Friday, August 17, 2012

A Mother's Unconditional Love








A Mother's Unconditional Love
by Cheryl Yow

“Even one daimoku can permeate the entire universe. How much greater then is daimoku’s capacity to move anything when it is chanted with sincerity and determination….
~ Daisaku Ikeda ~


         This is a testimony of unconditional love - a devoted mother with great faith. I actually heard this testimony some years back. Today I heard it for the second time.  Tears welled up in my eyes as I listened to her agonizing struggles. It was a detailed two hours testimony but I try to keep it short here. 

        Oh Ya Mei is a woman division leader. She has a loving husband and two wonderful children. Her struggles started when she had her 3rd child – a baby boy.

While in the hospital, she noticed her baby boy was not drinking much milk, the other babies had all finished their milk but her baby’s bottle was still full. On the 2nd day she asked the nurse and the nurse casually replied, “ Ah Soh, your baby tongue is too short!” She said that remark instantly prick her heart, it was as if someone has said that her son was mute.

          When she finally brought the baby home and for the first time unwrapped the cloth and towel around him, she was stunned! He had severe disability! His hands and feet were badly twisted  and his fingers/toes were ‘glued’ tightly together, he was not able to spread his fingers/toes. His backbone was collapsing all over him and half of his body was twisted. His upper arms were sealed/attached to his body, he could not lift his arms over his head. His head was constantly bent over the right side of his shoulders. Besides, he had some serious nerve, muscle and bone disease. The doctor said that this particular disease is very rare, at that point of time there were only two in Singapore and the other one had died. The doctor did not have much hope that this baby would survive.

            She said she felt ashamed to have such a baby. Why her? What had she done to deserve such a fate? What would others say … that she chanted and yet had such a baby! How could she face people whom she had so enthusiastically asked to chant for a better life? She said she started chanting for her son to have a quick and painless death. In the meantime she did not tell anyone about it, when members and friends came over, the baby was well- wrapped up. No one suspected anything.


     Then one day she wrote to Ikeda sensei (Daisaku Ikeda) to ask sensei to choose a name for her son. However she did not mention a thing about the disability of her baby. Within 2 weeks she received a letter from Ikeda sensei. She had expected a more wordy letter but there were only three Chinese characters:

Zhen  ( real/absolute)

Guang ( light)

Ming (radiant/brillante)

So the meaning of the name means an ‘absolute radiant light.’ She said the moment she read these three words, she felt as if a surge of a glowing beam of light has emerged out of her! From that moment she made a commitment to chant for 20 years for her son to be normal.



“When your determination changes, everything will begin to move in the direction you desire. The moment you resolve to be victorious, every nerve and fibre in your being will immediately orient itself toward your success.”
~ Daisaku Ikeda ~


           She started chanting 8 hours daily. She had to sacrifice her TV time, her favourite dramas and chant till 2 to 3 am daily. Her prayers are very focused:

1. I want his tongue to be longer/extended, 
    for him to speak properly 
    and the first few words that he will speak 
    are not mummy or daddy 
    but Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo
   ( after a few millions of chant he did,
   Starting with Nam to Nam Myo to Nam Myoho 
   and eventually the whole phrase!)

2.  I want him to be able to spread his fingers 
     and that his wrist will not be twisted so that he
    could write Nam Myoho Renge Kyo .

3. I want him to be able to spread his toes
    and his ankle will not be twisted 
    so that he could walk for kosen-rufu.

4. I want him to be able to walk straight 
    and his body will not be twisted, 
   because his body is like the Butsudan
    – the embodiment of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo

5. I want his head to be lifted up 
    so he could be a proof of the vow/power of
    Nam Myoho Renge  Kyo.

There are many more such focused and determined prayers like these. All prayers are answered. Much later on, she wanted to find a specialist for him to work on other areas that needed some specific medical expertise so she chanted for a specialist to have Buddha’s wisdom to conduct a successful (highly complicated) surgery for her son. One day someone just walked up to her and introduced a specialist to her!

Now he has grown into a charming young man with no sign of previous disability. He is a handsome boy ( 24 year-old) and he looks like a Korean movie actor! He is an active member of SGI young men division and presently he is doing his university studies.

I try to be as accurate as I can but more significantly here is her enduring determination and persevering faith. Though I cannot depict the intensity of her agony, her emotions, the strength of her spirit and the tears in her eyes, I believe we can take a piece of this inspiring story of faith to continue with staunch determination to overcome any obstacles we have.


“Invisible radio waves travel vast distances through space, reaching Mars and Venus. In the same way, our inner determination… activates the forces in the universe- the heavenly deities and the Buddhas throughout the ten directions-appears as solid actual proof  with the principle of 3000 realms in a single moment of life“
~ Daisaku Ikeda~



Wednesday, July 18, 2012

A Bedtime Story
by cheryl yow








A friend on facebook ask someone to tell her a bedtime story, so I wrote this story instantly!


Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess.
One day, by the pond, she saw a Lotus flower
She asked the flower
" I did not see you before, from where did you come from?'

Lotus flower replied:

I blossomed from this very muddy pond.
You see, I was once buried deep beneath this dark muddy pond.
I lived in darkness, and I had never in my life see the sun.

Oh how I longed to be able to see the sun!

Then one day, I saw the reflection of you- such a beautiful face!
You looked into this pond and said " Nam Myoho Renge Kyo'.
I love the sound and vibration of these words.
Then I started to long to see not only the sun but to see you again.

So each day I repeated those words 'Nam Myoho Renge kyo'

and each time I seemed to be lifted higher and higher, each day!
It was hard at first as the mud seemed to sometimes drag me further down,

but I kept your face in my heart and the sun in my mind.
So each day as I said those words I get lifted up
but at the same time the mud was dragging me down,
but I kept going, and going...
I believed I would be lifted higher and dragged down less
as I continued to say these words.

