Category: Megan

Abstract

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Trauma can span generations. It is not an individual psychological phenomenon, nor one that goes away after the traumatic threat has ended. These facts are established in the psychological community but need to be looked at further by those who study trauma as it relates to postcolonial theory. Postcolonial trauma affects millions of people in postcolonial societies, even long after colonial rule.

Through hereditary trauma, family units feel the lasting weight of colonization, which can negatively affect a family’s psychology. Three literary works have shown this theory: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus, Mai Der Vang’s book of poems Afterland, and lê thi diem thúy’s novel The Gangster We are All Looking For. Purple Hibiscus is bildungsroman novel about a young girl, Kambili, living in an abusive household in Nigeria. Afterland is a collection of poems about the Hmong people’s displacement from Laos after the Vietnam War. The Gangster We are All Looking For is the story of a young Vietnamese immigrant whose family has fled to San Diego.

Each of these texts deals with the psychological aftereffects of colonialism. They explore trauma as it relates to the family, both ancestral and living. These texts are examples of how familial ties are shaped and defined by postcolonial trauma. Each text shows through vivid imagery and characterization how colonial violence spans generations, and how necessary transgenerational narratives are to our understanding of postcolonial and trauma theory.

Colonialism is inherently intergenerational, and I argue that postcolonial studies and trauma theory are necessarily intertwined. It is impossible to explore postcolonialism without recognizing the hereditary nature of postcolonial trauma and the effects this trauma has on families today. I explore critical perspectives of postcolonial theory, psychological theory surrounding family trauma, and literary criticism in order to suggest that the motif of family in these texts is used to explore trauma responses to past and current psychological effects of colonization.

Keywords: Family, Trauma, Motif, Postcolonial

Works Cited:

Abubakar, Sadiya. “Traumatic Experiences of Nigerian Women: An Archetypal Representation in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” IRA-International Journal of Management & Social Sciences (ISSN 2455-2267) [Online], Vol. 4.3, 2016.

Adichie, Chimamanda N. Purple Hibiscus: A Novel. New York: Anchor Books, 2004. Print.

Bhattcharjee, Partha, and Priyanka Tripathi. “Ethnic Tensions and Political Turmoil: Postcolonial Reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” Language in India, vol. 17, no. 3, Mar. 2017, p. 433.

Ha, Quan Manh. “Conspiracy of Silence and New Subjectivity in Monkey Bridge and The Gangster We Are All Looking For,” Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement: Vol. 8: Iss. 1, Article 3, 2013.

History as Commodity: The Disney Company’s Venture into the Story of “Pocahontas”

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My further reading this week focused on Marxism, specifically the concept of commodification and how this relates to literature and media. Lois Tyson writes in her book Critical Theory Today that “For Marxism, a commodity’s value lies not in what it can do (use value) but in the money or other commodities for which it can be traded (exchange value) or for the social status it confers on its owner (sign-exchange value)” (59). Tyson defines commodification as “the act of relating to objects or persons in terms of their exchange value or sign-exchange value” (60). Literature is commodified when it is reprinted numerous times and sold. Stories are commodified when they are turned into easy-to-sell forms of media, such as the multi-billion-dollar movies made by the Disney company. Disney is one of the largest media companies in the world, worth (at the time of my writing) 132.75 billion US dollars. They have bought so many media franchises that they are in competition with themselves and have essentially created their own superstructure. A superstructure is the dominant cultural and societal institutions that result from a society’s economy. The dominant narrative in children’s media, both in movies, TV shows, and games, is largely controlled by Disney. Disney capitalizes off these stories through their amusement parks, through toys, clothes, music, and even healthcare products. But what they really sell is, essentially, stories.

Most of the popular stories that have become their most famous and best-earning movies are those taken from popular literature and commodified, that is, turned into a product which has the purpose of making money and furthering Disney’s reputation. Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and even the more recent The Princess and the Frog are based on fictional retellings of fairytales. However, not all Disney movies come from fairytales. The plot of The Lion King is largely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Their animated film Pocahontas, however, is a retelling of a historical event—one that makes drastic mistakes in their narrative and commodifies a story of oppression into a family-friendly movie designed for capital gain. When companies like Disney and Universal own stories, they own control over dominant narratives. They hold the power to write history out of existence in popular knowledge.

