Secret History of Violence Against Women

In reading the primary and secondary texts for this week, I noticed a few different examples of Leonora Sansay’s Secret History occupying in-between spaces. Gretchen Woertendyke discusses at length the power of reading the text as a variation on the “secret history” genre as opposed to reading it as a novel. According to Woertendyke, understanding Secret History from this perspective better recognizes the ways that Sansay blurs the line between public and private. As I read the text I was less concerned with thoughts about genre (mostly because I’m not familiar with the secret history genre beyond what I read in Woertendyke), but I noticed connections between the revolutionary violence occurring, which is expected, and the domestic violence, which was unexpected. Sansay often talked about violence against women in the context of the revolutionary violence between the Creoles and the black rebels. The Creoles had brutally enslaved the black people, who responded cruelly in turn, and the only group who remained powerless were the women, both Creole and black. Mary laments “[her] own lack of power” in helping her fellow women who were suffering at the hands of men, in this case an “English privateer” (119). In the text women are not only caught in the middle as constant recipients of violence, but they are also traded economically, much like slaves. So much of Mary’s letters are devoted to Clara’s unjust marriage to St. Louis, to whom she had been traded like a commodity. Clara continues to serve as the object of male desire and force throughout the text. The general pursues her and at one point uses his position of power to halt trade in order to acquire her, which serves as another example of how the treatment of women intersects with power relations and economic exchange (86). Mary uses Clara as a symbol for the pervasive violence against women, saying, “I believe Clara is not the first wife that has been locked up at St. Domingo” (87).

There is one point where I think this reading might be complicated; or, I had a hard time understanding how this passage functioned. After describing several truly grisly scenes of violence inflicted upon settler women by rebels, Mary writes, “Nothing is more common than such events. They excite little attention, and are seldom enquired into. How different is this from the peaceful security of the country in which I first drew breath, and to which I so ardently, but I fear hopelessly, desire to return” (121). Is she saying that this type of violence doesn’t occur in America, only the domestic violence that Clara suffered? Or is this passage a little sarcastic? I still don’t understand how this comment fits into the discourse of violence against women that Sansay devotes so much time to in the text. Maybe my classmates can help me out!

Transnational Turn, Pt. 2

The problem that I feel we began to tackle in class last week was (to generalize)––is the pursuit of including transnational literature into American studies not perpetuating and recycling the same American exceptionalism it claims to combat? I think that this is a good critique. We, mostly meaning white, privileged, Anglo-Americans, have a tendency to appropriate any other culture we come in contact with and call it “appreciation.” In thinking about how to constructively critique the transnationalist movement, I found that Winfried Fluck and Bryce Traister were the most helpful.

Fluck helped me to frame how I was thinking of transnationalism as a literary movement. She said, "my question is therefore not whether transnational studies are, in principle, a good thing or not, but what uses are being made of this new perspective in American studies" (366). I had not realized that I was thinking of transnational studies as being moral, but I was. I felt like I was doing a “good work” by agreeing that we should study marginalized literatures from the Americas and broaden our horizons to be more inclusive. But Fluck is right, I think. It’s not about whether or not it is “good,” it is about how useful the hermeneutic is. Breaking away from this idea that wanting to pursue transnational literature is somehow altruistic allows us to make the transition from a vague, existential understanding of transnationalism to a more concrete one. From theories of a more ‘real’ and ‘true’ America to “experiences of solidarity” (Fluck 377).

Traister continues to criticize the uncomplicated, unified vision of a new, more diverse American studies. He suggests that the theoretical turn was only reenacting the familiar myth of "the new nation rising from the ashes of the historical house burned down by the revolutionary arson of the present" (12). I think Traister puts into practice the transnational hermeneutic in a way that really works when he reads the 9/11 Commission Report through Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno.”

". . . how American jurisprudence manufactures its others (the 'illegal' revolution of slaves becomes the 'illegal' terrorism of the 9/11 assailants); how the American ideology of freedom sustains incarceral practices (Amasa Delano's liberality depends on where it doesn't create the conditions of marginalized resentment); and how the story of one nation under God carries with it the traces (and the desired elimination of those traces) of supernational and intranational practices (the international traffic in slaves becomes the neocolonial imperialism of contemporary global geopolitics)" (22).

This transhistorical approach would not work all the time, and even this example is not air-tight. But it is a functional and eye-opening reading that might open doors for further connection and research. He admits that the process itself employs American exceptionalism, and his admission helps to clarify the example, not confuse it. I think that transnational/transhistorical/etc. literary practices are important for the reasons why Porter and Kolodny did––because they broaden our scope and represent a more accurate America. But I also think these tools are important because they enable us to look critically at our literature and culture.

I am still preoccupied, if not “obsessed,” with thinking about literature in terms of “narrowly geographic or strictly chronological frameworks” (Kolodny 3). If asked what I study, I’d still respond with a time period and geographic location (contemporary American, meaning US, literature). Initially, I had a hard time figuring out what different authors meant by “transnationalism”––the definition was not laid out clearly for me. After reading three or four essays I began to make connections between them and formed a vague idea of what it meant to study American literature transnationally. I immediately believed in the value of reading texts that were marginalized or took place in liminal, borderland spaces, but my initial question was how do we read them? I still wanted coherence––if we aren’t reading texts based on the nation or time period that they have in common, then what brings them together? My question was partially answered by Alemán, who discussed narratives from the Spanish conquest of Mexico in order to highlight how reading these texts “exhumes the legacy of conquest and racial rebellion that haunts the US’s hemispheric presence” (410). Reading conquest narratives not only has a place in American studies because they took place in the Americas, but because they serve as a “psychic projection,” as Fox puts it, for other narratives of conquest and oppression in US history, like “Indian removal, the annexation of Texas, and black slavery” (Alemán 410). So one narrative, located in a particular space and time, can illuminate other previously considered “unrelated” narratives, when they are read in the context of “‘frontier’ as a locus of first cultural contact” (Kolodny 3). Giles helped me understand the idea of this context and locus more clearly when he explained that “transnationalism seeks various points of intersection, whether actual border territories or other kinds of disputed domain, where cultural conflict is lived out experientially” (65). Understanding that transnationalism connects narratives through points of intersection, places where cultures collide and borders are drawn, helped me to take a step back from my geographical/chronological framework. I look forward to applying these concepts in the literature that we’ll read this semester as I continue to reshape the way I think about my discipline.