McCoy's Life Journey曉風

 
Women in the Patriarchal Discourse: Questions on Femininity,
Oedipus Complex in The God of Small Things

 
Postcolonial India's Uncertain Condition: Mimicry, Rebellion
in The God of Small Things

The New Colonizer: Haunts of Imperialism and Caste System in
The God of Small Things

The New Colonizer: Haunts of Imperialism and Caste System in The God of Small Things
Ryan Hsieh


Ryan’s biography:

Summary on “Critique of Violence” by Walter Benjamin
In this essay, Benjamin shows violence’s relation to law and justice. At first, Benjamin mentions violence, as a principle, could be a moral means even to just ends which determined by the criterion for cases of it use. And then, Benjamin explores dimensions on violence from the natural law and positive law. According to the thesis of natural law, “violence is a product of nature” but for the positive law, “violence is a product of history’’ (237). For Benjamin, “natural law attempts, by the justness of the ends, to ‘justify’ the means, positive law ‘guarantee’ the justness of the ends through the justification of the means’’ (237). Secondly, Benjamin mentions ‘‘the different functions of violence rests on whether it serves natural or legal ends which can be traced against a background of specific legal conditions’’ (238). In Benjamin’s own view, “the individual as legal subject is the tendency to deny the natural ends in a given situation, be usefully pursued by violence’’ (238). Benjamin shows violence deals with in the paradoxical way. For Benjamin, “violence can with reason seems so threatening to the law, and be so feared it, must be especially evident on its application’’ (239). And then, Benjamin provides an instance of its application: about the strike by the labor and shows “the objective contradiction in the legal situation”. In Benjamin’s own view, strike cannot be regarded as violence for two reasons, as follows. Firstly, “the organized labor is the only legal subject entitled to exercise violence’’ (239). In the second place, “the right to strike constitutes in the view of labor, which is opposed to that of the state, the right to use force in attaining certain ends’’ (239). Benjamin shows the contradiction on this situation, the right to strike for labor is right but for the state the right is abuse. Thirdly, Benjamin mentions “the police is a institution of the modern state whose violence for legal ends but with the simultaneous authority to decide these ends itself within wide limits’’ (242). For Benjamin, police violence is law-making and “emancipated from both conditions because its function is the assertion of legal claims for any decree’’ (243). Even Benjamin portrays the power of police is formless, like its all pervasive, ghostly presence in the life of civilized states’’ (243). And then, Benjamin refers all violence may be regarded as a means of law-making or law-preserving and violence implies the problematic nature of law itself. What’s more, Benjamin refers mythic violence to show the problematic light on lawmaking violence through explores the legend of Niobe. For Benjamin, “the action of Apollo and Artemis is a punishment and their violence establishes a law far more than it punishes the infringement of a law that already exists’’ (248). And then, Benjamin reveals that “the function of violence in lawmaking is twofolded, in the sense that lawmaking pursues as its end, with violence as the means’’ and “lawmaking establishes a law not an end unalloyed by violence but one necessarily and intimately bound to it under the title of power’’ (248). Finally, Benjamin concludes that “all mythic, lawmaking violence, which we may call ‘executive’, is pernicious’’ (252).

Reflection on Ursula K. Heise’s Paper “From the Blue Planet to Google Earth”
In this paper, Ursula K. Heise deals with many dimensions on Ursula K. LeGuin’s work “Vaster than Empires”, localism, deterritorialization, cosmopolitanism, eco-cosmopolitanism, and forms of the global. I would like to focus on the idea on deterritorialization in this reflection because I am interested about deterritorialization. According to Heise, “Deterritorialization implies that the average daily life, in the context of globality, is shaped by structures, processes, and products that originate elsewhere” (Heise 54). As Heise portrays, there are many products makes us have the illusion on displacement in modern society. For example, people may buy American jeans to wear, eat Korean pickle, and cut the hairdo like Visual kei whose hairstyles appear on Japanese pop singer in our nation. It shows as if the frontier of the nation is destroyed by modern products. Hence, in Heise’s view, “This displacement is caused by the availability of internationally produced and distributed consumer products, cultural artifacts, and foods, the presence of media such as radio, television, and the Internet” (Heise 52). I would like to conclude this part, through cites Heise’s view, “Deterritorialization is the major cultural impact of global connectivity” (Heise 53). In addition to, I am interested about Heise’s view on identity politics. In Heise’s view, the people who are exiled can be regarded as the power of opposing the hegemony. In my own view, this concept is different from traditional thinking. In traditional society, people always think the group of exile as a group of oppressive who are bullied by the structure of society. But it is totally different. I think it is avant-garde thinking on identity politics.

