Something to Consider in Relation to Huey's Project

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Being Political: Martin R. Delany's Blake or the Huts of America

After I finished reading Martin R. Delany’s Blake or The Huts of America, I had the same thought I had when I first read Timothy B. Tyson’s biography of Robert F. Williams, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams & the Roots of Black Power. I thought, here is a piece of political contestation I have not encountered before and it is powerful. In Radio Free Dixie, Tyson traces Robert Williams’s struggles to remove the oppressive and violent system set against African-Americans in the South, during the mid-1900s. He demonstrates Williams’s efforts and connections to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and how these two as portrayed in Williams’s life, worked in conjunction with one another and not separately. So what exactly made Delaney’s text so much like Williams’s real struggles? Was it the fact that in Blake, Henry, the protagonist, starts off in the South, then goes North (to Canada), then goes back to the South and eventually travels to Cuba while leading a rebellion? This is probably part of it, as Williams was a civil rights leader who also started out in the South, then travelled north, and in 1961 went to Cuba and broadcasted “Radio Free Dixie.” But reading Andy Doolen’s analysis of Blake helped me understand that, that is not the only reason why I found Delany’s fictional narrative so influential.

In “‘Be Cautious of the Word “Rebel,”’ Doolen shows how Delany’s careful examination of the “pan-African thematics” (156) gave him the tools and ideas to move away from,

the formulaic and political restrictions of abolitionists writing and gave this versatile writer another genre with which to represent the African American experience [and that] No artificial binary between history and fiction can disguise the fact that Delany’s only novel is one of the finest studies available of how slavery corrupted nineteenth-century American language. (Doolen 156)

Here, Doolen explains, that it was Delany’s life experiences and refined studies of the how other abolitionists were writing about freedom and equality that allowed him to create a “transnationalist vision,” which eloquently portrayed the power dynamics of slavery during the 1800s. In addition, Doolen shows how Delany’s visualization of slavery not only captured the power dynamics of the time, but also how U.S. capitalism was highly intertwined in it (165). Delany’s ability to write about slavery from a more nuanced, but also globalized perspective, is what makes his work so similar to Williams’s life. However, I would add that Delany’s vision is also different because it responds to slavery in a political manner.

In Contesting Citizenship, Anne McNevin argues that being political is about creating contestations that allow for a potential change or “transformation” (98). I believe that this is also part of why Delany’s text is so significant, because while it offers many moments of Henry witnessing the violence and horrors of slavery (many re-created from non-fictional accounts), it also permits a new vision for how to overthrow it. The notion of forming a new vision relates to Floyd J. Miller’s response to the fact that readers will never know the actual conclusion of the novel. He writes, “yet the very inconclusiveness of the novel as it now exists—the rebellion in process—is perhaps more relevant today than any ending Delany could possibly have conceived” (XXV).  In other words, the very fact that the texts exists and leaves readers in the building of rebellion is political because it allows us to think about how transformation can occur.

*On a side note, and maybe something we can discuss in class, I am not sure how I feel about the Nwankwo’s use of “cosmopolitan” citizenship, especially when he claims that they can “craft notions of self and community that cross or negate national borders” (584).

Fictions of the Trans-American Imaginary in Edward Judson's Magdalena, The Beautiful Mexican Maid

In “Fictions of the Trans-American Imaginary,” Moya and Saldívar explore new beginnings for the field of American Literature through what they term the “trans-American imaginary.” Equivalent to Alemán’s “inter-American” approach, the trans-American imaginary allows for a re-thinking of what many scholars in American Literature came to view and accept as the “exceptionality of the American experience” (4) as portrayed in the U.S. literary canon. According to Moya and Saldívar, the trans-American approach seeks to

recognize the influence on literature of competing nationalisms (the existence and stubborn persistence of regional voices, popular styles, or minority group identifications) within the borders of the nation. But is also the case that much American Literature responds to ideological pressures from outside the geopolitical borders of the sovereign United States. (4)

They explain that this approach looks for contact zones, and “boundary-crossings” within and outside of the national fictions, with an emphasis on within and outside (as suggested by their use of italics). In other words, this framework can not only be applied to literary fictions outside and in relation to the U.S., but also to American texts which have been produced as a response to U.S. cross-language and cultural interactions. Therefore this approach expands and complicates our understandings of American identities, and includes texts which reveal various levels of hybridity, transculturismo, and translingualism. It crosses both geopolitical and imaginary borders.

