raise Families, and become respectable Citizens' (quoted inBellah et. al. 1985: 33).
For his part, Dick Armey, former Majority Leader in the House of Representatives,
emphasizes the role of individual liberty as a defining characteristic:
'You could move to Japan and never become Japanese. You could move toGermany and never become German. But any lover of Freedom can come toAmerica and become an American. That is the mark of a great and powerfulnation' (quoted in Ashbee 1998: 75)
This perspective has two consequences. Firstly, American identity has an open
and inclusive character. The U.S. is willing to embrace all outsiders and newcomers -
irrespective of race or ethnicity - who endorse the defining principles upon which the
country was constructed. Institutionalized forms of oppression and injustice, such as
slavery, segregation, and the use of race-based quotas for immigration, are all consid-
ered alien to American political traditions. Indeed, David Hollinger describes President
Woodrow Wilson's support for both the imposition of segregation in Washington DC
and the division of Europe on the basis of language and descent as deeply un-American
(Hollinger 1995: 135).
Secondly, in some accounts, the political basis of the U.S. has imbued it with a
sense of national purpose. The Declaration of Independence upon which, from this
perspective, the U.S. was founded, was committed to the universal and unalienable
rights of humankind. The U.S. is not an end in itself, but a means through which these
values can be realized across the globe. It is simply a first step. As John J. Miller argues:
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'Securing the universal rights of humankind requires supporting a nation that is
dedicated to them' (Miller 1998: 31).
Thinking such as this is closely allied with some forms of American
exceptionalism. A number of studies have argued that the U.S. has long been committed
to a mission that was bequeathed by the first Congregationalist settlers. Some observers
have claimed that this led the U.S. towards global responsibility and intervention in
Southeast Asia. Michael Hunt records that 'by 1967, half a million Americans, moved by
dreams and fears as old as their nation and yet still as fresh as yesterday, were fighting
in Vietnam (Hunt 1987: 170).
THE DECLINE OF THE 'IDEAS NATION'
Despite the immigration reform act of 1965 -which dramatically extended the
basis for admission to the U.S. - the concept of the 'ideas nation', structured around
liberal principles, was progressively undermined. There were two principal reasons for
this. Firstly, there was a broad paradigmatic shift. Although both Lipset and Huntington
always acknowledged the gap between American ideas - and their promise of
democratic universalism - and the reality of the country's institutions, the phrase 'ideas
nation', and the claim that the U.S. is governed by a democratic 'creed', began - in
themselves - to seem increasingly anachronistic. In contemporary eyes, phrases such as
'ideas nation' or references to a democratic creed appear to disregard the systematic
denial of the values associated with liberalism to particular social groupings and
underestimate the extent to which these values - in themselves - brought forth
institutionalized oppression. Citing an earlier publication of his own, Rogers Smith has
asserted that:
'.. it is "normal not anomalous" for the pursuit of liberal democratic policies togenerate political, economic, social and psychological conditions that foster theperiodic resurgence of traditions of ascriptive inequality' (Stevens and Smith1995).
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Furthermore, in the aftermath of Vietnam, representations of U.S. foreign policy
as the fulfillment of an idealist national mission seemed to have the aura of crude Cold
War propaganda. Economic mobility and the promise of the American dream were
displaced by talk of an underclass and entrenched socio-economic cleavages.
At the same time, the political and philosophical underpinnings, upon which the
'ideas nation' had been constructed, also began to weaken. The scholars and intellectuals
- principally historians - who are most closely associated with representations of the U.S.
in political terms occupied a relatively narrow tract of political territory. Their thinking -
and the conception of the U.S. as an 'ideas nation' - was rooted in mid twentieth century
liberalism or neo-conservatism. However, as political traditions, both progressively lost
ground. From the late 1960s onwards, the liberalism that had underscored the New
Deal, the Fair Deal and the civil rights movement was challenged from both left and
right. Liberalism became more closely associated with redistributive justice, opposition
to U.S. foreign policy, and a commitment to group rights. Neo-conservatism emerged in
response, but was absorbed by the broader conservative movement and lost much of its
initial distinctiveness as an ideological current.
However, despite this and although it assumed a profoundly different form, the
political model of identity was reinvigorated during the 198s and 1990s. The basis for its
re-emergence lay in the character of the mode! itself. By confining 'Americanism' to the
political realm, political definitions of identity were consequentially silent about civil
society and different cultural forms. As Lawrence Auster - a member of the American
Immigration Control Foundation - argues, the representation of identity offered by the
political model has a minimal character. Little - beyond faith in particular principles and
commitment to the rigors of the market economy - is required from the American. As
Auster asserts:
'.. it makes no difference whether a person can participate in the culture of thiscountry or even if he speaks English; holding a job and paying taxes become thesole criterion of being a good and useful citizen' (Auster 1990: 51).
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Although posed in polemical terms, Auster's comment has a degree of
legitimacy. By adopting a disinterested approach to cultural formations and folkways,
the political model of American identity has been able to coexist with mid-century
liberalism, neo-conservatism, and contemporary multiculturalism.
MULTICULTURALISM
From a pluralist or multiculturalist perspective, American identity--which rests
largely on the formal trappings of citizenship and the rights assured by the Constitution,
courts, and the political process -- can coexist with an almost unbounded range of
cultural traditions and expressions of ethnic diversity. For some, cultures are considered
in relativistic terms and, insofar as a conscious process is involved, a matter for
individual choice. 'Hyphenated-Americans' such as Irish or Italian-Americans can -
through their lived experience - place the emphasis on either side of the hyphen and
define their primary attachments in terms of an ethnicity or as American. Against this
background, the apparatus of government should remain neutral. Others assert that
American identity rests upon the conscious celebration of diversity. From this
perspective, government should facilitate and promote cultural expression among the
groupings that have traditionally been disadvantaged by economic and political
processes.
The antecedents of the multiculturalist approach lie in Horace Kallen's 1915 call
for the U.S. to be reconstituted as '.. a democracy of nationalities' (quoted in Gleason
1982.: 97). While remaining united at a political level, there was to be cultural diversity.
Hyphenated-Americanism should not be regarded as a threat to the integrity of the U.S.,
but should instead be celebrated. Contemporary multiculturalism gives this a more
polemical edge by depicting the U.S. as an imperialist power and asserting that
traditional representations of the American nation have masked the hegemony of a
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white Anglo-Saxon elite. As Amiri Baraka, the African-American poet and playwright,
puts it, 'the Eurocentric construct of so-called official Western culture America is a racist
fraud.' (Baraka 1998: 392). It has also attracted vigorous criticism. Multicultural ist
thinking, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. has argued, is leading the U.S. towards
fragmentation. In his eyes, it 'belittles unum and glorifies pluribus' (quoted in Morone
1996: 425). However, despite its radical associations, multiculturalism - or, at the least, a
commitment to ethnic pluralism - has become institutionalized. As Nathan Glazer
records:
"We are all multiculturalists now" .. one would be hard put, if one works withblack schoolchildren, so many of whom attend schools in which they make up allor a good part of the enrollment, to find someone who is not' (Glazer 1998: 160)
The policy proposals that stem from multiculturalism have also been pursued
with increasing vigor by industry and commerce. Affirmative action programs -
whereby particular efforts are made to ensure the composition of the workforce is
broadly representative of American society -are now an established feature of corporate
life. They have, for example, been endorsed by the National Association of Manufac-
turers and the Equal Employment Advisory Council, which includes most of the
Fortune 500 companies (Ashbee 2000: 19-20).
THE CULTURAL MODEL
Although the political model of American identity underpinned many scholarly
discussions and popular commentaries during the latter half of the twentieth century -
and informed American Studies during its early years as an academic discipline - it has
been subject to sustained criticism. It is said to provide a weak and inadequate basis for
national cohesion. It has little integrative power and the citizen's relationship to the U.S.
is relatively detached. Indeed, represented through the political model, the U.S. appears
to constitute more an imagined association than the 'imagined community' that forms
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the basis for Benedict Anderson's seminal study of nationalism (Anderson 2000). The
political model also appears to underestimate the degree to which the American
experience rests upon collective memories and attachments to place.
Cultural definitions of national identity stress these shared traditions and their
role in shaping a sense of belonging. There is, it is said, more to 'being American' than
mere principles, however forcefully these are asserted. However, although this is
common ground for those who think of American identity in cultural terms, there are
important differences among them. Some emphasize the British roots of American
culture, thereby denying the claims of those who portray the U.S. as exceptionalist.
David Hackett Fischer's 1991 book, Albion’s Seed gave the argument empirical
foundations. He argued that the U.S. is structured around four cultural regions, each of
which was shaped by the folkways of the earliest settlers. These, in turn, owed their
origins to cultural forms to be found in the British Isles. In the Massachusetts region, the
Puritan families who followed in the wake of the first Pilgrims were disproportionately
drawn from the eastern counties of England. The origins of the early communities in
Virginia in the decades after the founding of the Jamestown settlement were markedly
different. The colonists were drawn largely from the south and west of England. A
majority of the 23,000 who settled in the Delaware Valley between 1675 and 1725 were
Quakers. They came from the midlands and northern counties of England. During the
eighteenth century other migrants followed--particularly between 1717 and 1775-- the
early settlers from Scotland, the north of Ireland and northern England. They established
communities in the 'backcountry' along the mountains of Maryland, Virginia and the
Carolinas.
Later generations of immigrants were absorbed into the four established cultural
traditions. At the same time, the geographical territory occupied by these distinct
cultures spread so as to incorporate much of the U.S.. Thereby, the folkways of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have persisted to this day, molding the character
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of contemporary America. Fischer offers countless examples of this. He cites different
levels of educational achievement and attitudes towards work. He observes that the
dialects of New England have their origins in eastern England. Similarly, he notes that
the widely shared opposition to gun control in the south and west was shaped by 'the
retributive and every-man-his-own-master principles of the border legacy' (Fischer 1991:
73).
AN AMERICAN CULTURE?
Fischer's approach is, however, open to criticism. It says little about the place of
later immigrants, Native Americans and African-Americans in forging distinctive and
culturally separate folkways. It seems, furthermore, to underestimate the role of the
physical environment in shaping American attitudes and beliefs. Those who talk in
these terms assert that there is a distinctly separate American identity. It is:
a full-blooded nationality, reflecting a history and culture - exactly like all theother nationalities from which Americans have been, and continue to be,recruited. The ongoing immigration makes it difficult to see the real success ofAmericanization in creating distinctive types, characters, styles, artifacts of allsorts which, were Gene Kelly to display them to his Parisian neighbors, theywould rightly recognize as "American". More important, Americans recognizeone another, take pride in the things that fellow Americans have made and done,identify with the national community' (Walzer 1996: 41).
Harper's Magazine has periodically explored the character of American identity
and the culture on which it is constructed. In a 1956 essay, John A. Kouwenhoven
suggested that the country's culture was structured around a number of dualisms, some
of which were originally noted by Tocqueville during his journeys in the 1830s and
1840s. Americans were, Kouwenhoven argued, both materialist and idealist,
conservative and revolutionary, individualistic and gregarious. The Manhattan skyline
brought together seeming chaos yet, at the same time, had a structured order. The
structure of jazz was similarly 'a tension of cross-purposes yet the outcome is a
dazzlingly precise creative unity' (Kouwenhoven 1956: 28). Furthermore, America is
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always in process. Both the past and the future are open-ended. The country is directed
towards boundlessness:
'It does not, like the past of most other people, extend downward into the soil ...It extends laterally backward across the plains, the mountains, or the sea ... justas their future may at any moment lead them down the open road, theendless-vistaed street' (Kouwenhoven 1956: 33).
Those who describe American identity in terms such as these, and see Americanism as a
cultural formation, attribute its origins and growth to different variables. Two forms of
explanation have occupied a particular place in American historiography: the frontier
and the melting pot.
THE FRONTIER: CRUSADE, CRUCIBLE AND CRIME
In a celebrated study, Frederick Jackson Turner argued - in a paper presented to
the American Historical Association in July 1893 - that the frontier marking the settlers'
shift westwards across the continent or, as Turner put it, 'the meeting point between
savagery and civilization', had imbued American society with its defining
characteristics. 'In the crucible of the frontier', Turner asserted, '.. the immigrants were
Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality or
characteristics' (Etulain 1999: 31). Frontier life bred self-reliant individualism. It laid the
basis for a restless impatience with accumulated experience, a firm conviction that
barriers and setbacks could always be transcended, and a pronounced hostility to
government officialdom:
'That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; thatpractical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful graspof material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; thatrestless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and forevil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom -these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of theexistence of the frontier' (quoted in Etulain 1999: 37).
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The concept of the frontier has, however, been subject to sustained criticism
(Ashbee 2003). In particular, there are significant silences regarding gender and race. It
is, furthermore, a mono-causal explanation of American development that draws upon
human geography alone.
THE MELTING POT
Although few would deny the overall significance of the settlers' interaction with
their physical environment, others have emphasized the interaction of human variables
in shaping American cultural characteristics. In 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur,
who settled in America after serving as a soldier with the French armies, published his
experiences in Letters from an American Farmer. He asked a celebrated question: 'What,
then, is the American, this new man?' His answer asserted that American identity rested
upon the abandonment of former nationalities, beliefs and attitudes that had formerly
been held, and the embrace by immigrants of entirely new cultural forms. American
character, he argued, rested on:
'... that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I couldpoint out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wifewas Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sonshave now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leavingbehind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from thenew mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the newrank he holds ... Here individuals are melted into a great new race of men, whoselabors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world' (Crevecoeur1986: 69-70)
Over a century later - amidst mass immigration from eastern and southern
Europe - Israel Zangwill built upon Crevecoeur's observations by representing the U.S.
in terms of a 'melting pot'. Both asserted that American identity rested upon a distinct
national culture and tradition. It drew on cultures from across the globe, but the lived
experience of breaking free from the class structures of Europe and settling a continent
had created new ideas and attitudes.
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The melting pot has lost much of its former credibility. Some have asserted that it
obscures the harsher realities of the Americanization process insofar as it implies that
the nationalities and races came together on broadly egalitarian terms. However, they
argue, there was in practice a process of assimilation or 'Americanization'. Immigrants
had to accept a culture shaped by British settlers and their descendants. In place of the
'melting pot', newcomers were subject to a process structured around
'Anglo-conformity'. As Benjamin Schwarz has noted:
"Americanization" was a process of coercive conformity ... various nationalitieswere made into Americans as ore is refined into gold. "Americanization" purifiedthem, eliminating the dross. The Americanization movement's "melting pot"pageants, inspired by Israel Zangwill's play by that name, celebrated conformityto a narrow conception of American nationality by depicting strangely attiredforeigners stepping into a huge pot and emerging as clean, well-spoken,well-attired, "American-looking" Americans, that is, Anglo-Americans' (Schwarz1995).
THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF AN AMERICAN CULTURE
Nonetheless, although the concept of the frontier and the melting pot metaphor
have few uncritical contemporary adherents, the belief that there is an American identity
that extends beyond adherence to particular political principles has persisted. It is
shared across the political spectrum. As Newt Gingrich, former Republican House
Speaker has asserted:
'From the Jamestown colony and the Pilgrims, through de Tocqueville’sDemocracy in America, up to the Norman Rockwell paintings of the 1940s and1950s, there was a clear sense of what it meant to be an American. Ourcivilization is based on a spiritual and moral dimension. It emphasizes personalresponsibility as much as individual rights (Gingrich 1995: 7).
It also underpins Michael Lind's plea for 'liberal nationalism' and his claims that
the U.S., along with the countries of western Europe, are contributing to their own
demise. The lack of cultural cohesion, the low level of family formation, and the absence
of 'martial courage' make countries unsustainable in the long term (Gray and Lind 2001:
20-21). Lind therefore puts forward policy proposals that are directed towards
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assimilation and the reconstruction of a national culture. He emphasizes the need to
teach and use the English language. However, he asserts, other forms of acculturation
are also important:
'There is more to the national culture than the national language, though thelanguage is both the primary index of nationality and its major means oftransmission. In addition, there are folkways - not abstract moral codes, butparticular ways of acting, ways of dressing, conventions of masculinity andfemininity, ways of celebrating major events like births, marriages, and funerals,particular kinds of sports and recreations, conceptions of the proper boundariesbetween the secular and religious spheres. And there is also a body of material -ranging from historical events that everyone is expected to know about to widelyshared but ephemeral knowledge of sports and cinema and music - that might becalled common knowledge. Common language, common folkways, commonknowledge - these, rather than race or religion or political philosophy, are whatidentify a member of the American cultural nation' (Lind 1996: 265-66).
ASSIMILATION AND ACCULTURATION
There are policy consequences if identity is defined in cultural rather than
political terms. Some assert that a program of acculturation is required. Immigrants
should undergo Americanization. They should be compelled to learn English,
understand the structures of government, share the values, and come to share the
folkways around which the U.S. is constructed. Subgroup loyalties have to be
subordinated to a common national identity.
From this perspective, therefore, few first or second-generation immigrants can
be regarded as fully 'American'. Furthermore, from this, perspective, many of the
policies adopted from the 1960s onwards undermined traditional assimilative
mechanisms and should, therefore, be reversed. Bilingual education discouraged
immigrants from learning English. The pre-1997 system of welfare provision, affirmative
action programs, and the growing emphasis upon 'group rights' cut across the spirit of
self-reliance that had traditionally compelled newcomers to adapt to the American
mainstream. Multiculturalism allowed - indeed at times required - individuals to
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maintain their former allegiances. It thereby obstructed assimilation and the adoption of
an American identity.
Others put forward a cultural model of identity, but see the process of
assimilation in less demanding terms. A number of commentators have argued that a
significant proportion of the contemporary immigrant population already adhere to the
values that one characterized mainstream American culture. Indeed, it is said, some are
more committed to individualism, self-reliance and family values than a large
proportion of the native-born American population (Ashbee 1998: 76).
Others also see the assimilative process in less rigorous terms than the
proponents of Americanization. They talk of ethnic pluralism, but insist however that
minority groupings should remain subordinated to the national culture and purpose.
Michael Walzer draws a contrast between the U.S. and republican conceptions of
citizenship in revolutionary France. In 1791, the Constituent Assembly voted to fully
emancipate French Jews. It, however, demanded their full embrace of a French identity.
As one deputy said:
'One must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, and give everything to theJews as individuals ... It would be repugnant to have ... a nation within a nation'(quoted in Walzer 1996: 43).
From this perspective, American identity has little in common with French
conceptions of identity. It does not demand unbounded loyalty or require an exhaustive
commitment. Indeed, it differs from other national identities. Although structured
around a culture rather than a mere creed, it is exceptional insofar as it is tolerant of
ethnic pluralism. Walzer records:
'We have made our peace with the "particular characteristics" of all theimmigrant groups and have come to regard American nationality as an additionto rather than a replacement for ethnic consciousness' (Walzer 1996: 45).
'Hyphenated' Americans such as Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans have not--
according to Walzer--retained from former identities. Instead, these are amalgam
cultures. Furthermore, individuals can either emphasize their original ethnicity or their
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status as Americans. They can make a voluntary choice that may not be a full
commitment to their adopted country.
THE ETHNO-RACIAL MODEL
There is a further representation of American identity. It has traditionally been
associated with nativist groupings and has -- either implicitly or explicitly -- informed
many of the campaigns against immigration.
The ethno-racial model has four defining characteristics. Firstly, it vigorously
denies the claim that nations can be constructed on the basis of principles or beliefs. An
'ideas nation' will necessarily fall apart as different ethnic groupings - which are rooted
much more securely in family descent and associations with particular villages, towns or
lands - reassert themselves. As John O'Sullivan puts it, 'almost all the ideological nations
have collapsed, generally in acrimony' (quoted in Miller 1998: 29). Those whose ideas are
informed by ethnic or racial definitions of identity are, therefore, amongst the most
savage critics of 'nation building' and the belief that U.S. foreign policy can be used to
build nations that draw in and integrate a number of different ethnic groupings. The
peace plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina agreed at Dayton attracted particular ire.
Secondly, while some cultural representations are associated with the claim that
American identity rests upon a new or composite personality forged by immigrants
from across the globe, those who adhere to the ethno-racial model insist - to a much
greater extent than those who draw on the cultural model - that traditional American
folkways were shaped by their British origins. However, many associated with ethno-
racial definitions also stress the role of later 'white ethnic' immigrants who settled
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From their perspective,
although American identity is built upon the early communities established in Virginia
and the Puritanism of the first New England settlers, its essence as a nation also lies
among the waves of later immigrants from the different countries of Europe. In the
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words of Thomas Fleming, editor of Chronicles, national identity rests upon a fusion of
Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, and Ellis Island (Fleming 1995: 17).
Thirdly, although the U.S. has been corrupted by both mass immigration from
the other Americas and Asia, and the cosmopolitanism of the governing elites, it is in
essence a nation-state that is defined by descent from these beginnings. As Anthony D.
Smith records, the ethnic model is constituted on the basis of lineage:
'Its distinguishing feature is its emphasis on a community of birth and nativeculture Whether you stayed in your community or emigrated to another, youremained ineluctably, organically, a member of the community of your birth andwere for ever stamped by it. A nation, in other words, was first and foremost acommunity of common descent' (Smith 1991: 11).
Fourthly, the ethnic model has a 'closed' character. Those who are culturally, or
in some accounts, racially distanced from a particular 'community of birth' cannot be
assimilated into it. Peter Brimelow's 1996 book, Alien Nation, is representative of this
approach. It suggests that many of the immigrants who arrived in the U.S. following the
1965 liberalization of the immigration laws are, in practice, inassimilable. In particular, it
is said, those of Latino origin have clung to their own language, folkways and cultural
forms. Indeed, according to Scott McConnell of National Review - the foremost
conservative journal - second and third generation Latinos have instincts that are more
separatist than those of their parents and grandparents. He suggests that young Latinos
'.. see themselves locked in irremediable conflict with white society'. The idea of
Reconquista the absorption of the southwestern U.S. states by Mexico -has, he suggests,
gained increasing acceptance among them (McConnell 1997: 33). Some commentaries
have cited the events on September 11th 2001 as a further illustration of this. They have
noted that the hijackers appeared to have adopted many of the trappings of western
identity. However, this can be deceptive:
'Some fiercely reject the new society into which they have moved ... Whateverthe reason, some people reject an American future and ricochet backwards intotheir own tradition -except, of course, that the tradition they seek is no longer the
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uncomplicatedly comforting one of their youth but one subtly distorted by theirrejection of American modernity' (O'Sullivan 2001: 42).
Those who insist upon the inassimilable character of particular groupings are
going beyond the parameters of the cultural model. Their claim that particular folkways,
attitudes and forms of behavior are deeply ingrained or immutable meshes together
with notions drawn from sociobiology. Critical observers suggest that those who have
adopted an ethnic understanding of the American nation, and regard immigration as a
threat to the cultural integrity of the U.S., have resurrected the racist sentiments that
informed earlier anti-immigrant, nativist movements.
Ethno-racial representations of U.S. identity are often depicted as a break with
mainstream American thought. They are commonly represented as '.. deviant sidesteps
in the otherwise forward march of liberal ideas in America's political culture' (Stevens
and Smith 1995). For radical and Marxist observers however, ascriptive values - most
notably those tied to race - have long defined American identity. W.E.B. DuBois -the
black intellectual who guided the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) during its formative years - emphasized the place of caste, exploitation
and, indeed, naked hatred in the construction of Americanism. He noted the:
deep conviction of myriads of men that congenital differences among the mainmasses of human beings absolutely, conditioned the individual destiny of everymember of a group' (quoted in Stevens and Smith 1995).
DuBois' judgement was echoed some decades later by those associated with the New
Left for whom Americanism was synonymous with oppression at home and
imperialism abroad.
SURVEYING U.S. PUBLIC OPINION
All three definitions of national identity have appeared - either implicitly or
explicitly - in a number of popular commentaries. They have also underpinned debate
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about the future of immigration policy. Insofar as contemporary public policy is rooted
in a structured definition of identity, it draws primarily on political representations.
Congress under the 1990 Immigration Act established the U.S. Commission on
Immigration Reform. Its 1997 report fused the liberal themes associated with political
definitions of identity together with a belief in ethnic pluralism and diversity.
'We believe these truths constitute the distinctive characteristics of Americannationality the principles and values embodied in the American Constitution andtheir fulfillment in practice: equal protection and justice under the law; freedomof speech and religion; and representative government; Lawfully-admittednewcomers of any ancestral nationality -without regard to race, ethnicity, orreligion - truly become Americans when they give allegiance to these principlesand values ..' (U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform 1997: 25).
At the same time, the report also edged, albeit in very cautious terms, towards
something more. In particular, it regarded language as an important consideration and
asserted that the U.S. would be strengthened by greater fluency in English, although it
also emphasized that many would continue to speak, or learn, their own languages as
well (U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform 1997: 25).
However, although the three representations of identity are to be found in both
popular and scholarly discourse, they have customarily been either asserted in ex
cathedra terms or have rested upon an appraisal of the American historical process.
There have been few attempts to consider and assess popular perceptions of American
identity. However, in 1995-96, the General Social Survey (GSS) attempted to gauge the
character of public opinion by including a national identity module in its ongoing work.
The module formed part of a study of 24 countries across the world conducted by the
International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The survey also included other G7 nations, a
significant number of 'transitional' societies such as Russia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and
Latvia, together with two Asian countries: Japan and the Philippines. Respondents were
asked about the factors that allowed an individual to belong to a particular nation.
What, for example, made someone 'truly' American or British? The exact wording of
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each question was adjusted so as to correspond with national circumstances. In Canada,
for example, two languages were specified and those questioned were asked whether it
was important to speak either English or French. Similarly, Question 3 (below) was
always posed in different terms so that it referred to the dominant religious faith, faiths
or denomination within each of the countries.
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Some people say that the following things are important for being (e.g. trulyAmerican). Others say they are not important. How important do you think each ofthe following is ... (in percentages).
VI—very important; FI—fairly important; NVI—not very important;
NIAA—not important at all
Table 1: Language How important is it to be able to speak (dominant language[s] inthe respondent's country)?
VI FI NVI NIAA (N)
U.S. 71.3 21.6 5.1 1.9 1340
Canada 48.7 32.2 11.5 7.6 1502
Britain 65.0 23.4 7.8 3.8 1023
W. Germany 54.9 34.9 8.0 2.2 1245
Netherlands 67.4 28.0 3.5 1.1 2075
Hungary 79.0 17.9 2.3 0.8 991
Source: adapted from International Social Survey Program 1998: 16.
Table 2: Length of residenceHow important is it to have lived in (respondent's country) for most of one's life?
VI FI NVI NIAA (N)
U.S. 44.3 28.8 20.4 6.5 1324
Canada 23.3 28.8 32.6 15.3 1503
Britain 41.8 33.7 19.5 5.0 1003
W. Germany 27.9 35.5 27.0 9.7 1224
Netherlands 21.0 38.3 32.9 7.8 2037
Hungary 47.1 28.1 19.5 5.3 983
Source: adapted from International Social Survey Program 1998: 15.
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Table 3: ReligionHow important is it to be a (country's dominant religion or denomination)?
VI FI NVI NIAA (N)
U.S. 38.6 15.1 21.5 24.8 1309
Canada 14.7 9.8 20 55.5 1465
Britain 21.6 13.9 28.5 36.0 997
W. Germany 16.6 17.2 22.6 43.6 1213
Netherlands 3.3 4.0 24.0 68.8 2012
Hungary 19.7 16.2 30.3 33.8 980
Source: adapted from International Social Survey Program 1998: 17.
Table 4: Place of birthHow important is it to have been born in (respondent's country)?
VI FI NVI NIAA (N)
U.S. 41.2 27.5 18.9 12.4 1325
Canada 24.7 20.7 28.5 26.1 1491
Britain 49.8 28.8 14.8 6.6 1025
W. Germany 26.9 23.8 31.5 17.8 1243
Netherlands 23.4 28.7 35.4 12.5 2063
Hungary 40.7 27.1 21.1 11.0 980
Source: Adapted from International Social Survey Program 1998: 13.
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WHO’S YOUR GRANDDADDY? OR WHO GETS TO BE AMERICAN,CULTURALLY SPEAKING
Although it would be a mistake to over-generalize from a limited range of
questions, some initial conclusions can be drawn. Despite the claims of those who
represent the U.S. in terms of the political model, a sizeable majority of Americans
perceive national identity in distinctly different terms. To be 'truly American':
About two-thirds of Americans assert that an individual must have been born inthe U.S.;
Over half believe that adherence to the Christian faith is also required; Almost three-quarters argue that individuals must have lived in the U.S. for most
of their lives; Over two-thirds go further and say that they must have been born in the U.S.; And over 90 per cent believe that proficiency in the English language is essential.
These beliefs and values are associated with cultural and ethno-racial
conceptions of the U.S. rather than political definitions. They represent a rejection of
both liberal representations of identity and, as Jack Citrin emphasizes, a repudiation of
multiculturalism (Citrin 2001: 300). The beliefs underpinning the responses to these
questions are tied to a sense of identity that is structured around tightly drawn
parameters. For example, the association between American identity and Christianity
excludes those committed to the Judaic and Islamic faiths. These assertions about
identity point to a belief that individuals must be immersed in the folkways of the
country. Acculturation is a necessary corollary. Furthermore, the claim that an
individual must have been born in the U.S. if he or she is to be 'truly American'- an
assurance of citizenship under the Constitution - suggests that ascriptive qualities have
at least a partial role in determining national identity.
The statistics offer little to those who talk of an 'ideas nation', propositional forms
of identity, and American exceptionalism. Although a greater proportion of Hungarians
see their identity in culturally defined terms, there are other few statistically significant
differences between the U.S. and the European countries included in the survey.
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Furthermore, where there are differences, it seems that many of these other countries
-rather than the U.S. - lean towards a political definition of identity. Although, for
example, British respondents share some of the feelings towards identity that are
evident in the U.S., there are marked differences in attitudes towards religion. Despite
the Church of England's role as the established church, fewer of those in the U.K. believe
that adherence to the Christian faith is a defining feature of British national identity.
Paradoxically, a comparison of the survey findings between the U.S. and Canada could
be used to bolster claims that Canada -- rather than the U.S. -- is closer to the defining
features of the political model.
