Coalition Building: Lorde, Mohanty, Rich and the Question of Feminist Activism

In "Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience," Chandra Talpade Mohanty suggests that, "at least in the U.S. academy feminists no longer have to contend as they did in the 1970s with phallocentric denials of the legitimacy of gender as a category of analysis." Having read the article and contemplated Mohanty's thoughts on a "politics of location," I find myself wondering what, if any, epistemological or political value Mohanty theorizes for the category "woman," as opposed to the other categories--race, social class, ethnicity, geographic residence, sexuality, etc.--that are discussed more specifically. As George W. Bush marches toward what pundits are tentatively predicting will be another campaign victory with the strong support of millions of women, I occasionally find myself doubting whether "woman" as a political category lacks the significance it had just 20 or 30 years ago, and whether such an observation does stem from any residual phallocentrism in my own political consciousness. In addition, when reading or hearing about the factionalism that seems to hinder or even perhaps obstruct completely consensus or coalition building among women, I also often question whether it might be useful on occasion to divorce, or at the very least, distance woman-centered political activism from academic feminist theory. Mohanty quotes Bernice Johnson Reagon as observing, "You don't go into a coalition because you *like* it. The only reason you would consider trying to team up with someone who could possibly kill you, is because that's the only way you can figure you can stay alive." I am not suggesting that academic theory is not useful in a political project that works against the oppression of women. I am contemplating, however, the possibility that, at a certain point, theory needs to step aside and allow political activism to step in, that, if we are to change anything, eventually we have to set aside our differences and work towards whatever agenda we can agree upon.

Anyone watching, reading, or listening to coverage of the Republican National Convention should understand how vital such a step is in U.S. politics. A political party dominated by rising moderate pro-choice superstars, and where the Vice President publicly disagrees with the President on exactly how far the federal government should go in preserving the paradigm of heterosexual marriage, nevertheless managed to agree upon one of the most socially conservative Republican platforms in U.S. political history, one that includes a strong stance against both reproductive choice and gay and lesbian marriage. Consensus and coalition building play an even more important role in parliamentary governments that are not dominated by a two-party system. For example, politics in Germany and Israel have been plagued in recent years by the "my way or the highway" stance of right-wing nationalists. Finally, on the international stage, the UN has been weakened by internal disagreements over how to handle genocide in Africa, the global AIDS crisis, and of course, unilateralism in the war in Iraq. I think examples such as these show how getting anything done on a national or international level requires those involved to put aside what might be long-term differences in order to work towards change in the short term. I think that this is a fact that feminist movements often lose sight of, and their effectiveness (or at least the public perception of their effectiveness) as advocates for legal and political change suffers as a result.

In an interview with Adrienne Rich, speaking about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Audre Lorde suggests that creative endeavor is what keeps an oppressed group struggling for change from going over the edge. In the essay, "Poetry is Not a Luxury," Lorde provocatively argues that, "Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before." Lorde's observations highlight the perceived distinction between a creative discourse--of fiction, poetry and personal memoir--that is seen as capable of containing women's experience and the academic discourse--of observation, theory and objective analysis--that sometimes lacks this capacity. While I agree that the distinction is often a real one, I believe that these two discourses can be made to meet in the rhetoric of advocacy. Advocacy, of which political and legal discourse are two of the most obvious examples, is partisan, it is a discourse in which the speaker often must take a position on a particular question and advocate that it should be decided in a particular way. In the language of advocacy, the discourse of legal and political universals can be transformed to accommodate the realities of individual or communal experience. Advocacy is also a discourse that is designed to build consensus and coalition. It is a discourse that starts from the position that consensus does not exist and that in order to reach it, we must search for its foundations and build an argument demonstrating that it should. Although polemic fiction has been maligned by literary critics throughout its history, I am fascinated by the way in which it can turn art into a true act of political resistance and a force for change.

