Conclusion of The Invisible Subject

V. Conclusion

In Lee’s Native Speaker, Herny Park did not become invisible due to his being Korean, he first became invisible because of his speaking Korean. In Auster’s City of Glass, Quinn becomes invisible through ceasing social contact with others. Both, in contrast to the pre-Ellison tradition of invisibility, reinforce the new motif of invisibility. Invisibility is the point where power does not become maximized, but is instead minimized, where the violence done to an individual’s agency is at its greatest extreme. Only when Quinn abandons all social relations, all economic holdings, everything that Foucault would call the micro-physics of power, does invisibility become possible. This invisibility is only possible, however, through the decrease in public knowledge about oneself—the lack of self-representation; the allowance of public knowledge to dominate the interior space, just as “Glimmer & Co.” became Henry’s title for the company in actuality. It is through speaking Korean that Henry becomes invisible, but the violence done to him is more dramatic to him than it is to the other Korean-Americans because he is an English-speaking man. He internalizes his invisibility only when he does not represent himself. Only when the individual is incapable of engaging with others, and seeing them too as individuals, do they become invisible themselves—as is the case in Ellison, Lee, and Auster. And, through becoming invisible, their individual identity and agency disintegrate. The obliteration of identity is not limited to race. It is due to confronting the phenomenon of the individual in the multiplicity, of the man alone in the city. The city, a panopticon, gazes in on all—and it is because of this that Peter Stillman Sr. believed the only way to gain the language of man, the means to represent himself and give shape to the world, would be by raising a child without internalizing the panoptic gaze of the city, to become invisible. Yet, his quest was always in vain because to become invisible is not to gain the ultimate form of agency, but instead to lose it all and more. The texts of Auster and Lee do not offer an empirical judgment on the limits of human knowledge, or a conclusive definition of what exactly constitutes a man’s identity. Each demonstrates, however, how language constantly breaks down due to those very limits, allowing people in the city to not only allow others to reduce them to non-descript categories and see them as interchangeable with those categories, but can come to view themselves as those categories. With the breakages between what an author intends and a reader infers, those reductions easily become so prevalent they reduce category members to near-invisibility. Representing oneself through language allows the potential to be seen, and also can allow sight—to read others through engaging with them. Representations through language are the only way to become visible in the city and to constitute one’s own identity, and to imbue that identity with power, and not to be reduced to invisibility.

The Annihilation of Identity

IV. The Annihilation of Identity in Paul Auster’s City of Glass

Unlike Henry Park in Lee’s Native Speaker, Daniel Quinn in Auster’s City of Glass does become completely invisible before the novella’s end. Quinn begins the novel as an author of detective fiction, but after a series of phone calls from Virginia Stillman who has mistaken him for a detective—one named “Paul Auster”—Quinn decides to take up the persona of detective Paul Auster and accept the case Stillman pleads for him to take. Viriginia hires Quinn to protect her husband, Peter Stillman Jr. More specifically, Quinn is hired to observe Peter Stillman Jr.’s father. After Peter Stillman Sr. dissappears, Quinn believes that the only way to protect Peter Stillman Jr. is to watch his apartment unendingly, ensuring that Stillman Sr. cannot approach the apartment undetected. In the course of doing so, Quinn begins living in an alley alone, eventually becoming invisible—dissapearing into the city itself. Quinn’s invisibility is not rooted on the racial blindness of the observer, as Tina Chen argued for Native Speaker, but instead is due to his own unwillingness to see others. More dramatic than being reduced to being “Korean” or “Asian,” as Henry was for Janice, Quinn’s transformation into “part of the city” is to become non-human, to become blind not only to individual identities, but to the concept of The Other itself.

Through reproducing events and refraining simple crimes, Auster’s novella makes a compelling case for his use of biblical metaphor, each crime becoming not just a transgression against an individual but a problem of ontology. The most striking commonality between Auster’s and Lee’s novels is also the grounding that enables the emotional conflict of each novel: the death of the son. We learn that Daniel Quinn once had a son, but the son has died. What we learn of Quinn’s son in City of Glass is mostly through Quinn’s mirroring of his son with Peter Stillman Jr. In addition to reminding Quinn of his son, Quinn’s son was also named Peter. Quinn’s rationale for accepting the case offered to him to protect Peter Stillman Jr., what prompts him to use his knowledge of the detective genre to become a detective is not only the commonality of his dead son and Peter Jr., but more specifically his desire to avoid allowing the crime committed against his son to be reproduced. Stillman Sr.’s crime against his son was a vain attempt to rebuild the Tower of Babel. In a sense, Stillman reproduces the sin in the original myth. Peter Stillman Sr. theorizes in his work within a work, The Garden and the Tower: Early Visions of the New World, that the fall of man as depicted in Paradise Lost was both the fall of man and the fall of language, the loss of God’s will from language, mirrored in the fall of the Tower of Babel.

Stillman’s project only left a pale man, with everything about him white. On the one hand, watching Stillman Jr. walk was like a “watching a marionette trying to walk without strings” yet “it was as though Stillman’s presence was a command to be silent.” To some extent, then Peter Stillman Sr.’s project is a success, if one might call it that—the image of Stillman turns Quinn into the equivalent of an object in the Garden of Eden. Just as Stillman and his wife Victoria change Quinn’s name to Paul Auster by calling him on the telephone until he accepts the title and define his identity as a detective, for Quinn, Peter Stillman Jr. indeed represents the language invested with the power of God—the capacity to make what one calls something, and what something is, identical.

If the case is that calling someone a detective makes them a detective, then that begs the question in terms of understanding the category of what a detective is. Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy is regarded as detective fiction, yet the Literary Review claims that it is not just detective fiction; it is a series of seductive metaphysical thrillers. One might argue that the detectives of Auster’s novels are not detectives at all. They are men who prefer invisibility and acting as someone they are not. In City of Glass, Quinn only puts on the façade of the detective and plays the part from his experience writing detective fiction. Each protagonist has more in line with the Noir film genre’s antiheroes. In City of Glass there is some basis for the observations of detection—Peter Stillman Sr. reportedly locked his son in a dark room for several years, and despite having spent years in prison and being deemed rehabilitated, might return to try his experiment again. Yet, this explanation is tenuous at best, and even if it were satisfactory, it is unlikely that Quinn alone could successfully take on such a case. Jake Gittes in Chinatown required an entire team of men to follow one subject for a few days, and even then there was a multitude of misinformation he confronted.

Auster’s novel beckons a reevaluation of the detective genre as a genre, recentering the genre away from the heroism of the protagonist, instead emphasizing the primary action as the confrontation with the overwhelming phenomena of the world, where the detective’s real job is to select objects of meaning for the sake of forming some sort of narrative. As critic Barry Lewis, argues, “At the beginning of an investigation everything is a potential clue, and both the detective and the reader operate at their height of attentiveness.” Ontologically, this mirrors what Peter Stillman Sr. did before being arrested; he reduced all potential red herrings from the development of a child in the hope of forming a narrative of human existence. This process came off as insanity, demonstrating what Arendt and many others would regard as the fundamental violence of the act of detection: “He locked Peter [Jr.] in a room in the apartment, covered up the windows, and kept him there for nine years.” The result, however, is a man who can speak—after years of rehabilitation—but not in a way that is immediately clear as being somehow more representative of mankind’s narrative arc. Further, in addition to questioning his sanity, one must also question Peter Stillman Sr.’s methodology. The covering of the windows serves a dual purpose: it prevents Peter Jr. from seeing out, but also keeps all others from seeing in. It is, in essence, the opposite of Bentham’s Panopticon. Peter Stillman Sr. seems to view New York City as a panoptic structure. He covers the windows and seals the room to prevent his son from internalizing the threat of the panoptic space, to feel unimpeachable against mankind and thus, in a sense, to become akin to a God.

Auster’s recentering of the detective genre is also to a purpose: he uses the detective genre to deconstruct of identity. Daniel Quinn is the opposite of Peter Stillman Jr. Quinn is a man with a plurality of identities, and in his quest to prevent the violence done to Peter Stillman Jr., he nevertheless allows himself to be subjected to the same experiment, to be reduced to nothing more than a man. He proceeds through the novel with a multitude of identities: the narrative voice describes him as Daniel Quinn, yet he also identifies himself with Max Work, a fictitious character that he creates, and uses William Wilson for a pseudonym. He plays the role of detective Paul Auster. When Quinn confronts Peter Stillman Sr. after following for days, he identifies himself as “Quinn.” On their second meeting, he identifies himself as “Henry Dark,” a character that Stillman created—and finally as Peter Stillman’s son, “Peter Stillman.” From this multiplicity of identities, Quinn reduces this multiplicity of identities by seeking to determine who he really is, or at least who he really believes himself to be. When he takes on the persona of Paul Auster the detective, he performs the identity as though he were Max Work, his own fictive creation. In confronting Peter Stillman Sr., Quinn has to realize that the Paul Auster/Max Work character is not central to his identity, and returns to Quinn. In performing that identity for Peter Stillman Sr. however, in regarding what he used to pretend his identity was as a character of his own fictions, he realizes that that too was never really who he was. He must take on the persona of Henry Dark for the sake of understanding that Henry Dark always had been a narrative device and never a physical entity. Anne Cheng’s argument that “the subject effects mimicry in order to lose, rather than save, itself and, in doing so, finds itself” is central here—yet, even it presupposes that there is some sort of fixed identity to be found. A different reading might be more effective, such as that which Judith Butler argued in Gender Trouble, that identity is constituted by the performance of that identity. Peter Stillman Sr.’s quest to return to prelapsarian innocence was always futile because to believe that a Man is defined as a Man and constituted by a Man begs the question of what a Man is; without an Other, something else to distinguish it from and understand it in terms of, language is without meaning. Instead, what Peter Stillman really seeks is to constitute his son’s identity not in the power system governed by the gaze of civilization, but constituted in the power of language. To do so, he seeks to escape language so that he might understand what language is. Just as is the case with performing identities, however, language is constituted by the performance of it.

