view of tree looking up from the ground
trees, mountains beyond
view of trees through trees
(Quickly.)
It’s funny.
I am really not into nature metaphors. Just in general, I find them sort of exploitative, this imposition of a human intellectual framework on trees and animals and mountains and things in a language we’re not sharing with them. And beyond that, there are all sorts of important and insightful critiques of, e.g., the way visual representation of a “pure” or “untouched” landscape relates to sexism and beauty ideals (see Rebecca Solnit), romantically justifies colonialism, and more.
And how from this angle it looks like a swishing skirt, beautiful and sassy and strong all at once, offering me a moment of appreciating femininity (which I admittedly often struggle to appreciate and value).
base of lightning-split tree, which looks like a moving skirt
base of lightning-split tree, taller
I’m thinking: rootedness with movement, rootedness and movement coexisting. Strength with a swish. A violent split, a natural split, endurance, a sweet-sassy lean.
I walk and I see these trees, and boulders, and streams, and layers of mountains like oceans across the valley. Words appear in strings, making meanings that are at once comforting and illuminating and helpful and a threat.
I’m wary of this putting-it-to-words, this imposition of meaning, which feels not a little like theft.
Do I know how to understand or experience or feel without words? Can I put words to these things in a way that is not a reduction, an imposition, solipsism? Is there a way for a white, big-city-dwelling US citizen to temporarily leave the city and walk in the woods and return to the city and sit at a laptop and write about a walked-by tree that is not on some level a colonial gesture?
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April 20th, 2009 at 5:59 pm #
“Is there a way for a white, big-city-dwelling US citizen to temporarily leave the city and walk in the woods and return to the city and sit at a laptop and write about a walked-by tree that is not on some level a colonial gesture?”
Your point is well-taken, but I’m afraid that what you’re talking about is self-censorship. This reads (to me) almost like a caricature of white guilt. I agree that it’s important for people in positions of privilege to be aware of their historical relationship with the Other, but when you get to the point where you’re telling yourself that you can’t impose meaning on the world– in a sense, that you can no longer be human– then, in my opinion, you’ve gone off the deep end.
If you want to take it to its logical conclusion, then you’ve got to admit that all metaphors are a kind of “theft”, all literary devices are essentially violent weapons. I believe this might be true and people much smarter than me have probably already written about this in great detail; it’s certainly an interesting topic for discussion. However, if you’re the kind of person who’s interested in making art, then this is not the most helpful idea to have in the back of your mind.
April 20th, 2009 at 6:34 pm #
I disagree, Darcy, that Jess is talking about self-censorship. I think she’s talking about critical awareness of the space of creativity. Looking at people like Thoreau really emphasizes the point, I read his notes/book over the summer, and his entire writing project is a study in the justification of colonialism–i.e. we need to go out and set up our own little wilderness plots of Eden so that we can avoid the constraints of an evil government–he twines his justifications of escaping the goverment solidly in nature–without simultaneously recognizing that “escaping” at that point equaled the *literal* displacement of native peoples and the justification of colonialism through the government—all those white believers in anti-government needed to be protected right? So why not make them squatters? WHich is the basic core tenet of colonialism.
That thought process–the idea of the rugged individual–runs through every aspect of U.S. culture even today. Are we to look back on Walden pond and not notice how it follows through on the colonial project, even as it is critical of the nation/state? Or that T. created an idea of rugged individualism that has been harnassed by the government *repeatedly* throughout the years by the government?
I think that is what jess is talking about here–what effect does our art have on the discourse happening–and how does a genre of writing contribute to horrible things like colonialism? And does the artist have any responsibility at all to the people, the land, s/he is trying to represent?
April 20th, 2009 at 6:37 pm #
I mean, I think that’s an very appropriate message–one I haven’t really much considered, but now that I have–I think it’s so vitally incredibly important. What responsbility do artists have to the land, to the trees, to nature?
Also thinking of the guy who wrote a River Runs through it, and how he and robert redford lament the fact that it was the movie/book that contributed to the current state of deterioration that area is currently in–it was flooded by people who didn’t care for the land as much as Redford/the author did and completely trashed the area.
