Semicolon IX.II.

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t he s emicolon

arts & humanities students’ council volume IX issue II

;;; essay journal

The S e m i c ol on Essay Journal Spring 2015 Arts & Humanities Students’ Council at Western University

The Semicolon accepts A-grade essays written by undergraduate students for courses within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Western University. For more information and copies, please contact the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council in AHB ON2OD.

Editor-In-Chief Academic Managing Editor

Maryam Golafshani Serena Quinn

Creative Managing Editor

Gordon Haney

Copy Editor

Eric Zadrozny

Layout Editor

Calyssa Erb

Copyrights remain with the artists and authors. The sole responsibility for the content in this publication remains with the authors and artists. The content does not reflect the opinions of the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council (AHSC) or the University Students’ Council (USC).

The AHSC and USC assume no liability for any errors, inaccuracies, or ommisions contained in this publication.

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Tabl e of C onte nt s

Classical Studies 1

Caroline Hendrick’s The House of Augustus on Palatine Hill

Creative Writing 6

Michelle Baleka’s Death in the Disappearance: An Analysis of “Thanatosis” by Elizabeth Hazen

English 8

Elaine Yu’s Kickstarter: Defiant of Proof Against The Culture Industry

14

Samarra Goldglas’ Anonymous Molluscs: Naming and Identity in Parks’ Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom

19

Thomas Herbert’s Rhetoric in Canadian Marriage Laws: The Re-Inscription of Heteronormativity

Philosophy 25

Natasha Germana’s Experiencing Mortality: The Possibility of Retaining Personal Identity in Resurrection

;;; The School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities 25

Meg Cormack’s The Politics of Art in Contemporary Canadian Society

28

Julian Saddy’s Knowledge is Power: The Destructive Nature of Corrupted Kantian Enlightenment Throughout Early American History and in Choderlos de Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons

Theatre Studies 38

Sarah Gilpin’s Investigating the Norms of Performance Studies: Jon McKenzie’s “The Liminal-Norm” Against Victor Turner’s “Liminality and Communitas”

Visual Arts 41

Tabitha Chan’s Authenticity in Who the *$&% is Jackson Pollock?

Women’s Studies 45

Citlalli Melody Mastache’s Discourse on Ableism in “No Woman Born” by C.L. Moore

47

Brie Berry’s Evacuating Absence, “Gone Grrrl”: The Postmodern Femme Fatale

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CLASSICAL STUDIES 1

The House of Augustus on Palatine Hill Caroline Hendrick CS 3500

Introduction

During his reign, the emperor Augustus enjoyed several political and military triumphs and brought an era of peace, stability and innovation to Rome. Situated on the Palatine Hill, The House of Augustus contains wall paintings reflective of the stylistic changes occurring in fresco painting during the 20s BCE. This transitional phase between the second and third styles gave rise to a unique variety of frescos, with techniques and symbolism unseen in homes before the reign of Augustus. In addition, the paintings are greatly inspired by events in Augustus’s personal and political life, as well as political events occurring in the Roman Empire during this period. The Egyptianizing bedroom of Augustus is the most personal, incorporating various symbols referencing his most impressive victory at Actium. The Room of the Pine Festoons, used as a public and private space, provided the public with art they could appreciate, reflecting the altruistic personality of Augustus. In the northern domain of the house, The Room of the Masks is a manifestation of neo-classical painting, complimented with symbols representing Rome’s foundation and traditions. The House of Augustus wall paintings are a reflection of the stylistic changes occurring in fresco painting during the 20s BCE, brought on by Augustus’s personal life and the political circumstances existing in Rome during this period.

Transitional Second to Third Style Wall Painting The frescos at The House of Augustus reflect the most mature phase of second style wall painting and the beginning of the third style. The illusionistic and architectural second style is combined with the Egyptianizing symbolism and miniaturism of the third style in the rooms painted in the famous house on Palatine Hill. In second style wall painting, the imitation of the Roman theatre set is the dominating attribute (Leach 1993, pp. 140). The scaenae paintings mimicked temporary theatres built by wealthy Romans for the forty-four sacred festival days that took place each year (Wilson 2014, class lecture). The scaenae paintings included the realistically painted siparium, a wooden stage structure, plundered marble columns, and theatrical masks that hung from the scaenae frans. According to Vitruvius, a Roman architect during the time of Augustus, each of the scenes were painted in tragic, comic, or satyric style (Galinsky 2005, pp. 267). With the addition of the aedicula at the end of the second style, artists began adding detailed decorative ornaments, which reflected Roman mythology, the advances of the Roman Empire, and symbolism representing the Emperor Augustus and his patron deity, Apollo. As the third style was adopted, frescos were increasingly embellished with Egyptian qualities and small-scale, detailed ornamentation. The frescos display “Egyptian-inspired exoticism, but at the same time there are features that more closely reflect Roman taste” (Iacopi 2008, pp.16). It can be argued that Augustus himself initiated the transition from second to third style wall painting with the changes he implemented as emperor. He encouraged a pragmatic code of conduct for

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public figures, which may have induced the changes that lead to the third style of painting (Galinsky 2005, pp. 267).

The Bedroom of Augustus (Cubiculum 15)

Cubiculum 15, the colossal bedroom of Augustus and its elaborately decorated vaulted ceiling, found on the second floor of the house, looked onto the peristyle courtyard. It is the latest stylistically dated room in the house, painted in approximately 21 BCE. The neo-classical white background of the late second style is replaced by an ochre colour and the walls are flooded with Egyptianizing features that are unique to the rest of Rome. The lower portion of the wall is painted black with a cubic design; a dais that wraps around the entire room. It is topped by an aedicula, surrounded by an ochre and golden yellow background (Iacopi 2008, pp. 29). It is fitting that this was the emperor’s bedroom, as several Egyptian symbols are a personal reflection of his defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BCE. This was Augustus’s most important victory, as it marked the end of the Roman civil wars and brought peace to the empire.

The many details in this room mark the influence of Rome’s association with Egypt and the victory of Actium.

The worship of Apollo, as in the rest of the house, is significant in this room.

Apollo is credited with the naval victory at Actium, and Augustus vowed to include his worship in a religious policy, which is reflected in his bedroom (Iacopi 2008, pp. 13).

The friezes on either side of the aedicula are ornamented with winged obelisks, symbols of the Egyptian sun god Ra, who is worshipped at the Egyptian city of Heliopolis.

The Greeks shortened this to Helios, the Greek equivalent to Ra, who is often associated with Apollo. Above the north wall’s aedicula pediment is a black frieze, painted with swans draped with pearl garlands and plant motifs around their necks. The artist’s rendition of the swans proves to be another manner of praising the god Apollo, as they were sacred to him, while the plants signify the peace brought back to Rome with Augustus’s reign Wilson 2014, class lecture). Fanciful depictions of Nike appear on the ceiling of the vaulted cubiculum. This is an obvious celebration referencing the victory at Actium, which began to appear in various media around Rome (Iacopi 2008, pp. 35).

The symbolism behind the obelisks and swans further manifests Augustus’s thanks to his patron deity, who is held responsible for the inspiration behind this cubiculum.

Symbolism representing the worship of Isis began to flood Roman art at this time due to the Empire’s constant interaction with the Ptolemaic kingdom. In Rome, however, these symbols served a decorative purpose rather than having religious significance, (Iacopi 2008, pp. 33). The obelisks herons, cobras, vases, and plant motifs, including lotus blossoms are traits of new third style painting that was strongly influenced by the Egyptian culture. Animal figures are pictured on either side of sacred Egyptian objects.

Griffins flanking the obelisks in the left frieze are symbols of heraldry while the herons above the aedicula on the south wall flank a cist (Iacopi 2008, pp. 33). The cobras, shown with uraeaus, are a symbol of Lower Egypt, the northern part of the modern day country (Pratt 2013, class lecture). Augustus’s personal tastes are reflected in this room, as the motifs in the frescos are predominantly decorative. The Egyptian motifs in Cubiculum 15 represent Augustus’s most dignified victory at Actium, a tribute to his personal achievement, and the Empire’s expansion. The vaulted ceiling is decorated

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with stuccowork and intricate floral designs, dominated by lotus blossoms, again, typical of the early third style wall painting.

The Egyptianizing Bedroom of Augustus is a very elaborately decorated room, a contrast to the more public spaces in the remainder of the house, which are not as ornate. Augustus’s wish was to lead the empire in a more egalitarian style than previous rulers. Spaces outside of this bedroom adhered to the less ostentatious code of conduct he advocated (Galinsky 2005, pp. 267).

Room of the Pine Festoons (Cubiculum 6)

The Room of the Pine Festoons, located next to the Room of the Masks in the northern wing of the house, is dedicated to the goddess Cybele. The house was burned down in 3AD, and Augustus agreed to rebuild it with the help of his citizens. The temple dedicated to the goddess Cybele was also burned down in this fire, so he dedicated the Room of the Pine Festoons to her (Iacopi 2008, pp. 8). Cybele had a strong love for a youth named Attis, and after he died, she begged to have him brought back to life. Dionysus helped bring him back as a pine tree, and the garlands in cubiculum 6 represent this myth (Wilson 2014, class lecture). Several Romans worshipped Cybele; therefore, the public who viewed the frescos in this cubiculum would have adored them. The plain, white walls of cubiculum six are a reference to the neo-classical, Greek panel painting found in Athens in the fifth century BCE. The Room of the Masks (Cubiculum 5) The Room of the Masks, found in the northern section of the house, brings the viewer to a theatre setting, like the majority of second style frescos. Unlike scaenae frans painted earlier in the second style, depicting a specific theatre genre, the symbolism in the frescos of the Room of the Masks is a reflection of the personal taste of the owner of the house and the changes he implemented in the city of Rome at this time.

The theatre set does not depict one specific genre of theatre, but displays various masks of satire, comedy, and tragedy on each of the walls. The lower portion of the wall, painted brown, shows the protruding stage. The proscenium is painted in deep red and yellow, flanked by an antechamber façade. The tripartite style in this room draws the viewer’s eyes directly to the center of the wall (Wilson 2014, class lecture), to an aedicula, a small shrine structure with an upper pediment, supported by columns.

The addition of the aedicula to the scaenae frans is a feature of most mature phase of second style painting (Galinsky 2005, pp. 268). Adorning the lintel on the uppermost part of the stage structure are bucranium draped in garlands, which appear to be nailed to the stage structure. These bulls’ heads represent a large sacrifice (Wilson 2014, class lecture), most likely to Apollo in this case, as Augustus devoted much of his worship to him. Resting on top of the lintel are two cornucopias, flanked by overflowing urns and mythological gargoyles. The cornucopias at the center of the lintel represent the prosperity of Rome at this time, after the victories at Naulocus and Actium, which brought peace to the city. The gargoyles may be apotropaic, warding off any evils.

In The Room of the Masks, the aediculae are painted in a hazy, sketch-like technique, in a neo-classical, pale colour palette. There is a stark distinction of the centralized, monochromatic aediculae due to the juxtaposition provided by the vividly painted surrounding architecture (Galinksy 2005, pp. 268-270). Within each aedicula, refer-

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ences to Rome’s heritage are painted. The south wall central painting illustrates a rural sanctuary dominated by a bethel in the foreground. Along the bethel, rests a quiver, a blindfold, and a spear. The quiver and blindfold are likely attributed to Apollo, the patron deity of Augustus, who is also recognized for the peace brought to Rome following the victory. (Iacopi 2008, pp. 12). The spear is significant as it references the foundation of Rome, another sacred feature that was important to the emperor. Iacopi wrote, “The spear set into the depiction of the bethel could well be intended as a reference to that which Romulus hurled against the Palatine Hill at the moment of Rome’s foundation”. Augustus most likely chose the location for his house due to its close proximity to two Roman landmarks, the Casa Romulus, the house of the founder of Rome, and the Lupercal, the cave where twins Romulus and Remus were discovered by the she-wolf (Iacopi 2008, pp.16). The west wall aedicula portrays a rustic sanctuary dedicated to the Pan Lupercus (Iacopi 2008, pp.16). A pan flute rests on the base of the wooden structure, which is a reference to the Lupercalia festival, in which the procession passed by the Palatine Hill each year (Wilson 2014, class lecture). In 27 BCE, the Senatus Populusque Romanum gave the emperor the honourary titles of Augustus and Princeps. With these titles, he was given two laurel trees, the clipeus virtutis (shield of virtue), and the corona civica (civic crown) (Wilson 2014, class notes). These symbolic gifts are shown in the west wall aedicula: the laurel tree is presented in the background the shield is hanging from the top of the portico, and the crown is hung outside of the doorway, to be admired by the public. Two birds perch on the ground before the base of the structure, representing peace. The objects painted in the aediculae show Augustus’s appreciation for the city he lives in and, in turn, the appreciation the empire felt towards it’s emperor.

Conclusion

The House of Augustus serves as a historical proof of the transition developing in fresco painting during the 20s BCE. The addition of aediculae and intricately painted Egyptian symbolism reflect Rome’s interaction with the Ptolemaic kingdom and the influence it had on Roman artists. Augustus recognizes Greek elements of art with the inclusion of whitewashed sections of the walls in his home. Augustus’s personality is expressed through the frescos, in the depictions of the foundation of Rome and its traditions. Rome’s political advance, with the addition of Egypt in its empire, is depicted in the Egyptianizing bedroom and its ornate ceiling. Cybele, a goddess very dear to many Romans, is portrayed in the Room of the Pine Festoons. The Room of the Masks is one of the latest scaenae frans wall paintings, and the Egyptianizing bedroom marks the start of a style comprised by symbolism and the Egyptian cult of Isis. The House of Augustus is decorated with several details that accurately demonstrate the developments of the Roman Empire, the wall painting, and the personality of its emperor, Augustus.

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Works Cited Carretoni, Gianfilippo. 1983. Das Haus des Augustus auf dem Palatin. Darmstadt, Germany: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.

Galinsky, Karl. 2005. “II: Augustan Domestic Interiors: Propaganda or Fashion?”

Pp. 264-278 in Age of Augustus, edited by K. Galinsky. New York, NY: C a m b r i d g e University Press.

Iacopi, Irene. 2008. The House of Augustus Wall Paintings. Milan, Italy: Electa.

Leach, Eleanor Winsor. 1993. “Patrons, Painters, and Patterns: The Anonymity of Romano-Campanian Paintingand the Transition from the Second to the Third Style.” Pp. 133-158 in Roman Art in Context: An Anthology, edited by E. D’Ambra. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Humanities/Social Sciences.

Pratt, Catherine. 2013. “Egyptian Art and Architecture.” Presented at Western University, Fall 2013.

Wilson, David. 2014. “Greek and Roman Painting.” Presented at Western University, Fall 2014.

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CREATIVE WRITING 6

Death in the Disappearance: An Analysis of “Thanatosis” by Elizabeth Hazen Michelle Baleka Writing 2220

Inaction and death are twins of each other. “Thanatosis” by Elizabeth Hazen, published in the Southwest Review, is a short poem about a person hiding in her mother’s closet. The narrator cowers in the dark behind the clothing in the closet, clinging to her mother’s suit, and finds herself immobile. There a strong juxtaposition between an outside world that “calls” to the narrator, and the stagnant internal world that presents an image of “playing-dead.” The narrator is trying to disappear, and the poem’s language suggests this is an act of dying.

“Thanatosis” is composed of five short stanzas, fitting neatly onto a single page.

The first, third, and fourth stanzas end in the middle of a thought, causing the first lines of the following stanzas to begin lower-case, and to finish expressing the previous half-stated thought. A small rhyming pattern also runs through the stanzas. The first and fifth stanzas have an A B C A rhyming scheme; the fourth stanza reverses this by containing an A B B C pattern, while the second and third stanzas have an A B B A rhyming scheme. Each stanza contains the same amount of four lines, creating the poem’s flow and adding a touch of consistency. At its core, there is a certain sort of inconsistency within the poem such as in the narrative voice in comparison to the images presented.