To lose language is to lose everything, and Quinn, in reproducing the experiment done by Peter Stillman Sr. on Peter Stillman Jr., does so. As Quinn loses his language, he loses the investments in the world around him, his sense of structure, and every iota of power he ever held. The narrator states, “A long time passed. Exactly how long it is impossible to say.” Next is his place of residence and, after this, his sense of decency. Instead of living in an apartment, he lives in an alleyway overlooking the apartment where Peter Stillman Jr. lives, seeking to ensure that Peter Stillman Sr. never tries to contact him. He learns to defecate into garbage bins and to live without food or sleep. He does not talk to other people except in rare occurrences. The only thing holding him together is his sense of duty to Peter Stillman Jr., and through him, to his long dead son. Even that too becomes unnecessary when Quinn learns that Peter Stillman Sr. committed suicide shortly after their confrontation. Quinn is left with not only nothing to go on, he is left with absolutely nothing. As he becomes aware of how little he has, he moves into Peter Stillman Jr.’s apartment which he learns has been empty for much of the time he spent watching it. Only when he is in the room, completely alone, does he realize he is connected to the city intrinsically. Ironically, “he felt that his words had been severed from him, that now they were a part of the world at large.” The goal of Peter Stillman Sr. was always to unite man with language, to make it so that categories were absolute and real. Yet, in attempting to do so, for the first time Quinn feels that his words are no longer a part of him. And, in losing his language, Quinn has to confront that he has lost himself—or, more, that “he” or “himself” as a coherent identity had never existed in the first place.

Stillman, in his goal of uniting man with language, also presents the problem of a fluid language. As Stillman claims, “Most people…think of words as stones, as great unmovable objects with no life.” Quinn has no problem accepting the malleability of language, even if he accepts the stone metaphor—stones, after all, can be chipped or worn away, the reduced thing no longer having the same identity. Stillman’s primary example is that of an umbrella that has broken. Since an umbrella is something that serves a purpose, to block the rain, an umbrella that doesn’t work isn’t necessarily an umbrella. As though accepting the failure of his old quest, Stillman’s new quest is to create a language that “will at last say what we have to say.” It is for this very reason that he has come to New York, since New York is a place where “the brokenness is everywhere, the disarray is universal.” Stillman has to accept that he cannot regain prelapsarian innocence; just as one third of the Tower of Babel burned down, and as Henry Dark’s manuscripts burnt down in a fire, so did his apartment and project. Although in essence one facet of his old goal remains the same in his new project—to provide a name for all things in the world, he no longer seems interested in having a language that gives the world shape. His project has become descriptive, rather than prescriptive. When he completes his project, though, he believes he will “hold the key to a series of major discoveries… the key. A thing that opens locked doors.” This statement evokes the locked door he enclosed his son behind, as though this new research will somehow resolve the issues at stake when he first entrapped his son. The combination also presents the central metaphor behind the second novella in the trilogy, The Locked Room; the difference between the signifier and the signified, and the difference between what a writer intends to imply and what a reader infers.

Auster’s novel demonstrates the obliteration of identity without needing to racialize it, and in doing so reconceptualizes it. The first refraction of identity occurs with the disappearance of Peter Stillman Sr. After confronting him, Stillman disappears; as the text describes, “Stillman was gone now. The old man had become part of the city.” Stillman, having committed suicide by jumping off a bridge, is “part of the city” both in the sense that his body had become part of the physical structure of the city, and because his individual identity was obliterated by the collective of the city. The case of Peter Stillman Sr., however, pales to what happens to Quinn in the alleyway. Devoting himself entirely to ensuring that Peter Stillman Sr.—despite being dead, unknown to Quinn—does not reach Peter Stillman Jr.—who has vacated his apartment already, also unknown to Quinn—Quinn takes up living outside Peter Stillman Jr.’s apartment in the hope of ensuring that Peter Stillman Sr. never threaten Peter Stillman Jr. In effect he becomes a derelict homeless man, not quite a beggar, hiding in garbage bins to avoid the rain and pissing in the corner of his alleyway. Yet, the narrator never goes so far as to call Quinn homeless, or a bum, or to categorize him at all. He is still Quinn, and his actions persist in being represented as that of a detective. Quinn does continue to act out the plot of detection through his continuous gaze at the apartment of Peter Stillman Jr. The only mystery accepted, in fact, is the mystery of “how he managed to keep himself hidden during this period.” If New York City were a panoptic space, then simply hiding when trash collectors came by should not be enough to avoid detection; further, if Quinn persisted in his quest, as he claims to, of never allowing his eyes to leave the apartment where Peter Stillman Jr. continues to reside, then Quinn could not have avoided detection. The only explanation is for Quinn to have himself, a white male in New York City, become invisible. Quinn, as the narrative says, “melted into the very walls of the city,” and became as Peter Stillman Sr.— part of the city.

Quinn’s invisibility was based off his own unwillingness to see others. As the narrative describes, “Because he did not want anyone to see him, he had to avoid other people as systematically as he could. He could not look at them, he could not talk to them, he could not think about them.” There may be garbage collectors, passer-bys, pedestrians, or anyone else on the street, but the most important facet of not being seen is to not see them, to not engage with them. To allow oneself to become “part of the city”, the most general of categories and far more dramatic than “Korean” or even “Asian”, to become non-human, one must not only give others individual identities, it is to make the Other itself a non-entity; and only then is complete invisibility possible.

The Blindness of Native Speaker

III. The Social Blindness of Lee’s Native Speaker

Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker is regarded as a “spy novel.” Yet, as literary critic Tina Chen points out “Henry is at pains to distance himself from the spy hero”. It takes Lee’s protagonist Henry Park 17 pages to say that, “in a phrase, we were spies.” Even then, Park has to qualify the term. He’s not the spy “you naturally thought or even hoped existed.” He’s not a patriot. His corporation “pledged allegienace to no government.” Most of all, he is an anti-hero. He knows nothing of “weaponry, torture, psychological warfare, extortion, electronics, supercomputers, explosives.”

Lee’s protagonist prefers invisibility and acting as someone he is not. Even some of the least heroic detectives, such as Jake Gittes from Chinatown, were paid to watch someone due to the belief that they had perpetrated some sort of crime. Park spies for no other reason than because he is paid to. The reason Henry is paid to spy on Korean-American political candidate John Kwang is unknown even to him. Although Henry continues to grow closer to John Kwang, the object of observation for most of the novel, he goes off the fear of repeating his experience with Luzan, a psychoanalyst that, although Henry spied on at length, never ended up knowing any incriminating information. Yet, his observations does not enfranchise Park with power. Instead, after Park learns of Kwang’s most dramatic misdeeds, he is left with violence, assaulting Kwang in a mob of other faceless, nameless, nearly invisible people. Yet, this facet of the plot, despite taking up what is presumably the focus of the novel and the climax that the spy genre demands, only presents a superficial response to the emotional stakes underpinning the novel and does more to mask the psychological conflict than to clarify it. The emotional conflict introduced earlier on does not revolve around the spy genre elements, but instead around coping with the death of Henry’s son, Mitt, reconciling himself with his wife, Lelia, and understanding his role as a partially invisible American subject. These conflicts, Lee does not, and perhaps can not, completely resolve.

Perhaps the strongest microcosm for the relationship between visibility, invisibility, and ontological secrecy was not necessarilly intended by Lee, that being the role of the title of Park’s spy company. When Park first introduces the name, he admits that his company worked, “under the name of Glimmer & Co.” implying that “Glimmer & Co.” was in fact a false name they used for those they didn’t want questioning their presence in the office building they inhabit. Yet, having never given another name for the company, when Park must continuously address the corporation he works for, it becomes unequivocally the name of the company. When Henry describes his reports to Hoagland, he claims that, “it was likely that Glimmer & Company itself was involved in the manufacturing of happenings.” With the need for repetition and reproduction, the false title describing the company becomes its actual title in the novel. Secret or invisible titles mirror the titles individuals give themselves, titles that, as Henry emphasizes, are self-given. In example, when Henry believes he is penetrating deeper into John Kwang’s identity, Henry “believed I [Henry] had a grasp of his [John Kwang’s] identity, not only the many things he was to the public and to his family… but who he was to himself, the man he beheld in his own private mirror.” Yet, when secret identities are not performed, repeated, or reconstructed, they allow the visible, or the public identity to become the identity that is performed or categorized even when described in the space of a man’s interior mind, as we are given in Park’s reproduction of the text. In doing so, it allows what one regards as their real identity to become hidden even from themselves, or obliterated altogether.

The problem of naming and describing phenomenon takes center stage in the conflict Park has with his wife in describing the source of their son’s death. Lelia, Henry’s wife, thinks that they caused the death of their son through some sort of metaphysical crime:

“Maybe you’ve talked all this time with Jack about him, maybe you say his name in your sleep, but we’ve never really talked about it, we haven’t really come right out together and said it, really named what happened for what it was.”
“What was it?” I said softly.
“It was the worst thing that ever happened to us… the worst thing we ever did together.”
“It was a terrible accident.”
“An accident?” she cried. “…can’t you see, when your baby dies it’s never an accident… Sometimes I think it’s more like some long turning karma that finally came back for us.” [italics mine]

Racism, like conspiracy, is something that one cannot pin down. Racism lacks a body. Henry’s deferral of the question of who killed his son masks the fact that both of them know exactly who killed their son: white children, the same children whose parents Henry and Lelia confronted beforehand to discourage picking on him. Yet they cannot accuse the children, after all, as one white child keeps screaming, “It was just a stupid dog pile” [italics Lee’s]. As children, the murderers cannot be held accountable for their crime. Not only that, just like the woman who fills Park with rage after she calls him an “Oriental Jew” or the man that bumps into Ellison’s protagonist on the street, the subject charged with racism always lacks a name and lacks the very identity that the victim of racism accuses the racist of not respecting. Henry Park does not see the children who killed his son as having coherent identities and none of their parents are individually described. Yet, since Lelia and Henry are punished through the death of their son, there must be some agent perpetrating that punishment, taken up in Lelia’s abstract terms as “the world” or some other non-descript force. The problem Lelia and Henry face manifests itself as an ontological problem. They cannot name the actor that punishes them for the death of their son. Such is the case with all cases of violence that seems racially, but is in fact linguistically charged, throughout the novel.