Finally, one day, that is today,
I saw for the first time a crack of light
and I heaved myself harder to lift myself up...
saying repeatedly those words- Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
and then suddenly I found myself lifted up and out of the muddy pond!!

For the first time, all my senses are awakened!
I see the light,
hear wonderful sounds of life,
smell the fragrant of the flowers, 

feel the warmth of the sun
and now look into the most beautiful face of yours,
Princess Zara.






(Nam Myoho Renge Kyo is a buddhist chant.)

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Bias in the judging process of the Nobel & the Booker prize?

essay by cheryl yow


                                       Waiting for Godot









Paradise




Question:
The selection of texts in Judging Literature section of the
course displays a bias in the judging process of the Nobel
and the Booker towards the preoccupations and styles of
western literature.
Do you agree with the statement or not?



The Nobel Prize is awarded to the writer ‘who shall have
produced in the field of literature the most understanding
work in an ideal direction’ and the Booker Prize is awarded
to the ‘best work of fiction by a British or Commonwealth
writer’. (Johnson 199) This simple criteria is deceptively
misleading as how we define ‘ideal’ and ‘best’ is highly
complex and ambiguous . The judging of literary works has
been mightily criticised as been biased. Historically, these
judges of western origin, select literary works based on
British cultural landscapes, for example, Anton’s The
Cherry Orchard is judged more positively whereas
Labyrinths with Path of Thunder by Nigerian poet Christopher
Okigo is less positively judged. Taste in literary works has
constantly evolved from the initial perception of ‘polite
attribute… notion of rules…with Manners
(qtd in Johnson 200) to the Romanticism’s sense of
exceeding the conventional model of ‘good taste’ and
finally to the twentieth century of ‘taste’ that is
increasingly bound to the consumers’ expression of their
tastes. The accredited panel of literary judges made up of
educated elite superiors are shown to have favoured one
literary work over the others influenced by their eurocentric
bias. By declaring one literary work superior to others, they
may render the ubiquity of literary judgements in all contexts
to be neglected: literary, aesthetical, cultural, economical
and political. This essay compares Waiting for Godot, a play
by Samuel Beckett which wins a Nobel prize and Paradise,
a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah which is shortlisted for the
1994 Booker prize without winning it. In anaysising both
novels, there are glaring evidences that point to the
eurocentric nature of judging these literary texts. Both writers
adhere to the disinterested universal criteria: Beckett’s
existentialism and Gurnah’s simultaneously constructed
accounts of multiple cultural narratives that contribute to
historical realities rather than one single historic truth. Both
Beckett and Gurnah fulfilled the criteria of an exemplary
genius in their originality: Beckett in breaking traditional
theatrical conventions and Gurnah in his exquisite storytelling
by weaving parallel myths, legends and realities into many
true versions of an historic account. However only Beckett
claims the Nobel prize, Gurnah’s Paradise is not favoured by
the panel of eurocentric judges.



Immanuel Kant of Romantic tradition, an influential critic,
asserts that the genius must first be original and invent one’s
own rules without following pre-given rules and secondly his
work has to be exemplary: serve as a model but not as a
precept for other works. Significantly, Kant also suggests
that such work should be disinterested and universal with no
reference to extra-literary criteria, hence aesthetics here is
examined in isolation to other branches of philosophy.
Another critic, Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist,
challenged Kant’s proposal of disinterest or universal models
of aesthetic values. Bourdieu affirms that ‘taste’ is socially
determined accordingly to individual’s education and
social/class origins. In France the ruling classes with their
economic capital controls the cultural taste at the expense
of the working classes.


According to Bourdieu, literary prizes are just
symbolic traditions conducted by venerated judges who
accredit the aesthetic tastes of the ruling classes while
excluding works appreciated by the working classes.
Adding to Bourdieu’s criticism, Chidi Amuta, a twentieth
century African literary theorist argues that western literary
judgements are relative. He argues that even with its
universalised criteria, it seems to disparage African literature.
The West judges African aesthetic tradition as an
undifferentiated homogeneous African identity and
experience and fails to regard the complexity of African
societies. Amuta argues that African literature should
be evaluated by African values. Amuta, like Bourdieu
also renounces the Kant’s possibility of a universal, objective,
exclusively literary standard of judgement, and proposes an
alternate aesthetic that insists on the heterogeneity of literary
evaluation. It is doubtful if Kant’s criteria is comprehensive
in judging the literature of the late twentieth century based
on the singular exemplary work of a literary genius (which is
decidedly based on western cultural landscape). Both
Bourdieu and Amuta reject Kant’s narrow and rigid criteria;
for Bourdieu, ‘taste’ is constantly being determined by the
ruling class, and Amuta insists an all embracing criteria
that includes cultural, economical and political contexts.


The criteria of disinterest or ahistorical universalim is evident
in the play of Waiting for Godot. Beckett who live through the
war in Fance must have been deeply affected by the massive
disruption and uncertainty of the post-war situation. This could
influence his writing of the play and likely contribute his
philosophic disposition: his empathy with humanity especially
the downtrodden, in the universal sense of human uncertainty,
faith and purpose of life. The play does not invoke any
specific social or political context instead it is suggestive of
several contexts. This acontextual and ‘openness’ quality
allows it to deliver broader philosophical and theoretical
generalization about the human condition in the
contemporary world or perhaps reflecting on the religious
nature of faith and belief or even reflecting on the slippages
of language and communication. Beckett in receiving the
Nobel Prize award does adhere to its ‘ideal direction’ with
its universalist aspirations. The plays’s acontextual universal
interest in all contexts has affirmed the Nobel Prize ideal in
its pursuit of an ‘ideal direction’ without limitation to any
specific context. This has resulted in a momentary
resolution of the controversies that plague the Nobel prizes
in preceding years. However, there is still the familiar theme
of western religious perspective that has been significantly
alluded to in the play: the tree could be the tree of knowledge
in paradise of the bible and Godot may stand for God and
the exchange about two thieves who are crucified with Jesus.


