Tuesday, September 9, 2014

After Class: Re-thinking

Now that we are out of class, and broke down the discussion, I feel as if I am beginning to comprehend the argument of Fischer.

Professor Downs asks: 

Power-whose stories are powerful, and how do stories get powerful?

If I reapply that to the Absalom, Absalom! Then I must analyze the rhetor behind the story-telling? What stories are told? 

In the lasting, powerful discourse, the dominant white male “story” is the story that is told (his reasons are valued as the “good reason”).

I believe that there are authors (rhetors) that push back on the dominant story through their own counter narrative. Take A Mercy by Toni Morrison for example: in the novel Morrison pushes back on the dominant story of slavery through a narrative opposing the dominant discourse—she is opposing the idea that that which is greater, prevailingly white, is that which is better. Morrison retells the narrative of a slave through a retelling of the characters understanding of sexuality. 


"I know their tastes. Breasts provide more pleasure than simpler things. Yours are rising too soon…And they see and I see them see. No good follows even if I offered you to one of the boys in the quarter…When the tall man with yellow hair came to dine…His way, I thought, is another way…He never looked at me the way Senhor does. He does not want" (Morrison 190-191).

Morrison’s first distinction between “us and them” when discussing ‘their tastes’ draws upon the un-assimilation of Florens’ mother. She sees a distinction between the dominate culture use of sexuality and her own. The counter narrative is the mothers opposing view to the "known" dominate story of sexuality.

The slaves story is the story that isn't commonly told because of the construction of the dominant culture. 


At the end of this short analysis, I wonder if I am even addressing the same issue as we are discussing in class.


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