THE BREAK-DOWN OF AMERICAN OPINION
Alongside international comparisons, the General Social Survey (GSS) also offers
the opportunity to look at the relationship between attitudes towards national identity
and different demographic variables including gender, income, age, and race. The
findings indicate that feelings about identity are shared across most demographic
cleavages. However, although the sample numbers are small, they suggest some
significant racial and ethnic differences.
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Some people say that the following things are important for being truly American.Others say they are not important, (in percentages).
VI—very important; FI—fairly important; NVI—not very important;
NIAA—not important at all
Table 5: How important is it to be able to speak English?
VI FI NVI NIAA (N)
White 71.7 21.9 4.7 1.7 1088
Black 73.3 18.3 5.6 2.8 180
Other 61.1 26.4 11.1 1.4 72
Table 6: How important is it to have lived in America for most of one's life?
VI FI NVI NIAA (N)
White 42.4 29.3 21.5 6.9 1080
Black 60.1 22.5 14.5 2.9 173
Other 35.2 36.6 18.3 9.9 71
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Table 7: How important is it to be a Christian?
VI FI NVI NIAA (N)
White 35.5 15.4 21.9 27.2 1063
Black 62.1 14.7 16.9 6.2 177
Other 26.1 11.6 27.5 34.8 69
Table 8: How important is it to have been born in America?
VI FI NVI NIAA (N)
White 38.3 28.2 20.4 13.1 1078
Black 64 18.5 11.2 6.2 178
Other 27.5 40.6 14.5 17.4 69
Source: adapted from General Social Survey Cumulative Datafile (1979-2000).
As Tables 6-8 suggest, disproportionate numbers of African-Americans seem
committed to beliefs associated with a restricted definition of identity and the cultural
model. Over 60 per cent regard lifetime residence, adherence to the Christian faith, and
birth in the U.S. as 'very important' in determining American national identity. Among
whites, feelings are significantly less intense. For those categorized as 'others'
-principally Latinos - the figures are lower still. Only the most tentative and speculative
forms of explanation can be offered for these findings. Although overall levels of
religiosity are high, a much higher proportion of African-Americans than the white
population considers itself to be 'very religious' (General Social Survey Cumulative
Datafile 1979-2000). The attributes specified in the question - such as birth in the U.S.
and long-term residence - allow respondents an opportunity to 'belong' to the U.S. in a
context where other forms of 'belonging' appear to have been denied. The degree of
identification with these particular components of national identity may be an
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expression of alienation and could correspond with the conclusions drawn in those
studies of black opinion that have found a significant degree of isolation and
detachment from the American 'mainstream'. For example, in her 1995 study of the black
middle class, Facing Up to the American Dream, Jennifer Hochschild found that despite
rising levels of material prosperity, there was widespread disenchantment with the
American dream and its promise of upward mobility and individual success
(Hochschild 1995: 72). There may also be an association between African-American
sentiments and the competitive pressures that have been created in the secondary labor
market by the dramatic growth of the Latino population. Between 1980 and 2000, the
Latino share of the overall U.S. population grew from 9 per cent to 12.5 per cent.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
As has been noted, there multicultural three principal definitions of American
national identity. The political model -in both its liberal and multiculturalist forms -
confines the locus of national identity to the political realm. It is, at least formally,
disinterested in culture. In contrast, the cultural model insists that there is an American
nationality resting on distinct folkways. These incorporate the speaking of English and
the adoption of particular attitudes. Ethno-racial models go beyond this and assert that
only some ethnic and racial groupings can be assimilated. Although many of the most
celebrated studies of American identity draw on the political model and rest on liberal
representations of the U.S. experience, the 1995-96 ISSP and GSS surveys suggest that a
disproportionate number of Americans are committed to ideas associated with the
cultural model of identity. Furthermore, there is an implicit assertion that the
assimilation process presents formidable obstacles to the newcomer. Indeed, as has been
noted, over 68 per cent believe that immigrants themselves cannot be fully assimilated.
They regard birth in the U.S. as either 'very' (VI) or' fairly' important (FI) in defining
who is, or is not, 'truly American'.
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The GSS findings have public policy and socio-cultural implications for “native”
Americans and Newcomers. Although suppressed by the economic boom during the
latter half of the 1990s, immigration has long been a source of political controversy.
While faith in the efficacy of unrestricted market forces also plays a role, those who call
for significantly increased levels of immigration, or even open borders, also derive their
arguments, either implicitly or explicitly, from a political definition of American
identity. Correspondingly, opposition to an open immigration policy is fuelled and
strengthened by perceptions of the U.S. that rest upon cultural, or in some cases
ethno-racial definitions. The degree to which these representations of the U.S. have won
popular acceptance suggests that - notwithstanding suggestions that the Bush
administration might liberalize policy towards both legal and illegal immigrants from
Mexico - the centre of political gravity will remain within the restrictionist camp. The
security concerns about immigrants that arose in the aftermath of the September 11th
attacks only added further weight to their arguments.
There are further consequences. Over the next half-century, the demographic
character of the U.S. is expected to change profoundly. Although there will be important
differences between regions, the census Bureau estimates that the U.S. will have a
non-white majority by 2060. Some observers are optimistic about the nature of the
change. In a 2001 essay, Jack Citrin considers the GSS findings alongside other survey
evidence and suggests that there is still the widely shared commitment to an American
'civil religion' that Tocqueville recorded in the ante-bellum era. It rests, Citrin argues,
upon a shared identity and a culture that draws Americans together, but at the same
time permits a degree of diversity. Against this background, demographic change
would have a relatively straightforward character.
'A common identity is a lubricant that helps a nation achieve collective goals.Liberal nationalism is a formula for fusing individual members of Americansociety into a system that assures equality of status and a measure ofcommonality to all while, at the same time, allowing the maintenance of differentcultural traditions' (Citrin 2001: 305).
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However, the GSS and ISSP findings also point in another direction. While
survey respondents generally acknowledge the importance of at least limited diversity
as a policy goal, the widely shared commitment to cultural representations of national
identity - in particular, the large numbers who do not see foreign-born or non-Christian
citizens as 'truly American' - suggests a basis for division rather than consensus. The
growing numbers of Latino and Asian immigrants, and the increasing proportion of the
population that is foreign-born, can only intensify resentments and tensions. In such
circumstances, the task of coalition building - around which the American political
process has long been structured - will inevitably become a more fraught and difficult
process.
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CHAPTER 8: CINEMATIC DISCIPLINING OF THE IMMIGRANT OTHER ON THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER
Boundary maintenance appears to be a function common to all social systems andgroups, small and large, and thus part of the construction of the practices andnarrative accounts by which these—more or less strictly bounded—groups areconstituted (Paasi 1996, 27).
Most who write about storytelling focus on its community-building functions:stories build consensus, a common culture of shared understandings, and adeeper, more vital ethics. But stories and counter-stories can serve an equallyimportant destructive function. They can show that what we believe is ridiculous,self-serving, or cruel. They can show us the way out of the trap of unjustifiedexclusion. They can help us understand when it is time to reallocate power. Theyare the other half—the destructive half—of the creative dialectic (Delgado 1995,65).
SYNOPSIS:For some time the US-Mexico border has been a symbol-and site-of conflict,
collaboration, and transnational mobility. Related to the border, the topic of
undocumented immigration, and Mexican migrants in particular, has received
considerable attention in recent mainstream media. In light of the September 11 attacks
on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.,
monitoring of the US-Mexico border has become a key component of efforts to pre-empt
perceived vulnerabilities in US national security systems. Although these recent events
have highlighted media attention on 'suspicious' border crossers, the cinematic examples
I draw on illustrate an ongoing fear (and social anxiety) about borders and border
crossing of various forms. In this chapter I explore how narratives of borders and
nationhood are mapped onto immigrant bodies and border spaces through specific
filmic representations. The films themselves comprise a body of work by U.S. nationals
during the 1990s that re-inscribe social categories like “immigrant” and “foreigner”
within an ethno-racial disciplinary regime that subordinate and negate alien
subjectivities.
In order to undertake this study I focus on three cinematic examples exploring
representations of immigration at the US-Mexico border-Touch of Evil, The Border and
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Lone Star-exploring how concepts of borders, race, and gender, and tropes of "The
South" are re-territorialized onto immigrant bodies and around specific locales. I argue
that an inability to control and 'fix' boundaries around possible 'threats' to specific US
spaces and identities is counteracted by displacing this fear onto more easily marked
targets that are viewed as posing challenges to national (and personal) security, i.e.,
undocumented immigrants. At the same time, the threats and spaces for immigrants
themselves become increasingly marginalized, blurred, and frequently erased.
INTERTEXTUALITY: NARRATIVE, FILM AND SOCIAL DISCOURSES OFIDENTITY
Storytelling can take place through a variety of forms, and-as Delgado (1995)
states above-it can challenge dominant ideas. Cinematic narrative, as an example, also
utilizes certain conventions to map out social and spatial relations. Media stories can
reinforce dominant cultural and regional identities and represent "marginal" identities as
threatening, inferior, and separate. At the same time these media stories-or maps-of
contested identities and spaces may fuel sentiments such as fear and terror, particularly
in relation to how and who can travel across and between social and physical borders.
Creating a narrative relies on prioritizing specific ideas and subjects in order to present a
partial description of a series of events, histories, and places. Concomitantly, storytelling
can take various forms--cinema, novels, television, oral histories-and in so doing each of
these becomes a series of multi-layered and intertextual tales.
My use of "intertextuality" draws from the writings of Kristeva (1966), wherein
texts are intertwined rather than being self-contained, i.e., texts include discourses and
meanings that are drawn from other discourses, social spheres and categories and
molded into autobiographic bricolage. For example, the film Touch of Evil develops and
critiques previous discursive creations of the US-Mexico border as a dangerous and
liminal space, thereby integrating meanings that have been represented in other texts.
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In this chapter I explore the ways in which the creation of border narratives and
subjectivities in cinema are interwoven with efforts to define space, place, and identity. I
examine "border films" as a means by which mainstream tropes of "Southern" regional
identities are represented through anxieties over boundaries, tensions that at times
provide challenges to dominant representations, particularly within more recent filmic
renderings (e.g., Lone Star). In addition, although popular films addressing aspects of
immigration have focused on efforts to expel undocumented immigrants from the US, I
will argue that at the same time there has been an unspoken desire to keep these "exiled"
communities at close proximity. In other words, although there is an effort to depict
immigrants (particularly Mexican migrants) as "outside" of society, there is also a
concerted effort to keep this social group placed firmly in the public eye in order to
"locate" it in very rudimentary terms. Cinematic efforts to locate marginal populations
within dominant narratives of regional and national identities reflect an attraction to,
and anxiety about, scale and difference: as representations of global movements of
people and commodities become increasingly common, they are joined with fears about
who controls territory, cultural identity, the ability to travel and mobility more
generally. To undertake this exploration I emphasize the ways in which specific spatial
imaginaries of the border and the "South" in three key films-Touch of Evil, The Border,
and Lone Star-have depicted a social landscape tied into national and international
settings that represents the fluidity of borders and identities while simultaneously
highlighting efforts to keep them firmly in place.
The chapter is divided into three main sections. I begin my examination by
outlining my theoretical framework, which focuses on the links between space, identity
and representation. This is followed by a discussion of the three films selected and the
conflicts and social contradictions that they represent, particularly in relation to race and
gender within the discourse of the citizenship and immigration. In the third section I
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explore what these films suggest for understanding a spatial imaginary of the South as
represented by the US-Mexico border, particularly in relation to transnational identities.
GEOGRAPHIES OF THE BORDER SELF AND SOCIUS IN CINEMA
Within every story there is an effort to provide some form of introduction to the
setting and characters. The exposition, or framing of a drama, is used to situate the
proceeding (or prior) events. In the case of mainstream media there is also an effort to
frame discussions of specific events within very particular modes of representation
drawing on popular symbols and narratives. In discussions of immigration and the
US-Mexico border, cinematic images have played an important role in shaping (just as
they have been shaped by) debates over immigration policy reform and the policing of
undocumented immigrants.
In recent years there has been a growth in geographic research exploring the
relationships between place, identity, and representation, particularly in work focusing
on mass media. Cinema in particular has become an important context for exploring the
ways in which images of people and places are (re)produced. Drawing on discussions in
media and cultural studies, geographers have attempted to understand the ways in
which film has been used to create stories about specific locales and their inhabitants,
and to create a geography of its own: "The camera does not mirror reality but creates it,
endowing it with meaning, discourse, and ideology. And this endowment can and
should be contested .... Our belief is that lived experience is a coalescence of
re-presentations anchored in media images on the one side and our places and practices
on the other" (Aitken and Zonn 1994, 21). Unlike some previous analyses of film, which
viewed media images as reflecting reality on a screen or television set, Aitken and Zonn
suggest the ways in which we carry with us various representational and material
spaces. I would push this idea even further to state that it becomes impossible to
differentiate between those "media images" and "our places and practices" due to the
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ways in which they inform and become embedded in each other. This suturing of
narratives, image, and identities, can be so complex that on many levels the "effects" of
media are particularly difficult to discern, and indeed far from the purpose of this
chapter. As Gauntlett notes in response to longstanding criticisms of media and
depictions of "social problems" and violence:
To assert that, say, "media violence" will bring negative consequences isnot only to presume that depictions of violence in the media will alwaysbe promoting antisocial behavior, and that such a category exists andmakes sense... but also assumes that the medium holds a singular messagewhich will be carried unproblematically to the audience. The effects modeltherefore performs the double deception of presuming (a) that the mediapresents a singular and clear-cut "message," and (b) that the proponents ofthe effects model are in a position to identify what that message is (1998,8).
My purpose in this chapter, therefore, is not to deduce how cinematic
representations of the US-Mexico border and immigration have caused particular
attitudes towards immigrants to be formed, but rather to explore different ways in
which specific filmic narrative grammars can be read from a socio-literary perspective
and how these have been adapted and deployed at different moments by various social
actors.
I also aim to understand the ways in which certain spatial imaginaries of the
US-Mexico border have been represented in Touch of Evil's film-noir setting and how
these have been reinforced and/or challenged by more recent alternative filmic
geographies. These spatial imaginaries contain telling notions of power, control, scale,
and ideology. As will be shown in the following discussion of border films, the issue of
scale surfaces around efforts to establish control over space, representations, and
identities at an individual, local, national, and international level. At the same time,
although situated in a different context, images of the border run parallel to popular
media images of the US South as exotic, uncontrollable and embedded in the past2.
Borders represent the ambiguity and collapsing of scales, which reflects a concern for,
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and terror about, the central characters' loss of (moral and physical) boundaries. There is
an anxiety about proximity, and yet a desire for closeness, drawing on a desire to be
close to our own borders-be they social, physical, or psychological. As such, it can be
argued that the US and Mexico are within and apart from each other: they are part of
spatial imaginaries where borders are continually drawn and blurred, where conflicts
over race, gender (particularly masculinity), and sexuality are ongoing, and where
intense efforts to refine and delineate borders and order result in escalating chaos.
FRONTIER FANTASIES: HYPOTHETICAL SELVES & THREATENING OTHERS
Psychologically, cinematic “Mexico” has alternated between being a good
neighbor and a neighboring menace (Cortes 1989, 94-95). Cinema provides an important
context for understanding American depictions of the US-Mexico border and Mexico as
a whole. As Cortes (1989, 113) comments, "Frontier Mexico, especially Tijuana, has
become the convenient Hollywood source of background sin and menace." To examine
this border landscape further, three examples provide a useful introduction: Touch of
Evil (1958), The Border (1982), and Lone Star (1996). These films were selected because
while they were made in different decades using contrasting cinematography, they all
evince a social anxiety over immigrant self-fashioning, border crossing and they do fit
into what I would term a "borderlands" aesthetic following Anzaldua (1989). By this, I
mean that the US-Mexico borders, and particularly Mexico, become the quintessential
"South"-an national and international space of difference, fear and exotic identities-the
landscape in which spaces and identities become increasingly transient and haunted.
While the cinematography of Touch of Evil relies on the shadowy environment of more
traditional film noir settings, The Border and Lone Star use an almost negative effect-a
bleaching of the harsh semi-arid landscape-but with similar impacts, in that these locales
continue to ensnare and reproduce a semi-dreamlike state. These films also speak to
broader discussions of the US-Mexico border and "borderline" identities.
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In his nightmarish film noir extravaganza-Touch of Evil-Orson Welles explores
the corrupt world of underground criminals and police deals at the USMexico border.
Welles plays the corrupt and omnipresent Detective Quinlan, while Charlton Heston
counteracts his activities as the scrupulous Mexican-born detective Mike Vargas. Vargas
aims to expose Quinlan's backdoor approaches towards justice, while in turn, the former
plans to frame his new, and incredibly naïve wife, Susan (played by Janet Leigh) in a
staged drug bust/murder, which involves the cooperation of local Mexican gangsters.
As the plots unravel, Vargas gathers the evidence he needs to convict Quinlan (helped
by Quinlan's partner and best friend), and once Quinlan is broken and dead, Tanya (an
old friend of Quinlan's played by Marlene Dietrich) appears stating (infamously), "He
was some kind of man."
The Border, directed by Tony Richardson, although very different stylistically
from Welles's film, has commonalities in the central characters' moral struggles and also
focuses on the shadowy life of law enforcement at the US-Mexico border. The film
follows the everyday life of an El Paso Border Patrol agent, Charlie (played by Jack
Nicholson), who in response to his wife's (Marcy) apparently insatiable desire for
material comforts, accepts a deal with corrupt agent, Cat, to take pay-offs in return for
allowing a number of undocumented immigrants into the US. This unveils the unwieldy
and violent world of corruption on both sides of the border, eventually leading to its
renunciation by Charlie through his efforts to help a young Mexican woman, Maria.
The third film, Lone Star, is a more recent production directed by John Sayles,
which like The Border takes the Texas-Mexico border as its setting. The film is set in the
fictitious town of Frontera, where the present county Sheriff, Sam Deeds, stumbles upon
a half-unearthed human skull and a sheriff's badge while examining an abandoned rifle
range. Sam learns that while acting as a deputy for the past Sheriff, Charlie Wade, his
father (Buddy Deeds) refused to take any part in the Sheriff's extortion rackets. Furious
at this resistance, Wade stormed out of a restaurant with Buddy, and after this incident
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Wade was never seen again. Despite his father's heroic reputation in the town, Sam is
convinced that Buddy murdered Wade, and he sets out to establish the "truth" behind
the mystery. As we follow this exploration-back and forth through memories of the
border-we realize that Sam is not only attempting to recover his father's past, but also
his childhood sweetheart, Pilar Cruz.
Although varied in terms of style and content each of these films depicts concerns
around justice, borders, resistance, and morality. The themes emerge at different scales,
both in terms of intensity and socio-spatial contexts, but undercurrents of anxiety and
fear mark each. In many ways these are films that represent a range of nightmare or
"dream" spaces, reflecting the central characters' perspectives as they view the world
with little or no sense of control. Quinlan lives in the haunted memory of his wife's
violent murder, while Vargas is constantly negotiating US and Mexican identities, as
well as his own naivete about corruption; in The Border, Charlie stumbles around a
world in which consumerism and crime rule everyday life; and in Lone Star the
characters struggle to confront past and present lives. These are cinematic and cultural
landscapes in which the boundaries between "good" and "evil" are increasingly blurred
and where the characters' attempts to establish order leads to intensified chaos.
LOCATING THE BORDERS OF SELF: BOUNDED IDENTITY & SPLIT SELVES
Although the material and subconscious landscapes in these films introduce us to
settings in which we explore constantly shifting frames of mind-or "neuroses,"the
physical location and specificity of locale is integral to many scenes. The built
environment, therefore, is significant in each of these representations because in some
ways its relative fixity contrasts sharply with the fluidity of the social context, but in
other ways the two run parallel.
At the opening of Touch of Evil, for example, the camera pans around the scene in
a famously long panorama of the street scene below-a small border town, set in
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shadowy light, with border crossers stopping at a checkpoint. As the camera pans and
we view different buildings and dimly lit streets, the viewer is drawn into the landscape,
becoming intimately familiar with the topography of the street. Welles's framing of the
scenes enables the viewer to locate and navigate the movement of the characters, which
contrasts with the characters' difficulties in choosing a course of action. At the same
time, the setting is not simply a backdrop, but rather reflects the entrapment of the
characters: Quinlan cannot survive without being involved in cross-border crimes and
investigations in order to overcome feeling responsible for his wife's death; Susan is
trapped by her unconscious bigotry and the way her beauty is represented within
contemporary society; and Vargas is constrained by others' racism, his efforts to
establish a distinct professional identity, and his identity as a protective husband.
Despite the presence of the border, which suggests a possibility of mobility
between countries, there is a distinct sense of being trapped: in order to overcome their
fear of losing or changing their identities, the characters increasingly circumscribe their
lives until it is impossible to do so any longer. Rather than being represented as offering
a sense of openness, therefore, the border increasingly becomes a symbol of oppression,
violence, and repressed desires—disciplinary containment. This southwestern landscape
functions in the popular media in a way very similar to "the South": a fantastical
landscape of exaggerated dilemmas and is so far (morally and physically) from the
popular imaginary of mainstream US society that it is in danger of erasing itself from the
cultural map.
A similar sense of entrapment is represented in The Border, as the central
character, Charlie, seeks to negotiate his increasingly tense and complicated life. During
the course of the film Charlie's wife, Marcy, purchases more and more furniture and a
pool for their new house. Marcy uses these purchases to help overcome the restrictions
she feels due to their limited income and the boredom of suburbia (thus, in some ways
challenging the "good wife" figure common in mainstream cinema). At the same time,
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Charlie's move to a new Border Patrol job and the accumulation of debt due to Marcy's
purchases has left him feeling increasingly constrained, and this eventually leads him to
agree to take part in his partners' immigrant smuggling racket. As the film progresses,
Charlie makes a series of decisions that continually immobilize and censor his actions
until he finally reaches a moment of crisis and self-rupture at the end and challenges the
corrupt agents. Even though Charlie is able to physically move back and forth across the
border, his identity as a "provider," "authority figure," and "La Migra" is more difficult to
negotiate; it is located within specific socio-spatial discourses of suburbia (white
heterosexual nuclear homes), the workplace (tough and fraternal), and a Mexican
foreign landscape (exotic and dangerous). This marking and fixing-even if partial-is also
represented at the end of the film once Charlie has returned a kidnapped baby daughter
to Maria as they stand together in the riverbed straddling the US-Mexico border.
Although this final scene provides some resolution and a connection between two
characters from worlds in close proximity physically, but socially very distant, the
viewer is left with the suggestion that this is only a temporary reprieve after which each
character will return to their respective conflicts and fears. The border, therefore, offers
only the illusion of mobility and transformation, while coming to symbolize the
difficulties of overcoming economic, ethnic, and legal inequalities along with oppressive
social conditions. As Freddy Fender sings at the conclusion:
There's a landSo I've been toldEvery street is paved with goldAnd it's just across the borderline...And when you reach the broken promised landEvery dream slips through your handYou'll lose much more than you ever hoped to find.
This "dream" of crossing the boundaries and thereby breaking the constraints of existing
power relations and finding an alternative narrative of identity and space is represented
as being everywhere and nowhere in this filmic narrative.
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In Lone Star, Otis Payne-who runs Big 0's Roadhouse (the one bar in town that
has welcomed African Americans) -reinforces notions of ambiguous moral boundaries
by stating that no one is "all good or all bad." In one of the film's several pedagogical
scenes, he holds forth on how people move across moral and physical borders as they
travel through life. What does an "illegal" person look like? Where do they live? How
will they act? Sayles prompts these questions by uncovering the underlying
assumptions that fuel decisions made by Sheriff Wade and others: the shows the brutal
authority and racism that infuses Wade's treatment of the tired Mexican migrants whom
he finds huddled in the back of a car. Rather than symbolizing "safe spaces" for the local
population, Wade becomes a bandit himself: he acts out a vindictive from of "justice" by
siphoning money from local businesses. His actions become bound to reproducing
economic and raci al inequalities, thus mapping fear onto specific institutions in
Frontera.
Although much of the action in these films falls on the US side of the border, in
both Welles's and Sayles's films there is a nuanced exploration of cross-border
interactions, which complicate and resist popular depictions of Mexican towns as
inferior crime-ridden wastelands. For example, Noriega states that Touch of Evil "is as
much about the contamination of the United States by Mexico as it is about the
contamination of Mexico by the United States" (1992, 56). Welles travels back and forth
across the border and places one of the central "crimes"-the kidnapping of Susan-on the
US side of the border (undertaken by Mexican gangsters at the behest of (the Anglo)
Detective Quinlan). At the same time, border towns are depicted as replete with danger
and "immoral" residents who live in a place that Vargas states "isn't the real Mexico... all
border towns bring out the worst in a country." Indeed, Touch of Evil and Lone Star are
significant in their problematization of the socio-spatial relations of the US-Mexico
border. These films challenge efforts to locate and place characters on only one side of
the border, and instead illustrate the means by which places and identities travel with
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people across (representational and material) borders and are constantly being
discursively reproduced and contested.
DISCIPLINARY NARRATIVES: WHY SIZE MATTERS, OR DOES IT SCALE?
Within these cinematic spaces there is a fear of crossing borders: a fear that if
certain lines are crossed-be they spatial, moral, sexual, or racial-the scale of
transgressions will explode and dominant cultural narratives will no longer prevail, thus
making the world intolerable, if not intelligible. Narratives are used to police borders
and identities at a range of scales: through nationalist imagery, the discursive
production of border towns, and images of the body. These scales, however, do not
function separately from each other, but are overlapping and often represent competing
discourses. Similar to Pile and Thrift's discussion of the map as depicting how "some
people's place in the world is more precarious than others," these films also suggest the
ways in which such a precariousness and contestability can be discursively produced in
multi-scalar ways:
"The map [or film] as our allegory of power and knowledge-and thesubject-as our allegory of the body and the self-reveal identity: its fluidityand fixity, its purity and hybridity, its safety and terrors, its transparencyand its opacity" (1995,49).
Law enforcement and legal procedures are represented in these border films as
reinforcing specific genealogies, economies and cartographies of power. Legality is
depicted as being dispensed and disciplined by national governments, which monitor
and control territory and identities. At the same time, each of these films illustrates ways
in which concepts of legality and justice can become oppressive and thoroughly
embedded with local and personal, and wholely extra-legal conflicts. Touch of Evil, for
example, represents a border landscape in which national jurisdictions are ambiguous
and law enforcement signifies immorality. This is highlighted in a conversation between
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Vargas and Quinlan, in which Quinlan's questionable approaches towards police
procedure and the treatment of suspects are being interrogated:
Vargas:... a policeman is supposed to enforce the law, and the law protectsthe guilty as well as the innocent.
Quinlan (over): Our job is tough enough.
Vargas: It's supposed to be. It has to be tough. The policeman's job is onlyeasy in a police state. That's the whole point, captain, who is the boss, thecop or the law?
Throughout the course of the film, Vargas's question is effectively left
unanswered. In asking this question, Welles illustrates that it is not clear who fits the
category of "boss," and that, popular narratives of justice and legality run to the
contrary, the landscape of law enforcement is less clearly defined in daily practices.
While Vargas attempts to represent the law as functioning at a scale beyond the
personal, the film illustrates that it is at the scale of the local and the individual that
enforcement operates. This dislocation of a moral topography reinforces the concept of
the border as a precarious landscape: Vargas's attempts to hold onto a cartographic
control become increasingly desperate and determined, reflecting his efforts to hold onto
his "safe places." As Bordo et al. note:
Like a play within a play, people move from point to point following thepatterns and routines of apparently practical lives. But they carry withthem maps of safe places and safe distance, maps of their internallandscapes, its topography built up of the history of past and presenthuman relationships. These maps designate the way stations where onecan be refueled, loved, reminded of one's identity (1998, 88-89).
The US-Mexico border is represented as an ambiguous legal landscape that
challenges dominant notions of state and federal law enforcement as abstract and
safe.
While symbols of authority, such as laws, funding, and buildings, are sanctioned
at a national level, the authority of individual police officers and the Border Patrol is
reinforced through daily practices within towns, workplaces, homes, and bedrooms. In
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The Border, Charlie discovers that the Border Patrol unit functions by it own corrupt
rules and deals, which are hidden or ignored by the agents who witness strange
exchanges (e.g., drug deals being hidden in rundown houses, undocumented
immigrants being murdered by agents on back roads).
In addition, rather than suggesting that an overarching "truth" will be guaranteed
by an objective legal system, in Lone Star Sayles reinforces the situatedness of social
relations through discipline, and the ways in which people create their own borders,
stories, and truths. By moving back and forth between the present and past landscapes
of Frontera, he illustrates that although there has been a preoccupation with the
US-Mexico border as a place of "lawlessness," there have in fact been long histories and
geographies of legal negotiations between border residents. Lone Star provides a
representation of a "local" form of law enforcement that, in many ways, is controlled and
interwoven with the residents of the setting. In contrast to this, if we examine the
day-to-day activities of the Border Patrol in Southern California for example, they are
represented as an abstract body who attempt to remain "independent" from the border
and who create a "controlled" landscape through a system of advanced technology and
surveillance.
Although national discourses about discipline and control bolster the authority of
law enforcement agents, symbols of authority marked on the body (uniforms,
masculinity, virility, whiteness) and those that are represented as authoritative bodies
(police, Border Patrol agents, white teachers) illustrate the importance discursive
productions of power and identity in cinema. The image and site of the body becomes a
particularly important component of representing and negotiating border spaces and
identities. The border is represented as a space in which masculinity commands
authority, but is also contested by the male characters' inability to completely control
and achieve their desires: Quinlan can no longer conceal his corruption and needs to "lay
off the cookies" (as Tanya poignantly reminds him); Vargas cannot safeguard his wife
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from harm; Charlie dislikes his job and is unable to afford the "idyllic" suburban
lifestyle; and Sam questions his sense of self and justice in relation to his father. In these
border landscapes, the autonomous virile subject is unattainable, and the fissures
between national and personal identities become increasingly apparent.
THE IMMIGRANT BODY AS BORDER: ABJECT OBJECT?