In addition, while this framework seeks to expand our knowledge of an American literary canon, it also recognizes the pushing and pulling forces of imagined nationalisms, and their dystopias as “constructed within and from out of utopias” in various U.S. localized fictions (Moya and Saldívar 9, 16).Thus, the trans-American framework becomes a suitable lens to explore works such as, Edward Judson’s Magdalena, The Beautiful Mexican Maid. Judson’s novelette focuses on Magdalena, a Mexican woman of Spanish descent, who falls in love with Charles Brackett, an American soldier of Spanish descent, at the rise of the U.S.-Mexico War. Judson localizes his fiction at the Texas, US-Mexico border and travels as far as Orizaba, Vera Cruz in Mexico. He does so in order to create a fictional tale of the War and the lives of those who occupied the “borderlands.”

*It is important to note that Judson places Charles within the national boundaries by making him an American citizen, and outside by giving him a Spanish heritage. In addition, he places Magdalena in similar terms by making her a Mexican national, but also the daughter of European immigrants. Thus both Charles and Magdalena are of European heritage and “creole” children of immigrants.

The trans-American lens is not only suitable to Judson’s text because it deals with the borderlands, but also because it is a nationalistic text produced in response to the interests of the readers. Johanseen notes, “[novelette authors like Judson] were not artists but professional writers—hacks—whose talents were shaped by the demands of the marketplace” (To the Halls of the Montezumas: A War Literature 189). As Moya and Saldívar argue,

national identities are specific local knowledges. To be an American in south Texas is therefore different from being and American New England, even though there may be continuity between the two locally specific claims to the national identity of “American.” In the Southwest, to be an American means, among other things, not being Mexican. Conversely, in New England being an American has nothing to do with no being English, let alone Mexican […] Mexican is irrelevant for how Americans in the Northeast understand and interpret their own “American” identity. (16)

With this framework in mind, I want to discuss two moments in the narrative which demonstrate the production of the “trans-American imaginary.”

            The first moment occurs early in the narrative. General Taylor is looking for someone who can serve as a spy but will not betray the country. He sends for Captain Walker and, Walker recommends Charles Brackett. General Taylor poses his proposition in the following manner, “Not that I doubt either your bravery or your tact, but you are not dark enough, nor look sufficiently like a Mexican. I must have a man whose looks and knowledge of the language will enable him to pass for a native of Mexico,” Walker then says that Brackett is the right person for the job because he speaks Spanish and is “full as dark” (26). General Taylor then hesitates, and asks,

“Is he faithful, will not his Spanish blood, cause him to lean toward the other side a little?” “If to hate the Mexicans as few can hate; if to thirst for their blood, as the desert thirst for the dews of night; if to live under the weight of a fearful oath to revenge and outrage mother and sister, whose corpses are now moldering in a bloody grave near San Jacinto, will ensure his faith to us, then feel secure that Charles Brackett will never prove a traitor.” (26)

This passage demonstrates that in Judson’s imaginary fiction Americans of Mexican and Spanish descent, like Charles Brackett, have been a part of the Southwest history since before the time of the U.S.-Mexico War. However, they have also been categorized based on the localized competing nationalisms and long established racial hierarchies. This can be seen through the questions about Brackett’s phenotype and whether or not he will be faithful. What is most interesting to notice here is Captain Walker’s response as to why Charles won’t betray them, he says that Charles’s promise to avenge his mother’s and sister’s death will guarantee his loyalty. This goes back to Streeby’s idea of consensus and nationalism, but also to Moya and Saldivar’s point about inside and outside, and dystopias within utopia. So Charles’s loyalty is a form of U.S. nationalism and utopia of a growing and faithful nation, but also one with justified means for violence. This type of nationalism—which justifies violence—strongly  resembles white supremacy, functioning within the state borders, but in response to economic and political conditions of contraction, minority migration, and scapegoating in times of war.

            The second passage which demonstrates Judson’s trans-imaginary is his choice to have Magdalena sing in “Spanish” (32, 33, 53). Magdalena sings, “Se fue el hechizo, Del alma mia, Y mi alegnia Se fué también” (53). The first time Magdalena sings, Alemán and Streeby note that Judson’s Spanish is “imprecise” (290), I would add that, it is English influenced, and written as heard from an Anglophone range. But Judson’s use of Spanish reveals much more than his developing writing skills (in Spanish). His use of Spanish demonstrates what would have been expected from his readership, and the kinds of influences he interpreted as Mexican or Spanish (From Spain, not Latin America). These passages demonstrate the complexities of the American identity as seen through “spelling” the trans-American imaginary. One could also argue that Judson is engaging in translingualism—and to argue this I would end up writing an entire other blog, so I am happy to discuss this in class. One other thing I did not get to discuss here, but would love to talk about in class is how these “hybrid” identities are in flux. For example, Magdalena starts out as Mexican, then moves to Spanish, and then becomes quasi-American and then Spanish and Mexican again.           