Paradise sets in East Africa also depict a highly universal
theme without focusing of any specific social or political
context instead it is suggestive simultaneously of several
contexts. Its deliberate acontextual intermesh of myth and
history from a variety of different cultural, literary and
linguistic influences- East African, Arab, Islamic and
European displays the process of history formation and a
complex intimately linked frameworks of meaning. The
novel demonstrates that the standard and authentic
version of the narratives of Western colonialism is incomplete.
They explain only one version of history: European
magnanimous deliverance of Africans from Arabs slavers.
Using parallel narratives, history is seen instead to be
simultaneously constructed with other valid versions and they
reveal the complexity of history before the European
intervention. History is also closely associated with power,
some versions of history are naturalised in authorized
historical accounts with specific political agenda to present
only one version of ‘truth’. Through the complex weaving
of textual layers, Gurnah shows the differences between
indigenous African traditions and external western
influences, cultural nationalism or black essentialism that
simultaneously contribute to the larger part of history.
Gurnah writes with a balanced perception and not any
cultural version of historic construction in Paradise
has being exalted.


Beckett can indeed be considered an exemplary genius in
his pioneering use of theatrical conventions. Beckett use the
notion of the ‘Theatre of Absurd’- the use of techniques that
question and undermine theatrical conventions in expressing
the existentialist realm of the absurdity of human beliefs and
purposes. Beckett is original in presenting two sets of
equally indistinguishable and unremarkable happenings in two
very similar acts without any sense of development progression
at all: two tramps waiting for Godot, talking to each other, meet
an odd pair called Lucky and Pozzo and are informed by that
Godot will not come. This repetitive quality disrupts the habitual
expectation of the audience that there will be any development
progression of plot and characterization. Time is ambiguous in
the play, the bare tree in the first act grows a few leaves in the
second act and this prompt the audiences to habitually infer
that enough time has passed for the tree to grow, however it
is told in the beginning of the second act that it is the Next
day. Discarding the conventional theatrical techniques,
Waiting for Godot is a play that performs the dramatic form
in expressing the preoccupations of the existentialist’s plight
rather than talks about them. The dialogues are not adorned
in the artificial style like that of a drama in a verse that
audiences are used to. The actions too do not mirror the
conventional theatrical happening or plot development. The
theatrical methods here are self-reflexive that focus intently on
existentialist themes. Waiting for Godot is indeed a theatre
about theatre. The play overall structure undermines the
theatrical conventions. It seems to strategically obscure the
boundary between being theatre and doing theatre. Waiting for
Godot is deliberately self-reflexive in the sense that it compels
the audiences to question and reflect on theatrical conventions:
structure, setting, protagonist, dialogue and action.


Gurnah, too, is significantly an exemplary genius in his original
art of exquisite storytelling. Gurnah’s art of storytelling is lyrical
and mythical, similar to a scriptural tale. He weaves memory
and narratives into depicting personal and national histories that
give voice to the silences of the past. Paradise appears to be a
Bilddingsroman, the development of an innocent young boy
entrapped in the harsh trading world of corruptions which deny
him complete liberty. However, the centre of the novel examines
the psychological and material effects of a long history of
disempowerment. He uses the parallel stories of the koran
(Yusof) and the bible (Joseph), the origins of the idea of
paradise and the Gardens of Eden (walled garden).Yusof in
his role as listener, witness and mediator is the archive of
these various parallel narratives. Yusof, the on-looker listens
to the exchanges of people who has similar cultural heritage
and shared world views as well as the version of those whose
disagree resulting in conflict. Stories that are beyond the
speaker’s own reality are told in the different guises of fables,
fairytales or oral narratives of individual lives. Furthermore
some stories blur the boundaries between history and reality
as seen in when Khali tells Yusof about the hellish ‘wolfmen’.
(Gurnah 29) Both listeners and speakers are aware of how
their different worlds collide and that no matter how unrealistic
the world of fables is, it still reveal significant truths. Instead
of using the ‘insider’ perspective that is representative of a
‘postcolonial’ voice, Gurnah engages the readers from the
outset, exposing the complex, fragmented realities of the
multilingual world, subtly interrogating the previous
representations of ‘Africa’.


Beckett presents a significant existentialist perspective that
run through the two acts. Existentialists maintain that the only
absolute certainty is that we exist without any purpose or
grand mission, we just simply exist. There is nothing external
beyond this existence. Within this existentialist realization, a
sense of unlimited freedom and infinite choices emerge,
however this freedom also comes with the anxiety and dread
of the uncertainty of not having any clear direction in life. This
anxiety and uncertainty of unlimited freedom give rise to
suffering and in order to alleviate this suffering, one
chooses to bind oneself to a habitual and ritualistic existence:
‘Life is habit. Or rather life is succession of habits, since the
individual is a succession of individuals;. (Johnson 246)