Perhaps my taste for fiction with an agenda explains why I am attracted to theorists such as Nussbaum, hooks, and Mohanty. In spite of their siginificant differences, they are united in the view that feminism involves activism and a reclamation of agency. Critical theory and academic feminism are valuable because they require us to understand that few truths are actually "self-evident" and political solutions are never "one-size-fits-all." Yet, although I think Nussbaum perhaps goes to far in theorizing "universals," I also believe that at some point we have to make a judgment call and decide that some ways of doing things are "wrong." Judgments should be based on more than the Western, bourgeois code of moral ethics, and solutions should be tailored to deal with the social and political realities of the culture that implements them in a way that maximizes the agency of the women and men who will be most immediately effected by political or legal change. I think that ultimately, what I take away from Lorde, Mohanty and Rich is that building an international coalition of women is a goal worth striving for. Women, as a class of cultural, legal, and historical subjects, do and have suffered from patriarchal oppression. Yet, oppression has many different forms, and perhaps activism inevitably must always take place at a local, or at most national level in order to be truly effective and responsive to the needs of those who will be most affected by change.

Identity as Commodity: Hulme, Lorde, Mani, and Narayan

From the start, the critical response or outcry concerning Hulme's receipt of the Pegasus Prize for Maori literature has influenced our discussion of *The Bone People*. From Stead's condemnation of the novel as a work by a "Pakeha which has won an award intended for a Maori," to Fee's somewhat more moderated critique of the general project of a White writer attempting to write as Other, *The Bone People* has engaged us in an inquiry into how and whether the author's race, gender, and other socio-cultural identites should influence reception of a particular work. Working within the field of cultural criticism, Narayan has suggested that even though "oppressed groups, whether women, the poor, or racial minorities, may derive an 'epistemic advantage' from having knowledge of the practices of both their own contexts and those of their oppressors," we must nevertheless be wary of "idealizing or romanticizing oppression" in a way that "blind[s] us to its real material and psychic deprivations." Expressing a similar concern for the ways in which dominant discourse may tend to stereotype, abstract, or idealize the experiences of oppressed groups, Mani describes how she has confronted a demand from Western audiences that she live up to a standard of "authentic" non-Western experience that has little or no connection to reality. Both Stead and Fee, and to a lesser extent, Narayan and Mani nonetheless seem to deliniate an authorial space that is off-limits to non-Western writers, a space within which the socio-economic or cultural identity of the author operates as a kind of intellectual currency that can be used to acquire access. Although *The Bone People* does not necessarily explore the question of whether identity as part of an oppressed group is an essential component of authority when one is speaking of certain subjects, its exploration of a related question does arguably provide some insight regarding this issue. In particular, the construction of Kerewin as a Maori, or at least a non-Western figure, requires us to examine whether cultural identity is something that, like a commodity, can be purchased.

All of the markers or indices of Kerewin's non-Western identity are commodities in one way or another. Her circular tower, her collection of Maori jades, her I-Ching divination tools, and even the leisure that allows her to pursue life as an eccentric fisherman/shaman/wise woman have all been bought with lottery winnings. She has rejected the one intrinsic marker of her Maori identity, her family, and they are absent through most of the narrative. Even the scene between Kerewin and her brother is not narrated directly, but is related analeptically through Joe's observation. In evaluating Hulme's characterization of Kerewin in particular, I ultimately must agree with Stead's evaluation of Hulme's writing style in general: "Her uses of Maori language and mythology strike me as willed, self-conscious, not inevitable, not entirely authentic." Kerewin's characterization is all the more striking in how it contrasts with Hulme's portrayal of Simon and Joe. In many ways, their identities have not been acquired so much as forced upon them. Joe's blackness, his Maori name, his family, his alcholism, all of the things that make him "different," are aspects of identity that he has not chosen. Similarly, Simon's "differences" are of an intrinsic or accidental nature; his deafness, whiteness, and general strangeness are given rather than deliberately acquired. Through a dichotomy in the way it constructs character, the novel, in my opinion at least, establishes two separate frameworks for evaluating character action. Joe and Simon act the way they do because that is the way they are. Kerewin, however, chooses to act. Perhaps that is why Kerewin's betrayal of Simon strikes me as even more dismaying than Joe's continual and repetitive abuse. Kerewin gives Simon over to Joe's wrath because he broke her guitar; Joe is portrayed simply as a victim of circumstance.