Before the death of their son, Henry and Lelia’s central conflict arose over the problem of trying to call objects by their names. Once again, Lee hints at cultural or even racial differences. Conflict erupts between Park and his wife Lelia that Henry didn’t know the name of his father’s maid. As Park explains, “Americans live on a first-name basis. [Lelia] didn’t understand that there weren’t moments in our language—the rigorous, regimental one of family and servants—when the woman’s name could have naturally come out. Or why it wasn’t important.” Growing up in his father’s household, Park never heard his father speak the woman’s name—but then, he also never heard his father speak his mother’s name. The name they use for her, Ahjuma, is not a name, but is instead a form of address used for unrelated Korean women. This, the first of many conflicts between Park and his wife, erupts over Lelia’s desire to have Henry call Ahjuma by what Lelia regards as her real name. Or rather, the name she uses for herself. Although framed as a cultural or even racial difference between Korean-American culture and American culture, the problem manifests itself as a performative one.

Although Lee’s characters are hyphenated Americans, assuming that this facet was the largest determinant of their identity would mask the cause of Henry’s invisibility.
Henry became aware of his capacity for invisibility while working in his father’s stores. To spite his father, Henry speaks only Korean to the other workers in the store. In doing so, Henry “saw that if I just kept speaking the language of our work the customers didn’t seem to see me. I wasn’t there. They didn’t look at me… I could even catch a rich old woman whose tight stand of pearls pinched in the sags of her neck whispering to her friend right behind me, ‘Oriental Jews.’” Yet, unlike what Tina Chen or others might argue, this invisibility does not come from being Korean, but instead from speaking Korean. What gives Henry his symbolic invisibility, what causes people not to look at him, is the act of speaking another language.

Although some argue that the race of Native Speaker plays on the representations of Asian Americans in the spy genre, this only superficially encompasses the deconstruction Lee embarks on, or even masks it. Critic Tina Chen argues that, “the figure of the Asian American spy is itself a cultural convention. Stereotyped as sneaky and inscrutable, Asians and clandestinity have proven a particularly compelling combination” as a play on fictional Asian or Asian-American detective figures or villains from Charlie Chan to Dr. Fu Manchu. Yet Chang-rae Lee’s novel does not play on racial stereotypes of Korean-Americans unless the reader already has knowledge of those stereotypes. If the reader does, then it deconstructs those norms. When Park had to spend summers working in grocery stores with his father, he later finds out from his friends that they merely thought he was religious. They do not assume that because he is Korean that he works in a grocery store. Instead, Henry is more aware of the racial stereotypes, and how he falls into them, than the people he imagines would hold the stereotypes. Critic Anne Cheng argues that “the subject effects mimicry in order to lose, rather than save, itself and, in doing so, finds itself.” When Park pretends to be a non-English-speaking grocer, he is not being himself—but in doing so, he becomes aware that he is performing an identity, and becomes aware of what it means to to perform the identity of an English-speaking American. It is to know he holds the right to forsake the path of the immigrant he inherited.

Lee even seems to imply the attempt to latch on to a singular ethnic or political identity itself moves toward social invisibility. As an example, Lee opts for the case of John Kwang, his campaign, and its managers. The problem of becoming a hyphenated American does not occur in Kwang’s speeches, but instead of becoming wholly “American” he instead becomes wholly “Korean”. During Kwang’s meeting with “the black ministers,” in regard to the history of breakages in African-American communities, Kwang claims that, “We Koreans know something of this tragedy.” Kwang, as a political leader, avoids hyphens, but to address the problems of racial divide nevertheless opts to speak of different racial groups in non-hyphenated ways that emphasize difference rather than inclusion. Mirrored in Park’s narrative comes descriptions such as, “The crowd was much larger than we’d expected, an even mix of Koreans, blacks, Hispanics.” The choice not to capitalize “blacks,” despite perhaps being technically correct, nevertheless seems arbitrary. Further, the choice not to hyphenate any of them makes them seem as though, like Park himself, the people he address are not Americans—not patriots. To lose the hyphenation implies becoming, as Park is, a racial spy, a secret voyeur of American life. It is to, in Arendtian terms, do great violence to the American facet of racial minorities.

The structure of racial relations is further complicated by Janice, John Kwang’s Scheduling Manager. She claims that she “knows you Koreans” and as evidence says that she had Asian roommates in college at Berkeley. She, unlike Kwang, does not even reduce Park to a Korean. She reduces him to the even more vacuous term of “Asian,” and then later begins to oscillate between the two as though “Korean” and “Asian” were also synonymous. As their conversation progresses, she says that, “You [Henry] never really said anything about what you Koreans believe in” and she makes the synthesis that Henry, as a member of “you Koreans” also represents “you Koreans”. The ontological critique of racist reductions is that they imply that the category a member falls into represents an individual, and that an individual represents a category that includes other people as simultaneous equations. The enthymemes that might represent Janice’s remarks would be: Henry Park is a Korean therefore Henry Park represents all Koreans, and Henry Park is a Korean therefore all Koreans represent Henry Park. These two enthymemes both rely on the major premise that all Koreans are the same and interchangeable. When Janice defends her remarks against Henry’s criticisms that all of her friends were Asian, and that therefore he does not have the right to critique does not mean that her claims do not lead to the conclusion that all Asians are the same, instead her argument is that she has evidence for her claim, which is to say that after critically assessing her premise that all Asians are the same she came to a conclusion, with evidence, that they are. Henry, with his background being raised “to speak quietly and little,” although not afraid to gently poke fun at Janice’s absurd claims, nevertheless lacks the motivation to confront her masked racism. And yet, Janice is the planning manager for a man who seeks to represent the Korean-American community in New York. One might wonder if it was the views of Janice and others that really caused the downfall of John Kwang. After all, it was always the motive of Henry Park to “fuel the fire of [his object’s] most secret vanity” or so he claimed. Park, as a spy for Glimmer and Co., did not seek to confront Janice. In fact, he wanted to fan her racism. In her “most secret vanity,” she believed that she was justified in her own racial views, in her willingness to reduce people to categories.

Emphasizing the tropes of representation, however, in the case of John Kwang and his group nevertheless displaces the central conflict of the novel. The violence done to Henry’s son cannot be named. Although after abandoning his paid profession as a spy, Henry cannot completely reconcile himself with his wife. Instead, he is “always coming back inside. “We [Henry and Lelia] play this game in which I [Henry] am her long-term guest. Permanently visiting.” Instead of reconciling or resolving the conflict and space between them, the problem is eternally displaced by presenting the illusion of temporality. Even at the end, children must look at Henry’s face to make sure that his voice moves in time with his mouth. Finally, Henry’s body can be completely masked—he wears a green rubber hood in his role as the Speech Monster. One might argue that Henry embraces his invisibility, yet it nevertheless reflects the loss of power he has encountered throughout the novel. He has lost his well-paying job and put himself at the mercy of Lelia in terms of holding their home and his new job together. He abandons essentially all social relations except for his wife and his job with the children she teaches, and these do not seem to be meaningful relationships. The only catharsis Lee’s novel can offer comes through violence, through Park assaulting Kwang amidst a faceless mob. None of the emotional conflicts can be confronted, and instead of engaging with others more directly, Park instead distances himself even more dramatically from all his social friends, becoming alone except for Lelia, with whom he has an uncrossable and unspeakable distance. All is left displaced.

Theorizing the Invisible Body

II. Theorizing The Invisible Body

One of the easiest, but also one of the least rewarding, readings of Henry Park’s role in Native Speaker is to explain his dilemma as a result of the condition of the modern Korean-American. As literary critic Tina Chen argues, “Henry’s vanishing acts… are a logical extension of his personal history as a Korean American struggling to negotiate the divide that separates how others perceive him and how he sees himself.” Henry Park is not, as Tina Chen claims, an invisible man. He is, even in his own words, only “hardly seen.” To claim that he is wholly invisible undermines the very complexity that pervades Lee’s text; and acts as a refrain on the complexity that includes both it and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Ralph Ellison’s protagonist is not invisible either; he is only invisible to the people passing him on the streets of New York City. He can be seen by the men and women who share his ethnicity in the prologue. Ellison’s unstated definition of invisibility is the incapacity to be recognized as an individual, and by this definition, Ellison’s protagonist is blind himself. When Ellison’s unnamed protagonist confronts a man in the street, he first realizes that the other man “had not seen me, actually” and later mocks the man when he reports that he’d been mugged, berating him as a “Poor fool, poor blind fool… mugged by an invisible man!” Yet, this blind man nevertheless is only described as “a man” with blonde hair and blue eyes. In terms of penetrating the façade of the man he confronts, Ellison’s protagonist cannot claim to have seen the other man. By his definition, Ellison’s protagonist too is blind. Anne Cheng, in Passing, Natural Selection, and Love’s Failure discusses the connection between racial blindness and invisibility in the fiction of Ellison and Chang-rae Lee, but unlike Chen, does not see the metaphor as so simplistic in its entailments. For instance, although “white visibility” relies on the invisibility and assumed normality of whiteness, “black invisibility” acquires its shape precisely through its very visibility as difference. Yet, the result of both is quite similar.

