I found myself thinking about Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale after a brief interaction at a talk at the recent Utopian Studies Conference last weekend. Like the last conference I attended, the conference went well and the panel focusing on feminist utopias and dystopias might have been my favorite panel of the conference. About half the papers of the final panel I attended focused on the novel and the recent HBO adaptation of the novel. The papers by Claire Curtis and Kate Meakin critically examined the adaptation and the way it diverged from the original material of the novel. In both cases, the presenters were critical of the adaptation and particularly its transformation of the originally white nationalist republic of Gilead into a more integrated if equally patriarchal construction. The second presenter, Kate Meakin, went further to explore the way that those troubling aspects of the tv series translated into the recent protests in support of women’s rights that appropriated the image of the Handmaid. She noted that it was particularly problematic to embrace the phrase, Make Margaret Atwood fiction again when the policies being protested had a long history in the oppression of women of color. Far from being a product of Margaret Atwood’s imagination, most of these policies had been enacted to restrict the reproductive rights of women of color, a point that Atwood herself makes in the novel itself.[1]
In the comments section, I brought up the issue of the protests and noted that the protests tended to ignore the larger framing of the novel, one in which the Handmaids are in some sense relatively privileged in comparison to the women sent to deaths in the colonies or the African-American population who were almost certainly exterminated within the framework of the novel. The panelists were rightly critical of my poorly chosen framing of the analysis. Privilege is certainly the wrong word to use in conjunction of a population who must face the sort of intense domination and sexual violence that the Handmaids face, but the comment does gesture towards the nuanced manner that the fictional republic used to avoid the construction of a rebellion in the form of a ‘women as a class.’ The narrative marks the forms of resentment that create divisions between the Handmaids and the Marthas as well as the even wider gulfs between these figures and the various wives within the republic, who themselves are divided by class within the white republic. At the same time, those figures are incorporated within the republic even as they are systemically excluded from its public sphere distinguishing them from the women who are exiled to the colonies, the Jezebels on the margins of the society, and the populations exterminated by the regime.
One of the most powerful aspects of the book is the way that the book explores this dense disciplinary network of surveillance through the interior voice of the Handmaid, Offred. As Atwood notes in her earlier comments on the novel, Offred isn’t a rebellious figure and is a figure that tries to survive in the society as it exists, even as she tries to find a way out of it. Atwood goes even farther, referring to the character as a ‘coward.’ As one of the panelists, Claire Curtis, noted, the desire to survive within the book and the show often comes at the expense of others. For my interpretation, the desire to survive also involves a need to engage with the rules set that is created by the Gilead Republic, an engagement that unavoidably involves a degree of internalization of those very rules. The figure of Offred becomes the vehicle to explore this deeply ambiguous mixture of a desire to escape, to rebel against the republic and at the same time, the perhaps even necessary complicity with that oppression both against herself and other populations.[2] The resentments over the small differences in the regime’s treatment of different groups of women and the slights from other women are richly represented in the figure. It also captures the way that the threat of exile or death becomes another way to get the wives, handmaids, and marthas to perform the role of enforcers of their own oppression.
In this sense, the novel provides a much more thoroughly developed feminist analysis than I had previously given it credit. The Gilead Republic operates through a mixture of direct and indirect patriarchal sovereignty and, at the same time, the deployment of the techniques of sexuality that Foucault discusses in his first volume of The History of Sexuality. This combination winds up taking the form of a sort of diffused panopticism, which in turn leads to a kind of internalization of the logic of the regime by the women who live within it. That internalization doesn’t take the form of some sort of blanket brainwashing, which would have brought the novel into the kind of broad satirical critique that one gets from The Stepford Wives. Instead, it entwines that complicity with the very real and understandable desire to survive. In this sense, the republic succeeds by producing a sort of stasis, shifting the antagonism of the women of the society from dominant structures of that society to each other. In this sense, the disciplinary mechanisms of the society diffuse antagonism and allow for a functioning system. Most of the women within the novels are aware that the society is oppressive, but at the same time are far more consumed by the micro-conflicts between the various groups of classification set up by the republic. The disciplinary mechanisms operate through a process of individualization, depending on often deeply personal apparatuses of control, as well as the construction of a grid-like pattern of intelligibility, creating groups with their own functions, rights and responsibilities. Difference is both manufactured at the behest of patriarchal power and at the same time meaningfully creates differences within those dominated groups, inhibiting the possibilities of rebellion.
[1] Interestingly, Atwood has herself strongly embraced the structure of the protests as well as played a significant role in structuring the new television series. In this sense, we’re returning to the book to not only critique the reception of the novel, but the revised authorial interpretation of the work
[2] The paper by Claire Curtis particularly focused on the question of survival and the implications of the protagonists decision to survive on those around her.