Reflection on Pheng Cheah’s Paper “What Is a World? On World Literature as World-Making Activity”

In this paper, Pheng Cheah portrays world literature may regard as world-making activity and he cites many ideas from three philosophers, Kant, Goethe, and Marx, and he also mentions the postcolonial literature. But in this response, I would like to refer the two thinker’s ideas on world-making activity and world literature. In Cheah’s view, cosmopolitanism is mainly about imaging people as part of world which may transcend the limited ties of kinship and country to the human beings. After he claim that “World literature is an important aspect of cosmopolitanism because it is a type of world-making activity that enables us to imagine a world”, he cites three thinkers’ ideas on these. (Cheah 26) In Kant’s view, “The way of thinking may regards and conduct as a mere citizen of the world” (Cheah 27) Kant also mentions literature creates the world and cosmopolitan bonds and enhances the humanity. In Goethe’s interpretation, world literature may regard as a negotiation in order to arrive at the universal. Cheah also refers Goethe’s ideas on world literature full of eurocentrism and hierarchical because in Goethe’s view, only Greek literature has the archetypal beauty of humanity. In my won view, I don’t know why Goethe does this, ignores other literature even minority literature. Also I think his idea is not absolutely right about the vision of world literature. How world literature’s view only exists the Greek literature? Does he mean the anthology of world literature only needs to embody Greek literature? It sounds ridiculous to me.

Postcolonial India's Uncertain Condition: Mimicry, Rebellion in The God of Small Things
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is a novel about a tragic and traumatic experience in an Anglophile family in Ayemenem, India. While the British colonizes the India, the Indian elites always get the higher education in England or America. Nowadays India is an independent country, but the postcolonial Indian elite still behave like the colonizer, the British rather than themselves, the Asian Indian. The Indian elites admire, respect, and imitate the British cultures even teach their younger generation to learn the colonizer’s language, English and the British lifestyles. But it is ambivalent. On the one hand, the Indian elites prefer to behave like the British people, but on the other hand they can’t abandon the caste system which is deeply ingrained in the Asian Indian culture. Hence, it leads to a double result; that is the Indian elites not only contempt their family member who doesn’t get the education but also despise the untouchable person and the subaltern people. The postcolonial Indian elite's behavior makes the postcolonial India become an uncertain and hybrid condition. In addition, this book named as The God of Small Things, I would like to articulate “Small Things” as the rebellions are rose by the subaltern people. In this proposed research, I would like to utilize the postcolonial theorist, Homi Bhabha’s theory on mimicry and hybridity to elaborate the postcolonial Indian uncertain condition. I also refer to the rebellions could be regarded as the subaltern people against the postcolonial Indian elites.
At first, I would like to talk about the postcolonial Indian elite’s behaviors on imitating the colonizer, the British. There are three Anglophile characters. They are proud, arrogant, and self-centered. For example, the twins’ uncle, Chacko who has studied in the Oxford, often read aloud. “He didn’t care whether anyone was listening to him or not. And if they were, he didn’t care whether or not they had understood what he was saying” (Roy 54). In my view, it shows that Chacko is confident and proud that he has studied in the Oxford. It also reveals that Chacko intends to force other people to hear what he speaks in a loud voice. The postcolonial Indian elites always behave as the British through watching the English TV programs, wearing the Western costumes, driving the English car, and etc. For example, the twins’ maternal grandaunt, Baby Kochamma watched “The Bold and The Beautiful and Santa Barbara . . . loved their shiny clothes and the smart, bitchy repartee” (Roy 27). The twins’ grandfather, Pappachi also persists in wearing a “well-pressed three-piece suit even in the stifling Ayemenem heat, every single day” (Roy 49). For instances, Chacko unconsciously “Quoted long passages from the books he had read before for no any apparent reason” in any time (Roy 38). It reveals the literary texts which Chacko has read to disturb his real life. Even they insist on teaching their younger generation to learn and speak the colonizer’s language, English. For instance, if the twins, Estha and Rahel meet a new English word, Chacko will request the twins look up the Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary to learn the meaning of this new English word in their conversation. According to Rajeev. G on his essay “Arundati Rai’s The God of Small Things – A Post-Colonial Reading,” “Such an ardent obsession with the imperial language and codes is typical of post colonial community, where an involuntary subservience to the imperial hordes and an ingrained devotion to their modes and customs typify their psyche” (G 3). In his view, the postcolonial Indian elites cannot help but imitate the colonizer’s culture because India has been a British colony in the past. There is no denying that the colonized people, the Asian Indian are affected by the colonizer, British. As Edward Said states in Bhabha’s essay “Of Mimicry and Man,” “Mimicry represents an ironic compromise” (Bhabha 86). Baby Kochamma establishes a rule to force the twins, Estha and Rahel must speak in English. If Baby Kochamma catches the twins speaking in Malayalam in their private conversation, the twins will write this lines “I will always speak in English, I will always speak in English” in a hundred times (Roy 36). According to Miriam Nandi, the reason on the postcolonial Indian elite Baby Kochamma forces the twins to speak in English is:
Baby Kochamma’s injunction to speak in English is an echo of a much older imperative imposed on educated Indians during the colonial regime. . . . read as an allegory for the Anglicization of the Indian upper class and a critique of the epistemic violence inflicted in order to establish English as their dominant idiom. (178)
I would like to use Homi Bhabha’s theory on mimicry to explore their behaviors:

