Sabotaged Chicken Alive in Darkness

Jin's stories feature situations that cause the reader to question not just Communism or Capitalism, but authority in general. However, he does this in a non-obvious way that ends in the characters continuing to rely on Communism or rejecting Capitalist ideas. No one in the stories explicitly question the authority, responsibility, or response of the state. Jin presents these stories in such a way that someone indoctrinated in the Maoist ideology could think, "Well yeah, he was a bad citizen," "I'm glad to see that the Party helped that poor man," or "I hate that Capitalist!" While a fair percentage of the population may reach conclusions like those I just noted, another sizeable group is going to reach another conclusion that may have a destabilizing effect.

"Saboteur" is blatant in its condemnation of the Party's behavior. In his description of the events that led to Chiu's arrest, Jin clearly shows how unfair and arbitrary the behavior of the police is. He also demonstrates the unwillingness to acknowledge reason and that the Party ultimately creates dissension where none existed before. However, I can totally see the story going over the heads of certain readers rather than getting Jin's point across. Now, I could be 100% wrong here, but I have always been under the impression that the self-criticism letter that Mr. Chiu had to sign was a standard part of Communist re-education or rehabilitation. Due to this, it was a widely understood thing in pre- and post-cultural revolution China (and U.S.S.R.). I never really asked anybody about this while I was in China, but I thought that the personal stories of going into a re-education or rehabilitation facility for counter-revolutionary behavior (less than complete obedience), which is what Mr. Chiu was essentially accused of, was part of the machine that kept everyone in line. If that's the case, I can see how someone would read this as a story detailing the fate of a counter-revolutionary and why the authority of the Party (police) should be respected. It can readily be argued that Chiu's intentional infection of the town represents the Party's failure, but there's a chance that this section could reinforce an interpretation that Mr. Chiu was an anti-social element who was and should be condemned to die from the diseases ravaging his counter-revolutionary innards - That subversive dog!

In "Alive" we see a man who was presumed dead, but eventually returned to his former life. While the state did assist Guhan's family in his absence, the restitution for his death, which came in the process of performing his job for the state run cannery, was rather insignificant. The cannery and state didn't really spend anything to compensate his family for the loss of life and income. They simply shifted resources around by hiring his into a position that provided a smaller income than he originally had. Upon his return they were unwilling to send away the man they imported to fill the vice director position he was set to fill, they refused to demote the man who filled his original position, and they were unwilling to create a new position for him. He indirectly gave his life for the survival of the cannery, but the cannery management and employees, who all seemed to respect him greatly, continued to live as if he never existed. In addition, the director of the cannery may have misled Guhan about the financial state of the cannery. Guhan reappeared around the New Year, yet the cannery seemed to be running just fine without him or the money he was sent to collect. Considering the total destruction of Taifu, I find it hard to believe that the cannery received the money it was owed. I suppose the government could have paid the debt after Taifu's destruction, but who knows. Whether we consider that the cannery director was lying or not, the cannery still had a hand in Guhan's "death." Based upon the Party's promoted ethos, it was more than reasonable to assume he would be re-incorporated into the organization, but the Party simply tossed him aside with a pension, which he should have received eventually anyway, and Guhan accepted this as a reasonable solution to his predicament. Clearly, a story like this could rattle one's faith in their dear leader's party.

I was going to have a longer paragraph about "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town" right here, but this is getting a tad too long. However, I concluded that this was ultimately a story exposing the faults of both political systems (Communism and Capitalism), but one holds a greater promise of prosperity. While there's an imbalance in Capitalism, as demonstrated in Peter's power and wealth, there is opportunity in the system. As expressed through the narrator's mother and father, Communism can provide stability, but what good is stability if it's outweighed by misery and disappointment? And segue into Conrad talk.

I'm not incredibly familiar with Eastern European history, but I know that the Bolshevik Revolution took place in the early 1920s. So, the late 1800s and early 1900s would have been a time of anti-czarist/anti-imperialist activity and changes in modern political thought (Communism) or revolution. Considering the incredible change sweeping throughout the Russian Empire and nearby areas, I think Heart of Darkness would have been lost in the torrent of competing ideas at the time. There's a slight chance that HoD would have been seized by the anti-Imperialists and used to highlight the errors of imperialism and colonialism. However, there are various comments in Heart of Darkness that would weaken its use as an effective piece of propaganda, which further reduces its appeal in that regard. This isn't to say that changes weren't occurring in England, but there was certainly more stability that would allow for more careful consideration of the text. When examining these factors, it's clear that postcolonial literature would be significantly different because Conrad's voice would be totally absent from the conversation.

Who Are You? Who, who? Who, who?

