Achebe (via Matt) Takes A Shot At The Zoo Matt Went To As A Child In Kansas, Then Digresses To Talk About Ota Benga

Please? The African Savannah?

Isn't there any other locale of interest besides the Savannah? It's only the cradle of civilization.

Isn't there a kind of person, native to Africa whose stature isn't some vaguely humanoid stretched-thin-and-tall dark shadow holding a spear? Do all people in Africa live in straw huts.

Largely, the other-ized african continent is one of sub-human primal activity. It's seen especially in the historical understanding of those belonging to indigenous tribes.

Take, for example, Ota Benga, pictured below.

This picture is taken from the 1906 Bronx zoo exhibit, where he was costumed and displayed this way. (Okay Doug, I know this isn't contemporary, but I read about this and it's so outrageous I had to blog post up a storm) Though he was able to, and later did, learn english, he was not taught it until he was freed from the park. Thus, unable to speak the language of his new location and estranged from his home, a tribe of pygmies native to the Congo, he was displayed amid animals, originally called The Missing Link.  I know I go off on Conrad, but this is some seriously other-ized victim of colonization, or what Said would call, Orientalism. The insistence that other cultures are unlike in a subsidiary way to white, western-european cultures. And that what they are, is actually not a question anymore of what the are but what they aren't.  What Ota Benga isn't, is an average sized-english-speaking-white-american. Therefore he is mystical, primal, and unusual. Thoughts on Benga? Other-ized African culture? Zoos?

Paula Gunn Allen Mininterprets Ric Gendron's Art

    Ric Gendron is a Spokane-based artist whose work can be seen any time you fancy. This is in part a measure of his excellence and in part a measure of his abstraction: any gallery seeking to expand its cultural inclusivity finds an excellent metonymy in Gendron, who is (Thank God!) both a member of the Confederated Nation of the Colville and a popular painter. His work occupies a fascinating interstitial space between tribal identification and pop art. It is interesting that his work is described as an attempt to negotiate a hybrid identity between Colville tradition and American amalgamation, but then, this seem to be the only conversation allowed Native American artists. Anzaldua might have been a remarkable mestiza in her time, however, all blended identities that follow are, it seems, doomed to dialectical discourse (Gendron has a Colville father and an Umatilla mother! Fascinating!).
    The interpretation of Gendron’s work is far more interesting. In an article from the Spokesman review published on May 15, a reviewer said absolutely nothing, and in an article from 2011 following the cancellation of Gendron’s largest show to date, a reviewer said nothing again. Nothing except for a description of Gendron’s working method and objective content. In an especially bold move, one critic wrote: “Gendron’s work involves bluegrass music, with which he is also involved.” The trouble, it seems, is that while Gendron draws upon tribal design and iconography in his painting, no one seems willing to point out the fact that Gendron is almost entirely separated from a Colville Tradition, living instead outside the Colville reservation. Since it is the case Gendron is not, in fact, portraying cultural narratives, and he is not, in fact, articulating hybrid identities, the critical discussion around his work is forced to focus on the formal elements of his painting.
    Nevertheless, Gendron is marketed as a tribal artist. It seems to be a reinvention of Paula Gunn Allen’s interpretive difficulty. In the first place, a tribal narrative is marred by the interpretive framework imposed upon it. In the second place, out of the desire to understand personal identities in terms of communal histories, a tribal framework is imposed on a work of non-tribal art, therefore obfuscating the actual identity of the artist.

Said Goes to the Theater and Gets a Tattoo

    Said describes Orientalism as the articulation of otherness by groups with power so that dominant parties can understand themselves by differentiation. In Said’s description, the process of differentiation is done by the dominant group. However, it seems the case that marginalized communities will often represent themselves as a deliberate binary to dominant classes. For example, in Louis Valdez’s play Zoot Suit, Chicano youth in Los Angeles in the 1940’s don a performative set of clothing in order to build a group identity directly opposed to the dominant group. There seem to be two explanations.
    It is possible that Oreintalism is eventually accepted by subjugated groups, groups who agree to understand themselves only in the space of difference from dominance. In this model, even rebellious counter-cultures affirm societal stratification when they describe their identity as a difference from the dominant structure.
    It is also possible that Orientalism fails to accurately describe revolution. Or, since information is most easily organized in binaries, it might be the case that a group dissastisfied with the operation of a pervasive structure might create an alternative identity in dialectical tension. Young Hegelians do this all the time. Oh you young revolutionaries with your strange music. It is therefore possible that otherness is not an affirmation of dominance, but a discursive space in which plural identities might be negotiated.

Bhaba and Hegel Crush Science

    “It is often taken for granted in materialist and idealist problematics that the value of culture as an object of study…lies in a capacity to produce a cross-referential, generalizable unity that signified a progression or evolution of ideas-in-time” (2370).
    Now this: http://www.techwench.com/scientists-invent-oxygen-particle-that-if-injected-allows-you-to-live-without-breathing/
    Science is its own culture. It operates according to its own epistemic rules, and it is almost intentionally self-congratulatory. It is expressed as progress over time. I am convinced that Bhaba would think science was in fact a deliberate affirmation of particular ideologies. This is because science, expressed as advancement (and therefore positive), calls goodness the sustentation of particular conditions. It is important for science to describe itself as neutral, a unifying expression of human advancement. However, it seems that this guise of neutrality could instead cover dominant affirmation. For the ability to extend life is always owned by particular parties, parties that are keen to perpetuate a condition under which their product is desirable. That condition is the assumption that aliveness is the best expression of goodness. This is, more than anything else, a cultural claim.
    It seems that science, especially medical science, is linked inextricably to particular ideologies. Particularly consumption and control, both of which are valued in a dominant structure of production and distribution, that is, the heirs of Euroamerican neocolonial powers. The trouble is that neo and postcolonialsim no longer accurately describe international relationships. There are not large-scale discrete parties. There are, however, small communities engaged in particular enterprises. Those small communities are, in fact, dominant by nature of their monolithic capital. In science, differentiation is accomplished through idiomatic language, the display of technologies, and the ownership and administration of technologies by particular groups.