The narrator’s voice displays language that is not child-like, which clashes with the image of her seeking refuge in her mother’s closet. Words such as “tonic” and “rigor mortis” are not ones that would normally be used by a child. Since this contrasts with the image of the narrator frightfully pressing her mouth “in the wool of her [mother’s] one good suit” (Hazen 11) it suggests that innocence has been lost. Furthermore, the language used by the narrator is very dark, creating a sense of foreboding and danger in the poem.

The language is grim, alluding to death, and consisting of frequent images of terror and paralysis. “The victim’s one trick: to keel over” (3-4), suggests that someone is pretending to be dead in an act of self-preservation, stating such an action as the only alternative form of defense outside of “camouflage” and the instinct to choose between either fighting or fleeing. Here the familiar image of “fight or flight” is contrasted by a fresh image, “tonic immobility” (2-3). The familiar baseline for dealing with a tense situation is thus replaced by a contradictory image. Tonics are medicinal and typically used to revive, meaning that this “tonic” has the opposite effect, but for purposes of healing. Yet the image of “foul smells, teeth clench[ed], eyes glaze[d]” (5) implies that the immobility rendered by this tonic creates an intense illusion of death. The narrator proceeds to liken this state of paralysis directly with death at the end of the poem by stating, “I can see / no difference between death and immobility, / what it is to hide and disappear” (18-20). Therefore, while this “tonic” is a protective solution, ultimately it still is harmful.

The narrator also states that ‘what’s outside can’t revive / the creature; it feels nothing, though alive, / paralyzed while the predator remains,” (6-8). This is another ominous statement that tells the reader that while in that state of death, the victim is cut off from the outside world willfully, and nothing can draw them back. The victim has retreated and become the living dead in an attempt to survive. Ultimately, fear kills. The death

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shown to the reader is an internal death that is close in appearance to a death of the body.

However, there may be a more literal death occurring within the poem as well.

The narrator speaks in a first-person voice, although the “I” does not enter the poem until the third stanza, when the narrator is seen hiding and morphing “into a speechless, frozen thing,” (12). This gives the opening stanzas a voice that at first comes across as third-person. The only subject shown is “the victim.” The narrator appears to be witnessing something, or has witnessed something at the beginning of the poem. It is possible that what the narrator witnessed was the death of her mother, who’s “one good suit” (11) has become a sort of comforting item the narrator is clinging to. There is a sense of inheritance in this action.

Furthermore, it appears that the victim in the first two stanzas, as well as the subject described as “biding her time when the enemy is near” (17) may be the mother. Perhaps the narrator is watching her mother employ the “tonic” of immobility in order to protect herself while the child cowers in the closet. Perhaps she witnessed an act of abuse enacted against her mother, or even her mother’s literal death.

Since the narrator states “the others / call me from far away, but I am fixed / right here” (12-14) suggests that the event is over but the narrator continues to either linger in that moment or the immobility she first disappeared into in that moment. The outside world continues to live, continues to try to reach her, while the narrator has shut down and states a desire to stay in hiding.

Since there is a sense of inheritance to this piece, crafted by the careful language of Hazen, there is an implication that this poem has another meaning behind its surface visual of a cowering child. A sense of depression surrounds the piece with its dark, solemn images of withdrawal, inaction, doubt, internal paralysis, and shadows. The narrator appears to be unwilling to move, perhaps because of an inability to do so. Ignoring the outside world and retreating into a metaphorical closet of her mother’s clothing may convey a sense of grief, perhaps over the loss of the mother, or it may be insinuating depression.

The narrator may have inherited depression from her mother, causing her to display the same behaviour her mother once exhibited. The “predator” the victim is waiting out may be a depressive episode rather than a literal person. This may explain why the language is so dark, drawing a deep connection between immobility and the act of hiding with death itself. Death is the ultimate disappearance.

The narrator is still alive, but deadened in some ways, since they are immobile. Since the narrator displays the behaviour that is then stated to be the same as death, it makes the last lines jarring, giving the revelation power.

“Thanatosis” by Elizabeth Hazen sustains this reading through the poet’s use of its oddly consistently inconsistent structure, a deep and introspective narrative voice, strong images containing a consistently dismal tone, and a thematic parallelism that correlates death with inaction and the attempt to disappear. The poem thus contains a deep, self-reflective darkness captured by the language and structure of the piece.

Works Cited Hazen, Elizabeth. “Thanatosis.” The Best American Poetry 2013. Ed. David Lehman and Denise Duhamel. New York: Scribner Poetry, 2013. 50. Print.

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ENGLISH 8

Kickstarter: Defiant of Proof Against The Culture Industry Elaine Yu ENG 2250

In their joint article, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment and Mass Deception”, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argue that modern culture has become standardized. This, they argue, is because culture is generated through an industry with a system in place that stifles the development of original ideas (Horkheimer and Adorno 41). The system is imposed; leaving culture to produce the same content over and over again until repetition comes off as original, all the while preventing anything new from growing. On the off chance that anything spontaneous is produced, it is immediately absorbed into the industry to become a part of the system or “confined to the apocryphal field of the ‘amateur’ and also have to accept organization from above” (Horkheimer and Adorno 41). In this way culture is under a monopoly, but Horkheimer and Adorno also argue that culture monopolies are weak and cannot afford to neglect to appease “the real holders of power in society” (Horkheimer and Adorno 41), the economically powerful. Furthermore, Horkheimer and Adorno invoke the radio analogy: That is, the assumption that the consumer is unable to rebel against the system imposed on them because all culture is a one way street where the divide between those who generate culture and receive culture is distinct. They explicitly state in their text that “No machinery of rejoinder has been devised, and private broadcasters are denied any freedom” (Horkheimer and Adorno 41). Although this was true of their time, today the internet serves as the rejoinder they speak of. The phenomenon of crowd funding, most often conducted through the internet, has been called “pioneering” (Wortham B1), and “paradigm-shifting” (Gross), but is it really? At first glance crowd funding websites and platforms such as Kickstarter appear to defy Horkheimer and Adorno’s theories on the culture industry. However, upon closer inspection we find that these “paradigm-shifting” platforms are simply another part of the culture industry suggested by Horkheimer and Adorno.

Crowd funding is the practice of financing a project by collecting small increments of money from a large amount of people. Online, this method of funding is almost always conducted through specific websites and platforms designed for crowd funding. Although every website varies in the details of how it conducts business, in general creators are given a webpage within the website dedicated to their project. This webpage is the space where creators generate interest in their project, often posting a video along with a description of the project and where the pledged money will go.

More often than not, producers will entice potential backers by providing various rewards in exchange for donations at escalating intervals. Backers support projects via electronic pledges that producers receive via PayPal or credit card (Satorius and Pollard 16). It is also important to note that crowd funding platforms enforce a project deadline, meaning that a project can only raise money during a certain time period after being launched. Kickstarter is perhaps the most popular crowd funding platform on the internet, with over fifty-eight thousand successfully funded projects and over five million backers to date (Kickstarter). In total, backers have pledged over one billion dollars

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to various projects, with a success rate of over forty four percent of all projects reaching their goal amount (Kickstarter). Kickstarter follows the same general format as other crowd funding platforms, but it differs from other popular crowd funding platforms such as Indiegogo in that it enforces a rule where a project must reach its goal amount in order to collect the money raised. Should a project fail to reach its fundraising goal all the money is returned to the backers. For the purposes of this essay, projects that fall under the category of the “technology” on the Kickstarter website will be excluded.

This is because technology is not necessarily culture. The projects that fall under the “technology” category are not often for the cultural advancement or entertainment sectors of society, the sectors which Horkheimer and Adorno discuss in “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”.

At first glance, crowd funding undermines Horkheimer and Adorno’s argument that creators need to look to small a pool of wealthy sponsors to fund their projects. Although the success of project ideas is still driven by economic capital, the consumer invests in the idea rather than the finished product, the position that Horkheimer and Adorno believe is occupied by only a select few and not the masses. By having the masses invest in an idea rather than a finished product, the culture industry becomes a two-way street. Crowd funding forces consumers to think and respond critically to project ideas, asking themselves if the project is really worth their time and money, and what the consequences of certain projects are. It also becomes a dialogue where creators see the reactions of the masses and can change ideas accordingly.

Furthermore, the creators themselves are freed from having to play by the rules of the system as well. New, radical innovations in media that would be rejected by the system now have a chance to come to fruition. What Horkheimer and Adorno believe to be the corrupting element of profit is removed. Although project creators may have long term plans to make a profit from their work, backers support projects not for profit, but rather to “help them come to life” (Kickstarter).

However, theory and practice often differ. Just as Horkheimer and Adorno claim, these projects, launched by anyone from elementary school teachers to professionals within the industry, fall outside the culture system and are often labeled “amateur” due to their backyard art project nature. Even then, projects launched by professionals seeking to break away from the system often cannot compete with culture produced by the system. These “professionals” are often new to their fields and more often than not, unestablished. Most successfully funded projects raise less than $10,000 (Kickstarter), and even then the majority of the money often goes towards paying for cost of materials and production. What this all leads to is that most projects, if they are successful, never reach a broad audience beyond their project backers. The majority of projects funded through Kickstarter simply do not have the publicity and scale to compete with the system, confining them, as Horkheimer and Adorno put it, to the field of the “amateur” (Horkheimer and Adorno 41). There are, however, exceptions. The participation of creators who are already established in their respective fields brings a new level of professionalism that blends with this crowd of “amateurs”. Artists such as Amanda Palmer and Zach Braff, established artists in the music and film industries, have launched kickstarter campaigns to huge success, raising over three million dollars each. Despite being among the crowd that brings professionalism to the site, their

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success only serves to prove Horkheimer and Adorno’s theory further. A quick look through the most highly funded projects on Kickstarter reveals that the most successful projects are those launched by established artists and companies. What looks like a method for someone outside the industry to gain support for his or her ideas ends up being another way that the culture industry supports its own projects and endeavours.

The participation of famous, established professionals is a method through which the industry appropriates crowd funding, proving Horkheimer and Adorno’s point that the industry absorbs anything new. On the other hand, one must take into account why established artists who are a part of the culture industry are turning to websites such as Kickstarter. In the video for his project, Wish I was Here, Braff outlines some of the reasons he chose Kickstarter over traditional funding methods. His reasons include not wanting to sacrifice his right to “the final cut,” casting choices, location choices, and the script. These reasons are echoed by many if not all other professionals who have turned to Kickstarter hoping to avoid the industry. But despite these attempts by those within the industry to break away from it, they are still tethered to it in other ways. Elements outside of the actual production, such as screening locations and distribution companies for DVDs, are ultimately controlled by the culture industry. If Kickstarter users want their new product to be displayed, they need to take the industry into account.

An example would be in the video game industry. Unless a new console is created along with a video game, any producers making games must tailor their game to fit the existing consoles on the market. Overall, the culture industry, like Horkheimer and Adorno suggest, has given the label of “amateur” to many of the projects on Kickstarter. The few projects that are not seen as amateur are still under the monopoly of the industry, whether it is the projects themselves or through outside forces.

As Horkheimer and Adorno write, “any trace of spontaneity from the public in official broadcasting is controlled and absorbed by talent scouts, studio competitions and official programs of every kind selected by professionals” (Horkheimer and Adorno 41). In the case of Kickstarter projects, many projects, especially film, have been absorbed into the culture industry. Institutions, or “guardians of culture” (Horkheimer and Adorno 43) of the culture industry, such as the Sundance Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, and the Academy Awards have all given awards and distinctions, or at least nominations, to many Kickstarter funded films. By endorsing culture that is funded through Kickstarter and the crowd funding phenomenon, the culture industry is forcibly associating itself with something that initially had nothing to do with it. This appropriation process happens many ways. Primarily, the industry appropriates these projects through recognition. It is important to note that recognition and notoriety in itself are not wholly symbolic of the industry’s encroachment. Rather, it is the method through which a work gains popularity that dictates whether or not it is a part of the culture industry. Internet topics that have “gone viral” are an example of gaining popularity outside of the system, while interviews through a broadcasting company are an example of gaining popularity through the system. The subject being interviewed is no longer able to be divorced from their association with the broadcasting company, becoming absorbed by the system. By displaying Kickstarter funded projects at film festivals, an association between the institutions that fund the film festivals and Kickstarter is created. The Sundance Film Festival in particular has come to be associated

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with Kickstarter. Ten percent of the films at the Sundance Film Festival were funded through Kickstarter in 2012, four of which won top prizes. The Sundance Film Festival flaunts its “indie” label, only featuring films that fall under this category. By featuring Kickstarter funded films in the festival, the culture industry is categorizing the projects, allowing the consumer to “choose the category of mass product turned out for his type” (Horkheimer and Adornor 41). By including certain films and not others in festivals and nominating certain movies over others for an Academy Award creates a “marked differentiation such as those of A and B films” (Horkheimer and Adorno 41), which according to Horkheimer and Adorno, is simply another way of labeling works. This labeling of these Kickstarter projects is simply another step in the process described

by Horkheimer and Adorno. However, by giving recognition to certain projects over others by handing out awards, the culture industry also maintains its “ruthless unity” (Horkheimer and Adorno 41). The institutions that hand out awards and distinctions pick and choose which works they honour based on the same criteria as films created through the culture industry. By running Kickstarter projects through their judging system and awarding those that conform to their standards and rejecting those that do not, the culture industry kills two birds with one stone. It ensures that all culture remains alike while solidifying the industry’s monopoly over culture. The other forms of media Kickstarter engages with go through this same process of appropriation as film and video. Games are reviewed in gaming magazines, art is reviewed by critics, and music makes its way to the ranking lists on radio stations and awards shows. Although Kickstarter could in theory produce new forms of culture and counter the system, it has been appropriated by the culture industry, fulfilling Horkheimer and Adorno’s claim that anything new is absorbed into the industry.

But even before the culture industry begins actively appropriating Kickstarter funded projects, the website itself favoured the system. It even goes so far as to mold itself to the system that it claims to have left behind, with several of the platform’s features echoing the larger culture industry. As such, Kickstarter was a part of the culture industry to begin with. First of all, any creator hoping to post a project on the website must first submit to a screening process to ensure the project meets the website’s guidelines. Although the screening process is mostly to ensure that nothing illegal is being posted, one of the main guidelines is that the project must fit under one of the categories on the website (Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater) (Kickstarter). This guideline echoes Horkheimer and Adorno’s restaurant analogy (Horkheimer and Adorno 49). The potential backer must first be satisfied with the “menu” of selection of projects they can fund. Kickstarter also encourages the culture industry to encroach on its site. Kickstarter displays the achievements and recognitions (such as those mentioned above) that some of their projects receive in an annual “highlights” slideshow, which they have been running since 2012. The existence of pages such as “Staff Picks” and curated pages also show the website’s involvement with the culture industry. Some organizations with curated pages include the Sundance Film Festival, Youtube, and the International Game Developer’s Association (Kickstarter). These pages influence a backer’s decision on which projects to fund, as cultural institutions, while viewed as more professional, will single out projects that fit their criteria, once again encourag-

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ing the standardization of culture. The annual “highlights” slideshow also showcases instances of Kickstarter appearing within the culture industry as a triumph. Parodies of Kickstarter in television, games, and journalism are encouraged. As such, the industry has appropriated not only certain projects within the site, but the website itself as a part of the cultural industry. Kickstarter also encourages projects whose ideas are easier to sell using a certain format. Their website has a section dedicated to the “Kickstarter School” (Kickstarter), which teaches creators how pitch their ideas in a way that will encourage funding. The “school” encourages a cookie cutter formula for how project pages should be run. Typically, project pages which adhere to the formula tend to succeed more while projects whose ideas do not adhere to this standard formula of presentation tend to suffer. A project that is more dynamic and visually appealing will generally have a better page video than say, a book project idea. This formula imposes the standardization of successful projects funded through Kickstarter, which Horkheimer and Adorno suggest is one of the culture industry’s greatest flaws.