The main essence of the play is about the purposeless waiting
for Godot. Godot does not appear and the endless waiting
that is not being fulfilled, both serves as a metaphor for the
existential human condition. The repetitive two-acts structure
reflect the monotonous sameness day-to-day ritualistic
existence, hence the protagonists resort to the habitual
dependency of each other for comfort and any separating
becomes frightening. Both Vladimir and Estragon and Pozzo
and Lucky cling onto their mutual roles and dependence not
because they have to but rather they choose to (Lucky is not
being forced into slavery). The play depicts the gloomy
existence of the purposelessness and the anxiety of having
unlimited existential freedom. Vladimir describes human
existence as ‘the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned
us (Beckett 69) and Pozzo depicts it as ‘They give birth
astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night
once more. (Beckett 78) There is an overwhelming sense
of uncertainty among the protagonists. Vladimir and
Estragon are uncertain whether the day is the day, or the
place is the place or if the shoes are Estragon’s shoes or
that the tree is the one they believe it to be. They are not
certain whether Godot will turn up or whether there is a
god or not or whether there is any purpose in their
existence or not. Gurnah weaves the parallel stories of myth
and reality in contesting the notion of a simply one version
of Western historical truth. For Gurnah history is constructed
simultaneously with multiple versions of cultural realities.The
story of the cruel Jinn who imprisons his beloved princess
(as Amina is imprisoned in Aziz;s garden) and when powerful
Jinn discovers that she is not faithful he turns her lover, the
woodcutter into an ape and banished him from the land. In
reality when Aziz finds out about Yusof involvement with his
wife Amina, he does not turn Yusof into an ape neither does
he banish Yusof from his land. This deliberate shifting between
myth and actual predicament of Yusof’s life can enlighten us
to the realization that stories can blur the boundary of the
reality of history.


Paradise also serves as an excellent narrative strategy in
deconstructing the notion of ‘otherness’ on which colonial
histories are built upon. The idea of the binary definition of
‘civilised’ and ‘savage’ is shown repeatedly in different
characters: Hamid defines himself as an upright Muslim in
contrast to his friend, the ignorant and ‘hairy-arsed’ Sikh.
The Germans are being ‘exoticised’ and considered just
slightly above animals. This ‘othering’ is not exclusive to
the civilized white man versus the savage native, it also
applies to other characters who define themselves as
civilised and others as savages. The cumulative effect of
these stories recycled by different voices in different
contexts is shown to be harmful in affecting people’s beliefs
and how people perceive and recount history. Mohammed
Abdalla heard the rumour that Europeans can both ‘eat
metal’ and force others to consume ‘shit’ (Gurnah 171) make
him submit passively to their authority despite the fact he has
never seen any white man before. Such stories with its negative
impact are spread by both those in power as well as those they
oppress. Gurnah’s aim in writing Paradise is to challenge the
European’s benign single historic version of delivering the
Africans from the corruptions of the Arab trade. Such stories
are often incomplete representations as Hussien states: ‘When
they come to write about us, what will they say? That we made
slaves’. (Gurnah 87)


Western critics and reviewers have shown to be habitually
flawed in judging postcolonial literatures through the rigid and
disparaging lens of their narrow, eurocentric sentiments. On a
BBC2’s The Late Show (11 October 1994), professional
critics are invited to give comments on the shortlisted novel,
Paradise. Paradise is merely described as ‘book filled with
folk legends, myths and religious fables, and explores the
themes of colonialism and enslavement’. ( Johnson 334) The
presenters and critics has already categorised the novel as
typically perceived as a form of nationalist resistance
responding to European colonalism and it has also been
mistakenly located in the 1940 rather than before 1914.
Gurnah is certainly less concern about ‘writing back’. Western
critics seem to constantly look for eurocentric signs, Greer
criticizes Gurnah’s use of mesmerizing rhetoric that does not
conform to the standard representations of ‘difference’ and
Paulin is rigidly stuck in homogenizing ‘African’ fictions, by
comparing it with Achebe’s Things Fall Apart that directly
addressed the break-up of Igbo tribes under colonialism
(a very differently resolute colonial past) instead of
addressing the historical complexity of the different
geographical and cultural context of Gurnah’s Paradise from
Achebe’s novel. Byatt, a more discerning critic, explains that
though Paradise’s main theme of the enslaving of a young
black boy by another black, Arab trader, its hybridity
showcases the different cultural traditions and contradictory
legacies of the empire.


Western evaluation based on a homogenous focus on the
difference of ‘otherness’ between the European and the native
is highly ineffective without considering the particularities and
complexity of heterogeneous cultural traditions and historical
contexts. Gurnah’s Paradise cannot be read as the predictable
African continent of darkness and mystery, magic and
superstition in the tradition of Conrad’s lost continent in the
Heart of Darkness. This privileged western interpretation is
too rigidly biased. Paradise does not narrate the colonial
encounter between European and Africa. It focuses instead
on the different narratives of the past of the shifting multiracial
population of the indigenous Swahili, Omani Arabs, migrant
Asians, black tribes and Christians; competing with each other
within their trading history exposing the dehumanising of
domestic slavery of the cruel Arab slavers.It would be too
restrictive to judge literature using the same Western aesthetic
criteria to examine African writers. A different set of aesthetic
criteria is needed to judge the rich mix of both literary and
cultural contexts of Africa.


Paradise explores East Africa’s interweaving of different and
competing histories, cultural traditions and language systems
that predates European intervention by two centuries. The
novel does not ‘exoticise’ its subject matter or present a
sentimental chaste view of precolonial past, instead it reveals
to us its corruptions. There is also no reducing the characters
into binary of the difference of ‘otherness’ between back and
white, or victim and oppressor. There are competing accounts
include a variety of definitions of the stereotypes ‘otherness’’
– native or savage, civilized or uncivilized, black or white.
Both the Arabs and the Germans are representatives of two
different but inherently exploitative imperial systems. Several
parallel narratives of history coexist, each creating its own
‘truths’, its own versions of ‘otherness’, its own victims and
oppressors. Characters are affected by economic power
rather than the cultural differences and alltheir values are
commodified whatever their origin maybe. The fictional
world of Paradise is such that everything, whether goods
or human beings, is commodified.


Modernism is not distinctly a European phenomenon,
Modernism in Europe and elsewhere stems from the complex
archaeology of cross-cultural interchanges, borrowings and
knowledge. As a postmodernist test, Paradise does question
the authority of the grand narrative of history and in postcolonial
texts, it challenges the homogenizing binary between the
European ‘self’ and colonial ‘other’. The best literary works
are inspiring when they challenge rigid authoritative forms and
take us beyond the limits of our expressions and cross the
complex boundary between theoretical
definition and critical judgement.