DERRIDA, A DOCUMENTARY I WATCHED FOR EXTRA CREDIT (WITH MATT)

    First of all, there is a three-minute scene of Derrida getting a haircut. Which is completely ridiculous. You cannot tame Derrida’s hair in only three minutes. Derrida tried for  years to look unimposing and still failed.
    Second, Derrida’s position as in the documentary is remarkable. He actively deconstructs himself, pointing out the artificiality of his conditions and the disconnection between the representation of his life and the always already deferred reality of his life. This might mean that Derrida is obsessed with himself. Actually, it does mean that Derrida is obsessed with himself, since he calls all human interaction and thought narcissist and refers to himself as a king narcissist.
    At one point in the documentary, Derrida is asked about love. After belittling his interviewer, pointing out that love is a topic, and not even a topic, but always already you-know-what, Derrida avers that a better question about love would be between who and what, objectivity and subjectivity. When a person is in love with another person, asks Derrida, are they in love with the person as an object or with their attributes? Is it love for the ontological essence of an individual or their performative abilities? Because performative abilities, Derrida is quick to point out, are predicated upon particular circumstances, and circumstances, being dynamic, naturally alter the possible actions of an individual. However, even though actions and identities are shifting, Derrida points out that it would be impossible to know an individual outside such arbitrary attributes and therefore impossible to love an ontology outside a teleology.
    Apparently, this distinction relates to all philosophy, everywhere. Is it possible to talk about objects without talking about its attributes? And if it is only possible to talk about attributes, where then are Plato’s forms? Since human beings are oriented towards objects relationally, it follows that a person’s experience of an object would be dynamic, relative to the disposition of that individual (their expectations and desires) in a given instant. That being the case, it would be at all times impossible to get to an object, since an object is only an attribute interpreted through a person’s relationship. That being the case, it would seem that Derrida suggests Deconstruction is in fact a description of an individual’s interaction with the world: objects, participants in discourse, are also always already deferred.

Baudrillard Goes to the Space Station

    Facebook is simulacral. Obvious, and not very interesting. More interesting? This little gem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
    That’s right. An astronaut. Singing “Space Oddity.” In space. The map has become the territory, and Baudrillard, if not delighted, is at least a bit self-satisfied. The proliferation of the video is fascinating. It seems that we, as participants in mass media dialogues, love to see actions accept constructed frameworks. Human beings standing by statues will stand like statues and everyone has walked across a crosswalk like the Beatles at some point in their life. The map is not laid over the territory. The map is made to structure interaction, and then experience is laid down across it, trying to stay within its boundaries.
    There seem to be two explanations for this. The first is stability which is really immortality. If an astronaut sings “Space Oddity” in space, then all is as it should be, a reflection of an image. And if a human being is only another frame in a precession of simulacra, that person is, effectively, static and undying, a participant in an infinite regress of images. Mass media is built upon the conviction that human beings do not want to deal with objectivity, and this desire for precession can be exploited. That is, like Disneyland, structures of simulacra are commodified and sold.
    Second, if the real problem with the postmodern condition is not the absence of absolutes by the infinite subdivision of time, a re-ordering of both time and space that reflects the basic human desire to be God, then an Astronaut playing “Space Oddity” in a space shuttle is useful because even events--like three-minute songs--do not exist in time in a simulacrum. It is a data bit shattering across nodular space. This is hyperreality: the creation of absurd events to stabilize society by offering the promise of comprehensible, sound-byte experiences that are totally under human control. Only, they are not under human control, and a person watching the video of the astronaut becomes implicated in the simulacrum, and therefore absorbed by postmodern motricity. The video is viral. This does not mean it is popular. It is instead moving itself around the internet.
    Fascinating.

DERRIDA, A DOCUMENTARY I WATCHED FOR EXTRA CREDIT

But also enjoyed.

I wouldn't say it was especially illuminating for his theory, though. I think this is the problem with accessibility. There's a point where you say: this is about opening Derrida up, and therefore we must provide an extensive backgrounding so that anyone can access it.  That's great, except that by-and-large I'm going to guess the audience interested in watching ninety minute of Derrida also already read Derrida.  I think this attitude led to some of the heavy handed illustrations. Derrida talking about layers of knowing while the camera occasionally flips to shots of Derrida watching videos of videos of himself. Very clever.

All is not lost, Derrida talks about love. Or rather when asked about love he curtly tells her she can't ask him to talk so generally. Then, when asked about why philosophy continues to address that issue, he again says, You can't ask me that. Although, his apparent distaste for the question doesn't prevent him from going on about his views on love, this misplacement of it, the question between loving someone and loving something. The dependence loving someone has on the understanding of various traits which are ultimately mutable and therefore not lasting in the identity of the person. I think this, more than most parts, was surprising, and engaging.

This, and the everyday-ness, the humanizing effect it has on a figure whose essays and thoughts seem to outweigh his personality, was very interesting. The question then is: what is the value of the documentary? Is simply being interesting enough? Should their be more provoking thought-evidence?