Dissertation-UCB_Camargo-2003_sm

Immigrant Subjectivities & Commodity Culture:

Cultural Citizenship, Americanization &

Immigrant Autobiographics

in the Late-Twentieth Century United States

by

Carlos Fernando Camargo

B.A. (Florida International University, Miami) 1988

M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 1991

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

English

in the

GRADUATE DIVISION

of the

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Committee in charge:

Professor Richard Hutson (English), Chair

Professor Hertha Sweet Wong (English)

Professor Sau-ling Cynthia Wong (Ethnic Studies)

FALL 2003

2

The dissertation of Carlos Fernando Camargo is approved:

_________________________________________________________________Richard Hutson, Chair Date

_________________________________________________________________Hertha Sweet Wong Date

_________________________________________________________________Sau-ling Cynthia Wong Date

University of California, Berkeley

FALL 2003

3

IMMIGRANT SUBJECTIVITIES & COMMODITY CULTURE:

CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP,

AMERICANIZATION & IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS

IN THE LATE-TWENTIETH CENTURY UNITED STATES

Copyright 2003

by


1

ABSTRACT

Immigrant Subjectivities & Commodity Culture:

Cultural Citizenship, Americanization & Immigrant Autobiographics

in the Late-Twentieth Century United States

by


Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature and Language


Professor Richard Hutson, Chair

This study takes the literary works of immigrant writers and autobiographers as

occasions to explore and theorize the relationship between identity formations in

narratives of Americanization and the social discourses and material practices that make

these texts possible and related genres intelligible during periods of high migration in a

global labor market system. In particular this study is concerned with tracing the

generative tensions and contradictions of ideological discourses surrounding nation, self

and representation in the United States in the last quarter of the century in order to

demonstrate the "material force" of ideational and ideological discursive formations

within a culture structured around relations of exchange and commodification—i.e

advanced late capitalism. In brief, by investigating the discursive formations around

notions of self, nation and life-story in the autobiographical narratives of immigrants,

this study attempts to account for the emergence, development and imperatives of what

some scholars have labeled a "culture of autobiography" in evidence throughout U.S.

cultural formations within the last three decades of the 20th century. Additionally, this

study attempts to map the development and response of U.S. immigrant autobiography

to heated public debates over immigration at the 20th century's end, echoing the heyday

2

of a similar nativist assault in fin-de-siecle 19th century America lasting into what social

historian John Higham has characterized as the “Tribal Twenties” in his classic study of

turn-of-the-century U.S. nativism, Strangers in the Land (1964). Lastly, this study

documents the ideological triumph of economies of exchange underwritten by

commodity relations at the present historical juncture which call for an accounting of the

reifying and utopian possibilities and constraints of all cultural formations, but most

especially those of emergent immigrant and ethnic formations since these, as this study

will argue, provide a unique perspective on the economic, cultural and social cleavages

within the discursive and material fabric of the United States. Immigrants are

Americans writ large. Added to this socio-literary dynamic is the advent of what

immigration historians Castles and Miller call "the age of migration" providing us with a

unique opportunity to examine the role and expansion of commodity relations at both

phenomenological and structural planes because the commodities now in motion and in

circulation speak, write and represent themselves: they are the men, women and

children who have entered this country as immigrants, refugees & asylees.

Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature & Language


__________________________________________________________________Richard Hutson, Chair Date

i

DEDICATION

TO WILLIAM AND VIVIAN SARTELLE

AND

TO JOSEPH SARTELLE

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION..................................................................................................................... I

TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................................ II

LIST OF FIGURES ..............................................................................................................V

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................................... VI

PART I: NOVUS ORDO SECULORUM: AD AUGUSTA PER ANGUSTA ....................................1

CHAPTER 1: CONCEPTUALIZING NARRATIVE AGENCY: UBI BENE IBI PATRIA................2SYNOPSIS: IMMIGRANT GENRES...........................................................................................2TRANSCENDING THE DICHOTOMY: THE TALES WE TELL.................................................3

ETIC AND EMIC NARRATIVE SELVES— SUBJECTIVITY AS FUSION OF BIOGRAPHY& HISTORY ..............................................................................................................................4THE DUALITY OF STRUCTURE: BEYOND THE INTENTIONAL FALLACY TOWARDSTEXTS IN CONTEXT ...............................................................................................................6

OPERATIONALIZING HABITUS IN THE ANALYSIS OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICS OFAMERICANIZATION..................................................................................................................10

HABITUS AS SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: NARRATIVE & SOCIAL REGENERATION,RENEWAL BY KILLING A SELF ..........................................................................................15

CHAPTER 2: IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS IN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC &AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION ..................................................................................... ..............23

VARIETAS DELECTA: DRAMAS OF BEING & BELONGING................................................23NOMEN EST OMEN..............................................................................................................25INTER CAECOS REGNAT LUSCUS.....................................................................................27QUE NOCENT, SAEPE DOCENT. ........................................................................................32MELODRAMAS OF INDIVIDUATION & CONSOLIDATION ..........................................34REPETITIO EST MATER STUDIORUM... .............................................................................36VULNERANT OMNES, ULTIMA NECAT. ..........................................................................39

CHAPTER 3: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA............................................42SYNOPSYS: PERFORMANCE, PERSONALITY AND IDENTITY DEFENSE IN ..................43LIFE-STORY & AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE ...........................................................43LIFE STORIES: WHAT DO WE TELL WHEN WE TELL THEM? ...........................................46DEFENSE MECHANISMS IN LIFE-STORY FASHIONING: INTERVIEW EVIDENCE .........49BEYOND THE INTERVIEW: DEFENSE MECHANISMS IN THE LIFE STORY ....................53WHO HEARS THE STORY?........................................ .............................................................58AUDIATUR ET ALTERA PARS!................................................................................................60CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................................................63

PART II: IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS: HISTORIA EST VITAE MAGISTRA. ........64

CHAPTER 4: NARRATIVE PURSUITS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FABULAE .............................65THE SOCIO-CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF NARRATIVE IDENTITY &SUBJECTITIVIES IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE...................................................65NARRATIVE INDIVIDUALISM: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DEUS-EX-MACHINA.....................68

iii

THE SOCIO-CULTURAL IMAGINATION AS BASIS FOR SOCIO-LITERARYPERSPECTIVE: SELF-PRESENTATION, MIMESIS & NARRATIVE PURSUITS.................70CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................................................79

CHAPTER 5: IDOLS OF THE TRIBE & FABLES OF AMERICAN NATIONAL IDENTITY:SPEAKING OF IMMIGRATION ......................................................................................................82

ONE PERSON'S STORY IS ANOTHER PERSON'S METAPHOR ........................................83ASSIMILATION ........................................................................................................... ...............85ETHNIC RETENTION................................................................................................................90ACCULTURATION ....................................................................................................................94ETHNIC GROUP -- OR GROUPNESS?.................................................................................102

CHAPTER 6 : LOST IN INTERPELLATION: CHANG-RAE LEE’S NATIVE SPEAKER ..........106THE NARATIVE PURSUITS OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL TRICKSTER .........................106NARRATIVE SYNOPSIS: LOST IN INTERPELLATION ............................. ..........................106THE LONG PLANE RIDE: CHILDHOOD & YOUTH, OR WHEREIN THE PRE-REFLEXIVECOGITO GOES BAD...............................................................................................................107RHETORICS OF DESCENT & DIFFERENCE: TROPES OF FAMILY & FILIALSUBJECTIVITIES ....................................................................................................................109IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS: THE AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHIC IMPULSE..................115THE ETHNIC OTHER: MY MONSTER, MYSELF? ...............................................................117IMMIGRANT BRICOLEUR AS NATIVE-INFORMANT ...................................................... ....118ENGLISH ONLY!: LANGUAGE AND THE NATIVE SPEAKER ............................................121NARRATIVE RESOLUTIONS AND PLOTS OF MARITAL CONCORD ...............................123

PART III: AMERICANIZATION: PER ASPERA AD ASTRA...........................................126

CHAPTER 7: THE MAKING OF AMERICANS: ELITE & POPULAR ARTICULATIONS OFNATIONAL SUBJECTIVITIES .......................................................................................................127

THE POLITICAL MODEL - AN 'IDEAS NATION' ...................................................................128THE DECLINE OF THE 'IDEAS NATION' ..............................................................................131MULTICULTURALISM.............................................................................................................133THE CULTURAL MODEL........................................................................................................134AN AMERICAN CULTURE?....................................................................................................136THE FRONTIER: CRUSADE, CRUCIBLE AND CRIME .......................................................137THE MELTING POT ...................................... ..........................................................................138THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF AN AMERICAN CULTURE ....................................................139ASSIMILATION AND ACCULTURATION ..............................................................................140THE ETHNO-RACIAL MODEL................................................................................................142SURVEYING U.S. PUBLIC OPINION.....................................................................................144WHO’S YOUR GRANDDADDY? OR WHO GETS TO BE AMERICAN, CULTURALLYSPEAKING ... ............................................................................................................................149

THE BREAK-DOWN OF AMERICAN OPINION ..............................................................150SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.......................................................................................153

CHAPTER 8: CINEMATIC DISCIPLINING OF THE IMMIGRANT OTHER ON THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER ....................................................................................................................... ....156

SYNOPSIS: ..............................................................................................................................156INTERTEXTUALITY: NARRATIVE, FILM AND SOCIAL DISCOURSES OF IDENTITY.....157GEOGRAPHIES OF THE BORDER SELF AND SOCIUS IN CINEMA................................159FRONTIER FANTASIES: HYPOTHETICAL SELVES & THREATENING OTHERS ...........161LOCATING THE BORDERS OF SELF: BOUNDED IDENTITY & SPLIT SELVES ............163DISCIPLINARY NARRATIVES: WHY SIZE MATTERS, OR DOES IT SCALE?..................167THE IMMIGRANT BODY AS BORDER: ABJECT OBJECT?................................................170IMMIGRATION DISCIPLINE: REMEMBERING THE SOUTHERN “OTHER”......................172THE AMERICAN “SOUTH”: DISPLACED ANXIETY IN BORDER NARRATIVES...............173CINEMATIC CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................... ..........176

iv

PART IV: CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP: E PLURIBUS UNUM. .......................................179

CHAPTER 9: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AMERICAN AENEIDS: IMMIGRANT ........................180

FAMILY FICTIONS AS TROPES OF SELF—OR, HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST .............180

THEIR ACCENTS BY DREAMING IN CUBAN ...........................................................................180TENSE TROPICS: TROPES OF FAMILY & HOST COMMUNITY ......................................180ARTICULATING THE NARRATIVE SELF WITHIN THE IMMIGRANT SOCIUS .................187QUALIS PATER TALIS FILIUS. ..............................................................................................193HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, AND GOT THEIR GROOVE...........203SPANISH-AMERICAN PRINCESS: VENI, VIDI, VICI. ..........................................................213DREAMING IN CUBAN WHILE LIVING ON THE HYPHEN ........ .........................................219EXILE DREAMS: THE BREADED LEVIATHAN & CUBA LIBRE!........................................221SUGARCANE SHADOWS ......................................................................................................227REVOLUTIONARY FAMILIES AND THE MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY.......................228

CHAPTER 10: U.S IMMIGRANT SUBJECTIVITIES & NARRATIVES IN THE SHADOW OFTHE COMMODITY.........................................................................................................................234

TOWARDS A SOCIO-LITERARY PERSPECTIVE:.............................................................. .235LE LY HAYSLIP'S MORAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP & THE POLITICS OF ABSOLUTIONIN WHEN HEAVEN AND EARTH CHANGED PLACES AND CHILD OF WAR, WOMAN OFPEACE......................................................................................................................................238THE AESTHETICIZATION & PRIVATIZATION OF LOSS AND RAGE IN EVA HOFFMAN'SLOST IN TRANSLATION.........................................................................................................240ALL IN THE FAMILY: LIFE ON THE HYPHEN WITH PÉREZ FIRMAT:CUBA'S SON INAMERICA, OR WHAT BECOMES A CUBAN MACHO MOST? ...........................................244THE POLITICS OF RACE AND FAMILY VALUES IN MARK MATHABANE'S KAFFIRBOY, KAFFIR BOY IN AMERICA , & LOVE IN BLACK AND WHITE..................................247ILLEGAL DREAMS AND LABOR PAINS: THE SHADOWED LIFE A MIGRANT LABORERIN RAMON PÉREZ'S DIARY OF AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT...............................250

PART V: COMMODITY CULTURE: SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI. ............................254

CHAPTER 11: WHAT IS COMMODITY CULTURE, AND WHERE CAN I GET IT ON SALE?...255

MY SO-CALLED LIFE: LABORING IN THE SHADOW OF THE COMMODITY ..................255WHAT’S A HAND WORTH THESE DAYS? OR, THE COMMODIFICATION OF THEBODY........................................................................................................................................256PERSONS, BODIES AND THINGS........................................................................................259THE LOGIC OF DEMONIC CAPITAL & DE-HUMANIZING WAGE-LABOR........................261THE OCCULT HISTORY OF THE RISE OF VAMPIRIC CAPITALISM................................265WAGE-LABOR AND GLOBAL COMMODIFICATION ...........................................................269WHY SELL YOURSELF SHORT? ..........................................................................................272CHANGE IS THE CHALLENGE, NOT NEED ........................................................................275

WORKS CITED & ENDNOTES .................................................................................278

WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 2 .............................................................................................278WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 3 .............................................................................................279WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 4 .............................................................................................283WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 6 .............................................................................................285WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 9 .............................................................................................288WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 10 .............................................................................. .............290ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER 11.............................................................................................292

v

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1--Texts in Contexts..............................................................................................................75

Figure 2- Context ...............................................................................................................................79

Figure 3 - Sedimentation: From Habitus to Ideology ...............................................................237

Figure 4 - Acculturation Process........................................................................................ ...........237

vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Intellectually this study owes its critical interdisciplinary approach and scope to

the influence and teaching of Prof. Richard Hutson and of the Bad Subjects Collective

founded by Joe Sartelle at UC-Berkeley in the pre-bubble 1990s, before email and chat

rooms were all the rage. Additionally, it is informed by and has developed out of the

teaching practice and critical pedagogy I learned from Prof. Kathleen Moran and Prof.

Christine Palmer of the American Studies Program at UCB. From them, I learned to

decode texts in any context—and actually like it. From Richard, I learned to follow my

intellectual bliss. And, from Joe, I learned about bliss, period.

1

PART I: NOVUS ORDO SECULORUM: AD AUGUSTA PER ANGUSTA

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights,that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to

secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, derivingtheir just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of theseends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute

new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizingits powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect

their Safety and Happiness.

—(Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence of theUnited States of America, July 4, 1776)

.

IMMIGRANT SUBJECTIVITIES

“The woof of time is every instant broken, and the track of generations effaced.Those who went before are soon forgotten; of those who will come after,

no one has any idea: the interest of man is confinedto those in close propinquity to himself”

(Tocqueville, Democracy in America)

2

CHAPTER 1: CONCEPTUALIZING NARRATIVE AGENCY: UBI BENE IBI PATRIA

SYNOPSIS: IMMIGRANT GENRES

Writing this chapter has been particularly challenging – and has been described by onecolleague as my “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. This seems rather over-ambitious,but I am trying to bring together some ideas that might be considered as sitting uneasilytogether. In this chapter I introduce the conceptual framework I adopt in the study. Thisframework involves the elaboration of three key areas from social theory, PierreBordieu’s notion of habitus, the notion of ideology and its relation to underlying socialideas, and Michel Foucault’s analyses of discursive formations. I spend some timearticulating the significance of these three key themes because it seems to me to be veryimportant that wherever possible I clarify what might be misunderstandings. I want toargue that authorial decisions made by immigrant autobiographers are not solelyrational and self-directed (authorial) choices made by completely autonomous socialbeings. Looking objectively at the situation once evinces that there are influences andstructures of thought and feeling which impose themselves on immigrantautobiographers as they craft their life narratives. It is these influences and structures ofthought and feeling that are included in the notion of ideology, following Marx andWilliams. It is this level of thinking that is usually avoided in many formalistic studies ofimmigrant autobiographical practices, especially so in classroom practice, largely Iconjecture because of the political nature of the ideas it represents. However, theproposed Goffmanian, socio-literary approach to autobiographical narrative provides agenerative critical axis for narratological analysis of autobiographies as constitutinghistorical and biographically significant autobiographical social situations.

Critiquing ideology though is not enough to give us a clear picture of the messy swampof human interaction. I find my way through this swamp with Pierre Bordieu and hisnotion of habitus as my guide. Michel Foucault brings to this venture his idea that thereis some underlying structure and rationale to the process of discursive formation. I donot conceive of this chapter as a “Morrison’s Cafeteria” entree; but, rather it is a cordonbleu arrangement of complementing and mutually enhancing components, theintegration of which is considerably more satisfying and powerful than any of the parts.I hope you, the diner, will agree.

3

TRANSCENDING THE DICHOTOMY: THE TALES WE TELL

Sie wissen da nicht, aber sie tun es(They do not know it, but they do it)

(Karl Marx, Capital)

People know what they do, they frequently know why they do what they do, butthey don’t know what what they do does.

(Michel Foucault quoted in Dreyfus and Rabinow and Dowling 1991; FLM 1991Gender, Class and Subjectivity. pps 2 – 8)

It is because subjects do not, strictly speaking, know what they are doing that whatthey do has more meaning than they know.

(Pierre Bordieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p 79)

I write today for a reader who exists in my mind only phantasmagorically.(Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory, p 182)

In this section I discuss the link between the form of social structure and the nature ofauthorial agency, which acts as a precursor to my intention to study the structure ofimmigrant autobiographers’ understanding of their work and practice from within asocial perspective as mediated by their serial attempts at autobiographic self-fashioning.In particular, my approach assumes an interplay between structure and agency, and thisinterplay needs to be conceptualized and operationalized. I see this interplay asassociated with Antony Giddens ‘duality of structure’, but identify some limitations anddrawbacks in the form of his conceptualization. Resolving these limitations requires anapproach that is capable of uncovering determinants and influences that act between thesocial and the individual leading to a dialectical and dynamic constitution of both selfand society through autobiographical narrative forms. These determinants andinfluences appear in subsequent sections of this chapter as habitus, ideology anddiscursive formations.

4

ETIC AND EMIC NARRATIVE SELVES— SUBJECTIVITY AS FUSION OF BIOGRAPHY &HISTORY

Current perspectives on immigrant autobiographics appear to be caught in a

dichotomy, where approaches either suppress the significance of authorial agency or

ignore the structural determinants of the social world outside of autobiographical

production under question (cf: Boewlhower, Sollers and Dearborn). The need to

consider the interplay between social structure and authorial agency was identified by

Karl Marx when he claimed that

The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach included) isthat things, reality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of theobject, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice,not subjectively. (Marx 1844b, p 3)

Hence, the social world is to be seen as a practice, as human activity. I have

described in Chapters 1 and 2, my desire to know more about the mechanisms by which

society reproduces itself and how autobiographical practices and immigration self-

fashioning, in particular, contribute to social reproduction at the objective (genre-centric)

and subjective (text-centric) levels of articulation. I wish to do this, not by looking at

some wider overarching social practices, but to look into a critical site and understand

better how it is that covert social control & ideological domination may be sustained

through the way immigrant autobiographers conceptualize their work and their social

relationships in “presentations of self in everyday life” to borrow a phrase from

Goffman’s seminal study on self-fashioning as symbolic interaction, impression

management and social control mechanisms social formations evolve to reproduce and

maintain themselves over time (1952). Or, following Erchak in The Anthropology of

Self and Behavior, a standard college text in the field of psychological anthropology:

Societies produce the kinds of people they need: the socialization process withina culture shapes behavior and personality in children in order to produce the kind ofbehavior and personality in adults that will serve the general welfare while providingsatisfying lives for members of the culture. (emphasis in original, 1992, p 48)

5

Thus, the basic exigency is to understand certain aspects or components of authorial

agency and their relationship to social structure and ultimately its impact on immigrant

autobiographics. This is tied to notions of domination and oppression, and involves a

conception of power and influences. Henry Giroux sees this as part of a critical

interrogation of “how human beings come together within historically specific social

sites such as schools in order to both make and reproduce the conditions of their

existence” (Giroux 1997a, p 71). Underpinning this interrogation is an assumption that

must form the foundation of a critical examination of autobiographical practice – the

dynamic and dialectical relation between structure (genre) and agency (text). This forms

a central plank of Pierre Bordieu’s approach to ideological inquiry—a foundational

prism for the present study:

There exists a correspondence between social structures, between theobjective divisions of the social world – particularly into dominant anddominated in the various fields – and the principles of vision and divisionthat agents applied to it. (Bordieu, 1989a, p 7 quoted in Bordieu 1990a, p12)

This process of construction and reproduction is not well-examined or understood in

specific sites and seems to lack clear conceptual and methodological tools for analysis.

Critical sites are those in which the very day-to-day struggles for identity and power are

all played out. One such site is the immigrant autobiographical narrative and it’s

pedagogical deployment in the language instruction classroom. I chose this site not only

because I am by profession a Writing-Across-the-Curriculum educator and socio-literary

scholar, but also because it is a critical site in the constitution of self and identity as my

years of classroom practice and research confirm, and herein seek to convey to a larger

public. In order to carry out such an interrogation I need to identify and conceptualize

the ideas with which to describe the appropriate micro and macro structures and

6

mechanisms employed by immigrant autobiographers in fashioning narratives of

personal transformation, migration and growth.

THE DUALITY OF STRUCTURE: BEYOND THE INTENTIONAL FALLACY TOWARDS TEXTS INCONTEXT

One of the most enduring problems of modern social theory and its application

in the study of literary texts is to account for and theorize the nature of authorial agency

and its role in the maintenance and construction of social and generic structures. That is,

to theorize why do we do what we do, and just what is it that we do and how we are

influenced by others and by the wider social forces to which we are subject before one

even sets pen to paper to craft a narrative self. Anthony Giddens gives an example of his

approach to this structure/agency distinction, that allows one to by-pass a naïve

intentional fallacy, through what he terms the “unintended consequences of intended

action” (Giddens 1976 2nd Edition 1993, p 84). He uses the terminology “duality of

structure” to denote the inter-relation between agency (text) and structure

(genre/context) in the social sphere, which I here apply to the narrative realm, and I

shall illustrate this with three quotes:

By the duality of structure I mean that social structure is both constitutedby human agency and yet at the same time the very medium of thatconstitution.(Giddens 1976 2nd Edition 1993, p 128)

In social theory we cannot treat human activities as though they weredetermined by causes in the same way as the natural events are. We have tograsp what I call the double involvement of individuals and institutions:we create society at the same time as we are created by it . . . Social systemsare like buildings that are at every moment constantly being reconstructedby the very bricks that compose them.(Giddens 1982, pps 13 - 14)

Structure is the medium and outcome of the conduct it recursivelyorganizes; the structural properties of social systems do not exist outside ofthe action but are chronically implicated in its production andreproduction.(Giddens 1984, p 374)

7

There is a clear debt to Karl Marx in the development of Anthony Giddens’

‘structuration theory’, which Giddens recognizes as

an extended reflection upon a celebrated and oft-quoted phrase to be foundin Marx . . ‘Men make history but not in circumstances of their ownchoosing’.(Giddens 1984, p xxi)

Following Giddens lead, I would add that immigrant autobiographers are in no less of a

predicament vis-à-vis their own migration experience and the generic narrative

strategies at their disposal to craft narrative subjectivities that fit neatly and intelligibly

within a canon of American Subjectivities that range the historical spectrum from

Benjamin Franklin’s confident and action driven vita activa in an Revolutionary &

Enlightenment milieu to today’s post-modern and Advanced Late Capitalist consumer

millieu as fashioned by a less confident and “alienated” Eva Hoffman with respect to her

own incorporation and socialization into an American Habitus: and the trauma of being

lost in translation” in pursuing vita contemplative to find HER American Self:

“The extremes of immigration and of living in a second language are a kind ofexacerbation of the experience of being alienated from oneself, and of havinglanguage de-familiarised. I suppose this is something that every writerexperiences, but it becomes exacerbated in a second language, so that the sense ofone’s own otherness becomes all too natural... Writing Lost in Translation wastherapeutic for me, but that was a surprise. I didn’t set out for it to betherapeutic. And I didn’t know it would be. What was therapeutic was not only asense that I had found a voice, but that the book was received very generouslyand I had the feeling that I had been heard. And that enabled me to put theproblem of immigration to rest much more than before, because I think that oneof the obsessions driving me was the sense that nobody really heard orunderstood this particular experience.”(Extracts from the radio series are based on the book — Foreign Dialogues, MaryZournazi, Pluto Press, 1998)

Yet, I do not want to present this approach as unproblematic or uncontentious with

respect to the Hegelian dilemma of gewornfenheit—existential angst over choosing

among World-as-found versus World-as-fashioned. However, a central issue is the

necessity to try to understand and describe the contribution that human subjects make

8

to the enduring social forms, norms, genres and subjectivities, and in turn how literary

engagement in the social world might influence a immigrant self-representation and

semiosis through speech acts that comprise action (in the Arendtian sense) in the

constitution of immigrant autobiography as a genre-qua-genre or meta-genre. This

requires teasing apart the duality, rather than clouding it or negating it. That is, how can

the immigrant autobiographer be seen as deriving the logic of their practice from the

social world? Central to this project is the notion that autobiographical engagement in

the social world is a multi-layered complex phenomenon, in which we must eschew

simplistic notions of overt domination or repression, and conversely simplistic notions

of power, agency or authorial intention:

Domination is not the same as “systematically distorted” structures ofsignification because domination - as I conceive of it - is the very conditionof existence of codes of signification. “Domination” and “power” cannot bethought of only in terms of asymmetries of distribution but have to berecognized as inherent in social association. Thus - and here we must alsoreckon with the implications of the writings of Foucault - power is not aninherently noxious phenomenon, not just the capacity to “say no”; nor candomination be “transcended” in some kind of putative society of the future,as has been the characteristic aspiration of at least some strands of socialistthought. (Giddens 1984, pps 31 - 32)

Anthony Giddens’ development of structuration theory is an attempt to overcome the

dualism in the agency/structure dichotomy by “squashing together structure and

agency into one tightly-constituted amalgam” (Willmott 1999, p 7). The problem with

such an approach is that it leaves the effects and interplay between structure and agency

as indistinguishable, and “we are left with an unfortunate but ineluctable conflation of

structure and agency” (Willmott 1999, p 7). To overcome such a conflation we could opt

for the alternative approach of “analytical dualism” (Willmott 1999, p 7), an approach

which does not assume some primacy or determinism inherent in structure, but seeks to

develop a social ontology capable of uncovering determinants and influences that act

between the social and the individual leading to a dialectical and dynamic constitution

9

of both self and society, and by extension to any autobiographical fashioning or

identitarian project like creating property and social capital through engaging in a

public act of self-display and projection involved in today’s market for Biography and

Non-Fiction titles down at the Barnes & Noble’s or online at Amazon.com. My interest

in this chapter is to present a view of how people might be driven to operate and

interact with each other and therefore structure their social relations; how individuals,

personalities and subjectivities are formed and how they coalesce, conflict and

interweave to sustain capitalist social relations, which in turn constitute the relations of

production. In order to do that I begin by looking at how we ‘think’ in the sense of how

we come to think about and structure what we do which then leads us to do what we do

in relation to others. This is not going to be a psychological study however, but an

exercise in looking for how we can conceptualize the social theoretical frameworks

through which individuals operate. There is a significant area of research in the

immigrant literature and autobiographics from Lisa Lowe’s Immigrant Acts to Ma’s

Immigrant Subjectivities which looks at the structure of immigrant autobiographers’

cultural knowledge and rhetorical repertoires, which is helpful in identifying immigrant

autobiographers’ conceptual and cognitive structures along a material and socio-literary

axis of Extravagance and Necessity outlined by Sau-ling Wong. Like Wong, I find formal

merit in the work of the Ethnicity School, but ultimately find it’s ahistorical and thematic

approach to immigrant autobiographics simply misses the point. What we need is to

“penetrate beyond the discourses and consciousness of human actors to the conditions

and foundation of their day-to-day experiences” (Giroux 1983, p144).

10

OPERATIONALIZING HABITUS IN THE ANALYSIS OF ANAUTOBIOGRAPHICS OF AMERICANIZATION

But a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.(Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, “The Boxer”)

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please, they donot make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances

directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.(Marx 1852, p. 103)

Disposition: a tendency of an object or system to act or react in characteristic waysin certain situations.

(Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy)

In this section I present my rationale for using Pierre Bordieu’s habitus and the approachI adopt in working with it to elaborate the organizational structure of immigrantautobiographers’ thinking. The habitus forms a central plank of my theoretical andmethodological framework in this study and I offer a four-fold operationalization of itthat can help us come to an understanding of immigrant authorial agency and practice.Because one aspect of the habitus is embodied social structure, it forms a coherentbridge between a structuralist analysis of society on the one hand and human practiceon the other. The other aspects of the habitus (dispositions, structuring and symbolicviolence) similarly indicate ways in which I can develop a framework for analyzingimmigrant autobiographers’ self-reflective discourse to uncover the practical andcompositional logic therein.

11

HABITUS AS THE BASIS FOR SUBJECTIVITY IN NARRATIVE

I will begin with a consideration of the significance and operationalization of the

habitus – a more generalized construct than Basil Bernstein’s ‘code’ which has really

only been operationalized in educational settings (Harker and May 1993, p 173). We do

need to consider the generative grammar of educational practices and such a generative

grammar is offered by Pierre Bordieu’s habitus, which avoids the determinacy of Basil

Bernstein’s code through the paradoxically useful indeterminacy of the logic of human

practice (Bordieu 1990a, p 77). Crudely (and possibly unhelpfully brief) the habitus is

EMBODIED SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN PRACTICE AND THOUGHT and thus it is a notion that

transcends the dichotomy and distinction between structure and agency. Social structure

becomes embodied by individual, textual practice as an effect of secondary socialization

(or enculturation) and consequently the resultant social practices and authorial

interventions deployed or marshaled in constructing an Apologia pro vita sua through

the medium of narrative relations and interactions immigrant autobiographers thus give

effect/affect to and sustain these underlying social structures.

In this section, I will address what I see as the significant elements of the

applicability of the habitus in deconstructing immigrant autobiographers’

understandings and negotiation of the American Habitus. These are: the habitus as the

embodiment of social structure, the habitus as habit and dispositions, the habitus as a

structuring device and the habitus as symbolic violence. These form the elements in the

agency-structure symbiosis characteristic of my operationalization of a Bordieuian

approach and are fundamental elements in the framework I am constructing in this

chapter towards a socio-literary perspective. I will look at each of these in turn. It needs

to be borne in mind that the habitus is not only a sociological construct for

conceptualizing and theorizing the nature of human practices. It is also a method for

analyzing and describing those practices and understandings held by practitioners,

hence its practical application in this study.

12

THE HABITUS AS THE EMBODIMENT OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Pierre Bordieu uses the habitus to replace ‘rules’ with a strategic “feel for the

game” (Bordieu 1990a, p 9). Rogers Brubaker sees the habitus as important within

sociological thought because it represents:

the system of dispositions that mediate between inert structures and thepractices through which social life is sustained and structures arereproduced or transformed. (Brubaker 1985, p 758)

So conceptually, the habitus is Pierre Bordieu’s approach to theorizing how people enact

and embody dominant ruling ideas as well as in transforming and adapting them to

their purposed in the act of self-representation. Aaron Cicorel refers to this aspect of the

habitus too:

Studies of socialization have for the most part ignored Bordieu’s distinctiveway of calling attention to how power or forms of dominance arereproduced in settings like the family and the school such that they havelasting effects on future behavior and the way in which dominant groupssustain themselves. Neither however have Bordieu nor most students ofsocialization, language development, and educational processes examinedthe local ways in which a habitus reproduces dominant beliefs, values andnorms through the exercise of symbolic power and by bestowing culturalcapital; in particular, the way children perceive, acquire, comprehend andimplement power. Bordieu’s notion of habitus, however provides apowerful tool for examining domination as everyday practice; but thisnotion must be cognitively and linguistically documented. (Cicorel 1993, p111)

Hence, the significance of the habitus is that it “constitutes the means whereby

individuals are adapted to the needs of specific social structures” and by extension

narrative genres (Callinicos 1999, p 293).

THE HABITUS AS HABIT AND DISPOSITION

Pierre Bordieu himself often fails to offer a clear definition of the habitus -

because he claims it is indefinable and inaccessible outside of human practice. In much

the same way, it is difficult to define “autobiography” without referring to specific

13

practices in specific contexts. Generic definitions can prove constraining rather than

helpful. In Distinction, Pierre Bordieu describes the habitus as

both the generative principle of objectively classifiable judgements and thesystem of classifications of these practices. It is in the relationship betweenthe two capacities which define the habitus, the capacity to produceclassifiable practices and works, and the capacity to differentiate andappreciate these practices and products (taste), that the represented socialworld, i.e., the space of life-styles, is constituted. (Bordieu 1979: 1984, p 170)

To some extent, this is a helpful development; or habitus is what we use to classify and

judge and at the same time it is the collection and make up of those judgements and so is

deeply implicated in our daily practices. One way forward is to consider the habitual

nature of the actions that make up our practice. Where do these habits come from?

Largely they derive from our up-bringing and social background and all that goes with

it such as beliefs, perspectives, interpersonal relations throughout the processes of

primary and secondary socialization:

The habitus acquired in the family is at the basis of the structuring of schoolexperiences; the habitus transformed by the action of the school is in turn atthe basis of all subsequent experiences. (Bordieu and Wacquant 1992, p 134)

Hence, the role of the school and autobiography-as-schooling-genre are critical in the

development of wider social organization. The habitus becomes transformed within the

school, yet with its possibilities limited. It tends therefore to be reproductive rather than

transformative. The habitus is not deterministic yet it is dependent on the social field--

different practices may be produced by the same habitus in different fields. The habitus

thus mediates rather than determines (Bordieu 1990a, p 116).

Between the child and the world, the whole group intervenes with a wholeuniverse of ritual practices and also of discourses, sayings, proverbs, allstructured in concordance with the principles of the corresponding habitus.(Bordieu 1972, p 167)

The habitus is thus a reflection of social structure, but also illustrates how we become

constituted via generalized social dispositions that represent a repertoire of subjectivities

and identities available to immigrant autobiographers.

14

THE HABITUS AS A STRUCTURING DEVICE

This seems to offer some specificity to the notion of ideology, which I see as

related to rather than contrasted with the habitus. Or habits are not mechanically

produced, we have idiosyncrasies, or own inventions and creations picked up on the

way, partly depending on what we ‘choose’ to focus on and what we ‘choose’ to ignore.

Of course we may not actually consciously choose at all, rather, we may be (pre)-

disposed, conditioned etc.

We can always say that individuals make choices, as long as we do notforget that they do not choose the principals of these choices. (Wacquant1989, p 45)

The habitus and its relation to practice seem to be based not upon causality, (and

potentially, by implication, intentionality) but on relations. Ludwig Wittgenstein

problematizes the notion of causality following a Humean strain:

The proposition that your action has such and such a cause, is a hypothesis.The hypothesis is well-founded if one has had a number of experienceswhich, roughly speaking, agree in showing that your action is the regularsequel of certain conditions which we then call causes of the action. Inorder to know the reason which you had for making a certain statement, foracting in a particular way, etc., no number of agreeing experiences isnecessary, and the statement of your reason is not a hypothesis. Thedifference between the grammars of “reason” and “cause” is quite similarto that between the grammars of “motive” and “cause”. Of the cause onecan say that one can’t know it but can only conjecture it. On the other handone often says: “Surely I must know why I did it” talking of the motive.When I say: “We can only conjecture the cause, but we know the motive”this statement will be seen later on to be a grammatical one. The “can”refers to a logical possibility. (Wittgenstein 1958, p 15)

This seems a reasonable position to take, and one that is consistent with a Bordieuianposition.

It is because subjects do not, strictly speaking, know what they are doing thatwhat they do has more meaning than they know. (Bordieu 1972, p 79)

It does seem reasonable to argue that the dispositions we come to assume are quite

intimately connected to the frameworks that guide and organize or thinking about the

self and the nature of the autobiographical writing practice, as Seth Kreisberg suggests:

15

Ideology and hegemony work directly on the body as well that is on thelevel of or everyday unconscious experience. On fundamental levels, whowe are, what we want, what we need, and thus what kinds of socialrelationships we seek out and create are shaped by the patterns and dailyroutines of our everyday lives. In part this occurs through the process bywhich ideology seeps deep within our personalities into the depth of ourunconscious, shaping our personalities, needs and desires. I want to arguethough that the process by which social practices become sedimented andreproduce themselves, while connected to ideological processes ofreproduction are also distinct from these processes. People tend to relate toothers in the same way others relate to them. We tend to act in ways we seeand experience others’ actions. Experience solidifies into habit, in facthegemony is most encompaszing when a dominant hegemony reflects andis expressed in everyday experience and in a range of social practices andstructures in a society. In this society relationships of domination aremaintained by just such a correspondence of consciousness and experience,which while never total and static is still powerful and broadlyencompaszing. (Kreisberg 1992, p 16)

Seth Kreisberg raises an important issue here and touches upon the relationships

between subjectivity, habitus and ideology. The relationship between subjectivity-as-

personality, habitus and ideology is not greatly theorized in immigrant autobiographical

practice and socio-literary criticism and part of my aim is to construct some mapping

between them. This is a central issue, because an understanding of how our dispositions

are shaped and organized by social structure and conversely how our dispositions

mirror those structures is crucial in exploring the agency/structure relationship as it

manifested in immigrant self narratives.

HABITUS AS SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE: NARRATIVE & SOCIAL REGENERATION, RENEWAL BYKILLING A SELF

One of the key elements of Pierre Bordieu’s approach to understanding the role

didactic social practices like schools, textbooks and education practices and even

autobiographical speech acts play in social reproduction is symbolic violence (Bordieu

1972), a forceful phrase for quite a subtle idea. Symbolic violence occurs where the

arbitrary cultural norms of the dominant groups are presented not as arbitrary, but as

the legitimate and natural norms of narrative and social behavior: the classic example

16

being the White-Ethnic Americaniztion narrative tradition within which Faber,

Yierzerska, Cahan, Singer, Hoffman and Perez-Firmat write, and which can be thought

to have reached an apogee in the early part of the last century with the publication of

Mary Antin’s The Promised Land (1912) but remains a vital stock of the American

canonical repertoires available to newcomers to the United States. Important concepts

for Pierre Bordieu here are recognition and misrecognition. Symbolic violence is not

simply covert oppression, but involves resignation, a recognition of boundaries, but a

misrecognition of these boundaries as natural rather then oppressive. Power relations

are obscured, and this creates a narrative ‘false consciousness’ or “méconnaissance”

(Bordieu 1979: 1984, p 387). Translating this as ‘misrecognition’ loses the subtlety of

Pierre Bordieu’s original concept. Participants do not conceal or disguise a practice, but

render it invisible through reconstruing as something else that “goes without saying”

(Harker, Mahar and Wilkes 1990, p 19). An example of this would be the description of

certain immigrant autobiographical forms of language and phrases such as “Americans

in the Making” and so on. Use of such categorizations in turn impinges on the

formulation of the habitus of the ethnic and immigrant autobiographer, they become

constructed or constituted by such structures and thereby their individual trajectories

are specified through both objective structures in the socio-linguistic and cultural

systems and the interaction with the American habitus of others. Pierre Bordieu

considers this a symbolic form of violence that places constraints on the compositional

strategies available to immigrants further delimiting equality of opportunity with

respect to expanding the American canon of acceptable subjectivities through the

mutual recognition that Charles Taylor argues are the basis of social life and commity

(1988). Yet the discourses surrounding Americanization and acculturation into the North

American mainstream give the construal (that is the reconstrual) of wanting to do the

best for the newcomers, that restricting the autobiographical repertoires is not only

appropriate, but is in the best interests of Americans. A immigrant autobiographer’s

17

habitus becomes constrained or bounded by linguistic symbolic violence into

considering and positioning themselves as less able or not-yet-American and placing

them structurally in relation to others. This might then impinge upon their own view of

self, society and ideological belief about power, social structure, nature of self-narrative,

one’s positioning as cultural learner, social actor under conditions not of one’s choosing,

etc.

In being called an injurious name one is paradoxically given a certainpossibility of social existence, initiated into a temporal life of language thatexceeds the prior purposes that animate the call. (Butler 1997, p 2)

We have to see the name as part of the totality of the autobiographer’s social existence

and interactions. Does it fit with my view of myself? Does it fit with how I perceive

other’s view of me? (Althusser 1971. Orig.1970). This process of enforcement of

legitimate order plays its part in the structuring of the habitus. The habitus, partially

formed by early family experiences, influences the way in which the world outside of

the home, ethnic homeland or ancestral past, present or future is interpreted.

Conversely, the way symbolic violence is enacted in the Americanization process

influences in its part the way family life is interpreted as evinced by Hayslip’s journey

from “Child of War” to “Woman of Peace” (1989) and Hoffman’s appraisal of her

primary socialization & the role of the family and educational intuitions in mediating

one’s experience and expression, in fundamental ways:

“My immigration was very much my parents’ decision. I was thirteen at the time.We were living in Communist Poland, and we were Jewish, so there were all thesegood reasons to emigrate. I think my parents felt that they were doing it for thechildren to a large extent but, for many reasons, I absolutely baulked at it. I didn’twant to emigrate. It was in a way the wrong time... I was being yanked out of myworld and the process of growing up — out of childhood and the beginnings ofadolescence which I felt were very happy...” (Zournazi )

Eva’s pre-migration resistance is fuelled by perceived deprivation of vehicles for

secondary socialization offered by presumed or “imagined” co-national or co-ethnic

community that provides cultural markers and behavioral indices via peer-group

18

norming and trust-building both of which convey the acceptability of the practices as

well as working to exclude alternatives as unnatural or unthinkable. Power may not be

exercised or enforced directly or explicitly in everyday verbal and other exchanges, but

may be exercised more implicitly through a range of more subtle strategies that the

immigrant autobiographer may be unaware of – and which raises some problems for the

socio-literary researcher.

Empirical issues arise around a more immediate sense of consciousness andthe various ways in which participants of interaction can be said to beunaware of exercising power or seek to convey the idea of not exercisingpower. What strategies are employed that resist displays of power or thatseek to neutralize it? (Cicorel 1993, p 192)

Accordingly, cultural works by immigrant autobiographers will be positioned by

their involvement in the American socio-literary system in which symbolic violence is

enacted, and will react differentially. Aaron Cicorel is arguing that while there may be a

lack of awareness of the exercise of power - and by association, symbolic violence –

immigrant autobiographers may adopt strategies that seek to position themselves within

or to distance themselves from displays of autobiographical pride, social power or

immodesty. In viewing autobiographical practice as a form of social and symbolic

interaction and thereby adopting a socio-literary perspective with respect to

autobiography-qua-social-situation I align my efforts and consider them complementary

to recent efforts to bridge the dichotomy by sociologist Diane Bjorklund in her

comprehensive survey of two centuries worth of autobiographical writings by

Americans in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Bjorklund grounds her analysis and conclusion on sound historical review of the

structural and ideologically-situated discourses that seek to offer an autobiographer a

platform upon which to enact a performance of self that fashions a narrative subjectivity

that is articulated and generated by tensions between the text of Self (consciousness-for-

itself) and the context of Socius-as-Other (consciousness-in-itself):

19

“Unless autobiographers intend for their life stories to be privatedocuments only for themselves, they are communicating with a futureaudience of readers. Autobiographers are not only constructing the storiesof their lives, they are also strategically presenting the self. We can usefullyapply Erving Goffman’s (1959) analysis of impression management toautobiographers since they are a tempting to persuade readers that they, insome crucial way, admirable people.

In viewing autobiographies from a symbolic interactionist perspective, Bjorklundcorrectly argues that…

”putting together an autobiography is not simply a matter of recalling andrecording the facts of one’s personal history. As an action ofcommunication, it entails problems of composition andrhetoric—something openly acknowledged by many autobiographers.Autobiographers select “events” and “facts” from their lives that fit into acomprehensible narrative. Thus, as the anthologist Edward Bruner (1984,p. 7) also observed, ‘Life histories are accounts, representations of lives, notlives as actually lived.’ The definition of self in autobiography is shaped notonly by historical changes in the available vocabularies of self…but also bythe constraints, complexities, and opportunities of the social situation ofpresenting an autobiography. The autobiographer considers thecomposition of the intended audience, the current ‘climate of opinion’concerning what is an acceptable self, and the conventions of storytellingand autobiography. The writing of an autobiography is a social act---bothas a part of the “community of discourse” and as a type of social interactionin which one tries to influence others (Barbour 1992). (1998, p 17).

By envisioning an Iserian “idealized reader,” autobiographers can construct an “implied

reader” serves as both foil and touchstone for Americanness. As Bjorklund adds,

“[a]lthough the audience is not physically present and this is usually no face-to-face

interaction between autobiographers and readers (allowing no immediate feedback as in

a conversation), the autobiographer do take into account the reactions of the expected

audience” (ibid). A further extended excerpt from Bjorklund’s Interpreting the Self, will

help expand on the significance of grasping the historical evolutions in the constitution

of American selves and the role immigrant autobiographers play in extending,

subverting and perpetuating an uniquely American narrative of rhetorical

parthogenesis:

“The genre of autobiography provides us with a valuable written record ofhow people have thought about the self. By comparing autobiographiesover time, we can behold the diversity in this bountiful feast of self-

20

narratives, yet we also can see clearly how these stories of unique livesnecessarily link to a larger cultural discourse about the self. We discern theindividual voices of the autobiographers, but we also discover culturespeak through the self. These self-narratives, however, have even more tooffer when we also recognize them as rhetorical accomplishments.Autobiographers use vocabularies of self, not only to make sense of theirlives but also to present a praiseworthy self to their audiences. They arenegotiating their place in relation to cultural norms and values. We can seethem do so, for example, when they try to avoid obvious boasting, whenthey declare they are telling the truth, and when they worry about wastingtheir readers’ time with an uninteresting story. Autobiographies, therefore,give us an opportunity to examine the complex interplay of the micro levelof social situation (as autobiographers strategically relate themselves tonorms and values) with the macro level of the historical and culturalvocabularies of self.” (1998, p 158-159)

And, she goes on to demonstrate the importance of viewing autobiography-as-such as

an “action” following Goffman in viewing self-representation as constituting impression

management within the context of a “social situation” and mapping to a Burkean

“rhetorical situation” or Austinian “speech act”:

“This cultural discourse furnishes not only ideas about the nature ofselfhood but also evaluative standards for model selves and model lives.Autobiographers show us which evaluative standards they are attemptingto meet as they offer the stories of their lives publicly. They are aware thatothers will evaluate their actions, and the potential for feeling pride, shame,or embarrassment as a result gives them good reason to try to guide thereaders’ judgements of their lives. From this perspective, we canunderstand Philip Roth’s (1988, p. 172) claim that autobiography is‘probably the most manipulative of all literary forms.’ Or the literary criticJohn Sturrock’s (1993, p. 19) more kindly worded assessments thatautobiography is “he most sociable of literary acts.” (1998, p 159)

In constituting the canonical immigrant hagiography, immigrant makes use of available

discourses and genres in circulation at the time or that they have come to embodied

model or play out a script that provides a dramaturgical, hence, ethical dimension to

their self-pronouncements. Immigrants reside in an existential and ideational cognitive

space that bifurcates their self-reported vision and identity through a cross cultural and

bilingual worldview that structures and is generative of their understanding of the roles

migration and identity change has had on their respective life course and its attendant

narrative. As Hoffman corroborates…

21

The immediate condition of writing Lost in Translation was marginal to thesubject of the book... But I had been preoccupied with the subject oflanguage and self-translation for a long time. What I wanted to talk aboutwas not just language but the conjunction of language and identity, andthat to do that I needed a case study — and the case study I knew best wasmyself. It needed to be done from within a subjectivity since it was so muchabout subjectivity. I decided to write it as a memoir — quite reluctantlybecause I am not a confessional person at all... (Zournazi, ibid.)

The clinical distancing evinced in the “case study” approach to self-representation

employed by Eva Wyrda, the narratee and authorial avatar (cf. Booth, Rhetoric of

Fiction) of Hoffman’s Americanization story premised on a life “lived in a new

language’ is ideologically, hence, symptomatic of therapeutic discursive practices in

vogue in 1980s United States where Hoffman’s narratee takes degrees in English

Literature and Language from Rice and then Harvard leading to her positioning as an

“émigré “ and exilic oracle to her New York bourgie friends and Texan boyfriend in

“The New World” triptych of her translation (Lost in Translation, p 198). She further

corroborates this therapeutic autobiographical intervention in a radio conversation with

European radio commentator Mary Zournazi:

“Writing is an attempt to close the gap on the sense of being estranged frommyself. In my case, this estrangement happened very much in daily perceptionsand daily life. In a sense, writing is the attempt to find a language that is embeddedin yourself and that somehow can express the self directly. I know that is a kind ofdream and not completely attainable, but it is the attempt to find a language whichsort of bubbles up directly. I don’t know if I have a coherent philosophy oflanguage. But my notions of language have to do with its relationship tosubjectivity. The one lesson of my experience is that the first language seems to beattached to identity with a kind of absoluteness, so that it seems to be coeval withidentity and with the world; words seem to stand for the things they describe.Subsequent languages don’t have that kind of absoluteness — I mean that one isaware of a second language much more qua language qua its own system. (ForeignDialogues, 1998)

Hoffman identifies the linguistic register as her site of struggle and contestation towards

self-expression and self-definition. By so positioning her narrative subjectivity, she

endorses a worldview that exemplifies C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination”

wherein she overtly and tacitly acknowledges the dual role of socius in the constitution

22

of the self and its narrative posts. One could accurately characterize an undermining

undercurrent to Eva’s quest for individual voice through an self-analysis that highlights

the embedded and sedimented nature of language. The warrant to her argumentative

thread is a an implicit recognition of the ontological primacy that “socialization rather

than self-initiated cultivation of self” has throughout the life course for which she

attempts a narrative depiction (cf. Bjorklund, p 127).

Moreover, Hoffman’s reflections on her autobiographical acts a decade after the

fact, paint a picture of existential trauma resulting from psychologically powerful

experiences occasioned by migration at age 13—much like Mary Antin before her, as

Eva reminds us in the “Exile” section of her autobiography where she recounts her

Errand into the Linguistic Wilderness:

“The first real condition which spurred me to write about my immigration was thepeculiar experience of being virtually without language for a short while. It wasbecause I came to Canada without English and because Polish became completelyunusable, and for reasons which probably did have to do with the circumstances ofmy immigration and psychological factors. I somehow hid my Polish. I suppressedit. So I was without language — I was without internal language, and that was aterribly traumatic experience which I never quite forgot and which haunts me still.

I think this kind of radical state of language loss lasted... well I don’t know,perhaps not even a year. But it was a very quick lesson in the vital importance oflanguage to one’s identity. It was not a state which could be sustained, so I startedto try filling the gap with English. But that was a terribly long process, I mean inthe sense that the language didn’t quite belong to me, that it wasn’t quite inside,that it wasn’t mine. I would say this lasted — I know it is shocking — for abouttwenty years. (Zournazi, op. cit.)

23

CHAPTER 2: IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS IN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC &AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION

VARIETAS DELECTA: DRAMAS OF BEING & BELONGING

The paperback edition of Fae Myenne Ng’s 1993 novel Bone is blurbed “national

bestseller” on the outside and, on the inside, boasts the several pages of “more acclaim”

that are designed to lure readers like a two-thumbs-up movie review. The hyperbole is

the expected fare for advertisements and letters of recommendation, but the content of

the praise seems less routine. “This is the inside view of Chinatown,” writes Edmund

White, “one never presented before so eloquently.” But White’s praise of Ng’s depiction

of Asian experience is followed by a notice from the New York Times which offers a

most American seal of approval: “With the buoyant parting image, Ng invites

comparison to F. Scott Fitzgerald and the last line of The Great Gatsby.” Likewise, blurbs

on Chang-Rae Lee’s paperback Native Speaker feature the work not only as Korean but

also as an echo of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, while Lee himself begins the novel with

an epigraph from Walt Whitman. Ethnic American authors have met with criticism for

not representing their culture accurately, but the disparate nature of these reviews, I

think, raises the question of which ethnic group, precisely, such works actually do

represent. “Though it is often regarded as a very minor adjunct to great American

mainstream writing,” Werner Sollors writes in Beyond Ethnicity, “ethnic literature is, as

several readers pointed out in the past, prototypically American literature” (8).

The distinctly “ethnic” and the distinctly “American” are closely related in

autobiographical and fictional works on immigration and assimilation, but I want to

suggest that it is precisely this negotiation between ethnic and American cultures that

makes these works so American—i.e. basically playing out a drama of individuation and

groupness--the essence of immigrant autobiographics in the United States. Robert F.

Sayre reminds us “American autobiographers have generally connected their own lives

24

to the national life or to national ideas. As Scott Fitzgerald wrote in the 1930s, America is

not a land or a people. ‘France was a land, England was a people, but America, having

about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter’” (149). Autobiographies, then,

are stories of the ideas individuals live by, and the principal American idea or myth is

one of self-creation. No one participates more fully in this self-creation than immigrants,

who must of necessity reject or reevaluate their heritage, their parents, and their former

life. Hence, the stories and histories recounted in immigrant autobiography are

American self-invention writ large.

Given this cultural emphasis on self-creation, it is no wonder autobiography

plays such a large role in the American literary tradition. From captivity narratives to

Benjamin Franklin to Henry Adams to Gertrude Stein, the American bookshelf is filled

with individuals telling their own stories. Sayre notes “autobiography may be the

preeminent kind of American expression. Commencing before the Revolution and

continuing into our own time, America and autobiography have been peculiarly linked”

(147). Evaluating the connection between autobiography and American culture, Sayre

considers landmark autobiographies (those of Franklin, Whitman, Adams, and

Frederick Douglass) rather than “the memoirs of military leaders and statesmen” or

unsung private individuals, explaining that “the former is perhaps too much a citizen;

the latter takes his citizenship more or less for granted. Thus neither has been so

valuable to other Americans as the autobiographers to whom citizenship, in the broadest

sense, is a major issue in their total development” (168). Given this criterion, it seems

logical to expand Sayre’s ideas to include immigrant autobiographical writing, for

perhaps no one is more concerned with citizenship in extremis than the immigrant. Here

the issues of citizenship are played out explicitly, for high stakes.

Autobiography also seems a natural genre for self-creating Americans not only

in content but also in form. Telling the story of one’s life requires one to shape or

reshape events, picking and choosing, in order to create a new self or persona who

25

proceeds along a distinct trajectory -- in short, the literary form is another version of self-

invention.

The American tradition of individualism is much noted and long established:

Alexis de Tocqueville noted the emergence in America of individualism (as opposed to

what “our fathers [knew as] egoisme (selfishness)” (192)), a drive to separate from

society at large and to function as a distinct entity. Tocqueville saw individualism as a

fact but not necessarily a virtue; in a culture governed by this philosophy,

“the woof of time is every instant broken, and the track of generations effaced.Those who went before are soon forgotten; of those who will come after, no onehas any idea: the interest of man is confined to those in close propinquity tohimself” (194).

Examining late-twentieth century life in terms of Tocqueville’s diagnosis, Robert Bellah

in Habits of the Heart identifies two essential aspects of American individuation as

“leaving home” and “leaving church,” a sometimes-temporary separation from the life

and values of one’s parents in order to forge one’s own distinct personality. “Separation

and individuation are issues that must be faced by all human beings,” he admits, “but

leaving home in its American sense is not. In many peasant societies, the problem is

staying home -- living with one’s parents until their death and worshipping parents and

ancestors all one’s life. [...] For us, leaving home is the normal expectation” (57). One

may maintain a warm relationship with one’s parents, and return to their home or

beliefs, but American culture demands that they be examined critically and accepted by

choice.

NOMEN EST OMEN

For many “native” Americans, these separations are somewhat metaphorical,

involving perhaps a cross-town move and one’s own choice of career. But no one leaves

“home” and “church” as dramatically as the new American, whose physical separation

from the country of origin and submersion into a new culture create a need to reinvent

26

the self as distinct from parents and heritage. The example of Mary Antin, a Jewish girl

whose family immigrated to Boston from Russia in 1894, dramatizes this.

In The Promised Land, Antin describes existence in the Russian Pale as

“medieval,” suggesting not only backwardness but also a time in which much of life was

predetermined; people followed the roles laid out for them by their parents, and the

social system was rigid. Watching the treadmill horse at the bathhouse in her hometown

of Polotzk, Antin could see a microcosm of life in the Pale.

I knew what a horse’s life should be, entangled with the life of a master:adventurous, troubled, thrilled; petted and opposed, the buzz of beasts and menin the market place; to-morrow the yielding turf under tickled flanks, and thelone whinny of scattered mates. How empty the existence of the treadmill horsebeside this! As empty and dull as the life of almost any woman in Polotzk, had Ihad eyes to see the likeness. (78)

The medieval aspects of life in the Pale trapped its residents in strictly defined roles, and

had Antin continued to live there, she too would have been pigeonholed. As a Jewish

girl in the Russian ghetto, she would have had few opportunities for education and few

choices in her future. The community would have determined her role, just as sobriquets

were determined socially, often communally. “Family names existed only in official

documents, such as passports,” she explains. “Among my neighbors in Polotzk were

Yankel the Wig-maker, Mulye the Blind, Moshe the Six-fingered” (36). Had she stayed in

Polotzk, Antin might have become “Mashke the Short,” but the move to America

recreates her as “Mary Antin.” “I felt important to answer to such a dignified title,” she

writes. “It was just like America that even plain people should wear their surnames on

week days” (150). Whereas popular nicknames were bestowed based on one

distinguishing feature, and locked the bearer into a role that may or may not have been

flattering, Antin’s American name did not limit the possibilities of her identity.

While the move to America opens possibilities for Antin, the knowledge of how

to achieve these possibilities is not always easy to obtain. Because her parents are also

new immigrants, and unfamiliar with the culture they now live in, they are no longer

27

reliable role models for their children. Instead, both parents and children must look

elsewhere for instruction, and the new immigrant “is corrected, admonished, and

laughed at, whether by interested friends or the most indifferent strangers; and his

American experience is thus begun. The process is spontaneous on all sides, like the

education of the child by the family circle” (143). Others now dispense parental wisdom;

mothers and fathers model the lifestyle of the old world, and children must look

elsewhere if they are to learn how to be American adults. The parents, on the other

hand, “in their bewilderment and uncertainty, [...] needs must trust us children to learn

from such models as the tenements afforded. More than this, they must step down from

their role of parental authority, and take the law from their children’s mouths; for they

had no other means of finding out what was good American form” (213). Immigrant

parents were repudiated in favor of the new culture, but it’s important to note that

Americanization has as much to do with the process as the result; that is, without

parents as reliable models, members of the younger generation were forced to forge

their own way, by necessity. It was up to them to determine for themselves how to

behave and what to become. “Native” Americans are not exempt from this picking and

choosing among the values of peers; “if we are to be different from our fathers and also

different from the white marble gods they found in Plutarch or the grizzly patriarchs

they chose from the Bible, then we must imitate contemporaries” (Sayre 155). Sayre cites

Scott Fitzgerald, John Adams and even the famously “self-made” Benjamin Franklin as

examples of this phenomenon (156), which is not necessarily limited to those new to

American culture. Each generation, as Tocqueville suggested, reinvents itself.

INTER CAECOS REGNAT LUSCUS.

It’s no wonder, then, that adolescence and immigration are so closely linked in

Eva Hoffman’s memoir Life in Translation. A Polish Jew transplanted in 1959 to Canada

and then to the United States, she comments that her experiences are in some ways

28

uncannily similar to those of Antin, although context has made some changes. “A

hundred years ago, I [too] might have felt the benefits of a steady, self-assured ego, the

sturdy energy of forward movement, and the excitement of being swept up into a

greater national purpose. But I have come to a different America, and instead of a

central ethos, I have been given the blessings and the terrors of multiplicity” (164). While

Antin tells a “success story,” Hoffman focuses on the hardships of a change of

hemispheres during adolescence.

She describes her alienation: “Inside its elaborate packaging, my body is stiff,

sulky, wary. When I’m with my peers, who come by crinolines, lipstick, cars, and self-

confidence naturally, my gestures show that I’m here provisionally, by their grace, that I

don’t rightfully belong” (110). Hoffman blames her discomfort on her membership in an

outsider culture, but it also has to do with the pains of growing to adulthood – few

adolescents are fully comfortable with themselves, regardless of whether they’ve

immigrated. Still, her difficulty serves to illustrate the similarity of adolescence and

immigration, which is the separation from the parents’ lifestyle.

Hoffman sees herself as a misfit, but, she writes, “perhaps it is my [...] cherishing

of uncertainty as the only truth that is, after all, the best measure of my assimilation;

perhaps it is in my misfittings that I fit. Perhaps a successful immigrant is an

exaggerated version of the native. From now on, I’ll be made, like a mosaic, of fragments

– and my consciousness of them. It is only in that observing consciousness that I remain,

after all, an immigrant” (164). In a country of individualists, everyone is in some way a

misfit, and intentionally so. “If we are all other […] then we may also explore the

otherness in ourselves, which is the theme of many American autobiographical

conversion stories” (Sollors 31). Hoffman, as an “exaggerated native,” is simply highly

conscious of this culturewide emphasis on distinctiveness and separation, thanks to the

double adolescence that separated her both from Poland and from her parents.

