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VIII: Kristeva II/Fanon
Daliso's Post:
In Chapter Five of Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon makes many general declarations as to the image of the black man from a white patriarchal perspective. While some of his points in regard to feelings of inferiority are salient, I was rather dissatisfied by the fact that he did not delve into the construction of racism as a means for the dominant race to maintain control over subordinate racial groups. He does not once go into the historical realities of racism or link racial antagonisms to the structure of capitalist economics. I was hoping he would delve more into racial privilege and spend less time on preoblematizing what is revealed in a phrase like “Mama, see the Negro!”
But his description of blackness as it is ostensibly seen from a white perspective resurfaced in me a question that I have increasingly wondered at: in what way may we contend with the way in which white media continuously presents anything outside the confines of white experience as a mysterious, or even frightening “other?” Let me elaborate a bit on this question. It is my view (and I’d be keen to see how people might disagree with it) that white upper middle class characters with their related white upper middle class experiences are generalized as the mode or norm of human experience in both television and film. As “John Ellis said in Broadcast TV and Cultural Form,” television programmers assume their “audience takes the form of (white) families (113). Nonwhite characters are often projected as outside of the centrality of the televisual of filmic family. If not portrayed as bad guys, black characters are noted for the way in which they do not fit the norm – a fact which many will probably assume is just a point of acknowledging the black character’s racial individuality, but which I believe is a means of showing how he does not fit within the on-screen family. Now of course, this is not always the case, but it is definitely something to note. If we are under the assumption that there are certain specificities of race which should be openly demonstrated on television and film, let’s just admit this and leave media as it is. But if we want to view each other as just men (and women), then we must trouble the tendency in mainstream media to portray non-white characters as morally indigent “others.” What are the alternatives that might be proposed to current mainstream portrayals? Is it a matter of simply having more people of color involved in producing our own images, or are there certain systematic features of mainstream/white patriarchal media that can be redressed?
Also, briefly: On page 129, Fanon discusses how according to the generalized “white man,” the black man can be seen as a stage of development. This imaginary white man says “Your properties have been exhausted by us.” What does this tell us about the development of cultures? John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony referred to his settlement as a city upon the hill, remarking that it would be a light for the rest of the world. There have been people in numerous cultures who have similarly praised the success of their own civilizations above others. In this culture in which the Western way of civilization is considered the most advanced, what do we think of the prospects of undeveloped countries retaining sovereignty over their development? Especially with Western media as expansive as it is, what are the prospects for a development alternative to that which has been conceived in the West? As an extension of this, is it possible for the traditional (as in traditional ethnic culture) to be modern?
In Chapter Five of Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon makes many general declarations as to the image of the black man from a white patriarchal perspective. While some of his points in regard to feelings of inferiority are salient, I was rather dissatisfied by the fact that he did not delve into the construction of racism as a means for the dominant race to maintain control over subordinate racial groups. He does not once go into the historical realities of racism or link racial antagonisms to the structure of capitalist economics. I was hoping he would delve more into racial privilege and spend less time on preoblematizing what is revealed in a phrase like “Mama, see the Negro!”
But his description of blackness as it is ostensibly seen from a white perspective resurfaced in me a question that I have increasingly wondered at: in what way may we contend with the way in which white media continuously presents anything outside the confines of white experience as a mysterious, or even frightening “other?” Let me elaborate a bit on this question. It is my view (and I’d be keen to see how people might disagree with it) that white upper middle class characters with their related white upper middle class experiences are generalized as the mode or norm of human experience in both television and film. As “John Ellis said in Broadcast TV and Cultural Form,” television programmers assume their “audience takes the form of (white) families (113). Nonwhite characters are often projected as outside of the centrality of the televisual of filmic family. If not portrayed as bad guys, black characters are noted for the way in which they do not fit the norm – a fact which many will probably assume is just a point of acknowledging the black character’s racial individuality, but which I believe is a means of showing how he does not fit within the on-screen family. Now of course, this is not always the case, but it is definitely something to note. If we are under the assumption that there are certain specificities of race which should be openly demonstrated on television and film, let’s just admit this and leave media as it is. But if we want to view each other as just men (and women), then we must trouble the tendency in mainstream media to portray non-white characters as morally indigent “others.” What are the alternatives that might be proposed to current mainstream portrayals? Is it a matter of simply having more people of color involved in producing our own images, or are there certain systematic features of mainstream/white patriarchal media that can be redressed?
