Identity and HistoryIdentity and History

Literary Criticism – Identity, Trauma and Globalization

Introduction

Spring 2010Kate Liu

OutlineOutline

Identity and History Q1 -- What is Identity? Q2 -- History – what

eternity -- “Time in a Bottle” Déjà vu: Somewhere in Time catastrophe -- “The Dream Before” (male) violence: “Leda and the Swan”

Q3 -- Historiography -- why and how?Official history “My Grandmother”Facts “Two Villages”

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Q 1: IdentityQ 1: Identity

What is Identity? Does it matter to you? If so, how do you

define your identity (or identities)?

Identity Identity : Who am I?

Body, Desire, Work, Experience, Memory/TraumaBody, Desire, Work, Experience, Memory/Trauma

Identity= who I am

Collective --The World,

Nation, Society

(its History,

Ideology, RacismCulture,

and Economy)

Personal –

Cultural,Racial,

Gender, National,

and Others

Communal: Family

and other social units影

響影響

影響

包括

explanationexplanation

Identity Identity : Who am I?

1. To talk about our identity, we try to answer the question, "Who am I?"

2. Plural and provisional: The answer has to be plural and made from time to time (identity is a process of identification.)

Identity Identity : Who am I? (2)

We have different kinds of collective identity: national identity, social identity, cultural/racial

identity, class identity, familial identity, gender identity, sexual identity, etc. 

All these identities are formed beyond our control (at least partly).   (This explains why some contemporary theorists say that our identities are fragmentary and split.)

Identity Identity : Who am I? (3)

Conscious and unconscious: Out of all of these inter-related kinds of collective identity we form our personal (sense of) identity.   But “usually" we do not loudly pronounce (articulte and/or defend) a certain kind of identity unless it is strongly related to our beliefs or unless it is threatened.

Written on our bodies and into history: However, our personal senses or, more precisely, our constructions of our identities, consciously or not, are written on our bodies and embodied in our daily actions, which, in turn, become ‘historical’ documents of society’s archive.

Q 2Q 2: : WWhat is history?hat is history?

What do you think about the following statements: She’s history.// A history-making day.// We should put

the past behind us and move forward. History is progressive. // History repeats itself. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

(David McCullough) “. . . to [the elderly] all the past is not a diminishing road

but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches. divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years“ (“A Rose for Emily”).

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth. (E. L. Doctorow)

History is fiction, fiction history.

A 2: History A 2: History ––whatwhat Kinds –

Official history [history-making]; grand narrative (for legitimation); “objective”

personal histories (biography, memoir, anecdote, diary, etc.); small narrative; “subjective”

Is our daily life part of history?

It is when it is selected into a “historical text.”

History as text, interpretation or myth: “History is the present. That's why every generation

writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end

product, myth” (E. L. Doctorow). History is fiction, fiction, history.

A 2: History A 2: History ––what –what –Different kinds of Different kinds of

historical constructionhistorical construction

Subjective and personal sense of history with recent memories fading –

“. . . to [the elderly] all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches. divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years “ (“A Rose for Emily”)

A 2: History A 2: History ––what (3)what (3)

History as “a progress beyond the past”-- The past = a person rejected [She’s history]. The past = Past event/experience lived beyond. [We

should put the past behind us and move forward.] History repeats itself. progressive Related View of Time: linear or circular; history as a

route we take in life. But history has multiple plot, divergences and even gaps.

History and Identity: “History is who we are and why we are the way we are.”

Example 1: Example 1: ““Time in a BottleTime in a Bottle””

The song Please do a close analysis of

the song, both the lyrics and the music. What does it say and how does it say it? Are there contradictions and tensions in this song?

How is it similar to or different from the quote from “A Rose for Emily”?

Jim Croce, Died: September 20, 1973 Does it matter who writes the song?

Jim Croce, Died: September 20, 1973 Does it matter who writes the song?

