English 375

South African President Thabo Mbeki’s Contoversial views on AIDS. Read here.

South African Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, in controversy over her recent claims about delaying the onset of AIDS. Read here.

Isaac Julien’s film, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks, examines some of the larger issues of race, nationalism, and colonialism we have been exploring so far this semester. Below are some ideas to consider as you frame your response to the film in the form of a blog post:

-In the film, Stuart Hall discusses the importance of the gaze for Fanon’s understanding of a fragmented colonized-self and racialized identities. How does this intersect with other texts we have read thus far this semester.

-Hall also suggested that Fanon’s writing must be understood in relationship to the myriad questions and challenges facing the colonized people of the world at the historical moment of decolonization during the mid and latter-twentieth century. How does this film frame some of those questions and challenges that Fanon writes about in “On National Culture”? Can you trace any of the issues we have discussed, for example the dependency complex of the colonized subject, in other texts we have read this semester?

-How did you interpret the numerous scenes of psychotherapy for both the colonized and the colonizing subject?

-Why did Fanon identify with the Arab independence movement in Algiers?

-How do you understand Stuart Hall’s potentially subversive reading of the veiled muslim woman - a figure deeply linked to ideas of oppression and repression in the Western imagination?

-How do you understand Fanon’s defense of the conservative Islamic practices in Algeria?

Link here. Have fun!

Why do you think Chinua Achebe takes the title for his novel from the following poem?

“THE SECOND COMING”

by W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

(1921)

Click on map for larger image

As we begin to discuss Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, it may prove generative to think about his quote below in order to frame our discussion of this novel in relationship to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Additionally, let’s read the excerpt from “Colonialist Criticism” in the Readings section of the blog in order to examine the question of universality in these two works.

…

The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked. Students of Heart of Darkness will often tell you that Conrad is concerned not so much with Africa as with the deterioration of one European mind caused by solitude and sickness. They will point out to you that Conrad is, if anything, less charitable to the Europeans in the story than he is to the natives, that the point of the story is to ridicule Europe’s civilizing mission in Africa. A Conrad student informed me in Scotland that Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz.

Which is partly the point. Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind? But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot. I do not doubt Conrad’s great talents. Even Heart of Darkness has its memorably good passages and moments:

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across tile water to bar the way for our return.

Its exploration of the minds of the European characters is often penetrating and full of insight. But all that has been more than fully discussed in the last fifty years. His obvious racism has, however, not been addressed. And it is high time it was!

You can find the the essay in its entirety here.

OK everyone, the Richard Ligon wikipedia article is still languishing! Thus far only Kathryn and Emily have added anything to the page I created on the wiki.

So, I would like the rest of the class to find something to add to it and start shaping it into a rudimentary article one might see in an encyclopedia. Remember, you do not have to  spend a lot of time on this project, but I do want you to add something to the discusssion and start shaping the information we have into a coherent article. Finally, be sure to  include references for any source material you consult.

I would like this done by class time on Monday, June 5th.

In every society there also exist notions of difference between men and women, rich and poor, nobility and ordinary folk. Concepts of gender, class, and national difference have a profound effect on how any culture understands its own boundaries … (6)

In the introduction to Skakespeare, Race and Colonialism, Ania Loomba discusses the ways in which difference helps shape the way a culture understands itself. Using the quote above as a prompt, explore the ways cultural differences begin to define the concept of race during the 17th and 18th centuries in at least three of the texts we have read thus far (this includes the theory texts).

Please be sure to have an outline of your paper in the section provided on the class wiki by Saturday, June 3rd. The paper should be no shorter than 5-pages, type-written, double-spaced, 1″ margins, and 12 point font (Times New Roman).

The paper is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, June 6th - you can send the paper to me as an e-mail attachment or paste it the wiki (the preferred method is the latter). Please leave a comment on this post if you have any questions or concerns.

… who will be brave enough to get start us off? Here is the link.