|
Hybridity, Dialogism and
Identity in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions
 |
Email this
article |
Nidesh Lawtoo
University of Washington
Much of
the ongoing debate concerning the theme of identity in Jean Rhys's
Wide Sargasso Sea (WSS) can be read as a confrontation
between different epistemologies that inform conflicting ways of
understanding selfhood in relation to otherness. Two major
perspectives concerning this fundamental binary can be delineated if
we consider Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's "Wide Sargasso Sea
and a Critique of Imperialism" and Sandra Drake's "Race and
Caribbean Culture as Thematics of Liberation." To put it in the most
economic terms, Spivak conceives of the relationship between
selfhood (colonizer) and otherness (colonized) in terms of fracture
and opposition: she affirms that "[n]o perspective critical
of imperialism can turn the Other into a self" (246). Drake, on the
other hand, advocates fusion and "reconciliation" of self and other
(204). Their theoretical discordance is epitomized by their
respective interpretations of Antoinette's black childhood friend,
Tia. Whereas Spivak defines her as "the Other that cannot be selved"
(243), Drake argues that "Antoinette and Tia are . . . the same
person" (204). In this paper my concern is not, of course, to
challenge the totality of Spivak and Drake's seminal readings, but
rather to work with and against them in order to nuance the
epistemological assumption that the theoretical possibilities to
think about selfhood and otherness should be thought either in
terms of dichotomic opposition or total undifferentiated
synthesis.1 In my reading of WSS, hence, I
begin to delineate possibilities of dealing with the theme of
identity formation in terms of a generative, dialogic process. A
process which, as Rhys seems to suggest, takes place between
subjects that are neither fully identical nor radically
other.
By
focusing especially on Parts One and Three of WSS (but in an
attempt to consider the novel holistically), and by extending my
reflections to Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions (NC)--a
text that belongs to another chronotope but that shares a similar
interrogation of subjectivity--I begin to challenge dichotomous ways
of thinking about identity politics. In fact, through the theme of
"hybridity," both Rhys and Dangarembga provide a starting point for
shifting questions of identity formation from fixed and hierarchical
binary oppositions to more fluid and "egalitarian" binary
relationships.2 This shift calls for a
reconceptualization of the concept of "binary." For the moment,
suffice it to say that the dichotomous connotation inherent in this
concept is already challenged if we consider the astrological use of
the term. "Binary stars" correspond, in fact, to a "double star
system containing two associated stars revolving around a common
center of gravity in different orbits."3 According
to this definition, the emphasis shifts from opposition to
co-existence, from difference and separation to difference in
unity.
Redefinition of a concept calls for a modification of the way
the "self/other" binary notation is represented. Therefore, in what
follows, in order to stress the relational dimension of binaries, I
substitute the slash whose function is to divide "self" from "other"
(it works as a barrier), by a hyphen, representing both connection
and opposition. Thus redefined, the binary "self-other" comes to
signify a generative interaction between two terms on a
non-hierarchical plane.
This
redefinition of "binary" parallels the theory of identity that I
find implicit in both WSS and NC. In fact, as we shall
see, subjectivity in both texts cannot be considered in isolation
merely by taking into account the interior dimension of a self
supposedly identical to her/himself (identity, from Latin
idem, the same). Instead, its exploration calls for a
(re)consideration of the interactions of different (but not
incommensurable) identities.4 More precisely,
identity must be understood as a process of negotiation that takes
place on that thin hyphen that relates one self to another self (as
opposed to a mere other).5 And it is in this
light, that the notion of "dialogism", as defined by Mikhail
Bakhtin, is instrumental in exploring the in-between condition of
hybrid subjects and their relationship to both dominant and
dominated ideologies.
The
centrality of dialogue in the creation of consciousness is posited
by Bakhtin as he writes: "To be means to communicate"
because "I become myself only by revealing myself to another" (in
Todorov, 1984b, 96). Dialogism, for Bakhtin, becomes a way to
rethink identity formation in terms of a continuous, creative, and
interactive process with others who represent other possibilities of
selfhood and being. Contrary to Hegelian dialectics, Bakhtin's
dialogic principle calls for a non-hierarchical and non-teleological
relationship where opposites do not dissolve in a unifying
synthesis, but are engaged in a process of negotiation instead.
Hence, resolution (i.e. self-unity) in dialogism is striven for but
only provisionally (i.e. never definitively) achieved. It is with
these necessarily sketchy and general theoretical remarks in mind
that we now turn to consider Rhys's treatment of the Creole
subject.
The
theme of cultural hybridity that characterizes the Creole subject
appears in the very first paragraph of WSS:6
They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so
the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican
ladies had never approved of my mother, 'because she pretty like
pretty self' Christophine said. (9)
At
first sight, it appears that such a beginning allows for little
space for a dialogue between different cultural identities to take
place. In fact, Rhys posits the pronoun "we," which signifies the
Creole subject, in a strategic intermediary textual position,
squeezed, as it were, between the "white people" and the "Jamaican
[Black] ladies." Not only the theme of the frontier implicit in the
term "ranks," but also the structure of the paragraph, emphasize the
Creole's hybrid condition and the double exclusion that ensues.