As problematic as I find what seems to be a simplistic and embedded essentialism in Hulme's novel, I think the way in which the narrative solves the ethical dilemma with which it ends even more troubling. Put simply, Kerewin manages to buy her way out of the mess that she gets herself into. She builds her spiral home by the sea, encouraging reconcilation with her family, and she funds the diving expedition that leads to the discovery of Simon's origins, a necessary first step before she can adopt him. Even Joe's pain is assuaged with money when he inherits. Granted, the narrative still acknowledges the existence of significant tensions among the three main characters, and between Kerewin and Joe and their extended families. However, the emphasis is, in the beginning, on the new start that Kerewin's money has bought, and, in the end, on the cozy space, again one of Kerewin's purchases, within which the various characters will resolve their difficulties. All in all, in spite of its spiralling rejection of linear narrative formality, Hulme's novel offers a conventional Western ending in which money is the solution for all of the world's problems.

Last week, I wrote about one aspect of *The Bone People* in which the book appears to take a non-Western perspective. This week, I find myself more aligned with Stead or Fee in my evaluation of what seems to me to be the novel's over-arching Western concern with a consumer-like, commodified social and cultural identity. Yet I do think that, in spite of its flaws or contradictions, the novel is valuable in how it explores the various ways in which Otherness can be constructed. At the very least, it offers a partial critique of a critical paradigm in which a White author might always be said to write from a position of privilege, a paradigm that glosses over, or does not completely account for, prejudice against the disabled, the disfigured, or those whose difference resides not in their skin but in some other equally immutable facet of their identities. To return to the question with which I began this essay, I think that a member of a historically oppressed or marginalized group often does have a greater authority to speak with regard to certain issues. However, I cannot agree with Fee that a "White writer should not write as Other." Perhaps my faith in the "free market of ideas" is naive, but I think the critical discourse that has been inspired by Hulme's efforts, and the efforts of those writers who have tried and failed miserably (I would not say that Hulme falls into this category) to write the experiences of a culture that they are not a part of, is a valuable one. Writing fiction is not the same as writing cultural critique, and I think perhaps writers of fiction should feel freer to take chances in writing fiction, while readers should take more care not to assume that a single work of fiction is an "authentic" account that can be generalized to an entire culture.

Working Through Anger: Keri Hulme's *The Bone People*

Before class on Wednesday, I was having trouble writing or thinking anything at all about Hulme's *The Bone People* other than, "This is the most reprehensible book I have ever read." Not that it is poorly written; in fact, at the same time that I was repulsed by the story Hulme tells, I was enchanted by the dreamy quality of her prose and her use of language as a visual artifact. Fortunately, this was not a book I had to deal with on my own. After Shannon's excellent presentation of secondary source material and a very enlightening class discussion, I was finally able to get beyond my initial reaction. My general opinion of the book--that it is ultimately an apologist account of a horrific story of child beating--remains unchanged. Now, however, I can at least begin to explore those aspects of the book that triggered my initial response as well as those that may suggest an alternative, more useful reading.