The body is a site in which border conflicts are played out. The body is also a key
site through which film narratives are embodied. These borders are viewed as private
spaces, but they are publicly monitored and disciplined. These are spaces where fears
over authority and control are represented and played out. I would also argue that the
fascination with the body as a site of conflict in these films is interwoven with a
fascination with the "abject" body. In a discussion of female body builders, Johnston
(1998, 257), drawing on the work of Kristeva, outlines the means by which disgust and
fascination are focused on the images of muscular women: "The female body builder
threatens the border between female and male sexed bodies." Female body builders are
viewed as challenging popular definitions of feminine identity and, therefore,
challenging the category "Woman." These bodies challenge femininity at both individual
and societal levels: "The abject threatens the unity and identity of both society and
subject. It questions the boundaries on which they are constructed" (Johnston 1998, 257).
This fascination with abject bodies can also be seen in Touch of Evil, The Border,
and Lone Star. Questions arise about the boundaries on which central characters'
identities are formed and ontologically grounded, resulting in questions about societal
attitudes more generally, and questions about core identity formations more specifically.
These abject bodies rupture dominant cultural narratives of identity and at the same
time are marked and policed through specific constructions of race, gender, and locality.
In popular discussions about immigration, the abject body of the immigrant
challenges internal and external borders around what are deemed acceptable identities,
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subjectivities and practices. In the selected films, the bodies of Mexican immigrants are
mediated through sentiments of fascination and disgust. For example, throughout
Touch of Evil, the Tijuana gang boss who helps Quinlan is depicted as grotesque, yet
hypnotic: he is a successful Mexican businessman, a criminal, and a threatening figure to
Vargas and Susan, until his murder (by Quinlan) at the end of the film. I would also
suggest that the fascination and discomfort surrounding the character of Vargas is
related to his representation as an abject body: he is of Mexican descent, honest, a law
enforcer, and married to an Anglo US woman. He is also marked by an "ineffectual
masculinity" illustrated by his failure to protect Susan from gangsters. This masculinity
is challenged even more so by the fact that Susan is held hostage for a "staged rape" that
does not actually take place, as Welles toys with the popular stereotype of Mexicans as
sexually promiscuous and potentially rapists.
Quinlan is also depicted as representing abject space: he is a US detective who
pays off Mexican gangsters, he was not able to prevent his wife's murder, and he has-in
the word's of Tanya-become "a mess." His large frame represents a lack of control and
discipline, and yet his determination draws the viewer into his worldview. This use of
bodyweight as a symbol of weakness is an interesting strategy used by Welles, since it is
usually deployed either to discipline women or to create comedic value for a character.
Although women are far less likely to control the action in these films, there are
moments where female characters challenge the hegemony of their male counterparts by
illustrating the ways they can be viewed abjectly. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory,
these challenges to masculinity can also be linked into the notion of "woman as
threat"-"in that woman as representation signifies castration, including voyeuristic or
fetishistic mechanisms to overcome her threat" (Mulvey 1992, 351).
The notion of the abject is not only present in individual characters, but also in the
relationships between characters (which is fitting in terms of the curiosity and fear with
which the US-Mexico border and "The South" is represented in mainstream US media).
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For example, at the conclusion of Lone Star, when Sam and Pilar realize they have fallen
in love and are half brother and sister, there is a sense of shock, but also a relief that they
have rediscovered each other. This revelation about their relationship and their decision
to stay together represents the ultimate "abject" space or taboo: it is the sexual and
emotional bonding of two intimately related people from different ethnic
backgrounds-representative of the complex and messy borders that imbue the social and
physical landscape. These films crystallize the inherent contradictions in discussions of
the border and the ways in which they become racialized and gendered in specific
narratives. As Nericcio concludes in an examination of Touch of Evil:
Think of the space depicted in Welles' film: the bordertown and the half-breed, lafrontera y el mestizo: a space and subject whose identities are notfractured but fracture itself, where hyphens, bridges, border stations andschizophrenia are the rule rather than the exception... Only a culture withsome radically essential category of the pristine Subject, could collectivelysupport and sustain the derogatory valence of the half-breed (1992, 48).
This idea of a clearly defined and bounded "subject," such as, an "American" or an
"immigrant" (or even territorial boundaries), which in turn enable an easily identifiable
"transgressor," is-as Nericcio points out-problematic, because such notions have been
shaped by, and shaped, representations of the US-Mexico border and Mexican
immigrants to the US. These narrowly defined discourses can be traced in film,
immigration policies, and, as we will see in the next section can also suggest alternative
ways of categorizing a transnational trope of "Southern" spaces.
IMMIGRATION DISCIPLINE: REMEMBERING THE SOUTHERN “OTHER”
As evinced above, representations of the US-Mexico border and immigration in
popular cinema have depicted ongoing national concerns and individual narratives of
border crossing, self-fashioning and transgression. At certain moments, however,
recurring themes begin to emerge in these representations that suggest links between a
variety of socio-literary geographies. In this next section I will build on the issues raised
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earlier to explore the possibilities of understanding these cinematic cartographies of the
US-Mexico border by linking them with narratives of "Southern" US spaces. Several
similarities appear between the ways in which dominant images of the US South have
been shown in popular cultural discourses and those of the US-Mexico border. I aim to
illustrate how narratives of the US-Mexico border can be seen as continuing, if not
embodying, marginalized stories of southern "others."
The spatial imaginaries that emerge from cinematic representations of the US--
Mexico border reflect ongoing negotiations of landscapes imbued with fear, loathing
and fascination. This generalized fear surfaces from an avoidance and inability to view
misrepresentations and conflicts of the past and present—an inability to cognitively map
the interstices of history and biography onto the geographic soma. What is seen by the
central characters within Touch of Evil, The Border and Lone Star are landscapes that fit
within a perspective considered controllable and, by necessity, exclusionary. These
representations of borders are exclusionary in that they erase and reformulate memories
of place while they seek to create borders and physically expunge people who challenge
boundaries drawn between "north" and "south."
THE AMERICAN “SOUTH”: DISPLACED ANXIETY IN BORDER NARRATIVES
Images of "The South" in US media frequently depict a stereotypical landscape
that is largely rural, conservative and locked in the past. In addition, for many people
physically situated "outside" of the region, their spatial imaginary of this (very
generalized) locale consists of stories about insularity, reluctance to change, the War
Between The States and a landscape that is potentially wild and morally ambiguous.
While more recent cinematic images challenge some of these notions of a fixed and
bounded "South" as can be seen in the documentaries of new Southern cineastes at
Appalshop or Café Sisters Productions 3-the endurance of longstanding stereotypes has
remained quite significantly intact. Even in more recent mainstream films, such as
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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which illustrates the quirkiness of small town
Savannah, Georgia, a central component of the narrative relies on events that rely on a
largely separate social, spatial and legal jurisdiction. The film depicts a community
where neighbors regularly interact and eccentrics flourish. This is an exotic landscape
that is both general and highly localized in the context of the US. It is a general place in
the sense that it taps into existing notions of southern towns as "out of the ordinary" and,
therefore, becomes symbolic of small town life in "The South." The film is also localized
in the sense that there are traits that are specific to the particular situation in terms of the
place in which the film is placed and the unusual characters, e.g., a gay antique dealer, a
New York writer and a local drag queen.
A similar process of creating generic yet specific exotic landscapes can be seen in
the representations of the US-Mexico border. The border is abstracted in mainstream
media to become symbolic of overarching concerns about national sovereignty, security,
immigration, and moral boundaries that are assigned by nation, gender and race.
Simultaneously, specific events, such as, an abduction from a Tijuana hotel or a desert
murder act to map out and legitimize concerns about violence and ambiguity. In both of
these cases tropes of "southern spaces" rely on collapsing scales of difference in order to
map out social and physical terrain that should be viewed with caution.
On a similar note, Huyssen (2001) explores the importance of combining general
and localized identities in relation to public memory. His analysis of the Holocaust as a
metaphor for trauma and genocide while being tied to specific socio-spatial stories is
helpful for understanding the means by which violence and difference have become
mapped onto certain places through the process of memory and re-telling stories. In the
context of the Holocaust, Huyssen illustrates how this globalizing narrative signifies
limitations of modernity and the use of multi-scalar cultural narratives:
[The Holocaust] serves as proof of Western civilization's failure to practiceanamnesis, to reflect on its constitutive inability to live in peace withdifference and otherness and to draw the consequences from the insidious
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relationship between enlightened modernity, racial oppression, andorganized violence... It is precisely the emergence of the Holocaust asuniversal trope that allows Holocaust memory to latch on to specificsituations that are historically distant and politically distinct from theoriginal event (2001, 60).
In the context of the US-Mexico border as shown in the films discussed
previously, memory and the re-telling of spatial stories is also an important part of how
this locale comes to represent fear, danger, and difference. The stories of the US-Mexico
border, narrating it as a "southern-like space," rely on memories that illustrate a failure
to fully understand and address racism and violence. Hegemonic representations of the
US-Mexico border (and The South in the US), eclipse the cultural diversity that has
existed across the region and fail to elaborate on the transnational ties between the two
(and other) countries. As shown in an argument about how US history has been taught
by the schoolteachers in Lone Star, the inability to learn and understand past violence
also facilitates the violence of the erasure of local and national stories and the
re-mapping of dominant identities and narrative subjectivities. As a result of these
exclusionary discursive processes, in a similar manner to the US South being
represented as out of the ordinary, the US-Mexico border appears to be out of place.
In Touch of Evil, The Border and Lone Star central conflicts emerge over who has
the authority to decide the course of events and to have legitimate concerns that should
be addressed. These tensions reflect broader fears over maintaining boundaries between
the US and Mexico, and around processes of policing those who "belong" on either side
of the border. In addition, the US-Mexico border is seen as marker between North and
South-as, Nericcio (1992) states, between good and evil. Those who are marked as
inhabiting this in-between space also have signifiers mapped onto them that suggest
they do not have the legitimacy to be heard. In the same way, therefore, that viewpoints
from the US South are frequently ridiculed and undermined in mainstream media, so
too are voices from the US-Mexico border, particularly those of Latinos and those from
Mexico. Dominant mainstream media, therefore, in many instances can be seen as
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exerting a neo-colonialist force both within and beyond the US. This force represents a
process of media broadcasting that intrinsically relies on the interweaving of identity,
space and representation.
Bordo (1998) discusses a process that could be considered similar to this system of
demarcating spaces when she examines her own experiences of negotiating city life and
her growing sense of agoraphobia during her twenties. During this time and when
reflecting on this fear of open spaces, Bordo notes that she had become increasingly
"lost" and unhappy in here recent marriage, and had also been "giving up bits and
pieces" of herself (1992, 80). She suggests that in order to convince her that she was
content she made herself dependent and bound to her domestic environment by
creating imaginary boundaries--that became very real--when she ventured outside.
Although quite a different setting, I would argue that popular representations of the US
South and of the US-Mexico border rely on a similar process, wherein the potential for
social and physical openness and diversity within these spaces are represented as a
minefield of borders that are crossed at peril. By creating borders around our imagined
communities in this way, a dependence on traditional constructions of nationalism,
authority and integrity are encouraged in order to avoid confronting the complexity and
challenges that openness involves. However, by recognizing and exploring these border
"phobias" we can open up the possibility of re-thinking how we represent in-between
spaces. This re-thinking may provide us with the opportunity of what-in relation to
return migrants--Gmelch (1995) calls "double passage", i.e., the possibility to revisiting
places and identities and critically examining the assumptions with which they have
previously been viewed.
CINEMATIC CONCLUSIONS
At the same time as it runs the risk of abstraction and reinforcing dominant
cultural discourses, mass media also provides the opportunity to question who has the
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authority to speak and represent knowledge. By examining media texts we can
interrogate the assumptions that are bound within them. This "opening up" of
representation can challenge traditional efforts that reify a distinct border or an
"authentic" history. Such authentic geographies and histories frequently eclipse
difference and fail to recognize the poli-vocal nature of social relations. Cinema, for
example, offers an alternative understanding of time and space by providing multiple
contexts and venues in which a variety of images can be represented and read, and if
used as a form of resistance, may open up more spaces for effective political
representation, at best, at worst, it results in a blockbuster or two at the box-office.
When examining media images of the border and "Southern" spaces it becomes
evident that there is a complex system of socio-spatial networks utilized to delineate
between different, regional, economic, racial, gender and sexual identities. Ethnicity, for
example, is mapped onto segregated bars, neighborhoods, restaurants, national borders,
and used to recreate social ties in specific places. Borders are not only delineated by a
fence and seismic sensors, but are mapped onto the body-allowing certain people to gain
recognition, while others are marked as "outsiders." These images of the US-Mexico
border, the US South and immigrant identities, therefore, function at a variety of scales
and are intricately intertwined with specific spatial imaginaries. They place immigrants
in very particular ways and reflect an obsession with the proximity and mobility of
immigrant populations. An exploration of media images, such as Touch of Evil, The
Border and Lone Star offers a better understanding of this "open wound"-the "scar" of
the border-and the frequently arbitrary scars of human action, e.g., through personal
conflicts, attacks on migrants, transnational relations and poverty (Anzaldua 1987, 3).
Cinematic representations of border identities and spaces represent ongoing
concerns about difference and the means by which various groups can chart and map
those that are seen as marginal or threatening. These images also illustrate links with
representations of the US South and socio-literary tropes of the US-Mexico border and
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Mexico as problematic "Other" spaces. Media images tell stories about places and
immigration that are often abstractly personalized, contradictory on a variety of
levels-sometimes challenging-and oriented around the possibility of stabilizing aspects
of social life that are continually shifting. In order to understand and resist the presumed
naturalness of dominant discourses of borders and immigration it is necessary,
therefore, to interrogate how and why certain images become problematic, and to
explore the means by which film and television can offer an arena that can be both
innovative and challenging.
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PART IV: CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP: E PLURIBUS UNUM.
"The past is never dead; it's not even past."
(William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun)
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CHAPTER 9: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AMERICAN AENEIDS: IMMIGRANT FAMILY FICTIONS AS TROPES OF SELF—OR, HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST
THEIR ACCENTS BY DREAMING IN CUBAN
All migrants leave their past behind, although some try to pack it into bundles and boxesbut on the journey something seeps out of the treasured mementos and old photographs,until even their owners fail to recognize them, because it is the fate of the migrants to bestripped of history, to stand naked amidst the scorn of strangers upon whom they see therich clothing, the brocades of continuity and the eyebrows of belonging.
--Salman Rushdie
The tension generated when dissimilar cultures come into contact-tension between pastand present, between family history and daily life-is particularly visible in literature byimmigrant writers. --Karen Christian
TENSE TROPICS: TROPES OF FAMILY & HOST COMMUNITY
This chapter explores how, from a socio-literary perspective, two fictional
immigrant families, written by 1.5ers, negotiate many of the same dilemmas of
autonomy (self) and unity (socius); preserve cultural beliefs and practices surrounding
family and community within a larger hegemonic nativist agenda asserting
homogeneity and to maintain successful middle-class consumerist family relationships.
The perspective shifts to include additional factors, such as the complex constellation of
power relations that surrounds the issues of political exile, a greater reliance on family
as community, economic struggle, and English as a second language. How the Garcia
Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by Dominican American author Julia Alvarez, and
Dreaming in Cuban (1992) by Cuban American author Cristina Garcia depict Dominican
and Cuban nuclear and extended families struggling to negotiate the processes of
honoring ideologies and tropes of self that they carry from the homeland and the
constant pressure to acculturate or assimilate the new beliefs and customs learned in
America into a new “American Self.” These are among the issues that must be
considered in the differences between acculturation, which "occurs when the various
cultural threads of the ethnic and mainstream cultures become intermeshed," and
assimilation, "a gradual process, occurring over time in which one set of cultural traits is
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relinquished and a new set is acquired through participation in mainstream culture"
(McAdoo 11). Alvarez and Garcia depict closeness within Latin American
multigenerational families who are influenced by the convergence and production of
origin, ethnicity, class, and gender; while they trace how these elements contribute to
familial and individual struggles for narrative identity in a new country and a new
language. While orienting to life in America, Latina families, whether exiled or
voluntarily immigrated lose tightly-knit communities of extended family; consequently,
they generally must redouble efforts to retain narrative & socially generative
autobiographical story elements from their past in order to provide comfort and a sense
of belonging in their new country in the face of the Althusserian "state apparatus"
systems which encourage a nuclear family arrangement and mandate trading one
culture for another as part of the assimilation process in an “excessively exuberant” fin-
de-siecle business, political and civic cultures.
In her debut novel Alvarez essentially answers the question implied in the title to
detail not only how the Garcia girls lost their accents but also why this linguistic
phenomenon might occur. Because of his political activities, specifically a clandestine
relationship with the CIA in an attempt to stage a coup to oust Dictator Rafael Leonidas
Trujillo Molina, young Doctor Garcia must gather his wife and four children and flee
from their home in the Dominican Republic for the safety of the United States. Alvarez
uses a modified circular, in media res narrative format where she begins in the present
and writes in reverse order to end with the beginning of the Garcia's exile from the
island. Julie Barak calls the method "a narrative that spirals from the outside in, whirling
backward through the Garcia's lives" to take them farther away from their lives and
luxurious existence the Dominican Republic (160). Though Yolanda, who seems to be
Alvarez's autobiographical persona, shoulders more of the narrative duties, each adult
child "writes" a chapter to reflect upon the events of her life and how she was affected by
the turmoil that begins with the forced assimilation at her arrival as a small child, or
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what William Luis calls the "erasure of the ethnic excess" (94). Alvarez engages three
generations of Garcia del a Tones (in Latino/a families when referring to extended
family both surnames are used) to work through the trauma of separation that occurs
due to political events so that readers can witness the same events from multiple,
autobiographical perspectives. The novel opens in 1989, almost thirty years after the
family has fled Trujillo's secret police. Yolanda, in the throes of an identity crisis, has
returned to her extended family in an effort to recuperate the part of her she feels she
lost on the day her panicked mother packed the family's belongings. Alvarez partitions
the novel into three distinct groups of narrative movements. In the first, which spans
1972-1989, the sisters are adults; the second covers 1960-1972 and parallels the cultural
revolution of the 1960s with the private revolutions of Garcia girl adolescence; and, the
final section accounts for their idyllic island early childhood spanning 1956-1960.
Likewise, the complicated path of exiles separated from their families forms the
narrative impetus for Dreaming in Cuban. As is often the pattern in literature written by
Cuban nationalists and exiled expatriates, the pivotal point in island history and
biography occurs in 1959 when Fidel Castro's revolution succeeds and he assumes
control. Joseph M. Viera calls Garcia's novel a "microcosm of the Cuban condition since
it depicts families torn apart emotionally, geographically, and ideologically" (231). The
author begins with a brief character sketch of the oldest living member of the family,
Celia del Pino, Castro loyalist, matriarch, and mother to Lourdes, Felicia, and Javier, and
wife to Jorge, as she peers through government issued binoculars out into the waters off
the Cuban coast that her house sits upon looking for gusano (worm) traitors who might
be attempting to abandon The Revolution and the island. Abandoned by her unloving
mother and subsequently raised by a kind-hearted aunt, Celia's early adult life is marred
by depression over an unrequited love, and lack of maternal affection. Garcia accounts
for Celia's character through letters she writes to this lost love. Within the span of almost
thirty years Celia touches upon every personal and public detail in her life from politics
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to her beloved granddaughter. She passes her maternal inattention to her eldest
daughter Lourdes who, with husband Rufino Puente has long been living in New York
with their daughter Pilar, and were part of the mass exodus of Cuba's wealthy,
entrepreneurs and artisans almost immediately after Castro began appropriating private
citizens' lands and bank accounts. Pilar shoulders the brunt of the narrative duties which
are expressed in first person to, like the Garcia girls, record the fallout not only from
familial separation but also the tension political diversity plays in family. Similar to
what Alvarez does with Yolanda, Garcia makes Pilar the exiled daughter who wants the
impossible, the private sphere of family and community to overwhelm the public rift
between politicos and reunite families and communities. That way she can retrieve the
part of her selfhood she believes waits on the island of her family's origins; she, too,
devises a journey and casts herself as her own personal cultural anthropologist, on a
mission to recover familial artifacts of both tangible and intangible quality. Until she can
persuade her stubborn mother to make the trip, Pilar keeps the telepathic
communication she and Celia share going, and she stages her own coup, a brief stint
running away to her Florida relatives and their access to the island. Felicia lives near
Celia and is a reluctant comrade to the revolution. From her estranged husband she
inherits three things: daughter Luz, son Ivanito, and a debilitating case of syphilis that
eats away at her brain.
For Alvarez's and Garcia's characters the Freudian family romance is yet another
cultural mystery that must be narratively unraveled in the quest for open and
unconditional acceptance "for those who are part of the communities based on extended
family, religious beliefs, or country of origin" (McAdoo 13). Where the Freudian family
romance encourages the individual as focal point, these two novels focus on narrating
how acculturation and assimilation affect the immigrant communities and families.
Historically, Freud's theory about the family romance seems to have most affected the
European continent and Eurocentric America; in most Latin American cultures the
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family is simply structured differently. For example, in Latin American countries
machismo, a form of male dominance, pervades many families. Here the father is largely
absent, and by messaging his commands from afar he is symbolized in the abstract
(Stavins 108). To be macho, according to Ilan Stavins, is to consider sexual conquests a
sign of strength. Also, a man must appear physically well built. Men who are heavy,
balding, or possessing some other physical impairment are considered effeminate.
Likewise, revealing emotions is also taboo (108). Women are to come to the marriage
bed virgins while their husbands should be well experienced. Stavins points out how
education, politics, and cultural media support these ideologies. However, I believe that
Latinas circumvent machismo with a more egalitarian family authority system, and I
discuss Alvarez and Garcia's methodologies in more depth below. Since the Freudian
family romance is an Eurocentric concept and as such is one Dominican and Cuban
natives are not familiar with until they arrive in the states, being forced into the family
romance creates the unique perspective of "intersecting forms of domination" that
produce both oppression and opportunity" (Dill 237). The patriarchal family romance
initially oppresses characters in both novels until Garcia and Alvarez successfully
override that trope to create a post family romance in which power is more equitably
distributed. By crafting autobiographical fictions where the family is the individual writ-
large, not the state, Alvarez and Garcia also subvert a male-dominant family social
system for a more egalitarian and just system.
Because the authors emphasize extended family groupings and a greater reliance
on communal resources to redistribute power and authority to more than a few, the
characters navigate through K. T. Kumabe'sn "acculturation continuum," --"scale of
values that confronts a person or group from an ethnic background" (qtd. in McAdoo
11). This continuum can span the values learned in the person's homeland, their religion,
beliefs, and practices that are typically unique to the mainstream values of the
hegemonic group and what I see as practices that enhance the contemporary
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heterosexist family romance. Alvarez and Garcia also chronicle the range of emotion an
individual may experience while dropping in and out on the acculturation/assimilation
continuum. When the Garcia girls are children the social gap between them and their
classmates seems vast, but they remain unaffected because their parents insure them
regular connections to island relatives and customs to assuage doubts and hurt brought
about by schoolyard taunting. Later when they are in college the sisters experience anger
when they want to fit in with their American friends but they perceive their parents to
be holding them back with antiquarian Dominican social customs. Guilt intervenes and
redirects their efforts to just short of the moment they are ready to succumb to the
pressure and sell out their familial history for light skin and blue eyes.
Together these two novels create forums for the discussion of Spanish-speaking
immigrant families and their tales of survival, adversity, and success. The characters
are citizens of a diverse American society negotiating the dilemma of maintaining dual
cultures while offering narrative enhancements to the post-family system. Each author
examines, problematizes, and questions familial communities as a central component
of narrative identity formation while living in a dominant American culture that places
less value on extended kinship networks and more on nuclear family networks. The
novels provide support to the idea that the American family defines itself in multiple
ways by multiple ideologies, none of which can claim to be exclusively "American."
Finally, the characters resist the essentialized and homogeneous representations of
either a Cuban or Dominican heritage as that which is fixed, featuring instead evolving,
robust, dynamic social practices and complex hybrid families, communities, and
cultures.
During the characters' struggle to preserve la familia and their native customs
and beliefs while undertaking the processes of redefining their families and homes as
sites of culturally repressive and progressive practices and experiencing the ongoing
drama of trying to blend American values and habits with their own, they reveal a
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palette of emotions, depending on age and gender. Alvarez's Carlos and Laura exhibit
"anger, despair, and sadness" at the dramatic changes in their lives while their children
express "vacillation and ambivalence" (Borland 49). Garcia's Pilar, just a small child
when her parents emigrate, expresses a rage and contempt only a teen can summon at
her mother's vehement attitude about Cuba and their separation from the remainder of
the family. This range of disparate emotions resembles what William Luis calls the
"dance between two cultures" in his book of the same name. The term describes what
exiles perceive as the limited choice between to "either strive to assimilate-to eliminate
the excess-or seek refuge in the familiarity of their ethnic community" (qtd. in Karen
Christian 90). Though Luis structures his observations on an either/or principle, he
would probably agree that acculturating or supporting one's ethnic community requires
constant negotiating and policing of desires, hopes, and beliefs. On the one hand, the
lure of assimilation promises an easier life and less trouble with other Americans, but at
the price of erasing customs, holidays and familial structures?
Alvarez and Garcia find wriggling room that allows their characters to dance
within their two cultures, to choose within assimilation and acculturation, though
outside pressures on the families make efforts to retain many cultural practices difficult.
Both authors are familiar with this negotiation between cultural beliefs and as such
form a sort of bridge to connect their characters' ethnicity and the dominant American
beliefs, and they write plots where each community informs and adjusts to the other's
nuances. These negotiations invite the absolutely necessary vital exchange of
information and a constant adjustment of the "traditional" family to accommodate
various changes without further encouraging cultural erasure. Their plots also reveal
the troublesome nature of what Gloria Anzaldua calls living in the "borderlands," a
place that is simultaneously home but also a foreign land. Alvarez and Garcia resist
limiting aspects of their characters' identity formations and instead guide readers
towards an appreciation for their ethnicity, race, networks of power, their sexuality,
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gender, class, and geographic identities. During their stories of struggle to build new
and successful lives in America, the fictional families Garcia del a Tone and del Pino
Puente add vital texture to the fabric that comprises the American family's literary
narrative as it coexists within the dominant culture's narrative, and provide further
evidence to the complexities within Dominican and Cuban American families and
communities.
ARTICULATING THE NARRATIVE SELF WITHIN THE IMMIGRANT SOCIUS
Additionally, these two novels show how Dominicans and Cuban Americans
impact our notions of family by rescripting the nuclear family ideology on multiple
levels by the author's interpretation of the following points. Both novels portray families
as sites where members alternately exchange power within their intimate circles and
remain strong within larger webs of a community. The families are comprised of
members of various ages and genders who receive and relinquish individual authority
within their membership, thereby creating alternating points of authority and resistance.
Each has the ability to and typically does impose or withdraw his or her power, which
disrupts the patriarchal/traditional family. Relationships are subsequently defined by
how characters choose to manifest their authority, and the novels portray the family as a
heterogeneous apparatus, absolving itself of precise membership boundaries, which
result in households comprised of various kin and fictive members, such as aunts,
uncles, grandparents, cousins, lovers, and friends. These fictional families are dynamic
organisms that reinvent themselves for adaptation and survival.
Both novels examine and problematize issues surrounding the home, la casa, as
both a safe haven as well as a prison house of oppression, a place for all and a spot for
none. The works portray the home as actually one of the sites where the public and
private spheres dissolve, because through these particular novels the distinctions
between these traditional categories becomes less clearly represented than in other
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periods. For example, fiction from the nineteenth and early twentieth century created
and then vehemently supported a clear division between the public and private
sectors, a system that seems less important, judging from the points Alvarez and
Garcia make. Alvarez's Garcia residence in the island that protects the family from
political turmoil and speaks to their economic stability is also by traditional American
literature considered nontraditional. The extended family resides in a large compound
where business and home life are contained together. At one point, members of the
American CIA take up residence in one of the houses so that Dr. Garcia can assist them
in a coup to overthrow Trujillo. This residential compound resembles a small city
rather than a traditionally private home. For Garcia's del Pinos, Celia lives in a house
that openly invites the public into her private sphere because "the neighborhood has
voted her little brick-and-cement house by the sea as the primary lookout" for enemy
invasion and Celia their vigilant guard (DC 3). As a proud Castro supporter, Celia
expresses no qualms of personal ownership, preferring to see her home as an outpost
against the gusano who swear against el Lidar. Celia believes it is an honor to give her
home to the revolution.
Another instance where discussions surrounding this chapter shall be markedly
different from the preceding one is the issue of language. Children of immigrant
parents, like Alvarez's Garcias and Garcia's Pilar Puente, achieve proficiency in
English more quickly than their parents, in part because speaking the English
language is mandated in the school system. Yolanda Garcia reveals her motivation for
acquiring a proficiency in English as protective as well as practical because it "was still
a party favor for me-crack open the dictionary, find out if I'd just been insulted,
praised, admonished, criticized" (GG 87). This swift language acquisition puts sons
and daughters in the awkward position of negotiating between frustrated parents and
the grocer, the doctor, teachers, the utilities company, the landlord, and so on,
requiring children to act as translators for their parents and unavoidably usurping
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parental rule. Children return from school or a friend's house with new if not
necessarily Eurocentric cultural practices that threaten existing ones, and parents
suddenly become "old school," obsolete and powerless to their children's hunger for
acculturation or assimilation.
Pilar and her mother Lourdes, however, reverse the typical pattern of parents
clinging to old traditions and children gobbling up anything American. Pilar covets her
mother's naturally fluent Spanish and resents anything in translation because of the
danger in confusing and diluting original meaning. She confides in her diary, "I envy my
mother her Spanish curses sometimes. They make my English collapse in a heap" (DC
59). Like her mother peering at the surf off the Cuban coast for American invaders,
Lourdes watches vigilantly her daughter's attempts to immerse herself into what
Lourdes sees as the contested terrain of her ethnic identity. Where Pilar determines to
uncover her Cuban values, beliefs, and customs, Lourdes struggles to prevent the same.
Obviously in such a difficult situation this battle drives a wedge between the mother
and daughter, prompting a concerned doctor to suggest to Lourdes that she and Pilar
needed to spend more time together. She enrolls them in a flamenco class, but when the
instructor singles Pilar out for her "proud chest" and "how she carries herself" Lourdes
cancels the course for fear that her daughter may become too ethnic (Garcia 59).
