The Power of Words: The Weapon of American Colonialism?

In “Indian Literacy, U. S. Colonialism, and Literary Criticism,” Maureen Konkle does an excellent job of discussing not only the power of language but also the politics connected to it in relation to colonial expansion.  I found Konkle’s article extremely helpful in my analysis of Life of Black Hawk, or Má-ka-tai-me-she-kiá-kiák, especially Konkle’s point that “Colonialism is a struggle for territory that takes place in part through the production of knowledge; written records and a reading public are as necessary as technologically sophisticated weaponry or encroaching settlers” (460).  Hence, the English language, especially when written, holds a certain amount of power that can be used to harm those who are not masters of it.  However, just in case Indians do figure out how to use this language effectively, then Konkle points out how they will soon find themselves in a kind of “catch-22” since if Indians learned to write and speak English as well as “the white man,” then suddenly, they were not seen as truly Indian (476-77). 

As I was reading Konkle’s article, certain passages in Black Hawk’s narrative seemed much more important, especially concerning the power of the English language.  Now, I’m not sure if it would qualify as the “hot spot” of the text, but I think the following is an important theme throughout the novel.  Discussing the problems with the white settlers intruding on the Indian’s territory, Black Hawk states:

We acquainted our agent daily with our situation, and through him, the great chief at St. Louis—and hoped that something would be done for us.  The whites were complaining at the same time that we were intruding upon their rights! They made themselves out the injured party, and we the intruders!  and called Loudly to the great war chief to protect their property.  How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right” (57, italics in original). 

In this passage, we can see how Black Hawk and his tribe must go through their agent as their interpreter and spokesperson in order to have their message and complaints told to the “the great chief at St. Louis” while the whites spoke loudly to the “great war chief” for protection.  Mark Rifkin also points out how “Keokuk’s language gains force through its alliance with `the great war chief,´ also implicitly suggesting that he has come to view the land as property—a dissectable and dead thing” (693).  Rifkin is more concerned with analyzing this passage in its connection with land and geopolitics, but I would like to look at this passage through its connection to the power of language.  It becomes evident that Black Hawk is losing a battle of words.  He wonders about the power and smoothness of “the language of the whites” since they are able to make their cause look right and Black Hawk’s wrong.  It is the “white man’s language” that manipulates Black Hawk into leaving his village, and it is documents filled with “white man’s language” that Black Hawk and his fellow natives do not understand but “touch the quill” anyway.  Black Hawk seems aware of this power of language, and it is in his rival Ke-o-kuck that Black Hawk shares his enviousness of Ke-o-kuck’s “smooth tongue” and describes him as “a great speaker” (62).  Interestingly, Ke-o-kuck is also using his power of words to persuade his tribe that Black Hawk is in the wrong for wanting to go to war.  

Furthermore, the Americans trust the eloquent Ke-o-kuck, releasing Black Hawk with the condition that he will be under Ke-o-kuck’s supervision.  This restriction hurts Black Hawk’s pride; again, Black Hawk’s inability to be a persuasive orator causes him to not have the “trust” or the persuasiveness over the Americans or even the people of his own tribe.  Black Hawk seems envious of Ke-o-kuck’s ability to community with others, clearly sensing the power of language.  Although Black Hawk loses his original territory, becomes a captive, and must be under the care of his rival, he still fights back.  Obviously, he did not physically fight back; after all, he said himself that he wanted to live in peace.  I’m referring to his decision to narrate his story to be written in “white man’s language” and read by Americans throughout the nation.  Even though he had been the victim of the power of language, Black Hawk appropriates the “white man’s language” in order to criticize Americans in their own tongue.  In a way, Black Hawk fights back with words once he realizes the potential power of language.  

