The Fantasy of the Female: Gender Representation Through the Fantastic in Nora K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth

INTERNATIONAL DOCTORAL SCHOOL OF THE USC Sara González Bernárdez PhD Thesis The Fantasy of the Female: Gender Representation Through the Fantastic in Nora K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth Santiago de Compostela, 2023 Doctoral Programme in Advanced English Studies: Linguistics, Literature and Culture DOCTORAL THESIS THE FANTASY OF THE FEMALE: GENDER REPRESENTATION THROUGH THE FANTASTIC IN NORA K. JEMISIN’S THE BROKEN EARTH Sara González Bernárdez INTERNATIONAL PHD SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA PHD PROGRAMME IN ADVANCED ENGLISH STUDIES: LINGUISTICS, LITERATURE, CULTURE SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA 2023 This research was funded by the grants Formación del Profesorado Universitario (FPU) of the Spanish Ministry of Education (FPU18/02237). It also benefited enormously from the collaboration of the projects “Intersections: Gender and Identity in the Short Fiction of Contemporary British Women Writers” (FEM2017-83084-P) and GLOBALBORDERS (PID2021122433NB-I00), as well as of the research group “Discourse and Identity” (ED431C 2019/01, Xunta de Galicia). AUTORIZACIÓN DEL DIRECTOR/TUTOR DE LA TESIS D./Dña. Laura Mª Lojo Rodríguez En condición de: Tutor/a y director/a Título de la tesis: The Fantasy of the Female: Gender Representation Through the Fantastic in Nora K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth INFORMA: Que la presente tesis, se corresponde con el trabajo realizado por D/Dña Sara González Bernárdez, bajo mi dirección/tutorización, y a utorizo su presentación , considerando que reúne l os r equisitos exigidos en el R eglamento de Estudios de Doctorado de la USC, y que como director/tutor de esta no incurre en las causas de abstención establecidas e n la Ley 40/2015. En Santiago de Compostela, 29 de mayo de 2023 Firma electrónica AUTORIZACIÓN DEL DIRECTOR/TUTOR DE LA TESIS D./Dña. Jorge Sacido Romero En condición de: Director/a Título de la tesis: The Fantasy of the Female: Gender Representation Through the Fantastic in Nora K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth INFORMA: Que la presente tesis, se corresponde con el trabajo realizado por D/Dña Sara González Bernárdez, bajo mi dirección/tutorización, y a utorizo su presentación , considerando que reúne l os r equisitos exigidos en el R eglamento de Estudios de Doctorado de la USC, y que como director/tutor de esta no incurre en las causas de abstención establecidas e n la Ley 40/2015. En Santiago de Compostela, 29 de mayo de 2023 Firma electrónica INDEX ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................. 13 NOTES ON TERMINOLOGY ........................................................................... 15 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 17 Hypothesis ....................................................................................................... 19 Objectives ........................................................................................................ 20 Methodology ................................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER 1: THE MIRROR OF REPRESENTATION ............................... 25 1.1 Mirroring the Self.................................................................................. 29 1.2 Mirroring the Other .............................................................................. 31 CHAPTER 2: IDENTITY AS NARRATIVE.................................................... 35 2.1 Narrating the Subject ............................................................................ 39 2.2 Narrating the Other ............................................................................... 43 CHAPTER 3: FICTION AS THE MIRROR .................................................... 51 3.1 The Fictional Other: (Mis)Representing Woman ............................. 58 3.2 The Fictional Subject: Representing Woman .................................... 62 CHAPTER 4: FICTION AND THE READER ................................................ 67 4.1 Fiction and the Reader’s Response ...................................................... 67 4.2 Fiction and the Empathic Response...................................................... 71 4.3 The Limitations of Narrative Empathy ................................................ 77 CHAPTER 5: THE NARRATIVES OF FANTASY ........................................ 83 5.1 The Canons of Fantasy............................................................................ 97 CHAPTER 6: FANTASY AND/AGAINST REALITY .................................. 111 CHAPTER 7: THE REPRESENTATION OF FEMALE CHARACTERS IN NORA K. JEMISIN’S THE BROKEN EARTH ......................................... 125 7.1 Damaya ....................................................................................................... 128 7.2 Syenite ....................................................................................................... 132 7.3 Essun .......................................................................................................... 142 7.4 Essun as the Heroine .............................................................................. 152 7.5 A Woman, A Black Woman, A Black Orogene Woman .................... 154 CHAPTER 8: SYSTEMIC OPPRESSION IN ANOTHER WORLD: JEMISIN’S USES OF FANTASY ...................................................................... 165 8.1 Secondary-world Narratives of Oppression .................................... 170 8.2 Orogeny and the Dynamic of the Mirror ......................................... 173 CHAPTER 9: NASSUN, EUCATASTROPHE, AND LOOKING TO THE FUTURE .......................................................................... 187 9.1 Like Mother, Like Daughter: Nassun as Essun’s Mirror ............. 187 9.2 Nassun as the Antagonist ...................................................................... 196 9.3 Nassun as the Heroine: Breaking the Cycle ..................................... 203 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................... 211 Discussion of Results .................................................................................. 211 WORKS CITED ................................................................................................... 217 APPENDIX: RESUMO ....................................................................................... 225 INTRODUCTION The point is to develop an account of the world which treats our perspectives not as subjugated or disruptive knowledges, but as primary and constitutive of a different world. (Nancy Hartsock) The story of fantasy is one of reinvention. Against the presentation of realist literature as somehow superior or more legitimate due to fantasy’s apparent disconnection from known reality, its use of imaginary (secondary, in Tolkien’s terminology) worlds and events has recently been re-signified as potentiality. With the genre itself having undergone considerable changes over the centuries, this reconceptualization and development of what ‘fantasy’ is and means has managed to shift its usual perception. Recent critical and academic endeavours have argued that the ability of fantasy to explore different what ifs, which experiment with the tenets of known reality and even go beyond them, makes it a genre brimming with possibility. Additionally, the unfailing popularity of fantastic literature over the centuries, its stubborn persistence on bestselling book lists and its widespread, passionate fandoms, come as a symptom of the interest it holds for readers and writers alike. Such interest, I would argue, comes from the relevance which the stories of fantasy hold for readers and for the world in which they live. It is this very sense of relevance, both cultural and social, which has inspired and driven this work forward. The ability of literature to represent — to create images of events, situations, and people — has been discussed as one of its greatest attractions, with argument being made for its particular capacity to enter “what one is estranged from” (Morrison 4). Such a capacity has, in fact, been at the core of many recent discussions regarding the possibility for authors to represent certain marginalized collectives, and their accountability for the images they create. Toni Morrison had already argued that, though an author “is not personally accountable for the acts of his fictive creatures, […] he is responsible for them” (86) and, as such, writers must “take responsibility for all of the values they bring to their art” (xiii). The demand for more responsible representations of individuals and identities which have for a long time been relegated to the fringes of the norm is thus at the core of the present study, as fantasy in particular could, potentially, represent such identities at the centre instead of the margins. If, as Brian Attebery recently wrote, “[p]art of the cultural work of the fantastic is to tell us that things need not be the way they are” (Fantasy 3), then the genre does not so much explore possibilities as present alternatives. Very specifically, its representations constitute alternate imaginings of the ingrained structures and discourses of discrimination which shape primary reality and individual identity; and, in re-imagining them, fantasy may well deconstruct them. Nora Keita Jemisin, in a 2022 podcast interview with Ezra Klein, phrases it thus: I think we’re all painfully aware of climate change, and the encroachment of fascism, and the imminence of possible war, and all kinds of things like that everywhere. And we’re looking for alternative viewpoints, alternative ways of being, I think, and ways of thinking. 