Tactics of Empire

In "The Man Who Would Be King," Kipling maps out the process of creating an empire. Both Dravot and Carnehan head out to rule pre- existing tribes and show their self righteousness throughout the story. For example, they say: "and it won't help us to know the names of their tribes" (p. 72). This was at the planning stage, and they already had dehumanized tribes to the point that their names were irrelevant to their plans. Their mind was set on having the ability to go to a foreign land, teach natives their waves, and fight whoever crossed their way. All of this was done with the purpose of power.

An interesting take on gender is their relation to the empire. The story began with Carnehan using the "pretty" women from the land as a factor in their decision to move there. Once they arrive, Dravot marries a karfir girl and this shows how women (especially women of color) are used as objects by colonizers. When I read this story I couldn't stop thinking about the narrative of Pocahontas. Disney makes it seem like she fell in love with an English man out of her own will. Once we look at history critically, we understand that she was kidnapped when she was 12, raped, and forced to assimilate to a different culture. This colonizing narrative has withstood time and there aren't many people who inquire about the actual life of Pocahontas.

One of my favorite things about this story is that a woman is the reason for the fall of this newly created empire. When Dravot's wife bites him, she proves that he is not a God and is able to take down the empire that he had created. To Dravot and Carnehan these people were nothing more than bodies that they could use for power. The narratives that they would give them are much like the narratives given to Pocahontas. They would use their bodies, exploit them, and make them assimilate to their ways. And at the same time affirm their self righteousness with their English heritage. This is a narrative that is found repeatedly in history, and it makes me question whether or not the author critiques empires with the story or empowers them. The author has an obvious understanding of how empires are created, but he also has an understanding of how empires could fall. This could be a warning for emperors or it could be a narrative to make people be critical of how empires come to be.

Poetry, Education, and other fun things

This week, we were introduced to a new form of analyzing poetry. I thought this method of looking deeper into poetry was very useful and brought new interpretations to our minds as we were read the poems aloud. Dr. Campbell had us close our eyes and listen to the poems read aloud. As we listened, we were instructed to draw what we envisioned the poem looking like in our minds. As for me, I saw different aspects of the poems come to life through my imagination that I did not consider while I was reading it silently to myself. As they were read aloud, I noticed and caught on to the haunting the poems carried through the voices of the speakers. I noticed a lot more nature in the poems instead of focusing on what I thought the main points were. This was a very interesting way to teach poetry and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Today in class, we read two poems from our course packs. The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling and The Black Man’s Burden (A Reply to Rudyard Kipling) by Hubert Harrison. In class we touched on the possibility that Harrison was sort of mocking Kipling, and I agree. In my personal opinion, I think although there may have been issues in the white society in that day and age, whites had very little to no right to voice their struggles, and make it sound like no one had it worse than them. Harrison says, “Take up the Black Man’s burden--/ Reach out and hog the earth,/ And leave your workers hungry/ In the country of their birth;” This spoke to me because I felt like Harrison was mocking Kipling in saying “oh no, don’t let your poor men go hungry!” While his family and ancestors have suffered years of enslavement and starvation. I really enjoyed reading these two poems back to back and seeing the injustice brought to light.
Also, in class we were to research a topic in our blog groups. Ruben and I picked education, as we are both going to be teachers in the next few years we thought it would be interesting to see how education was dealt with in the 19th century. I researched African American education in the 19th century, and found a few interesting facts. Education for African Americans was thought of by whites to be a bad idea. They thought if they extended an education out to African Americans it would lead to them rebelling. Until, something called the Freedman’s Bureau was introduced to southern states. This bureau enforced schooling for African Americans from grade school to high school level classes. We are excited to hear everyone else’s presentations next week, as well as share the rest of our own!
Tara Nolan

Goopherd Reflection

In "The Goophered Grapevine" readers find multiple cues of the plantation tradition method of writing. Charles Chesnutt has an obvious stand on the plantation tradition and he culturally enriches readers by bringing narratives from black people of the time. The narrative of an oppressed group tricking the dominant group is both humorous and political. Julius tries to trick the soon to be owner of the plantation but fails. Chesnutt might use this story as political rebellion; however, the ending of the story is problematic because power rests mainly with the plantation owner.

While this story is centered on the theme of post-civil war conflict, I found connections to our current treatment of black men. We have criminalized black men with the War on Drugs and have made it ok to have alarming numbers of black men in prison.  This rhetoric mirrors the "trickster" narrative of Julius' story. The old plantation owner had tricked his slaves not to eat grapes. And today, black people are tricked with the idea of equality when jails have become the new Jim Crow. Many people view racism as individual insults, but academics of color view racism as the sociopolitical institutions that oppress people of color. In the end, the idea that racism is over is a trick to maintain power in the dominant group and to continue the subordination of people based on the color of their skin.

I am curious to know how Chesnutt's audience perceived his work. I feel as if this work was written for a black audience because they would need to understand the tradition of the trickster narrative. Majority of white people in that time would feel as if the ending was unfulfilling because Julius was getting paid for his work. This doesn't make sense because Julius lost more than he earned and is what the author might be trying to get at. For this work to be political, the author had to be subtle on his recreation of the oppression/domination binary. He was strategic in masking his purpose, but I wonder how many people understood what the author was really advocating for.

The continuous plantation tradition writings must have made those in power angry at Chesnutt's writing. He uses the elements of plantation tradition, but at the same time challenges as a strategic manner of critiquing this form of writing. Overall, this was an interesting story with rich historical and social knowledge of post-civil war times in the U.S.

Funsies at the library!

This week, we were able to visit something a part of our library I did not know existed: the MASC. The MASC stands for Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections—and it contains exactly that. At first, I was not too excited about visiting the MASC. I had envisioned over the entire weekend that we were going to a museum sort of place where we could not touch anything or look through any of the books. I thought the whole experience would be dull and boring, however, I was pleasantly surprised how much I learned while in the MASC for only about a half an hour.
While in the MASC, we were paired into groups and were assigned to look through the books presented on the tables and pick out what we thought were the most popular. This was especially fun because we actually got to look through the books. Although they were old and had to be rested on pillow type things on top of the tables, it was so interesting to see pieces of our history that we have free access to. I was very impressed by the amount of original books there are in the MASC. Some of the books were tearing, some had pages ripped off, and some were in decent condition for their age. My favorite part of the older books was the colorful pages. Some of the books had a pretty design on the edge of the pages so when the book is closed it was fun to look at. In my spare time I believe I will make a trip to the MASC. I was so busy doing the assignment that I would like to go back and look at all the books on the shelves.
Another fun part about the library visit was the activity we did in the classroom after our visit to the MASC. We were to go find a book in the library, and that is something I also do not do enough as a college student. My partner and I had picked the question that asked us to get an edition of Punch published in Charles Dickens’ lifetime. That was harder than we thought, because there were so many editions of Punch! I had no idea such a book existed, it was a lot of fun to look through an edition dated in the 1870’s. Punch seemed to be political comics and news stories from London all compiled into a whole book.
Overall, the experience was very worth it. I now know where I can go to find first edition books, and I am very excited to explore the MASC in my spare time.
Did anyone else learn something from the MASC? Does anyone plan to go back some time?

--Tara Nolan