Finally, a look at what projects are most successful and who receives the most funding reveals that despite the platform’s potential to fund new, innovative types of culture, the culture funded is often similar to the mass produced culture created by the industry. The Veronica Mars Movie Project, has become a symbol for Kickstarter’s potential to create video media. The project broke multiple site records, such as “Fastest project to reach $1 million”, “Fastest project to reach $2 million”, “All-time highestfunded project in Film category”, “Third highest-funded project in Kickstarter history”, and “Most project backers of any project in Kickstarter history”. Creators of the project initially turned to Kickstarter after the culture industry refused to fund their project.

The success of the project encourages the development of consumers responding to culture and removing the monopoly a select few currently hold on the industry. However, the Veronica Mars Project is a film sequel to the television series Veronica Mars, produced by Warner Bros. Television, which was aired for three seasons before being cancelled (John 8). The enthusiasm of the public to fund this project, a cultural production created by the industry, shows that the industry is perpetuated by the backers of Kickstarter funded media. Three of the top ten most funded projects are sequels to preexisting games or television series (Kickstarter). One possible reason for the success of sequels is that backers do not want to risk funding a project that may not succeed.

However, Kickstarter’s all or nothing policy ensures that projects that do not reach their funding goal return their funds to backers, removing much of the risk-factor involved (Kickstarter). This suggests that backers are gravitating towards projects that follow familiar formulas. Regardless, the public is perpetuating the standardization of culture in their funding choices. As Horkheimer and Adorno write, “the attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favors the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system” (Horkheimer and Adornor 41). This gravitation towards familiar content in potential backers encourages the perpetuation of the standard culture created by the industry because projects that fall outside the standard formula will fail to receive funds. Standardization is encouraged not only by the backers and consumers of Kickstarter culture but also by the creators of the projects themselves. In the gaming sector of Kickstarter, creators often use labels to create a quick understanding of their games in the thumbnail descriptions. This strategy is presumably to capture the

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attention of potential backers by showing them that the project is similar to something they already enjoy. The most successfully funded games often contain a large amount of jargon from the video game industry. Words such as “RPG”, “sidescrolling”, “tabletop”, “TCG”, etc. only promote the labeling of media that Horkheimer and Adorno look down upon. Furthermore, Horkheimer and Adorno write that “interested parties explain the culture industry in technological terms” (Horkheimer and Adorno 40).

The use of media specific jargon perpetuates the culture industry by preventing new genres from appearing. A new form of game that lacks a label appears unprofessional, discouraging potential backers, continuing the cycle of recycling material. Successful Kickstarter projects reflect this lack of new culture being produced. Cards Against Humanity, one of the most famous projects created through Kickstarter (Kickstarter), is simply a rehashing of Apples to Apples. A survey of the projects that achieve success through Kickstarter only proves Horkheimer and Adorno’s point that all “new” culture is simply the same thing with a different face.

Kickstarter appears to defy Horkheimer and Adorno’s theories on the culture industry. The website that utilises the phenomenon of crowd funding creates a dialogue between subject and broadcaster, and removes the profit based monopoly of the culture industry. However, the culture industry, through various means, has appropriated the platform, proving Horkheimer and Adorno’s claim that the culture industry absorbs anything new. The participation of professionals, the inability for small projects to reach a wide audience without catering to the pre-existing culture industry’s rules, and the encouragement of Kickstarter’s creators for their website to join the ranks of the industry are all means through which this is done. The standardization of culture is also actively present, enforced by both backers, the website itself, and project creators. Ultimately, Kickstarter is proof rather than the exception of the existence of Horkheimer and Adorno’s culture theories.

Works Cited Daniel M. Satorius, Stu Pollard. “Crowd Funding.” The Entertainment and Sports Lawyer 28.2 (2010): 15-17. Web. March 25. 2014.

Gross, Doug. “Kickstarter to User: Backer Beware.” CNN [US] 5 Sept. 2012, Web ed.

Web. March 25. 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/tech/web/kickstarter-refunds/ index.html Horkheimer, Max and Theodor Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Cultural Theory, an Anthology. Eds. Imre Szeman and Timother Kaposy. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, 2011, pp. 40-52 of 548. Print.

John, Emma. “Veronica Mars, the movie: ‘Fans gave the money, there was all this pressure’.” The Guardian [UK] 13 March. 2014, Web ed. Web. March 25. 2014. http://www. theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/13/veronica-mars-movie-fans-money-pressure-return-kickstarter-funded-marshmallows Wortham, Jenna. “A Few Dollars at a Time, Patrons Support Artists on the Web.” The New York Times 24 Aug. 2009, New York ed.: B1. Web. March 24. 2014. http://www. nytimes.com/2009/08/25/technology/start-ups/25kick.html

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Anonymous Molluscs: Naming and Identity in Parks’ Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom

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Samarra Goldglas English 3666

If someone came up to me and began calling me “Rebecca,” I would not answer. This is because my name is not Rebecca, not even close. This single interaction would not change who I think I am or how I relate to myself, but that is because this random person has no control over me or my life. Slaves, however, were property, and slave owners had complete power and control over them. Slave owners performed this power by changing the slave’s name. In order to challenge the historical practice in America of renaming slaves – individuals already dehumanized by slavery – SuzanLori Parks’ Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom questions the practice of renaming, and aims to reverse the erasure of identity by giving voice to those who had no choice.

Our names are the key to our self-identification; they are how we label ourselves and present ourselves to the world. In a scientific study concerning brain activation, Dennis P. Carmody and Michael Lewis found that “[t]here is unique brain activation specific to one’s own name in relation to the names of others” (156). That is, there is a physical, measurable difference in a person’s brain when that person hears their own name compared to when they hear a random name. Chona demonstrates the difference between a random name that is imposed versus a person’s identified name when Lutzky calls her Charlene instead of Chona: “Char-who? Uh uhn. Uh–It-is-I,-Dr.-Lutzky,-Chona” (32).

Her immediate response, “Char-who?”, indicates that the name Charlene does not have any meaning relevant to her identity. She does not simply correct Lutzky, she asserts herself using the identifying personal pronoun “I,” linking her intrinsic identity – her “I” – with the name Chona. Carmody and Lewis go on to note that the brain’s response to that person’s own name is “similar to the patterns reported when individuals make judgments about themselves and their personal qualities” (156). In other words, when hearing one’s own name, the brain reacts in the same way as when a person is performing a self-analysis. Therefore, the act of renaming someone is not only an attempt to change their identity and how they relate to their identity, but it is an attempt to alter the way that his or her brain physically works and responds. For Mona, renamed Molly, the renaming completely distances her from her former self, exhibited by her repeated mantra: “Once there was uh me named Mona” (27). Mona is acknowledging not only that her name has been changed, but that she, as a whole, has become a new person because of that change, a whole new “me.” Her repeated mantra becomes symbolic of her brain’s inability to accept this change. Her deteriorating mental health, represented by nonsensical lines such as “Splat. Splat. Splatsplatsplat” (35), is a result of this denial of her identity.

The renaming in Imperceptible Mutabilities is not a random phenomenon; it has its base in history. American slave owners often changed the names of their slaves when they came into their ownership. Sheila S. Walker, an anthropologist and educator, explains that “[m]ost slaves . . . were renamed with names their white masters

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found more familiar and convenient” (74), a practice Parks pointedly mirrors using the character of the Naturalist. This ability to rename slaves indicates that the master’s convenience takes precedence over a human being’s sense of identity and selfhood. In his monologue, the Naturalist refers to Mona and Chona as “subjects which for our purposes we have named ‘MOLLY’ and ‘CHARLENE’” (Parks 27). For the Naturalist, they are “subjects” to be studied, which dehumanizes them, removing their agency and defining them as a means to an end, that is, the study. They have been named for the “purposes” of the Naturalist and could have just as easily been “A” and “B,” as the names are not meant to give them an identity, but serve only as a convenient way to identify and differentiate between the subjects. Walker goes on to explain that by “renaming their slaves, [w]hite masters were symbolically cutting them off from their African identity and heritage, and from their sense of personhood” (74). In other words, renaming slaves was an act used to separate slaves not only from their identity, but also from their position in a unique culture. Parks examines this extermination of heritage with the Naturalist, who, as a member of the modern world “(mundus modernus),” asks how “Should. We. Best. Accommodate.” those from “mundus primitivus,” the primitive world, meaning Mona, Chona, and Verona as well as their so-called primitive heritage (Parks 29). While he describes it as accommodation, the stilted nature of the sentence puts emphasis on each word, implying that they do not mean exactly what is being said. Within the context of him observing them as “beasts” for “ex-per-i-men-tation,” the accommodation is not sincere in its purpose of “harmony” (29). In his guise as Dr. Lutzky, the Naturalist takes the position of an exterminator to visit Chona, Mona, and Verona, illustrating that extermination is far closer to the objective than the vague idea of accommodation (31). He is exterminating their sense of self by renaming them, exterminating their heritage that gave them their names, and confusing their ideas of their past selves, which in turn sparks Mona’s mantra about her past “me,” as the new name equals a new self; one that is separate from the old (33). Renaming a person for one’s own convenience implies a complete disregard for the other as an individual with a sense of identity, but renaming a person in order to cut them off from their heritage is a pointed attempt to exterminate a culture and leave the individual not only nameless, but without a personal history.

Throughout “Part 1: Snails,” Parks introduces the renaming of others – those regarded as inferior by the scientific community – for one’s own purposes as a harmful practice, detrimental to their mental well-being, as with Mona. The individual who is being renamed often challenges this attempt, as Chona does when correcting Lutzky; “I-am-Chona,” she says, positively asserting her identity (Parks 32). This challenge is ignored, as it often was in history, and Lutzky continues to refer to her as Charlene (35). Lynn A. Casmier-Paz, in her article “Footprints of the Fugitive: Slave Narrative Discourse and the Trace of Autobiography,” examines the circumstance of slave renaming, noting that some slaves “only tak[e] the [new] name . . . after [being] physically assaulted” (216). The individuals do not accept the name, but are instead beaten down into submission, forced to relinquish that which expresses who they are. Parks takes up this history and presents another possibility. While Mona is fragile and confused by the renaming, she refuses to accept the given name, either correcting or ignoring Lutzky when he refers to her as Charlene as she does when he tells her to “hold still, Charlene”

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and she talks to “Mokus” as though Lutzky said nothing (34-35). Instead of having the name be “forced upon [them] despite [their] stubborn refusal,” as in the historical autobiographies Casmier-Paz studies (216), Parks subverts this name-change dynamic.

The official character names of those personally identified as Chona and Mona are technically Charlene and Molly, the names given by the Naturalist, for scenes 1.A and 1.C in “Snails” (24-29). In scene 1.E however, the character names officially change on the page to Chona and Mona, their self-identified names. This change occurs because, unlike in historical accounts, the challenging of the imposed name and the positive assertion of the true name are respected by the official record, the play itself, if not by Lutzky the character. Parks uses this reversal of historical practice to draw attention to the cruelty inherent in refusing to acknowledge individuals as they present themselves.

Parks presents renaming as an absurd practice, questioning its importance and method in “Part 3: Open House” (41). Walker explains that some “slavers named their slaves for White persons they didn’t like as an expression of their scorn” (75). Not only were these individuals used as a means to a petty end and as an insult, but they were also named using someone else’s name. The name they then held was not unique or identifying for them, as it already identified someone else and carried that reference. Parks criticizes this idea, taking it one step farther when Aretha finds out that her name is, officially, Charles: ARETHA: . . . I had me uh master named Charles . . . Still. Havin uh master named Charles aint no reason for her tuh be called– MISS FAITH: She is named what her name is. She was given that name by him (47) Aretha highlights the lack of reason behind renaming by understanding the connection between her official name and her life, that it is the name of her previous master, but still seeing it as a nonsensical name for her. The only rationale given is that it is her name because it is her name and it is her name because Charles gave her that name.

The circular reasoning needed to understand the statement indicates that the rationale is arbitrary and therefore irrational. Miss Faith’s name is an aptronym, a name that perfectly represents her character (OED), as she has a strong (mis(s)placed) faith in “the book” (46). Parks uses these aptronyms, including Anglor Saxon and Blanca Saxon, which both imply white, English-speaking, and of British descent, as a hyperbolic way of demonstrating the importance of a name to identity. Miss Faith has a name that has meaning and identifies who she is. Aretha, because she has been officially renamed “Charles” Saxon, a name already belonging to someone else and given to her for no other reason than her master’s name was Charles Saxon, is denied a name that identifies her as an individual, or even correctly labels her gender (47). Charles later tells Aretha, after she has had all her teeth removed, that “[w]e won’t be able to tell you apart from the others. We won’t even know your name,” which implies that without dental records, a form of identification, and without the memory of her name, she will be indistinguishable from the masses (53). To Charles, her identity rests on the forensic evidence of her individuality, not on her sense of self, as though without a nametag, or a proper name of her own, she is unknown.

In “Part 4: The Greeks (Or the Slugs),” Parks links naming with possession, as Casmier-Paz does when she notes that “[t]he very act of renaming a slave powerfully

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demonstrates a slave owner’s hold upon slave identity” (222). The power to rename someone emerges from possessing them as an object, as slave owners were owners of slaves. The slave, and the slave’s identity, belonged to the slave owner. Parks discusses this possession in a different format, the family. When he faces his children after returning from his station, Mr. Sergeant Smith asks repeatedly, “[y]ou one uh mines?”

(70). He is unable to recognize any of his children as his own and does not, until the very end, use their names: “Duffy–Uh–Muffy,” but even then he confuses them, their names and identities as his children (71). Since he had been gone, he had not seen the children, and was likely not a part of the naming process. The children, while his blood, are unrecognizable to him and thus the names are unfamiliar. Before he comes home, Muffy desperately wants her father to say her name in his letters: “[i]f he really loved Muffy he’d say Muffy” (63). For Muffy her idea of love is completely wrapped up in her father using her name and acknowledging her as his. When he does not, he does not “know” her and does not love her (62). Saying a person’s name is the only way to acknowledge who they are and their identity. Steven Earnshaw discusses the same need in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, noting that a “name counts for nothing unless” spoken by the person, as Muffy requires of her father, as well as the “insist[ance] that” he “perform” her name (178). This performance of a name is central because it requires the speaker to recognize the other individual, in this case, Muffy, as they identify, using the name they see as encompassing all that they are. While understandable, Parks makes an argument that this need to belong to someone is also destructive. Mrs. Smith tries to make Muffy feel better about her name not appearing on the letters by explaining that “Muffy sounds like minefield,” but a minefield is a place of danger, not a means of comfort (64). Muffy replies robotically, as though it were a definition she has been learning for school, “[a] mine is a thing that dismembers” (64). The word “mine” is both a destructive bomb, and a term of possession. The reason given for not performing Mr. Smith’s possession (as a child and loved one) of Muffy by not saying her name is that her name is reminiscent of a mine, which is, in the end, what violently sends Mr. Smith home. Names as a form of possession can be both comforting and destructive. A slave master shows ownership by changing the slave’s name, while a husband acknowledges a wife and children as his own by giving them his last name.

To rename someone is to steal an integral part of their identity, affecting them not only emotionally, but physically altering the way their brain works. The process of renaming is rarely done with the individual’s blessing, and they often refuse to accept the new name, causing a disconnection between their personal identity and how others identify them. New slave names that masters chose were never chosen with the individual’s identity in mind, stripping them of a sense of self. Parks sets up and subverts these practices in Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, challenging history and giving voice to the voiceless. I will not answer to Rebecca because it is not my name, but I have that choice; slaves did not.

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Work Cited “Aptronym” OED Online. 3rd ed. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.

Carmody, Dennis P. and Michael Lewis “Brain activation when hearing one’s own and others’ names.” Brain Research 116.1 (2003): 253-58. Science Direct. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.

Casmier-Paz, Lynn A. “Footprints of the Fugitive: Slave Narrative Discourse and the Trace of Autobiography.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 24.1 (2001): 215-223.

Muse.