Unveiling Empire(s) in George Lippard's 'Bel of Prairie Eden: A Romance of Mexico

            I was glad to re-read Jesse Alemán’s “The Other Country: Mexico, The United States, and the Gothic History of Conquest,” not only for its applicability to George Lippard’s ‘Bel of Prairie Eden: A Romance of Mexico, but also because after having read Lippard’s sensationalist novel I can better understand why Alemán fears the possibility of “reproducing a hemispheric paradigm” (409), and therefore chooses an inter-American approach (which Moya and Saldívar identify as the “trans-American imaginary” (419)). Alemán explains that an inter-American framework allows for the unveiling of how the US and Mexico “share a familial relation that vexes citizenship as much as it troubles their national literary histories, for their confluences indicate how one country is already embedded within the history of the other, because the borders across the Americas are so porous” (410). Alemán argues that through the exploration of US nationalist texts, such as ‘Bel, much of the exposed conflicted history and destiny of Mexico reveals the “fate” and “sameness” of the US (419-20). Thus, John Grywin’s revenge and marriage to Isora not only functions as a parallel to Don Antonio’s and Isabel’s rape relationship, but also as a marker of how John, as a representation of the US, acts in the same manner as Don Antonio.

However, it is also important to note that the “difference” to which Alemán alludes to by reversing Mignolo’s argument about difference and sameness is presented through the rhetoric of justice. This becomes salient when John marks the enactment of his revenge as the day he has sex with Isora for the first time. The narrator tells,

John Grywin comes to Vera Cruz, finds entrance into the home of the sister, and night after night, sitting by her side, with her soft hand within his own, tells her the moving—somewhat melancholy—story of his life, and wins her heart forever…Well, after all his plans are laid, John Grywin, being still in pursuit of justice, brings the threads of destiny together on the night of the 9^th of March, 1847. Look yonder, Father Pedro! Behold the barren Isle of Sacrificios! There, in the sepulchers of the Aztec race, my bridal bed is waiting for me now. (155)

Here the many intersections between Don Antonio’s rape of Isabela, his representation of the Mexican nation, and John’s justification for manipulating and seducing Isadora become visible. In addition, this passage highlights the Mexican nation in relation to its indigenous, but also imperial Aztec roots. This moment in the narrative also demonstrates Lippard’s intentions to construct a violent and impure Mexican history which validates American expansion, but ultimately works to reveal the US’s inherently colonial mindset. 

The idea of Mexican history as constructed by US nationalist written works in relation to Mexico and the Mexican-American War can also be seen through Shelley Streeby’s American Sensations. Streeby centers her argument on the power of Lippard’s sensationalist works, and notes the element of imperialism in the US depictions of Manifest Destiny. She writes, “this fiction’s mode of production, which accounts for its relative immediacy…often has the effect of foregrounding the gaps, contradictions, and seamy underside of the ideological projects of white settler colonialism and Manifest Destiny” (Streeby 40). Through her in-depth analysis of Lippard’s novels, Legends of Mexico and ‘Bel, Streeby demonstrates how the impure depictions of Mexico and the borderlands (in ‘Bel’s case Texas) reveal “the age of U.S. empire-building” (73). Moreover, Streeby notes that Lippard’s literary works do not just show US empire-building by their vanishing of Native Americans (Dippie’s argument) or removal of conquest scenes, but rather by their depiction of consensual agreements between the US and Mexico (73). Compromise or consensual relations become obvious all throughout ‘Bel, not only in the passage that Streeby notes about Isora’s agreement to marry John, but also as the motivator for the narrative which is John’s revenge. Revenge as compromise becomes obvious in ‘Bel when John returns home from the Texas frontier to find out that his father has been murdered and his sister has been raped and John and the others tell the monk “You will confess, Father Pedro, that John Grywin and Don Antonio Marin have a long account to settle whenever they may chance to meet” (Lippard 154-55). This moment shows that even Father Pedro, who demands peace, must accept that revenge will be taken, and through violent means. In other words, that revenge has a justification.

Black Hawk's Counter Narrative

            In “Documenting Tradition: Territoriality and Textuality in Black Hawk’s Narrative,” Mark Rifkin argues that Life of Black Hawk “functions as a self-consciously traditionalist critique of the mappings and subjectivities of U.S. Indian policy” (681). He claims that although translated and edited, Life offers a contesting narrative that depicts Black Hawk’s “effort to redress white misunderstanding of him and his people” (Rifkin 681). In addition, Rifkin claims that even though many often focus on not being able to identify a “real” Black Hawk voice that should not become the center of assessment for the text, since the narrative has much more to offer than what may be perceived as an authentic Native American voice, especially given its socio-historical context speaking to white supremacy. I find Rifkin’s argument helpful and on point in relation to how I interpreted Black Hawk’s narrative.