(3087 words)



Bibliography:

Beckett, Samuel. “Waiting For Godot.” The Open University, London. 2004. Print
Gurnah, Abdulrazak. “Paradise.” Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London.2004.Print.
Johnson, David. “The Popular & the Canonical.” The Open University, Routledge. 2005. Print.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Post-modernism celebrates Hybridity

essay by cheryl yow    



Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?
               ~ Philip K. Dick’s ~












    Kiss of the Spider Woman
        ~ Manuel Puig ~
 










Question:
Post-modernism celebrates self-conscious hybridity in text
and a move away from the need for “unprecedented originality.”
Compare the extent to which Philip K. Dick’s
‘ Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? and Manuel Puig’s
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” conform to this statement.


Postmodernism is a revolutionary movement that challenges
the authoritative voice or absolute truth in core religious,
patriarchal and capitalistic values. It shuns the modernist’s
quest of meaning through unity, coherence and reason
(enlightenment) in a frenzied world; instead it delights
itself in the caricature of this quest. Postmodernism subverts
the traditional single grand narrative of human experience; it
chooses instead to embrace the concept of micro-narratives in
explaining human phenomena. The hallmark of postmodern
aesthetics include terms like Hybridity and Intertextuality.
Hybridity is a randomly chosen collages of different genres,
approaches, ideologies, and discontinuous narratives.
Intertextuality, the process of hybridity; it refers to the
borrowing and transformation of prior texts. Originality rigidly
remains to be the venerated novel and innovative ideal
inscribed in the ‘high’ literature of the Romantic period.
Twentieth century Postmodenism’s schizophrenic style rejects
originality and celebrate fragmented hybridity instead.
Postmodernists continuously undermine and erode distinctions
of boundaries, categories and hierarchies and thus render the
loss of the much revered ‘unprecedented originality’. Both
novels: Dick’s Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? and
Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman reject the notion of
“unprecedented originality” and employ distinct postmodern
characteristics instead: hybridity and intertextuality to depict the
multiple ideologies of their flawed, contemporary societies.



Dick’s Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? yields to the
hybridity of multiple texts: social, cultural, philosophical,
economic and political.It explores how material conditions
determine ideology and consciousness in the relationship
between global capitalism (economies) and postmodernism
(culture). Set in the historical context of Marxism (political),
Dick exposes the capitalist’s version of social reality, and
reveals the hidden class struggles and the processes of
alienation. Marxism focuses on two opposing classes: the
capitalists and the workers. Capitalists, the ruling class
exploits the workers to make profits for themselves. The
worker is compelled to repeat mundane tasks and eventually
he is reduced to a machine, an object or a commodity. The
capitalist also control all means of mental and ideological
production (social/philosophical); ideology functions in
obstructing the realities of economic exploitation. Hence, the
workers are made to believe this capitalist economic system
as the only natural way to organize a society.In this way
workers do not realize that they are being continuously
exploited. The capitalist social system with its associated
class struggles fundamentally influences the social, cultural,
philosophical, economical and political ideals of the society.


Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman is a hybrid mix of a wide
variety of texts and discourses which clash and yet fuse
with each other on the pages. The many forms of hybridity in
the novel includes: ‘B’ grade films, plays, footnotes, coded
letters, bolero, prison reports, police reports in dairy as well
as the thoughts, dreams and nightmares of the two
protagonists. The footnote is a voice that speaks in disparity
to the Molina’s sentimental film narratives; it speaks
extensively on a range of cultural and psychoanalytical
theories. The blurring of different discourses leads to the
creation of self-consciously hybrid literary tradition. Puig’s
deliberate rejection of an authoritative, dominant voice is
depicted through the absence of a authorial narrator, using
the dialogic voice instead with the strategic juxtaposition of
intertextual texts and accentuating silences.



The hybridity of texts in Dick’s novel considers his country’s
preoccupation of that time : the fear that America was
producing a dangerous conformist society. Set in a fictional
industrial world, Humans like Eldon Rosen are considered
the autocrat (capitalist), Rick, the bourgeoisie; Isidore and
androids are considered ‘proleteriats’ of this fictional society.
The capitalist provides a certain degree of pleasure to
workers, thus breaking the monotony of their lives and
making their exploitation more bearable. The economic
imperative on individuals to work is the ideological pressure
to own a genuine animal. Rick, the bounty hunter, a worker,
makes his living by killing androids with the main objective
of earning enough money to own a real animal. Isihore, a
chickenhead, belongs to the lowest class of the society,
can never leave the planet for a better life:

“They informed him in a countless procession of ways that he,
a special, wasn’t wanted. Had no use. Could not, even if he
wanted to, emigrate.” (Dick 16)

Although Isidore is a human being, he is not considered any
better than the androids. Additionally, the androids belong to
another form of class struggle: conflict between slave and
freeman. Rosen corporation (capitalist) is the exploiter of
androids and Eldon Rosen, its owner, told Rachel Rosen,
the android:

“…you’re the property of the Rosen Association, used as a
sales device for prospective emigrants.” (Dick 47)

Rick, Isidore and the androids are the workers and to a
varying extent, they are all alienated by their work. Ideas
of oppression and utility value are imposed on androids and
even on human like Rick and Isidore. The inequality of this
master and slave relationships results in the lack of
capitalist’s empathy for their workers and the worker’s
alienation.



Using hybridity, Puig is able to present the disturbing,
oppressive and unyielding political and gender issues of
contemporary Argentinian society. To Puig, politics and
sexuality are never a dichotomy: they are never mutually
exclusive. Puig uses hybridity and intertextuality in creating
a multiple of ideologies. The quality of dialogic voices in
the novel produces different discourses and ideologies:
Valentin as a ideologue of Marxist ideology while Molina
as the anti-ideologue of sexuality and gender, and
readers also get to access both Valentin and Molina’s
thoughts and dreams. The novel becomes in a sense,
a therapy: Molina and Valentin model the psychoanalytical
therapy where Valentin plays the psychiatrist and Molina,
the patient. Through the Freudian psychosexual
development lens, Molina’s homosexuality and gender
role is shown to be related to his relationship with
his mother:

‘A lovely lady, who gave her husband every happiness
and her children too, always managing everything
perfectly’ ( Puig 16).