According to Smithsonian, an institution which tells more accurately researched stories of history, Pocahontas was born Matoaka. Unlike in Disney’s film, she was not an eighteen-year-old who fell in love with the dashing John Smith after saving him from death by her father and lived happily ever after. She was the Great Powhatan’s daughter, who was captured by settlers, married John Rolfe and was paraded around Europe as an example of a “good” Native American until her untimely death at 21. Her story is a sad one, of a talented young translator’s death at the hands of a colonizing society. Disney’s retelling romanticizes her story for capital gain in an inauthentic and disrespectful fashion.

When the authenticity of Pocahontas’s story is damaged, the historical aspect of the story is lost in its reproduction. Walter Benjamin says in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that “The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object” (Walter Benjamin 2).

The prominent idea of Pocahontas in mainstream media, because of Disney’s commodification of her story, is historically inaccurate. The reason this idea still persists despite its inaccuracy is because of Disney’s status as a superstructure. A Marxist critic believes that companies who hold financial power control the knowledge that we learn through media, and this explains why Pocahontas herself—the real woman, not the Disney Princess—is so misunderstood today.

A Disney Animator’s Collection Pocahontas Doll- Priced on Target.com as $92.99.
source: Google Images

Works Cited

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

Mansky, Jackie. The True Story of Pocahontas. Smithsonian.com, March 23, 2017.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Schocken/Random House, 1998.

Annotation

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Annotation

My SCE project will look at how colonial violence spans generations through hereditary trauma in three texts, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus, Mai Der Vang’s book of poems Afterland, and lê thi diem thúy’s novel The Gangster We are All Looking For. The motif of family in these texts is used to explain transgenerational trauma responses to past and current psychological effects of colonization and war. I will be looking at critical perspectives of postcolonial theory, family trauma, and literary criticism in order to show my audience the importance of heritage and transgenerational narratives in postcolonial literature.

Abubakar, Sadiya. “Traumatic Experiences of Nigerian Women: An Archetypal Representation in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” IRA-International Journal of Management & Social Sciences (ISSN 2455-2267) [Online], 4.3 (2016): 602-611. Web. 24 Oct. 2019

Abubakar’s article, “Traumatic Experiences of Nigerian Women: An Archetypal Representation in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus”, provides an insight into how literature talks about trauma, and how trauma shapes generations. Abubakar talks about women’s oppression and trauma due to sexual assault, abuse, and poverty in Nigeria. She relates the patriarchal oppression of women to Purple Hibiscus, which she calls “an epitome of Nigerian women’s difficulties and their traumatic experiences” (Abubakar 603). Abubakar’s article discusses trauma theory in relation to literature and delves into the psychology of several of Adichie’s characters. Abubakar’s argument is that multiple traumas, from domestic violence to the trauma of oppression, affect and shape the Adichie’s characters and their familial relationships. These character relationships reflect to the trauma postcolonial Nigerians face. Abubakar’s main project is to show through literary analysis the necessity of trauma centers in Nigeria, and that literature is “unveiling such issues of trauma and letting it to penetratingly reach out to the world through narration” (610). This text is important to my SCE because it provides an overview of trauma and how it affects Nigerian people, and specifically Purple Hibiscus.  Abubakar’s article focuses specifically on women, but I believe that this is not a limitation because of women’s role in affecting the culture of both families and generations. My argument that trauma is hereditary, and that Purple Hibiscus shows an example of this psychological phenomenon, is supported by Abubakar’s examples of women’s trauma in postcolonial Nigeria and her analysis of Adichie’s writing.  I will use Abubakar’s article to support my argument that the characters in Purple Hibiscus inherit the postcolonial trauma of their parents and ancestors through the way this trauma shapes their family dynamic.

Familial Trauma in Postcolonial Literature

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For my SCE project, I will be looking at three primary texts: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus, Mai Der Vang’s book of poems Afterland, and lê thi diem thúy’s novel The Gangster We are All Looking For. These texts differ in form, content, culture and country. Purple Hibiscus is a coming-of-age novel about a young girl, Kambili, living in an abusive Catholic household in postcolonial Nigeria. Afterland is a collection of poems about the Hmong people’s displacement from Laos after the Vietnam War, where there were attempts at colonization through the military. The Gangster We are All Looking For is the story of a young, unnamed Vietnamese immigrant whose family has fled to San Diego. Though these texts are in many ways dissimilar, each of them deals with postcolonial life and the aftereffects of colonialism. I am thinking about the way that each of these texts deals with family, either ancestral or living, and how familiar ties shape and define trauma. I want to look at the reality of hereditary trauma in postcolonial societies, and how family dynamics can be affected by this trauma. In my SCE, I aim to explore how colonial violence spans generations in order to show my audience the importance of heritage and trans-generational narratives.

