Blog 5:

To Matthew G Kirschenbaum in “Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing,” technical advances inevitably lead to writer’s playing around with tools such as word process. Writers, who write to keep their memories alive, start to overwrite, focusing on substance rather than style. There is a link between the medium of inscription and a writer’s ability to elevate their style.

Writers write to keep their memories alive or to store memories onto a page, even if they are writing a novel or a short story. It was inevitable then that writers began to play around with word process for their own gains. Kirschenbaum says, “writers spending so much time with a keyboard and mouse beneath their fingertips and the glowing pixels of a screen angled in front of their eyes, it was inevitable that they would begin exploring and exploiting word processing technology in their own literary language and technique” (185). Word process became a tool for writers to experiment on, play around with language and also to work fast, speeding up the writing process so much so that overwriting began to occur.

As a result of word process, writers began to overwrite. There is so much information that is available on the web, which, “encourages authors to overwrite because it is so easy for them to continue revising and embellishing their prose. The availability of thesauri…and…the Web itself-—with
the potential for uncovering extraneous detail lurking behind every search box—… exacerbates these tendencies” (188). Writing became efficient. There was also easy access to endless amounts of word choices and material for writing. Overwriting is part of the nature of living in a digital age. There are many literary texts, movies, and music albums that would not be so without technical advances.

However, overwriting encourages writers to focus on substance rather than style. Kirschenbaum describes a writer named Tengo, who decided to use word processor but intentionally writer for style rather than substance. He writes that, “Tengo soon finds that his efforts have more than doubled the length of the text” (193). In this example Kirschenbaum shows that there is a link between the medium of inscription and a writer’s ability to elevate their style. Tengo was able to because he intentionally sought out to use word process to elevate his writing, rather than overwrite and focus on content. Kirschenbaum teaches us that different technological advances have upsides and downsides. It is up to us to use them to or our own personal gains.

In Native Son, Richard Wright overly sexualizes the character of Bigger. Wright ties Bigger’s overt sexuality with his identity as young black man. To Wright, sexuality and race for black men are not separate. Bigger is overly sexual because he is a black man. In turn, Bigger commits violent acts. The book sheds light onto Bigger’s violent acts, rather than on the violent systems of white supremacy and racism.

Bigger’s name is the first suggestion that his character is overtly sexual. “Bigger” implies that a certain part of his body, his phallus, is big. His name is not “Big” but his name is “Bigger. He is not and will never be “big” enough. He always needs to be “bigger,” both in his physical traits and in his personhood. In the book, Bigger is accused of raping Mary. That passage can be read as consensual sex, however the supposed rape shows that Bigger’s sexuality cannot be contained and it is violently forced upon white women.

In one scene, Bigger and Gus are playing white and Bigger is portrayed by Wright as overtly sexual, which is shown through the fact that he is a black man. At one moment, Bigger says, “You know where the white folks live,” then he “doubled down his fist and struck his solar plexus” and says, “Right down here in my stomach’” (22). After trying to come up with a different explanation for what Bigger said, I keep coming back to my original reasoning. Bigger in this instance is taking on a women’s role as a giver of life. Not only is he a man with a “big” phallus, but he is able to grow and hold life in his stomach. This portrays Bigger as child-like and innocent to the actual laws if science. Also he is innocent to the laws of society which were made by white folks, who don’t see him as child-like and innocent but rather as a threat. Bigger’s body is a sexual vessel that is so because of his blackness. “Every time I think of ‘em, I feel ‘em,” he says. “Naw; it ain’t like something going to happen to me. It’s… Its like I was going to do something I can’t help” (23). This foreshadows Mary’s rape.

It is unfortunate that Wright overly sexualized the character of Bigger. Because of the violence that comes out of Bigger being overtly sexual, it is hard to read this book seeing Bigger as an innocent young black men who got caught in the many webs of racism and white supremacy. I know he is a victim of the system. However, I don’t think Bigger would be the same character if he wasn’t for his overt sexuality. Since Wright thinks that blackness and sexuality are intertwined, it would be a different book entirely if Bigger’s blackness were separate from his sexuality. Bigger might not even be a sexual character. Mary’s rape may not have happened, which is the main event that propels the novel forward. It is important to note that Bigger is not the violent being in this book. White people and the systems of racism and white supremacy are. Bigger commits a violent act because of the violence that is being acted onto him, that is racism. I don’t think that blackness and sexuality have to be separate. But both can be harmoniously intertwined where a black person has ownership of their sexuality and blackness, and it not a pawn in Wright’s chess game, or a spider in white supremacy and racism’s web.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison inspired me for this project. It relates to this class because the entire book of Invisible Man is a narrative of inscription. Ellison defines inscription as white people or white institutions having the power to carve into the black body. What they carve into the black body are their own narratives and as a result, black people are rendered powerless. Despite the power of white people to inscribe on black bodies, Ralph Ellison shows that it is possible for black people to inscribe on themselves. The nameless protagonist has some agency in the book. By resisting the institutions of white supremacy, black people inscribe upon themselves and change their own narrative. However, this comes at a cost or a loss for them. For the nameless protagonist, even though he asserts his ownership over his body by inscribing upon himself, he is invisible within the structure of society. Thus, because of his efforts to inscribe upon himself, white supremacy chases him down and he is forced into isolation.

