Jungle Fever

In Jungle Fever, Dunby discusses what takes an ongoing debate, which takes place in a lit humanism class. The class discusses Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a novel which takes you on a journey through evil vs good. The debate gets very heated b/c the students have different views on the point of the book. I would have to agree with the student Henry because he doesn't neccessarily confine the novel strictly to race and western imperialism, but he suggests that the struggle of good vs. evil is present in all men. This subject is not a race issue entirely, but a humanity issue. People are capable of anything when thrown into certain situations. In The Heart of Darkness Conrad portrays the Africans as the savages when in reality it can be true of all humanity. The teacher Shapiro makes the point that although this may be true we are capable of changing the way we think and society.

Orientalism

It seems that Orientalism, according to Said's perspective, bares a close resemblance to Freud's "lacking" and the concept of "othering" that has been prevalent in many of the texts studied in this course. Just like Freud's "other" or "lacking" is defined by the subject, the male, the possessor of the phallus, Orientalism is defined by and for the subject, the omnipotent West. The Western conception of the Orient seems to justify imperialism, as well as perpetuate the power structure in which the West dominates the East. Therefore, cruel acts of imperialism are not merely accepted, but viewed as the means of "civilizing" an inferior culture. Additionally, because these definitions are provided by the West, the object, the Orient serves a subject, a bystander, in the conception of its own reality. It seems, as Said explains, "the Orientalist is outside the Orient" (21), those who explain and define the culture of the Orient are Westerners, the Orient does not play any role in defining itself. Likewise, Teresa de Lauretis discusses this same idea, Freud's question, "What is femininity?" is asked by a man, Freud himself, answered again by Freud and his answer, revolves around the man, the phallus. In both cases, it appears, the dominate group is defining its object of domination as an "other," inherently inferior in order to perpetuate its dominance.

Edward Said sounds like he has a valid political concern in his Introduction to Orientalism. The stereotype of Orientalism does exist to certain degrees (though the fact, which he admits, that the backbone of Said’s argument is a set of historical generalizations, does not provide a very strong basis for his arguments, I sounds like Freud saying that his whole argument is based on the concept of penis envy and if that is abolished his argument would not stand). Said’s argument in III, that it is practically impossible to remove the study of humanities from politics entirely is also a valid argument; writers, painters, even musicians are all affected by politics in some way. However, that is not an excuse to over-politicize everything one comes into contact with, which what Said seems to do. I agree with David Denby that many “critics” try to inflate texts with their own political agendas, using them to prove certain ideological points that they have an interest in proving. Approaching a text already knowing what one wants to get out of it is close-minded and intellectually dishonest, and it does seem that often times “open-minded intellectuals” are just the opposite, close-minded and intellectually dishonest.

There are also a few points that Said makes in a very nonchalant way that I think are debatable, for example, that America is an imperial power. There are very clear distinctions between that way America has gotten involved in other countries and how other imperial powers (Macedonia, Rome, the Chinese, the Mongols, the Muslims, the Ottomans, England etc) dealt with lands that they conquered and were under their sovereignty.

The main gist of his argument also is that there is a way to study the perspective of one general mindset or culture’s towards a radically different one. Not such an amazing new discovery. But of course he does insert some personal politics in the end.

M. Butterfly

In the beginning of the play Gallimard’s character portrays the West and Song represents the Other (East). The westerners are portrayed as “foreign devils” but the author makes Gallimard a sympathetic character. Especially at the end, a complete reversal takes place in the cultural aspect. It’s really unclear to me why was the cultural superiority reversed? The sexism and that the idealization of a woman is wrong was successfully depicted by Hwang. Through Song’s and Gallimard’s relationship the author illustrated the embedded mentality of western men towards Oriental women and the relationship of the West to the East. Gallimard’s distorted vision of the Orient, “Of slender women… who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. Who are born and raised to be the perfect women. Who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally. It is the vision that has become my life.” comes crashing at the end of the play. Nothing ideal can survive in the harsh reality of the human truth, which is confirmed by Gallimard’s tragic ending.

Conrad's The Heart of Darkness deals with a man's journey into the congo and his realization of the hypocrisy of the people, which surround him. Marlow can not fully trust anyone because what he believes, he finds out is not what is true. Marlow's character reminds of Michael's in The Deer Hunter because they both are innocent of the world's realities. Not until they take a journey and are subjected to pure evil human spirit do are they able to transform. Once you're innocence is robbed from you through demoralization you are not able to remain the same and view the world as you once did.

conquerors “gone native” in Conrad and Cimino

In considering Conrad’s Heart of Darkness alongside Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, it’s interesting to think about the elasticity of this narrative template of the white subject’s flight into Nature and encounter with, or transformation by, some mythicized dark Other, an encounter apotheosized in both works by the figure of the white who has “gone native.” Kurtz in Heart of Darkness and Nick in The Deer Hunter have both “step[ped] over the threshold of the invisible,” as Conrad puts it, and adopted the ways of being and knowing found on the far side of that threshold. This uncanny transformation of the white subject through a palpably eroticized immersion in the sphere of the other—Kurtz has fallen under the “mute spell of the wilderness that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts,” while Nick is conducted by the sulfurous Frenchman into a netherworld of vice—endows each character with mystical properties even as it leaves them, to the narrator’s eye, deranged beyond remedy. Kurtz wields an occult power over the indigenous Congolese, and Nick, as was pointed out in class discussion, manages to elude the fatal bullet across years of gambling with Russian roulette, until the final confrontation with Mike. Yet both works present “going native” as a one-way street. Kurtz could no more be reintegrated to Victorian London society than Nick could rejoin the dozy, complacent routines of his Allegheny hometown; for them “the threshold of the invisible” is also the point of no return. It remains for the normative white protagonists, Mike in The Deer Hunter and Marlow in Heart of Darkness, to impart some hint of the estranging effects upon the socialized subject of the “spell of the wilderness.” Once back in London, Marlow confides, “I found myself . . . resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams.” Cimino, by contrast, uses the device of Steven’s dismemberment and psychological breakdown to literalize the existential breach permanently separating him, Mike, and Nick from their community, which remains tenaciously innocent of both “The horror! The horror!” absorbed by the men and of the radical instability of self and subject dramatized by Kurtz and Nick.

"Heat of Darkenss"

“Heart of Darkness” set perhaps as a tell of colonial enterprise, it demonstrates the cruelty and harsh aspects of slavery and torture. Conrad describes this journey through Marlow as a narrator, revealing the true aspects of colonial slavery. We see Kurtz as an influent person whose life is built in a system based on opportunism. He is conscious in the way he demeans the African population, and forces them into work. Kurtz as seen through time and history, thinks this transformation can be achieved through slavery and inequality; believing that this would be the optimum way of introducing Africans to what he considers a civilized society. This attempt of transformation or conversion, as mention is another blog is a cruel ideology where color and race is embraced, where white people are look as intellectual individuals who have been given the right to rule and judge believes. “Heart Of Darkness” exposes this issue that is still latent in many cultures today.