            Twenty pages into Life I began to think of it as a counter narrative because of its depiction of a matured Black Hawk, self-reflexing on his experiences, and trying to fill-in gaps to the historical parts he saw as untold, thus, formulating an alternative narrative that places the colonial narrative in question. Such moments of questioning or opposing views in the narrative seem to generate the richest parts of Black Hawk’s narrative. One of these moments can be seen when Black Hawk confronts the white American “war chief” and tells him that,

‘We had never sold our country. We never received annuities from our American father! And we are determined to hold on to our village!’                                                                                                           The war chief, apparently angry, rose and said:—‘Who is Black Hawk? Who is Black Hawk?’                                                                                                                                                                    I responded: ‘I am a Sac! My forefather was a Sac! And all the nations call me a SAC!!’                                                                                                                                                     The war chief said: ‘I came here neither to beg nor hire you to leave your village. My business is to remove you, peaceably, if I can, but forcibly if I must! I will now give you two days to remove in—and if you do not cross the Mississippi within that time, I will adopt measures to force you away!’ (Hawk 65)

Here, it becomes obvious that Black Hawk and his people cannot conceive of the idea of selling their land. As Rifkin also points out in his analysis of a similar passage, the “demand for land would have been alien to the Sauks, not having been part of prior negotiations with the French, Spanish, or British” (683). Moreover, this excerpt points to Black Hawk’s strong “we” identification in which Native peoples perceive themselves as part of their nation, and not as individuals—also a part of Rifkin’s critique (693). Lastly, this moment emphasizes the use of force, and a frustrated “war chief” who cannot accept the idea of Native nations wishing to maintain their lands, but also a “brave” Black Hawk who is not afraid to provide a counter-argument. 

Catlin and Huey: “When the lights go out for good, my people will still be here. We have our ancient ways. We will remain” (Olowan Thunder Hawk Martinez)

Like Michelle, I want to use this blog as a way to think about some of the images provided by both Catlin and Huey and in light of our secondary readings.

In “Cultural Nationalism, Westward Expansion and the Production of Imperial Landscape,” Gareth John studies George Catlin’s paintings in relationship to 19^th century American ideas of the “vanishing” Native American (Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy). John argues that as much as Catlin sought to provide an accurate depiction of what he saw, his “quest for realism…inadvertently naturalized conventional, romantic, cultural nationalistic ways of seeing the Native American West as rapidly vanishing in the wake of ‘progress’” (186). Here, John discusses the “ambivalence of Catlin’s imperial vision of the West” (186), and his paintings reiteration of a disappearing Native American race. John frames his argument about Catlin’s “naturalization” through his analysis of two of Catlin’s oil canvas paintings, Big bend on the Upper Missouri (1832) and River Buffs (1832), and explains how both of the landscapes not only captured the vast extension of Western land, but also the vision of “unattained ‘progress’” and vast amounts of water. He also looks at how Catlin’s light effects offer inviting and natural scenes, in which only one Native American man appears to be present (John 186-190). Thus, hinting at the Native American disappearance and a westward gaze, which possibly focused on “unclaimed” lands—not recognizing Native claims to the land.

A Comanche family outside their teepee, 1841       

While Catlin’s 1841 Comanche Family (image to the left) primarily focuses on portraying the Native American family, the painting depicts many of the imperial complexities that John exposes about Catlin’s paintings. Catlin paints a family of five, in which there appears to be no older male figure. And while the family is the center of the image, the landscape which surrounds them becomes unavoidable to the eye. The clear skies and far mountains appear inviting as they reinforce notions of an aesthetic and unharmed nature.  In addition, the family’s clothes or children’s nudity seem to reassert colonial notions of the “uncivilized.” The portrayal of the family without a male figure, a Tepee in its direct background, the ragged native clothing, and the inert body language of the older female—perhaps the mother—create a sense of a passive and fading beauty. Moreover, the image without a father figure points to vanishing generations.

 In contrast with Catlin’s paintings are Aaron Huey’s photographs of the Buffalo in the reservation, and Theo White Plume and his horse (shown below). 

Theo White Plume and his horse, 2011

These two images not only reassert the endurance and perseverance of indigenous peoples, but also mark their close relationship with nature, as both the Buffalo and the horses remain present. It also shows how the Lakota nation and their animals have adapted to the imposed land and confinement in the reservation. They show how despite multiple forms of violence, genocides, exclusions, and confinements, indigenous peoples cultural knowledge and ways with nature remain vital to human existence. 

