I heart North Bay: Part I
March 8, 2010
I’ve just returned to New York from North Bay, Ontario where I attended Nipissing University’s conference on Truth, Reconciliation and the Residential Schools. The organizers put together a great program that involved both the academic community and the Nipissing First Nations community. I presented a short paper entitled: The Limits of Testimony: Contextualizing Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.
Because the IRS TRC is still in its early stages, the paper focused on a comparative analysis. In particular, I focused on one specific, puzzling testimony, given to the South African TRC in 1996 by Mrs. Konile, whose son was killed by apartheid security forces in 1986. A recent book has been published about this testimony, co-authored by Antjie Krog (an Afrikaner poet and journalist), Nosisi Mpolweni (Xhosa lecturer and linguist) and Kopano Ratele (psychologist). The book is entitled There Was This Goat: Investigating the Truth Commission Testimony of Notrose Nobomvu Konile and the authors spend the bulk of the book discussing one particular testimony, given by Mrs. Konile. This testimony was difficult to understand for many reasons – it did not follow a linear trajectory, it mixed her dream life with her waking life, and made reference to cultural and traditional symbols that would have been difficult for outsiders of her culture to understand. Add to that that her testimony was translated from Xhosa to English and transcribed, and one begins to understand how difficult it may be to comprehend one not-so-simple testimony. The authors of There Was This Goat, which is a line from Mrs. Konile’s testimony, embark on a journey of understanding as they imagine conversations about this testimony and begin to discuss with Mrs. Konile her experience of losing her son, with the truth commission and its aftermath. In one section of the text, where the authors imagine a conversation between two black South Africans, one says to the other:
To fully understand our words you have to understand a whole history of fear, hiding, running, evading, and still trying to maintain a sense of dignity and a life worth something. To truly hear Mrs. Konile’s truth, and the truth of most of the black people who testified at the Truth Commission hearings, you have to work hard to understand it, you have to gain our trust. It’s not going to be given to you just like that, because you may turn and use it against us, as happened many, many times under apartheid (32).
By looking at Mrs. Konile’s testimony and the work of Krog, Mpolweni, and Ratele, my paper explored how testimony is something that must be actively engaged and understood within a much larger historical and cultural context. (I posted a few weeks ago about another of Antjie Krog’s books, Country of My Skull, and There Was This Goat is another excellent, engaging read about the politics of truth commissions.)
Thanks to the organizers and the Nipissing First Nations, who were so generous with sharing their experiences.
Recently Re-read: Country of My Skull
January 30, 2010
While I was preparing for my specialization exams last summer, I read a ton of books. For the two exams, I had about 100 books to read in a very short period of time. I got good at skimming the material and pulling out relevant quotes, but because of the pressure to read quickly, I lost out on some of the nuances and beauty of the texts. Luckily, I recently had the chance to re-read one of these books and found that without the looming exam, I was able to appreciate the text much more.
In Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa, journalist Antjie Krog tells the story of the South African truth commission. It is a highly personal reflection on the process of national reconciliation after the fall of apartheid. When I first read it, I was looking for two sorts of information: 1) What were the basic facts of the commission? Who were the commissioners? Who testified? What was the public response? And 2) What were some of the theoretical issues with which the commission wrestled? How did it conceptualize truth? How did the concept of reconciliation change during the process? What did it mean to different sets of people within the country?
But on my second reading, I was able to focus far more on Krog’s personal experience of the commission and her struggle as a white Afrikaner dealing with the conflicting emotions of guilt, shame, pride, love and hope. It is a beautifully written, complex story that blends personal narrative with historical context and social commentary.
As I continue to follow the TRC in Canada, I wonder: How does one tell the story of a truth commission?With all its complexities and contestations, how does one weave together some sort of narrative that can speak to its inherent contradictions? Antjie Krog shows us that a layered text produced through a mixture of prose, poetry and journalism may be the answer.
Canada’s Colonialism – Article at TheMarkNews.com
January 21, 2010
A short piece on Canada’s colonial history, and Prime Minister Harper’s denial of it, is available at The Mark.
