From: Natasa Tucev tucev@tesla.rcub.bg.ac.yu
Neil wrote:
No. He might subvert our expectations of the way in which the power relation is expressed, but he does not subvert the power relation itself. He can't, any more than the cowboy can stop being a cowboy and become an indian. He is trapped there. As are we all.
This is not true. We are not irrevocably trapped within our social and cultural roles.
I'm afraid I believe that we are, but at the same time those roles are not fixed. They shift over time. Sticking with the sexism line, there has been a dramatic shift in male-female power relations over the last three decades, altering the ideologically sanctioned balance of power, or indeed obscuring it in many cases. Not that that has put an end to sexism, but things do seem to be moving in the right direction.
How do these power nodes shift? Probably not of their own accord. They are moved by people, by the cumulative effect of millions upon millions of thoughts, words and actions which challenge the ideological norm. The ideological norm itself thus changes. Politically correct language that was once ridiculed is now the de facto standard. (The Two Ronnies did a sketch in the mid-70s about non-sexist language. Repeated twenty years later, it was simply unfunny. To talk about a 'chairperson' had become not just commonplace, it had become the expected norm.)
One's whole being is not contained within one's culture. A whole book by L. Trilling, 'Beyond Culture' is dedicated to this question and it proves very convincingly that there is a residue of personality, however small, over which general culture doesn't hold sway, and which provides a standpoint for resisting this culture.
I haven't read Trilling (nor indeed even heard of her/im - see what I mean, 20 years ago I'd have just assumed 'him') and I'm hardly in a position to argue with his/er work. But: One's whole being not contained within one's culture? Yes, I can believe that. But one's whole being is not how one relates to the rest of society, which is where the ideological norms act on one. Take the cowboy/indian scenario I mentioned earlier. Ideological norm has it that cowboy shoots indian and massacres his buffalo.
Scenario 1: Nasty cowboy shoots indian and massacres buffalo. He is going along with the norm, and the norm consequently does not change. Scenario 2: Nice cowboy asks indian if he can shoot a buffalo or two and offers to pay adequate compensation. He is going against the norm, but the norm is again not changed by that single act, because the next cowboy to ride over the hill is more than likely going to be a nasty one. If *lots of other cowboys* start being nice, then yes, the norm will change. They might be inspired by the sterling example of the original nice cowboy, in which case we can say he has made a measurable impact - over time. But *at the moment* of him being nice, the norm doesn't shift. He is trapped - *at that time* - within the role allotted to him, however ardently he resists it.
The indian, used to nasty cowboys, might shoot him before he gets a chance to be nice. Actually this happens all too often. Because nice as he might be, he is still a cowboy, and he carries with him all the ideological baggage labelled 'Mr Cowboy - Nasty'. No matter that all his bags might be empty - the indian still sees the bags, not their contents.
Because what matters is not what the cowboy knows is in his bags, it's what the indian expects to be in there, and indeed what other cowboys expect them to contain. It is those expectations that trap people within ideological power structures, and any challenge or subversion - taken individually - does not alter those expectations. Cumulatively, the impact can be quite drastic.
(A good example of this is Orwell's W.Smith, who cannot compare his
wretched
living conditions with anything different in his experience, but feels in his bones and his stomach that everything around him is wrong.)
Yeah well, he really shifted a lot of ideological norms, didn't he?
I disagree again. If you're looking for ideological values within the text you cannot ignore the characters. A lot of what an author is consciously
or
unconsciously trying to tell us is conveyed through his characters.
True. What I meant was, ignore the characters as characters, but don't ignore them as representations of an ideological position. See them for *what* they stand for, rather than *who* they are.
EG: Avon - educated, civilised, visitor, knowing, scientific. And male, of course. Meegat - uneducated, primitive, native, ignorant, spiritual. And female, by some strange quirk of coincidence.
These different aspects of superiority/inferiority are (in this case) largely mutually reinforcing. We can choose to see Avon/Meegat as an essentially male/female interaction (which seems to have been Wendy's take), with Avon's male superiority enhanced by his education, civilisation, scientific acumen etc. Or we might go for the civilisation angle (essentially the basis of my keg marxist effort), where his maleness serves only to throw his civilised nature into starker contrast with Meegat's female primitiveness.
Or we could say that his education, maleness and scientific acumen (taken together as a mutually reinforcing whole) account for his superiority as a visitor over Meegat's native status. This is something that really does need to be accounted for, otherwise any old passing tourist is going to sort out all the problems in your home town. Meegat really ought to have an edge here, being one of the locals, but her native status is actually associated with all the other things that make her inferior and hence it itself becomes a signifier of inferiority.
Superiority or otherwise is largely grounded in ideology, rather than actuality. The relative superiority of men over women (or vice versa) is the one most obviously open to question, but so are the others. Is civilised really 'better' than primitive? Or science 'better' than the spiritual? (Obviously I have my own opinions on this one.) Educated over uneducated might have some merit, but then we've all heard of the brilliant academic who can't tie his own shoelaces.
Avon in Deliverance is a nice cowboy. But still a cowboy. Meegat is the indian. The rocket is therefore no longer a phallic object but a huge herd of buffalo being packed off to a nice safe sanctuary.
Neil
"Give me a home where the buffalo roam And I'll show you a house with a very messy carpet." Bill Oddie