Copyright @ Summer 1996 by -The Journal of Afro-Latin American Studies and
Literatures, JALAS&L, ISSN 1051-1865. All rights reserved. No portions
of this Fourth Article Highlight can be quoted without appropriately
citing JALAS&L or be printed and distributed without its permission.
Electronic distribution of this post must include this copyright statement
as well as all the bibliographic citations found herein.
Greetings! This highlight features the following articles published in
the 1995 JALAS&L: "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Building a West Indian
Female Identity," by Dr. Pascale de Souza, from University of Maryland,
and "Constructions of Afro-Brazilian Identity in the Theatre of the
1950's: The Case of Dora Seljan and Abdias do Nascimento," by Dr. Sandra
Richards, from Northwestern University.
BEFORE WE START THE HIGHLIGHTS:
I would like to request that all correspondence for -The Journal of
Afro-Latin American Studies and Literatures, JALAS&L- be sent directly to
its formal address: P.O. 2662, Kensington, MD 20891-2662, instead of
Howard University, given that I will be on academic leave between August
1996 and August 1997.
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which we send news about JALAS&L only.
First Article:
"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Building a West Indian Female Identity," by
Pascale de Souza, University of Maryland.
BEGINNING OF QUOTE:
"Je me comparais 'a elle et je me posais
des questions. Pourquoi est-on soi?
Sans choix, sans recours? Pourquoi
etais-je cet etre, et non cest autre?
Michelle Lacrosil (-Cajou-.
Paris: Gallimard, 1961, p. 34)
In -Ecrits, Lacan tries to reinterpret Freud in light of structuralist
conclusions on discourse. His research leads him to formulate the theory
of the mirror, according to which the child discovers in its reflection a
unified image of itself which contributes to the elaboration of its
personality. Terry Eagleton characterizes the theory in these terms: "The
child, who is still physically uncoordinated, finds reflected back to
itself in the mirror a gratifyingly unified image of itself; and although
its relation to this image is still of an 'imaginary' king--the image in
the mirror both is and is not itself, a blurring of subject and object
still obtains--it has begun the process of contructing a centre of self
(-Literary Theory: an Introduction-. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1983, p. 164).
Without the elaboration of that centre, the child would be unable to find
its niche in the universe nor to master its identity. The lacanian
conclusions place the quest for identity in a psychoanalytical model which
I would like to apply to novels by women authors from Guadaloupe,
Martinique and Dominica.
The novels which will be considered in this paper reveal the malaise
experienced by the Caribbean woman in search of her self. The challenges
to her identity have often been attributed to the prejudices which the
colonial situation imposed upon her. In fact, the interiorisation of the
colour prejudices which prevail in the Caribbean perpetuates itself
through the process of lactification.1 (Footnote No. 1: "Lactification" is
a term coined by Franz Fanon to describe a search for fairskinned mates.
The goal of this quest would be to produce offspring of pale complexion,
in other words, to 'whiten' the race.) I would like to consider how this
disfunctional behavior affects the mother-daughter relationship in various
novels.
[First] let's associate the Lacanian theory of the mirror, as expressed in
saussurian terms, with what Eagleton says: "We can think of the samll
child contemplating itself before the mirror as a kind of 'signifier'
-something capable of bestowing meaning- and the image it sees in the
mirror as a kind of 'signified.' The image the child sees is somehow the
'meaning' of itself" (166).
The mirror is therefore necessary to the child who whishes to find a
"meaning" to its life. In order to reach the symbolic stage of its
development, it will search for that reflection of itself in the eye of
the other. The image of itself it will see will eventually lead it to
become aware of its separate existence.
We arrive at a sense of an "I" by finding that "I" reflected back to
ourselves by some object or person in the world. This object is at once
somehow part of ourselves - we identify with it - and yet not ourselves,
something alien, as Eagleton says (166).
The lack of reflection would condemn the child to wander in search of
another eye where he could find his signified. In an article entitled
"Mirroring and mothering in Simone Schwarz-Bart's -Pluie et Vent sur
Telumee Miracle- and Jean Rhys' -Wide Sargasso Sea- (published by Yale
French Studies 62, in 1981), Ronnie Sharfman applies these conclusions to
the elaboration of the mother-daughter relationship. She postulates that
"the mother figure represents the first external mirror, eventually
internalized, into which a girl-child looks to discover her identity"
(88-106).
Whenever a little girl looks at her mother, she does not see another
person but a reflection of herself which confirms her own existence. The
post-colonial context however intervenes to disrupt that mother-daughter
bond by imposing a value system based on colour, thereby suggesting to the
mother that her daughter's beauty, and very existence, are conditionned by
colonial canons.
