Notes Towards Day 14: Word-Pictures

A few framing issues:
I. graphic novels (Maus) boom genre, new category
first written, published as comic books, in installments

what is the relation of Persepolis to this tradition?
in what way is Satrapi's use of the medium of comics important?
how would her story work differently as novel, as film?
how process differently if you see images instead of words?

II. The history of "the gaze"

From John Berger's 1972 Ways of Seeing:
"A woman...is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself...she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman...Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another...women watch themselves being looked at...this determines...the relation of women to themselves...she turns herself into an object--and most particularly an object of vision: a sight" (pp. 46-47).

III. Reading the surface to get underneath
The Power of Political Pratfalls (NYTimes, 10/13/08):
This can be just a trick of perception, but the art comes from connecting physical characteristics to character, the way Leonardo da Vinci did in his human-animal hybrids. For a great caricaturist, physiognomy is a reflection of the hidden soul: by showing us something exaggerated, something overlooked is revealed.

That is also what gives caricature a polemical role in politics. Caricature characterizes and criticizes. While it can also distort and misrepresent, it claims to disclose a political physiognomy, bringing its contours to the surface.

Of course caricature is never truly accurate; its job is to exaggerate, it dispenses with detail. This also makes it immune from easy challenge. A caricature bypasses argument. And now that pictures have become central to political life, caricatures have grown even stronger, and caricatured images are joined by caricatures of ideas.

III. But first: mid-semester evals,

and what we can do w/ 'em...

mostly working,
mostly "really enjoying" visitors,

in-class conversations & (most!) small group activities,
mostly "really appreciating" Serendip-ish dimensions,
& how on-line material gets incorporated into class...
(great appreciation for way class gets structured
by your interests/obsevations)

"I think the course is sort of working itself out."

"I like our chemistry as group of people in an academic pursuit."

"I like the inclusive feel of these discussions + the way in which everyone participates."

"I love that we start a class on feminism with trying to totally disrupt the category of feminism."

(yet: more about gender and identity, "not particularly feminist";

more of a gender-theory class than traditional, historical feminism)

some like/some don't freedom in paper topics....
(and want more direction)

what we might work on together:

--how we talk together

"Though I think the discussion in the class is valuable I also feel that it's very polarized...there are a lot of "far-out" ideas presented...it's very one sided. The classroom seems to be more accepting of certain thoughts than others..."

"I think some people are comfortable talking in class and + others are not so much--which happens regardless--but I think perhaps we could--as a class--have a gentler attitude with differing opinions."

(and with different learning-and-speaking styles?)

"Maybe we could do something in which the format is more conducive to people speaking who usually have to think a lot before they talk instead of being conducive to the people who talk while they think."

what might those "somethings" be?

"I might prefer that our conversations be slightly more text based--focusing more precisely on the readings."

"...maybe the discussion would flow more nicely if we got to know more @ one another...many don't feel like they should/had the cojones to/say anything, or if they had anything relevant to say."

are such changes a group or an individual decision?
what group changes might enable individual changes?

"I'd really like it if we had more writing assignments besides our serendip posting--like free-writes or even one-page reflections just for the reading, or on a separate topic."

"...would like if a culture of actually responding to posts became more of a norm"

"I should engage in more communication through serendip with my fellow classmates...."

"I don't participate as much as I should in class discussions...I still have trouble with the weekly postings...for whatever reason, I'm afraid to share my thoughts...."

is there a way for us as a group to address such fears?

speaking of which...

"I was a little uncomfortable...that your comments on our papers were posted for everyone to see."

"I think it's tricky to be able to see what you as professor write in response to everyone's papers. We can compare adjectives you use, etc. But I doubt you will change this, b/c I know it is part of how you teach."

well, part of how I teach is to be responsive....
so let's talk some more about this!

IV. Also to put on the table:
my own evaluation/disappointment/
fear that I overscript the class.

For ex, help me understand what happened on Tuesday?

"Literature is important for feminism…
as the place where impasses can be kept...
giving-to-read those impossible contradictions..."

Wanted to offer The Book of Salt is a great example
(at least a good test case!) of this.

It's "about"
Expanding the sensorium
--can we trust it?
--what are the political consequences of
such an intimate experiencing of another?

Redefining contemporary feminist fiction, with an
inclusiveness that gets beyond gender-definitionality/centrality.

Exploring alternatives to "predetermined life story"=
a more freely imagined life?

Role of sex in the novel?

Relation of sex to narrative?

Relation of narrative to a life freely lived?

Relation of novel to Stein's aesthetic (in which
"commas and periods...are nothing more than toads
flattened on a country road, careless and unsightly")?

But by 3:30 I felt I was talking to myself....?