29

For Vivian Gornick, a second-generation Russian Jew, separation from the

parents (and especially, for her, the mother) is the essential issue, and in her memoir

Fierce Attachments, it is framed in terms of immigration. Early in the work, Gornick’s

mother recalls a former upstairs neighbor named Cessa. “Want[ing] to be modern,”

Cessa cut off her long hair, meeting with punishment from her father and husband (5).

Gornick’s mother recalls, “‘I say to her, “Cessa, tell your father this is America, Cessa,

America. You’re a free woman.” She looks at me and she says to me, “What do you

mean, tell my father this is America? He was born in Brooklyn”’” (5-6). Being American,

Gornick’s mother suggests, entitles people to throw off their parents’ old traditions and

make their own choices. Cessa’s response highlights the continuing problem of

separation from the parents; even though her father was born in Brooklyn and the

family is officially American, she is not exempt from this process. Being American

means not that Cessa, or anyone, can or should follow the “American” lives of her

parents, but that it is up to her to negotiate between the life her parents prefer and the

life she would like to live.

Cessa’s problem is escaping from a patriarchal system, but Gornick’s problem

throughout Fierce Attachments is her connection to her mother. One typical dilemma

Gornick exemplifies is that the greater opportunity available for each new generation

necessarily creates a separation between parent and child. This is particularly true of

education, which parents typically value and want for their children but which, Gornick

shows in discussing her years at the City College of New York, drives a wedge between

them. “Benign in intent, only a passport to the promised land, City of course was the

real invader,” she writes.

I lived among my people but I was no longer one of them. I think this was truefor most of us at City College. We still used the subways, still walked the familiarstreets between classes, still returned to the neighborhood each night, talked toour high-school friends, and went to sleep in our own beds. But secretly we hadbegun to live in a world inside our heads where we read talked thought in a waythat separated us from our parents, the life of the house and that of the street. We

30

had been initiated, had learned the difference between hidden and expressedthought. This made us subversives in our own homes. (105)

Education is an almost unquestioned value, prized for its potential to help

people “get ahead,” but the flip side of this, typically unrecognized until it happens, is

that if the child is getting ahead, the parent is being left behind. This is true of Gornick’s

family; she recalls that her mother “hadn’t understood that going to school meant I

would start thinking: coherently and out loud. She was taken by violent surprise. [...] I

had never before spoken a word she didn’t know” (108).

Interestingly, Gornick links the ideas of individuation and creativity, her ability

to write. In a session with her analyst, she describes her creativity as a narrow rectangle

under intense outside pressure. “Why only that small bit of good writing inside a

narrow space, and all around the rhetoric of panic and breathlessness,” the analyst asks.

“That rectangle, I finally explained. It’s a fugitive, a subversive, an illegal immigrant in

the country of my being. It has no civil rights. It’s always on the run. [...] I can’t

naturalize the immigrant” (190). Gornick’s rectangle of creativity is a rectangle of

personal space, and it is “on the run” because of her fierce yet not always healthy

connection to her mother. When the analyst asks why she can’t “naturalize the

immigrant,” Gornick pictures her mother, “her face soft, weak, sadly intelligent. She

leaned forward intently. She was as interested in the question as I. But I remained mute.

I had no answer” (191). The idea of immigration is here the idea of separation and

individuation, finding a distinction from the mother while maintaining some

connection. In order to create, to produce something unique, Gornick must learn to

stand apart from her mother, “immigrating” from the culture of her family to one of her

own making.

The work’s central struggle, that between mother and daughter over the

daughter’s life, reaches only an ambivalent conclusion. The book closes after an

argument, when

31

My mother breaks the silence. In a voice remarkably free of emotion -- a voicedetached, curious, only wanting information -- she says to me, “Why don’t yougo already? Why don’t you walk away from my life? I’m not stopping you.”

I see the light, I hear the street. I’m half in, half out.

“I know you’re not, Ma.” (204)

In terms of immigration, the scene dramatizes the desire both to let go of and hold on to

what might literally be called here the mother culture. The mixed feelings here are a

moving and fitting conclusion to the content of Fierce Attachments, but in a larger

context, I would suggest that the question may be closer to settled than this ending

suggests, and that Gornick really is at least partially detached from her mother. In The

Situation and the Story, Gornick describes the shaping of experience that takes place in

writing a memoir, emphasizing the need to put space between the self and the subject.

“In fact,” she writes, “without detachment there can be no story” (12). Two connections

to ethnic autobiography may be made here. First is that minority groups have a natural

perspective of detachment, since they must negotiate life within a larger culture that is

not their own. Hoffman writes that “it is only in that observing consciousness that I

remain, after all, an immigrant” (164) -- her “misfittings” give her a sharp perception of

the culture around her, and the ability to write clearly about it. Second is that the process

of immigration or naturalization is necessarily a detachment, and furthermore, this is a

creative process. Probably no American is more archetypal than the “self-made” man or

woman, and assimilation is a re-envisioning and remaking of the self.

Furthermore, the act of writing an autobiography is its own kind of “self-

making,” sculpting raw material into a coherent story with a distinct (and usually

upward) trajectory. Autobiography is the act of self-creation on paper. In writing Fierce

Attachments, Gornick recalls, she had to “pull back -- way back -- from these people and

these events to find the place where the story could draw a deep breath,” and from this

distance, she realized that “this point of view could only emerge from a narrator who

was me and at the same time not me” (22). This included rejecting a diary she had

32

written at the time of the events described in Fierce Attachments. “The writing was

soaked in a kind of girlish self-pity -- ‘alone again!’ -- that I found odious” (22). To write

her memoir, Gornick rejected the “alone again!” that was a recorded part of herself in

order to create a distinct persona and a coherently crafted book.

QUE NOCENT, SAEPE DOCENT.

Fictionalization is only one step from the “detached” persona of the author of

autobiography, and I want to turn now to the idea of Americanization in more markedly

fictional works. Sau-ling Cynthia Wong documents major strands of the criticism of The

Woman Warrior, noting that “a number of Chinese-American critics have repeatedly

denounced The Woman Warrior, questioning its autobiographic status, its authenticity,

its representativeness, and thereby Kingston’s personal integrity” (248). These concerns

are related; Wong cites one critic who states baldly that if Kingston does not describe

Chinese life with documentary accuracy and fidelity (that is, if she fictionalizes), then

she does not give readers a true picture of Chinese-American culture -- in short, that she

is not suitably representative of her ethnic group. Critiquing The Woman Warrior, Ya-jie

Zhang writes that the work “did not appeal to me when I read it for the first time,

because the stories in it seemed somewhat twisted, Chinese perhaps in origin but not

really Chinese any more, full of Immigrant autobiographics” (17). Zhang, reading the

work as a Chinese, finds various points that do not match her picture of Chinese culture,

from the retelling of the Hua Mu Lan story to Kingston’s use of the word “ghosts.” She

is able to accept and appreciate the text only when she understands it as “Chinese-

American” rather than “Chinese.” What I want to focus on here is Zhang’s identification

of the imagination as specifically American. Born in California, Kingston could hardly

be expected to have the perspective of one born and raised in China, and so the work is

necessarily “Chinese-American” in this way. However, Zhang does not say that The

Woman Warrior is full of Chinese-Immigrant autobiographics; instead she implies that

33

the imaginative qualities of the book are dependent on the American side of this scale.

Anyone who has Chinese heritage but lives outside China might be said to have to

imagine China in order to write about it, but it somehow sounds different to suppose

that a Chinese-Canadian person would have to use “Canadian imagination” to write a

book like The Woman Warrior.

Immigrant autobiographics, I would suggest, has an aggressive quality that

Zhang is commenting on here. Whereas Jade Snow Wong accounts for her third-person

autobiography by explaining that, “even written in English, an ‘I’ book by a Chinese

would seem outrageously immodest to anyone raised in the spirit of Chinese propriety”

(xiii), the American side of Kingston’s imagination not only allows her to write an “I”

book but also to consider that “I,” its perceptions and imaginations, more important

than the “real world” of verifiable facts. Seeing things as they could be rather than as

they are seems an essential part of Immigrant autobiographics. It may not be a

coincidence that Benjamin Franklin is famous both as an autobiographer and as an

inventor; both of these qualities imply shaping the world rather than submitting to it,

and these two qualities seem to fuse in creating the archetypal American, particularly

since Franklin’s autobiography makes famous the concept of self-invention.

Probably the most well-known American literary self-creation from the world of

fiction, rather than autobiography, is Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As a novel, the

work is able to depict the paradigmatic self-created American while dramatizing the

tragedy of that self-creation. When the former James Gatz of North Dakota is reborn as

Jay Gatsby, he is descended from no one but himself. “His parents were shiftless and

unsuccessful farm people,” Nick Carraway notes. “His imagination had never really

accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long

Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (104). Gatsby has, in a very real

way, imagined himself into being. Furthermore, he has done so with a distinctly

Immigrant autobiographics; it’s peculiarly American to imagine yourself rich and

34

famous in New York while your parents are mediocre in the Midwest, and peculiarly

American (or Franklinesque) to attempt this goal by laying out a program of self-

improvement like the young James Gatz’s:

No wasting time at Shafters or (a name, indecipherable)No more smokeing [sic] or chewingBath every other dayRead one improving book or magazine per week (181-82)

Gatsby’s father, displaying this list to Nick when he arrives in New York for the

funeral, takes great pride in it, and in his son’s self-improvement, even while admitting

that “we was broke up when he run off from home” (181). What Mr. Gatz does not see is

the cause of his son’s death, the faith in imagination and in the future to the exclusion of

an understanding of reality and the past. It is this split from the past that produces

maladaptation: “Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners,” Nick

says, “and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly

unadaptable to Eastern life” (184).

MELODRAMAS OF INDIVIDUATION & CONSOLIDATION

With this prototypical fictionalization of the American experience in mind, I

want to consider what immigrant autobiographics might mean in two recent novels

concerned with ethnicity and assimilation in America -- Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker

and Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone.

The epigraph Lee has chosen comes from Walt Whitman, and the rest of the

work has moments of similarity to the poet. When protagonist Henry Park, working

undercover at the office of politician John Kwang, takes over Kwang’s ggeh, he also

inhabits a Whitmanesque personality. Henry becomes “a complier of lives” (279),

collecting family information and the amount each has contributed to the money club,

and listing it all on a spreadsheet.

35

I am remembering every last piece of them. Whether I wish it or not, I possessthem, their spouses and children, their jobs and money and life. And the more Isee and remember the more their story is the same. The story is mine. How Icome by plane, come by boat. Come climbing over a fence. When I get here, Iwork. I work for the day I will finally work for myself. I work so hard that oneday I end up forgetting the person I am. I forget my wife, my son. Now, too, Ihave lost my old mother tongue. And I forget the ancestral graves I have left on ahillside of a faraway land, the loneliest stones that each year go unblessed. (279)

Henry identifies with, embraces, even embodies the mass of people who have led

lives he recognizes and understands, and this identification with the masses is the

source of Lee’s identification with the all-embracing American poet. Sayre’s explication

of Whitman illuminates this connection. America, he explains, is an idea, and one that

the poet accepted willingly. “The paradoxes of America […] were to be his personal

paradoxes as well. He would share in all the success and suffering of the nation as a

whole. He would emulate America, and he would become the ideal common man (also

a paradox) whom other Americans could imitate, remember, and one day celebrate.”

(160).

Lee’s Henry Park, in his undercover operations, has a similarly inclusive

personality. Assimilation has given him a familiarity with the business of being multiple

people at once, and this familiarity facilitates his assumption of different roles and

personae on different assignments. “I had always thought that I could be anyone,

perhaps several anyones at once,” Henry muses. “Dennis Hoagland and his private firm

had conveniently appeared at the right time, offering the perfect vocation for the person

I was [...]. For that I felt indebted to him for life. I found a sanction from our work, for I

thought I had finally found my truest place in the culture” (127). Henry’s job requires

him to build new personalities from the ground up; he writes fictions (or “legends,” as

they are called in his line of work) and then embodies them. “The legend was something

each of us wrote out in preparation for any assignment. It was an extraordinarily

extensive ‘story’ of who we were, an autobiography as such, often evolving to develop

even the minutiae of life experience, countless facts and figures, though it also required a

36

truthful ontological bearing, a certain presence of character” (22). Like autobiographers

and like Whitman, Henry writes himself into different roles as the occasion demands.

REPETITIO EST MATER STUDIORUM.

In “The Sleepers,” Whitman writes, “I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the

politician, / The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box, / He who has

been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day, / The stammerer, the well-form’d

person, the wasted or feeble person” (340), and Henry, in various ways, has a similarly

inclusive personality. Lee’s epigraph to Native Speaker, however, comes from a later,

less optimistic section of the same poem. “I turn but do not extricate myself, / Confused,

a past-reading, another, / but with darkness yet.” This moment of stasis and confusion

demonstrates the problems and complications of, to use Sayre’s terms, sharing the

paradoxes of America. Any American Everyman must by nature have moments of

schizophrenia.

Furthermore, both Native Speaker and Bone exemplify the ways in which “the

track of generations [is] effaced” (Tocqueville 194). In Bone, Leila describes Grandpa

Leong’s “makeshift” funeral: “If Grandpa Leong had been a family man, he might have

had real tears, a grieving wife draped in muslin, the fabric weaving around her like

burnt skin” (82). Particularly for the Chinese, a funeral should consist of much grief and

much ceremony, in respect for ancestors and for tradition. Most important of all was the

ultimate disposition of the remains. “Hopefully – and there was hope if there were

children – when his children were grown and making their own money, they’d dig up

his bones, pack them in a clay pot, send them – no, accompany them – back to the home

village for a proper burial” (82). But all of this depends on a family, and Grandpa Leong

is not so lucky. When Leon, his son and Leila’s stepfather, decides to visit his grave, he

cannot find it in the cemetery. Leila takes his background information – American and

Chinese names, village, birth and death dates – to the Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent

37

Association to see what she can learn. The man there tells her Grandpa Leong’s bones

have been moved. “He told me overcrowding had become a problem at the cemetery

and most oldtimers had only leased their burial plots for three, five, or nine years,

hoping to be sent back to China by relatives. ‘More often than not,’ the man said, ‘the

dead are forgotten. People get busy. Times change, even feelings. It happens’” (76).

Grandpa Leong’s unclaimed bones are now mixed with other Leong bones under one

family headstone, as irretrievable as Leila’s Chinese past.

The living, breathing Leon himself is scarcely easier to identify. “Leon was

always getting his real and paper birthdates mixed up; he’s never given the same

birthdate twice. Oldtimer logic: If you don’t tell the truth, you’ll never get caught in a lie.

What Leon didn’t know, he made up” (55). Seeking accurate information to give to the

Social Security office, Leila sifts through her stepfather’s suitcase of old papers: rejection

letters, photos, newspaper clippings, check stubs and receipts. He has saved everything.

“I’m the stepdaughter of a paper son,” Leila realizes, “and I’ve inherited this whole

suitcase of lies. All of it is mine. All I have is those memories, and I want to remember

them all” (61). Leila is many steps removed from any traditional ancestry or bloodline.

Leon is not her father, but her stepfather, and furthermore, he is “a paper son” more

than a flesh-and-blood person, someone whose life has been made up, and made up

again, on scraps of paper.

It’s in the conclusion of Bone that the New York Times reviewer finds a

connection to The Great Gatsby. The “buoyant parting image” is of Leila packing up her

belongings to move from her mother’s home to her boyfriend Mason’s.

The last thing I saw as Mason backed out of the alley was the old blue sign,#2—4—6 updaire. No one has ever corrected it; someone repaints it every year.Like the oldtimers’ photos, Leon’s papers, and Grandpa Leong’s lost bones, itreminded me to look back, to remember.

I was reassured. I knew what I held in my heart would guide me. So I wasn’tworried when I turned that corner, leaving the old blue sign, Salmon Alley, Mahand Leon – everything – backdaire. (193-94)

38

At this point, Leila finds a balance between looking back and looking forward. Unlike

Vivian Gornick, half in and half out of her mother’s doorway, she is able to take

something from the past and use it to move forward. Likewise, Fitzgerald closes The

Great Gatsby with an image that ties together past and future.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedesbefore us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster,stretch out our arms farther. … And one fine morning –

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past(189).

While Fitzgerald concludes with Gatsby looking to the future, and Ng with Leila looking

to the past, both conclusions hover in between past and future with no strong

connection to either, optimistic but not quite decisive.

When Tocqueville writes that “the woof of time is every instant broken” when

people prize individualism, he is not only referring to a break from past generations, but

a split from the future: “of those who will come after, no one has any idea” (194). This

isolation is dramatized in ethnic American fiction by a death in the younger generation.

For Henry Park, it is his son Mitt, and for Leila Fu, her sister Ona.

As the product of an interracial marriage, half Asian, half white, Mitt learned

“words like mutt, mongrel, half-breed, banana, twinkie” from the neighborhood boys

(103), but “by that last summer Mitt was thick with them all. Friends for life, or so it

must have seemed” (104). Mitt is accidentally killed in a “dog pile,” crushed by the other

boys.

Second-generation Chinese-American Ona, on the other hand, is older and more

deliberate; Leila explains starkly that “my middle sister, Ona, jumped off the M floor of

the Nam,” a housing project in Chinatown (14). “‘Better a parent before a child, better a

wife than a husband,’” their mother cried after the suicide, highlighting the topsy-turvy

relationships individualism sometimes produces. “‘Everything’s all turned around, all

backward’” (15).

39

This common figure of a death in the next generation is, I think, a way of

presenting the radical disconnect caused by assimilation and individuation. While

individuals may see their own lives as proceeding along clear paths, individualism

devalues membership in society at large; people do not see themselves as parts of a

whole, and therefore do not necessarily see society as proceeding along a clear path.

Antin’s treadmill horse may have been bored and depressed, but it functioned in a clear,

useful, and well-defined way. Outside of this system, if you create yourself, then your

children will also create themselves, and your own legacy is uncertain, or possibly even

nonexistent.

“The oldtimers believed that the blood came from the mother and the bones from

the father,” Leila says. “Ona was part Leon and part Mah, but neither of them could

believe that Ona’s unhappiness was all her own” (104). According to oldtimer logic, Ona

should resemble her parents, but her decision to date Osvaldo against their wishes is an

act of individualism rather than obedience. Of course, Leila and Nina also “leave home”

in other ways, but Ona’s death gives a shape to the melancholy aspects of individuation.

It literally leaves her parents without an heir. Breaking away from their Chinese heritage

changes not only the relationship to the past, but to the future.

VULNERANT OMNES, ULTIMA NECAT.

Hisaye Yamamoto, in “Life Among the Oilfields, A Memoir” (1979), is blunt

about such injury to children when cultures mix. Yamamoto begins her recollection of

the 1920s and ’30s with an epigraph from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Notebooks:

They rode through those five years in an open car with the sun on theirforeheads and their hair flying. They waved to people they knew, but seldomstopped to ask a direction or check on the fuel, for every morning there was agorgeous new horizon … They missed collisions by inches, wavered on the edgeof precipices, and skidded across tracks to the sound of the warning bell. (86)

40

Yamamoto goes on to describe the “warning signs” of the Depression that she can now

piece together as the result of distance in time – “unaware” of it then because “we

probably did not have that far to fall” (86). The historical significance of her friend’s

snitching her brother’s share of candy, or of seeing children pick through a garbage can

for food, escaped her at the time and were, in their way, like “living alongside derricks

and sump holes […]. If we could not ignore their considerable presence, we accepted

them, worked and played around them, and made respectful allowances for the peril

connected with them” (93).

Another, different, example of unawareness comes the day her brother Jemo is

hit by a car as it speeds, oblivious, through the oil fields. “He was only stunned,”

Yamamoto writes, but there were still hospital bills, which the couple driving the car

refused to pay.

When I look back on that episode, the helpless anger of my father and mymother is my inheritance. But my anger is more intricate than theirs, warped byall that has transpired in between. For instance, I sometimes see the arrogantcouple from down the road as young and beautiful, their speeding open roadsteras definitely and stunningly red. They roar by; their tinkling laughter, like a longsilken scarf, is borne back by the wind. I gaze after them from the side of theroad, where I have darted to dodge the swirling dust and spitting gravel. And Iknow that their names are Scott and Zelda. (95)

Yamamoto’s response to the incident echoes Leila’s description of Ona, part parental

inheritance and part personal perception. Her connection to American culture – closer

than that of her parents – allows her to identify the careless driver as a particular

heedless American type, which intensifies her anger; if the driver (like Whitman) is seen

as the idea of America, then Jemo’s accident becomes an assault on the idea of Japan.

However, the dynamic is not so simple, and not only because the Fitzgeralds are headed

for a crash of their own. In her memoir, Yamamoto recalls being as heedless of the stock

market crash as the Fitzgerald characters in her epigraph are; only in retrospect can she

see the trouble around her. Yamamoto’s identification with the Fitzgerald model is

uneasy, but real.

41

Ironically, the end result of assimilation to American individualism does not

necessarily culminate in the disappearance of ancestral culture. If the second generation

declares its independence from the parents by rejecting their culture in favor of

Americanization, the third generation may separate from its Americanized parents by

returning to the roots of the grandparents, and embracing the lost ethnicity. Thus, while

in Gish Jen’s novel Mona in the Promised Land, Mona disturbs her assimilated Chinese

parents by becoming Jewish, her sister Callie disturbs them every bit as much by

becoming … Chinese. Her father would “rather see Callie study engineering [o]r

accounting” at Harvard (129), but instead, she’s learning to speak Chinese. By the time

she becomes an adult, she has become “so Chinese that [her parents] Ralph and Helen

think there is something wrong with her. Why does she wear those Chinese padded

jackets, for example? They themselves now wear down parkas, much warmer” (301).

Mona is suspicious of the degree of Callie’s rebellion, since she has always “[led]

a straight A life,” but Callie protests. “I left home too, she says sometimes. I’m my own

person. I made my own choices” (302). The only difference is that Callie “leaves home”

by returning to the home her parents left. Werner Sollors writes that the third generation

“is, at the same time, more American and more ethnic than its predecessors. In fact, not

being like their immediate predecessors – the parents – is what helps to authenticate

third-generation members, who yet avoid oedipal confrontations by aggrandizing their

own position as rooted in meaningful origins” (230). In other words, Callie – or Kailan as

she calls herself after embracing Chinese culture – is still acting like an American even

when she backpedals on the issue of assimilation. In choosing to be unlike her parents,

Callie continues to enact the drama of individuation that has marked American culture

since the country’s beginning.

42

CHAPTER 3: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA

“It is evident to anyone who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are eitherideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions andoperations of the mind; or lastly, ideas formed by the help of memory or imagination ... That neitherour thoughts nor passions nor ideas forms by the imagination exist without mind is what everybodywill allow ... and to me it seems no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on thesenses, however blended or combined together cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them”.

“It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men that houses, mountains, rivers and in aword, all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by theunderstanding ... For what are the aforementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? Andwhat do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it plainly repugnant that anyone ofthese, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived”.

[Berkeley, George (1685 - 1753) from Of the Principles of Human Understanding]

“No man is wholly responsible for his own metaphysics; a large part of the structure of it he inevitablytakes over from the period and the community of which he is a part. The insight, which his geniusgives him, must play upon the landscape which surrounds him, but it may be an insight whichilluminates more significantly other landscapes than his own. And that I think is true of Berkeley'sinsight that the world of our perception is the real world. When Berkeley sought to counteract thematerialism of his time, by presenting perception as daily converse with God, he was met by Dr.Johnson's stamp of his foot on the pavement, by the Free Thinker's shrug of his shoulder, and by theindifference of the scientist. Today the affirmation that the real world is the world of our experiencecomes to us in no such bizarre form. Berkeley saw the real world partially in our perceptions, butcompletely in the mind of God. From this he drew the moral that we should govern our conduct by themeaning and purpose of the world, which God had revealed to us through many channels. We can notdraw any such moral from the identification of our experience with reality. We possess no vision givenin the mount which completes our perspectives. The moral that we can draw is of a frankly oppositesort. Just in so far as we can control our experience we can control the world, just in so far we can becreative in our own experiences, we can be creative in the world. We can be thus intelligently creativeonly in so far as we conform to the order which is revealed in our past experience. We control natureby obeying her. And we have been doing it at a great rate. The world in which humanity lives today,especially in the western world, is as different from that of the eighteenth century as were two geologicepochs. We can determine what plant life and what animal life shall surround us; and to a large extentwe do. We can determine what shall be the immediate incidence of cold and heat upon our bodies. Wecan determine what sort of a human race shall be bred, and how many of them. All the conditions,which we believe, in large measure, determined the origins of species are within our power. We can doall of this, but we have not accepted the responsibility for it. And, I take it, this is the moral that weshould draw from the identity of the world of our experience and the real world. If we can control themeans we become responsible for the new ends, which they enable us to form. And we have come farshort of accepting that responsibility. We fashioned the marvelous world of the twentieth century, andthen undertook within it to fight an eighteenth-century war. The hands were the hands of Esau, butthe voice was the voice of Jacob.

[George Herbert Mead. "Bishop Berkeley and his Message", Journal of Philosophy 26(1929), pp. 421-430]

43

SYNOPSYS: PERFORMANCE, PERSONALITY AND IDENTITY DEFENSE IN

LIFE-STORY & AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE

In modern societies, adults typically prvide their lives with some sense of unity

and purpose by constructing self-defining life stories that serve as their identities. Such

stories are told to others and to an internalized audience or listener who serves as an

ultimate judge and interpreter of the narrative. Defense mechanisms specify narrative

strategies that persons use to shape how their lives are told to others and to their

internalized audiences. Life events and experiences are incorporated into a life story to

the extent that the internalized audience can make sense of the telling. Defenses function

to make some stories more tellable than they might otherwise be and to keep other

potentially storied accounts from ever reaching the status of being told. This I argue is

the essence of narrative selves in autobiographical discourse in general, with

“immigrant autobiographics” providing a special case in point—if not the Ur-moment in

identity construction following Heimert, Bailyn, Rogin & Bercoveitch—since it

highlights the transition from an ego-concept of Auslander to New American in the

protagonist, narrator, author and implied reader of an autobiography.

We do not know when it first occurred to human beings that a single life might

be told as a story. But the affinity between stories and human lives seems so easy and

natural as to lead some scholars to suggest that the prime reason for the existence of

stories is to convey the vicissitudes of human intention and desire organized in time

(Bruner, 1986; Mink, 1978; Rouse, 1978). According to Bruner (1986, 1990), the telling of

stories is the principal mode through which people make social sense of human

behavior and motivation—their own included. Human actions are rendered sensible to

the extent that such actions can be assimilated to a narrative that can be told and

understood in a particular social and cultural context (Cohler & Cole, 1994;

44

Polkinghorne, 1988). To say, therefore, that a particular behavior makes no sense is to

suggest that one cannot discern a convincing story to account for that behavior. To say,

furthermore, that a person’s life itself makes no sense—that the life writ large cannot be

understood by that community of human beings who seek to understand it—is to say

that one cannot create a story or series of stories that convincingly organizes the

collection of events and attendant characters, settings, actions, and reactions that appear

to make up that particular life. These kinds of claims about behavior and human lives

are fully contextualized in culture and history. Lives make sense according to the stories

that prevail at a given time and place, that is, according to the canonical plots and

characterizations that people in a given society and at a particular historical moment

consider to be conceivable and acceptable. Thus, each of us seeks to understand who he

or she is with respect to a complex socioliterary tradition within which our lives are

inevitably and unwittingly embedded (Denzin, 1989; McAdams, 1996).

Since the time of Freud, social theorists of many different stripes have

endeavored to collect and analyze the stories people tell about their lives in order to help

people understand themselves better, to relieve suffering or alleviate symptoms, and to

enhance the collective, scientific understanding of human behavior and experience. But

it has only been within the last 20 years or so that theorists have taken seriously the idea

that people’s life stories themselves exist as psychological constructs worthy of

systematic scrutiny on their own terms (McAdams, 1995a). Thus, while psychoanalysts

have been listening to life stories for almost 100 years, Schafer (1981) was one of the first

to conceive of the psychoanalytic process itself as akin to assisted storytelling and to

interpret the analyst’s mission as helping the client to develop a new and better story

about his or her life. Psychotherapists from other traditions have recently developed

narrative approaches to counseling and clinical work; indeed, the term narrative therapy

has gained considerable currency in professional and lay circles (White & Epston, 1990).

Within academic personality psychology, to take another example, investigators

45

such as Allport (1942), Block (1971), Murray (1938), and White (1952) urged researchers

to adopt biographical methods in the study of human lives. But it was not until the

emergence of conceptualizations such as Tomkins’s (1979) script theory, McAdams’s

(1985) life-story theory of identity, and Hermans’s (1992; Hermans, Kempen, & van

Loon, 1992) view of the dialogical self that personality theorists proposed theories about

human lives that were explicitly couched in narrative terms. According to McAdams

(1985, 1993, 1996), for instance, a person’s life story is itself an internalized and evolving

psychological structure that functions primarily to integrate a person’s life in time, so

that the life may be experienced as having some semblance of unity and purpose. In the

modern world, McAdams argues, an adult “has” identity in his or her life to the extent

that he or she can successfully formulate and internalize an integrative life

narrative—complete with setting, scenes, characters, plot, and themes—that synthesizes

the reconstructed past, perceived present, and anticipated future. Identity, then, is the

internalized life story or collection of stories that the modern adult carries around in his

or her mind in an effort to make his or her own life sensible to the self and to others (see

also Giddens, 1991; MacIntyre, 1983; Polkinghorne, 1988).

What, then, is the role of defense mechanisms in the development and

articulation of a person’s life story? A defense mechanism is defined as a mental

operation that keeps unacceptable thoughts, impulses, and wishes out of awareness

either to safeguard the individual from excessive anxiety, to enhance self-esteem, or to

protect the integration of the self (Cramer). Defense mechanisms are seen as part of

normal personality functioning, but excessive or inappropriate use of particular defenses

can contribute to psychopathology. In keeping with the recent emergence of narrative

theories in personality psychology, this article considers the possibility that defense

mechanisms may be viewed as narrative strategies that shape howa life is told, both to

the self and to others. In narrative terms, the whole concept of defense is inextricably

linked to the notion of story tellability. Defenses function to make some stories more

46

tellable than they might otherwise be and to keep other potentially storied accounts

from reaching the status of ever being told. In order to understand the working of

defense in life-storytelling, furthermore, one must consider a crucial question for

narrative identity: To whom is the life story told? This article proposes that life stories

are fundamentally constructed and told with an internalized audience, listener, or

spectator in mind. Thus, defenses work in the context of both (1) an evolving story or set

of stories that individuals construct to make sense of their own lives and (2) an

internalized other who functions as the prime audience, critic, and evaluative source for

determining the extent to which a given story is to be seen as sensible and acceptable.

LIFE STORIES: WHAT DO WE TELL WHEN WE TELL THEM?

There are many different kinds of stories that can be told to make a human life

meaningful. Indeed, the multitude of possibilities is so vast and each person’s life is so

unique that some investigators consider any effort to find commonalities across people’s

lives and their life stories to be sheer folly (Marcia & Strayer, 1996). In the extreme, one

critical position has it that each story that a person tells about his or her life is a one-of-a-

kind moment in discourse, that every story has a virtually limitless supply of possible

meanings, that each life is set in a confusing swirl of stories and story fragments out of

which little sense can be made, and that any effort to organize or catalogue other

people’s stories involves little beyond the investigator’s sometimes hegemonic

projection of his or her own conceptual framework upon the subject of inquiry (Gergen,

1992; Sampson, 1989; Shotter & Gergen, 1989). But a more moderate and pragmatic view

encourages researchers to examine particularly salient narratives that would appear to

organize in psychologically important ways some human lives at some times and in

some places (Gregg, 1991; McAdams, 1993; Singer & Salovey, 1993). Even while

acknowledging that every life story is unique, investigators may still be able to discern

similarities across narratives and to make psychological and sociological sense of how

47

and why certain people at certain times develop certain kinds of stories for their lives

(McAdams, 1996; Rosenwald, 1988).

Following this pragmatic line, Carlson (1981, 1988) drew upon Tomkins’s (1979)

script theory to contrast two common life-story forms, the nuclear script and the

commitment script, that may be found in some classic autobiographical accounts. Linde

(1990) illustrated how some contemporary American adults import implicit stories of

self-development from popular psychology in accounting for change in their own lives.

Maruna (1997) content-analyzed published autobiographies of 20 ex-criminals to discern

a prototypic narrative of reform—a general life-story format that virtually all of his

subjects drew upon to explain how they got into crime and how they eventually were

able to get out of it.

McAdams, Diamond, de St. Aubin, and Mansfield (1997) contrasted the life

stories of 40 adults who had distinguished themselves for their generativity (a strong

concern for and investment in benefitting the next generation [Erikson, 1963]) to those

stories constructed by 30 matching adults who scored relatively low on assessments of

generativity. Each subject in the study was interviewed according to a standardized

format in which he or she described in detail (1) the main chapters in his or her life story,

(2) key life-story scenes such as high points and turning points, (3) significant characters

in the story, (4) plans and hopes for the future, (5) basic beliefs and values, and (6) the

extent to which the story illustrates a central message or theme. Deriving hypotheses

from the writings of Colby and Damon (1992) on the lives of moral exemplars and

Tomkins (1979) on commitment scripts, the authors content-analyzed the interview

protocols and identified a prototypical life-story form that consistently distinguished

between the respective stories articulated by the two groups. The highly generative

adults were more likely to reconstruct the past and anticipate the future as variations on

a prototypical commitment story in which the protagonist (1) enjoys an early family

blessing or advantage, (2) is sensitized to the suffering of others at an early age, (3) is

48

guided by a clear and compelling personal ideology that remains stable over time, (4)

transforms or redeems bad scenes into good outcomes, and (5) sets goals for the future

that aim to benefit society as a whole and its institutions.

With respect to the commitment story, McAdams et al. (1997) argued that highly

generative adults choose, in part, to tell their life stories in this manner because this kind

of narrative effectively sustains and reinforces their efforts to contribute in positive ways

to youth and the well-being of the next generation. For example, the encounter with

suffering at an early age foreshadows the generative adult’s later efforts to care for

individuals in need. The invocation of an enduring personal ideology provides the

moral steadfastness needed to sustain the adult’s care and commitment during trying

times, reinforcing the adult’s efforts to transform bad events into good outcomes. Many

different kinds of life stories might conceivably sustain an adult’s generative efforts, but

one can see that the kind of commitment story identified in McAdams et al. (1997) might

prove especially efficacious in this regard.

Life stories are not simple veridical reports about what “really happened” in a

person’s life. They are instead imaginative renderings of life into narrative form in

which the past is reconstructed to meet current needs and goals and the future is

anticipated in light of the reconstructed past (Adler, 1927; Cohler & Cole, 1994;

Hermans, et al., 1992; Howard, 1991; McAdams, 1996; Polkinghorne, 1988; Sarbin, 1986;

Singer & Salovey, 1993). While life stories are surely and necessarily based on the facts of

a person’s life as the person knows and experiences them, they are also artful and

selective narrations that surely and necessarily bear resemblance to myth, folklore, and

fiction. Like stories in literature and everyday interaction, life stories serve to entertain,

instruct, and, most importantly, to integrate diverse elements of the self into a unified

and purposeful whole (McAdams, 1985). In the study by McAdams et al. (1997),

therefore, the commitment stories provided the highly generative adults with a

language or discourse for the self that supports a caring, compassionate, and responsible

49

approach to social life, especially with respect to the adult’s involvement in caring for

youth and subsequent generations. Other sorts of life stories support other kinds of life

strivings, goals, beliefs, and attitudes (McAdams, 1993, 1995b, 1996).

DEFENSE MECHANISMS IN LIFE-STORY FASHIONING: INTERVIEWEVIDENCE

The method of choice for life-story research is the structured interview. The issue

of defense first arises in considering the quality of the interview protocols. Common

questions posed about the interview include the following: How do you know that the

research participant is telling you the true story? Isn’t it likely that the person is simply

telling you what he or she thinks you want to hear? What is the person hiding?

There are no perfectly good answers to these fundamental questions. But a

sensible way to address them in a given life-story study is to acknowledge first that

research subjects consciously and unconsciously tailor their responses to fit the context,

employing standard defense mechanisms and other strategies to do so. There can be

little doubt that participants in life-story research—like participants in many forms of

social-science research—employ denial, projection, intellectualization, and other

strategies outside their awareness in order to keep anxiety at bay and enhance esteem in

responding to the interviewer’s questions. Indeed, Vaillant (1977) coded interview

responses as well as other case materials for the relative salience of a number of different

defense mechanisms, ultimately showing that mature defenses tended to be associated

with better psychosocial adjustment overall. The interview is a presentation of the self to

a particular audience, and defense mechanisms help to assure that the presentation

comes off in a socially appropriate and, in many cases, moderately self-serving manner.

Although it is surely difficult to determine precisely if and in what way

defensive processes impact life-narrative accounts, the researcher may do well to

examine particular aspects of the account that are most likely to yield important

50

evidence. Alexander (1988) has delineated nine guidelines for extracting data from

interview and biographical materials. Some of these guidelines would appear to be

especially relevant for detecting the workings of defenses. Alexander argues that life-

narrative material that is most likely to yield useful interpretations may be revealed

through the detection of (1) primacy (that which comes first in a narrative account), (2)

frequency (that which appears often), (3) uniqueness (that which is singular or odd), (4)

negation (that which is repudiated, denied, or turned into its opposite), (5) emphasis

(that which is underscored or stressed), (6) omission (that which is conspicuous by its

absence), (7) error (that which appears to be a mistake), (8) isolation (that which sits

alone, does not fit), and (9) incompletion (that which appears not to be finished). From

Alexander’s list, negation, omission, error, isolation, and incompletion would appear to

be especially relevant criteria for the detection of defenses in life narrative. Life-narrative

accounts that are strongly shaped by defensive processes may appear to lack good story

form, leaving the listener feeling that something in the account just does not make sense.

The story may deny the obvious or appear to omit that which should be conspicuous.

Significant passages of narrative may seem strangely disconnected from the whole. The

story may seem incomplete. The storyteller may make obvious mistakes.

A good example of the working of defense mechanisms in life-story interviewing

can be found in Wiersma’s (1988) study of women who undertook new careers after

spending considerable time as mothers and homemakers. Reviewing the initial

interviews, Wiersma was disappointed to encounter stereotypical accounts filled with

clichés and non sequiturs. The women first explained their career changes by telling

well-worn cultural stories that Wiersma found unconvincing:

As I listened to subjects’ initial stories, they seemed empty, stereotyped,and implausible. Their similarities were uncanny. These women first announceduniformly that this was the best thing that had ever happened to them. They saidthey had now become “legitimate,” “responsible,” “independent,” “grown up,”“powerful,” and “strong” by making a narrow escape from an oppressive pastthat was, at best, a socialization into meaninglessness and, at worst, a harrowingexperience. By some unspecified mechanism that it was clearly taboo for me to

51

ask about, they claimed they had discovered either a “true self” or even a “newself” which resulted in their present euphoric state. And, as if my credulityhadn’t been strained far enough, they also declared that this entiremetamorphosis had taken place by sheer coincidence—that there had beennothing planned in this entire tour de force. (Wiersma, 1988, p. 209)

Because these initial narrative accounts resembled tidy clichés designed for easy

public consumption, Wiersma (1988) termed them press releases. The press release

concealed the many complex and highly individualized stories of struggle and angst

that Wiersma was eventually able to ferret out through extensive follow-up interviews

of the same women. “The press releases seemed to be only potential, or partial stories, or

even story fragments,” Wiersma concluded (p. 217). With respect to defense, the press

releases would appear to be the result of the mechanism of denial. Cramer (1991) writes

that denial often functions on a cognitive level through the imposition of a simple,

pleasant fantasy onto a more complex and anxiety-provoking reality. In the narrative,

the fantasy may provide the basis for pollyannish denial, resulting in the “life is

wonderful” story. Wiersma’s women adopted a kind of pop-sociology fantasy, prevalent

in the cultural rhetoric of the day, about having escaped societal oppression to

experience perfect freedom and joy in the professional world. Only by refusing to settle

for these initial accounts and pushing hard to reach a deeper level of narrative was

Wiersma eventually able to discover the more nuanced and emotionally complex stories

that the press releases were originally designed to conceal.

Another example of denial in life-story interviewing may be found in

McAdams’s (1993) account of the story of Julie McPherson. As in Wiersma’s study, Julie

initially reacts to the interview by speaking in clichés and stereotypes. While her press

release is not as cheery and upbeat as those offered by Wiersma’s women, Julie’s

account is similar in its failure to offer narrative material that would readily differentiate

her from her cohort. She is a typical 39-year-old market analyst, she maintains, married,

childless, going along in life in a very even-mannered way, with few deep concerns and

52

few strong motivations. The interviewer poses one question after another, but Julie

continues to respond with vague generalizations. “I am just like everybody else,” she

wants to maintain. “There is nothing special about me.” A fantasy of the perfectly

conventional life serves to deny the pain that makes her actual life different from others,

that individuates her and gives her story its unique flavor. The conscious realization of

her uniqueness may itself be painful, for it may reinforce her fear that she is separate

from others and alone in the world. Finally, with the interview’s last scheduled question,

the defense of denial seems to give way. As Wiersma was able to obtain more nuanced

stories in subsequent interviews, it was not until the interviewer wrapped up the one

and only session with Julie by asking her about the overall theme of her life story that

one is able to glimpse behind the mundane press release:

All right. Well, we talk a lot about stability and stuff like that, or relinquishingresponsibility. That’s my utopia. I want to be taken care of. I will tell you a storythat will tell you where I want to be when I grow up. About two years ago, I wasin the hospital for two weeks. I was sick, but I wasn’t in pain. I was in a room bymyself; I was in isolation. I couldn’t have any visitors [at first]. I wasn’t onmedication; there was no discomfort. I was there for two weeks, and I chose mymeals off a menu. I got up every morning at six o’clock and took a shower, puton a little makeup, put on a clean nightgown, sat down, had my breakfast, readthe paper, read a book till noon, watched Julia Child at noon, turned off the TV,read a book or whatever until five or so, and then my husband came to visit meor I had dinner served. That couple I talked about earlier in the interview wouldcome to visit. Then everybody’d leave. At ten o’clock, I’d turn off my lights andgo to sleep. After two weeks, I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go homeand be faced with laundry and housecleaning and dogs that had to be taken outand a husband that had to be waited on. And that to me was like I was taken careof. I didn’t have to cook a meal. I told them what I wanted. I only had to takecare of myself personally, and other than that, I went to bed at ten o’clock; I wentto sleep; I didn’t have to take a pill or anything; I woke up promptly at six,without an alarm. And I know I was upset when I had to go home. That’s thetheme. (Quoted in McAdams, 1993, pp. 171–172).

Behind the press release, Julie reveals a story whose central theme is the desire to

be taken care of. On the brink of midlife, she feels overwhelmed by her many

responsibilities and she longs desperately to be nurtured the way she was when she was

a child. The hospital scene is a real-life fantasy that runs counter to the press release of

living a conventional and more-or-less contented middle-class life. In the context of the

53

interview, pollyanish denial worked as a narrative strategy keeping her from telling a

more troubling story that captured certain truths about her life. Had the interview ended

one question earlier, the investigator would have had few clues about how this defense

had shaped Julie’s narrative response. Even with the addition of the hospital scene,

however, the interpretation of her life-story account in terms of defense mechanisms

remains an exercise in informed speculation. And even when the researcher enjoys the

luxury of further probing and subsequent in-depth interviews, as in the case of Wiersma

(1988), it remains extremely difficult to sort out how defenses shape the storied accounts

that people offer. Interviewing, therefore, remains an imperfect method for life-story

research, for reasons that include, but by no means are limited to, the issue of defense.

But all methods are imperfect, and one is hard-pressed to find a more appropriate

method for discerning life stories.

BEYOND THE INTERVIEW: DEFENSE MECHANISMS IN THE LIFE STORY

Wiersma’s (1988) concept of the press release alerts researchers to the likelihood

that defenses such as denial operate to conceal stories about the self that might be told to

the interviewer because such stories are too painful, complex, or revealing. In the

example of Wiersma’s women changing careers and in the case of Julie McPherson, the

researchers were successful in getting beyond the press release to obtain a purportedly

deeper and more psychologically informed life narrative. This is not to suggest,

however, that the researchers had finally uncovered a “basic” or “true” story that was

heretofore hidden by the “false” and superficial press releases. It is certainly possible

that the new, more complex stories concealed other, even more complex or personally

problematic narratives. Furthermore, there is nothing especially “false” about the first

stories that were solicited. While Wiersma may have found the sociological clichés her

women offered to be psychologically disappointing, she also acknowledged that the

women believed these stories to be true, even after telling alternative stories, and that

54

the press releases helped to sustain and reinforce life choices and commitments.

Similarly, Julie McPherson’s vague generalizations about a conventional life were not

proven false by the hospital scene. Both the press release and the counter-story are parts

of a larger life story that Julie McPherson has constructed in an effort to provide her life

with meaning, purpose, and unity. Identity includes both the public performances and

the private musings that make up the stories people live by (McAdams, 1993).

The reasoning above suggests that, vis-à-vis life stories, defense mechanisms

play a larger role than simply influencing what kinds of narrative accounts people offer

when interviewed. Such strategies as denial and projection surely shape what comes out

in the interview, but one might also contend that they shape the life story itself. To put it

another way, defense mechanisms not only influence how participants respond to life-

story questions in a research interview (a methodological conundrum), but they also

likely influence just how the person has structured his or her own self-defining life

story—that is, his or her very identity—whether he or she is ever interviewed or not. A

key assumption in McAdams’s conception of identity as a life story is that the person

comes to the interview with a life story already developed. The interview is designed to

get at that story. But the interview is an interpersonal interaction itself, replete with

demand characteristics and other situational factors that shape the account that is given

in important and sometimes inexplicable ways. Therefore, this imperfect method

provides narrative data that, at best, approximate in a very rough way just what kind of

story or stories exist as psychologically real structures in a person’s personality.

Defenses play a role, therefore, in the entire investigative process—by influencing the

nature of the interview account itself (the data) and by influencing the construction of a

self-defining life story in the first place (the psychological construct that is indicated,

sometimes vaguely or indirectly, by the data). McAdams (1993) presents the case of

Richard Krantz to illustrate how a single life story can combine strong themes of power

and love. But Krantz’s story is also a good illustration of how the defense mechanism of

55

intellectualization serves as a narrative strategy for creating a story of the self. Richard

Krantz is a 38-year-old attorney who, since he was a child, has greatly valued the life of

the mind. The central protagonist in his life story is the rational man who can think

clearly and solve problems in a logical and coolheaded manner. Richard works hard to

arrive at precise and reasonable answers to complex questions. To convey his political

orientation to the interviewer, Richard arrives at a formula: “I am twenty percent

Libertarian, forty percent progressive Democrat, and forty percent Socialist” (McAdams,

1993, p. 204). On the topic of religious beliefs, he provides a framework that is cerebral,

intellectualized, and impersonal:

I think that if there is a God, that God probably was created by man, and is not asupreme being, apart from its existence by man. If men cease to be—or humanscease to be part of this world—then God would probably die along with them.God is the internal belief we all have in our selves, or many of us have in our self,that represents the force for good. God is the good motivating force in ourlives—if there is such a thing, and I’m not even sure there is such a thing, but ifthere is such a force in our lives, that’s what I would call God. (Quoted inMcAdams, 1993, p. 204)

Richard was the only child in a family that prized education. He reports: “I spent

a lot of my childhood alone, and my companions were books more than they were other

kids” (p. 205). Books have catalyzed the growth of a keen and precise intellect, a mind

that values clarity and organization over everything else. In all things, Richard seeks to

be organized and clear. A high point in his life story is his wedding, which he and his

wife-to-be organized all by themselves:

My wife and I entirely planned our own wedding. From A to Z we did it allcompletely. We moved into a new apartment and invited sixty people over forsix weeks later and we had the wedding in our apartment. We arranged forsomebody to marry us; we arranged for the catering; we arranged for the chairs;we arranged for everything. We chose the ceremony; we did everything. It wentwithout a hitch. It took ten minutes and it was over with. We had a partyafterwards, and I loved it because I wasn’t really nervous. I knew I wanted tomarry this person. I thought everything had been really well planned out, andhere was the high moment of our lives at that point in time, and we were incontrol, our show, nobody was telling us what to do. . . . It was this wonderfulexperience of getting married and being married with no glitches. (Quoted inMcAdams, 1993, p. 205).

56

In Richard’s life story, the clear and well-organized intellect is the most powerful

tool available to human beings. It is what makes him a powerful force in his social

world. But things don’t always get resolved without a glitch, even for the

intellectualizing hero. Among the many different goals Richard has for his life, one of

the strongest is to “make the world a better place for somebody or some people” (p.

205). This goal is the prime motivator for his work as a class-action attorney. Richard

represents clients who feel they have been cheated or abused by industry or

government. It is also a prime motivator for his volunteer work at a local food pantry.

“You have to make an effort, big or small, to leave the world a better place than you

found it,” he says (p. 205). The problems he faces because of these efforts, however, are

not always resolved by rational thought, and this causes Richard considerable grief. His

reaction is to become very cynical. The narrative strategy of intellectualization would

appear to reach its limits when it runs up against intractable and irrational human

problems in the world. As he approaches midlife, Richard sees the conflict in stark

terms:

I admire Clarence Darrow. He was incredibly cynical about things. He was askedhow somebody who was as big a cynic as he was could do what he did. Hewould still take on these cases involving supposedly hopeless people fightingagainst the system to keep from being in prison. Why did he do this when hewas so cynical about human nature and he believed people were not necessarilyborn good and were not necessarily motivated by good? And he said, “It’sbecause my intellect hasn’t caught up with my emotions yet.” I’ve found that I’ma lot like Darrow in that regard, because I’m incredibly cynical. I’m not all thatpositive that the world is going to be a better place when I die than it was when Iwas born into it. I’m not sure that we won’t find ourselves on the brink ofannihilation through our own stupidity, and I’m very concerned about that, andvery cynical. . . . I’m not that far from being so cynical that I’m going to say thehell with it all. (Quoted in McAdams, 1993, p. 206)

As a narrative strategy, intellectualization supports a life story that stars a clear-

minded protagonist who masters life’s many challenges through analysis and planning.

But the same strategy can lead to cynicism and despair when the protagonist seeks to

57

sustain commitments to helping others in a less-than-rational world. Those challenges

are of a different order than planning a wedding, or even sorting out one’s personal

ideology in formulaic terms. Richard, however, appears to be up to the challenge, as he

shifts narrative strategies to rely on a new defense: identification. Cramer (1991) shows

how children and adults employ identification to resolve a host of developmental

challenges and life problems. For Richard, identification provides a narrative strategy

for transcending the cynicism that intellectualization brings. Richard identifies with the

most famous class-action lawyer in American history, Clarence Darrow, and suggests

that even through Darrow was cynical, like Richard himself, Darrow was able to

persevere in his efforts to help the disadvantaged. Richard also invokes Martin Luther

King Jr., whom he regards as a “great hero” whose life proves that “standing up for

what you believe in can make a difference” (p. 206).

But an even more significant source for identification is probably Richard’s

mother. He describes her as the most important influence in his life story. “She taught

me about my heritage, and she taught me my values,” he says. “My mother was the

social activist in the family, as well as the organized person in the family, and I think

I’ve inherited some of that from her, and I think that’s probably something I’m passing

down to my son, as well, so it’s continuing the lineage” (p. 206). As a source of

identification, Richard’s mother personifies the organized activist: an idealized blend of

strong intellect and compassionate, in-the-world action. The identification with his

mother does not erase Richard’s cynicism. Instead, the defenses of intellectualization

and identification work together to create a complex story that ultimately affirms

organized social action in the face of difficult obstacles and incessant doubts. “In the rest

of my life, I want to be able to fulfill the goals of being a good family member, husband

and father, and trying to make a positive impact on society,” Richard states. He states

that “I think I am trying to do that” through his volunteer and professional work, by

being a “member of society” who is involved in “social and political work,” and by

58

manifesting “social and intellectual creativity” that he uses to motivate “people to feed

the hungry” and to improve their families and the communities within which they live

(p. 207). Richard’s life goals fit well with the commitment stories characteristic of highly

generative adults in McAdams et al. (1997). It is noteworthy that a significant number of

those highly generative adults also appear to employ the defense of identification as a

narrative strategy, invoking heroes and heroines with whom they identified and who

served as generative role models in their lives.

WHO HEARS THE STORY?

A life story is a psycho-literary performance that is tailored for an intended

reader, listener, or audience. At the methodological level of the research or clinical

interview, the respondent tailors his or her narrative account to meet what he or she

interprets to be the demand characteristics of that performative situation. The tailoring is

both conscious and unconscious and, as has been noted above, may involve defense

mechanisms of various kinds, especially denial. At the level of identity, however, the life

story exists as an internalized performance whose internalized audience functions as the

main reference point from which the self is understood. In her study of women

embarking on new careers, Wiersma (1988) noted that the press releases she

encountered appeared to have been “mulled over, honed to perfection, and ‘negotiated’

long before I arrived on the scene.” The women were “speaking to an audience who

understood them,”Wiersma remarked (p. 231). That audience consisted of other women

in their cohort and those perceived to be part of the Women’s Movement at the time of

the study, many of whom shared the subjects’ assumptions about gender equality, the

oppression of domestic life, and the liberating power of paid employment. The press

release was rehearsed and fashioned with respect to that conventional reference group

of like-minded women. The story played well to this audience. But it did not play well

to Wiersma, who insisted that the subjects in her study delve into those alternative

59

stories that were intended for other more personally idiosyncratic audiences. The skeptic

might conclude that the investigator searched long and hard for stories that would play

well to Wiersma herself—the audience of the investigative clinical theorist. But from

Wiersma’s perspective, the life-story accounts she obtained in subsequent interviewing

moved beyond the defenses used to preserve the stereotyped story to tap into deeper

levels of meaning with reference to internalized audiences that were more

psychologically significant in the women’s lives.

A simple but profound truth about stories is that they are told. It is in the nature

of stories that there exist both a teller and a recipient of the telling: the audience, listener,

viewer, reader, or whatever. Stories are composed and performed with an audience in

mind. As such, stories are always culturally, socially, and interpersonally anchored. To

the extent, therefore, that a person’s identity is a life story, identity itself is similarly

anchored to a socius. And to the extent that such a story is internalized as a

psychological structure that provides a person’s life with some degree of unity and

purpose, the socius with respect to which the story is oriented is an internalized

audience, listener, viewer, reader, spectator —the internalized other to whom, in a

fundamental sense, the story is told. Many different theorists have proposed that human

behavior is guided by internalized agents of various sorts. Freud’s (1923/1961) superego

is perhaps the most well-known example. As an internalization of the Oedipal parents,

the superego performs the function of observing the self and monitoring psychic activity

with respect to internalized standards for good and bad behavior. Following Freud,

object-relations theorists (e.g., Fairbairn, 1952; Guntrip, 1971) and psychoanalytic self-

theorists (e.g., Kohut, 1977) have proposed a variety of models for psychological

functioning in which significant persons (“objects” and “self-objects”) in one’s

environment are internalized in one way or another and their personified mental

representations thereafter influence and monitor psychic activity in various ways. For

example,Kohut (1977) speaks of internalized parental imagoes that help structure the

60

self, and Watkins (1986) speaks of internalized dialogues that take place between various

personified agents of the psyche. From a sociological perspective, Mead (1934) argued

that full socialization involves the internalization of the generalized other. The mature

man or woman is able to take stock of his or her own social behavior by adopting the

imaginary vantage point of society writ large. For Mead, the self is constructed through

determining how others in general are likely to view one’s own behavior, attitudes,

values, and so forth. In an especially provocative passage, William James (1963) spoke of

the internalized social “judges” or “tribunals” that men and women invoke as they

develop toward an imagined social and moral ideal. The ultimate judge, the ideal

spectator is God, whom James likens to a final audience to which the “gregarious”

human being feels compelled to speak, act, and perform:

All progress in the social Self is the substitution of higher tribunals for lower, thisideal tribunal [God] is the highest; and most men either continually oroccasionally, carry a reference to it in their breast. The humblest outcast on thisearth can feel himself to be real and valid by means of this higher recognition.And, on the other hand, for most of us, a world with no such inner refuge whenthe outer self failed and dropped us would be the abyss of horror. I say “for mostof us,” because it is probable that individuals differ a good deal in the degree inwhich they are haunted by an ideal spectator. It is a much more essential part ofthe consciousness of some men than of others. Those who have the most of it arepossibly the most religious men. But I am sure that even those who say they arealtogether without it deceive themselves, and really have it in some degree. Onlya non-gregarious animal could be completely without it. Probably no one canmake sacrifices for “right” without some degree of personifying the principle ofright for which the sacrifice is made, and expecting thanks from it. (James,1892/1963, pp. 178–179).

AUDIATUR ET ALTERA PARS!

The idea of an internalized audience or listener for one’s life story shares

conceptual space with the above perspectives offered by Freud and the object-relations

theorists, Mead, and James. Because it is in the nature of stories to be told, a person

develops a self-defining life story in adulthood with an implicit audience or listener in

mind. Following James, that audience may be a kind of ideal spectator personified as a

61

personal God. For others, Mead’s concept of a generalized other may be more

appropriate in that they articulate their identity with respect to a personified abstraction

of a broad swath of their social world. For still other people, the audience may be more

particular, representing parents, spouses, children, or even valued colleagues and

friends. The development of identity over time, therefore, should involve both the

development of the life story itself and the development of the intended audience for

that story. Especially dramatic transformations in identity may be occasioned by a

reconfiguration of the intended audience. For example, a man who has composed his life

story with his wife as his intended audience or spectator may search for a new

internalized audience after she dies. But this kind of transformation in the adult years

would appear to be rather rare, especially as people move into midlife and beyond.

Once an audience is internalized and stories are composed to speak to that audience in

particular, it may be extremely difficult to make dramatic changes in the manner in

which people render their lives meaningful through narrative.

It is with respect to this hypothesized internalized audience for the life story that

defense mechanisms may be seen in yet another light. Some forms of defense may

involve the inability to tell personal experience in story form because there is no

internalized audience available that will understand the story, will sympathize with it,

or will approve of its internalized performance. Like Freud’s superego, the internalized

audience may pass moral judgment on a potential narrative, compelling the person to

render that narrative untellable. But the audience may also function at levels even more

basic than that of the moral and ethical. The audience determines just what indeed is

understandable in narrative. Some experiences may not be tellable in story because the

intended audience does not have the language or the schemas or the

cognitive/emotional wherewithal to comprehend the story. Life events and experiences

become tellable to the extent that the internalized audience would be able to make sense

of them. Therefore, some experiences remain separated from the self—that is, cut off

62

from the main life-story structures—because the assumed audience for the telling of

those experiences could not or would not hear or view such a thing. Different varieties

of defense may be used to accomplish this.

The single mother who has devoted her life to raising her oldest son, who

desperately seeks that son’s approval as he grows older, and who eventually sets that

son up as the internalized audience for her life story of maternal sacrifice cannot

construct a story in her mind about how that son has deeply disappointed her or how

that son no longer cares for her, nor maybe she for him, because she unconsciously

knows that her son could never understand such a story. And because he would never

understand it, she cannot understand it either, and she cannot tell it. In terms of defense,

denial or isolation or repression creates the inability or refusal to story an experience

because an appropriate audience for the telling cannot be found. The married woman

who has built her identity around her family and set up her husband as the main

internalized audience for her life story cannot incorporate the sexual affair she is having

with a coworker into her current identity. There is no story available for her that will

make the affair understandable to her husband, and perhaps even to herself as well. So

she splits the experience off from the main story line of her life. In terms of defense, she

may employ the narrative strategy of isolation (Engel, 1962) or dissociation (Vaillant,

1977), establishing a separate line of storied experience that cannot, for the time being,

be reconciled with what she fundamentally believes herself to be or to have been. The

young Christian man who has set up the church authority as the main audience for his

emerging life story cannot tell the narrative of his nascent fears that he may be a

homosexual. The internalized audience would not be able to validate such a telling.

Therefore, the young man becomes especially sensitive to the possibility that many men

in his environment may have sexual designs on him. The defense of projection may

work well to alleviate anxiety, keep the desired story developing on track, and mollify

63

an internalized audience that is looking for a strong male hero and a conventional

narrative of heterosexual achievement.

CONCLUSION

While there exists today a great deal of talk and excitement about new narrative

approaches to personality and social psychology (Cramer, 1996; Gregg, 1991; Hermans

et al., 1992; McAdams, 1996; Singer & Salovey, 1993; Tomkins, 1979), psychopathology

(Howard, 1991; Sarbin, 1986), and clinical work (White & Epston, 1990), rigorous

empirical research has lagged behind. To the extent that researchers have adopted

narrative approaches to the study of lives, they have tended to work on describing the

kinds of life stories that can be obtained empirically and linking those story types and

story themes to independent personality variables and demographic characteristics (e.g.,

Carlson, 1988; Demorest, 1995; Hermans, 1992; Maruna, 1997; McAdams, 1985;

McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfield, & Day, 1996;McAdams et al., 1997; Singer, 1995).