(Quick note: Ridiculous title, I’m sorry. And now I’ve got the opening of CSI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WseRJMQf1U) stuck in my head. Anyway, this is a completely revised version of my original post. I suppose the original post was fine, but it felt lacking in some regard. I got kind of long winded on this version. If you don’t want to read it, just assume that I wrote Antoinette is a mad, beastly woman and she got what she deserved. You can comment accordingly.)

I hate you blog post five. Well, not really hate, but you certainly made me rethink how to approach this more often than I had anticipated. Spivak, curse you as well. Anyhow, with my outbursts against a block of text and the author of an essay out of the way, let’s move on to the details.

I suppose I should explain what caused some second and third (?) guessing with this week’s post. It’s not so much that I had trouble wrapping my head around things, more that there is so much to touch on that I wasn’t sure where to go and I kept wanting to go back and look at other things mentioned in the essay. Looking at the phrase “other things” and how I ended up approaching this, I suppose one could take that to mean things about the other because I got somewhat fixated on the idea of the other and identity in this instance. This isn’t to say that previous blog posts haven’t been about the other or identity because they all have to some degree. (Isn’t what part of what this class has been about? Who’s who? In what context are we defined and who’s the one coming up with that definition? How does one interact with another to change things?) However, the combination of Spivak’s essay and WSS more obviously laid out the conflict with identity more than any of the other stories we’ve read so far. So this is going to be an amalgamation of Spivak’s points, but they all seem to involve Antoinette’s identity.

I’ll start with things on the third page of Spivak’s essay (242) and kind of jump around from there. Here Spivak explores Antoinette’s sanity, which I agree is intact, and that leads into a discussion about Antoinette’s identity and her belonging in both England and the West Indies. Not only does Antoinette represent the other, but she also represents the other’s other. So, she also kind of represents the self in that regard. In this context I don’t feel that the broader question of whether she was insane or not is the most crucial, but questions regarding what the “insane” outburst might have said about Antoinette, and ultimately the lasting impact colonization has on the colonized population, are important.

As Spivak notes, Antoinette’s attack on Mason was not one of an insane person, but rather one of a competent, yet possibly irrational, person (242). It is not as if Antoinette leapt at Mason as soon as she saw him or immediately after he began speaking. In her recollection of the scene, Grace implies that the conversation carried on for some indeterminate amount of time before Mason said, “I cannot interfere legally” and Antoinette’s subsequent attack (150). This reflects some level of composure, control, or sanity and not unrestrained madness on Antoinette’s part. Spivak and Rhys also note that the attack coincided with Mason’s mention of the term “legally.” Now, this could have been nothing more than a marker word used to show when Mason was interrupted. However, if we continue along Spivak’s line of thought and examine why the phrase “legally” might have set off Antoinette, the argument that this brief episode marked the point at which the repressed part of Antoinette’s psyche was rekindled can be made. Again, not in an unbridled mad manner, but simply that the non-English other that was a critical part of Antoinette finally reached a saturation point (in terms of dismissal and abandonment) and struck out at the idea of English control that Mason represented at that moment. Not only was the imposition of English law preventing her salvation, but she was being abandoned and left to wither in the hands of English (Rochester) control, much like foreign lands/people colonized before. Following the attack we find Antoinette is largely unaware of what transpired. We’ll say she blacked out or something, but that blackout episode further reflects the repression of the other and Antoinette’s forced adoption of Englishness. An interesting aspect of this part of Spivak’s essay is that she is consistently referring to Antoinette in England as Bertha, just like Rochester does in WSS and Jayne Eyre, in order to demonstrate the new identity that Antoinette was coping with. I suppose it also demonstrates the end of Rhys’ original narrative and the interweaving with Bronte’s. However, if this is considered further, it becomes apparent that this blackout episode was less about a blinding rage and more about a situation where there was a fleeting repression of Bertha, which allowed a for a small rebellion against the colonizer and, indirectly, the English self that stood idly by.

Overgrowth

I found the description of the once manicured, but now overgrown estate garden kind of interesting. The paragraph on pages 10 and 11 mentions how the garden was once “large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible,” but now it is “overgrown [with] a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell.” Rhys also writes about the orchids that were so alluring, but unapproachable. At this point in the story it seems like the garden is much like the island itself. The old order is withering, but there’s also a swarm of chaotic energy accompanied by a terrifying allure now that the master is gone. In the moment it seems like it’s something you could interact with and enjoy, but there’s also a sense that it could immediately overwhelm and overpower the senses. It’s a very weird place to find one’s self; in the middle of this transformation and not sure where to go. If we look at Antoinette, she’s got these choices to make because the middle isn’t where it’s at. The middle ground seems to be filled with abandonment, isolation, and alienation.

