Anne McClintock Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, Sexuality in the Colonial Contest Intro, Chapter 1 and 5
Ann Laura Stoler, Chapter 1, “Intimidations of Empire: Predicaments of the Tactile and Unseen,” in Stoler (ed.) Haunted by Empire
Frantz Fanon Black Skin White Masks Intro, Chapter 1 and 5
Ann Curthoys, “We’ve Just Started Making National Histories, and You Want us to Stop Already?” in Antoinette Burton (ed.) After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and Through the Nation
Adele Perry, “Nation, Empire and the Writing of History in Canada,” in Christopher Dummit and Michael Dawson (eds) Contesting Clio’s Craft: New Directions and Debates in Canadian History
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3 Q’s from this week’s readings:
ReplyDelete1) Is there a risk that Stoler’s ‘haunting’ metaphor, while connecting imperial/colonial history to the present simultaneously relegate the lineages of peoples, cultures and languages, territory/alization to a finished past (presumably those that do the haunting are passed/past, ie: ‘dead indians’) rather than a living history/present in which colonialism may or may not be ‘post’ (i.e.: first nations peoples)?
2) McClintock’s proposes three key concepts: violent containment, anachronistic space, and the co-articulating categories of race, gender, and class. How might these concepts work with/support/counter/contest the project of transnational history?
3) Curthoy writes, “All these histories tell stories about the past as a way of pondering the present. All create the emblematic convict woman to suit their own times….” (83). While Curthoy’s piece centres on Australian history, her analysis is applicable to Canadian histories. How, in our current writings and re-tellings of histories, are we suiting our own times?
1. One of the opening quotes of Chapter 5 of McClintock's work is the Unilever slogan, "Soap is Civilization." How do the visual advertisements for soap throughout the chapter play to the biological classifications of race used by "colonizers" in this period?
ReplyDelete2. McClintock, in her introduction, implies that because there are different kinds of colonialism - European, Arabic, cultural, military, and otherwise - and there are therefore different kinds of post-colonial thinking. How does this tie into Curthoy's idea that "the sense of a distinctive Australian past is indeed rather fragile, still in the making" because it is considered to be a "new" country? (84)
3. How could Perry's main through-line - that Canadian historians moved from framing the country within a British context to a North American one, to a potentially transnational one - change if French histories of Canada were taken into account?
1) What are the ways in which soap becomes a context for a cleansing and civilizing mission, as both a physical commodity, but a spiritual, or ideological commodity as well? How has the Victorian fetishization of soap served as a narrative between the "governing" and the "governed" of colonial societies?
ReplyDelete2) Throughout Perry and Curthoy's readings, we can trace a definitive line from colonial and post-colonial, to national, and eventually to transnational discourses within Canadian history. Would it be possible - or even prudent - for us as scholars to trace this line into a potential or foreseeable future discourses or interpretations of "Canadian" history?
1. Stoler argues in her firs chapter that "matters of the intimate are critical sites for the consolidation of colonial power". How has the United States' post-9/11 re-invigoration of their imperial agenda impacted the policing of intimate relationships, both in North America and abroad?
ReplyDelete2. McClintock makes some interesting points about the nature of post-colonial history and its tendency to oversimplify histories in the interests of making fruitful comparisons between different areas of the developing world. What are the implications of this argument for the field of transnational history in general? Can we engage in studying cross-border history while still respecting the integrity and inherent value in each individual history on its own?
1. Both Curthoys and Perry trace the historiography of their respective 'nations' in order to demonstrate the emergence of transnational history within Canada and Australia. What are similarities among their calls for increased study across boundaries? What are some areas where their arguments differ (either because of national context or otherwise)? What can these differences reveal in terms of 'doing transnational history' in different contexts?
ReplyDelete2. As alluded to by Stoler: what are the connections between postcolonialism and 'intimacy'? How are postcolonial questions thus used to frame issues surrounding 'intimate' realms of history? Is postcolonialism a necessary or required lens through which to deconstruct intimacy?
3. Taking Fanon within the historical context in which it was written, what does this book reveal in terms of issues brought up by the other authors? For example, how can this book be placed within the historiographical contexts articulated by both Stoler and Curthoys, if at all? What influence does this type of text have within contemporary transnational history?
1. Perry writes that “the fiction of the nation is always taxing to maintain, especially in colonial contexts.”, that the reality of empire and colonization “chips away” at claims to totality and coherence for the Canadian nation-state. This might be particularly apparent for Canadianists, but is it more universal than that? What national history could be written without grappling with that country's role as colonizer or colonized or both?
ReplyDelete2. Near the end of Chapter One, McClintock, comparing Luce Irigaray and Homi Bhabha, discusses “ambivalence” of performance. She sees mimicry as sometimes subversive (ie. some drag), but sometimes not. Fanon also discusses imitation, but sees it mainly as a sort of tragedy, in which the original is lost and the hegemonic (whiteness) is never achieved. Does mimicry gain subversive power when it is intentional? When it is used ironically? When, as McClintock suggests, its use of ambivalence is more all-encompassing and less focused on a single category of race/gender? When and how can agency be found in ambiguity?
1. Perry observes that George Wrong published histories that firmly situated Canada as a part of the British empire at a time when it was politically prudent for him to do so. Is the same true of our current propensity to weave a transnational narrative into our own work? In other words, is it possible that the trend towards writing "transnational history" (whatever that may mean, and based on our discussion in seminar last week, it's clear that a singular definition of the word is nearly impossible to nail down) is just a passing historiographical fad?