Buffalo in the Reservation, 2011

At the same time, the Buffalo in the reservation picture also shows the deeply rooted “colonial wounds” or “scars” of imperialism and “modernity” (Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera; Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America), in which, the reservation appears as an abandoned field, where even the grass fails to grow. This image speaks of the complexities about Native American reservations and their peoples in our present time. Its grayish light and cloudy skies demonstrate how “progress” continues to affect the ancestors of “our” American land, but that does not mean that they are asking to be saved—as Olowan Thunder Hawk Martinez eloquently points out in “The Shadow of Wounded Knee,” it just means that despite all they will continue to persevere, because they always have. Lastly, and as a comment more than an analysis, I really like Huey’s act of "rhetorical listening" (Krista Ratcliffe) and going back to the Lakota people to present other images about Native lives, but I also think that his earlier images are sometimes necessary in the eyes of those who have never even considered the effects of the “American history” he discusses in his Ted Talk. His earlier images provide a depiction of marginalized poverty on reservations, or the “modernization” of misery, as the nation’s outsiders and perhaps few elites in the reservations promote economic progress—despite social segregation and economic disparity.

Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok

I must admit that while I was reading Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok I struggled to find interest in the narrative. A hundred and twenty pages into the novel, and having read Carolyn Karcher’s introduction, I realized that Mary’s interracial marriage to Hobomok would only take place out of Mary’s desperation (Child 123,125, 133,135). However, after reading Brian W. Dippie’s first three chapters of The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy, I found more potential in Hobomok. Dippie argues that during the 1800s the idea of the “vanishing” Native American race became a widely spread notion, which allowed “progressive” Anglo-Americans to reassert and to construct and American identity. Dippie writes,

the ‘inoxerable destiny’ of the Indians, like that of the wilderness with which they shared an almost symbiotic relationship, was to recede before civilization’s advance. Their fate had important implications for white Americans self-consciously searching for a national identity. (15)

Here, Dippie explains that disseminating inaccurate notions about the genocide of Native Americans, not only reinforced thoughts of more “civilized” times, but also ideas of a growing white American identity. Also that progress would become exclusively tied to the changing landscape, in which Native Americans would have to disappear because of their perceived interdependent relationship with the wilderness. The conception of a vanishing Native American race as part of an inevitable “destiny” becomes salient in Hobomok’s departure. After Charles Brown comes back from England and encounters Hobomok in the forest, Hobomok leaves. In fact, he seems to vanish into the wilderness. The narrator tells, “He paused on a neighboring hill, looked toward his wigwam… with a bursting heart again murmured his farewell and blessing forever passed away from New England” (Child 141). Thus, Hobomok appears to move deeper into the forest and disappear. After reading Dippie’s text, this passage seemed much more meaningful. It not only depicts Dippie’s point about the destined desertion of Native Americans, but also Karcher’s claim about Child’s growth as an advocate for equality.

In Hobomok, Child presents her early understanding of racial co-existence and intermingling, which based on the ending of the novel is destined to fail. Child’s Hobomok demonstrates how constructions of identity and nation permeate a text, and work to reassert such notions. For example, although the innovative part of this text is the idea of a white puritan daughter running away into the wilderness to marry a Native American, the narrative’s conclusion deems the idea of interracial marriage as desperate and fatal. Also the erasure of a Native American identity in Hobomok’s son (Child 150) works to reiterate the idea that power remains in the hands of the imagined growing white population—which connects to Ezra F. Tawil’s “Domestic Frontier Romance, or, How the Sentimental Heroine Became White.” Therefore Hobomok becomes interesting because of how it depicts the complexities of marking a change in understanding racial relations in America, and also how writing allows an author to develop new and more complex ideas about race. In Child’s case, writer’s growth can be seen in  her An Appeal For the Indians, which although far from perfect—and still saturated by the kind of nostalgia unveiled in Lora Romero’s “Vanishing Americans: Gender, Empire and New Historicism”—the text, certainly demonstrates a much more politicized and conscious writer…but we can talk about this in class. I am curious to hear what others thought. 