Web. 27 Oct. 2014 Earnshaw, Steven. “’Give Me My Name’: Naming and Identity in and Around Jane Eyre.” Brontë Studies: The Journal of the Brontë Society 37.3 (2012): 174-89. ProQuest. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.

Parks, Suzan-Lori. “Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom.” The America Play and Other Works. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995. 23-73. Print.

Walker, Sheila S. “What’s in a Name?” Ebony. June 1977: 74-76. Google Books. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.

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Rhetoric in Canadian Marriage Laws: The Re-Inscription of Heteronormativity Thomas Herbert English 3880

What is rhetoric? Rhetoric is an incantation of words, gestures, smiles and good manners, designed to ward off the horrors of existence, to keep the evil spirits quiet in the minds of our treacherous and diabolic fellowmen. (9293) – Winston Weathers

Weather’s deliberately highfalutin definition of rhetoric playfully enacts the facility of language to dress-up, or sugar-coat, that which it is describing or referencing.

The capacity of rhetoric to misconstrue, or to create false impressions and coax mistaken meanings, in a “persuasive” and “manipulat[ing]” fashion takes center stage in Roland Chrisjohn and Tanya Wasacase’s essay “Half-Truths and Whole Lies: Rhetoric in the ‘Apology’ and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (220). In their discussion of the installation of the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) on June 2, 2008, and Steven Harper’s subsequent public “pronouncement” (“the term ‘apology’ is inappropriate”) to Indigenous Peoples on June 11, Chrisjohn and Wasacase document cogently how the use of rhetoric created a false “history of Indian/non-Indian relations in Canada,” and drew “an incomplete picture” of Native experience at residential schools (219 ; 222 ; 223).

Chrisjohn and Wasacase’s definition of rhetoric as “a concerted effort to manipulate our perception and understanding of what is happening” provides a useful critical apparatus for scrutinizing Harper’s statement of apology (220). I will argue that Harper, in suggesting that “[t]here is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system to ever prevail again,” creates the false impression that those “attitudes” are, as Linda Tuhiwai Smith puts it, “finished business” (CDN. Dept. of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada) (qtd. in Driskill 70). However, as Pauline Wakeham and Jennifer Henderson have pointed out: “The absence of the word ‘colonialism’ from the prime minister’s apology enables a strategic isolation and containment of residential schools as a discrete historical problem of educational malpractice rather than one devastating prong of an overarching and multifaceted system of colonial oppression that persists in the present” (2).

Observing that Harper omits any reference to the word “‘colonialism’” in his apology, Wakeham and Henderson provide an elucidating discussion of the connection between this omission and his “subsequent outright denial of the ‘history of colonialism’” at the 2009 G20 Pittsburgh Summit (2). I will take Wakeham and Henderson’s observation of omission, as well as their notion that “oppression . . . persists in the present,” as key building blocks to my study (2). I argue that Harper’s omission of the “word ‘colonialism’” isolates the indoctrination of heteronormative, ‘good’ Christian values that occurred in Indian residential schools as a “discrete historical” moment in Canada’s bygone ‘(non)colonial’ past (1 ; 2). I read this as an attempt to rhetorically

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persuade the Canadian polity of a fictitious notion that the heteronormative colonial “attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system” do not continue to pervade Canada’s legal definitions of marriage today (CDN. Dept. of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada).

I will begin by discussing and identifying what the heteronormative “attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system” were (CDN. Dept. of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada). I will then unveil the untruth of Harper’s statement by demonstrating that those attitudes remain inscribed into contemporary Canadian marriage law, in the shape of legal sanctions placed against diversified and non-normative erotic formations that existed amongst First Nations peoples pre/earlycontact. I will then argue that this is an attempt to maintain the already iconic status of the heteronormative family model, and retain the First Nations in it.

Though the histories of residential schools predate Confederation, it is generally agreed upon that this system of educational and cultural assimilation came to fruition after the Indian Act was passed into law in 1876. The Indian Act mandated that First Nations children were to be forcibly removed from their homes, communities, and families, and placed in Church run, federally funded residential schools. There they learned to forget their language, to denigrate their culture, and to adopt Euro-Christian lifeway.

Rationalized under the “pretense” of a “civilizing” mission, or what Rudyard Kipling infamously referred to as the “white man’s burden,” “missionary and residential schools . . . . undertook a program of re-education that included molding Native children to the heteronormative ideals of European society” (Bishop-Stall). Gender difference was augmented through a strictly enforced “segregation of the sexes” that delimited boys and girls to spaces and activities that were considered congruent with their sex (Leeuw 339). For example, girls would engage in “sewing,” cooking, cleaning, “ironing” and other decidedly ‘feminine’ roles while boys were prohibited from entering into female spaces of domesticity (Leeuw 339). In addition to prescribing heteronormative gender roles, heterosexuality was promoted in the shape of rewards for good female behaviour: “[w]hen Euro-colonial femininity was acceptably performed . . . . girls were rewarded with authorization to . . . . [prepare] a meal and [invite] fellow male students to eat with [them]” (Leeuw 339). Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that one of the prevalent “attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system” was that, in order to ‘civilize’ Native peoples, a reconfiguration of the erotically diverse family formations that thrived pre/early-contact was a necessary function of residential schools if future generations of Native peoples were to achieve civility.

Fast-forwarding nearly 150 years later, it would seem as though the ‘civilizing’ “attitudes” of Canada’s nineteenth-century forefathers have disappeared, particularly in light of Canada’s joining the Netherlands and Belgium as the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage back in 2005. According to the amendments made to Canada’s marriage laws, prescribed in the Civil Marriage Act, “[m]arriage for civil purposes” was redefined from “the lawful union of one man and one woman” to “the lawful union of two persons.” For many LGBT couples and activists, the legalization of same-sex marriage marked a progressive leap forward in Canadian history. However, I will argue that simply extending the possibility of marriage to two peoples of the same sex (“to the exclusion of all others”) still denies legal recognition of, and legitimization

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to, two-spirited peoples and couplings that embody a much more fluid and shifting erotic dynamic that is not easily reducible to one-on-one, male / male, female / female, or male / female binaries.

Lori G. Beaman has noted in her essay “Introduction: Is Polygamy Inherently Harmful?” that: [G]ender equality . . . is far from an achieved reality in Canada . . . . multiple intimate relationships have always existed in this geographic space, among the First Nations . . . who, during the past 145 years of the colonial declaration of the birth of the nation, have engaged in short- and long-term sexually intimate relationships with more than one person at a time. They are us and we are them, and all are inextricably woven into the fabric of the nation we call Canada. (13) While Beaman’s homogenizing notion that natives and non-natives fit neatly into an “us” and “them” relationship is an oversimplification, she calls important attention to the fact that non-monogamous relationships existed amongst the Native population in Canada prior to colonial contact, and that “[p]olygamy, polyamory, serial monogamy, and adultery are all part of the national fabric” (13). Too often the histories of polygamy are delimited to Charles Ora Card’s migration to Alberta, and the “genesis of ” the first Mormon “settlement” in Canada (Lehr 114). Although the emergence of official laws against polygamy originated in 1888 when Sir John A. MacDonald rejected Card’s request for the legal allowance of polygamy in Canada, I argue we can just as easily see them as a reaction to the “erotic and [diverse] gender relations” which foreign Christian “missionaries” observed amongst Native peoples, and labelled “‘nefarious practices’” (Cannon 95) (qtd. in Cannon 96). Through a close reading of the legal rationale which prohibits polygamy today, I will argue that the “regulation of a ‘savage’ sexuality thought antithetical to Christian decorum, gendered domestic relations, and moral rationality,” euphemised by Harper as “the attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system,” remain the primary motivation behind prohibitions against plural marriage (Cannon 96).

It would be, of course, inaccurate to say that the legal argumentation mobilized against polygamy is without justification. A number of court cases have concluded that polygamous relationships often result in the sexual and physical abuse, and trafficking of women. For example, Carolyn Jessop, who testified in the 2011 Reference re: Section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada case, is quoted in the CBC News article “Woman recounts abuse in polygamous family” as saying she was “plagued by beatings and emotional abuse . . . common throughout the isolated community where men were encouraged to control women and children.” In upholding Canada’s ban against polygamy, Chief Justice Robert Bauman concluded “that this case is essentially about harm,” and legal scholar Gillian Calder noted that “the majority of [Bauman’s judgement’s] 1, 367 paragraphs and appendices [were] dedicated to findings of fact” (218). Many of the “fact[s]” built upon are laid out in a 2006 research report entitled “Polygyny and Canada’s Obligations under International Human Rights Law,” found on the Department of Justice’s website. It is stated in the report that “there is a growing consensus that polygyny violates women’s right to be free from all forms of discrimination. Where polygyny is permitted through religious or customary legal norms, it often relies on obedience, modesty, and chastity codes that preclude women from operating

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as full citizens and enjoying their civil and political rights” (Cook and Kelly 2). While this reasoning is based on justifiable apprehensions about the documented nature of polygamous relationships, the report’s focus on women being pressed into “obedience, modesty, and chastity” does not accurately define the conditions of Native two-spirit women (or men) in non-monogamous marriage. At work here is a collapsing of the important differences between the two of them: while Mormon polygamy is based off of binding patriarchal religious strictures in which men exert a controlling influence, often physically and sexually dominating women, two-spirit marriage, on the other hand, can involve peoples heterosexual and/or homosexual that do not commit to one partner for any given duration of time and exhibit a much more fluid gendered identity that involves an unrestricted “distribution of (cross-gendered) tasks” (Hardy 98) (Cannon 98) (Beaman and Calder 13). By implication, a state-forged rhetorical characterization of polygamy as necessarily oppressive to women undermines the complexities of Native intimacy and two-spirited relations, and is irrationally applied as a legal rationale against legitimising non-monogamous relations between First Nations peoples.

This raises several pressing questions: if the Canadian government’s apprehensions about polygamy are so far removed from the realities of Native non-monogamy, then why do legal prohibitions based on what is more accurately defined as Mormon polygamy continue to restrict Native peoples from entering into non-monogamous marriage? Why are Native marriage rights still subsumed under federal jurisdiction and not addressed in the Indian Act? Why are Native peoples not afforded the “rhetorical sovereignty” to define their own unique and diverse forms of human intimacy, or, better yet, the self-governance to legitimise them in law (Lyons 449)? I argue that the denial of polygamy rights to Native peoples under an overarching federal law that ignores the specificity of non-patriarchal, non-restrictive, and non-sexist two-spirit plural marriage can be understood as a continued effort to confine Native peoples within the heteronormative ideals of commitment, family and proper gender roles that originated as a mission of residential schools. There is still a need to tame “‘savage’ Native sexuality; to reformate it into a version compatible with wholesome Canadian family life; to, as Mark Rifkin puts it, “make [it] straight” (Cannon 96) (Rifkin 8).

My argument has followed three successive phases. First, I argued that Prime Minister Stephen Harper suggested through coded rhetoric that the “attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system” no longer shape Canada’s socio-legal reality.

I then dispelled this notion by demonstrating that the laws against polygamy hinge on characterizations about polygamous relationships that do not accurately describe First Nations two-spirit non-monogamous relationships, and therefore are irrationally levied as legal rationale against the free expression of First Nations sexuality that flourished during pre/early-contact. I interpreted this as a method of ensuring the continual containment of First Nations peoples within the heteronormative logic that informed many of the gender separating practises at residential schools, but also continues to pervade the “to the exclusion of all others” logic behind the legalization of same-sex marriage. Chrisjohn and Wasacase’s definition of rhetoric as “persuasive argumentation,” and Wakeham and Henderson’s rightly noted observation that Harper neglects “to acknowledge” Canada’s history of colonialism, aided me in conceptualizing his speech as an attempt to coax a fantastic notion that Canada is heteronormativity free

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into the collective imagination of the Canadian polity (2). My analysis was not able to take into account how the status of two-spirit, non-monogamous marriage has declined amongst the Native populous, and how residential schooling has impacted how they see and think of their own culture. Further research into how the Native community has perhaps internalized Eurocentric visions of their culture through violent and incessant inculcation would add a new layer of complexity and depth to this study.

Works Cited Beaman, Lori G. “Introduction: Is Polygamy Inherently Harmful?.” Polygamy’s Rights and Wrongs: Perspectives on Harm, Family, and Law. Eds. Calder, Gillian, and Lori G. Beaman. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014. 1-21. Print.

Bishop-Stall, Reilley. “Re-Imagine and Re-Imagining the Colonial Legend: Photographic Manipulation and Queer Performance in the Work of Kent Monkman and Miss Chief Share Eagle Testickle.” GNOVIS 12.1 (2011) : n. pag. Web. Calder, Gillian. “Conclusion: ‘To the Exclusion of All Others’ – Polygamy, Monogamy, and the Legal Family in Canada.” Polygamy’s Rights and Wrongs: Perspectives on Harm, Family, and Law. Eds. Calder, Gillian, and Lori G. Beaman. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014. 215-33. Print.

Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Statement of Apology.

Ottawa, June 2008. Web. 31 May. 2014.

Cannon, Martin. “The Regulation of First Nations Sexuality.” Canadian Perspectives in Sexual Studies: Identities, Experiences, and the Contexts of Change. Ed. Diane Naugleer. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2012. 95-101. Print.

Chirsjohn, Roland, and Tanya Wasacase. “Half-Truths and Whole Lies: Rhetoric in the ‘Apology’ and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Response, Responsibility, and Renewal: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Journey. Eds. Gregory Younging, Jonathan Dewar, and Mike DeGagne. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2009.

217-32.

Cook, Rebecca J., and Lisa M. Kelly. Department of Justice. Research Report: Polygyny and Canada’s Obligations under International Human Rights Law: Family, Children and Youth Section Research Report September 2006. Ottawa: Family, Children and Youth Section, 2006. Print.

Driskill, Qwo-Li. “Doubleweaving Two-Spirit Critiques: Building Alliances between Native and Queer Studies.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16.1-2 (2010) : 66-92. Web. Hardy, B. Carmon. Solemn Convent: The Mormon Polygamous Passage. Chicago: Uni-

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versity of Illinois Press, 1992. Print.

Henderson, Jennifer, and Pauline Wakeham. “Colonial Reckoning, National Reconciliation?: Aboriginal Peoples and the Culture of Redress in Canada.” ESC: English Studies in Canada 35.1 (2009) : 1-26. Web. Leeuw, Sarah De. “Intimate colonialisms: the material and experienced places of British Columbia’s residential schools.” The Canadian Geographer 51.3 (2007) : 339. Web. Lyons, Scott Richard. “Rhetorical Sovereignty: What do American Indians Want from Writing?.” College Composition and Communication 51.3 (2000) : 447-66. Web. Reference re: Section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada. BCSC 1588. Supreme Court of British Columbia. 2011. Supreme Court of British Columbia. Web. 31 May. 2014 Rifkin, Mark. When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.

Weathers, Winston. “The Rhetorician.” Rhetoric Review 16.1 (1997) : 92-104. Web. “Woman recounts abuse in polygamous family.” CBC News: British Columbia 12 Jan. 2011. Web.

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Experiencing Mortality: The Possibility of Retaining Personal Identity in Resurrection Natasha Germana Philosophy 2073

In considering what allows one person at a moment in time to exist as the same person in another moment in time, I want to engage the philosophical and theological positions taken up in Stephen T. Davis’s “Traditional Christian Beliefs in the Resurrection of the Body” and the selected excerpts from John Perry’s A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality to contemplate the survival of a person after death.

Specifically, I will attend to the common view within various Christian traditions that suggests a person survives death through resurrection in an afterlife and that in surviving death a person retains their personal identity. Using a phenomenological approach to provide a definition of personal identity, I seek to argue that personal identity is not wholly formed from memory and/or anticipation, but is informed through consciousness as a human being with a soul and body in a (real or perceived) spatiotemporal reality. Furthermore, after examining potential objections brought in from Davis’ discussion of resurrection, I will reconsider the implications this particular view of personal identity has on possibility of the same person surviving death in an afterlife.