Showing posts with label dystopia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dystopia. Show all posts
Monday, November 12, 2018
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Fire on the Mountain and the Representation of History
The recently proposed television series, "Confederate", by the showrunners of Game of Thrones has created a great deal of controversy online. The show proposes an alternative history in which the civil war ends as a stalemate and the Confederacy persists as a slave-holding nation. Unsurprisingly, the proposal has been greatly controversial, particularly in the face of the explosion of authoritarian white nationalist activism and organizing in the past few months. The push back against the proposed show has taken multiple forms, from challenging the ability of the showrunners to create such a narrative in a thoughtful manner to the persistence of such narrative recreating the "Lost Cause" myth and even the legitimacy of white artists creating the narrative. An additional response has been a proposed alternative history that would imagine the country after reparations. However, within the margins of these conversations, a number of science fiction fans have brought up an alternative narrative, Fire on the Mountain, a 1988 novel by Terry Bisson that imagines a history where John Brown's uprising succeeds due to the participation of Harret Tubman in the uprising. As far as I can tell, very little attention has been given to the Bisson narrative within the context of the above controversy, so I thought I would write a brief essay discussing its imagined alternative history, and its explicit assessment of the history of the country.
The narrative of Fire on the Mountain itself is richly created, oscillating between the narrative of a former slave who participated in the uprising and his great-granddaughter, who is reviewing the memoirs of her grandfather in the socialist republic of the southern United States in the late 1950's. The story richly imagines the experience of the successful slave uprising, while constructing a plausible southern socialist republic, preparing to send astronauts to Mars after a failed previous mission. The first imagines the uprising as a slow build up of resources, with the insurgents first taking to the mountains to engage in a guerilla struggle before succeeding in putting together a successful army, and brings the historical personas of Brown and Tubman alive through their engagement with the youthful protagonist of that section of the novel. The southern socialist republic in turn is created through references to novel technological developments and social structures, pointing to a radically different society Between those stories, the slave revolt and successful construction of the independent republic contributes to a series of global rebellions, from a successful Paris Commune to an eventual successful workers' revolt in the north, starting in Chicago.
Through that process,the novel effectively poses the successful revolt as a novum, a novelty that transforms the terrain of history, and takes up the hypothesis in the first German preface to Marx's Capital, where he states, "As in the 18th century, the American war of independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle class, so that in the 19th century, the American Civil War sounded it for the European working class." A prognostication that he expands with the following material on the process of the destruction of slavery, "At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade,vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing" Within the context of these statements, the destruction of the institution of slavery creates a possibility of transformation if fully implemented, albeit an uncertain one. Bisson simply extrapolates from the other side of this hypothesis.
At the same time, it presents a stark image of the present of the present within its pages through an illicit parody novel produced by proslavery forces in the revanchist North that imagines a path of history that look remarkably similar to our own. To get a sense of how this is described, we need to a look at an extended passage of the novel that describes the parody novel and its story.
"You never read it? I wrote a paper on it in college It was a bestseller in the 1920s. It's a border fantasy, a what-if."
"You mean it's pro-slavery?"
"Well, not exactly," Grisson said. "Worse than that, really. It's a sort of white supremacist utopia, mis-topia maybe."
"So if its not about slavery, what's it about?
"Empire. By the middle of the nineteenth century, slavery was about finished anyway," Grissom said. "Africans around the world were throwing it off. The real issue in the Independence War was land. Nationhood."
"So there's no Nova Africa." Yasmin riffled the pages. "Does Tubman hang too?"
"She's not there," Grissom said. "That's the trick the plot turns around. The idea is that instead of going on the Fourth as planned, Tubman gets sick. The raid is delayed until fall, October, I think. Brown goes without her. Now according to the book--and in actual fact--Brown was more of a strategists than a tactician. Without Tubman he hesitates, takes hostages, lets the Washington train go through. You know, in real life it was Tubman who insisted on blowing the Maryland bridge and cutting off the train. Anyway, in the book they don't blow the bridge; they get trapped in the town, captured,and hung as traitors."
"So we have John Brown's body and now war."
"There's still a war. It's just not an independence war. It's fought to keep the old U.S. together rather than to free Nova Africa."
"So who wins?"
"The North. Lincoln," Grissom said. "In the book, he become president and the war is started by the slave owners, who are trying to set up a separate country--like Nova Africa, as a matter of fact, on pretty much the same territory."
"Clever."
"But a slave country, run by the slave owners."
"They already had that, for all practical purposes," Yasmin said.
"They were losing it by 1860, or at least thought they were. They didn't want another Kansas. Anyway, in the story the North fights to keep the South in the Union. And they do. They win."
"And we lose."
"And how. Listen, this book was a bestseller in the U.S. in the 1920's. Lincoln's a big here; so's Lee...."