Skin color and tone further complicates ethnicity and hegemony. Karen Christian
observes, "For those immigrants with racial difference visibly inscribed on their bodies,
no amount of performing will ever permit them to pass as white Americans" (92). This
belief plays out in the American education system that perpetuates the power struggle
between immigrant parents and their children. Patricia Hill Collins states that typically
white, middle-class children find the educational experiences they receive affirm their
family's middle-class values; however, the opposite can be true for certain African
American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American children whose experiences
seem to stand in contrast to their class status and dominant cultural values and beliefs
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(206). Collins supports her work with examples that include the ubiquitous skin tone
issue that creates tension between people trying to preserve their particular cultural
beliefs and those who insist all but the dominant cultural values must become
subordinate to the American cultural system, whatever that may be. In a conversation
she had with an African American mother who married and had two sons with a
Japanese American, Collins demonstrates how undeniably shaky race can be. PTA
mother Jenny Yamoto observed that her sons' behaviors were interpreted differently
depending on which parent would attend the open house. If she represented the family,
she was told her oldest son behaved "disruptive [and] irreverent," but if their father
attended, the same child would be praised for his assertive actions and clever thinking
(206). Obviously this culturally determined shift might rupture existing parent to child
relationships and disrupt often subtly transfered power from one generation to the next.
Parents and grandparents feel less in control, and children discover those they have
looked to and relied upon for guidance may have been undermined by outside
authorities, such as the Collins example.
This reinforced good skin color/bad skin color is a recursive theme in both
Garcia Girls and Dreaming in Cuban. When her parents visit her in college, Yolanda is
quickly reminded of how her family and herself have been culturally inscribed with
"difference" because of their Dominican features (GG 98). Her sister Carla reluctantly
echoes this phenomenon by admitting her embarrassment over how she assumes her
Anglo friends will react to "[h]er immigrant father with his thick mustache and accent
and three-piece suit" (GG 155). Fretting over always feeling one step behind her college
peers, Yolanda rues her immigrant origins. She confides to her diary, "If only I too had
been born in Connecticut or Virginia, I too would understand the jokes everyone was
making on the last two digits of the year 1969; I too would be having sex and smoking
dope; I too would have suntanned parents who took me skiing in Colorado over
Christmas break" (GG 95). In Dreaming in Cuban, Lourdes hires a Puerto Rican woman,
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but her actions reveal the decision is less about helping a fellow immigrant with
employment opportunities and more about assuaging her own racial prejudices.
Lourdes critically scrutinizes the darker-skinned Maribel's every move, noting her new
employee's efficiency but remaining convinced the woman is fundamentally lazy and
capable of stealing. Masking her anger in the thought that "nobody works like an
owner," she admonishes Maribel for her lack of sales initiative when she simply rings
people up instead of suggesting more items to purchase. Finally Lourdes's vigilance
pays off when she catches the woman stealing money from the register. Triumphantly,
Lourdes orders the other brown-skinned woman from The American Bakery (DC 66).
Additionally, these novelists expose the implicit double bind of ethnicity and
growing up in America. The adolescent/teen period, difficult enough when one's
identity is aligned in the traditional white, middle class, Christian, nuclear category, is
even more difficult for a brown-skinned child with an accent. In fact, studies indicate
that first-generation children often reject their culture of origin for the perceived
homogeneity of their new culture's beliefs and a chance to fit in instead of continuously
being perceived as different, though Garcia's Pilar subverts this pattern. Despite this
shift, many second and third generation children return to and practice the distinctive
characteristics of their parents' and grandparents' native cultures and values, thus
preserving and perpetuating original beliefs while staying within the context of what
may be loosely defined as an American culture. Garcia makes the distinction between
generational loyalty to the home country vividly clear, but only insofar as to reflect the
gamut of the general split between pro and anti-Castro Cuban Americans and resists
privileging one over the other (Luis 216). As evidenced in the del Pino family, some
achieve glory by answering Castro's call for community work (Celia and the reluctant
Felicia), some remain loyal to Cuba but not her politics (Rufino and Pilar), and others
become aggressively vocal concerning the government and its hold over the island
(Lourdes). Conversely, Alvarez's novel could almost read as an acculturation handbook
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for survival, because the young girls quickly learn that the way to duck schoolyard
taunts and become popular with boys is to distance themselves from their cultural
legacy. However, as adults they unequivocally align themselves with their Dominican
heritage as evidenced by the end of the novel when as an adult, Yolanda returns to the
island to recoup her lost histories. At that point Alvarez reveals the layered intricacies of
preserving cultural pride from dominant cultural erasure. Yolanda believes that after
years of therapy, several mental breakdowns, and much pain and suffering, she is
prepared to accept that the answer to her identity and self worth will avail itself to her
when she returns to her original home.
Finally, and most importantly, these two novels demonstrate how the immigrant
family becomes infused with and influenced by so-called American beliefs, and then
articulate the overlooked point that this knowledge exchange is mutually beneficial to
all citizens living in a multicultural society. People feel more comfortable sharing
familial nuances that enrich the overall culture while decreasing divisions, because the
familial level is more intimate and less intimidating than the educational and judicial
segments. One informal method of unlocking cultural equality is to share and learn
cultural beliefs and customs from one another, and often this process begins when
people intermarry or integrate neighborhoods. Another method of shared customs
involves food. Eating in to make dishes that are of another culture are perfectly
acceptable and socially encouraged activities that can even be construed as connoting a
certain cultural sophistication. But when other mores, beliefs, and practices are at stake,
many who view themselves as "non-traditional" resist reverse enculturation unless they
have integrated families or live in multicultural neighborhoods.
Alvarez and Garcia's similarities extend beyond the strong family narrative
running through their work, as their root language is Spanish. Another coincidental
aspect of these specific works that is their interest in themes depicting fictional families
who come to this country as political exiles, a far different issue than voluntary
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immigration. The novels indicate that exile, forced or voluntary, is a politically
motivated act that firmly and profoundly shapes the characters' experiences and
ideologies as they negotiate their new lives as American citizens. An examination of
these texts confirm that Dominican American and Cuban American families, regardless
of immigration circumstances, contribute to the entity we call the American family.
QUALIS PATER TALIS FILIUS.
The issue of naming remains a centrally contested point in personal identity.
Many theorists prefer not to engage the terms Hispanic, Chicana/o, and Latina/o when
speaking about a corpus of texts and practices originating from authors who originate
from one or more Latin American countries, just as many more find these terms
adequate and appropriate. Where appropriate I shall be as specific as possible, referring
to people by the country of origin, as in the Dominican Americans in Alvarez's novel
and the Cuban Americans in Garcia's. I base this decision on arguments presented by
Suzanne Oboler in Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives, Gustavo Perez Firmat's Life on the
Hyphen, han Stavins' The Hispanic Condition, William Luis's Dance Between Two
Cultures, and Isabel Alvarez Borland's Cuban-American Literature of Exile. This group
of authors examines controversial practices of group identity among people of Spanish-
speaking countries. Each favors specificity in group naming, as in Mexican American,
Cuban American, and Dominican American over the more generalized
misunderstanding that they feel the terms Chicana, Hispanic, and Latina convey. That
is, persons who either identify themselves or are identified as Latina, Hispanic, Chicana,
rather than the term that speaks to the specificity of their country of origin, typically face
blanket labeling practices that ignore individual nations and countries and their diverse
and distinct experiences. That notwithstanding, the terms "Hispanic" and "Latina" are
labels many do find applicable, and I engage Latina to refer to less culturally specific
elements that separate Dominican from Cuban and more general elements the two
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novels share. Though few Cuban Americans identify themselves as Latino or Hispanics,
many Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Chicanos label themselves as Hispanic or
Latino/a (Borland 150). Luis traces the term "Latino" to the late sixties and early
seventies, to an American political group called the Young Lords Party (279). He goes on
to say that Latino refers to oppressed people in the United States, a term that
"postcolonial people have developed within the colonizing country-an identity that does
not extend outside its geographic borders" (280). According to Luis, utilizing the term
Latino is to recontextualize outside the boundaries of race, in essence to reassign
identity, or as Oboler emphasizes, applying the term Latino or Hispanic blurs the
distinctions of writers who could be from one of at least eighteen separate
Spanish-speaking countries (160). This dilemma of categorical identity suggests the
complexities surrounding ethnicity and how negative connotations stem from unfairly
grouping people of diverse backgrounds, how powerful identity practices prevail in this
country, and how politically charged the issue of ethnicity remains not only in literary
studies, but geopolitics and socioeconomic arenas as well.
Clearly, there exists the very real probability that this practice of blanket naming
will result in continued cultural erasures and inaccuracies when a dominant culture
cannot or does not recognize and validate ethnic distinction. Pablo Medina recounts that
when he began publishing his work he was alternately called Hispanic, Cuban
American, and even Latino. He said this confusion gave him the "distinct impression
that I was somehow being manipulated" (qtd. in Borland 150). For those who prefer
more general or generic labels, Suzanne Oboler recommends employing the term
Latina/o as a marker that is sensitive to culture as well as language origins, where the
term Hispanic is more of a label of convenience the U. S. government created to conduct
census polls and other politically-motivated exercises. She believes the term Hispanic
connotes the image of "second-class 'foreign others" (159). On the other hand, Borland
supports Gustavo Perez Firmat's opinion that "Latino is a statistical fiction, a figment of
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the imagination of ethnic ideologues, ad executives and salsa singers" (150). Firmat calls
the term as "an empty concept." He adds, "Latino doesn't have a culture, a language, a
place of origin. How do you eat Latino? You can dance Cuban. You can dance rancheras,
but how do you dance Latino?" (qtd. in Borland 150). Most who identify themselves as
Latinos and Latinas share cultural, linguistic, and historical legacies originating in those
countries that comprise Latin America, where Chicanos/as essentially claim Mexico as
country of familial origin. However, Cuba is an island not considered a part of Latin
America, so this existing system of identity markers isn't sufficient. Borland, Oboler,
Firmat, and Luis would concur that Latin American and Cuban immigrants represent a
complex group of people with diverse backgrounds, countries of origin, class position,
race, gender, sexuality, religion, and political beliefs and should be treated as individual
entities. Base assumptions limit a culture's richness and must be avoided. Luis believes
applying postmodern literary theory to cultural criticism allows us to rethink "the
evolution and meaning of terms like Latino, race, difference, and hybridity. Postmodern
criticism allows us to judge old meta-narratives and construct new ones" (287). It seems
that postmodernity provides the language to interpret as well as engage a vantage point
useful in judging the past and, perhaps, multiethnic literature like Garcia Girls and
Dreaming in Cuban can serve as examples Americans study in order to measure the
successes and failures of a diverse culture.
There are still many theorists who approve of and utilize Latina, Chicana,
Hispanic, Native American, Asian American, and so on in their discussions, a decision
to be honored where appropriate. Whenever possible though, it seems wise to read a
text responsibly, meaning the audience must consistently contextualize the work in a
thorough manner, looking at all categories that define in terms of racial, ethnic, gender,
class, and political categories.
The novels also speak to the marked difference between voluntary immigration,
leaving one's home country in search of prosperity, and exile, fleeing to avoid political
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detention or even death. As William Luis observes, the Dominican and Cuban political
migration patterns occurred roughly around the same time period, the 1960s when
Trujillo fell from power in the Dominican Republic and Castro rose in Cuba (266). Their
own real-life exile experiences translate into their fiction, as Alvarez and Garcia each
write of forced and chaotic departures, characters who endure psychological and real
chasms in their identity, and others who never can renounce the beliefs and customs left
behind. These tropes appear within certain characters' compulsory desires to circle back
towards their homelands, mentally returning to the intimacy of the private, the comfort
of the public, and rehearsing imagined vignettes involving the things and people left
behind. The characters cannot resist the temptation to catalog certain conditions before
leaving, reasons for departure, and speculations about life on their islands after they
fled. Like various Cuban migration patterns which occurred mostly in order to flee from
Fidel Castro's dictatorship, many Dominicans left their homes because of Dictator
Trujillo's reign, a time in the island's history typically described as bloody, cruel, and
dangerous to its inhabitants. Both dictators ruled in absolute power and made
immigration or exile a political issue that pervaded all media forms. Because of their
respective positions in history, both dictators have profoundly impacted their citizens at
home and abroad and are subjects of a impacts family dynamics for those who not only
leave but also for the ones who must stay.
Suzanne Oboler observes that one importance of oral recitation of familial stories
to up and coming generations is that it helps to instill a cultural pride in families who
face constant hardships in their new country with its differing ideals, customs, and
attitudes. Like John Roberts's work in Chapter Two, asserts not all tales are of the
highest order. Shared histories also preserve and celebrate familial accomplishments
even when the heroes live subordinated lives; myths also alter otherwise traditional
perceptions of the old ways and beliefs. Oboler refutes the pervasive belief that Latinas
are "passive victims of their experience" which refers to the idea that Latino machismo
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keeps Latinas in subjugated positions (169). While machismo is clearly a value or belief
attached to certain cultures and prominently featured in both novels, Garcia and
Alvarez reject the notion that all Dominican and Cuban men are aggressively patriarchal
and all Dominican and Cuban women are submissive. In fact the authors systematically
jettison these stereotypes along with the "hot-blooded Latina" and hyper-sexed Latino,
as well as patriarchal dominance within the family. Unlike the Freudian family romance,
their family narratives depict characters sharing power and authority as freely attainable
traits, regardless of age, gender, or position within the family. Garcia's Lourdes flips the
patriarchal domination on all levels. She makes the family decisions from where to live
to which business they open, and she experiences a period of a particularly heightened
libido in which she forces her husband to submit her urgent and frequent sexual
encounters. This chapter reinforces Lourdes's position as a powerful character capable of
subverting patriarchal dominance, not someone whose empty, vapid sexual encounters
are endemic of her ethnicity. On the contrary, I think Lourdes is "reaching through
Rufino for something he could not give her," in an effort to quell her feelings about the
rift between her family (DC 21). During her freshman year of college, Yolanda
experiences the hot-blooded Latina stereotype when her boyfriend, Rudy Elmenhurst,
gets fed up with her repeated refusals to have sex. As they break up he snarls, "I thought
you'd be hot-blooded being Spanish and all, and that under all the Catholic bullshit,
you'd be really free, instead of all hung up like these cotillion chicks from prep schools"
(GG 99). Later in a chance run in with Rudy's parents, she finds the origins of Rudy's
ethnic stereotypes. She remembers, "His parents did most of the chatting, talking too
slowly to me as if I wouldn't understand native speakers; they complimented me on my
'accentless' English and observed that my parents must be so proud of me" (GG 100).
Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill believe that no other assumption
about Latino families is more popular than the male dominance (234). She finds that
much work conducted during the 1970s and 1980s effectively challenges this monolithic
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approach to Latino families as exclusively male dominated. Rather, and here Zinn uses a
variety of identifiers and freely mixes them, Latino/Chicano/Mexican American
families behave like any other family group, exhibiting many versions of marital
decision making, including "patriarchal, role-segregated, and egalitarian patterns, with
many combinations in between" (234). Both Alvarez and Garcia circumvent the
stereotypical notion of
the male-dominated household and offer examples from the text to support that idea.
Oboler's second myth surrounds the perceived homogeneity of things "Hispanic"
or "Latino" discussed above. Despite the fact that Dominicans and Cubans both speak
Spanish, their countries are islands boasting similar geo-climactic conditions and each
was at one point overthrown by a dictator, these similarities suggest little more and are
in no way sufficient evidence to draw comparative cultural assumptions. Neither
Alvarez nor Garcia write narratives that support the patriarchal household. Instead,
each portrays fictional families for whom power ownership is either a non-issue because
the characters implicitly share or exchange leadership roles.
Oboler also debunks some of the myths of the working class. For example, many
believe that immigrants who are non-white are often assumed to belong to the lower
classes in both their native and new countries. This assumption misses the broad class
structures found in Latin or Central American countries and Cuba, where, like most
Anglos, there exists a variety of working class people, and others achieve middle and
upper classes due to economic or inherited positions (Neate 218). One needs only to read
about the first wave of Cuban refugees that began in the late 1950s to understand this
fact. Most who immediately fled Castro's ascent to power did so to preserve their great
wealth and status as affluent artists, doctors, engineers, and assorted professional
positions, thus refuting the myth of the working class person. Garcia herself was an
infant when her parents left Cuba in 1958, so no coincidence that Lourdes and Rufino
leave and take their two-year-old as well (Mitchell 52). Only with the latter waves of
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immigrants, such as the most recent Mariel boatlift, did the stigma of Castro emptying
his jails and asylums and filling the departing vessels with the poor, mentally deranged
Cuban take root and propagate as another stereotype. In Garcia Girls the Garcia family
can thank Laura Garcia de la Tone's affluent heritage for enabling them to enjoy the
privileges of the Dominican upper class where they are considered one of the island's
wealthiest families, though for some reason the money remains on the island and the
nuclear family must practically fend for themselves. Dreaming in Cuban's Puente family
has an intricate support system of extended family in Miami that takes in the new
immigrants, teaches them American cultural nuances, and sends them on their way to
New York where Lourdes is owner of a successful bakery and Rufino an artist. In Cuba,
Celia and Felicia are no worse off than their compadres who work in the labor camps for
Castro.
In his study about ethnicity and community, Wilson Neate provides evidence to
support the idea that Chicanas/os live widely diverse experiences despite the
prevailing nuclear family myth. Though he is concerned with people of Mexican
descent, his findings are appropriate to apply to other Latin Americans without
becoming grievous and stereotypical. He finds though that though there are varied
Chicana/o class and familial experiences, "the ideal of a middle-class nuclear unit has
exercised a degree of power at the level of the popular imaginary and, moreover, has
been constructed in political and cultural representations alike as the desired and
privileged mode of familial organization" (219). Neate looks to some of Mark Poster's
scholarship to support his claim that the nuclear family's internalization through media
images, which began in the nineteenth century and has been absorbed into all class
contexts, "minority and non-minority alike," in terms of both psychological and
reproductive arenas, and has affected all families and all communities (Neate 219). He
sees that like race, the nuclear family is an artificial invention and the families who
reject this artifice do so for various reasons, none of which seem altogether politically
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motivated, but are probably due to more pragmatic reasons, such as economic and
emotional support. Neate sees the nuclear unit as a useful benchmark to measure the
"significance of subsequently convergent and divergent familial practices," and his
point is useful because he doesn't suggest the reader should simply reject the nuclear
configuration for another familial system (219). Accordingly, it seems that Neate would
agree that Garcia Girls and Dreaming in Cuban represent new watersheds in familial
plots by Dominican and Cuban American authors because they provide variety to the
traditional plots, and that variety doesn't exclude or replace the nuclear family.
Neate engages Griswold del Castillo's study of Chicana/o families from 1848 to
the present as important because Castillo suggests that the nuclear family has indeed
been a mythical narrative for Chicana/o families. He believes that the vast changes in
the American economic system have forced a rupture between the nuclear family as an
ideal concept and the extended kinship circumstances that continue to be actual realities
for Chicano/as. People of Spanish heritage, de Castillo finds, are accustomed to
adapting to diversity and as such respond quickly to changing material conditions, and
they view lafamilia as "a broad and encompassing term, not one limited to a household
or even to biologically related kin" (qtd. in Neate 222). He believes that contemporary
narratives challenge the nuclear tradition by featuring families that consist of relative
and non-relative kinships that problematize oppressive patriarchal plots. Both Garcia
Girls and Dreaming in Cuban follow families who reject the constraints of the nuclear
family for the extended ones. The Dominican Garcia del a Tones create the family
compound and since Lourdes insists that they locate away from her in-laws and their
extensive web of relations in Miami, the Puentes exemplify the fragmentation of the
Cuban family created by the Cuban revolution (Luis 215).
Perhaps the predominant reason a mainstream familial scholarship that
supports oppressive patriarchal plots has difficulty in not only recognizing but also
supporting these configurations is due to a continued reliance on the dominant
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experiences of modernization and assimilation. Zinn and Dill suggest that immigrant
families are judged by their abilities to assimilate into the dominant Eurocentric
patterns of familial development as practiced in the United States. Failure or even
hesitation to assimilate and assume the nuclear construct, a modern artifice, produces
negative connotations and marks the immigrant family as problematic, unwilling,
deviant, sullen, or pathological (232).Karen Christian sees recurring themes in literature
by Caribbean-born U. S. Latina/o writers that involve protagonists who, despite the
strong lure of the dominant culture to quickly assimilate, struggle to adjust to a new
country while maintaining some semblance of cultural unity to their homelands.
Typically, the immigrant individual or family moves into a "hostile metropolitan
setting," experiences a degree of racist oppression and its subsequent alienation, and
eventually accepts, although not necessarily completely, the new country's culture (90).
Both Garcia Girls and Dreaming in Cuban depict families who move to large urban cities,
honor their respective homelands through culinary, religious, and familial practices,
and feature characters altering their families in some way by adapting to the new
culture. Though neither overtly expresses their intent, both Garcia and Alvarez write
their characters into situations where they are conflicted about loving their new
country and emotional ties to their home country. Christian believes that these and
other writers resist assimilation by creating plots that offer framing devices to allow the
characters an opportunity to comment on their culture of origin rather than serve as
some final goal of the immigrant experience (90). Perhaps Garcia Girls and Dreaming in
Cuban are also evidence that immigration profoundly alters the émigrés as well as the
inhabitants of their new country, for each informs and becomes informed by the new
experiences.
Earlier I cited Rachal Blau Du Plessis's work about subverting traditional and
patriarchal writings as a trope these authors invoke. Whether the reason be culturally
imposed or not, Garcia and Alvarez write beyond the Eurocentric endings to resist the
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patriarchal plots that privilege nuclear families over extended kinships and instead
celebrate alternate power and kinships networks within the families. Though they focus
their observations more on the on the ethnic working class, Eliana Ortega and Nancy
Saporta Sternbach write of what they see as "a clearly distinguishable discourse of
Latinas," organic in composition and continually in the process of constructing itself and
reconstructing its future through literature (12). Latina women, the two believe, work to
depict the "reality, experiences, and everyday life of a people whose working-class
origin serves as a springboard to understanding cultural contexts [issues] considered
central for an analysis of Latin American literature: racial, economic, ethnic, political,
social, chronological, culinary, ideological, luminous, and stylistic" (12).
Garcia and Alvarez write with the understanding that their work appeals to a
heterogeneous audience, many of whom are either Dominican or Cuban American and
recognize ubiquitous elements and scenes played out in their both in own personal
arenas and in those who are not of Dominican or Cuban descent. Therefore, to render a
culturally accurate text, Latina writers draw on several events that disrupt traditional
patriarchal plots. Like some of the artists Ortega and Sternbach researched, Alvarez and
Garcia engage class and everyday experiences to rewrite the traditional familial plots
while presenting fictional accounts that speak of their specific beliefs, practices, and
aspects in their range of knowledge as such without suggesting these values explicitly or
exclusively apply to their respective cultures at large. Their novels show ethnicity as a
dynamic feature that greatly affects individuals as well as groups, like families. They
convey, "The tension generated when dissimilar cultures come into contact-tension
between past and present, between family history and daily life-is particularly visible in
literature by immigrant writers"(Christian 89). Christian's observation articulates the
dilemma of agency, of who gets to problematize this tension. Alvarez is American-born
of immigrant parents and Garcia was born in Cuba but has lived almost her entire life in
America. Their works reveal this collision of dissimilar cultures in matters of family
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practices, cultural beliefs, and future hopes, or what Christian and Ortega and Sternbach
refer to, however, neither Alvarez or Garcia fit into the narrowly defined categories.
Perhaps these tight spaces and references are endemic of the great deal of work cultural
studies in general and culturally specific studies must problematize in order expand our
choices in literary interpretations.
HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, AND GOT THEIR GROOVE
Two examples of outside influences that restructure families and their systems of
power are immigration and exile, each inevitably separating kin from one another.
Alvarez's Garcia Girls is comprised of characters that must negotiate one power struggle
after another, a trope also found in her second novel, A Time for Butterflies. Alvarez's
first work chronicles events in the fictional Garcia de la Tone family from 1956 to the
fictional present, 1989. As mentioned earlier, she avoids chronology in her novel,
choosing instead to employ multiple narrators and a chronologically backwards format,
though the beginning is also the end, and readers find that events and the characters'
lives come full circle, almost but not quite in reverse chronology.
The plot centers upon a nuclear family who must leave the country and how the
characters are affected by their continuous tension that exists when they circulate
between the United States and their extended family in the Dominican Republic.
William Luis calls this plot construction a technique that describes a "migratory process
of immigration" (196). He seems to suggest that migration is a continual process, which
Alvarez's narrative supports. While the Garcias concentrate on learning the nuances of a
foreign culture and maintaining consistent contact with relatives, they achieve various
small victories on either end with each exchange. At no time, however, does any
character fully denounce one country for another, a fact that implies that Alvarez
implicitly writes beyond the patriarchal endings that typically end when the characters
swear an oath of allegiance to America and renounce all allegiance to home. She instead
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portrays characters embroiled in a carefully constructed sideshow that erupts when the
Garcias go American and nuclear. Their new and forced kin system sharply contrasts
against the backdrop of the Dominican extended connection, which, too, is fraught with
problems but nonetheless intact. Because Alvarez features both familial configurations
as problematic and flawed, it appears that she attempts to break stereotypes where one
type of unit is preferred over the other, though she does portray one as strictly
Dominican and the other exclusively American. That is, though Americanized, the
Garcias meet and ride waves of strife, happiness, mental illness, insecurity, comfort,
love, and success, and they resist returning to the island to live; Alvarez doesn't require
her readers to choose one culture or familial construct over the other.
Drawing from her own personal experience of growing up in a large Dominican
family possessed with wealth and "obsessed with American culture," Alvarez's gives her
fictional family great prestige as one of the wealthiest on the island (Barak 161). She
places clues throughout the novel so that readers will appreciate how Dr. Carlos Garcia,
his wife Laura, and their children, Carla, Sandi, Yolanda, and Fifi are devoted to their
very large, extended family in the Dominican Republic. The Garcia de la Tone clan's
wealth is evidenced in their posh compound comprised of multiple homes where aunts,
uncles, cousins, reside together, and dark-skinned employees who are emotionally
connected to their employers and are treated as close to family as class convention
permits.2 These extended kin clog the driveway with the obvious signs of wealth like
Mercedes, BMWs, and other expensive performance vehicles; their compound boasts an
extensive staff that includes cooks, cleaners, nursemaids, gardeners, and chauffeurs; and
they habitually send their male children to exclusive private boarding schools in
America. The family's wealth also permits them the trips to America complete with
shopping sprees at Saks Fifth Avenue and FAO Schwartz in New York. Any
homebound relative loads up with gifts of fine clothing, jewelry, and other trinkets for
lafamilia waiting on the island.
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But while the family enjoys the luxuries of their island existence, Carlos lives a
double life as a doctor and a mole for the American Central Intelligence, assisting the U.
S. government in their plot to overthrow Trujillo. When the U.S. stalls and the coup fails,
the secret police interrogate the family until they uncover the doctor's part in the plot.
Garcia is ordered to gather his wife and children and immediately flee for the protective
custody the United States offers. He fails to realize how the thrill of revolution has been
supplanted within his children and wife as a means of achieving results. At this early
stage in the novel both Carlos and Laura are in their late thirties and their children are
very young, the oldest not quite eleven. Carlos's status in the Dominican Republic as a
respected doctor and powerful politico does not transfer to the U. S., and he must
initially accept a post as an intern earning enough money to keep his family afloat but
nowhere near the lifestyle they were once accustomed. The truncated nuclear family,
essentially adrift without the support of their extended relations, except the money
Laura's relatives infrequently slip her, finds itself in a new land without their "domestic
circle of kinfolk" (Stack 29). They must learn a new language, contend with their lower
class position, and struggle through the general malaise of learning how to survive and
succeed in a new culture.
As the four daughters and their parents become proficient in living in the United
States and begin making a gradual ascent up the economic ladder and achieve
middle-class identity, they visit their old island homeland during brief periods when it
is deemed safe for a former revolutionary. In keeping contact with the island family,
Alvarez sets up a dichotomy of old versus new world ideology in terms of ethnicity,
class structure, dating, and most importantly, gender, weaving the intricacies of
negotiations in a plot that works well for critiquing the difficulties of negotiating old and
new experiences. As the girls try to "Americanize" themselves and fit in with their New
York peers, they attempt to shed those strong connections to their kin. The sisters scoff
at their island cousins, calling them "the hair and nails cousins," those who wear "flashes
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of color in turquoise jumpsuits and tight jersey dresses (Alvarez 3). But instead of stock
characters that either grossly assimilate to the new country ways or stubbornly remain
old world, Alvarez paints them as identities in flux. Her characters test their limits and
are not afraid to reject some of their new American concepts like the nuclear family
ideology along with island ones they no longer ascribe to. Essentially, they experience
the "migratory process of immigration" that entails neither all nor nothing of either
culture, but possibly the best of each (Luis 196). This negotiation is best evidenced in the
fact that the novel begins and ends with Yolanda. The twist is that the Yolanda who
opens the novel is an adult who speaks English with almost no accent and is returning
to her native Dominican Republic to find herself, the self she ostensibly left when the
family fled some thirty years earlier. The Yolanda who ends the novel is a child who
speaks no English and who has not yet begun to understand that her maturation and
womanhood will become a perpetual journey, especially as she is a child of two
countries. In contrast, at the finish of the novel, readers discover the same character is a
scared little girl who is leaving her island home for America. Within this reverse
chronology Garcia explains and brings together the story of exactly how the Garcia girls
lost their accents and the import of such a process.