Some of the criteria for determining sameness of a person, as explored throughout Perry’s text, are the conditions of memory and the anticipation of a future self. Yet, in their distinct or interrelated forms, memory and anticipation do not wholly make up the uniqueness and persistence of personal identity. Memory in itself, the recognition of a past self in relation to present self, does not constitute the whole of personal identity, and as Perry elaborates in his dialogue, there is the problem of how to distinguish between authentic and constructed memories, or more accurately, how to distinguish between a person remembering their self in the past versus a person only seeming to remember their self in the past (72). In either case, persistent doubt about the authenticity of memories in either person eliminates the possibility of memory being a sole criterion for a person existing as the same person over stretches of time.

Simply perceiving memories to be one’s own does not necessarily mean a person is the same as the person existing in the moment before. Additionally, anticipation of a future person that will experience and remain identical to the person in the present moment cannot qualify as a sole criterion for personal identity because one cannot guarantee that this future person will be the same person. “Correct” anticipation of a future person that will retain the identity of the person in the present moment means that a future person will have memories of the past person (i.e. the person in the present moment) (Perry 67). As noted, memory, even in combination with the anticipation of the survival of a future self, cannot be regarded as a wholly sufficient measurement of personal identity because there is persistent doubt of its authenticity. Therefore, the future person who is anticipated to be the same person as the person in the present moment would not necessarily be the same person if the future person only seemed to remember the past self.

Although conditions of memory and correct anticipation in their distinct or

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interrelated forms do not wholly suffice as criteria for examining the persistence of personal identity in survival after death, they are constitutive parts to the particular phenomenological view of personal identity I wish to outline here. The study of phenomenology concerns itself with the philosophical exploration of how persons experience subjective consciousness and process phenomena – how objects in space and time appear or how they are perceived to appear and what meanings are attached to certain phenomena or what meanings are attached to subjective relations to such phenomena.

To provide clarification, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy introduces phenomenology as the study of “structures of experience” in which “[t]he central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed towards something, as it is an experience of or about some object.” In applying the phenomenological approach, personal identity, instead of being formed solely from memory or anticipation of future experiences, is rooted in a person’s subjective experiences of consciousness that merges awareness of past memories and awareness of potential futures, specifically as they relate to a real or perceived mortal reality. Personal identity is thus not attached to conceptions of an immaterial soul or a material body, but is formed through a person’s conscious experiences of the intersections and interrelations between soul, body, and a spatiotemporal reality. What is important to this particular phenomenological view of personal identity is that conscious processes of interpreting experiences of the self, spatiotemporal reality, and the self in relation to objects within the spatiotemporal reality are rooted and manifest in a mortal body and a mortal reality. Therefore, a person surviving death in an afterlife would not necessarily be the same person, as the phenomenological understanding of personal identity as specifically rooted in the relationship between the soul, body, and spatiotemporal reality would be fundamentally altered (i.e. in resurrection, the soul and body would be displaced from their interactive relationship, and a person’s presence in some form of celestial afterlife would not occur in a spatiotemporal and essentially mortal reality).

In Perry’s hypothetical dialogue between a dying philosophy teacher (Weirob), a chaplain and close friend (Miller), and her student (Cohen), the three individuals discuss the possibility of survival after death as it parallels with common philosophical and religious conversations about what constitutes the survival of personal identity after death. Acknowledging the immediacy of her impending death, Weirob assigns Miller the task of forming a reasonable argument to persuade her that survival of her personal identity is possible after the physical death of her body. In Miller’s first attempt he makes the argument that the “soul or self or mind” is the only thing that matters to maintain personal identity after death because it is the immaterial soul, not the material body, that holds a person (Perry 67). However, Weirob counters that it does not suffice Miller’s argument to say that an immaterial soul constitutes a person because there is no clear and observable way to discern sameness of soul and therefore sameness of person.

Similarly, in discussing the theory of resurrection in the Christian tradition, Davis articulates a view of identity that recognizes a person as being both an immaterial soul and a material body, but within this specific view, personal identity is still attributed to being within the soul, and it is in the soul that a person is carried over into the afterlife until it is reunited with a resurrected body as a whole being (78-79). From

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Perry and Davis’ common perception that personal identity is held in the immaterial soul (whether seen as whole or partial), an objection could be made that the phenomenological argument I constructed for personal identity is still rooted in consciousness (and therefore, rooted in an immaterial soul). Thus, there would be potential for such consciousness (of the self in relation to objects and object meanings in a mortal reality) to be carried over into an afterlife in which the resurrected being would retain the consciousness of themselves in a spatiotemporal reality, and in essence, be the same person.

The argument for personal identity as rooted in experiences of phenomena in a spatiotemporal and mortal reality does not seek to eliminate the possibility that such consciousness could be carried over into an afterlife, but to contend that this consciousness would be fundamentally altered by the mere shift in reality (i.e. being in the presence of a God in or occurring in a place ultimately unbounded by space and time). Hypothetically, if a person resurrected in an afterlife is the same person as they were in their mortal life in that their personal identity is still formed through a conscious awareness of the relationship between soul, body (now “glorified”) and a real or perceived (now “immortal”) reality, then they would no longer be the same person – their perception of their self (altered in the afterlife) in relation to a celestial afterlife (a reality unlike and perhaps unimaginable from the spatiotemporal reality of the mortal world) would no longer be identical to their mortal self.

In responding to the potential objection that consciousness rooted in experiences of phenomena could be carried over and retained in a resurrected afterlife, I do not attend to questions of God’s existence, powers, or methodologies, but recognize that, in resurrection, a person after death would be altered in a way that would not allow them to remain the same person in the time before their death. The parameters I set out around what constitutes personal identity does not allow for a person to exist as the same person once they cease being mortal and cease to experience phenomena relegated to a spatiotemporal reality. Personal identity of a mortal being cannot be identical to that of a being in an afterlife because such a being would not have the mortal experience to inform their consciousness.

Works Cited Davis, Stephen T. “Traditional Christian Belief in the Resurrection of the Body.” Philosophy and Death: Introductory Readings. Eds. Samantha Brennan and Robert J. Stainton. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2010. 77-98. Print.

Perry, John. “Excerpts from ‘A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality.’” Philosophy and Death: Introductory Readings. Eds. Samantha Brennan and Robert J. Stainton. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2010. 65-76. Print.

“Phenomenology.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 16. Dec. 2013. Web. 4 Oct. 2014.

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The Politics of Art in Contemporary Canadian Society Meg Cormack Arts and Humantities 2200

Transcript: The Poetical Party of Canada’s Leadership Debate December 2nd 2014, London Ontario MODERATOR: Good evening ladies and gentlemen, party members, and distinguished guests. On behalf of the Poetical Party of Canada, I would like to thank you all for your continued support and for taking the time to attend this evening’s proceedings. Please help me in welcoming our distinguished candidates for leadership to the stage: Sir Philip Sidney and Mr. William Wordsworth. [APPLAUSE] Gentlemen, welcome. We will begin with a short introduction from each candidate.

SIDNEY: Good evening everyone. My name is Philip Sidney and I am running to be your leader of the Poetical Party of Canada in the upcoming 2015 federal election. It is my belief that the Canadian people are ready for change and that it is this party that is ready to create it. It is the desire of the current government to see their own interests protected. It is the desire of Canada to see effective leadership enact effective policy that Canadians can stand proudly behind. It is the desire of the Poetical Party of Canada to protect the interests of the diversity of the nation and it is my personal desire to see the best possible leader lead this great party towards its goal. To me, leading a party is like making a saddle: “… even as the saddler’s next end is to horsemanship, so to the horseman’s to soldiery, and the soldier not only to have the skill but to perform the practice of a soldier” (Sidney 261). To make a saddle, the saddle-maker needs to learn something about what it means to ride a horse. Making the saddle not only changes something about the horse and the rider, but fundamentally alters the act of horsemanship. Because horsemanship participates in the act of soldiering, so to the saddlemaker alters the course of God’s war on Earth. In other words, actions must come from knowledge because action affects not the individual but the collective. And I, ladies and gentlemen, know a lot about riding horses. [APPLAUSE] WORDSWORTH: As many of you know, my name is William Wordsworth and I am hoping to lead the good people of this party into 2015 and beyond. I would like to congratulate Mr. Sidney who has clearly mastered the art of sprezzatura and does make some excellent points. Certainly, in order to lead one must be knowledgeable of the actions he hopes to take before leading others to act them out. However, it is not enough to learn. The reason that I want to see this party rise to power is because to me, the politician is much like the poet in that “… he should consider himself as in the situation of a translator” (Wordsworth 567). The poet is endowed with the power to bring man back to the basic senses altogether forgotten in the plague of modern culture. Poetry is the only kind of political doctrine capable of producing the right kind of stimulation to move Canadians to do the great things that they are capable of doing; reproducing in the mind of the reader an endured or encountered view of the world. While I may not

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be an accomplished rider, I sincerely believe that I, and I alone, can translate the endurances of this people into a thriving Canadian experience. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] MODERATOR: Thank you to both candidates. As Mr. Wordsworth began to touch on, the reason that we are gathered here today is first and foremost to fight for the integration of the arts into the governing doctrines of our country. To both of you as poets, here are my first two questions of the evening: What does poetry mean to you? What do you believe to be the role of the poet?

SIDNEY: Today, there are many different kinds of poets writing under various subgenres: epic, lyric, slam etc. Though I do not mean to diminish these other endeavors, for me, poetry has one definition, which stands as the basis for my “Defence of Poesy”: “Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting or figuring forth - to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture - with this end: to teach and delight” (Sidney 258). It is now clear that I am not a realist, but for this I do not apologize. What this country needs is leadership that is not only practical, but enriching. The fundamental ability of poetry is to elevate and I believe in using this elevation to inspire. Poetry can give us the finer and the better and it is the job of the poet to draw our attention to something greater.

In other words, the job of the poet is not to show life as it is but instead how it aught to be. My colleague Mr. Wordsworth is famous for proposing that the poet is meant “to choose incidents and situations from common life” (Wordsworth 561). For Wordsworth, tracing low and rustic life shows the passions of the heart less under constraint.

These people who fascinate him are untouched by modern civilization and are thus closer to the elementary forms of humanity. He sees them as more human than the rest of us, as living a more vivid life of what it means to be in the world. Wordsworth proposes modernity as a virus that has infected our minds and destroyed the natural conditions of the human mind.

I must point out the fatal error in this argument. We as a society and we as a nation cannot survive in the world of today by abandoning urban culture and retiring to the countryside. Not all of us have the luxury of spending our daily lives communing with nature. For most of us, and especially the emergent middle class, we need the jobs that an urban economy provides to support our families and to support ourselves. This is one area in which the current government has made an effort to highlight in their campaign, reminding the public of their Economic Action Plan for 2013: “This is a commitment of roughly 53 billion dollars in contributions to provincial, territorial, and community infrastructure projects: roads, buildings and installations of all kinds” (Stephen Harper). Modernity provides the essential services, from health care to waste management, which nature alone cannot. Though less romantic than rustic contemplation, these cannot be the enemy. Poetry, and art more generally, must be pursued “with the end of not well knowing but of well doing” (Sidney 260). Mr. Wordsworth is correct that there is the temptation to get swept up in the monotony of modernity, forgoing the pursuit of virtue. However, it is not enough to know right from wrong or virtue from sin. You must act accordingly. The role of poetry is to provide the bridge from knowing to doing. Poetic language can inspire us to do things we might not otherwise do. When

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the poet acts out what he says in verse, we internalize it; we can imagine ourselves doing it. The lessons of the poet then must be universal, so that they can be acted out in the lives of every Canadian and not just in that of Mr. Wordsworth’s infamous leech gatherer.

WORDSWORTH: I would like to applaud Mr. Sidney for quoting me so accurately. I will try my best to pay him the same respect. In “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”, I devote a great deal of thought to the question “…what is meant by the word Poet? What is a Poet?” (Wordsworth 567). While I do certainly acknowledge the draw of utilizing poetry as an outlet for imagining a better world, as Mr. Sidney suggests, my vision of the Poet is necessarily different: “… the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion” (569). Yes, I believe that poetry should give voice to the rustic. For me, this is the ideal realm first because it is natural, but secondly because it is something true.

Instead of rejecting the ‘essential services’, my aim is to remind society of the only permanent and enduring truth of man against the ever-changing faces of commodity culture. As my compatriot Mr. Samuel Taylor Coleridge would say, a great work of art works to reveal something to you about your own reality that you would not have otherwise realized (Coleridge 590). Instead of suggesting that urban economy be done away with, I am advocating a way in which participants can stay grounded. This is contrary to the idea that “… poetry ever sets virtue so out in her best colours, making fortune her well-waiting handmaid, that one must needs be enamoured of her” (Sidney 264). For Sidney, poetry is an act of imitation. Sidney’s poet holds up a mirror to life and the thingness of the natural world with this attribute: the image in the mirror is the most perfect version of humanity. Instead of documenting life, he makes selections from it: only the golden.

The argument, I’m sure, is that in the act of lying, the poet is able to tell a truth that nature never can. That is to say, allotting humanity the ability to imagine a perfect world: ability thought to only reside in God. While a fascinating proposition, this represents, I am afraid, an end that I cannot endorse. “I have said the Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…recollected in tranquility…kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind” (Wordsworth 573). My prescription for writing poetry is as follows: to begin with an overflow of authentic emotion, to regain composure, and finally to begin writing at some point in the future when the memory of the emotion, half-forgotten returns. Poetry can only begin in the absence of the feeling, and not during its stimulation as a true overflow of emotion should overwhelm you completely. It is less the thing of the poem that matters than the recreation of feeling. If you can recreate it in your mind, you know that you can create it in the minds of others. My goal with all of this is to reawaken society from the savage topor, mental inactivity, imposed upon us by the constant play of connection and disconnection of city life. Again, I am not calling for some grand factory walkout, but instead to show that while workers may not be able to control the means of their own production, they can seize the faculties of their own minds. I cannot help here but to endorse Third Party leader Justin Trudeau’s commitment to safeguarding prospective upward mobility for all working classes in Canada:

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“The idea that no matter where and to whom you were born, you start free, and should have a fair shot at success. If you remain hard-working and forward-thinking, you should be able to build a better life for yourself, and pass on even more opportunities to your kids” (Justin Trudeau). Unlike some poets, I put sense above sound.

MODERATOR: If elected leader, and further if indeed elected to parliament, what new direction do you feel that Canada needs to take in 2015? What would you change?

SIDNEY: I think that it is important for any politician to note that while the system we have today is not perfect, Canadians have many reasons to be proud of their government. For example, “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms”. Entrenched in 1982 with the Constitution Act, the bill has served not only to codify Canadian civil rights but to ensure their integration into all government actions. In many ways it would appear that this is equally important to the current government. For example, following the Ottawa shooting on October 22nd, Prime Minister Harper stated: “On our values, on our society, on us, Canadians, as a free and democratic people embrace human dignity for all. But let there be no misunderstanding. We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated” (Stephen Harper). The problem here is that the intention is ambiguous. Some interpreted this comment as merely a means by which to promote Harper’s Iraq agenda.

While I am not going to comment at this time on my thoughts about this endeavor, I think that the biggest change that I would like to see in Canadian politics is a necessitated clarity of language. I have been quoted in the past as rejecting “idolatry in art” and “disputative virtue” (Sidney 260). While I have time and time again defended the need for poetry to delight, to allot writing the power to inspire action in its reader, I implore that poetry cannot be pleasing on the basis of its meter alone. I truly think that political clarity could be improved by the principles of poesy. That is to say, speech “doth not learn a conceit out of a matter but marketh matter for a conceit” (270). Language is a vehicle of history, with which must come preconceptions due to the fact that circumstance belongs to the past: unchangeable. For poetry, circumstance is up to the poet to create in order to best portray the message. This is not to say that I support a Machiavellian or Straussian perspective that it is ok to lie if the ends can justify the means. My point is that the realm created by poetry is a kind of virtual reality, distinct in its own right. We accept that its portrayal is artistic and not necessarily factual, so that we are lead to read in it the spirit of the law, whereas in a political speech we accept facts: the letter. A kind of spirit-ridden language should be available to politicians.