Virtually no research, however, has examined the process of formulating a life story, a

process that would appear to be shaped by defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms

may work as narrative strategies that help to determine not only how a life story is told

but also what stories are deemed tellable. As researchers begin to consider the

psychological process of identity formation through life-storytelling, they are likely to

encounter the workings of defense mechanisms such as denial, projection,

intellectualization, rationalization, isolation, and identification. Research into life stories,

therefore, could benefit from a concerted examination of the literature on defense

mechanisms, and the empirical study of defense could also benefit from considering

insights into human personality and identity offered by recent narrative theories and

frameworks.

64

PART II: IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS: HISTORIA EST VITAEMAGISTRA.

“Perhaps it is my [...] cherishing of uncertainty as the only truth that is, after all, the bestmeasure of my assimilation; perhaps it is in my misfittings that I fit. Perhaps a successful

immigrant is an exaggerated version of the native. From now on, I’ll be made, like amosaic, of fragments – and my consciousness of them. It is only in that observing

consciousness that I remain,after all, an immigrant”

(Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation)

65

CHAPTER 4: NARRATIVE PURSUITS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FABULAE

According to common narratological and psychological wisdom, identity refers

to a characteristic of the individual. We "possess," "acquire," and "have a sense of

"identity, for example. Similarly, the narrative processes that are often claimed to

underlie identity construction are also typically viewed as attached to the individual, the

product of a type of in-the-head thinking, linguistic construct or other mental structure.

This chapter argues that an individualist approach to the understanding of narrative and

identity obscures the co-constructed, contextually embedded nature of these constructs.

A socio-cultural alternative is offered, arguing that as a narrative pursuit, personal

identity can emerge interstitially only as one moves actively between private and public,

personal and cultural, past and present.

THE SOCIO-CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF NARRATIVE IDENTITY &SUBJECTITIVIES IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE

Literary theorists, social critics, educators, therapists, social scientists, and others

broadly interested in, to borrow a phrase from Arendt, the “human condition” are in

general agreement that "there may be a special affinity between narrative and self such

that narrative can be said to play a privileged role in the process of self-construction"

(Miller, Potts, Fung, Hoogstra, & Mintz, 1990, p. 292). In spite of this consensus,

however, the term is also found in ways that increasingly force one into a choice

between two competing frameworks regarding the origins of narrative phenomena tout

court.

The first of these frameworks regards narrative as a specific mode of thinking, a

cognitive scheme. For instance, following the pioneering work of Propp, it has been

suggested that a basic narrative form, realized within folktales, provides evidence for

the "universal structuring of human memory" (Mander, Scribner, Cole, DeForest, 1980,

p. 21) according to narrative-like schemes or mental operations. Indeed, some writers

66

conclude that the mind itself is "a narrative concern" (Sutton-Smith, 1988, p. 12). The

second framework for the term "narrative" tends to locate its origins not in an innate

characteristic of mind, but in the wider culture of which such minds are a part. Here,

narrative is defined largely as a stylized, culturally acquired textual form. In the former

framework, narrative points toward an innate characteristic of mind while, in the latter,

it denotes a cultural form external to the individual.

This apparent contest over the true origins of narrative has provided the fuel for

Donald Polkinghorne's volume, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences (see also

Polkinghorne, 1991). In this book, Polkinghorne writes that

“the question of interest...is whether the narrative scheme is an innate structureof consciousness, like the grammatical structure suggested by Chomsky, or alearned linguistic form, a cultural product like haiku poetry?" (Polkinghorne,1988, p. 23).

I would like to suggest that such questions risk leading us into an intellectual and

epistemological cul-de-sac. Seduced ultimately by the sirens of the perennial nature-

nurture debate, the quest for final origins inevitably diverts us into a game of

philosophical ping-pong. On the one hand, as we contemplate the structure of

individual cognition, we incline toward a Chomskian-like position where knowledge

(innate narrative structures, for example) is viewed as essentially pre-formed, wired,

within us. In this climate, suitable questions present themselves as "What are the models

by which we can understand the individual knower?" "How does the individual mind

work?" Eventually, we face the fact that in seeking answers to such questions we have

begun to regard the mind as a more or less de-contextualized, cranium-bound,

mechanism—if not Cartesian automaton. In this frame, although culture may be seen as

influencing the mind, mind and culture otherwise retain their fundamental

separateness.

Dissatisfied, we therefore entertain notions of culture-in-mind of human society

as no longer a mere influence on mind but, instead, as one of its actual constituents.

67

Although knowledge in this alternative view is again preformed, it is seen to reside

externally in, for example, the cultural genres which individual minds appropriate like

immigrant autobiography. Unfortunately, by following this path, we eventually

confront the antithetical risk to that just discussed: as boundaries of mind protrude

beyond the individual to include its social and historical constituents, we run the risk of

sliding into a type of social determinism in which endogenous or biological factors

threaten to play no role at all.

In their book, The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson, & Rosch consider such

dilemmas (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). They attribute the very real anxiety that

can result to humans' continuing search for an "absolute ground" of knowledge. They

write

the tendency is to search either for an outer ground in the world or an innerground in the mind. By treating mind and world as opposed subjective andobjective poles, the Cartesian anxiety oscillates endlessly between the two insearch of a ground (p. 141).

Similarly, the quest for an absolute ground of narrative, either as a structure embedded

in the mind or as a stylized cultural tradition like life-narrative, is ultimately a crazy-

making pursuit. It is based upon this irresolvable polarity of inner versus outer,

endogenous mind versus external culture. However, once we move past the

reductionism inevitable in assigning primary origins of narrative to either pole (i.e.,

nature or culture), we are free to move on, to explore other ontologies within which we

might begin to conceptualize an alternative view.

In this chapter, I attempt to define a socio-cultural theory of narrative in which

narrative's dialogical and intimate connections to personal identity are made apparent.

A socio-cultural & socio-literary perspective—with antecedents in Fiedler’s Prodigy and

Reynold’s Underneath the American Renaissance (1989) is a view in which literary and

mental phenomena, among other things, are understood as constituted by (that is, not

merely by influenced) their cultural, historical, and social contexts, contexts which

68

themselves are deeply and fundamentally human—i.e. socially-mediated. This view

offers a means of analyzing the basic dimensionality of narrative, that is, the personal

aspects equated with narrative as well as the social and historical embeddedness that is

narrative's very hallmark—when biography and history in autobiographical discourse,

as C. Wright Mills urged in his The Sociological Imagination. It also foregrounds the

ways in which narrative language practices or genres, in particular the pragmatic

functions of story telling in life narrative, occasion and constitute the ongoing

construction of American personal identities in their social, cultural, and historical

contexts giving rise to narrative subjectivities that encapsulate allowable and say-able

selves. For purposes of this discussion, the terms "narrative" and "story" will denote an

account of personal experience, following the materialist literary tradition launched by

Aristotle when he equated the plot of a narrative with the character recognized

throughout the dramatic action (Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 1957).

NARRATIVE INDIVIDUALISM: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DEUS-EX-MACHINA

An individualist approach to narrative, what I will call narrative individualism,

underlies the intellectual cul-de-sac mentioned earlier. Like all theory, narrative

individualism is based on certain fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of self,

language, and meaning. First, it presupposes a basic dualism of self and world.

According to this view, within our "deep interior" there resides a bounded, world-

independent Self (Gergen, 1991; Boelhower, 1996; E. San Juan, Jr, 1993), an entity for

which narrative serves as but one medium of expression. To author a personal life-

narrative is, in this frame, to employ narrative-qua-genre as a vehicle for the transport of

personal thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. This myth manifests itself linguistically

through the deceptively simple article "the" by which we convert an Emersonian Self

from a fluid experience of human-sensuous activity into a fixed, bounded entity (when

for example, we refer to the self). Such usage feeds a narrative individualism in which,

69

as mentioned, narrative's primary function is that of expressive vehicle for a bounded,

endogenous self.

Second, narrative individualism presumes a correspondence view of language.

That is, narrative individualism presumes a one-to-one standing, an identity, between

the words I use and that which my words are presumed to represent, whether such

signification be of internal ideas or external objects. From this perspective, again,

language is a transparent medium, a container for the safe transport of ideas. From a

correspondence view, an author or narrator creates texts essentially by filling words

with his or her own images and ideas. Although an author may appropriate words,

signs, and symbols for purposes of communicating, the "signal" (i.e., the author's

meaning, or pace Wimsatt & Beardsley, dare one invoke the author’s intention ) and

"conduit" (i.e., the words, signs, and symbols by which meaning is communicated)

remain essentially separate. From this perspective, narrative becomes the conduit by

which a private self is made public.

Third, in accordance with the previous two assumptions, from the view of

narrative individualism meaning is believed to ultimately reside in the mind of the

individual author. It is an essentially private phenomenon, communicated to others

through narrative forms which themselves remain external to and separate from the

author's meanings and intentions. Narratives "tell" what we mean while they do not

affect or constitute those meanings in any fundamental way.

As all theory must, narrative individualism thus privileges a certain view

regarding the nature of "the real" from which certain assumptions flow. The

fundamental given of this ontology is that there exists a knowable world of things and

events, representable through the medium of language, from which we, as selves,

remain fundamentally separate. The nature of self varies, of course, depending on

whether one takes an empiricist or rationalist view. The implications are the same,

however: the phenomena of primary importance are attached primarily to the

70

individual. In other words, the individual remains the valued site for the ultimate

realization of personal narrative as well as for our understanding of how narrative

relates to issues of identity.

THE SOCIO-CULTURAL IMAGINATION AS BASIS FOR SOCIO-LITERARYPERSPECTIVE: SELF-PRESENTATION, MIMESIS & NARRATIVE PURSUITS

A socio-cultural view offers a very different conception from the individualism

just discussed. The organizing principle of a socio-cultural conception is, as I see it, the

assumption that the causes of human phenomena cannot be reduced to fixed cognitive

or cultural factors. Accordingly, I will suggest that both narrative and identity emerge

from the confluence of five integrated dimensions: (a) time, (b) artifacts

(language/signs/symbols), (c) affect, (d) activity, and (e) self-reflexiveness. I will review

each of these in turn. I will also discuss how, through these dimensions, narrative and

identity are not separable entities but, instead, serve to mutually and discursively

constitute one another. This rejects the possibility of a "pure" narrative form, a structure

that somehow stands apart from the identities, which populate it. Conversely, it also

rejects the notion of an identity existing in isolation from the narratives by which it is

rendered intelligible.

By way of general disclaimer, although I believe it is safe to assume that Homo

sapiens share these five dimensions I am about to elaborate, there is no predicting how

they will be realized at any one time and place. There is an infinite complexity to the

world that makes such prediction impossible. Although vitally important, a thorough

study of the qualifying effects of culture and history on these dimensions of narrative

identity and autobiographical discourse are beyond the scope of this chapter. I now

discuss the first dimension of a socio-cultural construction, the dimension of time.

TIME- The telling of personal stories always occurs in the present (although

their content may, of course, refer to either past, present, or future). Telling –or,

71

narrating-- is vastly more than a simple reporting of events, however. Since the full

implication of events is never completely manifest at their occurrence, their personal

meaning is perpetually subject to change as the identity and situations of those who

experience them change and develop.

The central implication of the time dimension for narrative is that the events in

one's life can be made meaningful only in relation to other events. The sewing together

of events (past, present, and future) for purposes of meaning-making, autobiography

and identity construction is ultimately a narrative pursuit. Thus, there is no human

requirement for congruence between physical time (i.e., time as it truly is) and time as

we experience it. For us, the phenomenological passing of time requires only those

events by which time is personally marked, by which the important episodes in one's life

are demarcated. These boundaries are never fixed. Instead, the defining of relevant

events, roles, and relationships is always accomplished only in accord with current

constructions of identity. And these are always changing.

AFFECT - A socio-cultural approach views emotion as being irreducible to its

physiological and/or psychological components, contrary to what essentialist views

might suggest (e.g., Ekman, 1982; Izard, 1977; Tomkins, 1982). Although some pre-social,

physiological component is obviously present in the experience, emotions become

interesting from a socio-cultural standpoint for how they acquire meaning and force as

"pragmatic acts and communicative performances" within particular discursive contexts

(Abu-Lughod & Lutz, 1990, p. 11). Since it can be shown that there are culturally and

historically diverse emotions as well as different interpretations across cultures of what

we might consider the same emotion (Armon-Jones, 1985; D'Andrade & Strauss, 1992;

Harre, 1986; Lutz & White, 1986; Lutz & Abu-Lughod, 1990), the spectrum of human

emotion is considered an open rather than closed question.

The incorporation of affect into questions of identity acknowledges that we

assume a feeing-attitude toward our existence. But such attitudes are hardly automatic.

72

Through affective discourse, we are continually instructed in our emotions, guided by

an other (a parent, peer, or teacher, for example) through whom we are taught what one

"ought" to feel in certain situations. The implication is that we continually learn how to

feel, how to form, sustain, and break off relationships. The crucial aspects of this

learning are that it is social (ocurring in interaction with others according to cultural

norms), constructive, and mediated by those tools (i.e., sign, symbols, words, gestures,

etc.) available within a particular time and place.

ARTIFACTS (LANGUAGE/SIGNS/SYMBOLS) - For the socioculturalist or the

socio-literary theorist, language is not a passive channel for the communication of self-

contained, personal meanings, a medium autonomous from the purposes to which it is

put (Vygotsky, 1962). Instead, words are regarded as a class of psychological tools that

"are a part of and mediate human action" as discursive technologies of self (Wertsch,

1991, p. 29). Cultural artifacts, material or immaterial, do not simply express underlying

cultural truths. Instead, they feed back into the culture in ways that fundamentally

change it.

In constituting an identity, individuals take up aspects of their world (artifacts

such as language but also including behavior, dress, gesture, cultural roles, and other

conventions) which, importantly, pre-exist them but which also provide the material for

the ongoing construction of personal identity and narrative subjectivities (see Shaw,

1994). The most vital aspect of this process is that it always occurs in relation to others

(Gergen, 1994; Harré & Gillett, 1994).

Thus the question arises: are personal narratives cultural artifacts? I would

answer in the affirmative. But I would add that they represent artifacts of a higher order.

The uniqueness of autobiographical narrative as an artifact stems from its tendency to

organize lower order artifacts (e.g. single events, objects, or stream-of-consciousness

productions) into some kind of meaningful socio-literary framework.

SELF-REFLEXIVENESS - Luria (1981) writes that "animals have only one world,

73

the world of objects and situations. Humans have a double world" (p. 35). This second

world is the world of culture. Through culture and language, Homo sapiens are able to

deal not only with those things which lie beyond our immediate perception, we can also

imagine and communicate with others about times other than the present. Through

language and various other items in the "cultural tool kit" (Wells, 1996), we are able to

tell personal stories that speak from the position of an 'I' in the here-and-now about an 'I'

that is not identical but, in fact, occupies another time and place. This idea is central to

dialogic views of self where self is no longer considered a monolithic construct but

ultimately a "dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I positions" (Hermans,

Kempen, & van Loon, 1992, p. 28).

I use the term "self" to refer to the core of this personal auto-reflexive capacity,

this auto-conscious center. This is the dimension through which we experience ourselves

as moving phenomenologically through time. At the same time, I use the term "identity"

to index the higher order, culturally constituted person - a person that exists for both self

and other. The fact that self is a co-terminus and fundamental component of identity,

and not something separable which has or acquires an identity, is implicit in the fact that

a sustained social identity is impossible without an equally sustained private sense of

personal continuity (Gover & Gavelek, 1996, p. 2).

ACTIVITY- A socio-cultural perspective seeks to contextualize autobiographical

narrative by arguing for the inseparability of narratives from the system of social

practices which constitute them. Such practices might include narrative conventions,

story-telling styles & pragmatics, interpersonal relationships, cultural rules and

traditions, economic practices, and so on. What follows from this is that the meanings of

human experience available for autobiographical inscription or contemplation are never

fixed. Instead, meaning is discursive, inhering in narrative practices and

autobiographical personae themselves. In autobiographical narrative as an embodied,

pragmatic act, we find that our personal stories and subjectivities emerge from the fluid

74

inter-relationship between self and world and, thus, can actually mean different things

at different times—casting an Arendtian flavor to human action. Yet, too often in

practice, its more the case as Casey (1986, p. 219) notes that problems can arise when

one's stories become overly rigid. In the case of such fixity, one risks conspiring in a

certain "stuckness," an inflexible view of the world that resists adaptation and change.

For the socio-culturalist, such rigidity is not merely a characteristic of the individual but

would entail some or all aspects of the larger story-telling context.

In sum, viewing personal narrative as part of a larger system of discursive

activities highlights the simple fact that, in order for identities to be viable, we must tell

stories which "fit" the larger system of which we are a part. The narrative pursuit of

“foundations of self” in nation, group or religion perforce demands a defensive and

projective self-presentation most acutely for immigrant autobiographers. Further, the

power and authority governing one's likelihood of authoring a certain type of story is

not confined to the site of the teller but is variously dispersed.

A DIAGRAM- As inadequate and oversimplified as schematics can be, I would

like to offer a diagram that attempts to visually integrate the various dimensions I have

discussed (see below in figure #1)

75

Figure 1--Texts in Contexts

First, we recognize a context or environment. This context is comprised of

physical, social, and cultural components in all their multi-layered complexity. The

significant point here is that environments are not merely a static accompaniment to

one's life. Instead, environments themselves are always changing (although the

timeframe for contextual development is typically quite different than for that of the

individual, who is both preceded and outlived by the physical and cultural

76

environment—I imagine Foucault in accord with this view of discourse-speaking-for-

us). Cole writes "human beings live in an environment transformed by the artifacts of

prior generations, extending back to the beginning of the species" (Cole, 1989, p. 7). A

basic principle of socio-cultural theory is therefore that we construct our identities by

both borrowing from and transforming a world inherited from previous generations

through culturally proscribed genres of self employing available

technologies—especially, so today since the WWW offers new dimensions to self on the

Internet.

Moving to the center of the diagram, characteristic of each individual person is

the dimension of self-reflexiveness, a self-conscious awareness of being an origin, if not

author, of one's thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. As mentioned, it is here that we

phenomenologically experience a sense of self-sameness, an awareness of ourselves as

moving through time. Further, through semiotically mediated self-reflexive thought,

Homo sapiens are predisposed to turning back upon ourselves. We have the capacity to

consciously reflect on ourselves in an attempt to understand, evaluate, or change who

and what we perceive ourselves to be at a given point in time.

Next, in a socio-cultural view, the border between individual and context is not

physical (as marked by the skin, for instance). Instead, a semiotic boundary, or generic

interface, constituted by the enactment of gestures, symbols, signs, etc. comprises the

bridge between personal identity and one's social and cultural context. Both differences

and similarities are established at this limen between the individual and the social

through the medium of autobiographical discourse.

For example, as part of an unrelated research project, I recently asked a group of

40 and 50 year-olds from an Adult Basic Education program in a vocational English as a

Second Language class to share a story with me about themselves. The only stipulation

was that these stories be personal and of a certain type, based on a particular mood or

affect which I was to specify ("sad," "happy," "scary," for example). For instance,

77

"Lourdes" was asked to share an "exciting" story about herself. She responded by

sharing a breathless account of being the flower-girl at her great grandmother’s recent

wedding. What is pertinent here is that because of the culturally and historically

constituted nature of semiotic boundaries, when I asked Tammy for an "exciting story",

she had no difficulty in producing a narrative replete with all the traditional elements of

what we might consider an adventure. Similarly, when I asked "Ana," another student,

for a "scary story" about herself, I received a story structured very much like the genre of

dramatic thriller.

By virtue of the semiotic boundary between us, a boundary that connects as well

as differentiates, no explicit confusion arose between myself and these Adult English

Learners (AEL) learners regarding the meaning of affective terms such as "exciting,"

"sad," or "scary." For the same reason, the presumption of shared understanding was

automatic regarding what I intended by the phrase "a story about yourself," not to

mention what I meant by a "sad" or "scary" story. Finally, at an even broader level,

Lourdes’ story was made intelligible by the fact that both Lourdes and I automatically

take for granted that the other understands what it means to be a flower-girl in a

Western-style Mexican wedding ceremony.

At no point are two persons' understandings identical, of course. I could just as

easily talk about the differences between these adults and me in how culture, age, and

personal trajectory lead us to diverse knowledge and lives. Nonetheless, words and

gestures seem to create a sense that at least some degree of overlap or "shared variance"

exists. It is here, at the level of words and gestures that communication is made

meaningful. Returning to the diagram, thought, affect, and perception are positioned

within the semiotic boundary in order to signify their personal nature. But "personal" or

"private" does not mean innate or endogenous. The socially constructed aspects of

thought, emotion, and even perception are widely acknowledged (Armon-Jones, 1985;

Averill, 1985; Bateson, 1979; Edwards, 1991; Gergen, 1994; Harre, 1986; Harre & Gillett,

78

1994; Lutz & White, 1986; Searle, 1995; Shotter, 1995).

Finally, identity appears as an oblong (solid line) spanning both personal and

contextual dimensions. From a time perspective, identity extends into the past through

the stories by which we make sense of our experience, both personally and as a culture.

It also extends into the future in much the same way, guided by personal and cultural

expectations (the vertical axis in Figure #1 has not been assigned a particular meaning).

The shape and location of identity is very much a function of the degree to which

one has been able to appropriate the cultural and socio-literary tools available for

identity construction and subject formation. A discursively or materially impoverished

context, for example, may preclude the development of identities that draw upon wider

cultural artifacts, artifacts through which one's identity becomes more varied and

complex.

An excellent example of this is provided by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and

Tarule's book, Women's Ways of Knowing (1986). These writers interviewed a small

group of women whom they describe as exhibiting "an extreme denial of self" (p. 24).

Common among the women is a background of material, social, economic, and

educational deprivation. These are individuals "silenced" by an environment that did

not value their words. As a result, neither did the women come to place any value in the

power of their own words and thoughts. With little encouragement or opportunity to

participate in the language practices by which we symbolically mediate our

participation in the world, by which we reflect, abstract, and make ourselves into an

object of thought, these women seemed to live and react almost totally in a self-absorbed

present (see where the identity oblong encompasses primarily personal feelings,

thoughts, and perceptions in the present). Their imagination largely uncultivated, they

were unprepared to generate prospective, future-oriented images of themselves. One

woman says simply, "I haven't thought about the future" (p. 32).

79

Figure 2- Context

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, my theme is one widely shared by teachers, therapists, and others

whose work makes them active participants in the crafting of personal stories: narrative

language practices are a constituent of identity development. As we share our personal

stories with others, fantasize future scenarios, and identify with or partake in the stories

of others, we constitute and reconstitute our identities within their physical, cultural,

and historical contexts. The roots of narrative and identity thus merge, inextricably

embedded and nurtured in the soil of human action.

Furthermore, the narratives by which we understand and make sense of our lives

are not in-the-head but of-the-world. Like identity, instead of being reducible to an

essence, narratives emerge only as one actively moves between private and public,

personal and cultural, past and present. Identities are not portable but become

80

intelligible only within those contexts that provide the resources for their construction.

What a socio-cultural view of autobiographical narrative and identity thus buys

us from a theoretical standpoint is permission to give up the "chicken or egg" question.

It allows us to realize that we tell stories, which are always, and forever a part of, and

themselves contain, other stories--ranging from Barthesian fun-houses to Jamesonian

prison louses of language. Thus, their origins are not assignable to a single time or place.

For instance, an account of how I come to write this chapter acquires meaning

only within the greater story of my life as lived up to this point. In turn, my life-story

has meaning only within the greater narrative of how American culture has, in part,

come to value and support the type of academic pursuits I find rewarding. Finally, this

cultural narrative is ultimately embedded in the grand evolutionary tale of humankind

and their capacity for language and society. Like Russian dolls, there is always a story

within a story (see Cole and Engestrom, 1993, pp. 18-22).

To be sure, this has tremendous ramifications for how we conduct research on

narrative and identity. What is vital from a socio-cultural and socio-literary frame is that

such research on self continue moving outward from an individual person based

understanding toward a broader socio-cultural and socio-literary frame in which

dimensions such as history, language, and culture have equal explanatory power.

Penuel and Wertsch (1985) write that the point of interest in identity research thus

becomes "how individuals select, choose, and commit to different people and idea

systems in the course of their activities" (1995, p. 91).

Since the socio-culturalist is attempting to solve different kinds of problems than

those set forth by an empiricist program, it is important to remember that one

assimilates socio-cultural research only under a fundamentally different set of

assumptions regarding what is real and how we come to know. For example, issues of

interpretation, power, and context are often valued over, or at least given equal billing

with, issues of validity and reliability. Further, analysis is focused on the genesis of

81

integrated units and genres rather than the formal analysis of elements (Vygotsky, 1986).

Finally, in writing this chapter, I have the feeling that more questions may have

been generated than resolved. Still, at least one thing does seem clearer: the phrase

"personal narrative" and our notions of autobiography may ultimately represent an

oxymoron. The value of a socio-cultural perspective for teaching, helping, and learning

stems from the fact that our personal stories are not simply heard, they are used by

others in ways which make them forever a two-way street. That is, in spite of narrative's

ability to express an actor's unique worldview, one person's story remains another

person's metaphor. Through stories, we have the predilection for vicariously inserting

ourselves into the position of others in ways that make their stories simultaneously both

public and private. This is a human propensity—a Baconian “Idol of the Tribe” if you

will--that cannot be stopped, and one that has the potential to both enrich and constrict

our personal identities, autobiographical subjectivities and narrative pursuits as the

following chapter maps out.

82

CHAPTER 5: IDOLS OF THE TRIBE & FABLES OF AMERICAN NATIONALIDENTITY: SPEAKING OF IMMIGRATION

The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe orrace of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. Onthe contrary, all perceptions, as well of the sense as of the mind, are according to themeasure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And thehuman understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly distorts anddiscolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. (XLI)

The idols and false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, andhave taken deep root therein, not only so beset men's minds that truth can hardly findentrance, but even after entrance is obtained, they will again in the very instauration ofthe sciences meet and trouble us, unless men being forewarned of the danger fortifythemselves as far as may be against their assaults. (XXXVIII)

--Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620)

As an ongoing effort to bound social relations at the territory’s edge, the

American nation-state can boast a record of considerable success. Not least among its

triumphs ranks the everyday assumption that the nation comprises an entity apart, its

separation from the rest of the world representing the normal state of affairs. While we

could expect the man and the woman in the street to therefore regard immigration as an

unexpected surprise, we run into problems if our own interpretive paradigms similarly

present immigration as a foreign, not native phenomenon. We would do better if we

conceptualized immigration as a characteristic of American society and its insiders, who

interact with the newcomers in ways that enhance, rather than diminish, difference. And

we should also take insiders’ understandings more seriously, since the folk view of

immigration as anomalous, immigrants as different, and difference as undesirable, helps

define the native theory of the world, which immigrants are in turn expected to absorb.

The analytic task gets tougher, because the response to immigration engenders a

reaction among the newcomers themselves, in which new identities and forms of

affiliation take hold. But the intensity of these attachments obscure their innovative,

mutable character, if for no other reason than the extraordinary utility furnished by the

83

image and idea of the bounded, ethnic group. While appreciating the compelling nature

of ethnic identities, we should recall their relational foundation, and remember that

boundaries rarely enclose the same people, at all times and in all places. In the end, of

course, we confront the intellectual difficulties that inevitably impinge on those of us

who study a phenomenon of which we are also a part. This is our abiding dilemma and

our greatest intellectual challenge in thinking through the rich tradition of American

autobiographical discourse.

ONE PERSON'S STORY IS ANOTHER PERSON'S METAPHOR

Immigration, as we all know, is a defining American feature, which is where

both the attraction of the topic, and the dangers associated with studying it, is to be

found. The root problem involves the potential overlap between native (emic) and

scholarly (etic) understandings of the question at hand. Common sense tells us that the

United States comprises a bounded entity, in which the entry of immigrants represents a

foreign phenomenon, the immigrants' difference somehow anomalous, an imported

feature that is neither expected nor desired to last. Is it really unfair to contend that

much of the scholarly literature frames the matter in much the same way? After all, no

sooner do the immigrant outsiders arrive than they turn out to be ethnics. But note the

etymological roots of the term ethnicity: ethnos was the Greek word used for the

Hebrew term “goy” when the Bible was translated more than two millennia ago, later to

be applied as synonym for "heathens". When indeed the word "ethnicity" first surfaced

in the American scholarly lexicon, Warner and Srole to classify the entire variety of

Newburyport’s groups with one exception -- the “Yankees or Natives”, who were

somehow not ethnic, used it. As astute a student of the American ethnic scene as Herbert

Gans recently thought it appropriate to distinguish immigration researchers as either

insiders or outsiders, classifying insiders as those who either shared an ancestry with the

group they studied or a commitment to its persistence, as opposed to all others, whom

84

he categorized as "outsiders." But if immigration is a distinguishing American trait that

is at once persistent and defines everyday understandings of what it means to be an

American, then Gans' so-called "outsiders" are no less implicated than his insiders in the

phenomenon they both study. Too much of our scholarly literature, and criticism, I'm

afraid, amounts to a literary ethnography of the “goy”, of the Other, written from the

standpoint of the insider posing as outsider, always remaining external to the analysis

itself, indeed entirely invisible.

It is also the case that we may be the victims of our own successful transition

from an Industrial to a Digital Age and its attendant rise in pop-psychology and pop-

sociology via mass media channels. Today, not only is “the medium, the message,” but

the communications revolutions of the post-WWII & Post-Cold War periods have had a

salutary democratizing effect on personal communications via phones, computers & the

Internet. Our own key “reality concepts” seem to be part of the everyday cognitive tool-

kit used for making sense of the world, as one might expect of a highly educated

population, increasingly adept at the use and manipulation of symbols and ideas. But if

social scientific and humanistic concepts inform the behavior and orientations of the

actors we study, they are then part of the process themselves, requiring us to adopt a

different, more distanced set of analytic tools. That our concepts are flawed does not

mean that they yield no purchase on the phenomenon they seek to illuminate. On the

contrary, they prove all too helpful, which is why we scurry to be the servants of power,

when called upon as “ etic experts.” However, the reflexive nature of the humanities and

the social sciences aggravates the problem: precisely because institutional actors orient

themselves toward the phenomenon through the framework we give them, we need to

transform the framework itself into an etic object of analysis, approached with a

vocabulary distinct from that used by the actors themselves—whether they be

“strangers in the land” or “natives.”

I begin from the standpoint that immigration is a native--not foreign--

85

phenomenon, requiring us, therefore, to use concepts removed from the everyday

understandings that we all -- scholars and citizens -- share. I will argue that our core

analytical categories, however, lack this quality, revealing themselves to be native/emic

concepts, part and parcel of the very subject matter we wish to comprehend.

Traditionally, American sociologists and literary historians have relied upon a set of

conceptual tools in the study of immigration and its attendant literatures that slavishly

rely on critically, unexamined assumptions of American Exceptionalism manacled with

strands of hidden Universalism.

ASSIMILATION

Let me begin with assimilation, our must enduring, most influential concept in

the discussion of migration and adaptation. Having long fallen into disgrace –during the

late 1980s and 1990s, thanks in part to the discourse of multiculturalism-- assimilation is

back in style in the 21st Century. For the most eloquent and justifiably influential of the

recent defenses, we can turn to the work of Richard Alba and Victor Nee. But without

detracting in the least from their accomplishment, they jumped on a horse that was

already in full stride. Whether we take, as indicators, works designed to engage a

broader literate public, or those directed purely at an academic audience, it is clear that

numerous writers have found appeal in an idea so often rejected. What they observe is

an America too porous and too mutable to be captured by the differentialist/pluralist

vision, in which ethnic boundaries are depicted as hard and fast, just as we understand

them to have been 100 years ago. Searching for a vocabulary to describe the reality they

discern, many scholars of immigration have inevitably returned to the concept of

assimilation.

While I sympathize, I cannot get myself to agree. As Alba and Nee argued,

assimilation entails a reduction in ethnic difference, a definition that seems to accurately

describe the way in which social scientists and literary scholars have generally

86

understood assimilation. However, it does seem to beg the question of how the

intellectual problematic should be defined and why.

The issues at hand clearly fall into the general concerns raised by the study of

stratification, in that our interests involve the relationship between some birth-ascribed

characteristic and outcomes later on in life or in subsequent generations. In principle, the

same framework applied when considering the influence of one trait, let's say, foreign

birth or ancestry, should hold when the interest turns to the impact of another, let’s say,

parents’ social class. But imagine that I were to propose a concept that entailed "the

decline, and at its endpoint the disappearance of a class distinction and the cultural and

social differences that express it," thus exactly rephrasing the definition provided by

Alba and Nee, but substituting the word "class" for "ethnic" (Remaking the America

Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration, 2003) A formulation of this

sort might appeal to the more egalitarian members of the Academic Left. But I am sure

that we would all agree that it also reflects my own, lamentably outdated social

democratic views, as opposed to the specification of an analytic concept around which a

field of study can be organized. More charitably, one could suppose that "assimilation"

could be usefully invoked to identify an outcome of a stratificational process of

uncertain outcome, very possibly eventuating in diminished difference, but no less

likely to lead to difference of an increased or persistent sort, or very possibly a shift in

the nature of the relevant differences. To pose the question in stratificational terms,

however, implies that difference is a normal, and not a deviant outcome; and therefore,

that the production and reproduction of difference, and not just its reduction, belongs at

the heart of the inquiry. In its very formulation the sociology of assimilation thus

reveals its assimilationist cast—if not nativist cast, following Higham’s reasoning in

Send These To Me (1975). It begins with the presence of outsiders, whose appearance on

the scene requires no explanation, and whose distinctiveness can be assumed without

making reference to those parties that perceive difference, and make it socially

87

significant. Moreover, it has never seriously asked how difference might decline, or

conversely, how similarity might come to be. An obvious answer involves one of the

other, usually forgotten meanings of assimilation, namely, treating similarly. If, as I've

argued above, the intellectual problem involves the relationship between ethnic origins

and ethnic destinies, then we need to enlarge the analytical frame to include those

others, whether located at subordinate, lateral, and superior levels, that play a crucial

role in affecting both "who gets what" and "who is what." Understood this way,

assimilation is a process whose subjects are not simply outsiders, but insiders as well,

and who make "assimilation" through an interactional process that both redefines the

lines between insiders and outsiders and determines who is "in" and who is "out".

And just why one should be concerned with the disappearance of difference -- or

its converse, similarity -- has never been adequately explained. After all, similarity is a

very specific distributional attribute, in which persons with an origin in a particular

source population need to have a wide spread, so that there is extensive overlap

between them and the reference population. Why couldn’t we define assimilation as the

process whereby members of a source population converge around the mean for the

reference population? Convergence could still entail very great difference, if the source

population turns out to be much more tightly clustered around the mean than the

reference population. But clustering around the mean would be closely correlated,

though not perfectly, with similar treatment. From a normative standpoint, I don’t see

why we should care about anything else. Now there may be an intellectual or scientific

reason to be interested in similarity rather than convergence with the mean, but such an

argument I've yet to encounter. As assimilation necessarily involves the dissolution of

ethnic groups -- it is hard to imagine ethnic persistence without dissimilarity -- the

expectation of similarity seems uncomfortably close to the ideological preoccupations

(i.e. Racism & Euro-centrism) that have shaped this field of study right from the

start—whether that be Riis’ How the Other Half Lives or Thomas & Znaniecki’s The

88

Polish Peasant in Europe and America.

But difference is only meaningful within a relational framework, which means

that we cannot talk about "them" without also referring to "us". The literature on

assimilation, however, cannot quite manage to identify those actors who make

difference important, nor why or how they do so. If we cannot answer such questions as

"different from whom?" can we have anything to say about difference at all?

To be fair, the scholarly literature on immigration does make some effort to

identify the target population to which outsiders are supposed to assimilate, but at the

expense of muddying things further. In contemporary parlance, we talk of a "majority"

or "mainstream," though it takes but a few seconds of reflection to realize that “there’s

no there, there” a la Stein. Detach the "majority" from its inherent opposition to the

minoritarian outsiders, and it collapses along the class, regional, religious, and

ideological cleavages that are the bread and butter of our colleagues who make a living

in the study of stratification, politics, or culture, pure and simple. To make matters

worse, "majority", in the talk confected by the students of assimilation, means "white

majority," a term that is certainly part of the everyday discourse of race and ethnicity,

but is otherwise lacking in intellectual content. Simply put, "white majority" are just two

words for continued exclusion on the basis of descent; thus assimilation into the "white

majority" simultaneously means disassimilation, since the former necessarily links the

conditions of one group's acceptance to another's rejection. Were our scholarly literature

truly interested in the nature of the U.S. system of ethnic stratification it would ask just

how the entry of immigrant outsiders might eventuate in an outcome of this sort. But

too many of our colleagues have concluded that this is a question that we can blithely

ignore.

Our older commentators did better, in part because they could talk more freely,

avoiding the circumlocutions favored by the right-thinking academics of today, ever on

guard against offending thoughts. Good old Milton Gordon -- where would we be

89

without him? -- had no compunctions about naming the group to whose acceptance

outsiders were supposed to aspire. In the early 1960s, one could not only write about a

"core cultural group" but name it -- white Protestants of vaguely British descent. Of

course, identifying the target population in terms such as these simply described the

world from the standpoint of the particular communal group standing at the top of the

system, and whose centrality and dominance therefore required no further discussion.

While the perspective of one's betters certainly warrants attention, it would be good to

label it as such. The ability of any group to assert itself as "core" is bound to affect the

mechanisms by which outsiders seek and gain acceptance, not to speak of their

motivations for doing so. And in any case, that was then, this is now, everything solid --

yesterday's cultural core included -- having since melted into thin air.

My own guess is that our scholarly literature struggles with stating the target

group because it cannot quite get itself around to stating the obvious: namely, that as the

process transforming outsiders into insiders, assimilation takes foreigners and turns

them into "Americans." Of course, to put it that way makes it clear that we can no longer

describe assimilation as a shift from particularism to universality, as was the wont of the

earlier literature, and as some contemporary scholars continue to pretend. Rather we

need to confront assimilation for what it is -- a substitution of just one particularism for

another. I don't mean to impugn particularism as such: after all, the importance of

belonging is one of the few sociological maxims that we possess. And why not cultivate

a sense of membership in a national collectivity? In theory, if not in practice, the

American people are surely wider and more inclusive than other forms of ethnic

affiliation. But still the point stands: assimilation is a very peculiar scholarly concept,

resonating with that normative vision of national life which envisions a direct

relationship between the individual and the nation, unmediated by ties of an ethnic

type. As such, the ideological echo sounds all too clear: too much of our scholarly

literature on immigration and its attendant cultural formations amounts to little more

90

than a mildly intellectualized version of the folk (emic) understanding of what it means

to become American, obscuring our ability to approach the phenomenon with the

critical distance it requires.

ETHNIC RETENTION

The scholarly literature on migration and the literary criticism of “multi-ethnic

literatures” typically opposes assimilationist with retentionist points of view.

Retentionism is an anachronism, mirroring many of the assumptions of the view, which

it contests, and subject, therefore, to many of the same liabilities. Retentionism needs to

posit some stable, fixed entity; after all, what would there be to retain, were there not a

coherent, self-conscious collectivity enacting and re-enacting the life of its group? There

would be nothing wrong with such a description, if only it specified the time and place.

The problem is that retentionsim freezes a single point in time, projecting it backwards

as if patterns of self-awareness and interaction had not always been changing, which, in

turn, makes the American ethnic group moment but a stage in the broader sweep of

time. Like assimilationism, retentionism begins with the assumption of a bounded,

undifferentiated group. But the reality is almost always otherwise, and all the more so, if

we move out of the groupist assumptions common to the literature on and by

immigrants, and think of the subjects of our inquiry as actors in a relational field, whose

self-awareness shifts as the pattern of interaction changes. From this standpoint,

migration necessarily yields greater diversity in the structure of interpersonal relations,

though the significance of that change varies depending on how one situates oneself,

relative to the actors at hand. Let us begin by considering the peasant migrant. This

prototypical newcomer begins from a small-scale society, where alliances are either

knitted among locals or through connections that extend to neighboring villages; self-

sufficiency, isolation, customary patterns of local social control reduce exposure to

unknown, outsiders. While existing contacts to friends and kin lubricate the movement

91

to a new society, they cannot possibly reproduce the same level of social encapsulation.

The hometowners are a small element in a new context, whose size, heterogeneity, and

complexity almost surely increases the probability of exposure to outsiders. The most

relevant group of outsiders may turn out to consist of members of related categories,

removed in terms of dialect, customs, and habit, and yet not so distant as to preclude

effective contact. Notwithstanding the preference for familiarity, similarity will often

suffice. Moreover, the prohibitions or suspicions that might have constrained relations

back home no longer have the same force; the elders are not around and the power of

loneliness is frequently sufficient to overcome all other restraints. Some migrants will

end up venturing still further afield, if for no other reason than a taste for adventure and

the chance encounters made more probable by the fluidity of life in a less structured

context. As always, necessity is the mother of invention, the gender imbalance

characteristic of so many migrations providing ample reason to effect alliances of a

totally innovative kind (e.g. out-group marriage). Thus, while the balance of

relationships may shift toward connections with elements that were known, if

unfamiliar, in the home context, others would extend to categories and groups entirely

absent from the original interactional field.

For observers working from the standpoint of the host society, the only relevant

shifts are those that can be mapped on to the categories it recognizes, regardless of how

these correspond to the self-understandings of the persons whom one purports to

describe. Thus, what I might describe as the growth of an ethnic niche, using official

census data that obscure differentiations below the national-origin level, may simply be

a case of misplaced concreteness? From the standpoint of the home society, the

environment that appears so homogeneous to the outsiders is more likely to represent

unparalleled diversity. After all, relatively small shifts in the number of persons having

out-group contacts quickly diminishes the proportion of relationships that are entirely

encapsulated within the group; before too long, everyone has a contact that extends

92

beyond the original circle.

While the new society offers opportunities for exposure far wider than those ever

imagined back home, a variety of factors keep the options circumscribed. At the bottom

of the labor market, like meets like -- which is to say, workers differing in ethnic and

national origins, but otherwise quite similar in social traits and related dispositions. To

the extent that ethnicity and class bear little relationship, persons who qualify as

outsiders by virtue of national origins will run into those who also lack acceptance, but

by virtue of social class position. On the other hand, the forces that create the demand

for immigrant workers tend to be the same as those that put native-born labor in short

supply (Wallterstein 2000; Harvey 1989). Past and present, there have been relatively

few members of the American working-class in those sectors of the economy where

peasant migrants have made a living. Rephrased in somewhat more abstract terms, the

potential for immigrant exposure to dominant group outsiders is limited by the degree

of overlap in the distribution of other, relevant social characteristics. Where the

occupational, educational, and geographic distributions barely overlap -- as for example,

in the case of native-born Euro-Americans and Mexican immigrants in early 21st century

Los Angeles -- these sets of strangers will frequently encounter one another as

subordinates and superiors, but far more rarely as potential neighbors, friends, or

intimates.

Moreover, exposure does not guarantee acceptance. Peasant migrants are

preferred precisely because they are despised, a quality which makes them all the more

desirable in performing a society's least desired tasks (Waldiger & Licther 2003). As it

happens, those tasks are dishonoring, which is why the stigma associated with dirty jobs

rubs on to their incumbents. And all the worse if the children of immigrants retain their

parents' stigma, while acquiring American aspirations -- in which case, we can expect

that they will be neither liked nor preferred. So migration may induce far-reaching

changes in the ethnic social structure of any source population, as Waldiger & Lichter

93

argue In How the Other Half Works, without in any way yielding the diminished

differences between source and reference populations, predicted by the sociology of

assimilation (12).

To each, his -- or her -- own ethnic myth. Assimilation is the myth of the

dissolution of ethnic boundaries as told from the standpoint of the nation-state society,

which imagines itself to be a bounded, sharply demarcated, entity: The United States of

America. But the economic networks of goods, services, information, and people cut

across any single nation-state society and other like units of the world, propelling

migrants across those interactional cleavages that states try so hard to create (Mann

2002). Even while noting states' remarkable effectiveness at bounding the unit they seek

to enclose, it is our misfortune that this intellectual field crystallized just when the

interactional cleavage at the national boundary was at its height -- leading us to mistake

a contingent event for an inevitability.

By contrast, retention is the myth of persistence, projected backward from a

moment of relatively stable association and affiliation to an interactional field of a totally

different type. In a sense, one myth is at the service of the other, the assumption of

entitivity no less applicable, in the sociology of assimilation, to the immigrants than it is

to the host society. Not for nothing do we have a concept with a digestive meaning, the

very notion of assimilation implying the existence of foreign groups who are absorbed

as their boundaries are dissolved.

But the idea of retention is no less fallacious, since the networks that breach the

nation-state society simultaneously pulls the migrants out of their home environment,

progressively diffusing them across a broader interactional field. Consequently the

diversity of contacts, especially as measured against the interaction networks known

back home, vastly expands. Since only a modest proportion of the home community

ever leaves, one cannot ever recapture the same homogeneity of contact. No matter

where one settles, the new environment is sure to be a place of high exposure

94

probabilities to persons whose traits would have surely marked them as outsiders back

home. On the other hand, members of the host population are incapable of making the

same discriminations as insiders, leading to fundamental attribution errors, which

provide the bases for new identities—i.e. Latino or Hispanic, and more recently, Asian

and Pacific Islander. If back home, sensitivities to regional or linguistic differences rank

high, they diminish or even collapse in the new context, thanks to the lumping efforts of

the unknowing members of the native group—as evidenced most recently, in post-9-11

attacks on Asian Americans mistaken for Arabs from Georgia to California. The ethnic

moment is the time when an interactional field, whose internal ethnic differentiations

are either slight or forgotten, takes hold; but the same forces that bring it into being will

almost surely produce its demise. In the end, ethnic retention and ethnic assimilation

emerge, not just as simplistic, but also as false polarities, two complementary ways of

obscuring the reality we wish to understand.

ACCULTURATION

Like its twin, assimilation, the concept of acculturation has shown the capacity

for absorbing innumerable intellectual beatings and yet endures. By acculturation, the

scholarly literature refers to the process by which an outsider group adopts the culture

of the society into which it has moved. The standard complaints lodged against this

particular conceptualization are too well known to merit extensive review (cf. Omi &

Winant 1992). That there may be a host society on to which could be mapped a single,

uniform culture is pure illusion; at best one can identify an amalgam of subcultures,

varying by region or class, all of which are changing over time. Moreover, the notion

that the transmission of tastes, styles, and beliefs between ethnic outsiders and insiders

follows a single direction is just simplistic—and contradicted by the cultural syncretism

that has accompanied globalization since it began in the Age of Discovery. Not only do

the immigrants import a set of influences that diffuse far beyond the initial, bounded

95

category. They and their descendants engage in a new set of cultural activities - -

partially, in an attempt to respond to or make sense of their new environment -- that

turn out to have broader, innovative effects. Case in point: the Jewish immigrant tycoons

and the Hollywood they invented and sustained.

But complaints of this sort, which can be accommodated without much trouble,

only begin to scratch the surface of the problem. As it is conceptualized in our scholarly

literature on migration and identity formation, culture turns out to be nothing more than

an inventory of traits. However, a trait inventory, as anthropologist Michael Moerman

has pointed out, is merely a list and lists lack closure, which means that they cannot

provide an adequate summary of the parts, let alone the cultural "whole" which they

purport to represent. The difficulties get more serious, when one asks how to identify

the group (or category) to which the traits supposedly belong. Since ethnicity is a

relational concept, identifying some set of traits as characteristic of one group implies

something about the features that typify some other -- each of which is equally "ethnic,"

albeit in its own peculiar way. But then it turns out that "groupness" is precisely in

question, proving too variable to support any fixed set of traits. As the boundary

between groups is not given, but rather constructed, negotiated, and contested, it too

needs to be understood as a cultural product. Of course, the same holds true for the

categories -- native and foreign, American and ethnic, "white" and "Black" -- around

which the boundaries are maintained.

If categories and boundaries are both cultural, then the bedrock distinction

between acculturation and assimilation collapses. That opposition, as Herbert Gans has

written, rests on the contrast between culture and society, a difference which remains

alive and well in the specialized literature of ethnography & sociology, but fares less

well outside that native land. At the very least, we need to avoid assuming that the

relevant actors are cultural dopes, lacking a finely elaborated understanding of the

structures in which they may be encased. On the contrary, we would do better to ask

96

about the everyday theories of the world with which ethnics on both sides of the

native/immigrant divide work, that is to say, the intellectual and emotional toolkits that

allow them to both make distinctions between "us" and "them", and also make sense of

the consequences that ensue.

From this perspective, examining shifts in immigrant traits becomes secondary to

understanding the evolution of their view of the world and their place in it as articulated

in Americanization narratives from Mary Antin’s The Promised Land to Eva Hoffman’s

Lost in Translation. To ask that question, however, demonstrates a greater

connectedness between culture and society than our usual approaches allow.

Immigration, after all, is a transitional phenomenon, in which immigrants slowly give

up the attachments that rooted them to their earlier lives. What the scholarly literature

describes as the "dual frame of reference" refers to immigrants' tendency to understand

their condition relevant to a benchmark that the native population does not share. Put

somewhat differently, it provides the theory by which immigrants make sense of their

condition, in an interpretation with which few persons, native to the host society, could

agree.

But meanings change as the frame of reference -- and related social attachments -

- shift. Part of becoming “American” therefore involves a change in one’s understanding

of what that state/status entails. In this respect, the crucial point of departure occurs

when immigrants and/or their children take on a native theory of American society, as

well as the associated ways of acting and feeling. Rephrased only slightly, acculturation

therefore refers to the process whereby outsiders come to understand themselves as

candidate insiders in a loosely structured democratic society where a special premium is

placed on the expression and development of the individual self. That particular change

is potentially incendiary, in part, because the practical utility of immigration involves

the repression of those needs for self-gratification deemed normative by the native

population. But the gratified American self is likely to be more than a materially satiated

97

self; an American self also derives a sense of worth from a situation of presumed

equality with ethnic insiders. Therefore, the explosive potential is greater still, since fully

Americanized immigrants and their descendants will be unlikely to accept the

subordination which the new arrivals take as a given.

Of course, the way in which one understands the world is related to the tools

employed for comprehending it. For that reason, the diffusion of cultural patterns from

insiders to outsiders yields an effect at considerable variance from what our standard

accounts suggest. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, as epitomized by the so-called

"straight-line" theory, one would do better to forecast a pattern of non-linear change.

Reducing cultural difference is probably the best means for increasing sensitivity to any

disparities that persist. The better one reads, talks, speaks the native code, the easier it is

see which of its promises haven't been delivered; and the greater one has bought into the

national creed, the more bitter the disappointment if one's expectations turn out to be

unfulfilled.

Moreover, culture as theory of the world or worldview necessarily implicates

insiders in ways that our conventional literature manages to elide, if not dismiss out of

hand. The distinction between native and foreign traits only holds if we assume that the

latter are truly alien. Since the presence of social outsiders imported from beyond the

boundaries of the state is a recurrent, and therefore native, phenomenon to the United

States, the culture of its natives also encompasses their everyday, working theories of

immigrants and immigration. Put somewhat differently, the culture shared by

Americans includes a set of variable understandings of the boundaries separating

native-born insiders from immigrant outsiders, as well as interpretations of the

conditions for membership in the American people and the meanings that that status

entails.

Thus, the very recruitment of immigrant labor needs to be understood as a

culturally-informed, if not cultural, activity itself. Marxist or Marxist-inspired theories

98

have it largely right: the dynamic, unequal nature of capitalist economies yields

perpetual recourse to cheaper, more tractable sources of labor from beyond the society's

bounds. Nonetheless, they assume what needs to be explained: namely, the existence of

the categories distinguishing immigrant from native labor, and the understandings

entailed in that discrimination. Let me put it crudely, if not in the least bit unfairly:

immigrants comprise a group of workers whom their employers at once prefer but also

despise. The employers' contempt is the stuff of the social psychological literature, a

body of work that points to some universal cognitive mechanisms, but cannot explain

the specific discriminations between particular groups of them and us in other than

cultural terms. But the employers' preference for immigrants can be best understood as

an everyday theory of immigrant labor, in which immigrants are perceived as that class

of worker that evaluates conditions “here” in light of how bad they are “there.” That

quality makes immigrants preferable to the native-born alternatives, who are comprised

of people that set their sights on rewards a good deal higher than those available at the

bottom of the totem pole of global capitalism. And thus we can see why immigration

needs to be thought of as a property of the national culture, as native employers value

foreigners, doing so precisely because they understand the immigrants to be different.

If understandings about immigrants and immigration comprise part of the

national culture, then those processes conventionally denoted as "acculturation" also

entail the mechanisms whereby immigrants and their descendants become oriented

toward insiders' view of ethnic outsiders. Those views need not always imply derision

or rejection, and one can trace a shift, over the course of the last century, from more

exclusive to more accepting understandings. On the other hand, our imaginative

literature and scholarship reveal a continuing perception of immigrants as different, a

preoccupation that can only suggest that such difference is a source of discomfort and

trouble. Certainly, pre-Civil Rights commentators took rejection of ethnic difference for

granted; I note that Milton Gordon identified a decline of the prejudices held by insiders

99

as one of the very last stages in his assimilation typology. And the large majorities that

continue to voice opposition to large-scale immigration, if only when asked, not to speak

of the smaller, though more vocal group of nativists and restrictionists do leave grounds

for thinking that acceptance remains problematic.

Thus, in construing immigration as an occurrence of a foreign, and not native,

type, both literary and social scientific understandings construct the familiar as strange.

From the standpoint of the self-proclaimed normals, that is to say, our nation’s so-called

"majority group", difference appears undesirable. Moreover, the views of these

particular normals count, not simply because they possess the key to acceptance, and the

goodies it unlocks; acculturation itself at once orients outsiders toward the standards of

insiders, and leads them to accept insiders' standards of judgment. From this point on,

the analysis proceeds straightforwardly: As Goffman explained, the stigma associated

with an ethnic, or any other sort of difference, at once confirms the usualness of the

stigmatizer, while discrediting the stigmatized. Since one is stigmatized by association,

with the stigma spreading from the stigmatized person to his or her intimates,

disaffiliation from the more stigmatized elements provides one route of obtaining

acceptance. To quote Goffman’s Stigma, "the very notion of shameful differences

assumes a similarity in regard to crucial beliefs" (1963). Therefore, acculturation and

stigmatization can turn out to be one and the same, as immigrants and their descendants

display their growing attachment to the host society by adopting the ways of the insider

group and seeking their approval.

One can easily go further. In orienting themselves toward insiders' views,

outsiders also accept the reference group's view of themselves. The outsiders wish to do

more than simply erase the difference that separates them from insiders. They also feel

compelled to reject the very same qualities of their own group to which insiders object,

which not only belong to others of their originating kind, but regrettably are to be found

within the self. At its best, the result is the phenomenon of "double consciousness" first

100

described by DuBois in his The Souls of black Folks: "this sense of always looking at

one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring oneself by the tape of a world that

looks on in amused contempt and pity." (1903, p. 4) At its worst, the stigmatized

outsiders find their way to self-hatred.

These are the terms that we do not usually find in the social scientific lexicon;

though the reconstructed American literary canon of the 1980s and 1990s abound in such

double-voicedness and dialogism. After all, can we doubt that is an unself-consciously

assimilationist sociology of assimilation, when the author of our canonical

text—Assimilation in American Life--is none other than a Goldberg turned Gordon, the

name change the symbolic equivalent of the nose job. Yes, I'll concede that name

changes and nose jobs are possibly motivated by a quintessentially American desire to

start afresh. Still, we have to admit that some distaste for one's prior self almost surely

plays a significant role. And is it just an accident -- as the ex-Marxists among us used to

say -- that in the 15 page-long, double column index to the recent Handbook of

International Migration, there is not a single entry to stigma or self-hatred?

On the other hand, the stigmatizers of immigrant America -- that is to say, the

assimilation literature's "core cultural group" – do not always have the good fortune of

encountering a human material equally susceptible to stigmatization. The peasant

migrants of the turn of the twentieth century didn't need a social scientist or literary

critic to tell them that they were expected to act as inferiors, as that was the lesson that

they had absorbed in the old world, where the peasant's stigmatized status, relative to

townsmen or aristocrats, was beyond question. And was there any reason to doubt the

claims of the insiders who sought to Americanize them? After all, the United States was

then the very acme of modernity, its material abundance and growing national power

the demonstration of its superiority, as against the immigrants and the old worlds from

which they came.

But today's immigrants have entered a different world, one where stigmatized

101

outsiders have learned a few new tricks. Inversion was always one of the weapons of the

weak: it is better to be “bad.” But inversion is now utilized in self-conscious ways, with

stigma at once revalued as the positive pole of one's identity, as Christian Joppke has

pointed out, but also turned around, forcing the stigmatizers to confront their own

shameful deeds (Citizenship Between De- and Re-Ethnicization 2003). "Black is

beautiful," was a revolutionary slogan, and all the more powerful because it worked.

The ethnic revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s, so scorned by Glazer to Walzer,

illustrates a glimmer of belated recognition: the young ethnic intellectuals of the time

realized that their parents had swallowed the American dream hook, line, and sinker,

when in fact that they need not have gone so far. And while that particular ethnic

revival had no hope -- history had moved too fast -- the new post-1965 immigrants

arrived just in time to take up the cultural tool kit that the civil rights revolution had

invented and legitimated.

Moreover, today's immigrants are especially well-suited to use this particular

tool. Relative to the past, contemporary immigrants are distinguished by their

considerable symbolic capital and competence; as for the less-skilled immigrants, they

tend to find a proximal host, equipped with the necessary intellectual arsenal. So even if

the Barthian insight holds -- the influence of America's democratic, consumerist culture

quickly rendering ethnicity an empty vessel, absent of most content -- the collectivities in

which the immigrants participate have the capacity to both create and consume a

symbolic content for the vessel which they inhabit. That symbolic capacity is fateful,

since the stakes involve the relationship between “who is what” and “who gets what.”

In that contest, today's immigrants fare relatively well, since the ability to tap into

desired resources largely rests on the ability to legitimize some particular who. (Barth,

1969)

102

ETHNIC GROUP -- OR GROUPNESS?

If the sociology of assimilation or the literature of Americanization prefers to

ignore the identity of the insiders to which the at best, ambivalently welcomed

outsiders, are to be oriented, it shows no similar shyness regarding the "themness" of the

outsiders whose behavior it is so intent in describing. A slightly older, less self-conscious

scholarly tradition in made that them-ness crystal clear: we were talking about the

assimilation of "ethnic groups". But it is groupness precisely that is at question. At the

very least, the degree of groupness is likely to vary, a good deal lower among those

categories of persons for whom groupness is embedded in a highly particular, place-

specific way of life, as opposed to the self-conscious sense of belonging engendered by a

process nation-building. The peasant migrants of the past came from a set of folk

societies, not yet nationalized, and therefore not possessing the common traits and

corporate sense that the nation-building project imparts. By contrast, today’s newcomers

typically arrive with a prior experience of nationalization, which means that they show

up fully equipped with the resources for understanding themselves as self-conscious

entities of an ethnic sort. Moreover, the capacity for groupness also hinges on the

symbolic and cultural resources required to articulate an explicit understanding of

groupness, that is to say, how I fit in with those "like me" and those who are different.

From this standpoint, almost all of yesterday’s migrations were lacking the human

resources needed for the articulation of ethnic differences. In comparison, the

extraordinarily high level of education characteristic of many of today's international

immigrant flows implies far greater symbolic competence, crucial for both elaborating

and legitimating ethnic identities.

While I am suggesting that we think in terms of “groupness” rather than

“group,” much of the scholarly literature and literary criticism has moved in a different

direction, largely, out of an understandable reaction to the problems bequeathed by our

103

intellectual legacy. The standard critique of the older assimilationist paradigm starts

with the point Waldiger offerered in Ethnic Los Angeles, namely, that the assimilation

model seems to fit the trajectory of European origin groups, but that “the historical

experience of immigrants of non-European origin requires a different approach.” (18)

Behind the confusion lay a common enough notion: that these two immigrations

contained groupings of a fundamentally different sort. However impoverished or

stigmatized, the European immigrants shared a common cultural and racial background

with the majority whose acceptance they sought; by contrast, the non-European

newcomers were far more distinctive, and on both counts. In effect, race mattered, to

paraphrase the title of Cornell West’s well-known book, facilitating inclusion in one

case, while hindering it in the other.

Unfortunately, this formulation mistakes cause and effect: acceptance did not

occur because the European immigrants were white when they stepped off the boat;

their children became white in America, which is what then allowed for inclusion. The

older scholarly formulations of Robert Parks and the “Chicago School” of sociology

imagined the process by which immigrants became Americans as if it could be

abstracted from the system of ethnic stratification into which the immigrants entered. In

fact, Oscar Handlin wrought an earlier revolution in immigration historiography when

he realized that the “history of immigration was the history of American people,” in the

process, excising a large portion of the people he purported to describe in The Uprooted

(1951). His sociological contemporaries were not guilty of the same slip; the major

accounts of the 1960s sought to understand an ethnic order made up of the descendants

of those who had become Americans, not just by consent, but by force as well. However,

the analysis proceeded as if all groups of outsiders started equally at the bottom,

confronting barriers of similar sorts. More importantly, the underlying framework

neglected the contrastive nature of the social identities, which the immigrants and their

descendants gradually absorbed. We know who we are only by reference to whom we

104

are not; likewise, for the progeny of the European immigrants, who became members of

a majority that defined itself through exclusion. But as novelist Toni Morrison has

eloquently and damningly argued in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary

Imagination, our national literature and history have been slow to acknowledge that

(white) majority implied (colored) minority (1992). And so when the descendants of the

European immigrants made an unexpected appearance in the late 1960s, they did so

under the guise of “white ethnics,” as if it were transparent just why and how white

should modify ethnic, rather than the other way around.