18 And that can be good. In a way, it is revolutionary thought. If those thoughts don’t take any turn into action, then even without the action revolutionary thought is a good thing. It is a way of imagining that the world can be different. (Klein 00:04:38-00:05:15) This awareness of the revolutionary potential of the alternatives with which fantasy presents us is precisely where my interest on N. K. Jemisin’s own fictional work stems from. This African American author has received such prestigious awards as the Nebula and the Locus, yet her largest achievement has been the winning of three consecutive Hugo Awards for Best Novel, one for each of the books in The Broken Earth trilogy, which is the primary focus of this work. This marked both the first time a Black1 author earned a Hugo Award as well as the first time any author at all managed to earn three in consecutive years, a feat which effectively cemented Jemisin’s position as one of the most significant and most celebrated new voices in science fiction and fantasy. Her work in general focuses, very notably, on themes of conflict and oppression, yet she has been particularly praised for her emphasis on the depictions of Black women at the centre of her fictions. This comes, of course, partly from Jemisin’s own lived experience. Though she was born in Iowa, she spent her childhood in Mobile, Alabama, during the nineteen eighties. This meant that both herself and her family had first-hand experience of “the regimentation of Southern society, the quasi-suburban alienation, the racism” which characterized the United States and particularly the American South at the time (Khatchadourian). Violence against African Americans was common, and legal desegregation still very recent. Though Jemisin was herself an avid reader in childhood and already enjoyed science fiction and fantasy, it was impossible for her not to notice that there was hardly any fiction that “credibly represented someone like her” (Khatchadourian). Non-white authors were extremely difficult to find because their work was often published under pseudonyms, or else their treatment of race in their fiction was censored or otherwise concealed, so that Jemisin, despite wanting to write, “believed that a career in writing fantasy was closed to her, because of who she was” until rather late in her life (Khatchadourian). Furthermore, when literary opportunities first began to present themselves to Jemisin, she believed that the rejections she received — which argued an impossibility to fit her work into the market — were at least in part backed by the same sort of bigotry which writers before her, such as Samuel Delany or Octavia Butler, had had to endure. She expressed the rage she felt at the time in an interview with Raffi Khatchadourian: I came very close to quitting […]. I had a long dark tea-time of the soul, and basically somewhere in there I realized, People are just that racist. If the only problem is that the book is full of black people —O.K., I got you. I am going to write something full of white people, but it is going to be all about how evil those white people are. (Khatchadourian, italics in original) This clear expression of frustration against the systemic prejudice that had hindered Jemisin’s own access to the secondary worlds of fiction as a child also betrays a desire to represent the world as she saw it — to centre the position and point of view of a person who, in the reality she knows, is marginalized and discriminated against. Jemisin herself admits to having drawn inspiration from historical events in her work: “I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history. And I’m not drawing 1 I adhere throughout this work to Audre Lorde’s use — which seems to be growing increasingly common — of “Black” as capitalized when referring to Africans and African Americans, in the same way as, for instance, Asian or Caucasian. 19 solely upon my own racial experiences. There’s some stuff that’s going to happen in the third book [of The Broken Earth] that’s sort of hinting at the Holocaust. You can see hints of stuff that happened with the Khmer Rouge at varying points in the story” (Newkirk). Her fiction is therefore clearly meant to be read, at least partly, as social commentary. Not only that — Jemisin’s fantasy is also meant to provide an alternative. As Barbara Smith puts it, “the use of Black women’s language and cultural experience in books by Black women about Black women results in a miraculously rich coalescing of form and content and also takes their writing far beyond the confines of white/male literary studies” (quoted in Pickens 45). The images of Black female characters which Jemisin creates in her work therefore centralize the Black, female experience from the point of view of a Black, female writer. This use of language, coming from and directly addressing the marginal position, creates an alternative way of seeing — a “view from elsewhere”, in Teresa de Lauretis’ words (25) — which constitutes a unique point of view from which to reveal the secondary world of the fantasy. This alternative view is also built in direct opposition to the normative ways in which people of colour and other marginalized collectives are forced to read themselves into the fiction they consume, so that Jemisin’s work provides a refreshing mirror in which these marginal identities come to perceive themselves as no longer marginal, but central to the world’s narratives and discourses. It is important to mention that, as a consequence of the above, Jemisin’s work has been conflated with the tradition of Afrofuturism, which Mark Dery defines as follows: “Speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture — and more generally, African American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future — might, for want of a better term, be called ‘Afro-futurism’” (180). Though Afrofuturism unites “different genres and media” under an “interest in projecting black futures derived from Afrodiasporic experiences”, the current “is closely related to science fiction as an aesthetic genre”, and many of the authors identified as Afrofuturist “explicitly identify themselves as science fiction authors” (Yaszek 42). While there is certainly an argument to be made for Jemisin’s work as part of this longstanding tradition, Jemisin blends elements belonging to several different genres throughout the trilogy. I am, in this work, deliberately choosing to read and analyze it as fantasy fiction, which necessarily causes the Afrofuturistic reading to take a step into the background so as to focus on the features that allow its consideration as a fantasy. These features are detailed in greater depth in chapter 8, as part of my analysis of Jemisin’s uses of fantasy. Hypothesis This work therefore argues that fictional representations act as mirrors for individuals, mirrors which are able to reaffirm and validate their identity, and that fantasy in particular is able to enhance the possibilities for the representation of otherness, as seen through Nora Jemisin’s work. There are several reasons why The Broken Earth was chosen as a case study, not the least of which being my own love for Jemisin’s complex and insightful storytelling. Another reason is the aforementioned blend of genres that this author executes in this trilogy, which illustrates the mutability of the fantastic and its potential for innovation by blurring the already diffuse and permeable boundaries which separate fantasy from its neighbouring genres. The major motivation behind this choice, however, is the fact that Jemisin’s work is completely centred around characters which, in the primary world, would be considered ‘other’ — racialized women, in particular. It is my major argument that Jemisin’s work, by centring the perspective of perceived difference, forces a reorientation of the hegemonic readers’ position, thus introducing them to new ways of seeing. At the same time, and perhaps more intentionally, 20 the trilogy provides otherized readers with carefully fleshed-out images that reflect their identities and experiences, and thus contributes to the constitution of a positive sense of themselves as subjects. Objectives Firstly, then, the thesis aims to show the importance of fictional representations for individual identity by examining different theories of identity construction as related to narrative. Such an examination aims to explain