The Complexities of “Territories”: Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

I don’t know where to begin.  As I was reading, listening, and watching, so many thoughts flashed into my head.  My apparent lack of knowledge about Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and just the history in general regarding the United States and Indian relations was one of the things I realized.  Frankly, I must admit I had not given a lot of thought about Indian reservations prior to this assignment.  I guess I had a romantic view of how they were connected harmoniously with nature and were happy and at peace.  Though I might have continued believing that if we had just looked at George Catlin’s landscape portraits, I obviously had a real “enlightenment” when it came to Aaron Huey’s photography and especially his Ted Talk.  Now, I’m not going to keep on going on and on about how Huey’s photography and Fuller’s article and podcast made me realize I had been living in my own little world, but I wanted to let you know where I was coming from, and I kind of imagine I’m not alone there.  Nevertheless, what I’d like to do in this blog is connect some of our secondary readings to Huey’s pictures in order to see the connections to territory.

First, in Brenner and Elden’s article, they discuss Henri Lefebvre and how he discusses territory as a space—Lefebvre especially discusses “abstract space”—that is political, visionary (or “political imaginaries”), and violent (358-59).  Though the territory of the Black Hills is not an abstract space, I think these three aspects are worth looking at.  Brenner and Elden go on to point out that the notion of land could be understood as “the articulation between the nation-state and its territory” (363).  This is a crude summary, but I can’t go into too much detail in this blog.  I think the politics of territory is one of the key ways to look at Huey’s photography.  After all, Huey employs his photography of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as a way of making a political statement: “Give the Black Hills back to the Lakota.  What they do with them is none of your business.”  The “territory” of the Black Hills becomes a political issue.  Interestingly, Mount Rushmore, with our forefathers looking out over the land, seems “visionary.”  Yet, as I listened to on the National Geographic website from a girl about “Faces-Do Not Worship,” she points out that this place people travel to has become basically a joke since it wasn’t even the Americans’ land to start out with.  I don’t know if I should even point out the violence aspect tied to this land since we’ve all read and listened to the same texts.

I’d also like to quickly mention “The Pursuit of Whiteness: Property, Terror, and Expansion, 1790-1860” and how Roediger points out that political theorists connect our forefathers’ claim to “the pursuit of happiness” to the “pursuit of property” (581).  I think it is interesting if we look at the Black Hills as property that our forefathers “pursued” in the hopes of obtaining happiness through financial prosperity and how the Indians view this property as a part of their heritage.  I realize that I need to wrap up my blog post, so I’m just going to end by saying that I think the complexities between property and pursuing happiness is an interesting way of looking at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the Black Hills.   

“All the Live Long Day” or Night: Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok

After reading Hobomok, I read Carolyn Karcher’s exquisitely thorough and informative introduction.  (On a side note, I decided to read Hobomok first since it has been my experience that the introduction frequently gives away a lot of spoilers.)  I especially appreciated Karcher's point about how both Hobomok and Charles Brown “provide a means of defying patriarchal authority, as vested not only in Mary’s father but in the society for which it stands” (xxix).  Although I was extremely impressed with Karcher’s introduction, I’d kind of like to go in a different direction in order to make a similar connection. 

As I was reading, I was (for some reason I’m unsure of) extremely tuned into Child’s word choices and the phrases she was using, and two in particular stood out to me.  The first instance is in chapter one when the narrator is discussing his trip to America and says, “All the livelong day we watched the sails as they fluttered loosely round the mast, and listened to the hoarse creaking of the shrouds.  Evening at length came on in her softened beauty; and I shall never forget the crowd of sensations which it brought upon my mind.  I was in a new world, whose almost unlimited extent lay in the darkness of ignorance and desolation” (7, my italics).    The narrator seems to use the phrase “all the livelong day” as a way of emphasizing his impatience to arrive to America.  However, it is evening before he actually sees this “new world” but its potential seems to be covered in darkness and ignorance.  I wonder if this cloud of darkness covering America could be symbolic of the patriarchal society encompassing and stifling the intellectual and cultural growth of minority groups, such as women and Indians (to name a few).