Where this leaves the situation of Asian-Americans, or specifically Korean-Americans, is even less specific. The tropes of invisibility only include “white” and “black”. What exactly constitutes the difference between “white visibility” and “black invisibility” is even less clear if applied to Ellison’s text. Both Ellison’s protagonist and the man on the street cannot discern much about the other. What they lack is the capacity to be differentiated, the incapacity to be an individual and not a repetition of the norm, and an inclusion in no other category than “The Other.” What seems to underlie every form of racial blindness is the sense of Otherness that is constituted only through appearing different than someone else. If this is the case, then one need not think of invisibility in terms of race, but instead as the result of social blindness.

This blindness and invisibility leads to an obliteration of identity itself. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble discusses gender not as a solid construct but instead as a “repeated stylization of the body” that over time produces the “appearance of substance.” Butler’s description of gender could be analogized to any facet of identity. Identities congeal in the performance of that identity. One needs to be able to perceive a distinctive performance, whether another’s or one’s own, to recognize a subject as an individual holding their own identity. The problem both Ellison’s narrator and the man he bumped into encountered was that neither could recognize anything in the other that others would not do. In this case, since their behavior did not differ from a perceived norm, their individual identity became akin to invisible.

According to philospher Michel Foucault, the knowledge that one can be seen is itself the basis for modern sociality. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault describes Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon was a prison where each cell looked in toward a central tower with Venetian blinds or some other means to prevent the prisoner from seeing inside the tower. Each prisoner, without knowledge of the tower’s interior, might believe that the guards in the tower could be looking at them at any time. Ideally, the prisoner would internalize this belief, and would adjust their behavior to reflect the belief that they could be seen at any time. Panoptic structures are reproduced in almost all public spaces: the school, the hospital, the corporation, etc. If visibility is the basis for social behavior, then invisibility is the basis for asocial behavior.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt’s arguments in On Violence suggests that the asocial individual is also the one with the least power. According to Arendt, “The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All.” Further, Arendt explicitly defines power as, “the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.” Although Arendt’s work was specifically tailored toward political revolution, her definitions might serve as a theoretical basis for understand the relationship between violence and vision if one extends her metaphor. The invisible individual, reduced to asociality, lacks the capacity to represent themself and will never be able to act in concert. Instead, they will always be reduced to acting in violence, forced to pit themselves against all else, and perhaps even themselves.

An Introduction to Invisibility

I. Introduction

In 1953, Ralph Ellison published Invisible Man, racializing the discourse of literary invisibility by centering his novel on a man invisible explicitly due to his being African-American. Some critics, from Vogue to Tina Chen, believe that the novels of Chang-rae Lee follow directly in Ellison’s footsteps by representing the Korean-American male as an invisible man. Yet, Henry Park, the protagonist of Lee’s Native Speaker, is not wholly invisible, nor does his camouflage explicitly come from his ethnicity. He is a spy that, as the narrator sometimes suggests, is helped in his job due to his Korean-American heritage. The racialization of the discourse of invisibility does more than merely displace the real causes of that invisibility. It implies that invisibility is limited to racial minorities when this is not the case. Paul Auster’s City of Glass, part of The New York Trilogy, may offer a solution to Lee’s inability to resolve the ontological problems his novel raises. By avoiding the racialization of social invisibility altogether, Auster focuses his text on its ontological roots and emphasizes its implications. Whereas Lee’s Native Speaker distorts the meaning of his novel by hinting at racial, and racist, causes of invisibility, yet still links the invisibility to language, Auster avoids racial issues and emphasizes the ontological roots of invisibility and has a greater capacity to explain the emotional issues at stake.

The Faulknerian Dream

Faulkner’s American Dream & Anti-Dream
Or: Tragic Racism
December 27, 2007
Revised From: May 2, 2006

It would be a vast oversimplification to state that all people in America have, do or ever will share one and only one desire. Nevertheless, the dreams of many Americans have common ground, frequently including such things as the ownership of property, the pursuit of happiness, and a prosperous family. Perhaps no character epitomizes these traits more than Thomas Sutpen from William Faulkner’s novel, Absalom, Absalom! Yet, the landscape Faulkner paints is also a paranoid one, a nightmarish dystopia. Something happens, something that destroy Sutpen’s family. That something is the specter of racism.

Rosa Coldfield, says of Sutpen that he
“came out of nowhere and without warning upon the land
with a band of strange niggers and built a plantation—(Tore
violently a plantation, Miss Rosa Coldfield says)—tore
violently.”

Sutpen comes from nowhere, without warning. Like the gaze of the warden in Foucault’s Panopticon, Sutpen can appear at any time, prompting the individual to act as though he were always present. Why does she emphasize the idea that he “tore violently a plantation” instead of simply saying he built one? Even if you demarcate a plantation with a fence, it cannot be said that you are “tearing” the plantation as a metaphor for building it. The verb implies an object that can be torn. Rosa argues later that, “inside of two years he had dragged house and gardens out of virgin swamp, and plowed and planted his land with seed cotton.” To Rosa, Sutpen tears the plantation out of the earth itself, out of “virgin swamp,” out of virginity itself.

The place of “strange niggers” in Sutpen’s dream, or in Rosa’s paranoia, is a precarious subject. When Thomas wrestles with “negro,” Rosa believes Ellen and the audience should be as outraged as she is. Instead of explaining her own disgust at the violence of the scene, however, she tries to embody and give voice to Ellen, believing she can speak for her and represent her. “That is what Ellen saw,” Rosa says, “her husband and the father of her children standing there naked and panting and bloody to the waist and the negro just fallen.”

Sutpen’s racism generates most of the novel’s conflict. When a young Sutpen is sent on an errand to the city, he encounters an African American there who is better dressed than he is, and that it is only because the African American, who “happened to have had the felicity of being housebred.” Following this encounter, “All of a sudden he [Sutpen] found himself running and already some distance from the house… He wasn’t even mad. He just had to think…” That Sutpen “wasn’t even mad” that a “nigger” looks better dressed than he does implies that it would be expected, and acceptable, for Sutpen to be mad, and that his lack of it—his anger over this simple distinction—is what drives him nearly to insanity. Sutpen “went into the wood” and realized “he would have to do something about it in order to live with himself for the rest of his life.” The success of the African American threatens Sutpen’s very capacity to live with himself. Sutpen’s ambition to live a good life is not a desire to be rich, but a means to be superior to African Americans.

This same racism also spawns the melodrama of the novel. Melodrama is embodied in the person of Charles Bon. Charles Bon is Sutpen’s son with Eulalia Bon Sutpen, a woman from Haiti who previously married Thomas Sutpen. Sutpen learned that Eulalia had “negro blood” and repudiated her and their child, Charles Bon. All this Thomas Sutpen left behind him when he moved to Yoknapatwpha County until Charles comes and asks for Thomas Sutpen’s daughter’s hand in marriage. On Christmas in 1860, Sutpen forbids marriage between his daughter Judith and Charles Bon. In response, Henry Sutpen, Thomas’s son, repudiates his birthright and leaves with Charles Bon. As first described in the book, “something happened.” This “something” that happens is Thomas Sutpen reaping the seed he had sown when he repudiated Eulalia Bon because of her negro blood, and abandoned his firstborn child. The reason Sutpen denies marriage between Charles Bon and Judith is not because of incest but because of race. Sutpen was convinced that all his problems had, “come from a mistake and until he discovered what that mistake and been he did not intend to risk making another one.” It is this mistake which leaves Thomas Sutpen a sonless widower.

What Postmodernism Is

What is Postmodernism?
Or: What was Modernism?
December 26, 2007

If the sailboat of your mind should ever drift into the waters of academia and academic criticism of literature, thought, philosophy etc. one might encounter such words or phrases as “new historicism,” “post historicism,” or perhaps “post contemporary,” the last of which which my friends and I made up just a little while ago. However, if you even pretend to take such subjects seriously, the word you are likely to be most frustrated by is “Postmodernism.” “What the hell?” you might think, “This is about stuff that comes after today?”

And you would be wrong. Your error, however, is probably not rooted in understanding “postmodernism” as you might think. Your problem is probably in thinking you understand “modernism.” If you ever go to the museum of *modern* art, you will likely see various things like the four squares of color, the ink blobs, the white canvas. You may be tempted to think: oh, this is so postmodern. What you’ll mean is that it’s artsy bullshit. But you will have forgotten where you are. You’re in the museum of modern art, not the museum of postmodern art.

Is modernity this style of art that makes me feel like the art world really is so pretentious? The answer: yes. Modernity, despite your inclinations to think there is something “modern” about it, ostensibly began in architecture. At this point, I have no interest in discussing anything other than literary or philosophical modernism and post-modernism, so I will skip that part. When did literary modernism begin? I would make a case for 1913-1914. Two events mark this decision. The first is the publication of the first part of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” in 1913. The second is the dawn of World War I. Now, considering Proust began writing his tome before 1913, we can theorize that “modernist” thinking can go back to perhaps even 1880. However, modernism did not begin to shape the world until World War I.

Okay, so now we have a date. But even then, what do we say about it? What was modernism? If one wanted to be facetious, one could say that modernism is really “postpremodernism.” That is, in some ways modernism is only discernable because it is different from what came before modernism. This is one of the many points at which one has to confront the prospect that “modernism” and “postmodernism” aren’t very good tools to use in understanding the historical development of ideas. Yet, that description is facetious, and there really are more effective ways to discern modernism.

Modernist philosophy is religion without God. Modernist literature is marked by realism and hyperrealism, by the introduction of the “psychological story,” by the domination of the conscious mind over all else, whether it be subconscious, unconscious, or the natural world, by democracy, by nationalism and hypernationalism, by the belief that one mind represents all minds, that one subject represents all subjects, that one language represents all languages, and by imperialism. Yet, it also is the dawn of extreme paranoia, the end of trust in fellow man, the end of the aristocracy, the replacement of tradition with history, and the end of faith.

