Nicole Wheatley

Americans' Ineptness of Globalization

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever consider, in my early 20s, myself as a Literature major. I always enjoyed reading ever since I was a little girl, but the idea of reading and writing about dead white men the rest of my career just did not appeal to me. I was a journalist at heart. Everyone has a story and I believed everyone should have a chance for it to be shared with the world. I loved news. It was almost an addiction. After receiving my bachelors degree in Communication from UHCL, I along with a million other journalists discovered we are a dime a dozen. Jobs were not easy to come by due to the influx of journalists over the past decade, and of course, everyone thought they were going to be the next Diane Sawyer, except me. I am too much a realist. All of this brought me to becoming a grant writer, and like journalism I get to change lives in a different fashion almost everyday. It is a thrill. It is my adrenaline to life. It wasn’t enough. So after much thought I decided to get a masters degree in Literature. The first classes were difficult.

Dr. White’s Utopian Literature was one of the first Literature classes I took towards my graduate degree. It was a huge eye opener. It was very apparent I was not your usual Literature grad student. My background was completely different from everyone, I was not a teacher, nor a writer, nor could I quote literature off the top of my head; in a sense, I felt like the elephant man. After attending class for a couple weeks, it all made sense to me. For the first time ever following my degree path, I felt like I had made the right choice, because I may not be your usual literature grad-student; but I fit. My past experiences in journalism, in my life, in my grant writing, allows me to bring a different perspective to each literature class I take, and at times I am at odds against most of my fellow students in how I see the world; or how I see the literature I study it enhances how I interpret things allows insight to how others interpretation of certain texts do not always coincide with mine. I am learning a new way to look at the world, as it is ever-changing, and I am utilizing my new knowledge to make assumptions or judgments I never would have made before due to my lack of experiences. Dr. White has been instrumental in this revelation for me, because his classes are more than literature they are a haven, a place where students are encouraged to share their opinions, beliefs and experience without any biasness. As Allison Coyle states in her final exam in 2008, I too, “am glad to say that my expectations and realizations have gone above and beyond my close minded apprehensions I initially began with.”

               When I began this World Literature course my initial reaction was excitement, because we were not studying dead white authors and we were focusing on the Caribbean; my favorite place in the world. So I was pretty much open to anything. Taking Dr. White’s class was in essence, like taking a cruise through the Caribbean. Each text we studied explained the many dimensions of the lives in the how their lives suffered the fate of many catastrophes. It raised many issues with each different text such as: women suffering, racial tensions, cannibalism, imperialism, and anarchy. One would think since these texts were written many years ago we would have, as a society, gotten past all of these socially inept issues to be a more productive world. What this class gave me was the knowledge we have not grown as the world. Women are still raped and treated like the dirt on the bottom of men’s shoes. Rape is not only in “third world” countries; but power countries like the United States, Great Britain and China. In the United States alone, every two-minute someone in the United States is sexually assaulted, and each year there are about 213,000 victims of sexual assault. This issue was really discussed in our World Literature course using The Train of Pakistan as a medium. This part of the class was very disturbing and very hard to interpret and read, because most of the women in “third world” countries do not have laws in place to protect them from men like Hukum Chand. One of the parts of The Train of Pakistan that just made me sick to my stomach was the part where her grandmother basically sold Haseena to the Magistrate, and he abused his power by dragging her to the table amongst plates covered with stale meatballs and cigarette ash (31). He swept them off the table with his hand and went-on to his lovemaking. The girl suffered his pawing without protest. He picked her up from the table and laid her on the carpet amongst the litter of tumblers, plates and bottles. She covered her face with the loose end of her sari and turned it sideways to avoid his breath (31). This made me sick internally for a very of reason of a woman being treated so inhumanly. Women like Heseena were helpless against powerful men who use their power for unmoral and devalued things like taking women without their consent.

