In the same way that Gloria Anzaldúa uses a mix of languages to give her readers a feeling of linguistic and contextual exclusion, Marjane Satrapi uses her medium of images as an inclusive means of communicating to any reader.  As we discussed last week in class, Borderlands/La Frontera in a way excludes readers who don’t speak either Spanish or English.  This linguistic setup reflects the main theme of the text, the portrayal of a rupture between cultures (and the formation of a hybrid culture within).

In a similar manner, Satrapi’s Persepolis creates a completely opposite atmosphere; it represents transnational discourse because she appeals to an over-inclusive audience through her own unique form.  By formatting her novel in the form of comics, she relates her story through two universal languages: imagery and humor.  The three-hundred plus pages of comic strips begins as the narrator (Satrapi herself) is a strong-willed child.  Any reader can relate to the humorous shenanigans that the young girl gets into as she grows up during a constantly-evolving period in history.  Satrapi’s objective in her graphic novel is to translate the experience of coming of age during the Islamic Revolution to her readers.  She manages to achieve this goal through the first-person narrative because the perspective of the child is so relatable.

Though the issues of the Islamic Revolution in the Middle East are distinctly unique and separate from most cultural phenomena in the West, Satrapi nonetheless makes the plot a universal concern by involving the readers as though they experience it themselves.  The novel was originally printed in French, but the actual text of the book is not what best conveys the story; even without being able to understand each written word, the reader would understand Persepolis because of Satrapi’s masterful use of universal communication.  Just like a viewer watching a foreign film will still gain a new perspective on issues abroad, readers of Persepolis can take away the terror, injustice, pride, patriotism, and even quotidian nuances of daily life in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.  The author’s means of communication is transnational in that is so comprehensible by any audience, that its language transcends national borders.

In “Area Studies, Transnationalism, and the Feminist Production of Knowledge,” Ella exhorts us to “reimagine the study of regions and cultures in a way that transcends the conceptual border inherent in the cartography of the cold war” (1271). What is implied here is that the West (U.S., Europe) still perceives culture in terms of imagined “areas” which were mapped strategically during the war (think “Middle East,” for instance), and that what ended up happening because of this was that knowledge about these arbitrarily-defined, and very-much imagined areas, was accumulated without regard for cultural differences.

Here, let me literally drive the point home: imagine that the United States was studied by others with the intention of establishing their superiority over Americans (remember, this all started because of wars). Now imagine that they chose the South as the dumping ground of all things American. Soon, people would think that all Americans are predominantly rural, disproportionately poor, and dim-witted (these stereotypes are all intentional). As you can see, the knowledge that begins to be produced about this “American region” is far from the reality. It does not even begin to encompass the social, economic, gender-based, racial, or geographical complexities that exist in the United States. Only by taking a look beyond these maps which were created to assert superiority may others then start seeing these complexities.

This becomes crucial in a world like ours, which is now becoming more interconnected by mass media, and where we are constantly bombarded with images, sounds, and goods from all over. Faced with all this information, we need to be able to look beyond these outdated maps which validity rests on the stating that someone else is inferior, such as the term “third world,” and take a look at how we are interacting and perceiving each other through these transnational (across borders) interactions which are occurring.

This inexorably makes me think Uma Nayaran’s article, “Cross-Cultural Connections, Border-Crossings, and ‘Death by Culture’” in which she compares dowry murders in India and domestic violence in the United States. As she contends with the topic, Nayaran cites an anecdote from Madhu Kishwar in which she tells how she was asked by western feminists if they had battered-women’s homes in India, and that by asking this it was assumed that not having it would constitute a lower stage of development. Nayaran argues that in the Indian context, organizing around issues such as shelters for battered women requires a certain set of conditions which are not available in the country; but that, on the other hand, women in India do have the resources to publicize cases of dowry-murders and hold public demonstrations and protests, which led to the boycotting of marriages where dowry was involved. In short, the conditions of both places (India and the U.S.) dictated what type of actions were taken to lessen aggression toward women. (In the case of the U.S., murder is not as common when it comes to domestic violence; therefore, advocating for shelter for those affected becomes the more logical course of action.)