Needless to say that a direct cultural consequence of the Creole
subject's "intermediate" textual/existential location is the
impossibility to belong to a clearly defined cultural identity. Less
directly, Antoinette and her family's in-between condition not only
prefigures the precarious and unstable identity position they
occupy, but also calls for a negotiation of the boundaries of
selfhood. That is to say, a negotiation of the frontier that divides
"self" from "other."
Michel
De Certeau's discussion of the notion of frontier is useful to
challenge static notions of identity borders and to set in motion a
dialogue between the self-other binary within a Bakhtinian
perspective. De Certeau points out that the frontier occupies a
paradoxical (conceptual) position since it is "created by contacts"
and that "the points of differentiation between two bodies are also
their common point" (127). Hence, according to the French theorist,
the frontier is a place both of "conjunction" and "disjunction"
(127); convergence and divergence; encounter and tension; unity and
opposition. Simply put, it is a locus of "generative tensions"
(Butler, 2000a 146). Or, using Du Boisian terminology we could thus
speak of the "two-ness" (5) of both the frontier (which then becomes
the "color line") and of the hybrid Creole who lives her/his life on
it.7
These
necessarily brief and sketchy theoretical considerations are
instrumental to move from the static implication inherent in the
military, nationalist, and exclusive expression "close ranks," to
more fluid and unstable implications that characterize the condition
of in-betweenness.8 Notice that any identity
positioned on the borderland is deprived of the illusion of being a
stable, unitary, self-sufficient subject that is identical to
him/herself. It is therefore relevant that the protagonist's name
(the ultimate signifier of personal identity) is only introduced
towards the end of Part One (31), and that, throughout the novel, it
is constantly replaced by other signifiers.9 This
"undetermined" condition does not necessarily imply immediate
liberation, nor a joyous liberation from a totalizing signifier but,
rather, the opening for a space where the painful process of
self-definition can be initiated.10
Antoinette realizes the existential weight implicit in the
transitory state which defines hybrid identities in the initial
pages of the novel. These pages describe a loss of the ontological
security necessary to sustain the Creole subject's sense of
selfhood: what is abstractly posited by the first person narrator in
the first paragraph is here experienced by the character. Redefined
as "white nigger" (14) by her Afro-Caribbean friend Tia, and
subsequently exposed to the eyes of white visitors while wearing
Tia's dirty dress--a sharp contrast with the visitors' "beautiful
clothes"(14)--Antoinette is doubly defined in terms of otherness. In
both cases, she suffers a denigration (from Latin, denigrare,
to make very black) which symbolically and existentially strips her
of her whiteness. However, such denigration, contrary to its
etymological meaning, does not entail Antoinette's identification
with "blackness." She reaches a state that Mary Lou Emery aptly
defines as "double marginality" (163). Neither white nor black, she
is put in a double bind position. And the only exit consists in the
adoption of the "unnatural"11 category of "white
cockroach" (13). What ensues is a deprivation of any possibility of
belonging and, thus, of a sense of stable selfhood. In fact,
immediately afterwards, we read: "[I]t was as if a door opened and I
was somewhere else, something else. No longer myself"(16).12 In both passages, identity is defined in function of the
subject's positionality. Being "somewhere else"--on a threshold
between "whiteness" and blackness--displaces the subject from her
location within her self. The hybrid subject epitomizes Bakhtin's
vision of subjectivity. The subject, in fact, according to Bakhtin,
"never coincides with itself" (Todorov, 1984b 24) since "[m]an has
no internal sovereign territory; he is all and always on the
boundary" (Todorov 96). However, the impossibility of self-identity
does not correspond to a "death of the subject," but rather to a
birth of a more complex, heterogeneous and, therefore, unstable
sense of identity. The latter is reflected in Rhys's thematic use of
mirrors.
The
multiplicity of references to mirrors in WSS epitomizes
Antoinette's search for a psychic unity which constantly eludes her
and which would provide the guarantee of "safety"--an ongoing
obsession for Antoinette. The theme of mirroring can thus be read in
terms of a Lacanian imaginary relationship with one's specular image
through which internal coherence can be achieved. In a sort of
mythic return to a world of fullness, the pre-Oedipal child,
according to Lacan, gains a unified sense of identity by identifying
with her/his specular image. The effect of this imaginary
identification, as Lacan puts it, is to counter "the turbulent
movements which animate the subject" (Lacan 95; my
translation).13 This reference to Lacan allows me
to now turn to two competing readings of WSS.
Spivak's reflections on narcissism are predicated on the
theoretical assumption that an imaginary identification between
Antoinette and her textual alter-ego, Brontė's Bertha, is possible
(see Spivak 243). Drake, on the other hand, makes a similar
assumption with regards to Tia (see above). The crucial point that
both authors disregard concerns the fact that such univocal
identifications cannot encompass the complexity of the hybrid
subject. While sharing Narcissus's obsession with mirrors,
Antoinette is never allowed to reach the insight of her mythic
predecessor that would make her utter "iste ego sum" (Spivak 242).