Because their departure is rushed, the family has to carefully select but a few
items to take with them. Angelika Bammer believes that the tangibles, like trinkets and
objects, as well as the intangibles, such as stories and memories governing tradition,
ground us by linking the past and the future, reinforcing the idea that we are linked to a
specific social or familial community (93). However, the eminent danger from being
arrested by Trujillo's guards spurns them to pack hastily, and the Garcia children are
told they may only select one item from their childhood to serve as a talisman of what
they leave behind for their new life, whatever could fit inside a suitcase with their
clothes. In taking in her lovely home for the last time, Laura Garcia's vision "sharpens as
if through the lens of loss-the orchids in their hanging straw baskets, the row of
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apothecary jars Carlos has found for her in old druggists' shops throughout the
countryside, the rich light shafts swarming with a golden pollen" (GG 212). To
demonstrate their loss from another point of view, Alvarez recasts the same traumatic
event in one of Sandi's chapters. In a reflective retrospect of her life and subsequent
choices, Sandi concludes how ludicrous the idea that somehow one item can represent
one's life and history. She then understands how that event mars hers forever, urging
her on a perpetual search for the transcendental signifier that links her past to the
"specific social or familial community" (Bammer 93). "Nothing would quite fill the need,
even years after, not the pretty woman she would surprise herself by becoming, not the
prizes for her schoolwork and scholarships to study, not the men that held her close and
almost convinced her when their mouths came down hard on her lips that this, this was
what Sandi had been missing" (GG 215).
Clearly, loss is a central theme in the novel. The narrative follows a loosely
reverse chronology so that each of the four Garcia daughters presents her views on the
family's and their individual predicaments while learning to live in America and still
maintain frequent visits to the island. From these multiple perspectives, Alvarez
creates a composite of the ever shifting power possession within this family as all six
Garcias come to understand how maturation as citizens of the United States means
learning to survive as a smaller familial unit. Together the daughters stage little
rebellions against their autocratic father, as does their mother, to alter their familial
dynamic from what might be perceived as the nuclear unit to a more egalitarian one.
The first chapter, "Antojos" which translates to "from before your United States
was even thought of' (GG 8) spells out the old world ways the Dominican della Tones,
Yolanda's maternal relatives, practice as observed from the Americanized Yolanda, who
is initially treated as an outsider for living so many years away from the clan. In this
return of her familial origins and playing every bit the prodigal daughter, Yolanda's first
task is to explain the complex pecking order the clan observes concerning the home
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front, la casa, and a mass of stucco and wood buildings that comprise the compound.
This intricate system cascades downward from the presiding uncles, to the aunts who
enjoy days of leisure, followed by the cousins and their children, the latter who at the
first sign of poor behavior invariably get whisked away by the help, "a phalanx of
starched white uniforms" (GG 3). Yolanda knowingly predicts they will pronounce her
appearance shabby, "like a missionary" and her hair "too wild" compared to the cousins'
"designer pantsuit[s] and frosted, blown-out hair" (5). Once she's weathered the remarks
and taken her place at the table, the aunts continue to complain about the help, and the
cousins discuss who is and is not away at American boarding schools (only boys are
permitted to attend U. S. colleges). Yolanda understands that after this afternoon of
feminine familiarity, they will all repair to their respective compound houses, instruct
their cooks concerning the evening meal, and wait for their husbands to return from
Happy Hour or, as one network, its wealth and cultural ties would embrace
Americanized gender and power roles to create an even stronger support system with
reconceived ideologies.
With regard to the island family and the American one, again she doesn't always
provide a clear seam where she defines what is purely "island" and "American" as the
Garcia de la Tones blur distinctions and cull from each culture what they find most
useful to reinvent themselves as neither American nor island but a combination of both.
This difficulty in identity can best be summed up by the fact that Yolanda eventually
chooses the Dominican Republic as the place where she believes she can formulate a
more cohesive self, knowing full well that her character has been defined by her life in
America and subsequent Americanized beliefs, values, and opinions which bear little
resemblance to her island family's. This conflict within her character seems to express
what Anzaldua discussed above as the space between cultures when one's identity can
be neither all of one or another.
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From the meticulous observations Yolanda makes in the very first pages of the
novel, it seems that for Alvarez, the family imposes a strong governing influence over
itself because she articulates the various principles that manage individual and group
behavior. She paints two equally flawed configurations instead of taking sides with one
culture over the other, though it is at times difficult to determine her allegiances. On the
one hand, the extended network found in the Dominican Republic, a phalanx of
relatives who love and also fight within close quarters and often seem to crowd each
other, is contrasted by the lonely nuclear family, vulnerable without its support system.
Naturally, there are flaws with each country, arrangement, and rules of decorum. In
America, the family must choose between a society that censures their ethnicity as
incentive to assimilate or seek long-distance refuge from the island culture and the
familiarity of their ethnic community (Karen Christian 91). The Garcias discover how a
dominant culture can exert economic pressure on ethnic families who choose to preserve
their heritage when their class status plummets and the girls express frustration that
they "didn't feel we had the best the United States had to offer" (GG 107). Instead of their
accustomed finery, they are forced to make do with "second-hand stuff, rental houses in
one redneck Catholic neighborhood after another, clothes at Round Robin, [and] a black
and white TV afflicted with wavy lines" (107). Though the family is acutely aware of the
change in prosperity, Alvarez reinforces the idea that Americans fail to differentiate
between economic and political exiles, so any claims to wealth and status in their
country of origin is pointless as it fails to impress those in the new country (Luis 269). To
add insult to injury, the strict rules that applied to island children followed suit in the
U.S. as well, but there was no island wealth to cushion the inequities. However, some
new customs challenge the family. As soon as a pervert approaches Carla as she walks
home from the neighborhood school and Sandi tries Tampax, their mother quickly finds
the means to ship the girls off to boarding schools they may mix with the "right kind"
(108). Obviously, if these events had occurred on the island, Laura and Carlos would
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have the benefit of immediate counsel with their siblings and in-laws and could
adequately handle the emergencies without further separating their small family. Later
in their adult lives the girls recognize the "censure of their ethnic excesses" that the
WASPish boarding schools accentuate (Karen Christian 91).
But if there exists any doubt about Alvarez's subtextual message concerning this
nuclear family's lack of close by extended resources, she answers forcefully their
attempts to assimilate into a dominant culture with repeated problems and issues. The
Garcia women pay a high price for their heritage or, as seen through the dominant
culture interpretation, their "excess" (Karen Christian 96). The two middle children,
Yolanda and Sandi, experience multiple mental breakdowns resulting in extensive
hospitalizations and recoveries, and neither can remain in satisfying long-term
relationships. The oldest, Carla, becomes a child psychologist who ritualistically
analyzes her parents and sisters at each gathering, pointing to how their actions
negatively affected her spiritual growth. In a scholarly paper Carla admonishes her
mother's method of assigning each child a color code to resist chaos and confusion.
"Each of the four girls had the same party dress, school clothes, underwear, toothbrush,
bedspread, nightgown, plastic cup, towel, brush, and comb set as the other three" (GG
41). Carla, whose color is yellow, writes in her paper, "I Was There Too," that the color
scheme "weakened the four girls' identity differentiation abilities and made them forever
unclear about personality boundaries" (41). Clearly, Carla sees how the system thwarted
any efforts towards individuality and the power that comes with recognition of the self
Moreover, each Garcia woman dates and marries an Anglo man, not a Dominican or
other non-Anglo. Readers must question Alvarez's motivation in such an obvious and
repetitious plot element, wondering perhaps if she's critiquing the inequities of gender
inequities in ethnic acculturation, taking an anti-immigration stance, or insinuating that
the sisters' emotional instabilities are the result of the often oppressive control Carlos
and Laura exert over them (Luis 271).
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In drawing equally from both cultures, this novel supports the claim that
ethnicity informs and enhances our American families. The six Garcias influence many
readers through their fictional exploits. Because the author continuously slips overt
judgment for one country over another by pointing various positive and negative
aspects about the Dominican Republic and the United States, she in effect asks her
readers to mimic the Garcias and consider the ramifications of being engaged in a
perpetual struggle of one against the other. She offers evidence that proves how difficult
the acculturation process can be on a family used to the protection of its extended
network but unable to access those people. Carla divorces her first husband and marries
her psychiatrist. After becoming dangerously anorexic, Sandi must be hospitalized after
becoming delusional. Yolanda divorces her husband and has relationships with her
psychiatrist as well as the Chair of the Comparative Literature department of the college
where she teaches, and she, too, suffers a nervous breakdown, claiming she is unable to
comprehend the English language. And Sofia or Fifi, the youngest, demonstrates how
children can achieve alternative points of power and eclipse their elders by firmly
reciprocating her father's extended grudge of silence against her for eloping with a
German she meets in South America. Alvarez quells any temptation in her readers to
wonder how well the family would have fared had they remained in the Dominican
Republic, rendering that culture equally as complicated. Therefore, instead of
encouraging a misreading of Alvarez's meaning, to see the novel only in terms of this
Dominican/ethnic/extended and American/assimilated/nuclear dichotomy, which
could easily be done, a more salient approach comes from examining the various ways
in which these fictional families operate within their respective contexts. The novel
offers a multifaceted view of how ethnicity enhances American familial relations, in that
much about the Garcia family is similar to many other American families. They stage
conflicts, arguments, power plays, revolutions, coups, and reconciliations. In this sense
the sisters then operate as a collective lynchpin between cultures as they influence their
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American constituents with Dominican customs, and their Dominican family with
American influences. With their visits to and from the island and their American home,
they provide an exchange of cultural ideas to their Dominican friends and family and
their American friends. Essentially, they inform and become informed as well as
represent and become represented by their Dominican and American lives. Therefore,
Alvarez's debut novel queries this conflation of family and ethnicity without making the
characters or the reader qualify and judge between country and culture.
Alvarez positions power as a crucial element in the novel, evidenced by the
perpetual advances, gains, defeats and disappointments the girls experience as children
and adults. Julie Barak connects their spirited assertiveness through their maternal
lineage of the de la Tone clan, descendants of the Spanish conquistadors, the warriors
who come to the island and conquer the Caribs & Tainos in the late 1500s. Their
descendants of the warring peoples have since been participants in several revolutions,
such as the Haitian battle for independence from France in 1804, the Dominican
Republic's successful revolution from Spain in 1844, and the 1960s political turmoil
(Barak 165). In America, these warriors' ancestors attain power as the daughters and
mother eagerly embrace many of the new customs while the father refuses to budge
from his home country's values that privilege him as unchallenged head of the
household. The novel surreptitiously indicates that power is a relational
commodification and directly affects the various familial relationships, and this is
articulated in the machismo myth expressed in the family's perennial parable to explain
why there are four daughters and no sons. Carlos uses the phrase, "good bulls sire cows"
as a clever way to shift the paternal blame away from him and acknowledge the
underlying disappointment of not siring male children. There are more examples of the
tacit acknowledgement of this machismo, or the myth of hypermasculinity and male
superiority. It seems that machismo governs the Garcia de la Tone clan in the Dominican
Republic but is significantly weakened when the count becomes five women to one man,
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especially for Carlos Garcia whose wife and daughters prefer the liberation of their
American lives without succumbing to his autocratic "old school" rules. His wife and
children certainly respect him, but behind his back they dismiss his strutting and
preening as childish and slightly buffoonish.
Perhaps the most obvious example where Alvarez rewrites and alters this
traditional familial power structure occurs in the chapter, "A Regular Revolution," when
the girls are in their teens. During their boarding school days they shirk the oppressive
cloak of chaperones, learn to forge their mother's signature, provide cover stories when
the parents call, discover kissing does not lead to pregnancy, and develop a "taste for the
American teenage good life, and soon, Island was old hat, man. Island was the
hair-and-nails crowd, chaperones, and icky boys with all their macho strutting and
unbuttoned shirts..." (GG 108). But their perceived freedom remains punctuated with
frequent visits to the island because [their parents'] "hidden agenda was marriage to
homeland boys, since everyone knew that once a girl married an American, those
grandbabies came out jabbering in English and thinking of the Island as a place to go get
a suntan" (109). However, for one particular holiday every year the adult women mimic
the island familial construct, reverting back to their girlhoods to honor their father's
birthday. Though their husbands and lovers lobby extensively to be included, "annoyed
at the father's strutting" that keeps them excluded, the daughters defend theirpapi and
his right to keep his four daughters to himself "They were passionate women, but their
devotions were like roots; they were sunk into the past towards the old man" (GG 24).
Only after the youngest gave birth to the long-awaited son do the American Garcias
acknowledge their status as an extended family and open the holidays up to everyone.
SPANISH-AMERICAN PRINCESS: VENI, VIDI, VICI.
But power can and does shift as demonstrated by the small revolutions the
Americanized Garcia girls and mother stage during a group island visit to stay in touch
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with lafamilia. When a maid discovers a bag of pot teenaged Fifi forgets in her packing
haste, Laura keeps the information from her husband, for fear that the repercussions
may muddy her own waters as an independent woman taking classes at the local
university. She banishes her youngest to six months on the island where she'll be safe
under the many watchful eyes of her tias and tios. Like her sister at the end of the novel,
Fifi imagines that returning to the island will help her rebuild her fragmented identity
(Karen Christian 111). But to her three sisters' chagrin, Fifi goes island and shortly after
her arrival is reputed to be "taking classes in shorthand and typing at the Ford
Foundation. [Moreover] they hear reports that she's also "seeing someone nice" (GG
117). When her sisters swoop in to whisk her away from their relatives and back to what
they believe is the safety of their progressively American lives, they find their baby sister
has gone the way of hair-and-nails and has turned into a "Spanish-American princess"
(GG 118). The someone nice she's seeing is Manuel, one of her father's brother's
illegitimate children no one in the family is supposed to speak of, and he is quite macho,
a virtual tyrant who tells the once liberated Fifi she can't wear pants in public, talk to
other men, leave the house without his permission, or read because books are 'junk in
your head" (GG 120). The sisters resolve to wrestle Fifi away from Manuel's influence,
which means going against island protocol, the macho system, and the cousins, and they
do so by following a plan their own father helped devise years prior to expose Trujillo's
tryst with one of his mistresses (127). In a clever twist that serves to remind the reader
that Alvarez resists an either/or competition between island culture and mainland
ways, just when the sisters think they've beaten their family and gained their
independence, an aunt, Tia Carmen, clucks over them and professes her love for her
nieces and how she cherishes their visits. Yolanda sums up the confusion with, "We are
free at last, but here, just at the moment the gate swings open, and we can fly the coop,
Tia Carmen's love revives our old homesickness" (131). The pull of familial love proves
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too strong and though they win the coup and get their youngest back, the daughters
know they will look forward to a lifetime of island visits to come.
These examples support the idea that in this novel contributing to certain
judgments about cultures is problematic, because the old world beliefs limit, prohibit,
police, control, under the guise of protecting the individual, while the new country
mores provide their own set of dangers and advantages. As in Fifi's case, uprooting the
subject exposes her to the requirements of the very cultural system from which she has
previously emancipated herself If the dominant system, which in this example is the
Dominican mores about gender identity, still produces subjects that differ from the "axis
of domination," the individuals will confront the domineering methods that force their
conformity and submission (Barak 165). Prior to the pot incident, Fifi behaved like her
sisters, secure in her ability to seek new freedoms in gender expression by taking
advantage of an American society immersed in the sexual politics of the 1970s. But when
she returns to the island she reverts to or becomes reinitiated into the Dominican mores
of machismo domination as imparted upon her by her boyfriend Manuel and tacitly
supported by her island family. The remaining three sisters, steeped in U. S. feminist
ideology, revolt against the control Manuel exercises over Fifi's mind and her body, and
the incident exemplifies again the pressure the girls experience between the "axes of
Dominican Republic machismo and U.S. feminism, between the languages of
domination and revolt that are integral to their histories as islanders," and the extended
community and nuclear family (Barak 166). However, Alvarez resists passing judgment
that Dominican men control some sort of a universal patriarchal control. The particular
cultural mores Alvarez portrays in her novel are unique to the situation, and the very act
of writing about these practices suggests that she is attempting to bring the issue into the
forum of the historical present for discussion. She exemplifies that just as a woman is an
unstable signifier, so is patriarchy. However, the events exemplified in this discussion in
no way suggest that Dominican social practices can be rightfully labeled as acts Alvarez
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showcases in order to then "colonize and appropriate non-Western cultures to support
highly Western notions of oppression" (Butler 3).
The novel makes clear that revolution against patriarchal inequalities isn't a
generational symptom. Restless with her new life in the states Laura Garcia attempts to
reject her deferment to husband and children and find her own autonomy, conducting
what Yolanda describes as "lip service to the old ways, while herself nibbling away at
forbidden fruit" (GG 116). Sandi observes "Mami was the leader now that they lived in
the States. She had gone to school in the States. She spoke English without a heavy
accent" (GG 176). She becomes an inventor, constantly sketching her ideas and trying to
enlist her already Americanized daughters for their opinions, but they resented the
chasm they perceive she creates with her focus on self-improvement instead of working
to help their acculturation go smoothly. For a time Laura thinks she can achieve her own
success instead of waiting for her husband to find a job that would vault the little family
back into the upper class position "her venerated family name" permitted them on the
island (Karen Christian 96). She devotes her evenings as creative invention time,
sketching stick figures on pads of paper. Some of her ideas demonstrate a keen eye and
talent. The figure of a stick person "dragging a square by a rope" would eventually be
the invention that revolutionizes air travel, the suitcase with wheels, but her sketch ends
up in a trash can instead of the patent office because she doesn't possess the resources to
follow through and she lacks support from her husband and children (GG 137). After
giving up the sketches, Laura asserts herself in other ways with her marriage and family,
thus turning the Garcia household into an egalitarian system of shared power and
responsibilities. Here the American culture enhances her Dominican one.
Alvarez also deals extensively with the concept of home. In the beginning of the
novel when Yolanda returns as an adult, she observes the family compound is
essentially a women-centered place where men infrequently insinuate their presences.
But inside these expensive villas displaying all the trappings of wealth, a different image
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could appear, that which restricts the freedoms of the female inhabitants. This seems,
though, not to be the case. The girls observe that the largest house belonged to Tia
Carmen, "the widow of the head of the clan," a station that affords her a modest
authority, something akin to the second in command (GG 7). Later in the novel but
much earlier in her life, the teenaged Yolanda and her sisters attempt to "raise
consciousness here" by asking another aunt, Tia Flor, why she resisted lobbying for
more power, which she considers "very unfeminine for a woman to go around
demonstrating for her rights." To this, Tia Flor replies, "Look at me, I'm a queen. My
husband has to go to work every day. I can sleep until noon, if I want. I'm going to
protest for my rights?" (GG 121). The Americanized girls see Tia Flor unwittingly
languishing in a prison of gender oppression, where the aunt sees herself as enjoying the
life of a well-positioned Dominican woman who is accustomed to extravagance. Again,
Alvarez's deliberate ambiguity at once asks her readers to read beyond the ending, but
take care in resisting the need to pass judgment on which system is more just over the
other.
Regardless of gender inequities, the Americanized Garcias have far greater
difficulties in making their living quarters feel like homes. In America there are no
aunts, cousins, or uncles who comprise the safety net of extended kin and extended
resources and can protect them from hegemonic oppression. In America they encounter
the hostilities of neighbors like "La Bruja," a blue-haired woman in their apartment
building who complains to Alfredo, the building super, how "Their food smelled. They
spoke too loudly and not in English" (Alvarez 170). Fortunately for the Garcias, Alfredo
is Puerto Rican and crosses the ethnic divide to provide some comfort and
understanding that their absent family cannot. He operates as a buffer between the old
Anglo woman who judges their ethnicity as excess (Karen Christian 94), and councils
them about how to avoid such encounters that challenge their identity. On the island,
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the family would never have been placed in such a position to explain their culinary
choices or reminded of their outsider identity.
Perhaps two additional factors that differentiate this chapter from the preceding
one are what Suzanne Oboler refers to as the myths that structure Latina/o experiences
and identities. One revolves around memory, specifically stories that first-generation
immigrants recount to their families about life in the homeland (168). These
remembrances take on additional significance because stories of the immigrant
experience are often silenced as they reveal the moments of extreme oppression, unfair
treatment, prejudice, and exclusion when disenfranchised people attempt to practice
traditions, religions, and cultural rituals from their country of origin. Like most familial
rites and observances, homeland myths and stories of learning the new country are
typically oral histories that often function as centerpieces in family events. In Garcia
Girls these myths come from multiple perspectives because the children are not born in
the United States but possess their own full memory banks about their lives on the
island. Alvarez provides each Garcia girl her own voice and chapters to divide up the
narrating duties, and each daughter reveals unique perspectives from her Dominican
and American experiences. Two popular homeland myths everyone clearly remembers
involve Trujillo's secret military police who investigated Dr. Garcia for suspected covert
activities. One tale involves, Yolanda, the gregarious third daughter, who almost gets
her father killed by telling their neighbor, an aging general, that her father had a gun.
After she receives a severe beating and her parents quickly dispose of the weapon, the
incident becomes indelibly printed into their memories, easily recounted by Laura's
"you almost got your father killed, Yoyo" (198). The second story surrounds Fifi, the
headstrong youngest, who resisted the sexual advances of one of the secret police
investigating her father. She refused the guard's invitation to sit "on his hard-on and
pretend we were playing Ride the Cock to Banbury Cross" (217). Though these moments
were extremely tense and dangerous for all, the subsequent stories gain import
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throughout the years and the family share immediate recognition at any mention of
them.
Yolanda returns to the island to end the novel or begin its chronological
narrative, in search of the most important familial myth to her, one never discussed at
parties and dinners, the personal myth of confronting her childhood and her past (Luis
277). As a small child, literally days before her untimely departure from the island,
Yolanda separates a kitten from its mother, uproots a baby from its nest in the same way
she is to be removed from hers (Luis 276). She finds a litter of kittens in a coal shed on
the property and falls in love with the one with white paws. Uncertain if touching the
kitten will cause its mother to abandon it, Yolanda asks a hunter cutting across the
property. He advises her that to take the kitten so soon from its mother would be "a
violation of its natural right to live," but Yolanda decides that this advice from a man
whose gun violates other animals of their natural rights is not to be trusted. She takes
the kitten and smuggles it into her room inside a drum with its mother in hot pursuit.
Overwhelmed with guilt at her act, she beats loudly on the drum to mask the kitten's
cries for its mother until she realizes she could kill it herself Then she opens her
window, throws the kitten out, and watches "the wounded kitten make a broken
progress across the lawn" (GG 289). For the rest of her life she will be haunted by dreams
of the mother cat searching for her baby as Yolanda fulfills Chucha's prophesy about
their future: "They will be haunted by what they do and don't remember. But they have
spirit in them. They will invent what they need to survive" (GG 223).
DREAMING IN CUBAN WHILE LIVING ON THE HYPHEN
Like Alvarez, Christina Garcia's debut novel, Dreaming in Cuban, depicts a
family romance based on profound loss, and one with which she has intimate and
personal experience. In 1993, Garcia claimed in an interview with the Boston Globe, "In
terms of the Cuban experience, the Revolution is 34 years old as old as I am. We're in a
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unique position to tell the story of exile in a way our parents couldn't because they
were too scarred and busy remaking their lives" (qtd. in Borland 136). Though she left
Cuba as an infant, Garcia's characters are profoundly affected by their exiled existence,
a trait found in other Cuban-born writers of her generation.3 Like many other Cuban
Americans, Garcia negotiates through the disparate political conflict that surrounds
Cuban natives, exiled Cubans, and younger generations of American born Cubans. In
an interview she explains how, unlike most protesters who are either pro-Castro or
oppositional to the revolution, she remains neutral and objective about the issue that
has torn so many families apart:
I grew up in a very black-and-white situation. My parents were virulentlyanti-Communist, and yet my relatives in Cuba were tremendous supporters ofCommunism, including members of my family who belong to the CommunistParty. The trip in 1984 and the book [Dreaming in Cuban], to some extent, werean act of reconciliation for the choices everybody made. I'm very much in favor ofdemocratic systems, but I also strongly believe a country should determine itsown fate. I realize I couldn't write and be a journalist and do everything I've donein Cuba; yet I respect the right of the people to live as they choose (qtd. in Luis216).
With Dreaming in Cuban, Garcia creates an intricate web of family and community
whose shared narrative reconceives family narratives made complicated by exiled
status. The novel conveys the tremendous weight Cuban Americans place on their
culture as well as their dichotomous views on Castro, and is told in "numerous narrative
consciousnesses, usually in the third person, from time planes that move backward and
forward but follow a general linear chronological direction" (Vasquez 22). Similarly to
Alvarez, Garcia goes to great lengths to make the narrative a family affair, and in doing
so reveals complicated elements of family and point of view as she fashions
inconsistencies in the text to demonstrate how complex point of view can be. No
coincidence that the text centers not just upon Abuela Celia, but "the entire extended
family of women-mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, cousins, godmothers, lovers,
neighbors, fortune tellers, curanderas (healers), midwives, teachers, and friends,
especially girlhood friends-make up a cast of characters" (Ortega 12). According to
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Eliana Ortega and Nancy Sternbach, when Latina women speak of a family of women,
"we imply a restructuring of the traditional patriarchal family" (12). Pilar,
thirteen-years-old when the novel begins and twenty-two at its close, seems to be the
common thread throughout the family, whether she's telepathically communicating
with her grandmother, Celia, vehemently arguing with her mother, Lourdes, or
commiserating with her father, Rufino. Garcia's novel like other texts featuring "the
child as an unconventional informant presents an unusual and potentially subversive
perspective. Her entire narrative may be seen as a process of undermining the value of
the patriarchal family" (Riga 104). Additionally, Pilar's primary objective is to reunite her
broken extended family. Like Garcia, though just two when the revolution began in
Cuba, Pilar claims she "remember[s] everything that's happened to me since I was a
baby, even wordfor-word conversations" (Garcia 26). However much the import of the
action rests with Pilar, I intend to demonstrate how each of the main characters each
overcome the geographic divides in their attempts to fuse together the family fractured
by politics and revolutions.
EXILE DREAMS: THE BREADED LEVIATHAN & CUBA LIBRE!
The novel chronicles the family romance from three dimensions that take into
consideration the character's political and gendered positionality. From Celia del Pino
we learn about familial legacy from the point of view of one who remains in Cuba, that
like politics, family unity requires the ultimate in personal sacrifice and reliance upon
the community equals reliance upon the family. Her daughter Felicia adds to that the
concept of physical and mental anguish as defining elements of the family romance. The
family romance as revamped by Lourdes demonstrates a break from cultural tradition.
The Puente's nontraditional nuclear family economically thrives in New York City, but
its members implicitly rebel against the nuclear triad to create a restructured family that
reflects their displaced condition as exiles (Ortega 12). Finally, Pilar as the third
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generation and a young teenager acquires the power and authority she will
undoubtedly parlay into her life as an adult and the matriarch to save her troubled
family by forcing a reunion in Cuba. I want to be clear that returning to the island is no
panacea for familial reconciliation, but for repairing multi-generational rifts returning to
the base of familiarity is, according to the novel, necessary. As a family romance, Garcia
consistently rewrites the patriarchal family trope with all main characters in the novel.
Her homes symbolize havens in a heartless world as well as instruments to trap, strip
away spirit, and oppress. In this cross-cultural divide, the indigenous and the immigrant
survive the state apparatuses with the help of extended family and communal support.
At the onset of Castro's command, Lourdes and her husband Rufino show their
contempt for Castro by fleeing Cuba, landing in Miami but at Lourdes's insistence they
strike out for New York, the ultimate symbol in immigrant freedom and assimilation.
They each leave behind their families, but Garcia concentrates on Lourdes's side, the del
Pinos, even though many of Rufino's family settle in Miami. Mother to Lourdes and
grandmother to Pilar, Celia del Pino is a staunch Castro supporter who disdains any
disparaging remark against el Lidar makes the rift between herself and her daughter's
family wider than the geographic divide. Pilar, a sensitive girl who becomes an
accomplished painter in her early teens, constantly lobbies for a reconciliation between
the women because she's motivated by her desire to learn about herself by learning
about her family and her culture. Like many exiles who bitterly oppose Castro and hold
him responsible for their having to leave the country, Lourdes expresses her patriotism
to excess, behaving more American than the descendants of the Mayflower. She names
her business The Yankee Doodle American Bakery, calls her mother a Communist, and
vows she will not return to Cuba until Castro dies. It appears as though Lourdes trades
her ethnic heritage for assimilation into the kind of "imagined community" that ignores
racial, social or national differences (Oboler 161). Like Claudia, Avey, and Yolanda, Pilar
exhibits a focused awareness on the importance of preserving the familial history that
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remains lost on Lourdes but well understood by Celia. Pilar's text are actually excerpts
from journal, a diary she ferrets away in the lining of her winter coat after her mother
finds it hidden under the mattress, which chronicles a family driven apart by politics,
pride, and emotions.
Doris Wilkinson asserts that maintaining close relationships with both sets of
grandparents is of fundamental importance, as is the maternal aunt's role to negotiate
between parents and adults in the family, which Garcia creates in the form of telepathic
communication between Pilar and the deceased Felicia (37). Garcia seems to support this
idea, because at the onset of the novel Pilar is the one most cognizant of the importance
of grandparents. Convinced that she is being oppressed by her parents, particularly
Lourdes, and that living with her grandmother Celia in Cuba will bring her familial
peace, at thirteen Pilar runs away to Miami where she believes the Puentes will support
her cause with money and transportation to the island. Though physically removed
from her grandmother, Pilar uses mental telepathy to communicate with her abuela
Celia so that she can remain connected to her extended family in Cuba at the same time
write their current history.
Those relatives who remain on the island also share narrative responsibilities
and plot complications. Through Celia we discover the complex system of familial
relations and duties, specifically that of mothering and patriarchal oppression Cuban
style, which helps us understand Lourdes's motherly and wifely motivations in
America. Though Freudian influences are quite similar to the system of Cuban
machismo, the powerful mother/son match reformulates the Freudian family romance
to feature families that consist of dominant mothers and sons. This system where Garcia
privileges the father's patriarchal power and dominance lasts only as long as his wife
bears him females. After a son arrives, the power shifts to the mother, which she
dutifully passes to her son when he is of age. In a combination of third person narrative
and Celia's letters to Gustavo, Garcia begins examining traditional patriarchal conditions
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in the Cuban family and how such arrangements transform the home as safety into the
home as prison for women. While wasting away and housebound due to her depression
at losing Gustavo, Celia finds Jorge del Pino, fourteen years her senior, coming to court
her. Though patient with her delicate position at first, Jorge eventually orders her to
write Gustavo. " 'Write to that fool,' Jorge insisted. 'If he doesn't answer, you will marry
me" (DC 37). After no word from Gustavo, Celia relents to Jorge's frequent insistences,
marries him, and the couple move in with his mother. What occurs next seems like a
miniature missive attacking the patriarchal structure by an elaborate show of maternal
dominance that sets up a subtextual pattern of deviant maternal behavior that affects
relationships as it ripples through Celia to Lourdes to Pilar. Some forty years later after
Jorge dies and makes posthumous visits to Lourdes, he confesses his culpability in
sending Celia to an asylum. As revenge for her loving Gustavo in a way he knew she
could never love him, the seemingly gentle Jorge leaves Celia with his mother and sister
so that they can break the spirit in her that broke him with love. He deliberately stays
away on his business trips longer than necessary so they have more time to belittle and
mentally torture Celia. Instead of quickly succumbing to their inhumane acts like Jorge
expected, Celia persists. After delivering Lourdes, however, Celia grips her baby by the
ankle and hands her to Jorge, vowing never to know her name (DC 195).
