LITR 5831 Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Lecture Notes

22 Septemberr 2015

1. Continue dialogue between Crusoe and Lucy? Extend to Man . . . King?

compare Crusoe & Lucy

146 could do what I wanted, “as long as I could pay for it”; cf. 159

64 example all the world should copy

70 first time in life, began to look forward

80 L & M marry against parents’ wishes

133 a new beginning again

133 nurse, parents, obedience, convention

134 inventing myself

143 Mariah’s rules: master / servant

158 living a life I had always wanted . . . apart from my family in a place where no one knew much about me

2. Continue Lucy as Lucifer—compare to Friday? How have self-other dynamics shifted?

149 Potter < Englishman who owned ancestors when slaves

150 mother not an ordinary human being but something from an ancient book

152 named after Satan himself

Lucy, short for Lucifer

152 moment I knew who I was

152 Bible, Paradise Lost, Shakespeare

153 if I did not know everything yet, I would not be afraid to know everything as it came up

3. How coordinate Lucy's family drama to colonial-postcolonial? That is, how successfully can the hierarchies of family or marriage be projected on colonialism and its after-effects?

1. Where does this text fit in Colonialism > Postcolonialism > Transnational Migration? If Lucy is an immigrant story, what does she see about the First World? 60-1

32 diners look like M’s relatives / waiters look like my relatives (cf. God of Small Things)

LITR 5831 World / Multicultural Literature: American Immigrant summer 2016

review discussion-lead assignment

seminar instructors not perfect models b/c often mixing lecture with planned objective but also adapting to student reaction, input

pre-graduate classrooms (high school, undergrad): if anything's going to happen consistently, the instructor has to make it happen, provide energy and focus

Ideal seminar situation:

shared reading(s)

essential question(s)

discussion stays within subject-field but can go where discussion creates--no predetermined outcomes

motive behind discussion-lead assignment: students more comfortable contributing to peer-led discussions, less anxiety about saying something in newer language than prof's or stepping on prof's sensitivities

grad students are professionals, not just learning from and feeding back to professors but creating their own careers and research

self-other dialogue model

traditional culture as hierarchy; modern culture as lateral relations

self superior-other subordinate

Todorov 42

apply to gender, family, traditional culture

use with Poco Culture Studies inclusion of women's studies

6. How does Lucy's status as a woman (along w/ Kincaid's) change the sexual dynamics of the self-other encounter? Compare and contrast Inter-racial Buddies (all-male; e.g., Crusoe & Friday).

3. How coordinate Lucy's family drama to colonial-postcolonial? That is, how successfully can the hierarchies of family or marriage be projected on colonialism and its after-effects?

[traditional culture, bio-basis of humanity]

53 loved Miriam, treated her as my mother

131 Mariah wanted to rescue me

but my mother was my mother x history, culture, other women

132 Mariah had completely misinterpreted my situation

132 mourning end of love affair, perhaps only true love

119 too clever, too used to getting his way

make her think it was she who was leaving him

119-20 I am going to ask Lewis to leave (cf. Friday)

61 parents hated everyone not from Ireland or near there

63 Mariah +- OK with Peggy > superior to my mother [intersubjectivity]

63 Mother: my needs <_ her wishes

90 present takes shape of past; my past was my mother

not like my mother—I was my mother

124-5 father left by his mother; > grandmother

father’s father & Panama Canal

126 father died leaving mother a pauper

130 only child till 9

male children > U. in England, doctor or lawyer

father okay, but mother

no accompanying scenario for me

Mrs. Judas

142 men no morals; why men like laws

Lucy: modernity / tradition; Neo-Colonialism 73; millennialism 8, 72-73, 88, 129, 156

self-other as marked, unmarked 25-27, 114

72 no connection between comforts and decline of world

72 on last legs, disappear from the earth

73 if saved, reduced circumstances

cf. Lewis’s daily conversations with stockbroker, any relation?

124-5 father left by his mother; > grandmother

father’s father & Panama Canal

60-1 Peggy & cousin, also an au pair from Ireland

1998 course texts

3c. Does American resistance to or ignorance of postcolonial criticism react to this discourse’s development from outposts of the former British Empire and French / Francophone traditions?

Lucy 136 if only ruled by French

Course unlimited in what one could study

familiar patterns of self-other, conquerors / conquered, but every colonial / imperial situation unique unto itself

France seems to have maintained the closest, least disruptive relations with former colonies(?)