Proust presents the best method of understanding what Modernism is. It is to believe aesthetics, instead of God, are the center of your cosmology. That is the essential difference between pre-Modernity and Modernity. Why the white canvas as a painting? Why the red squares and blue squares? Because they represent foundations upon which all other art is built. They are a center, an absolute shape and figure. They are the “Genesis” of Modern Art.

At its worse, or perhaps best, is Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Joyce is so Modernist he can actually appear to be Post-Modern. Finnegans Wake tries to capture the “Everyman” with the “Everyman’s voice.” It tries to represent all people for all time. A task which, if you think about for anything more than only a few moments, will likely demonstrate why Joyce and people who read Joyce are so incredibly pretentious, and why Joyce can fail so hard as to appear to be the opposite of what he is. Part of the reason Joyce fails so hard at actually conveying his intention is due to the desire to pursue his conjoined objective.

Joyce believed he could pursue this goal through a nearly unmediated representation of the “sub/unconscious” mind. This goal is more redeemable and a far better explanation for why the book reads as it does. I include the “sub” out of mercy to Joyce. In truth, what this amounted to was the inclination to try to represent dream thoughts and how the mind works when it isn’t conscious. It is this objective that earned Finnegans Wake the title of “Joyce’s Book of the Dark.” While Ulysses is Joyce’s book of every waking thought, Finnegans Wake is Joyce’s book of every sleeping thought. Why then is Finnegans Wake so incomprehensible? Because what it amounts to is a form of literary pastiche, a tossing together of everything that happens to pass through Joyce’s mind. Nothing appears relevant or meaningful. Everything is fanciful and cute. It leaves one with the impression that one could open at any page, read that page, and have as much understanding of the text as someone who has worked on reading it for their entire life.

It is difficult to conceptualize Modernism because it isn’t the best of categories. It is not a genre, and although many Modern artists will have similarities, they will have differences that will often appear more significant than anything discussed here. And if Modernism is hard to follow, Post-modernism is far worse.

I will offer the “traditional” view of Postmodernism, and then I will offer my own which, being my own, I vastly prefer. The traditional view can be summarized by philosophers like Derrida or Lyotard. Lyotard argued that the “Postmodern Condition” is an “incredulity toward meta-narratives.” Not that there’s any good reason to have seen this movie, but if you have it will help illustrate my point: consider the case of “Conspiracy Theory” with Mel Gibson. There’s the point where Gibson yells at the men who have captured him, “You guys are with NASA!” The audience goes: No. You are incorrect sir. NASA has nothing to do with this movie; if these guys are with NASA, I’m walking out of this theater. The audience in this instance has an incredulity toward Gibson’s narrative, or the inclusion of NASA in that narrative.

What is an incredulity toward meta-narratives then? It’s an incredulity toward individual thought and interpretation; an incredulity toward morals. QED: the Post-Modernist is more than anything else incredulous of the figure of Jesus, and more specifically, the argument that Jesus is an effective metaphor for modern living. They are incredulous to the interpretation of parables. This is why Post-Modernists, in the traditional view, take on the appearance of children. They are the ones who don’t think The Chronicles of Narnia have anything to do with Jesus.

Lyotard’s interpretation is mirrored, or perhaps echoed, in that of Derrida, and his arguments that there has been a great “De-centering.” That is to say, the condition of Post-Modernism is the one in which there is no center at all. That, unlike Proust’s Modernism with the center of the Aesthetic, and the previous centers of God, Jesus, and Religion (who take form in The Aristocracy as the God-Men of any given era, ala Shakespeare’s center), Post-Modernism is the era of the great lacking, of having an incredulity toward Centers.

In many ways, Lyotard and Derrida’s arguments are highly representative of many arguments people will tend to make. Many of these, however, amount to child-like mantras that can be flown in the face of anything, “that’s just your opinion,” “don’t state opinion as fact,” and will then begin to drift into skeptical arguments like, “we don’t really know anything.” However, I don’t find these arguments particularly compelling. Consider that Derrida is in many ways rooted in Finnegans Wake, and yet he now argues the exact opposite of what Joyce implicitly argued. Joyce believed that he could represent everyone always. Derrida argues that no one can represent anyone ever. Both drift into unnecessary extremes, and although both certainly represent something, that something is nonetheless convoluted and quite frankly, boring.

Again, Derrida’s and Lyotard’s version of Postmodernism does have potential, especially in the murky relationship between Deconstruction and Postmodernism which I will not get into right now, or perhaps ever.

The bottom line is that both Lyotard and Derrida miss the point of Post-modernism. My interpretation of Post-modernism is more a return to pre-modernism. It is not an incredulity toward meta-narratives, but an incredulity toward extremes. It is not pastiche for the sake of pastiche. It is montage for the sake of conveying meaning. In many ways, Post-modernism is actually a return to Pre-modernism.

Consider, for a moment, Milton. I like to joke that Milton was the greatest fanfic writer to have ever lived. Yet, in the strictly abstract sense, how different is Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. If you remove questions of quality formal complexity, then in many ways the two works are quite similar: an attempt to recenter the popular cosmogonic center. Both wanted to take the central myths of the Bible and change them somehow to reflect their own political and moral center.

Is The Da Vinci Code Postmodern? Not by Lyotard’s or Derrida’s description. But that does not make it Modern. And if it is not Modern or Postmodern, if neither of those terms can effectively describe a popular work of art in the 20th or 21st century, then the terms are almost completely useless. I, however, would argue that The Da Vinci Code is Postmodern. It appeals to the sense that what it argues is true, yet it nevertheless comes with the sense that Brown is attempting to tell a story, albeit a trite and contrived one.

By my definition, Postmodernism is a return to many of the tropes of Premodernism: of not being afraid to accept that a work of fiction actually is a work of fiction, to be conscious that one is telling a narrative story, to be aware of structure and style but not enslaved to them. But, this does not inherently impinge upon the potential for narrative to convey meaning.

Consider House of Leaves as an example of the best and worst of Postmodernism. The House of Leaves takes the metaphor of writing and expresses it in architecture which is mirrored in the formatting of the page. The “Labyrinths” chapter involves a great staircase which the text of the page mirrors. When the staircase appears long, it takes longer for the audience to read and there are more meaningless lists throughout. When the staircase appears short, there are fewer words per page. On the one hand, the novel functions as one of the truest reproductions as to the relationship between reader and text, narrator and narrative, while still providing a narrative. Yet, that narrative can only manifest itself through the notes of a blind critic. This makes it the case that what the reader becomes interested in is not the narrative itself but the relationship of the narrative to the reader. Be that what it may, it also results in the narrative drifting into senseless pastiche, moving toward the sense of Postmodernism expressed by Derrida and Lyotard. One might say that, at its worst, Postmodernism allows the potential for meaningless narrative. At its best though, the great majority of stories you know and love have elements of Postmodernism, or are explicitly Postmodern.

Neither Modernism nor Postmodernism are always bad or always good. Each represents an epoch that corresponds to some of the most prolific writing ever to stir our world. Each holds the capacity to fail miserably, each holds the potential to be quite honest and effective. Each holds the potential to be tedious, each holds the potential to be beautiful.

I end by describing when I believe that Post-modernity began and where Modernity ended. I believe it happened on a day. I believe that day was August 6, 1945. It is this day that makes one understand what the “center” was that Derrida believed had been destroyed. That center was the belief that Modernity, that Science, was inherently Just and moving forward toward Peace. On August 6, 1945, man learned that Science alone would not guarantee Freedom or Peace or Greatness. That aesthetics might not be enough to shape the minds of our world. In the midst of discovering the full extent of the atrocities in Germany during World War II, in the midst of what might have been the most important war in modern cosmogony, came a Little Boy.

The Timeless and The Dated

Nouns, The Difference Between The Timeless and The Dated
Or: Why You’ll Probably Never Read “Like a Hole in the Head”
December 25, 2007
Revised From: December 1, 2006

If you ever attempt to read a “modern masterpiece,” it’s wholly possible you’ll be tempted to pick up “The Companion” to it, that will clue you in on all the references that were hip when the book was written but have since faded away. It’s partly a result of theater and film, that writing in a prop demands having that prop present, not an object that the narrative itself must constantly return to. When effective and read in time, this gives the audience a sense of immediacy about the text. An author always has to bear in mind his expectations for what things his audience will know and pick up on. Some authors will constantly push this tendency to the limits. Take for instance Jen Banbury’s Like a Hole in the Head. The narrative revolves around Jack London’s The Cruise of the Snark, yet despite the centrality of this text it is hardly described at all. One of the reasons you will likely have never heard of Banbury’s novel is probably due to this choice.

Banbury emphasizes London’s novel in such a way that it’s likely the audience will be left with the sense that there’s some sort of inside joke one will understand if they have read The Cruise of the Snark. However, that is not one of London’s more famous works, and even if one is familiar with it, it provides little insight into Banbury’s novel. Any linkages are extremely tenuous at best. As an element of realism, there is nothing wrong with this choice. As an element of fiction, however, this choice is terrible. The novelist should not emphasize the meaninglessness of choices they make if they seek to engage the reader.

In terms of other terrible stylistic choices, consider Banbury’s opening:

I woke up with a hangover and roof tar on my feet and a vague recollection of
pacing around up there half the night. I think I threw a bottle at the building
next door and somebody yelled something.

Again, this novel was recommended to me on the grounds that it “was the most accurate description of a hangover ever.” On retrospect, it occurred to me that this should never be a selling point. Consider how vague this opening is. “Somebody yelled something,” “a vague recollection,” “I think I threw a bottle at the building next door.” It’s sort of funny if you choose to read it humorously, but it’s funny in the way a bad college movie is funny: it’s unintentionally campy. Even if this is a drunken recollection, how can the protagonist be so unaware that they don’t know what their next door building is, or have some interesting way of characterizing it? And “somebody yelled something”? Funny or not, it’s simply bad writing.