Example 1: Example 1: ““Time in a BottleTime in a Bottle””

The song What – The speaker wants to spend everyday with

“you” till eternity, but there is not enough time (mortality).

How – slow, rhythmic (3-beat) and repetitive melody; seemingly unfinished both in meaning and in music, as if the song could be repeated again and again.

The elderly in “A Rose for Emily” – remote past frozen in their mind.

Two futile attempts to treat history as eternity.

Example 2: Example 2: History as LoopHistory as Loop: : Somewhere in Time (1980)Somewhere in Time (1980)

Plot: (preview first) Chicago playwright Richard

Collier goes back in time 60 years to find the love (Elise McKenna) he’s been missing all his life. Richard --

1978 1912 Location: Mackinac Island,

Michigan, the Grand Hotel

Example 4: Example 4: Time Travel: e.g. Time Travel: e.g. Somewhere in Time (1980)Somewhere in Time (1980)

Method of “Time Travel” (clip 4)

[Sources: Jack Finney, a science fiction writer]

-- location – a hotel

-- erase the traces of the present

-- hypnotize his own mind how Richard does it (chap 5)

first encounter (chap 7)

Example 4: Example 4: Time Travel: e.g. Time Travel: e.g. Somewhere in Time (1980)Somewhere in Time (1980)

Who determines their destiny? A gold watch, the photo as

mementos destiny?

Richard’s crisis in life? Elise’s becoming senile?

The producer (chap 13) What is eternal love? (chap 14 --1:29)

Example 2: Example 2: Somewhere in Time Somewhere in Time (1980)(1980) -- -- a reinterpretationa reinterpretation

1. Time travel -- Can we really travel in time? • time travel can get us into 1) a never-

ending causality loop (grandfather/ontology paradox; see here.)

2) multiple time line.2. Isn’t realistic novel or historical romance like

this?3. Another interpretation: another young man in

the past (source)

Example 2: Example 2: Somewhere in Time Somewhere in Time (1980)(1980) -- -- a reinterpretationa reinterpretation (2) (2)

3. History and fixation in history -- Other possibilities: -- There could be two “Richards”; -- It could all be Richard’s fantasy, made with the gold

watch and the photo. (It could be another woman that gave Richard the watch.)

In the end, it’s either Richard or Elise, or both, who is fixated by their memory or immobilized by their traumatic experience of losing a lover, and thus seeks to perpetuate it (in life and in death).

Example 3: Example 3: ““The Dream BeforeThe Dream Before”” (for Walter Benjamin) (for Walter Benjamin)

The song – Verse 1: Hensel and Gretel as adults “History is a pile of debris

And the angel wants to go back and fix things  To repair the things that have been broken But there is a storm blowing from Paradise  And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future And this storm, this storm  is called  Progress. ”

Laurie AndersonLaurie Anderson

Note: schnapps - （穀物釀製的）烈酒

Example 3: Example 3: ““The Dream BeforeThe Dream Before””

Q: How does the song deal with the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel?

A: They live in a life not as heroic and adventurous as their life in the fairy tale. fairy tale as illusion; growing up as gradual degradation.

Hansel – contradictory

1) attached to the witch (why?);

2) Expresses Walter Benjamin’s view of history as progress thru’ desctruction with debris left behind.

Paul Klee's Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus“"Angelus Novus“

(( 新天使新天使 ))

Benjamin on Benjamin on Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus" Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus"

An angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.”

Benjamin on Benjamin on Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus"Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus"

The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. . . . But a storm is blowing from Paradise; . . . irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, This storm is what we call progress.” Walter Benjamin,

“Theses on the Philosophy of History” Do you agree with this view of history?

Example 3: Example 3: “Leda and the Swan”“Leda and the Swan”

Yeats’ views:

1.History as cyclical (with interpenetrating cones) and Catastrophic; 2. Leda’s rape initiating the fall of Troy, followed by Roman Empire and then modern civilization.

