Much of postcolonial criticism roots itself in discourses of the center and marginalization. The way we define the margin and center is, at times, largely contextual, but we can think of the center as historically belonging to heterosexual white men. Of course, this pushes everyone else to the margin—some more than others. Postcolonial indebted to perspectives of critical race theory, feminist theory, queer theory, and many others when it comes to recognizing this station of difference, but only postcolonial theory discusses it in these terms. Because society is generally thought to be constructed by those at the center, it often does not benefit people at the margins in the ways it does those at the center, if not actively causing them harm. We can also say that society often does not “belong” to those at the margins. This raises the issue of displacement, wherein marginalized people are forced to move out of and away from the places they feel they belong. While displacement is often used in a physical sense, it refers to a sense of culture as well.

For many artists of marginalized communities, displacement is an important theme in their work. Feelings of isolation, disconnection, anger, and sorrow all make an appearance, but displacement makes itself known in more nuanced ways as well. Literary genres exist as groupings that we understand somewhat intrinsically, but they all have defining characteristics on which we can mostly agree. Because these genres were often (canonically) contributed to only by those at the center, many of these characteristics are inextricably linked to centralized identity. Artistic genres are no different, and the portrait is one of the oldest. The most common example is the Mona Lisa (1503), and most portraits follow its lead: fine clothing, simple poses, figure facing the viewer, a detailed or extravagant background. Not surprisingly, the majority of famous portraits feature white people from wealthy backgrounds.

Far from the center, Glenn Ligon is a black queer artist who grew up poor in Brooklyn. His work is indebted to this identity, and by extension, a kind of displacement. He often plays with form and genre, subverting classical artistic notions. His Self Portrait (X) (1996) shows Ligon facing away from the viewer in a plain shirt. It’s a simple pose and a blank background. There’s a lot to analyze in the print, but feelings of despondency and isolation are clear. It’s no stretch to call Ligon’s work an exemplar of displacement. By subverting a genre that was created at the center, Ligon provides us with an artwork that can easily be discussed with postcolonialism in mind.

Glenn Ligon. 1996. Self-Portraits. Prints. https://library.artstor.org/asset/LARRY_QUALLS_10310739840.

X: Ableism within hegemonic literary structures, particularly forms of epistemological centrism (ocularcentrism, phonocentrism).

Y: The most basic tenet of ocularcentrism is the idea that “seeing is believing,” the best way we can know something is by seeing it firsthand. Phonocentrism works slightly differently, prioritizing sound and speech over image and text. Phonocentrism further posits that written text is subpar as a method of acquiring knowledge as it is derived from and tries, but ultimately fails, to replicate speech. For the able-bodied, a person may prefer one method over another, but both are likely to appear valid. Both structures assume that all people interacting with them are both sighted and hearing, having the ability to choose with which sense they experience something. What happens, however, when someone doesn’t have the privilege of sight or hearing? Are those people then unable to know? Does their knowledge become secondary? Must they inherently endorse a kind of centrism? Who benefits from the prioritization of knowledge?\

Z: Looking at structural ableism, deconstruction, and theories of disability I plan to address the inherent ableism of prioritizing the Aristotelian senses, particularly of placing one sense above all others. Deaf poet Meg Day’s collection Last Psalm at Sea Levelabandons musicality for rich tactile and flavorful description. Helen Oyeyemi’s surrealist short fiction found in What is Not Yours is Not Yoursattempts to make sense of arcane knowledge—characters with ideas of the world they can’t explain with sensory experience. Using these texts, I hope to further expose ableist structures in literature and argue against any kind of epistemological centrism that disadvantages or others the reader/viewer (terms which are themselves ableist).

 

A secondary text I may use is Martin Jay’s “The Rise of Hermeneutics and the Crisis of Ocularcentrism,” an article that argues against the triumph of either the eye or ear as a dominant mode of imagery production.

Jay, Martin. “The Rise of Hermeneutics and the Crisis of Ocularcentrism.” Poetics Today 9, no. 2 (1988): 307-26. doi:10.2307/1772691.

New historical criticism and cultural criticism are the broadest theoretical perspectives we’ve worked with thus far, and as such, don’t have many limits. Questions of historical context, cultural reception, rhetorical analysis, and group experience are boundless and could be used to support any number of arguments. This breadth is, perhaps, also a limitation of the perspectives as well. New historical and cultural criticism assume that experience and reality are largely subjective and, as such, believe interpretation is subjective as well. Unlike New Criticism which assumes objectivity and a single correct interpretation, new historical and cultural criticism can get lost in their subjectivity. This subjectivity means that any number of perspectives are valid and therefore any number of interpretations could also be valid. Any multiplicity of interpretation would also seem to indicate the impossibility of a single correct answer. While the inability to reach a single answer doesn’t invalidate the perspective, it can create some problems. New historical and cultural criticism thus become limited in the sense that they can only truly be used interpretively and to understand contextual information, not to provide definite answers about a text.

One of the largest cultural phenomena in the past decade surrounds the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This particular event provides the perfect site for cultural analysis. When it began in May of 2008 with the first Iron Man film, no one had ever heard of a “cinematic universe” and certainly some folks thought it would fail. The closest approximation at the time was the James Bond series, which, though successful, has a niche audience at best. Iron Man was a success, however, and soon The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avengerwere too. After the first Avengersfilm, it became abundantly clear that the Marvel Cinematic Universe was incredibly lucrative and here to stay. There’s plenty of speculation around the initial success of the MCU. Perhaps there was space to be filled in the film industry for such a massive project, after successes like the original Spider Man trilogy there was a desire for more superhero blockbusters, or maybe the only reason it was able to stick around was Disney’s acquisition of Marvel Studios. In any case, its success at the time is undeniable.