I will be looking at critical perspectives of postcolonial theory, psychological theory surrounding family trauma, and literary criticism concerning these three texts. Postcolonial criticism will help me to shape my argument and my readings of these three texts. I will suggest that the motif of family in these texts is used to explain trans-generational trauma responses to past and current psychological effects of colonization. This is extremely important to understand not only the history of colonization, but the lasting psychological effects that are passed down in family dynamics. I argue that these effects are not created through genetics but through hereditary trauma, making it possible for children to take on the postcolonial trauma of their ancestors. These texts show this notion through the motif of the family, using metaphor, character, and imagery.

Keywords: Family, Trauma, Motif, Postcolonial

Provisional Works Cited:

Jacob, John. “Hmong American Identity in Literature.” Salem Press Encyclopedia of Literature, 2019.

Quan Manh Ha. “Conspiracy of Silence and New Subjectivity in Monkey Bridge and The Gangster We Are All Looking For.” Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, 2013, p. 1.

Bhattcharjee, Partha, and Priyanka Tripathi. “Ethnic Tensions and Political Turmoil: Postcolonial Reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” Language in India, vol. 17, no. 3, Mar. 2017, p. 433.

Social Construction and New Historical Criticism

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New Historical Criticism, rather than seeing and analyzing historical events from a linear, objective perspective, approaches the past from a sociological lens. In New Historical Criticism, historical texts are analyzed with a focus on socioeconomic and cultural contextualization. Lois Tyson writes in “Critical Theory Today” that new historicists believe “there is no such thing as a presentation of facts; there is only interpretation” (269). A traditional, linear understanding of history presents only one objective version of reality. However, New Historical Criticism would argue that there are many different realities; each person has their own subjective worldview or “selfhood” which is influenced both by their individual personhood and by the society or culture they develop in (269). History is subjective, and there are multiple sides to every story. The limitation to this subjectivity is that usually only one side of the story is shown. The history that Americans learn in elementary school is not necessarily inclusive of multiple perspectives. History is often presented in an objective manner, presenting one version of reality as the truth. This “truth” often serves an existing power structure (271). Whoever controls the dominant narrative in society has the power to decide what is seen as objective. For example, the Church, a long-standing power structure, has produced the narrative that homosexuality is a sexual ‘perversion’ (271). The reason for this belief’s continuing popularity is because of the prominence of the social construct of the Church and the power it holds in society. Michael Foucault has suggested that all definitions of ‘insanity,’ ‘crime,’ and sexual ‘perversion’ are social constructs by meanings of which ruling powers maintain their control. We accept these definitions as ‘natural’ only because they are so ingrained in our culture’ (271). One can see form this quote that New Historical Criticism is rooted in sociological concepts. Sociologists, as well as New Historical Critics, believe that “what is “right,” “natural,” and “normal” are matters of definition (271). What is “true”, therefore, is subjective. The idea of subjectivity naturally lends itself to the theory of social constructs. Social constructionism is a theory first written about in “The Social Construction of Reality” by Peter L. Bergeer and Thomas Luckman in 1966. Essentially, social constructionists believe that human beings create their conceptualization of the world socially. Because of this, things that we believe to be true or objective often depend upon others’ perception of the same things. Perceptions can change over time, and as a society changes, so do its constructions. Traditional historicism tends to believe that societies change in a progressive, linear way. However, because of social constructionism, New Historical Critics believe that the way societies change over time is more subjective: “History cannot be understood simply as a linear progression of events. At any given point in history, any given culture may be progressing in some areas and regressing in others” (269). Each different historical event may be viewed as progressive or regressive within certain communities because of the social constructions that they have come to view as “natural” or “normal”. New Historical and Cultural Criticism tends to question these ideas and view history in multiple different perspectives, attempting to apply subjectivity to social constructions. For my further reading, I reread “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien’s book contains many stories from soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War, a war much disputed by those not fighting it. This book revealed to me how soldiers struggle with the social construction of war, and the impact that this war has on their lives during and after the war. This book made it obvious to me how multiple perspectives are necessary in order to fully understand historical events and the breadth of human experience. O’Brien gives a chilling insight into the minds of soldiers in the midst of atrocities with the weight of the world’s expectations and their own actions on their shoulders. This book made me rethink my assumptions about the Vietnam War and about how history is presented from positions of power.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2015

Anna Karenina as Modern Heroine: an Elevator Speech

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I am looking at Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a novel which has recently inspired many visual adaptations: several films and even a comic book. However, Anna Karenina has had few contemporary retellings in novels- at least, few that are obvious about their connection. I am thinking about the way Anna Karenina has helped shape a modern “Chick Lit” genre, to help me understand how contemporary female authors respond to and rework the trope of the adulterous woman that Anna Karenina popularized. This trope in “Chick Lit” is reclaimed by (typically) white female authors in order to create a feminist narrative, but not one that is necessarily intersectional.