Of course, today we know better, though it is depressing to note that historians,

not social scientist, have been chiefly responsible for changing our views. A rapidly

expanding corpus tells us that the once swarthy immigrants from southern, eastern, and

even northern Europe eventually became white, which is another way of saying that

“race” is an achieved, not an ascribed status. One can try to reconcile this observation

with the older assimilation story, contending that racial perceptions changed as the Irish,

Poles, Italians, and Jews moved ahead, and were then able to move among the same

people who had previously held them in contempt. However, this formulation leaves

out the essential, contrastive element: in becoming white, the immigrants and their

descendants also became party to strategies of social closure that maintained others’

exclusion as noted by David Roedriger in The Wages of Whiteness (1991).

But the whiteness literature only gets us so far: After all, the man and woman in

the street will tell us that Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles, you name the group, are whites. We

then still need reference to some other set of concepts to explain what the everyday

categorization as “white” entails. The contribution of “new white studies” is to remind

us that the European immigrants were once not-quite-white, and that reminder

underscores the fluidity that the everyday notions obscure. Yet having said this, we run

the risk of describing the indeterminacy of this “not-quite-white” status in ways that fall

into the circularity of making recourse to the concept of race itself. And once we have

105

underscored the mutability of racial status, our customary option of contrasting groups

of different kind no longer holds. Though we say that a group has changed its colors, we

really mean something else: it has now acquired eligibility for participation among

established groups, all the while engaging in efforts to maintain boundaries, against

some other, more stigmatized entity—for example, blackface minstrelsy functioned in

much this manner for the 19th century Irish and 20th century Jewish immigrants (Rogin,

BlackFase, White Noise, 1996).

Thus, some of the more recent scholarship too often maintains the vices of the

old. It is one thing to argue that the struggle for place in a contested, ethnic order has

historically provided ample motivations for newcomers to resolve the ambiguities over

how their racial identities are to be defined. But it is another thing, altogether, to insist

that these racialized categories represent real, substantial groupings of a fundamentally

different sort. The American ethnic system is not a container of independent units, but

rather a relational matrix, in which categories are constructed and applied through a set

of ongoing interactions in ways that affect distributional outcomes. And though

everyday language portrays insiders and outsiders as mutually exclusive, bounded

entities, the reality is often otherwise, with the nexus between ethnic category and

pattern of association varying from one dimension of social life to another. True, our

unfortunate history has produced far too many situations in which excluded outsiders

were never eligible for acceptance -- whether as co-workers, neighbors, friends, or

intimates. Yet in phrasing the matter this way, we substitute an analytic language that

modifies the absolute distinctions implied by the concept of “race.” We also convert the

relationship between “them” and “us” into a continuum, and thereby gain purchase on

the dynamic nature of ethnic life, without succumbing to the groupist illusion that has

so often clouded our vision in the past and should not carry over into imagined

communities of the American future.

106

CHAPTER 6 : LOST IN INTERPELLATION: CHANG-RAE LEE’S NATIVE SPEAKER

THE NARATIVE PURSUITS OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL TRICKSTER

Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker (1995) is certainly the best-known contemporary

Korean American novel.1 It covers at least three genres: it is an excellent city novel set in

New York City, a spy novel and, most of all, an immigrant novel. There are two plots; in

one, the narrator Henry Park tells of his private life, in the other of his job as private

detective/commercial spy. So far, reviews, notices and interpretations of Native Speaker

have been dominated by two important aspects, namely whiteness and language.2 Both

subjects are important for my reading of the text as well, but I would additionally like to

focus on Henry Park's narrative identity and on immigration as a basic themes of the

novel.

NARRATIVE SYNOPSIS: LOST IN INTERPELLATION

Henry Byong-Ho Park is a Korean American in his early thirties. He seems to be

a lonely person; his wife Lelia has just left him, his parents both passed away a while

ago, he does not seem to have any friends, and at work everybody, including Henry, is a

loner. Loneliness, however, is never really made the subject of the book, since Henry

does not seem to be bothered by it—in fact, this social distance underwrites his ethnic-

minstrelsy-qua-commercial-espionage. Bit by bit, Henry tells of his past. His narration is

associative and without any real chronology. He tells of his wife Lelia, how they met,

their marriage, the death of their child. He relates childhood memories that do not seem

very happy, and he describes his work at the C.I.A.-esque "firm." Especially his last two

jobs were of importance: one of them was to find out everything about a Filipino

American psychologist called Emile Luzan, which he did by becoming his patient. For

the first time in his career, however, Henry is close to failing: he almost gives himself

107

away. The other job, his last one, is also difficult for him. He is supposed to spy on the

politician John Kwang and therefore starts working as a volunteer for Kwang's election

campaign. The better he gets to know the politician of Korean origin, though, the more

he is fascinated by his personality. Only when Kwang finally disappoints him is Henry

capable to accomplish his job and deliver important evidence against him. The novel

ends in relative harmony: Lelia and Henry get back together. Henry stops his job at the

"firm," which so far had stood between them, and starts helping Lelia with her work as a

speech therapist.

This quick summary of the novel might be misleading, though. In fact, Native

Speaker is a multi-layered narrative in which events often are ambiguous, amorphous, .

The plot as described above is only the mere backdrop for a complex conflict that takes

place within Henry. In order to get a better understanding of Henry, as narrator and

focalizing consciousness in the novel, it is necessary to put together some of the bits and

pieces he relates throughout the narrative about different nodal points, topoi and fibulae

he draws upon in crafting an authorized narrative self that demonstrates both linguistic

competence and ideological conformity, if not ethno-racial or religious kinship. The

Medean “generalized Other” that Henry has introjected and been interpellated by is

both repressive and generative of the very subjectivities her operationalizes in diverse

social situations—the narratological objective correlative of an everyday presentation of

self a la Goffman.

THE LONG PLANE RIDE: CHILDHOOD & YOUTH, OR WHEREIN THE PRE-REFLEXIVE COGITO GOES BAD

Henry Park was born in the United States and is therefore an American citizen.

For him this is pure chance: "My citizenship is an accident of birth, my mother

delivering me on this end of a long plane ride from Seoul." (334) Exactly at the moment

that his immigrant parents arrive in their new country, he is born. He himself is an

108

immigrant, too, but by means of a simple law he is American at the same time. This

simultaneousness of being both, immigrant and American will be symptomatic for

Henry for the rest of the novel.

From an early age, Henry confronts questions of identity. The contrast between

his Korean parents and his Korean looks and his (white) American surroundings as

Henry recalls the mystic chords of memory:

"… for a time in my boyhood I would often awake before dawn and step outsideon the front porch. It was always perfectly quiet and dark, as if the land werecompletely unpeopled save for me. No Korean father or mother, no tauntingboys or girls, no teachers showing me how to say my American name. I'd thenrun back inside and look in the mirror, desperately hoping in that solitarymoment to catch a glimpse of who I truly was but looking back at me was justthe same boy again, no clearer than before, unshakably lodged in that difficultface." 323 [emphasis added]

Henry tries to be an inconspicuous child who blends well into his surroundings.

Like his parents, he wants to be as unobtrusive as possible, not a burden to anyone--

while sub-rosa a simmering “immigrant rage” fuels the “multiverse” of “newcomer”

subjectivities:

"So call me what you will. An assimilationist, a lackey. A duteous foreign-facedboy. I have already been what you can say or imagine, every version of thenewcomer who is always fearing and bitter and sad." (160)

At an early age, Henry is thus trying to obscure his difference by becoming

almost invisible through immaculate behavior and seamless adaptation to his

environment. He will later improve this camouflaging skill and make it his profession

and code of not only silent but invisibility—hence the frequent visual rhetorics of

“seeing & being” that Sartre articulated phenomenologically in Being & Nothingness but

was earlier artistically perfected by Ellison in Invisible Man. The creation of an inter-

subjective, socio-cultural chameleon—a popular version of Sartre’s pre-reflexive cogito--

as the nodal point of entry into the range of subjectivities and hence subject position

available within the socius is reminiscent of the confidence men Melville and Twain

chronicled and thereby making charter members of the American Pantheon of 19th

109

century canonic subjectivities—the social outcast, outlaw, ka ethnos, other were socially

recognized category. In his marriage with Lelia, he plays his role as husband perfectly,

too. He is everything that is expected of him, but never really himself, which leads

eventually to the end of his marriage:

On paper, by any known standard, I was an impeccable mate. I did everythingwell enough, was romantic and sensitive and silly enough, I made love enough,was paternal enough, big brotherly, just a good friend enough, father-to-my-sonenough, forlorn enough, and then even bull-headed and dull and macho enough,to make it all seamless. For ten years she hadn't realized the breadth of what Ihad accomplished with my exacting competence, the daily work I did, whichunto itself became an unassailable body of cover. (161)

RHETORICS OF DESCENT & DIFFERENCE: TROPES OF FAMILY & FILIALSUBJECTIVITIES

Henry's family is extremely important in his quest to find out who he is. He is

shaped by the influence of his immigrant parents and by living with his white American

wife. It is by drawing similarities and finding out about contrasts that Henry tries to

position himself, tries to discover what is Korean, what American, and what is maybe

both or possibly neither.

His ability to adapt perfectly to certain environments and situations is something

that Henry developed partly by himself because he noticed at an early age that

difference might cause negative reactions. Additionally from his favorite T.V. sitcoms he

learned how to resolve such identity and non-identity contests dramaturgically through

transgressive-yet-symbolic role-playing (think: Lucy-as-confectioner at chocolate

factory) and autobiographical self-fashioning (think: Ricky-and-Lucy in Hollywood).

For the most part, however, he took this behavior over from his parents. His father, for

example, always came to watch Henry play baseball, but he never cheered him on and

instead always stood quietly by. The mother never dared to ask a neighbor for lacking

ingredients and instead rather ruined a meal. Later in life, Henry sees in their behavior

the exaggerated dependence of the immigrant on the new country—an identity

110

addiction that embraced the ideological Americanism of the period:

"[W]e believed in anything American, in impressing Americans, in makingmoney, in polishing apples in the dead of the night, perfectly pressed pants, perfectcredit, being perfect, shooting black people, watching our stores and offices burn downto the ground." (52/53)

Despite of his critical attitude towards them, Henry's parents remain an

important influence in his life. He often contemplates, for example, what his late mother

would have thought about certain people or situation; thus, rendering one of the many

voices of the Generalized Other through a regressive narrative frame depicting an

imagined dialogue that more accurately resembling the form and function of dramatic

internal monologues from Plato’s to Hamlet’s:

My mother, in her hurt, invaded, Korean way, would have counseled meto distrust him, this clever Japanese. Then, too, she would have advised againstmy marriage to Lelia, the lengthy Anglican goddess, who'd measure meceaselessly while I slept, continually appraise our vast differences, count up theways. (15) …She believed that displays of emotion signaled a certain failurebetween people. … I thought she possessed the most exquisite control over themuscles of her face. She seemed to have the subtle power of inflection over them,the way a tongue can move air. (31)

The mother, who never wanted to stay in the United States, sticks to old Korean

views on the Japanese and ceaselessly emphasizes the difference between their (Korean)

family and the Americans. Firmly believing in controlling emotions in the presence of

strangers, "American" openness and emotionality seemed strange to her. She did not

believe in the American dream for immigrants of color – in her opinion there was a limit

to what they could achieve, no matter how hard they tried. About Kwang, the politician,

she would have thought: "Didn't he know he could only get so far with his face so

different and broad?" Kwang's wish to become mayor of New York would have been

absolute hubris for her. She simply thought that life means endless suffering.196

Henry's father, on the other hand, is the perfect immigrant. Not unlike the typical

Korean newcomer protagonist of the late 20th century, he comes as a graduate of a

Korean elite university to the United States and finds himself working in grocery stores.

By working incredibly hard, he manages to build up a small chain of stores and to move

111

with his son to a wealthy neighborhood (his wife has passed away by then). For him, the

American dream becomes true, but it does not make him a happy man, for his family is

incomplete and he does not have any time for his son with whom he does not get along

anymore. Though part of the American dream, he never becomes American. Growing

up, Henry views him as utterly Korean, as completely out of place. He is ashamed of his

father's faulty English and fights with him constantly.

The absolute alien in Henry's family, however, is Ahjuhma. She is a woman who

one day suddenly appears in Henry's life. His father arranged for her to come from

Korea to take care of their household. She lives in a separated part of their house and

spends most of her time in the kitchen. She does not attempt to learn any English at all

or to meet anybody. The only people she talks to are Henry and his father. She is, as one

of Henry's white friends from school remarks, "a total alien." (78) Henry does not like

her and only talks to her when necessary. Even when he recognizes later that for his

father she is more than just a housekeeper, she does not become part of his idea of a

family. Lelia finds it intolerable that Ahjuhma fulfills the tasks of a homemaker, mother,

and even lover, but is not accepted as such. She cannot believe that Henry, during all the

years that the woman worked for his father and him, not once asked for her name. The

woman is always simply called "ahjuhma," the Korean way of addressing an older

woman to whom one is not related: the functional analog to the ethnic Southern

“ma’am” reminiscent of Faulkner’s imagined communities in Absalom, Absalom!

(1936).7 When Lelia meets the woman, she wants to do better by her than Henry has so

far and tries to communicate with her, but is rejected by her in a rude way. The

argument Henry and Lelia have about Ahjuhma marks a moment in the novel in which

the cultural difference between them becomes palpable and is made visible and manifest

linguistically. Henry does not understand Ahjuhma, nor does he like her much, but this

is not reflected – as Lelia assumes – in his ignorance about her personal “Christian”

name, if you will. As in many Asian languages, in Korean people are often not

112

addressed by their name directly as a sign of respect and social deference is registered

linguistically with a social injunction against the use of one’s interlocutor’s first name.

Language conventions, in this instance, seek to discriminate among social categories of

individuals instrumental in facilitating or enabling the narrative emergence of self. Lee

narrates how social categories become prosopopaeic linguistic masks—a narrative echo

of the masks (dramatis personae) used throughout classic drama and whose prima facie

specular logic Twain satirizes in The Prince and the Pauper—the sartorial Ur-text of the

American rags-to-riches narrative, pace Horatio Alger. There are special ways of

addressing spouses, relatives, friends, colleagues, superiors, and even strangers, and

most of the time it is more polite to address them this way than by their name. Only

younger people are called directly by their names. Lelia, who calls her parents by their

first names, does not know this. She is trying to communicate with Ahjuhma but does

not realize that she is getting too close to her, that she is not respecting her privacy, that

she is forcing her way into the woman's territory. While trying to "save" the woman, she

does not notice that the woman does not want to be saved and, most of all, does not

wish to have contact to her, the "American." At this moment of their argument, Henry

distinguishes between Americans (and that means Lelia) and Koreans (including

himself): "Americans live on a first-name basis. She didn't understand that there weren't

moments in our language – the rigorous, regimental one of family and servants – where

the woman's name could have naturally come out." (69) It is in moments like this that he

realizes how Korean he is. Even though Ahjuhma is also an "alien" for him and the

embodiment of all things Korean that he dislikes, and even though he often wishes to be

more American, he has to admit that he is not like Lelia, not like "Americans."

If Ahjuhma embodies everything strange, foreign and alien, then Lelia is the

"native."8 Her name already signals whiteness, and when Henry meets her for the first

time, it is her whiteness he notices first: "I noticed she was very white, the skin of her

shoulder almost blue, opalescent, unbelievably pale considering where she lived [El

113

Paso]." (9) Henry continuously points out the visual differences between himself and his

"American wife," for example by calling her "the lengthy Anglican goddess." (15) Lelia is

indeed quite different from Henry. While he does not talk much about his feelings, life,

or job and has many secrets, Lelia is open and direct. One might even say that in the two

persons of Henry and Lelia the contrast between Korea and the United States is

highlighted once again. Lelia, for example, is described as an almost stereotypical

American. Her character is, as Min Song has pointed out, amazingly underdeveloped

and only roughly outlined.9 The main reason for this, however, can be found in the

narrative perspective. Henry is the sole narrator and everything is seen from his

perspective and in relation to his person and focalizing narrative subjecitivities.

Borrowing Virginia Wolfe’s metaphoric line of argument in A Room of One’s Own, it is

Lelia's socio-literary role to be Henry's American mirror; marrying a white woman has

not made him more "American," but instead makes him face his difference day after day.

Lelia's directness encourages this. When they meet for the first time, in her direct way

she describes how she perceived him: "I saw you right away when you came in…You

kept pulling at your tie and then tightening it back up. I saw a little kid in a hot church."

(9) When she leaves him, she leaves behind a list describing Henry, a list "of who I was."

(1) At first, Henry takes the list extremely seriously, and it takes him some time to realize

that the list is not a complete description of his self, but only names some aspects.

Henry also describes Lelia’s parents quite sketchily and stereotypically. They are

only mentioned to explain the background Lelia stems from. Molly and Stew are

alcoholics, divorced, and rich. They both live in Massachusetts. They were open-minded

about their daughter marrying a person of color, even though Henry remembers

moments of unintended racism. When Lelia recalls that Molly always liked Henry, he

answers "'I'm her exotic. ... Like a snow leopard. Except I'm not porcelain.'" Stew –

"Groton, Princeton, Harvard Business School...Chief Executive Officer. Do not fuck with

this man." – praises Henry's "Oriental culture" and, meaning well, adds: "'You Koreans

114

are really doing a number on them [the Japanese], in certain areas. You're kicking some

major butt around the world.'" (119-22) Stew and Molly obviously see in Henry a Korean

and Asian and not a fellow American.

Even though there had been difficulties in Henry and Lelia's relationship before,

the death of their son Mitt is decisive in their separation. Lelia mourns his death openly,

while Henry withdraws into his shell. She blames him for this several times and once

even stresses the ethnic difference between them by calling her mourning self a "mad

white lady in the attic" (119, my emphasis). She describes Henry as the Asian stoic who

perfectly and without any visible emotions does his duties as a mourning father. Mitt,

their perfect and happy child, dies on his seventh birthday.

Half-white and half-Korean, he embodies the chasm within his father but he does

not live it—an off-stage, spectral rendition of Hester’s Pearl. He speaks perfect English,

but – in contrast to his father – does not mind the broken English of his Korean

grandfather. On Sundays, Lelia sends him to Korean school so that he picks up some

Korean as well, but Henry does not approve: "...my hope was that he would grow up

with a singular sense of his world, a life univocal, which might have offered him the

authority and confidence that his broad half-yellow face could not. Of course this is

assimilationist sentiment, part of my own ugly and half-blind romance with the land."

(267)

"…I was the one who was hoping whiteness for Mitt, being fearful of what Imight have bestowed on him: all that too-ready devotion and honoring, and thechilly pitch of my blood, and then that burning language that I once presumeduseless, never uttered and never lived" (285).

Henry wants to spare his son the existential angst of the psychic chasm he feels

but does not realize that his son might not feel split. Mitt's perfect little life, however,

does not last long. Like a "tragic mulatto," he is doomed to die: he is crushed to death in

a "dog pile," playing with white kids from the neighborhood who, after some initial

racist remarks, have become his friends. Here, Chang-Rae Lee plays with the motif of

115

the "tragic Eurasian," which can be found in many early works by white Americans on

Asians. Like tragic mulattoes in early 20th century stage and print favorites like Farber’s

Showboat or Chopin’s The Awakening, they are depicted as hysterically torn between

their good/white/western half and their evil/colored/ethnic half. Because of their inner

conflict, they are often doomed to die young. 10 Lee was mostly like aware of this

literary motif, and it is therefore most interesting that he lets Mitt, who bridges both

cultures so perfectly, die that young. This can be seen as a sign that, at least at this point

of the novel, there is no prima facie, hybrid Korean American solution – Henry is still

torn between his Korean background and his American socius. Since Henry cannot

really identify with either of these two typological poles, which are represented by the

respective members of his family, it is only natural that in the beginning of the

autobiographical novel, when his identity-conflict is most explicit, he is left without any

family: both of his parents are dead, Lelia has left him, and Mitt has died as well.

IMMIGRANT AUTOBIOGRAPHICS: THE AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHIC IMPULSE

Henry strictly separates his private life from his job. Nobody in his family, not

even Lelia, knows how Henry earns his money. He describes his work at the "firm" as

follows:

We casually spoke of ourselves as business people. Domestic travelers. We wentwherever there was a need … In a phrase, we were spies… We weren’t the kindof figures you naturally thought of or maybe even hoped existed. … We choseinstead to deal in people. Each of us engaged our own kind, more or less. Foreignworkers, immigrants, first-generationals, neo-Americans. I worked with Koreans,Pete with Japanese. We split up the rest, the Chinese, Laotians, Singaporeans,Filipinos, the whole transplanted Pacific Rim. Grace handled Eastern Europe;Jack, the Mediterranean and Middle East; the two Jimmys, Baptiste and Perez,Central America and Africa. (17)

The "firm" thus uses "ethnic spies," native informants, who “spy on their own kind” to

find out the information demanded and paid for by their clients. Immigrants are their

prime target. There is a high demand for their work and "no other firm with any ethnic

coverage to speak of" (18). The maxim of Dennis Hoagland, head of the firm, is "to be a

116

true spy of identity ... you must be a spy of the culture." (206) The firm deals with

identity narratives: a fake identity with a fake past is invented in order to get to know as

much as possible about the background and identity of the "object." Ethnicity becomes

an asset. At first, Henry considers his job his vocation. He, whose identity does not seem

fixed, loves to redefine it himself again and again:

I had always thought that I could be anyone, perhaps several anyones at once.Dennis Hoagland and his private firm had conveniently appeared at the righttime, offering the perfect vocation for the person I was, someone who couldreside in his one place and take half-steps out whenever he wished. … I found asanction from our work, for I thought I had finally found my truest place in theculture. (127)

Henry, experienced in being unobtrusive and inconspicuous from youth on and

additionally with no family and no friends to speak of (there is only Lelia left, but she

walks out on him), is especially well suited for the job of identitarian bricolage. Henry

himself describes his colleague, Pete Ichibata, as the perfect spy, but many of Pete's

attributes are also true for Henry:

Pete makes a good spook but a good spook has no brothers, no sisters, no fatheror mother. He's intentionally lost that huge baggage, those encumberingremnants of blood and flesh, and because of this he carries no memory of ahouse, no memory of a land, he seems to have emerged from nowhere. He'sbrought himself forth, self-cesarean. (173)

There is, however, one great difference between Henry and Pete, and it is this difference

that causes Henry to fail at his job as a corporate spy: he does not have any family left,

but he still remembers his parents, their lives, and their country, which seems to be his

as well. As much as he wishes to have "brought himself forth" and as hard he tries to

ignore the memories unnerving him, he does not succeed. The two jobs in which he fails

miserably are the last ones he is assigned to. Henry feels comfortable with the person he

is to spy on, he feels understood by Emile Luzan, who does not know why Henry really

became his patient. He confides more and more from his real past to the psychologist

instead of making up, as usual, a fake identity: "For the first time I found myself short of

my story, my chosen narrative." (22) Luzan touches Henry's innermost feelings when he

117

assures him, "You'll be yourself again, I promise." (22) Just moments before Henry is

ready to tell Luzan everything, to tell him the truth about the reason why he is there and

the truth about his person, Henry's colleagues intervene and take over. Luzan is later

killed, and it remains unclear whether the firm's client in Luzan's case is responsible for

his death. After this incident, Henry is no longer the same:

"Is this what I have left of the doctor? That I no longer simply can flash a lightinside a character, paint a figure like Kwang with a momentary language, butthat I know the greater truths reside in our necessary fictions spanning humanevent and time?" (206)

In addition to these new insights Henry has in dealing with people, another dangerous

factor comes up when he is observing John Kwang: "I was employing my own life as

material for my alter identity." (181)

THE ETHNIC OTHER: MY MONSTER, MYSELF?

Like Henry's father, John Kwang is the perfect immigrant for whom the

American dream became true. Different from Henry's father, though, he has managed to

break out of the isolation of immigrant life and become a politician and thus a public

figure. Not only is he successful and visionary, he is somebody that is regarded a role

model for others. In contrast to Henry's father, he has managed to become "American"

and get rid of the stigma of the immigrant. His picture can be found in stores owned by

immigrants, and this makes Henry think, "You are the model by which they will work

and live. You are their hope. And all this because you are such a natural American, first

thing and last, if something other in between." (326) The difference between him and

Henry's parents can be mainly found in his self-confidence and a certain fearlessness, an

executive-self:

"He displayed an ambition I didn't recognize, or more, I hadn't yet envisioned assomething a Korean man would find significant or worthy of energy anddevotion; he didn't seem afraid like my mother and father, who were alwayswary of those who would try to shame us or mistreat us." (139)

Also, Kwang speaks without an accent, and even his body, which naturally looks

118

Korean, appears differently. He has, according to Henry, "short Korean legs," but he

walks differently - "he didn't sport the short choppy step of our number, but seemed

instead to stride in luxurious borrowed lengths." (137/138) The story of Kwang's

immigration sounds like many others (210/211), but what Henry finds so fascinating

about him and his story is that Kwang "began to think of America as a part of him,

maybe even his." (211) This is, of course, what Henry and maybe every immigrant

desires – the ultimate American-Dilemma wish-fulfillment of an dream in which the

color of one’s skin does not matter anymore. Through his shining example, he convinces

people that they can be just like him, achieve the same for themselves, and hence

become part of a bigger entity, the nation – e pluribus unum. This is also the main

weapon in his campaign for his political career. His party is a party of immigrants:

"Instead he had made his the party of livery boys and nannies and wok cooksand seamstresses and delivery boys, and his wealthiest patrons were the armies ofsmall-business owners through whose coffers passed all of Queens, by the nickel anddime." (143)

He wins his voters with the American dream by embodying the American dream: "In

ten different languages you say Kwang is like you. You will be an American." (143)

IMMIGRANT BRICOLEUR AS NATIVE-INFORMANT

The more Henry observes Kwang, the better he gets to know him – and in the

end he thinks that he knows him better than anybody else (140) – the closer he feels

attached to him, the more he comes to admire him. Soon he is not capable anymore of

delivering meaningful reports about Kwang to the firm:

"With John Kwang I wrote exemplary reports but I couldn't accept thefact that Hoagland would be combing through them. It seemed like anunbearable encroachment. An exposure of a different order, as if I were offeringa private fact about my father or mother to a complete stranger in one of ourstores." (147)

Jack, Henry's closest colleague, soon recognizes this and notes, "Now, I am

seeing what you write of Kwang, the way you present him with something extra. It is

119

evident that you cannot help yourself. Something takes you over." (291) He believes that

Kwang's influence on Henry is too big and that Henry cannot judge Kwang correctly

and advises him to step back from the job. As in the Luzan job, Henry feels understood

by Kwang - "[s]imply, it felt good not having to explain any further" – not only as a

human being, but also as a second-generation immigrant of color. (182)

Only after Kwang lets him down, is Henry capable of betraying him. Kwang

confesses that he commissioned an attack on his own office in the course of which two

people were killed. One of them was, according to Kwang, a spy. Kwang's political

career is in a crisis, and it is interesting to observe that the more he feels the effects of the

crisis, the more "Korean" he appears. He now resembles more Henry's father, and turns

from a family man into a loner. (296) His perfect appearance is gone; he neglects it

totally. One day he even comes to see Henry in the office, which is installed temporarily

in the basement of Kwang's house, in pajamas and a gown. He does not talk in his

perfect English to Henry anymore, but instead in Korean, and not even standard

Korean, but a dialect. While drunk he sings Korean songs, "...his Korean accent getting

thicker and heavier." (297) Kwang's character regresses, with him turning from a perfect

"American" back into the "Korean" he used to be. Interesting in this context is also

Kwang's house, which carries almost symbolic meaning: he lives in a "stately Victorian

house, … a showplace for the Kwangs' many guests and visiting dignitaries." All the

things Korean, the jars with the smelly kimchi, are hidden in the basement. The house is

an American façade with a hidden, Korean inside. Henry prefers the basement to the

upper levels, stating that the rest of the place "feels borrowed to me, unlived in." (302)

While it is typical for Henry to prefer staying in a basement, hidden away, it is

interesting that it is – at the same time – the “Korean” part of the house. 11

Even though in the end Kwang disappoints Henry, the work with him and his

many immigrant followers leaves a lasting impression on him offering him new

narrative posts and subjectivities to explore or morph into, figuring him as a protean

120

changeling—like the shape-shifitng Odo on the popular space opera Star Trek: Deep

Space 9. He starts to identify more and more with immigrants and their life stories:

"I have steadily become a compiler of lives. I am writing a new book ofthe land. ... And the more I read and remember the more their story is the same.The story is mine. How I come by plane, come by boat." (279)

One of his incognito tasks while working for Kwang was to take care of the

ggeh, the "money club." Ggeh are common in Korea, but also among Korean immigrants

abroad as a means to save up money for larger investments. Each member regularly

pays a certain sum and after a while is paid out the lump sum that has accumulated.

Kwang has built up a gigantic money club, to which anyone can donate a couple of

dollars and, in needy moments, ask for money in return. Henry loves the idea and

identifies totally with it. Repeatedly evincing his interpellation, he talks of "our money

club." (280, emphasis added) With Kwang's help, he gets a better idea of the “American

Dream,” immigrants, his own family, himself, and even of Ahjuhma: "They speak me, as

John Kwang could always, not simply in new accents or notes but in the ancient untold

music of a newcomer's heart, sonorous with longing and hope." (304) For the first time

in his life, he feels the urge to speak Korean, a language he despised all his life, in order

to be able to communicate with immigrants. (316)

One of the reasons why Henry feels close to John Kwang is their similar

background. This similarity is also reflected in their outer appearances, turning Henry

almost into Kwang's doppelgänger. Proleptically, even before Henry takes on the

Kwang-job, his colleague Jack observes, "Sometimes I think you'll look like him, Parky,

in fifteen years or so." (37) Repeatedly, Henry serves as stand-in for interview rehearsals

(92, 99), and several times he is mistaken for Kwang (253, 305). These, of course, might

be accidental situations in which the respective people see an Asian man and think of

Kwang immediately. However, Henry also feels the affinity to Kwang and remarks

about their relationship: "you might say that one was the outlying version of the other."

(138) In the regression of his character, Kwang later turns into someone who resembles

121

more Henry's father than the person he formerly was. This does not contradict the fact

that there is a similarity between Henry and Kwang; Lelia remarks about Henry's father:

"He's just a more brutal version of you." (58) Henry also knows what she is talking about

when she says that he is doing his "father's act:" "When real trouble hits, I lock up." (158)

It is important for Henry's development that he realizes that there is something

of himself in both men, his father and John Kwang. Being an immigrant and the child of

immigrants suddenly acquires a different meaning for Henry. Whereas before, he

always saw himself and his family adrift as lone immigrants in a predominantly white

world, he later learns to see himself as part of a group. Whereas before, being an

immigrant was a stigma for him, it now seems to be something normal, something one

can even be proud of, becoming generative of new narrative subjectivities. This of course

improves Henry's attitude towards his immigrant father immensely.

ENGLISH ONLY!: LANGUAGE AND THE NATIVE SPEAKER

His new attitude towards immigrants and to his own person becomes most

evident in Henry's relationship to language – as the title of the novel proposes. As a

child, Henry has to undergo speech therapy because of his faulty English. His therapist

is an "ancient chalk-white woman" (233) who does not manage to perfect his English.

This is amazing, since Henry was – as we know – born and raised in the United States;

and even if Korean was the dominant language at home, it has to be assumed that he is a

native speaker of English. Henry explains the fact that he remains "between" both

languages by enumerating psychological reasons:

I will always make bad errors of speech. I remind myself of my mother andfather, fumbling in front of strangers. Lelia says there are certain mentalpathways of speaking that can never be unlearned. Sometimes I'll still say riddlefor little, or bent for vent, though without any accent and so whoever's presentjust thinks I've momentarily lost my train of thought. But I always hear myselfdisplacing the two languages, conflating them – maybe conflagrating them – forthere is so much rubbing and friction, a fire always threatens to blow up betweenthe tongues. (234)

122

When Lelia and Henry meet for the first time, Henry remarks: "'People like me are

always thinking about still having an accent.'" (12) Lelia responds: "'You pay attention to

what you're doing. If I had to guess, you're not a native speaker…." (12) Henry is a

native speaker, but by overly paying attention to his ethnicity-qua-stigma, he also

becomes extremely self-conscious of his speech. When he first meets Lelia, almost all of

his thoughts betray a pre-occupation with her responses to his ethnicity and his self-

image as “racial other.” He assumes, for example, that the person who introduced them

"must have thought, let my Asian friend in the suit have a pleasant moment with her."

(9) Lelia "was looking at me closely, maybe wondering what a last name like Park meant

ethnically." (10) "I asked her if she had ever kissed an Asian before." (13) Lelia, the

speech therapist and linguistic "standard-bearer" (12), is of course someone that makes

him feel very self-conscious of his language. When the two get back together again, they

communicate more physically than verbally. Since Henry feels more comfortable with

his immigrant background, we can assume that he is less conscious about his outer

appearance and language and accepts them as they are. He even starts missing his

father's English: "I think I would give most anything to hear my father's talk again, the

crash and bang and stop of his language, always hurtling by." (337) And, most of all, he

starts understanding his father: "And when I consider him, I see how my father had to

retool his life to the ambitions his meager knowledge of the language and culture would

allow, invent again the man he wanted to be. … I am his lone American son, blessed

with every hope and quarter he could provide." (333) Henry no longer wishes to be

invisible and reconciles his American and his immigrant Korean backgrounds. He

realizes that there is no fixed definition of who he is, and that a defining list, like the one

Lelia left for him when she went away, does not exist. The definitions, Lelia's and his

own, can only describe a part of him at a certain moment.

Therefore, in the end, Henry manages to make different statements about

123

himself, and trivial as they may seem, they are a big step towards his recognition that his

identity consists of many aspects: "I know I'm American because I order too much when

I eat Chinese." (326) "We Koreans have reinvented the idea of luck as mostly bad, and try

to do everything we can to prevent it." (327) Watching mostly white, young males

protesting against Kwang, Henry thinks, "By rights I am an American as anyone, as

graced and flawed and righteous as any of these people chanting for fire in the heart of

his house," but at the same time he can identify with immigrants, evoking a DuBoisian

double consciousness:

"And yet I can never stop considering the pitch and drift of their forlorn boats onthe sea, the movements that must be endless, promising nothing to theirnumbers within, headlong voyages scaled in a lyric of search, like the great loveof Solomon." (335)

The last chapter has a peaceful atmosphere and reflects Henry's love for the city of New

York and his newly discovered attraction to multiculturalism. He remembers Mitt and

his parents, but now his memories are without sadness or bitterness. He cooks a hot

Korean soup for Lelia following one of his mother's recipes; and Lelia eats it even

though she does not see the point of eating a spicy hot soup on a hot day. The novel

ends with Lelia pronouncing the names of her non-native speaker students, an ode to

multiculturalism:

"Now, she calls out each one as best as she can, taking care of every last pitch andaccent, and I hear her speaking a dozen lovely and native languages, calling all thedifficult names of who we are." (349)

NARRATIVE RESOLUTIONS AND PLOTS OF MARITAL CONCORD

The identity conflict in Native Speaker is much more like conflicts found in the

"classic" autobiographical immigrant novels of Yazierska and Cahan than, for example,

in its fellow Korean American novel Comfort Woman. Lee shows a man searching for

his self, which is located somewhere between Koreanness and Americanness. In the

124

beginning, he assumes that the two are irreconcilable. Loathing the former, he strives for

the latter, feeling, however, that this leaves him incomplete and with an artificially

constructed identity. In the course of the novel, the protagonist slowly starts to find a

way to embrace his Korean background as a narrative subjectivity becomes available in

the public realm and actually to be proud of being the descendant of immigrants.

Having experienced a Pauline conversion in ethnic identification and affiliation with

Kwang as a mentor, he then turns to a marital Pax Americana to underwrite the

heterosexual legitimacy of an emerging fused-self.

While there are many parallels to the identity conflict in No-No Boy or even

China Men, Native Speaker is also distinctively different from those older “canonical”

Asian American works like Fifth Chinese Daughter or America is in the Heart in that the

conflict is much more layered, nuanced and framed narratively to come to a

denouement in a male mirror-stage that reaffirms patriarchy and the rhetoric of

Confucian filial piety. Nonetheless, Henry Park is already part of the American socius in

having found his own way among the herd, he does not have to prove himself anymore.

He faces a conflict within himself rather than one against a society that does not want

him. He’s more a stranger to himself, than to the land: in fact, the narcissistic alienation,

psychic vampirism and cynical spectatorship of his “day job” as a private undercover

agent confirm his made-in-the-U.S.A.-ethnic autobiographer’s dilemma: choosing

between decrying ethno-racial chauvinism and selling the ethnic self—alienated labor, in

the classic Marxian sense. Interestingly enough, the classic American autobiographical

genre of kunslerroman-qua-immigrant-Jeremiahad following a literary trajectory

through the Calibanic works of Carlos Bulosan, Philip Roth, I.B. Singer, Bernard

Malamud and Frank Chin we can trace the emergence of a spectral narrative chronicling

melodramas of beset immigrant manhood, to paraphrase Nina Baym. This narrtivized

pre-reflexive cogito or authorial voice, Henry discursively re-discovered among

Kwang’s immigrant socius: new emplotments became possible as the canon of social

125

subjectivities expands with the embrace of the Self-qua-Other: linguistic difference and

ethnoracial epiphenomenon become the engines for a generative social grammar of the

narrative subjectivities that resolve social contradictions through nodal points (i.e. the

marriage plot) around identity and authorial personae that will become the locus

classicus of fin-de-siecle immigrant autobiograpics.

126

PART III: AMERICANIZATION: PER ASPERA AD ASTRA.

“To observe the character of a particular people we must examinethe objects of its love. And yet, whatever these objects,

if it is the association of a multitude not of animals but of rational beings,and is united by a common agreement about the objects of its love,then there is no absurdity in applying to it the title of a “People.”

(St. Augustine, Civitas Dei)

127

CHAPTER 7: THE MAKING OF AMERICANS: ELITE & POPULARARTICULATIONS OF NATIONAL SUBJECTIVITIES

In recent years, notions of 'national identity' have been subject to far-reaching

criticism. Some observers are fearful that attempts to assign particular cultural

characteristics to different nationalities will inevitably lead to the use of crude

stereotypes. Others assert that studies structured around the nation always

underestimate or disregard cleavages within nations, such as those derived from class,

gender, ethnicity and race. Furthermore, recent critiques have suggested that although

notions of a national identity may have had a degree of validity in the past, this has now

been lost. In the contemporary era, it is said, individuals have multiple identities tied to

a myriad of lifestyles and cultural enclaves. These exist 'below' and, as the globalization

process has advanced, 'above' the nation-state. Stuart Hall has noted the ways in which

they mesh together and overlap:

'Identities are fragmented and fractured, never singular but multiply constructedacross different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices andpositions' (quoted in Isin and Wood 1999: 16)

However, despite all of these claims, the belief that there is a distinct American

identity has shown a striking degree of resilience. In recent years, it has informed

rhetorical appeals, popular commentaries, and scholarly discourse. There were, in

particular, repeated invocations of the American character in the aftermath of September

11th 2001 when both journalists and politicians recalled the writings of Samuel

Huntington, particularly The Clash of Civilizations. Although now threatened from both

without and within, Huntington argued that the U.S. had traditionally been defined by

its role as a standard-bearer for the universal values associated with western civilization

(Huntington 1998: 305).

However, although there is a continuing faith in the concept of a discernible

American identity there is little agreement about its basis. While the dividing lines

128

between them lack precision, three distinct definitions or models can be identified.

Whereas some regard 'Americanism' as a set of political principles, others assert that it

has a cultural character and rests upon clusters of folkways or mores. There are,

furthermore, those who argue that only those of European origin - who share the U.S.'s

cultural roots - can be 'remade' as Americans. Given this more popular and highly

restrictive conception of “Americanness,” it is not surprising that the immigrant

autobiographer approaches her task and craft with some trepidation and more than a

little defensiveness. One could almost say that the hyper-assimilationist, century-old

paradigm of the Americanization narrative as articulated in Antin’s Promised Land

(1904) to Hoffman’s Lost in Translation (1989) is a reaction formation to—more

specifically a defensive inversion of--the undercurrent of nativist popular opinion in the

U.S. that has accompanied increased international migration in the 20th and 21st

Centuries.

THE POLITICAL MODEL - AN 'IDEAS NATION'

Both Samuel Huntington and Seymour Martin Lipset suggest that American

identity is derived from adherence to particular beliefs and principles. The U.S. is a.

propositional or 'ideas' nation. This distinguishes 'Americanism' from the forms of

identity found in nation-states or countries represented as nation-states. It breaks with

the tradition of jus soli - or the right of soil' - that ties identity to an individual's

associations with a particular or place. The notion of the U.S. as an 'ideas nation' is also a

departure from those conceptions of national identity that are derived from jus

sanguinis or 'the right of blood'. There is, for example, a sharp contrast between the U.S.

and Germany. Although Germany's 2000 Citizenship Law Reform Act provided a

limited extension of citizenship rights to the children of some immigrants, the principle

of blood descent remains embodied in German law. The descendents of Germans who

settled in Eastern Europe centuries ago can still claim citizenship of the Federal

129

Republic. In contrast although the U.S. confers citizenship on the children of U.S.

citizens born abroad, lines of descent or shared cultural traditions are said by those who

represent American identity in political terms to have little place in the U.S.. As Nathan

Glazer puts it: 'we are a nation based not on a common ethnic stock linked by mystic

chords of memory, connection, kinship, but rather by common universal ideas' (Glazer

1993: 17J. Instead, paradoxically the U.S. has some similarities with the former Soviet

Union insofar as, in both, identity is a function of loyalty towards particular beliefs.

Those who question such ideas are - by definition - guilty of disloyalty towards their

own country:

'It is possible to speak of a body of political ideas that constitutes "Americanism"in a sense in which one can never speak of "Britishism", "Frenchism","Germanism", or "Japanism" "Americanism is to the American... not a tradition orterritory ... but a doctrine ... To reject the central ideas of that doctrine is to beun-American' (Huntington 1982: 25).

`Others speak of 'Americanism' in broadly similar terms. In a celebrated phrase, Richard

Hofstadter noted that 'it has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be

one', (quoted in Lipset 1991: 16).

What ideas constitute 'Americanism'? Some accounts echo Louis Hartz's 1955

critique in depicting the U.S. as a 'pure' bourgeois formation structured around

untrammeled liberalism (Hartz 1964: 71). Huntington echoes the Swedish sociologist,

Gunnar Myrdal, in talking of an American Creed—the civic religion. He emphasis’s the

place of constitutionalism, individualism, liberalism democracy and egalitarianism and

their roots in the Declaration of Independence, Protestantism, and Enlightenment beliefs

(Huntington 1982: 14-15). For his part, although Lipset argues that Americanism is based

upon liberal values such as liberty, egalitarianism, individualism and laissez-faire, he

also identifies populism -or democratic anti-elitism - as a defining feature of

Americanism (Lipset 1997: 19). To all this, commitment to other core liberal virtues

might-be added: Firstly, there is an assurance of individual rights which rests upon a

dividing line between the public and private spheres (Morone 1996: 425). From this

130

perspective, there is a realm into which neither the state nor civil society can venture.

Secondly, American identity is tied to a faith in self-reliance and the prospect of upward

mobility. The notion of the American dream -exemplified in the novels of Horatio Alger

and Benjamin Franklin's words to intending immigrants - has also long been at the core

of 'Americanism'. As Franklin put it:

'If they are poor, they begin first as Servants or Journeymen; and if they aresober, industrious, and frugal, they soon become Masters, establish themselves inBusiness, marry, raise Families, and become respectable Citizens' (quoted inBellah et. al. 1985: 33).

For his part, Dick Armey, former Majority Leader in the House of Representatives,

emphasizes the role of individual liberty as a defining characteristic:

'You could move to Japan and never become Japanese. You could move toGermany and never become German. But any lover of Freedom can come toAmerica and become an American. That is the mark of a great and powerfulnation' (quoted in Ashbee 1998: 75)

This perspective has two consequences. Firstly, American identity has an open

and inclusive character. The U.S. is willing to embrace all outsiders and newcomers -

irrespective of race or ethnicity - who endorse the defining principles upon which the

country was constructed. Institutionalized forms of oppression and injustice, such as

slavery, segregation, and the use of race-based quotas for immigration, are all consid-

ered alien to American political traditions. Indeed, David Hollinger describes President

Woodrow Wilson's support for both the imposition of segregation in Washington DC

and the division of Europe on the basis of language and descent as deeply un-American

(Hollinger 1995: 135).

Secondly, in some accounts, the political basis of the U.S. has imbued it with a

sense of national purpose. The Declaration of Independence upon which, from this

perspective, the U.S. was founded, was committed to the universal and unalienable

rights of humankind. The U.S. is not an end in itself, but a means through which these

values can be realized across the globe. It is simply a first step. As John J. Miller argues:

131

'Securing the universal rights of humankind requires supporting a nation that is

dedicated to them' (Miller 1998: 31).

Thinking such as this is closely allied with some forms of American

exceptionalism. A number of studies have argued that the U.S. has long been committed

to a mission that was bequeathed by the first Congregationalist settlers. Some observers

have claimed that this led the U.S. towards global responsibility and intervention in

Southeast Asia. Michael Hunt records that 'by 1967, half a million Americans, moved by

dreams and fears as old as their nation and yet still as fresh as yesterday, were fighting

in Vietnam (Hunt 1987: 170).

THE DECLINE OF THE 'IDEAS NATION'

Despite the immigration reform act of 1965 -which dramatically extended the

basis for admission to the U.S. - the concept of the 'ideas nation', structured around

liberal principles, was progressively undermined. There were two principal reasons for

this. Firstly, there was a broad paradigmatic shift. Although both Lipset and Huntington

always acknowledged the gap between American ideas - and their promise of

democratic universalism - and the reality of the country's institutions, the phrase 'ideas

nation', and the claim that the U.S. is governed by a democratic 'creed', began - in

themselves - to seem increasingly anachronistic. In contemporary eyes, phrases such as

'ideas nation' or references to a democratic creed appear to disregard the systematic

denial of the values associated with liberalism to particular social groupings and

underestimate the extent to which these values - in themselves - brought forth

institutionalized oppression. Citing an earlier publication of his own, Rogers Smith has

asserted that:

'.. it is "normal not anomalous" for the pursuit of liberal democratic policies togenerate political, economic, social and psychological conditions that foster theperiodic resurgence of traditions of ascriptive inequality' (Stevens and Smith1995).

132

Furthermore, in the aftermath of Vietnam, representations of U.S. foreign policy

as the fulfillment of an idealist national mission seemed to have the aura of crude Cold

War propaganda. Economic mobility and the promise of the American dream were

displaced by talk of an underclass and entrenched socio-economic cleavages.

At the same time, the political and philosophical underpinnings, upon which the

'ideas nation' had been constructed, also began to weaken. The scholars and intellectuals

- principally historians - who are most closely associated with representations of the U.S.

in political terms occupied a relatively narrow tract of political territory. Their thinking -

and the conception of the U.S. as an 'ideas nation' - was rooted in mid twentieth century

liberalism or neo-conservatism. However, as political traditions, both progressively lost

ground. From the late 1960s onwards, the liberalism that had underscored the New

Deal, the Fair Deal and the civil rights movement was challenged from both left and

right. Liberalism became more closely associated with redistributive justice, opposition

to U.S. foreign policy, and a commitment to group rights. Neo-conservatism emerged in

response, but was absorbed by the broader conservative movement and lost much of its

initial distinctiveness as an ideological current.

However, despite this and although it assumed a profoundly different form, the

political model of identity was reinvigorated during the 198s and 1990s. The basis for its

re-emergence lay in the character of the mode! itself. By confining 'Americanism' to the

political realm, political definitions of identity were consequentially silent about civil

society and different cultural forms. As Lawrence Auster - a member of the American

Immigration Control Foundation - argues, the representation of identity offered by the

political model has a minimal character. Little - beyond faith in particular principles and

commitment to the rigors of the market economy - is required from the American. As

Auster asserts:

'.. it makes no difference whether a person can participate in the culture of thiscountry or even if he speaks English; holding a job and paying taxes become thesole criterion of being a good and useful citizen' (Auster 1990: 51).

133

Although posed in polemical terms, Auster's comment has a degree of

legitimacy. By adopting a disinterested approach to cultural formations and folkways,

the political model of American identity has been able to coexist with mid-century

liberalism, neo-conservatism, and contemporary multiculturalism.

MULTICULTURALISM

From a pluralist or multiculturalist perspective, American identity--which rests

largely on the formal trappings of citizenship and the rights assured by the Constitution,

courts, and the political process -- can coexist with an almost unbounded range of

cultural traditions and expressions of ethnic diversity. For some, cultures are considered

in relativistic terms and, insofar as a conscious process is involved, a matter for

individual choice. 'Hyphenated-Americans' such as Irish or Italian-Americans can -

through their lived experience - place the emphasis on either side of the hyphen and

define their primary attachments in terms of an ethnicity or as American. Against this

background, the apparatus of government should remain neutral. Others assert that

American identity rests upon the conscious celebration of diversity. From this

perspective, government should facilitate and promote cultural expression among the

groupings that have traditionally been disadvantaged by economic and political

processes.

The antecedents of the multiculturalist approach lie in Horace Kallen's 1915 call

for the U.S. to be reconstituted as '.. a democracy of nationalities' (quoted in Gleason

1982.: 97). While remaining united at a political level, there was to be cultural diversity.

Hyphenated-Americanism should not be regarded as a threat to the integrity of the U.S.,

but should instead be celebrated. Contemporary multiculturalism gives this a more

polemical edge by depicting the U.S. as an imperialist power and asserting that

traditional representations of the American nation have masked the hegemony of a

134

white Anglo-Saxon elite. As Amiri Baraka, the African-American poet and playwright,

puts it, 'the Eurocentric construct of so-called official Western culture America is a racist

fraud.' (Baraka 1998: 392). It has also attracted vigorous criticism. Multicultural ist

thinking, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. has argued, is leading the U.S. towards

fragmentation. In his eyes, it 'belittles unum and glorifies pluribus' (quoted in Morone

1996: 425). However, despite its radical associations, multiculturalism - or, at the least, a

commitment to ethnic pluralism - has become institutionalized. As Nathan Glazer

records:

"We are all multiculturalists now" .. one would be hard put, if one works withblack schoolchildren, so many of whom attend schools in which they make up allor a good part of the enrollment, to find someone who is not' (Glazer 1998: 160)

The policy proposals that stem from multiculturalism have also been pursued

with increasing vigor by industry and commerce. Affirmative action programs -

whereby particular efforts are made to ensure the composition of the workforce is

broadly representative of American society -are now an established feature of corporate

life. They have, for example, been endorsed by the National Association of Manufac-

turers and the Equal Employment Advisory Council, which includes most of the

Fortune 500 companies (Ashbee 2000: 19-20).

THE CULTURAL MODEL

Although the political model of American identity underpinned many scholarly

discussions and popular commentaries during the latter half of the twentieth century -

and informed American Studies during its early years as an academic discipline - it has

been subject to sustained criticism. It is said to provide a weak and inadequate basis for

national cohesion. It has little integrative power and the citizen's relationship to the U.S.

is relatively detached. Indeed, represented through the political model, the U.S. appears

to constitute more an imagined association than the 'imagined community' that forms

135

the basis for Benedict Anderson's seminal study of nationalism (Anderson 2000). The

political model also appears to underestimate the degree to which the American

experience rests upon collective memories and attachments to place.

Cultural definitions of national identity stress these shared traditions and their

role in shaping a sense of belonging. There is, it is said, more to 'being American' than

mere principles, however forcefully these are asserted. However, although this is

common ground for those who think of American identity in cultural terms, there are

important differences among them. Some emphasize the British roots of American

culture, thereby denying the claims of those who portray the U.S. as exceptionalist.

David Hackett Fischer's 1991 book, Albion’s Seed gave the argument empirical

foundations. He argued that the U.S. is structured around four cultural regions, each of

which was shaped by the folkways of the earliest settlers. These, in turn, owed their

origins to cultural forms to be found in the British Isles. In the Massachusetts region, the

Puritan families who followed in the wake of the first Pilgrims were disproportionately

drawn from the eastern counties of England. The origins of the early communities in

Virginia in the decades after the founding of the Jamestown settlement were markedly

different. The colonists were drawn largely from the south and west of England. A

majority of the 23,000 who settled in the Delaware Valley between 1675 and 1725 were

Quakers. They came from the midlands and northern counties of England. During the

eighteenth century other migrants followed--particularly between 1717 and 1775-- the

early settlers from Scotland, the north of Ireland and northern England. They established

communities in the 'backcountry' along the mountains of Maryland, Virginia and the

Carolinas.

Later generations of immigrants were absorbed into the four established cultural

traditions. At the same time, the geographical territory occupied by these distinct

cultures spread so as to incorporate much of the U.S.. Thereby, the folkways of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have persisted to this day, molding the character

136

of contemporary America. Fischer offers countless examples of this. He cites different

levels of educational achievement and attitudes towards work. He observes that the

dialects of New England have their origins in eastern England. Similarly, he notes that

the widely shared opposition to gun control in the south and west was shaped by 'the

retributive and every-man-his-own-master principles of the border legacy' (Fischer 1991:

73).

AN AMERICAN CULTURE?

Fischer's approach is, however, open to criticism. It says little about the place of

later immigrants, Native Americans and African-Americans in forging distinctive and

culturally separate folkways. It seems, furthermore, to underestimate the role of the

physical environment in shaping American attitudes and beliefs. Those who talk in

these terms assert that there is a distinctly separate American identity. It is:

a full-blooded nationality, reflecting a history and culture - exactly like all theother nationalities from which Americans have been, and continue to be,recruited. The ongoing immigration makes it difficult to see the real success ofAmericanization in creating distinctive types, characters, styles, artifacts of allsorts which, were Gene Kelly to display them to his Parisian neighbors, theywould rightly recognize as "American". More important, Americans recognizeone another, take pride in the things that fellow Americans have made and done,identify with the national community' (Walzer 1996: 41).

Harper's Magazine has periodically explored the character of American identity

and the culture on which it is constructed. In a 1956 essay, John A. Kouwenhoven

suggested that the country's culture was structured around a number of dualisms, some

of which were originally noted by Tocqueville during his journeys in the 1830s and

1840s. Americans were, Kouwenhoven argued, both materialist and idealist,

conservative and revolutionary, individualistic and gregarious. The Manhattan skyline

brought together seeming chaos yet, at the same time, had a structured order. The

structure of jazz was similarly 'a tension of cross-purposes yet the outcome is a

dazzlingly precise creative unity' (Kouwenhoven 1956: 28). Furthermore, America is

137

always in process. Both the past and the future are open-ended. The country is directed

towards boundlessness:

'It does not, like the past of most other people, extend downward into the soil ...It extends laterally backward across the plains, the mountains, or the sea ... justas their future may at any moment lead them down the open road, theendless-vistaed street' (Kouwenhoven 1956: 33).

Those who describe American identity in terms such as these, and see Americanism as a

cultural formation, attribute its origins and growth to different variables. Two forms of

explanation have occupied a particular place in American historiography: the frontier

and the melting pot.

THE FRONTIER: CRUSADE, CRUCIBLE AND CRIME

In a celebrated study, Frederick Jackson Turner argued - in a paper presented to

the American Historical Association in July 1893 - that the frontier marking the settlers'

shift westwards across the continent or, as Turner put it, 'the meeting point between

savagery and civilization', had imbued American society with its defining

characteristics. 'In the crucible of the frontier', Turner asserted, '.. the immigrants were

Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality or

characteristics' (Etulain 1999: 31). Frontier life bred self-reliant individualism. It laid the

basis for a restless impatience with accumulated experience, a firm conviction that

barriers and setbacks could always be transcended, and a pronounced hostility to

government officialdom:

'That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; thatpractical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful graspof material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; thatrestless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and forevil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom -these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of theexistence of the frontier' (quoted in Etulain 1999: 37).

138

The concept of the frontier has, however, been subject to sustained criticism

(Ashbee 2003). In particular, there are significant silences regarding gender and race. It

is, furthermore, a mono-causal explanation of American development that draws upon

human geography alone.

THE MELTING POT

Although few would deny the overall significance of the settlers' interaction with

their physical environment, others have emphasized the interaction of human variables

in shaping American cultural characteristics. In 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur,

who settled in America after serving as a soldier with the French armies, published his

experiences in Letters from an American Farmer. He asked a celebrated question: 'What,

then, is the American, this new man?' His answer asserted that American identity rested

upon the abandonment of former nationalities, beliefs and attitudes that had formerly

been held, and the embrace by immigrants of entirely new cultural forms. American

character, he argued, rested on:

'... that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I couldpoint out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wifewas Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sonshave now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leavingbehind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from thenew mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the newrank he holds ... Here individuals are melted into a great new race of men, whoselabors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world' (Crevecoeur1986: 69-70)

Over a century later - amidst mass immigration from eastern and southern

Europe - Israel Zangwill built upon Crevecoeur's observations by representing the U.S.

in terms of a 'melting pot'. Both asserted that American identity rested upon a distinct

national culture and tradition. It drew on cultures from across the globe, but the lived

experience of breaking free from the class structures of Europe and settling a continent

had created new ideas and attitudes.

139

The melting pot has lost much of its former credibility. Some have asserted that it

obscures the harsher realities of the Americanization process insofar as it implies that

the nationalities and races came together on broadly egalitarian terms. However, they

argue, there was in practice a process of assimilation or 'Americanization'. Immigrants

had to accept a culture shaped by British settlers and their descendants. In place of the

'melting pot', newcomers were subject to a process structured around

'Anglo-conformity'. As Benjamin Schwarz has noted:

"Americanization" was a process of coercive conformity ... various nationalitieswere made into Americans as ore is refined into gold. "Americanization" purifiedthem, eliminating the dross. The Americanization movement's "melting pot"pageants, inspired by Israel Zangwill's play by that name, celebrated conformityto a narrow conception of American nationality by depicting strangely attiredforeigners stepping into a huge pot and emerging as clean, well-spoken,well-attired, "American-looking" Americans, that is, Anglo-Americans' (Schwarz1995).

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF AN AMERICAN CULTURE

Nonetheless, although the concept of the frontier and the melting pot metaphor

have few uncritical contemporary adherents, the belief that there is an American identity

that extends beyond adherence to particular political principles has persisted. It is

shared across the political spectrum. As Newt Gingrich, former Republican House

Speaker has asserted:

'From the Jamestown colony and the Pilgrims, through de Tocqueville’sDemocracy in America, up to the Norman Rockwell paintings of the 1940s and1950s, there was a clear sense of what it meant to be an American. Ourcivilization is based on a spiritual and moral dimension. It emphasizes personalresponsibility as much as individual rights (Gingrich 1995: 7).

It also underpins Michael Lind's plea for 'liberal nationalism' and his claims that

the U.S., along with the countries of western Europe, are contributing to their own

demise. The lack of cultural cohesion, the low level of family formation, and the absence

of 'martial courage' make countries unsustainable in the long term (Gray and Lind 2001:

20-21). Lind therefore puts forward policy proposals that are directed towards

140

assimilation and the reconstruction of a national culture. He emphasizes the need to

teach and use the English language. However, he asserts, other forms of acculturation

are also important:

'There is more to the national culture than the national language, though thelanguage is both the primary index of nationality and its major means oftransmission. In addition, there are folkways - not abstract moral codes, butparticular ways of acting, ways of dressing, conventions of masculinity andfemininity, ways of celebrating major events like births, marriages, and funerals,particular kinds of sports and recreations, conceptions of the proper boundariesbetween the secular and religious spheres. And there is also a body of material -ranging from historical events that everyone is expected to know about to widelyshared but ephemeral knowledge of sports and cinema and music - that might becalled common knowledge. Common language, common folkways, commonknowledge - these, rather than race or religion or political philosophy, are whatidentify a member of the American cultural nation' (Lind 1996: 265-66).

ASSIMILATION AND ACCULTURATION

There are policy consequences if identity is defined in cultural rather than

political terms. Some assert that a program of acculturation is required. Immigrants

should undergo Americanization. They should be compelled to learn English,

understand the structures of government, share the values, and come to share the

folkways around which the U.S. is constructed. Subgroup loyalties have to be

subordinated to a common national identity.

From this perspective, therefore, few first or second-generation immigrants can

be regarded as fully 'American'. Furthermore, from this, perspective, many of the

policies adopted from the 1960s onwards undermined traditional assimilative

mechanisms and should, therefore, be reversed. Bilingual education discouraged

immigrants from learning English. The pre-1997 system of welfare provision, affirmative

action programs, and the growing emphasis upon 'group rights' cut across the spirit of

self-reliance that had traditionally compelled newcomers to adapt to the American

mainstream. Multiculturalism allowed - indeed at times required - individuals to

141

maintain their former allegiances. It thereby obstructed assimilation and the adoption of

an American identity.