why social others stand particularly to benefit from a larger, more varied presence of representations that can stand as reflections of their experiences, as well as why the fantasy genre is particularly suitable for this purpose given its peculiarities against other, more realistic fictions. Secondly, the above is intended to be proven by using Jemisin’s trilogy as a case study. The analysis structures the second part of the thesis, and takes The Broken Earth as an example of how the use of fantasy enhances the positive representation of otherness. As mentioned above, the idea of representation, and particularly the representation of difference — of that which lies outside the norm — has always been of particular interest to me. I was already taking up the issue in previous writings where I examined the representation of female identity through different case studies, hoping to understand how such images worked in relation to identity construction and why this was significant, given the condition of woman as other. Most of the materials I found during that period of research were academic essays and books dealing with ‘representation’ in terms of character analysis: the analysis of the actions and descriptions of fictional characters, within the context of the fictional world, under the light of different theoretical frameworks (in this case, mostly feminist theories). This is a perfectly natural and useful methodology which I continue to make use of here, but the theory I sought after was something else entirely. Having often interacted with fandom and fan spaces, I had firsthand experience of the current concerns regarding the scarcity and inadequacy of the fictional representations afforded to marginalized identities — not just to women, but also people of colour, LGBTQ+ identities, and other experiences in the social margins. Despite the many recent, positive developments in this regard, their demands for visibility and for more (and more conscious) representations in the fiction they consume are very much justified. The theory I had hoped to find, then, was one that would explain why this is such a concern: why fictional representation is so significant, both in general and in particular as applied to these marginalized identities. Not finding one, I set out to make an approach towards such a theory, which I now see was rather naïve of me. There is not, that I am aware, a single theory under which fictional representation can be examined, evaluated, or indeed explained. There is no single tool that will enable the analysis of representation and the responses to it in a way that will truly answer the question I began asking myself all those years ago. Methodology There is a way to answer that question, however, by using a combination of existing theories, whose concepts and accounts of individual identity and its relationship to fiction may provide an explanation of how we relate to fictional worlds and characters, and why this makes it possible for fiction to have a plausible, positive impact over non-fictional people. This work thus pulls together many different theories into an amalgam for the sake of its argument; hopefully, this will serve as a toolkit — a set of concepts and frameworks that, when combined, may be able to shed light on some of the issues around the concept, such as: how does representation work in this fictional context? What does it take for individuals to truly be, or feel, represented within a 21 fictional image? What makes a fictional representation ‘good’ — or, perhaps more interestingly, what makes it ‘bad’? Chapter 1 therefore begins by taking a look at the concept of representation itself, establishing a working definition and delving into the necessary situatedness of representations, as they are subjected to and affected by individual perspectives — what Sara Ahmed calls orientation, Brian Massumi position, and Donna Haraway situated knowledge. This chapter also explains my choice of the image of the mirror as the thread pulling the different theories together, and its significance for the dynamic subject/other, which is taken as central to this work. Chapter 2 employs Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation to describe the dynamic by which individuals are made subjects — which, in his theory, means subjected to ideological systems, but which is here repurposed to imply recognition, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued. The latter’s theory of embodiment therefore describes the communication between subject and other through the body and the gaze in order to establish the relationality of identity — the essential role which others play in the construction of the self. The chapter then delves into theories examining the process of identity construction as related to narrative, particularly Paul Ricoeur’s idea of “emplotment” as expressed in Oneself as Another, in order to establish the link between identity construction and fiction. This is done in the interest of proving narrative to be a crucial concept for both individual identity and the articulation of society at large. The concept of the ‘other’ is then examined in terms of the inability to locate oneself in dominant social narratives, or to create a self-narrative that is not defined or impeded by that perceived otherness. Chapter 3 then focuses on providing an explanation for how fictional narratives can act as mirrors to social others, for which purpose I borrow mainly from Alan Palmer’s idea of fictional minds, as well as from theories surrounding the concept of identification, in order to understand the influence which fiction has, or can potentially have, for individuals and their self-image. The chapter then turns to discussing in what ways this mirroring has been used to enforce otherness through the discourses of fiction. As my case study focuses on female characters, I resort to Laura Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze and Slavoj Žižek’s concept of symbolic identification in order to understand in what ways fiction has been used to misrepresent woman. On the other hand, the chapter also provides an exploration of how fiction may be used in the opposite way — to deconstruct and resist dominant discourses against difference. To do so, I rely on bell hooks’ idea of a liberated voice and Brent R. Henze’s conception of agency, as well as Teresa de Lauretis’ technologies of gender, in order to come up with an explanation of how fiction may provide individuals with positive images of their own difference, in order to individually and socially reframe its perception as ‘other’. Chapter 4 examines reader-response and empathy theories in order to discern by which mechanisms fiction is able to have an impact, to produce a tangible or noticeable change, in primary reality. Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theory is considered so as to explain what takes place during the reading process, and the effect which fiction has over the individual during their consumption of the texts. Theories of narrative empathy, such as Suzanne Keen’s and Lynn Hunt’s, are then called upon to describe how said effect may, potentially, extend beyond the individual to affect society at a larger scale. Chapter 5 provides a literary review of some of the most significant theories of fantasy, from Tzvetan Todorov to Brian Attebery, in order to arrive at a tentative definition of what the genre entails. The complexities in the relationship between fantasy and the ‘real’ are also foreshadowed here, particularly through Lubomír Doležel’s theory of possible worlds — a crucial concept to my understanding of the workings of fantasy. This chapter, then, serves to 22 outline fantasy’s most prominent features, as well as to provide a revision of its literary canon — or, rather, lack thereof, given J. R. R. Tolkien’s extensive influence on the genre as a whole —, in light of which the particularities of Jemisin’s work are considered as it subverts many of the expectations derived from this tradition. Chapter 6 further develops the discussion on the peculiar relationship existing between fantasy as a literary genre and the extra-literary reality surrounding it, in order to conclude how fantasy can have an effect over said reality that makes it into a suitable tool for political and social subversion — a way to frame revolutionary thought, to paraphrase Jemisin’s words (Klein 00:04:37). With this in mind, the chapter establishes a parallel between the binaries reality/fantasy and subject/other, given that the genre’s devaluation as an inferior reflection of the ‘real’ creates a noticeable parallel with the position of other. In doing so, the chapter argues that fantasy’s deviations from primary reality are its strongest asset, as it allows to overcome or sidestep the discourses and narratives at work in the primary world. Chapter 7 opens the analysis of Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy, which aims to provide evidence of how the genre’s potential as a political tool may be exploited, and how marginalized identities — women, and racialized women