As a result, we start to see her finding comfort in extremes as the chapter progresses.  For her, those extremes tend to be on the European side. After losing her friend and her mother finds a new husband, Antoinette starts to withdraw from the world outside the estate walls and we start to see her gravitating towards Mason’s unparalleled Englishness. She eats an English dinner with her family even though she typically eats traditional island food alone; she adores a picture of a “lovely English girl with brown curls and blue eyes,” and finds comfort/safety in Mason’s English self-confidence. This move to one extreme and the moment of safety that came with it is immediately thrown into upheaval, but once that passes and some other events transpire she finds herself in another situation where she feels “safe.” This happens when Antoinette enters the convent. The island ways she was used to are replaced by customs of the European church. With the end of the first part of the book, it looks like that her sense of safety is going to be disrupted again.

What's the Difference?

In today’s class discussion there was much talk surrounding the attitudes displayed by Mr. Brown and Rev. Smith. Due to poor planning on my part I hadn't completed “Things Fall Apart” before class so some of the context of the discussion was lost on me. However, I was able to establish some opinions about the two that seemed to hold up after I finished the last few chapters. A lot of what was discussed focused on who was the nicer guy, but the more I heard the more it seemed  that it wasn’t so much a matter of one being nice and the other being mean, it was just a case of differing philosophies. They shared the same ultimate goal and were both equally detrimental to the continued existence of the tribe as a unit. The ideas of good and bad are relative and when I compared these two characters in the context of their mission, neither seemed particularly good to me. Was Mr. Brown as aggressive and immediately destructive as Rev. Smith? No. However, in the long run, I think that Mr. Brown’s tack was more shrewd and insidious.

Rev. Smith was concerned about establishing a tradition of strength in the congregation. As a result, he considered driving the less faithful from the church, took an aggressive stance toward the villagers, and let the zealots among his group run unchecked. While this approach did allow him to strengthen the faith of the church in Umuofia, it also resulted in increased hostility with the villagers. As we can see in chapter 24 of “Things Fall Apart,” this approach wasn’t going to be sustainable without serious conflict and, likely, notable losses for both parties. While brute force can pay off in the long run, the run is much longer and more painful than the “good cop” approach Mr. Brown employed.

Mr. Brown was interested in ensuring that the church appealed to as many tribesmen as possible. He seemed to do this by learning about the native culture, without adopting these concepts himself, and looking for ways to make the church an integral, and ultimately dominant, part of the community. (As an aside, this scenario, as lopsided as it is, seems to go toward the concept of exchange to be covered in our first essay.) Mr. Brown’s process of examination can be seen on pages 101 and 102, Achebe writes that Mr. Brown even took the time to learn about the clan’s beliefs and looked for ways to “attack” those ideas.  Ideally, establishing mass appeal would lead to a situation where everyone would have a close friend/family member who was in the church and that would ultimately bring the rest of the tribe along.

To answer the question presented in the title of this post, I don't think there's a difference. In the end the two men could have been swapped out for anybody or any personality as long as they had the same goal in mind. While I'd prefer a Mr. Brown style regime, Mr. Brown seems like a more dangerous influence, in regard to the local culture, than Rev. Smith. Mr. Brown displayed a gentleness and understanding that made him appear non-threatening. This lulled the people of Umuofia into a false sense of security and before they knew it their community was being pulled apart by Mr. Brown's involvement in their lives. At least those who were loyal to Umuofia’s traditions could readily see the cultural/societal threat posed by Rev. Smith and try to do something to change things.

Read Or Bury Our Traditional Stories?

Is the title nonsense? Yeah. I just wanted my title to create the acronym ROBOTS. I previously had a line rationalizing the title, but it seemed pointless. This doesn't seem any more fruitful. So...

I think avoiding controversial texts, like “Heart of Darkness,” does nothing to serve individual growth or growth as a society/community. Without reading a book like “Heart of Darkness” and considering, internal and external, reactions to it we risk a reaching a point where we continue to operate in the same ideological framework and don’t move past certain ideas. Now, I suppose one could argue that teaching the same text each generation can lead to the same sort of stagnation, but I’d say that risk is almost negligible because the context in which HoD is read and the way it is read change over the years. As a result, HoD continues to inform people, but brings them to different conclusions. For example, HoD was read for 50+ years before an opinion like Achebe’s was developed and published. Achebe rails against the text and Conrad for the evils he observed, but without reading HoD Achebe might not have been compelled to respond when and how he did and we may not be considering the question of Hillis Miller’s essay “Should We Read ‘Heart of Darkness’?”