ReplyDelete2. Our seminar is comprised of people from a variety of disciplines and academic backgrounds, and as such we each bring a unique perspective to the table. McClintock's work is interesting in our context because while Imperial Leather is considered a classic text by many historians, her analysis is different than that of preceding histories about Empire because of her own background and training. Her use of "psychoanalysis," literary critique, and analysis of art and images sets her work apart, and demonstrates how a non-historian can contribute meaningfully to the historiography of an area as seemingly-stagnant "The British Empire." Fanon also uses a great deal of psychoanalysis in his work, but to a different end. How does their work compare, and more importantly, how does each piece affect our understanding of what constitutes "history"?
1. In Ann Curthoys, We’ve Just Started Making National Histories, and you want us to stop already?, Curthoys states that, “This quiet history (Australian History) was best explained by emphasizing Australian history as a product of British History”. In many respects I find that national histories are often linked/tied or merely a side note to the histories of its European colonizer. Though Curthoys indicates that this trend is changing in regards to Australian History the phenomenon is still very much present. This leads me to wonder that if National Histories are to a large extent products of their colonizers history then do transnational histories risk falling into the same trap? Would most transnational histories merely become by products or side notes to well established or primary patterns of transnational ebbs and flows?
ReplyDelete2. In Ann McClintock’s Imperial Leather she identifies “a crisis in the idea of linear historical process”, signalled by the widespread, seemingly “ritualistic”, use of “post” words in current culture, such as postcolonialism, postmodernism, post structuralism....etc. This is turn as led us to orient ourselves in a world of binaries when looking at history through a colonialism/postcolonialism lens. What would be a more constructive lens to view both history and the present with? Though McClintock believes that this perspective is destructive, is a new viewpoint realistic?
McClintock speaks about the fetishizing of land as a female as a negative phenomenon. She makes broad claims about the intentions of the men who spoke of the land this way. Is there an alternative way to reclaim the connect of the land as female that is empowering?
ReplyDeleteIn Fanon's writing, the use of the vocabulary of the dominate culture in which he has been educated is evident. In which ways are we entrenched in the academic world in the same way?
History as written in English is one way of viewing strongly held beliefs about Canada as a nation. How can similar beliefs be seen in current performances such as the opening and closing ceremonies of the olympic games? Are these notions of nation still is in the past? Or are they still useful and marketable to an international audience?
Fanon claimed Sartre was in error to believe that the Négritude movement (a collection of black francophone intellectuals rejecting colonial racism), would cease to exist in a society without races. What does it mean that a movement formed around a common black identity would survive even when racial categories no longer exist? It may be that Négritude fights to reclaim the history of blacks, "those who never explored the seas or the skies," a project that continues even in a society without races. But is that a sufficient explanation?
ReplyDeleteWhat does it mean to use psychoanalysis in the pursuit of knowledge about the past? Is the focus on the intimate ushering in the use of psychoanalysis as an important aspect of the histories of empire? And which reading of Freud or Lacan are we using?
1) Stoler's writing seems to be arguing that transnational history is a collapse, or perhaps progression from, of binary systems. She outlines the ways the public sphere meets the private, visible meets invisible, and how races and classes intersect. Has this always been the case, or is it a mostly postmodern perspective?
ReplyDelete2) Is Perry's assertion that Canada is unlikely to decolonize accurate? If so, is it something we should seek to deconstruct or accept as part of the national make-up? Is it a bad thing, or should all 'fiction of nations' be adamantly rewritten as 'fact'?
3) In Curthoys article, she documents a move from focus on colonizers to self-actualization. In Australia they go from having the indoctrinated fear of Asia, so a growing desire to trade with them. Is decolonization the move from politics, the links to empire, to geography, and full realization of physical location?
1. Do historical projects concerned with gender and race serve to uphold notions of national historical unity or should they be viewed as a central tool in the deconstruction of national boundaries and collective identity? Consider the example of histories of the convict woman in Australia, which suggest both a history unique to the Australian setting, while also revealing the shared experience of gendered and sexualized colonialism around the world.
ReplyDelete2. Frantz Fanon, in his work Black Skin, White Masks, takes a psychoanalytic approach to understanding the experience of race, colonialism and empire. In particular he focuses on the experience of the colonized. However, many historians fail to treat Fanon’s work as a scientific study despite his emphasis on the psychological effects of colonization. How does this illuminate the various connections between race and the writing of History? How does Fanon’s focus on the colonized body help to emphasize the transnational nature of the colonial experience?
1. With respect to the idea of national and transnational histories - did the trend towards writing history as transnational grow out of a sense of completion of "national projects"? Did national histories establish for a given country a national identity, a shared story of the past as a kind of baseline or way of establishing a common understanding in order to be able to move past it and look transnationally. As the SNID presenter Dr. Rinaldo Walcott asserted regarding the civil rights movement - that the success of the movement was the ability of African Americans to then be able to turn inward for evaluation. Is it the opposite when thinking about transnational history? Is national history something that needed to be done to allow for the consideration of history on a transnational level?
ReplyDelete2. The definition of a republic (according to dictionary.com) is "a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them". Given this, what can be said about the statement (quoted in Stoler) of Michael Ignatieff that reads..."in becoming an empire, the US risks losing its soul as a republic."?