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6/26/2013

In his latest blog posting, “The Blog as Literary Genre,” Kevin Eagan of Critical Margins asks, “Is the blog, in its mature form, a literary genre?” He believes, ultimately, that the blog is “a literary form or genre” and, although the blog “does more than an essay because of its playfulness, [i]n its play, it can move between personal diary entry and sophisticated essay with ease.” I agree and disagree with Kevin; but, above all I appreciate his blog’s prompt and call for a defined understanding of, and purpose for the blog, especially from one who is already a leader within our new generation of literary scholars.

Writer, editor, blogger Kevin Eagan

In full disclosure, I must admit that Eagan is my former university mate; our graduate tours overlapped at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. And so, it is with great pleasure and respect and seriousness that I approach Kevin’s question. First, let us address some terminology. I am a little uneasy with some of the descriptors used by Kevin. For example, what is a “mature blog?” Elsewhere in his posting, Eagan juxtaposes the seemingly untidy blog against the “tidy” novel and writes of blog postings evolving into “longer, more thoughtful articles” (italics mine). I think that using such descriptors destroy the concept of the blog and work towards confining the blog to an area where ideas of hierarchy begin to dominate and democracy begins to dissipate. To think of the blog as genre confines and destroys it; to think of the blog as literary form offers more freedom.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
(SIUE)

As literary form, the blog already, always exists as what it is: written poetry or prose, made from letters, of a fiction or non-fiction distinction. To start speaking of the mature blog or tidy blog or longer, thoughtful blog is to begin to make valuations in relationship to particular blogs. To make such valuations would make one a critic of blogs. And do not get me wrong, we are trained to discuss the excellence of form regarding literature and its expression and whether or not the literature expresses universal ideas and interests, but the blog should not be confined to a genre: it is a literary pharmakon, a remedy and a poison. It should remain as such!

When it comes to the anxiety that Kevin implicitly betrays regarding the nature and role and purpose of the blog, the blog itself is both remedy and poison to his problem. The blog is problematic and somewhat poisonous to the Academy from which Kevin and our ilk spring; the blog is poisonous to the hierarchy of genres and forms so analogous to the teaching of literature from ivory towers on high. At the same time, the blog is a remedy to any and all concerns and anxieties related to and engendered by a need to categorize literature(s). It removes such concerns. As literary pharmakon, the blog’s

‘essence’…lies in the way in which, having no stable essence, no ‘proper’ characteristics, it is not, in any sense (metaphysical, physical, chemical, alchemical) of the word, a substance…It is rather the prior medium in which differentiation in general is produced. (Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, 125-6)

The blog should remain our literary tabula rasa; it should be blank every time we approach it; it should be a tool of literature, but not controlled by the structural rules of existing literatures. It should always, already remain ambivalent to literature. And, its ambivalence should

constitute the medium in which opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links them among themselves, reverses them or makes one side cross over into the other (soul/ body, good/ evil, inside/ outside, memory/ forgetfulness, speech/ writing, [poison/remedy].).…The pharmakon is the movement, the locus, and the play: (the production of) difference. It is the différance of difference. It holds in reserve, in its undecided shadow and vigil, the opposites and the differends that the process of discrimination will come to carve out. Contradictions and pairs of opposites are lifted from the bottom of this diacritical, differing, deferring, reserve. (Derrida 127)

Allow the blog its free flowing, democratic nature. To place it within a genre, to make it the generic, robs the blog of its characteristic of instantaneous, always new creation. A blog is a place where thought experiments, like this one that I am having right now, can freely take place: a place where thought experiments can take place and where the arbiters of style and syntax and grammar are not welcome…unless they are.

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Where Does Mimi Fit in All of This? – African American female novelists and the queering of African American masculinity

6/24/2013

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Hello, world! Welcome to the first official posting of the Tarrell Rodney Campbell site. I guess I am a full-time blogger now! I was recently involved in a conversation, on Facebook (what has happened to man?), centered on Jesmyn Ward’s award-winning novel, Salvage the Bones. The conversation was initiated by Kelly Virella, founder, publisher and editor of Dominion of New York - the digital magazine for creative and forward-thinking black people who love New York and want to make the most of their lives there. Be sure to check out the Dominion of New York site: http://www.dominionofnewyork.com. Our conversation went something like this:

Kelly Virella: So has anyone read “Salvage the Bones,” last year's National Book Award winner? If so, what did you think? I just finished the first chapter.

R.L.N.: I have not, although I should considering I have every intention of [s] macking down Jesmyn Ward next time I see her.

S.T.: Hard to read (subject matter, not technique/style). Her descriptive voice is so far ahead of the game, that I felt I was receiving a master class in psychogeography. The way she uses place, in relation to character...it was too emotionally heavy to read again, but I'm glad I read it.

N.H.J.: I have. I found the language beautiful if at times overwrought. It was a book that weighed heavily on the soul, pleasurable but taxing.