Returning to my original point, though, I would like to discuss Chuck Mangione. There’s a slight chance you remember Chuck Mangione. He was a real (music) artist, and might be characterized as a real one-hit wonder. Even if you do remember him, there’s very little reason that you should. At the end of the second paragraph, Jill explains she left home because “the lady below me had put on her Chuck Mangione record so I was just as glad to be leaving.” Chuck Mangione is no longer a brand name that all readers would be familiar with. Chuck Mangione was an international success in 1977 with a jazz-pop single, “Feels So Good”. His songs were used in the 1976 and 1980 Olympic Games. However, perhaps his most significant current claim to fame is inclusion as a secondary character in the animated television program, “King of the Hill”. None of this information is provided by the novel. There’s a chance that the audience at publication, young adult males, were not born when Chuck Mangione was famous. Yet even if the reader understood the reference, it’s still not a great line. Why does Jill dislike the musical choice? Is it his voice, his melody? Is the record too loud? Has that particular record merely been played too frequently? The answer to this question is one of those little things that, when an author includes it, gives life and flavor to the world of a story. When it is not, the audience is pushed further away from the narrator. And why name the author of the record if the narrator, Jill, was unwilling to name the bottle or brand of alcohol she was drinking last night? The neighbor’s “loud record” or “annoying record” would at least indicate the nature of Jill’s grievance. Jen Banbury, however, opts for the brand name.

Films offset this lack of accessibility, because instead of relying on the mental representation of a brand name, they provide a visual representation of all the objects in a scene, eliminating the necessity of the brand name. If there were a film version of Like a Hole in the Head, the audience would not need Chuck Mangione’s name, but they would likely understand by how the record sounded in context as to why it was so irritating.

While talking to a character who is described with his most distinctive feature being a single glove on his left hand, the “glove guy” remarks, “I like the postmodern gangster films”, to which Jill responds, “Postmodern. That phrase is meaningless in that context. Completely meaningless. It’s a description some ex-weatherman idiot film reviewer probably thought up”. Why is it so meaningless? Could it be because Jill doesn’t actually understand the meaning of “postmodern” and thus can’t explain why a “postmodern gangster film” is meaningless? This makes it seem like Banbury herself doesn’t know what she’s talking about which, quite frankly, she probably doesn’t.

I have tried to point out throughout this article that you certainly can enjoy Like a Hole in the Head. There are certainly worse books out there. I wouldn’t feel compelled to discuss a novel that was strictly bad in every sense of the word. (Well, yes I would, but that’s aside the point.) However, if you happen to enjoy Banbury’s sense of humor, you’ll probably enjoy it. The thing is, with every passing year, as the referencs become more distant, they will first transform into nostalgic reminders of the 90s, and finally into mind-numbing trivialities. In essence, if you haven’t read this book already, you probably never will. It’s barely been a decade and the book is already dated. But hey, if you want to know what I’m talking about, you can buy a hardcover for 1 cent from amazon. Even if you don’t end up liking it, you can always use it to start a campfire.

On Christmas

On Christmas
Or: Why and How an Agnostic Celebrates Christmas
Written on: Christmas Eve

I do not honor Saturn or Thor. I do not celebrate the birth of Sol, Elah-Gabal, Ishtar, Mithras, or Jesus. I do not believe in Santa Clause. I am entertained by the thought of the “Winter Solstice” but it does little for me. But I do celebrate Christmas.

I recognize the significance of Christmas to the economy of the USA, but that is not why I celebrate Christmas. I do practice gift exchange, but those gifts need not come from a mall.

Nativity Scenes are unnecessary but not offensive. If the mayor wants to have one on his front porch, I don’t see why he can’t have one at the town hall. I like Christmas Trees, but if my Christmas Tree was a blade of grass or some moss growing on my window, even if my lights were just a spot of ink from a highlighter, it would still be my Christmas Tree and it would still be Christmas. Christmas Trees can be beautiful, but they are not central to Christmas.

I have joked in the past of celebrating “Capitalism Day” but in truth Christmas has little to do with capitalism. Gift exchange flies in the face of capitalism. There is no guarantee that you will receive a gift of equal economic value. If you give someone a gift and you do not receive one in return, that’s fine. Gifts are given to show appreciation to those you love or care about. (“Secret Santa” does not count as Christmas.) I do not have a problem with companies trying to make a buck off Christmas, except when their commercials are annoying.

Why celebrate Christmas? Why is it on one particular day and not another? Well, to be honest, the day doesn’t really matter. If it’s on the Winter Solstice or not doesn’t matter to me. But I like there being one day for Christmas. A tradition is something that you practice that other people also practice. A tradition survives because you respect it and you enjoy it. For me, there are six holidays: New Years, Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. If New Years wasn’t so important to me for personal reasons, then Christmas would be the most important.

Christmas is the fulfillment of the essence of Thanksgiving. You can speak thanks to someone or something on Thanksgiving, but unless you can do something it doesn’t feel like you’re really giving Thanks. You give presents on Christmas to be true to how you felt (or how you wanted to feel) at Thanksgiving.

When a Christmas Tree is beautiful, it is beautiful for two reasons. The first, is because of lights—the lights glowing and pushing back the ever growing darkness of the winter months. The second is when a tree is personal, when it is shared with whatever your family may be (even if no blood is shared between you), when it is filled with the detritus of your lives. The light is the light of your mind and your memories, the bonds of kinship that you can remember. They need not be hung, but as with any physical reminder of a memory, it is more enjoyable if you can see it, and touch it.

There is no magical promise that Christmas will be beautiful. You have to make it beautiful yourself, forming the bonds with your own hands. Or, if that will not work, you can hope.

Here’s hoping to a Merry Christmas!

What Freud Said

What Freud Said and Why He Said It
Or: Why Derrida Is Wrong
December 23, 2007
Revised From: March 9, 2007

Someone like Derrida might take a look at the impact Freud had on modern thinking and claim: “One consequence of Freud’s thinking on dreams and the unconscious is that we can never be sure of where our ideas and words come from.” Freud’s On Dreams, however, does not necessarily deny our capacity to be certain about origin of the entirety of ideas and words. Freud offers a more nuanced view. A dream is not completely unknowable. Dreams are drawn from a variety of factors, some of which might not be directly represented. Although Freud argued that his dreams were indicative of the unconscious thinking which provides “the dream-work with the material for condensation, displacement, and dramatization” this dream-work nevertheless does not undermine the entirety of thought as a whole—Freud specifically leaves his discussion to that of the unconscious. Although the unconscious plays a large role in the life of an individual, it does not dominate or undermine conscious thought. Intention and the capacity to express that intention is not undermined by the existence and the aloofness of the unconscious. Freud’s analysis demands that we include in our definition of “intention” that, what we conceive of as “meaning” often will require understanding the symbols underlying it. The symbols that Freud identifies as underlying the dream always come from the individual’s experience in the world. The only challenge is in identifying which facet of the individual’s experience is the cause of which representation in the dream.

Freud, instead of denying the capacity to know where ideas and words come from, offers several possibilities of where they can originate from. Freud asserts that “only a small minority of educated people doubt that dreams are a product of the dreamer’s own mind.” Freud makes a distinction—he believes that the mythological interpretation of dreams, that dreams are of demonic or divine origin, has been rejected, and instead reasserts the argument that dreams originate from the dreamer’s own mind. Freud does know where dreams come from—they come from the mind. Although this seems obvious now, it nevertheless is a starting point, and a starting point that rejects several millennia of dream interpretation. This origin of dreams is not questioned. What is left unknown are the “conditions of their origin, their relation to waking mental life… but what stands in the foreground of our interest is the question of the significance of dreams.” The significance of dreams is what Freud leaves as the center of his object of debate, rather than the capacity to know dreams at all. After all, if Freud regarded dreams as completely unknowable, then there would be no point of psychoanalysis.

Freud conceptualizes of dreams as representative of the impulses and manifestations of mental forces which have been obscured during conscious life. The first is the overvaluation of the dream, as akin to the ancient mythologies which took the dream as the will of some supernatural agent. The prototype Freud provides for this line of thought is that of Schubert, that “dreams are a liberation of the spirit from the power of external nature.” Freud rejects this overvaluation, but nevertheless he probably would associate his conceptualization of dreams more with this extreme than he would with the other, that one held by “the majority of medical writers” to whom “dreams scarcely reach the level of being psychical phenomena at all.” Freud’s own conceptualization of dreams certainly is not that held by the “majority of medical writers” nor would it be that of Schubert. Instead, his conceptualization would be closest to that of Scherner and Volket, who insisted that dreams arise from mental impulses, and represent manifestations of mental forces “which have been prevented from expanding freely during the daytime.” Freud certainly would not argue that every element in every dream is an expression of a repressed desire, but nevertheless he certainly would be willing to accept that this was the case some of the time. Freud adds to this the idea that dreams frequently condense, dramatize, or displace events and thoughts which occur during waking life, and focuses on the multiplicity of associations that can be inferred from the events of a dream. For instance, Freud likens the activity of a dream to a painting that represents “all the poets in a single group in a picture of Parnassus.” Many of the poets in such a painting would not have ever been together at the same place at the same time, but because the mind associates the poets together the mental representation of them places them close together in proximity. Returning to the views of Scherner and Volket, Freud likens his interpretation of dreams to theirs in the case of wish fulfillment in dreams. Freud argues that there are three types of wish fulfillment: infantile, dreams with repressed wishes, and dreams with wishes that are not repressed, but usually are accompanied by anxiety. It certainly is true some of the time that dreams include repressed wishes—nevertheless, the content of dreams include much more than this.