in particular, given my current focus — can find in it a locus of self-expression that enables the weaving of a discourse beyond the mirror dichotomy and its dualistic hierarchies as outlined in previous chapters. As such, chapter 7 focuses mainly on the analysis of Essun, the main character of the trilogy, from an intersectional feminist perspective that takes into account how both her gender and race are represented within the secondary world. Chapter 8 moves to dissecting how Jemisin’s use of the fantastic articulates a discourse of empowerment and healing within the secondary world. The chapter examines how she uses the premise of the fantasy to alter the oppressive dynamics at work by drawing on the concept of ‘fantastic racism’ to describe how Jemisin’s depiction of a fantastic trait at the source of oppression is not an escapist endeavour. This therefore shows how Jemisin avoids otherizing her characters due to such factors as gender or race, while still providing insightful, fleshedout commentary on how discriminatory relationships articulate society. To explain the radical re-imagining of systemic enslavement which Jemisin executes through the fantastic premise, I draw on the theories presented in previous chapters as well as on Christina Sharpe’s concepts of the ‘wake’ and the ‘weather’, which are useful to describe the alterations Jemisin makes to the ingrained discourses and narratives of primary reality against Blackness in particular, given the equivalence drawn between orogeny and slavery. Chapter 9, finally, analyzes the development of Essun’s daughter, Nassun, in order to understand how Jemisin makes particular use of one of fantasy’s most crucial elements, which Tolkien called ‘eucatastrophe’, in order to provide a sense of consolation and hope despite the narratives of oppression which her story focuses on. In so doing, the dissertation attempts to shed light on how Jemisin’s novels provide an alternative model of resistance and enable marginalized communities to find both understanding of their oppression and, simultaneously, a respite from it in her secondary world. This dissertation thus argues that such respite from primary world ideologies and discourses around the marginal, the nonnormative, is key for individuals to become able to conceive of their identity beyond the imposed social definitions and discourses of otherness. By articulating the theoretical analysis around such interrelated concepts as representation, identity, narrative/ fiction, and fantasy, I hope to show how fictional images created through secondary worlds serve as positive models by which individuals who are marginalized in the primary world can find their identities validated, and how fantasy’s particularities can prove crucially helpful in doing 23 so. The change in self-perception thus provoked enables individuals to perceive themselves as individual subjects whose agency and voice are bolstered and not impeded by the difference which has thus far excluded them — a change which proves fundamental to the formation of resistance against the norms and ideologies defining and constraining our primary reality. CHAPTER 1: THE MIRROR OF REPRESENTATION The image touches me, and, thus touched and drawn by it and into it, I get involved, not to say mixed up in it. There is no image without my too being in its image. (Jean-Luc Nancy) Given the importance of the concept of ‘representation’ for the present work, it is only fitting for it to be the subject of the first chapter. The term has had an extremely long and complex history, and has been employed across disciplines from philosophy to mathematics in wildly varying ways. It is beyond the scope of the present chapter to outline such a history, but the ensuing pages will nonetheless revise some of the historical developments of and around the term — particularly as applicable to fiction, which is the primary focus of this study — with the aim of coming up with a working definition or tentative description substantial enough to suit the use made of the term throughout. To make the task slightly less daunting, as well as for the sake of clarity, it is useful to begin by consulting the Oxford English Dictionary. Its second acceptation links “representation” to a “depiction or portrayal” (OED, “representation” n.1. II), which is the sense I am most interested in. Three of the definitions provided therein bear some basic, significant resemblances: “A depiction or portrayal of a person or thing, typically one produced in an artistic medium; an image, a model, a picture.” (OED, “representation” n.1. II.6.a) “The action of putting forward an account of something discursively; a spoken or written statement, esp. one which conveys or intends to create a particular view or impression.” (II.8.a) “The action or process of presenting to the mind or imagination; an instance of this; (also) the result of this process; an image or picture presented to the mind or imagination in this way.” (II.9.a) Textual evidence shows uses of the term that align with the above definitions as early as 1477. However, I would draw particular attention to the polysemy hinted at in definition II.9.a, which states that ‘representation’ may be used to refer to an action or process, as well as to the result of said process — or to an image presented through it. This ambiguity is at the heart of the theoretical debate and confusion surrounding the term. Philosophy, in particular, has used it indistinctly to refer to the “image, concept, or thought in the mind […] regarded as an object of direct knowledge”, as well as to “the means by which knowledge of objects in the world may indirectly be acquired […], the formation or possession of images, concepts, or thoughts in the mind” (OED, “representation” n.1. II.9.b). Either way, it becomes obvious that ‘representation’ entails the existence and/or the creation of images or concepts in the mind — images that condense, and engender, knowledge about the world. For my current purpose, I narrow down 32 begs the question of what it is about this plural reality that fantasy chooses to represent, as well as what the intentions and potential consequences of such choices may be. After all, if fictional images embody ways of seeing, as Berger argued, even fantastic representations must be the result of social codes that surround and determine the position they are created from. Tracing these very ways of seeing within the work itself may point towards such codes, which are ultimately to be questioned and held responsible for the absences and lacks which the produced representation may suffer from. However, when representations are produced by these marginalized identities, they embody ways of seeing outside of the hegemonic centre of the grid. It is often argued that this may lead to proactive, or at least perceivable, social change beyond the moment of fictional consumption. When a subject is placed before these fictional representations of and by otherness, they may find this otherness integrated into their vision of the world: the consumption and internalization of these different ways of seeing may serve to shift preconceptions and prejudices, or, at the very least, to question them. However, and as will be further argued throughout this work, the point of fictional representation need not be to produce a change in the worldview of the hegemonic subject by shifting its perception of otherness — and perhaps ought not to think of the hegemonic subject at all. I would like to take a moment to look at the following statements, from authors of fantasy and science fiction:3 You guys know about vampires? […] You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought [… is] that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, ‘Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?’ And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors […] so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it. (Junot Diaz, quoted in Donohue) I read a lot of science fiction as a kid. And, of course, that meant reading boys books because that’s what kids’ science fiction was. I made up my own stories to put myself in them. (O. Butler) In Mobile’s public library, [Nora K.] Jemisin read voraciously, but she almost never encountered characters who credibly represented someone like her. Black writers have been engaged in speculative fiction since at least the nineteenth century, but when Jemisin first immersed herself in the genre their work was either difficult to locate or difficult to recognize. (Khatchadourian) Me. I write for me. I write the stories that I wish I had seen, either when I was growing up or just when I was bored. (Jemisin, “A True Utopia”) These are but a few examples. Though plenty more could be gathered, it is easy even in these few to notice a common element. All of the above authors, themselves belonging to historically otherized communities, speak of their younger selves looking for a reflection in fiction, and 3 Some theorists have chosen to use ‘speculative fiction’ as an umbrella term, given the contemporary tendency for genres of fantasy and science fiction towards “bending and blending, […] shape-shifting and morphing” (Cart 97). Despite the apparent usefulness of the term, this work adheres to Brian Attebery’s use of the term ‘fantastic’ instead (see chapter 5 below). 