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.