"Lee?"
"He leads the army for the South. He plays the good loser, the Virginia gentleman generous in victory, gallant in defeat, shaking hands at the end--all that."
"Amazing," Yasmin said.
"White right prevails; the slave owners keep the land, even get more. The slave system is modified so that n'Africans end up as serfs; or worse, as a sort of landless nation packed into the slums of Chicago and New York for occasional servile labor."
"No Nova Africa."
"Afraid not, comrade. One nation indivisible--it's old Abe's dream, and your nightmare. You don't even get a hundred acres and a Mule."
"Mis-topia, dystopia, wishful thinking." (Bisson 75-76)
In a curious sense, this brief conversation of an imagined parody novel of the defeated North contains the ethical core of the novel; it imagines the history of the United States as a nightmare, or a horrible parody, as terrible as it is improbable from the rational standpoint of the socialist republic. It demands that we estrange ourselves from this nightmarish history, to imagine another approach, to reject the inevitability of the present, which is presented as the result of a small series of unfortunate contingencies. At another level, it's a commentary on the possibilities and failures contained in what is often called the second reconstruction, the civil rights era, which the author participated in and saw collapse into the counter-revolution of Reaganism. To return to the initial controversy, the novel demands that we both reassess our history and to fight to create radically new social relations, a demand also implicit in the destruction of Confederate Memorial statues by anti-racist protestors. Within this context, we need to break out of the fantasies of innocence that often frame our narratives about the violent white supremacists calling themselves the alt-right. As I noted a few days ago,
I've been thinking a bit about one of the ways that the so-called alt-right movement has been criticized, notably the narrative of treason. A lot of material has accused the movement of treason because of its invocation of the confederacy and Nazism. The logic is, implicitly, since these organizations support either seditious or enemy forces, they must be condemned. I think this is a mistaken narrative. By this logic, we should condemn John Brown, a man who clearly engaged in military actions against the United States government in his efforts to overthrow slavery. The problem with aligning oneself with the Nazis, the confederacy, and the Klan is that these are brutally racist and authoritarian social movements, not that they are treasonous. Implicit in the effort to brand these movements treasonous is an effort to declare them exogenous, outside the national narrative, which strikes me as a profound erasure of the history of our country. Rather than engaging in this fantasy, we should acknowledge that these forces are fully a part of our nation, and because of that, need to be combated all the more. The fight against fascism should be a fight to transform the nation and perhaps even to obliterate it as it currently exists, not to preserve it.
In either case, the novel takes the forms of estrangement embedded in science fiction and creates a remarkable alternative world, refusing the abyss of the counter-revolution, even as it marks that abyss. Within this framework, the novels demolishes the 'Lost Cause' myth by showing the continuation of the white supremacy at the heart of the supposedly defeated Confederate cause, showing its preservation in the post-reconstruction era. In this sense, the estrangement embedded in the imagined narrative of Confederate contains a deep mystification, and an inability to grasp the history of the country.
The narrative of Fire on the Mountain itself is richly created, oscillating between the narrative of a former slave who participated in the uprising and his great-granddaughter, who is reviewing the memoirs of her grandfather in the socialist republic of the southern United States in the late 1950's. The story richly imagines the experience of the successful slave uprising, while constructing a plausible southern socialist republic, preparing to send astronauts to Mars after a failed previous mission. The first imagines the uprising as a slow build up of resources, with the insurgents first taking to the mountains to engage in a guerilla struggle before succeeding in putting together a successful army, and brings the historical personas of Brown and Tubman alive through their engagement with the youthful protagonist of that section of the novel. The southern socialist republic in turn is created through references to novel technological developments and social structures, pointing to a radically different society Between those stories, the slave revolt and successful construction of the independent republic contributes to a series of global rebellions, from a successful Paris Commune to an eventual successful workers' revolt in the north, starting in Chicago.
Through that process,the novel effectively poses the successful revolt as a novum, a novelty that transforms the terrain of history, and takes up the hypothesis in the first German preface to Marx's Capital, where he states, "As in the 18th century, the American war of independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle class, so that in the 19th century, the American Civil War sounded it for the European working class." A prognostication that he expands with the following material on the process of the destruction of slavery, "At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade,vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing" Within the context of these statements, the destruction of the institution of slavery creates a possibility of transformation if fully implemented, albeit an uncertain one. Bisson simply extrapolates from the other side of this hypothesis.
At the same time, it presents a stark image of the present of the present within its pages through an illicit parody novel produced by proslavery forces in the revanchist North that imagines a path of history that look remarkably similar to our own. To get a sense of how this is described, we need to a look at an extended passage of the novel that describes the parody novel and its story.
