Hi All,
So this is our first time blogging on a text for class. I'm looking forward to getting your reactions. I know it's a long essay, but try to read and respond to this post.
In his Eighteenth-century satire, "The True Born Englishman" Daniel Defoe pokes fun at the invention of a 'pure' Englishness when (historically and biologically) this is absurd. Here's an excerpt:
"Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het'rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend'ring off-spring quickly learn'd to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus'd betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv'd all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen."
Building on what we've read in Said, Anderson, and Nyman about how nationality, race, and community is imagined I'd like you to think about how this applies to our own American experience. Obviously, it's different, and I'd like you to take this difference into account. While I'd like you to refer to the ideas in the text for this week, this post invites you to speculate about Americanness. You're welcome to discuss any questions, either contemporary or 18th/19th century. Some examples might be: What is an American? How do we define ourselves? Against whom? Who and what do we point to as a point of origin?
I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
--Dan
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8 comments:
I found Nyman’s essay to speak a truth that many of us, Americans, neglect to realize. In the article, Under English Eyes, Nyman states that “the construction of any identity (sexual, national, gender) requires an Other” (7). Thinking about the question Dan poses, “What is it to be an American?” , the only educated answer I can give is an answer that defines myself against the “un-American”. Thus an American is to a person who is born on the soil of the United States of America. We are a country that is full of hope, promise and democracy. I believe the idea of being America was even more engrained into the citizens of the United States’ mind after September 11. Due to the fact that people begin to try and prove that they were patriotic. In the mist of being loyal to our country we as Americans began to view anyone from the East as “the rude and not-too-well-washed people on the Continent (who) are definite Others who cannot be trusted or admired but need to be feared and treated with contempt and revulsion because of their strange appearances, habits and appetites” (1). During that time period Americans acted in a similar manner to the British when they wanted to disassociate themselves from the rest of Europe. We began to treat Americans that were decedents from the East as if they did not belong, as if they were the Other. Personally, I feared for my safety when ever I came into contact with anyone who was not white, black or Mexican. I understand that is very ignorant on my part because only a small group of people where responsible for the attack and I blamed the entire East. In a way, as an African American it felt good not to be the “other” and have an imaginary nationalism and be just an American. For the first time we were not separated from being American because of our skin tone, we were apart of the superior nation of America and allowed the East to be inferior.
Initially, America was founded as a refuge for groups of the Other—Puritans and prisoners. Otherness is different for American versus England and Europe because we were formed as a nation of Others, and we embrace our sense of Otherness. We pride ourselves on being a melting pot. Our norm is otherness. We esteem ourselves above other nations because of this factor; national unity is constructed by the opposite of unity--diversity. In a sense, the United States has reversed the concept of the Other because we’ve made the rest of the world into the Other by embracing our Otherness. Anderson believes that the representation of the imagined has real effects, and this is obvious for the case of American influence abroad. The United States is an international power house, and the international community (whether they favor us or not) recognizes this idea.
Today, we identify as a diverse nation, a country filled with opportunity. America started out as a blank slate of opportunity and abundance—or was it? While an essential part of present day Americanism, the concept of the American dream is an excellent example of the underlying construct of Americanism. American values have been molded by the discourse of our nation. Our laws, literature, media, and education construct the notion that the United States is a place of opportunity and abundance. Our nation by little means can be viewed as a cornucopia of fortune; however, this is an intangible representation that is ingrained into not only our society but also the societies of other nations.
Throughout Nyman's essay my thoughts kept drifting back to thoughts about America, even before I read the blog. America "ceaselessly reconfirm(s) its own identity and individuality by finding...reverse selves, the dark mirror-images..." (16-17) in the world around it. All people and nations base their own identities on the differences they note in others and in themselves. America is no different. To me, we seem to mirror Britain in many ways. We do see ourselves as superior, as the conqueror, the civilized. Whether we learned that trait from Britain itself or if our nation is just that similar I don't know. Maybe all nations see themselves that way. As other bloggers and the author himself said, "the construction of any identity...requires an Other" (7), and the easy way, and maybe the only way to define oneself, is to say what they aren't. So what is an American? Such a broad definition requires a depth of thought that I'm not sure I can muster. We are a nation of individualist materialists who are from so many different regions, ethnicities, and cultures, that literally to define us all would take months or years to do it properly. We are a melting pot of people from almost every country on the globe. Anyone who lives in America as long as they believe in freedom, and liberty and justice for all, and don't want to secretly sabotage the country, could be an American to me.
I consider an American one who lives in the United States, which is a country (imagined community) full of people who follow common laws and doctrines as stated in the Constitution and other sources. Generally speaking, we define ourselves as hard workers who earn their place in society. By comparison to the Japanese work ethic, however, which produces some of the top products on the market, including but not limited to Honda/Toyota and Sony, the American commerce seems lazy and unorganized. However, by comparison to those who live in poverty stricken areas of Central America, the American society has a very solid and stable standard of living. As for an origin of the American culture, I personally trace the ideas of individual/independent ideals of interdependent sufficiency to the first settlers, who depended on the Native Americans for support while thinking that they were the creators of this great new world.
To an extent, the above description of American men compares to Defoe’s notion of Englishmen in that the roots are discussed but may not be easily traced. For example, the Englishman’s “gend’ring off-spring quickly learn’d to bow” shows the image of the Englishman as a proper person. Defoe discusses blood heritage of Englishmen. This ties into Nyman’s criticism because just as the blood must exist for a race to relate to one another so must the existence of people in a close space exist for a nation to occur.