 Literary colonialism: Kincaid & daffodils

17 spring daffodils, old poem

18 Queen Victoria Girls’ School, poem

18-19 daffodils, dream, anger surprised both of us

29 daffodils: looked simple, as if made to erase a complicated and unnecessary idea

30 moved away, got my voice back

had to learn poem about flowers at 10, didn’t see flowers till 19

30 cast beloved daffodils in scene she never considered . . . of conquered and conquest

Objective 7. To register and evaluate the persistence of millennial or apocalyptic narratives, images, and themes as a means of comprehending or symbolizing the colonial-postcolonial encounter.

White Teeth -- Jehovah's Witnesses, world perennially ending

apocalypse

8 Book of Revelation

72 on last legs, disappear from the earth [millennial]

88 ruins

118 the end, the ruin

122 break apart, holding together

129 mansion in ruins, sugar industry in Caribbean

156 he loved ruins . . . sad, gradual decline

Train to Pakistan through page 116 (through Kalyug chapter, up to Mano Majra chapter)

Later in semester: Things Fall Apart

Transnats may not buy into end of world, but changing of world

one world dies, another is born

India > Obj. 7 millennialism

colonial period: 1500s-1900s

postcolonial or decolonizing period 1940s-1960s

World War 2 1939-45

Major Events following WW2

1. Establishment of Israel in Palestine (1948)--> End-Time Prophecies esp. in USA

2. Partition / Independence of India, Pakistan (1947)

immigrant story--what see about 1st world? + tradition / modernity

5 no longer tropical zone

knowledge divides past / future

61 parents hated everyone not from Ireland or near there

63 Mariah +- OK with Peggy > superior to my mother [intersubjectivity]

70 first time in life, began to look forward

71 destruction of countryside, farmland

72 no connection between comforts and decline of world

72 on last legs, disappear from the earth

112 easy to be kind in winning hand position

146 could do what I wanted, “as long as I could pay for it”; cf. 159

159 this work paid the bills; cf. 146

what role or identity for 1st world after colonialism?

12 they seemed to have been all over the world

13 x-say grace, thanks to God

13 what sort of parents?

13 the Visitor, x-part of things

14 Lewis’s uncle >monkeys, x-human beings

14-15 dream, Dr. Freud; taken them in; x-understand

15 I did not know who Dr. Freud was

26 Mariah was beyond doubt or confidence

25, 27 mark, unmarked

27 Mariah, celestial light, blessed, no blemish or mark

35-6 Mariah wanted us to see things the way she did

37 my boat, my fish. Feed minions / millions?

37 minions, dominion: a word like that would haunt someone like me

39 I have Indian blood, reason I’m so good at catching fish and hunting

40 nothing remotely like an Indian about her: why claim a thing like that? I myself . . . my grandmother is a Carib Indian

40 Carib Indian > museums; possession of a trophy

41 victor & vanquished

41 “How do you get to be that way?”

49 separate planets

49 [Dinah interrupts] endangered marshland

61 parents hated everyone not from Ireland or near there

63 Mariah +- OK with Peggy > superior to my mother [intersubjectivity]

65 all had been to the islands & had fun there

65 place & shame: only thing to be said, “I had fun there”

65 “Where in the West Indies . . . ?” > came to like, important

119 cultivated man cannot speak mind

119 too clever, too used to getting his way

make her think it was she who was leaving him

119-20 I am going to ask Lewis to leave (cf. Friday)

Continue Lucy as Lucifer; compare to Friday?

How to coordinate family drama to colonial-postcolonial?

[traditional culture, bio-basis of humanity]

53 loved Miriam, treated her as my mother

131 Mariah wanted to rescue me

but my mother was my mother x history, culture, other women

132 Mariah had completely misinterpreted my situation

132 mourning end of love affair, perhaps only true love

Use Kincaid’s style materials

Kincaid’s style

simple explicitness, directness +- exaggeration

6 such a rage

46 I had grown to love her so

compare to DeFoe’s exhaustiveness

extremely selective in detail and plotting

pp. 66-71 regarding possible pregnancy, then dropped

79 absence of detail on scene

90 not like my mother—I was my mother.

91 I would die

narrow range, “perverse”

love & hate, pain of hatred + significance

20 love and hate exist so side by side

58 mother

POOR VISITOR

3 first day

3 lifeboats & drowning soul

bad feeling, no name for

so many people

4 the new

4 refrigerator

5 sun: miss home less

5 sun + cold

5 no one had ever told me [traditional culture]

5 something always know: skin color brown, own name

5 no longer tropical zone

knowledge divides past / future

6 felt cold

6 books, homesickness

6 I understood it . . . there

6 picture of future

gray / black / blacker / blackest

7 leave behind sad, discontent?