While I will be providing evidence from many moments throughout the book, one particularly powerful scene, known as the battle royal, shows the idea for my project the best. Mr. Colcord inscribes onto the nameless protagonist’s body when the nameless protagonist is thrown onto the electric rug. The nameless protagonist at first seems to have little agency. However, in this particular fight he “held on” so as not to be pushed onto the electrified rug (Ellison 28). He resists Mr. Colcord, who is a system controller and represents white supremacy. “It became a real struggle” when the nameless protagonist kept slipping out of Mr. Colcord’s hands (Ellison 28). The nameless protagonist then tries to “topple him onto the rug” (Ellison 28). When the nameless protagonist attempts to usurp power he rebels against the explicit desire of the system controllers mark on his black body. He grabs Mr. Colcord’s “leg, trying to tumble him out of the chair” (Ellison 28). In this way the nameless protagonist tries to challenge the system of white supremacy and take back ownership of his black body.

I want to draw on other works that we have read in class about white people inscribing on black bodies that would be relevant to racial struggles over inscription. I will use The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass and I was thinking of also using My Bondage and Freedom. I would like some advice on any other possible sources to use outside the ones from class. I will also be going to the library to ask a librarian for ideas.

Some resources:

Douglass, Frederick, and William L. Garrison. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Printed by Joseph Barker, 1846. Print.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York :Vintage International, 1995. Print.

From The Bodies of Black Folk (WINTER 2010), pp. 85-109 Invisibility Embraced: The Abject as a Site of Agency in Ellison’s Invisible Man by Shelly Jarenski

Morel, Lucas E. editor. Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to Invisible Man. 1st ed., University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

The Bodies of Black Folk: The Flesh Manifested in Words, Pictures, and Sound by Carol E. Henderson

**some sources not properly cited because I need access to the book/journal article

My reading of the Chesnutt’s “Conjure Tales” changed for the better when I looked at the text through the point of view of Annie. In my first reading of the text I had a hard time understanding Uncle Julius’s stories. Not because of the style in which Chesnutt choose to write Uncle Julius’s speech in, but I could not grasp why the stories were important. Annie has a fascination, a deeper understanding and appreciation of Uncle Julius’s stories. When I wrote from her perspective about the stories I began to love and admire them too. In particular, the story of Becky and then the rabbit’s foot. I learned that Uncle Julius is the heart of the novel. Without him, Annie would not have a reason to speak. Everything that Annie says is a reaction to what happens around her.

I picked Annie originally because at first read I thought she was a simple character. I was wrong. Because of her ignorance, her devotion to her husband and Uncle Julius and her depression, she is in fact very complex. She is always in scene, and is given dialogue, but she does very little action. We don’t have insight into how she feels, we are only told that she is depressed. On Friday, during class, I told my partner in the discussion that if given another opportunity I would choose a different role to play. However, after completing all the moves, I realized that I would still choose Annie, if given another opportunity. Annie allowed me to be creative with my posts. Since there was not much research available on Annie, I could try to understand her character. That is perhaps more powerful than historical context. I started to like Annie. I understood her faults but I could look past them and create a move where she is in her faults but allowed to have compassion.

I would suggest that the next game be one large one for the whole class to play. I found myself looking at the other group’s game to see what they were doing. It would be nice to have more posts to interact with, and more characters to invest moves in. It would also be interesting to have, say two Annie’s, and they can interact with one another, similarly like a person does in an internal monologue. Overall I has a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the creativity of this assignment.

In this assignment, because I wanted to learn more about Douglass, and also to not get overwhelmed by distant reading, I decided to explore the Douglass corpus. Along with being interested in Douglass, I am curious about the many ways in which water is symbolic and important to people of color. Slaves were forced across the Middle Passage by boat, and it is interesting to see the ways in which water impacts the lives of people of African descent. Thus my research question was: does the importance of water increase or decrease to Douglass over the time of the three texts? The first term I searched for on the corpus was “tears,” which was used twenty three times. I was astounded by the result on the map, which showed a straight upward trajectory.

I remember it was mentioned in class that Douglass’s earlier work, such as what we read, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, is a more direct slave narrative while his later work draws more definitive conclusions on the system of slavery. The fact that Douglass’s use of the word “tears” increases overtime is the opposite of what I expected. I thought that a more personal narrative would lead him to write “tears” a greater number of times. “Tears” imply that someone is crying. “Tears” are water that the human body produces.