Others put forward a cultural model of identity, but see the process of

assimilation in less demanding terms. A number of commentators have argued that a

significant proportion of the contemporary immigrant population already adhere to the

values that one characterized mainstream American culture. Indeed, it is said, some are

more committed to individualism, self-reliance and family values than a large

proportion of the native-born American population (Ashbee 1998: 76).

Others also see the assimilative process in less rigorous terms than the

proponents of Americanization. They talk of ethnic pluralism, but insist however that

minority groupings should remain subordinated to the national culture and purpose.

Michael Walzer draws a contrast between the U.S. and republican conceptions of

citizenship in revolutionary France. In 1791, the Constituent Assembly voted to fully

emancipate French Jews. It, however, demanded their full embrace of a French identity.

As one deputy said:

'One must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, and give everything to theJews as individuals ... It would be repugnant to have ... a nation within a nation'(quoted in Walzer 1996: 43).

From this perspective, American identity has little in common with French

conceptions of identity. It does not demand unbounded loyalty or require an exhaustive

commitment. Indeed, it differs from other national identities. Although structured

around a culture rather than a mere creed, it is exceptional insofar as it is tolerant of

ethnic pluralism. Walzer records:

'We have made our peace with the "particular characteristics" of all theimmigrant groups and have come to regard American nationality as an additionto rather than a replacement for ethnic consciousness' (Walzer 1996: 45).

'Hyphenated' Americans such as Irish-Americans or Italian-Americans have not--

according to Walzer--retained from former identities. Instead, these are amalgam

cultures. Furthermore, individuals can either emphasize their original ethnicity or their

142

status as Americans. They can make a voluntary choice that may not be a full

commitment to their adopted country.

THE ETHNO-RACIAL MODEL

There is a further representation of American identity. It has traditionally been

associated with nativist groupings and has -- either implicitly or explicitly -- informed

many of the campaigns against immigration.

The ethno-racial model has four defining characteristics. Firstly, it vigorously

denies the claim that nations can be constructed on the basis of principles or beliefs. An

'ideas nation' will necessarily fall apart as different ethnic groupings - which are rooted

much more securely in family descent and associations with particular villages, towns or

lands - reassert themselves. As John O'Sullivan puts it, 'almost all the ideological nations

have collapsed, generally in acrimony' (quoted in Miller 1998: 29). Those whose ideas are

informed by ethnic or racial definitions of identity are, therefore, amongst the most

savage critics of 'nation building' and the belief that U.S. foreign policy can be used to

build nations that draw in and integrate a number of different ethnic groupings. The

peace plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina agreed at Dayton attracted particular ire.

Secondly, while some cultural representations are associated with the claim that

American identity rests upon a new or composite personality forged by immigrants

from across the globe, those who adhere to the ethno-racial model insist - to a much

greater extent than those who draw on the cultural model - that traditional American

folkways were shaped by their British origins. However, many associated with ethno-

racial definitions also stress the role of later 'white ethnic' immigrants who settled

during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From their perspective,

although American identity is built upon the early communities established in Virginia

and the Puritanism of the first New England settlers, its essence as a nation also lies

among the waves of later immigrants from the different countries of Europe. In the

143

words of Thomas Fleming, editor of Chronicles, national identity rests upon a fusion of

Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, and Ellis Island (Fleming 1995: 17).

Thirdly, although the U.S. has been corrupted by both mass immigration from

the other Americas and Asia, and the cosmopolitanism of the governing elites, it is in

essence a nation-state that is defined by descent from these beginnings. As Anthony D.

Smith records, the ethnic model is constituted on the basis of lineage:

'Its distinguishing feature is its emphasis on a community of birth and nativeculture Whether you stayed in your community or emigrated to another, youremained ineluctably, organically, a member of the community of your birth andwere for ever stamped by it. A nation, in other words, was first and foremost acommunity of common descent' (Smith 1991: 11).

Fourthly, the ethnic model has a 'closed' character. Those who are culturally, or

in some accounts, racially distanced from a particular 'community of birth' cannot be

assimilated into it. Peter Brimelow's 1996 book, Alien Nation, is representative of this

approach. It suggests that many of the immigrants who arrived in the U.S. following the

1965 liberalization of the immigration laws are, in practice, inassimilable. In particular, it

is said, those of Latino origin have clung to their own language, folkways and cultural

forms. Indeed, according to Scott McConnell of National Review - the foremost

conservative journal - second and third generation Latinos have instincts that are more

separatist than those of their parents and grandparents. He suggests that young Latinos

'.. see themselves locked in irremediable conflict with white society'. The idea of

Reconquista the absorption of the southwestern U.S. states by Mexico -has, he suggests,

gained increasing acceptance among them (McConnell 1997: 33). Some commentaries

have cited the events on September 11th 2001 as a further illustration of this. They have

noted that the hijackers appeared to have adopted many of the trappings of western

identity. However, this can be deceptive:

'Some fiercely reject the new society into which they have moved ... Whateverthe reason, some people reject an American future and ricochet backwards intotheir own tradition -except, of course, that the tradition they seek is no longer the

144

uncomplicatedly comforting one of their youth but one subtly distorted by theirrejection of American modernity' (O'Sullivan 2001: 42).

Those who insist upon the inassimilable character of particular groupings are

going beyond the parameters of the cultural model. Their claim that particular folkways,

attitudes and forms of behavior are deeply ingrained or immutable meshes together

with notions drawn from sociobiology. Critical observers suggest that those who have

adopted an ethnic understanding of the American nation, and regard immigration as a

threat to the cultural integrity of the U.S., have resurrected the racist sentiments that

informed earlier anti-immigrant, nativist movements.

Ethno-racial representations of U.S. identity are often depicted as a break with

mainstream American thought. They are commonly represented as '.. deviant sidesteps

in the otherwise forward march of liberal ideas in America's political culture' (Stevens

and Smith 1995). For radical and Marxist observers however, ascriptive values - most

notably those tied to race - have long defined American identity. W.E.B. DuBois -the

black intellectual who guided the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (NAACP) during its formative years - emphasized the place of caste, exploitation

and, indeed, naked hatred in the construction of Americanism. He noted the:

deep conviction of myriads of men that congenital differences among the mainmasses of human beings absolutely, conditioned the individual destiny of everymember of a group' (quoted in Stevens and Smith 1995).

DuBois' judgement was echoed some decades later by those associated with the New

Left for whom Americanism was synonymous with oppression at home and

imperialism abroad.

SURVEYING U.S. PUBLIC OPINION

All three definitions of national identity have appeared - either implicitly or

explicitly - in a number of popular commentaries. They have also underpinned debate

145

about the future of immigration policy. Insofar as contemporary public policy is rooted

in a structured definition of identity, it draws primarily on political representations.

Congress under the 1990 Immigration Act established the U.S. Commission on

Immigration Reform. Its 1997 report fused the liberal themes associated with political

definitions of identity together with a belief in ethnic pluralism and diversity.

'We believe these truths constitute the distinctive characteristics of Americannationality the principles and values embodied in the American Constitution andtheir fulfillment in practice: equal protection and justice under the law; freedomof speech and religion; and representative government; Lawfully-admittednewcomers of any ancestral nationality -without regard to race, ethnicity, orreligion - truly become Americans when they give allegiance to these principlesand values ..' (U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform 1997: 25).

At the same time, the report also edged, albeit in very cautious terms, towards

something more. In particular, it regarded language as an important consideration and

asserted that the U.S. would be strengthened by greater fluency in English, although it

also emphasized that many would continue to speak, or learn, their own languages as

well (U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform 1997: 25).

However, although the three representations of identity are to be found in both

popular and scholarly discourse, they have customarily been either asserted in ex

cathedra terms or have rested upon an appraisal of the American historical process.

There have been few attempts to consider and assess popular perceptions of American

identity. However, in 1995-96, the General Social Survey (GSS) attempted to gauge the

character of public opinion by including a national identity module in its ongoing work.

The module formed part of a study of 24 countries across the world conducted by the

International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The survey also included other G7 nations, a

significant number of 'transitional' societies such as Russia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and

Latvia, together with two Asian countries: Japan and the Philippines. Respondents were

asked about the factors that allowed an individual to belong to a particular nation.

What, for example, made someone 'truly' American or British? The exact wording of

146

each question was adjusted so as to correspond with national circumstances. In Canada,

for example, two languages were specified and those questioned were asked whether it

was important to speak either English or French. Similarly, Question 3 (below) was

always posed in different terms so that it referred to the dominant religious faith, faiths

or denomination within each of the countries.

147

Some people say that the following things are important for being (e.g. trulyAmerican). Others say they are not important. How important do you think each ofthe following is ... (in percentages).

VI—very important; FI—fairly important; NVI—not very important;

NIAA—not important at all

Table 1: Language How important is it to be able to speak (dominant language[s] inthe respondent's country)?

VI FI NVI NIAA (N)

U.S. 71.3 21.6 5.1 1.9 1340

Canada 48.7 32.2 11.5 7.6 1502

Britain 65.0 23.4 7.8 3.8 1023

W. Germany 54.9 34.9 8.0 2.2 1245

Netherlands 67.4 28.0 3.5 1.1 2075

Hungary 79.0 17.9 2.3 0.8 991

Source: adapted from International Social Survey Program 1998: 16.

Table 2: Length of residenceHow important is it to have lived in (respondent's country) for most of one's life?

VI FI NVI NIAA (N)

U.S. 44.3 28.8 20.4 6.5 1324

Canada 23.3 28.8 32.6 15.3 1503

Britain 41.8 33.7 19.5 5.0 1003

W. Germany 27.9 35.5 27.0 9.7 1224

Netherlands 21.0 38.3 32.9 7.8 2037

Hungary 47.1 28.1 19.5 5.3 983


148

Table 3: ReligionHow important is it to be a (country's dominant religion or denomination)?

VI FI NVI NIAA (N)

U.S. 38.6 15.1 21.5 24.8 1309

Canada 14.7 9.8 20 55.5 1465

Britain 21.6 13.9 28.5 36.0 997

W. Germany 16.6 17.2 22.6 43.6 1213

Netherlands 3.3 4.0 24.0 68.8 2012

Hungary 19.7 16.2 30.3 33.8 980


Table 4: Place of birthHow important is it to have been born in (respondent's country)?

VI FI NVI NIAA (N)

U.S. 41.2 27.5 18.9 12.4 1325

Canada 24.7 20.7 28.5 26.1 1491

Britain 49.8 28.8 14.8 6.6 1025

W. Germany 26.9 23.8 31.5 17.8 1243

Netherlands 23.4 28.7 35.4 12.5 2063

Hungary 40.7 27.1 21.1 11.0 980

Source: Adapted from International Social Survey Program 1998: 13.

149

WHO’S YOUR GRANDDADDY? OR WHO GETS TO BE AMERICAN,CULTURALLY SPEAKING

Although it would be a mistake to over-generalize from a limited range of

questions, some initial conclusions can be drawn. Despite the claims of those who

represent the U.S. in terms of the political model, a sizeable majority of Americans

perceive national identity in distinctly different terms. To be 'truly American':

About two-thirds of Americans assert that an individual must have been born inthe U.S.;

Over half believe that adherence to the Christian faith is also required; Almost three-quarters argue that individuals must have lived in the U.S. for most

of their lives; Over two-thirds go further and say that they must have been born in the U.S.; And over 90 per cent believe that proficiency in the English language is essential.

These beliefs and values are associated with cultural and ethno-racial

conceptions of the U.S. rather than political definitions. They represent a rejection of

both liberal representations of identity and, as Jack Citrin emphasizes, a repudiation of

multiculturalism (Citrin 2001: 300). The beliefs underpinning the responses to these

questions are tied to a sense of identity that is structured around tightly drawn

parameters. For example, the association between American identity and Christianity

excludes those committed to the Judaic and Islamic faiths. These assertions about

identity point to a belief that individuals must be immersed in the folkways of the

country. Acculturation is a necessary corollary. Furthermore, the claim that an

individual must have been born in the U.S. if he or she is to be 'truly American'- an

assurance of citizenship under the Constitution - suggests that ascriptive qualities have

at least a partial role in determining national identity.

The statistics offer little to those who talk of an 'ideas nation', propositional forms

of identity, and American exceptionalism. Although a greater proportion of Hungarians

see their identity in culturally defined terms, there are other few statistically significant

differences between the U.S. and the European countries included in the survey.

150

Furthermore, where there are differences, it seems that many of these other countries

-rather than the U.S. - lean towards a political definition of identity. Although, for

example, British respondents share some of the feelings towards identity that are

evident in the U.S., there are marked differences in attitudes towards religion. Despite

the Church of England's role as the established church, fewer of those in the U.K. believe

that adherence to the Christian faith is a defining feature of British national identity.

Paradoxically, a comparison of the survey findings between the U.S. and Canada could

be used to bolster claims that Canada -- rather than the U.S. -- is closer to the defining

features of the political model.

THE BREAK-DOWN OF AMERICAN OPINION

Alongside international comparisons, the General Social Survey (GSS) also offers

the opportunity to look at the relationship between attitudes towards national identity

and different demographic variables including gender, income, age, and race. The

findings indicate that feelings about identity are shared across most demographic

cleavages. However, although the sample numbers are small, they suggest some

significant racial and ethnic differences.

151

Some people say that the following things are important for being truly American.Others say they are not important, (in percentages).

VI—very important; FI—fairly important; NVI—not very important;

NIAA—not important at all

Table 5: How important is it to be able to speak English?

VI FI NVI NIAA (N)

White 71.7 21.9 4.7 1.7 1088

Black 73.3 18.3 5.6 2.8 180

Other 61.1 26.4 11.1 1.4 72

Table 6: How important is it to have lived in America for most of one's life?

VI FI NVI NIAA (N)

White 42.4 29.3 21.5 6.9 1080

Black 60.1 22.5 14.5 2.9 173

Other 35.2 36.6 18.3 9.9 71

152

Table 7: How important is it to be a Christian?

VI FI NVI NIAA (N)

White 35.5 15.4 21.9 27.2 1063

Black 62.1 14.7 16.9 6.2 177

Other 26.1 11.6 27.5 34.8 69

Table 8: How important is it to have been born in America?

VI FI NVI NIAA (N)

White 38.3 28.2 20.4 13.1 1078

Black 64 18.5 11.2 6.2 178

Other 27.5 40.6 14.5 17.4 69

Source: adapted from General Social Survey Cumulative Datafile (1979-2000).

As Tables 6-8 suggest, disproportionate numbers of African-Americans seem

committed to beliefs associated with a restricted definition of identity and the cultural

model. Over 60 per cent regard lifetime residence, adherence to the Christian faith, and

birth in the U.S. as 'very important' in determining American national identity. Among

whites, feelings are significantly less intense. For those categorized as 'others'

-principally Latinos - the figures are lower still. Only the most tentative and speculative

forms of explanation can be offered for these findings. Although overall levels of

religiosity are high, a much higher proportion of African-Americans than the white

population considers itself to be 'very religious' (General Social Survey Cumulative

Datafile 1979-2000). The attributes specified in the question - such as birth in the U.S.

and long-term residence - allow respondents an opportunity to 'belong' to the U.S. in a

context where other forms of 'belonging' appear to have been denied. The degree of

identification with these particular components of national identity may be an

153

expression of alienation and could correspond with the conclusions drawn in those

studies of black opinion that have found a significant degree of isolation and

detachment from the American 'mainstream'. For example, in her 1995 study of the black

middle class, Facing Up to the American Dream, Jennifer Hochschild found that despite

rising levels of material prosperity, there was widespread disenchantment with the

American dream and its promise of upward mobility and individual success

(Hochschild 1995: 72). There may also be an association between African-American

sentiments and the competitive pressures that have been created in the secondary labor

market by the dramatic growth of the Latino population. Between 1980 and 2000, the

Latino share of the overall U.S. population grew from 9 per cent to 12.5 per cent.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

As has been noted, there multicultural three principal definitions of American

national identity. The political model -in both its liberal and multiculturalist forms -

confines the locus of national identity to the political realm. It is, at least formally,

disinterested in culture. In contrast, the cultural model insists that there is an American

nationality resting on distinct folkways. These incorporate the speaking of English and

the adoption of particular attitudes. Ethno-racial models go beyond this and assert that

only some ethnic and racial groupings can be assimilated. Although many of the most

celebrated studies of American identity draw on the political model and rest on liberal

representations of the U.S. experience, the 1995-96 ISSP and GSS surveys suggest that a

disproportionate number of Americans are committed to ideas associated with the

cultural model of identity. Furthermore, there is an implicit assertion that the

assimilation process presents formidable obstacles to the newcomer. Indeed, as has been

noted, over 68 per cent believe that immigrants themselves cannot be fully assimilated.

They regard birth in the U.S. as either 'very' (VI) or' fairly' important (FI) in defining

who is, or is not, 'truly American'.

154

The GSS findings have public policy and socio-cultural implications for “native”

Americans and Newcomers. Although suppressed by the economic boom during the

latter half of the 1990s, immigration has long been a source of political controversy.

While faith in the efficacy of unrestricted market forces also plays a role, those who call

for significantly increased levels of immigration, or even open borders, also derive their

arguments, either implicitly or explicitly, from a political definition of American

identity. Correspondingly, opposition to an open immigration policy is fuelled and

strengthened by perceptions of the U.S. that rest upon cultural, or in some cases

ethno-racial definitions. The degree to which these representations of the U.S. have won

popular acceptance suggests that - notwithstanding suggestions that the Bush

administration might liberalize policy towards both legal and illegal immigrants from

Mexico - the centre of political gravity will remain within the restrictionist camp. The

security concerns about immigrants that arose in the aftermath of the September 11th

attacks only added further weight to their arguments.

There are further consequences. Over the next half-century, the demographic

character of the U.S. is expected to change profoundly. Although there will be important

differences between regions, the census Bureau estimates that the U.S. will have a

non-white majority by 2060. Some observers are optimistic about the nature of the

change. In a 2001 essay, Jack Citrin considers the GSS findings alongside other survey

evidence and suggests that there is still the widely shared commitment to an American

'civil religion' that Tocqueville recorded in the ante-bellum era. It rests, Citrin argues,

upon a shared identity and a culture that draws Americans together, but at the same

time permits a degree of diversity. Against this background, demographic change

would have a relatively straightforward character.

'A common identity is a lubricant that helps a nation achieve collective goals.Liberal nationalism is a formula for fusing individual members of Americansociety into a system that assures equality of status and a measure ofcommonality to all while, at the same time, allowing the maintenance of differentcultural traditions' (Citrin 2001: 305).

155

However, the GSS and ISSP findings also point in another direction. While

survey respondents generally acknowledge the importance of at least limited diversity

as a policy goal, the widely shared commitment to cultural representations of national

identity - in particular, the large numbers who do not see foreign-born or non-Christian

citizens as 'truly American' - suggests a basis for division rather than consensus. The

growing numbers of Latino and Asian immigrants, and the increasing proportion of the

population that is foreign-born, can only intensify resentments and tensions. In such

circumstances, the task of coalition building - around which the American political

process has long been structured - will inevitably become a more fraught and difficult

process.

156

CHAPTER 8: CINEMATIC DISCIPLINING OF THE IMMIGRANT OTHER ON THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER

Boundary maintenance appears to be a function common to all social systems andgroups, small and large, and thus part of the construction of the practices andnarrative accounts by which these—more or less strictly bounded—groups areconstituted (Paasi 1996, 27).

Most who write about storytelling focus on its community-building functions:stories build consensus, a common culture of shared understandings, and adeeper, more vital ethics. But stories and counter-stories can serve an equallyimportant destructive function. They can show that what we believe is ridiculous,self-serving, or cruel. They can show us the way out of the trap of unjustifiedexclusion. They can help us understand when it is time to reallocate power. Theyare the other half—the destructive half—of the creative dialectic (Delgado 1995,65).

SYNOPSIS:For some time the US-Mexico border has been a symbol-and site-of conflict,

collaboration, and transnational mobility. Related to the border, the topic of

undocumented immigration, and Mexican migrants in particular, has received

considerable attention in recent mainstream media. In light of the September 11 attacks

on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.,

monitoring of the US-Mexico border has become a key component of efforts to pre-empt

perceived vulnerabilities in US national security systems. Although these recent events

have highlighted media attention on 'suspicious' border crossers, the cinematic examples

I draw on illustrate an ongoing fear (and social anxiety) about borders and border

crossing of various forms. In this chapter I explore how narratives of borders and

nationhood are mapped onto immigrant bodies and border spaces through specific

filmic representations. The films themselves comprise a body of work by U.S. nationals

during the 1990s that re-inscribe social categories like “immigrant” and “foreigner”

within an ethno-racial disciplinary regime that subordinate and negate alien

subjectivities.

In order to undertake this study I focus on three cinematic examples exploring

representations of immigration at the US-Mexico border-Touch of Evil, The Border and

157

Lone Star-exploring how concepts of borders, race, and gender, and tropes of "The

South" are re-territorialized onto immigrant bodies and around specific locales. I argue

that an inability to control and 'fix' boundaries around possible 'threats' to specific US

spaces and identities is counteracted by displacing this fear onto more easily marked

targets that are viewed as posing challenges to national (and personal) security, i.e.,

undocumented immigrants. At the same time, the threats and spaces for immigrants

themselves become increasingly marginalized, blurred, and frequently erased.

INTERTEXTUALITY: NARRATIVE, FILM AND SOCIAL DISCOURSES OFIDENTITY

Storytelling can take place through a variety of forms, and-as Delgado (1995)

states above-it can challenge dominant ideas. Cinematic narrative, as an example, also

utilizes certain conventions to map out social and spatial relations. Media stories can

reinforce dominant cultural and regional identities and represent "marginal" identities as

threatening, inferior, and separate. At the same time these media stories-or maps-of

contested identities and spaces may fuel sentiments such as fear and terror, particularly

in relation to how and who can travel across and between social and physical borders.

Creating a narrative relies on prioritizing specific ideas and subjects in order to present a

partial description of a series of events, histories, and places. Concomitantly, storytelling

can take various forms--cinema, novels, television, oral histories-and in so doing each of

these becomes a series of multi-layered and intertextual tales.

My use of "intertextuality" draws from the writings of Kristeva (1966), wherein

texts are intertwined rather than being self-contained, i.e., texts include discourses and

meanings that are drawn from other discourses, social spheres and categories and

molded into autobiographic bricolage. For example, the film Touch of Evil develops and

critiques previous discursive creations of the US-Mexico border as a dangerous and

liminal space, thereby integrating meanings that have been represented in other texts.

158

In this chapter I explore the ways in which the creation of border narratives and

subjectivities in cinema are interwoven with efforts to define space, place, and identity. I

examine "border films" as a means by which mainstream tropes of "Southern" regional

identities are represented through anxieties over boundaries, tensions that at times

provide challenges to dominant representations, particularly within more recent filmic

renderings (e.g., Lone Star). In addition, although popular films addressing aspects of

immigration have focused on efforts to expel undocumented immigrants from the US, I

will argue that at the same time there has been an unspoken desire to keep these "exiled"

communities at close proximity. In other words, although there is an effort to depict

immigrants (particularly Mexican migrants) as "outside" of society, there is also a

concerted effort to keep this social group placed firmly in the public eye in order to

"locate" it in very rudimentary terms. Cinematic efforts to locate marginal populations

within dominant narratives of regional and national identities reflect an attraction to,

and anxiety about, scale and difference: as representations of global movements of

people and commodities become increasingly common, they are joined with fears about

who controls territory, cultural identity, the ability to travel and mobility more

generally. To undertake this exploration I emphasize the ways in which specific spatial

imaginaries of the border and the "South" in three key films-Touch of Evil, The Border,

and Lone Star-have depicted a social landscape tied into national and international

settings that represents the fluidity of borders and identities while simultaneously

highlighting efforts to keep them firmly in place.

The chapter is divided into three main sections. I begin my examination by

outlining my theoretical framework, which focuses on the links between space, identity

and representation. This is followed by a discussion of the three films selected and the

conflicts and social contradictions that they represent, particularly in relation to race and

gender within the discourse of the citizenship and immigration. In the third section I

159

explore what these films suggest for understanding a spatial imaginary of the South as

represented by the US-Mexico border, particularly in relation to transnational identities.

GEOGRAPHIES OF THE BORDER SELF AND SOCIUS IN CINEMA

Within every story there is an effort to provide some form of introduction to the

setting and characters. The exposition, or framing of a drama, is used to situate the

proceeding (or prior) events. In the case of mainstream media there is also an effort to

frame discussions of specific events within very particular modes of representation

drawing on popular symbols and narratives. In discussions of immigration and the

US-Mexico border, cinematic images have played an important role in shaping (just as

they have been shaped by) debates over immigration policy reform and the policing of

undocumented immigrants.

In recent years there has been a growth in geographic research exploring the

relationships between place, identity, and representation, particularly in work focusing

on mass media. Cinema in particular has become an important context for exploring the

ways in which images of people and places are (re)produced. Drawing on discussions in

media and cultural studies, geographers have attempted to understand the ways in

which film has been used to create stories about specific locales and their inhabitants,

and to create a geography of its own: "The camera does not mirror reality but creates it,

endowing it with meaning, discourse, and ideology. And this endowment can and

should be contested .... Our belief is that lived experience is a coalescence of

re-presentations anchored in media images on the one side and our places and practices

on the other" (Aitken and Zonn 1994, 21). Unlike some previous analyses of film, which

viewed media images as reflecting reality on a screen or television set, Aitken and Zonn

suggest the ways in which we carry with us various representational and material

spaces. I would push this idea even further to state that it becomes impossible to

differentiate between those "media images" and "our places and practices" due to the

160

ways in which they inform and become embedded in each other. This suturing of

narratives, image, and identities, can be so complex that on many levels the "effects" of

media are particularly difficult to discern, and indeed far from the purpose of this

chapter. As Gauntlett notes in response to longstanding criticisms of media and

depictions of "social problems" and violence:

To assert that, say, "media violence" will bring negative consequences isnot only to presume that depictions of violence in the media will alwaysbe promoting antisocial behavior, and that such a category exists andmakes sense... but also assumes that the medium holds a singular messagewhich will be carried unproblematically to the audience. The effects modeltherefore performs the double deception of presuming (a) that the mediapresents a singular and clear-cut "message," and (b) that the proponents ofthe effects model are in a position to identify what that message is (1998,8).

My purpose in this chapter, therefore, is not to deduce how cinematic

representations of the US-Mexico border and immigration have caused particular

attitudes towards immigrants to be formed, but rather to explore different ways in

which specific filmic narrative grammars can be read from a socio-literary perspective

and how these have been adapted and deployed at different moments by various social

actors.

I also aim to understand the ways in which certain spatial imaginaries of the

US-Mexico border have been represented in Touch of Evil's film-noir setting and how

these have been reinforced and/or challenged by more recent alternative filmic

geographies. These spatial imaginaries contain telling notions of power, control, scale,

and ideology. As will be shown in the following discussion of border films, the issue of

scale surfaces around efforts to establish control over space, representations, and

identities at an individual, local, national, and international level. At the same time,

although situated in a different context, images of the border run parallel to popular

media images of the US South as exotic, uncontrollable and embedded in the past2.

Borders represent the ambiguity and collapsing of scales, which reflects a concern for,

161

and terror about, the central characters' loss of (moral and physical) boundaries. There is

an anxiety about proximity, and yet a desire for closeness, drawing on a desire to be

close to our own borders-be they social, physical, or psychological. As such, it can be

argued that the US and Mexico are within and apart from each other: they are part of

spatial imaginaries where borders are continually drawn and blurred, where conflicts

over race, gender (particularly masculinity), and sexuality are ongoing, and where

intense efforts to refine and delineate borders and order result in escalating chaos.

FRONTIER FANTASIES: HYPOTHETICAL SELVES & THREATENING OTHERS

Psychologically, cinematic “Mexico” has alternated between being a good

neighbor and a neighboring menace (Cortes 1989, 94-95). Cinema provides an important

context for understanding American depictions of the US-Mexico border and Mexico as

a whole. As Cortes (1989, 113) comments, "Frontier Mexico, especially Tijuana, has

become the convenient Hollywood source of background sin and menace." To examine

this border landscape further, three examples provide a useful introduction: Touch of

Evil (1958), The Border (1982), and Lone Star (1996). These films were selected because

while they were made in different decades using contrasting cinematography, they all

evince a social anxiety over immigrant self-fashioning, border crossing and they do fit

into what I would term a "borderlands" aesthetic following Anzaldua (1989). By this, I

mean that the US-Mexico borders, and particularly Mexico, become the quintessential

"South"-an national and international space of difference, fear and exotic identities-the

landscape in which spaces and identities become increasingly transient and haunted.

While the cinematography of Touch of Evil relies on the shadowy environment of more

traditional film noir settings, The Border and Lone Star use an almost negative effect-a

bleaching of the harsh semi-arid landscape-but with similar impacts, in that these locales

continue to ensnare and reproduce a semi-dreamlike state. These films also speak to

broader discussions of the US-Mexico border and "borderline" identities.

162

In his nightmarish film noir extravaganza-Touch of Evil-Orson Welles explores

the corrupt world of underground criminals and police deals at the USMexico border.

Welles plays the corrupt and omnipresent Detective Quinlan, while Charlton Heston

counteracts his activities as the scrupulous Mexican-born detective Mike Vargas. Vargas

aims to expose Quinlan's backdoor approaches towards justice, while in turn, the former

plans to frame his new, and incredibly naïve wife, Susan (played by Janet Leigh) in a

staged drug bust/murder, which involves the cooperation of local Mexican gangsters.

As the plots unravel, Vargas gathers the evidence he needs to convict Quinlan (helped

by Quinlan's partner and best friend), and once Quinlan is broken and dead, Tanya (an

old friend of Quinlan's played by Marlene Dietrich) appears stating (infamously), "He

was some kind of man."

The Border, directed by Tony Richardson, although very different stylistically

from Welles's film, has commonalities in the central characters' moral struggles and also

focuses on the shadowy life of law enforcement at the US-Mexico border. The film

follows the everyday life of an El Paso Border Patrol agent, Charlie (played by Jack

Nicholson), who in response to his wife's (Marcy) apparently insatiable desire for

material comforts, accepts a deal with corrupt agent, Cat, to take pay-offs in return for

allowing a number of undocumented immigrants into the US. This unveils the unwieldy

and violent world of corruption on both sides of the border, eventually leading to its

renunciation by Charlie through his efforts to help a young Mexican woman, Maria.

The third film, Lone Star, is a more recent production directed by John Sayles,

which like The Border takes the Texas-Mexico border as its setting. The film is set in the

fictitious town of Frontera, where the present county Sheriff, Sam Deeds, stumbles upon

a half-unearthed human skull and a sheriff's badge while examining an abandoned rifle

range. Sam learns that while acting as a deputy for the past Sheriff, Charlie Wade, his

father (Buddy Deeds) refused to take any part in the Sheriff's extortion rackets. Furious

at this resistance, Wade stormed out of a restaurant with Buddy, and after this incident

163

Wade was never seen again. Despite his father's heroic reputation in the town, Sam is

convinced that Buddy murdered Wade, and he sets out to establish the "truth" behind

the mystery. As we follow this exploration-back and forth through memories of the

border-we realize that Sam is not only attempting to recover his father's past, but also

his childhood sweetheart, Pilar Cruz.

Although varied in terms of style and content each of these films depicts concerns

around justice, borders, resistance, and morality. The themes emerge at different scales,

both in terms of intensity and socio-spatial contexts, but undercurrents of anxiety and

fear mark each. In many ways these are films that represent a range of nightmare or

"dream" spaces, reflecting the central characters' perspectives as they view the world

with little or no sense of control. Quinlan lives in the haunted memory of his wife's

violent murder, while Vargas is constantly negotiating US and Mexican identities, as

well as his own naivete about corruption; in The Border, Charlie stumbles around a

world in which consumerism and crime rule everyday life; and in Lone Star the

characters struggle to confront past and present lives. These are cinematic and cultural

landscapes in which the boundaries between "good" and "evil" are increasingly blurred

and where the characters' attempts to establish order leads to intensified chaos.

LOCATING THE BORDERS OF SELF: BOUNDED IDENTITY & SPLIT SELVES

Although the material and subconscious landscapes in these films introduce us to

settings in which we explore constantly shifting frames of mind-or "neuroses,"the

physical location and specificity of locale is integral to many scenes. The built

environment, therefore, is significant in each of these representations because in some

ways its relative fixity contrasts sharply with the fluidity of the social context, but in

other ways the two run parallel.

At the opening of Touch of Evil, for example, the camera pans around the scene in

a famously long panorama of the street scene below-a small border town, set in

164

shadowy light, with border crossers stopping at a checkpoint. As the camera pans and

we view different buildings and dimly lit streets, the viewer is drawn into the landscape,

becoming intimately familiar with the topography of the street. Welles's framing of the

scenes enables the viewer to locate and navigate the movement of the characters, which

contrasts with the characters' difficulties in choosing a course of action. At the same

time, the setting is not simply a backdrop, but rather reflects the entrapment of the

characters: Quinlan cannot survive without being involved in cross-border crimes and

investigations in order to overcome feeling responsible for his wife's death; Susan is

trapped by her unconscious bigotry and the way her beauty is represented within

contemporary society; and Vargas is constrained by others' racism, his efforts to

establish a distinct professional identity, and his identity as a protective husband.

Despite the presence of the border, which suggests a possibility of mobility

between countries, there is a distinct sense of being trapped: in order to overcome their

fear of losing or changing their identities, the characters increasingly circumscribe their

lives until it is impossible to do so any longer. Rather than being represented as offering

a sense of openness, therefore, the border increasingly becomes a symbol of oppression,

violence, and repressed desires—disciplinary containment. This southwestern landscape

functions in the popular media in a way very similar to "the South": a fantastical

landscape of exaggerated dilemmas and is so far (morally and physically) from the

popular imaginary of mainstream US society that it is in danger of erasing itself from the

cultural map.

A similar sense of entrapment is represented in The Border, as the central

character, Charlie, seeks to negotiate his increasingly tense and complicated life. During

the course of the film Charlie's wife, Marcy, purchases more and more furniture and a

pool for their new house. Marcy uses these purchases to help overcome the restrictions

she feels due to their limited income and the boredom of suburbia (thus, in some ways

challenging the "good wife" figure common in mainstream cinema). At the same time,

165

Charlie's move to a new Border Patrol job and the accumulation of debt due to Marcy's

purchases has left him feeling increasingly constrained, and this eventually leads him to

agree to take part in his partners' immigrant smuggling racket. As the film progresses,

Charlie makes a series of decisions that continually immobilize and censor his actions

until he finally reaches a moment of crisis and self-rupture at the end and challenges the

corrupt agents. Even though Charlie is able to physically move back and forth across the

border, his identity as a "provider," "authority figure," and "La Migra" is more difficult to

negotiate; it is located within specific socio-spatial discourses of suburbia (white

heterosexual nuclear homes), the workplace (tough and fraternal), and a Mexican

foreign landscape (exotic and dangerous). This marking and fixing-even if partial-is also

represented at the end of the film once Charlie has returned a kidnapped baby daughter

to Maria as they stand together in the riverbed straddling the US-Mexico border.

Although this final scene provides some resolution and a connection between two

characters from worlds in close proximity physically, but socially very distant, the

viewer is left with the suggestion that this is only a temporary reprieve after which each

character will return to their respective conflicts and fears. The border, therefore, offers

only the illusion of mobility and transformation, while coming to symbolize the

difficulties of overcoming economic, ethnic, and legal inequalities along with oppressive

social conditions. As Freddy Fender sings at the conclusion:

There's a landSo I've been toldEvery street is paved with goldAnd it's just across the borderline...And when you reach the broken promised landEvery dream slips through your handYou'll lose much more than you ever hoped to find.

This "dream" of crossing the boundaries and thereby breaking the constraints of existing

power relations and finding an alternative narrative of identity and space is represented

as being everywhere and nowhere in this filmic narrative.

166

In Lone Star, Otis Payne-who runs Big 0's Roadhouse (the one bar in town that

has welcomed African Americans) -reinforces notions of ambiguous moral boundaries

by stating that no one is "all good or all bad." In one of the film's several pedagogical

scenes, he holds forth on how people move across moral and physical borders as they

travel through life. What does an "illegal" person look like? Where do they live? How

will they act? Sayles prompts these questions by uncovering the underlying

assumptions that fuel decisions made by Sheriff Wade and others: the shows the brutal

authority and racism that infuses Wade's treatment of the tired Mexican migrants whom

he finds huddled in the back of a car. Rather than symbolizing "safe spaces" for the local

population, Wade becomes a bandit himself: he acts out a vindictive from of "justice" by

siphoning money from local businesses. His actions become bound to reproducing

economic and raci al inequalities, thus mapping fear onto specific institutions in

Frontera.

Although much of the action in these films falls on the US side of the border, in

both Welles's and Sayles's films there is a nuanced exploration of cross-border

interactions, which complicate and resist popular depictions of Mexican towns as

inferior crime-ridden wastelands. For example, Noriega states that Touch of Evil "is as

much about the contamination of the United States by Mexico as it is about the

contamination of Mexico by the United States" (1992, 56). Welles travels back and forth

across the border and places one of the central "crimes"-the kidnapping of Susan-on the

US side of the border (undertaken by Mexican gangsters at the behest of (the Anglo)

Detective Quinlan). At the same time, border towns are depicted as replete with danger

and "immoral" residents who live in a place that Vargas states "isn't the real Mexico... all

border towns bring out the worst in a country." Indeed, Touch of Evil and Lone Star are

significant in their problematization of the socio-spatial relations of the US-Mexico

border. These films challenge efforts to locate and place characters on only one side of

the border, and instead illustrate the means by which places and identities travel with

167

people across (representational and material) borders and are constantly being

discursively reproduced and contested.

DISCIPLINARY NARRATIVES: WHY SIZE MATTERS, OR DOES IT SCALE?

Within these cinematic spaces there is a fear of crossing borders: a fear that if

certain lines are crossed-be they spatial, moral, sexual, or racial-the scale of

transgressions will explode and dominant cultural narratives will no longer prevail, thus

making the world intolerable, if not intelligible. Narratives are used to police borders

and identities at a range of scales: through nationalist imagery, the discursive

production of border towns, and images of the body. These scales, however, do not

function separately from each other, but are overlapping and often represent competing

discourses. Similar to Pile and Thrift's discussion of the map as depicting how "some

people's place in the world is more precarious than others," these films also suggest the

ways in which such a precariousness and contestability can be discursively produced in

multi-scalar ways:

"The map [or film] as our allegory of power and knowledge-and thesubject-as our allegory of the body and the self-reveal identity: its fluidityand fixity, its purity and hybridity, its safety and terrors, its transparencyand its opacity" (1995,49).

Law enforcement and legal procedures are represented in these border films as

reinforcing specific genealogies, economies and cartographies of power. Legality is

depicted as being dispensed and disciplined by national governments, which monitor

and control territory and identities. At the same time, each of these films illustrates ways

in which concepts of legality and justice can become oppressive and thoroughly

embedded with local and personal, and wholely extra-legal conflicts. Touch of Evil, for

example, represents a border landscape in which national jurisdictions are ambiguous

and law enforcement signifies immorality. This is highlighted in a conversation between

168

Vargas and Quinlan, in which Quinlan's questionable approaches towards police

procedure and the treatment of suspects are being interrogated:

Vargas:... a policeman is supposed to enforce the law, and the law protectsthe guilty as well as the innocent.

Quinlan (over): Our job is tough enough.

Vargas: It's supposed to be. It has to be tough. The policeman's job is onlyeasy in a police state. That's the whole point, captain, who is the boss, thecop or the law?

Throughout the course of the film, Vargas's question is effectively left

unanswered. In asking this question, Welles illustrates that it is not clear who fits the

category of "boss," and that, popular narratives of justice and legality run to the

contrary, the landscape of law enforcement is less clearly defined in daily practices.

While Vargas attempts to represent the law as functioning at a scale beyond the

personal, the film illustrates that it is at the scale of the local and the individual that

enforcement operates. This dislocation of a moral topography reinforces the concept of

the border as a precarious landscape: Vargas's attempts to hold onto a cartographic

control become increasingly desperate and determined, reflecting his efforts to hold onto

his "safe places." As Bordo et al. note:

Like a play within a play, people move from point to point following thepatterns and routines of apparently practical lives. But they carry withthem maps of safe places and safe distance, maps of their internallandscapes, its topography built up of the history of past and presenthuman relationships. These maps designate the way stations where onecan be refueled, loved, reminded of one's identity (1998, 88-89).

The US-Mexico border is represented as an ambiguous legal landscape that

challenges dominant notions of state and federal law enforcement as abstract and

safe.

While symbols of authority, such as laws, funding, and buildings, are sanctioned

at a national level, the authority of individual police officers and the Border Patrol is

reinforced through daily practices within towns, workplaces, homes, and bedrooms. In

169

The Border, Charlie discovers that the Border Patrol unit functions by it own corrupt

rules and deals, which are hidden or ignored by the agents who witness strange

exchanges (e.g., drug deals being hidden in rundown houses, undocumented

immigrants being murdered by agents on back roads).

In addition, rather than suggesting that an overarching "truth" will be guaranteed

by an objective legal system, in Lone Star Sayles reinforces the situatedness of social

relations through discipline, and the ways in which people create their own borders,

stories, and truths. By moving back and forth between the present and past landscapes

of Frontera, he illustrates that although there has been a preoccupation with the

US-Mexico border as a place of "lawlessness," there have in fact been long histories and

geographies of legal negotiations between border residents. Lone Star provides a

representation of a "local" form of law enforcement that, in many ways, is controlled and

interwoven with the residents of the setting. In contrast to this, if we examine the

day-to-day activities of the Border Patrol in Southern California for example, they are

represented as an abstract body who attempt to remain "independent" from the border

and who create a "controlled" landscape through a system of advanced technology and

surveillance.

Although national discourses about discipline and control bolster the authority of

law enforcement agents, symbols of authority marked on the body (uniforms,

masculinity, virility, whiteness) and those that are represented as authoritative bodies

(police, Border Patrol agents, white teachers) illustrate the importance discursive

productions of power and identity in cinema. The image and site of the body becomes a

particularly important component of representing and negotiating border spaces and

identities. The border is represented as a space in which masculinity commands

authority, but is also contested by the male characters' inability to completely control

and achieve their desires: Quinlan can no longer conceal his corruption and needs to "lay

off the cookies" (as Tanya poignantly reminds him); Vargas cannot safeguard his wife

170

from harm; Charlie dislikes his job and is unable to afford the "idyllic" suburban

lifestyle; and Sam questions his sense of self and justice in relation to his father. In these

border landscapes, the autonomous virile subject is unattainable, and the fissures

between national and personal identities become increasingly apparent.

THE IMMIGRANT BODY AS BORDER: ABJECT OBJECT?

The body is a site in which border conflicts are played out. The body is also a key

site through which film narratives are embodied. These borders are viewed as private

spaces, but they are publicly monitored and disciplined. These are spaces where fears

over authority and control are represented and played out. I would also argue that the

fascination with the body as a site of conflict in these films is interwoven with a

fascination with the "abject" body. In a discussion of female body builders, Johnston

(1998, 257), drawing on the work of Kristeva, outlines the means by which disgust and

fascination are focused on the images of muscular women: "The female body builder

threatens the border between female and male sexed bodies." Female body builders are

viewed as challenging popular definitions of feminine identity and, therefore,

challenging the category "Woman." These bodies challenge femininity at both individual

and societal levels: "The abject threatens the unity and identity of both society and

subject. It questions the boundaries on which they are constructed" (Johnston 1998, 257).

This fascination with abject bodies can also be seen in Touch of Evil, The Border,

and Lone Star. Questions arise about the boundaries on which central characters'

identities are formed and ontologically grounded, resulting in questions about societal

attitudes more generally, and questions about core identity formations more specifically.

These abject bodies rupture dominant cultural narratives of identity and at the same

time are marked and policed through specific constructions of race, gender, and locality.

In popular discussions about immigration, the abject body of the immigrant

challenges internal and external borders around what are deemed acceptable identities,

171

subjectivities and practices. In the selected films, the bodies of Mexican immigrants are

mediated through sentiments of fascination and disgust. For example, throughout

Touch of Evil, the Tijuana gang boss who helps Quinlan is depicted as grotesque, yet

hypnotic: he is a successful Mexican businessman, a criminal, and a threatening figure to

Vargas and Susan, until his murder (by Quinlan) at the end of the film. I would also

suggest that the fascination and discomfort surrounding the character of Vargas is

related to his representation as an abject body: he is of Mexican descent, honest, a law

enforcer, and married to an Anglo US woman. He is also marked by an "ineffectual

masculinity" illustrated by his failure to protect Susan from gangsters. This masculinity

is challenged even more so by the fact that Susan is held hostage for a "staged rape" that

does not actually take place, as Welles toys with the popular stereotype of Mexicans as

sexually promiscuous and potentially rapists.

Quinlan is also depicted as representing abject space: he is a US detective who

pays off Mexican gangsters, he was not able to prevent his wife's murder, and he has-in

the word's of Tanya-become "a mess." His large frame represents a lack of control and

discipline, and yet his determination draws the viewer into his worldview. This use of

bodyweight as a symbol of weakness is an interesting strategy used by Welles, since it is

usually deployed either to discipline women or to create comedic value for a character.

Although women are far less likely to control the action in these films, there are

moments where female characters challenge the hegemony of their male counterparts by

illustrating the ways they can be viewed abjectly. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory,

these challenges to masculinity can also be linked into the notion of "woman as

threat"-"in that woman as representation signifies castration, including voyeuristic or

fetishistic mechanisms to overcome her threat" (Mulvey 1992, 351).

The notion of the abject is not only present in individual characters, but also in the

relationships between characters (which is fitting in terms of the curiosity and fear with

which the US-Mexico border and "The South" is represented in mainstream US media).

172

For example, at the conclusion of Lone Star, when Sam and Pilar realize they have fallen

in love and are half brother and sister, there is a sense of shock, but also a relief that they

have rediscovered each other. This revelation about their relationship and their decision

to stay together represents the ultimate "abject" space or taboo: it is the sexual and

emotional bonding of two intimately related people from different ethnic

backgrounds-representative of the complex and messy borders that imbue the social and

physical landscape. These films crystallize the inherent contradictions in discussions of

the border and the ways in which they become racialized and gendered in specific

narratives. As Nericcio concludes in an examination of Touch of Evil:

Think of the space depicted in Welles' film: the bordertown and the half-breed, lafrontera y el mestizo: a space and subject whose identities are notfractured but fracture itself, where hyphens, bridges, border stations andschizophrenia are the rule rather than the exception... Only a culture withsome radically essential category of the pristine Subject, could collectivelysupport and sustain the derogatory valence of the half-breed (1992, 48).

This idea of a clearly defined and bounded "subject," such as, an "American" or an

"immigrant" (or even territorial boundaries), which in turn enable an easily identifiable

"transgressor," is-as Nericcio points out-problematic, because such notions have been

shaped by, and shaped, representations of the US-Mexico border and Mexican

immigrants to the US. These narrowly defined discourses can be traced in film,

immigration policies, and, as we will see in the next section can also suggest alternative

ways of categorizing a transnational trope of "Southern" spaces.

IMMIGRATION DISCIPLINE: REMEMBERING THE SOUTHERN “OTHER”

As evinced above, representations of the US-Mexico border and immigration in

popular cinema have depicted ongoing national concerns and individual narratives of

border crossing, self-fashioning and transgression. At certain moments, however,

recurring themes begin to emerge in these representations that suggest links between a

variety of socio-literary geographies. In this next section I will build on the issues raised

173

earlier to explore the possibilities of understanding these cinematic cartographies of the

US-Mexico border by linking them with narratives of "Southern" US spaces. Several

similarities appear between the ways in which dominant images of the US South have

been shown in popular cultural discourses and those of the US-Mexico border. I aim to

illustrate how narratives of the US-Mexico border can be seen as continuing, if not

embodying, marginalized stories of southern "others."

The spatial imaginaries that emerge from cinematic representations of the US--

Mexico border reflect ongoing negotiations of landscapes imbued with fear, loathing

and fascination. This generalized fear surfaces from an avoidance and inability to view

misrepresentations and conflicts of the past and present—an inability to cognitively map

the interstices of history and biography onto the geographic soma. What is seen by the

central characters within Touch of Evil, The Border and Lone Star are landscapes that fit

within a perspective considered controllable and, by necessity, exclusionary. These

representations of borders are exclusionary in that they erase and reformulate memories

of place while they seek to create borders and physically expunge people who challenge

boundaries drawn between "north" and "south."

THE AMERICAN “SOUTH”: DISPLACED ANXIETY IN BORDER NARRATIVES

Images of "The South" in US media frequently depict a stereotypical landscape

that is largely rural, conservative and locked in the past. In addition, for many people

physically situated "outside" of the region, their spatial imaginary of this (very

generalized) locale consists of stories about insularity, reluctance to change, the War

Between The States and a landscape that is potentially wild and morally ambiguous.

While more recent cinematic images challenge some of these notions of a fixed and

bounded "South" as can be seen in the documentaries of new Southern cineastes at

Appalshop or Café Sisters Productions 3-the endurance of longstanding stereotypes has

remained quite significantly intact. Even in more recent mainstream films, such as

174

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which illustrates the quirkiness of small town

Savannah, Georgia, a central component of the narrative relies on events that rely on a

largely separate social, spatial and legal jurisdiction. The film depicts a community

where neighbors regularly interact and eccentrics flourish. This is an exotic landscape

that is both general and highly localized in the context of the US. It is a general place in

the sense that it taps into existing notions of southern towns as "out of the ordinary" and,

therefore, becomes symbolic of small town life in "The South." The film is also localized

in the sense that there are traits that are specific to the particular situation in terms of the

place in which the film is placed and the unusual characters, e.g., a gay antique dealer, a

New York writer and a local drag queen.

A similar process of creating generic yet specific exotic landscapes can be seen in

the representations of the US-Mexico border. The border is abstracted in mainstream

media to become symbolic of overarching concerns about national sovereignty, security,

immigration, and moral boundaries that are assigned by nation, gender and race.

Simultaneously, specific events, such as, an abduction from a Tijuana hotel or a desert

murder act to map out and legitimize concerns about violence and ambiguity. In both of

these cases tropes of "southern spaces" rely on collapsing scales of difference in order to

map out social and physical terrain that should be viewed with caution.

On a similar note, Huyssen (2001) explores the importance of combining general

and localized identities in relation to public memory. His analysis of the Holocaust as a

metaphor for trauma and genocide while being tied to specific socio-spatial stories is

helpful for understanding the means by which violence and difference have become

mapped onto certain places through the process of memory and re-telling stories. In the

context of the Holocaust, Huyssen illustrates how this globalizing narrative signifies

limitations of modernity and the use of multi-scalar cultural narratives:

[The Holocaust] serves as proof of Western civilization's failure to practiceanamnesis, to reflect on its constitutive inability to live in peace withdifference and otherness and to draw the consequences from the insidious

175

relationship between enlightened modernity, racial oppression, andorganized violence... It is precisely the emergence of the Holocaust asuniversal trope that allows Holocaust memory to latch on to specificsituations that are historically distant and politically distinct from theoriginal event (2001, 60).

In the context of the US-Mexico border as shown in the films discussed

previously, memory and the re-telling of spatial stories is also an important part of how

this locale comes to represent fear, danger, and difference. The stories of the US-Mexico

border, narrating it as a "southern-like space," rely on memories that illustrate a failure

to fully understand and address racism and violence. Hegemonic representations of the

US-Mexico border (and The South in the US), eclipse the cultural diversity that has

existed across the region and fail to elaborate on the transnational ties between the two

(and other) countries. As shown in an argument about how US history has been taught

by the schoolteachers in Lone Star, the inability to learn and understand past violence

also facilitates the violence of the erasure of local and national stories and the

re-mapping of dominant identities and narrative subjectivities. As a result of these

exclusionary discursive processes, in a similar manner to the US South being

represented as out of the ordinary, the US-Mexico border appears to be out of place.

In Touch of Evil, The Border and Lone Star central conflicts emerge over who has

the authority to decide the course of events and to have legitimate concerns that should

be addressed. These tensions reflect broader fears over maintaining boundaries between

the US and Mexico, and around processes of policing those who "belong" on either side

of the border. In addition, the US-Mexico border is seen as marker between North and

South-as, Nericcio (1992) states, between good and evil. Those who are marked as

inhabiting this in-between space also have signifiers mapped onto them that suggest

they do not have the legitimacy to be heard. In the same way, therefore, that viewpoints

from the US South are frequently ridiculed and undermined in mainstream media, so

too are voices from the US-Mexico border, particularly those of Latinos and those from

Mexico. Dominant mainstream media, therefore, in many instances can be seen as

176

exerting a neo-colonialist force both within and beyond the US. This force represents a

process of media broadcasting that intrinsically relies on the interweaving of identity,

space and representation.

Bordo (1998) discusses a process that could be considered similar to this system of

demarcating spaces when she examines her own experiences of negotiating city life and

her growing sense of agoraphobia during her twenties. During this time and when

reflecting on this fear of open spaces, Bordo notes that she had become increasingly

"lost" and unhappy in here recent marriage, and had also been "giving up bits and

pieces" of herself (1992, 80). She suggests that in order to convince her that she was

content she made herself dependent and bound to her domestic environment by

creating imaginary boundaries--that became very real--when she ventured outside.

Although quite a different setting, I would argue that popular representations of the US

South and of the US-Mexico border rely on a similar process, wherein the potential for

social and physical openness and diversity within these spaces are represented as a

minefield of borders that are crossed at peril. By creating borders around our imagined

communities in this way, a dependence on traditional constructions of nationalism,

authority and integrity are encouraged in order to avoid confronting the complexity and

challenges that openness involves. However, by recognizing and exploring these border

"phobias" we can open up the possibility of re-thinking how we represent in-between

spaces. This re-thinking may provide us with the opportunity of what-in relation to

return migrants--Gmelch (1995) calls "double passage", i.e., the possibility to revisiting

places and identities and critically examining the assumptions with which they have

previously been viewed.

CINEMATIC CONCLUSIONS

At the same time as it runs the risk of abstraction and reinforcing dominant

cultural discourses, mass media also provides the opportunity to question who has the

177

authority to speak and represent knowledge. By examining media texts we can

interrogate the assumptions that are bound within them. This "opening up" of

representation can challenge traditional efforts that reify a distinct border or an

"authentic" history. Such authentic geographies and histories frequently eclipse

difference and fail to recognize the poli-vocal nature of social relations. Cinema, for

example, offers an alternative understanding of time and space by providing multiple

contexts and venues in which a variety of images can be represented and read, and if

used as a form of resistance, may open up more spaces for effective political

representation, at best, at worst, it results in a blockbuster or two at the box-office.

When examining media images of the border and "Southern" spaces it becomes

evident that there is a complex system of socio-spatial networks utilized to delineate

between different, regional, economic, racial, gender and sexual identities. Ethnicity, for

example, is mapped onto segregated bars, neighborhoods, restaurants, national borders,

and used to recreate social ties in specific places. Borders are not only delineated by a

fence and seismic sensors, but are mapped onto the body-allowing certain people to gain

recognition, while others are marked as "outsiders." These images of the US-Mexico

border, the US South and immigrant identities, therefore, function at a variety of scales

and are intricately intertwined with specific spatial imaginaries. They place immigrants

in very particular ways and reflect an obsession with the proximity and mobility of

immigrant populations. An exploration of media images, such as Touch of Evil, The

Border and Lone Star offers a better understanding of this "open wound"-the "scar" of

the border-and the frequently arbitrary scars of human action, e.g., through personal

conflicts, attacks on migrants, transnational relations and poverty (Anzaldua 1987, 3).

Cinematic representations of border identities and spaces represent ongoing

concerns about difference and the means by which various groups can chart and map

those that are seen as marginal or threatening. These images also illustrate links with

representations of the US South and socio-literary tropes of the US-Mexico border and

178

Mexico as problematic "Other" spaces. Media images tell stories about places and

immigration that are often abstractly personalized, contradictory on a variety of

levels-sometimes challenging-and oriented around the possibility of stabilizing aspects

of social life that are continually shifting. In order to understand and resist the presumed

naturalness of dominant discourses of borders and immigration it is necessary,

therefore, to interrogate how and why certain images become problematic, and to

explore the means by which film and television can offer an arena that can be both

innovative and challenging.

179

PART IV: CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP: E PLURIBUS UNUM.

"The past is never dead; it's not even past."

(William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun)

180

CHAPTER 9: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AMERICAN AENEIDS: IMMIGRANT FAMILY FICTIONS AS TROPES OF SELF—OR, HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST

THEIR ACCENTS BY DREAMING IN CUBAN

All migrants leave their past behind, although some try to pack it into bundles and boxesbut on the journey something seeps out of the treasured mementos and old photographs,until even their owners fail to recognize them, because it is the fate of the migrants to bestripped of history, to stand naked amidst the scorn of strangers upon whom they see therich clothing, the brocades of continuity and the eyebrows of belonging.

--Salman Rushdie

The tension generated when dissimilar cultures come into contact-tension between pastand present, between family history and daily life-is particularly visible in literature byimmigrant writers. --Karen Christian

TENSE TROPICS: TROPES OF FAMILY & HOST COMMUNITY

This chapter explores how, from a socio-literary perspective, two fictional

immigrant families, written by 1.5ers, negotiate many of the same dilemmas of

autonomy (self) and unity (socius); preserve cultural beliefs and practices surrounding

family and community within a larger hegemonic nativist agenda asserting

homogeneity and to maintain successful middle-class consumerist family relationships.

The perspective shifts to include additional factors, such as the complex constellation of

power relations that surrounds the issues of political exile, a greater reliance on family

as community, economic struggle, and English as a second language. How the Garcia

Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by Dominican American author Julia Alvarez, and

Dreaming in Cuban (1992) by Cuban American author Cristina Garcia depict Dominican

and Cuban nuclear and extended families struggling to negotiate the processes of

honoring ideologies and tropes of self that they carry from the homeland and the

constant pressure to acculturate or assimilate the new beliefs and customs learned in

America into a new “American Self.” These are among the issues that must be

considered in the differences between acculturation, which "occurs when the various

cultural threads of the ethnic and mainstream cultures become intermeshed," and

assimilation, "a gradual process, occurring over time in which one set of cultural traits is

181

relinquished and a new set is acquired through participation in mainstream culture"

(McAdoo 11). Alvarez and Garcia depict closeness within Latin American

multigenerational families who are influenced by the convergence and production of

origin, ethnicity, class, and gender; while they trace how these elements contribute to

familial and individual struggles for narrative identity in a new country and a new

language. While orienting to life in America, Latina families, whether exiled or

voluntarily immigrated lose tightly-knit communities of extended family; consequently,

they generally must redouble efforts to retain narrative & socially generative

autobiographical story elements from their past in order to provide comfort and a sense

of belonging in their new country in the face of the Althusserian "state apparatus"

systems which encourage a nuclear family arrangement and mandate trading one

culture for another as part of the assimilation process in an “excessively exuberant” fin-

de-siecle business, political and civic cultures.

In her debut novel Alvarez essentially answers the question implied in the title to

detail not only how the Garcia girls lost their accents but also why this linguistic

phenomenon might occur. Because of his political activities, specifically a clandestine

relationship with the CIA in an attempt to stage a coup to oust Dictator Rafael Leonidas

Trujillo Molina, young Doctor Garcia must gather his wife and four children and flee

from their home in the Dominican Republic for the safety of the United States. Alvarez

uses a modified circular, in media res narrative format where she begins in the present

and writes in reverse order to end with the beginning of the Garcia's exile from the

island. Julie Barak calls the method "a narrative that spirals from the outside in, whirling

backward through the Garcia's lives" to take them farther away from their lives and

luxurious existence the Dominican Republic (160). Though Yolanda, who seems to be

Alvarez's autobiographical persona, shoulders more of the narrative duties, each adult

child "writes" a chapter to reflect upon the events of her life and how she was affected by

the turmoil that begins with the forced assimilation at her arrival as a small child, or

182

what William Luis calls the "erasure of the ethnic excess" (94). Alvarez engages three

generations of Garcia del a Tones (in Latino/a families when referring to extended

family both surnames are used) to work through the trauma of separation that occurs

due to political events so that readers can witness the same events from multiple,

autobiographical perspectives. The novel opens in 1989, almost thirty years after the

family has fled Trujillo's secret police. Yolanda, in the throes of an identity crisis, has

returned to her extended family in an effort to recuperate the part of her she feels she

lost on the day her panicked mother packed the family's belongings. Alvarez partitions

the novel into three distinct groups of narrative movements. In the first, which spans

1972-1989, the sisters are adults; the second covers 1960-1972 and parallels the cultural

revolution of the 1960s with the private revolutions of Garcia girl adolescence; and, the

final section accounts for their idyllic island early childhood spanning 1956-1960.