Humanity in Algiers: or the Story of Azem

         While I have a very difficult time accepting Henry Petter’s 1971 argument that the narrative of Humanity in Algiers: or the Story of Azem functions “to illustrate the hardships endured by slaves, whether Americans in Algiers or Negroes in the United States” (Faherty and White 2). I find great value in both Majid’s and Marr’s arguments—respectively—that this text demonstrates the “‘hypocrisy and double standards’ of the U.S. in regards to slavery, [and] a view of Islam as a potentially benevolent system of morality” (Faherty and White 2-3). Arguments like Petter’s always puzzle me because they tend to further this notion that people need some type of narrative reminder to know that enslaving human beings is morally wrong. However, Majid’s argument seems on point in relation to the United States ideology of global exceptionalism we have discussed in class. Yet it is Marr’s argument that really intrigues me, because as I was reading Humanity I was able to see how Islam indeed functions as a “benevolent system of morality,” which appears to offer an alternative framework to U.S. exceptionalism and Christianity in terms of literacy and enslavement.  When I refer to an alternative framework I have Frederick Douglass’s life history in mind. In the U.S. context of slavery, literacy was seen as a threat to the system. Douglass’s autobiography not only shows how he taught himself to read and write, but also how his male owner and others negatively reacted to Douglass’s literacy. Hence, the U.S. notion of Christian morality seems comparable to the one offered in Humanity.

In the beginning of Humanity the narrator—a White American man—introduces his “benefactor,” Azem. He explains that Azem was a former slave who was “gifted” to his first owners at a young age. He also adds that Azem was treated like any of the other children in the house. Sequida, “his mistress taught him the knowledge of letters, so that he could read any part of the Alcoran: and careful she was to teach him the faith of Mehometinsm, and to instruct him in all the ceremonies of her religion” (Faherty and White 7). Here—and in addition to the footnotes—it becomes clear that Azem became literate for religious study, and to morally follow the Muslim faith.

The idea of a Muslim morality also becomes salient when Omri tries to make a case for Azem’s freedom. Omri asks Sequida “‘have you not taught [Azem] to read the Alcoran, and instructed him in the moral law?’ [to which Sequida eventually replies] ‘My friend, my warmest thanks are due to you, for the pains you have taken in explaining my duty. May my God forgive my late unwillingness to obey his commands’” (Faherty and White 11). Sequida’s response concurs with Marr’s argument about Islam as a benevolent system of morality, in which she is responsible for teaching Azem how to read the Koran and also answering to a greater and “divine law” which asks that she grants him his freedom. Thus, Azem’s religious identity should be understood as that of a Muslim. However, the only times Azem performs his Muslim faith is when he implores God to allow him freedom (Faherty and White 8), a notion that seems more likely to align with the Judeo-Christian identity.  In fact, when Azem marries Shelimah there is no image of a particular faith. The narrator simply tells, “their hands were at length joined in marriage; and festivity and mirth” (Faherty and White 28).

In the preface to Humanity editors Duncan Faherty and Ed White explain that Humanity’s author is unknown, but that the text may be attributed to Robert Moffitt. Moffitt published a great number of Baptist writings in a community that “was somewhat local,” and associated with the Shaftsbury Baptist culture. Faherty and White also explain that “abolition groups had a denominational orientation, meaning that abolitionist arguments were couched in spiritual and theological terms and often linked with institutional practices and pressures” (1). If U.S. Christian abolitionists groups often used religious rhetoric to point out the immorality of slavery, then how can we understand Azem’s neutralized Muslim identity? Should we interpret it as the result of a deeply entrenched U.S. exceptionalism, which does not permit both a “benevolent form of Muslim morality” and a salient Muslim identity?

Sansay's Secret History

I really enjoyed reading Leonora Sansay’s Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo because it allowed me to develop some of the “transnational methodologies” that Sandra Gustafson describes in “Histories of Democracy and Empire.” Gustafson argues that in order for early-Americanists to adopt a transnational model, which “replace[s] nationalist history…[they] need a form of historical criticism capable of presenting the complex circumstances of colonization and national emergence rather than the generalized history of the national narrative” (109). I embrace the move towards a more nuanced study of historical contact zones in the Americas, in order to better understand linkages that connect the past with the present, and future (in American Literature). Using Gustafson’s proposed practice, I dig deeper into Sansay’s exoticism of the creole women (a move often understood as nationalist) and explore Elizabeth Dillon’s argument that Sansay is also identifying herself as part of the creole community she describes (88). To do this I employ Walter Mignolo’s discussion of the meaning of creole.