33 failing to find it. None of them imply that to relate to existing images was impossible; however, they do highlight that there was no fiction where they could see their particular identities (whether in terms of ethnicity, gender, or sexuality) represented in meaningful ways. This tells us three things: 1) That while otherized subjects have little or no trouble relating to and identifying with fictional images that do not resemble them, and can share in the enjoyment of such images, it is nevertheless trying to constantly have to ignore or even reject one’s own difference in order to enter into the fictional experience. 2) That the lack of these representations makes otherized individuals acutely aware of their own difference as an exception, even an abnormality; aside from being exhausting, to find oneself alienated from representation is likely to become an obstacle for the formation of a positive sense of self in these individuals, as they are denied positive identification with images that resemble them. As a consequence, this awareness of one’s own difference creates a wish to change, to homogenize oneself and adapt to what hegemony demands in order to, quite simply, be seen. 3) Perhaps most significantly, authors such as the above-quoted never speak of their writing as being created for the benefit of those who have oppressed and in many ways continue to oppress them. They do not, at any point, express an intention or a wish to communicate their experience in order to change the minds or worldviews of their oppressors; rather, they explicitly state they are writing for others who are like themselves, for others whose shared difference(s) have created similar life experiences, and who are looking for themselves in fiction as eagerly as these authors once did. Others who may be looking for images to use as role models or ideals to admire, but especially images of people, of unique individuals whose existence is valid and that can be related to as true subjects instead of, simply, an other. If these social others were able to leave behind the preconceptions, impositions, and social constraints which define, delimit, and impose their otherness, it may be possible for them to achieve fully functional, validated identities as subjects. Fictional representations could achieve this, at least partially, by offering an image of what this fully functional identity may look like for these individuals to identify with and aspire to. As will be argued in later chapters, then, representation is not necessarily meant for hegemonic subjects to gain new perspectives on difference — though it may certainly achieve that, under the right circumstances. Rather, it can be a useful tool for displaced or otherized individuals to gain access to their own voice and, consequently, their own agency as subjects. Referencing a scene from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959), where a little girl insists on drinking her milk from her special cup with stars at the bottom, Carmen Maria Machado expresses it thus: For me, the cup of stars is a reminder that you are allowed your own fantasies, the particular fancies of your own mind. That everyone deserves this, and should insist upon it. That — even as others tell you the things you want are unrealistic, outrageous, not permitted, or silly — it’s okay to say, I want this. […] We don’t allow certain types of people that space for all kinds of reasons; there are so many ways the real world doesn’t value our purest time. […] I am driven to find that. Even if it’s just my own mind, I want to have my cup of stars. The response to that attitude can be: Oh, that’s so selfish. Or: That’s so not accommodating to other people’s needs. Or: How dare you demand that thing? But you have to. “I want it”, we deserve to say. “Give it to me.” (Carmen Maria Machado, quoted in Fassler; italics in original) 34 The demand for representation, for that space within fiction and outside of it, is the demand for that cup of stars. However unreasonable it may seem to the current status quo, the fictional space can and indeed should be seized and transformed so that the perception of difference can, itself, be transformed. No longer perceived under the limiting parameters of reflection and otherness, difference can, through fictional representations, be fully explored and rendered as part of an individual’s identity as a subject. Hence my decision to explore how the fantasy genre opens up new possibilities for these marginalized identities to seize this space in world-bending ways. Octavia Butler mentions the “freedom” which the genre allows: “There isn’t anything that I can’t do […] — past, present, future, Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever, I can get away with all sorts of things in science fiction and fantasy, I should say, that might not be that possible in trade fiction” (“Octavia Butler on writing”). This reasoning may well be argued to be at the core of the preference for fantastic genres that is shared by so many marginalized authors4: when used in a politically conscious way, fantasy and the fantastic’s creation of new possible worlds — which are at least partly untethered from reality — rejects the power dynamic of the mirror, turning it from a constricting binary into a tool for the deconstruction of the very concept of otherness — and doing so in ways that are unavailable to other genres due to their further commitment in closely representing facets of our ‘real’, primary world. 4 It is worth mentioning that fantasy and other fantastic genres are not by any means the only ones to have been linked to marginal identities. Other genres and forms, such as the short story, have also been argued as particularly suitable for the expression of marginality, precisely due to their own status as marginal with respect to the literary canon. See, for instance, Adrian Hunter’s The Cambridge Introduction to the Short Story in English, Cambridge University Press, 2007. CHAPTER 2: IDENTITY AS NARRATIVE If my identity were to lose all importance in every respect, would not the question of others also cease to matter? (Paul Ricoeur) Much as it happened with “representation”, the concept of “identity” has a long and complex history, enough to fill a work such as this thrice over. Unable to consider the extensive psychological, psychoanalytical, and philosophical body of work devoted to the concept, I choose to focus on understandings of identity as related to my structuring image of choice — the mirror. The metaphor informs the majority of the theoretical approaches I revise here, its consistent appearances illustrative of the dynamics between subject and other, which makes it particularly suitable for my current purposes insofar as it refers ab initio to the process of construction of “other” identities — those marked as different by social preconceptions derived from the intersection of oppressive systems. The theories here outlined thus discuss the process of identity construction, how it goes hand in hand with the construction of otherness, and how the process differs in the case of otherized identities given their constitution as such. From the aforementioned mirror stage onwards, identification of both oneself and others has been widely considered a wholly visual process — meaning, identification taking place with a given image. This spectre of the visual can be traced in Louis Althusser’s theory of Ideological State Apparatuses, which, despite having been developed from a Marxist point of view, applies a mirror-like structure to the concept of ideology in order to understand how subjectivity is constituted and functions within it. Althusser regards ideology as both an illusion (in other words, an unreal or imaginary representation) and an allusion (a direct reference which, if interpreted, will lead to the discernment of real conditions). Thus, ideology is the creation of an imaginary representation of the subjects’ relationship to the conditions of their existence: an “imaginary relation of individuals to the real relations in which they live” (Althusser 39). In turn, ideology acquires material existence in its apparatuses and practices, as well as in the subjects themselves, who embody it by behaving, acting, and participating in systems and rituals determined by the ideological apparatus. Thus, “there is no practice except by and in an ideology”, yet “there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects” (Althusser 44), meaning that the relationship between subjects and ideology is reciprocal and self-sustaining, in that they continually create and sustain one another. This is interesting, as far as otherness goes, because Althusser maintains that, as long as they exist within a certain ideological apparatus, “individuals are always-already subjects” (50), since ideology has already interpellated them as such