In Maryse Conde's -La Traversee de la Mangrove- (Paris: Mercury de France,
1989), the death of a fair-skinned daughter has plunged Rosa into a grief
made even more acute by the birth of a dark-skinned daughter, Vilma. Rosa
Ramsaran remains unable to give Vilma the look which the latter craves: "
Elle marchait 'a trois pas devant moi et je fixais sa tresse noire roulee
en un chignon transperce' par une longue epingle d'ecaille, son dos
aveugle sous l'indienne de ces robes noires qu'elle portait chaquejour que
le Bon Dieu fait, dans le deuil de ma soeur Shireen" (186). By offering
her daughter nothing but a "blind back," Rosa denies her a mirror image.
Likewise, in Myriam Warner-Vieyra's -Le Quimboiseurl'Avait Dit- and
Mayotte Capecia's -Je Suis Martiniquaise-, the mothers fall prey to the
"mirror on the wall" and only see in their respective daughters constant
reminders of their own mixed origins. In both novels, the mulatto mothers
are fairer than their "capresse" daughters. They eventually leave home to
settle with a white man so as to forget their own "tainted" origins
reflected in their "failed" offspring. They thereby abandon their
daughters to grapple with broken identities.
In both novels, the mothers are hailed to be very pretty, but it is all
too clear which canons apply. Even when the mother remains with her
daughter and gives her love and care, the latter cannot forget the canon
of beauty imposed by colonial powers.
END OF QUOTE
Second Article:
"Constructions of Afro-Brazilian Identity in the Theatre of the 1950's:
The Case of Dora Seljan and Abdias do Nascimento," by Sandra L. Richards,
Northwestern University.
BEGINNING OF QUOTE:
Because scholars could until recently assume little prior knowledge of
Brazil or its cultural production on the part of English-language readers,
the relatively small body of published criticism on Afro-Brazilian theatre
has concentrated largely on thematic surveys and historical documentation
(Lima, Robert. "Xango and Other Yoruba Deities in the Plays of Zora
Seljan." -Afro-Hispanic Review- 11.1-3 (1992): 26-34; Litto, Frederic M.
"Some Notes on Brazil's Black Theatre." -The Black Writer in Africa and
the Americas-. Ed. Lloyd W. Brown. Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc.,
1973. 195-221; and Turner, Doris J. "Black Theater in a 'Racial
Democracy:' The Case of the Brazilian Black Experimental Theater."
-College Language Association Journal- 30.1).
I would like to ask different questions that encourage us to move
English-language analysis beyond surveys towards an examination of this
literature as cultural products whose formal structures and enactment
replicate hierarchies of power and resistance. The present essay
represents a first attempt to include Brazil in my long-range comparative
research on drama and theatre in Africa and its American diasporas.
Obviously, within this tremendous geographical expanse there are
significant historical, social, political, and economic differences in the
national traditions with which the playwrights are working and within
which their audiences are responding. Yet, given the prominence
attributed to Yoruba culture in the construction of an Afro-Brazlilian
identity and my previous work on African American and Nigerian drama, I
have chosen Yoruba culture as a focal point in order to delimit, at least
initially, this comparative study.
I believe it valid to pose two questions: First, what is the relevance of
Yoruba culture as an analytic tool in studying Afro-Brazilian drama? How
does its dramaturgic use replicate or depart from ways in which it is
deployed in other areas of the "black world?"
A few words about my methodological assumptions are in order. Because
the literatures created by black peoples have until relatively recently
been marginalized, it has been necessary for scholars to recuperate
performance traditions, written texts, and theatre histories and to
formulate for them appropriate critical theories which both derive from
the aesthetic and philosophical systems African peoples have themselves
developed and nonetheless acknowledge that any given culture is dynamic
and appropriates elements from other cultural systems with which it comes
into contact. Given my early training in literature and limited financial
resources, my access to materials outside US-African American culture has
first been textual; hence, my analysis starts with a written text and then
asks how performance complicates interpretation.
Performance constitutes an important analytical site, because the
semiotics of theatre, i.e., the actor's body and presence, spatial
arrangements, costume, lighting, gesture, and sound, along with audience
response all have the potential to generate meanings not evident on the
printed page. And, as I have discovered in working with US-African
American and Nigerian texts and will argue here, a performative analysis
rooted in an African matrix most often unearths considerations that
significantly destabilize the discourse signalled by the written word.
...In analyzing Afro-Brazilian texts, I discovered that my questions did
not allow me to produce a coherent, totalizing account. The divination
paradigm [Yoruba divination practices] ... again seemed appropriate.
Accordingly, this paper lays out a number of narratives concerning
constructions of Afro-Brazilian identity in the theatre of the 1950's.
Admittedly, writing insinuates the illusion of an orderly, sequential
consideration of issues, but hopefully, my juxtaposition of perspectives
that intersect, reinforce, or destabilize each other undercuts this
fiction, asserting instead a proliferation of meaning produced in
accordance with one's cultural literacy and ideological conditioning.