The thing that disturbs me most about *The Bone People* is how the story seems to blame Simon for the abuse he suffers, while taking great pains to portray Joe as a likeable fellow, and a victim of abuse in his own right. In searching for answers about why I am reading the book this way, I believe that I may have stumbled upon the keys to a more productive, even if still problematic, reading. For me, Hulme's use of Simon as a focalizer for the action in Chapter 8 makes him appear as the agent of his own destruction. He goes to Binny Daniel's house and Kerewin's Tower even though Joe has expressly declared both locations as off-limits. Then, in his encounter with Kerewin, he refuses to return her talisman, the knife, and proceeds to attack her physically. Thwarted in his efforts to injure her person, he settles for destroying her cherished guitar. At the point that Simon leaves the Tower, a possibility remains that his disobedient and disorderly conduct might remain unknown to Joe, but instead of going home, he stays out, destroying the shop windows, slowly and deliberately, just begging to get caught. Had the chapter been focused through another character, Joe or Kerewin, the reader would have had to hear about at least part of Simon's behavior second-hand, because only Simon is present in the scenes where he makes his first visit to Daniel's house and engages in his spree of vandalism. By using Simon as the focalizer for the third-person, external narration, Hulme has emphasized both the linear progression of the behavior that leads to Simon's punishment, as well as Simon's deliberate escalation of his disobedience. Having already learned how Simon forced the confrontation between Joe and Kerewin at the beach, a scene that--to use Barthe's terminology, I would label an index--one has the sense that we are supposed to see him as the master of the situation in Chapter 8 as well. Although, in the end, Kerewin viciously renounces Simon, giving Joe permission to go ahead with the beating, I could not help but feel that she simply fails a test that Simon himself has set for her.

I think that, in Hulme's narrative, Simon unquestionably shares some of the culpability for a crime that has in fact been perpetrated against him by numerous people who simply should have known better. This is the aspect of the story that offended me the most and led to my strongly negative, initial reaction. Making Simon the agent of his own victimization begins to make narrative sense, however, if one begins to think--as we did in class on Wednesday--of *The Bone People* in terms of Christian iconography. As a figure for Christ, Simon would necessarily be the agent of his own sacrifice, understanding that this is the inevitable final step in creating the Trinity with which the book begins: "They were nothing more than people, by themselves. Even paired, any pairing, they would have been nothing more than people by themselves. . . . Together, all together, they are the instruments of change" (4). As Kerewin finally recognizes in Chapter 7, "O God no, Himi's in the way" (291). It is in the act of Simon's sacrifice that Joe, the avenging Old Testament-style God figure, is united with Kerewin, a figure for the more forgiving God of the New Testament. Simon, their sacrificed son, is the bridge between the old world and the new: "But all together, they have become the heart and muscles and mind of something perilous and new, something strange and growing and great" (4).

By re-examining the book in this light, I slowly began to make sense of other facets of the story that had been bothering me. For example, I found Hulme's characterization of Kerewin to be particularly problematic. During my initial read, Kerewin struck me as an extraordinarily selfish construct, and I questioned whether Hulme had offered sufficient motivation for Kerewin's betrayal of Simon. As a figure for the Christian deity, though, Kerewin begins to make sense. She is androgynous, solitary, enencumbered by familial relations, and she prefers vague benevolence to active involvement. Similarly, Joe's character, as a portrayal of the avenging New Testament father-god, is also strangely apt. Joe is more gendered than Kerewin, but he remains relatively asexual. He sets clear boundaries, and severely punishes their transgression. He wants to be kind and loving, but he inevitably ends up seriously over-reacting and then regretting his vengeful actions after the fact.

Although the mythology seems to map well onto Hulme's narrative, I do not think *The Bone People* could as a result be placed into the category of Christian allegory. Allegory familiarizes myth through the use of ordinary symbols that stand for extraordinary things. To make an allegory is to allege that the story one tells is somehow universal or inevitable, part of the natural order of things. What Hulme has done defamiliarizes the story of the Passion; in her narrative the reader can see it as a story of the brutal sacrifice of a son by his father. The myth has been recast, made Other, in Hulme's treatment. For this reason, I think it is possible to argue that Hulme has achieved success in writing from the position of a non-Western other, even if that success is somewhat limited because *The Bone People* merely interrogates the supposed universality of the Western mythological tradition without offering a truly alternative perspective.