With this vignette where Celia temporarily lets go of her mental faculties and
her first child, I think Garcia accomplishes several tasks. Regardless of the cost to her,
Celia does get released from her mother-in-law's prison, even if she must enter another
institution. Where many young wives stay and endlessly endure the shame and berating
attacks, Celia triumphs over the oppressive system. Also, when she returns from the
institution, she assumes absolute control in the marriage so that Jorge will never again
challenge her authority. Celia subverts the machismo and then teaches her two
daughters and a son how to rewrite the same, though here I want to make a distinction
between reformulating the patriarchal family and mothering. Celia teaches many lessons
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to her children, but maternal nurturing is not one, and I see that failing as partially due
to Jorge's attempt to break her and partially due to her own mother's inability to
nurture. Consequently, Lourdes and Pilar have a stormy relationship fraught with
mother/daughter battles, as do Felicia and her three children. Lack of the maternal also
functions as a way of subverting the patriarchal family.
To rescue these patriarchal and nuclear families, Garcia combats the pattern of
generational aggression with extended family and community webs of containment to
diffuse the strong personalities and conflicts; however as evidenced in the lack of the
maternal theme, Garcia will not deliver the ubiquitous happy ending. For Celia and
second daughter Felicia, the line between the communal and the familial is less distinct
than an open door. They live close to one another and have the fellowship of
long-endured neighbors to buoy them and help in times of need. Celia also enjoys the
company of her fellow revolutionaries, though Felicia is less enthusiastic about the
situation. Isabel Alvarez Borland calls Felicia a "stranger to the rational world due to her
own real dementia," and believes her syphilis renders her in "the silent world of inner
exile" (DC 140). Though Felicia's health does plunge her into psychotic episodes, such as
when she burns Hugo the husband who infects her with the disease and kills her next
husband by pushing him out of a roller coaster, which prompts her to eventual suicide,
she also experiences long periods of lucidity and is connected to an extensive santeria
sect of which her best friend from childhood, Herminia, is a priestess. Of their friendship
Herminia says, "I never doubted Felicia's love. Or her loyalty" (DC 184). In the chapter,
"Daughters of Chango," Garcia expands the telecommunication element that Pilar is
attuned to include Felicia and Lourdes, with Felicia as the spiritual link. In Cuba she
plays her Beny More records, "loud and warped [to] lessen the din" of neighborhood
noises that her acute hearing blasts in her head (DC 75). Later Pilar thumbs through
album seconds in a New York record store and buys a beat up Beny More record. After
leaving the store Pilar has the urge to visit a botanica, a shop that sells santeria
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paraphernalia because like Felicia she appreciates "the simplest rituals, the ones that are
integrated with the earth and its seasons, that are the most profound" (DC 199). She
selects a red and white beaded necklace and a packet of herbs, prompting the shop
owner to place a hand on her shoulder and call her a "daughter of Chango" because the
deity's colors are red and white and tells her to "finish what you began," meaning her
thwarted trip to Cuba (DC 200). In a ceremony reminiscent of Felicia's when she tries to
become a santeria priestess, Pilar returns to her dorm room with her purchases, lights a
candle and makes a bath with the scented herbs. At midnight she paints "a large canvas
ignited with reds and whites, each color betraying the other," and continues the ritual
for eight more days. "On the ninth day of my baths," Pilar concludes, "I call my mother
and tell her we're going to Cuba (203). Ironically, Pilar always feels a connection to her
grandmother, but this chapter emphasizes the intimate connection Pilar has with Felicia.
Once in Cuba she begins to understand the similarities she shares with Felicia, such as
the ease with which each could integrate into new environments (Luis 230), and their
openness to various religions and spiritual beliefs. Immediately before Pilar's purchases,
Felicia's spirit moves to Lourdes through their deceased father. In this final time of
contacting her from beyond death Jorge again confesses his horrid sins against Celia
with even more details about how he left her in the asylum with instructions for the
doctors to make her forget about Gustavo. "They used electricity. They fed her pills" (DC
196). Then he explains that Felicia has died and that she must return to Cuba to "do
things you will only know when you get there" intimating that the rift between his wife
and eldest is not at all what Lourdes has been thinking (DC 196). Felicia and Jorge
understand how distant Lourdes and Pilar are from their extended family and
community, and their telepathic urging becomes the impetus for familial reintegration
when at the end of the novel Pilar and Lourdes return to Cuba and all begin the business
of tenderly repairing the strained relationships.
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SUGARCANE SHADOWS
In "(Re)Writing Sugarcane Memories" Eliana S. Rivero discusses the issue of a
double identity that perpetually shadows Cubans who evolve into Cuban Americans.
She finds the condition manifested in writing that expresses "a sense of belonging
nowhere-neither here nor in Cuba. Their place and time had been defined by a cultural
space that is no more: the decade of the fifties" (170). Similarly, Michael Seidel describes
the Cuban exile as "one who inhabits one place and projects the reality of another" (qtd.
in Borland 141). I see Garcia engaging in this concept of cultural displacement in the
Puente nuclear family, but when Pilar flees to her father's family in Miami, she
experiences an integrated extended family and community whose estrangement from
Cuba would not be as apparent. The senior Puente home is a compound of sorts in that
Rufino's parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law live together in a cadre of tios and tias in a
wealthy neighborhood of Cuban immigrants.
Lourdes, whose earnest attempts to trade her Cuban identity for a fully
integrated American is probably the most affected. Obviously, her memories of the
island are finite and fresh ones cannot be made after she has departed, but she has no
interest in developing new ones she could establish with consistent contact with her
family on the island like her daughter conducts. To suppress even the old memories,
Lourdes uses her bakery business and stints as an auxiliary policewoman to divert her
attentions from her truncated family. Not until her father comes to the states four years
later for cancer treatment does anything Cuban make it through her touch façade.
Lourdes recalls "how after her father arrived in New York her appetite for sex and baked
goods increased dramatically" (DC 20). Garcia paints Lourdes as a woman barely in
control of her life, wolfing pounds of sticky buns at a sitting, wearing her husband down
with urgent and frequent lovemaking sessions, astounding him with her agility despite
gaining 118 pounds. Garcia cryptically describes this abnormal behavior saying that
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"Lourdes was reaching through Rufino for something he could not give her, she wasn't
sure what" (DC 21). I think Garcia wants readers to see that behind her unrequited
cravings exists a deep and primordial instinct to reunite. Reunification between herself
and her daughter, herself and her extended family, and her daughter and extended
family in Cuba will realign all the members with the communities and cultures from
each side of the ocean.
REVOLUTIONARY FAMILIES AND THE MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY
By the end of the novel Garcia's consistent character portrayals lend a degree of
predictability in terms of how they will react to the inevitable reunion that has been
foreshadowed throughout, but not necessarily the final outcome of the action. The
connection between Celia and Pilar seems obvious. Through unfortunate cycles of
abandonment, Celia's inability to mother Lourdes early in her life sets of the next cycle
where Lourdes finds it difficult to exhibit love and affection to Pilar. However, on the
last page we find the final letter Celia writes to Gustavo dated January 11, 1959, on the
day Pilar is born, which is also Celia's fiftieth birthday. She explains that this is her last
letter to him because "She [Pilar] will remember everything" (DC 245). Garcia reveals
through this out of sequence epistle that we have been reading Pilar's diary all along and
that she has been the omniscient narrator. According to Isabel Alvarez Borland, Garcia
creates this device to impress upon the reader the fact that Pilar shoulders double duty
of narrating and participating in a story about herself and her place within a family so
that she could more actively "find that part of her identity she knew was missing" (DC
141).
But now that we know Pilar has been filtering the action through her own biased
and complicated lenses, I think it important to revisit Lourdes's incredibly complex
character, because the version Pilar has been presenting shows her as a strong willed,
single dimension, stubborn and unreasonable woman incapable of evolving into
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anything more. Throughout the text Garcia maintains a distance between Celia and
Lourdes that, as revealed above, is unwillingly instigated by Jorge in his machismo
attempts to break Celia's spirit and punish her for loving another man before him. By
sending Celia to asylum immediately after she has Lourdes, Jorge not only makes his
final bid for power within his family, but he also separates mother and child at their
most critical stage of bonding and development. For the rest of their lives Celia and
Lourdes must struggle with feeling like isolated individuals in a culture that values
extended family and community (Bump 328). Lourdes works through these feelings of
inadequacy by knee-jerk reactions and pure action, which come across as the signs of a
woman hiding from her feelings. Garcia again circumvents the tradition of power
located within the paternal with Lourdes and Rufino's non-traditional by Cuban
standards marriage. Lourdes immediately understands that her husband, a farmer in a
long line of farmers in Cuba, has experienced some form of arrested motivation. Garcia
explains that shortly after their arrival in America when they leave their refuge with the
extended exiled Puentes in Miami that Lourdes instinctively knows Rufino "would
never adapt. Something came unhinged in his brain" that would prevent him from any
work but what he knew in Cuba. "There was a part of him that could never leave the
finca [farm] or the comfort of its cycles, and this diminished him for any other life" (DC
129). Though instilled with the idea that "Cuban women of a certain age and a certain
class consider working outside the home to be beneath them," Lourdes ignores such
classist ideology and takes control of the marriage, the finances, and the decision making
processes (DC 130). Joseph Viera calls her a "doer" who attacks her new life in America
as an entrepreneur with such frenetic energies that she is obviously masking her feelings
about leaving Cuba (239). Indeed everything Lourdes attempts she carries to excess,
such as her belief that owning one bakery will not satiate her desires. She wants a chain
of bakeries that she will oversee. At the core of all her intentions is making Pilar's life in
America easier than she experienced in Cuba, but she carries out her actions with so
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much domination that her entire family easily misreads her. Ironically, had Garcia made
Lourdes the hidden narrator, I think she would have painted Celia in the same strokes.
However, evidence suggests Lourdes clearly exhibits a tremendous amount of growth
and change as demonstrated in a series of events that occur during her visit to Cuba.
Garcia's deceased characters continually call to the living to repair the fractured
family, as evidenced in the change to Lourdes's character because of the accelerated
action at the end of the novel. Spurned by visits from her dead father urging them to
return to Cuba, Lourdes concedes to make amends and she and Pilar embark on the trip.
Each approaches the visit with her particular agenda, though both seek the same: the
essential core of identity and unification between family. Pilar wants to absorb the
culture that is implicitly hers and she relishes spending quiet times with Celia to learn
the histories that grandmother will pass to granddaughter. Like Claudia in The Bluest
Eye and Avey in Praisesong for the Widow, Pilar understands Celia has chosen her to
pass on the family stories. Just before Celia tells Pilar that only granddaughters can save
their grandmothers and "guard their knowledge like the first fire," Pilar feels, "my
grandmother's life passing to me through her hands. It's a steady electricity, humming
and true" (222). This scene foreshadows Celia's suicide and the end of a family's
matriarch, but not before she passes the legacy to the next generation. Meanwhile,
Lourdes is busy tearing through the country in a rented car revisiting places from her
past to gather the disparate memories from her fragmented life as an exile. She returns
to her husband's farm and the place she lost her first child, to the streets of her own
childhood, her sister's home to see her nieces and nephew.
Pilar's observations of Lourdes remain consistent with those throughout her
diary/the novel. "She argues with Abuela's neighbors, picks fights with waiters, berates
the man who sells ice cream cones on the beach" about the lengths of decay and poverty
the island and its people have experienced (DC 234). I submit that where Celia is losing
her energy to keep the family together, Lourdes increases her energies from the island,
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which she will need to complete what I believe is her secret agenda to reunify the
surviving and willing del Pinos by spiriting them out of Cuba and into the states. When
she learns the dictator has declared that any wishing to emigrate can leave through the
Peruvian embassy, she rushes to Felicia's son, Ivanito, and packs his clothing. He is the
easiest to grab up and the least invested in the political struggle, so Lourdes practices
her skills in covert activities with him.
Because Celia is a loyalist to the revolution and Pilar is so caught up in mending
the broken connection between them, Pilar misinterprets Lourdes's actions, and Celia
reaffirms her lamenting, "We have no loyalty to our origins. Families used to stay in one
village reliving the same disillusions. They buried their dead side by side." She finishes
with, "Ay mi cielo, what do all the years and the separation mean except a more
significant betrayal" (DC 240). When they go to the embassy where each gets bruised
and shaken by the angry mob trying to swarm the already filled compound, Pilar still
supports Celia's beliefs over her mother's. She promises to find Ivanito, and when she
does they hug. She feels "my cousin's heart through his back. I can feel a rapid uncoiling
inside us both" (DC 242). With that visceral connection to Ivanito and his emotions, Pilar
separates herself from her abuela, cementing the parting with a lie, "I couldn't find him"
(242). This scene marks Pilar's initial awareness that the roles of good and bad she
assigned her grandmother and mother and Cuba and the U. S. that she angrily clings to
are much more unstable than she estimates. Home for Pilar will not be her
grandmother's but her mother's. Pilar sees with greater clarity the relationship also
between cultural displacement and cultural unity and each has defined her selfhood and
her family, even Abuela Celia.
Though the novel ends immediately after this scene when Celia slips into the
night and walks into the ocean to die, I believe the events at the compound and Celia's
death helps Pilar understand that the Cuba she romanticized, like her place within it,
became vastly different from her idealized dreams. What we take away from this novel
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is, I believe, an ambiguity about the space which families occupy. Helping Ivanito
emigrate is not an act of spite against the island or her mother, but for Lourdes an
opportunity to bring yet another member of the family out of the revolution and into the
exiled community. On many levels Pilar understands that distances occur within one's
home as they do between nations. I hesitate to say she will reconcile herself to her
mother's political and cultural opinions, but having spent the six days in Cuba, Pilar
develops a much more sophisticated sense of the family, the culture, the ideologies she
learns on the trip. Lourdes recognizes that Celia did not abandon her, but taught her to
"read the columns of blood and numbers in men's eyes, to understand the morphology
of survival" (DC 42). So the Cuban American visitors each leave with intangibles and
tangibles to help them continue to negotiate the familial and cultural divide that
comprises their non-traditional family. Pilar has Celia's letters to Gustavo, and Lourdes
has her nephew, Ivanito. The family loses Celia, but like her beloved country, Celia will
always be a part of their lives and dreams in Cuban.
Ultimately, this novel attempts to determine what happens to the concept of
family when the locus of familial identity and authority become displaced (Bammer
105). Against her mother's wishes, Lourdes defies the government of Cuba so that she
can reassemble the disparate pieces of her kin. Whether she will rescript them into
another familial mold or fold them into her own, we can only guess, but her post-Cuban
family romance will be anything but traditional. Family, community, and nation are
"unstable and mutable concepts" but inseparable as well (Bammer 96). This dilemma
took center stage in the 2000 Census Report that lacked specific ethnic and racial
categories were not provided. As more ethnic groups are discovering, invisibility
equates to more than loss of identity, such as unavailable funding for certain
communities, and groups are now marshalling forces for more adequate representation.
The help, mainly Haitian women, exemplify those racial and class divisions similarly to
black/white issues Morrison depicts in The Bluest Eye. In an effort to commit racial
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genocide and rid the island of what he considered the inferior Haitian presence, Trujillo
calls for an overnight slaughter of all Haitians. Chucha pleads with the Garcia girls'
grandparents who take her in and save her life. In exchange, Chucha pledges lifelong
loyalty to the de la Tones. Like Morrison's Pauline Breedlove, Chucha's steadfast
dedication affords her certain perks other servants are denied, but she's nonetheless a
lower-class citizen who, by virtue of her birth, will never rise to the equality of the
family she serves. Cuban Americans Virgil Suarez, Roberto Fernandez, and Achy Obejas
infuse their work with issues like the political exile, the incredibly difficult debate Cuban
exiles and Cuban Americans have over the Revolution and Fidel Castro, and dreams of
one day returning to Cuba.
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CHAPTER 10: U.S IMMIGRANT SUBJECTIVITIES & NARRATIVES IN THE SHADOW OF THECOMMODITY
This chapter takes the serial works of five immigrant autobiographers written
during the 1980s and 1990s as occasions to explore and theorize the relationship between
identity formations in narratives of Americanization and the social discourses and
material practices that make these texts possible and intelligible, specifically in relation
to the promise and anxiety occasioned by renewed periods of high migration
experienced in the U.S. in the last three decades (Fig. 3). In particular this chapter is
concerned with tracing the generative tensions and contradictions of ideological
discourses surrounding nation, self and narrative representation in the United States in
the last decade of the 20th century in order to demonstrate the "material force" of
ideational and ideological biographic narrative formations within a culture structured
around relations of exchange and commodification—i.e. advanced late capitalism.
In brief, by investigating the life narratives of immigrants, this chapter attempts
to account for the emergence, development and imperatives of what some scholars have
labeled a "culture of autobiography" in evidence throughout U.S. cultural formations
within the last three decades (Folkenflick 1).
Lastly, this chapter attempts to map the development and dialogic response of
U.S. immigrant autobiography to heated public debates over immigration at the 20th
century's close, echoing the heyday of a similar nativist assault in fin-de-siecle 19th
century America lasting into what social historian John Higham has characterized as the
“Tribal Twenties” in his classic study on American nativism, Strangers in the Land
(1964).
The ideological triumph of economies of exchange underwritten by commodity
relations at the present historical juncture call for an accounting of the reifying and
utopian possibilities and constraints of all cultural formations, but most especially those
of emergent immigrant and ethnic cultural formations since these, as this chapter will
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argue, provide a unique perspective on the economic, cultural and social cleavages
within the discursive and material fabric of the United States. Added to this social
dynamic is the advent of what immigration historians Castles and Miller call "the age of
migration" providing us with a unique opportunity to examine the role and expansion
of commodity relations at both phenomenological and structural planes because the
commodities now in motion and circulation around the globe speak & act: they are the
men, women & children that have entered this country as immigrants, refugees &
asylees and have gone on to document new contours to the American literary traditions
of self-writing and novelizations of pre-migration experiences and Americanization.
While, their stories are singular and unique testaments of journeys undertaken,
determination exhibited, struggles lost and successes achieved, they are also cultural
artifacts that document the inexorable logic of capital's commodifying and reifying
tendencies even within the most private and individual of spaces—human
consciousness and subjectivity as manifested through the act of writing and narrative
self-fashioning. The story that will unfold within the scope of this chapter is a trajectory
of the narrativization of commodification of social life, and by extension the
commodification of individual life or consciousness as attested to by immigrants
themselves in their life writings and labor or through works of imaginative literature.
TOWARDS A SOCIO-LITERARY PERSPECTIVE:
The goal of this study has been is to provide a methodological intervention in the
realm of cultural and literary studies that take as their object of inquiry immigrant and
ethnic cultural formations. At its most concrete level, this study seeks to outline and
articulate a historically determined and influenced dialectical materialism that will
bridge the gulf between 1) a reductive and individualist, “auteur” focus on emergent
immigrant cultural formations and 2) an over-generalized and overly structural focus on
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social and economic integration—i.e. Americanization. This study strives to present an
intermediate perspective that engages the mirco- and marco-structural dimensions of
migration, while at the same time being attuned to the "cultural work" and labor
performed by immigrants within a global capitalist economic order that structures the
ideational or noumenal forms cultural expressions take on. To this end, this study
borrows and builds upon recent trends in immigrant historiography, literary studies,
ethnography, sociology and world systems theory that have posited and discussed the
epochal transformations in capital formations from Fordist to Postmodern mutations
since the beginning of the 20th Century. In particular I will explore the “cultural friction”
occasioned by an increasing rate of immigration towards the end of the 20th Century in
the U.S. echoing earlier accelerations in rates in the 1850s and 1910s .
Historically, the publicly available discursive formations surrounding
immigration in the United States have oscillated between two mutually exclusive and
contradictory poles that stress either a history of race-based exclusion or one of inclusion
(Takaki 12). Depending on the political project at hand, whether it be progressive or
reactionary, cultural workers in the field of immigration studies and policy have, for the
most part, characterized and overemphasized one of these two historical trends at the
expense of a balanced and dialectical outlook. This idealist and myopic analytic
strategy--one that has left us with categories and assumptions modeled on a bifurcated
neo-classical economic paradigm unable to reconcile the micro-structural & macro-
structural dimensions of migration--leaves us ill prepared as students and scholars of
immigrant and ethnic cultural formations to deal with the complexities, contradictions,
ambiguity and heterogeneity of the life experiences of immigrants and the attendant
processes of economic and social integration they experience (see Fig. 7 for an example
of such a process that I have used successfully in the classroom to help guide students
towards systemic and structural thinking.
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Figure 3 - Sedimentation: From Habitus to Ideology
Figure 4 - Acculturation Process
The socio-literary perspective advocated by this study attempts to go beyond the
belletristic and naive humanist celebrations of ethnic diversity and/or condemnations of
ethnic antagonism evident in much scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences
within the last three decades by focusing on the socio-economic horizons wherein
immigrant cultural productions take place both on a national and global stage. While it
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would be too reductionist to insist that the story of migration or immigration in the 20th
Century is simply the story of international labor migrations; it would be equally
misguided not to attend to the structural components and consequences of the
accelerations and transformations in capital attendant in the shift from Fordist to
Postmodernist economies of exchange and its attendant waves of global migration in
factors of production. The accelerations in global economic integration since the end of
WW II precipitated by automation and technological innovation, the continuing search
for exploitable natural resources and commodity markets, and the declining rate of
profit available to capitalists in the industrialized world have all placed a premium on
the "free movement" of the factors of production, chief among them labor, in order to
guarantee the ever-expanding consumption and production "needed" to sustain a
capitalist world economic system (Harvey 1989: 186). However, these accelerating or
fragmenting forces have not been the only ones unleashed in the wake of a globally
consolidating capital formation made up of multinational corporations, since there have
also been, on a local (regional or national) level, forces that have placed a premium on
"boundary maintenance" in a nativist register. Hence, the turbulent and heated national
debates over citizen and worker rights much in evidence around the globe since the
collapse of the oligarchic collectivist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
and the emergence of the United States as a global geo-political, economic and military
hegemon by the early 21st Century in the aftermath of Persian Gulf War II.
LE LY HAYSLIP'S MORAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP & THE POLITICS OFABSOLUTION IN WHEN HEAVEN AND EARTH CHANGED PLACES AND
CHILD OF WAR, WOMAN OF PEACE
The new Iraq War, having become the U.S.’s 2nd Vietnam under
Bush II, provides a new punctual backdrop and social resonance in the serial
autobiographies of Vietnamese American writer Le Ly Hayslip. Her opus are cultural
documents that argue for an individualistic social therapeutics based on reconciliation
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and forgiveness that contest, and yet affirm, dominant (hence ideological) readings of
the U.S.'s involvement in Southeast Asia. No doubt the short-lived popularity of
Hayslip's narrative, in part, derives from its efficacy in assuaging and managing the
guilt, shame and trauma associated in the national socio-political imaginary with the
"American loss of innocence in Viet Nam," while at the same time documenting the
resilience, fortitude and determination involved in one woman's narrative trajectory
from "rags to riches"--both staples in the repertoire of identity narratives in the 1980s of
Reagan's America depicted in Hayslip’s chronicle. In fact, the popularity and perceived
effectiveness of Hayslip's narratives in giving a "face" and a "voice" to the "enemy," as
evinced in the commercial success of Olive Stone's filmic adaptation of Hayslip's life in
Heaven and Earth (1994), serves as a prime site of inquiry into the role of
commodification in the life writing of immigrants. Of special interest throughout the
study is the role of the immigrant autobiogapher in accommodating, challenging and
changing the terms and conditions of structural and cultural assimilation into a U.S.
social formation underwritten by a regime of flexible capital accumulation that foments
social fragmentation (Harvey). In particular, the study focuses on When Heaven and
Earth Changed Places (1989) and Child of War, Woman of Peace (1993) as narratives
engaged in 1) confirming the assimilability of Southeast Asian immigrants, 2) deploying
the tropes and metaphors of a therapeutic cultural formation in evidence in U.S. in the
1980s (Lears 1983: 6), 3) promoting an international philanthropic enterprise, through
The East Meets West Foundation, underwritten by a neo-liberal politics of volunteerism
and effective compassion consonant with the "thousand points of light" pop-ideology of
the Bush Administration, 4) joining a national conversation over the meaning of "Viet
Nam" (Christopher 1995: 2), 5) positioning the immigrant autobiographer as a moral
entrepreneur, 6) documenting the creation of cultural capital through autobiographical
narratives, and 7) demonstrating the effect and consequences of commodity relations on
everyday life and consciousness (Lukács 1968: 86-87).
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More concretely, Hayslip’s life story traces the role played by the socialization
and acculturation into market relations she undergoes in war-torn Viet Nam as a rite-of-
passage and constitutive experience of her Americanization abroad. The lessons
Hayslip learns as a blackmarketeer in Saigon prepare her to assume her place in the
American canon of identities as an "entrepreneur," a role that she enacts in both private
business and civic life. Hayslip's is a narrative of social mobility that attests to the
possibility and desirability of attaining the 'American Dream" based on principles of
market exchange and mutual reciprocity inflected through the lens of karmic soul debt
accrued from within a Buddhist socio-religous worldview. Additionally, her narratives
argue for a model of citizenship based on transnational performativity, cultural
citizenship, and civic participation that is consonant with the dominant discourses of
American nationalism in the 1980s. And, yet despite the ideological nature of her
autobiographical project from a national perspective, Hayslip's life narratives are also
engaged in contesting and expanding the American cultural imaginary as part of the
emergent, if not resurgent, cultural formation of Asian Americans, in general, and
Vietnamese Americans, in particular, throughout the United States in the 1990s. More
importantly, Hayslip offers a model for social action, that while premised on individual
goodwill and charity operationalized through private philanthropic institutions and
further warranted by appeals to filial piety, nonetheless addresses the important
responsibilities and obligations inherent in membership in either communities of
descent or consent.
THE AESTHETICIZATION & PRIVATIZATION OF LOSS AND RAGE IN EVAHOFFMAN'S LOST IN TRANSLATION
While Hayslip's embrace and reproduction of American capitalist social relations
in her autobiographies can be said to be explicit and, at times, exuberant, Hoffman on
the other hand stages her response to Americanization as ambivalent, reluctant and
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anoretic--in keeping with a tradition in European-American immigrant letters that is
highly critical of the consumerism and individualism of American social formations.
Yet, while Hoffman continues a tradition in bourgeois narratives of self (e.g. the writer
as social exile) consonant with the maincurrents of American life writing depicting the
melodramas of beset authorship first articulated by writers of the American Renaissance
in the 19th century; she also reintroduces a critical cultural stance reminiscent of the
positions taken by the founders of the Frankfurt School and the emigres who staffed the
New School for Social Research after WW II (Krohn 1993: 59). Not surprisingly,
Hoffman's text positions the immigrant autobiographer in the roles of cultural critic and
psychological/cultural auto-ethnographer of the immigrant experience. Her narrative
attempts to deal with the experience of chaotic multiplicity and fragmentation
confronting individuals under late capital. Throughout Lost in Translation, Hoffman
stages her sense of rage and loss as causal determinants for her nostalgia and the
aestheticization of her anoretic response to U.S. culture in the aftermath of the social
transformations of the 1960s.
Read within the context of other social discourses in circulation in the U.S. in the
late 1980s and early 1990s that attempt to cognitively map the U.S. social formation from
the analytic rubric of consumption studies (Bocock 1993: 51), Hoffman's autobiography
stages the most explicit deployment of the ethos and practice of what social historian T.J.
Jackson Lears has identified as a "therapeutic worldview" in dominance in North
America since the mid-nineteenth century. The basic contours of such a therapeutic
technology of self are delimited by a search for form and meaning in a commodity
culture that seeks to articulate and interpellate individual human agents as subjects
within a regime of flexible accumulation that requires extensive and conspicuous
consumption behavior in order to reproduce itself. While critical of the consumerism of
American life, Hoffman's proposed model for social action stops short of indicting the
exploitative social and material conditions that give rise to advanced capitalist social
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relations, and instead offers the solace of the therapist's couch as an ameliorative
strategy for personal growth and well being. By narrating the phenomenological
experience of the confluence of existential weightlessness and the persistent
introspection fostered by the postmodern condition of American capital, Hoffman offers
an ethical injunction for a disciplinary regime underwritten by therapeutic practices that
focus on bolstering the autonomy of the bourgeois self when all overarching structures
of meaning have collapsed.
The ideological force of Hoffman's narrative resides in her "critical" stance
toward consumption and assimilation in the American register. A stance which at first
glance seems progressive, yet is in actuality only a further elaboration and
rationalization of the morbid self-absorption much in evidence throughout segments of
our culture as a whole in the last 25 years (Bellah et. al.). Obliquely and in disguised
form, Hoffman's autobiography argues for a performative model of self-formation and
self-presentation much in keeping with the findings of sociologist Irving Goffman's The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life which documents the consolidation and
dissemination of a social stance that posits that there's nothing at stake in social life
beyond "a manipulatable sense of well-being" and self-fullfilment (Philip Reiff 1966: 13).
