Monday, 3 July 2008: Web highlight (2nd research postings from 2006): Sandy Murphy

Introduction:

This assignment required that I select passages from the second research postings from the model assignments submitted by students during the Summer 2006 Immigrant Literature class.

The purpose of this assignment is two-fold.

• The first purpose of this assignment is to provide a broader perspective of the subject matter through additional student viewpoints.
• The second purpose of this assignment is to provide a sample, or framework, to facilitate the completion of the second research posting.

To complete this assignment, I read the instructions in the syllabus carefully and then read several of the model assignments posted on the course web-site. Once again, many of the submissions were extraordinarily well done. Some students continued and built upon their first research posting while others branched off into new and exciting territory.

Sample posting #1

Sample by Phil Thrash

From Swastika to A Nation of Sheep via the “Culture Industry.”

     This journal posting will show how some Jewish Immigrants during the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich analyzed and developed theories of some major influences on and characteristics of the U.S. Dominant Culture.  Horkheimer and Adorno were German Jewish professors of social anthropology who developed the idea that a “culture industry” exists in societies to create needs and wants in individuals. “Historicism is a type of literary criticism that examines literary works within their diverse and interrelated historical contexts.  In analyzing a text, the historicists consider the cultural and social forces that influenced and are revealed through the text.  Historicists may incorporate aesthetic perspectives, the metaphysical or Hegelian, the nationalist and the naturalistic representation.”   (Bedford p. 202)  This paper will view Horkheimer and Adorno’s notion through the historicism nationalistic perspective to; (from which it is seen as a cultural product influenced by nationally held norms and ideals), coupled with the naturalistic perspective; (from which it is viewed as a means of gaining insight into contemporary social values). Thesis development will include brief views of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 during the rise of Hitler’s National Socialist Party (Nazis) and will include some related Nietzschean references.  These historicism perspectives and brief view of Nazi Germany will support the “culture industry” notion of Horkheimer and Adorno.  I have come upon these ideas from graduate classes taken at the University of Houston at Clear Lake, Texas, specifically:  Literary Theory and Criticism, The Third Reich as viewed from Nazi Cinema, and now, Immigrant Literature.

     Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno were Jewish professors at the University of Frankfurt during the early 1920s, who embraced the works of Kant and studied under the noted German social theorist Siegfried Kracauer.  They pursued their specialties in what became the now famous interdisciplinary Institute for Social Research (the so called Frankfurt School).  They both focused on cultural studies and empirical social analyses of modern culture and were, in effect, social anthropologists.  Their methods of research are reflective of the nationalist and naturalistic perspectives of historicism literary theory.

     National Socialism (Nazism) became the official political party in Germany in 1933.  Hitler was made Fuehrer of this “legitimate” political party which existed until 1945.  During the early years of the Third Reich, marginalization and intense discrimination of the Jews in Europe began.  The German Jews were taken out of government positions and Horkheimer immigrated to the United States after the Nazis closed the institute in 1933.  Adorno was denied the opportunity to teach at the university because he was Jewish.  Adorno accepted Horkheimer’s invitation to join him in the U.S. and he came to America in 1938, before the German pogroms began in earnest and before the invasion of Poland.  They moved to Los Angeles and collaborated on Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), their major critique of modern culture.   “They came upon their major thesis and notion that the modern West had not fulfilled its utopian promise of Enlightenment, becoming instead a rationalized, administered world that dominates individuals through instrumental reason, monopoly capitalism, and political totalitarianism.”  (Norton, p. 1221)  Their intellectual backgrounds and theories went beyond theory evidenced by their experiences lived in Nazi Germany.  Nazi Germany exhibited extreme perspectives of the nationalistic perspective of historicism, which was corroborated and promulgated by Horkheimer and Adorno in their major argument about modern Western culture.   They would have opportunity to study the United States dominant culture in California to see the “culture industry” in action.

