Notes Towards Day 9 (Tues, Oct. 2): "Proceed with Caution"

I. Silence via Sarah; Chandrea is up for Thursday

II. coursekeeping
* Bechdel's cartoon!

* sign up for writing conferences, this week and next (sara, you too!)

* * I had asked you all to record, @ the top of our course forum, what you wrote/read last Thursday, about what you/we need to flourish here--1/2 of you did so; I'd love/like to have the rest, please

* I've adjusted the readings for Thursday:
removed two texts about an opera called "Seven Attempted Escapes from Silence" (an article describing the project, and the score by one of the composers--since I couldn't actually find a recording of what it sounds like...); as well as a YouTube video of Thelonious Monk playing a piano solo, and an essay by John Edgar Wideman about the silence of Thelonious Monk...all that material is still available, linked to from our course home page (I'm assembling a list @ the bottom of stuff we're not getting to...) and from the course forum, if you want to explore it; but we won't as a group

* what I've left in for Thursday's reading is two more essays:
the first one was recommended to me by Linda-Susan Beard, my friend and colleague who teaches Africana Studies, and is a Benedictine nun (she will visit our class in December): it's a very short essay by John Edgar Wideman called "In Praise of Silence"; I'd also like you to read a longer essay by a French critic about "Silence as Common Ground in J.E. Wideman's Texts"-- you can skip the last 3 pp of this (pp. 690-693), which
are about other texts than the one we'll read--as long as you read the last paragraph!

* we are prepping for Wideman's book-length memoir, Brothers and Keepers
(which we'll discuss next week): Wideman is a professor @ Brown;
he graduated from Penn, where he also taught for many years,
and started the African American Studies Program there; he also
received the McArthur Foundation "genius" grant; his book is about
his relationship w/ his brother Robby, who is in jail for murder

* you might note that last week, I had you read Rigoberta Menchu's testimonio
BEFORE you read Doris Sommers' analysis of it; this week, I'm asking you to read
the analysis of J.E. Wideman's text BEFORE you read the text itself...
among other things, I'd like us to figure out which order is more "silencing" of the
text, and of your own reading of it....do you like some "framing," some "structure,"
or do you prefer to encounter a text directly, "unmediated"?

* as you know, we piloted a different form of posting-and-reading this weekend,
trying to create more time for reading-and-responding...
I want to accentuate that process today,
by using those postings-and-responses in the form of a carousel:
I'll quote something you wrote, occasionally interspersed w/ Doris Sommer's commentary...
I'd like you to take two minutes to discuss each passage w/ your partner;
then I'll invite larger group discussion, then we'll repeat....

before we begin: did you understand the contrast Sommers
makes between "universalist" and "particularist" writing?

III. Get up and form a carousel...
listen, discuss in pairs, then as a whole...

[From your postings:]
Chandrea said, Rigoberta writes that "it makes parents sad to see their children asking for things they can't give"…I certainly have had moments where I've begged my mom to get me something and she just couldn't get it for me….Sometimes…I take for granted the sacrifices my parents made for me and the struggles they endured just to keep us happy. The Quiché parents…went through hell and back just to earn money to pay for food for their children.

Michaela replied, I agree--I feel as though too often, we forget to thank our parents for everything they've done for us…I need to remember not to take them…for granted. Thank you, Chandrea, for the reminder.

But Sommers wrote, Empathy is hardly an ethical feeling...readers' projections of intimacy...disregard the text's...performance of keeping us at a politically safe distance....

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couldn'tthinkofanoriginalname said, Doris Sommer’s reading was not the most accessible text. It was quite difficult for me to understand … her thinking around why authors, like Rigoberta, would choose to withhold information…. the urge to know is so strong....But I was reminded of our last silent activity where we had to “read” and “make meaning” from a Chinese text….I did feel like I deserved to know the English translation… did that mean that Erin…should not deny me?….was I unintentionally exercising power over Erin by requesting that I have access to her language?...was I pressuring her, just like the student did to Rigoberta, to… translate?...what did her saying no mean? …what good is keeping quiet and can it truly protect Rigoberta’s people?