V. Also had hoped to use the novel
--to help us make the transition out of the U.S.,
into other parts of the world,
into beginning to look @ ways that
varieties of racialized class formation
intersect w/ gender...
to use (for example) the distorted intimacies of domestic service
in the novel as a microcosm of distorted geopolitical relations
(condescension/racism in unwillingness to
learn how to pronounce Binh's name, etc.).

Mridula Nath Chakraborty, "Wa(i) ving It All Away:
Producing Subject and Knowledge in Feminisms of Colour," Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration. Ed. Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie and Rebecca Munford. Palgrave, 2007.

Feminists of colour argue that the very idea of a phase/stage/

wave-based consciousness is an ideological construct...that seeks to subsume and consume the challenges posed to it through notions of 'inclusion' and 'solidarity'....

...an example is the Palestinian female suicide bomber...perceived as a traitor to the feminist causes, without any questioning of the Eurocentric stakes in 'international' feminist politics....

Feminism must stop conceiving itself as a nation, a 'natural' political destination for all women...it will have to develop a self-conscious politics of partiality, and imagine itself as a limited political home, which does not absorb difference within pre-given and predefined space....

global feminist models take into account the political economy of their socio-cultural milieu and are contingent upon broad-based approaches to questions of equity rather than a simple gender divide...a new typology...engages with multiculturalism, racialised class formations, immigration and naturalisation laws...

The first step is to name this way of knowing the world as an embodied epistemological essentialism....

Cf. Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought:
A More Comprehensive Introduction (Third Edition):
Liberal; Radical; Marxist and Socialist; Psychoanalytic; Care-Focused; Multicultural, Global and Postcolonial; Ecofeminism; Postmodern and Third-Wave Feminisms

most expanded (and most relevant-to-us-right-now) chapter:
"Multicultural, Global, and Postcolonial Feminism"
challenge essentialism and chauvinism
(tendency of privileged women to speak on behalf of all):

all women not created/constructed equal

affected by (among other things) national membership,
esp. differences between Northern/Southern Hemispheres

interlocking sources of oppression
Third World feminists emphasize economic and political
issues as much as sexuality and reproduction
(may reject label "feminist":
economic greater than gender oppression;

may reject "rights language" for valuing
personal autonomy and mobility over communal ties,

@ the neglect of social responsibilities)

Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential Woman:
on the difference between imagining and perceiving another woman's life (prepared to receive new information and adapt);

& beween tolerating and welcoming someone's opinon

(actively seeking out a serious critique of one's own viewpoint)

Iris Marion Young,
"The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference":

"insistence on the ideal of shared subjectivity...leads to undesirable political implications"...distrust the desire "for reciprocal recognition and identification...because it denies differences"...desires for sisters/friends "thwart our principled calls for heterogenity in feminism"

VI. And now (finally!) to Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
initial reactions about this coming-of-age story?
about its visual representation?
about the relation between medium and message?

how do you read a graphic novel?
how would you characterize the genre?

sarina: I sort of think of it like watching a movie with subtitles.

dhathaway: Now we are using the visual lens again...not only creating visuals from word meanings, we are able to see exactly what the author means

anorton: not infrequently...I found myself hardly looking at the pictures at all...dependent on text, I did not give the images the time they deserved....When I...would go back to more-thoroughly examine the frames...I was intrigued by the use of only black and white....

Satrapi....chooses to illustrate people in the same color as their background. This has interesting implications for the understanding of people as separate individuals....

mpottash: do books that rely on illustrations to tell a story place a limit on our imagination?...[or] do illustrations allow for the better expression of our inner ideas?...perhaps it is this aspect that would allow us to call a graphic novel "feminist": perhaps it allows the author to express ideas that would otherwise not be expressed

 

sarahk: The graphics combined with words in Persepolis allow me to be further invested in the characters and their immediate emotions. I find that the images allow for the reader to provide their own more specific interpretation....

lrperry: I was struck immediately by the form and content of the introduction...Satrapi provides not only a history lesson but an autobiographical lesson....Satrapi’s language in this introduction suggests that...her project is in this graphic novel: to do justice.

aaclh: One thing that struck me was how much watching or gazing went on in the story....I interpreted this as a theme of control. I also think it is interesting to see that a person wasn't allowed to 'gaze' back

Is there any relation--if so, what is it?--
between this genre and gender?

Between the genre-and-gender,
and the generic predilections and

gender positions of Satrapi's (presumed) readers?

GENS
A clan or sept; a number of families united by the ties of a supposed common origin, a common name, and common religious rites. Hence employed to designate any similar aggregation of families.

GENRE
Kind; sort; style.
A particular style or category of works of art; esp. a type of literary work characterized by a particular form, style, or purpose.

GENDER
Kind, sort, class; also, genus as opposed to species.
the general gender: the common sort (of people).

For Tuesday: read Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
(also two more NYTimes articles in packet--
& I promise Kendalyn and Janet we'll talk about 'em!)