In The Idea of Latin America Mignolo explains that in the colonial Americas, especially in their Caribbean islands creole was not only an identity tied to birth place, but also racial and ethnic affiliation. Thus, there were creoles of Afro-descent, creoles of European descent, and creoles of Indian descent (Mignolo 63,73). Even though Sansay never uses her “secret history” to declare that creoles are only of European descent, she does not refer to other groups, such as people of African heritage born in Saint Domingue (or the “New World”) as creoles. She instead, as Dillon explains, utilizes Mary’s character to dedicate a great deal of her epistolary narrative describing the behaviors and occurrences of women she identifies as creole. For example, Mary’s letter narrating her experience about being on the same vessel as a group of Creole women demonstrates how Mary envisions the creole women as a culture of their own. She writes,

There’s something inconceivably interesting in these ladies. Young, beautiful, and destitute of all resource, supporting with cheerfulness their wayward fortune. But the most captivating trait in their character is their fondness for their children! The Creole ladies, marrying very young appear more like the sisters than the mothers of their daughters. Unfortunately they grow up too soon, and not frequently become the rivals of their mothers. (Sansay 110)

Here, like in many other passages, Sansay hyper-sexualizes Creole women by speaking about their marriages and childbirth at a young age. In addition, she characterizes them as sensitive and motherly oriented, and gives them what could be understood as an Oedipus complex. However, as Dillon also points out, Sansay draws a clear division between the European and creole women by distinguishing the ways in which they both use or dispose of their available “resources.” Hence, hinting at Sansay’s potential identification as creole.

Like Dillon, I see how the use of resources would allow Sansay to potentially identify as creole, but I would add that this is also possible because of the way she blurs the lines for the creole identity, and utilizes Mary’s and Clara’s characters to display what Mignolo identifies as the “White/Creole…double consciousness” (63).  Sansay, displays double consciousness or “consciousness of not being who [she is] supposed to be (Europeans)” and having to validate herself as a woman of the New World (Mignolo 63) by demonstrating two ways of thinking and seeing the condition of the creole woman. For example, through Mary’s description, Sansay sees the creole woman as less-structured than the European woman, but much more sensitive and careful of her surroundings.

Transculturalismo, Not "Aesthetic Transnationalism"

           Last week when we began exploring the transnational field of American Literature, I expected a strong scholarly divide in the articles we read. One side cheering for the move and the other, perhaps more cautious, overwhelmed, and neutral. I knew I would find myself somewhere in a liminal range leaning towards “transnational,” but knowing that what most mean by transnational is not necessarily what scholars envision. How did I know where I would stand about a literary transnational mindset? My research interests are in translingual rhetoric and composition. I have encountered many of these questions about where and how to draw the limits to “trans”: How does transnational defy or reassert power dynamics? Is transnational a more inclusive or exclusive disposition? And as Wess pointed out on my first blog, does a transnational identity “suppress” or “erase” the original identity?

Because of these questions I found Winfried Fluck’s “A New Beginning?: Transnationalisms” very intriguing,  but problematic. While I appreciated Fluck’s acknowledgement that transnationalism can imply more than one interpretation, I found his category of “aesthetic transnationalism” limiting.  Fluck utilizes Levander’s and Fishkin’s Presidential Address to reduce transnationalism to a “phenomena [which] enrich[es], revitalize[es], sometimes intoxicat[es] experience” (368) or  simply, a shift which compels American culture to become “a happy global mélange in which it feels quite at home, because the global dominance of American culture receives an entirely new explanation” (369). In short, Fluck poses aesthetic transnationalism—one out of the two categories he creates for transnationalism—as a utopian neoliberal borderless society. Fluck then adds that “the narrative of transnational rejuvenation is therefore also the narrative of enrichment and empowerment, and in this respect comes uncomfortably close to a neoliberal celebration of free flow” (371). Here, Fluck not only sees “aesthetic transnationalism” as the ultimate global model, but also in service of the construction of nation and its narrative of U.S. exceptionalism. While some scholars may foresee transnationalism in the ways suggested by Fluck in his category of “aesthetic transnationalism,” the roots of transnationalism mindset suggest otherwise.

 Contact zones—the result of various forms of transnationalisms—as proposed by Pratts, or transculturalismo as first introduced by Ortiz in 1940, both deal with grappling with cross-cultural interactions and their complexities. This can be seen in the way that Patricia Bizell envisions contact zones in her article “‘Contact Zones’ and English Studies.” Bizell writes, “In short, I am suggesting that we organize English studies not in terms of literary or chronological periods, nor essentialized racial or gender categories, but rather in terms of historically defined contact zones, moments when different groups within the society contend for the power to interpret what is going on” (167). Here, Bizell argues that studies structured within contact zones promote context not only as a way for awareness, but for critical thinking in a system which can never function outside of the dynamics of power. This is the issue I find most disconcerting with Fluck’s idea of “aesthetic transnationalism,” the notion that any disposition may all of the sudden function outside the dynamics of power. Contact zones are always grounded in power dynamics because the concept of nation seems much too ingrained in our society.  And even though transnationalism may indeed create problematic results, as demonstrated in Alex Rivera’s talk on “Transnationalism and the Digital Nation” (Worsham Theatre, University of Kentucky, 18 Sept. 2013) it shows a stronger inclination for the exposition of diverse texts and voices within the nation. In addition, it permits a more nuanced exploration of widely read texts and their influences—so texts like Ulysess never have to leave the scenario. Therefore transnationalism may be envisioned as a moment of contact as the context for study. For example, situating power struggles, political analyses of culture, domination and resistance across borders.