Owl replied, power plays a critical role here… who has the "right" …to speak?...this can help you better understand what "you gain and lose" from a hierarchical interaction …

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sdane said, Since our class lunch on Friday, I've been thinking a lot about what 360-inspired activism might look like and … what kind of dent a small amount of activism might make on problems as huge and systemic as the ones we’re discussing …“injustice needs to be confronted,” but I think that it is true for problems as … seemingly small as campus-wide issues.

Dan [who had put the question of activism on the table, also] asked what I Rigoberta Menchu, and the trauma novel, does. I asked this question because I have read Trauma fiction before.… if millions of people are threatened, displaced, tortured, massacred, etc., the trauma novel, or the testimonio, both tries to create a space for a particular trauma in history and tries to shake the complacent and privileged into recognition and hopefully into action of some form.  However, if there is a trauma novel from every group of disenfranchised people, how can we read them all? Is there the possibility that we will become desensitized to the brutality within the pages of each?

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Hummingbird said, I'm beginning to feel all written out …I feel like my voice has been overused of late… I feel as though I'm never truly silent. …I want to work on being a better person of silence.…Isn't there value in not sharing? I'd like to follow the lead of Jesusa Palancares, quoted in Sommer's introduction...and simply say, "Fuck off, now. Go away and let me sleep."

Michaela replied, As exhausted as I often feel by these classes, I feel as though I'd rather know more about others… I wish I had a level of context that we haven't yet reached, at least so that we can better understand where our points of view come from. 

ishin wrote, Like Sommer sharply observes, I am like others who assume that writing should be based in a "monolingualism" …where all should be able to understand what is being said.  To write for all to understand is something that I strive for continuously and painstaningly.  So I took Sommer's points with feelings of anger… and then got hard hit with memories of cultural space…For three months, I lived in with a family who identify as Amish… my last night there…I wrote for 4 hours straight trying to tell them everything that I felt about the experience and how much I appreciated them and their friendship.  But then … I was hit with the gap between us ….A lesson like that is hard for me to swallow…I don't like the idea of not being able to connect with others if I want to, and Sommer's gave me a hard reminder of…frankness and closure.  There are certain gaps we just have to respect, and that is that.

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Sommers asked, "Why is so much attention being called to our insufficiency as readers? Does it mean that the knowlege is impossible or that it is forbidden? Is she saying that we are incapable of knowing, or that we ought not to know?"

Is she "withholding her secrets becasue we are empirically different and would understand them only imperfectly; or must we not know them for ethical reasons, because our knowledge would lead to power over her community?"

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Erin said, Our reflections and readings make me think of a lot of questions which I don’t have answers right now. I struggled a lot writting this post …I totally lost the control of my words when I tried to write a response to such a academic paper. I have a lot of things to say but my proficiency of English silenced me from defend my opinions in front of such a academic piece….“I’m still keeping secrets that I think no-one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find our secrets.” This sentence is a very powerful, strong and striking statement.  But Sommer refutes it with the title “No secrets for Rigoberta.” She analyzed the article from several perspectives and I was … particularly struck by “The whole truth is not found in the Bible, but neither in the whole truth in Marxism” … I think there is no existence of the whole truth … but I wonder what’s meaning of the partial truth we get from her narratives....

Sommers wrote, "So simple a lesson and so fundamental: it is to acknowledge modestly that difference exists...this defends us from harboring any illusions of complete or stable knowledge" (cf. Ellsworth!)

"For Rigoberta there are literally no ideal readers....The Maya Quiche who ideally understand her are no readers at all....Consciously working in a translated, borrowed langauge, those who testify...understand that none of these codes is sufficient to their revolutionary situation....

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HSBurke wrote, “Showing each other our cracks and admitting that we don’t have it all together is, in my opinion, something our group needed. Thank you for your honesty.