In fact, from the position of Brontė's mad woman in the attic,
Antoinette retrospectively meditates on the specular image she used
to contemplate during her honeymoon in Dominica. She affirms: "The
girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself" (107). I choose to read
this passage not so much as confirming a schizophrenic division of
the self that attests Antoinette's loss of lucidity and critical
thinking but, rather, as its very opposite. Namely, as a critical
insight into a divided psychic condition which has been there all
along. In fact, she immediately adds: "Long ago when I was a child
and very lonely I tried to kiss her: But the glass was between
us--hard cold and misted over with my breath" (107). Hence the
necessity of both Antoinette and her mother to "pretend" (78) in
order for identification and semblance of unity to take place.
Antoinette's impossibility to reach (or regress to) a
Lacanian imaginary stage is foreshadowed by Rhys's use of symbolism.
The destruction of the garden of Coulibri, associated with the
"garden in the Bible . . . [where] the tree of life grew" (10-11),
anticipates the loss of an Edenic unity (Lacan's imaginary stage on
psychological terms; the colonial imperialist domination in
historical terms) and with it the existence of a unitary,
independent, and coherent self. What is gained, on the other hand,
is the possibility to engage dialogically with others. As Paulo
Freire succinctly puts it, "self-sufficiency is incompatible with
dialogue" (79). To put it in Antoinette's language, the Biblical
expulsion corresponds to the opening of a door that takes the
subject somewhere else, where it is no longer possible to be oneself
independently of others. The world of unitary identifications is
replaced by a world of binary relationships whose differences,
contrary to those introduced by the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis,
are not of kind but of degree--hence the possibility for dialogue to
take place. To put it differently, the result of this expulsion is
that the Creole subject begins to understand self-completion in
terms of a search (i.e. a dynamic, dialogic process), rather
than as a state (a static product). Antoinette's encounter
with mirrors, to use a Bakhtinian language, is never allowed to be
monologic but is always of a dialogic nature.
In
WSS, Rhys introduces a political dimension which supplements
Lacan's psychological model. Her exploration of the theme of
personal identification is complicated by the problematic of racial,
economical, cultural and historical differences that inform a key
and controversial passage in the novel. The dispute turns around the
possibility or impossibility of identification across the color
line. The passage depicts the violent encounter that takes place
between Antoinette and Tia right after the Afro-Caribbean's upheaval
against the descendants of the colonizers. It does not resolve the
Spivak/Drake controversy but, rather, indicates the ambiguity that
sustains it:
Then, not so far off, I saw Tia and her mother
and I ran to her . . . We had eaten the same food, slept side by
side, bathed in the same river. As I ran, I thought, I will live
with Tia and I will be like her . . . When I was close I saw the
jagged stone in her hand but I did not see her throw it . . . I
looked at her and I saw her face crumple up as she began to cry.
We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was
as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass. (27)
The
ambiguity of this passage is generated by strife between two
opposing textual forces. On the one hand, the socio-political
dimension that informs the scene indicates the oppositional and
violent nature of this confrontation. "Blood" and "tears" function
then as signifiers of racial, economical, historical and cultural
division (i.e. Spivak's "fracture of imperialism"). On the other
hand, the common existential condition of pain that derives from
this violent encounter (from Vulgar Latin, incontrare, from
Latin in- + contra, against, opposite) indicates, if not a
undifferentiated "merging" of identity (Drake 205), at least the
existence of a common ground where a generative dialogue can
potentially take place.14 It follows that the
simile of the looking glass does not reflect a unitary self, but
rather indicates the existence of sameness in diversity--a necessary
condition for the disruption of the self/other dichotomy.
Rhys
does not posit the tension between social fracture and psychological
recognition in order to resolve it according to a dichotomic
"either/or" logic, but rather in order to affirm and investigate its
complexity. To put it with Antoinette's words, we can say that for
each perspective "[t]here is always the other side, always" (77). In
fact, this tension epitomizes the condition of the hybrid subject in
a society based on racial conflict. The drive towards the
possibility of belonging and, therefore, identity stability, must
confront and engage the exclusion that ensues. And yet, the above
passage seems to indicate the direction in which Antoinette sees the
possibility for a generative dialogue to take place. Ambiguity in
WSS does not foster an "epistemic closure" but rather its
openness.15
In Part
Three of WSS, the question of identification with Tia
reappears and new elements are added to a theory that investigates
the relationship of self and other across the color line. In her
final dream, Antoinette gains a sense of selfhood understood in
teleological terms, that is to say, as a project. It is the
recollection of the fire that burned down her colonial mansion in
Jamaica that reminds her of "something [she] must do" (111). Her
project is a direct continuation of the Afro-Caribbean's reaction to
colonial domination. The Creole subject, thus conceived, stops
functioning as a frontier between opposing worlds and assumes the
role of a bridge that mediates the relationship of power between
colonized and colonizer. In an inversion of the Promethean myth,
Antoinette's final dream prefigures a return of the fire to the
white colonizers who, at the dawn of colonial domination, assumed
the status of divinity in order to facilitate their process of
subjugation of the indigenous populations. Her dream, therefore, is
not of a personal nature; neither does it function as a catalyst for
the return of a private repressed fantasy, but rather for a return
of the violence that the Western colonial empire had (has?)