Response Paper on Hélène Cixous’s “Sorties”
In her work “Sorties,” Hélène Cixous mentions that we must destroy the connection of logocentrism and phallocentrism because “The general logic of difference would no longer fit into the opposition that still dominates” (97). In the beginning of this essay, Cixous lists many couples of oppositions such as sun versus moon, culture versus nature, and etc. For instances, in Linda Hogan’s People of the Whale, the female protagonist Ruth struggles for protecting the indigenous tradition, the whale, the nature in the whole story. In contrast to Ruth, many male characters struggle for getting a lot of money rather than protecting the nature. And in one of Chinese songs, mother figure is portrayed as a moon. Also in our tradition, female are sensitive and are requested to be obedient to male. In contrast to female, male always dominates the female. After Cixous lists these oppositions, she reveals that “Thought has always worked by dual, hierarchized oppositions” (90). It shows that theory of society, culture support the symbolic system; that is phallocentrism. In this essay, I would like to talk about three issues: female figure in philosophy, interpretations on the femininity, Cixous’s assertion of a new difference.
First, I would like to point out women are passive and obedient in philosophical discourse. In Cixous’s example, if we meet an unfamiliar object, we will ask the question ‘what is it?’ And then, there is a sound; that is the symbolic father respond to us. There is a sound would answer that “It is a book” because the object is named as a book. The whole symbolic system includes language, rule, and etc are created by male. In this case, it reveals that “There’s no place at all for women in the operation” (92). Cixous also uses Mallarmé’s tragic dream to reveal that female doesn’t exist in the philosophy. In Mallarmé’s tragic dream, a father mourns for the death of his son but no mother exists. I wonder whether the mother is dead or not. If the answer is not, why does not the mother exist in his dream? For Cixous, it reveals that “Woman upon whom he no longer depends, he retains only this space, always virginal, matter subjected to the desire that he wishes to imprint” (92). In my own interpretation, it explains why women are requested to be obedient to male in the tradition. It also reveals that female plays a minor role in satisfying the male’s desires to make the symbolic system would operate successfully in the traditional patriarchal society.
Secondly, Cixous mentions two psychoanalysts, Sigmund Freud’s and Ernest Jones’s interpretations on femininity and her questions about their perspectives. For Freud, “the ‘fatality’ of the feminine situation is a result of an anatomical ‘defectiveness’’’ (94). For Cixous, in Freud’s view on “the anatomical difference only based on the difference between having /not having the phallus” (95). In my view, Freud’s interpretation is ocularcentristic but Cixous’s perspective is persuasive. In Cixous’s view, “There is no such things as ‘destiny,’ ‘nature,’ or essence” (96). According to Freud, the girl’s masturbation is similar to the masculine practice. For Jones, “woman’s clitoris is not a minipenis” so her clitoral masturbation is different from male. In Freud’s view, “The first love object being, for both sexes, the mother, it is only for the boy that love of the opposite sex is natural” (94). For Jones, “The girl has a feminine desire for her father, the penis, or an object of same form in place of the breast starting from the age of six months” (94). In my own interpretation, why must the girl desire for her father or the penis? It is ironical. On the one hand, Jones asserts femininity is an autonomous essence, but on the other hand he claims that the girl has a desire for the male’s penis rather than her breast. For Cixous, “Freud and Jones quarrel over the subject of feminine sexuality, starting from opposite points of view to support the anatomical determination of sexual difference-opposition” and phallocentrism as a position of power (93).
What’s more, I would like to mention Cixous’s assertion of a new difference. As I have mentioned before, the traditional logic of sexual difference is outdated, Cixous claims that “The difference would be a crowning display of new differences” (97). There are three dimensions on Cixous’s assertion of a new difference, as follows. At first, Cixous asserts that “The difference makes itself most clearly apparent in as far as woman’s libidinal economy is neither identifiable by a man nor referable to the masculine economy” (95). In my view, it reveals the reason why Freud’s interpretations on femininity are wrong. Because Freud is a man, he can’t identify the femininity correctly. It also shows female need not obey male because female is referable to her feminine economy rather than the masculine economy. Second, Cixous brings up the question: ‘“How do female experience her sexual pleasure?’ What is feminine sexual pleasure, where does it take place, how is it inscribed at the level of her body, of her unconscious? And then how is it put into writing?” (95). There is no any person concerning about the feminine sexual pleasure. Female have more than one sexual organ but in the traditional discourse, people always pay attention to the female sexual organ which is beneficial to the reproduction. People always think female plays a passive role in the sexual intercourse to satisfy the patriarchal society’s request. And the sexual pleasure is only based on the male’s desire. I am wonder about how the feminine sexual pleasure could put into writing. In this essay, Cixous doesn’t give us examples about the accomplishment of her assertion; that is female sexual pleasure into writing. What’s more, Cixous affirms a new difference; that is “Men or women admit the component of the other sex makes them at once much richer, plural, strong” (97). In my view, the new difference is necessary. If we only advocate ourselves, we will make us strong. But at the same time we also repress the others. For example, in the past the empire would like to expand his territory so he launches a war to occupy the other territories. For Cixous, “There is no invention possible, whether it be philosophical or poetic, without the presence in the inventing subject of an abundance of the other, of the diverse” (97). In this case, it reveals why does the empire have many colonies in the past?