As Mignolo argues, a transnational mindset illuminates contact zones and complicates our reading of texts and their “historical” significance for inventing the Americas, however, the question of identity still remains (The Idea of Latin America 2-8, 145-148). Certainly some is lost, but it seems that much is also gained. For example, the Latino identity is a result of transnationalism, not individual or national identity—one which is highly debated and contested by Latin Americans and Spaniards, but for those who fall under the category in the United States, it has served to promote a voice and attention to how Latinos have been a part of the nation since its conception.

Considering the Formation of the 'Transnational Subject": Studying Contact Zones, Multilingual Exchanges, and Cross-Cultural Interactions

This is nothing new, nothing that we haven’t heard before. Being ethnic in the US is simply being foreigner, even though for most of us America has always been our home. Take the example of Puerto Rico, which in the Downes vs. Bidwell case of 1901, the infamous Justice Edward Douglass White declared that “while in an international sense Porto Rico [poor man couldn’t pronounce his ues] was not a foreign country, it was foreign to the United States in a domestic sense.”

—Victor Villanueva, “Papers, Please: Theorizing Border Discourses after Arizona SB1070 & HB2281 Conference” University of Arizona. 13 September 2013. Keynote Address.

           

           As I read through the articles for this week, I kept thinking about the idea of what it means to reconstruct a geo-historical literature of nation that offers a more accurate and inclusive vision of events. I also thought about the risks in reconstructing from a hemispheric perspective which in many ways has already benefitted from the shared and “established” history of imperial conquests, leaving according to Walter Mignolo in The Idea of Latin America a “colonial wound” (2-8, 17).  However, Moya’s and Saldivar’s concerns for understanding the formation of the “transnational subject” of the Americas seems adequate in the current national climate on questions of Latinos senses of belonging in the United States. An American Literature, or Americas’ Literature, shift towards a more comprehensive study of hemispheric contact zones, people’s movements, and their identities does appear to offer a step away from what Moya and Saldivar identify as “binary thinking” (17). Moving away from binary thinking can help in amending inconsistent notions of belonging such as the one cited in the epigraph above. In the epigraph included, Villanueva critiques the idea that ethnicity in the U.S. has always been part of the dichotomy of foreigner and native. He demonstrates that such notion abstracts the reality of Puerto Rican citizenship and relationship to the U.S., as documented in the literature.

Moya’s and Saldivar’s interest in presenting studies which explore the transnational subject are not only appealing because they allows for a more in-depth understanding of diverse peoples in relation to the US, but also because they also call for an exploration of cross-language interactions and their influences on the production of culture and American texts. The move to a “trans” approach calls for a closer look at how cultural influences have travelled back and forth across borders and hemispheres, and have produced the contact zones of the Americas. The production of cross-cultural texts may be seen in Annette Kolodny’s study of the Yaqui Testamento, which as she explains contains a mixture of Spanish, Yaqui, and “inflections from Latin and Hebrew” (3). The close study of texts such as the Yaqui Testamento highlights the multilingual beginnings of American identity and can help strategize through current notions of linguistic universality. It can as Kolodny suggests, produce a “frontier” mindset which may claim multiple identities and dispositions in relation to the land and state, such as the linguistic attitudes demonstrated by Gloria Anzaldúa’s code-switching in Borderlands/La Frontera. In addition, a frontier mindset can add to the current scholarly orientation towards translingual exchanges and literacies in writing.

Lastly, as can be seen in Timothy Marr’s trajectory of Islam in the US, the Americanists' move to a hemispheric and global approach allows for unconsidered beginnings for the U.S. and ways to analyze how  identity can become solely a performance. Marr provides the example of Ira Aldridge, a black man who performs the performance of Arab identity and consequently erases his black identity. He demonstrates that although Aldridge is able to freely travel abroad (during the time of slavery) and gain socio-economic standing, it is at the cost of his identity (531-533). Thus, through Aldrige’s example, Marr eloquently shows how Islam has permeated much of the history of the U.S., either by its imaginative or actual presence, but like in Villanueva's case has been part of the dichotomy of foreigner and native subject.