The sentiment, like Derrida’s, that Freud’s arguments negate the capacity to understand the origin of thoughts stem largely from his conclusion, where he makes the caveat, “one can never tell whether any particular element in the content of a dream is to be interpreted symbolically or in its proper sense.” This caveat is far from the sentiment that it often evokes. Freud’s argument makes it clear that we must accept the possibility that sometimes we will not be able to understand where the constituents of our dream come from. However, to say that one can never be sure of where our ideas and words come from is to deny the magnificence of the associative links that underlie many of our dreams, and the many cases where in all likelihood the interpretation of the dream is centered. There is very little doubt in the painting of the poets in a picture of Parnassus where the images that the painting is based on came from. Although Freud expands his arguments to be indicative of the unconscious he nevertheless does not negate the capacities of conscious activity to understand the origin of its words and ideas. The dream that Freud speaks of is not necessarily the same dream that Martin Luther King Jr. speaks of in his speech, “I Have a Dream.” Freud is specifically discussing dreams that occur during unconsciousness. The conscious mind is one that is capable of producing dreams as well, but the conscious mind creates ones that express clear and well-stated desires that do not have to produce anxiety, but can produce hope instead.

Freud, like many of his predecessors, identifies his center: it is the ego, the self, as the shaping force behind all dreams. Just as Aristotle begins the Poetics by arguing that most forms of art are imitation or representation, and Victor Shklovsky identifies the maxim, “Art is thinking in images”, Freud has his center. It is through the center that one can exert intention. It is through the center that one can be reminded that some of the time, one can understand where what is said and thought comes from. Just the same, one can infer from reading Aristotle that art is the expression of the intention—it is the expression of the intention to reproduce or imitate something else. Or, for Shklovsky, art is the intention to think in images. However, the sentiment that one cannot know the origin of thoughts or words, as the prompt posits, echoed by Derrida in Structure, Sign, and Play when he links Freud with Heidegger and Nietzche in precipitating what he calls “this decentering, this thinking the structurality of structure”. Derrida remarks on “the Freudian critique of self-presence, that is, the critique of consciousness, of the subject, of self-identity and of self-proximity or self-possession.” Derrida, in typical form, provides no work, let alone page number, of Freud’s to refer to that would allow the reader to substantiate this claim. Instead, Derrida refers to “the Freudian critique,” a term so ambiguous it could be a critique which need not even necessarily originate from Freud, but from all that deem themselves “Freudian.” Yet, although it is true Freud critiques consciousness, and indeed further critiques the modern medical establishment for essentially ignoring the unconsciousness, Freud never renounces consciousness. We might sometimes not be able to comprehend our dreams consciously, and this might be a criticism of consciousness. But a criticism of consciousness is not a renunciation of consciousness—and Derrida’s inclusion of Freud as one of his central forces of “decentering” is flawed.

Perhaps instead of asking whether it is ever possible to write or say what one means, one might ask whether it is ever possible to not write or say what one means. Dreams always come from one’s self, and our own personal associations, and our own personal experiences. If this is the case, then there is no situation in which we cannot express what we mean, as all expression is the result of some will, either conscious or unconscious. Wimsatt’s and Beardsley’s The Intentional Fallacy offers an example that follows these lines; that of Elliot’s note to The Waste Land where Elliot explains that “The Hanged Man… fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples of Emmaus…” As Wimsatt and Beardsley argue, Elliot explains his poem in terms of his own intentions, and his intention in terms of his associations. This style nevertheless creates a problem for the earlier assertion that we cannot express what we do not mean, since, as Saussure argues in The object of study, there may be a distinction between what is expressed and what is intended to be expressed, as there is the capacity for miscommunication. But this only requires revision to the earlier proposition: all of our expressions are causally related to our intentions, even if our expressions do not always express our intentions. This, although rephrased, is essentially the same paradigm that can be inferred from Freud’s interpretation of dreams. Everything in our dreams is comes from our mind, even if the recollection and expression of our dream does not allow us to comprehend the intentions that are the causal basis for the dream’s occurrence.

Derrida’s criticism and the sentiment that it is impossible to comprehend the origins of thought provides an incomplete picture of Freud’s arguments. Freud’s arguments include a center, and that center is the ego. Through this center, one can, at least some of the time, express thought and language, and know the origin of it. This origin often will take the form of some desire, whether repressed or infantile, but also sometimes will be the result of condensation or dramatization. Although sometimes we will not be able to comprehend the nuance of the origin of our dreams, the origin remains constant. A better question from a Freudian perspective might be, “Can we ever express what we consciously want to express?” But that question too would be flawed, for it would seek to divide conscious activity from unconscious activity. The conscious mind and the unconscious mind inhabit the same brain; each is linked, and each takes in information from the other. Perhaps the ultimate objective is to ask, “Can we ever have such a perfect filter that none of our unconscious desires would seep into our conscious thought and speech?” Freud would probably offer that that is the true center, and the ultimate objective, of psychoanalysis.

The Meaning of Whiteness

The Madness Of The Whale
Or: The “Meaning” Of Whiteness In Moby Dick
December 23, 2007
Revised From: December 10, 2005

In the “Whiteness of the Whale” chapter of Moby Dick, Melville combines so many different possible interpretations of whiteness as a symbol that thinking of “whiteness” as a symbol becomes absurd. Instead of the color of the whale holding some sort of deep meaning or significance for the reader, perhaps it is better to view its importance to the characters of the story. It is a deflection away from the personal feelings and status of the individual. Just as this is true for Ahab, who seems to become obsessed with the whale for some inexplicable reason that almost certainly is either sexual or racial in nature, this also may be true for Ishmael. Ishmael’s search for meaning in Moby Dick may actually be to deflect away from his own inadequacies and his own private madness that questions the very reasons that Ishmael is on the Pequod to begin with.

Ishmael cyclically restricts the freedom of others and himself. In the first paragraph, Ishmael discusses his reasons for going to sea. What is included is not as important as what is not, however. What lacks from his explanation are references to family, friends, or anything social. He refers to methodically knocking people’s hats off, spontaneously following funerals, and other antisocial activities. While he says that he joins the Pequod to be part of a fixed social hierarchy, he never explains why being part of a fixed social hierarchy is at all a good thing. Instead, once again, what he does not refer to is as important as what he does. The physical act of being on a boat for several months at a time is the uttermost form of restricting his physical, social, and personal freedom. Those on the boat might be the epitome of civilization, but they are also the epitome of confinement. Opposed to this, Moby Dick is the epitome of freedom. Ishmael is incapable of grasping why it is that he joins along, at the beginning of the “Moby Dick” chapter, with the others. It could be because Moby Dick is everything that Ishmael failed to accomplish—Moby Dick is free, and shows no signs of being disconcerted with his own natural surroundings. Instead, Moby Dick seeks to destroy the humans that try to kill him as one might expect any animal to. When viewed in conjunction with his actions of joining the boat at all, after coming from a state of total freedom, Ishmael’s decision to help kill Moby Dick does not seem at all perplexing. Just as he destroyed his own freedom, he seeks to destroy the freedom of others, in this case, Moby Dick. A facet of the rage Ishmael and the crew expresses toward Moby Dick could be one of jealousy, of the satisfaction with freedom they do not have and never will acquire. The men of the Pequod destroy freedoms they desire but have left behind for social tolerance, a freedom which only is regained with the destruction of society, or the Pequod, as a whole, as at the end of the novel.

The fundamental tenet of American society, that of freedom, is something which Ishmael, Ahab, and the whole Pequod is unable to comprehend or accept. Moby Dick, being merely an albino whale, is a blank template upon which they thrust unending hatred, in the case of Ahab, or in Ishmael’s case, a multitude of meaning when really there is none implicit. The real dilemmas are those that are not spoken of in the novel, because they are too focused on trying to discover the meaning of the whale. They externalize their own loneliness, and the prisons they create for themselves, so that they do not have to confront them. If Ishmael were capable of giving meaning to his life on the boat, he never would have allowed Ahab to lure the crew into an obsessive quest to destroy the whale. Instead, he too tries to give the whale meaning, allowing Ahab’s complete deflection of his own inner demons to consume the crew as a whole and, ultimately, to destroy the Pequod and all on it, save Ishmael himself.

Are P2P Technologies Really P2P?

Is “The Public” of Tomorrow Going To Be a Network?
Or: How Significant Are P2P Technologies?
December 22, 2007
Revised From: May 8, 2007

Some contend that the emerging peer-to-peer networked public sphere differs from the mass mediated public sphere. While this certainly is the case to an extent, it nevertheless does not take into account discussions by Phil Agre and Yochai Benkler that, although peer-to-peer technologies are emerging, there nevertheless remain strong forces assert the power of broadcast media and traditional proprietary models. How significant can this transformation be when the peer-to-peer network technologies are themselves mediated by monopolies such as Microsoft, SBC-Yahoo, Google, Comcast, and Apple? To further complicate matters, it is difficult to say when the period of the “mass mediated public sphere” begins. Why do we regard the “preceding era” as mass mediated, when, after all, broadcast television is itself regarded as a “network”? Why do we refer to some technologies as “peer-to-peer” when the users operating them are not necessarily peers? Perhaps both the future and the past are murkier than they may appear. The significance of new technologies like MySpace, Facebook, Blogs, File-sharing Programs, etc do not implicitly change anything in particular.

In 2003, when Phil Agre wrote P2P and the Promise of Internet Equality, he was still living in the cusp of the transformation to the music industry the full force of which is only recently being received. He argued:

The post-Napster institutions of music distribution will presumably depend on new technologies. At the moment, most technical development is aimed at two models: P2P models that resist legal assaults and rights-management models that preserve existing economic models or migrate toward subscription models. It is unclear whether a thoroughly P2P architecture can survive, particularly if monopolies such as Microsoft change their own architectures to suit the record companies' needs.

