Read the following extract and answer the following questions
I destroyed white baby dolls.
But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The
truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little
white girls. The indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only
by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me: the secret of the magic they
weaved on the others. What make people look at them and say, “Awwwww,” but not
for me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street, and
the possessive gentleness of their touch as they handled them.
If I pinched them, their eyes – unlike the crazed glint of
the baby doll’s eyes – would fold in pain, and their cry would not be the sound
of an icebox door, but a fascinating cry of pain. When I learned how repulsive
this disinterested violence was, that it was repulsive because it was
disinterested, my shame floundered about for refuge. The best hiding place was
love. Thus the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to
fraudulent love. It was a small step to Shirley temple. I learned that the
change was adjustment without improvement.
a)
Claudia
“destroyed white baby dolls.” Could you relate this ‘violence’ to any Freudian
‘defenses’ that ego makes to accommodate desire?
b)
What
is the “secret” that differentiates the narrator from the white girls? Does it
anyway exemplify ‘hegemony’ and ‘disciplinarity’?
c)
Explain
the following statement: “change was adjustment without improvement.” Do you
think Marx would have been happy with this attitude?
Answer- a) Yes, I can do. This reminds Freudian
defense “reaction formation”. The white dolls remind her ideology of beauty
which is traumatic and which effects extreme upon her mind. Using “reaction
formation”, she is taking away that threatening ideology of beauty so that she
can balance that ego seeks to maintain in the mind.
Answer-b) The secret that differentiates the
narrator from the white girls is the idea of ‘beauty’ according to white
ideology. In a white supremacist society ‘beauty’ is constructed by the one who
has power. It is Foucault’s term power/knowledge that creates the idea of
‘beauty’. Who we may call ‘beautiful’ and which qualities will make one
‘attractive’ are preconceived by the ideology.
The statement reenacts the idea of being
hegemonized. It is like going with the flow without disrupting the system.
Since hegemony is occurring where one is accepting this ideology as
internalized, it will also exemplify disciplinarity as one will not question or go against that
ideology.
Answer-c) If improvement means going against
the established ideology, then I must say Marx would have been dissatisfied
with this statement. If change means adjustment then the idea of ‘economic
determinism’ will prevail without hampering the ideology of the ‘powerful’.
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন