November 23 2010

[W]anting desperately to be wearing a sign, a large white placard that said:

I AM NOT A WAITER. I HAVE BEEN A STUDENT, A SCIENTIST, A SOLIDER, MY WIFE IS CALLED ALSANA. WE LIVE IN EAST LONDON BUT WE WOULD LIKE TO MOVE NORTH. I AM A MUSLIM BUT ALLAH HAS FORSAKEN ME OR I HAVE FORSAKEN ALLAH, I’M NOT SURE. I HAVE A FRIEND – ARCHIE – AND OTHERS. I AM FORTY-NINE BUT WOMEN STILL TURN IN THE STREET. SOMETIMES.

White Teeth, 49

Opening Journal Assignment: (Suggested: 10 Minutes)

Who are you?  How do you define yourself?

What is the “large white placard” you show the world?

Group Work: (Suggested: 5-7 minutes)

Share your findings. then, come up with a placard that you can write on the board for the class.

Class Discussion of Placards:

What would a placard for the class look like?

?

Okay, now – does this sound more like a romantic, Victorian, modern, or postmodern group of people?

Romantic?

Victorian:

Modern:

 

Postmodern:

Let’s remember what the three basic parts of the postmodern mindset are:

1) A willingness to entertain contradictions as being equally true.

2) The ability to be serious and funny at the same time.

3) An attraction to the false, or fake.

Mini Lecture:

1)      There were four basic “parts” to the reading we did for today. I’d summarize them as follows, but you certainly don’t have to:

A) Clara’s marriage to Archie

B) Alsana’s, Clara, Niece-of-Shame’s conversation

C) Samad and Archie in WWII

D) Samad’s “infatuation” with Ms. Poppy Burt-Jones.

2)      I would argue that all four of these sections are deeply concerned with issues surrounding identity,identity relations, and the challenges of postmodernity  poses for traditional conceptions of identity.

1. Clara’s Marriage to Archie

1. i.      “Even the registrar, who had seen it all – horsey women marrying weaselly men, elephantine men marrying owlish women – raised an eyebrow at this most unnatural of unions as they approached the desk. Cat and dog. “Hullo, Father,”said Archie.” “He’s a registrar,” said his friend Samad Miak Iqbal. (42)

2. ii.      “I’ve known Sam for years, and his wife seems a quiet sort. They’re not the royal family, you know. They’re not those kinds of Indians.” (46)

3. iii.      Interracial Marriage

   1. “The company dinner last month – it was awkward, Archie, It was unpleasant….It’s not that I’m a racialist, Archie…” (61).

4. Alsana’s, Clara, Niece-of-Shame’s conversation

1. i.      Identity relations in marriage, Alsana’s advice, Niece-of-Shame’s response. (65-66):

2. “Because, Miss Smarty-pants, it is by far the easier option.  It was exactly because Eve did not know Adam from Adam  that they got on A-OK. Let me explain…Every time I learn something more about [Samad], I like him less.”

1. Samad and Archie in WWII

1. i.      The opening gives us the difference between modernism and postmodernism. How much information is enough, when it comes to identity? (71)

2. ii.      What does identity matter in the tank?

3. iii.      Dr. Sick? Who is he? What did he do?

1. Samad’s “infatuation” with Ms. Poppy Burt-Jones.

   1. i.      Kate Miniver, Ms. Miss. Mrs. (108)

   2. ii.      Objection to the Harvest Festival (108-09)

   3. iii.      To the pure all things are pure. Can’t say fairer that that. (115) What does it mean to be a good Muslim?

3)      Now, while all these questions do not emerge in the context of an urban space, they all relate to life as it is lived in a multicultural/postmodern environment.

4)      We have seen some of these concerns expressed in a different way in To The Lighthouse. However, in that context, the issue was, more often than not, the differences in understanding that separate people from each other.

5)      Here, however, we have something that is even more extreme: i.e., the individual sense of identity is, itself, in question.  For example, one might clearly say that one is not a waiter – but this is a negative assertion.

It does not say what one is.

What are the characteristics or qualities that make up identity? How do we do this in a world where gender, age, race, and religious differences are falling apart?

6)      This is also a good place for us to think about this text as being a pre-9/11 work. Some of these issues have taken on a different tone in the contemporary era.

Homework: Discussion of the Text: Read through 201 for Tuesday,