The second instance that grabbed my attention was when Hobomok is looking out for Mary since he is aware that she has been targeted by some of the Indians: “Mr. Conant returned to his family, and Mary, inured to such occurrences, slept peacefully within their humble dwelling, unconscious that Hobomok watched it the livelong night, with eyes that knew no slumber” (41, my italics).  In this passage, the night is depicted as being long and tedious for Hobomok whose “eyes that knew no slumber,” but for Mr. Conant and especially Mary it is a peaceful night since they live unconscious of their potential danger and also unconscious of their protector.  Living in a dark, desolate place, Hobomok is the one character whose “eyes are open” and is conscious of surroundings and potential threats.  Suddenly, in this passage, Hobomok seems to be the enlightened character while the others are encompassed in darkness and ignorance.  I like how these two passages seem to use the same imagery and how they seem to support Karcher’s argument about Child’s concern with the white male supremacy that she saw dominating her contemporary society.     

The Problems of the Unconscious: Humanity in Algiers

In the opening to Humanity in Algiers, the narrator writes, “Unconscious of our own crimes, or unwilling the world should know them, we frequently condemn in others the very practices we applaud in ourselves” (3).  This seems to be the main theme throughout the text.  Sequida and Selictor struggle against freeing Azem since they desire to profit by selling him, yet they themselves when they were younger needed help from a friend to release Selictor from prison.  Selictor fails to recognize the similarity between him and Azem, refusing to free Azem by selling him to their neighbor Testador.  What I found interesting was how Selictor’s death is contrasted with Azem’s death.  Both attain the executors of their wills from Omri’s family: Selictor from Omri himself and Azem from Omri’s son Arramel.  However, Selictor insists on accumulating his wealth as much as possible before he dies to then give to his biological family even at the literal cost of another person’s freedom.  Azem, on the other hand, helps other slaves and even argues against turning enemies into slaves.  Although Azem’s family dies so he could not leave an inheritance to them, his immediate thought is to help others who had been in his position.  The author seems to be suggesting that Azem demonstrates true humanity.  He is conscious of the immorality of enslaving people no matter their race or gender.  The problem with many of the characters in the novel—Selictor, Sequida, Selin (Sequida’s brother), and Valachus to name a few—is that they are those who are “unconscious” of their own crimes and faults.  The author seems to also suggest that true humanity lies in not only being conscious but also realizing those tendencies and to take action to stop hypocrisy and to help others. 

I felt as though a lot of the novel was predictable (Alzina revealed as Azem’s sister, the old slave as his mother, etc), but I appreciated the theme of “humanity” and “unconsciousness.”  I also liked the American narrator who is revealing this story as way of paying homage to Azem for restoring his freedom.  I realize that most of the secondary readings we had were more concerned with capitalism and cosmopolitism, and I think I can see a correlation between them and Humanity in Algiers, especially if you look at the slaves as commodities and how there is a continual circle of the victors of combat enslaving the losers and then the losers overcoming the victors and so on and so forth.  However, I felt like focusing more on a closer reading of Humanity in Algiers, especially since it is part of the “Just Teach One” project (which I find particularly interesting by the way).      

Secret Revealed: The Importance of the Epistolary Form

For my other grad course I’m taking this semester, I’m presenting on the epistolary novel.  Hence, it is probably not that surprising that I have decided to discuss Secret History: or, The Horrors of St. Domingo in connection to it being an “epistolary novel.”  Now, I put “epistolary novel” in scare quotes because I was struck with the fact that Gretchen Woertendyke refused to discuss Secret History as an epistolary novel but insisted upon referring to it as belonging to the genre of secret history.  I do not have a problem with Woertendyke discussing Secret History in relation to this genre, but I do have an issue with Woertendyke’s refusal to also discuss Secret History as an epistolary novel since I think by limiting herself to only viewing Secret History as a secret history that she missed crossing literary boundaries of genre that would have enriched her analysis.  In fact, Woertendyke only mentions “epistolary novel” once in her fifth footnote in a brief attempt to explain that she is focusing on “secret history” instead of “novel” because she feels as though “secret history” is often buried in “a footnote or otherwise secondary characteristic” (267-68).  However, this is exactly what she does with “epistolary novel.”  What I would like to do in this blog is to point out briefly just a few connections to the epistolary novel that I think could have benefited Woertendyke’s article.