"You never read it? I wrote a paper on it in college It was a bestseller in the 1920s. It's a border fantasy, a what-if."
"You mean it's pro-slavery?"
"Well, not exactly," Grisson said. "Worse than that, really. It's a sort of white supremacist utopia, mis-topia maybe."
"So if its not about slavery, what's it about?
"Empire. By the middle of the nineteenth century, slavery was about finished anyway," Grissom said. "Africans around the world were throwing it off. The real issue in the Independence War was land. Nationhood."
"So there's no Nova Africa." Yasmin riffled the pages. "Does Tubman hang too?"
"She's not there," Grissom said. "That's the trick the plot turns around. The idea is that instead of going on the Fourth as planned, Tubman gets sick. The raid is delayed until fall, October, I think. Brown goes without her. Now according to the book--and in actual fact--Brown was more of a strategists than a tactician. Without Tubman he hesitates, takes hostages, lets the Washington train go through. You know, in real life it was Tubman who insisted on blowing the Maryland bridge and cutting off the train. Anyway, in the book they don't blow the bridge; they get trapped in the town, captured,and hung as traitors."
"So we have John Brown's body and now war."
"There's still a war. It's just not an independence war. It's fought to keep the old U.S. together rather than to free Nova Africa."
"So who wins?"
"The North. Lincoln," Grissom said. "In the book, he become president and the war is started by the slave owners, who are trying to set up a separate country--like Nova Africa, as a matter of fact, on pretty much the same territory."
"Clever."
"But a slave country, run by the slave owners."
"They already had that, for all practical purposes," Yasmin said.
"They were losing it by 1860, or at least thought they were. They didn't want another Kansas. Anyway, in the story the North fights to keep the South in the Union. And they do. They win."
"And we lose."
"And how. Listen, this book was a bestseller in the U.S. in the 1920's. Lincoln's a big here; so's Lee...."
"Lee?"
"He leads the army for the South. He plays the good loser, the Virginia gentleman generous in victory, gallant in defeat, shaking hands at the end--all that."
"Amazing," Yasmin said.
"White right prevails; the slave owners keep the land, even get more. The slave system is modified so that n'Africans end up as serfs; or worse, as a sort of landless nation packed into the slums of Chicago and New York for occasional servile labor."
"No Nova Africa."
"Afraid not, comrade. One nation indivisible--it's old Abe's dream, and your nightmare. You don't even get a hundred acres and a Mule."
"Mis-topia, dystopia, wishful thinking." (Bisson 75-76)
In a curious sense, this brief conversation of an imagined parody novel of the defeated North contains the ethical core of the novel; it imagines the history of the United States as a nightmare, or a horrible parody, as terrible as it is improbable from the rational standpoint of the socialist republic. It demands that we estrange ourselves from this nightmarish history, to imagine another approach, to reject the inevitability of the present, which is presented as the result of a small series of unfortunate contingencies. At another level, it's a commentary on the possibilities and failures contained in what is often called the second reconstruction, the civil rights era, which the author participated in and saw collapse into the counter-revolution of Reaganism. To return to the initial controversy, the novel demands that we both reassess our history and to fight to create radically new social relations, a demand also implicit in the destruction of Confederate Memorial statues by anti-racist protestors. Within this context, we need to break out of the fantasies of innocence that often frame our narratives about the violent white supremacists calling themselves the alt-right. As I noted a few days ago,
I've been thinking a bit about one of the ways that the so-called alt-right movement has been criticized, notably the narrative of treason. A lot of material has accused the movement of treason because of its invocation of the confederacy and Nazism. The logic is, implicitly, since these organizations support either seditious or enemy forces, they must be condemned. I think this is a mistaken narrative. By this logic, we should condemn John Brown, a man who clearly engaged in military actions against the United States government in his efforts to overthrow slavery. The problem with aligning oneself with the Nazis, the confederacy, and the Klan is that these are brutally racist and authoritarian social movements, not that they are treasonous. Implicit in the effort to brand these movements treasonous is an effort to declare them exogenous, outside the national narrative, which strikes me as a profound erasure of the history of our country. Rather than engaging in this fantasy, we should acknowledge that these forces are fully a part of our nation, and because of that, need to be combated all the more. The fight against fascism should be a fight to transform the nation and perhaps even to obliterate it as it currently exists, not to preserve it.
In either case, the novel takes the forms of estrangement embedded in science fiction and creates a remarkable alternative world, refusing the abyss of the counter-revolution, even as it marks that abyss. Within this framework, the novels demolishes the 'Lost Cause' myth by showing the continuation of the white supremacy at the heart of the supposedly defeated Confederate cause, showing its preservation in the post-reconstruction era. In this sense, the estrangement embedded in the imagined narrative of Confederate contains a deep mystification, and an inability to grasp the history of the country.
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