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North American Fiction and Film
Introduction
This Unit Study Guide for the web is divided into a number of chapters,
one for each of the novels to be studied. In this Introduction, we will
begin with the notion of "America as a community," and show how
this notion is a construction, a site of struggle where competing forces
vie for hegemony (leadership, domination, "naturalising" of certain
views to the exclusion and/or denigration of others). We will show how the
notion of a community is "imagined," to use Benedict Anderson's
phrase, and we will begin showing some of the attempts which have been made
to negotiate these imaginings, these constructions, in and through terms
such as ideology, race and gender.
Table of Contents
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America as a community
Cultural landscapes
Contemporary literary theory radically challenges the contention (made in
regard to Australian fiction as well) that North American fictions and films
in English are rendered unique by some special "essence" embodied
in both the North American landscape and white (male) Christian North American
culture. While there is no doubt that a particular topography profoundly
affects a culture, it cannot be seen as the sole determinant of a culture
initially imported from other countries with long established socio/political
traditions.
The North American landscape undoubtedly played a major part in the development
of indigenous Indian culture and the inscription of that culture within
the indigenous Indian languages. It is equally "true" that the
"new" landscape had a profound effect on the early European settlers/invaders.
(Again, a useful comparison can be made with the Australian situation.)
This effect, however, is not simply one of a direct action of the landscape
on a "blank" European personality sheet. It is complicated and
mediated by the whole socio-cultural baggage-their sense of community-those
"first" "American" Europeans brought with them.
Imagined communities
For Benedict Anderson, notions of community are only ever imagined because
even members of the smallest nations will know or hear of only a small number
of their compatriots, which means that their sense of community is constructed
from ideas which circulate within their culture, ideas to do with nation,
race, class, politics, literature, media, gender and so on (Imagined
Communities. 1-15).
Put simply, a certain set of these ideas of what a community is, how it
is or ought to be organised, the values it should promote or reject, and
the role and place of people within this context, all form a hegemony, one
which serves the interests of certain groups or classes of people. This
hegemony is a "site of struggle," however, for the ideas which
go to make it up will be contested by others within the community (or, indeed,
from outside). These ideas need to be constantly reaffirmed, through fiction,
film, the media, and so on. A good example of this concerns the environment.
[ Top ]
The Environment
Those of us who can remember a decade back will know that the environment
was a non-issue then, for most of us, and the people who supported it were
regarded by the hegemony as just so many weirdos who had probably over-indulged
in too many recreational substances, and who wouldn't work in an iron-lung
(add your own cliche here). This caricature of environmentalists worked
very much in favour of the hegemony for it kept most people from giving
the environment a lot of thought lest they also be considered as weirdos.
Now, things have changed dramatically. Being an environmentalist is "cool."
In fact, being a non-environmentalist is very "un-cool." This
change did not come about over night; it involved not only a struggle by
a dedicated group of people (including some very respected scientists) but
also a change in attitude by the media and by school educators. Now one
could say that the hegemony includes a consciousness of the environment
which is almost a reversal of the way it was viewed ten to fifteen years
ago.
This might seem like a trivial example to some, but what is significant
about it is the way that the genesis of this change is quickly forgotten
as the new idea becomes part of the "imagined community." No one
I know actually remembers a time when environmentalists were regraded as
weirdos; we've always been concerned about the environment, haven't we?
What this shows is that once an idea becomes "naturalised" as
common sense, as an integral part of the hegemony, those who ascribe to
the hegemony no longer question its genesis or its assumptions.
Maybe this is a good thing when it comes to the environment. But what of
other ideas which seem to operate in very much the same way: class, gender,
ethnicity, and so on. How confident can we be that the "value"
we apportion to these integral parts of that hegemony we call the community
is appropriate? Is there a mechanism for checking? Or do we just blunder
in with our old stereotypes and caricatures without giving them much thought
unless something happens to force us to question them?
The Study of Literature
Why is all this relevant to the study of literature? Well, because literary
texts are one of the places where community values and ideas are reinscribed,
reinforced, challenged, subverted and, indeed, changed. Many of the texts
we will be examining do all of these things; some only question; some clearly
offer warnings; some give voice to individuals and groups not usually heard
in the hubbub of the mainstream. If a community is made up of many voices,
then it is probably fair to say that our sense of the community is a function
of those voices we hear most often, literary or otherwise. We could also
say that the way we respond to those voices is also crucial - do we give
them a fair or even sympathetic hearing, or do we dismiss them out of hand?
[ Top ]
Is politics based on our sense of community?
Is politics based on our sense of community? The simple answer to this is
yes, despite what out politicians might say. In contemporary politics, for
example, competing political parties, whilst claiming that their main purpose
is to "manage" the economy (that is, they are "above"
politics and simply want to be "neutral" managers), spend a good
deal of their time and effort persuading voters that their particular version
of the "imagined community" is the right one, that it should be
given the status of an hegemony and "naturalised" as common sense.
Think back to any recent election and to what the leaders had to say. I
would argue that it is almost as if they were saying that if the economy
is to function "correctly," whatever that might mean, than we
need to be particular sorts of individuals within a particular kind of hegemony.
The nuts and bolts, the y=3x+2 formulas of economics, seem to take a distant
second place to the debates about nation and community. So, to invert the
argument, we could say that wherever there is a struggle over what constitutes
our sense of an imagined community, this struggle is inevitably political.
This means, among other things, that literature itself is political (that
is, it is not a neutral examination of the verities of the human condition
but a place where these so-called verities-read "ideas"-are fought
over, naturalised, challenged, subverted, changed, and so on). The importance
of understanding this view of notions of community in the study of literature
cannot be understated because literature acts to reinforce or to challenge
the norms of the imagined community, whatever this might be at particular
moments. Many of the texts we will be examining do both-certain aspects
of the notion of community are reinforced, and others are challenged. Some
of the texts even challenge the idea that texts can reflect the world in
a way which reveals aspects of communal or individual identity.
[ Top ]
How does all this relate to the aims of
the unit?
This brings us to the aims of this unit. We believe that some of these issues
can be explored by analysing selected American writings of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries within a framework of issues which underpin the
hegemonic notions of American community. Obviously, our focus will be on
the ways in which such notions are contested within literature. As we shall
see, however, the category of literature itself is and has been a site of
contestation through debates about the canon (i.e. those works deemed to
be set apart from the run-of-the-mill by their alleged literary quality
and importance).
In other words, what constitutes the canon is not as "natural"
or as "neutral" as some would have us believe because the hegemonic
gestures which constitute notions of American community are not only constructions
which suit the interests of particular groups within this community at the
expense of others, they are also the means by and through which these "others"
are excluded, even denigrated.
Issues such as ideology, gender, race, politics, the politics of literature
and literariness (i.e. who gets to be in the canon and why), and notions
of national identity, then, are not irrelevant products of an over-active
academic imagination (as neo-conservatives are in the habit of arguing);
they are the sites of negotiation and contestation upon which the very idea
of a community is grounded. Let's examine some of these terms in more detail.
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Last updated August 1996
Comments to Dr John Fitzsimmons:
Phone: (079) 309240; Email: j.fitzsimmons@cqu.edu.au
Humanities Department
Faculty of Arts
Central Queensland University
Rockhampton MC Queensland 4702
Australia