Cf. Room & cargo box [slavery?]

7 regard them as family?

8 Book of Revelation: Bible & family memory

8 radio

9 “made in Australia”

10 I could not go back

10 longed to see someone on corner drawing attention, engaging, complaining; cf. P. 86

12 calypso regarding girl who ran away to Port of Spain, good time, no regrets

12 yellow-haired

12 they seemed to have been all over the world

13 x-say grace, thanks to God

13 what sort of parents?

13 the Visitor, x-part of things

14 Lewis’s uncle >monkeys, x-human beings

14-15 dream, Dr. Freud; taken them in; x-understand

15 I did not know who Dr. Freud was

MARIAH

17 question, x-wait for answer

17 spring = friend; cf. 20

17 spring daffodils, old poem

18 Queen Victoria Girls’ School, poem

18-19 daffodils, dream, anger surprised both of us

19 we stepped back

19 History

20 weather as personal betrayal; cf. 17

20 letters from family; love / hate

21 girl’s throat cut on subway; girl possessed by devil

21 devil can’t walk over water

21 why should my life be reduced to these two possibilities? (cf. God of Small Things)

22 [White Christmas]

22 snow = certain kind of beauty; excess of beauty

23 world nourishing

23 wept < x-want to love one more thing

23 winter = my first real past, my own, final word

24 marked cheek; public misconduct > jail, x-forget

25 heavy & hard the beginning of living

26 Mariah was beyond doubt or confidence

25, 27 mark, unmarked

27 Mariah, celestial light, blessed, no blemish or mark

27 smells pleasant x powerful odor

29 daffodils: looked simple, as if made to erase a complicated and unnecessary idea

29 where should I start? Over here or over there?

30 moved away, got my voice back

had to learn poem about flowers at 10, didn’t see flowers till 19

30 cast beloved daffodils in scene she never considered . . . of conquered and conquest

30 x-her fault, x-my fault

31 no rain since left [cf. Small Place re tourists’ expectations of water.]

31 new no longer thrilling

32 diners look like M’s relatives / waiters look like my relatives (cf. God of Small Things)

32 backchat

32 world round / world flat

32 sleep: thousand on horseback chasing, cutlass

33 freshly plowed fields x [awareness of labor; cf. Dining car]

33 [more labor] man who’d done things for her family; as if he belonged to family

34 hate way she says your name as if she owns you?

34 miles & miles of nothing; land says, I dare you

34 seeing her past go swiftly by in front of her

35 read of lake in geography books

35 < a body of water outside

35-6 Mariah wanted us to see things the way she did

36 love: make me an echo

37 my boat, my fish. Feed minions / millions?

37 minions, dominion: a word like that would haunt someone like me

39 I have Indian blood, reason I’m so good at catching fish and hunting

40 nothing remotely like an Indian about her: why claim a thing like that? I myself . . . my grandmother is a Carib Indian

40 Carib Indian > museums; possession of a tropy

41 victor & vanquished

41 “How do you get to be that way?”

THE TONGUE

43 no real taste

44 fairy food; drawn-out process

44-5 first began to notice mother, as specimen

45 Mariah & children: sincerity & straightforwardness [compare later lying re rabbit]

46 beautiful golden mother / hollow old woman

46 grown to love her so

47 woman taller than husband

47 air of untruth; a show for each other; x-trust

47 speak of family with bitterness

48 handsomeness +; features cf. Coin or stamp

49 separate planets

49 [Dinah interrupts] endangered marshland

51 hot > happy; x-that place

53 loved Miriam, treated her as my mother

54 a place x-real thing

55 [cf. Evil Forest]

55 [cf. Evil Forest >] something beautiful, expanding world

57 Dinah & beauty

58 “the girl”—I had sized her up [subject-object]

58 Mariah + - mother

58 kitchen table < Finland

59 make sure it was always in their possession

59-60 peonies; climate; abandon

61 sort of time not allowed with mother

60-1 Peggy & cousin, also an au pair from Ireland

61 hate & family obligation

61 parents hated everyone not from Ireland or near there

62 Peggy & Lucky Strikes [gendered culture]

63 we told each other everything

63 Mariah +- OK with Peggy > superior to my mother [intersubjectivity]

63 Mother: my needs <_ her wishes

64 example all the world should copy

64 names easy on tongue, made world spin

65 all had been to the islands & had fun there

65 place & shame: only thing to be said, “I had fun there”

65 “Where in the West Indies . . . ?” > came to like, important

67 pregnancy? > reminded of past, filled with confusion and dread

68 armpit hair [physicality]; life no longer secret

69 blood in underpants, someday to pray for

69 [abortifacient] herbs

70 presented with innocence & politenesss: curtsy

70 first time in life, began to look forward

70 yes, life isn’t so bad after all

71 almost unbreakable bonds > x-new ones

71 destruction of countryside, farmland

72 Louisa: “what before our house?”

72 no connection between comforts and decline of world

72 on last legs, disappear from the earth

73 if saved, reduced circumstances

cf. Lewis’s daily conversations with stockbroker, any relation?