and they have responded to that interpellation. This is the notion which most interests me about Althusser’s theory: that of interpellating, or hailing — the act by which an individual becomes a subject. For Althusser, such interpellation involves language, or at the very least a voice, and not a visual image, much in the same way as Lacan upheld the idea that the symbolic order — language — was what restored the subject’s function as such (76). Ideology 36 thus posits an Absolute or capitalised Subject, who stands at its centre and interpellates every subject around it, at once subjecting (i.e. subjugating) them and “giving them the Subject in which each subject can contemplate its own image” (Althusser 54). This “duplicate mirror” structure is what makes possible the recognition of the Absolute Subject, as well as that of subjects themselves and among themselves — thus eliminating the other from the equation entirely. Under Althusser’s proposed structure of the ideological apparatus, every individual is considered a subject from the get-go: the very ideology has ensured that this be so, since every individual must recognize themselves as hailed or “interpellated as a free subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall freely accept his subjection” (Althusser 56). Against this one-sided hailing, Maurice Merleau-Ponty proposes the concept of “mutual recognition” which leads to a wholly different conception of subjectivity. Merleau-Ponty’s major work, Phenomenology of Perception (1945), attempts to explain how perceptual dynamics establish subjectivities and codify the relationships between them. The most thought-provoking aspect of this approach is that it problematizes the classical philosophical conception of an active subject against a perceived, passive object without resorting to an ideological system, as Althusser did. Rather, Merleau-Ponty suggests a communicative understanding of perception as a reciprocal process by which subjects establish mutual, not unilateral, relationships. This author suggests that “classical philosophy” posits a division of the subject in four parts, which once again emphasizes the visual: (1) myself, my ‘psyche’; (2) the image I have of my body by means of the sense of touch or cenesthesia […]; (3) the body of the other as seen by me, which we shall call the ‘visual body’; and (4) a fourth (hypothetical) term which I must reconstitute and guess at — the ‘psyche’ of the other, the other’s feeling of his own existence — to the extent that I can imagine or suppose it through his visual body. (144-145) Thus, I (1) perceive the world through my body (2), particularly through touch and sight; in perceiving the other’s visual body (3) and identifying it as such, I build the other’s psyche (4) by using my own as a model. Merleau-Ponty was here especially referring to theories in the Cartesian, dualist tradition, which separate mind from body and thus uphold the impossibility of knowing anything but our own existence. However, it is interesting that some later work echoes similarly Cartesian ideas. R. D. Laing, for example, posits an approach against theories from egoistic standpoints, instead considering the you — that is, the other — as fundamental to the formation and maintenance of subjectivity, thus conceiving of identity as a “dyadic system” where “there is no isolated individual person. The one person, in order to maintain his own selfidentity, has to act towards the other” (Laing et al. 27, italics in original). And yet, in spite of this connection to the other, Laing’s work seems to suggest an ultimately egoistic end to interpersonal perception: he appears to imply that subjects, by acting upon the other, want to shape the other’s perception of themselves towards the self-image they wish to project. In other words, subjects build determined, preconceived identities by interacting with and bouncing off of the other in certain ways so that they may reach, in their own eyes, their ideal or preferred self. Additionally, while Laing does recognize the importance of the views and actions of the other in shaping the subject’s identity, and that the subject cannot always control or predict the other’s behaviour, he seems to be more concerned with individual experience (as perceived through a veil of biased interpretations of the other’s behaviours) as the core of 37 perception, and therefore of identity construction. This would be conducive to the assumption that Laing, and theorists in his vein, preserve the consideration of the other as fundamentally inaccessible, someone (or something) that the subject is unable to directly communicate with or act upon: “I cannot act on the other himself directly, but I can act on my own experience of him” (Laing et al. 22, italics in original). Indeed, Laing appears to interrogate the possibility that interpersonal communication can be anything other than ultimately selfish: “If one can act upon one’s experience of the other, so that one can shape to one’s own desire the way one sees the other and hence the way one supposes the other sees oneself, is it worth the bother to act toward the other in order to shape the other’s experience?” (Laing et al. 27, italics in original). In fact, he goes as far as to assert that “[m]y need is for the other’s need of me. His or her need is that I need him or her. […] My solicitude is not for another, but for another to want me” (34). Meaning, in short, that subjects seek to interact with others only so that they can build an identity according to their own desires, while only being able to “reconstruct” and “guess at” the other’s experience — imagining or supposing it through the body, as Merleau-Ponty suggested. Laing’s work can be thus interpreted to consider the other’s mind and experiences as fundamentally inaccessible to the subject, due to the impingement of one’s own subjective point of view on what the other says and does; this would make the act of perceiving, in Laing’s structure, a causal process — bidirectional, yes, and affecting both parties, but without attributing any meaning to the perceived except as a projection of the perceiver. This is highly similar to Emmanuel Levinas’ argument that the other “is not unknown but unknowable” (75): the experience of the other is unrepresentable to the self, and therefore inaccessible. In fact, Levinas argues that to understand and narrate the other’s experience is, in reality, to produce it — to reshape it into an image of sameness, of recognizable similarity, which is to Levinas an unethical act: “If one could possess, grasp, and know the other, it would not be other. Possessing, knowing and grasping are synonyms of power” (90). These are different expressions of the major philosophical quandary known as “the problem of other minds”, which the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy summarizes as follows: At a superficial glance it can look as if there is agreement about what the problem is and how we might address it. But on closer inspection one finds there is little agreement either about the problem or the solution to it. Indeed, there is little agreement about whether there is a problem here at all. […] The problem here has most commonly been thought to arise within epistemology: how do I know (or how can I justify the belief) that other beings exist who have thoughts, feelings and other mental attributes? (Avramides, “Other Minds”) The persistence of this problem throughout the centuries and different philosophical currents — as well as, more recently, in psychology and neuroscience — shows how theorists continue to find it difficult to leave behind the cautions generally instilled in them as to the other’s fundamental inaccessibility. How, after all, could we truly come to know another, if all we really know is our perception of what they are? Indeed, how could we truly know ourselves, if all we know is what we think others see us as? Importantly, however, this Levinasian conception of otherness which Laing’s theory seems to echo is informed by the presumption that sameness and otherness constitute a separate dichotomy, and “that the self and representation are exclusively informed by a self-same logos admitting no residues of otherness” (Yi Sencindiver 5). It may well be argued that to present the other as this unapproachable, unknowable mystery is as harmful, and in many ways as 38 fetishizing, as to feign its complete understanding. Against this mystifying inaccessibility, Merleau-Ponty proposed the abandonment of “the fundamental prejudice according to which the psyche is that which is accessible only to myself and cannot see itself from the outside” (146), positing a phenomenological theory of perception that defends a living, constant connection between the self and the world that imbues the perceived with meaning beyond what the subject can perceive in it — and, therefore, considering the other’s psyche to be (at least partially) knowable. This is not to say that Laing or Levinas deny or question the other’s existence beyond the self’s projections; they simply seem to outright deny the possibility