Woertendyke states, “Sansay draws attention to the space between conceptual categories, of private and public, and geopolitical landscapes, of Early America and Early Haiti” (262).  One of the great aspects of epistolary novels is their ability to have a fictional writer/narrator of the letters address another fictional character within the private sphere of letters but with the author of the novel having the full knowledge that these “private letters” will be read by a public audience.  Furthermore, the fictional writer of a letter is transcribing their own personalized and private interpretation of events for a specific fictional audience.  The author of the novel must not only keep this in mind but must also consider how the public audience might respond to these “private” letters.  Furthermore, letters may travel across oceans, states, nations, or to the house next door; thus, letters themselves are not stationary but are mobile.  By considering the epistolary form, Sansay is able to embed these complexities of public and private within the genre of the epistolary novel. 

Furthermore, many critics have been fascinated, and rightly so, with Sansay’s depictions of men and women’s relationships.  Again, it is important to consider the epistolary novel since as Theresa Gaul points out that many women did not have opportunity to publish books or novels so instead many women wrote letters (265).  The form of an epistolary novel provided Sansay with the opportunity to transform her “private” letters into a novel for the “public.”  As scholars have discussed, Sansay took her own private life and used it as the basis for her novel.  Thus, I believe ignoring the form Sansay chose to publish her novel in is a mistake that can cause many important connections to be missed.  I think the points and observations to be made are too numerous for one blog post, but hopefully, we as scholars can cross the literary divide between secret history and epistolary novel in order to enrich our understandings (and refuse the urge to bury either one in a footnote).          

A Search for Literary Identity in Early American Literature

So, as I read the articles as they appear on our schedule, I made comments and observations in a notebook.  Now, don’t worry.  I’m not going to simply re-write my notes, but I would like to point out how much they all seem to converse with one another.  (Obviously, these are not their complete arguments since I don’t have space enough to give them all the attention they may deserve.) 

 

Gustafson and Hunter feel as though early Americanists are needed to contribute to the “understanding of the field as a whole” (215).  Bauer wants a more “polycentric historicism” as defined by Roland Greene (220).  Bost desires for America to be viewed in a “hemispheric dialogue” (236).  This concern with de-centering the United States and having a conversation with other cultures in connection to the past and present all seem to be coming together to form a transnational approach to literature. 

 

Wait though, we’re not done yet.  Fitzgerald and Wyss come together and work to literally bring “the contemporary present to the historical past” and discuss “the relationship between the academic fields of early and contemporary Native literature” (241).  Anderson agrees that Native texts see “the past in the present and the future in the past” and argues that early Native studies matter to more contemporary scholars (252).  Meanwhile, Parrish might rummage through the “boring” parts of early American studies to find that you must “Let your archive be mobile.  Let it be textual or let it be biological.  Follow it, in and out of holds” (271).  Littlefield may respond to Parrish with a proposition that “archival constructions are simultaneously epistemological and agnotological” (276).  Littlefield sees the cultural productions of both ignorance and knowledge (agnotological and epistemological) as being useful ways “to theorize archival methodology itself” (276).  Sayre concerns himself with captivity narratives and the earlier stereotypes of Native Americans and the contemporary stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims (327).  Again, connections between the past and the present, early American studies and contemporary US studies, and the United States and other nations are all interacting with one another.  Edwards continues to build on Sayre’s points (and Reddy also kind of falls into this section), while Watts asks, “If the US is not an `immemorial’ nation based in idealized democratic principles is the only other option a racist, sexist, and elitist empire whose literature is merely propaganda?” (449).  Watts petitions us to consider “the model of the double minded settler” (449).  Yet, do we want to be unsettled and consistently of two minds?  Is there not another option?  White and Drexler point out that there is an “absence of a strong literary cannon” for early Americanists but claim that they are not lamenting this but that it shows “a sign of a relatively progressive, open, and representative sense of coverage” (475).  It most certainly is broad, but it is also unstable.  White and Drexler use the analogy of Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” to point out that it is important not to miss what you are searching for simply because it is right in front of you, which they say are “the texts that out to be commonly situated, discussed, and debated” (482).  However, Gustafson becomes overwhelmed in history again but makes an interesting point about the link between democracy and empire, which we easily always divide. 