     A portion of their work from Dialectic of Enlightenment was called; “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.”   They observe the social-economic situation of the U.S. dominant culture’s consumption of goods and products, in which the individual thinks he is independent, yet, by consuming the mass produced, hysterically promoted goods and services, make the individual more subservient to the “culture industry,” the ones in power who manipulate wants and needs.  “The truth is they are just business made into ideology in order to justify the rubbish they produce.”  (Norton, p. 1224)  They indicate the whole world is made to go through the filter of the culture industry.  Movies become metaphors for real life as an illusion is presented to prevail that the outside world is a continuation of what was presented on the screen.  They tie this concept into advertising manipulation of the masses to the point is made that sustained thought is out of the question.  The spectator (consumer) does not have to think as through dint of repetition he does not want to miss the relentless flow of “facts” from the culture industry.   “Even the effort required for the consumer’s response is semi-automatic; no scope is left for the imagination.” (Norton, p.1226) 

      I thought of Vance Packard’s book A Nation of Sheep after digesting Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s theories of the Culture Industry.  Both books are incisive about the mindlessness of the dominant majority of the U.S. culture regarding values, just not as consumers, but as citizens of America. I live and vote in Lufkin, Texas, a small East-Texas town of about 35,000 persons.  In a recent mayoral election, 2,500 persons voted!  This is not remarkable if one looks at voting records across the nation.  It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw which reflected; “What do you think about ignorance and apathy,” with the response, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”  I have to think if it were not for bumper stickers, many would not have opinions. The pleasure principle moves into the naturalist historicism perspective of the dominant culture through these analyses.  Pleasure, in my view, is that the dominant culture does not have to think about anything due to the successful efforts of the culture industry.  People, especially the dominant culture, want to have pleasure and forget suffering as flight from any reality requiring real thought.  Horkheimer and Adorno wrote their work in 1947.  It appears it was applicable then and prophetic now, as it appears this dominant culture is a nation of sheep waiting to be led, or being led by an “overman,” or “overmen” in the Nietzschean sense. Please prove my possible cynicism wrong and vote!  Kinky Friedman has made the “ticket,” and would at least provide some freshness to the staleness of the puppets the dominant culture chooses not to vote out.                   

Comments: 
I selected this posting partially because it related to the readings and discussion of the last class period.  This posting provided additional information on Theodor Adorno, who was referenced in Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation, and his contemporary, Max Horkheimer. This posting was by no means the most thoughtful or well-written of the model assignments, but I felt it touched on an important, albeit unsettling, aspect of the dominant culture.

Sample posting #2

Sample by Karen Daniel

Assimilation and the Abandonment
of the French Language in Louisiana

            Raised by parents of Cajun descent, I have long been interested in Cajun culture and history and, in fact, wrote my first college research paper on the forced emigration and subsequent enslavement of, and discrimination against, the Cajun people (Le Grand Degrangement).  As I grew older and spent more time in Louisiana with my extended family, I became aware of certain aspects of the history of the people of that area that place them, in terms of this classes objectives, in both the immigrant and the minority classifications.  While the Cajun people are strongly assimilated into the dominant culture of Louisiana, their period of assimilation was much longer than that of the model immigrant due in large part to the fact that they resisted mainstream assimilation and attempted to hold onto the traditions and language of their homeland. While residing in the United States for many generations, the Cajun people were generally isolated from dominant society and continued to speak French until the 1900’s when there were attempts made by the government and the dominant culture to wipe out their language by making it illegal to speak French in public schools.  In the context of our classroom discussions I have begun to question if, how, and to what extent the forced elimination of their language has contributed to their degree of assimilation, and how, as an ethnic group they feel about this relatively recent development. 

            There is a Cajun singer by the name of Zachary Richard (pronounced Reeshard) that holds icon status in the rich cultural atmosphere of Southern Louisiana.  Singing primarily about the culture of the Cajun people, he sings a song entitled “No French No More” (Lyrics) that is a poignant story of the forced loss of the French language through the public education system.  The story Richard tells links the issues faced by the Cajuns with those faced by the Mexican Americans in that they were already in Louisiana when it was purchased by the US and had established that area as French speaking.  However, unlike the majority of Mexican Americans, the Cajun people were in control of their own schools and government institutions for a long time afterwards, and it was not until later that the US would attempt to, and succeed in, wiping out their language base. 