Also, briefly: On page 129, Fanon discusses how according to the generalized “white man,” the black man can be seen as a stage of development. This imaginary white man says “Your properties have been exhausted by us.” What does this tell us about the development of cultures? John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony referred to his settlement as a city upon the hill, remarking that it would be a light for the rest of the world. There have been people in numerous cultures who have similarly praised the success of their own civilizations above others. In this culture in which the Western way of civilization is considered the most advanced, what do we think of the prospects of undeveloped countries retaining sovereignty over their development? Especially with Western media as expansive as it is, what are the prospects for a development alternative to that which has been conceived in the West? As an extension of this, is it possible for the traditional (as in traditional ethnic culture) to be modern?
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| mmcarval | Kristeva Reading Part 2 | 0 | Mar 20 2007, 11:13 AM EDT by mmcarval | ||
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Thread started: Mar 20 2007, 11:13 AM EDT
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Going along with poetic language, is “thetic language” (being opposed to poetic language, according to Professor Doane’s lecture) language that does propose a critical thesis or opinion? Would Kristeva’s “From One Identity to an Other”, along with the other essays we have read for this class, count as “thetic language” since each essay proposes a thesis of some sort?
On page 125, Kristeva introduces the term “crisis” and mentions “crises of meaning, subject, and structure.” What does she mean by “crisis”? Is a crisis, for Kristeva, anything which challenges one’s already existing belief system (such as a crisis of faith)? What does Kristeva mean on page 129 when she talks about the “noesis” and “noemis” (in relation to the sign and the signified)? What do these two terms mean? On page 142, Kristeva introduces the “obscene word”. Does this refer to any curse word, or is something more complicated than that? Professor Doane said that the obscene word is a semiotic moment. Can we go over what exactly this means? Lastly, I had a hard time discerning Kristeva’s thesis in this essay. I think that her main thesis is introduced on page 125 when she says, “I shall therefore and in conclusion argue in favor of an analytical theory of signifying systems and practices that would search within the signifying phenomenon for the crisis or the unsettling process of meaning and subject rather than for the coherence or identity of either one or a multiplicity of structures.” What does this mean? - Monica M. Carvalho |
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| mmcarval | Kristeva Reading Part 1 | 0 | Mar 20 2007, 11:12 AM EDT by mmcarval | ||
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Thread started: Mar 20 2007, 11:12 AM EDT
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Reading Kristeva’s essay, I had a difficult time with some of the vocabulary she used, particularly poetic and thetic language. When Kristeva says “poetic language,” is she referring only to poetry, or is “poetic language” simply language that is not proposing a thesis of some sort? Does poetic language include all of literature, only fictional writing, or something else entirely? On page 133, Kristeva writes that “heterogeneousness…produces in poetic language ‘musical’ but also nonsense effects that destroy not only accepted beliefs and significations, but, in radical experiments, syntax itself.” Reading this, I figured that “poetic language” referred only to poetry since it is the most free-form style of writing and does not require correct grammar, spelling, or sentence structure. In this way, poetry would embody the idea of the “destruction of syntax.” However, I did not understand how poetry would also destroy “accepted beliefs and significations,” which makes me think that “poetic language” must refer to something else besides poetry. Moreover, I did not quite understand what Kristeva meant by “beliefs” – beliefs about what? Is she referring to the many ideological beliefs we all hold? She also says on page 137 that “poetic language is linked with ‘evil’”. What does she mean by this? She says that poetic language is evil because it “utters incest” but also that it is the “social body’s self defense against the discourse of incest (italics mine)”. Which is it? Does poetic language encourage incest or does it protect the social body from it? How is incest even related to poetic language in the context of this essay?
- Monica Carvalho |
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