Because of my dad's background with the KKK, I've grown up learning about racism in America and the struggles that African American people endure. I've heard stories and wrote research papers about the ways that black people are affected by racism. It was really good for me to read the articles about Orientalism this week and really think about the racism and cultural prejudice that affects groups of people from the east, especially with the anniversary of September 11th happening this weekend. Sadly, I know people who are guilty of grouping all people from the Middle East in with those suicide bombers, and I know that I'm guilty of not being as aware of the prejudices that Middle Easterners face. Some of the quotes from the Weekly Ahram would make for a good, controversial sermon. :-)
Our discussions about the meanings of Oriental and Occidental and the differences between the two words made me read the Native American pieces in a different way. I see a mixture of the east and the west in the House Made of Dawn. The poem is full of binaries, dawn and dusk, he-rain and she-rain, dark and light, which are more of a western thing, but there is still the beauty at the end. Beauty is the main goal, not harmony and all of the pieces fitting together like we would want in the west, but beauty. It also interests me that this piece was written in the west but has so many eastern characteristics like the fact that it was passed down orally through the generations. I guess maybe the east is not so much a place but more like a mindset.
The main thing that struck me was the difference between what the west says we want and what we actually do. We say we're all about individualism and everyone being their own person, but then we go and do things like take over other countries and begin to "westernize" them so that they're just like us. It's just like what's happening in The School Days of an Indian Girl; she was taken from her people and forced to conform to what the white people wanted her to be. It makes no sense whatsoever.
And those are my first thoughts...... :-)
Particularly for our purposes too, we are thinking about how Orientalism affects how we study the literature. Our very Western system of studying to uncover what is hidden, or what is masked assumes something about the object of study not being completely honest or subalternately harmful.
ReplyDeleteSo as we begin to study an ongoing question will be "how are we studying this, and are we in keeping with the "object" of study, or is objectication at hand?
We are always then trying to assemble a cultural construct from the literature we are reading being aware that many secondary sources may be Othering, even if unintentionally.