Alana Lajoie O’Malley writes:
“At the G20 Summit last September, our prime minister boasted that we “have no history of colonialism.” That the leader of our country can stand in front of dignitaries from around the world and speak these words is a testament to just how far we have to go in really understanding our national history.”
Read the full piece here.
Photo by axiepics available under a Creative Commons License
Recently Read: Magic Weapons
June 21, 2009
In Magic Weapons: Aboriginal Writers Remaking Community After Residential School, Sam McKegney makes an important contribution to discourses that explore the role of literature in representing marginalized and/or contested histories. His focus on the work of authors including Basil H. Johnston (who also contributes an excellent foreword), Rita Joe, Louise Halfe, and Anthony Thrasher among others, brings much-needed attention to the ways in which the lens of trauma and psychoanalytic explorations of residential school experiences only tell part of the story. McKegney rightly highlights that calls for more awareness of these experiences should be accompanied by new visions for the future. He cautions against an orientation that privileges the past as the sole site of community-making and defining.
He elaborates:
“Perceived over the past two decades as the principal vehicle for engaging the residential school issue, historicization (alone) dangerously orients our thinking away from the present and the future, binding us in a reactive manner to the power of the past. And, with compensatory and restructuring funds finally being freed from government coffers by virtue of the Reconciliation and Compensation Agreement (November 2005), imaginative visions for plausible futures of First Nations are essential. This is where the understudied resource of Native literature becomes so valuable” (6)
In exploring the history of the schools and the way in which individuals and communities have dealt with their legacy, McKegney asks, “What does literature do that history doesn’t?” (32) His book is an engaging, well-reasoned response to this question.
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McKegney, Sam. Magic Weapons: Aboriginal Writers Remaking Community after Residential School. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2007.
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Also, a friend of mine recently informed me that today is National Aboriginal Day in Canada. For more information on the day, click here.
Semester Wrap-Up: Part 2
May 18, 2009
More reading highlights from the semester:
1) Michael Taussig’s The Nervous System
Michael Taussig explores the ways in which the combination of state-sanctioned violence and a climate of silence engender a perpetual “state of emergency,” where the chaotic is the norm. His metaphor of the nervous system works well on several levels. In terms of memory work, it evokes the non-linear way in which an individual or community remembers. It also suggests an embodiment that, as we have seen in previous readings, is an important component when theorizing trauma. In addition, he explores the concept of “writing the nervous system” and explains that it “calls for an understanding of the representation as contiguous with that being represented and not as suspended above and distant from the represented” (10). He inserts himself into this text, realizing that his own representations cannot be distanced from the represented; he blends the subject and object of study. At times, he addresses the reader explicitly, asking, “But what about people like yourself caught up in such matters? What sort of talk have you got?” and then, “What about myself, for that matter?” (29). This rhetorical technique helps to illuminate the “nervousness” in both Taussig’s content and style.
In chapter 3, he raises some interesting questions about the academic process of contextualization, positing that it has become a sort of talisman, mystified in a way that suggests its knowledge translates into a guaranteed understanding of social relations and history. Instead, Taussig proposes that social relations and history themselves are “fragile intellectual constructs posing as robust realities” (45). And that our “contextualizing gaze” (45) creates a view that is too narrow, not allowing for creative blending within and between disparate spaces and times.
2) John Jackson’s Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity
By using a diverse range of examples in the New York area, including the gentrification of Harlem, Black Jewish identity in Brooklyn and the politics of naming in hip hop, Jackson challenges ideas of racial authenticity and explores the potentials of sincerity. Jackson’s book is a foray into “autoethnographic” work. He focuses on complications and intersections, practicing a “dark reading,” where he attempts to “feel, grope, invent, even pretend the real” (67). He is offering another way of meaning-making, an interpretive strategy that recognizes the role of the interpreter in relation to the messages that are received. Anthropology, in other words, can have a dual nature, representing a complicated interaction between observed and observer.