Additionally, though the authorial footnote is invented, it is
an accurate representation of Nazi gender ideology:

“Her single mission is to be beautiful and bear sons of the
world” (Johnson 173).

The contrasting discourses of the authorial footnote and
Molina’s ‘vulgar’ and tasteless films both depict the woman
as being beautiful, seemingly passively waiting to fall in love
or passively assuming the nurturing feminine role and
inescapably confined to the domestic sphere.



Dick’s Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? has a main
philosophical concern : what it means to be really human?
Android reveals the capacity to empathise as well. Though
Rachael is an android, she is shown to show emotions:

“ …her expression had now become one of moodiness.”
“Rachael said, ‘…You know what I have? Toward this Pris
android?’
‘Empathy,’ he said ”. (Dick 148-9)

Rachael shows she is able to identify and emphasise with Pris:
the fact that Pris will be retired soon and recognizing androids
are nothing more than ants and would wear out over time
and be retired eventually. On the other hand, humans are
shown to be lack of empathy. Rick told Phil Resch:

“ You don’t kill the way I do… You like to kill. All you
need is a pretext..”and Rick wonders if there is anything
‘unnatural or unhuman about Phil Resch’s reaction” ( Dick 113)

- that Phil kills just for the sake of killing. Rick himself too
admitted that he “ had never felt any empathy on his own part
toward the androids he killed”( Dick 112), however later
Rick also said, “I’m capable of feeling empathy for at least
specific, certain androids.” ( Dick 113).

The difference between “living humans and humanoid
constructs” is blurred. Rick, being deeply embedded into the
capitalistic worker mentality, does his job of killing
mechanically, however he later becomes more human when
he becomes in touch with his genuine feeling: empathy.
Humans like Iran shows great sympathy by dialing a
depression mood just to experience the agony of others
and Isidore makes no distinction of his empathy for the
real spider and the android cat. The realization of what it
means to be human is the need to extend empathy to all
things.The loss of empathy is evidently seen in postmodern
situations and the real is connected with humanity’s innate
empathy.



Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman philosophical concern
is depicted though starkly different scientific and mythical
discourses: to explain the paradox of sexuality. The films
reveal Molina’s repressed desire of sexual orientation. The
presence of homosexual is being repressed by the society.
There are interesting parallels to Freud’s three stages of
psychosexuality: oral, anal and genital stages in the novel’s
pleasure of oral narratives; the cleaning up of Valentin’s
diarrhoea and the sexual intercourse. The imprisoned
masculine and feminine roles are being unyieldingly imposed
by the patriarchal society. Masculinity and femininity are later
shown to be false polarities when Valentin and Molina
eventually swapped their gender roles. Puig is hinting that the
transformation of gender relations could be a prerequisite for
fundamental social change. Valentin believes the root causes
of society’s illness are economic and class-based. The
suffering of both Valentin and Molina is due to patriarchal
domination and class oppression. Significantly, the novel is
asserting that Freudianism and Marxism need not be
mutually exclusive, the fact that being subjected to the modern
consumer and civilised society renders false desires and
keeping individuals in a state of repression.



According to Baudrillard’ s “The Precession of Simulacra”, the
postmodern culture relies faithfully to models and maps, that we
lost the sense of the real world; of reality that preceded the map.
The postmodern culture is artificial and people have lost the
sense of the distinction between nature and artifice. There are a
few phenomena to explain the loss of distinction between ‘reality’
and the simulacrum: language, exchange value and media culture.
In the industrial age, once money become the ‘universal
equivalent’ our lives is measured in terms of money rather
than real things like our time, our sweat or our tears of labour.
Also because we rely solely on language to structure our
perceptions; thus any representation of reality is already
constructed by simulacra and is already an ideology.
Media culture is one of them, in the sense we interpret our
most private selves through the lens of media images and
our desires become increasingly defined by commercialised
images. Media technologies reproduce social identities and
values that precede the real.


Puig’s Molina internalise the submissive feminine in the stories
he narrates and his identity is part of this cultural identity; he,
himself has no real identity. In a sense Molina, the simulacra
(copy) is consumed by these characters. In Dick’s novel,
the mechanised reproduction of simulacrum distorts the real,
we become confused between the real and the fake and
simulacrum also shows the loss of individual’s sense of
agency. Isidore and the androids seem to be a copy of each
other as they both have the same social status. The empathy
box and fusion with Mercer is not real experiences, it is a
virtual reality. Though Phil Resch is human but his lack of
empathy make him seem like an android, on the other hand,
Rachael, an android with the capacity to empathise make
her seem more human.


Twentieth century’s Post-modernism moves away from the
need for ‘unprecedented originality’ of the solitary genius of
the Romantic period of ‘high’ literature. In a subverting
manner, it embraces hybridity and intertextuality; it rejects
absolute truth and instead honours fragmentation. With the
wide variety of tones and ideologies, the readers are no
longer passively consuming a single meaning rather they
take an active role in judging the text with its multiple
meanings. In this way there is no single dominant voice and
each voice is an ideologue in itself. The reader becomes
an active creator of literature rather than a passive consumer.
Both Dick and Puig are original in the postmodern sense:
the way their novels yield to multiple discourses and
ideologies. Both Dick and Puig in depicting the pressing
issues of their oppressive societies, offer their readers
in-depth philosophical insight: Dick’s -what it means to
be human? and Puig’s –paradox of gender roles and
sexuality (-…).