Response Paper on Luce Irigaray’s “The Blind Spot of An Old Dream of Symmetry”
Whereas Julia Kristeva not only approves of Freud’s insights but also expresses her perspective on his psychoanalytic theories, Luce Irigaray opposes to Freud’s psychoanalytic theories on the interpretation of femininity, the oedipal phase, the castration, the penis-envy and so on. “The Blind Spot of an Old Dream of Symmetry” is Irigaray’s reinterpretations of Freud’s essays on “Femininity,” etc. It reveals that Freud’s perspectives are unpersuasive and doubtful. Irigaray satirizes that there are blind spots on Freud’s insights because they are only based on patriarchal preference. There are two reasons why Freud regards female as a passive figure. First, female always plays a passive role in the sexual union. Second, female’s sex cell is passive than male’s sex cell in the sexual union. But in Irigaray’s view, Freud’s insights are uncertain because “the male is active only in the single act of sexual union” (17). When female breast-feeds her children, she is more active than male. In this essay, I would like to talk about three issues: the statement of little girl is a little boy in Irigaray’s view, Freud’s theory on the change of love object, and the position of the female and the position of child in Freud’s view.
First, I would like to reveal the reasons why female is inferior to male in Freud’s view and to show Irigaray’s oppositional viewpoint on it. In Irigaray’s work, “The Little Girl Is (Only) a Little Boy, ” she mentions that in Freud’s view, the definition of woman is “A man minus the possibility of (re)presenting oneself as a man” (27). It shows that the little boy becomes the little girl because of losing phallus in the phallic stage. Hence, female must suffer more painful life than male. In Irigaray’s view, it reveals that “The desire for the same, for the self-identical, the self (as) same, and again of the similar . . . to put it in the desire for the homo . . . male, dominates the representational economy” (26). It shows that Freud pursues a fiction－ that the little girl is a little man is just to satisfy the male’s interest, to construct the patriarchal domination. It also ignores the importance of “sexual difference.”According to Irigaray, ‘“Sexual difference’ is a derivation of the problematic of sameness” (26). It shows that Freud’s perspective with a blind spot because the truth is, the male or the female is different individual subject. In my view, Freud’s interpretation on the female reveals that female must tolerate suffering in her life; that is “women have fewer social interests than male” because she doesn’t have a penis (26). But I think it is an excuse to dominate female in the patriarchal society. I think it is very ironical in Freud’s view because Freud said that he uses the method of science to differentiate between the male and female. But why does Freud still emphasize that the little girl has a smaller penis? Why does Freud mention that the little girl’s autoeroticism is like the little boy’s penis masturbation? Does Freud misunderstand the biological science? It shows that Freud’s view on the female: the female is inferior to male is unpersuasive and ambiguous. Freud would rather emphasize the value of phallus than assert the importance of sexual difference.