collectively (i.e. historically and culturally) repressed. Moreover,
Antoinette's intermediary position between colonizer and colonized,
as well as her shifting status from one pole to the other, helps
disrupt the fixity of the self/other dichotomy. In fact, the hybrid
subject makes clear that the political status of identity is a
matter of position within specific power relationships--what Stuart
Hall influentially christened a "struggle around positionalities"
(Hall, 92)--and do not depend on a postulation of an essence inherent
in the subject.
In
order to do justice to Spivak's reading of WSS, it must be
stressed that she recognizes that the Creole subject is "caught
between the English imperialist and the black native" (242). And yet,
in this particular piece, she does not fully consider how the Creole
subject cannot be considered independently of the colonizer and the
colonized. In fact, it is not entirely accurate to state that
WSS is a rewriting of Jane Eyre "in the interest of
the white Creole rather than the native" (Spivak 246), since
Antoinette's project cannot be dissociated from the project of her
black counterpart, Tia (i.e. the former chooses to enter in a
dialogical relationship with the latter). Moreover, what
characterizes a dialogical relationship is the fact that no "other"
who participates in it can be considered as "tangential" (as Spivak
defines Christophine's place within the narrative) because in a
dialogical relationship self and other are united like binary stars.
This does not involve a "merging" that "turns the Other into a
self," (to use both Drake and Spivak's problematic assumptions) but
rather a Du Boisian understanding of this dynamics: "In this
merging," Du Bois specifies, the hybrid subject (of which the
African-American is a representative) "wishes neither of the older
selves to be lost" (5). It is in order to preserve this generative
"two-ness" that Antoinette, at the end of the novel, chooses again
to move towards the Caribbean side of her identity.
Antoinette's choice of direction is a political choice which
is based on her epistemological understanding of the prerequisites
necessary for a generative dialogue to take place. Remembering her
parrot from Coulibri which burned during the fire because its wings
were clipped (significantly) by Mr. Mason, the colonizer figure,
Antoinette says: "I heard the parrot call as he did when he saw a
stranger, Qui est lą? Qui est lą? And the man who hated me
was calling me too, Bertha! Bertha! The wind caught my hair and it
streamed out like wings"(112). Contrary to the parrot, Antoinette is
granted "wings" (albeit metaphorical ones) which suggest the
possibility for liberation. Rhys offers the Creole subject two
possibilities which are representative of two fundamentally opposed
theories of identity. Bluntly put, one interrogates identity, the
other affirms and asks merely to accept and repeat (parrot?) an
oppressive definition of selfhood. On the one hand, the question
"Qui est lą?" is characterized by an epistemic openness: it
suggests both tolerance towards difference as well as an invitation
to engage with difference in a creative dialogue whose goal is an
active questioning of identity (as opposed to a re-active
answering). On the other hand, the answer to that question provided
by the Rochester figure epitomizes an "epistemic closure." In fact,
not only does Mr. Mason provide a fixed answer to an open question,
but he also imprisons the subject within an alien sense of identity:
the signifier "Bertha" replaces identity with otherness and thwarts
any possibility of dialogic interrogation.
Antoinette's choice, as the symbolism of flight suggests,
indicates a movement towards the question "Qui est lą"--which
is also a move in the direction of her Caribbean origins--rather than
towards the answer. However, as Sandra Drake's reading proves, the
danger of epistemic closure can be encountered even within this
perspective. In fact, Drake affirms that Antoinette succeeds in
"finally answering" the question, by jumping "into her deepest self"
(202)--a sort of "pure" Caribbean identity represented by Tia. Drake
argues in favor of a resolution of the paradoxical nature of
hybridity by returning to an essentialism that grounds the "truth"
of identity within the psychological depths of the individual
subject. Contrary to Du Bois' dialogical understanding of "merging,"
the assumption of Antoinette's totalizing identification with Tia
implies the loss of one "of the older selves" (Du Bois). Put
differently, Drake seems to advocate the dissolution of the Creole
subject's specificity. Furthermore, such a synthesis of self and
other brings to a stop the dialogical process of self-interrogation
that engages two selves in a common project of self-definition.
Synthesis, according to Bakhtin, is the death of communication,
questioning and the discovery of new possibilities of being. Hence
his insistence that dialogue necessitates "two consciousnesses that
do not fuse" (Todorov, 1984b 99). Therefore, while being aware that
no definitive answer can be provided to this question, I propose
that the beginning of an answer can be found if we turn to a West
African proverb which says: "I am because we are; we are because I
am. I am we" (Butler, 2002, 180; my emphasis).16 By attempting to answer the question, the self finds
herself immediately in communication with another self. The
inability to "finally answer" that question is also what keeps the
subject alive since to quote Bakhtin again, "to live means to engage
in dialogue, to question, to listen, to answer" (Todorov, 1984b 96).