73-75 Lewis & rabbits

75 In the silence, a world of something must have appeared

75 history of civilization, mention everything; not one world on the misery to be found at a dining-room table

77 buried rabbit in ceremony = untruths, universal to father, mother, children

78 same, nothing same: revelation

79 cf. Dinah event and small part of map > blown up to clue

79 Lewis licking Dinah: not a show; something real

80 L & M marry against parents’ wishes

80 a picture no one would take

80 where I came from, known that some men and women not to be trusted in certain areas

80 father, 30 children

80 an obeah woman

82-3 virginity mattered to boy, x-such a hold

83 [chapter ends on tongues]

COLD HEART

85 wealthy, comfortable, beautiful, best world had to offer at fingertips—never a broken fingernail?

85 prosperous (happy) parts of world with 4 distinct seasons [preview eco-imperialism]

86 people x do anything interesting; cf. P. 10

86 how luxurious . . . a room that nobody really needed

87 unhappiness that too much can bring . . .  .  too little

87 looked: happy family

88 role of amusing, adorable father

88 I was looking at ruins

89 small hands / penis < catechism [cf. Robinson Crusoe]

89 Sundays

90 present takes shape of past; my past was my mother

not like my mother—I was my mother

90 prison

91 read only one letter, die of longing

91 Peggy’s family held no magic over her

92 normal life with ups and downs, not dangerous undertow

92 x-nurse

93 nurse’s uniform: cloth or circumstances

93 alone in the world

94 face godlike: knows origins, knows make up

94 museum

95 [Gauguin]

95 halfway across world to live

95 place as prison

95 man’s life in pages of book

95 not a man; young woman from fringes of world > servant

96 “Angry person?” “What expect?”

96 plants from rain forest, I knew [defamiliarized; use > aesthetic value]

96 a painter

97 Paul’s paintings, x-straightforward

97 paintings = reflects in pool with disturbed surface

97 clean, virginal > instantly, deliciously strange [cf. Plants]

98 assumed everything they said mattered

98 artists, men, irresponsible

98 no one much liked them except other people like themselves

98 any artists [among people she knew who went crazy?]

98-9 [good manners >] world’s misery

99 plants: use > ceremony > defamiliarized

99 self = a sort of weed

100 gurgly laugh of pleasure and insincerity, kind of woman I wouldn’t have liked

101 chosen company of a man over hers

102 hands looked strange

102-5 story of Myrna, wicked stepmother, Mr. Mathew & Mr. Thomas, middle finger, money in Ovaltine tin

105 overcome with jealousy

106 smoking cigarettes = disrespect [ritualized society]

107 a direct imitation of my mother

109 hands

109 Lucy & Peggy & apartment: old story

110 count blessings x there could never be enough blessings

111 Maude, confusion of punishments and rewards

father head of Her Majesty’s Prisons

112 quarreled constantly but never in my presence

112 easy to be kind in winning hand position

113 life with Paul in bed, thrill of violence

113 “We have such bad sex”

114 Mariah’s affair, impotence blame, left a mark

115 letter: urgent x doomsday

115 photos of ordinary people > looked extraordinary [defamiliarization]

116 cousin Cuthbert: smell > photo

116-17 Roland from Martinique & panama

117 a kiss of treachery

118 the end was here, the ruin in front of me

119 cultivated man cannot speak mind

119 too clever, too used to getting his way

make her think it was she who was leaving him

119-20 I am going to ask Lewis to leave (cf. Friday)

120 feeling of home

121 picture more exciting than subject—why?