Likewise, the complicated path of exiles separated from their families forms the

narrative impetus for Dreaming in Cuban. As is often the pattern in literature written by

Cuban nationalists and exiled expatriates, the pivotal point in island history and

biography occurs in 1959 when Fidel Castro's revolution succeeds and he assumes

control. Joseph M. Viera calls Garcia's novel a "microcosm of the Cuban condition since

it depicts families torn apart emotionally, geographically, and ideologically" (231). The

author begins with a brief character sketch of the oldest living member of the family,

Celia del Pino, Castro loyalist, matriarch, and mother to Lourdes, Felicia, and Javier, and

wife to Jorge, as she peers through government issued binoculars out into the waters off

the Cuban coast that her house sits upon looking for gusano (worm) traitors who might

be attempting to abandon The Revolution and the island. Abandoned by her unloving

mother and subsequently raised by a kind-hearted aunt, Celia's early adult life is marred

by depression over an unrequited love, and lack of maternal affection. Garcia accounts

for Celia's character through letters she writes to this lost love. Within the span of almost

thirty years Celia touches upon every personal and public detail in her life from politics

183

to her beloved granddaughter. She passes her maternal inattention to her eldest

daughter Lourdes who, with husband Rufino Puente has long been living in New York

with their daughter Pilar, and were part of the mass exodus of Cuba's wealthy,

entrepreneurs and artisans almost immediately after Castro began appropriating private

citizens' lands and bank accounts. Pilar shoulders the brunt of the narrative duties which

are expressed in first person to, like the Garcia girls, record the fallout not only from

familial separation but also the tension political diversity plays in family. Similar to

what Alvarez does with Yolanda, Garcia makes Pilar the exiled daughter who wants the

impossible, the private sphere of family and community to overwhelm the public rift

between politicos and reunite families and communities. That way she can retrieve the

part of her selfhood she believes waits on the island of her family's origins; she, too,

devises a journey and casts herself as her own personal cultural anthropologist, on a

mission to recover familial artifacts of both tangible and intangible quality. Until she can

persuade her stubborn mother to make the trip, Pilar keeps the telepathic

communication she and Celia share going, and she stages her own coup, a brief stint

running away to her Florida relatives and their access to the island. Felicia lives near

Celia and is a reluctant comrade to the revolution. From her estranged husband she

inherits three things: daughter Luz, son Ivanito, and a debilitating case of syphilis that

eats away at her brain.

For Alvarez's and Garcia's characters the Freudian family romance is yet another

cultural mystery that must be narratively unraveled in the quest for open and

unconditional acceptance "for those who are part of the communities based on extended

family, religious beliefs, or country of origin" (McAdoo 13). Where the Freudian family

romance encourages the individual as focal point, these two novels focus on narrating

how acculturation and assimilation affect the immigrant communities and families.

Historically, Freud's theory about the family romance seems to have most affected the

European continent and Eurocentric America; in most Latin American cultures the

184

family is simply structured differently. For example, in Latin American countries

machismo, a form of male dominance, pervades many families. Here the father is largely

absent, and by messaging his commands from afar he is symbolized in the abstract

(Stavins 108). To be macho, according to Ilan Stavins, is to consider sexual conquests a

sign of strength. Also, a man must appear physically well built. Men who are heavy,

balding, or possessing some other physical impairment are considered effeminate.

Likewise, revealing emotions is also taboo (108). Women are to come to the marriage

bed virgins while their husbands should be well experienced. Stavins points out how

education, politics, and cultural media support these ideologies. However, I believe that

Latinas circumvent machismo with a more egalitarian family authority system, and I

discuss Alvarez and Garcia's methodologies in more depth below. Since the Freudian

family romance is an Eurocentric concept and as such is one Dominican and Cuban

natives are not familiar with until they arrive in the states, being forced into the family

romance creates the unique perspective of "intersecting forms of domination" that

produce both oppression and opportunity" (Dill 237). The patriarchal family romance

initially oppresses characters in both novels until Garcia and Alvarez successfully

override that trope to create a post family romance in which power is more equitably

distributed. By crafting autobiographical fictions where the family is the individual writ-

large, not the state, Alvarez and Garcia also subvert a male-dominant family social

system for a more egalitarian and just system.

Because the authors emphasize extended family groupings and a greater reliance

on communal resources to redistribute power and authority to more than a few, the

characters navigate through K. T. Kumabe'sn "acculturation continuum," --"scale of

values that confronts a person or group from an ethnic background" (qtd. in McAdoo

11). This continuum can span the values learned in the person's homeland, their religion,

beliefs, and practices that are typically unique to the mainstream values of the

hegemonic group and what I see as practices that enhance the contemporary

185

heterosexist family romance. Alvarez and Garcia also chronicle the range of emotion an

individual may experience while dropping in and out on the acculturation/assimilation

continuum. When the Garcia girls are children the social gap between them and their

classmates seems vast, but they remain unaffected because their parents insure them

regular connections to island relatives and customs to assuage doubts and hurt brought

about by schoolyard taunting. Later when they are in college the sisters experience anger

when they want to fit in with their American friends but they perceive their parents to

be holding them back with antiquarian Dominican social customs. Guilt intervenes and

redirects their efforts to just short of the moment they are ready to succumb to the

pressure and sell out their familial history for light skin and blue eyes.

Together these two novels create forums for the discussion of Spanish-speaking

immigrant families and their tales of survival, adversity, and success. The characters

are citizens of a diverse American society negotiating the dilemma of maintaining dual

cultures while offering narrative enhancements to the post-family system. Each author

examines, problematizes, and questions familial communities as a central component

of narrative identity formation while living in a dominant American culture that places

less value on extended kinship networks and more on nuclear family networks. The

novels provide support to the idea that the American family defines itself in multiple

ways by multiple ideologies, none of which can claim to be exclusively "American."

Finally, the characters resist the essentialized and homogeneous representations of

either a Cuban or Dominican heritage as that which is fixed, featuring instead evolving,

robust, dynamic social practices and complex hybrid families, communities, and

cultures.

During the characters' struggle to preserve la familia and their native customs

and beliefs while undertaking the processes of redefining their families and homes as

sites of culturally repressive and progressive practices and experiencing the ongoing

drama of trying to blend American values and habits with their own, they reveal a

186

palette of emotions, depending on age and gender. Alvarez's Carlos and Laura exhibit

"anger, despair, and sadness" at the dramatic changes in their lives while their children

express "vacillation and ambivalence" (Borland 49). Garcia's Pilar, just a small child

when her parents emigrate, expresses a rage and contempt only a teen can summon at

her mother's vehement attitude about Cuba and their separation from the remainder of

the family. This range of disparate emotions resembles what William Luis calls the

"dance between two cultures" in his book of the same name. The term describes what

exiles perceive as the limited choice between to "either strive to assimilate-to eliminate

the excess-or seek refuge in the familiarity of their ethnic community" (qtd. in Karen

Christian 90). Though Luis structures his observations on an either/or principle, he

would probably agree that acculturating or supporting one's ethnic community requires

constant negotiating and policing of desires, hopes, and beliefs. On the one hand, the

lure of assimilation promises an easier life and less trouble with other Americans, but at

the price of erasing customs, holidays and familial structures?

Alvarez and Garcia find wriggling room that allows their characters to dance

within their two cultures, to choose within assimilation and acculturation, though

outside pressures on the families make efforts to retain many cultural practices difficult.

Both authors are familiar with this negotiation between cultural beliefs and as such

form a sort of bridge to connect their characters' ethnicity and the dominant American

beliefs, and they write plots where each community informs and adjusts to the other's

nuances. These negotiations invite the absolutely necessary vital exchange of

information and a constant adjustment of the "traditional" family to accommodate

various changes without further encouraging cultural erasure. Their plots also reveal

the troublesome nature of what Gloria Anzaldua calls living in the "borderlands," a

place that is simultaneously home but also a foreign land. Alvarez and Garcia resist

limiting aspects of their characters' identity formations and instead guide readers

towards an appreciation for their ethnicity, race, networks of power, their sexuality,

187

gender, class, and geographic identities. During their stories of struggle to build new

and successful lives in America, the fictional families Garcia del a Tone and del Pino

Puente add vital texture to the fabric that comprises the American family's literary

narrative as it coexists within the dominant culture's narrative, and provide further

evidence to the complexities within Dominican and Cuban American families and

communities.

ARTICULATING THE NARRATIVE SELF WITHIN THE IMMIGRANT SOCIUS

Additionally, these two novels show how Dominicans and Cuban Americans

impact our notions of family by rescripting the nuclear family ideology on multiple

levels by the author's interpretation of the following points. Both novels portray families

as sites where members alternately exchange power within their intimate circles and

remain strong within larger webs of a community. The families are comprised of

members of various ages and genders who receive and relinquish individual authority

within their membership, thereby creating alternating points of authority and resistance.

Each has the ability to and typically does impose or withdraw his or her power, which

disrupts the patriarchal/traditional family. Relationships are subsequently defined by

how characters choose to manifest their authority, and the novels portray the family as a

heterogeneous apparatus, absolving itself of precise membership boundaries, which

result in households comprised of various kin and fictive members, such as aunts,

uncles, grandparents, cousins, lovers, and friends. These fictional families are dynamic

organisms that reinvent themselves for adaptation and survival.

Both novels examine and problematize issues surrounding the home, la casa, as

both a safe haven as well as a prison house of oppression, a place for all and a spot for

none. The works portray the home as actually one of the sites where the public and

private spheres dissolve, because through these particular novels the distinctions

between these traditional categories becomes less clearly represented than in other

188

periods. For example, fiction from the nineteenth and early twentieth century created

and then vehemently supported a clear division between the public and private

sectors, a system that seems less important, judging from the points Alvarez and

Garcia make. Alvarez's Garcia residence in the island that protects the family from

political turmoil and speaks to their economic stability is also by traditional American

literature considered nontraditional. The extended family resides in a large compound

where business and home life are contained together. At one point, members of the

American CIA take up residence in one of the houses so that Dr. Garcia can assist them

in a coup to overthrow Trujillo. This residential compound resembles a small city

rather than a traditionally private home. For Garcia's del Pinos, Celia lives in a house

that openly invites the public into her private sphere because "the neighborhood has

voted her little brick-and-cement house by the sea as the primary lookout" for enemy

invasion and Celia their vigilant guard (DC 3). As a proud Castro supporter, Celia

expresses no qualms of personal ownership, preferring to see her home as an outpost

against the gusano who swear against el Lidar. Celia believes it is an honor to give her

home to the revolution.

Another instance where discussions surrounding this chapter shall be markedly

different from the preceding one is the issue of language. Children of immigrant

parents, like Alvarez's Garcias and Garcia's Pilar Puente, achieve proficiency in

English more quickly than their parents, in part because speaking the English

language is mandated in the school system. Yolanda Garcia reveals her motivation for

acquiring a proficiency in English as protective as well as practical because it "was still

a party favor for me-crack open the dictionary, find out if I'd just been insulted,

praised, admonished, criticized" (GG 87). This swift language acquisition puts sons

and daughters in the awkward position of negotiating between frustrated parents and

the grocer, the doctor, teachers, the utilities company, the landlord, and so on,

requiring children to act as translators for their parents and unavoidably usurping

189

parental rule. Children return from school or a friend's house with new if not

necessarily Eurocentric cultural practices that threaten existing ones, and parents

suddenly become "old school," obsolete and powerless to their children's hunger for

acculturation or assimilation.

Pilar and her mother Lourdes, however, reverse the typical pattern of parents

clinging to old traditions and children gobbling up anything American. Pilar covets her

mother's naturally fluent Spanish and resents anything in translation because of the

danger in confusing and diluting original meaning. She confides in her diary, "I envy my

mother her Spanish curses sometimes. They make my English collapse in a heap" (DC

59). Like her mother peering at the surf off the Cuban coast for American invaders,

Lourdes watches vigilantly her daughter's attempts to immerse herself into what

Lourdes sees as the contested terrain of her ethnic identity. Where Pilar determines to

uncover her Cuban values, beliefs, and customs, Lourdes struggles to prevent the same.

Obviously in such a difficult situation this battle drives a wedge between the mother

and daughter, prompting a concerned doctor to suggest to Lourdes that she and Pilar

needed to spend more time together. She enrolls them in a flamenco class, but when the

instructor singles Pilar out for her "proud chest" and "how she carries herself" Lourdes

cancels the course for fear that her daughter may become too ethnic (Garcia 59).

Skin color and tone further complicates ethnicity and hegemony. Karen Christian

observes, "For those immigrants with racial difference visibly inscribed on their bodies,

no amount of performing will ever permit them to pass as white Americans" (92). This

belief plays out in the American education system that perpetuates the power struggle

between immigrant parents and their children. Patricia Hill Collins states that typically

white, middle-class children find the educational experiences they receive affirm their

family's middle-class values; however, the opposite can be true for certain African

American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American children whose experiences

seem to stand in contrast to their class status and dominant cultural values and beliefs

190

(206). Collins supports her work with examples that include the ubiquitous skin tone

issue that creates tension between people trying to preserve their particular cultural

beliefs and those who insist all but the dominant cultural values must become

subordinate to the American cultural system, whatever that may be. In a conversation

she had with an African American mother who married and had two sons with a

Japanese American, Collins demonstrates how undeniably shaky race can be. PTA

mother Jenny Yamoto observed that her sons' behaviors were interpreted differently

depending on which parent would attend the open house. If she represented the family,

she was told her oldest son behaved "disruptive [and] irreverent," but if their father

attended, the same child would be praised for his assertive actions and clever thinking

(206). Obviously this culturally determined shift might rupture existing parent to child

relationships and disrupt often subtly transfered power from one generation to the next.

Parents and grandparents feel less in control, and children discover those they have

looked to and relied upon for guidance may have been undermined by outside

authorities, such as the Collins example.

This reinforced good skin color/bad skin color is a recursive theme in both

Garcia Girls and Dreaming in Cuban. When her parents visit her in college, Yolanda is

quickly reminded of how her family and herself have been culturally inscribed with

"difference" because of their Dominican features (GG 98). Her sister Carla reluctantly

echoes this phenomenon by admitting her embarrassment over how she assumes her

Anglo friends will react to "[h]er immigrant father with his thick mustache and accent

and three-piece suit" (GG 155). Fretting over always feeling one step behind her college

peers, Yolanda rues her immigrant origins. She confides to her diary, "If only I too had

been born in Connecticut or Virginia, I too would understand the jokes everyone was

making on the last two digits of the year 1969; I too would be having sex and smoking

dope; I too would have suntanned parents who took me skiing in Colorado over

Christmas break" (GG 95). In Dreaming in Cuban, Lourdes hires a Puerto Rican woman,

191

but her actions reveal the decision is less about helping a fellow immigrant with

employment opportunities and more about assuaging her own racial prejudices.

Lourdes critically scrutinizes the darker-skinned Maribel's every move, noting her new

employee's efficiency but remaining convinced the woman is fundamentally lazy and

capable of stealing. Masking her anger in the thought that "nobody works like an

owner," she admonishes Maribel for her lack of sales initiative when she simply rings

people up instead of suggesting more items to purchase. Finally Lourdes's vigilance

pays off when she catches the woman stealing money from the register. Triumphantly,

Lourdes orders the other brown-skinned woman from The American Bakery (DC 66).

Additionally, these novelists expose the implicit double bind of ethnicity and

growing up in America. The adolescent/teen period, difficult enough when one's

identity is aligned in the traditional white, middle class, Christian, nuclear category, is

even more difficult for a brown-skinned child with an accent. In fact, studies indicate

that first-generation children often reject their culture of origin for the perceived

homogeneity of their new culture's beliefs and a chance to fit in instead of continuously

being perceived as different, though Garcia's Pilar subverts this pattern. Despite this

shift, many second and third generation children return to and practice the distinctive

characteristics of their parents' and grandparents' native cultures and values, thus

preserving and perpetuating original beliefs while staying within the context of what

may be loosely defined as an American culture. Garcia makes the distinction between

generational loyalty to the home country vividly clear, but only insofar as to reflect the

gamut of the general split between pro and anti-Castro Cuban Americans and resists

privileging one over the other (Luis 216). As evidenced in the del Pino family, some

achieve glory by answering Castro's call for community work (Celia and the reluctant

Felicia), some remain loyal to Cuba but not her politics (Rufino and Pilar), and others

become aggressively vocal concerning the government and its hold over the island

(Lourdes). Conversely, Alvarez's novel could almost read as an acculturation handbook

192

for survival, because the young girls quickly learn that the way to duck schoolyard

taunts and become popular with boys is to distance themselves from their cultural

legacy. However, as adults they unequivocally align themselves with their Dominican

heritage as evidenced by the end of the novel when as an adult, Yolanda returns to the

island to recoup her lost histories. At that point Alvarez reveals the layered intricacies of

preserving cultural pride from dominant cultural erasure. Yolanda believes that after

years of therapy, several mental breakdowns, and much pain and suffering, she is

prepared to accept that the answer to her identity and self worth will avail itself to her

when she returns to her original home.

Finally, and most importantly, these two novels demonstrate how the immigrant

family becomes infused with and influenced by so-called American beliefs, and then

articulate the overlooked point that this knowledge exchange is mutually beneficial to

all citizens living in a multicultural society. People feel more comfortable sharing

familial nuances that enrich the overall culture while decreasing divisions, because the

familial level is more intimate and less intimidating than the educational and judicial

segments. One informal method of unlocking cultural equality is to share and learn

cultural beliefs and customs from one another, and often this process begins when

people intermarry or integrate neighborhoods. Another method of shared customs

involves food. Eating in to make dishes that are of another culture are perfectly

acceptable and socially encouraged activities that can even be construed as connoting a

certain cultural sophistication. But when other mores, beliefs, and practices are at stake,

many who view themselves as "non-traditional" resist reverse enculturation unless they

have integrated families or live in multicultural neighborhoods.

Alvarez and Garcia's similarities extend beyond the strong family narrative

running through their work, as their root language is Spanish. Another coincidental

aspect of these specific works that is their interest in themes depicting fictional families

who come to this country as political exiles, a far different issue than voluntary

193

immigration. The novels indicate that exile, forced or voluntary, is a politically

motivated act that firmly and profoundly shapes the characters' experiences and

ideologies as they negotiate their new lives as American citizens. An examination of

these texts confirm that Dominican American and Cuban American families, regardless

of immigration circumstances, contribute to the entity we call the American family.

QUALIS PATER TALIS FILIUS.

The issue of naming remains a centrally contested point in personal identity.

Many theorists prefer not to engage the terms Hispanic, Chicana/o, and Latina/o when

speaking about a corpus of texts and practices originating from authors who originate

from one or more Latin American countries, just as many more find these terms

adequate and appropriate. Where appropriate I shall be as specific as possible, referring

to people by the country of origin, as in the Dominican Americans in Alvarez's novel

and the Cuban Americans in Garcia's. I base this decision on arguments presented by

Suzanne Oboler in Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives, Gustavo Perez Firmat's Life on the

Hyphen, han Stavins' The Hispanic Condition, William Luis's Dance Between Two

Cultures, and Isabel Alvarez Borland's Cuban-American Literature of Exile. This group

of authors examines controversial practices of group identity among people of Spanish-

speaking countries. Each favors specificity in group naming, as in Mexican American,

Cuban American, and Dominican American over the more generalized

misunderstanding that they feel the terms Chicana, Hispanic, and Latina convey. That

is, persons who either identify themselves or are identified as Latina, Hispanic, Chicana,

rather than the term that speaks to the specificity of their country of origin, typically face

blanket labeling practices that ignore individual nations and countries and their diverse

and distinct experiences. That notwithstanding, the terms "Hispanic" and "Latina" are

labels many do find applicable, and I engage Latina to refer to less culturally specific

elements that separate Dominican from Cuban and more general elements the two

194

novels share. Though few Cuban Americans identify themselves as Latino or Hispanics,

many Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Chicanos label themselves as Hispanic or

Latino/a (Borland 150). Luis traces the term "Latino" to the late sixties and early

seventies, to an American political group called the Young Lords Party (279). He goes on

to say that Latino refers to oppressed people in the United States, a term that

"postcolonial people have developed within the colonizing country-an identity that does

not extend outside its geographic borders" (280). According to Luis, utilizing the term

Latino is to recontextualize outside the boundaries of race, in essence to reassign

identity, or as Oboler emphasizes, applying the term Latino or Hispanic blurs the

distinctions of writers who could be from one of at least eighteen separate

Spanish-speaking countries (160). This dilemma of categorical identity suggests the

complexities surrounding ethnicity and how negative connotations stem from unfairly

grouping people of diverse backgrounds, how powerful identity practices prevail in this

country, and how politically charged the issue of ethnicity remains not only in literary

studies, but geopolitics and socioeconomic arenas as well.

Clearly, there exists the very real probability that this practice of blanket naming

will result in continued cultural erasures and inaccuracies when a dominant culture

cannot or does not recognize and validate ethnic distinction. Pablo Medina recounts that

when he began publishing his work he was alternately called Hispanic, Cuban

American, and even Latino. He said this confusion gave him the "distinct impression

that I was somehow being manipulated" (qtd. in Borland 150). For those who prefer

more general or generic labels, Suzanne Oboler recommends employing the term

Latina/o as a marker that is sensitive to culture as well as language origins, where the

term Hispanic is more of a label of convenience the U. S. government created to conduct

census polls and other politically-motivated exercises. She believes the term Hispanic

connotes the image of "second-class 'foreign others" (159). On the other hand, Borland

supports Gustavo Perez Firmat's opinion that "Latino is a statistical fiction, a figment of

195

the imagination of ethnic ideologues, ad executives and salsa singers" (150). Firmat calls

the term as "an empty concept." He adds, "Latino doesn't have a culture, a language, a

place of origin. How do you eat Latino? You can dance Cuban. You can dance rancheras,

but how do you dance Latino?" (qtd. in Borland 150). Most who identify themselves as

Latinos and Latinas share cultural, linguistic, and historical legacies originating in those

countries that comprise Latin America, where Chicanos/as essentially claim Mexico as

country of familial origin. However, Cuba is an island not considered a part of Latin

America, so this existing system of identity markers isn't sufficient. Borland, Oboler,

Firmat, and Luis would concur that Latin American and Cuban immigrants represent a

complex group of people with diverse backgrounds, countries of origin, class position,

race, gender, sexuality, religion, and political beliefs and should be treated as individual

entities. Base assumptions limit a culture's richness and must be avoided. Luis believes

applying postmodern literary theory to cultural criticism allows us to rethink "the

evolution and meaning of terms like Latino, race, difference, and hybridity. Postmodern

criticism allows us to judge old meta-narratives and construct new ones" (287). It seems

that postmodernity provides the language to interpret as well as engage a vantage point

useful in judging the past and, perhaps, multiethnic literature like Garcia Girls and

Dreaming in Cuban can serve as examples Americans study in order to measure the

successes and failures of a diverse culture.

There are still many theorists who approve of and utilize Latina, Chicana,

Hispanic, Native American, Asian American, and so on in their discussions, a decision

to be honored where appropriate. Whenever possible though, it seems wise to read a

text responsibly, meaning the audience must consistently contextualize the work in a

thorough manner, looking at all categories that define in terms of racial, ethnic, gender,

class, and political categories.

The novels also speak to the marked difference between voluntary immigration,

leaving one's home country in search of prosperity, and exile, fleeing to avoid political

196

detention or even death. As William Luis observes, the Dominican and Cuban political

migration patterns occurred roughly around the same time period, the 1960s when

Trujillo fell from power in the Dominican Republic and Castro rose in Cuba (266). Their

own real-life exile experiences translate into their fiction, as Alvarez and Garcia each

write of forced and chaotic departures, characters who endure psychological and real

chasms in their identity, and others who never can renounce the beliefs and customs left

behind. These tropes appear within certain characters' compulsory desires to circle back

towards their homelands, mentally returning to the intimacy of the private, the comfort

of the public, and rehearsing imagined vignettes involving the things and people left

behind. The characters cannot resist the temptation to catalog certain conditions before

leaving, reasons for departure, and speculations about life on their islands after they

fled. Like various Cuban migration patterns which occurred mostly in order to flee from

Fidel Castro's dictatorship, many Dominicans left their homes because of Dictator

Trujillo's reign, a time in the island's history typically described as bloody, cruel, and

dangerous to its inhabitants. Both dictators ruled in absolute power and made

immigration or exile a political issue that pervaded all media forms. Because of their

respective positions in history, both dictators have profoundly impacted their citizens at

home and abroad and are subjects of a impacts family dynamics for those who not only

leave but also for the ones who must stay.

Suzanne Oboler observes that one importance of oral recitation of familial stories

to up and coming generations is that it helps to instill a cultural pride in families who

face constant hardships in their new country with its differing ideals, customs, and

attitudes. Like John Roberts's work in Chapter Two, asserts not all tales are of the

highest order. Shared histories also preserve and celebrate familial accomplishments

even when the heroes live subordinated lives; myths also alter otherwise traditional

perceptions of the old ways and beliefs. Oboler refutes the pervasive belief that Latinas

are "passive victims of their experience" which refers to the idea that Latino machismo

197

keeps Latinas in subjugated positions (169). While machismo is clearly a value or belief

attached to certain cultures and prominently featured in both novels, Garcia and

Alvarez reject the notion that all Dominican and Cuban men are aggressively patriarchal

and all Dominican and Cuban women are submissive. In fact the authors systematically

jettison these stereotypes along with the "hot-blooded Latina" and hyper-sexed Latino,

as well as patriarchal dominance within the family. Unlike the Freudian family romance,

their family narratives depict characters sharing power and authority as freely attainable

traits, regardless of age, gender, or position within the family. Garcia's Lourdes flips the

patriarchal domination on all levels. She makes the family decisions from where to live

to which business they open, and she experiences a period of a particularly heightened

libido in which she forces her husband to submit her urgent and frequent sexual

encounters. This chapter reinforces Lourdes's position as a powerful character capable of

subverting patriarchal dominance, not someone whose empty, vapid sexual encounters

are endemic of her ethnicity. On the contrary, I think Lourdes is "reaching through

Rufino for something he could not give her," in an effort to quell her feelings about the

rift between her family (DC 21). During her freshman year of college, Yolanda

experiences the hot-blooded Latina stereotype when her boyfriend, Rudy Elmenhurst,

gets fed up with her repeated refusals to have sex. As they break up he snarls, "I thought

you'd be hot-blooded being Spanish and all, and that under all the Catholic bullshit,

you'd be really free, instead of all hung up like these cotillion chicks from prep schools"

(GG 99). Later in a chance run in with Rudy's parents, she finds the origins of Rudy's

ethnic stereotypes. She remembers, "His parents did most of the chatting, talking too

slowly to me as if I wouldn't understand native speakers; they complimented me on my

'accentless' English and observed that my parents must be so proud of me" (GG 100).

Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill believe that no other assumption

about Latino families is more popular than the male dominance (234). She finds that

much work conducted during the 1970s and 1980s effectively challenges this monolithic

198

approach to Latino families as exclusively male dominated. Rather, and here Zinn uses a

variety of identifiers and freely mixes them, Latino/Chicano/Mexican American

families behave like any other family group, exhibiting many versions of marital

decision making, including "patriarchal, role-segregated, and egalitarian patterns, with

many combinations in between" (234). Both Alvarez and Garcia circumvent the

stereotypical notion of

the male-dominated household and offer examples from the text to support that idea.

Oboler's second myth surrounds the perceived homogeneity of things "Hispanic"

or "Latino" discussed above. Despite the fact that Dominicans and Cubans both speak

Spanish, their countries are islands boasting similar geo-climactic conditions and each

was at one point overthrown by a dictator, these similarities suggest little more and are

in no way sufficient evidence to draw comparative cultural assumptions. Neither

Alvarez nor Garcia write narratives that support the patriarchal household. Instead,

each portrays fictional families for whom power ownership is either a non-issue because

the characters implicitly share or exchange leadership roles.

Oboler also debunks some of the myths of the working class. For example, many

believe that immigrants who are non-white are often assumed to belong to the lower

classes in both their native and new countries. This assumption misses the broad class

structures found in Latin or Central American countries and Cuba, where, like most

Anglos, there exists a variety of working class people, and others achieve middle and

upper classes due to economic or inherited positions (Neate 218). One needs only to read

about the first wave of Cuban refugees that began in the late 1950s to understand this

fact. Most who immediately fled Castro's ascent to power did so to preserve their great

wealth and status as affluent artists, doctors, engineers, and assorted professional

positions, thus refuting the myth of the working class person. Garcia herself was an

infant when her parents left Cuba in 1958, so no coincidence that Lourdes and Rufino

leave and take their two-year-old as well (Mitchell 52). Only with the latter waves of

199

immigrants, such as the most recent Mariel boatlift, did the stigma of Castro emptying

his jails and asylums and filling the departing vessels with the poor, mentally deranged

Cuban take root and propagate as another stereotype. In Garcia Girls the Garcia family

can thank Laura Garcia de la Tone's affluent heritage for enabling them to enjoy the

privileges of the Dominican upper class where they are considered one of the island's

wealthiest families, though for some reason the money remains on the island and the

nuclear family must practically fend for themselves. Dreaming in Cuban's Puente family

has an intricate support system of extended family in Miami that takes in the new

immigrants, teaches them American cultural nuances, and sends them on their way to

New York where Lourdes is owner of a successful bakery and Rufino an artist. In Cuba,

Celia and Felicia are no worse off than their compadres who work in the labor camps for

Castro.

In his study about ethnicity and community, Wilson Neate provides evidence to

support the idea that Chicanas/os live widely diverse experiences despite the

prevailing nuclear family myth. Though he is concerned with people of Mexican

descent, his findings are appropriate to apply to other Latin Americans without

becoming grievous and stereotypical. He finds though that though there are varied

Chicana/o class and familial experiences, "the ideal of a middle-class nuclear unit has

exercised a degree of power at the level of the popular imaginary and, moreover, has

been constructed in political and cultural representations alike as the desired and

privileged mode of familial organization" (219). Neate looks to some of Mark Poster's

scholarship to support his claim that the nuclear family's internalization through media

images, which began in the nineteenth century and has been absorbed into all class

contexts, "minority and non-minority alike," in terms of both psychological and

reproductive arenas, and has affected all families and all communities (Neate 219). He

sees that like race, the nuclear family is an artificial invention and the families who

reject this artifice do so for various reasons, none of which seem altogether politically

200

motivated, but are probably due to more pragmatic reasons, such as economic and

emotional support. Neate sees the nuclear unit as a useful benchmark to measure the

"significance of subsequently convergent and divergent familial practices," and his

point is useful because he doesn't suggest the reader should simply reject the nuclear

configuration for another familial system (219). Accordingly, it seems that Neate would

agree that Garcia Girls and Dreaming in Cuban represent new watersheds in familial

plots by Dominican and Cuban American authors because they provide variety to the

traditional plots, and that variety doesn't exclude or replace the nuclear family.

Neate engages Griswold del Castillo's study of Chicana/o families from 1848 to

the present as important because Castillo suggests that the nuclear family has indeed

been a mythical narrative for Chicana/o families. He believes that the vast changes in

the American economic system have forced a rupture between the nuclear family as an

ideal concept and the extended kinship circumstances that continue to be actual realities

for Chicano/as. People of Spanish heritage, de Castillo finds, are accustomed to

adapting to diversity and as such respond quickly to changing material conditions, and

they view lafamilia as "a broad and encompassing term, not one limited to a household

or even to biologically related kin" (qtd. in Neate 222). He believes that contemporary

narratives challenge the nuclear tradition by featuring families that consist of relative

and non-relative kinships that problematize oppressive patriarchal plots. Both Garcia

Girls and Dreaming in Cuban follow families who reject the constraints of the nuclear

family for the extended ones. The Dominican Garcia del a Tones create the family

compound and since Lourdes insists that they locate away from her in-laws and their

extensive web of relations in Miami, the Puentes exemplify the fragmentation of the

Cuban family created by the Cuban revolution (Luis 215).

Perhaps the predominant reason a mainstream familial scholarship that

supports oppressive patriarchal plots has difficulty in not only recognizing but also

supporting these configurations is due to a continued reliance on the dominant

201

experiences of modernization and assimilation. Zinn and Dill suggest that immigrant

families are judged by their abilities to assimilate into the dominant Eurocentric

patterns of familial development as practiced in the United States. Failure or even

hesitation to assimilate and assume the nuclear construct, a modern artifice, produces

negative connotations and marks the immigrant family as problematic, unwilling,

deviant, sullen, or pathological (232).Karen Christian sees recurring themes in literature

by Caribbean-born U. S. Latina/o writers that involve protagonists who, despite the

strong lure of the dominant culture to quickly assimilate, struggle to adjust to a new

country while maintaining some semblance of cultural unity to their homelands.

Typically, the immigrant individual or family moves into a "hostile metropolitan

setting," experiences a degree of racist oppression and its subsequent alienation, and

eventually accepts, although not necessarily completely, the new country's culture (90).

Both Garcia Girls and Dreaming in Cuban depict families who move to large urban cities,

honor their respective homelands through culinary, religious, and familial practices,

and feature characters altering their families in some way by adapting to the new

culture. Though neither overtly expresses their intent, both Garcia and Alvarez write

their characters into situations where they are conflicted about loving their new

country and emotional ties to their home country. Christian believes that these and

other writers resist assimilation by creating plots that offer framing devices to allow the

characters an opportunity to comment on their culture of origin rather than serve as

some final goal of the immigrant experience (90). Perhaps Garcia Girls and Dreaming in

Cuban are also evidence that immigration profoundly alters the émigrés as well as the

inhabitants of their new country, for each informs and becomes informed by the new

experiences.

Earlier I cited Rachal Blau Du Plessis's work about subverting traditional and

patriarchal writings as a trope these authors invoke. Whether the reason be culturally

imposed or not, Garcia and Alvarez write beyond the Eurocentric endings to resist the

202

patriarchal plots that privilege nuclear families over extended kinships and instead

celebrate alternate power and kinships networks within the families. Though they focus

their observations more on the on the ethnic working class, Eliana Ortega and Nancy

Saporta Sternbach write of what they see as "a clearly distinguishable discourse of

Latinas," organic in composition and continually in the process of constructing itself and

reconstructing its future through literature (12). Latina women, the two believe, work to

depict the "reality, experiences, and everyday life of a people whose working-class

origin serves as a springboard to understanding cultural contexts [issues] considered

central for an analysis of Latin American literature: racial, economic, ethnic, political,

social, chronological, culinary, ideological, luminous, and stylistic" (12).

Garcia and Alvarez write with the understanding that their work appeals to a

heterogeneous audience, many of whom are either Dominican or Cuban American and

recognize ubiquitous elements and scenes played out in their both in own personal

arenas and in those who are not of Dominican or Cuban descent. Therefore, to render a

culturally accurate text, Latina writers draw on several events that disrupt traditional

patriarchal plots. Like some of the artists Ortega and Sternbach researched, Alvarez and

Garcia engage class and everyday experiences to rewrite the traditional familial plots

while presenting fictional accounts that speak of their specific beliefs, practices, and

aspects in their range of knowledge as such without suggesting these values explicitly or

exclusively apply to their respective cultures at large. Their novels show ethnicity as a

dynamic feature that greatly affects individuals as well as groups, like families. They

convey, "The tension generated when dissimilar cultures come into contact-tension

between past and present, between family history and daily life-is particularly visible in

literature by immigrant writers"(Christian 89). Christian's observation articulates the

dilemma of agency, of who gets to problematize this tension. Alvarez is American-born

of immigrant parents and Garcia was born in Cuba but has lived almost her entire life in

America. Their works reveal this collision of dissimilar cultures in matters of family

203

practices, cultural beliefs, and future hopes, or what Christian and Ortega and Sternbach

refer to, however, neither Alvarez or Garcia fit into the narrowly defined categories.

Perhaps these tight spaces and references are endemic of the great deal of work cultural

studies in general and culturally specific studies must problematize in order expand our

choices in literary interpretations.

HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, AND GOT THEIR GROOVE

Two examples of outside influences that restructure families and their systems of

power are immigration and exile, each inevitably separating kin from one another.

Alvarez's Garcia Girls is comprised of characters that must negotiate one power struggle

after another, a trope also found in her second novel, A Time for Butterflies. Alvarez's

first work chronicles events in the fictional Garcia de la Tone family from 1956 to the

fictional present, 1989. As mentioned earlier, she avoids chronology in her novel,

choosing instead to employ multiple narrators and a chronologically backwards format,

though the beginning is also the end, and readers find that events and the characters'

lives come full circle, almost but not quite in reverse chronology.

The plot centers upon a nuclear family who must leave the country and how the

characters are affected by their continuous tension that exists when they circulate

between the United States and their extended family in the Dominican Republic.

William Luis calls this plot construction a technique that describes a "migratory process

of immigration" (196). He seems to suggest that migration is a continual process, which

Alvarez's narrative supports. While the Garcias concentrate on learning the nuances of a

foreign culture and maintaining consistent contact with relatives, they achieve various

small victories on either end with each exchange. At no time, however, does any

character fully denounce one country for another, a fact that implies that Alvarez

implicitly writes beyond the patriarchal endings that typically end when the characters

swear an oath of allegiance to America and renounce all allegiance to home. She instead

204

portrays characters embroiled in a carefully constructed sideshow that erupts when the

Garcias go American and nuclear. Their new and forced kin system sharply contrasts

against the backdrop of the Dominican extended connection, which, too, is fraught with

problems but nonetheless intact. Because Alvarez features both familial configurations

as problematic and flawed, it appears that she attempts to break stereotypes where one

type of unit is preferred over the other, though she does portray one as strictly

Dominican and the other exclusively American. That is, though Americanized, the

Garcias meet and ride waves of strife, happiness, mental illness, insecurity, comfort,

love, and success, and they resist returning to the island to live; Alvarez doesn't require

her readers to choose one culture or familial construct over the other.

Drawing from her own personal experience of growing up in a large Dominican

family possessed with wealth and "obsessed with American culture," Alvarez's gives her

fictional family great prestige as one of the wealthiest on the island (Barak 161). She

places clues throughout the novel so that readers will appreciate how Dr. Carlos Garcia,

his wife Laura, and their children, Carla, Sandi, Yolanda, and Fifi are devoted to their

very large, extended family in the Dominican Republic. The Garcia de la Tone clan's

wealth is evidenced in their posh compound comprised of multiple homes where aunts,

uncles, cousins, reside together, and dark-skinned employees who are emotionally

connected to their employers and are treated as close to family as class convention

permits.2 These extended kin clog the driveway with the obvious signs of wealth like

Mercedes, BMWs, and other expensive performance vehicles; their compound boasts an

extensive staff that includes cooks, cleaners, nursemaids, gardeners, and chauffeurs; and

they habitually send their male children to exclusive private boarding schools in

America. The family's wealth also permits them the trips to America complete with

shopping sprees at Saks Fifth Avenue and FAO Schwartz in New York. Any

homebound relative loads up with gifts of fine clothing, jewelry, and other trinkets for

lafamilia waiting on the island.

205

But while the family enjoys the luxuries of their island existence, Carlos lives a

double life as a doctor and a mole for the American Central Intelligence, assisting the U.

S. government in their plot to overthrow Trujillo. When the U.S. stalls and the coup fails,

the secret police interrogate the family until they uncover the doctor's part in the plot.

Garcia is ordered to gather his wife and children and immediately flee for the protective

custody the United States offers. He fails to realize how the thrill of revolution has been

supplanted within his children and wife as a means of achieving results. At this early

stage in the novel both Carlos and Laura are in their late thirties and their children are

very young, the oldest not quite eleven. Carlos's status in the Dominican Republic as a

respected doctor and powerful politico does not transfer to the U. S., and he must

initially accept a post as an intern earning enough money to keep his family afloat but

nowhere near the lifestyle they were once accustomed. The truncated nuclear family,

essentially adrift without the support of their extended relations, except the money

Laura's relatives infrequently slip her, finds itself in a new land without their "domestic

circle of kinfolk" (Stack 29). They must learn a new language, contend with their lower

class position, and struggle through the general malaise of learning how to survive and

succeed in a new culture.

As the four daughters and their parents become proficient in living in the United

States and begin making a gradual ascent up the economic ladder and achieve

middle-class identity, they visit their old island homeland during brief periods when it

is deemed safe for a former revolutionary. In keeping contact with the island family,

Alvarez sets up a dichotomy of old versus new world ideology in terms of ethnicity,

class structure, dating, and most importantly, gender, weaving the intricacies of

negotiations in a plot that works well for critiquing the difficulties of negotiating old and

new experiences. As the girls try to "Americanize" themselves and fit in with their New

York peers, they attempt to shed those strong connections to their kin. The sisters scoff

at their island cousins, calling them "the hair and nails cousins," those who wear "flashes

206

of color in turquoise jumpsuits and tight jersey dresses (Alvarez 3). But instead of stock

characters that either grossly assimilate to the new country ways or stubbornly remain

old world, Alvarez paints them as identities in flux. Her characters test their limits and

are not afraid to reject some of their new American concepts like the nuclear family

ideology along with island ones they no longer ascribe to. Essentially, they experience

the "migratory process of immigration" that entails neither all nor nothing of either

culture, but possibly the best of each (Luis 196). This negotiation is best evidenced in the

fact that the novel begins and ends with Yolanda. The twist is that the Yolanda who

opens the novel is an adult who speaks English with almost no accent and is returning

to her native Dominican Republic to find herself, the self she ostensibly left when the

family fled some thirty years earlier. The Yolanda who ends the novel is a child who

speaks no English and who has not yet begun to understand that her maturation and

womanhood will become a perpetual journey, especially as she is a child of two

countries. In contrast, at the finish of the novel, readers discover the same character is a

scared little girl who is leaving her island home for America. Within this reverse

chronology Garcia explains and brings together the story of exactly how the Garcia girls

lost their accents and the import of such a process.

Because their departure is rushed, the family has to carefully select but a few

items to take with them. Angelika Bammer believes that the tangibles, like trinkets and

objects, as well as the intangibles, such as stories and memories governing tradition,

ground us by linking the past and the future, reinforcing the idea that we are linked to a

specific social or familial community (93). However, the eminent danger from being

arrested by Trujillo's guards spurns them to pack hastily, and the Garcia children are

told they may only select one item from their childhood to serve as a talisman of what

they leave behind for their new life, whatever could fit inside a suitcase with their

clothes. In taking in her lovely home for the last time, Laura Garcia's vision "sharpens as

if through the lens of loss-the orchids in their hanging straw baskets, the row of

207

apothecary jars Carlos has found for her in old druggists' shops throughout the

countryside, the rich light shafts swarming with a golden pollen" (GG 212). To

demonstrate their loss from another point of view, Alvarez recasts the same traumatic

event in one of Sandi's chapters. In a reflective retrospect of her life and subsequent

choices, Sandi concludes how ludicrous the idea that somehow one item can represent

one's life and history. She then understands how that event mars hers forever, urging

her on a perpetual search for the transcendental signifier that links her past to the

"specific social or familial community" (Bammer 93). "Nothing would quite fill the need,

even years after, not the pretty woman she would surprise herself by becoming, not the

prizes for her schoolwork and scholarships to study, not the men that held her close and

almost convinced her when their mouths came down hard on her lips that this, this was

what Sandi had been missing" (GG 215).

Clearly, loss is a central theme in the novel. The narrative follows a loosely

reverse chronology so that each of the four Garcia daughters presents her views on the

family's and their individual predicaments while learning to live in America and still

maintain frequent visits to the island. From these multiple perspectives, Alvarez

creates a composite of the ever shifting power possession within this family as all six

Garcias come to understand how maturation as citizens of the United States means

learning to survive as a smaller familial unit. Together the daughters stage little

rebellions against their autocratic father, as does their mother, to alter their familial

dynamic from what might be perceived as the nuclear unit to a more egalitarian one.

The first chapter, "Antojos" which translates to "from before your United States

was even thought of' (GG 8) spells out the old world ways the Dominican della Tones,

Yolanda's maternal relatives, practice as observed from the Americanized Yolanda, who

is initially treated as an outsider for living so many years away from the clan. In this

return of her familial origins and playing every bit the prodigal daughter, Yolanda's first

task is to explain the complex pecking order the clan observes concerning the home

208

front, la casa, and a mass of stucco and wood buildings that comprise the compound.

This intricate system cascades downward from the presiding uncles, to the aunts who

enjoy days of leisure, followed by the cousins and their children, the latter who at the

first sign of poor behavior invariably get whisked away by the help, "a phalanx of

starched white uniforms" (GG 3). Yolanda knowingly predicts they will pronounce her

appearance shabby, "like a missionary" and her hair "too wild" compared to the cousins'

"designer pantsuit[s] and frosted, blown-out hair" (5). Once she's weathered the remarks

and taken her place at the table, the aunts continue to complain about the help, and the

cousins discuss who is and is not away at American boarding schools (only boys are

permitted to attend U. S. colleges). Yolanda understands that after this afternoon of

feminine familiarity, they will all repair to their respective compound houses, instruct

their cooks concerning the evening meal, and wait for their husbands to return from

Happy Hour or, as one network, its wealth and cultural ties would embrace

Americanized gender and power roles to create an even stronger support system with

reconceived ideologies.

With regard to the island family and the American one, again she doesn't always

provide a clear seam where she defines what is purely "island" and "American" as the

Garcia de la Tones blur distinctions and cull from each culture what they find most

useful to reinvent themselves as neither American nor island but a combination of both.

This difficulty in identity can best be summed up by the fact that Yolanda eventually

chooses the Dominican Republic as the place where she believes she can formulate a

more cohesive self, knowing full well that her character has been defined by her life in

America and subsequent Americanized beliefs, values, and opinions which bear little

resemblance to her island family's. This conflict within her character seems to express

what Anzaldua discussed above as the space between cultures when one's identity can

be neither all of one or another.

209

From the meticulous observations Yolanda makes in the very first pages of the

novel, it seems that for Alvarez, the family imposes a strong governing influence over

itself because she articulates the various principles that manage individual and group

behavior. She paints two equally flawed configurations instead of taking sides with one

culture over the other, though it is at times difficult to determine her allegiances. On the

one hand, the extended network found in the Dominican Republic, a phalanx of

relatives who love and also fight within close quarters and often seem to crowd each

other, is contrasted by the lonely nuclear family, vulnerable without its support system.

Naturally, there are flaws with each country, arrangement, and rules of decorum. In

America, the family must choose between a society that censures their ethnicity as

incentive to assimilate or seek long-distance refuge from the island culture and the

familiarity of their ethnic community (Karen Christian 91). The Garcias discover how a

dominant culture can exert economic pressure on ethnic families who choose to preserve

their heritage when their class status plummets and the girls express frustration that

they "didn't feel we had the best the United States had to offer" (GG 107). Instead of their

accustomed finery, they are forced to make do with "second-hand stuff, rental houses in

one redneck Catholic neighborhood after another, clothes at Round Robin, [and] a black

and white TV afflicted with wavy lines" (107). Though the family is acutely aware of the

change in prosperity, Alvarez reinforces the idea that Americans fail to differentiate

between economic and political exiles, so any claims to wealth and status in their

country of origin is pointless as it fails to impress those in the new country (Luis 269). To

add insult to injury, the strict rules that applied to island children followed suit in the

U.S. as well, but there was no island wealth to cushion the inequities. However, some

new customs challenge the family. As soon as a pervert approaches Carla as she walks

home from the neighborhood school and Sandi tries Tampax, their mother quickly finds

the means to ship the girls off to boarding schools they may mix with the "right kind"

(108). Obviously, if these events had occurred on the island, Laura and Carlos would

210

have the benefit of immediate counsel with their siblings and in-laws and could

adequately handle the emergencies without further separating their small family. Later

in their adult lives the girls recognize the "censure of their ethnic excesses" that the

WASPish boarding schools accentuate (Karen Christian 91).

But if there exists any doubt about Alvarez's subtextual message concerning this

nuclear family's lack of close by extended resources, she answers forcefully their

attempts to assimilate into a dominant culture with repeated problems and issues. The

Garcia women pay a high price for their heritage or, as seen through the dominant

culture interpretation, their "excess" (Karen Christian 96). The two middle children,

Yolanda and Sandi, experience multiple mental breakdowns resulting in extensive

hospitalizations and recoveries, and neither can remain in satisfying long-term

relationships. The oldest, Carla, becomes a child psychologist who ritualistically

analyzes her parents and sisters at each gathering, pointing to how their actions

negatively affected her spiritual growth. In a scholarly paper Carla admonishes her

mother's method of assigning each child a color code to resist chaos and confusion.

"Each of the four girls had the same party dress, school clothes, underwear, toothbrush,

bedspread, nightgown, plastic cup, towel, brush, and comb set as the other three" (GG

41). Carla, whose color is yellow, writes in her paper, "I Was There Too," that the color

scheme "weakened the four girls' identity differentiation abilities and made them forever

unclear about personality boundaries" (41). Clearly, Carla sees how the system thwarted

any efforts towards individuality and the power that comes with recognition of the self

Moreover, each Garcia woman dates and marries an Anglo man, not a Dominican or

other non-Anglo. Readers must question Alvarez's motivation in such an obvious and

repetitious plot element, wondering perhaps if she's critiquing the inequities of gender

inequities in ethnic acculturation, taking an anti-immigration stance, or insinuating that

the sisters' emotional instabilities are the result of the often oppressive control Carlos

and Laura exert over them (Luis 271).

211

In drawing equally from both cultures, this novel supports the claim that

ethnicity informs and enhances our American families. The six Garcias influence many

readers through their fictional exploits. Because the author continuously slips overt

judgment for one country over another by pointing various positive and negative

aspects about the Dominican Republic and the United States, she in effect asks her

readers to mimic the Garcias and consider the ramifications of being engaged in a

perpetual struggle of one against the other. She offers evidence that proves how difficult

the acculturation process can be on a family used to the protection of its extended

network but unable to access those people. Carla divorces her first husband and marries

her psychiatrist. After becoming dangerously anorexic, Sandi must be hospitalized after

becoming delusional. Yolanda divorces her husband and has relationships with her

psychiatrist as well as the Chair of the Comparative Literature department of the college

where she teaches, and she, too, suffers a nervous breakdown, claiming she is unable to

comprehend the English language. And Sofia or Fifi, the youngest, demonstrates how

children can achieve alternative points of power and eclipse their elders by firmly

reciprocating her father's extended grudge of silence against her for eloping with a

German she meets in South America. Alvarez quells any temptation in her readers to

wonder how well the family would have fared had they remained in the Dominican

Republic, rendering that culture equally as complicated. Therefore, instead of

encouraging a misreading of Alvarez's meaning, to see the novel only in terms of this

Dominican/ethnic/extended and American/assimilated/nuclear dichotomy, which

could easily be done, a more salient approach comes from examining the various ways

in which these fictional families operate within their respective contexts. The novel

offers a multifaceted view of how ethnicity enhances American familial relations, in that

much about the Garcia family is similar to many other American families. They stage

conflicts, arguments, power plays, revolutions, coups, and reconciliations. In this sense

the sisters then operate as a collective lynchpin between cultures as they influence their

212

American constituents with Dominican customs, and their Dominican family with

American influences. With their visits to and from the island and their American home,

they provide an exchange of cultural ideas to their Dominican friends and family and

their American friends. Essentially, they inform and become informed as well as

represent and become represented by their Dominican and American lives. Therefore,

Alvarez's debut novel queries this conflation of family and ethnicity without making the

characters or the reader qualify and judge between country and culture.

Alvarez positions power as a crucial element in the novel, evidenced by the

perpetual advances, gains, defeats and disappointments the girls experience as children

and adults. Julie Barak connects their spirited assertiveness through their maternal

lineage of the de la Tone clan, descendants of the Spanish conquistadors, the warriors

who come to the island and conquer the Caribs & Tainos in the late 1500s. Their

descendants of the warring peoples have since been participants in several revolutions,

such as the Haitian battle for independence from France in 1804, the Dominican

Republic's successful revolution from Spain in 1844, and the 1960s political turmoil

(Barak 165). In America, these warriors' ancestors attain power as the daughters and

mother eagerly embrace many of the new customs while the father refuses to budge

from his home country's values that privilege him as unchallenged head of the

household. The novel surreptitiously indicates that power is a relational

commodification and directly affects the various familial relationships, and this is

articulated in the machismo myth expressed in the family's perennial parable to explain

why there are four daughters and no sons. Carlos uses the phrase, "good bulls sire cows"

as a clever way to shift the paternal blame away from him and acknowledge the

underlying disappointment of not siring male children. There are more examples of the

tacit acknowledgement of this machismo, or the myth of hypermasculinity and male

superiority. It seems that machismo governs the Garcia de la Tone clan in the Dominican

Republic but is significantly weakened when the count becomes five women to one man,

213

especially for Carlos Garcia whose wife and daughters prefer the liberation of their

American lives without succumbing to his autocratic "old school" rules. His wife and

children certainly respect him, but behind his back they dismiss his strutting and

preening as childish and slightly buffoonish.

Perhaps the most obvious example where Alvarez rewrites and alters this

traditional familial power structure occurs in the chapter, "A Regular Revolution," when

the girls are in their teens. During their boarding school days they shirk the oppressive

cloak of chaperones, learn to forge their mother's signature, provide cover stories when

the parents call, discover kissing does not lead to pregnancy, and develop a "taste for the

American teenage good life, and soon, Island was old hat, man. Island was the

hair-and-nails crowd, chaperones, and icky boys with all their macho strutting and

unbuttoned shirts..." (GG 108). But their perceived freedom remains punctuated with

frequent visits to the island because [their parents'] "hidden agenda was marriage to

homeland boys, since everyone knew that once a girl married an American, those

grandbabies came out jabbering in English and thinking of the Island as a place to go get

a suntan" (109). However, for one particular holiday every year the adult women mimic

the island familial construct, reverting back to their girlhoods to honor their father's

birthday. Though their husbands and lovers lobby extensively to be included, "annoyed

at the father's strutting" that keeps them excluded, the daughters defend theirpapi and

his right to keep his four daughters to himself "They were passionate women, but their

devotions were like roots; they were sunk into the past towards the old man" (GG 24).

Only after the youngest gave birth to the long-awaited son do the American Garcias

acknowledge their status as an extended family and open the holidays up to everyone.

SPANISH-AMERICAN PRINCESS: VENI, VIDI, VICI.

But power can and does shift as demonstrated by the small revolutions the

Americanized Garcia girls and mother stage during a group island visit to stay in touch

214

with lafamilia. When a maid discovers a bag of pot teenaged Fifi forgets in her packing

haste, Laura keeps the information from her husband, for fear that the repercussions

may muddy her own waters as an independent woman taking classes at the local

university. She banishes her youngest to six months on the island where she'll be safe

under the many watchful eyes of her tias and tios. Like her sister at the end of the novel,

Fifi imagines that returning to the island will help her rebuild her fragmented identity

(Karen Christian 111). But to her three sisters' chagrin, Fifi goes island and shortly after

her arrival is reputed to be "taking classes in shorthand and typing at the Ford

Foundation. [Moreover] they hear reports that she's also "seeing someone nice" (GG

117). When her sisters swoop in to whisk her away from their relatives and back to what

they believe is the safety of their progressively American lives, they find their baby sister

has gone the way of hair-and-nails and has turned into a "Spanish-American princess"

(GG 118). The someone nice she's seeing is Manuel, one of her father's brother's

illegitimate children no one in the family is supposed to speak of, and he is quite macho,

a virtual tyrant who tells the once liberated Fifi she can't wear pants in public, talk to

other men, leave the house without his permission, or read because books are 'junk in

your head" (GG 120). The sisters resolve to wrestle Fifi away from Manuel's influence,

which means going against island protocol, the macho system, and the cousins, and they

do so by following a plan their own father helped devise years prior to expose Trujillo's

tryst with one of his mistresses (127). In a clever twist that serves to remind the reader

that Alvarez resists an either/or competition between island culture and mainland

ways, just when the sisters think they've beaten their family and gained their

independence, an aunt, Tia Carmen, clucks over them and professes her love for her

nieces and how she cherishes their visits. Yolanda sums up the confusion with, "We are

free at last, but here, just at the moment the gate swings open, and we can fly the coop,

Tia Carmen's love revives our old homesickness" (131). The pull of familial love proves

215

too strong and though they win the coup and get their youngest back, the daughters

know they will look forward to a lifetime of island visits to come.

These examples support the idea that in this novel contributing to certain

judgments about cultures is problematic, because the old world beliefs limit, prohibit,

police, control, under the guise of protecting the individual, while the new country

mores provide their own set of dangers and advantages. As in Fifi's case, uprooting the

subject exposes her to the requirements of the very cultural system from which she has

previously emancipated herself If the dominant system, which in this example is the

Dominican mores about gender identity, still produces subjects that differ from the "axis

of domination," the individuals will confront the domineering methods that force their

conformity and submission (Barak 165). Prior to the pot incident, Fifi behaved like her

sisters, secure in her ability to seek new freedoms in gender expression by taking

advantage of an American society immersed in the sexual politics of the 1970s. But when

she returns to the island she reverts to or becomes reinitiated into the Dominican mores

of machismo domination as imparted upon her by her boyfriend Manuel and tacitly

supported by her island family. The remaining three sisters, steeped in U. S. feminist

ideology, revolt against the control Manuel exercises over Fifi's mind and her body, and

the incident exemplifies again the pressure the girls experience between the "axes of

Dominican Republic machismo and U.S. feminism, between the languages of

domination and revolt that are integral to their histories as islanders," and the extended

community and nuclear family (Barak 166). However, Alvarez resists passing judgment

that Dominican men control some sort of a universal patriarchal control. The particular

cultural mores Alvarez portrays in her novel are unique to the situation, and the very act

of writing about these practices suggests that she is attempting to bring the issue into the

forum of the historical present for discussion. She exemplifies that just as a woman is an

unstable signifier, so is patriarchy. However, the events exemplified in this discussion in

no way suggest that Dominican social practices can be rightfully labeled as acts Alvarez

216

showcases in order to then "colonize and appropriate non-Western cultures to support

highly Western notions of oppression" (Butler 3).

The novel makes clear that revolution against patriarchal inequalities isn't a

generational symptom. Restless with her new life in the states Laura Garcia attempts to

reject her deferment to husband and children and find her own autonomy, conducting

what Yolanda describes as "lip service to the old ways, while herself nibbling away at

forbidden fruit" (GG 116). Sandi observes "Mami was the leader now that they lived in

the States. She had gone to school in the States. She spoke English without a heavy

accent" (GG 176). She becomes an inventor, constantly sketching her ideas and trying to

enlist her already Americanized daughters for their opinions, but they resented the

chasm they perceive she creates with her focus on self-improvement instead of working

to help their acculturation go smoothly. For a time Laura thinks she can achieve her own

success instead of waiting for her husband to find a job that would vault the little family

back into the upper class position "her venerated family name" permitted them on the

island (Karen Christian 96). She devotes her evenings as creative invention time,

sketching stick figures on pads of paper. Some of her ideas demonstrate a keen eye and

talent. The figure of a stick person "dragging a square by a rope" would eventually be

the invention that revolutionizes air travel, the suitcase with wheels, but her sketch ends

up in a trash can instead of the patent office because she doesn't possess the resources to

follow through and she lacks support from her husband and children (GG 137). After

giving up the sketches, Laura asserts herself in other ways with her marriage and family,

thus turning the Garcia household into an egalitarian system of shared power and

responsibilities. Here the American culture enhances her Dominican one.

Alvarez also deals extensively with the concept of home. In the beginning of the

novel when Yolanda returns as an adult, she observes the family compound is

essentially a women-centered place where men infrequently insinuate their presences.

But inside these expensive villas displaying all the trappings of wealth, a different image

217

could appear, that which restricts the freedoms of the female inhabitants. This seems,

though, not to be the case. The girls observe that the largest house belonged to Tia

Carmen, "the widow of the head of the clan," a station that affords her a modest

authority, something akin to the second in command (GG 7). Later in the novel but

much earlier in her life, the teenaged Yolanda and her sisters attempt to "raise

consciousness here" by asking another aunt, Tia Flor, why she resisted lobbying for

more power, which she considers "very unfeminine for a woman to go around

demonstrating for her rights." To this, Tia Flor replies, "Look at me, I'm a queen. My

husband has to go to work every day. I can sleep until noon, if I want. I'm going to

protest for my rights?" (GG 121). The Americanized girls see Tia Flor unwittingly

languishing in a prison of gender oppression, where the aunt sees herself as enjoying the

life of a well-positioned Dominican woman who is accustomed to extravagance. Again,

Alvarez's deliberate ambiguity at once asks her readers to read beyond the ending, but

take care in resisting the need to pass judgment on which system is more just over the

other.

Regardless of gender inequities, the Americanized Garcias have far greater

difficulties in making their living quarters feel like homes. In America there are no

aunts, cousins, or uncles who comprise the safety net of extended kin and extended

resources and can protect them from hegemonic oppression. In America they encounter

the hostilities of neighbors like "La Bruja," a blue-haired woman in their apartment

building who complains to Alfredo, the building super, how "Their food smelled. They

spoke too loudly and not in English" (Alvarez 170). Fortunately for the Garcias, Alfredo

is Puerto Rican and crosses the ethnic divide to provide some comfort and

understanding that their absent family cannot. He operates as a buffer between the old

Anglo woman who judges their ethnicity as excess (Karen Christian 94), and councils

them about how to avoid such encounters that challenge their identity. On the island,

218

the family would never have been placed in such a position to explain their culinary

choices or reminded of their outsider identity.

Perhaps two additional factors that differentiate this chapter from the preceding

one are what Suzanne Oboler refers to as the myths that structure Latina/o experiences

and identities. One revolves around memory, specifically stories that first-generation

immigrants recount to their families about life in the homeland (168). These

remembrances take on additional significance because stories of the immigrant

experience are often silenced as they reveal the moments of extreme oppression, unfair

treatment, prejudice, and exclusion when disenfranchised people attempt to practice

traditions, religions, and cultural rituals from their country of origin. Like most familial

rites and observances, homeland myths and stories of learning the new country are

typically oral histories that often function as centerpieces in family events. In Garcia

Girls these myths come from multiple perspectives because the children are not born in

the United States but possess their own full memory banks about their lives on the

island. Alvarez provides each Garcia girl her own voice and chapters to divide up the

narrating duties, and each daughter reveals unique perspectives from her Dominican

and American experiences. Two popular homeland myths everyone clearly remembers

involve Trujillo's secret military police who investigated Dr. Garcia for suspected covert

activities. One tale involves, Yolanda, the gregarious third daughter, who almost gets

her father killed by telling their neighbor, an aging general, that her father had a gun.