               It made me realize just how far women have come in the US, but also made me aware that when women in the US are raped it is the same scene; except if the perpetrator is ever caught we have laws in place for men like Hakum Chand to be held responsible for their crimes. It definitely gave me an outlook to a world where not only can women become socially inept due to their circumstances, but the men who treat them this way are already socially inept because of their experiences and circumstances. It is a vicious circle that is repeated and repeated through world history. Putting things into perspective, taking this class opened my eyes to the world. As a journalist writing about other people’s tragedies gave me a glimpse of just how some people treat others so inhuman, because they are unable to function in society. Writing about other peoples’ tragedies was very upsetting, because no matter how much you discussed it, or interpreted it, their circumstance was not changing and their fate was not changing. To me this just proved that in order for students to be better prepared for their endeavors in life they must research, study, discuss and interpret texts and histories that have a physical, and mental affect on them. Learn from these texts and use them in the future as a tool to teach others.

               Derek Walcott, poet and author, was a find in this World Literature class. Poetry has not always been something I enjoyed due to all of its hidden meanings in just a few lines. I like to know the story or the meaning upfront. He was an inspiration. He gave me a better understanding of millennium and how the imperial powers that be have a profound effect on the very people they try to educate to become just like them. In his poem “A Far Cry from Africa” written as a response to the Mau Mau Uprising and Kenya’s fight to get out from under the Colonial rule of Britain, Walcott touches on several issues not only faced during this period, but issues that we still face today. Grad-student Lisa Hacker’s poetry discussion was very informative and almost serene in the fact Walcott was using imagery to describe to the world the horrific experiences the Kenyans were suffering during this part of their history. As Hacker explains in Walcott’s line, “The violence of beast on beast is read as natural law, but upright man seeks his divinity by inflicting pain…..” this is the unnaturalness of colonialism. It is the motivation against the machine, and in this case the machine is colonialism. Hacker states, “Students could see the turmoil that the writer continues to experience and put into dialogue with the historical information. By the seeing the personal experience of Walcott, students understand history at a different level.”

               Hacker’s interpretation is similar to my mid-term paper about “Imperialism in Literature: The Power of Language and the Lie of Imperialism in Post Colonialism Texts,” Walcott could be considered using the word as the Romantics did to describe his experiences. “Postcolonial Romanticisms utilized as the power of language ultimately becoming a lie of imperialism examines the methods of resistance that are achieved in the postcolonial literary text through a sometimes ironic appropriation and redeployments of the discourses of European romanticism, specifically the discourse of the romantic landscape.” Walcott does this with his words. He radically reimagines and rewrites the Kenya uprising with historical, traumatic language while still maintaining the sublime mood.

               All of points and interpretations point to the obvious, Americans and their ignorance to post-colonial issues. In objective 3B, do 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? I discuss this fully in my research project, “Technology & the Civilizing Mission of Post Colonialism.” During the past three decades, people have studied and focused much attention on the emergence in the imperial outposts of Great Britain, France, United States and elsewhere, of distinctly sciences. This is why imperialism, is a claim to a distinct nature based on the observations that medical and agricultural programs for the empires were characteristic by a problem-oriented, vertically integrated approach, which encompassed a very limited definition of socio-economic problems favoring the political agenda of the imperial powers. Americans are completely ignorant to the issue of imperialism, its effects throughout the world, and how imperial powers trying to civilize “third world” countries have affected the people of the United States globally. These countries, when the imperial powers leave, have no inspiration to make their county better economically, socially, politically and agriculturally. Due to post colonialism and imperialism the US normally feels, as a “mother country,” that it should go help in times of catastrophic events and that the people it is helping, want to be saved. It is our ignorance and lack of understanding as to the makeup of these countries that has caused the economic discourse in globalization in the world today.

               In conclusion, Dr. White’s World Literature course has opened my eyes to imperialism, globalization due to post colonialism, and the suffrage of women around the globe. As Bruno Latour states, “Yet, even a passing overview of the role played by technical innovation in the history of globalization, suggests it will always cause a social disruption: technical change, all technical change, and is a continuation of politics by another name” (Latour, 25).

Works Cited

               Latour, Bruno. “Globalization brings technical change: politics never change.” Literature Class. 3, July: 1995. Pp. 23-27.