To compare, I searched the corpus for the word “ocean,” which was used twenty times. I chose “ocean” because it is made of water like tears are. However an ocean is a large quantity of water and has less apparent emotional impact. Except, to someone like Douglass, who was a former slave, who’s ancestors were taken from Africa and forced to travel across the ocean, it does have an significant emotional impact. The graph looked as follows.

The word “ocean” increased through Douglass’s texts but then decreased after the second text. When I typed it into the context section of the corpus I could only see two examples of the twenty times during which “ocean” was used. Douglass wrote, “moving off to the mighty ocean” and “spot, this side of the ocean, where we could be free.” Distant reading in this case allowed me to draw the conclusion that water is important to Douglass. “Tears” become increasingly more relevant for him overtime, however “ocean” perhaps is less relevant to him. However where distant reading fell off was when it was time to draw more narrow conclusions. From looking at the context of “ocean” I discovered that Douglass wants to in a sense reclaim the vast body of water that is an ocean. For Douglass, the ocean is mighty and the ocean is freedom. Distant reading lacks the ability to go deeper and analyze. However it does allow one to look objectively at more than one text, and begin to figure out the importance of certain words and contexts for an author.

By Boat and Across Water: the Black Body and Reflections on America

In the excerpt from “My Bondage and Freedom” Douglass travels by boat to Great Britain and Ireland. Through the language he uses when he describe this voyage Douglass takes back ownership over his black body. Black folks were taken from Africa against their will and put on slave ships, however Douglass chooses to leave America and travel by boat. On the trip, “All color distinctions were flung to the winds.” Douglass is not an “object,” but he is an “object of general interest.” He gets along with the people on the boat, and he is even traveling with white friends. For Douglass, “one part of the ship to me was about as free as another.” The atmosphere upon the boat is “eloquent,” the “sweetest songs” are sung, and there is “spirited conversation, during the voyage.” Douglass writes that he has “good policy, as with my own feelings.” He asserts himself as a human who has feelings and emotions. Douglass has agency on the trip and in this way he reclaims his black body.

Similarly, through language Douglass breaks out of the bonds, which America has tied on his hands, and writes about America. He is only able to write honestly and deeply about the injustices of America when he is no longer there. The order in which Douglass writes matters. First, he describes the voyage in which he chooses to leave America thus he is able to reclaim ownership over his black body. Following that he writes a letter to Mr. Garrison where he says, “the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters.” The trip across the ocean awoke Douglass’s true and honest feelings about slavery. His brothers and sisters are “borne to the ocean,” meaning America is not their mother but rather a body of water is. This is interesting because water is fluid and you can’t hold it in your hands. It will slip through your fingers.

Douglass will “reproach myself that anything could fall from my lips in praise of such a land.” Compared to the excerpt from “The Souls of Black Folk” Douglass seems to hate slavery more once he is no longer a slave than when he was writing reflecting on being a slave. He then says, “America will not allow her children to love her.” Compared to the earlier statement, where the ocean takes on the mother role for black folks, Douglass could possibly believe that only white people are the children of America. Thus it is white folks comeuppance for slavery that America will not allow her children to love her. Douglass was only able to realize this once he left America and ventured to Great Britain and Ireland by boat and across water specifically.

In the excerpt from “The Souls of Black Folk,” there is an emerging theme of twoness and doubleness that comes from the outer racist world, which then enters the black body and splits a black persons inner self into two. Black folks must merge their two selves, without losing either self, in order “to be a better and truer self” (3). The tragedy is that it is difficult for a black person to be a single entity when he or she has the ability to see the outer racist world in double. A black person can see the truth about America but what is most important is finding their own truth. Du Bois never says if the merging of the selves is successful or possible.

Two is a powerful theme in Du Bois’s essay. In racist America two is “black” and “white,” two is “two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women,” two is a “twice-told tale” that a black person tells to his white neighbor (4). Du Bois explores the effects of twoness in the outer world on a black person’s inner self. Du Bois says that black folks always feel this twoness within themselves. A black person is “an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (3). A black person’s inner self is a reflection of its outer surroundings. The outer world is in double so that enters the black body and splits a black person’s inner self in two.

Black folks in America, according to Du Bois are “born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight” (3). In the documentary I am not your Negro, James Baldwin said that he knows more about white people than white people know about him. This relates to “The Souls of Black Folk” because black folks can see America through white people’s eyes and also through their own eyes. Black folks have double vision.

It is tragic then to be able to be a single entity when everything around you has double meanings. Du Bois places emphasis on a black person being able to find his or her own  true self amidst the contradictions of America. He never says if it is possible he only says that it must be done. However when he asserts the idea that a ballot can bring black folks a sense of freedom, he writes, “The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defence,—else what shall save us from a second slavery?” (6) The number two also represents a second slavery, which Du Bois wants to prevent at all cost.