It must exist in a radical way in which it is distinguishable absolutely from the kind of discourse available presently.

WORDSWORTH: I think that Mr. Sidney’s point here is admirable. While I admire his ambition to put forth a kind of visionary change, the path that I would like to lead Canada down is more straightforward. As much as I think that politics could benefit from integrating artistic principles into itself, I think that this is secondary to the need for politics to support the arts and artistic endeavours of constituents. In addressing the leadership that Canada has seen from Prime Minister Harper, I would say that a bigger

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problem than lack of clarity arises in his vision for the arts, or lack thereof: “Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sparked a culture war in the federal election campaign with a claim that ‘ordinary people’ don’t care about arts funding. Under fire for his government’s $45 million in cuts to arts and culture funding” (Benzie). This is in contrast to a comment made by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau on the social role of arts and culture: I think arts and culture is important beyond just the economic sphere ... arts and culture is also about challenging ourselves and defining ourselves in the same way -- challenging ourselves because artists are always the ones that look at reality with a different perspective and challenge us to step outside of our comfortable spaces and really ask questions about who we are as a society and where we’re going. (Justin Trudeau).

Of course, to me and to any advocate of the arts, Mr. Harper’s statement seems inexcusable while Mr. Trudeau’s is promising: almost an echo of my own position of the need to transport the mind away from the savage topor of everyday existence. However, the problem is less what these statements say, than the fact that they were both prompted by direct questions. Political statements regarding the arts are hard to come by. They don’t make great headlines because there is nothing much at stake. Or so it would seem. The biggest change I would like to make would be to challenge the political sphere to embrace the actual necessity to the nation of arts and culture. It is this that is lacking in our country’s current direction and this that is “…acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind” (Wordsworth 563). I believe in democracy, and democracy to me means not only equal rights for all citizens, but that all citizens are given the proper tool to understand these rights. This tool is art as no other discipline can as formidably train the critical faculties of the mind to distinguish truth from propaganda or to imagine solutions to issues that have not yet presented themselves.

MODERATOR: Gentlemen, your closing statements.

SIDNEY: At the end of the day Mr. Wordsworth and I are here for the same reason. We believe that not only can the arts have a place in politics, but that they must. For this, and for many reasons, I respect him. I believe whole-heartedly in the Poetical Party of Canada and I know that whichever of us you good people choose to elect will lead the whole of the nation into a new golden age of government. [APPLAUSE] WORDSWORTH: I would like to echo what Mr. Sidney has said, with one addition.

My main goal with Lyrical Ballads was to do in poetry what the great revolutions did on the political scene: overthrow all older ways of writing, of thinking, with new ones.

Like Lyrical Ballads, The Poetical Party of Canada is an experiment; the result of which I am certain will be revolutionary. [APPLAUSE] MODERATOR: Having heard from both our candidates, the power lies with you. Tonight’s debate has not been about a battle of rhetoric between two great poets. It has been to show you that political action comes from theory and theory necessarily comes from art. Art is not defined as poetry, or as painting, or otherwise. Art is opening the mind past the boundaries of reality to liberate the human into the second realm of his

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own imagination: not of fantasy, but of how life could and can be with the right politics.

Works Cited Benzie, Robert, Bruce Campion-Smith, and Les Whittington. “Ordinary Folks Don’t Care about Arts: Harper.” The Star. N.p., 24 Sept. 2008. Web. 28 Nov. 2014. <http:// www.thestar.com/news/politics/federalelection/2008/09/24/ordinary_folks_dont_ care_about_arts_harper.html>.

Harper, Stephen. “PM Delivers Remarks in London.” London. 24 Nov. 2014. Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. <http://pm.gc.ca/eng/ news/2014/11/24/pm-delivers-remarks-london>.

Harper, Stephen. “Statement by the Prime Minister in Ottawa.” Ottawa. 22 Oct. 2014.

Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. <http://pm.gc.ca/eng/ news/2014/10/22/statement-prime-minister-canada-ottawa-0>.

Sidney, Philip. “The Defence on Poesy.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2001. 254-83. Print.

Trudeau, Justin. “Justin Trudeau Outlines His Vision for Arts and Culture in Canada.”

Interview by Jian Ghomeshi. CBC. Toronto, 21 Oct. 2014. Radio.

Trudeau, Justin. “Justin Trudeau’s Speech to the Liberal Biennial Convention.” Liberal Biennial Convention. Montreal. 23 Feb. 2014. The Canadian Progressive. Web. 23 Nov. 2014. <http://www.canadianprogressiveworld.com/2014/02/23/transcript-justintrudeaus-speech-liberal-biennial-convention/>.

Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2001. 559-79. Print.

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Knowledge is Power: The Destructive Nature of Corrupted Kantian Enlightenment Throughout Early American History and in Choderlos de Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons

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In his philosophical treatise “What is Enlightenment?”, Immanuel Kant describes enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage;” that is, the ability to become self-dependent by thinking and using reason without the influence of others. He divides the use of reason into two distinct categories: the private use and the public use. He argues that the public use of reason, which is independent of society as a whole, should be unrestricted while the private use of reason, usually in a social hierarchy or structure, should be limited in order to achieve the enlightenment of mankind (Kant). However, when the enlightened choose to perpetuate their own rational superiority by limiting both the private and public uses of reason of the unenlightened, the principal goals of Kantian enlightenment are undermined, sowing discord between the oppressed, unenlightened peoples and their enlightened oppressors. The selfish acts of the enlightened divert the intended course of intellectual freedom and create a highly volatile sociopolitical environment that can only be resolved by the enlightenment of the oppressed or the deposition of the enlightened. In Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons and throughout early American history, the selfish corruption of Kantian enlightenment by persons or groups who see themselves as ‘enlightened’ leads to the deaths of the Presidente de Tourvel and the Vicomte de Valmont, the maiming of the Marquise de Merteuil, the mistreatment and subjugation of non-white peoples in 18th- and 19th-century America, and the American Civil War.

The intentional corruption of the immature by the enlightened committed by the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons would be viewed as a punishable sin by Kant. Birkett says that in Laclos’ work, “the demand for ‘freedom’ and ‘rights’ is combined with a powerful elitism” (85). Both the Marquise and the Vicomte are particularly high on the French social ladder and they exploit their social rank in their games of seduction, impinging upon the rights of others along the way. As libertines, they act outside of traditional moral boundaries, which allows them to see themselves as especially elite, unfettered by custom, within their social circle.

When morally righteous or innocent characters such as Cecile and the Presidente de Tourvel are introduced, neither the Marquise nor the Vicomte have any problem manipulating them in order to engage in their superficial competition of seduction. However, the Vicomte’s actions are more egregious than those of the Marquise. He chooses to pursue the Presidente de Tourvel because of “her devotion, her love for her husband, [and] her strict principles” whereas the Marquise selects Cecile because she is the easiest way to get back at her ex-lover (Laclos 17). Both the Marquise and the Vicomte act immorally, but the Vicomte selects his ‘victim’ with more intent to directly corrupt and deceive. These degrees of sinful action are later reflected in the characters’ ultimate

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fates: Valmont, who is morally bankrupt and irredeemable, faces death for his corruption of both the Presidente and Cecile while the Marquise, who played a role in the perverted ‘enlightenment’ of Cecile but had less of a direct intent to harm and corrupt, is diagnosed with a disease that prevents her from ever exploiting her physical beauty again. The ‘deflowering’ of the Presidente and Cecile by Merteuil and Valmont speaks directly to the libertine ideology of selfish, often reckless conduct; seeing themselves as ‘enlightened’ and having no regard for those beneath them, Merteuil and Valmont are punished accordingly for their elitist misinterpretation of enlightenment and manipulation of those who they perceive to be ‘unenlightened.’

American history parallels the Marquise and the Vicomte’s corruption of the unenlightened with its suppression of racial minorities; some Americans, mostly in the South, attempted to artificially monopolize intellectual freedom by suppressing the potential enlightenment of Mexicans, and First Nations peoples. Since its colonization in the 17th century, exceptionalism has been a key part of the American identity.

Settler John Winthrop called the British settlement in Massachusetts “a city upon a hill” and told his crew that “the eyes of all people are upon us,” showing the beginning of American national pride and superiority, both in terms of physical and economic stature and global recognition (Winthrop). This idea of American exceptionalism was reinforced following the American Revolution, when America was able to gain its independence from Britain and establish a culture that was distinctly different from its Anglo-European roots. In its 19th century nascence, recurring motifs of progress and divine providence became prominent in American rhetoric. The American misinterpretation of enlightenment is perhaps best exemplified by the American concept of Manifest Destiny.

Manifest Destiny was the belief set that America was predestined to expand its borders throughout the North American continent. In his essay “The Great Nation of Futurity,” John David O’Sullivan says that America “is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles” and that “the expansive future is [America’s] arena, and for our history” (427). This is the mindset with which America approached westward expansion; though there were many First Nations tribes living on the Frontier, America believed that it was an enlightened nation and that it was divinely prophesied to continue its expansion westward. This resulted in the relocation of thousands of First Nations peoples known as “The Trail of Tears.” Forcibly displaced from their homes, many of the First Nations people died of exposure as they travelled eastward to their newly designated territory. Instead of sharing in their enlightenment and helping First Nations tribes ‘emerge’ from their admittedly primitive hunting methods and technology, American hubris and entitlement led to the marginalization of the First Nations peoples. America forced them into social nonage and insignificance, which defies Kant’s ideal enlightened society.

Manifest Destiny also led to the annexation of Texas in 1845. Texas was, at the time, a Mexican territory which wished to join the United States of America. When it was finally admitted into the union in 1845, it incited the Mexican-American War, which lasted from 1846 to 1848. This escalated racial tensions between white Southerners and Hispanic Texans, who were already separated by a cultural barrier. Hispanics who sought to embrace “the American dream” and Manifest Destiny were rebuked;

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this led to the development of Chicano (Mexican-American) literature and culture.

Hispanic Texans were divided from Americans not because of choice, but because of an intolerant white population; their ambition to develop and become enlightened is evident through their literary and cultural movements, but was stifled by American oligarchy and racism. The subjugation of Hispanic and First Nations peoples by America in the 1800s was largely influenced by a culture of enlightened exceptionalism; the 19th century belief that America was a nation of freedom, knowledge, and progress is disproven by their selfish, elitist refusal to allow others to partake in the same liberties that they enjoyed.

In Dangerous Liaisons, punishment is not only served to those who abuse their enlightenment, but also those who refuse to enlighten themselves. In Liaisons, the Presidente de Tourvel is shown to be an innocent character who is taken advantage of by the Vicomte de Valmont. However, per Kantian terms, she is the antithesis of enlightenment. Kant says “nonage in religion is not only the most harmful but the most dishonorable” and that the motto of the enlightenment is to “have the courage to use your own understanding” (Kant). The Presidente de Tourvel defies both of these; she has an intense religious fervour that she does not think to question and she refuses to have the courage to act upon her true feelings towards the Vicomte. In “What is Enlightenment?”, Kant says, “A revolution may bring about the end of a personal despotism or of avaricious tyrannical oppression, but never a true reform of modes of thought. New prejudices will serve, in place of the old…” When she eventually does forfeit her religion and sleep with Valmont, she has essentially experienced a complete revolution in attitude. However, she has not emerged from nonage in religion, but rather sunken into an obsession with Valmont. Laclos shows that the blind worship of a man can be as dangerous as blind worship to a god; the Presidente’s illness and death are symptoms of her inability to think independently and rationally. Though she is an unwilling participant in the games of Valmont and Merteuil, Kant would still view the Presidente as a contemptible character due to her hyper-dependence on religion and, later, Valmont’s companionship.

Like the Presidente de Tourvel, American history featured many morally righteous or nominally ‘enlightened’ people who misguidedly championed a cause and achieved the opposite of the intended result. Abolitionist John Brown sought to end slavery in America and bring about a state of racial equality and tolerance. However, Brown believed that the only way to abolish slavery was to begin an armed insurrection of slave-owning states. Brown was an educated thinking man whose public expressions of opinion Kant would have advocated for. However, the means by which Brown intended to accomplish his goal violated the private use of reason because he was impinging on the rights of other American citizens. Brown died in an attempted robbery of the federal armoury in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia; this was one of the key events that led up to the American Civil War. On the other hand, John C. Calhoun declared slavery to be “a positive good;” one “fully borne out by history” (Calhoun 3). A politician and former vice-president, Calhoun represented an example of the enlightened who sought to maintain his superiority by restricting the freedom of the lower classes.

His opinions may have been calculated and genuine, but they are ultimately selfish and do not consider the needs and wants of an entire subsection of American people. In

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American history, both radical and morally questionable ‘enlightened’ individuals are shown to hinder progress and the collective enlightenment of the nation.

Both Dangerous Liaisons and early American history show the perils that come with the notion of enlightenment. The enlightened are free to use reason, but it is often misappropriated in a way that becomes an impediment to a uniform state of equal enlightenment. It is only appropriate that America was forced to abolish slavery and that the Marquise and Vicomte faced unenviable fates; their bastardization of Kant’s ideas forced reform of thought or, in the extreme cases of the Marquise and Vicomte, personal injury. In “What is Enlightenment?”, Kant says that “there are only a few men who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating their own minds.” In Dangerous Liaisons and American history, many of these firm few enlightened seem to be far from ideal models of independence, justice, or morality. Kant suggests that a state of universal enlightenment must be put in place in order to drown the radical and morally contentious, but, if the gradient of opinions becomes even more speckled with the varying views of the newly enlightened, how will consensus ever be reached? Without an authority to direct and attempt to centralize moral opinion, there will be much larger radical groups at one side or the other, which could pose an even bigger threat to the stability of society than having the majority of people operate under the nonage of an ‘enlightened’ few.

Works Cited Birkett, Jennifer. “Dangerous Liaisons: Literary and Political Form in Choderlos de Laclos.” Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2005. Web. 8 Dec 2014.

Calhoun, John C. “Slavery a Positive Good.” TeachingAmericanHistory.org. Orig.

1837. PDF file.

Choderlos de Laclos, Pierre. Dangerous Liaisons. London, UK: Penguin Books, 2007.

Print.

Kant, Immanuel. “What is Enlightenment?” 1784. Columbia.edu. Web. 5 Dec 2014.

O’Sullivan, John David. “The Great Nation of Futurity.” The United States Democratic Review 6.23 (1839): 426-430. Web. 5 Dec 2009.

Winthrop, John. “On the Model of Christian Charity.” Orig. 1630. PDF file.

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Investigating the Norms of Performance Studies: Jon McKenzie’s “The Liminal-Norm” Against Victor Turner’s “Liminality and Communitas”

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Victor Turner has successfully become the footnote to every theory created within Performance Studies. No argument is made without citing the man who coined the term “liminal” or observed the Ndembu tribe in their natural environment. It is this observation of the tribe that led Turner to draw conclusions for the term “liminal.”

Turner proposes the liminal as the state “between positions assigned” (89). Performance Studies scholars view “liminality [as] one of the most frequently cited attributes of performance efficacy” (McKenzie 26). Each definition coined by Turner becomes an expectation when studying performance. If you plan on reading a chapter of Richard Schechner, chances are Turner will be mentioned at least twice. Are you interested in learning the wedding ritual to understand exactly what happens when Kate Middleton says, “I do?” Look no further than Turner’s theories. There is simply no way of escaping Turner; he is the man of ritual performance. However, is it possible that Turner is not the only man of liminality? What if his views are not as set in stone as many Performance Scholars perceive them to be? Jon McKenzie is the voice for those who wish to question Turner as the sole authority of ritual analysis. McKenzie’s essay “The LiminalNorm” appears similar to Turner’s “Liminality and Communitas”, but is actually challenging Turner’s traditional lens of authority in viewing the liminal. By creating the “liminal-norm,” McKenzie directly attacks Turner as a personification of the normative in an effort to challenge the liminal.