April 20th, 2009 at 7:51 pm #
It’s interesting. Every time I’ve asked an explicit question along these lines within a piece of writing, someone has jumped in to tell me I’m silencing myself from white guilt. (The time before this was in a creative-writing workshop, when I brought in a piece that interrogated the power dynamics of white people writing characters of color in fiction.)
I have thought a lot about those responses, and I really, really don’t think that’s where I’m coming from.
I think I am speaking from criticality about — from trying to look as honestly as possible at — white supremacist colonialism, exploitation, appropriation …
When I clicked “publish” on this post, I thought — for a reader who doesn’t know I am engaged in cross-class, multiracial organizing work that aims to challenge structures of oppression, is this going to sound like yet more intellectual/abstract/individual-subjectivity meandering? It might. I decided it was worth putting out there as a form of, hmm, what is the phrase I want? Maybe something like: A form of being critical about my own subjectivity and privilege as one piece of participating in multifaceted, collective movements for social justice through structural change. Maybe if this questioning existed in a vacuum, if I thought simply asking this sort of question and doing this sort of self-examination was enough, was activism, was social-change work — I do see how that might be close to a “guilt”-motivated type of work. But I think (?) that if this sort of critical questioning of voice among privileged people (esp. privileged people who do social-justice-minded media work) is one piece of a multifaceted and collective, cross-class, transnational, and multiracial struggle for collective change — yes, I do think this kind of self-examination and criticality around voice and history and power matters in that larger context, and can be used in the service of social-justice movement.
(Last week I was re-reading Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s Feminism Without Borders, and my thinking here is heavily influenced by Mohanty’s reading of Minnie Bruce Pratt’s “Identity: Skin Blood Heart” — which I have not yet read — among other things …)
Do others of you think so? Or no? Or not sure? I would love to think and work through this with you.
April 20th, 2009 at 8:08 pm #
Also, yes, I am really critical and questioning of narratives of the individual artist, because I do see those narratives and not a few of the products of them, at least in the Western cultural traditions I’m most familiar with, upholding violence and oppression in many ways. I am committed to and inspired by collective movements for liberation, not so much by notions of My Voice, or My Art, so I don’t see this kind of question as guilty self-censorship but as an attempt to be critical, honest, and responsible, and to think about how art and voice and media can be used in the service of violence and oppression – which also, I hope, opens space to think about and remember and acknowledge how those things (art, voice, media) can be used, instead, in the service of justice and liberation.
April 20th, 2009 at 8:45 pm #
“And does the artist have any responsibility at all to the people, the land, s/he is trying to represent?”
I do and I’m always annoyed at how many (usually white) writers say that no, we don’t, that that’s “political correctness” and whatnot. But this betrays my naivete.
“for a reader who doesn’t know I am engaged in cross-class, multiracial organizing work that aims to challenge structures of oppression, is this going to sound like yet more intellectual/abstract/individual-subjectivity meandering?”
I think this might be it. When I read “Do I know how to understand or experience or feel without words?” alarm bells went off in my head because it seemed that, in a way, you were trying to do something similar to what Thoreau did. I think most conscientious white people go through a period in their lives when they realize their place in the world and its meaning and think “this isn’t me. I’m not racist/imperialist/sexist. I don’t want to be a part of that system.” And so they look for some pure, “virgin” territory either within themselves or in an idealized version of the outer world, like Thoreau deciding that his vision of a pristine wilderness was the antidote to modern civilization. But then you realize that you’ll never be “pure”–nothing and no one is. You can’t erase history, especially when it’s one that you continually benefit from in terms of privilege. The problem, then, is that a lot of people are paralyzed by guilt (and I don’t mean this in the dismissive way that a lot of right-wingers use it but to refer to the very real feeling that a lot of white people have that “omg I can’t do *anything* without bringing 500 years of oppression into the picture”). The more constructive approach, obviously, is to just accept yourself and try to move forward. I don’t think a critical approach necessarily has to entail feelings of shame.
Obviously, if you’re involved in activism you already know this and probably deal with it everyday. I just thought I should try to explain where I’m coming from.