T.R.: it's on the list

Tarrell Campbell: I am actually using it in my dissertation (hoped to get an interview with Mimi). I found it a fascinating read, with regards to catastrophe literature. I am exploring the male characters as developed from a female authors point of view. will update you on my findings

*****

M.F.: Tarrell- I'd like to read what you write about catastrophe lit; AND if you happen to write on that male character development by female authors, I'm interested in checking that out too. -MF.

Tarrell Campbell: Okeedokee...I will get something together that I won't feel ashamed to share in public...give me a minute.

And that brings us to today. In response to MF’s prompt, I want to discuss the nature and direction of my research regarding Salvage. I am interested in whether or not Ward, as an African American female novelist of the twenty-first century, continues in the tradition of some African American female novelists of the twentieth century with regards to queering conceptions of African American masculinity. In his work, Masculinist Impulses: Toomer, Hurston, Black Writing, and Modernity, Nathan Grant suggests that black women writers of the twentieth century are

interested…in showing their [black men’s] errant natures [and desire to] resurrect black manhood by complicating his nature beyond his ordinary depictions, even those mistakenly chosen for himself. [For example, the representation of the] complications [of some] black male characters developed by black women writers, [such as Paul D in Beloved] interrogate some of the inner reaches of [black feminism] to aid in creating the discourse of a black masculinity responsive to feminism’s political and social impetus. (17-18)

I want to know: Does Ward continue in this tradition? If so, to what degree? What does adherence to, or, deviation from, such a tradition insinuate about the direction of the literature of African American female novelists in the early twenty-first century? Do Ward’s representations of African American men, manhood and masculinity in Salvage the Bones aid in developing a discourse/discourses of black masculinity responsive to the political and social impetus of any feminisms?

To begin, let us all develop common ground regarding the word queer. In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler does an excellent job of explicating the word queer and its changing use. In describing the use and meaning of the term in her analysis of Nella Larsen’s Passing, Butler declares:

the periodic use of the term “queering”…where queering is linked to the eruption of anger into speech such that speech is stifled and broken…the sudden gap in the surface of language [referred to] as “queer” or as “queering”… it seems…did not [always]…mean homosexual, but it did encompass an array of meanings associated with the deviation from normalcy which might well include the sexual. Its meanings include: of obscure origin, the state of feeling ill or bad, not straight, obscure, perverse, eccentric. As a verb-form, “to queer” has a history of meaning: to quiz or ridicule, to puzzle, but also, to swindle and to cheat…forbid[den]… to mention…race: described as “queer”… When… a passing black woman… hears a racial slur against blacks… “from [the woman’s] direction came a queer little suppressed sound, a snort or a giggle”…something queer, something short of proper conversation, passable prose…[a] longing to travel to Brazil is described as an “old, queer, unhappy restlessness”, suggesting a longing to be freed of propriety… queering is what upsets and exposes (Butler 176-177)

With regards to African American female novelists of the twenty-first century, I am interested in how the representations and characterizations of their male characters reflect a queering of African American masculinity; more specifically: to what degree do Ward’s representations of Esch’s father and brothers – Randall, Skeetah, Junior - and Esch’s romantic love interest, Manny, upset and expose concepts of African American middle-class patriarchal masculinity that the boys and men may have chosen for themselves? Do the representations of any of the African American male characters in Salvage reflect an understating of, or intuition reflecting, concepts of black masculinity that interrogate some of the inner reaches of black feminism(s) to aid in creating the discourse of a black masculinity responsive to feminism’s political and social impetus?

Lastly, I believe that Naturalistic literature and catastrophe/disaster literature function similarly. Audiences are asked/expected/guided to understand the actions and motives of characters in light of the extremely powerful structural forces that control the milieu in which the characters find themselves in the literature. With that perspective in mind, to what degree has disaster literature become a tool, in the twenty-first century, in exposing, that is queering, structural inequities and inequalities that exist in the United States? More specifically, in the South – with regards to black men? How do such structural forces delimit the practice of middle-class patriarchal masculinity for black men? How does the literature reflect such a delimiting structural force?

I remember when I first met Jesmyn “Mimi” Ward. We were both undergraduate students at Stanford University; we both did our Work Study under the stewardship of Dr. Ewart Thomas and, then Ph.D. student, Dr. Angela Cole in the university’s psychology department. I never would have thought that over a decade later, I would seriously, in the manner of a scholar, research and investigate and analyze imaginary worlds and people created by little ole Mimi. She is little no more. She has earned her place as a literary giant. Her voice is powerful. Her voice is welcomed. Her voice is queering. And in these days, these times, when so many men are destroying themselves, their families, their spouses and mates – in the furtherance of living up to and adhering to the criteria of middle-class patriarchal masculinity – exposure of the queerness associated with such criteria and exposure of how men may mistakenly choose concepts of masculinity that are indeed harmful, may be exactly what is needed. And for that Mimi, we – men – say: thank you!

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Where Does Mimi Fit in All of This? – African American female novelists and the queering of African American masculinity

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