After she receives a severe beating and her parents quickly dispose of the weapon, the

incident becomes indelibly printed into their memories, easily recounted by Laura's

"you almost got your father killed, Yoyo" (198). The second story surrounds Fifi, the

headstrong youngest, who resisted the sexual advances of one of the secret police

investigating her father. She refused the guard's invitation to sit "on his hard-on and

pretend we were playing Ride the Cock to Banbury Cross" (217). Though these moments

were extremely tense and dangerous for all, the subsequent stories gain import

219

throughout the years and the family share immediate recognition at any mention of

them.

Yolanda returns to the island to end the novel or begin its chronological

narrative, in search of the most important familial myth to her, one never discussed at

parties and dinners, the personal myth of confronting her childhood and her past (Luis

277). As a small child, literally days before her untimely departure from the island,

Yolanda separates a kitten from its mother, uproots a baby from its nest in the same way

she is to be removed from hers (Luis 276). She finds a litter of kittens in a coal shed on

the property and falls in love with the one with white paws. Uncertain if touching the

kitten will cause its mother to abandon it, Yolanda asks a hunter cutting across the

property. He advises her that to take the kitten so soon from its mother would be "a

violation of its natural right to live," but Yolanda decides that this advice from a man

whose gun violates other animals of their natural rights is not to be trusted. She takes

the kitten and smuggles it into her room inside a drum with its mother in hot pursuit.

Overwhelmed with guilt at her act, she beats loudly on the drum to mask the kitten's

cries for its mother until she realizes she could kill it herself Then she opens her

window, throws the kitten out, and watches "the wounded kitten make a broken

progress across the lawn" (GG 289). For the rest of her life she will be haunted by dreams

of the mother cat searching for her baby as Yolanda fulfills Chucha's prophesy about

their future: "They will be haunted by what they do and don't remember. But they have

spirit in them. They will invent what they need to survive" (GG 223).

DREAMING IN CUBAN WHILE LIVING ON THE HYPHEN

Like Alvarez, Christina Garcia's debut novel, Dreaming in Cuban, depicts a

family romance based on profound loss, and one with which she has intimate and

personal experience. In 1993, Garcia claimed in an interview with the Boston Globe, "In

terms of the Cuban experience, the Revolution is 34 years old as old as I am. We're in a

220

unique position to tell the story of exile in a way our parents couldn't because they

were too scarred and busy remaking their lives" (qtd. in Borland 136). Though she left

Cuba as an infant, Garcia's characters are profoundly affected by their exiled existence,

a trait found in other Cuban-born writers of her generation.3 Like many other Cuban

Americans, Garcia negotiates through the disparate political conflict that surrounds

Cuban natives, exiled Cubans, and younger generations of American born Cubans. In

an interview she explains how, unlike most protesters who are either pro-Castro or

oppositional to the revolution, she remains neutral and objective about the issue that

has torn so many families apart:

I grew up in a very black-and-white situation. My parents were virulentlyanti-Communist, and yet my relatives in Cuba were tremendous supporters ofCommunism, including members of my family who belong to the CommunistParty. The trip in 1984 and the book [Dreaming in Cuban], to some extent, werean act of reconciliation for the choices everybody made. I'm very much in favor ofdemocratic systems, but I also strongly believe a country should determine itsown fate. I realize I couldn't write and be a journalist and do everything I've donein Cuba; yet I respect the right of the people to live as they choose (qtd. in Luis216).

With Dreaming in Cuban, Garcia creates an intricate web of family and community

whose shared narrative reconceives family narratives made complicated by exiled

status. The novel conveys the tremendous weight Cuban Americans place on their

culture as well as their dichotomous views on Castro, and is told in "numerous narrative

consciousnesses, usually in the third person, from time planes that move backward and

forward but follow a general linear chronological direction" (Vasquez 22). Similarly to

Alvarez, Garcia goes to great lengths to make the narrative a family affair, and in doing

so reveals complicated elements of family and point of view as she fashions

inconsistencies in the text to demonstrate how complex point of view can be. No

coincidence that the text centers not just upon Abuela Celia, but "the entire extended

family of women-mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, cousins, godmothers, lovers,

neighbors, fortune tellers, curanderas (healers), midwives, teachers, and friends,

especially girlhood friends-make up a cast of characters" (Ortega 12). According to

221

Eliana Ortega and Nancy Sternbach, when Latina women speak of a family of women,

"we imply a restructuring of the traditional patriarchal family" (12). Pilar,

thirteen-years-old when the novel begins and twenty-two at its close, seems to be the

common thread throughout the family, whether she's telepathically communicating

with her grandmother, Celia, vehemently arguing with her mother, Lourdes, or

commiserating with her father, Rufino. Garcia's novel like other texts featuring "the

child as an unconventional informant presents an unusual and potentially subversive

perspective. Her entire narrative may be seen as a process of undermining the value of

the patriarchal family" (Riga 104). Additionally, Pilar's primary objective is to reunite her

broken extended family. Like Garcia, though just two when the revolution began in

Cuba, Pilar claims she "remember[s] everything that's happened to me since I was a

baby, even wordfor-word conversations" (Garcia 26). However much the import of the

action rests with Pilar, I intend to demonstrate how each of the main characters each

overcome the geographic divides in their attempts to fuse together the family fractured

by politics and revolutions.

EXILE DREAMS: THE BREADED LEVIATHAN & CUBA LIBRE!

The novel chronicles the family romance from three dimensions that take into

consideration the character's political and gendered positionality. From Celia del Pino

we learn about familial legacy from the point of view of one who remains in Cuba, that

like politics, family unity requires the ultimate in personal sacrifice and reliance upon

the community equals reliance upon the family. Her daughter Felicia adds to that the

concept of physical and mental anguish as defining elements of the family romance. The

family romance as revamped by Lourdes demonstrates a break from cultural tradition.

The Puente's nontraditional nuclear family economically thrives in New York City, but

its members implicitly rebel against the nuclear triad to create a restructured family that

reflects their displaced condition as exiles (Ortega 12). Finally, Pilar as the third

222

generation and a young teenager acquires the power and authority she will

undoubtedly parlay into her life as an adult and the matriarch to save her troubled

family by forcing a reunion in Cuba. I want to be clear that returning to the island is no

panacea for familial reconciliation, but for repairing multi-generational rifts returning to

the base of familiarity is, according to the novel, necessary. As a family romance, Garcia

consistently rewrites the patriarchal family trope with all main characters in the novel.

Her homes symbolize havens in a heartless world as well as instruments to trap, strip

away spirit, and oppress. In this cross-cultural divide, the indigenous and the immigrant

survive the state apparatuses with the help of extended family and communal support.

At the onset of Castro's command, Lourdes and her husband Rufino show their

contempt for Castro by fleeing Cuba, landing in Miami but at Lourdes's insistence they

strike out for New York, the ultimate symbol in immigrant freedom and assimilation.

They each leave behind their families, but Garcia concentrates on Lourdes's side, the del

Pinos, even though many of Rufino's family settle in Miami. Mother to Lourdes and

grandmother to Pilar, Celia del Pino is a staunch Castro supporter who disdains any

disparaging remark against el Lidar makes the rift between herself and her daughter's

family wider than the geographic divide. Pilar, a sensitive girl who becomes an

accomplished painter in her early teens, constantly lobbies for a reconciliation between

the women because she's motivated by her desire to learn about herself by learning

about her family and her culture. Like many exiles who bitterly oppose Castro and hold

him responsible for their having to leave the country, Lourdes expresses her patriotism

to excess, behaving more American than the descendants of the Mayflower. She names

her business The Yankee Doodle American Bakery, calls her mother a Communist, and

vows she will not return to Cuba until Castro dies. It appears as though Lourdes trades

her ethnic heritage for assimilation into the kind of "imagined community" that ignores

racial, social or national differences (Oboler 161). Like Claudia, Avey, and Yolanda, Pilar

exhibits a focused awareness on the importance of preserving the familial history that

223

remains lost on Lourdes but well understood by Celia. Pilar's text are actually excerpts

from journal, a diary she ferrets away in the lining of her winter coat after her mother

finds it hidden under the mattress, which chronicles a family driven apart by politics,

pride, and emotions.

Doris Wilkinson asserts that maintaining close relationships with both sets of

grandparents is of fundamental importance, as is the maternal aunt's role to negotiate

between parents and adults in the family, which Garcia creates in the form of telepathic

communication between Pilar and the deceased Felicia (37). Garcia seems to support this

idea, because at the onset of the novel Pilar is the one most cognizant of the importance

of grandparents. Convinced that she is being oppressed by her parents, particularly

Lourdes, and that living with her grandmother Celia in Cuba will bring her familial

peace, at thirteen Pilar runs away to Miami where she believes the Puentes will support

her cause with money and transportation to the island. Though physically removed

from her grandmother, Pilar uses mental telepathy to communicate with her abuela

Celia so that she can remain connected to her extended family in Cuba at the same time

write their current history.

Those relatives who remain on the island also share narrative responsibilities

and plot complications. Through Celia we discover the complex system of familial

relations and duties, specifically that of mothering and patriarchal oppression Cuban

style, which helps us understand Lourdes's motherly and wifely motivations in

America. Though Freudian influences are quite similar to the system of Cuban

machismo, the powerful mother/son match reformulates the Freudian family romance

to feature families that consist of dominant mothers and sons. This system where Garcia

privileges the father's patriarchal power and dominance lasts only as long as his wife

bears him females. After a son arrives, the power shifts to the mother, which she

dutifully passes to her son when he is of age. In a combination of third person narrative

and Celia's letters to Gustavo, Garcia begins examining traditional patriarchal conditions

224

in the Cuban family and how such arrangements transform the home as safety into the

home as prison for women. While wasting away and housebound due to her depression

at losing Gustavo, Celia finds Jorge del Pino, fourteen years her senior, coming to court

her. Though patient with her delicate position at first, Jorge eventually orders her to

write Gustavo. " 'Write to that fool,' Jorge insisted. 'If he doesn't answer, you will marry

me" (DC 37). After no word from Gustavo, Celia relents to Jorge's frequent insistences,

marries him, and the couple move in with his mother. What occurs next seems like a

miniature missive attacking the patriarchal structure by an elaborate show of maternal

dominance that sets up a subtextual pattern of deviant maternal behavior that affects

relationships as it ripples through Celia to Lourdes to Pilar. Some forty years later after

Jorge dies and makes posthumous visits to Lourdes, he confesses his culpability in

sending Celia to an asylum. As revenge for her loving Gustavo in a way he knew she

could never love him, the seemingly gentle Jorge leaves Celia with his mother and sister

so that they can break the spirit in her that broke him with love. He deliberately stays

away on his business trips longer than necessary so they have more time to belittle and

mentally torture Celia. Instead of quickly succumbing to their inhumane acts like Jorge

expected, Celia persists. After delivering Lourdes, however, Celia grips her baby by the

ankle and hands her to Jorge, vowing never to know her name (DC 195).

With this vignette where Celia temporarily lets go of her mental faculties and

her first child, I think Garcia accomplishes several tasks. Regardless of the cost to her,

Celia does get released from her mother-in-law's prison, even if she must enter another

institution. Where many young wives stay and endlessly endure the shame and berating

attacks, Celia triumphs over the oppressive system. Also, when she returns from the

institution, she assumes absolute control in the marriage so that Jorge will never again

challenge her authority. Celia subverts the machismo and then teaches her two

daughters and a son how to rewrite the same, though here I want to make a distinction

between reformulating the patriarchal family and mothering. Celia teaches many lessons

225

to her children, but maternal nurturing is not one, and I see that failing as partially due

to Jorge's attempt to break her and partially due to her own mother's inability to

nurture. Consequently, Lourdes and Pilar have a stormy relationship fraught with

mother/daughter battles, as do Felicia and her three children. Lack of the maternal also

functions as a way of subverting the patriarchal family.

To rescue these patriarchal and nuclear families, Garcia combats the pattern of

generational aggression with extended family and community webs of containment to

diffuse the strong personalities and conflicts; however as evidenced in the lack of the

maternal theme, Garcia will not deliver the ubiquitous happy ending. For Celia and

second daughter Felicia, the line between the communal and the familial is less distinct

than an open door. They live close to one another and have the fellowship of

long-endured neighbors to buoy them and help in times of need. Celia also enjoys the

company of her fellow revolutionaries, though Felicia is less enthusiastic about the

situation. Isabel Alvarez Borland calls Felicia a "stranger to the rational world due to her

own real dementia," and believes her syphilis renders her in "the silent world of inner

exile" (DC 140). Though Felicia's health does plunge her into psychotic episodes, such as

when she burns Hugo the husband who infects her with the disease and kills her next

husband by pushing him out of a roller coaster, which prompts her to eventual suicide,

she also experiences long periods of lucidity and is connected to an extensive santeria

sect of which her best friend from childhood, Herminia, is a priestess. Of their friendship

Herminia says, "I never doubted Felicia's love. Or her loyalty" (DC 184). In the chapter,

"Daughters of Chango," Garcia expands the telecommunication element that Pilar is

attuned to include Felicia and Lourdes, with Felicia as the spiritual link. In Cuba she

plays her Beny More records, "loud and warped [to] lessen the din" of neighborhood

noises that her acute hearing blasts in her head (DC 75). Later Pilar thumbs through

album seconds in a New York record store and buys a beat up Beny More record. After

leaving the store Pilar has the urge to visit a botanica, a shop that sells santeria

226

paraphernalia because like Felicia she appreciates "the simplest rituals, the ones that are

integrated with the earth and its seasons, that are the most profound" (DC 199). She

selects a red and white beaded necklace and a packet of herbs, prompting the shop

owner to place a hand on her shoulder and call her a "daughter of Chango" because the

deity's colors are red and white and tells her to "finish what you began," meaning her

thwarted trip to Cuba (DC 200). In a ceremony reminiscent of Felicia's when she tries to

become a santeria priestess, Pilar returns to her dorm room with her purchases, lights a

candle and makes a bath with the scented herbs. At midnight she paints "a large canvas

ignited with reds and whites, each color betraying the other," and continues the ritual

for eight more days. "On the ninth day of my baths," Pilar concludes, "I call my mother

and tell her we're going to Cuba (203). Ironically, Pilar always feels a connection to her

grandmother, but this chapter emphasizes the intimate connection Pilar has with Felicia.

Once in Cuba she begins to understand the similarities she shares with Felicia, such as

the ease with which each could integrate into new environments (Luis 230), and their

openness to various religions and spiritual beliefs. Immediately before Pilar's purchases,

Felicia's spirit moves to Lourdes through their deceased father. In this final time of

contacting her from beyond death Jorge again confesses his horrid sins against Celia

with even more details about how he left her in the asylum with instructions for the

doctors to make her forget about Gustavo. "They used electricity. They fed her pills" (DC

196). Then he explains that Felicia has died and that she must return to Cuba to "do

things you will only know when you get there" intimating that the rift between his wife

and eldest is not at all what Lourdes has been thinking (DC 196). Felicia and Jorge

understand how distant Lourdes and Pilar are from their extended family and

community, and their telepathic urging becomes the impetus for familial reintegration

when at the end of the novel Pilar and Lourdes return to Cuba and all begin the business

of tenderly repairing the strained relationships.

227

SUGARCANE SHADOWS

In "(Re)Writing Sugarcane Memories" Eliana S. Rivero discusses the issue of a

double identity that perpetually shadows Cubans who evolve into Cuban Americans.

She finds the condition manifested in writing that expresses "a sense of belonging

nowhere-neither here nor in Cuba. Their place and time had been defined by a cultural

space that is no more: the decade of the fifties" (170). Similarly, Michael Seidel describes

the Cuban exile as "one who inhabits one place and projects the reality of another" (qtd.

in Borland 141). I see Garcia engaging in this concept of cultural displacement in the

Puente nuclear family, but when Pilar flees to her father's family in Miami, she

experiences an integrated extended family and community whose estrangement from

Cuba would not be as apparent. The senior Puente home is a compound of sorts in that

Rufino's parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law live together in a cadre of tios and tias in a

wealthy neighborhood of Cuban immigrants.

Lourdes, whose earnest attempts to trade her Cuban identity for a fully

integrated American is probably the most affected. Obviously, her memories of the

island are finite and fresh ones cannot be made after she has departed, but she has no

interest in developing new ones she could establish with consistent contact with her

family on the island like her daughter conducts. To suppress even the old memories,

Lourdes uses her bakery business and stints as an auxiliary policewoman to divert her

attentions from her truncated family. Not until her father comes to the states four years

later for cancer treatment does anything Cuban make it through her touch façade.

Lourdes recalls "how after her father arrived in New York her appetite for sex and baked

goods increased dramatically" (DC 20). Garcia paints Lourdes as a woman barely in

control of her life, wolfing pounds of sticky buns at a sitting, wearing her husband down

with urgent and frequent lovemaking sessions, astounding him with her agility despite

gaining 118 pounds. Garcia cryptically describes this abnormal behavior saying that

228

"Lourdes was reaching through Rufino for something he could not give her, she wasn't

sure what" (DC 21). I think Garcia wants readers to see that behind her unrequited

cravings exists a deep and primordial instinct to reunite. Reunification between herself

and her daughter, herself and her extended family, and her daughter and extended

family in Cuba will realign all the members with the communities and cultures from

each side of the ocean.

REVOLUTIONARY FAMILIES AND THE MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY

By the end of the novel Garcia's consistent character portrayals lend a degree of

predictability in terms of how they will react to the inevitable reunion that has been

foreshadowed throughout, but not necessarily the final outcome of the action. The

connection between Celia and Pilar seems obvious. Through unfortunate cycles of

abandonment, Celia's inability to mother Lourdes early in her life sets of the next cycle

where Lourdes finds it difficult to exhibit love and affection to Pilar. However, on the

last page we find the final letter Celia writes to Gustavo dated January 11, 1959, on the

day Pilar is born, which is also Celia's fiftieth birthday. She explains that this is her last

letter to him because "She [Pilar] will remember everything" (DC 245). Garcia reveals

through this out of sequence epistle that we have been reading Pilar's diary all along and

that she has been the omniscient narrator. According to Isabel Alvarez Borland, Garcia

creates this device to impress upon the reader the fact that Pilar shoulders double duty

of narrating and participating in a story about herself and her place within a family so

that she could more actively "find that part of her identity she knew was missing" (DC

141).

But now that we know Pilar has been filtering the action through her own biased

and complicated lenses, I think it important to revisit Lourdes's incredibly complex

character, because the version Pilar has been presenting shows her as a strong willed,

single dimension, stubborn and unreasonable woman incapable of evolving into

229

anything more. Throughout the text Garcia maintains a distance between Celia and

Lourdes that, as revealed above, is unwillingly instigated by Jorge in his machismo

attempts to break Celia's spirit and punish her for loving another man before him. By

sending Celia to asylum immediately after she has Lourdes, Jorge not only makes his

final bid for power within his family, but he also separates mother and child at their

most critical stage of bonding and development. For the rest of their lives Celia and

Lourdes must struggle with feeling like isolated individuals in a culture that values

extended family and community (Bump 328). Lourdes works through these feelings of

inadequacy by knee-jerk reactions and pure action, which come across as the signs of a

woman hiding from her feelings. Garcia again circumvents the tradition of power

located within the paternal with Lourdes and Rufino's non-traditional by Cuban

standards marriage. Lourdes immediately understands that her husband, a farmer in a

long line of farmers in Cuba, has experienced some form of arrested motivation. Garcia

explains that shortly after their arrival in America when they leave their refuge with the

extended exiled Puentes in Miami that Lourdes instinctively knows Rufino "would

never adapt. Something came unhinged in his brain" that would prevent him from any

work but what he knew in Cuba. "There was a part of him that could never leave the

finca [farm] or the comfort of its cycles, and this diminished him for any other life" (DC

129). Though instilled with the idea that "Cuban women of a certain age and a certain

class consider working outside the home to be beneath them," Lourdes ignores such

classist ideology and takes control of the marriage, the finances, and the decision making

processes (DC 130). Joseph Viera calls her a "doer" who attacks her new life in America

as an entrepreneur with such frenetic energies that she is obviously masking her feelings

about leaving Cuba (239). Indeed everything Lourdes attempts she carries to excess,

such as her belief that owning one bakery will not satiate her desires. She wants a chain

of bakeries that she will oversee. At the core of all her intentions is making Pilar's life in

America easier than she experienced in Cuba, but she carries out her actions with so

230

much domination that her entire family easily misreads her. Ironically, had Garcia made

Lourdes the hidden narrator, I think she would have painted Celia in the same strokes.

However, evidence suggests Lourdes clearly exhibits a tremendous amount of growth

and change as demonstrated in a series of events that occur during her visit to Cuba.

Garcia's deceased characters continually call to the living to repair the fractured

family, as evidenced in the change to Lourdes's character because of the accelerated

action at the end of the novel. Spurned by visits from her dead father urging them to

return to Cuba, Lourdes concedes to make amends and she and Pilar embark on the trip.

Each approaches the visit with her particular agenda, though both seek the same: the

essential core of identity and unification between family. Pilar wants to absorb the

culture that is implicitly hers and she relishes spending quiet times with Celia to learn

the histories that grandmother will pass to granddaughter. Like Claudia in The Bluest

Eye and Avey in Praisesong for the Widow, Pilar understands Celia has chosen her to

pass on the family stories. Just before Celia tells Pilar that only granddaughters can save

their grandmothers and "guard their knowledge like the first fire," Pilar feels, "my

grandmother's life passing to me through her hands. It's a steady electricity, humming

and true" (222). This scene foreshadows Celia's suicide and the end of a family's

matriarch, but not before she passes the legacy to the next generation. Meanwhile,

Lourdes is busy tearing through the country in a rented car revisiting places from her

past to gather the disparate memories from her fragmented life as an exile. She returns

to her husband's farm and the place she lost her first child, to the streets of her own

childhood, her sister's home to see her nieces and nephew.

Pilar's observations of Lourdes remain consistent with those throughout her

diary/the novel. "She argues with Abuela's neighbors, picks fights with waiters, berates

the man who sells ice cream cones on the beach" about the lengths of decay and poverty

the island and its people have experienced (DC 234). I submit that where Celia is losing

her energy to keep the family together, Lourdes increases her energies from the island,

231

which she will need to complete what I believe is her secret agenda to reunify the

surviving and willing del Pinos by spiriting them out of Cuba and into the states. When

she learns the dictator has declared that any wishing to emigrate can leave through the

Peruvian embassy, she rushes to Felicia's son, Ivanito, and packs his clothing. He is the

easiest to grab up and the least invested in the political struggle, so Lourdes practices

her skills in covert activities with him.

Because Celia is a loyalist to the revolution and Pilar is so caught up in mending

the broken connection between them, Pilar misinterprets Lourdes's actions, and Celia

reaffirms her lamenting, "We have no loyalty to our origins. Families used to stay in one

village reliving the same disillusions. They buried their dead side by side." She finishes

with, "Ay mi cielo, what do all the years and the separation mean except a more

significant betrayal" (DC 240). When they go to the embassy where each gets bruised

and shaken by the angry mob trying to swarm the already filled compound, Pilar still

supports Celia's beliefs over her mother's. She promises to find Ivanito, and when she

does they hug. She feels "my cousin's heart through his back. I can feel a rapid uncoiling

inside us both" (DC 242). With that visceral connection to Ivanito and his emotions, Pilar

separates herself from her abuela, cementing the parting with a lie, "I couldn't find him"

(242). This scene marks Pilar's initial awareness that the roles of good and bad she

assigned her grandmother and mother and Cuba and the U. S. that she angrily clings to

are much more unstable than she estimates. Home for Pilar will not be her

grandmother's but her mother's. Pilar sees with greater clarity the relationship also

between cultural displacement and cultural unity and each has defined her selfhood and

her family, even Abuela Celia.

Though the novel ends immediately after this scene when Celia slips into the

night and walks into the ocean to die, I believe the events at the compound and Celia's

death helps Pilar understand that the Cuba she romanticized, like her place within it,

became vastly different from her idealized dreams. What we take away from this novel

232

is, I believe, an ambiguity about the space which families occupy. Helping Ivanito

emigrate is not an act of spite against the island or her mother, but for Lourdes an

opportunity to bring yet another member of the family out of the revolution and into the

exiled community. On many levels Pilar understands that distances occur within one's

home as they do between nations. I hesitate to say she will reconcile herself to her

mother's political and cultural opinions, but having spent the six days in Cuba, Pilar

develops a much more sophisticated sense of the family, the culture, the ideologies she

learns on the trip. Lourdes recognizes that Celia did not abandon her, but taught her to

"read the columns of blood and numbers in men's eyes, to understand the morphology

of survival" (DC 42). So the Cuban American visitors each leave with intangibles and

tangibles to help them continue to negotiate the familial and cultural divide that

comprises their non-traditional family. Pilar has Celia's letters to Gustavo, and Lourdes

has her nephew, Ivanito. The family loses Celia, but like her beloved country, Celia will

always be a part of their lives and dreams in Cuban.

Ultimately, this novel attempts to determine what happens to the concept of

family when the locus of familial identity and authority become displaced (Bammer

105). Against her mother's wishes, Lourdes defies the government of Cuba so that she

can reassemble the disparate pieces of her kin. Whether she will rescript them into

another familial mold or fold them into her own, we can only guess, but her post-Cuban

family romance will be anything but traditional. Family, community, and nation are

"unstable and mutable concepts" but inseparable as well (Bammer 96). This dilemma

took center stage in the 2000 Census Report that lacked specific ethnic and racial

categories were not provided. As more ethnic groups are discovering, invisibility

equates to more than loss of identity, such as unavailable funding for certain

communities, and groups are now marshalling forces for more adequate representation.

The help, mainly Haitian women, exemplify those racial and class divisions similarly to

black/white issues Morrison depicts in The Bluest Eye. In an effort to commit racial

233

genocide and rid the island of what he considered the inferior Haitian presence, Trujillo

calls for an overnight slaughter of all Haitians. Chucha pleads with the Garcia girls'

grandparents who take her in and save her life. In exchange, Chucha pledges lifelong

loyalty to the de la Tones. Like Morrison's Pauline Breedlove, Chucha's steadfast

dedication affords her certain perks other servants are denied, but she's nonetheless a

lower-class citizen who, by virtue of her birth, will never rise to the equality of the

family she serves. Cuban Americans Virgil Suarez, Roberto Fernandez, and Achy Obejas

infuse their work with issues like the political exile, the incredibly difficult debate Cuban

exiles and Cuban Americans have over the Revolution and Fidel Castro, and dreams of

one day returning to Cuba.

234

CHAPTER 10: U.S IMMIGRANT SUBJECTIVITIES & NARRATIVES IN THE SHADOW OF THECOMMODITY

This chapter takes the serial works of five immigrant autobiographers written

during the 1980s and 1990s as occasions to explore and theorize the relationship between

identity formations in narratives of Americanization and the social discourses and

material practices that make these texts possible and intelligible, specifically in relation

to the promise and anxiety occasioned by renewed periods of high migration

experienced in the U.S. in the last three decades (Fig. 3). In particular this chapter is

concerned with tracing the generative tensions and contradictions of ideological

discourses surrounding nation, self and narrative representation in the United States in

the last decade of the 20th century in order to demonstrate the "material force" of

ideational and ideological biographic narrative formations within a culture structured

around relations of exchange and commodification—i.e. advanced late capitalism.

In brief, by investigating the life narratives of immigrants, this chapter attempts

to account for the emergence, development and imperatives of what some scholars have

labeled a "culture of autobiography" in evidence throughout U.S. cultural formations

within the last three decades (Folkenflick 1).

Lastly, this chapter attempts to map the development and dialogic response of

U.S. immigrant autobiography to heated public debates over immigration at the 20th

century's close, echoing the heyday of a similar nativist assault in fin-de-siecle 19th

century America lasting into what social historian John Higham has characterized as the

“Tribal Twenties” in his classic study on American nativism, Strangers in the Land

(1964).

The ideological triumph of economies of exchange underwritten by commodity

relations at the present historical juncture call for an accounting of the reifying and

utopian possibilities and constraints of all cultural formations, but most especially those

of emergent immigrant and ethnic cultural formations since these, as this chapter will

235

argue, provide a unique perspective on the economic, cultural and social cleavages

within the discursive and material fabric of the United States. Added to this social

dynamic is the advent of what immigration historians Castles and Miller call "the age of

migration" providing us with a unique opportunity to examine the role and expansion

of commodity relations at both phenomenological and structural planes because the

commodities now in motion and circulation around the globe speak & act: they are the

men, women & children that have entered this country as immigrants, refugees &

asylees and have gone on to document new contours to the American literary traditions

of self-writing and novelizations of pre-migration experiences and Americanization.

While, their stories are singular and unique testaments of journeys undertaken,

determination exhibited, struggles lost and successes achieved, they are also cultural

artifacts that document the inexorable logic of capital's commodifying and reifying

tendencies even within the most private and individual of spaces—human

consciousness and subjectivity as manifested through the act of writing and narrative

self-fashioning. The story that will unfold within the scope of this chapter is a trajectory

of the narrativization of commodification of social life, and by extension the

commodification of individual life or consciousness as attested to by immigrants

themselves in their life writings and labor or through works of imaginative literature.

TOWARDS A SOCIO-LITERARY PERSPECTIVE:

The goal of this study has been is to provide a methodological intervention in the

realm of cultural and literary studies that take as their object of inquiry immigrant and

ethnic cultural formations. At its most concrete level, this study seeks to outline and

articulate a historically determined and influenced dialectical materialism that will

bridge the gulf between 1) a reductive and individualist, “auteur” focus on emergent

immigrant cultural formations and 2) an over-generalized and overly structural focus on

236

social and economic integration—i.e. Americanization. This study strives to present an

intermediate perspective that engages the mirco- and marco-structural dimensions of

migration, while at the same time being attuned to the "cultural work" and labor

performed by immigrants within a global capitalist economic order that structures the

ideational or noumenal forms cultural expressions take on. To this end, this study

borrows and builds upon recent trends in immigrant historiography, literary studies,

ethnography, sociology and world systems theory that have posited and discussed the

epochal transformations in capital formations from Fordist to Postmodern mutations

since the beginning of the 20th Century. In particular I will explore the “cultural friction”

occasioned by an increasing rate of immigration towards the end of the 20th Century in

the U.S. echoing earlier accelerations in rates in the 1850s and 1910s .

Historically, the publicly available discursive formations surrounding

immigration in the United States have oscillated between two mutually exclusive and

contradictory poles that stress either a history of race-based exclusion or one of inclusion

(Takaki 12). Depending on the political project at hand, whether it be progressive or

reactionary, cultural workers in the field of immigration studies and policy have, for the

most part, characterized and overemphasized one of these two historical trends at the

expense of a balanced and dialectical outlook. This idealist and myopic analytic

strategy--one that has left us with categories and assumptions modeled on a bifurcated

neo-classical economic paradigm unable to reconcile the micro-structural & macro-

structural dimensions of migration--leaves us ill prepared as students and scholars of

immigrant and ethnic cultural formations to deal with the complexities, contradictions,

ambiguity and heterogeneity of the life experiences of immigrants and the attendant

processes of economic and social integration they experience (see Fig. 7 for an example

of such a process that I have used successfully in the classroom to help guide students

towards systemic and structural thinking.

237

Figure 3 - Sedimentation: From Habitus to Ideology

Figure 4 - Acculturation Process

The socio-literary perspective advocated by this study attempts to go beyond the

belletristic and naive humanist celebrations of ethnic diversity and/or condemnations of

ethnic antagonism evident in much scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences

within the last three decades by focusing on the socio-economic horizons wherein

immigrant cultural productions take place both on a national and global stage. While it

238

would be too reductionist to insist that the story of migration or immigration in the 20th

Century is simply the story of international labor migrations; it would be equally

misguided not to attend to the structural components and consequences of the

accelerations and transformations in capital attendant in the shift from Fordist to

Postmodernist economies of exchange and its attendant waves of global migration in

factors of production. The accelerations in global economic integration since the end of

WW II precipitated by automation and technological innovation, the continuing search

for exploitable natural resources and commodity markets, and the declining rate of

profit available to capitalists in the industrialized world have all placed a premium on

the "free movement" of the factors of production, chief among them labor, in order to

guarantee the ever-expanding consumption and production "needed" to sustain a

capitalist world economic system (Harvey 1989: 186). However, these accelerating or

fragmenting forces have not been the only ones unleashed in the wake of a globally

consolidating capital formation made up of multinational corporations, since there have

also been, on a local (regional or national) level, forces that have placed a premium on

"boundary maintenance" in a nativist register. Hence, the turbulent and heated national

debates over citizen and worker rights much in evidence around the globe since the

collapse of the oligarchic collectivist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

and the emergence of the United States as a global geo-political, economic and military

hegemon by the early 21st Century in the aftermath of Persian Gulf War II.

LE LY HAYSLIP'S MORAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP & THE POLITICS OFABSOLUTION IN WHEN HEAVEN AND EARTH CHANGED PLACES AND

CHILD OF WAR, WOMAN OF PEACE

The new Iraq War, having become the U.S.’s 2nd Vietnam under

Bush II, provides a new punctual backdrop and social resonance in the serial

autobiographies of Vietnamese American writer Le Ly Hayslip. Her opus are cultural

documents that argue for an individualistic social therapeutics based on reconciliation

239

and forgiveness that contest, and yet affirm, dominant (hence ideological) readings of

the U.S.'s involvement in Southeast Asia. No doubt the short-lived popularity of

Hayslip's narrative, in part, derives from its efficacy in assuaging and managing the

guilt, shame and trauma associated in the national socio-political imaginary with the

"American loss of innocence in Viet Nam," while at the same time documenting the

resilience, fortitude and determination involved in one woman's narrative trajectory

from "rags to riches"--both staples in the repertoire of identity narratives in the 1980s of

Reagan's America depicted in Hayslip’s chronicle. In fact, the popularity and perceived

effectiveness of Hayslip's narratives in giving a "face" and a "voice" to the "enemy," as

evinced in the commercial success of Olive Stone's filmic adaptation of Hayslip's life in

Heaven and Earth (1994), serves as a prime site of inquiry into the role of

commodification in the life writing of immigrants. Of special interest throughout the

study is the role of the immigrant autobiogapher in accommodating, challenging and

changing the terms and conditions of structural and cultural assimilation into a U.S.

social formation underwritten by a regime of flexible capital accumulation that foments

social fragmentation (Harvey). In particular, the study focuses on When Heaven and

Earth Changed Places (1989) and Child of War, Woman of Peace (1993) as narratives

engaged in 1) confirming the assimilability of Southeast Asian immigrants, 2) deploying

the tropes and metaphors of a therapeutic cultural formation in evidence in U.S. in the

1980s (Lears 1983: 6), 3) promoting an international philanthropic enterprise, through

The East Meets West Foundation, underwritten by a neo-liberal politics of volunteerism

and effective compassion consonant with the "thousand points of light" pop-ideology of

the Bush Administration, 4) joining a national conversation over the meaning of "Viet

Nam" (Christopher 1995: 2), 5) positioning the immigrant autobiographer as a moral

entrepreneur, 6) documenting the creation of cultural capital through autobiographical

narratives, and 7) demonstrating the effect and consequences of commodity relations on

everyday life and consciousness (Lukács 1968: 86-87).

240

More concretely, Hayslip’s life story traces the role played by the socialization

and acculturation into market relations she undergoes in war-torn Viet Nam as a rite-of-

passage and constitutive experience of her Americanization abroad. The lessons

Hayslip learns as a blackmarketeer in Saigon prepare her to assume her place in the

American canon of identities as an "entrepreneur," a role that she enacts in both private

business and civic life. Hayslip's is a narrative of social mobility that attests to the

possibility and desirability of attaining the 'American Dream" based on principles of

market exchange and mutual reciprocity inflected through the lens of karmic soul debt

accrued from within a Buddhist socio-religous worldview. Additionally, her narratives

argue for a model of citizenship based on transnational performativity, cultural

citizenship, and civic participation that is consonant with the dominant discourses of

American nationalism in the 1980s. And, yet despite the ideological nature of her

autobiographical project from a national perspective, Hayslip's life narratives are also

engaged in contesting and expanding the American cultural imaginary as part of the

emergent, if not resurgent, cultural formation of Asian Americans, in general, and

Vietnamese Americans, in particular, throughout the United States in the 1990s. More

importantly, Hayslip offers a model for social action, that while premised on individual

goodwill and charity operationalized through private philanthropic institutions and

further warranted by appeals to filial piety, nonetheless addresses the important

responsibilities and obligations inherent in membership in either communities of

descent or consent.

THE AESTHETICIZATION & PRIVATIZATION OF LOSS AND RAGE IN EVAHOFFMAN'S LOST IN TRANSLATION

While Hayslip's embrace and reproduction of American capitalist social relations

in her autobiographies can be said to be explicit and, at times, exuberant, Hoffman on

the other hand stages her response to Americanization as ambivalent, reluctant and

241

anoretic--in keeping with a tradition in European-American immigrant letters that is

highly critical of the consumerism and individualism of American social formations.

Yet, while Hoffman continues a tradition in bourgeois narratives of self (e.g. the writer

as social exile) consonant with the maincurrents of American life writing depicting the

melodramas of beset authorship first articulated by writers of the American Renaissance

in the 19th century; she also reintroduces a critical cultural stance reminiscent of the

positions taken by the founders of the Frankfurt School and the emigres who staffed the

New School for Social Research after WW II (Krohn 1993: 59). Not surprisingly,

Hoffman's text positions the immigrant autobiographer in the roles of cultural critic and

psychological/cultural auto-ethnographer of the immigrant experience. Her narrative

attempts to deal with the experience of chaotic multiplicity and fragmentation

confronting individuals under late capital. Throughout Lost in Translation, Hoffman

stages her sense of rage and loss as causal determinants for her nostalgia and the

aestheticization of her anoretic response to U.S. culture in the aftermath of the social

transformations of the 1960s.

Read within the context of other social discourses in circulation in the U.S. in the

late 1980s and early 1990s that attempt to cognitively map the U.S. social formation from

the analytic rubric of consumption studies (Bocock 1993: 51), Hoffman's autobiography

stages the most explicit deployment of the ethos and practice of what social historian T.J.

Jackson Lears has identified as a "therapeutic worldview" in dominance in North

America since the mid-nineteenth century. The basic contours of such a therapeutic

technology of self are delimited by a search for form and meaning in a commodity

culture that seeks to articulate and interpellate individual human agents as subjects

within a regime of flexible accumulation that requires extensive and conspicuous

consumption behavior in order to reproduce itself. While critical of the consumerism of

American life, Hoffman's proposed model for social action stops short of indicting the

exploitative social and material conditions that give rise to advanced capitalist social

242

relations, and instead offers the solace of the therapist's couch as an ameliorative

strategy for personal growth and well being. By narrating the phenomenological

experience of the confluence of existential weightlessness and the persistent

introspection fostered by the postmodern condition of American capital, Hoffman offers

an ethical injunction for a disciplinary regime underwritten by therapeutic practices that

focus on bolstering the autonomy of the bourgeois self when all overarching structures

of meaning have collapsed.

The ideological force of Hoffman's narrative resides in her "critical" stance

toward consumption and assimilation in the American register. A stance which at first

glance seems progressive, yet is in actuality only a further elaboration and

rationalization of the morbid self-absorption much in evidence throughout segments of

our culture as a whole in the last 25 years (Bellah et. al.). Obliquely and in disguised

form, Hoffman's autobiography argues for a performative model of self-formation and

self-presentation much in keeping with the findings of sociologist Irving Goffman's The

Presentation of Self in Everyday Life which documents the consolidation and

dissemination of a social stance that posits that there's nothing at stake in social life

beyond "a manipulatable sense of well-being" and self-fullfilment (Philip Reiff 1966: 13).

My critique of Hoffman stems from what I discern as a category error of the first

order. In short, she mistakes the historical and contingent development and nature of

reified consciousness in the 20th century as a salutary attribute of the human mind

under postmodernity (Lukács). For Hoffman, the defining feature of native and

immigrant social life is a celebratory and solipsistic recourse to an "observing

consciousness" that fails to map the social totality because of the "blessings and terrors of

multiplicity" wrought by capitalist social relations in the U.S. Hoffman's training as a

literary scholar at Rice University and Harvard during the heyday of poststructuralism

and her work as a book review editor for the New York Times and the New York

Review of Books, predispose her to seek and structure a symbolic resolution to the

243

contradictions of social life under capitalism in the literary realm, more accurately in the

realm of language. At its most concrete level, Hoffman's text argues for a regimen of

what she denotes as "translation therapy" in the "New World" section of her

autobiography. While she explicitly argues for a social constructivist perspective

towards language and the creation of social meaning, she nonetheless reintroduces a

deep psychologism that reinforces the very individualism she attempts to critique by

aestheticizing her "life in a new language." Hoffman stages a tension between the public

and private meanings of language only ultimately to favor the primacy of her own

private ideolect. While she highlights the dialogic and heteroglossic dimensions of

language, and by extension social life, she finally resolves the social contradictions of the

immigrant life experience through ideational and ideological strategies that foreground

the primacy of the individual bourgeois ego at the expense of the socius. Unlike

Hayslip, who attempts to resolve some of the contradictions of social life through the

mechanism of civil society, Hoffman's project seems to vindicate, yet again, the banality

of the American retreat to "the haunted chambers of the mind" (Lasch 1978). While

Hayslip attempts to mediate the experience of loss attendant with the disruption and

continuity of the migration experience through social action, Hoffman privatizes and

aestheticizes her experience in an attempt to demonstrate her point that "perhaps the

successful immigrant is an exaggerated version of the native" (LT 164).

244

ALL IN THE FAMILY: LIFE ON THE HYPHEN WITH PÉREZ FIRMAT:CUBA'SSON IN AMERICA, OR WHAT BECOMES A CUBAN MACHO MOST?

This section examines the work of Cuban American literary scholar and poet

Gustavo Pérez Firmat as an occasion to interrogate the ideological overdetermination of

the discourses of family, language maintenance and conjugal relations as the sites for the

reproduction of capitalist social relations. We begin by tracing the development and

deployment of a critical bi-cultural and bilingual perspective towards the presumption

of Anglo-conformity implicit in assimilationist models that address the integration of

ethnic populations into the U.S. in the 1980s. In particular, this study places Pérez

Firmat's poetical works not only within the context of the often heated debates in the

1980s and 1990s over what has come to be know as the "English Only" movement, but

more generally within the horizon of expectations operationalized by more strident

forms of nativist responses to the acceleration and globalization of migration after the

reforms of U.S. immigration laws since 1965. Pérez Firmat's three collections of poems,

Carolina Cuban (1987), Equivocaciones (1989) and Bilingual Blues (1994) and his

autobiography Next Year in Cuba (1995) all attempt to articulate the Cuban Condition

within the matrix of U.S. cultural and social formations by stressing and appealing to the

inviolable right to property in oneself and one's consciousness that has underwritten

20th century legal and social discourses on questions of U.S. citizenship, whether

cultural or political (Rosaldo). Pérez Frimat poetical project oscillates, deftly and

precariously, between the strong cultural pluralist tradition first introduce by Horace

Kallen and Randolph Bourne at the beginning of this century and the loose cultural

nationalist tendencies of the new social movements that gave birth to the Black Arts

Movement and the Chicano and Asian Literary Renaissances of the 1970s and 1980s

under the auspices of multiculturalism. The motive force behind this oscillation is Pérez

Firmat's (evolving and dynamic) self-perception as an exile, as opposed to immigrant in

245

the U.S. The central structuring motif throughout Pérez Firmat's work is the tension he

experiences and stages in his texts through the metaphorics of "life on the hyphen" as he

writes about the vicissitudes and triumphs of "the marriage of person and place" that the

exile attempts to sustain or rebuild in his quest for a place to call home. Integral to Pérez

Firmat's poetical and autobiographical projects is the desire to move beyond the

condition of exile while at the same time "staking out a place that spans more than one

country, more than one culture, more than one language" (NYC 13). From a strong bi-

national and bicultural perspective Pérez Firmat argues for the conditions and

possibilities of a transnational American identity that unites and resolves the

contradictions of the North/South divide through the reproduction of social life within

the private realm of familial relations.

For Pérez Firmat, the family mediates the "accelerated birth" occasioned by

migration and the exile's sense of "slow death," "deferral", and "suspended animation"

as he await Castro's fall from power. In so far as his project seeks to bolster and sanction

heterosexual and patriarchal familial arrangements and the viability of the immigrant

household as an engine of social stability and personal transformation and expression,

Pérez Firmat's narrative and lyrical strategies are consonant and complicit in

reproducing and promulgating a neo-conservative agenda of "family values" within

literary and social realms through his elaboration and proselytization of the "macho

ethic" (NYC 240). To be sure, Pérez Firmat's engagement and elaboration of hombria and

machismo as ethical constructs regimenting men's social conduct is nothing if not

ironized. But such irony only serves to masks the material force and prevalence of the

machista ideology within Caribbean and Latin American cultures, and their mainland

enclaves in the U.S.

So while this self-styled "Ricky Ricardo with a Ph.D." (NYC 227) propounds a

melodrama of beset Cuban manhood, he lays the groundwork for a socially and

politically conservative project that will allow him to claim wife and home, as the

246

prerogatives of masculinity, by eternalizing and naturalizing the discourses of marriage

and family. Not coincidentally does Pérez Firmat align himself with the persona of

Ricky Ricardo, a character from the extremely successful 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy. In

much of Pérez Firmat's work, the figure of Ricky and Lucy, as an inter-ethnic couple,

stands in for the fulfillment of the ethnic's crossover dream of primary and secondary

cultural assimilation, or as Pérez Firmat designates it Ricky and Lucy's "romance with

otherness" (NYC 237). In the inter-ethnic bond each member of the dyad is idealized

and loved, in turn, for not being what the other is. For Pérez Firmat, the conjugal

relation stands in for the resolution of social and cultural antimonies and contradictions,

along similar lines as those articulated by Mary Dearborn's and Werner Sollors' study of

interracial and inter-ethnic love in Pocahontas' Daughters and Beyond Ethnicity,

respectively. In Pérez Firmat's oeuvre, the marriage plot as a literary device seeks to

reconcile all manner of antimonies, be they psychological, economic, linguistic, social or

sexual. In Pérez Firmat's work, the inter-ethnic family is pressed into serve to function as

the site for the maintenance and reproduction of stable subjectivities and property

relations as an antidote to the disruption, dislocation and identity shifts occasioned by

migration and modernity. In brief, Pérez Firmat's anodyne to the nausea of postmodern

subjectivity in crisis is a conjugal mambo: "The paradox is that you are never so entirely

yourself as when you fall in love with someone who is unlike you. Want to feel

American? Marry a Cuban." (NYC 237).

247

THE POLITICS OF RACE AND FAMILY VALUES IN MARK MATHABANE'SKAFFIR BOY, KAFFIR BOY IN AMERICA , & LOVE IN BLACK AND WHITE

During the late 1980s and early 1990s the discourses of family and race in the

United States enjoyed prominent and privileged positions, as both ideological

explanations for social pathologies and as sites for socio-cultural regeneration, from

within the political discourses of both the Left and the Right. After the election of Bill

Clinton in 1992, the consolidation and re-articulation of a neo-liberal political and

cultural hegemony in national debates about identity, nation, race and family

increasingly took a firm hold of the political imaginary of the nation (Wattenburg).

Within this context, where "values matter most," Mark Mathabane's serial

autobiographies stage a socio-cultural intervention in the politics and rhetorics of

identity, family and community within the context of U.S. and South African discourses

of nation. His autobiographies provide a strong indictment of the racialized and racist

notions of identities-in-relation in operation in both his natal and adopted lands. Like

Pérez Firmat, Mathabane structures literary resolutions to the social contradiction of

everyday life through appeals to the plots of romance and marriage throughout his

narratives. However, Mathabane, as a Black South African man married to a white

Midwestern woman, goes further than Pérez Firmat to tackle the "thorny" issues that

have sedimented into mainstream U.S. views of interracial love by writing a joint

autobiography with his wife, Gail Mathabane, that seeks to extend, explicate and

"humanize" the plight of interracial couples twenty five years after the landmark U.S.

Supreme Court decision legalizing interracial marriages in Loving vs. Virginia (1967).

Throughout his individual narratives and his joint conjugal narrative, Mathabane

attempts to dispel the taboos, misconceptions, sexual myths and stereotypes that have

proliferated around black men and interracial relationships. His is an integrationist

racial project that harkens back to the heyday of Civil Rights accomodationist policies

248

pursued by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and later eschewed by more radical Black

cultural nationalists (Omi & Winant 1986: 96-98) in their quest for the full rights of

citizenship. However, Mathabane's narrative also needs to be examined through the

cultural prism created by an ascendant black middle class that saw a two-fold increase

in its numbers during the 1980s. Members of this class wedge made "remarkable"

symbolic and material strides in the late 1980s and early 1990s as evinced by the hero-

worship surrounding former Bush and Clinton Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Colin Powell

and by the appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court of conservative ideologue and

apologist Clarence Thomas. The rhetoric of individual merit, competence and

transcendence advocated by African American apologists for the U.S. racial state, like

Sheelby Steele, Thomas Sowell--and more recently UC Regent Ward Connerly-- deeply

inform the racial projects advanced by Mathabane as ameliorative measures for healing

racial tensions in the U.S. While elements of Mathabane's arguments for individual and

social regeneration through appeals to the discourses of interracial love and fellow-

feeling are no doubt progressive vis-s-vis his anti-apartheid stance towards the South

African regime prior to the release of Nelson Mandela and the ascendance of the African

National Congress, his overall project, as transplanted and articulated within the U.S.

context, is influenced and underwritten by ideologically suspect notions of

individualism and an amnesiac historical and structural understanding of race relations

in the U.S.

Mathabane's meteoric rise to prominence and celebrity, evinced by appearances

on nationally syndicated talkshows and his busy lecture tour schedule, no doubt arise

from the Franklinesque "by the bootstrap" worldview that he adopts as a consequence of

his political exile, expatriation and settlement in New York and then the American

South. On his way to the top, Mathabane is helped and warmly received by many

individuals, both white and black, who are solicitous and desirous that he share his

249

"rags to riches" story with ever larger audiences as testimony to the viability and

relevance of the "American Dream."

The narrative strategies and arguments that Mathabane employs are amenable to

analysis from the theoretical approaches to assimilation gleaned from the work of

Harvard sociologist Mary Waters, who has researched the associative and dissociative

identificatory strategies pursued by other black immigrants to the U.S. since 1965, most

notably those of West Indian and Haitian immigrants to the Northeast. Waters traces

and maps the "ethnic options" of black immigrants within a context of hostile and

adverse social and economic reception that fosters segmented assimilation along the

lines theorized and studied by economic sociologists Alejandro Portes (1992/3) and

Rubén Rumbaut (1990, 1996). In brief, Waters argues that the divergent circumstances of

migration, reception, access and participation in the opportunity structures of the U.S.

economy under a regime of flexible accumulation are co-variant determinants of the

ethno-racial filiations immigrants make as they integrate into American society.

Moreover, Waters' findings suggest that segmented and stratified opportunity structures

within the U.S. economy predispose black immigrants to "generally believe that it is

higher social status to be an immigrant black than to be an American black (Waters,

"Second Generation" 175). She goes on to argue from this finding that such a premise

leads to some black immigrants pursuing assimilative ethnic responses that eschew

solidarity and identification with native black communities and issues. Two strategies

Water's identifies, and that can be traced in Mathabane's work, are those of "[1]

identifying as ethnic Americans with some distancing from black Americans, or [2]

identifying as an immigrant in a way that does not reckon with American racial and

ethnic categories (Waters 178). Close readings of Mathabane's narratives allow us to

discern a narrative trajectory that moves through both the latter and former moments of

ethno-racial filiation into a more "neutral" and more "marketable" mainstream liberal

pluralist position that affords Mathabane the cultural capital to become an ethnic

250

entrepreneur of the immigrant and ethnic experience in the U.S. as he aligns himself

with a position (also shared by Steele and Sowell) that foregrounds racialist thinking as

an individual (or attitudinal) pathology that retreats from understanding race as a

social structuring principle in American life (Omi/Winant 1989: 68).

ILLEGAL DREAMS AND LABOR PAINS: THE SHADOWED LIFE A MIGRANTLABORER IN RAMON PÉREZ'S DIARY OF AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT

During the 1980s and 1990s, the "illegal" or "undocumented" immigrant from

Mexico became a lighting rod for the American public's concern, anxiety and hysteria

over what nativist commentators like Charles Lamm, and later Peter Brimelow, have

characterized as an "immigration time bomb" waiting to explode within the very bosom

of the nation. Not surprisingly, these xenophobic fears have been fueled in no small

measure by the crass and cynical maneuvering of opportunistic politicians like Pete

Wilson, Governor of the State of California, and hyper-conservative and nationalist

firebrand Pat Buchanan in the 1992 and 1996 national electoral cycles. And, while

undocumented migratory streams from Mexico, and elsewhere, have indeed increased

in absolute and relative terms since the 1960s, the opprobrium that the "mojado" has had

to endure is far in excess of the cultural or fiscal impact such migratory streams have

actually had (Portes & Rumbaut, Immigrant America). To fully understand the rancor

and resentment that has been directed at undocumented immigrants through legislation

at the national level (IRCA in 1986 and the 104th Congress' infringement of the rights

and privileges of naturalized citizens in 1996) and through state-wide plebiscite like

California's Proposition 187, one must trace the history and genealogy of the economic

and cultural formations (distilled and registered through public opinion) that have

historically underwritten what social historian John Higham calls a "general history of

the anti-immigrant spirit" in the United States (Strangers in the Land, ix). The current

phase of xenophobic anxiety has its roots in the uncertainty and confusion unleashed by

251

the transformations in finance capitalism since the late 1960s and the increasing levels of

global labor migration since the late 1970s fostered by a global economic restructuring

fueled by an acceleration in the decline of manufacturing and the shift towards services

in the industrialized West & parts of Asia. (cf. Castles & Miller, The Age of Migration).

No single immigrant stream in recent history seems to have garnered the American

public's contempt and resentment as decidedly as the "mojado" has. Not since the

heyday of virulent nativist restriction that took hold of California and the nation in the

1870s and 1880s and culminated in passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 has

anti-foreigner zeal been so prevalent and instrumental in operationalizing the class and

racial prejudices of a European American elite and a coopted class wedge of minority

elites that comprise a national (even if as of yet disaggregated) ethnic bourgeoisie (cf.

Sklair, The Sociology of the Global System). Through no fault of their own, it has

become the infelicitous lot of the undocumented immigrant to bear the stigma of being

"civilization's new discontent" (Orosco-Suárez, Transformations, 11).

It is within the context of a resurgent nativist "patriotism" (Brimelow, Alien

Nation 254) that responds with hostility and resentment to the social and economic

inroads made by U.S. minorities in business and education over the last quarter century,

as evidenced by the legitimation of multiculturalism as a curricular, research and

consumerist paradigm and the rise in the ethnic middle classes in the 1980s, that texts

such as Ramon "Tianguis" Pérez's Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant must be read.

However, any comprehensive analysis of the autobiographical and narrational

strategies of Pérez's life story, also requires that we be attuned to the pervasive and

dominant sociological and ethnographic interpretive filters that have governed much

scholarly research and popular interest in the life stories of immigrants of late, and

historically since the inception of the field of Mexican immigrant historiography and a

sociology of migration in the work of Mexican sociologist Manuel Gamio. From the

time of Gamio's magisterial Mexican Immigration to the United States: A Study of

252

Human Migration and Adjustment in the 1930s to Marylin Davis' more recent tome,

Mexican Voices/American Dreams (1990), social scientists have sought to elicit the

"voluntary eloquence" of their informants to augment the aggregate, structural,

statistical and "objective" aspects of migration with the phenomenolgical and subjective

experience of migration, cultural disruption and the negotiation of identity shifts

occasioned by population movements. It is this quest or demand for a voice from the

informant by the social scientist and the public at large that I will trace as the originary

impulse for autobiographical disclosure within immigrant cultural formations that are

directed to mainstream, national audiences. Starting from the assumption that

"prominent modes of remembering are subject to implicit social control or redirectioning

based on the power exercised by existing dominant and popular cultural forms" (King,

et al, x), I seek to provide an answer to a question Genaro Padilla raises in his work

tracing the socio-historical formation of Mexican American autobiographical practice:

"What happens when the autobiographical impulse finds its self-constitutive operations

undermined by the very discursive practices that make autobiographical presentation

possible?" (My History, 32)

In the case of Ramon Pérez's narrative, I trace an "odyssey of labor" that reflects

both the desire to inscribe oneself in the cultural imaginary of the nation as a laborer and

the desire to reaffirm the filial connections and social networks that have sustained him

on his trans-border journey. Throughout Diary of an Undocumented Immigration

(1991) Ramon "Tianguis" Pérez, a Mexican of Zapotec ancestry, recounts the trials and

tribulations of an undocumented immigrant worker's daily struggle for economic and

cultural survival in the American Southwest. And, while it is important to attend to the

ethno-racial dimensions of Pérez's narrative within an interpretive paradigm that

privileges the nation-state (whether it be Mexico or the US) as the site of struggle for

human dignity and expression, Pérez's narrative offers us a unique opportunity to tease

out and trace the emergent material and ideational figurations of self, desire, need and

253

autonomy from the perspective of a member of a transnational proletariat brought into

being by the neo-liberal socio-economic policies and structures that have only recently

been codified and made visible through the hemispheric embrace of the North American

Free Trade Agreement by an emergent transnational capitalist class (Sklair, SGS, 143).

Starting from the premise that the self and self-representation are "subjective

moments of class conflict" (Wexler 1983: 121), I seek to trace the trajectory of the

changing set of the social relations of production under the current regime of flexible

accumulation governing trans-border interaction and economic integration that make

Pérez's narrative possible and intelligible. Following Marx (1976) and Lukács (1968), I

take commodification, as a general aspect of social relations under advance capitalism,

as the central structural and phenomenological problem of life in capitalist societies.

Within this analytic rubric, Pérez's narrative registers and documents an epochal

transformation in the historical meanings and relations of labor and work within an the

social formation along the U.S.-Mexico Border that mediates between First World de-

industrialization through "production sharing" in the industrializing Third World. In

brief, I attempt to map the narrative and compositional strategies employed by Pérez as

ideational effects and responses to the changing material conditions of labor, self-

representation and segmented incorporation of the Mexican diaspora into an emergent

North American Common Market (Portes & Rumbaut 1996: 291).

254

PART V: COMMODITY CULTURE: SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI.

" After all, the chief business of the American people is business. …Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. … American newspapers have seemed to me to be particularly

representative of this practical idealism of our people."

(Calvin Coolidge, “The Press Under a Free Government")

CHAPTER 11: WHAT IS COMMODITY CULTURE, AND WHERE CAN I GET IT ON SALE?

While a powerful critique of commoditization has recently entered the public

realm, thanks in no small measure to the new global justice movement, one particular

commodity has generally been absent from this critique: human labor. And this absence,

as I argue below, is replete with consequences, both theoretical and political, and by

extension socio-literarily.' The global market system and it’s imperatives drive the

forces of production and the changing regimes of power that articulate appropriate

subjectivities. As a consequence, the narratives of lives lived by immigrant in advanced

capitalist nations like the United States will always-already come into presence in the

shadow of the commodity.

It is of tremendous import, of course, that as social movements contest the

privatization and marketization of public goods like water and electricity, they have

directed withering criticism at the neo-conservative myth of the market as efficient

allocator of all goods and services. It is now possible, at conferences and rallies and in

numerous books and articles, to find the commodification of goods such as water, plant

seeds, electricity, healthcare and education regularly challenged, with critics insisting

that such goods should be exempted from private ownership and market allocation.

MY SO-CALLED LIFE: LABORING IN THE SHADOW OF THE COMMODITY

Building on these arguments, Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke argue in Global

Showdown that there are four categories of things that ought not to be commodified:

pernicious goods such as nuclear arms and toxic waste; life building blocks like bulk

water, air and genes; common inheritance goods such as plants, seeds and animals

(which should not be patented); and democratic rights including healthcare and

education. 2 The buying and selling of such goods on open markets and their patenting

as the property of private owners is, they urge, contrary to the public interest. Consistent

256

with this, important legal theorists are criticizing the bias of western law in favor of

market (rather than public) regulation. In Contested Commodities, for instance,

Margaret Jane Radin takes on what she calls "inappropriate commodification," arguing

that sex, children and body parts in particular ought not to be market goods. 3

These eloquent pleas to limit and constrain commodification represent a

significant challenge to neo-conservative dogma, to the myth that market regulation of

virtually everything on the planet (and beyond) will usher in the best of all possible

worlds. One of the most insidious features of the globalization agenda of multinational

corporations and agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World

Bank, after all, is its commitment to what I have elsewhere called global

commodification, the idea that every conceivable good and service under the sun should

be turned into a marketable item. 4 For writers aligned with the global justice movement

to have challenged the logic of global commodification is an accomplishment of no small

import.

Yet, despite the power of these attacks on commodification, the existence of a

global market in which billions of people sell their labor typically goes unmentioned.