121 Maude quick!

122 father died

122 about to break apart

123 remind me of your mother

said only thing keep me alive

124 nonsense [homeland as absurd x rational]

124-5 father left by his mother; > grandmother

father’s father & Panama Canal

126 father died leaving mother a pauper

127 cold letter, matched my heart

127 this real world

128 life as a slut

128 husbandless, fatherless

129 old mansion in ruins < sugar industry in West Indies

great explorers, crossed seas, riches + feel free

dead animals < fast-moving cars

riches & death

129 forgive your mother

130 only child till 9

male children > U. in England, doctor or lawyer

father okay, but mother

no accompanying scenario for me

Mrs. Judas

131 Mariah wanted to rescue me

but my mother was my mother x history, culture, other women

132 Mariah had completely misinterpreted my situation

132 mourning end of love affair, perhaps only true love

LUCY

133 a new beginning again

133 nurse, parents, obedience, convention

out of existence

134 inventing myself

134 x-position, money; > memory, anger, despair

135 Columbus named island in passing

so many things to name

135 origin < foul deed

135 x-Rule Britannia, x-Briton, <slave

135 efforts to civilize me

136 if only ruled by French

136 mail through ruler country

137 past = person you no longer are

139 [universality]

139 felt like Lucifer, wrong upon wrong

142 men no morals; why men like laws

143 necklace from Africa; most beautiful

143 books

143 Mariah’s rules: master / servant

144 Mother: make sure roof over head is your own

144 new bed, my own < my own money

145 restlessness, dissatisfaction, skin-doesn’t-fit-ness

146 could do what I wanted, “as long as I could pay for it”; cf. 159

146 parents trivial, etc.

147 luxury of plumbing

147 history < a little person, unhappy, stirs up

149 Lucy Josephine Potter

149 Uncle Joseph, sugar in Cuba

149 living in an old tomb in Anglican churchyard

149 Potter < Englishman who owned ancestors when slaves

150 mother not an ordinary human being but something from an ancient book

151 harm in shape of animal

152 named after Satan himself

Lucy, short for Lucifer

152 moment I knew who I was

152 Bible, Paradise Lost, Shakespeare

153 if I did not know everything yet, I would not be afraid to know everything as it came up

154 everything looked unreal; never penetrate

154 my sense of time had changed

154 Was Peggy seeing the same thing? Probably not

155 Peggy did not know what a real lemon smelled like. How get out of this?

155 I wondered what my mother was doing . . . saw her face . . . loved me without reservation

155 moment he . . . possessed me . . . I grew tired of him

156 he loved ruins; he loved the past but only . . . if it ended on a sad note, from a lofty beginning to a gradual, rotten decline

156 a man stay with me in my own bed . . . only made a note of it

157 employee / employee

respect, submission, reagerness to please

x-mean

x-let real personality come out

158 living a life I had always wanted . . . apart from my family in a place where no one knew much about me

158 “Mr. Simon” = x-honey, x-darling

159 first person I’d met who had deeply compromised himself

159 this work paid the bills; cf. 146

160 sure none of it was good for me, and I liked that

160 made a print that made more beautiful the thing I thought I had seen

161 enough of partings just now

161 I was alone in the world

162 going far away to live in a place of uncommon natural beauty

163 women, journals, and, of course, history

163 top of page I wrote my full name

164 love someone so much . . . would die

shame

blur

Leftover notes from earlier classes

Introduced LITR 5734 as new course in LITR grad curriculum ten years ago

Somewhat exotic course, esp. in USA

I never took a course like this. Most students haven't either, though some changes in 10 years

Course operates somewhat in a void. Most students like it and catch its historical premises, but most Literature courses operate in terms of national literatures and period surveys like "American Literature since the Civil War" or "English Romanticism."

Geo-political and economic globalization has led to some revival of "world literature" courses in many different forms--but most literature curricula aren't organized this way.

(Conservative pressures in curriculum: teachers teach what they're taught; involved parents of high school students expect Huck Finn and Scarlet Letter since those are the books they read.) 

I put together Colonial-Postcolonial literature from models of two different courses at U of Wisconsin

content: new undergrad course on colonial and postcolonial literature

dialogue model: seminar on race in American literature in which a canonical novel was followed by a new-canon novel (e. g., Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and early African American novel, William Wells Brown's Clotel; or, the President's Daughter (1853))

Course succeeds primarily on quality of primary texts. 

As context for those texts, what to do?

Earlier versions of course: more theory

Two problems:

Literary theory is a mixed bag--great big ideas that can relocate from one literary scenario to another; loose or obscurantist writing, often the worst kind of model for student writing

Students' (and everyone's) lack of empirical or historical knowledge of world cultures

> efforts to incorporate more knowledge into course; e. g., "animism" and "Sikhs"

With every new offering of LITR 5734, rebalance theory-knowledge mix as context for readings

Next time, I'll likely cull some of the web reviews that seemed less productive

One less presentation per class meeting

open class or after break with lecture-section on theory applied to novel