Yeats’ views:

1.History as cyclical (with interpenetrating cones) and Catastrophic; 2. Leda’s rape initiating the fall of Troy, followed by Roman Empire and then modern civilization.

Pay attention to 1) the tropes used, and 2) its sound Arrangements:

explosive vs. mellow sounds, Iambic, trochaic, spondaic, and

rhyme scheme.

Pay attention to 1) the tropes used, and 2) its sound Arrangements:

explosive vs. mellow sounds, Iambic, trochaic, spondaic, and

rhyme scheme.

Example 3: Example 3: “Leda and the Swan”“Leda and the Swan”

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

Note the use of Synecdoche

Note the use of Synecdoche

““Leda and the Swan”Leda and the Swan” (2)(2)

A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,So mastered by the brute blood of the air Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,So mastered by the brute blood of the air Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

““Leda and the Swan”Leda and the Swan” (3)(3)History as Violent CatastropheHistory as Violent Catastrophe

0. Background: “’Leda and the Swan’ in 1923, Ireland was in the midst of a bloody civil war that was the result of the Anglo-Irish conflict as well as the discord between the largely Catholic south and the Protestant north.” – (source)

1. New Critical (or formalist) Approach:

1. sound and sense: the poem is a sensual presentation of Zeus’ rape of Leda. Sensuality conveyed thru’ the alteration between explosive and mellifluous sounds.

““Leda and the Swan”Leda and the Swan” (4)(4)Formalist Approach Formalist Approach (cont’d)(cont’d)

2. Figurative language: the use of synecdoche. The rape is presented in close-up, so is the fall of Troy.

Plus the effects of the explosive sounds, the poem uses such language to convey 1) the largeness of the swan, its indifference to Leda as a person, and 2) the powerful impact of both the rape and the Trojan war.

3. Irony and/or contradiction: besides the contrast between power and powerlessness, there is also a contrast between fear (terrified vague fingers) and willingness (loosenging, feel the heart), birth (engendered) and destruction (what is engendered) , passive (caught and mastered) and active (put on his knowledge)

““Leda and the Swan”Leda and the Swan” (5)(5)Formalist & Other Approaches Formalist & Other Approaches (cont’d)(cont’d)

Formalist: 4. structure of surroundedness (in the first two stanzas), development by the parallel between a sudden blow, and a shudder in the loin, questions in the 2nd quatrain, and the 2nd part of the sestet.

5. The use of Petrarchan sonnet – 8 + 6, with a shift in theme in between; A break in line 11, to shift back to Leda. Rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFGEFG. (slant

rhymes, like "push" and "rush," or "up" and "drop.“)

6. Other approaches: Feminist (why rape, and why the use of a woman?); Postcolonial (the poem as an allegory of the rape of Ireland by England).(note)

Q3: History Q3: History ––why and how?why and how?

Why do we write and read histories? To record events only? What are the functions of history?

To serve their functions, how are ‘histories’ told?

Example 1 -- Example 1 -- 戒嚴的實施與解除戒嚴的實施與解除 　　三十八年五月，臺灣省警備總司令部為了維護治安，宣布全省戒嚴，長期限制人民的言論、出版、集會、結社等自由，而備受輿論的批評。金門、馬祖則劃入戰地政務實驗區，實施軍事管理，限制住民的自由和參政權，成年民眾編為自衛隊，支援國軍作戰。民國六十年代後期，社會運動興起後，一再要求解除戒嚴，回歸憲政 ; 因此，七十六年七月蔣經國總統宣布解除戒嚴，開放黨禁、報禁。迨李登輝繼任總統後，明令終止動員戡亂時期，廢除動員戡亂時期臨時條款，修訂憲法，全面改選中央民意代表，以及實施省市長、總統直接民選等，開啟臺灣政治民主化的新頁。 (visited 2004, see below for

the present version; 台灣演義 , based on 認識台灣 [國立編譯館 ]) Source: http://contest.ks.edu.tw/%7Etaiwan/main.htm

Example 1 Example 1 –– Official/National History Official/National History

[the 2004 version] Exact dates, numbers and ‘facts’ Only the names of VIP’s; His-story; General – avoiding and/or erasing sensitive

details (of 228) Partially justifying martial law, and

suggesting progress

Example 2: Example 2: ““My Grandmother Ironed the King's My Grandmother Ironed the King's

ShirtsShirts””

1999 Torill Kove How is this animation different from an

official story of Norway? Pay attention, again, to its form and content.