Identity, as Rhys's unanswered question Qui est lą?
suggests, can be understood as a continuous process of questioning
which takes the form of an unresolved dialogue with other selves. It
is a process that sets in motion a dialogic interaction between an
"inside" and an "outside." Thus understood, identities stand "as a
function of knowing rather than a quality of being" (Adell
paraphrasing James 14). They are "ways of making sense of our
experiences" (Mohanty 398) which are constantly modified by the
subject's interaction with others and with the world. Moreover,
WSS's closure suggests that the notion of agency is key for
the process of identity formation. Antoinette engages her question
through action: the setting on fire of Thornfield.17 The heuristic
function of identity suggested by both James and Mohanty can be
extended in order to define identity as a way to gain agency in the
world. However, the ambivalent image of Antoinette burning with the
colonial mansion indicates that the intersection of agency and
knowledge do not imply a facile liberation for the Creole/colonial
subject. Therefore, what can be read as a "triumph" (Drake 194) also
represents the "epistemic violence of colonialism" positing a
"self-immolating colonial subject" (Spivak 243). This fundamental
unresolved ambiguity--as well as the contradictory nature of hybrid
identity and its heuristic function--finds a continuation in Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions.
In
WSS, Rhys complicates the notion of the hybrid subject by
focusing on questions of cultural hybridity. Dangarembga's
meditation on the question of emancipative education concerning the
African subject in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) further expands the
frontiers of the concept of hybridity in another
chronotope.18 She considers the interaction of a
dominant culture with a cultural minority (understood as a minority
in terms of power) and the production of hybrid subjects that
ensues. This move has theoretical consequences in the way we
understand hybrid identities because it involves an extension (and
therefore transformation) of this concept. More precisely, the
notion of hybridity implicit in NC can be seen as
encompassing every subject belonging to a cultural minority which
has had contacts with different forms of Western imperialism. The
"nervous conditions" proper to the hybrid subjects stem from the
inability to rethink the ideological hierarchy inherent in the
opposition "dominant/subordinate" in order to subsequently initiate
a dialogue between binaries in which there is space for the
negotiation of cultural identities.19 The confrontation of the
dispossessed with the dominant culture becomes in the sarcastic
words of Tambudzai's cousin, "a marvelous opportunity [ . . . ][t]o
forget who you were, what you were and why you were that" (178-179).
Emancipation, thus defined, turns into a violent "assimilation"
(179)--a more explicit political counterpart of Mr. Rochester's
violent renaming of Antoinette.
Inherent in the theme of emancipation is a struggle to
negotiate opposing identity models. Tambudzai's struggle to gain
literacy in order to move to a higher degree of "freedom" involves
the risk of a loss of her "older self" (Du Bois' term) caused by a
disconnection with her cultural origins. Retrospectively, Tambudzai
realizes that she "had been too eager to leave the homestead and
embrace the 'Englishness' of the mission" (203). The move from
"homestead" to "Englishness" is initially introduced as a move from
dispossession to possession. However, what the novel progressively
investigates is the danger of self-dispossession inherent in the
inability to negotiate an identity between two hierarchical cultural
spheres.
The
strongest opposition to a total "assimilation" with the ideology of
the dominant empire signified by the "Englishness," (179) comes from
a character who, more than others, is torn between the African and
the English world: Tambudzai's cousin, Nyasha. Since Nyasha has been
to England during a crucial period for her identity development (the
years of primary school), it is in her that the sense of hybridity
is mostly developed and, with it, the capacity to critically
interrogate the value of the two worlds she carries in herself. And
it is precisely through Nyasha's counter--discourse that Dangarembga
further explores Rhys's question, "Qui est lą?" and with
it, the heuristic and revolutionary potential inherent in the hybrid
subject. Contrary to Tambudzai who, newly acquainted with the
"Englishness" her uncle represents, avoids "the mazes of
self-confrontations," (116) Nyasha, we are told, "thrived on
inconsistencies and liked to chart them so that she could turn her
attention to the next set of problems" (116). The violent
heterogeneity that constitutes the hybrid subject becomes, thus, a
privileged place to confront the "inconsistencies" inherent in both
internal and external worlds. Put differently, by looking at her
African origins through the prism of her Englishness and vice versa,
Nyasha creatively exploits what Du Bois calls the gift of
"second-sight" (5). However, there is a danger in this hermeneutic
gift, since as Du Bois reminds us, the "two-ness" of second sight
also corresponds to the two-ness that threatens to tear the subject
apart.