Over time, we have seen the relative success of both models, but not necessarily through the means that Agre predicted. Over the past few years, the market has finally seen the theorized decline of record sales, but not because of P2P models: instead, because of iTunes, and other models. iTunes and similar programs allow artists to have guaranteed revenue that’s directly reflective of their sales, it co-opts many of the most successful artists that otherwise would be attracted to P2P models by allowing them to release their music digitally, but through a media formation that is more broadcast in origin than P2P. One might argue that through programs like iTunes, the artists win: they can sell their records without having to work through a traditional record label. But on the other hand, iTunes has merely become the record label of all those artists that use their services. iTunes isn’t a P2P model. Like Microsoft, Apple has become a powerful center of information technology. Agre suggested that Microsoft might change its structure to suit producers’ needs. Instead, Apple changed its structure to suit artists needs, and in doing so Apple guaranteed that music will continue to be mediated by proprietary models.
Agre’s predictions captured many points of what would come to be. However, Benkler’s discussion in The Wealth of Networks may ultimately be more relevant. Peer-to-peer technologies are challenging traditional proprietary models of intellectual property, Benkler’s arguments explain, but they are now the subject of a legal backlash. As Benkler explains,

…the DMCA and the continued dominance of Microsoft over the desktop, and the willingness of courts and legislatures to try to stamp out copyright-defeating technologies even when these obviously have significant benefits to users who have no interest in copying the latest song in order not to pay for the CD-are the primary sources of institutional constraint on the freedom to use the logical resources necessary to communicate in the network.

Not only Microsoft and the DMCA, but other monopolies or near-monopolies, such as Disney, continue to fight for longer copyrights and more trademarks. New biotechnologies continue to expand traditional perceptions of what can be the subject of a patent, now including chemicals and elements produced by the human body. Traditional proprietary models, based on exclusive intellectual property rights, continue to lobby major governments to illegalize network models, and sometimes use guerilla tactics to attack network models directly. In one regard, one has to accept that a completely open peer-to-peer technology is completely open to attack, when those who are actively attacking peer-to-peer technologies can gain access just as easily as the creator of peer-to-peer technologies, or the average user interested in looking around to see what’s offered. One has to ask when this is the case: what really constitutes a peer?

Even Benkler has to discuss the illegal activities of millions of the people using peer-to-peer technologies. Certainly the backlash against peer-to-peer technologies, starting with Napster, originates in the threat traditional models sensed; the threat that the users illegally trading music would lower record sales. Few answers exist to understand why so many users of peer-to-peer technologies now associate with criminality. Further, monopolies offer few answers as to why old methods of broadcasting information for limited or indirect profit, such as broadcast radio, did not cause record labels to worry that their music was being “stolen”. As Benkler argues that, “Music, like all information, is a nonrival public good whose marginal cost, once produced, is zero.” If this was all there was to the case, then the illegal users of peer-to-peer technologies really never had any excuse.

Failure to understand the illegal users of peer-to-peer technologies is rooted in the failure of many to understand peer-to-peer technologies at all. As they are, peer-to-peer technologies are wholly rooted in a multitude of expensive products whose sale is largely dominated by several monopolies and major international corporations. Benkler was right: once produced, music has little cost to reproduce. However, the cost of production can be extraordinary. The ownership of a computer, the technologies (like Microsoft’s Windows), the specialized information-producing technologies, and the instruments necessary will rarely cost, combined, less than several thousand dollars. Following this, there are the most important costs: the time, talent, creativity, and energy required to produce information technologies. In the time it takes an individual to produce one piece of music, they could download a thousand songs. In the time it would take to produce one full length movie, they could download a hundred films at least. To produce a film and share it on a P2P network, a user would require a camera: to own a competitive model, they might want to go for a something like a “Canon XL1 Digital Camcorder Kit”—cost on Amazon, $2,500. That’s $2,500—paid to a different major corporation, Canon. Once a film is made, it is then converted to a different digital format on a computer (perhaps run off a desktop like Microsoft’s Windows). That desktop software is then connected to the Internet—powered by either SBC-Yahoo or Comcast in all likelihood—and then connected to be shared for no immediate financial return on a P2P sharing site. To produce music, there are different monopolies and major corporations one must instead pay. And even then, to access some networks, one might need a portfolio.

If an extra $2,500 was a requirement for every community, then the world would be filled with countless lone individuals. It is not surprising then, that those that are regarded as the most “successful peer-to-peer” technologies are those that demand the least in terms of “sharing” original content. Networks such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Blogs can be accessed by almost anyone and demand almost nothing. All the content is either already present or can be offered with very little cost of either time or money. Yet these networks nonetheless aren’t always P2P technologies. MySpace and Facebook are both owned by individuals, and can be sold—and completely deleted—at will. YouTube is more of a P2P form than those others, but it nevertheless is the subject of countless attacks by major corporations and the government, demanding that songs be removed, that movies be removed if they use songs or clips of popular movies, or music videos. Most of the “Peers” on a sight of YouTube do not have the money, the time, the energy, or the talent to compete with the media distributed by broadcast media. Instead, the most popular members of YouTube are those who use cheap webcams or podcasts to convey essentially the same information as that of a post on LiveJournal. If this is the freedom promised by some, then it is an awfully limited freedom—and hardly utopian.

Perhaps the “real” P2P formations were those that existed beforehand in Broadcast media: those who work to produce the News for CBS may all work for a major corporation, and once hired, they may very well be Peers: by working for the same corporation, they know who each other are, and what they can produce. If they lack sufficient production, then they are fired. But those who work for the major corporation have guaranteed pay, whereas those who work for the Peer-to-Peer community may receive very little in return. The risk remains that those with the most interest in developing professional, competitive products will often be drawn toward the major corporations and monopolies for guaranteed returns—thus lowering the amount of quality original content on Peer-to-Peer networks. So what are P2P technologies left with? Millions of people without the means or energy to produce content joining P2P networks consisting of millions of other people without the means or energy to produce content: the only content available being that produced by major corporations.

So is there an emerging Peer-to-Peer network sphere? Communities such as YouTube and MySpace are still owned by individuals; although their content may be generated by individuals, they are not implicitly more or less “Peer-to-Peer” than the Networks of Broadcast Media, and the continued thriving of Networks undermine P2P Networks at least, if not more, than the P2P Networks undermine the Broadcast Media. And there is no end to mediation, in any sphere.

Did All Native Americans Ride Horses?

Is “Dances With Wolves” Historically Inaccurate?
Or: Did All Native Americans Ride Horses?
December 21, 2007
Revised From: October 12, 2005

In “Dances with Wolves,” Kevin Costner rides out with the Native Americans and intermeshes with their culture. When viewing such a film, it is easy to say that “That’s not how Native Americans really were!” It does seem like Costner is interested in integrating himself into “Native American” culture, not the culture of “post-colonial Sioux.” If one views “Dances with Wolves” as representative of “Native American” culture, than it is indeed erroneous. However, if they are viewed as only representing the Sioux, then the film is remarkably accurate. Yet, the tendency to lump all Native American tribes together into some sort of unified cultural entity consistently works to alienate, rather than unify, the two groups.

The myth of the Native Americans as a completely mobile, roaming people is inaccurate for most tribes other than the Sioux. For instance, Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire, was remarked as, “a city as large as Cordova or Seville, entirely within the lake two mile from the mainland.” The Aztecs, a Mesoamerican people of central Mexico, were perhaps the largest empire south of the plains Indians of North America. The Aztecs were not the Native Americans that the colonists confronted on their frontier, however, and thus they are not a part of the myth of Native America that is depicted in film and movies. Even the Sioux, while they did eventually become a horse-back riding tribe, did not have horses before the European Americans imported the animals.

The Pequots, while not established in great cities like Tenochtitlan, were not a roaming band of Indians either. The Pequots, as are many of the tribes of Native America, are not incorporated into the modern popular myth of Native America. The reason for this is understandable—they were almost completely annihilated in the Pequot War. Richard Drinnon in his chapter of “Facing West” on the Pequot War, even notes that the colonist, “sought, as Mason said, ‘to cut off the Remembrance of them from the Earth.’ After the war, the General Assembly of Connecticut declared the name extinct.” The Pequots, as with many other tribes that did not last as long as the Sioux in terms of war, were annihilated so completely that no trace of them could be left for the modern mythos to accept. The myths of modern America will never be able to include these stories completely in its myth, due to the lack of information regarding the truth of the people, and the myth of Native America will never be able to accurately reflect reality.

Due to the political atmosphere of colonial times, there were strong differences in the interactions between Native American tribes and the colonists. Tribes in the southeast and northeast were exploited by the English trade in skins and slaves much more readily than did the Muskogees. The Muskogees even managed to retain cultural autonomy for a longer period of time than many of their neighbors. However, none of this mattered aside from delaying the inevitable, in terms of United States, and ironically, this indifference to Muskogee culture strengthened Muskogee resistance. While the United States, as Joel Martin explains in “Sacred Revolt”, “was determined to force on the Muskogees an ideology that not only repressed the logic of gifts and the egalitarian society that it nurtured but also asserted that the Moskogees could become fully ‘civilized’ only by becoming identical to Anglo-Americans.” While the United States general attitude was to reduce the assorted Native American tribes to that of mere savages occupying otherwise vacant land, their actions and attitude undermined their capacity to negotiate or confront the Natives at all. Martin also notes an incident in which Georgians killed Lower Muskogees in revenge for crimes of the Upper Moskogees, alienated the Lower Muskogees from the Georgians and “led to a rapport between the two major Muskogee factions.” The United States unwillingness to recognize variation in Native American culture led to increased solidarity among the Muskogees. Their denial of Indian culture, however, allowed the United States to create an economic justification in taking the Muskogees’ supposedly vacant lands. The denial of Native American cultural autonomy both ensured the animosity on racial lines, and “justified” the United States for annihilation.