My critique of Hoffman stems from what I discern as a category error of the first
order. In short, she mistakes the historical and contingent development and nature of
reified consciousness in the 20th century as a salutary attribute of the human mind
under postmodernity (Lukács). For Hoffman, the defining feature of native and
immigrant social life is a celebratory and solipsistic recourse to an "observing
consciousness" that fails to map the social totality because of the "blessings and terrors of
multiplicity" wrought by capitalist social relations in the U.S. Hoffman's training as a
literary scholar at Rice University and Harvard during the heyday of poststructuralism
and her work as a book review editor for the New York Times and the New York
Review of Books, predispose her to seek and structure a symbolic resolution to the
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contradictions of social life under capitalism in the literary realm, more accurately in the
realm of language. At its most concrete level, Hoffman's text argues for a regimen of
what she denotes as "translation therapy" in the "New World" section of her
autobiography. While she explicitly argues for a social constructivist perspective
towards language and the creation of social meaning, she nonetheless reintroduces a
deep psychologism that reinforces the very individualism she attempts to critique by
aestheticizing her "life in a new language." Hoffman stages a tension between the public
and private meanings of language only ultimately to favor the primacy of her own
private ideolect. While she highlights the dialogic and heteroglossic dimensions of
language, and by extension social life, she finally resolves the social contradictions of the
immigrant life experience through ideational and ideological strategies that foreground
the primacy of the individual bourgeois ego at the expense of the socius. Unlike
Hayslip, who attempts to resolve some of the contradictions of social life through the
mechanism of civil society, Hoffman's project seems to vindicate, yet again, the banality
of the American retreat to "the haunted chambers of the mind" (Lasch 1978). While
Hayslip attempts to mediate the experience of loss attendant with the disruption and
continuity of the migration experience through social action, Hoffman privatizes and
aestheticizes her experience in an attempt to demonstrate her point that "perhaps the
successful immigrant is an exaggerated version of the native" (LT 164).
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ALL IN THE FAMILY: LIFE ON THE HYPHEN WITH PÉREZ FIRMAT:CUBA'SSON IN AMERICA, OR WHAT BECOMES A CUBAN MACHO MOST?
This section examines the work of Cuban American literary scholar and poet
Gustavo Pérez Firmat as an occasion to interrogate the ideological overdetermination of
the discourses of family, language maintenance and conjugal relations as the sites for the
reproduction of capitalist social relations. We begin by tracing the development and
deployment of a critical bi-cultural and bilingual perspective towards the presumption
of Anglo-conformity implicit in assimilationist models that address the integration of
ethnic populations into the U.S. in the 1980s. In particular, this study places Pérez
Firmat's poetical works not only within the context of the often heated debates in the
1980s and 1990s over what has come to be know as the "English Only" movement, but
more generally within the horizon of expectations operationalized by more strident
forms of nativist responses to the acceleration and globalization of migration after the
reforms of U.S. immigration laws since 1965. Pérez Firmat's three collections of poems,
Carolina Cuban (1987), Equivocaciones (1989) and Bilingual Blues (1994) and his
autobiography Next Year in Cuba (1995) all attempt to articulate the Cuban Condition
within the matrix of U.S. cultural and social formations by stressing and appealing to the
inviolable right to property in oneself and one's consciousness that has underwritten
20th century legal and social discourses on questions of U.S. citizenship, whether
cultural or political (Rosaldo). Pérez Frimat poetical project oscillates, deftly and
precariously, between the strong cultural pluralist tradition first introduce by Horace
Kallen and Randolph Bourne at the beginning of this century and the loose cultural
nationalist tendencies of the new social movements that gave birth to the Black Arts
Movement and the Chicano and Asian Literary Renaissances of the 1970s and 1980s
under the auspices of multiculturalism. The motive force behind this oscillation is Pérez
Firmat's (evolving and dynamic) self-perception as an exile, as opposed to immigrant in
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the U.S. The central structuring motif throughout Pérez Firmat's work is the tension he
experiences and stages in his texts through the metaphorics of "life on the hyphen" as he
writes about the vicissitudes and triumphs of "the marriage of person and place" that the
exile attempts to sustain or rebuild in his quest for a place to call home. Integral to Pérez
Firmat's poetical and autobiographical projects is the desire to move beyond the
condition of exile while at the same time "staking out a place that spans more than one
country, more than one culture, more than one language" (NYC 13). From a strong bi-
national and bicultural perspective Pérez Firmat argues for the conditions and
possibilities of a transnational American identity that unites and resolves the
contradictions of the North/South divide through the reproduction of social life within
the private realm of familial relations.
For Pérez Firmat, the family mediates the "accelerated birth" occasioned by
migration and the exile's sense of "slow death," "deferral", and "suspended animation"
as he await Castro's fall from power. In so far as his project seeks to bolster and sanction
heterosexual and patriarchal familial arrangements and the viability of the immigrant
household as an engine of social stability and personal transformation and expression,
Pérez Firmat's narrative and lyrical strategies are consonant and complicit in
reproducing and promulgating a neo-conservative agenda of "family values" within
literary and social realms through his elaboration and proselytization of the "macho
ethic" (NYC 240). To be sure, Pérez Firmat's engagement and elaboration of hombria and
machismo as ethical constructs regimenting men's social conduct is nothing if not
ironized. But such irony only serves to masks the material force and prevalence of the
machista ideology within Caribbean and Latin American cultures, and their mainland
enclaves in the U.S.
So while this self-styled "Ricky Ricardo with a Ph.D." (NYC 227) propounds a
melodrama of beset Cuban manhood, he lays the groundwork for a socially and
politically conservative project that will allow him to claim wife and home, as the
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prerogatives of masculinity, by eternalizing and naturalizing the discourses of marriage
and family. Not coincidentally does Pérez Firmat align himself with the persona of
Ricky Ricardo, a character from the extremely successful 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy. In
much of Pérez Firmat's work, the figure of Ricky and Lucy, as an inter-ethnic couple,
stands in for the fulfillment of the ethnic's crossover dream of primary and secondary
cultural assimilation, or as Pérez Firmat designates it Ricky and Lucy's "romance with
otherness" (NYC 237). In the inter-ethnic bond each member of the dyad is idealized
and loved, in turn, for not being what the other is. For Pérez Firmat, the conjugal
relation stands in for the resolution of social and cultural antimonies and contradictions,
along similar lines as those articulated by Mary Dearborn's and Werner Sollors' study of
interracial and inter-ethnic love in Pocahontas' Daughters and Beyond Ethnicity,
respectively. In Pérez Firmat's oeuvre, the marriage plot as a literary device seeks to
reconcile all manner of antimonies, be they psychological, economic, linguistic, social or
sexual. In Pérez Firmat's work, the inter-ethnic family is pressed into serve to function as
the site for the maintenance and reproduction of stable subjectivities and property
relations as an antidote to the disruption, dislocation and identity shifts occasioned by
migration and modernity. In brief, Pérez Firmat's anodyne to the nausea of postmodern
subjectivity in crisis is a conjugal mambo: "The paradox is that you are never so entirely
yourself as when you fall in love with someone who is unlike you. Want to feel
American? Marry a Cuban." (NYC 237).
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THE POLITICS OF RACE AND FAMILY VALUES IN MARK MATHABANE'SKAFFIR BOY, KAFFIR BOY IN AMERICA , & LOVE IN BLACK AND WHITE
During the late 1980s and early 1990s the discourses of family and race in the
United States enjoyed prominent and privileged positions, as both ideological
explanations for social pathologies and as sites for socio-cultural regeneration, from
within the political discourses of both the Left and the Right. After the election of Bill
Clinton in 1992, the consolidation and re-articulation of a neo-liberal political and
cultural hegemony in national debates about identity, nation, race and family
increasingly took a firm hold of the political imaginary of the nation (Wattenburg).
Within this context, where "values matter most," Mark Mathabane's serial
autobiographies stage a socio-cultural intervention in the politics and rhetorics of
identity, family and community within the context of U.S. and South African discourses
of nation. His autobiographies provide a strong indictment of the racialized and racist
notions of identities-in-relation in operation in both his natal and adopted lands. Like
Pérez Firmat, Mathabane structures literary resolutions to the social contradiction of
everyday life through appeals to the plots of romance and marriage throughout his
narratives. However, Mathabane, as a Black South African man married to a white
Midwestern woman, goes further than Pérez Firmat to tackle the "thorny" issues that
have sedimented into mainstream U.S. views of interracial love by writing a joint
autobiography with his wife, Gail Mathabane, that seeks to extend, explicate and
"humanize" the plight of interracial couples twenty five years after the landmark U.S.
Supreme Court decision legalizing interracial marriages in Loving vs. Virginia (1967).
Throughout his individual narratives and his joint conjugal narrative, Mathabane
attempts to dispel the taboos, misconceptions, sexual myths and stereotypes that have
proliferated around black men and interracial relationships. His is an integrationist
racial project that harkens back to the heyday of Civil Rights accomodationist policies
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pursued by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and later eschewed by more radical Black
cultural nationalists (Omi & Winant 1986: 96-98) in their quest for the full rights of
citizenship. However, Mathabane's narrative also needs to be examined through the
cultural prism created by an ascendant black middle class that saw a two-fold increase
in its numbers during the 1980s. Members of this class wedge made "remarkable"
symbolic and material strides in the late 1980s and early 1990s as evinced by the hero-
worship surrounding former Bush and Clinton Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Colin Powell
and by the appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court of conservative ideologue and
apologist Clarence Thomas. The rhetoric of individual merit, competence and
transcendence advocated by African American apologists for the U.S. racial state, like
Sheelby Steele, Thomas Sowell--and more recently UC Regent Ward Connerly-- deeply
inform the racial projects advanced by Mathabane as ameliorative measures for healing
racial tensions in the U.S. While elements of Mathabane's arguments for individual and
social regeneration through appeals to the discourses of interracial love and fellow-
feeling are no doubt progressive vis-s-vis his anti-apartheid stance towards the South
African regime prior to the release of Nelson Mandela and the ascendance of the African
National Congress, his overall project, as transplanted and articulated within the U.S.
context, is influenced and underwritten by ideologically suspect notions of
individualism and an amnesiac historical and structural understanding of race relations
in the U.S.
Mathabane's meteoric rise to prominence and celebrity, evinced by appearances
on nationally syndicated talkshows and his busy lecture tour schedule, no doubt arise
from the Franklinesque "by the bootstrap" worldview that he adopts as a consequence of
his political exile, expatriation and settlement in New York and then the American
South. On his way to the top, Mathabane is helped and warmly received by many
individuals, both white and black, who are solicitous and desirous that he share his
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"rags to riches" story with ever larger audiences as testimony to the viability and
relevance of the "American Dream."
The narrative strategies and arguments that Mathabane employs are amenable to
analysis from the theoretical approaches to assimilation gleaned from the work of
Harvard sociologist Mary Waters, who has researched the associative and dissociative
identificatory strategies pursued by other black immigrants to the U.S. since 1965, most
notably those of West Indian and Haitian immigrants to the Northeast. Waters traces
and maps the "ethnic options" of black immigrants within a context of hostile and
adverse social and economic reception that fosters segmented assimilation along the
lines theorized and studied by economic sociologists Alejandro Portes (1992/3) and
Rubén Rumbaut (1990, 1996). In brief, Waters argues that the divergent circumstances of
migration, reception, access and participation in the opportunity structures of the U.S.
economy under a regime of flexible accumulation are co-variant determinants of the
ethno-racial filiations immigrants make as they integrate into American society.
Moreover, Waters' findings suggest that segmented and stratified opportunity structures
within the U.S. economy predispose black immigrants to "generally believe that it is
higher social status to be an immigrant black than to be an American black (Waters,
"Second Generation" 175). She goes on to argue from this finding that such a premise
leads to some black immigrants pursuing assimilative ethnic responses that eschew
solidarity and identification with native black communities and issues. Two strategies
Water's identifies, and that can be traced in Mathabane's work, are those of "[1]
identifying as ethnic Americans with some distancing from black Americans, or [2]
identifying as an immigrant in a way that does not reckon with American racial and
ethnic categories (Waters 178). Close readings of Mathabane's narratives allow us to
discern a narrative trajectory that moves through both the latter and former moments of
ethno-racial filiation into a more "neutral" and more "marketable" mainstream liberal
pluralist position that affords Mathabane the cultural capital to become an ethnic
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entrepreneur of the immigrant and ethnic experience in the U.S. as he aligns himself
with a position (also shared by Steele and Sowell) that foregrounds racialist thinking as
an individual (or attitudinal) pathology that retreats from understanding race as a
social structuring principle in American life (Omi/Winant 1989: 68).
ILLEGAL DREAMS AND LABOR PAINS: THE SHADOWED LIFE A MIGRANTLABORER IN RAMON PÉREZ'S DIARY OF AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT
During the 1980s and 1990s, the "illegal" or "undocumented" immigrant from
Mexico became a lighting rod for the American public's concern, anxiety and hysteria
over what nativist commentators like Charles Lamm, and later Peter Brimelow, have
characterized as an "immigration time bomb" waiting to explode within the very bosom
of the nation. Not surprisingly, these xenophobic fears have been fueled in no small
measure by the crass and cynical maneuvering of opportunistic politicians like Pete
Wilson, Governor of the State of California, and hyper-conservative and nationalist
firebrand Pat Buchanan in the 1992 and 1996 national electoral cycles. And, while
undocumented migratory streams from Mexico, and elsewhere, have indeed increased
in absolute and relative terms since the 1960s, the opprobrium that the "mojado" has had
to endure is far in excess of the cultural or fiscal impact such migratory streams have
actually had (Portes & Rumbaut, Immigrant America). To fully understand the rancor
and resentment that has been directed at undocumented immigrants through legislation
at the national level (IRCA in 1986 and the 104th Congress' infringement of the rights
and privileges of naturalized citizens in 1996) and through state-wide plebiscite like
California's Proposition 187, one must trace the history and genealogy of the economic
and cultural formations (distilled and registered through public opinion) that have
historically underwritten what social historian John Higham calls a "general history of
the anti-immigrant spirit" in the United States (Strangers in the Land, ix). The current
phase of xenophobic anxiety has its roots in the uncertainty and confusion unleashed by
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the transformations in finance capitalism since the late 1960s and the increasing levels of
global labor migration since the late 1970s fostered by a global economic restructuring
fueled by an acceleration in the decline of manufacturing and the shift towards services
in the industrialized West & parts of Asia. (cf. Castles & Miller, The Age of Migration).
No single immigrant stream in recent history seems to have garnered the American
public's contempt and resentment as decidedly as the "mojado" has. Not since the
heyday of virulent nativist restriction that took hold of California and the nation in the
1870s and 1880s and culminated in passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 has
anti-foreigner zeal been so prevalent and instrumental in operationalizing the class and
racial prejudices of a European American elite and a coopted class wedge of minority
elites that comprise a national (even if as of yet disaggregated) ethnic bourgeoisie (cf.
Sklair, The Sociology of the Global System). Through no fault of their own, it has
become the infelicitous lot of the undocumented immigrant to bear the stigma of being
"civilization's new discontent" (Orosco-Suárez, Transformations, 11).
It is within the context of a resurgent nativist "patriotism" (Brimelow, Alien
Nation 254) that responds with hostility and resentment to the social and economic
inroads made by U.S. minorities in business and education over the last quarter century,
as evidenced by the legitimation of multiculturalism as a curricular, research and
consumerist paradigm and the rise in the ethnic middle classes in the 1980s, that texts
such as Ramon "Tianguis" Pérez's Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant must be read.
However, any comprehensive analysis of the autobiographical and narrational
strategies of Pérez's life story, also requires that we be attuned to the pervasive and
dominant sociological and ethnographic interpretive filters that have governed much
scholarly research and popular interest in the life stories of immigrants of late, and
historically since the inception of the field of Mexican immigrant historiography and a
sociology of migration in the work of Mexican sociologist Manuel Gamio. From the
time of Gamio's magisterial Mexican Immigration to the United States: A Study of
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Human Migration and Adjustment in the 1930s to Marylin Davis' more recent tome,
Mexican Voices/American Dreams (1990), social scientists have sought to elicit the
"voluntary eloquence" of their informants to augment the aggregate, structural,
statistical and "objective" aspects of migration with the phenomenolgical and subjective
experience of migration, cultural disruption and the negotiation of identity shifts
occasioned by population movements. It is this quest or demand for a voice from the
informant by the social scientist and the public at large that I will trace as the originary
impulse for autobiographical disclosure within immigrant cultural formations that are
directed to mainstream, national audiences. Starting from the assumption that
"prominent modes of remembering are subject to implicit social control or redirectioning
based on the power exercised by existing dominant and popular cultural forms" (King,
et al, x), I seek to provide an answer to a question Genaro Padilla raises in his work
tracing the socio-historical formation of Mexican American autobiographical practice:
"What happens when the autobiographical impulse finds its self-constitutive operations
undermined by the very discursive practices that make autobiographical presentation
possible?" (My History, 32)
In the case of Ramon Pérez's narrative, I trace an "odyssey of labor" that reflects
both the desire to inscribe oneself in the cultural imaginary of the nation as a laborer and
the desire to reaffirm the filial connections and social networks that have sustained him
on his trans-border journey. Throughout Diary of an Undocumented Immigration
(1991) Ramon "Tianguis" Pérez, a Mexican of Zapotec ancestry, recounts the trials and
tribulations of an undocumented immigrant worker's daily struggle for economic and
cultural survival in the American Southwest. And, while it is important to attend to the
ethno-racial dimensions of Pérez's narrative within an interpretive paradigm that
privileges the nation-state (whether it be Mexico or the US) as the site of struggle for
human dignity and expression, Pérez's narrative offers us a unique opportunity to tease
out and trace the emergent material and ideational figurations of self, desire, need and
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autonomy from the perspective of a member of a transnational proletariat brought into
being by the neo-liberal socio-economic policies and structures that have only recently
been codified and made visible through the hemispheric embrace of the North American
Free Trade Agreement by an emergent transnational capitalist class (Sklair, SGS, 143).
Starting from the premise that the self and self-representation are "subjective
moments of class conflict" (Wexler 1983: 121), I seek to trace the trajectory of the
changing set of the social relations of production under the current regime of flexible
accumulation governing trans-border interaction and economic integration that make
Pérez's narrative possible and intelligible. Following Marx (1976) and Lukács (1968), I
take commodification, as a general aspect of social relations under advance capitalism,
as the central structural and phenomenological problem of life in capitalist societies.
Within this analytic rubric, Pérez's narrative registers and documents an epochal
transformation in the historical meanings and relations of labor and work within an the
social formation along the U.S.-Mexico Border that mediates between First World de-
industrialization through "production sharing" in the industrializing Third World. In
brief, I attempt to map the narrative and compositional strategies employed by Pérez as
ideational effects and responses to the changing material conditions of labor, self-
representation and segmented incorporation of the Mexican diaspora into an emergent
North American Common Market (Portes & Rumbaut 1996: 291).
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PART V: COMMODITY CULTURE: SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI.
" After all, the chief business of the American people is business. …Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. … American newspapers have seemed to me to be particularly
representative of this practical idealism of our people."
(Calvin Coolidge, “The Press Under a Free Government")
CHAPTER 11: WHAT IS COMMODITY CULTURE, AND WHERE CAN I GET IT ON SALE?
While a powerful critique of commoditization has recently entered the public
realm, thanks in no small measure to the new global justice movement, one particular
commodity has generally been absent from this critique: human labor. And this absence,
as I argue below, is replete with consequences, both theoretical and political, and by
extension socio-literarily.' The global market system and it’s imperatives drive the
forces of production and the changing regimes of power that articulate appropriate
subjectivities. As a consequence, the narratives of lives lived by immigrant in advanced
capitalist nations like the United States will always-already come into presence in the
shadow of the commodity.
It is of tremendous import, of course, that as social movements contest the
privatization and marketization of public goods like water and electricity, they have
directed withering criticism at the neo-conservative myth of the market as efficient
allocator of all goods and services. It is now possible, at conferences and rallies and in
numerous books and articles, to find the commodification of goods such as water, plant
seeds, electricity, healthcare and education regularly challenged, with critics insisting
that such goods should be exempted from private ownership and market allocation.
MY SO-CALLED LIFE: LABORING IN THE SHADOW OF THE COMMODITY
Building on these arguments, Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke argue in Global
Showdown that there are four categories of things that ought not to be commodified:
pernicious goods such as nuclear arms and toxic waste; life building blocks like bulk
water, air and genes; common inheritance goods such as plants, seeds and animals
(which should not be patented); and democratic rights including healthcare and
education. 2 The buying and selling of such goods on open markets and their patenting
as the property of private owners is, they urge, contrary to the public interest. Consistent
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with this, important legal theorists are criticizing the bias of western law in favor of
market (rather than public) regulation. In Contested Commodities, for instance,
Margaret Jane Radin takes on what she calls "inappropriate commodification," arguing
that sex, children and body parts in particular ought not to be market goods. 3
These eloquent pleas to limit and constrain commodification represent a
significant challenge to neo-conservative dogma, to the myth that market regulation of
virtually everything on the planet (and beyond) will usher in the best of all possible
worlds. One of the most insidious features of the globalization agenda of multinational
corporations and agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Bank, after all, is its commitment to what I have elsewhere called global
commodification, the idea that every conceivable good and service under the sun should
be turned into a marketable item. 4 For writers aligned with the global justice movement
to have challenged the logic of global commodification is an accomplishment of no small
import.
Yet, despite the power of these attacks on commodification, the existence of a
global market in which billions of people sell their labor typically goes unmentioned.
And this has significant consequences, both theoretical and political since, as I argue
below, the logic of global commodification cannot be uprooted confronted without
confronting its inner secret: the commodification of human labor.
WHAT’S A HAND WORTH THESE DAYS? OR, THE COMMODIFICATION OFTHE BODY
There is a certain irony to the general silence surrounding the commodification
of labor since the buying and selling of human bodies and body parts provokes
widespread revulsion and given the recent debates over reproductive rights and stem-
cell research by neo-conservative U.S. Administrations. Echoing the rightist revulsion to
assaults on the “sanctity of human life”, a sensational headline in the New York Times
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magazine ran an anguished article entitled "Body Parts Peddler" describing a global
market in which poor people in the Third World sell their kidneys for less than $1,000.
Dramatic as these stories are, they barely touch on the true dimensions of the
body business. A variety of scholarly studies - bearing titles like The Human Body Shop,
Body Bazaar and Spare Parts - inform us that more than 1,300 biotechnology firms now
compete in a $17 billion (US) industry that trades genetic data, tissue samples, umbilical
cords, eggs, sperm, blood and more. 7 One biotech company, deCODE Genetics, has a
12-year monopoly on investigating, storing and selling the genetic data of the entire
population of Iceland. A rival corporation, Autogen Ltd., has purchased the right to
conduct genetic research on the people of Tonga, the results of which it can patent and
sell. 8 Another firm, Myriad Genetics, has filed patents on two genes that indicate
susceptibility to breast cancer. Claiming ownership of these genes, it is suing hospitals
and laboratories around the world that conduct breast cancer tests on them, insisting
that only Myriad's labs can be used for this purpose. 9 Unsettling as developments such
as these are to many people, this commercialization of human life is entirely in accord
with a 1980 decision of the US Supreme Court which defined living forms as "machines
or manufactures," thereby upholding the principle that living beings can be patented,
and their life forms owned. 10
The US Supreme Court notwithstanding, dramatic newspaper headlines suggest
that few things are so shocking as the idea that human body parts (and the human
genome itself) might be bought and sold. What is deeply disturbing about this trade - be
it in organs, blood, eggs, or tissue - is that human identities are inextricably bound up
with our bodies. Take away the personal histories that we carry around with our bodies
- our births, the places our bodies have dwelled, our experiences of pleasure and pain,
illness and health, celebration and loss, labor and love - and you take away our very
being. To attack the integrity of our bodies is thus, in the deepest and most profound
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sense, to attack our selves. This is why "body snatchers" occupy a central place in horror
films: to invade our bodies is to assault an integral part of what makes us who we are.
This is why most people recoil from the commercialized language of property
rights, supply and demand, trade, contract and profits that permeates the body business.
In the jargon of the industry, "body parts are extracted like a mineral, harvested like a
crop, or mined like a resource." Such language suggests that, rather than inviolable sites
of personhood and individual identity, our bodies are merely a collection of parts which
"can be pulled from their context, isolated, and abstracted from real people." When this
happens, "the body has become commodified, reduced to an object, not a person." 11
Responding to deep ethical concerns about such developments,
governments in many countries are undertaking to constrain, regulate or ban the trade
in human body parts. In 1984, for instance, then-US Congressman Al Gore pronounced:
"It is against our system of values to buy and sell parts of human beings." 12 That a
mainstream politician (who subsequently became US Vice President and systematically
favored business interests) could voice such sentiments speaks to widespread qualms
about the body business.
This concern for non-commercial values is central to debates over bioethics, the
ethical issues associated with buying, selling, patenting, researching and
commercializing parts of the human body and its genetic makeup. In an effort to protect
social values from the effects of commerce, critics have advocated limiting or preventing
such commodification by "sequestering the body from the market. 13 There is great merit
to such proposals. But in an important sense, they do not address the deepest roots of
the commodification they resist. After all, trade in the human body is hardly something
new. In fact, such trade utterly saturates modern life in the form of the mass market in
human labor. And such a market is the space in which people sell bits and pieces of their
bodily talents, skills, creativity, strength and energies - in short, integral aspects of their
embodied personhood. Without addressing this issue, attempts to limit the
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commodification of the body, and with it as I shall argue, the commodification of most
of our planet, are likely to be futile.
PERSONS, BODIES AND THINGS
The resistance of many people to the idea of selling parts of the body is rooted in
long-standing cultural meanings and traditions. One modern source of this resistance is
the opposition to the enslavement of persons that has figured prominently in much
liberal political thought. A staple of such liberalism is its sharp distinction between
persons and things. Persons, it is held, can own things but not other persons. This is
because these two kinds of entities are radically different by virtue of the freedom and
autonomy that pertain to persons.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) mobilized this distinction
to argue that humans could not sell themselves: "Man cannot dispose over himself
because he is not a thing; he is not his own property ... if he were his own property, he
would be a thing over which he could have ownership. But a person cannot be a
property and so cannot be a thing which can be owned. The next great German
philosopher, G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), deepened and extended this argument by
claiming that the human body - and not just an abstraction called the human will or
personality - cannot be treated like an object. Since humans are embodied beings,
violation of our bodies constitutes violation of our freedom. "My body is the
embodiment of my freedom," Hegel wrote. 14 "Because I am alive as a free entity in my
body," he added, my body "ought not to be misused by being made a beast of burden. "15
In short, the body is not a thing that can be separated from personhood; it is integral to
that personhood itself.
The philosophical approach developed by Kant and extended by Hegel suggests,
therefore, that to treat persons and their bodies as things is to violate human freedom
and, in so doing, to deprive people of a fundamental component of their humanity. This
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is a powerful claim - and one that sits uneasily with the dominant institution of modern
capitalist society, the labor market. Although capitalism was only minimally developed
in the Germany of his day, Kant was aware of the dilemma. Troubled by the
implications of wage-labor for personhood, he proposed that, while selling goods was
unobjectionable, selling one's labor ought to disqualify one from citizenship. In cases
where an individual "must earn his living from others," he wrote, "he must earn it only
by selling that which is his [i.e. goods], and not by allowing others to make use of him."
Those who make their living as "merely laborers" - i.e. sellers of their labor - would be
"unqualified to be citizens. 16
With this argument, Kant identified wage-labor - the selling of one's labor,
energy and skill for a wage - as a threat to the freedom and autonomy which are integral
to personhood. By selling their labor, wage-laborers treat intrinsic parts of themselves as
things - and this is a violation of the very distinction between persons and things upon
which human freedom (and morality) rest for Kant. Of course, Kant's "solution" is an
anti-democratic one: rather than challenge the institution of wage-labor, he sought
instead to disqualify laborers from citizenship.
In his major work of political philosophy, Hegel tried to find a way out of this
dilemma by distinguishing between selling "the use of my abilities for a restricted
period" and "alienating the whole of my time." By alienating the whole of my time, he
claims, "I would be making into another's property the substance of my being" and, with
it, "my personality." 17 Yet, this distinction is not nearly so secure as Hegel would like. At
what point, for instance, would selling parts of my body qualify as violating my bodily
integrity? And at what point would selling some parts of my life energies and time - "the
substance of my being" -constitute my transformation into a beast of burden? After all, if
I spend a huge part of my life treating my energies, talents and bodily powers as things,
commodities for sale, mustn't this in some significant way imperil that which makes me
free, my differentiation from thing-hood? Is it not probable that the systematic and
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persistent commodification of my laboring energies and skills will affect my personhood
in some fundamental way? If my body is "the embodiment of my freedom," then are not
the continual commodification of my embodied abilities and my regular treatment as a
beast of burden contrary to the personal (and bodily) autonomy that is integral to
human freedom?
Hegel is not alone in his blindness to the force of these questions. After all, while
the sale of body parts makes sensational headlines today, the sale of human labor is not
in the least newsworthy. So imbued is modern society with the commodification of
labor, so normalized even "naturalized" has it become, that few bother to question it.
While selling body parts still appears offensive, selling parts of our life's laboring
energies seems entirely reasonable and acceptable. Yet this very fact speaks to just how
thoroughgoing commodification has become. After all, wage-labor was once considered
to be similar in kind to selling part of one's body; indeed, as I point out below, in some
parts of the world today it is still associated with diabolical forces. How this deeply
disturbing arrangement came to be considered normal speaks to one of the most
momentous transformations in human history.
THE LOGIC OF DEMONIC CAPITAL & DE-HUMANIZING WAGE-LABOR
The classic analysis of wage-labor is, of course, that developed by Karl Marx. No
one before Marx had systematically probed the purchase and sale of labor in all its
human dimensions. For Marx, this transaction involves much more than just an
economic exchange; it also shapes the very identities and life experiences of the human
agents involved. Declaring that to be human is to engage in creative work with others,
Marx argued that wage-labor involves a loss of control over a fundamental human
life-activity. Invariably, it entails the alienation of the worker's essential life-energies:
the exercise of labor-power, labor is the worker's own life-activity, themanifestation of his own life. And this life-activity he sells to another person inorder to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life-activity is for
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him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does noteven reckon labor as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is acommodity which he has made over to another. life begins for him where thisactivity ceases, at table, in the public house, in bed.