The section we covered of Nyman’s criticism included Introduction: Writing England and/or Europe. This breaks down into three main parts: (1) Europe and the British Imagination (discussing English as a distinguished nation/ for example: p. 5 points out the contrast both writers Douglas and Lawrence make between Italy and England); (2) Imagining the European Other (describing both the individual identity [p.7 with Kristeva’s reference of the “foreigner” within us] and the national identity [which is described with “disguised concerns” (p.8) and “English imaginings of Europe” (p.9) to stress the image/representation of the Other in Europe] and essentially showing, with the help of examples of British authors and 19th century critics, that England is split up when written about and clearly is seen as a contrast to other nations (p.26); (3) Envisioning England (showing the difficulty in finding the cultural causes of England’s national identity by deciding whether the term “British” is all encompassing (p.27) or whether the communities of others may be included/excluded (p.29); this section also explores education leading to identity and space, for example, the effect of rural space in England).
The idea of the "other" that has been presented in the Said, Nyman, and Anderson texts is a concept that I have never really given thought to. However, the more I read on the idea, the more I realize that it is a construct that has been used not only to create national identity, but to create a sense of superiority to other nations or groups.
So what is an American? Legally it is a person who is born in America, born to American parents, or someone who becomes naturalized. However, it is also a shared standard of beliefs about ourselves that juxtaposes ourselves against other nations. We need to construct an "other" to determine what we are. A figure to look at and understand what we are not. It seems that without the "other", no nation could truly establish themselves because there would exist no variation which to measure itself against.
I don't know if we can answer what an American truly is because we are such a diverse nation. It is like Anderson pointed out, we will never be able to meet everyone with whom we share a national identity. So even though we identify ourselves all as Americans due to birth or naturalization, one American's concept of an American might contradict another person's American ideal. Furthermore, without the construct of the "other", which is more times than not made on the idea that we are superior, the idea of an American can be more convoluted. It is all really making me think about how I identify myself as an American, and if I have been debasing other nations or groups of people to do so.
Nyman's essay is a very interesting account of "otherness" and has allowed me to reflect further on idea's that have interested me for quite some time. Nyman quotes Bhabha's essay that "to exist is to be called into being in relation to an otherness, its look or locus" (7). This brings me to the idea of evil being simply the absence of good; however, it is much more than that. My point is that however, to have something exist in the first place one must acknowledge either an absence of something or a comparison. No man is an island. So it seems my thoughts really do not make much sense here so I will go on further to make a remark on Novak's question about "What is an American? How do we define ourselves? Against whom? Who and what do we point to as a point of origin?" An American is someone who is born into a world of opportunity. Generation after generation it is our born duty to not only learn where we came from, but more importantly, continue paving the road to erase prejudice, racism, and hatred among men and women. The human mind is quite easily molded to many different ideals; thus, it is our duty as American's to mold the minds of others in the right direction. We define ourselves as "the land of the free"; however, Ishmael of Moby Dick puts it better when he laments, "who ain't a slave?" (Melville). This comment brings me to my thought that although we are American and considered to be free, perhaps we need to stop defining ourselves into such tight constrictions in that we are unable to reach a higher level of the human mind. To the point of origin that American's direct themselves to, usually people would say that we came over from abroad and started a "new world" thanks to our European ancestors. Although this is true in a broad sense, I look to the world as a whole as the locus or origin of Americaness.
The essays by Nyman, Anderson, and Said all pose eye-opening ideas on national pride, superiority, inclusiveness, and exclusiveness. As I read Nyman's essay in particular, I felt it very easy to relate the British feeling of isolation and superiority to that of America's own feeling. Nyman claims that the British citizens look at the other countries on its continent as just that- Others. To the British mind the Others are inferior and sub par to Britain in every way, be it cultural, economical, or political. Even though they are located on the same continent and are neighboring countries, the British people find that there is very little in common to identify with in the Other countries and their different ideas and ways are shunned.
Like the British, Americans also share this outlook on the Other countries that are their neighbors and also share with them the continent of North America. It has been my experience that Americans view the country of Mexico and it’s people as far inferior by all standards. They also view the infiltration of Mexicans into America as extremely damaging to the well being of America, as if our neighbors to our south will taint America’s pureness. The same basic idea, albeit less harsh, also applies to our neighbor to the north, Canada. It seems to be the general thought that Canada never has, and never will, pose any threat to the power of America. While the Canadians are not viewed with quite the same content as Mexicans are, they are not even given much time or thought. Because Americans barely give Canada any thought, they are including them too as an Other that will never be on America’s level.
It is this attitude that has given America the classification of an arrogant and pompous country that is often despised by Others. While America is, in many instances, a country far ahead of Others, it is the attitude with which it views the Others that has earned it the reputation it has today.
Nyman says on page 4 that, " the European Other in its early twentieth-century reincarnation is a historical and cultural phenomenon deeply rooted in the period's pleas for national efficiency and its naturalized sense of British superiority over other races and nations, a process in which the achievements of European high culture remain secondary to discourses." I think that it is easy to compare this to America's actions after 9/11. One thing that truly made us bond after the tragedy was placing blame on unfaced people on the other side of the world. On page seven, the writers says, "In this sense, to become truly English one needs to define oneself in opposition to things and people not-English…" Many Americans felt it was an Us vs Them situation, which again, I felt made Us prouder to be Americans and better Americans because We were banding together against Them, the Evil Ones. It almost came to the point where some people were saying, "If you don't think that we should blow up all of Iraq, you're just not American." This crazy form of group-think became a qualification of being "American" in post-9/11.Just as the British defined themselves as people who were different and better, in their opinion, than the rest of Europe, Americans sometimes define themselves at the country of people who are against and better than the Middle East, the vague stereotype that most Americans have of it.
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