I became curious about the dowry-murders, and when I looked it up on Google, one of the first articles that the search showed me was titled “India ‘Dowry Deaths’ Still Rising Despite Modernization.” The interesting thing about this article was that it correlated modernity with having obtained independence (“Despite…strides in modernization since India’s 1947 independence…”); that is, it assumes, as Ong states in his book, Flexible Citizenship, that modernity is the process in which “the rest of the world will eventually be assimilated to an internationalized modernity originating in and determined by the West” (53). Implied in the title of that article is the judgment that India, although striving to the like the western countries (does it?), is still located at a lower stage of development than those countries which it seeks to emulate by becoming “modern.” The author clearly has a very western-centered idea of what modernity is. Yet is it important to mention that, as Ong reminds us, modernity “is a matter of signification” (53), and that, at the end of the day, it really has to do with whom controls that which is signified as “modern.” The need, then, to think in terms of difference, not to ascertain superiority, but as a way to reach an understanding of those with whom we come into contact becomes paramount in this day and age.

Previously, a student was not able to post about the issue of rape in Teju Cole’s Open City. We are hoping that campus tech support has been able to address this problem.

When I first read Borderlands/La Frontera four years ago for a seminar class, our assignment was to write an autobiographical poem similar in style to Anzaldúa’s poetry. Given one of the prompts, I thought it would be fun to post this here! It’s fairly self-explanatory, but I might add that in the final stanza, the “Mexican cowboy” is Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who I did a performance art workshop with that same year.

Vocal Cataclysm

My kin never done no foreign talk larnin’.

Hell, they barely knew the King’s English.

They all spoke country, see, the s-language of the Amer’can South.

Mama done tried to fix her tongue when she got that city job.

But she was all hat and no cattle. You could still spot that accent a mile away.

The song had diffrin’ lyrics, but the rhythm was all the same.

But Papa knew I was gonna be the first the leave this one-horse town.

Always said I was quicker than a steel trap. Spoke just like those stars in the picture shows.

His idol was Eastwood, mine was Hepburn. I had the Rain in Spain down by five.

But it was when the schoolhouse opened that I really learned how to talk.

I had just learned to write my name when Sandy Flores came to town.

She was the first one to tell us that there was a south below the South.

She talked funny, so we had to buy a whole new dictionary to understand her.

I found out her last name, Flores, meant “Flowers” in bordertongue,

Which made sense because we listened to her tongue grow each day.

And she twisted our tongues too, teaching us how to turn butter into borregos.

But then Sandy didn’t come around any more.

After giving up on trying to find her, she finally sent a brief letter:

“Gone to find Harriet T. Remember the condor.”

Suddenly the word “Flores” no longer symbolized an image of growth.

I spent all of secondary education trying to know the Other.

I read Lorca, listened to Jacques Brel, and watched del Toro.

I played around with a snow globe I called “North and South”.

I couldn’t really determine where I belonged in that globe.

Then I packed up for Yinzertown.

First to leave the valley, just like Papa always said.

“Kid, you’re no bigger than a minute,” he said, “Don’t let no horse buffalo ya.”

Advice I knew I’d come to partially neglect in the future.

It’s always a struggle, migrating from a flock of eagles to a flock of eagles and condors.

Like everyone else, I witnessed the removal of the “id” from the i-dentity.

That was when I met the Mexican cowboy.

He was a nomadic circus performer that dropped by to lead a cultural fusion workshop.

We would play this game where he would shout out a word and I would definite it.

Migration

A part natural, part man-made delta that universally alters the sense of belonging

Identity

Diamond teeth in a hog’s mouth

Community

The conscious awakening to a primal jungle

Art

The photographic memory of that one good trip

I finally understood the extent of the fluidity of all foreign, all common, all language.

As an American living among the Schwa once said,

“Words provide those extra incisors to bite the hand that feeds us.”

But as a French filmmaker once said,

“Words can lighten the shadows around the thing they designate.”

To-may-to, To-mah-to.

It’s up to us to give them a life of our own.

(Note to instructors: I am not assigned to post this week, so no need to grade this!)