Example 2: Example 2: ““My Grandmother My Grandmother Ironed the King's ShirtsIroned the King's Shirts””

Content: Characterization – the grandmother a royalist and a

professional ‘shirt-presser’ history – In the 60’s, “She no longer approved.”

Form: child-like drawing + historical (black-and-white)

photos digressions ice-skating dancer, the ending. language – humorous: “unemployed” royals. ending: another family legend after this one.

For your reference For your reference

挪威王國首都奧斯陸（ Oslo ） 1905, separated from The Bernadottes the

union between Sweden and Norway to be a separate nation.

On 18 November, 1905, the solemn election of Prince Carl as king of Norway took place in the Storting, taking the name of Haakon the seventh.

The Royan family of Norway: http://www.kongehuset.no/default.asp?lang=eng

For your reference (2)For your reference (2)

When the Norwegian forces in Northern Norway capitulated after two months of fighting in June 1940, the king, prime minister and government evacuated to Great Britain. Throughout the war years, Norway retained a operating government in exile. And as the years passed by, the number of Norwegian refugees abroad grew to some 80.000.

Norway's resistance in World War II included civil disobedience, such as pretending to not know German, and students’ wearing paper clips

(source: http://home.online.no/~gestrom/history/norartxt.htm ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_resistance_movement#Civil_disobedience )

Example 3: Example 3: ““Two VillagesTwo Villages””

How are numbers used in the two parts of the poem?

How are the two passages with numbers in contrast with the other two about Mr. Tat and Mr. Tuong.

For your reference For your reference HistoryHistory——the use of hard facts and photos the use of hard facts and photos

e.g. Paul Hardcastle '19e.g. Paul Hardcastle '19‘‘

In a newscaster’s voice: "In world war two the average age of the combat soldier was twenty six. In Vietnam he was nineteen. I-I-I-I-In Vietnam he was nineteen. N-n-n-n-nineteen."

For your reference For your reference ––Vietnam War Vietnam War

History: the country divided in 1954; the U.S.’s involvement since around 1955; support forces arriving since 1961, intense bombing since 1965, withdrawal since 1969, and the total withdrawal in 1973, a few months after a ceasefire was signed in Jan. The fall of Saigon in May 1975.

For your reference For your reference ––Vietnam War Vietnam War Atrocities: A. American side:

58,148 dead, 270,000 injured Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Agent Orange

Vietnamese side dead: (from both sides) more than 4,000,000 civilians

and soldiers—10% of the entire population displaced: 9,000 out of 15,000 villages destroyed: farmland, forest, farm animals; all six of the

industrial cities in the North affected: 200,000 prostitutes, 879,000 orphans, 181,000

disabled people, 1 million widows

A 2: History A 2: History ––why and how?why and how?

Purposes

– a memento to keep (and past to immortalize), and to be fixated by, Somewhere in Time

-- sense-making, legitimating or empowering .grandmother;

-- re-interpretation relating it to our present world and selves.

Cannot be re-presenting the past; histories have to be fictions, or constructions.

Q 4: History and IdentityQ 4: History and Identity

History and Identity: How does History/histories shape our identities?

And how do we establish/construct our identities through telling stories?

About our CourseAbout our Course

1. Identity History History and Literature

2. Identity and (History of) colonialism and racism

3. Historical Representation as influenced by Postmodernism

4. Identity as influenced by Globalization and Trauma

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Read: Literary Criticism 1-- Chapter 3 Literature and history pp. 93-111

"Rip Van Winkle"