that the subject could have access to this beyond. Merleau-Ponty, on the other hand, recognizes the situated and partial perspective which influences our perceptions — what Haraway called situated knowledge —, but is still willing to grant the subject a capacity to encounter the other, as both are embodied, living beings sharing the world. His theory postulates a communicative structure built around the gaze, by which we identify and come to recognize ourselves and others — so that the gaze occupies, in Merleau-Ponty and in subsequent theories such as Laura Mulvey’s, the same role which the Absolute Subject and its ideological apparatuses played for Althusser. By this mutual recognition, then, Merleau-Ponty refers to a particular way of regarding (a “way of seeing”, to recall Berger’s words) that marks individuals as subjects and makes them accessible to each other, achieving an effect very much like that of Althusser’s hail — yet acting within visual parameters, and without the consequent entrapment into an apparatus of subjugation. Still, Merleau-Ponty is aware of and does not deny the alienating or subjugating effect which the gaze can have; rather, he argues that such an effect takes place only “when this mutual recognition is not realised; when we feel that our actions and expressions” are being analyzed or scrutinized (Crossley 415) as one party constitutes itself as inaccessible, as observing the other from a vantage point of view: “But in fact, the other’s gaze does not transform me into an object, and my gaze does not transform him into an object, […] unless we both establish an inhuman gaze, and unless each senses his actions, not as taken up and understood, but rather as observed like the actions of an insect” (Merleau-Ponty, Perception 378). Thus, Merleau-Ponty’s theory serves to turn the hitherto unidirectional concept of the gaze into a point of intersubjectivity — a way of hailing constituted by its particular context, and only an alienating factor when the observed, the looked-at, is never hailed as a communicative subject at all. Crucially, this does not necessarily imply a refusal to communicate at all, but rather the communication of the fact that they are not being recognized as subjects, so that even the refusal to acknowledge another as such — and the consequent subjugation — “is still a mode of communication” (Perception 378). The mechanism of the gaze may achieve the effect of hailing, but the channel or medium that permits interpersonal connection — and thus the communicative act — is the body. For Merleau-Ponty, the body’s sentience (the ability to feel and to be felt) is what effects perception, and in this encounter, “[w]hen one sees the other […], one sees meaningful behaviour. And this meaningful behaviour is, in effect, access to the other” (Crossley 411). Indeed, Merleau-Ponty goes as far as to argue that behaviour is subjectivity, and hence how subjects have immediate access to each other: individuals are “always-already subjects”, in Althusser’s words, because the body, in communicating their behaviour to another, hails them as such. Crossley puts it very accurately: “One does not first experience the behaviour of the other and then, by some secondary action, attribute meaning to it. The other is not reduced […] to (my) thought of him/ her” (412). It is thus that the visual acquires “an altogether different type of significance for the subject’s life […]. Our images are predominantly visual, and this is no accident; it is by means of vision that one can sufficiently dominate and control objects” (Merleau-Ponty, “Relations” 39 166). It is no coincidence that Merleau-Ponty believes the relation of “the specular image to identifications with others” (167) to be fundamental, as to recognize oneself in the mirror is essential to come to identify with others: “I understand all the more easily that what is in the mirror is my image for being able to represent to myself the other’s viewpoint on me; and, inversely, I understand all the more the experience the other can have of me for seeing myself in the mirror in the aspect I offer him” (Merleau-Ponty, “Relations” 167). While the Lacanian theory Merleau-Ponty heavily references does not establish anywhere near as reassuring a relationship with the mirror image, this shows how specularity has been consistently relied upon to describe the dynamic subject/other which seems to be the basis for our perception of the world. Further, Merleau-Ponty’s theory is significant insofar as it suggests that the mirror, rather than creating a power dynamic, facilitates understanding between the poles subject/ other, in facilitating the subjects’ understanding of themselves. In choosing to communicate as equals within a context that places them in more or less equal circumstances, subject and other choose to grant each other access to one another’s perceptions, to favour mutual understanding as much as possible. It is here that it becomes most evident that visual perception cannot be the only channel through which the encounter with others takes place; much like Althusser had already argued that interpellation or hailing involves language, Merleau-Ponty takes language to be the bridge between subjectivities, an “interworld” in his own words, that makes intersubjective communication possible. Because the very essence of thought involves communication, language is proof that thought is never an individual act, but rather a social one: the subject always perceives and is perceived, both feeling the world as a subject and being perceived as an object, both shaping the world around it and being shaped by it in turn, as Ahmed posited in Queer Phenomenology. And yet, even if others can indeed be accessible to us as we perceive and thus hail them as communicative subjects, there will always be ‘other’ others, whom we do not deem worthy of such status, that we do not judge worthy of communicating with. There is also the issue of the uncertainty inherent to the communicative process: as we construe our identities through others in an endless interplay of reflections, we can never be truly certain of whether we know others, or their meanings in communicating, at all. This is the reason why meaning is often imposed upon others through several channels, or apparatuses to borrow Althusser’s term, not the least of which is fiction. 2.1 Narrating the Subject The concept of fiction has been consistently related to the construction of identity in different ways. I find this a particularly interesting relationship in light of the above theories, since fiction can convey itself both via visual and non-visual forms, yet narrative intrinsically requires language. Further, fiction-making takes place not only stricto sensu through the creation of fictional works, but also through larger apparatuses at the socio-cultural level. As Althusser’s theory of ideology suggested, but did not elaborate upon, social groups collectively agree upon and live by certain narratives (ideologies), which are at the core of widespread beliefs and behaviours that are essential for the functioning of society as we know it — and that, consequently, deeply influence the ways in which individuals constitute their selves. François Lyotard’s concept of metanarratives expresses this idea of grand, totalizing discourses which are or have been acknowledged as universal truths, even though, if “[j]udged by the yardstick of science, the majority of them prove to be fables” (xiii). Indeed, the French term he originally uses — grands récits, literally “big stories” — already suggests their fictional nature. However, such great fictions/grand narratives are legitimized through discourse, particularly the discourse 40 of philosophy (Lyotard xxiii), which serves to grant such fictions an existence beyond their realm, presumably separate from reality. These grands récits were defining of modernity, so that the questioning of these narratives, Lyotard holds, is characteristic of postmodern thought. This is but one significant example of how narrative is a process through which we understand and explain the world to ourselves and to one another, and which plays a significant, perhaps fundamental role in the organization and articulation of human societies and behaviours. It is therefore not by any means a stretch to suggest that narrative also heavily impacts the creation of individual selves, to the point that the idea of the self has itself been regarded a fiction — the product of many subjective perceptions and desires derived from interaction with others. Paul Ricoeur explored a similar idea in his three-volume treatise Time and Narrative (1983), which he later reformulated in Oneself as Another (1992). It is interesting that Ricoeur establishes a polarity between two “models of permanence” which comprise personal identity: idem, or sameness, and ipse, what he calls selfhood — the thing which differentiates one particular self from others. These two models of permanence are articulated through narrative, a process which Ricoeur calls “emplotment” and through which we construe and articulate