Using feminist critical theory, it can be conceived that Tolstoy’s “othering” of Anna Karenina, an adulterous woman, is only justified by her suicide. She is punished for her deviation from societal norms with a tragic demise. The modern reworking of this trope often includes a happy ending for the “Anna Karenina”-esque heroine, typically a sexually liberated white heterosexual woman. However, her status as an “other” feels ingenuine, given the nature of modern feminism; thus, her happy ending does not come as a surprise, nor is it particularly empowering for a diverse audience.

I will be looking at feminist criticisms of Anna Karenina, for example, “Women, Character, and Society in Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ by Gayle Greene. I will also be focusing on modern works which borrow extensively from the tropes Anna Karenina inspired, analyzing the way contemporary feminist writers subvert the narrative of the “othered” adulteress, and how they miss the mark. The “Chick Lit” books that I will be looking at alongside Anna Karenina include Bridget Jones’ Diary, Sex in the City, among others.

Critical article: Greene, Gayle. “Women, Character, and Society in Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina.’” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 1977, pp. 106–125. 

Located on Jstor.

Authorial Intent and Affective Stylistics: The Philosophy of Manipulation

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The critical concept I chose to focus on from this week’s reading was affective stylistics. Tyson writes that affective stylistics involves the piece of writing being “examined closely, often line by line…in order to understand how (stylistics) it affects (affective) the reader in the process of reading (167).  In order to experiment with applying reader response criticism to a text, I reread “The Philosophy of Composition” by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s essay examines his own writing of “The Raven”, a poem which he himself deems “most generally known” (1). Poe says about “The Raven” that “it is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition—that the work proceeded step by step, to its completion, with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem “ (Poe 1).  Poe talks in this essay about a “unity of effect” that he strives for in his poems. Reader response criticism values the reader’s interpretation of the text, but this seems to be inherently tied to authorial intent. For example, in “The Philosophy of Composition”, Edgar Allan Poe writes about his thought process in planning “The Raven” not only in order to draw appreciation to his genius in method. He also writes it in order to but also more acclaim to an already highly acclaimed poem. He explains and analyzes his own poem, highlighting the same affects that a reader might point out in order to play off the reader-response mindset to his benefit.

Poe attempts to manipulate the reader’s response to his essay through his critique of other writers and thorough analysis of his own text. This text serves to deliver more attention to writing methodology as well as to the product. I believe Poe would agree with those who practice the criticism of affective stylistics because they believe that “the text consists of the results it produces, and those results occur within the reader” (167). I attempted to apply affective stylistics to “The Philosophy of Composition”, thinking about this essay as “an event that occurs in time” (Tyson 167). I took a small portion to focus on specifically, hoping to follow Tyson’s advice in describing this style of criticism. I looked at the “textual cues” from Poe’s introduction (169). Poe writes, “I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written by any author who would—that is to say, who could—detail, step by step, the processes by which any one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to the world, I am much at a loss to say—but, perhaps, the autorial vanity has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause” (Poe 1).

To examine this sentence from a reader response standpoint, I believe it is possible to see how a writer consciously thinks about and can attempt to manipulate reader response. Poe writes at first in the hypothetical: “How interesting a magazine paper might be written” (Poe 1). The irony in this statement lies in the fact that he is essentially calling his own paper interesting. Poe then implies that he is one of the only authors capable of attempting such a feat: “by any author who would—that is to say, who could—” Poe draws a (1). Poe’s language differentiates himself from other writers, giving the cause for the lack of papers like his own as “autorial vanity” (1). This is an ironic statement, given that Poe has been patting himself on the back for the last few sentences, but it shows the conscious effort on Poe’s part to manipulate the opinion of the public in his favor. The result that this text produces, to borrow Tyson’s phrasing, is an essay that builds up Poe’s reputation as a writer of both poetry and analysis. I believe that the limit of affective stylistics is that it does not give as much credit to authors who also think of the text from a reader-response standpoint.