Nyasha's case makes clear that the exploration of the
generative power of the subject's "inconsistencies" requires an
anchorage to social reality which, in her case, is provided by her
friendship with Tambudzai. The absence of a dialogic interaction
with another self turns what could be called Nyasha's generative
inconsistencies into degenerative symptoms. After Tambudzai's
departure to a Catholic school named Sacred Heart, Nyasha realizes
the centrality of the role of the other for the completion of the
self. She writes to Tambudzai: "In many ways you are very essential
to me in bridging some of the gaps in my life, and now that you are
away I feel them again" (196). The notion of "gap" is key to
understand the condition of hybridity. Lacking wholeness in the
sense of a unitary and coherent sense of selfhood, the hybrid
subject is constituted by internal contradictions that need to be
dealt with in order to connect distinct aspects of identity. What
takes place in a dialogic process is a co-operative and mutual
effort to attend a provisional coherence which, in turn, allows to
move forward towards new possibilities of being. Thus conceived,
self-unity is never definitively achieved. Instead of a totalizing
whole, subjectivity can then be defined as an ever expanding
ramification of bridges that holds difference together in order to
constitute what Bakhtin calls the "unfinalizability of human
consciousness" (14). Dialogism can then be compared to a conjoint
hermeneutic effort which attempts to bring about an expansion of
consciousness of both subjects involved. Nyasha's realization that
Tambudzai is "essential" to her life confirms the wisdom of the
African proverb "I am we" as well as the displacement of existence
into co-existence inherent to it.
The
interruption of the dialogic process of friendship with Tambudzai
brings about Nyasha's fragmentation of selfhood. Left alone, the
latter cannot sustain the clash of two "unreconciled strivings" (Du
Bois 5) and thus fails to negotiate her place on the borderland. Her
final words, however, should not be reduced to a schizophrenic (and
therefore meaningless) delirium. The heuristic function of the
hybrid subject is still at work even (especially?) at this stage.
She says to Tambudzai: "I'm not one of them but I'm not one of you"
(201). Her impossibility to find a place on either side of the
frontier (i.e. either in the world of "Englishness," or with those
who blindly try to conform to it) is a clear and lucid diagnosis of
her state and of its causes. It is, in fact, important to notice
that the unmasking power of Nyasha's language stems from its
paradoxical nature. She repeatedly affirms: "I'm not a good girl. I
won't be trapped" (201). What is at stake here is the subversion of
the dominant definition of "goodness"--a concept which is deftly
re-conceptualized in terms of imprisonment of the self (being
"trapped"). From this perspective, freedom calls for a refusal of
dominant standards of "goodness." The incoherence of Nyasha's
speech, therefore, "is perfectly coherent with the incoherence of
the world she lives in" (Todorov 1984a 574; my translation).
Furthermore, Nyasha's condition cannot be defined as a "nervous
condition'--an assimilation to the world of the dominant ideology--but
rather as the effect of trying to counter it. Put differently, her
failure to disrupt the double bind between "goodness" and "freedom"
illustrates the impossibility of bridging the gaps between
inconsistent identities from outside a dialogic relationship.
What
the narrator defines as "Nyasha's kamikaze behavior" (201) bears
important similarities with Antoinette's self-immolating act.
Rochester's colonial mansion is paralleled by Nyasha's father's
replica of it in Africa. Both signifiers of colonialism are the
target of the dissident hybrid subject. In both cases, the
disruption of the dominant order affects the dominated self--a
narrative move which seems to stress the fact that there is a high
price to pay in order to move towards liberation. And yet, it is
significant that Nyasha's crisis ultimately functions as an
effective communicative act. In fact, it endows Tambudzai with the
seeds for a more critical understanding of the position of the
colonial subject within fields of power. Tambudzai, at the end of
the novel, says: "I was young then, but seeds do grow. Although I
was not aware of it then, no longer could I accept Sacred Heart and
what it represented as a sunrise on my horizon" (203). In a way
reminiscent of WSS's last chapter, this image foreshadows the
subaltern subject's re-appropriation of the equatorial sun as a
light instrumental for the broadening of her/his cultural horizon--a
move which is necessary in order to promote a dialogic (as opposed
to dialectic) engagement with the dominant other.
What
Dangarembga, in NC's concluding words, defines as a "process
of expansion" (204) indicates an expansion of knowledge which helps
situate the self within cultural, historical and political forces.
What is at stake in this process of expansion is a critical
engagement with the ideological fetters that imprison the
hybrid/colonial's subject within oppressive paradigms of identity.
In fact, both NC and WSS seem to stress the fact that
an expansion of one's understanding of selfhood brings about a
renewed sense of agency. Further, both novels challenge limiting,
partial and totalitarian notions of identity through the power of a
creative narrative act. Significantly, Dangarembga concludes
NC by writing: "[T]his story is how it all began" (204). The
continuation of her project implies an active participation of the
reader in that subversive act of communication which is the act of
reading. The narrative "I," as it is given voice by the reader, is
ultimately always a dialogic "we" signifying the author and reader's
participation in a common generative effort to constantly rethink
the fundamental question, "Qui est lą?"
