In Jesse Alemán’s article that we re-read this week, “The Other Country: Mexico, The United States, and the Gothic History of Conquest,” he uses the Freudian concept of unheimlich or “uncanniness” to discuss Gothic frontier literature and what he terms “inter-American studies.” I want to discuss these concepts in the context of the ways George Lippard’s ‘Bel of Prairie Eden “unearths” the uncanny relationship between the US and Mexico and the way he uses terror and literal haunting to reveal the “haunting history that must be excavated” (Alemán 409).
We’ve discussed many different possible delineations for how to talk about American literature, but Alemán’s “inter-American” concept works especially well for ‘Bel of Prairie Eden. Alemán frames his idea by clarifying that he is using the prefix “inter” to signify “‘burial’ to emphasize the idea that the presence of the other in the nation is ‘that which is concealed and kept out of sight’” but must also be uncovered through the literature, invoking Freud’s “uncanny” (409).
Mexican history of conquest is interestingly interred in ‘Bel of Prairie Eden. On the surface, it is a story of personal revenge. But folded inside the frame of the main narrative of the Grywins and Don Antonio Marin is the “Three Hundred Years Ago” passage, transporting us to the conflict between Montezuma and Cortes. This hidden history is unearthed and exposed. The history of Spanish conquest of Mexico haunts the narrative of personal revenge and vendetta, which is set in the context of the US/Mexico war. The narratives of imperial power are recycled, just as the violence is recycled between John Grywin, Don Antonio Marin and Ewen McGregor.
The connections between the layers of the narrative are tenuous, but the most interesting way I saw history haunting the “present” of Grywin and Don Antonio is in the Isle of Sacrificio. In a passage describing the earlier historical period, Lippard offers a grisly description of human sacrifice––a man’s heart being torn from his living chest––to the Aztec gods (147). This process is repeated by John, through Red Ewen, upon Don Antonio Marin, this time to appease John’s own sense of retribution. The physical space of the Isle of Sacrificio is haunted by its bloody history, collapsing time and space. Similarly, the individuals in the story have interred national narratives of conquest, imperialism, and violence––they are haunted by these ghosts. Don Antonio becomes literally haunted by Isabel who returns as “but a ghostly image from the regions of the dead, sent to haunt his perjured soul” (Lippard 162). John Grywin is haunted by the memory of his brother, Harry, killed by Don Antonio’s orders after being defeated at Rancho Salado; John repeatedly unearths the narrative, losing his composure at the remembrance of Harry’s death.
The history interred in ‘Bel of Prairie Eden is repeatedly dug up. The characters are haunted by the cycles of violence and retribution they act on one another, and the spaces they occupy are haunted by the imperial violence of the Spanish, being re-enacted by the US. ‘Bel is a ghost story, and when read through Alemán’s notion of “inter-American” studies, we see how the uncanny presence of the “buried” past serves to collapse the borders between space, nation, history, and time. Instead of a South-Westward expansion and a progressive movement of time, we have cycles of violence that refuse to stay in the past––a ghostly hand creeping up from the grave.
In my response to Matt's posting, I mentioned how our reading (and his remarks) helped me to think about a "transnational Gothic" disconnected from its canonical Philadelphia-Baltimore geography (Interstate 64 or something?). After thinking about your excellent use of Alemán's notion of the uncanny, I believe I now prefer "inter-American Gothic" for the reasons you state. Inter, meaning buried, certainly fits seamlessly within our critical framework of the Gothic. Until Streeby's "American Sensations," a racialized American Gothic was understood mainly in connection with slavery and Indian dispossesion--Toni Morrison, Joan Dayan, and Joan's student, Teresa Goddu, are key scholars in this new formulation of the Gothic. What we see with Streeby and Alemán, however, is another strain of the Gothic that exceeds national boundaries and is embedded in the history of making imperial desire come true in Mexico. The American Gothic looks very different today!
ReplyDeleteKatie,
ReplyDeleteI like how you look at the many nuanced ways the buried past comes back to haunt the present. I thought Aleman's concept of "inter-American" was fascinating, and it's great to see how you applied it to the text we read. I found one of the connections you made especially interesting: "In a passage describing the earlier historical period, Lippard offers a grisly description of human sacrifice––a man’s heart being torn from his living chest––to the Aztec gods (147). This process is repeated by John, through Red Ewen, upon Don Antonio Marin, this time to appease John’s own sense of retribution." When I read 'Bel of Prairie Eden, I read this moment as another example of the uncanny doubling of Mexico and the U.S., both of which have a pagan indigenous past. Yet, your description shows an intriguing difference between the two--the Aztecs partook in human sacrifice to appease their gods, but John does so to appease himself. Do you think that this scene could imply that Americans are not only becoming needlessly violent but also greedy? Is it meant to show that Americans, who are supposed to be more civilized than the Aztecs, have also been corrupted by progress and civilization? I would probably read the text in this way. Lippard's text critiques not only the Mexicans but also the Americans, and the ambivalence toward U.S. land acquisition (due to its connection with greed and violence) pops up once again. Thanks for the thought-provoking post!
Katie,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post on the use of the uncanny in 'Bel. I'd like to respond to this comment you made: "Similarly, the individuals in the story have interred national narratives of conquest, imperialism, and violence––they are haunted by these ghosts." This statement got me thinking about the intersection of "interment" and the scale of the individual body. Specifically, I'd like to offer an idea that "inverts" the scale of inter-national interment, telescoping down to the site of the individual colonizer/colonized body. Can we productively read the identities of the colonizer, and the colonized, in terms of interment? Franz Fanon famously argues that the arrival of the colonizer establishes a structure of inequality between him and the colonized--I think that we might be able to theorize the two identities as mutually constitutive. We could say that the colonizer introjects the identity of the colonized in a reversed, "negative" way (in Adorno's sense of being defined in-relation to something that one is "not"). We could invert this inversion, too, and say that the colonized introjects the authority of the colonizer into his/her consciousness, thereby "interring" the identity of the colonizer within his/her own. The reason I think this is a valid application is that texts like Sansay's "Secret History" and even Lippard's text parallel the interactions of individuals with the interactions of large-scale entities like nations, often conveying that personal action has a correlate with national action. It seems productive to invert this allegorical dimension, especially in terms of the uncanny. We might even say that the collapsing of colonizer/colonized identity is brought about by power relations and discursive inequalities, which would render the close affinity between the two identities very uncanny.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this post. Not only did you nicely summarize the important moments in the secondary texts, you also clearly explained how they would be useful to your argument. One thing that I found quite useful is that you chose a theoretical construct and said "Here it is at work in the text." Additionally, you went one step further and added the complicating factor of geography to your discussion of Gothic interment within Lippard's novella, reminding us all that every text is situated both historically and geographically.