As much as his book is about the difficulties involved in theorizing race, Jackson’s project is also a “rumination on the ethnographic project, itself a response to challenges arising from the alleged crises in representation and analysis of the late 1980s, crises that still haunt the discipline to this day” (9-10). In response to this haunting, Jackson proposes the novel methodological technique of “channeling.” To deal with his own feelings of nervousness in asking subjects difficult or personal questions, Jackson channels the presence of more famous and accomplished ethnographers. He asks himself, WWZNHD? What would Zora Neal Hurston do? (24-25) Eventually, he finds that he needs to conjure up a whole new identity altogether, which leads to the rise of Anthroman.
The fears he believes accompanies ethnographic writing, what he refers to an “ethnographobia” are brought fully to the surface of his text (24). Anthroman is one of his coping strategies, an alter ego whose “Anthrosenses” won’t fail under pressure. In referring to himself in the third person, he disrupts the flow in his text, and highlights the constructed nature of his work. It is a methodological tool that illustrates his theoretical arguments. Jackson’s work recognizes the difficulty in reading his subjects, and explains that this is what sincerity demands: an acceptance of our “mutual impermeability” (87).
I found Jackson’ work particularly interesting in his recognition of the ways in with ethnography is implicgated in the production of knowledge. For Jackson, ethnographic knowledge is produced through an acknowledgement of this “mutual impermeability” while simultaneously engaging with it.
At times, his own presence in his work is a little overwhelming. Still, the book is definitely worth-reading, providing an interesting example of creative and engaging ethnography.
Semester Wrap-up: Part I
May 12, 2009
The semester is finally winding down and although I have a few loose ends to tie-up, summer is on the horizon. So I thought I’d take a little time and post some reflections on my coursework and research from this past semester.
A few books that I loved:
1) Human Rights, Inc. by Joseph Slaughter.
Slaughter begins his Preamble to the book with a quote from John Humphrey, principle drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone knows, or should know, why human rights are important.” (2) Slaughter goes on to discuss how the gap between what everyone knows and what everyone should know is relevant to discourses of both literature and law. He focuses on the connections between human rights and the novel, particularly the coming-of-age genre, Bildungsroman.
He writes:
“The novel genre and liberal human rights discourse are more than coincidentally, or casually, interconnected. Seen through the figure and formula of human personality development central to both the Bildungsroman and human rights, their shared assumptions and imbrications emerge to show clearly their historical, formal, and ideological interdependencies. They are mutually enabling fictions: each projects an image of the human personality that ratifies the other’s idealistic visions of the proper relations between the individual and society and the normative career of free and full human personality development” (4).
It’s a fascinating read that ties together seemingly distinct discourses in interesting and unexpected ways. Chapter three, “Normalizing Narrative Forms of Human Rights: The (Dys)Function of the Public Sphere,” focuses on the ways in which reciting one’s story in a public setting, as ins the practice in some truth commissions, reveals the emphasis placed on storytelling in relation to the formation of the citizen-subject.
2) The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada by Eva Mackey.
In The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada, Eva Mackey explores the ways in which multicultural and pluralist discourses, while espousing the rhetoric of tolerance, may in fact create a climate of intolerance and resentment. By examining the strategies of power at play in Canadian multicultural policies, Mackey challenges the national myth of an inclusive and tolerant Canadian society. Her explorations reveal how an account of national identity that focuses on pluralism may be a form of managing difference as opposed to allowing for difference to flourish.
Mackey utilizes several methods in order to explore the terrain of Canadian identity as it relates to policies of multiculturalism. She offers a re-reading of historical documents, analyzes iconic imagery (including painting, sculpture and photography) and their circulation, and conducts interviews with people around and about several events celebrating the 125th anniversary of Canadian confederation. This eclectic approach strengthens Mackey’s points, highlighting the diverse ways in which multicultural discourses takes shape on both national and local levels.
In the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada, it will be interesting to see how this myth of a tolerant nation will be affected.
3) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, follows the haunting tale of three friends who are “donors.” The story moves back and forth between the present and the past, recounting Kathy H’s sometimes-tumultuous memories of two dear friends, Tommy and Ruth. Although the novel is set in the 1990s in England, it straddles the boundaries between a world that seems incredibly familiar, and one that is eternally distant. A sense of familiarity is created by the recounting of Kathy’s childhood and youth, including arguments with friends and first loves that will resonate with most readers. At the same time, a sense of distance is created by the realization that Kathy and her friends are part of a system where they are reared expressly for the harvesting of their organs. The novel provides an interesting context in which to discuss issues of personhood, the ethics of biotechnology and human rights.
Recently Read: On Forgiveness
March 3, 2009
In his essay, “On Forgiveness,” Derrida discusses the paradox of granting forgiveness: true forgiveness consists of forgiving the unforgivable. Throughout the essay, Derrida is working within the realm of contradictions. He negotiates the terrain between pure and mediated, conditional and unconditional, and individual and collective forgiveness.
Both forgiveness and reconciliation are concepts that have secular and religious interpretations. Although there is a trend towards an attempted liberalization and secularization of reconciliation discourse, the theological undertones of reconciliation continue to play an important role in the way in which reconciliation takes place. As Derrida illustrates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s role as Chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission undoubtedly influenced the public’s perception of reconciliation in relation to forgiveness. The tensions between religious and secular conceptions of reconciliation also foreground the roles of individuals in comparison to those of the collective. Secular ideas of reconciliation tend to emphasize tolerance on the individual level and see amnesty on the collective level as a valid way to proceed. Religious conceptions of reconciliation, however, emphasize the idea of forgiveness and national healing.
Derrida argues that the concept of forgiveness is misplaced when used in relation to a national trauma. For example, he writes that “forgiveness must engage two singularities: the guilty (the ‘perpetrator’ as they say in South Africa) and the victim” (42). If a third party steps in to mediate this process (such as a national truth commission or juridical entity), pure forgiveness is no longer possible. Forgiveness then stays in the domain of the individual, not the state. And once the process of reconciliation has begun, pure forgiveness is no longer possible. Because once one embarks on a process of understanding the Other, the guilty, the perpetrator, the irreducibility and incomprehensibility of the Other is shattered. For Derrida, pure forgiveness “must plunge, but ludicly, into the night of the unintelligible” (49). Because reconciliation works to make sense of this unintelligibility, it drives one away from forgiveness.
At the end of this essay, he explores the implications of granting forgiveness. The granting of forgiveness implies a legitimate claim to power in order to do so. Derrida asserts that this form of power must be divorced from forgiveness; pure forgiveness is one without sovereignty (59).
Derrida himself notes that he is ‘torn’ between the “ethical vision of forgiveness” and the practicality of reconciliation (51). His ruminations on forgiveness do not imply that reconciliation as part of a political process is impossible, nor that it should be avoided. Rather, he is arguing against the conflation of the two terms: forgiveness and reconciliation.
Recently Read: History After Apartheid
January 17, 2009
In History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa, Annie Coombs explores several specific sites of memorial in South Africa, highlighting the ways in which drastic political and social changes call for a re-negotiation of important historical sites. For example, Coombs explores the symbolic importance of Robben Island, as embodying both the troubled history of South Africa and the promise of a new future. Because of the central role it played in the discourse of political resistance under apartheid, the fate of the island during the shift to a post-apartheid society was hotly debated. It was eventually decided that the island should become open to the public as a tourist site. Former guardsbecame tour leaders on the grounds of their past incarceration. The site becomes a “living memorial,” where narratives continue to evolve.
Her comparison of the Robben Island Museum with the District Six Museum allows her to contrast the ways in which other categories of identity, including gender, enter the discourses of oppression, loss and memorialization. The discrepancy she notes between the two museums is indicative of the importance placed on the struggles of the prisoners at Robben Island (including Nelson Mandela) as opposed to the families displaced by the forced relocation of District Six residents. Written before the completion of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, Coombs can only speculate about the way in which the narratives understood through an examination of The District Six Museum and Robben Island are voiced in the new museum space.