Notes
| 1
|
It is
worth noting that Spivak's expression "turning the Other into
a self" implies either a conflation (synthesis) of the two
poles or, as she argues, its impossibility due to the "the
fracture of imperialism" (243). |
| 2
|
My use of
the notion of hybridity is informed by R. Radhakrishnan who
defines it as "an excruciating act of self production by and
through multiple traces" (Radhakrishnan 314). This concept
allows us to think of identity in terms of a process which
implies the disruption of binary oppositions. I hasten to add
that in this paper I use "hybridity" and "in-betweenness"
interchangeably. |
| 3
|
Collins
English Dictionary. Glasgow: HarperCollins, 2000. It may
also be worth noting that the majority of stars are part of a
binary system, as if to indicate a universal law that
privileges co-existence over disconnectedness. |
| 4
|
For lack
of a better term, I continue to use the term "identity"
without endorsing the connotation of internal unity and
coherence implicit in the etymology of the word. |
| 5
|
In recent
theoretical developments, there is an awareness that the
Post-Colonial identification of "self" with the oppressor and
"other" with the oppressed perpetuates a form of theoretical
imperialism that denies the colonized direct access to
selfhood (see Butler 2000b note 7, 30). While embracing this
theoretical inversion, my main focus in this paper is to show
how identity formation is dependent upon a dialogic
relationship in which the other (whoever it is) must be
conceived in terms of selfhood. In dialogism, interaction does
not occur between self and other but, rather, between self and
self, or as Bakhtin puts it, "a fully valid 'thou,' that is,
another and other autonomous 'I' " (Bakhtin 93). For the sake
of clarity, I will maintain the distinction between "self" and
"other" in order to denote the colonized-colonizer
relationship. It should be noted that in WSS, the
subject's status varies according to the position s/he
occupies within a system of relationships. Antoinette, in
fact, assumes the status of "self" in relationship to the
Rochester figure but should then be defined as "other" in
relationship to Tia or Christophine. I find it interesting
that the text already disrupts fixed dichotomous ways of
thinking. |
| 6
|
I use here
the term Creole in Jean Rhys sense: i.e. as denoting a white
subject born in the Caribbean. The category of Creole should
then not be confused with the one of "colored" which denotes a
subject of mixed descent. The notion of Creole indicates that
questions of hybridity, even when they refer to mixing of
"races" (understood as a biological fiction that is
nonetheless visible and determines a social reality) always
imply problems of cultural belonging. Whiteness must then be
understood as a cultural rather than biological (i.e.
essentialist) category. It is a social, historical and
political construct and, as such, it is the product of power.
This does not dissolve whiteness as an arbitrary fiction (its
status has a social reality), but rather reveals the
culturally construed status of "race." |
| 7
|
Indeed, W.
E. B. Du Bois's seminal definition of double-consciousness
perfectly matches De Certeau's definition of the frontier.
Hence, the heuristic potential inherent in African American
identity to help conceptualize future studies on hybridity.
The obviousness of the African American in-between position
should not be left unnoticed. The reason I first introduced De
Certeau's notion of frontier to think through the self-other
binary is to subsequently come to a better understanding of Du
Bois's definition of "merging' (5). |
| 8
|
To put it
in Gloria Anzaldua's terminology, we must shift from a
conception of "border" understood as a "dividing line" to an
operative notion of "borderland" defined as a "constant state
of transition"; a "vague and undetermined place created by the
emotional residue of an unnatural boundary" (qtd. in Butler,
2000, 141; my emphasis). |
| 9
|
The
practice of (violent) renaming occupies a central role in the
narrative: "white nigger," "white cockroach," "beke,"
"marionette," and, finally, "Bertha," indicate a multiplicity
of signifiers (representative of different social
perspectives) that threaten to disrupt the hybrid subject, and
contribute to the creation of a contradictory and ambivalent
identity. Thus, Antoinette's "undetermined" sense of identity
derives from its overdetermination. Antoinette's task, within
Rhys narrative project, is to turn this potentially disruptive
ambivalence into new possibilities of selfhood. |
| 10
|
R.
Radhakrishnan makes a distinction between a "metropolitan" and
a "postcolonial" versions of hybridity. He writes: "whereas
the former are characterized by an intransitive and immanent
sense of jouissance, the latter are expression of extreme pain
and agonizing dislocations" (314). |
| 11
|
I use this
term that repeatedly occurs in NC with critical
distance, and with an awareness that the psychology of the
colonial subject cannot be considered independently from
her/his social, political, historical and cultural context.