...
Dora Seljan [a white playwright and poet] initially attracted my attention
because she is occasionally cited--summarily--as part of a group of
playwrights who accorded dignity to blac characters, and because her
introductions to her texts reveal a fine sense of theatre--and African
religion--as embodied performance. Relatively little biographical or
production information seems to have been written about her. ... Nina
Rodriguez, the father of Afro-Brazilian social studies, his immediate
successor Arthur Ramos, Camara Cascudo, and Mario de Andrade are among the
ethnographic authorities she often cites. The latter is of interest
because as a member of the 1920's modernist -Antropofagia- movement [he]
embraced "primitive" Amerindians as a means of cannibalizing a European
heritage and articulating a -mestico- Brazilian identity in its stead, he
is intellectualy linked with Leopold Senghor whom Seljan approvingly
quotes concerning the alleged, intuitive plasticity of black rationality
(3 Mulheres 16). Seljan's research on Afro-Brazilians as well as on
indigenous Brazilians was disseminated in essays, folk operas, an
anthology of folktales, a puppeteer's text, and performer training for the
troupe, Teatro Oxumare, which she co-founded with Antonio Novais in 1956.
... The famous Bahian novelist Jorge Amado notes in introducing Seljan's
1973 collection of folktales that she holds a high rank in the Xango house
of Axe do Opo Afonja', one of the most important 'camdonble' communities
in the city of Salvador da Bahia.
... Because Abdias do Nascimento has offered a biographical accound of his
activism in [his] -Africans in Brazil: a Pan African Perspective- (Trans.
Elisa Larkin do Nascimento. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1992), and
several English-language articles have been written about his theatre
company, I will mention only that Nascimento, who is an economist by
training, saw a production of Eugene O'Neill's -Emperor Jones- in 1941
that changed his life. Disturbed because the black hero of this drama was
being played by a white actor in blackface, Nascimento resolved to
establish a theatre that would reject the comedic stereotypes assigned to
blacks, instead "redeeming ... in Brazil the values of Afro-Brazilian
culture, ... what was proposed was the social elevation of the Negro by
means of education, culture and art" ("Negro Theater," 40).
Thus, in 1944 he founded Teatro Experimental do Negro-TEN, which, during
its twenty-four years of existence, not only produced plays about
Afro-Brazilian life written by both black and white writers, but also
sponsored literacy programs, beauty contests, and national conferences,
designed to "unmask as unauthentic all pseudo-scientific literature which
in reality served only to distract attention from the real emergent
problems in a white society" (Turner, 34) and to work for "the integration
of the Afro-Brazilian in society while encouraging blacks of all
complexions to perceive their true situation and to take pride in their
African heritage" (Turner, 32-33).
... Important to note [here] is the different way in which race is
socially constructed in Brazil, for there, many more categories occupy
what in the United States is virtually non-existent ground between white
and black. Consequently, mixed race people may as isolated individuals
achieve upward mobility; concepts of racial solidarity are weak, and
racial mixture (mesticismo) is championed as a national virtue
distinguishing Brazil from the more overtly racist United States. But
limiting this fluidity of identity is the concept of 'branqueamento' or
whitening, perhaps best explained in the telling cliche, "money whitens."
As David Brookshaw and Roger Bastide argue, "branqueamento" is
"intricately bound up with the racial and social policy which does not
deny mobility to people of mixed descent, but prefers that their black
ancestry should not be too pronounced. "Mesticismo," on the other hand,
is a cultural stance, a type of nationalism aimed against the complete
cultural hegemony of Europe and North America, while at the same time
regarding itself as superior to pure Afro-Amerindian cultural influences
because of the "purifying" action which the white heritage exercises on
these. If "branqueamento" is the whitening of the Afro-Amerindian in skin
colour and features, "mesticismo" is the diluting of Afro-Amerindian
culture (Brookshaw, David. -Race and Color in Brazilian Literature.-
Metuchen, J.J.: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1986, p. 276), (Bastide, Roger.
"Variations on Negritude." -Presence Afrianine- 8.36 (1961): 83-92).
END OF QUOTE
The next articles of the 1995 JALAS&L to be highlighted will be: "O
pedagogico, eixo ideologico no projeto do TEN-Teatro Experimental do
Negro," by Dr. Ricardo Gaspar Muller, from Universidade Federal
Fluminense, Neteroi, Rio de Janeiro, and "Television and the Cultivation
of Modern Racism: The Case of Brazil," by Dr. Michael Leslie, from
University of Florida.
<Respectfully submitted by Rosangela Maria Vieira, editor and founder of
JALAS&L <rmvieira@howard.cldc.howard.edu>.