Secondly, I would like to point out the differences of “change of object” between the girl and the boy to reveal that Freud’s view is uncertain. According to Freud, “A boy’s mother is the first object of his love, and she remains so too during the formation of his Oedipus complex. . . . For a girl too her first object must be her mother. . . . But in the Oedipus situation the girl’s father has become her love-object” (31). In Irigaray’s view, why must the girl go from “her masculine phase” to the feminine? In my view, why does not the boy go through the process of the change of object? Why must the girl turn to her father as her love object? In my view, it is irrational because her father doesn’t do anything good to the girl. According to Freud, the reason is that her father has the phallus, but her mother doesn’t have one. And the girl found that both she and her mother don’t have the penis so the girl is angry to her mother and changes her love object to her father. It is nonsense. Does the girl forget that her mother is the only person who takes cares of her when she is a baby? Why must the girl envy the penis in the phallic stage? According to Irigaray, “If one loves, desires one sex, one necessarily denigrates, detests the other. What is more, with only one sex being desirable, it becomes a matter of demonstrating how the little girl comes to devalue her own sex by devaluing her mother’s” (40). According to Freud, The little girl becomes melancholic “because she does not know what she is losing in discovering she and her mother are castrated” (68). In my view, Freud’s theory reveals that both the girl and her mother are castrated by the patriarchal society; that is: the female is oppressed by the male in the patriarchal society. It also reveals that the female figure is an object to support the patriarchal economy, to endure the generation of human beings. But it is satiric because the female’s reproducing capacity is ignored and even becomes a tool to support the patriarchal society.
What’s more, I would like to mention that the position of female and the position of child in Freud’s view. For Freud, “Woman is nothing but the receptacle that passively receives masculine product” (18). It reveals that the female is a passive and obedient figure who must accept all request the patriarchal society requires her to do. Female can’t refuse the irrational requests because woman plays a passive role in the patriarchal society. In my view, it reveals that female is a suppressed figure because her rights are all taken away by the male. According to Freud, “If the little girl, the woman, is to become ‘fully’ a woman, the desire for a child must replace the wish to have a penis” (73). It reveals that the child is a substitute for the wish of penis. In my view, the fact is that the female wants to acquire the right, the privilege rather than the phallus. But Freud claims that the value of penis and female desire for the phallus. For Freud, “The child— and it is ardently hoped it will be a boy—appears merely to be a penis-product and penis substitute” (74). In my view, it also reveals the reason why the mother always treats her son better than her daughter in the traditional patriarchal society. I think it is a little bit masochistic and ironic. Does the mother forget the pain－her mother always treated her brother better than herself when she was a girl? Why does the girl continue to do this thing to her daughter? Besides, if the female only wants to bear the boy, and then the species of human being will be extinct. Because the fact is only the female can bear the children.