The definition of Turner’s “liminal” and McKenzie’s “liminal-norm” adhere to a state of “in betweenness” (McKenzie 27); yet differ in the action that must be taken before the state is created. Turner views “the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial” (89). In a ritual, a figure of authority must adhere to the liminal state before it can occur. The circumstances of an in-between state are for the law and convention that govern a ritual. A ritual is embedded in customs and it is through rituals that liminal state is experienced. This authority perspective Turner takes is folded back onto himself as McKenzie describes Turner as the “norm.”

The liminal-norm “allows for social norms to be suspended, challenged, played with, and perhaps even transformed” (McKenzie 27). The law that Turner creates within his definition and as a theorist cannot be the only view of the liminal. As a reply to the Turner hype, McKenzie questions if his normative can be challenged or better yet transformed entirely. Instead of submitting to the laws of rituals that Tuner defines and creates, McKenzie offers a breath of fresh air in establishing the liminal as a guide to “help us to construct objects of inquiry” (27). I believe the state of in-between must not end at a law to simply pass down as the concrete definition of Performance Studies.

The creation of the in-between state helps us to understand what norms are; McKenzie implements my view as he calls for resistance of Turner’s term.

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The debate of obedience verses resistance is established when comparing both Turner and McKenzie’s theory. Within a ritual, the neophyte “must obey their instructors implicitly and accept arbitrary punishment without complaint” (Turner 90). This is a rather harsh and violent view of the type of authority that is needed in order to fulfill the liminal state. There is no room for opinion in Turner’s definition. A liminal state is implemented on a neophyte with force and is not concerned with the individual. McKenzie finds this argument troubling. He points out in his own essay that Turner tends to focus on “reinforcement [as] being the most common outcome” (28) to achieve liminality. McKenzie does not wish to conform to the normative of Turner. In fact, the first reason behind the importance of the liminal-norm is to “demonstrate how forces of normativity can become mutational” (28). The liminal-norm calls for a departure in the traditions established by Turner. Instead of submitting to a law, let “resistance itself become normative” (27). Challenge that authority figure that is implementing punishment on you. Act in a state that is between a norm and your own vision of that norm.

Break a part from the narrow path of what is expected to simultaneously glimpse at the world beyond the path and form your own version of it.

McKenzie furthers his argument by expanding on Turner’s idea of a “liminal rite.” Turner refers to Arnold van Gennep when defining rites de passage as “‘rites which accompany every change of place, state, social position and age’” (89). The rite provokes a change during the in-between state the individual is experiencing. Once again, Tuner relates his term to a neophyte since this individual has “in many rites de passage to submit to an authority that is nothing less than that of the total community” (95). Gennep’s definition calls for change, yet Turner manages to shut the idea down, as a neophyte must submit to authority during and their liminal rite. McKenzie challenges the notion of liminal rites to “provide us with a (and not the) metamodel of the paradigm” (29). A liminal rite must then look to provide a version of the in-between state instead of appearing as the only possibility. Similar to Gennep, McKenzie wants us to change the liminal state and never fully submit to the authority that must be placed upon an individual.

The overarching theme within McKenzie’s theory is to view Performance Studies as a discipline that must continue to progress instead of submit to one definition such as Turner’s view of the “liminal.” McKenzie views his concept of the liminalnorm to “help us resituate the borders and limits of performance studies itself ” (29).

To take the known and construct a new version which thereby expands the boundaries of the discipline. As scholars, “we must create concepts” and “launch movements of generalization” (30). We must “create multiple and diverse concepts and continue to do so” (30). We must never submit to one definition that attempts to establish itself as the only way. Similar to the various versions of a script that can be performed, the theories behind these performances must be consistently rehearsed by other scholars through different insights.

Jon McKenzie’s “The Liminal-Norm” presents an argument for Performance Studies scholars to continue to expand on definitions. Tradition is not the only approach in a field that is continuously transforming. Mackenzie’s term uses its in-between state to function with the norms but also to desire change. Victor Turner’s “Liminality and Communitas” displays Turner as the all-knowing guru of liminality. Turner’s defini-

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tion of liminality uses the law to then impose itself as the law. In contrast, McKenzie consistently focuses on terms of change, progress, and a rebellion against the norm, as all Performance Studies scholars must do as well.

Works Cited McKenzie, Jon. “The Liminal-Norm.” The Performance Studies Reader. Second Ed. Henry Bial. New York: Routledge, 2007. 26-31. Print.

Turner, Victor. “Liminality and Communitas.” The Performance Studies Reader. Second Ed. Henry Bial. New York: Routledge, 2007. 89-97. Print

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Authenticity in Who the *$&% is Jackson Pollock?

Tabitha Chan VAH 2283

In order for an artwork to be accepted by the art world and valued by society, there must be no doubt regarding its authenticity. Who the *$&% is Jackson Pollock? is a documentary that explores how authenticity is determined and questions the legitimacy of the process. It follows the story of a seventy-three year old former truck driver, Teri Horton, as she journeys on a mission to authenticate a painting that she bought for five dollars at a thrift store, as a genuine artwork created by Jackson Pollock. This documentary argues that the manner in which the art world determines what is “authentic” and what is “good” art is flawed. It suggests this perspective through comparing Horton to Pollock, placing in opposition the scientists against the artists, revealing the unreliability of provenance, and through a variety of cinematic effects.

This documentary intertwines the biographies of Horton and Pollock in order to make the viewer desire for a favourable outcome for the heroine. The first comparison the film makes is between their confident personalities and their fearless integrity.

In a scenario where another driver hit Horton’s truck, she is not scared to stand up for herself, despite being of an elderly age. This is compared to how Pollock would not sell a painting for less than what he thought it was worth, even when he was broke. Horton’s tough character is continuously emphasized throughout the entire documentary.

The viewer is compelled to admire her for her stubbornness in not selling her painting for less than what she believes it to be worth, just like Jackson Pollock. The documentary ends by telling the viewer that even when Horton is offered nine million dollars, she turns it down because of her moral principles. Her belief in her painting being genuine is strong enough to overcome any amount of greed or monetary gain. Another comparison the documentary makes between Horton and Pollock is in their self-destructive behaviours. During the time when Pollock was alive, he was an alcoholic and it is speculated that he committed suicide in an automobile accident. Horton shares her past with the viewers by describing a moment when she also considered committing suicide after her daughter died from heart failure at the age of nineteen. She tears up as she talks about how close she was with Corey and how her daughter used to say that her mother was her best friend. The music at this point in the documentary changes to an acoustic guitar playing a sombre melody. The film urges the viewer to sympathize with Horton by describing her lonely and saddening past. The documentary re-enacts the scene of Horton walking along the beach considering the thought of drowning herself to give viewers a visual image of how depressed she was. Viewers are able to feel a personal connection to Horton through having a deeper understanding of her life. In this way, the director has appealed to viewers through their emotions and has cleverly ensured that they will want the painting to be an authentic Jackson Pollock just as much as Horton desires it to be.

The contrasting perspectives between the scientists and the artists are used to argue that the reasoning behind how the art world determines authenticity is nonsensical and illogical. The director portrays the scientists as the protagonists and the

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artists as the antagonists. When Horton first seeks advice from art dealers about how to authenticate her painting, they simply reply that it is not possible for a Jackson Pollock painting to be found at a thrift store. When she asks them how they are sure of this, they disregard her completely: “Well I’m in the art business, you’re not.” Throughout the documentary, the explanations that art dealers and art experts provide to Horton do not seem to make sense because of their circular reasoning. Thomas Hoving is the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and he is portrayed in the film as a pompous man who believes he knows everything about art. The documentary makes fun of Hoving as he inspects Horton’s painting. The angle of the camera makes him look absurd when he turns his head upside down to look at the piece and when he stands so close to the piece that his nose almost touches the paint. The music at this point in the film is playful and has a mocking tone. Hoving constantly emphasizes his expertise, which makes the viewers dislike him and think of him as an arrogant elitist: “There are a lot of second rate experts in the world, I’m not. Now, if I had been a night watchman at The Met for ten years, instead of a director for eighteen and a half, then you could say my expertise is not so good.” Hoving does not believe that the painting is authentic because his first impression of it was that it was neat and compacted. His concern with the painting brings up the difficulty of interpreting abstract, non-representational art. Peter Paul Biro is a forensic scientist and an art authenticator who uses science to determine a painting’s genuineness: “I look at a painting almost like a crime scene, looking not for who committed a murder but who committed the art and under what circumstances.” Biro uses photographic equipment and microscopes to look carefully at paintings in order to compare them to already authenticated paintings. The documentary highlights his expertise by describing his experience in authenticating paintings for famous art galleries like the Tate Gallery. When he finds a fingerprint on the back of Horton’s painting, he travels to Pollock’s studio to see if he can find a match: “The best way to interpret evidence is through its relationship to its environment. This is plain old-fashioned forensic approach.” As the film shows Biro doing his search of the studio, the music is of a majestic trumpet that is solemn and serious. In contrast to Hoving’s inspection, the documentary makes Biro’s investigation seem much more legitimate.

Biro’s theory is placed in opposition to Hoving’s perspective to further emphasize the ridiculous reasoning of the art world in determining authenticity. When Biro successfully finds a fingerprint on a paint can in Pollock’s studio that closely resembles the fingerprint on Horton’s painting, he analyzes it in his lab to find that it is indeed a perfect match. Biro asks Sergeant Andre Turcotte to confirm whether this finding is legitimate. As the narrator describes, Turcotte is a former fingerprint expert for the Montreal crime lab at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Turcotte compares the multiple bifurcations between the two fingerprints and agrees that they are exactly the same. The documentary overlays the two prints to visually show the viewer that the two prints are a match of each other. Biro further investigates and finds the same chemical component in the paint content in both Pollock’s studio and Horton’s painting. Hoving responds to the finding of scientific evidence with disbelief and says that it is not enough to authenticate the artwork: “Fingerprints, all this stuff is that lovely ‘what if ’ but it is not essential to the heart and the artistic soul. The painting has no Pollock soul

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or heart.” His reaction is made to seem irrational since fingerprint and chemical analysis are presented to the viewer as viable evidence in real crime cases. The documentary makes art experts seem ludicrous because even when presented with empirical proof, they reject it and deem it meaningless. The juxtaposition between scientific and artistic perspectives is used to critique and undermine how the art world is seen to authenticate a work of art.

This documentary aims to question the power that art experts and art institutions have in dictating what kind of art is valuable. According to Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright in Practices of Looking, the history of ownership of an artwork contributes greatly to its value and authenticity. In the film, an art lawyer named Ron Spencer explains the importance of provenance in providing evidence to authenticate an artwork. The provenance of an artwork traces the movement of ownership from the artist to the present day owner, therefore showing that the work is genuine. Art experts are skeptical of Horton’s painting being a real Jackson Pollock because she is unable to provide provenance. The only documentation she has of the painting is the receipt from the thrift store where she bought it. The film continues to make art dealers seem ridiculous when Horton makes up a story about the provenance of her painting and they actually believe it. Tod Volpe, an art dealer with a history of fraud explains from first hand experience that a paper trail of ownership can be easily faked. He is hired

by Horton to represent her painting in the hopes that he will be able to connect her with art experts. The documentary emphasizes the discrepancies between what the art world deems to be valuable by showing that they value a signature by the artist over a fingerprint match. Volpe says: “Everyone is saying to prove that it is a Jackson Pollock. I say prove that it isn’t.” John Myatt also has a history of creating forgeries and is depicted as an expert in pastiche and creating imitations of artwork. He explains to viewers why it is extremely difficult to replicate a Pollock painting: “I don’t think you could be sober and do one. The right kind of paint, the right kind of brush, the right kind of flow of speed. It’s so much too think about.” Who the *$&% is Jackson Pollock? illustrates how the process of determining this authenticity is complicated and not as black and white as simply providing written documentation.

From beginning to end, this documentary is filmed to portray Teri Horton as the heroine of a Cinderella story. She represents the everyday person who happens to find something valuable that could completely change her life. This appeals to mundane viewers watching the documentary because they feel like this is a possibility that could happen to them as well. When Horton first sees the painting, she does not appreciate it for its aesthetics because she does not have an in depth knowledge of visual culture: “I saw this big canvas with paint all over it, no picture. It was ugly. There was nothing to it, it was just all these different colours over a canvas.” Her hobby of digging through the dumpster to look for treasures like clothing, watches and miscellaneous electronics further emphasizes her character as being any other ordinary person. Horton’s search for authentication then becomes a story of an individual who has the courage to stand up against the bullies in the art world. Volpe alludes to this parallel: “There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in the art world. It’s all about money, power and greed. People see Teri Horton as a peasant.” The fairy tale aspect of the film makes the viewer root for Horton and desire for her to be able to authenticate the painting as a real Jackson Pol-

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lock painting. If she is able to get her happy ending against all odds, then perhaps any ordinary viewer can also be lucky enough to do the same.

Who the *$&% is Jackson Pollock? argues that determining authenticity in the art world is full of interweaving complications. The authenticity of an artwork is what determines its value, prestige and position in the art market. This documentary aims to reveal the politics and the unfairness in the way that the art world determines the authenticity of artworks by telling the story of Terri Horton. Although the status of the film being a documentary makes it seem like it should be an objective method to receive unbiased information, the way that it appeals to the viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s emotions, portrays certain professionals with positive or negative qualities and the use of cinematic effects shows that it is trying to send a very specific message to the viewer.

Works Cited Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Who the *$&% is Jackson Pollock. Directed by Harry Moses. 2006: Picturehouse, 2006.

Accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmFjAAA3AT8.

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Discourse on Ableism in “No Woman Born” by C.L. Moore Citlalli Melody Mastache Women’s Studies 2203

“No Woman Born” by C.L. Moore is described in lecture as a feminist response to Lester del Rey’s robot model in “Helen O’Loy”, which is a fifties housewife model of a man-serving woman. Moore’s model, Deirdre, is made as more than a man’s servant. She shows no deep interest in the men in her life and is instead focused on achieving her goals as a dancer. While I agree that Deirdre is a feminist response to del Rey, I believe that Moore was attempting something bigger than simply a non-sexist model. Many feminist theories often fail to include the marginalized and oppressed community of disabled people. I believe that while Moore may have been attempting to address the sexism in “Helen O’Loy”, she was also creating a very important discourse on the issue of ableism through Deirdre’s character, who was much more than woman - indeed, much more than human.

C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born” begins by describing a goddess of a woman, one who supersedes all others in beauty, grace, and charm. Harris, the protagonist, is devastated at the death of Deidre and terrified at the prospect of what she will become in her new robot form. As Maltzer, Deirdre’s maker, says to Harris: “She’s so pitifully handicapped even with all we could do. She’ll always be an abstraction and a ... a freak, cut off from the world by handicaps worse in their way than anything any human being ever suffered before. Sooner or later she’ll realize it” (Moore 280). Both Maltzer and Harris are scared of what they believe to be Deirdre’s loss of ability to move freely; the death not of who she is but of what she can do. Knowing that our own society can be hard for a disabled person to navigate, these feelings are not uncommon in the family and friends of disabled people. In my own experience, I’ve noticed that many feel that a life with a disability is worse than no life at all. Maltzer shows a similar concern by seriously considering a mercy killing. He reasons that “Maybe this taste of it will be enough ...

If she retires now, she’ll never guess how cruel her own audiences could be ... she’s too fragile to stand that” (Moore 286). Maltzer remains so convinced of Deirdre’s vulnerability and his own dictation over her that he disregards Deirdre’s attempts to convince him of her capabilities. Ironically, by not paying attention to her needs, Maltzer stands in the way of her full autonomy.