And this has significant consequences, both theoretical and political since, as I argue

below, the logic of global commodification cannot be uprooted confronted without

confronting its inner secret: the commodification of human labor.

WHAT’S A HAND WORTH THESE DAYS? OR, THE COMMODIFICATION OFTHE BODY

There is a certain irony to the general silence surrounding the commodification

of labor since the buying and selling of human bodies and body parts provokes

widespread revulsion and given the recent debates over reproductive rights and stem-

cell research by neo-conservative U.S. Administrations. Echoing the rightist revulsion to

assaults on the “sanctity of human life”, a sensational headline in the New York Times

257

magazine ran an anguished article entitled "Body Parts Peddler" describing a global

market in which poor people in the Third World sell their kidneys for less than $1,000.

Dramatic as these stories are, they barely touch on the true dimensions of the

body business. A variety of scholarly studies - bearing titles like The Human Body Shop,

Body Bazaar and Spare Parts - inform us that more than 1,300 biotechnology firms now

compete in a $17 billion (US) industry that trades genetic data, tissue samples, umbilical

cords, eggs, sperm, blood and more. 7 One biotech company, deCODE Genetics, has a

12-year monopoly on investigating, storing and selling the genetic data of the entire

population of Iceland. A rival corporation, Autogen Ltd., has purchased the right to

conduct genetic research on the people of Tonga, the results of which it can patent and

sell. 8 Another firm, Myriad Genetics, has filed patents on two genes that indicate

susceptibility to breast cancer. Claiming ownership of these genes, it is suing hospitals

and laboratories around the world that conduct breast cancer tests on them, insisting

that only Myriad's labs can be used for this purpose. 9 Unsettling as developments such

as these are to many people, this commercialization of human life is entirely in accord

with a 1980 decision of the US Supreme Court which defined living forms as "machines

or manufactures," thereby upholding the principle that living beings can be patented,

and their life forms owned. 10

The US Supreme Court notwithstanding, dramatic newspaper headlines suggest

that few things are so shocking as the idea that human body parts (and the human

genome itself) might be bought and sold. What is deeply disturbing about this trade - be

it in organs, blood, eggs, or tissue - is that human identities are inextricably bound up

with our bodies. Take away the personal histories that we carry around with our bodies

- our births, the places our bodies have dwelled, our experiences of pleasure and pain,

illness and health, celebration and loss, labor and love - and you take away our very

being. To attack the integrity of our bodies is thus, in the deepest and most profound

258

sense, to attack our selves. This is why "body snatchers" occupy a central place in horror

films: to invade our bodies is to assault an integral part of what makes us who we are.

This is why most people recoil from the commercialized language of property

rights, supply and demand, trade, contract and profits that permeates the body business.

In the jargon of the industry, "body parts are extracted like a mineral, harvested like a

crop, or mined like a resource." Such language suggests that, rather than inviolable sites

of personhood and individual identity, our bodies are merely a collection of parts which

"can be pulled from their context, isolated, and abstracted from real people." When this

happens, "the body has become commodified, reduced to an object, not a person." 11

Responding to deep ethical concerns about such developments,

governments in many countries are undertaking to constrain, regulate or ban the trade

in human body parts. In 1984, for instance, then-US Congressman Al Gore pronounced:

"It is against our system of values to buy and sell parts of human beings." 12 That a

mainstream politician (who subsequently became US Vice President and systematically

favored business interests) could voice such sentiments speaks to widespread qualms

about the body business.

This concern for non-commercial values is central to debates over bioethics, the

ethical issues associated with buying, selling, patenting, researching and

commercializing parts of the human body and its genetic makeup. In an effort to protect

social values from the effects of commerce, critics have advocated limiting or preventing

such commodification by "sequestering the body from the market. 13 There is great merit

to such proposals. But in an important sense, they do not address the deepest roots of

the commodification they resist. After all, trade in the human body is hardly something

new. In fact, such trade utterly saturates modern life in the form of the mass market in

human labor. And such a market is the space in which people sell bits and pieces of their

bodily talents, skills, creativity, strength and energies - in short, integral aspects of their

embodied personhood. Without addressing this issue, attempts to limit the

259

commodification of the body, and with it as I shall argue, the commodification of most

of our planet, are likely to be futile.

PERSONS, BODIES AND THINGS

The resistance of many people to the idea of selling parts of the body is rooted in

long-standing cultural meanings and traditions. One modern source of this resistance is

the opposition to the enslavement of persons that has figured prominently in much

liberal political thought. A staple of such liberalism is its sharp distinction between

persons and things. Persons, it is held, can own things but not other persons. This is

because these two kinds of entities are radically different by virtue of the freedom and

autonomy that pertain to persons.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) mobilized this distinction

to argue that humans could not sell themselves: "Man cannot dispose over himself

because he is not a thing; he is not his own property ... if he were his own property, he

would be a thing over which he could have ownership. But a person cannot be a

property and so cannot be a thing which can be owned. The next great German

philosopher, G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), deepened and extended this argument by

claiming that the human body - and not just an abstraction called the human will or

personality - cannot be treated like an object. Since humans are embodied beings,

violation of our bodies constitutes violation of our freedom. "My body is the

embodiment of my freedom," Hegel wrote. 14 "Because I am alive as a free entity in my

body," he added, my body "ought not to be misused by being made a beast of burden. "15

In short, the body is not a thing that can be separated from personhood; it is integral to

that personhood itself.

The philosophical approach developed by Kant and extended by Hegel suggests,

therefore, that to treat persons and their bodies as things is to violate human freedom

and, in so doing, to deprive people of a fundamental component of their humanity. This

260

is a powerful claim - and one that sits uneasily with the dominant institution of modern

capitalist society, the labor market. Although capitalism was only minimally developed

in the Germany of his day, Kant was aware of the dilemma. Troubled by the

implications of wage-labor for personhood, he proposed that, while selling goods was

unobjectionable, selling one's labor ought to disqualify one from citizenship. In cases

where an individual "must earn his living from others," he wrote, "he must earn it only

by selling that which is his [i.e. goods], and not by allowing others to make use of him."

Those who make their living as "merely laborers" - i.e. sellers of their labor - would be

"unqualified to be citizens. 16

With this argument, Kant identified wage-labor - the selling of one's labor,

energy and skill for a wage - as a threat to the freedom and autonomy which are integral

to personhood. By selling their labor, wage-laborers treat intrinsic parts of themselves as

things - and this is a violation of the very distinction between persons and things upon

which human freedom (and morality) rest for Kant. Of course, Kant's "solution" is an

anti-democratic one: rather than challenge the institution of wage-labor, he sought

instead to disqualify laborers from citizenship.

In his major work of political philosophy, Hegel tried to find a way out of this

dilemma by distinguishing between selling "the use of my abilities for a restricted

period" and "alienating the whole of my time." By alienating the whole of my time, he

claims, "I would be making into another's property the substance of my being" and, with

it, "my personality." 17 Yet, this distinction is not nearly so secure as Hegel would like. At

what point, for instance, would selling parts of my body qualify as violating my bodily

integrity? And at what point would selling some parts of my life energies and time - "the

substance of my being" -constitute my transformation into a beast of burden? After all, if

I spend a huge part of my life treating my energies, talents and bodily powers as things,

commodities for sale, mustn't this in some significant way imperil that which makes me

free, my differentiation from thing-hood? Is it not probable that the systematic and

261

persistent commodification of my laboring energies and skills will affect my personhood

in some fundamental way? If my body is "the embodiment of my freedom," then are not

the continual commodification of my embodied abilities and my regular treatment as a

beast of burden contrary to the personal (and bodily) autonomy that is integral to

human freedom?

Hegel is not alone in his blindness to the force of these questions. After all, while

the sale of body parts makes sensational headlines today, the sale of human labor is not

in the least newsworthy. So imbued is modern society with the commodification of

labor, so normalized even "naturalized" has it become, that few bother to question it.

While selling body parts still appears offensive, selling parts of our life's laboring

energies seems entirely reasonable and acceptable. Yet this very fact speaks to just how

thoroughgoing commodification has become. After all, wage-labor was once considered

to be similar in kind to selling part of one's body; indeed, as I point out below, in some

parts of the world today it is still associated with diabolical forces. How this deeply

disturbing arrangement came to be considered normal speaks to one of the most

momentous transformations in human history.

THE LOGIC OF DEMONIC CAPITAL & DE-HUMANIZING WAGE-LABOR

The classic analysis of wage-labor is, of course, that developed by Karl Marx. No

one before Marx had systematically probed the purchase and sale of labor in all its

human dimensions. For Marx, this transaction involves much more than just an

economic exchange; it also shapes the very identities and life experiences of the human

agents involved. Declaring that to be human is to engage in creative work with others,

Marx argued that wage-labor involves a loss of control over a fundamental human

life-activity. Invariably, it entails the alienation of the worker's essential life-energies:

the exercise of labor-power, labor is the worker's own life-activity, themanifestation of his own life. And this life-activity he sells to another person inorder to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life-activity is for

262

him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does noteven reckon labor as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is acommodity which he has made over to another. life begins for him where thisactivity ceases, at table, in the public house, in bed.

In wage-labor human creative energies are no longer an expression of one's life,

but a denial of it; they are transformed into things (commodities) that are sold like any

other thing. And this process of turning labor into a commodity to be "made over to

another" is not an isolated event, but an experience that is repeated over and over

throughout a lifetime. Thus, while not sold in their entirety, as is a slave, the

wage-laborer nonetheless

sells himself and, indeed, sells himself piecemeal. He sells at auction eight, ten,twelve, fifteen hours of his life, day after day, to the highest bidder... to thecapitalist. The worker [unlike a slave or a serf – CFC] belongs neither to theowner nor to the land, but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belongto him who buys them. 18

The capitalist who buys this unique commodity (labor-power), does so with one

intention alone: to turn a profit on it. One of the great secrets of capitalism is that work

performed under the direction of the employer produces substantially more than the

value of the wages paid. Capital thus lives by exploiting labor, by appropriating a

surplus beyond the value of the costs of labor. For this reason, capitalism has devoted

extraordinary attention to studying the labor process, breaking it down into the smallest

possible physical motions, and using machinery to speed up each and every one of these

movements. 19 The more they can intensify labor, however alienating it may be, the more

profit capitalists can accrue. As a result, the exchange of money for labor, by a process

that appears obscure and mysterious, breeds ever-more money for the buyer of labor.

And this money is turned into ever more means of production - machines, factories and

the like - for the further exploitation of labor.

A whole system of exploitation is thus erected in which workers produce the

very instruments of production which are used to further exploit them. And this system

263

of exploitation rests upon a Frankenstein-like inversion in which workers are dominated

by their own creations, in which workers themselves produce the elements of capital

(machines, factories and so on) that are used to exploit them. Capital, therefore, is at root

the alienated labor of workers that has accumulated in the hands of the employing class.

So, the more labor is intensified, the more gigantic the stock of capital. Drawing on

folklore, Marx dramatically expresses this process with the image of the vampire.

"Capital," he writes, "is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living

labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” 20

Marx could not possibly have known just how resonant this imagery would

prove to be. Yet, the depiction of capitalists as diabolical creatures who suck human

blood and consume human bodies has been one of the most enduring in the popular

imagination in many parts of the world.

In many societies of the global South where I myself was born in 1964, where

fully modern capitalism has not been as deeply entrenched as it has in Europe and

North America, the intensification and extension of capitalist relations is frequently

associated with devils and demons. This is particularly so when these societies are

subjected to intensified commodification. In parts of Colombia during the nineteenth

century, for instance, black and indigenous peasants typically resisted entry into the

labor market, clinging tenaciously to small plots of land. Wage-labor was construed as

an evil and barbaric arrangement; indeed, people often believed that "success" on its

terms involved contracts with the devil, contracts that ultimately entailed the sacrifice of

one's life powers. 21

More recently, in African countries such as Ghana and Nigeria - which have been

subjected to the intense commodification demanded under Structural Adjustment

Programs imposed by the likes of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank

- images of capitalist wealth as derived from ritual murder and the theft of body parts

have proliferated in films, novels, folklore and the media. 22 The brilliant Nigerian

264

novelist Ben Okri has captured these cultural meanings to great effect in a series of

novels, particularly The Famished Road.

The central capitalist figure in that novel, Madame Koto, grows physically huge

as she becomes rich. Okri draws upon the vampiric image of the capitalist with great

literary effect: "At night, when she slept, she stole the people's energies. (She was not the

only one; they were legion.)... Madame Koto sucked in the powers of our area. Her

dreams gave the children nightmares. Her colossal form took wings at night and flew

over our city, drawing power from our sleeping bodies. "23

The imagery of capital "drawing power" from the bodies of the poor is a

widespread one in societies where commodification is experienced as a shock. Rather

than "primitive" understandings, these images ought to be seen as dramatic metaphors

through which people struggle to make sense of the unnaturalness of capitalism,

particularly its accumulation of immense wealth through the commodification of labor,

through the piecemeal purchases of people's bodily energies - purchases that enable the

employing class to grow extraordinarily rich. The people "captured" by capitalist

demons are depicted in many of these popular images as money-spewing zombies, or

"human ATMs" whose mouths spew out currency. 24

These ostensibly "fantastic" notions capture key elements of what Marx described

as the "phantasmagoria" of commodities, the swirling images that allow capital to depict

itself, and not human labor, as the self-generating basis of wealth. That people in

"advanced" capitalist societies now experience these arrangements based upon the

buying and selling of labor as normal and natural speaks to their cultural

impoverishment, to the loss of rich systems of meaning that problematize capitalism's

reduction of every aspect of life - most centrally human labor - to just another thing to be

bought and sold.

It wasn't always this way, of course. Even in the birthplace of capitalism, Britain,

capitalism did not conquer without a centuries-long battle to subjugate the poor, break

265

down long-standing socio-cultural traditions, and deprive the subaltern population of

every other alternative but wage-labor.

THE OCCULT HISTORY OF THE RISE OF VAMPIRIC CAPITALISM

"Never before our own time were markets more than accessories of economic

life," wrote the economic historian Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation. 25 Prior to

the rise of capitalism, markets operated at the periphery of social life; most of the goods

people consumed were produced directly by themselves and their immediate social

group (family, tribe, clan, village community). While exchange might take place for

unique sorts of items, the idea of the systematic buying and selling of virtually every

good and service necessary for human comfort would have struck people as utterly

bizarre.

In particular, the selling of one's labor was a deeply offensive idea. This had to

do with the fabric of social-economic relations in most pre-capitalist societies. Prior to

capitalism a large part of economic life was communally organized and regulated

according to the principles of reciprocity and redistribution. The principle of reciprocity

holds that all individuals are organically interconnected and have responsibilities for

and duties toward one another. Linked to this is the redistributive principle, the notion

that the community provides a transfer of wealth to those who have too little. The desire

of individuals to accumulate as much personal wealth as they could would have struck

most people in pre-capitalist societies - certainly those outside the elites -as a thoroughly

repulsive sort of anti-social behaviour. Society was organized to insure the collective

well-being of its members. As one anthropologist has pointed out, in most human

societies prior to our own "the objective of gathering of wealth ... is often that of giving it

away.” 26 As a result, no individual faced the threat of starvation so long as society had

enough to support its members. In such circumstances, noted Polanyi, "the individual is

not in danger of starving unless the community as a whole is in a like predicament.”27

266

Even in class-dominated societies, such as feudal Europe, where lords exploited the

labor of peasants, the poor still maintained important means for looking after

themselves and their communities. Crucial in this respect were the common lands and a

whole battery of common rights that applied to them. It was typical in feudal Europe for

every village, dominated as it was by the lord's estate, also to have a mix of personal

plots worked by peasant households and vast expanses of forests and fields that

"belonged" to all. On these common lands, peasants could hunt, fish, graze animals and

gather wood for fuel in the winter. Without the millions of acres of land that were held

in common - and the fish, game, wood and grazing land they provided - a huge

proportion of the European peasantry could not have survived. It was not just Europe

that knew such arrangements. Well into the twentieth century, common lands were

widespread among peasants in many parts of the world. In Colombia, for instance, such

lands were known as indivisos among other terms. One Colombian peasant describes

them as follows:

They also called these lands communeros; that was the land where youand I, and he, and someone else and someone else, and so on, had theright to have our animals... no bit of land was divided by fences. Therewere some communeros with eighty families. They were lands where youplace yourself as an equal with everybody else. Here almost all the landused to be like that. But after the War of One Thousand Days [whichended in 1902], the rich came along and closed off the land with barbedwire. 28

The modern history of Colombia is, among other things, a story of violent appropriation

of the lands of the poor by the rich. In this respect, for all their marked differences,

histories of the rise of capitalism almost invariably involve the privatization of land and

the dispossession of the bulk of the rural poor. Britain was just the first case. America,

the second. Moreover, the American “manifest destiny” expansion across North

America in the 19th century was among the most bloody and brutal such expropriations

of land from Native American dwellers. When vast social and economic changes in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries pushed British landlords toward new forms of

267

capitalist farming (based on hiring out large tracts of lands to rich farmers who

employed wage-laborers), a class war over the common lands became the decisive

contest of the age. By driving up rents, foreclosing on debts, and disputing peasant

ownership in the courts, landlords drove hundreds of thousands of peasants off their

lands. These lands, now centralized in the hands of landowners, were then rented as

large farms to wealthy capitalist tenant farmers who hired property-less wage-laborers

(many of them former peasant farmers).

Relentlessly, then, landlords were forcing millions of the rural poor off the land

and onto the labor market. Valiantly, peasants resisted this process. They tore down

fences ("enclosures") barring them from the common lands, they rioted and invaded the

forests, erecting cottages and "poaching" fish and game that had previously been

available to all. A guerrilla war of localized resistance raged across the decades. Through

violence, extortion and intrigue, however, the landlords won battle after battle,

enclosing perhaps 29 per cent of all English lands between 1600 and 1760. Then, having

seized the momentum, the landlords turned to the political institution they thoroughly

dominated, Parliament, to put the seal on the whole process. In the seventy years after

1760, landowners introduced "enclosure acts" that privatized at least six million acres of

common lands, turning them into their own private property. 30 As these acts were put

into effect, new waves of rebellion and resistance were again met by troops and

weapons. With the violent subjugation of the rural poor, the new capitalist order

emerged, as Marx noted in folkloric flourishes, "dripping from head to toe, from every

pore, with blood and dirt." 31

Over the course of two centuries or more, English society was utterly remade. A

village-based system which, however much it rested on the exploitation of peasant labor

by lords, also guaranteed them access to the resources provided by communal lands,

was transformed into a system based upon a capitalist labor market.32 The key

development here is what Ellen Meiksins Wood has appropriately dubbed market

268

dependence.33 Prior to enclosure of the common lands, peasants had non-market access

to basic means of life. But the privatization of the common lands involved the separation

of peasants from their communal means of production, and this meant that huge

numbers could no longer support themselves without going to the market. There, they

had to sell a commodity in order to acquire the money with which to buy the necessities

of life. Prior to the loss of the commons, peasants could directly procure most of what

they needed to survive without entering the sphere of market exchange. Henceforth they

no longer had that option. As a result, they now found their social-economic existence

marketized in two fundamental ways. First, they could only procure basic means of

subsistence through buying on the market. And, secondly, on the market they typically

had to sell their laboring ability ("labor-power") in order to obtain the wage-money with

which to purchase basic goods, foodstuffs in particular. The daily lives of the rural poor

had thus become completely reliant upon the market; wage-labor now governed their

existence.

The shift to market dependence represented a massive rupture in the fabric of

everyday life. In closing of non-market forms of life, the loss of communal rights and

properties was catastrophic. Even before the landlords used Parliament to enclose

millions of acres, a majority of peasants had already been driven onto the labor market,

as the following Table indicates:

Table I Proportion of English Peasant Employed as Wage-Laborers, 1066-1688

Date Laborer/Peasant Ratio in %

1086 6

1279 10

1380 12

1540-59 11

269

Date Laborer/Peasant Ratio in %

1550-67 12

1600-10 35

1620-40 40

1688 56

(Source: Richard Lachman, From Manor to Market: Structural Change inEngland, 1530-1640, p. 17)

Even if these figures are not entirely precise, they certainly capture the basic

trends. For nearly 500 years, around 10 per cent of the rural population engaged in

wage-labor. Then came the upheavals of the seventeenth century. Before it was out, a

majority of peasants has been forced by economic circumstances to turn to wage-labor.

Capitalism's first war against the poor had been won. Yet, these wars were far from

over. They would soon spread to more and more parts of the globe as capitalism became

the dominant system on the planet. And they continue to rage today as part of the battle

over globalization.

In fact, James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer calculate that the number of

propertyless wage-laborers on the planet has risen dramatically as neo-conservative

policies displace peasants, encourage export-oriented agriculture, and cater to western

agri-businesses. They suggest that the global pool of wage-laborers has increased from

1.9 billion in 1980 to roughly three billion as of 1995, an increase of over 50 per cent

during the globalization era. 34

WAGE-LABOR AND GLOBAL COMMODIFICATION

It is often forgotten that the commodification of one's productive time and

creative energies, their transformation into things for sale on the market, has dramatic

effects upon an individual's sense of self, body, nature and others. The systematic,

270

regularized sale of "the very substance" of one's being, to use Hegel's formulation,

deeply affects the individual's experience of life, time, persons and things.

Central to commodification of labor, argued Marx, is that the capitalist "treats

living labor power as a thing." 35 More than this, however, as the Hungarian philosopher

Georg Lukacs pointed out, labor commodification also imposes its stamp upon the very

subjectivities of workers themselves. Rather than just a specific way of organizing the

allocation of goods and services, commodification also reorganizes the very forms of

human experience, the ways in which we perceive and understand ourselves and our

capacities. Commodification is thus a thoroughly two-sided process, one that reshapes

the world around us and penetrates into the psyche of the human individuals involved:

"Objectively a world of objects and relations between things springs into being (a world

of commodities and their movements on the market). Subjectively - where the market

economy has been fully developed - a man's activity becomes estranged from himself."

As a result, labor commodification "stamps its imprint upon the whole consciousness of

man; his qualities and abilities are no longer an organic part of his personality, they are

things which he can 'own' or 'dispose of' like the various objects of the external world. "36

Thus, when critics today object to the way the body business employs "a set of

cultural assumptions" which treat the body as a package of "units" that "can be pulled

from their context, isolated and abstracted from real people," they are also unwittingly

describing exactly what happens with the commodification of human labor. 37 Of course,

people do not easily submit to this thingification (reification) of their selves. At first,

commodification is experienced as unnatural, as involving non-human and demonic

forces which are invading social life. 38 But once alternative systems of meaning have

been decisively uprooted, once people have learned to accept wage-labor as normal and

natural, once alternative ways of organizing social life are no longer part of their waking

conscious life, then commodified senses of self and other become the norm. 39

271

In "developed" capitalist societies today, for example, how to "sell yourself" has

become a regular subject of advice columns and talk shows, with individuals being

encouraged to package their "assets," their looks, aptitudes, skills, strength, smile,

personality and so on for life in a market society. Commodification thus involves the

reification of parts of the self - their isolation as abstractable components of the human

being that can be put on the market. In this vein, two American economists have

recently argued that individuals should begin to imagine themselves as corporations

and sell shares in themselves. More crudely, a San Francisco restaurant found 50 people

willing to tattoo their arms or legs with its mascot in exchange for free lunches for life.

And in Canada, four people with the surname Dunlop agreed to change their last names

to Dunlop-Tire in return for $6,250 from Goodyear Canada which markets Dunlop tires.40 No longer, then, will people simply wear brand name logos on their clothes; now they

will tattoo logos onto their bodies and change their very names, their public markers of

individual identity.

This sort of self-commodification is an inevitable part of the logic of a

commodified society and it is responsible for the commodified and reified subjectivities

and consciousness on display in immigrant autobiographies.41 We should not be

surprised, then, that people who have grown accustomed to commodifying themselves

would similarly consider all the elements of the natural environment - minerals, trees,

fossil fuels, water and air to be commodifiable, or that they might be susceptible to

seeing education, healthcare, wombs or human organs in these terms. 42 In a society in

which essential elements of our being, such as time, skill, energy and creativity, are

regularly put up for sale, why should we expect people to look at other parts of the

world around them differently? Why should we expect people who are compelled to sell

themselves on labor markets to automatically find the commercialization of water or

education objectionable? 43

272

WHY SELL YOURSELF SHORT?

At the heart of my argument is the claim that commodification of one of our

fundamental life-activities - labor - generates what has been called "commodification as

a worldview," an outlook in which commodification is seen as the only possible way of

organizing the allocation of every conceivable good or service. For this reason, those

who wish to de-commodify a whole range of goods and services - from water and

wombs to education and healthcare - need to grapple with the deep structures of

commodification that have made the commodity-basis of socio-economic life seem

normal and natural. A number of critics have argued eloquently for overturning

"commodification as a worldview" without giving serious consideration to the effects of

the market organization of our working lives. Yet, since commodification shapes the

very subjectivities of people in a capitalist society, so long as human labor is organized

as a market commodity, the drive to commodify everything around us will seem a

logical and natural extension of the way our everyday lives are organized. It is unlikely,

therefore, that society will be reconstituted around non-market values so long as the

market permeates one of the most basic and fundamental aspects of our socio-economic

existence. 44

But what would it mean to de-commodify labor? How might we envision a

society, which is not based upon a labor market? And how might we build mass

movements to de-commodify labor?

As our historical analysis suggests, at its most basic level, the de--

commodification of labor requires the recreation of common property and common

rights that guarantee non-market access to the means of subsistence . 45 In modern

capitalism, as we have seen, most people's access to housing, food, electricity, recreation,

higher education and so on depends upon finding a buyer for their labor in the market

(or, in the case of children or "dependents" on parents, guardians, or partners finding

273

such buyers). Fail to locate a buyer for our labor on the market and we (along with those

who depend directly upon our earnings) run the risk of not procuring housing, adequate

food, and so on. The first decisive step toward de-commodifying labor, then, involves

providing guaranteed (non-market) access to such fundamental goods as housing, food,

electricity, recreational goods and facilities, education, healthcare, childcare, and the like

as basic rights. Individual subsistence and survival would, in such circumstances, no

longer be determined by vagaries of the labor market, by whether or not one manages to

find a buyer for one's embodied abilities. Market dependence would thus be broken.

To be sure, the guarantee of universal rights and entitlements to the goods and

services provided by a socialized consumption sector would require a commitment by

healthy adults to performing social labor, to doing some of the work necessary for

society to meet the needs of its members. In my view, such social labor ought to be

organized in terms of worker-managed, communally owned workplaces that operate

according to ecological and democratic principles in full accord with the United Nation’s

Declaration of Human Rights. In addition, they should be based upon a radical

reduction in the length of the ordinary workday or work week. By eliminating wasteful

forms of production, unemployment, massive product duplication, enormous war

industries and the huge resources devoted to advertising, marketing, product promotion

and so on it would be possible to provide work to all healthy adults and improve the

conditions of life for the majority of humankind while also significantly reducing the

hours (and upgrading the conditions) of social labor.

By organizing the allocation of fundamental goods and services on the basis of

rights, not ability to pay, we would supplant the market as the mechanism by which

people guarantee their survival - or fail to do so. This is not to say that all market

transactions would necessarily disappear, and certainly not overnight. It is instead to

propose that people's survival would be secured outside the market, in what I would

call a socialized consumption sector, which would be governed by need, not ability to

274

pay. Freeing our socio-material reproduction from the market is the decisive step

toward de-marketizing and de0commodifying human labor. If the first wage-laborers

were driven into the labor market as the only available means of survival, then the

construction of a socialized consumption sector which guarantees survival, comfort and

socio-material reproduction as social rights would eliminate this market dependence. In

such a society, social labor would be performed as a social responsibility, not out of

coercion enforced by the threat of poverty.

There is no doubt that a variety of transitional arrangements would be necessary

before a society could be said to have accomplished the full de-commodification of

labor. Over time, more and more goods and services would have to be encompassed by

the socialized consumption sector; correspondingly, the sphere of market transactions

would tend systematically to contract. And this is what it means to de-commodify

human labor: to make the market increasingly marginal, rather than central, to the

procurement of the necessities of life. As our socio-material needs are increasingly

satisfied outside the market, as we become less and less reliant on market exchanges (via

money) to "make ends meet," then the notion of human life as based upon rights to

goods and services can be expected to supplant the commodified view of the world in

which everything ought to be for sale. In a society which treated people as inherently

valuable ends in themselves, and not means to the expansion of capital, new social

values - non-commercial and non-commodity ones - based upon fundamental principles

of human dignity, integrity, freedom and self-development could be expected to

flourish. People in a de-commodifying society would learn to value themselves, others,

and the natural environment in qualitatively new ways, opening the way to a radically

different form of society.

275

CHANGE IS THE CHALLENGE, NOT NEED

To talk about a radical transformation of world society is, of course, to invite the

charge of utopianism. Yet this is to miss two crucial points. First, our adversary - neo-

conservativism, especially in its virulently hegemonic Bush II strain- has succeeded in

part because of the boldness of its (reactionary) utopianism, what we might call

capitalist utopianism. At the core of neo-conservativism is a dramatic vision in which

the whole world really is for sale, a world without unions, environmental regulations,

minimum wage laws and so on. Neo-conservativism imagines a world organized simply

on the basis of private property rights (which would apply effectively to everything) and

global market competition. And it's not just our planet that is supposed to be regulated

by property law and corporate ownership: recently, a private corporation was granted

legal rights to explore, photograph and land on the moon - part of a long-term plan for

the privatization and corporatization of lunar space. Not surprisingly, corporations have

also been offered the opportunity to have their logos emblazoned on the side of lunar

space shuttles - for a mere $25,000 US. Neo-conservativism thus projects a radical

corporate utopianism in which everything from the human genome to the moon is

privately owned. We need look no further to what fate awaits us all under Bush II by

only looking at designs on gutting the U.S. Constitution and illegally invading Iraq.

But the second crucial point about a radical perspective is that the emerging

global justice movement, particularly in the South, is itself beginning to formulate a

powerful counter-utopia. Occupying land in Brazil, fighting giant dams in India,

resisting water privatization in Bolivia, striking against layoffs in Korea, throwing up

barricades against structural adjustment in Argentina - in all these ways and more, mass

movements of millions of people have challenged the fundamental premises of global

commodification. 50 Rising to new levels of militancy and defiance, they have also begun

to formulate their own social vision. Until recently, the opposition to neo-conservativism

276

generally lacked the audacity and boldness of outlook that sustained its capitalist

adversaries. But the new grassroots popular movements of workers and peasants have

increasingly proclaimed, as the banner of the World Social Forums of 2001 and 2002 in

Porto Alegre, Brazil declare, that “another world is possible”. In so doing, they have

started the process of reclaiming utopia, of envisioning a world organized on the basis of

popular democracy, global justice, full gender and racial equality, ecological sanity,

respect for the rights of indigenous and oppressed peoples, and production for human

needs, not profit.

The new movement is very much one in formation. More mainstream and

"respectable" elements, particularly non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and

moderate trade union leaders, often try to constrain the movement's propensity to

militant struggle and direct action, and to divert its energies into demanding a few seats

among the elites at the negotiating table, rather than overturning the whole structure of

elite power. But against these moderate and bureaucratic forces there are powerful

movements which seize land, occupy the streets, wage mass strikes, confront the riot

police, throw up barricades - in short, do whatever is necessary to roll back the neo-

conservative juggernaut. And in demanding land for the landless, jobs for the jobless,

and water, electricity and homes for all, they are challenging the very logic of

commodification.

Yet, as I have argued throughout this piece, commodification cannot truly be

uprooted without undermining the market character of labor in modern society. And

this social and political project - the overturning of the commodity structure of modern

life - is not possible without a radically anti-capitalist movement, one which intends to

break corporate-capitalist power and create new forms of communal property regulated

by radical, grassroots democracy. The task is thus a revolutionary, not an ameliorative

one.

277

How could it be otherwise? To de-commodify society, to make it effectively

impossible for people to even imagine that someone could own the world's water or the

human genome, means to strike at the deepest roots of our own commodification. It

means, in short, to create a world in which the buying and selling of labor is as

reprehensible as the buying and selling of body parts.

278

WORKS CITED & ENDNOTES

WORKS CITED IN CHAPTER 2

Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. 1912. New York: Penguin, 1997.

Bellah, Robert N. et. al. Habits of the Heart. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Scribner, 1995.

Gornick, Vivian. Fierce Attachments. Boston: Beacon, 1987.

---. The Situation and the Story. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation. New York: Penguin, 1990.

Jen, Gish. Mona in the Promised Land. New York: Vintage, 1997.

Lee, Chang-Rae. Native Speaker. New York: Riverhead, 1995.

Ng, Fae Myenne. Bone. New York: Hyperion, 1993.

Sayre, Robert F. “Autobiography and the Making of America.” Autobiography: EssaysTheoretical and Critical. Ed. James Olney. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980.

Sollors, Werner. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. NewYork: Oxford UP, 1986.

Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. 1835. Ed. Richard D. Heffner. New York:Mentor, 1956.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York: Bantam, 1983.

Wong, Jade Snow. Fifth Chinese Daughter. 1945. Seattle: University of WashingtonPress, 2000.

Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. “Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour? Maxine HongKingston’s The Woman Warrior and the Chinese-American AutobiographicalControversy.” Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives. Ed. James Robert Payne.Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.

Yamamoto, Hisaye. Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories. New Brunswick, N.J: RutgersUP, 2001.

Zhang, Ya-Jie. “A Chinese Woman’s Response.” Maxine Hong Kingston’s The WomanWarrior: A Casebook. Ed. Sau-ling Cynthia Wong. New York: Oxford, 1999.

279


Adler, A. (1927). The practice and theory of individual psychology. New York: HarcourtBraceWorld.

Alexander, I. E. (1988). Personality, psychological assessment, and psychobiography.Journal of Personality, 56, 265–294.

Allport, G. W. (1942). The use of personal documents in psychological research. NewYork: Social Science Research Council.

Block, J. (1971). Lives through time. Berkeley, CA: Bancroft Books.

Bruner, J. S. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.University Press.

Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Carlson, R. (1981). Studies in script theory: I. Adult analogs to a childhood nuclear scene.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 501–510.

Carlson, R. (1988). Exemplary lives: The uses of psychobiography for theorydevelopment. Journal of Personality, 56, 105–138.

Cohler, B. J., & Cole, T. R. (1994, June). Studying older lives: Reciprocal acts of tellingand listening. Paper presented at the annual conference for the Society for Personology,Ann Arbor, MI.

Colby, A., & Damon, W. (1992). Some do care: Contemporary lives of moralcommitment. New York: Free Press.

Cramer, P. (1991). The development of defense mechanisms: Theory, research, andassessment. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Cramer, P. (1996). Story-telling, narrative, and the Thematic Apperception Test. NewYork: Guilford Press.

Demorest, A. (1995). The personal script as a unit of analysis for personality. Journal ofPersonality, 63, 569–592.

Denzin, N. K. (1989). Interpretive biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Engel, G. L. (1962). Psychological development in health and disease. Philadelphia:Saunders.

Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York: Norton.

Fairbairn,W.R.D. (1952). The object relations theory of personality. London: Routledge &Kegan Paul.

Freud, S. (1961). The ego and the id. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard editionof the complete works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 12–66). London: Hogarth Press.

280

(Original work published in 1923)

Gergen, K. J. (1992). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. NewYork: Basic Books.

Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Gregg, G. (1991). Self-representation: Life narrative studies in identity and ideology.New York: Greenwood Press.

Guntrip, H. (1971). Psychoanalytic theory, therapy, and the self. NewYork: Basic Books.

Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. New York: International Universities Press.

Hermans, H. J.M. (1992, July). The narrative approach to personality psychology.Conference Proceedingings of Sixth Conference of the European Association ofPersonality Psychology, Groningen, The Netherlands.

Hermans, H. J. M., Kempen, H. J. G., & van Loon, R. J. P. (1992). The dialogical self:Beyond individualism and rationalism. American Theorist, 47, 23–33.

Howard, G. S. (1991). Culture tales: A narrative approach to thinking, cross-culturalpsychology, and psychotherapy. American Theorist, 46, 187–197.

James, W. (1963). Psychology. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett. (Original work published in1892)

Linde, C. (1990). Life stories: The creation of coherence. (Monograph No. IRL 90-0001).Palo Alto, CA: Institute for Research on Learning.

MacIntyre, A. (1983). After virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Marcia, J. E., & Strayer, J. (1996). Theories and stories. Psychological Inquiry, 7,346–350.

Maruna, S. (1997). Going straight: Desistance from crimes and life narratives of reform.

In R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds.), The narrative study of lives (pp. 59–93).Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

McAdams, D. P. (1985). Power, intimacy, and the life story: Personological inquiries intoidentity. New York: Guilford Press.

McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of theself. New York:William Morrow.

McAdams, D. P. (1995a). Introductory commentary. Journal of Narrative and LifeHistory, 5, 207–211.

McAdams, D. P. (1995b). What do we know when we know a person? Journal ofPersonality, 63, 363–396.

281

McAdams, D. P. (1996). Personality, modernity, and the storied self: A contemporaryframework for studying persons. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 295–321.

McAdams, D. P., Diamond, A., de St. Aubin, E., & Mansfield, E. (1997). Stories ofcommitment: The psychosocial construction of generative lives. Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 72, 678–694.

McAdams, D. P., Hoffman, B. J., Mansfield, E., & Day, R. (1996). Themes of agency andcommunion in significant autobiographical scenes. Journal of Personality, 64, 339–378.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mink, L.O. (1978). Narrative form as a cognitive instrument. In R. H. Carey &J. Kozicki(Eds.), Literary form and historical understanding (pp. 129–149). Madison: University ofWisconsin Press.

Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Polkinghorne, D. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press.

Rosenwald, G. C. (1988). A theory of multiple case research. Journal of Personality, 56,239–264.

Rouse, J. (1978). The completed gesture: Myth, character, and education. New Jersey:Skyline Books.

Sampson, E. E. (1989). The deconstruction of the self. In J. Shotter&K. J. Gergen (Eds.),Texts of identity (pp. 1–19). London: Sage.

Sarbin, T. (Ed.). (1986). Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct.New York: Praeger. Schafer, R. (1981). Narration in the psychoanalytic dialogue. In W. J.J. Mitchell (Ed.), On narrative (pp. 25–49). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shotter, J., & Gergen, K. J. (Eds.). (1989). Texts of identity. London: Sage.

Singer, J. (1995). Seeing one’s self: Locating narrative memory in a framework ofpersonality. Journal of Personality, 63, 429–457.

Singer, J., & Salovey, P. (1993). The remembered self. New York: Free Press.

Tomkins, S. (1979). Script theory. In H. E. Howe Jr. &R. A. Dienstbier (Eds.), NebraskaSymposium on Motivation (Vol. 26, pp. 201–236). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Vaillant, G. (1977). Adaptation to life. Boston: Little, Brown.

Watkins, M. (1986). Invisible guests: The development of imaginal dialogues. Hillsdale,NJ: Analytic Press.

White, M.,& Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. NewYork: Norton.

White, R. W. (1952). Lives in progress. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

282

Wiersma, J. (1988). The press release: Symbolic communication in life historyinterviewing. Journal of Personality, 56, 205–238.

283


Armon-Jones, C.(1985). Journal for the theory of social behavior Prescription,explication, and the social construction of emotion, 15(1), 1-22.

Averill, J. R. (1985). The social construction of emotion: With special reference to love. InK. J. G. a. K. E. Davis (Ed (pp. 89-109). The social construction of the person New York:Springer-Verlag.

Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. New York: Bantam.

Belenky, M., Clinchy, B., Goldberger, N., & Tarule, J. (1986). Women's ways of knowing.Basic: New York.

Casey, K. (1996). The new narrative research in education. In M. W. Apple (Ed.), Reviewof research in Education (Vol. 21, pp. 211-253). Washington, D.C.: American EducationalResearch Association.

Cole, M., & Engestrom, Y. (1993). A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition.In G. Salomon(Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educationalconsiderations (pp. 1-46). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Edwards, D. (1991). Categories are for talking: On the cognitive and discursive bases ofcategorization. Theory & Psychology, 1(4), 515-542.

Ekman, P. (Ed.). (1982). Emotion in the human face (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA:Cambridge University Press.

D'Andrade, R.G., & Strauss, C. (Eds.). (1992 ). Human motive and cultural models. NewYork: Cambridge.

Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self. New York: Basic.

Gergen, K. J. (1994). Realities and relationships. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Harre, R. (1986). Social sources of mental content and order. In J. Margolis, P. T.Manicas, R. Harre, & P. F.Secord (Eds.), Psychology: Designing the discipline (pp. 91-127). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Harre, R. (Ed.). (1986). The social construction of emotions. New York: Basil Blackwell.

Harre, R., & Gillett, G. (1994). The discursive mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hermans, H. J. M., Kempen, H. J. G., & van Loon, R. J. P. (1992). The dialogical self:Beyond individualism and rationalism. , 47(1), 23-33. American Psychologist

Horowitz, L. M. (1994). Schemas, psychopathology, and psychotherapy researchPsychotherapy Research, 4(1), 1-19.

Luria, J. (1981). Language and cognition. Washington, DC: Winston.

284

Lutz, C., & White, G. (1986). The anthropology of emotions. Annual Review ofAnthropology, 15, 405-436.

Lutz, C., & Abu-Lughod, L. (Eds.). (1990) Language and the politics of emotion. NewYork: Cambridge.

Mandler, J., Scribner, S., Cole, M., & DeForest, M. (1980). Cross-cultural invariance instory recall. Child Development, 51, 19-26.

Miller, P. J., Potts, R., Fung, H., Hoogstra, L., & Mintz, J. (1990). Narrative practices andthe social construction of self in childhood. American Ethologist, 2(17), 292-311.

Nelson, K. (1991). Remembering and telling: A developmental story. Journal ofNarrative and Life History, 1(2 & 3), 109-127.

Penuel, W. R., & Wertsch, J. V. (1995). Vygotsky and identity formation: A socio-culturalapproach. Educational Psychologist, 30(2), 83-92.

Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: StateUniv. of New York Press.).

Polkinghorne, D. E. (1991). Narrative and self-concept. Journal of Narrative and LifeHistory, 2 & 3, 135-153.

Searle, J. R. (1995). The construction of social reality. New York: The Free Press.

Shaw, T. S. (1994). The semiotic mediation of identity. Ethos, 22(1), 83-119.

Shotter, J. (1989). Social accountability and the social construction of 'You'. In J. Shotter &K. Gergen (Eds.), Texts of Identity (pp. 133-151). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Shotter, J. (1995). Conversational realities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Sutton-Smith, B. (1988). Imagination and education. In D. Egan & D. Nadaner (Eds.), InSearch of the imagination. New York: Teachers College Press.

Tomkins, S. (1982). “Affect theory.” In P. Ekman Emotion in the human fact (Ed ( 2nded.). pp. 354-395). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A socio-cultural approach to mediated action.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

285


Anderson, B. (2000), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread ofNationalism, London, Verso.

Ashbee, E. (1998), 'Immigration, national identity, and conservatism in the UnitedStates', Politics, 18:2, 73-80.

Ashbee, E. (2000), 'America divided: the politics of "Balkanization", ed. A. Grant,American Politics: 2000and Beyond, Aldershot, Ashgate, 7-27.

Ashbee, E (2003), American Society Today, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Auster, L. (1990), The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration andMulticulturalism, Monterey, American Immigration Control Foundation.

Baraka, A. (1998), 'Multinational, Multicultural America versus White Supremacy', ed. I.Reed (ed), MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace, New York:Penguin.

Bellah, R. et. al.(1985), Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in AmericanLife, Berkeley, University of California Press.

Citrin, J. (2001), 'The end of American identity', ed. S.A. Renshon, One America? PoliticalLeadership, National Identity, and the Dilemmas of Diversity, Washington DC,Georgetown University Press.

Crevecoeur, J . H. St.J. de (1986), Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches ofEighteenth Century America, New York, Penguin.

Etulain, Richard W., ed. Does the Frontier Experience Make America Exceptional?Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

Fischer, David Hackett and James C. Kelly. Bound Away: Virginia and the WestwardMovement. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.

Fischer, D.H. (1991), Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, Oxford, OxfordUniversity Press.

Fleming, T. (1995), 'Introduction', ed. The Rockford Institute, Immigration and theAmerican Identity:

Selections from Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, 1985-1995, Rockford, TheRockford Institute.

General Social Survey Cumulative DataFile (1979-2000), AMBORNIN, AMCHRSTN,AMENGLSH, AMLIVED, RELPERSN I RACE. URL:http://csa.berkeley.edu:7502/cgi-bin12/hsda3/

Gingrich, N. (1995), To Renew America, New York, Harper Collins.

Glazer, N. (1993), 'The closing door', The New Republic, 27 December.

286

Glazer, N. (1998), We Are All Multiculturalists Now, Cambridge, Harvard UniversityPress.

Glazer N. and D.P. Moynihan, (1967), Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, PuertoRicans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City, Cambridge, MIT Press.

Gleason, P. (1982), 'American identity and Americanization', ed. W. Petersen, M. Novak,and P. Gleason, Concepts of Ethnicity, Cambridge, Belknap Press, 57-143.

Gray, J. and M. Lind (2001), 'Are there global political values?', Prospect, 69, December,18-23.

Hartz, L. (1964), The Founding of New Societies, San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Hochschild, J.L. (1995), Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul ofthe Nation,Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Hollinger, D.A. (1995), Postethnic America New York, Basic Books.

Hunt, M.H. (1987), Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, New Haven, Yale University Press.

Huntington, S.P. (1982), American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, Cambridge, TheBelknap Press.

Huntington, S.P. (1998), The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,London, Touchstone.

International Social Survey Program (1998), National Identity, 1995, Codebook, ICPSR2474, Ann Arbor, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Isin, E.F. and P.K. Wood (1999), Citizenship and Identity, London, Sage Publications.

Kouwenhoven, J.A. (1956), 'What's American about America?', Harper's Magazine, July,25-33.

Lipset, SM. (1991), 'American exceptionalism reaffirmed', ed. B.E. Shafer, Is AmericaDifferent? A New Look at American Exceptionalism, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Lipset, SM. (1997), American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, New York, W.W.Norton.

Lind, M. (1996), The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the FourthAmerican Revolution,New York, Simon and Schuster.

Miller, J.J. (1998), The Unmaking of Americans: How Multiculturalism has UnderminedAmerica's Assimilation Ethic, New York, The Free Press.

Morone, J.A. (1996), 'The struggle for American culture', PS: Political Science andPolitics, September, 424-30.

287

O'Sullivan, J. (2001), 'Fatal contact: The western influence on Islamic radicals', NationalReview, November 5,41-43.

Schwarz, B. (1995), 'The diversity myth', The Atlantic Monthly, May,http://www.theatlantic.com/politics foreign divers.htm

Smith, A.D. (1991), National Identity, London, Penguin.

Stevens, J. and R. Smith (1995), 'Beyond Tocqueville please!', American Political ScienceReview, 89:4, 987-97.

U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (1997), Becoming an American: Immigrationand Immigrant Policy, Washington DC, U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.

The Wall Street Journal (1984), 3 July.

Walzer, M. (1996), What It Means to be an American: Essays on the AmericanExperience, New York, Marsilio.

288


Aitken, S. and Zonn, L. (eds.) 1995. Re-Presenting the Place Pastiche. In Place,Power, Situation, and Spectacle, 3-26. London: Rowman and Littlefield.

Anzaldua, G. 1987. Borderlands San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

Bailey, J. 1995. Mexico in the US Media, 1979-88: Implications for the BilateralRelation. In Coatsworth, J. and C. Rico (eds.) Images of Mexico in the UnitedStates. 55-90, San Diego: Center for US-Mexican Studies, University of California.

Benjamin, W. 1968. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Arendt,H. (ed.), Illuminations, 223. New York: Hartcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

Bordo, S., Klein, B., and Silverman, M. 1998. Missing Kitchens. In Nast, H. and S. Pile(eds.) Places through the Body, 72-92. London: Routledge.

Cortes, C. E. 1989. To View a Neighbor: The Hollywood Textbook and Mexico. InCoatsworth, J. and C. Rico (eds.) Images of Mexico in the United States. 91118,San Diego: Center for US-Mexican Studies, University of California.

Delgado, R. (ed.) 1995. Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge. Philadelphia:Temple University Press.

Glmelch, G. 1995. Double Passage:The Lives of Caribbean Migrants Abroad andBack Home. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Hanna, S. P. Representing Appalachia: Appalshop Films and the Politics of RegionalIdentity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2000.“Representation and the Reproduction of Appalachian Space: A Historyof Contested Signs and Meanings,” Historical Geography Vol. 28: 71-199.

Huyssen, A. 2001. Present Pasts. In Appadurai, A. (ed.) Globalization, 57-77.Durham: Duke University Press.

Johnston, L. 1998. Reading the Sexed Bodies and Spaces of Gyms. In Nast, H. and S.Pile (eds.) Places Through the Body, 244-262. New York: Routledge.

Kellner, D. 1990. Television and the Crisis of Democracy. Boulder, CO: WestviewPress.

Kristeva, J. 1966. Les Recherches sémantiques de Tzvetan Todorov. La Pensée130:36-43.

Mulvey, L. 1992. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In Visual and OtherPleasures. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Nericcio, W. A. 1992. Of Mestizos and Half-Breeds: Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil . InNoriega, C. A. (ed.) Chicanos and Film: Essays on Chicano Representation andResistance, 53-66. New York: Garland Publishing.

289

Noriega, C. A. 1992. Between a Weapon and a Formula: Chicano Cinema and itsContexts. In Noriega, C. A. (ed.) Chicanos and Film Essays on ChicanoRepresentation and Resistance 159-188. New York: Garland Publishing.

Paasi, A. 1996. Territories, Boundaries & Consciousness: The ChangingGeographies of the Finnish-Russian Border.

Pile S. and Thrift, N. 1995. Introduction/Mapping the Subject. In Pile, S. andN.Thrift.(eds.) Mapping the Subject: Geographies of CulturalTransformation,1-51. London: Routledge.

San Diego Dialog. 1994. Who Crosses the Border?: A View of the San Diego! ijuanaMetropolitan Region. San Diego: UCSD Extension.

Web Site References

CNN. 20 January, 2000. http://www.CNN.com.Gauntlett, D. 1998. Ten Things Wrong with the "Effects Model."http://www.newmediastudies.com/effectsl.htm

US Census. 1996-2000. http://www.census.gov

US INS. 1998-2000. http ://www .ins .usdoi .gov/graphics/index.htm

Filmography

Lone Star, 1996. Directed by John Sayles. USA: Castle Rock/Rio/SonyPictures Classics.

(Re)inventing Hispanic/Latino Identities: A Visual Exploration, 1999. USA:LaSooz Productions.

The Border, 1982. Directed by Tony Richardson. USA: U-RKO/Universal. Touch of Evil, 1958. Directed by Orson Welles. USA: Universal.

290


Bellah, Robert & R. Madsen, W. Sullivan, S. Swindler, & S. Tipton. Habits of the Heart.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985.

Brimelow, Peter. Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster.New York: Random House, 1995.

Bocock, Robert. Consumption. London & NY: Routledge, 1993.

Castles, Stephen & Mark Miller. The Age of Migration: International PopulationMovements in the Modern World. New York: Guilford Press, 1993.

Christopher, Renny. The Viet Nam War, The American War: Images andRepresentations in Euro-American and Vietnamese Exile Narratives. Amherst, MA: Uof Massachusetts Press, 1995.

Dearborn, Mary. Pocahonta's Daughters: Gender and Ethnicity in American Culture.New York: Oxford UP, 1986.

Folkenflik, Robert, ed. The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1993.

Fox, Richard Wightman & T.J. Jackson Lears, eds. The Culture of Consumption: CriticalEssays in American History, 1880-1980. New York: Pantheon, 1983.

Gamio, Manuel. The Mexican Immigrant: His Life-Story. New York: Arno Press, 1969.

Hayslip, Le Ly with James Wurts. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: AVietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace. New York: Penguin, 1989.Hayslip, Le Ly with James Hayslip. Child of War, Woman of Peace. New York:Doubleday, 1993.

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins ofCultural Change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990.

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. NewYork: Atheneum, 1963.

Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language. New York: Penguin,1989.

Krohn, Claus-Dieter. Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School forSocial Research. Trans. Rita & Robert Kimber. Amherst: U of Massachusetts Press,1993.

Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism. New York: 1978.

Lukács, Georg. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Trans.R. Livingstone. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.

291

Mathabane, Mark. Kaffir Boy. New York: Plume, 1986.

Mathabane, Mark. Kaffir Boy in America. New York: Collier Books, 1989.

Mathabane, Mark & Gail. Love in Black and White: The Triump of Love Over Prejudiceand Taboo. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.

Marx, Karl. Capital. Vol. 1. Trans. B. Fowkes. New York: Penguin, 1976.

Omi, Michael & Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960sto the 1980s. New York: Routledge, 1989.

Padilla, Genaro M. My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexian AmericanAutobiography. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.

Pérez, Ramón "Tianguis." Diary of An Undocumented Immigrant. Houston, TX: ArtePublico Press, 1991.

Pérez Frimat, Gustavo. Next Year in Cuba: A Cubano's Coming-of-Age in America.New York: Anchor Books, 1995.

Portes, Alejandro and Rubén Rumbaut. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 2nd Ed.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Reiff, Phillip. Triumph of the Therapeutic. New York: 1966.

Sklair, Leslie. Sociology of the Global System. 2nd Ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns HopkinsUP, 1995.

Sollors, Werner. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. NewYork: Oxford UP, 1986.

Suárez-Orozco, Carola & Marcelo. Transformations: Migration, Family Life, andAchievement Motivation Among Latino Adolescents. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995.

Takaki, Ronald, ed. From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity inAmerica. New York & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987.

Waters, Mary. "Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second Generation Black Immigrants inNew York City," in The New Second Generation, edited by Alejandro Portes. NewYork: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996.

Wexler, Philip. Critical Social Pyschology. Boston & London: Routledge, 1983.

292

ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER 11

1 This section explains why autobiography becomes just another form of alienated andexpropriated labor.

2 Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Global Showdown: How the New Activists areFighting Global Corporate Rule (Toronto: Stoddart Publishing, 2001), pp. 181-82.

3 Mary Jane Radin, Contested Commodities: The Trouble with Trade in Sex, Children,Body Parts, and Other Things (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).Radin introduces the term “inappropriate commodification” p. 8.

4 Marx, Capital.

5 “Body Parts Peddler,” New Yorker Magazine, October 18, 2002, p. 1.

6 Michael Finkel, “Complications,” New York Times Magazine, May 27, 2001. Thisarticle clearly illustrates the way in which class and race issues figure in the buyingand selling of body parts. These issues, along with gender, are also raised by a recentCanadian example. See Lisa Priest, “Boss gets organ fromdomestic,” Globe and Mail, November 16, 2002.

7 Lori Andrews and Dorothy Nelkin, Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue inthe Biotechnology Age (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), pp. 2, 4. See also A.Kimbrell, The Human Body Shop: The Engineering and the Marketing of Life (SanFrancisco: Harper and Row, 1993), and R. C. Fox and J. P. Swazey, Spare Parts: OrganReplacement in Human Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

8 See “Pirates Ahoy!” New Internationalist 349 (September 2002), p. 25; and LopetiSenituli, “The gene hunters,” New Internationalist 349 (September 2002), pp. 13-14.

9 Nelkin p. 79.

10 See Jordi Pigem, “Barcoding Life,” New Internationalist 349 (September 2002), p. 26.

11 Andrews and Nelkin, pp. 5, 6.

12 US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health and theEnvironment, Hearing on H.R. 4080, “National Organ Transplant Act,” 98th Congress(1984), p. 128.

13 Margaret Somerville as quoted in Lisa Priest, “Women promote ‘perky ovaries’with eggs for sale,”Globe and Mail, September 8, 2001.

14 This is the heading of the final chapter in Andrews and Nelkin. Radin’s argument indefense of “incomplete commodification” works in a similar direction.

15 Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (London: Methuen, 1979), p.165.

16 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1952), p. 43. This emphasis on embodiment had earlier proponents in political

293

philosophy, but Hegel was unique among German Idealist philosophers in accenting itin this way.

17 Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying ‘This may be True in Theory, but it doesnot Apply in Practice” in Kant, Political Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss (Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 78, 78n. See also Kant, “The Metaphysics ofMorals,” Political Writings, pp. 139-40.

18 Hegel, p. 54.

19 Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1952), pp. 20-21.

20 See, for instance, James Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work: Alienation and the LaborProcess, 3rd edn.(Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1996).

21 Karl Marx, Capital, v. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976),p. 342.

22 Michael Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (ChapelHill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). Taussig has often been criticized, withsome justification, for idealizing precapitalist arrangements in these regions inColombia as “natural” and “organic.” This criticism should not, however, detract fromthe great power of his reading of cultural understandings of capital as a diabolicalpower in these societies.

23 See for instance Birgit Meyer, “‘Delivered from the powers of Darkness’:Confessions of Satanic Riches in Christian Ghana,” Africa, v. 65, n. 2 (1995), pp. 236-55;and Meyer, “The Power of Money: Politics, Occult Forces and Pentecostalism inGhana,” African Studies Review, v. 41, n. 3 (December 1990), pp. 15- 37; andMadelaine Drohan, “Gruesome tales show Nigeria’s desperate state,” Globe and Mail,September 25, 2000. These are not the only countries where such tales abound at thismoment of late capitalist anxiety.One also finds them in other parts of Africa, East Asia and Latin America. See JeanComaroff and John L. Comaroff, “Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction:Notes from the South African Postcolony,” American Ethnologist, v. 26, n. 2 (1999), p.291.

24 Ben Okri, The Famished Road (London: Vintage Books, 1992), p. 495.

25 The term “human ATMS” is used by anthropologist Misty Bastian, as quoted byDrohan.

26 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of ourtime (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), p. 68.

27 Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1972), p. 213.

28 Karl Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies (Boston: Beacon Press,1968), p. 66.

29 For a detailed account of the English common lands see A W. B. Simpson, A Historyof the Land Law, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). For an insightfulinterpretation of their meaning for common rights see E. P. Thompson, Customs in

294

Common (New York: The New Press, 1991).

30 Quoted in Taussig, pp. 73-74.

31 For a more detailed discussion see David McNally, Against the Market (London:Verso, 1993), Chap. 1.

32 Marx, Capital, v. 1, p. 926.

33 By no means do I intend to idealize the feudal system: it was oppressive,exploitative and patriarchal in the extreme. The key point in my account is thetransformation to modern forms of capitalist property and the way in which thistransformation required the destruction of communal lands in order to create amodern capitalist labor market.

34 Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press,199), pp. 10-71.

35 James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the21st Century (Halifax: Fernwood Books, 2001), p. 24. For descriptions of the process bywhich this takes place see McNally, Another World is Possible, pp. 73-78.

36 Marx, Capital, v.1, p. 989.

37 Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone(London: Merlin Books, 1971), pp. 87, 100.

38 The quote comes from Andrews and Nelkin, p. 6.

39 See the references in endnotes 20 and 21.

40 I do not believe these processes are ever totally complete.

41 See Elizabeth Church, “Authors ‘blur’ old rules of business,” Globe and Mail, July21, 1998; “Advertising space,” Globe and Mail, July 5, 2001; and John Heinzl, “Fourrenamed Dunlops now big wheels,” Globe and Mail, March 12, 2002.

42 The notion of self-commodification is perceptively developed by Alan Sears in TheLean State, 2002.

43 For the environmental implications of human alienation under capitalism seeVittvogel on hydraulic societies.

44 I recognize that many people do in fact contest the commodification of such things.In doing so, however, they are acting counter to the logic of commodification that isinscribed in the experience of wage-labor.

45 I would also argue that society cannot be reorganized according to non-commercialvalues so long as it rests on the buying and selling of human labor. An unwillingnessto confront this is the great weakness of Radin’s important book, ContestedCommodities. While occasionally acknowledging the alienating effects of at least someforms of wage-labor, she hopes to challenge “commodification as a worldview”without de-commodifying labor – an impossible task in my view. Similarly, the

295

absence of human labor on the impressive list of goods and services that Barlow andClarke suggest ought not to be commodified (see note 1 above) represents, in my view,a major flaw in their critical analysis.

46 The idea of recreation here does not mean a return to the medieval or early-modernsystem of common lands. To begin with, these were ultimately subordinate to thesocial power and property of landowners. More than this, in modern society we wouldhave to think in terms of common forms of industrial and “post-industrial” property.

47 For recent attempts to rehabilitate radical utopian thinking on the Left see DavidHarvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Leo Panitchand Colin Leys, eds., Necessary and Unnecessary Utopias: Socialist Register 2000(London: Merlin Press, 1999; and I concur with certain opinions that hold that WorldSocial Forums are not without their internal tensions and problems; nonetheless, theirsymbolic and ideological significance in arguing for a new kind of radical orientationis of inestimable value, pace ShrubCo.

48 Perhaps the harshest criticism of the role of NGO leaders in the movement comesfrom Petras and Veltmeyer, Chapter 8. But see also Gerard Greenfeld, “The Success ofBeing Dangerous: Resisting Free Trade and Investment Regimes, “ Studies in PoliticalEconomy 64 (Spring 2001).

49 Marx and those committed to a marxian analysis of the world system understandwhy capitalism breeds its own grave diggers: much akin to the much talked aboutforeign policy “blowback” that occasioned 9/11.

Dissertation-UCB_Camargo-2003_sm

Documents

Transcript of Dissertation-UCB_Camargo-2003_sm