In wage-labor human creative energies are no longer an expression of one's life,
but a denial of it; they are transformed into things (commodities) that are sold like any
other thing. And this process of turning labor into a commodity to be "made over to
another" is not an isolated event, but an experience that is repeated over and over
throughout a lifetime. Thus, while not sold in their entirety, as is a slave, the
wage-laborer nonetheless
sells himself and, indeed, sells himself piecemeal. He sells at auction eight, ten,twelve, fifteen hours of his life, day after day, to the highest bidder... to thecapitalist. The worker [unlike a slave or a serf – CFC] belongs neither to theowner nor to the land, but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belongto him who buys them. 18
The capitalist who buys this unique commodity (labor-power), does so with one
intention alone: to turn a profit on it. One of the great secrets of capitalism is that work
performed under the direction of the employer produces substantially more than the
value of the wages paid. Capital thus lives by exploiting labor, by appropriating a
surplus beyond the value of the costs of labor. For this reason, capitalism has devoted
extraordinary attention to studying the labor process, breaking it down into the smallest
possible physical motions, and using machinery to speed up each and every one of these
movements. 19 The more they can intensify labor, however alienating it may be, the more
profit capitalists can accrue. As a result, the exchange of money for labor, by a process
that appears obscure and mysterious, breeds ever-more money for the buyer of labor.
And this money is turned into ever more means of production - machines, factories and
the like - for the further exploitation of labor.
A whole system of exploitation is thus erected in which workers produce the
very instruments of production which are used to further exploit them. And this system
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of exploitation rests upon a Frankenstein-like inversion in which workers are dominated
by their own creations, in which workers themselves produce the elements of capital
(machines, factories and so on) that are used to exploit them. Capital, therefore, is at root
the alienated labor of workers that has accumulated in the hands of the employing class.
So, the more labor is intensified, the more gigantic the stock of capital. Drawing on
folklore, Marx dramatically expresses this process with the image of the vampire.
"Capital," he writes, "is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living
labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” 20
Marx could not possibly have known just how resonant this imagery would
prove to be. Yet, the depiction of capitalists as diabolical creatures who suck human
blood and consume human bodies has been one of the most enduring in the popular
imagination in many parts of the world.
In many societies of the global South where I myself was born in 1964, where
fully modern capitalism has not been as deeply entrenched as it has in Europe and
North America, the intensification and extension of capitalist relations is frequently
associated with devils and demons. This is particularly so when these societies are
subjected to intensified commodification. In parts of Colombia during the nineteenth
century, for instance, black and indigenous peasants typically resisted entry into the
labor market, clinging tenaciously to small plots of land. Wage-labor was construed as
an evil and barbaric arrangement; indeed, people often believed that "success" on its
terms involved contracts with the devil, contracts that ultimately entailed the sacrifice of
one's life powers. 21
More recently, in African countries such as Ghana and Nigeria - which have been
subjected to the intense commodification demanded under Structural Adjustment
Programs imposed by the likes of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
- images of capitalist wealth as derived from ritual murder and the theft of body parts
have proliferated in films, novels, folklore and the media. 22 The brilliant Nigerian
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novelist Ben Okri has captured these cultural meanings to great effect in a series of
novels, particularly The Famished Road.
The central capitalist figure in that novel, Madame Koto, grows physically huge
as she becomes rich. Okri draws upon the vampiric image of the capitalist with great
literary effect: "At night, when she slept, she stole the people's energies. (She was not the
only one; they were legion.)... Madame Koto sucked in the powers of our area. Her
dreams gave the children nightmares. Her colossal form took wings at night and flew
over our city, drawing power from our sleeping bodies. "23
The imagery of capital "drawing power" from the bodies of the poor is a
widespread one in societies where commodification is experienced as a shock. Rather
than "primitive" understandings, these images ought to be seen as dramatic metaphors
through which people struggle to make sense of the unnaturalness of capitalism,
particularly its accumulation of immense wealth through the commodification of labor,
through the piecemeal purchases of people's bodily energies - purchases that enable the
employing class to grow extraordinarily rich. The people "captured" by capitalist
demons are depicted in many of these popular images as money-spewing zombies, or
"human ATMs" whose mouths spew out currency. 24
These ostensibly "fantastic" notions capture key elements of what Marx described
as the "phantasmagoria" of commodities, the swirling images that allow capital to depict
itself, and not human labor, as the self-generating basis of wealth. That people in
"advanced" capitalist societies now experience these arrangements based upon the
buying and selling of labor as normal and natural speaks to their cultural
impoverishment, to the loss of rich systems of meaning that problematize capitalism's
reduction of every aspect of life - most centrally human labor - to just another thing to be
bought and sold.
It wasn't always this way, of course. Even in the birthplace of capitalism, Britain,
capitalism did not conquer without a centuries-long battle to subjugate the poor, break
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down long-standing socio-cultural traditions, and deprive the subaltern population of
every other alternative but wage-labor.
THE OCCULT HISTORY OF THE RISE OF VAMPIRIC CAPITALISM
"Never before our own time were markets more than accessories of economic
life," wrote the economic historian Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation. 25 Prior to
the rise of capitalism, markets operated at the periphery of social life; most of the goods
people consumed were produced directly by themselves and their immediate social
group (family, tribe, clan, village community). While exchange might take place for
unique sorts of items, the idea of the systematic buying and selling of virtually every
good and service necessary for human comfort would have struck people as utterly
bizarre.
In particular, the selling of one's labor was a deeply offensive idea. This had to
do with the fabric of social-economic relations in most pre-capitalist societies. Prior to
capitalism a large part of economic life was communally organized and regulated
according to the principles of reciprocity and redistribution. The principle of reciprocity
holds that all individuals are organically interconnected and have responsibilities for
and duties toward one another. Linked to this is the redistributive principle, the notion
that the community provides a transfer of wealth to those who have too little. The desire
of individuals to accumulate as much personal wealth as they could would have struck
most people in pre-capitalist societies - certainly those outside the elites -as a thoroughly
repulsive sort of anti-social behaviour. Society was organized to insure the collective
well-being of its members. As one anthropologist has pointed out, in most human
societies prior to our own "the objective of gathering of wealth ... is often that of giving it
away.” 26 As a result, no individual faced the threat of starvation so long as society had
enough to support its members. In such circumstances, noted Polanyi, "the individual is
not in danger of starving unless the community as a whole is in a like predicament.”27
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Even in class-dominated societies, such as feudal Europe, where lords exploited the
labor of peasants, the poor still maintained important means for looking after
themselves and their communities. Crucial in this respect were the common lands and a
whole battery of common rights that applied to them. It was typical in feudal Europe for
every village, dominated as it was by the lord's estate, also to have a mix of personal
plots worked by peasant households and vast expanses of forests and fields that
"belonged" to all. On these common lands, peasants could hunt, fish, graze animals and
gather wood for fuel in the winter. Without the millions of acres of land that were held
in common - and the fish, game, wood and grazing land they provided - a huge
proportion of the European peasantry could not have survived. It was not just Europe
that knew such arrangements. Well into the twentieth century, common lands were
widespread among peasants in many parts of the world. In Colombia, for instance, such
lands were known as indivisos among other terms. One Colombian peasant describes
them as follows:
They also called these lands communeros; that was the land where youand I, and he, and someone else and someone else, and so on, had theright to have our animals... no bit of land was divided by fences. Therewere some communeros with eighty families. They were lands where youplace yourself as an equal with everybody else. Here almost all the landused to be like that. But after the War of One Thousand Days [whichended in 1902], the rich came along and closed off the land with barbedwire. 28
The modern history of Colombia is, among other things, a story of violent appropriation
of the lands of the poor by the rich. In this respect, for all their marked differences,
histories of the rise of capitalism almost invariably involve the privatization of land and
the dispossession of the bulk of the rural poor. Britain was just the first case. America,
the second. Moreover, the American “manifest destiny” expansion across North
America in the 19th century was among the most bloody and brutal such expropriations
of land from Native American dwellers. When vast social and economic changes in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries pushed British landlords toward new forms of
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capitalist farming (based on hiring out large tracts of lands to rich farmers who
employed wage-laborers), a class war over the common lands became the decisive
contest of the age. By driving up rents, foreclosing on debts, and disputing peasant
ownership in the courts, landlords drove hundreds of thousands of peasants off their
lands. These lands, now centralized in the hands of landowners, were then rented as
large farms to wealthy capitalist tenant farmers who hired property-less wage-laborers
(many of them former peasant farmers).
Relentlessly, then, landlords were forcing millions of the rural poor off the land
and onto the labor market. Valiantly, peasants resisted this process. They tore down
fences ("enclosures") barring them from the common lands, they rioted and invaded the
forests, erecting cottages and "poaching" fish and game that had previously been
available to all. A guerrilla war of localized resistance raged across the decades. Through
violence, extortion and intrigue, however, the landlords won battle after battle,
enclosing perhaps 29 per cent of all English lands between 1600 and 1760. Then, having
seized the momentum, the landlords turned to the political institution they thoroughly
dominated, Parliament, to put the seal on the whole process. In the seventy years after
1760, landowners introduced "enclosure acts" that privatized at least six million acres of
common lands, turning them into their own private property. 30 As these acts were put
into effect, new waves of rebellion and resistance were again met by troops and
weapons. With the violent subjugation of the rural poor, the new capitalist order
emerged, as Marx noted in folkloric flourishes, "dripping from head to toe, from every
pore, with blood and dirt." 31
Over the course of two centuries or more, English society was utterly remade. A
village-based system which, however much it rested on the exploitation of peasant labor
by lords, also guaranteed them access to the resources provided by communal lands,
was transformed into a system based upon a capitalist labor market.32 The key
development here is what Ellen Meiksins Wood has appropriately dubbed market
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dependence.33 Prior to enclosure of the common lands, peasants had non-market access
to basic means of life. But the privatization of the common lands involved the separation
of peasants from their communal means of production, and this meant that huge
numbers could no longer support themselves without going to the market. There, they
had to sell a commodity in order to acquire the money with which to buy the necessities
of life. Prior to the loss of the commons, peasants could directly procure most of what
they needed to survive without entering the sphere of market exchange. Henceforth they
no longer had that option. As a result, they now found their social-economic existence
marketized in two fundamental ways. First, they could only procure basic means of
subsistence through buying on the market. And, secondly, on the market they typically
had to sell their laboring ability ("labor-power") in order to obtain the wage-money with
which to purchase basic goods, foodstuffs in particular. The daily lives of the rural poor
had thus become completely reliant upon the market; wage-labor now governed their
existence.
The shift to market dependence represented a massive rupture in the fabric of
everyday life. In closing of non-market forms of life, the loss of communal rights and
properties was catastrophic. Even before the landlords used Parliament to enclose
millions of acres, a majority of peasants had already been driven onto the labor market,
as the following Table indicates:
Table I Proportion of English Peasant Employed as Wage-Laborers, 1066-1688
Date Laborer/Peasant Ratio in %
1086 6
1279 10
1380 12
1540-59 11
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Date Laborer/Peasant Ratio in %
1550-67 12
1600-10 35
1620-40 40
1688 56
(Source: Richard Lachman, From Manor to Market: Structural Change inEngland, 1530-1640, p. 17)
Even if these figures are not entirely precise, they certainly capture the basic
trends. For nearly 500 years, around 10 per cent of the rural population engaged in
wage-labor. Then came the upheavals of the seventeenth century. Before it was out, a
majority of peasants has been forced by economic circumstances to turn to wage-labor.
Capitalism's first war against the poor had been won. Yet, these wars were far from
over. They would soon spread to more and more parts of the globe as capitalism became
the dominant system on the planet. And they continue to rage today as part of the battle
over globalization.
In fact, James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer calculate that the number of
propertyless wage-laborers on the planet has risen dramatically as neo-conservative
policies displace peasants, encourage export-oriented agriculture, and cater to western
agri-businesses. They suggest that the global pool of wage-laborers has increased from
1.9 billion in 1980 to roughly three billion as of 1995, an increase of over 50 per cent
during the globalization era. 34
WAGE-LABOR AND GLOBAL COMMODIFICATION
It is often forgotten that the commodification of one's productive time and
creative energies, their transformation into things for sale on the market, has dramatic
effects upon an individual's sense of self, body, nature and others. The systematic,
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regularized sale of "the very substance" of one's being, to use Hegel's formulation,
deeply affects the individual's experience of life, time, persons and things.
Central to commodification of labor, argued Marx, is that the capitalist "treats
living labor power as a thing." 35 More than this, however, as the Hungarian philosopher
Georg Lukacs pointed out, labor commodification also imposes its stamp upon the very
subjectivities of workers themselves. Rather than just a specific way of organizing the
allocation of goods and services, commodification also reorganizes the very forms of
human experience, the ways in which we perceive and understand ourselves and our
capacities. Commodification is thus a thoroughly two-sided process, one that reshapes
the world around us and penetrates into the psyche of the human individuals involved:
"Objectively a world of objects and relations between things springs into being (a world
of commodities and their movements on the market). Subjectively - where the market
economy has been fully developed - a man's activity becomes estranged from himself."
As a result, labor commodification "stamps its imprint upon the whole consciousness of
man; his qualities and abilities are no longer an organic part of his personality, they are
things which he can 'own' or 'dispose of' like the various objects of the external world. "36
Thus, when critics today object to the way the body business employs "a set of
cultural assumptions" which treat the body as a package of "units" that "can be pulled
from their context, isolated and abstracted from real people," they are also unwittingly
describing exactly what happens with the commodification of human labor. 37 Of course,
people do not easily submit to this thingification (reification) of their selves. At first,
commodification is experienced as unnatural, as involving non-human and demonic
forces which are invading social life. 38 But once alternative systems of meaning have
been decisively uprooted, once people have learned to accept wage-labor as normal and
natural, once alternative ways of organizing social life are no longer part of their waking
conscious life, then commodified senses of self and other become the norm. 39
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In "developed" capitalist societies today, for example, how to "sell yourself" has
become a regular subject of advice columns and talk shows, with individuals being
encouraged to package their "assets," their looks, aptitudes, skills, strength, smile,
personality and so on for life in a market society. Commodification thus involves the
reification of parts of the self - their isolation as abstractable components of the human
being that can be put on the market. In this vein, two American economists have
recently argued that individuals should begin to imagine themselves as corporations
and sell shares in themselves. More crudely, a San Francisco restaurant found 50 people
willing to tattoo their arms or legs with its mascot in exchange for free lunches for life.
And in Canada, four people with the surname Dunlop agreed to change their last names
to Dunlop-Tire in return for $6,250 from Goodyear Canada which markets Dunlop tires.40 No longer, then, will people simply wear brand name logos on their clothes; now they
will tattoo logos onto their bodies and change their very names, their public markers of
individual identity.
This sort of self-commodification is an inevitable part of the logic of a
commodified society and it is responsible for the commodified and reified subjectivities
and consciousness on display in immigrant autobiographies.41 We should not be
surprised, then, that people who have grown accustomed to commodifying themselves
would similarly consider all the elements of the natural environment - minerals, trees,
fossil fuels, water and air to be commodifiable, or that they might be susceptible to
seeing education, healthcare, wombs or human organs in these terms. 42 In a society in
which essential elements of our being, such as time, skill, energy and creativity, are
regularly put up for sale, why should we expect people to look at other parts of the
world around them differently? Why should we expect people who are compelled to sell
themselves on labor markets to automatically find the commercialization of water or
education objectionable? 43
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WHY SELL YOURSELF SHORT?
At the heart of my argument is the claim that commodification of one of our
fundamental life-activities - labor - generates what has been called "commodification as
a worldview," an outlook in which commodification is seen as the only possible way of
organizing the allocation of every conceivable good or service. For this reason, those
who wish to de-commodify a whole range of goods and services - from water and
wombs to education and healthcare - need to grapple with the deep structures of
commodification that have made the commodity-basis of socio-economic life seem
normal and natural. A number of critics have argued eloquently for overturning
"commodification as a worldview" without giving serious consideration to the effects of
the market organization of our working lives. Yet, since commodification shapes the
very subjectivities of people in a capitalist society, so long as human labor is organized
as a market commodity, the drive to commodify everything around us will seem a
logical and natural extension of the way our everyday lives are organized. It is unlikely,
therefore, that society will be reconstituted around non-market values so long as the
market permeates one of the most basic and fundamental aspects of our socio-economic
existence. 44
But what would it mean to de-commodify labor? How might we envision a
society, which is not based upon a labor market? And how might we build mass
movements to de-commodify labor?
As our historical analysis suggests, at its most basic level, the de--
commodification of labor requires the recreation of common property and common
rights that guarantee non-market access to the means of subsistence . 45 In modern
capitalism, as we have seen, most people's access to housing, food, electricity, recreation,
higher education and so on depends upon finding a buyer for their labor in the market
(or, in the case of children or "dependents" on parents, guardians, or partners finding
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such buyers). Fail to locate a buyer for our labor on the market and we (along with those
who depend directly upon our earnings) run the risk of not procuring housing, adequate
food, and so on. The first decisive step toward de-commodifying labor, then, involves
providing guaranteed (non-market) access to such fundamental goods as housing, food,
electricity, recreational goods and facilities, education, healthcare, childcare, and the like
as basic rights. Individual subsistence and survival would, in such circumstances, no
longer be determined by vagaries of the labor market, by whether or not one manages to
find a buyer for one's embodied abilities. Market dependence would thus be broken.
To be sure, the guarantee of universal rights and entitlements to the goods and
services provided by a socialized consumption sector would require a commitment by
healthy adults to performing social labor, to doing some of the work necessary for
society to meet the needs of its members. In my view, such social labor ought to be
organized in terms of worker-managed, communally owned workplaces that operate
according to ecological and democratic principles in full accord with the United Nation’s
Declaration of Human Rights. In addition, they should be based upon a radical
reduction in the length of the ordinary workday or work week. By eliminating wasteful
forms of production, unemployment, massive product duplication, enormous war
industries and the huge resources devoted to advertising, marketing, product promotion
and so on it would be possible to provide work to all healthy adults and improve the
conditions of life for the majority of humankind while also significantly reducing the
hours (and upgrading the conditions) of social labor.
By organizing the allocation of fundamental goods and services on the basis of
rights, not ability to pay, we would supplant the market as the mechanism by which
people guarantee their survival - or fail to do so. This is not to say that all market
transactions would necessarily disappear, and certainly not overnight. It is instead to
propose that people's survival would be secured outside the market, in what I would
call a socialized consumption sector, which would be governed by need, not ability to
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pay. Freeing our socio-material reproduction from the market is the decisive step
toward de-marketizing and de0commodifying human labor. If the first wage-laborers
were driven into the labor market as the only available means of survival, then the
construction of a socialized consumption sector which guarantees survival, comfort and
socio-material reproduction as social rights would eliminate this market dependence. In
such a society, social labor would be performed as a social responsibility, not out of
coercion enforced by the threat of poverty.
There is no doubt that a variety of transitional arrangements would be necessary
before a society could be said to have accomplished the full de-commodification of
labor. Over time, more and more goods and services would have to be encompassed by
the socialized consumption sector; correspondingly, the sphere of market transactions
would tend systematically to contract. And this is what it means to de-commodify
human labor: to make the market increasingly marginal, rather than central, to the
procurement of the necessities of life. As our socio-material needs are increasingly
satisfied outside the market, as we become less and less reliant on market exchanges (via
money) to "make ends meet," then the notion of human life as based upon rights to
goods and services can be expected to supplant the commodified view of the world in
which everything ought to be for sale. In a society which treated people as inherently
valuable ends in themselves, and not means to the expansion of capital, new social
values - non-commercial and non-commodity ones - based upon fundamental principles
of human dignity, integrity, freedom and self-development could be expected to
flourish. People in a de-commodifying society would learn to value themselves, others,
and the natural environment in qualitatively new ways, opening the way to a radically
different form of society.
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CHANGE IS THE CHALLENGE, NOT NEED
To talk about a radical transformation of world society is, of course, to invite the
charge of utopianism. Yet this is to miss two crucial points. First, our adversary - neo-
conservativism, especially in its virulently hegemonic Bush II strain- has succeeded in
part because of the boldness of its (reactionary) utopianism, what we might call
capitalist utopianism. At the core of neo-conservativism is a dramatic vision in which
the whole world really is for sale, a world without unions, environmental regulations,
minimum wage laws and so on. Neo-conservativism imagines a world organized simply
on the basis of private property rights (which would apply effectively to everything) and
global market competition. And it's not just our planet that is supposed to be regulated
by property law and corporate ownership: recently, a private corporation was granted
legal rights to explore, photograph and land on the moon - part of a long-term plan for
the privatization and corporatization of lunar space. Not surprisingly, corporations have
also been offered the opportunity to have their logos emblazoned on the side of lunar
space shuttles - for a mere $25,000 US. Neo-conservativism thus projects a radical
corporate utopianism in which everything from the human genome to the moon is
privately owned. We need look no further to what fate awaits us all under Bush II by
only looking at designs on gutting the U.S. Constitution and illegally invading Iraq.
But the second crucial point about a radical perspective is that the emerging
global justice movement, particularly in the South, is itself beginning to formulate a
powerful counter-utopia. Occupying land in Brazil, fighting giant dams in India,
resisting water privatization in Bolivia, striking against layoffs in Korea, throwing up
barricades against structural adjustment in Argentina - in all these ways and more, mass
movements of millions of people have challenged the fundamental premises of global
commodification. 50 Rising to new levels of militancy and defiance, they have also begun
to formulate their own social vision. Until recently, the opposition to neo-conservativism
276
generally lacked the audacity and boldness of outlook that sustained its capitalist
adversaries. But the new grassroots popular movements of workers and peasants have
increasingly proclaimed, as the banner of the World Social Forums of 2001 and 2002 in
Porto Alegre, Brazil declare, that “another world is possible”. In so doing, they have
started the process of reclaiming utopia, of envisioning a world organized on the basis of
popular democracy, global justice, full gender and racial equality, ecological sanity,
respect for the rights of indigenous and oppressed peoples, and production for human
needs, not profit.
The new movement is very much one in formation. More mainstream and
"respectable" elements, particularly non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and
moderate trade union leaders, often try to constrain the movement's propensity to
militant struggle and direct action, and to divert its energies into demanding a few seats
among the elites at the negotiating table, rather than overturning the whole structure of
elite power. But against these moderate and bureaucratic forces there are powerful
movements which seize land, occupy the streets, wage mass strikes, confront the riot
police, throw up barricades - in short, do whatever is necessary to roll back the neo-
conservative juggernaut. And in demanding land for the landless, jobs for the jobless,
and water, electricity and homes for all, they are challenging the very logic of
commodification.
Yet, as I have argued throughout this piece, commodification cannot truly be
uprooted without undermining the market character of labor in modern society. And
this social and political project - the overturning of the commodity structure of modern
life - is not possible without a radically anti-capitalist movement, one which intends to
break corporate-capitalist power and create new forms of communal property regulated
by radical, grassroots democracy. The task is thus a revolutionary, not an ameliorative
one.
277
How could it be otherwise? To de-commodify society, to make it effectively
impossible for people to even imagine that someone could own the world's water or the
human genome, means to strike at the deepest roots of our own commodification. It
means, in short, to create a world in which the buying and selling of labor is as
reprehensible as the buying and selling of body parts.
278
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ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER 11
1 This section explains why autobiography becomes just another form of alienated andexpropriated labor.
2 Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Global Showdown: How the New Activists areFighting Global Corporate Rule (Toronto: Stoddart Publishing, 2001), pp. 181-82.
3 Mary Jane Radin, Contested Commodities: The Trouble with Trade in Sex, Children,Body Parts, and Other Things (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).Radin introduces the term “inappropriate commodification” p. 8.
4 Marx, Capital.
5 “Body Parts Peddler,” New Yorker Magazine, October 18, 2002, p. 1.
6 Michael Finkel, “Complications,” New York Times Magazine, May 27, 2001. Thisarticle clearly illustrates the way in which class and race issues figure in the buyingand selling of body parts. These issues, along with gender, are also raised by a recentCanadian example. See Lisa Priest, “Boss gets organ fromdomestic,” Globe and Mail, November 16, 2002.
7 Lori Andrews and Dorothy Nelkin, Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue inthe Biotechnology Age (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), pp. 2, 4. See also A.Kimbrell, The Human Body Shop: The Engineering and the Marketing of Life (SanFrancisco: Harper and Row, 1993), and R. C. Fox and J. P. Swazey, Spare Parts: OrganReplacement in Human Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
8 See “Pirates Ahoy!” New Internationalist 349 (September 2002), p. 25; and LopetiSenituli, “The gene hunters,” New Internationalist 349 (September 2002), pp. 13-14.
9 Nelkin p. 79.
10 See Jordi Pigem, “Barcoding Life,” New Internationalist 349 (September 2002), p. 26.
11 Andrews and Nelkin, pp. 5, 6.
12 US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health and theEnvironment, Hearing on H.R. 4080, “National Organ Transplant Act,” 98th Congress(1984), p. 128.
13 Margaret Somerville as quoted in Lisa Priest, “Women promote ‘perky ovaries’with eggs for sale,”Globe and Mail, September 8, 2001.
14 This is the heading of the final chapter in Andrews and Nelkin. Radin’s argument indefense of “incomplete commodification” works in a similar direction.
15 Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (London: Methuen, 1979), p.165.
16 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1952), p. 43. This emphasis on embodiment had earlier proponents in political
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philosophy, but Hegel was unique among German Idealist philosophers in accenting itin this way.
17 Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying ‘This may be True in Theory, but it doesnot Apply in Practice” in Kant, Political Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss (Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 78, 78n. See also Kant, “The Metaphysics ofMorals,” Political Writings, pp. 139-40.
18 Hegel, p. 54.
19 Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1952), pp. 20-21.
20 See, for instance, James Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work: Alienation and the LaborProcess, 3rd edn.(Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1996).
21 Karl Marx, Capital, v. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976),p. 342.
22 Michael Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (ChapelHill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). Taussig has often been criticized, withsome justification, for idealizing precapitalist arrangements in these regions inColombia as “natural” and “organic.” This criticism should not, however, detract fromthe great power of his reading of cultural understandings of capital as a diabolicalpower in these societies.
23 See for instance Birgit Meyer, “‘Delivered from the powers of Darkness’:Confessions of Satanic Riches in Christian Ghana,” Africa, v. 65, n. 2 (1995), pp. 236-55;and Meyer, “The Power of Money: Politics, Occult Forces and Pentecostalism inGhana,” African Studies Review, v. 41, n. 3 (December 1990), pp. 15- 37; andMadelaine Drohan, “Gruesome tales show Nigeria’s desperate state,” Globe and Mail,September 25, 2000. These are not the only countries where such tales abound at thismoment of late capitalist anxiety.One also finds them in other parts of Africa, East Asia and Latin America. See JeanComaroff and John L. Comaroff, “Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction:Notes from the South African Postcolony,” American Ethnologist, v. 26, n. 2 (1999), p.291.
24 Ben Okri, The Famished Road (London: Vintage Books, 1992), p. 495.
25 The term “human ATMS” is used by anthropologist Misty Bastian, as quoted byDrohan.
26 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of ourtime (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), p. 68.
27 Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1972), p. 213.
28 Karl Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies (Boston: Beacon Press,1968), p. 66.
29 For a detailed account of the English common lands see A W. B. Simpson, A Historyof the Land Law, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). For an insightfulinterpretation of their meaning for common rights see E. P. Thompson, Customs in
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Common (New York: The New Press, 1991).
30 Quoted in Taussig, pp. 73-74.
31 For a more detailed discussion see David McNally, Against the Market (London:Verso, 1993), Chap. 1.
32 Marx, Capital, v. 1, p. 926.
33 By no means do I intend to idealize the feudal system: it was oppressive,exploitative and patriarchal in the extreme. The key point in my account is thetransformation to modern forms of capitalist property and the way in which thistransformation required the destruction of communal lands in order to create amodern capitalist labor market.
34 Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press,199), pp. 10-71.
35 James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the21st Century (Halifax: Fernwood Books, 2001), p. 24. For descriptions of the process bywhich this takes place see McNally, Another World is Possible, pp. 73-78.
36 Marx, Capital, v.1, p. 989.
37 Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone(London: Merlin Books, 1971), pp. 87, 100.
38 The quote comes from Andrews and Nelkin, p. 6.
39 See the references in endnotes 20 and 21.
40 I do not believe these processes are ever totally complete.
41 See Elizabeth Church, “Authors ‘blur’ old rules of business,” Globe and Mail, July21, 1998; “Advertising space,” Globe and Mail, July 5, 2001; and John Heinzl, “Fourrenamed Dunlops now big wheels,” Globe and Mail, March 12, 2002.
42 The notion of self-commodification is perceptively developed by Alan Sears in TheLean State, 2002.
43 For the environmental implications of human alienation under capitalism seeVittvogel on hydraulic societies.
44 I recognize that many people do in fact contest the commodification of such things.In doing so, however, they are acting counter to the logic of commodification that isinscribed in the experience of wage-labor.
45 I would also argue that society cannot be reorganized according to non-commercialvalues so long as it rests on the buying and selling of human labor. An unwillingnessto confront this is the great weakness of Radin’s important book, ContestedCommodities. While occasionally acknowledging the alienating effects of at least someforms of wage-labor, she hopes to challenge “commodification as a worldview”without de-commodifying labor – an impossible task in my view. Similarly, the
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absence of human labor on the impressive list of goods and services that Barlow andClarke suggest ought not to be commodified (see note 1 above) represents, in my view,a major flaw in their critical analysis.
46 The idea of recreation here does not mean a return to the medieval or early-modernsystem of common lands. To begin with, these were ultimately subordinate to thesocial power and property of landowners. More than this, in modern society we wouldhave to think in terms of common forms of industrial and “post-industrial” property.
47 For recent attempts to rehabilitate radical utopian thinking on the Left see DavidHarvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Leo Panitchand Colin Leys, eds., Necessary and Unnecessary Utopias: Socialist Register 2000(London: Merlin Press, 1999; and I concur with certain opinions that hold that WorldSocial Forums are not without their internal tensions and problems; nonetheless, theirsymbolic and ideological significance in arguing for a new kind of radical orientationis of inestimable value, pace ShrubCo.
48 Perhaps the harshest criticism of the role of NGO leaders in the movement comesfrom Petras and Veltmeyer, Chapter 8. But see also Gerard Greenfeld, “The Success ofBeing Dangerous: Resisting Free Trade and Investment Regimes, “ Studies in PoliticalEconomy 64 (Spring 2001).
49 Marx and those committed to a marxian analysis of the world system understandwhy capitalism breeds its own grave diggers: much akin to the much talked aboutforeign policy “blowback” that occasioned 9/11.