As can be deduced from my comments above, I agree with Hillis Miller’s general opinion that “’Heart of Darkness’ should be read, ought to be read” (HoD 474). However, I kind of disagree with Hillis Miller's opinion that it should only be read a certain way. HoD is a work of fiction, so to assume everything in the book is completely accurate isn’t very reasonable. However, I think there’s value in HoD, or most any book, regardless of how it’s read.  Is reading “Heart of Darkness” without some sort of discourse, introspection, etc. dangerous? I think dangerous is overstating things, but yes I suppose it could skew or reinforce a reader’s opinions. However, things are open to interpretation and if someone goes into “Heart of Darkness” looking to find examples to reinforce their negative opinions of another race, culture, gender, and so on, that's what they'll likely find. If they don’t read “Heart of Darkness,” they’ll likely find it in another text they come across. I don’t think that the discourse that can come out of reading “Heart of Darkness” should be sacrificed to avoid the risk of causing harm. We shouldn’t avoid things just because they might be taken one way or another, because they present potentially disquieting concepts, or because we can get similar ideas from another text. A set of ideas presented in a specific way will elicit very specific opinions that may not be conceived otherwise.

Furthermore, we, as members of society in general, should also read classic books like HoD because those who came before read them.  We shouldn’t read them out of obligation or to maintain the status quo, but to understand what shaped our forebears’ thought processes, how society has or hasn’t changed, and how we can individually interpret the world in which we live.

I'm Not Sure About This Kidd.

In “Social Progress and the Rivalry of the Races” Benjamin Kidd uses the idea of Social Darwinism to apply Darwin’s theory of evolution to the progression of or competition between races, as the title implies. Kidd asserts that one race will dominate the races that it comes in contact with because certain core attributes (work ethic, altruism, ethical behavior, etc.) of the dominant race are inherently better or more progressive than those of the dominated race. Kidd explains that conflict and ultimately domination appear to be unavoidable forces, but they aren’t always expressed through “fierce and cruel wars of extermination” (230).

I’m sure that our class discussion (09/03/09) was more broad than I recall, but for some reason I came away with the impression that there was a considerable focus on violent domination as opposed to the “silent and painless” (232) domination that Kidd brings up several times. As a result, I’ve decided to try to look at how “Heart of Darkness” may reflect some of Kidd’s ideas, specifically the idea that inherent racial/cultural qualities invariably motivate one race to dominate another and how that domination may subtly occur.

One of the most obvious things in “Heart of Darkness” that demonstrates how thoroughly Africa has been dominated by the west is the map Marlow examines in the trading company’s office. Marlow describes a map of Africa that has been divided into colored sections with each representing a different foreign concern that had control over territory in Africa (10). While Conrad writes that the “map is marked with all the colours of a rainbow” (10) and proceeds to mention how European countries are represented by these colors, there isn’t any mention of unclaimed land. This implies that none of the land actually belongs to the natives; there is no “Africa.” All we see is a group of territories belonging to the westerners who put their flags there first and the African people happen to be there. Obviously this example doesn’t go toward establishing how or why these cultures so thoroughly spread throughout Africa, but it does show a situation where one race has completely pushed the other toward extinction (apparently without a drastic war-like action).

Maybe I’m not recalling a portion of “Heart of Darkness,” but I can’t think of an example from the text that blatantly demonstrates Kidd’s belief regarding the superiority of one race’s attributes over another’s. However, if Kurtz is used as an analog for a dominant race and the natives he ultimately lived with are an analog for a dominated race, I think I can see some of the conflict and "progress" Kidd talks about.

Conrad writes, “Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He wasn’t rich enough … It was his impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there“ (75). I think Marlow’s reflection on Kurtz’s situation with his fiancé mirrors what Kidd was conveying about core cultural/racial qualities that lead to competition between races. In this example Conrad reveals a “restless” (233) disposition and an industrious spirit, which are some ideas Kidd associated with the dominant race of the time, the Anglo-Saxons. Once in Africa, Kurtz finds himself stranded without a guarantee of rescue and surrounded by peril. For some reason, aside from Conrad’s need to tell a story, the local indigenous Africans who greatly outnumber Kurtz don’t attack and kill him at the first opportunity. It also doesn’t seem like they attempted to adopt Kurtz and assimilate him into their society. This hesitation may be explained by curiosity, fear, indifference, morality, etc. Whatever the reason, Kurtz exploited what could be considered a display of weakness and was able to subordinate this group of natives with what seemed to be a limited show of force. It appears that Kurtz eventually began introducing and enforcing his own rules and whatnot upon the local native. Soon Kurtz's way became accepted by the local natives and he was able to integrate with, but also dominate that  group. Again, this seems to have some parallels with the Anglo-Saxons. Westerners were exploring in an attempt to find additional resources. They found themselves in a mysterious land, but were able to control much of Africa through the application of attributes and concepts favored by their culture/race.

A quick introduction

My name is Kristopher (or Kris). I'm a junior in the DTC program. I'm a fan of "The Big Lebowski." I don't watch a ton of TV, but I have been watching "The Colony" on Discovery. It's a reality show and feels really staged at times, but the post-disaster scenario is interesting. I also watch hockey and baseball from time to time. I don't have much else to post right now, so I guess that's it.