 

Traister though uses another analogy that of  “America” as the international airport terminal and how transnationalists may easily become “universalists” and encroach on the territories of other scholars from different departments (4-18).  It seems as though Traister may have a point on how transnationalist may simply be falling into another form of America exceptionalism (23).  Nevertheless, Fluck simply categorizes transnationalism into two types: aesthetic and political (367-68).  Fluck defines the aesthetic transnationalism as “a promise of rejuvenation of the field and its `tired´ practices” (368) and political transnationalism also being “transnational radicalism because it is an extension of cultural radicalism beyond the nation-state” (372).  It is the flexibility and fluidity of identity that Fluck embraces even more than stability (376). 

However, the problem I see is that if you do not have some sort of stability, then it will be difficult to identify anything, and it could cause early American literature to still have the feeling of the “other” studies in American literature that is also closely kin to US history.  Suddenly, the past and the present seem to kind of muddle up the future of where transnational studies may be going.  One more observation and I’ll conclude this rather lengthy blog.  I noticed in the readings that “America” and “transnational” were probably (all of these are estimates by the way) the most commonly repetitive terms throughout our reading with “history,” “early,” and “contemporary” being probably the second most popular group of terms.  Ironically, I find the terms “literary,” “literature,” and “cannon” being more than likely in the third or even fourth (if you count “exceptionalism” for the third) group.  I felt as though White and Drexler may have had the best analogy when they used Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.”  It’s not that the Prefect did not have a thorough and even impressive methodology for finding the letter.  The problem was that he never read any of the letters on the desk in the first place.                  

Broadening Our Horizons in American Literature

When I read Caroline F. Lavender and Robert S. Levine’s “Introduction: Hemispheric American Literary History,” something just seemed to “click.”  Perhaps, I was pleased with how they not only incorporated many of the influential texts and articles about broadening our perspectives and approaches to American literature but also how they contributed to this conversation and asked several thought-provoking questions:

What happens to US and Americas literary and cultural studies if we recognize the asymmetry and interdependency of nation-state development throughout the hemisphere? [. . .] what happens if the `fixed´ borders of a nation are recognized not only as historically produced political constructs that can be ignored, imaginatively reconfigured, and variously contested but also as component parts of a deeper, more multilayered series of national and indigenous histories? (401)

I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers to these questions since I don’t think they can easily be resolved; however, these questions did spur me on to consider that American literature—though as many of the scholars like Carolyn Porter have pointed out can be rather ethnocentric and U.S. oriented—if considered in a broader scope, such as including the cultural influences of Africa, the Americas, Europe, Latin America, etc., would be a truer and more accurate picture of Americans (both in North and South America).  It is not as if a U. S. citizen is only influenced by North America or only has Puritan ancestry.  A writer from any country has multiple influences: cultural, political, religious, etc.  If American literature were approached with this “broader horizon or outlook” then many important connections could be made.  When border lines are erased, then what is American literature becomes both more complicated and risky.  It becomes complicated since there is such a broad scope that it may be a bit easy to become inundated with cultural influences, and it becomes risky because when borders are erased the lines of what is American literature become blurred or are missing.  However, Lavender, Levine, Porter, and many of the others we have read believe it is a risk that must be taken in order to have a deeper insight and fuller understanding of the conflicts and complications of American literature.  Thus, it is the blurring or eradicating of boundaries that might actually free us to see American literature in a fuller light.  At this point, I’m not sure if I’m making sense, but I also like Lavender and Levine do not pretend that I’m saying something “new” (399).  However, this is “new” to me, so I’m using this response blog as a way of making my own thoughts clearer to myself.  Perhaps, I’m helping someone else as well (which would be great), but if not, then, I’m at least helping myself start to see American literature from a broader perspective.    

Jessica E.