(2011 words)





Works Cited:

Dick, k. Philip. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”Gollancz, Great Britain. 2010. Print
Johnson, David. “The Popular & the Canonical.” The Open University, Routledge. 2005. Print.
Puig, Manuel. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” Vintage, London. 2007. Print

Postmodern Literature. Wikipedia. Web. 17 sept. 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature

Simulacra and Simulation. Wikipedia. Web. 17 sept.2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation




Tuesday, January 11, 2011

For the death of someone so dear...










For you & your mother


In Buddhism,
death is a seamless link to a fresh new life.
For life and death are one,
just as the river must flow into the sea.
She does not actually die,
she only flies to a new realm of consciousness,
for the refreshment of her soul,
back to the home of her spirit.
Thus death is not the last sleep,
it is the new awakening.
Look up the sky, you will see a new star,
that is she, smiling and watching over you.
When she had lived such a pure life then nothing can destroy her.

She that you love so deeply, had never really left you,
she is with you all the time, in soul and spirit.
The love deep in your heart that stirs, flutters in hers.
When you cry, she knows.
When you smile, she feels consoled.


I know surely
you and your mother will meet again
beyond the clouds, beyond the rainbows
in some distant land,
you will recognise her,
as both your hearts beat as one.
She is just going there first
to prepare a fresh new path
for you and her,
in a wondrous magical land.


cheryl yow
11 January 2011



dedicated to Isabel, Anjana and those who have lost someone so dear...

Thursday, January 6, 2011

The 'Popular' versus 'High literature'

                                                             Rebecca













Jane Eyre











Allen Ginsberg



"Poetry is not an expression of the party line.
It's that time of night, lying in bed,
thinking what you really think,
making the private world public,
that's what the poet does."




"The only thing that can save the world
 is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world.
That's what poetry does."

"Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine,
jiggling your knees blankly in the rain,
when it snows in your nose you catch cold in your brain."




Question:

The ‘popular’ is a site of ideological struggle between resistant
subordinate groups/culture in society and the dominant groups
/culture who perpetually endeavour to incorporate them”
(Johnson 54). To what extent do you find his definition
appropriate when analysing Rebecca and the poetry of
Ginsberg?


The ‘Popular’ text as Dwight Macdonald asserts “is like
chewing gum”, lacking in literary value; it caters to the lowest
sense of contentment for the common people of the mass
culture. Modernists assert that ‘serious’ literature: an art for
radical use, should be avant-garde, constantly reinventing
itself, catering only to a small discerning audience. Thus, in
brief, ‘Popular’ is: trivial, formulaic, repetitive, uninventive,
exploitative, devoid of aesthetic value, distinctive from the
great literature of the past and catering to the middle-class,
philistines and the mass.Value-judgments: aesthetic, social
and politics in literature are infamously wavering so no
literary work is innately valuable in itself. The literary
canon is a construct by specific people for specific purpose
at a specific time frame. The ‘popular’ Rebecca is not merely
a replica of the canonical Jane Eyre; only acute, discerning
critics are enlightened to its theoretical readings of identity,
class and gender and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and
Ginsberg’s poetry is not merely ‘popular'. It serves to
revitalize old rigid conventional poetry and to shout out the
soul of his society.



Rebecca defies the rigid definition of ‘popular’- the fact it is
considered merely a gothic romance. Its fairytale setting comes
with a twist; it hints at the nightmare perversion of the orderly
domestic setting. Additionally, upon close examination,
Rebecca reveals theoretical readings of contemporary critics:
identity, class and gender. It also is uncannily suggestive of
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis: the development of female
sexuality. Its mixed genres: romance, murder, historical
/cultural studies and psychology challenge the inflexible
boundary between ‘High’ and ‘popular’ literature.


From the historically specific perspective, Rebecca could have
engaged in the anxiety of its time: identity, class and gender.
The moment the nameless narrator steps into her new home,
she abandons her own name and takes on a new title of de
winters, yet she is constantly struggling with an invisible
identity. Marriage renders the effacement of women’s
individual identity. Class issues are also depicted by the
disparity in age, wealth and class of the narrator’s marriage
and gender roles are closely aligned with class struggle.
Maxim and Manderley that represent perfect domesticity are
seen as warped and rootless. The promiscuous Rebecca and
the infertility of her malformed cancerous uterus depicts her
as an antithesis of a proper womanhood: being married,
monotonous and child-bearing. The murder of Rebecca and
her unproductive female sexuality has reduced the upper class
Manderley into a warped representation of conventional
domesticity. The fact that Manderley is eventually destroyed,
this could endorse the victory of the middle class. Thus the
text could be seen as shaking up and reinventing one’s role in
the social structure. The focus of class consciousness, the
decaying façade of aristocratic power and the renegotiating
of perceived power relations between the classes is highly
evident in its text.



The first chapter of Rebecca is deftly crafted in a dream, in line
with Freud’s dream theory:A dream is a disguised fulfilment
of a repressed wish. The ingenious option of first person
nameless narrator, invites the reader into the surreal world
of her complex subconscious: the blurring of fantasy and
reality. Freud’s Odeipus complex, from the perspective of
female sexuality alleges that the girl’s first love is her mother
but as she grows, she becomes intimately attached to her
father. In this process, she now starts to detach from her
mother, develops a hostile relation and an intense fear of her
and directs her affection to her father instead. Mrs Danver
resembles an oppressive motherly figure and Rebecca as
the ‘other woman’. Furthermore, Freud also asserts that
women usually marry a man who is a substitute of their father
while subconsciously battling their inner conflict of their hostile
relationship with their mother. This conflict is reflected in the
narrator’s insecurity and unstable relationship with Maxim.