Coombs’ work on contextualizing the implications of a changing history on the physical representations of these histories is interesting in the Canadian context. The Canadian TRC, in other words, is only one way in which this neglected history will be explored. By the end of the TRC’s five year mandate, museums, public spaces and existing and new artwork will have to be reinterpreted.
Recently Read: Hiroshima Traces
November 11, 2008
The concept of “in-betweenness”, mentioned early by Lisa Yoneyama in Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory is one that can be found throughout the book. She is working on the nuances and subtleties between categories, doing the memory work that resides where these binaries meet. For example, Yoneyama challenges the binary between victims and victimizers and offers a theory of national history that allows for a more nuanced reading of these categories. She utilizes Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of historiography, focusing on the counterpoints of history, those moments, events or objects that interrupt a universal and continuous narrative of history. It allows then for the disjuncture between past and present to be reconciled in a way that enables the past to affect current struggles for social change.
Yoneyama describes the conflict that resides in Hiroshima regarding its past and its future. The past, often characterized by “dark” memories of destruction and tragedy stands in contrast to the discourse of an imagined future of peace and prosperity. In the 1980s in particular the city embarked on re-imagining itself as a place for light, for brightness and cheerfulness, or “akurusa.” Public officials believed that memory could be utilized for the recasting of Hiroshima as a prosperous city that embodies both historical authenticity and a renewed push towards contemporary culture (through the Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art for example). By painting the history prior to the atomic bombing in a nostalgic light, and obfuscating the military history of the city, municipal officials and promoters of tourism cast Hiroshima as a city of peace and urban renewal. The promotion of tourism was itself framed as an act of peace, as was visiting the city as a tourist. Consumer activity in general was also incorporated into discourses of peace, which went hand in hand with economic prosperity.
Yoneyama also highlights the central myth of Hiroshima as a uniquely Japanese event. That tens of thousands of Koreans had lived in Japan as colonial subjects was largely glossed over in the discourses of hibakusha (literally translated to mean “bomb-affected people,” but usually translated simply to “survivors”). The position of the original memorial dedicated to Koreans affected by the atomic bomb and the proposal to move it to be within the Peace Park sparked much controversy and revealed the multiple subjectivities and positions in relation to narratives of survival. By exploring these complexities, Yoneyama sees the potential for these traces of Hiroshima, the testimonials, debates and representations, to contribute to a national narrative of victimhood and nationalism while at the same time undermining and obstructing the same processes. It is the dual nature of these memories of Hiroshima that give Yoneyama’s theories strength.
Recently Read: The Future of Nostalgia
September 14, 2008
In The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym introduces several interesting theories regarding both the history and future of nostalgia. She distinguishes between restorative and reflective nostalgia, explaining that restorative nostalgia works on the assumption of a past “truth” and the goal of re-instating that past. Alternatively, reflective nostalgia deals with the feeling of longing and loss associated with nostalgia but does not actually try to recapture the past. The word nostalgia, Boym explains, is from the Greek “nostros” or home and algia or “longing.” Restorative nostalgia then is a desire to rebuild and return to this home, whereas reflective nostalgia is a constant deferral of a homecoming, incorporating the enjoyment of the distance between past and present, which savors the inability of return.
Early in the book, Boym introduces the concept of “off-modern,” explaining that the adverb “off” focuses our attention on a non-linear exploration of time and space. As opposed to the suffix “post,” it does not suggest a linear idea of progress, allowing for detours and roadblocks to be embraced and explored. By focusing on several different cities including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Berlin, the reader gets a sense that the exploration of nostalgia is one that traverses both space and time, a journey beyond physical borders. Boym’s explorations of these cities are often introduced through her own experiences there. She successfully integrates her own personal experiences in these cities-in-transition with larger political and cultural narratives of nostalgia.