            Much to my surprise, rather than having a difficult time finding information and research on the topic of the loss of Cajun French (wikipedia), there is so much information that I became lost in all of it, although, not surprisingly a great many of the web sites are published in French.  Generally the research discusses two separate aspects of the Cajun French language issue, the first of these being the rationale behind giving up the French language, mainly due the necessity of assimilation into Anglo-American culture.  According to The Center for Cultural and Eco-tourism (ccet), based at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, “as their children were humiliated and punished in schools for speaking the language of their ancestors, Cajuns and black Creoles alike were convinced that the French dialects they spoke were cultural, social, political and economic liabilities.”  Although is website does not specifically discuss laws forbidding the use of French in public schools, many sites do, and often assert that this was actually an attempt to suppress the entire Cajun culture.  Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajun) talks about sociologists that believe that the language was directly related to social class, with the decedents of the French speaking people becoming the working class, and those who chose to assimilate and speak only English becoming the members of the higher socio-economic classes.  Within the higher economic classes, even those families who encouraged bilingualism in their children discouraged the use of Cajun French, instead encouraging them to learn the more academic formal French spoken in France and other European countries.  On his website (About Being Cajun) Terry Eymard discusses the perception by the outside dominant culture that Cajuns were illiterate as they could not speak English, leading to the word Cajun being considered a slur, which in turn led to a loss of pride in their heritage and culture. 

            The second issue that is addressed in the research I did is the idea of the regeneration of the Cajun culture, and this ethnic group’s attempts to retain their rich and colorful heritage.  Most prominently mentioned are the efforts of a group titled Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODIFIL), developed during what came to be known as the Louisiana French renaissance movement (ccet).  According to their website, their primary philosophy is to “treasure our past to enrich our future by affirming our Franchophone (the word francophone refers to people who speak French or areas or countries where French is the principal language or one of the principal languages spoken) identity through education (Goal I), community outreach (Goal II) and international exchanges (Goal III).  Interestingly, there is a general feeling that part of the interest in the regeneration of the Cajun French culture is an increased interest in the music of that ethnic group (Cajun French).  Much like my own experience with the music of Zachary Richard, the lyrics sung by older generations can inspire younger generations to develop an interest in, and pride for, their cultural history.  What was once seen as a detrimental thing (being Cajun) has now reached an almost nostalgic status, and the general feeling is that the pendulum has swung to the point of many people claiming Cajun heritage who, in fact, are not of Cajun descent (Heartland Cajun History).  I am sure this is a bittersweet irony for the generation that suffered through the humiliation of being an illiterate Cajun years ago. 

            While in many cases assimilation through abandoning their home language was not absolutely forced upon the Cajuns, it is easy to see why families with social status to maintain would have chosen to separate their children from their cultural heritage.    From a more personal perspective, I find it interesting that while it was the upper and middle classes that first abandoned their Cajun French heritage, it is those same classes that are in a large part responsible for the interest in, and regeneration of, this linguistic resource.  Since a great many upper and middle class students in Louisiana attend private (often Catholic) schools, they are often required to learn both French and Latin as part of their regular curriculum.  This creates an interesting paradox as, while social and economic status is often linked to the decline in the French language, it is also linked to its resurgence.   It is almost as if the Cajuns gave up their native language long enough to fully assimilate and are now choosing to regain some of the rich cultural traditions that they were compelled to abandon.  There is some question as to how successful the regeneration of Cajun French will be and it will be interesting to see how it develops as today’s younger generation matures and pursues their interests in it.   

Comments:
I selected this posting because early in the text Ms. Daniel referred to the Grand Degrangement. Since we have on several occasions discussed the concept of diaspora and were going to be continuing that discussion today, I was intrigued to discover that there had in fact been a Cajun diaspora, or dispersal.  If you are interested in this topic, you might want to read another student submission from the same class. It is titled “A Quarter Cup of Cajun” and was written by Amy Noblitt.

Conclusion:

I enjoyed reading the second research postings from the model assignments of the Summer 2006 class. Although the ones that I shared with you today were not the best of the best, they did provoke my thoughts and inspire me to learn more about those topics. The fact that they touched on recent classroom topics of discussion added to their interest.