Additionally, according to Freud’s model of the psyche: the
Idrepresents the pleasure mind, seeking only immediate
enjoyment; the ego is the rational mind, prohibits one’s basic
drives foridealistic fantasies and the super-ego, the
perfectionist, plays the critical, moralizing role. Rebecca is
significant as the moralizing principle, she is the epitome of
social grace that is torturing the narrator. The conflicts of the
Id, the ego and the superego is constantly battling in the
narrator’s mind. Viewed through a Freudian lens: Rebecca is
no longer a straight-forward romance, rather it emerges as a
psychological study of the complex female sexuality; thus
perhaps so, it has an enduring intriguing appeal with the mass
readership. Hence, the genre of Rebecca is ambiguous and
it has an avant-garde perspective at the time it is written;
and only the acute critics can identify the psychological
insight the novel delivers.


Allen Ginsberg’s innovative Beat poetry is the new poetic
voice of America in the fifties. Beat poetry, in order to
distinct itself from conventional poetry, borrows from ‘high’
poetry and energized its new forms with jazz-improvising
style plus a plurality of mass culture’s voices. These voices
are their passionate rebellion against American culture: the
hypocrisy of any established norms; and their ecstasy is
immersed in jazz, homosexuality and dope-addiction. Beat
poets serve a public purpose: protest against capitalism,
consumerism and social inequalities. In its fierce attacks
against the mainstream US values, this new and
revolutionary force sought a new audience within the
counter culture.


Ginsberg believes that the mind should be free to roam so
that significant associations and connections could be made
and truths emerge. Ginsberg asserts that old poetry should be
revolutionised. He creates an enduring, intriguing tension
between the ‘high’ and ‘popular’ by adding new forms to
the existing ‘high’ literature. Thus, using his self-reflective
technique, he straddles between describing his poetry first to
make it more spontaneous, colloquial and conversational as
well as polishes them with careful construction. Some of the
new forms include jazz-like form: unrhymed lines, no regular
metre, no stanza form, ellipsis and catalogue.


Additionally, the relentless litany-style repetition like the
active verbs ‘who’ in Howl conveys a sense of intensity and
urgency in actions,movements and momentum. The varying
length and inconsistent flow of lines adhere to the
spontaneous experimental jazz –like style of improvising
and the lack of full stops give a sense of breathlessness.
More significantly, the unconventional word play (placing
words in uncertain relations to each other) is mightily
intriguing. For example, Moloch (a name of god) has
being juxtaposed:


“Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!
Moloch whose blood is running money!
...
Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!”
(Howl part 2, 5th stanza)

Though the tone is colloquial and conversational it is
accompanied by powerful vivid images that heightens its
poetic qualities, for example, the juxtaposed religious and
‘de-romanticed’ mechanical images:

“Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless
Jehovahs!”
(Howl, part 11, 6th stanza)



Ginsberg’s father, Louis, uses the ‘high’ poetic tradition:
regular stanza form, rhythm and rhyme, very different
from his son’s. In Atomic:

The splitting apart
Of man from man
Dooms more than splitting
The atom can.

The ‘high’ poetry here, has a sense of rigid formality with
much focus on the meticulously aesthetical structure of words.
This seems to focus on the vanity of the poet himself rather
than passionately expressing the seriousness, agony and
tragedy of the atom bomb. Compare this with
Ginsberg’s Howl:

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,…”

Here, people are described as ‘starving, hysterical, angry,
burning’; the imagery here is vivid and the words are
intense. The passion is ignited, it captures the precise,
particular rhythm and sentiments of his generation.
Ginsberg’s sense of poetry is, as stated at the end
of Howl:

“to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose
and stand before you speechless and intel-
ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con-
fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm
of thought in his naked and endless head.”

Ginberg’s new poetry speaks profoundly and genuinely of
what is really happening in his society and more significantly,
the communication between the souls rather than rigidly
adhering to the form of ‘high’ literature soullessly.


Literary value is not a fixed phenomenon: its value is
subjective and continuously shifting. The rhythm of each
generation is different, all things evolve: politics, economics,
lifestyles. So why shouldn’t literature evolve? High literature
no longer belongs to the exclusive elite especially in this age
of technology; the literacy rate has expanded tremendously
and there are more educated and intelligent people belonging
to the mass culture than in the era of the canonical writers.
To rigidly focus on the aesthetic stylistics without expressing
the entire explosive emotions, anxieties and sentiments of the
contemporary society is to be devoid of genuine emotional
rhythm and momentum which is worse than the devoid
aesthetic values.


If Jane Eyre can evolve from popular fiction to ‘High’
literature, why shouldn’t Rebecca? Rebecca is not just a
slavish imitation of Jane Eyre, it is a re-write of an original
idea. Its intertextual and ambiguous quality can be interpreted
in many ways and has an enduring appeal. Additionally,
Ginsberg ingeniously revolutionised old poetry with new forms.
His energized poetry can precisely depict the hurricane of
emotions of his generation that rigid forms fail to do so.
Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian philosopher in his work of
literary theory denounces the ‘monologic’ work of literature,
he contends that all works of literature is dialogic: it is a
continuous dialogue with other works of literature and
other authors.

(1586 words)



Bibliography:
Du Maurier, Daphne. “Rebecca” Virago press. 2010. Print.
Johnson, David. “The Popular & the Canonical.” The Open University, Routledge. 2005. Print.
Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl” City Lights Books. 1959. Print.
Dialogic.Wikipedia. Web. 21 Aug. 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogic

Freud about Dream Interpretation. Web. 21 Aug. 2010
http://dreaminterpretation.freudfile.org/freud_about_dreams.html

Oedipus complex. Wikipedia. Web. 21 Aug. 2010
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_complex>



Total Mark : 80
Dear Cheryl
This has been a pleasure to read with many keen insights that address the question and engage with the issue of resistance to ideologies. There is also close textual analysis and a distinct flow of the arguments.  That said, it’s a well-constructed and relevant response.

Marcus