Works Cited:

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Philosophy of Composition.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, 13 Oct. 2009, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69390/the-philosophy-of-composition.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2015

Far From Close Reading

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Megan Walsh

The critical concept that interested me most was one that I was not unfamiliar with. In high school, close reading was emphasized as part of a New Criticism-leaning curriculum. However, I have never questioned or considered the potential limitations or relevancy of close reading, nor its connection to New Criticism. Lois Tyson explains New Criticism as a movement characterized by a dedication to the text as a singular entity (130). It moves away from the earlier method of analysis, focus on authorial intent and historical context, and focuses singularly on the work itself (Tyson 130). New Critics emphasize a strict focus on the work in question with no outside knowledge or contextualization; they believe that the text speaks for itself and all other information is irrelevant.

New Criticism holds that in order to analyze and understand a work’s underlying meaning, one must only look for the answers in the text itself by reading closely. Close reading can also mean slow reading, or deliberately and carefully looking for deeper meaning and connections in a text. Even individual words can be analyzed within a text and change the meaning of the overall piece through connotation. Close reading recognizes this and, as a strategy, aims to reach a broader understanding of a text and its relevancy to humanity and overarching themes by analyzing details within the text. The strategy of close reading aims to examine “all the evidence provided by the language of the text itself: its images, symbols, metaphors, rhyme, meter, point of view, setting, characterization, plot, and so forth, which, because they form, or shape, the literary work are called its formal elements” (Tyson 131). I found that although new criticism has waned in popularity, close reading is still a key part of current literary practice.

However, form does dictate close reading’s relevancy to a certain extent. There may be limitations to close reading that I had not previously thought possible. I realized this while reading Cleanth Brooks’ “An Account of Keats’ Urn”, a close reading analysis of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Brooks draws evidence stanza by stanza to support his claim of a larger connection that justifies the final paradox of the poem as “in character”: “But to return to the larger pattern of the poem: Keats does something in this fourth stanza which is highly interesting in itself and thoroughly relevant to the sense in which the urn is a historian” (Brooks 9). I agree with Brooks in that I believe formally close reading may be necessary to ascertain the overlying meaning of this poem or justify the last few lines. Poetry lends itself to close reading on a formal level. However, Brooks’ writing points out a glaring flaw of the strategy; the double bind of close reading is revealed.

Brooks close reads in order to pick out evidence for his argument, glossing over lines that do not support his claim. It is nearly impossible to close read everything in the poem, but entirely necessary to do so in order to create the unity and wholeness desired by those who uphold close reading. In order to look at the whole text and nothing but the text, and to achieve a singular effect, close reading must be applied to every stanza in order to not miss any chance for analysis that might change the poem’s meaning. After all, if every word counts, doesn’t glossing over lines leave potential analysis out? This is the paradox that created the biggest limitation of close reading for me. I decided to apply this to another work that differed in form, The Great Gatsby, in order to look at Tyson’s example in a different light. To look at The Great Gatsby from a New Criticism lens is to risk close reading for the wrong reasons. To decontextualize Gatsby from the American Dream and the time period is to miss greater themes that characterize the novel. Also, depending on which parts of the novel one close reads, very different types of criticism become necessary. For instance, one could hypothetically perform a close reading of The Great Gatsby which focuses only on Nick’s interactions with Gatsby, thus leading to an analysis centered around themes of hero worship and even homosocial bonding, missing the larger themes Daisy represents in the text and Gatsby’s real motivations.

To go further with this idea, I wondered if it were possible to close read a text in a way that goes completely against its purpose as a work, and I believe that by picking and choosing which passages one reads from, this is a legitimate problem. How much of a given text are we missing by close reading? Is it possible to apply close reading wholly to longer texts, such as Moby Dick, without skipping over parts of the novel? I wondered if close reading could get too close and miss the point of a text. I think that sometimes it may be necessary to get further away from close reading, to contextualize a text and look for broader themes in the novel by looking at a text without a (potentially too narrow) New Criticism lens.

Works Cited:

Brooks, Cleanth. “History without Footnotes: An Account of Keats’ Urn.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 52, no. 1, 1944, pp. 89–101.

 Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004.


Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. 3rded., Routledge, 2015. 

Poetryfoundation.org. (2019). Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats: The Poetry Foundation. [online] Available at: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173742