 As I scanned the beer menu I was overwhelmed by the variety of Belgian ales and German pilsners. I ordered the Eupner. Why drink foreign when you can have domestic?

 The town of Eupen lies at the nexus of Netherlands, Belgium and Germany – for many, Eupen is a European borderland. Situated within Belgium, Eupen operates under the jurisdiction of a Deutsche Gemeinschaft (German community). Eupen is neither Belgian nor German and at the same time it is both.To add to their identity crisis the citizens inhabiting Eupen and the surrounding areas struggle to align their ways of life with their neighbors within the European Union. The most minute of differences among the three countries are migraine-worthy. One example: In order to cooperate during emergencies, the Belgians, Dutch and Germans in these borderlands agreed to share fire-fighting equipment and engines. Though admirable, the collaborative plan came to a standstill when Dutch and Belgian, and German fire-hoses did not fit their neighbors’ fire trucks.

 The Goethe-Institut sponsored both of my last teacher exchanges to Europe. A cultural extension of Germany, the Goethe-Institut is a public-private organization dedicated to promoting German language and culture – among other things. They operate in over 132 countries and are funded partially by the German government and by private organizations. The Goethe-Institut has expressed an interest in “internationalizing” the social studies curriculum and strongly promotes its Transatlantic Partnership Outreach (TOP) textbooks to American social studies teachers.

 I believe today’s educators have a responsibility to teach what Spivak calls “transnational literacy”. At the same time, educators should guard their classrooms from a Trojan Horse that is slipped into the curriculum.

 In “Crossing Borders”, Spivak notes how during the Cold War, the Ford Foundation helped found Area Studies, which combined social and literary studies.  In my experience education – especially social studies – is always political, always ideological, and never neutral. A teacher should always be on the lookout for bias in the established curriculum. Indeed, the Goethe-Institut’s TOP program is supported by big names such as Siemens, The Robert Bosch Stiftung, and the Deutsche Bank. Spivak notes the politics “the production of knowledge”, and educators should pay attention, lest schools become sites of indoctrination or manipulation. In the case of Area Studies during the Cold War, different agendas in the humanities had been mobilized to affect political outcomes.

 “In the Postmodern Subaltern”, Susan Koshy articulates the need for a ‘transnational literacy’ that I think has great potential in today’s public schools and universities. As an public educator in the borderlands of UMD, I have seen the transformative power of the classroom and appreciate the diversity that my students bring to the classroom. In just one class today I had five Iraqi, seven Hispanic, two African, three Nepali students. Of the fourteen hundred students about 52% are Hispanic and about 75% are on free and reduced meals. Indeed in my seven years of teaching Social Studies at Parkdale High School has been one transnational experience after the other. 

 One claim by Susan Koshy resonates with my experience of teaching first-generation immigrants. Koshy criticizes the feminist academic for assuming the voice of the oppressed subaltern female “through this discursive move” (124). In all of this I now question whether academics are the best people to speak on behalf of the subaltern or marginalized. I appreciate how Anzaldúa used language to incorporate all Chicanas into the fold. It is clear that she is interested in the lives of all Chicanas who inhabit the Borderlands. However, what is missing from this academic and transnational feminist debate is the real (if not unrefined) voice of the subaltern female. Indeed the majority of my Latina students possess a working-class subjectivity that seems overlooked or misappropriated by “hegemonic feminisms”.

 As a student at the University of Maryland I have experienced how language is kicked around like a discursive football. Seemingly intelligent people play conversational keep away. They try to force their voice down the field while blocking any dissenting voices. What if educators to first-generation, working-class immigrants imposed the same discursive imperialisms present at the university level? Shu-Mei Shih’s appeal for “discursive rights” is important not just for minority feminists but for all lone wolf academics. I believe both Anzaldúa and Spivak come the closest to honoring and valuing the academic and linguistic contributions of those “remedial classes whose imaginations are crossing and being crossed by a double aporia-the cusp of two imperialisms” (Spivak, 12). Perhaps for some would-be, working-class academics or feminists there are no divisions separating the political from the literary. Educators should listen more closely for the working-class subjectivities of their students, which is usually drowned out by more “respectable” discourses.