Such an assumption complicates given notions of "normality"
and 'naturalness." |
| 12
|
The same
problem persists throughout the novel. Years later, when
talking to the Rochester figure Antoinette says: "I often
wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong
. . ." (61). Radhakrishnan postulates a provocative connection
between a totalitarian sense of national unity and the notion
of identity as a unity. Antoinette's case illustrates the
opposite point: lacking any sense of national belonging which
would give her a sense of "normative citizenship," she is
deprived the "ideological effect that secures the regime of a
full and undivided identity" (Radhakrishnan 314). |
| 13
|
Although I
am aware that Lacan's considerations refer to the development
of the pre-Oedipal child (six to eighteenth months), their
implications can be expanded to encompass fundamental psychic
mechanisms that can help clarify Antoinette's struggle for
self-definition. |
| 14
|
As the
etymology of the word suggests opposition and therefore the
possibility for violence, is not excluded in the meeting with
difference and in the nature of relationship. Opposition as
part of dialogism should however not be thought of as the only
form of interaction. In this lies a fundamental difference
between the notion of dialogue and the Hegelian dialectic. In
fact, Hegel thinks of the relationship between
self-consciousnesses in terms of a "life-and-death struggle"
only (12). |
| 15
|
"Epistemic
closure"-a term that I borrow from Louis Gordon while adapting
it to the Creole hybrid condition-implies that knowledge of
the impossibility of fully belonging "brings knowledge claims
to a close" (Gordon 23). |
| 16
|
This
proverb has its European counterpart in Ponge's statement:
"Je parle et tu mÕentends, donc nous sommes" (Kristeva
156). Both sayings counter Descartes's cogito ergo sum.
|
| 17
|
Bakhtin
writes: "Action and dialogue give expression to all that is
within man" (Todorov 90). |
| 18
|
Neither
Rhys nor Dangarembga make use of the concept of hybridity
explicitly. My goal is to interact dialogically with these
literary texts in order to extrapolate elements for a theory
of identity concerning the hybrid subject. |
| 19
|
It is not
my intention to deny the fact that there is a profound gap
between the so called First World and the Third World in terms
of material conditions. My point is that the hierarchy
inherent in the term "first" and "third" should not apply to
questions of the domain of cultural heritage. The difficulty
in dissociating economic from cultural values stems from the
fact that the economic dimension is promoted by the dominant
ideology of the First World as the signifier of culture
tout court. |
|
Works Cited
Adell,
Sandra. Double Consciousness/ Double Bind, Theoretical Issues in
Twentieth-Century Black Literature. Urbana: U of
Illinois P, 1994.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Bakhtin Reader. Ed. Pam Morris.
London: Edwards Arnold, 1994.
Butler,
Johnella E. "African American Studies and the 'Warring Ideals': The
Color Line Meets the Borderlands." Dispatches from the Ebony
Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience.
Ed. Manning Marble. New York: Columbia UP, 2000a. 141-152.(Quoted
from: Holzapfel, New York Trilogy)
---."Theory and the Aesthetic of Wholeness." Mumbo Jumbo.
Eds. Emory Elliot and Louis F. Caton. Oxford UP, 2002. 175-193.
---."Reflections on Borderlands and the Color Line."
Power, Race, and Gender in Academe. Strangers in the Tower?
Ed. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, and Maria Herrera-Sobek. New York: The
MLA, 2000b. 8-31.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Condition. Seattle: Seal, 1989.
Drake,
Sandra. "Race and Caribbean Culture as Thematics of Liberation in
Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea." Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., 1999. 188-192.
Du
Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. Eds. David W.
Blight and Robert Gooding Williams. Boston: Bedford,
1997.
De
Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven
F. Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.
Emery,
Mary Lou. "Modernist Crosscurrents in Wide Sargasso
Sea." 1966. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. 161-172.
Freire,
Paulo. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergamos
Ramos. New York: Continuum, 1990.
Gordon,
Lewis R. Existentia Africana. New York: Routledge,
2000.
Hegel
and G. W. Friedrich. "Independence and Dependence
of
Self-Consciousness." Identities. Eds. Linda Martin Alcoff
and Eduardo
Mendieta. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. 11-16.
Hall,
Stuart. "New Ethnicities." Identities. Eds. Linda Martin
Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
90-95.
Kristeva, Julia. "Le mot, le dialogue et le roman."
Semiotike. Paris: Seuil, 1969, 143-173.
Lacan,
Jacques. "Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je."
Ecrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. 93-100.
Mohanty, Satya, P. "The Epistemic Status of Cultural
Identity." Identities. Eds. Linda Martin Alcoff and Eduardo
Mendieta. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
392-405.
Radhakrishnan, R. "Postcoloniality and the Boundaries of
Identity." Identities. Eds. Linda Martin Alcoff and Eduardo
Mendieta. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. 312-329.
Rhys,
Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. 1966. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New
York: W.W. Norton, 1999.
Sartre,
Jean-Paul. "Preface to The Wretched of the Earth." Frantz Fanon.
The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. C. Farrigton. New York:
Grove, 1963. 7-26.
Spivak,
Gayatri Chakravorty. "Wide Sargasso Sea and a Critique of
Imperialism." Wide Sargasso Sea. 1966. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin.
New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. 240-246.
Todorov, Tzvetan. "Dialogisme et schizophrénie." Language and
Literary Theory. Eds. Bejamin A. Stolz, I. R. Titunik and Lubomir Dolozel. Ann Arbour: U of Michigan P,
1984a.
---. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogic Principle. Trans.
Wald Godzich. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984b.
Back
to top |