Michaela replied, I'm grateful that… you all don't "have it all together" in the way I feared--that everyone else had some intstruction manual for getting through life that I just never picked up on…

Sara added, I think most students at Bryn Mawr feel that everyone else around them is doing better then them… I realized last semester that everyone else felt exactly as I did- behind… like everyone else was flourishing but them. I began to wonder, in this environment that is supposed to be so empowering, why so many students felt so helpless and inadequate…maybe …we are constantly measuring ourselves up to impossible standards; grades that we have imagined for the people that seem to be flourishing …

IV. More Reading Notes from Proceed with Caution....
"books can sting readers who feel entitled to know everything as they approach a text...the slap of refused intimacy from uncooperative books can slow readers down"

"Why should distance be marked? Shouldn't limits be overcome through empathy and learning?

"Absences can...interfere with comprehension...release readers from the exorbitant (and unethical) but usually unspoken assumption that we should know the Other well..."

"Without setting limits, can ethnically marked, 'minority' writers hope really to engage an authoritative reader?"

"Is inhospitality toward the reader...surprising? It merits a pause long enough to learn new expectations."

"Educated readers usually expect to enter into collaborative language games with a range of writers...in stories that become ours...."

"Differences coexist and do not reduce to moments in a universal history of understanding."

"Why should she make so much of keeping secrets instead of just keeping quiet?"

Why do "her techniques include maintaining secrets that keep readers from knowing her too well"?

"Parties to productive alliances respect cultural distances among members."

"the recorded voice was synthesized and processed....our access is limited...but sentimental readers miss the point... prefer the illusion of immediacy...."

"Sympathetic readers...are reluctant...to question their own motives for requiring intimacy."

"'what draws the reader to the novel...is the hope of warming his shivering life with a death he reads about'...testimonios promise [a lot of] warmth."

"Its collective denunciatory tone distinguishes testimony from the personal development narrative of standard autobiography, and it tends to erase the elitist author who mediates the narrative."

"Empathy is hardly an ethical feeling...readers' projections of intimacy...disregard the text's...performance of keeping us at a politically safe distance."

"To close in on Rigoberta would threaten her authority and leadership."

"Why should we assume that our interest in the 'Other' is reciprocated?...Could we consider that sympathy is not bilateral in an asymmetrical world?"

"Secrets can cordon off curious and controling readers...Secrecy is a safeguard to freedom."

"Menchu's audible silences and her wordy refusals to talk are calculated...to incite our curiosity, so that we feel distanced."

"This document is a screen, in the double sense...something that shows and that also covers up."

"Why is so much attention being called to our insufficiency as readers? Does it mean that the knowlege is impossible or that it is forbidden? Is she saying that we are incapable of knowing, or that we ought not to know?"

Is she "withholding her secrets becasue we are empirically different and would understand them only imperfectly; or must we not know them for ethical reasons, because our knowledge would lead to power over her community?"

"Our cultural difference would make her secrets incomprehensible...we would inevitably force her secrets into our framework."

"marking frontiers, limiting access...liberation means reconstituting the alterity of the other..."

"Rigoberta excuses us from her circle of intimates...we are intellectually or ethically unfit for Rigoberta's secrets...it produces a particular kind of distance akin to respect...."

"So simple a lesson and so fundamental: it is to acknowledge modestly that difference exists...this defends us from harboring any illusions of complete or stable knowledge" (cf. Ellsworth!)

"the testimonial I in these books doesn't invite us to identify with it....We are too foreign, and there is no pretense here of universal or essential human experience."

"For Rigoberta there are literally no ideal readers....The Maya Quiche who ideally understand her are no readers at all..."

"Consciously working in a translated, borrowed langauge, those who testify...understand that none of these codes is sufficient to their revolutionary situation...."

"distance can be read as the condition for success of coalitional politics....It is similar to learning that respect is the condition for lasting love."