Deirdre’s new form allows her to become more than human and more than the product of men’s influence on her life. Maltzer states that “One of the strongest stimuli to a women of her type was the knowledge of sex competition. You know how she sparkled when a man came into the room? All that’s gone, and it was an essential” (Moore 278). This suggests that when Deirdre was human, she focused on her appeal to the opposite sex. Now that Maltzer notices that men do not have the same effect on her, he sees her as broken and useless. Besides the obvious sexism in this statement, Maltzer is demonstrating the idea that disabled people are often seen as broken instead of being seen as reborn. Deirdre reminds then both that “The whole idea from the start was to re-create what I’d lost so that it could be proved that beauty and talent need not be sacrificed by the destruction of parts of all the body” (Moore 275). This quote could

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be seen as the sum of the story by conveying the idea that disability does not render the body useless. The of technology to create prosthetics allows disabled people to regain their abilities. More than this, it allows those people to achieve more than they ever thought possible. Deirdre illustrates this when she exclaims, “I don’t want them to come ready to pity my handicaps - I haven’t got any!” (Moore 276).

Both Harris and Maltzer remain oblivious to the fact that Deirdre is achieving more than she has ever been able to. Maltzer laments that, “If she only weren’t so...so frail. She doesn’t realize how delicately poised her very sanity is” (Moore 279), overlooking the fact that he has no true idea of what is going on in Deidre’s mind. He sees his position as her maker as a way to speak for her. Maltzer even convinces Harris that “No body before in all history ... could have been designed more truly to be a prison for its mind than Deirdre’s” (Moore 286). I’ve met many relatives of disabled people that have felt this concern. I have firsthand experience with this. We are concerned that our loved ones are suffering despite any evidence of the opposite. This is especially true when we consider disabled people who need someone or something to speak for them.

Deirdre, to prove her autonomy, fights to show them that she is capable of handling her audience, explaining that “I haven’t lost contact with the human race. I never will, unless I want to” (Moore 298). As a robot with her human brain still intact, Maltzer and Harris see Deirdre as disconnected from humanity. She challenges this by demonstrating that humanity remains accessible to her.

By the end of the story, Deidre has proved herself more than capable, showing that she is more powerful than any could have imagined. As Harris contemplates, “[He] remembered incredulously that he had feared once to find her jointed like a mechanical robot. But it was humanity that seemed, by contrast, jointed and mechanical now” (Moore 282). Harris and Maltzer learn that Deidre’s unique position in the world is a benefit to herself and also a benefit to humanity. Her ability to move beyond the limits men set on her helps define her as a strong woman; strong for her differences, and not in spite of them. C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born” shows Deidre as an example of what disabled people can achieve and provides insight into the new perspectives they can offer about the world.

Works Cited Moore, C.L. “No Woman Born.” Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Ed. Patricia S. Warrick, Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh.

New York: Harper and Row, 1988. 154-87.

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Evacuating Absence, “Gone Grrrl”: The Postmodern Femme Fatale Brie Berry WS 3153

To reduce Amy Dunne to a sociopath is doing her narrative—and its larger cultural implications—a great disservice. Gillian Flynn’s 2012 thriller novel, Gone Girl is an absorbing indictment of the façade of relationship conventions through the lens of the femme fatale figure, Amy Dunne. Gone Girl investigates the disappearance of Amy Dunne and the potential involvement of her husband Nick in her vanishing.

The femme fatale is categorized as being “highly visible and yet never quite what she seems to be”, and moreover, “blatantly sexual [but] not fully legible” (Beckman 25).

The femme fatale reflects the dichotomy between progressive feminist revisions within representations of women and patriarchal status quos in order to subvert the problematic portrayal of women in contemporary literature. The characters in this postmodern mystery are ciphers, the inversion of tropes that resonate with real-life readers despite fantastical, hyperbolic acts of violence, vengeance, and ingenuity. Amy acts as a femme fatale, a “bad girl” who displays both social and sexual dissidence throughout the latter part of the novel under the rouse of “Dead Amy”. She exhibits this behaviour as a response to the pressure of embodying the impossible “Amazing Amy” and “Cool Girl” motifs that her family, her husband, the police investigating her disappearance, and mourning locals martyr her through. Amy’s dissidence is aided through her privilege as a white woman, yet contained within the novel by the limits of her class privilege, as is demonstrated when Greta and Jeff attack her and steal her money and she returns to men in her life for stability and support. In this essay, I will explore the social and sexual dissidence of Amy in Gone Girl using Anita Harris’ “The ‘Can-Do’ Girls Versus the ‘At Risk’ Girl”, Terrie Waddell’s “Scrubbers”, and Lisa Rundle’s “Cinematic Superbabes Are Breakin’ My Heart” to support my thesis.

Flynn positions the character of Amy as an unreliable narrator. However, the reader is not made aware of her dishonesty until partway through the novel. Up until this point, Amy is painted as the likeable—albeit, weak wife of the suspiciously distant Nick Dunne, who becomes the center of a media frenzy when she mysteriously disappears. It is important to note that the media coverage of Amy’s disappearance is due to her privilege as a white woman—missing women of colour are traditionally devoted a “disproportionate amount of newsprint and airtime” (Nittle). Amy’s sexual and social dissidence in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is a response to the models of femininity ascribed to her in the first half of the novel by her husband, her parents, the police, the media, and ultimately, the reader. Amy’s parents capitalize on the mythos of her character by creating a book series centered on the figure dubbed “Amazing Amy”(Flynn 26). Amy is disfigured through the ideal of perfection embodied by the archetypal “Amazing Amy”, “the [Amy that Amy Dunne] was supposed to be” but was never able to reach (26). “Amazing Amy” is the ultimate “Can-Do” girl, a girl “with the world at her feet” (Harris 14). The relationship between Amy and the trope of “Amazing Amy” created by her parents and facilitated through a loyal fan following made for a dichotomy between what she was and what she was expected to be. Amy’s failure to live up

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to the model established by “Amazing Amy” generated a feeling of dissatisfaction. Further, after Amy goes missing, her parents utilize the trope of “Amazing Amy” to plead for their daughter’s safe return, stating in a press conference: “Amy is a sweetheart of a girl…she really is our Amazing Amy” (Flynn 64). Amy is memorialized and martyred through the figurative “Amazing Amy” even after she has disappeared. Moreover, the sentiment of disappointment parallels Amy’s discovery of Nick’s affair with his student, Andie. Andie fulfills the model of the “Can Do” girl—she is educated, confident, and sexually viable—just like Amy used to be. Nick describes Andie as “a physical counterpoint to all things Amy” (Flynn 150). Once again, Amy is made to feel inadequate, a “failed subject”, unable to fit the model of the “Can-Do” girl that both Andie and the character of “Amazing Amy” prescribe (Harris 28). As a response to Nick’s adulterous betrayal, Amy embraces the prototype of “Amazing Amy” through her fictitious journal entries; capitalizing on the sympathy this figure garnered in order to turn public and police against Nick. In so doing, Amy comes to embody the self-determination of “grrlpower” as a means of vengeance (Harris 17). Amy’s social and sexual dissidence is a product of the prescriptions of “Amazing Amy” and the “Can-Do Girl” forced upon her. Her adoption of these traits in order to challenge the identity of “Amazing Amy” is evidence of her power as a femme fatale: a figure whose “behaviour vacillates between the active and the passive” in order to disturb the characteristics projected onto her (Beckman 26). Amy still operates within the discursive limits of the “Amazing Amy” identity, but subverts it as to benefit her construction of revenge.

Amy and Nick’s relationship is plagued by the narcissism of seduction, “two people pretending to be other people, better people, versions of the dream guy and dream girl” (Dowd). This façade is facilitated by Amy’s adoption of the “Cool Girl” motif. Amy’s social and sexual dissidence is governed by her wish to escape the act of the “Cool Girl” in order to live authentically outside of socially enforced patriarchal scripts. Amy expresses this desire to the reader as she takes over the narration: “I’d like you to know me first. Not Diary Amy, who is a work of fiction…Actual Amy” (Flynn 220). Amy’s conformism vis-à-vis the figure of the “Cool Girl” is symptomatic of patriarchal pressures that dictate an ideal of femininity based off of male desire. The “Cool Girl” is the way for Amy to “play the girl a man like Nick wants” (222). Amy elaborates on this notion: “being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping…loves threesomes and anal sex…let their men do whatever they want” (222). While Amy recognizes that the “Cool Girl” is a construct, she polices herself and her behaviour in order to convince Nick that she fit this figure. Conversely, the “scrubber” is a hypersexualized, highly-sexed woman who “clings to the phallus for physical and emotional sustenance” (Waddell 184). The “Cool Girl” can be perceived as a figment of the “scrubber” type illustrated in Terrie Waddell’s “Scrubbers”. Amy took up the model of the “Cool Girl” because she was “crazy about him at first” (Flynn 223). Amy’s behaviour began to be moderated through Nick, “he helped me be Cool Girl—I couldn’t have been Cool Girl with anyone else” (223).

Through their relationship, Nick perpetuated the scripts of the “Cool Girl” while Amy crafted herself to his projections shaped through patriarchal culture. When Nick’s philandering is exposed, Amy reclaims her agency and bucks against the “Cool Girl”. Yet, even as Amy defies the “Cool Girl” model by crafting her own disappearance, she re-

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tains qualities of the “scrubber”, thus containing her sexual and social dissidence within the text. Amy’s staged disappearance—her act of rebellion—is marred by the presence of bodily waste: “[Amy] cut [her]self…let the blood drizzle steadily until [she had] made a nice thick puddle…[she] cleaned it up poorly” (Flynn 220). In her essay, Waddell asserts that the symbolic quality of bodily waste is paramount in understanding the dissidence of the “scrubber” contrasted against the model of physical cleanliness which symbolizes “socialization and containment” (Waddell 188). However, this socialization and containment is within the patriarchal models of feminist identities. By engaging in “scrubber” behaviour, Amy is challenging these scripts and creating a space in which she can become “Real Amy…[who is] so much better, more interesting, and more complicated than Cool Amy” (Flynn 225).

The figure of the “scrubber” is also seen through the character Greta. Greta signifies how issues of class interact with Amy’s social and sexual dissidence. Amy meets Greta as she is constructing the figure of “Dead Amy” and erasing her past with Nick. “Poor, bruised, smacked around” Greta serves as a parallel to Amy—representing how Amy’s narrative has been privileged through her upper-class status (Flynn 280).

Greta actually is an “ostracized” battered woman, and goes to the same Hide-A-Way cabin in order to escape her abuse that Amy hides away in after faking her disappearance (Waddell 190). Yet, there are no search parties looking for Greta as there are for Amy, Greta’s face is not plastered all over the news, her parents do not plead for her safe return. The similarities between the two women are clear when Greta introduces herself to Amy, Amy notes that her name “sounds made up”, despite having just introduced herself under the pseudonym Nancy (Flynn 262). However, Greta similarly displays an omnipotent awareness of Amy’s own lie—as they watch Nick on television, Greta knowingly remarks that she thinks Amy is “hiding out all safe and sound” (267).

Greta is a conscious challenge to the script of “Dead Amy”—she is the facilitator of its downfall, despite not being clearly awarded power through class privilege. Moreover, the reader is constantly reminded of Greta’s class status as Amy makes a point to dismiss her attractiveness as “cheap pretty”, and as such, not as valuable as Amy (279).

Greta is also associated with the uncleanliness that is typically attributed to the scrubber: “twice [Greta] has gone into the cesspool of dirty water” (280). While Greta does collaborate with Jeff, who she has met at the Hide-A-Way to rob Amy, alluding to a reliance on a man, it is Greta who “yanks off her money belt” (307). In this way, Greta, like Amy, displays autonomy—“I talked Jeff into it”, although she does so without the privilege of wealth (307). The same class privilege that Amy had defined herself against Greta through is her undoing. Greta, by taking away Amy’s money and thus, her class privilege, sets a boundary on her sexual and social dissidence that leads Amy to return to Desi, and ultimately, to Nick.

As Lisa Rundle points out in “Cinematic Superbabes Are Breakin’ My Heart”, often, female-heroes “are stereotypical heterosexual male fantasies” (Rundle 306). Yet, Amy Dunne is not constructed to be a hero, but rather exhibits social and sexual dissidence in order to act as a femme fatale, a “bad girl”, as she abandons the figure of “Dead Amy” and returns to Nick. In her article, Rundle questions the motives behind insisting that female-heroes “remain feminine”, surmising that heterosex-appeal is the female-heroes most valuable skill (307). Conversely, in Gone Girl, “Amy…weaponize[s]

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female stereotypes. She embodies them to get what she wants and then she detonates them” (Dowd). Amy’s femininity, employed through the model of the femme-fatale, is a weapon. Amy uses her sexuality to manipulate Desi—“I know he pictures making love to me”—into coming to her aid (Flynn 325). Then, when she no longer needs Desi, Amy seduces him and kills him: “Desi’s semen inside me…they’ll find him naked and drained…the bed soaked in blood” (374). Amy’s agency, her sexuality, and her violence are all intrinsically linked. Further, Amy’s explosive confrontation with Nick is an “exhilarating, empowering experience” (Rundle 308). In this scene, Nick attempts to dismiss Amy’s sexual and social dissidence as “psycho[tic]” (Flynn 394).

Amy refuses this, demonstrating her autonomy, self-awareness, and embracing of herself as the femme fatale, stating: “The only time in your life you’ve liked yourself was pretending to be someone I might like…I’m the bitch who makes you a man” (Flynn 395). Here, Amy is defining Nick against herself. She is the subject and he is the object.

She is asserting herself as “the one who [is] really winning” (Rundle 310). She is the one who is writing the scripts and making the decisions now. Further, Amy once again utilizes her femininity in order to control Nick. Through “motherhood”, Amy is able to utterly “reassembl[e] Nick” into the “worlds best, brightest” husband (415). Amy uses her femininity as a source of power and control, rewriting the models of femininity prescribed so her by her family, her husband, the police, the media, and patriarchal society. Finally, in order to demonstrate the inversing of power relations within Amy and Nick’s marriage, the novel which began from Nick’s point of view ends in Amy’s as she decisively states: “I just wanted to make sure I had the last word” (415). In so doing, Amy negotiates a new role for herself through her sexual and social dissidence in which she is inarguably, utterly in control.

Amy’s sexual and social dissidence is the catalyst of her renegotiation of the models of femininity prescribed to her by her husband, her parents, the police, the media, and ultimately, herself: “Amazing Amy”, “Cool Girl”, and “Dead Amy”. Anita Harris’ “The ‘Can-Do’ Girls Versus the ‘At Risk’ Girl”, Terrie Waddell’s “Scrubbers”, and Lisa Rundle’s “Cinematic Superbabes Are Breakin’ My Heart” unpack these roles and locate them within patriarchal constructs. As a femme fatale, Amy subverts the patriarchal pressures that had been containing her throughout the novel and uses her femininity as a source of power. Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl serves as a social commentary, mediation of a complex female character that upsets traditional gender roles and reimagines a feminist manifesto through sexual and social dissidence.

Works Cited Beckman, Frida. “From Irony to Narrative Crisis: Reconsidering the Femme Fatale in the Films of David Lynch”, Cinema Journal, vol. 52, no.1, University of Texas Press: 2012, pp. 25-44 Dowd, Maureen. “Lady Psychopaths Welcome”, The New York Times: 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd- lady-psychopaths-welcome.html?_r=2

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Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl. New York: Crown, 2012. Print.

Harris, Anita. “The ‘Can-Do’ Girls Versus the ‘At Risk’ Girl”, Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century, Psychology Press: 2004.

Nittle, Nadra Kareem. “Why Missing People of Color Aren’t a Media Priority”, Criminal Justice, 2012. http://mije.org/mmcsi/criminal-justice/why-missing- people-coloraren%E2%80%99t-media-priority Rundle, Lisa. Cinematic Superbabes Are Breakin’ My Heart: It’s Hard To Go All The Way with the New Breed of Lady Killers When They Just Won’t Let Go of that Man”, Sumach Press: 2004, Toronto.

Waddell, Terrie. “Scrubbers”, Women Vision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia, Damned Publishing Melbourne: 2003.