Even more noteworthy, from the standpoint of cultural criticism, however, is the lasting effect the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had on the film and television industries as a whole. In the 11 years since its creation, the MCU has spawned 23 films and 12 television series. Its success has spawned such competitors as the DC Extended Universe and Sony’s Marvel Universe (for what it’s worth, neither has come anywhere close to the success of the MCU). Since the creation of these industry behemoths, standalone superhero films have been few and rather unsuccessful. The first Transformers film grossed 709 million in 2007 (pre-MCU). Before the mass MCU expansion that came after Avengers: Age of Ultronin 2015, the fourth film Transformers: Age of Extinction grossed 1.1 billion in 2014.  In 2017, Transformers: The Last Knightgrossed a comparatively small 605 million. In 2018 Bumblebee made only 468 million. That same year, Avengers: Infinity War grossed over 2 billion dollars.

For further proof of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s strong grip on the industry we can look at other superhero films that don’t have the legacy of a franchise like Transformers. In the same year of Infinity War’s record-breaking success, the standalone superhero film Fast Colorwas held to a limited release by Lionsgate and failed to break the $100,000 line in box office sales despite generally positive reviews. It becomes clear to any cultural critic that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has changed the film industry and the way fans respond to that industry for decades to come.

X: Epistemological structures (ocularcentrism, phonocentrism) and ableism.

Y: The most basic tenet of ocularcentrism is the idea that “seeing is believing,” the best way we can know something is by seeing it firsthand. Phonocentrism works slightly differently, prioritizing sound and speech over image and text. Phonocentrism further posits that written text is subpar as a method of acquiring knowledge as it is derived from and tries, but ultimately fails, to replicate speech. For the able-bodied, a person may prefer one method over another, but both are likely to appear valid. What happens, however, when someone doesn’t have the privilege of sight or hearing? Are those people then unable to know? Does their knowledge become secondary?

Z: Looking at structural ableism, deconstruction, and theories of disability I plan to address the inherent ableism of prioritizing the Aristotelian senses, particularly of placing one sense above all others. Through analysis of Deaf poet Meg Day’s collection Last Psalm at Sea Leveland Helen Oyeyemi’s surrealist short fiction found in What is Not Yours is Not Yours, I hope to further expose ableist structures in literature and propose a system of knowing that is inclusive of those without the privilege of being able-bodied.

 

A secondary text I may use is Brian Stonehill’s “The Debate over ‘Ocularcentrism’,” a critical review of Jonathan Crary’s 1990 study on the history of sight as it relates to thought in the 19^thcentury.

Brian Stonehill, The Debate over “Ocularcentrism”, Journal of Communication, Volume 45, Issue 1, March 1995, Pages 147–152, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1995.tb00720.x

The most common structuralist practice we partake in as readers and writers would seem to be generic classification—a topic Tyson dedicates an entire subsection to as “The structure of literary genres.” In this section, Tyson largely cites Frye’s “theory of myths,” a framework that sorts texts by narrative pattern and offers four patterns that are presumed to account for the totality of human work. Frye similarly offers the “theory of modes,” which, again, provides only four stations to occupy, this time based on the agency of characters. The specifics of each theory and mode are somewhat unimportant for my argument so long as we understand as methods of classification—methods limited to four categories.

Modern methods are similarly limited and coincidentally rely on quartets as well. We commonly understand the broader modern genres to be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. It’s safe to say that large fantasy series like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are fiction, that a memoir like Cheryl Strayed’s Wild is nonfiction, or that the Broadway-hit Wicked is drama. The elements that classify these texts might not be entirely tangible, but the creation and continued existence of all of these texts was and is undeniably informed by the genres (structures) into which they fall. With little regard for plot or character, this generic classification would likely be the main structuralist concern. What makes Wicked dramatic? In what ways did previous self-discovery memoirs shape Wild? How did Harry Potter redefine teen fantasy novels? The list goes on with nearly every structuralist question coming back to genre.

However, genre isn’t the only thing structuralism seems to rely on so heavily. The desire for systems of classification points to a need for essentialism in order for structuralist criticism to work. We have to first identify a text as nonfiction before we can ask how it being nonfiction has shaped it. The problem comes when not texts don’t fit so neatly into broad genres. Works of historical fiction and speculative memoir hang somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. Prose poems lack the lineation and meter we expect of poetry. How can we discuss the poetic structures of Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “Iskandariya” when the “poem” doesn’t fit nearly any of the criteria we check when asking if a work is, in fact, a poem?

Surely structuralism fails when a text defies accepted structures; one can’t work without the other. At least, this was my original conception. In the process of writing this blog post, however, I’ve realized it’s not so simple. Defiance of essentialist structures doesn’t free a text from the murkier deep structure Tyson goes on about. “Iskandariya” might not be a typical poem but we can still consider how it’s indebted to schools of imagism or the way invertebrates contrast with biblical allusion. Structuralist questions can still be asked of the text. “How does ‘Iskandariya’ fail as a poem?” is a structuralist criticism in the same way as asking how it succeeds. And so we find the importance of the deep structure. Though structuralist criticism leans heavily on classification and definition, the unknowable/unidentifiable influences that make up a text’s “deep structure” can still be analyzed—even when a text resists being classified.