our individual self, and then communicate it to others: Following the intuitive preunderstanding we have of these things [history and fiction], do we not consider human lives to be more readable when they have been interpreted in terms of the stories that people tell about them? And are not these life stories in turn made more intelligible when the narrative models of plots — borrowed from history or from fiction […] — are applied to them? (Ricoeur 114, fn.) In other words, Ricoeur posits that we constitute our selves through narrative, a sum of our life stories and significant events which is built by borrowing structures and techniques from fiction. The sum of these stories constructs what Ricoeur calls “character”, a “set of distinctive marks which permit the reidentification of a human individual as being the same” (119). The polysemy of the word is advantageous in this instance, as it calls to mind a character in the fictional sense, a “person portrayed in a work of fiction, a drama, a film, a comic strip, etc.” (OED, “character” II.14). The resemblance is evident insofar as fictional entities must also retain a sense of coherence in their personality and actions, so that readers may be able to recognize them as the same entity throughout. Ian Watt also recognized this connection between character in terms of identity and in terms of the novel, as “the particularising approach to character resolves itself into the problem of defining the individual person” (17), and definitions on what exactly constitutes “the individual person” change according to the philosophy followed.5 Character as Ricoeur understands it, then, is what grants an individual’s identity stability across time, so that they may be understood as idem — the same — even through changes in their life. It is thanks to this that humans are able to conceive of identity as regulated by sameness, as well as by a rejection of difference or inconsistency, which is reflected in the expression “out of character” to mean “[c]ontrary to a person’s usual behaviour” (OED, “character” P1.a), or “incongruous” with it (P1.b). This is again reflected in fictional instances, as characters are deemed flimsy or ‘not believable’ when their actions are perceived to be inconsistent with their previously established traits. This is because, if character is built through plots, a plot-like structure always demands concordance and coherence. 5 John Locke, for instance, defined personal identity as “an identity of consciousness through duration in time […], through memory of [the individual’s] past thoughts and actions” (Watt 20), an account in keeping with the importance which Ricoeur granted to the life narrative of the individual and its coherence. 41 The fact remains, however, that inconsistencies do appear, so that this demand is in constant tension with “the admission of discordances which, up to the close of the story, threaten this identity” that we had intended to build as a single, unitary self (Ricoeur 141). In order to resolve this tension, Ricoeur once again borrows from the structures of fiction and resorts to the concept of event, which can be “a source of discordance inasmuch as it springs up, and a source of concordance inasmuch as it allows the story to advance” (142). In a fictional story, readers witness narrative events that affect the fictional characters and lead them towards certain actions which, even if seemingly incoherent with their hitherto established character, can now be explained in light of that event. Inconsistencies or shifts thus no longer imply the annihilation of the character hitherto built (and hence the loss of an identity), but rather the evolution of said character as prompted by circumstance, which is then “emplotted” into one’s life story — thus incorporated as part of one’s identity, one’s character, and becoming recognizable as idem. Emplotment is thus crucial for identity building, since it allows individual identities to change and evolve while remaining marked by an intrinsic sense of sameness. Ian Watt expressed the same idea by saying that modern novel readers have “a sense of personal identity subsisting through duration and yet being changed by the flow of experience” (24). Importantly, Ricoeur emphasizes that these self-narratives are not unique. They coexist with other narratives, belonging to other selves, which in turn shape and redirect the plot of our self and alter our character: “the life history of each of us is caught up in the histories of others. Whole sections of my life are part of the life history of others” (Ricoeur 161), and vice versa. Identity thus becomes an interpersonal equivalent to the notion of intertextuality: as a text is intrinsically made up of other texts which came before it and which coexist with it, the personal plot of one’s individual life story becomes increasingly interwoven with and influenced by those of others. Once again, as Merleau-Ponty and Ahmed had suggested, the self is always affecting and being affected in turn, “acting and suffering”, as Ricoeur puts it (145). And yet, despite this, Ricoeur perceives a major moral issue inherent to the construction of identity, and hence to subject/other relationships: an “essential dissymmetry between the one who acts and the one who undergoes, culminating in the violence of the powerful agent” (Ricoeur 145), i.e. the one occupying the position of subject and hence possessing the power to act over the other, who thus becomes confined to the position of object. Thus, similarly to how the mechanism of perception and interpersonal communication was plagued with visual metaphors, the way in which individual selves construe their identities in order to communicate them becomes rife with metaphors of storytelling. Indeed, the notion of emplotment makes identities themselves into fictions,6 given its suggestion that subjects use their own (subjective) interpretations of the events unfolding throughout their lives to explain their actions with structures and devices resembling those used to construction fictional narratives. In Ricoeur’s words, “self-understanding is an interpretation; interpretation of the self, in turn, finds in the narrative […] a privileged form of mediation; the latter borrows from history as well as from fiction”, in the sense that it borrows events from the individual’s past and weaves them into a fictional, plot-like structure in order to communicate them, “making a life story a fictional history, or, if one prefers, a historical fiction” (Ricoeur 114, fn.). In turn, these identity 6 Though Ricoeur considered himself and is considered to adhere to narrativist theories of the self, rather than fictionalist theories, this distinction comes from a binary conception — arguably derived from the mimetic paradigm — that holds reality as somehow closer to truth than fiction. My equivalence of identity narratives with fictions does not derive from this conception, nor from the idea that the self is non-existent, but from the fact that they are built from subjective, situated knowledges and hence not derived from an objective, external reality against which they may be contrasted. I therefore hold that personal identity shares both the structure and the fictional nature of narratives, as Lacan suggested by mentioning the “fictional direction” of the ego in his “Mirror Stage” (76). 48 since, however theoretical or inapplicable to real social contexts they may be, these theories have inspired other theorists and activists, and thus resulted or encouraged movements of active socio-political resistance — as Butler’s own reflections on gender performance demonstrate. Taking the above into account, then, it can be concluded that gender categories, and the position of woman as a social other, hinder woman’s capacity to conceive of herself as a subject, and hence to rid herself of the patriarchal ideas and bodily performances that shape her identity. Yet if the total abolition of gender categories, and identity categories in general, is not necessarily the answer, neither is their unquestioning acceptance, as shown by Moya’s and hooks’ criticisms. The question then remains to be answered — how can women build an identity for themselves as subjects despite their position in the current social and discursive economy? Perhaps Paula Moya’s idea of a “realist theory of identity” offers an interesting middle ground between the postmodernist deconstruction of identity categories and their essentialist assumption — and thus perhaps paves the way towards a system in which women, and other others, become able of constructing themselves as subjects. Moya draws on the theory of Chicana activist and theorist Cherríe Moraga, and argues that the “physical realities” of gender, race, class, and other socio-cultural markers do not determine or make up the core of our being — but do, nonetheless, “inform the contours and the context of both our theories and our knowledge” (Moya, “Postmodernism” 80, italics in original). Hence Moya’s use of “realist”, as such a view of identity takes context — position — into account, which returns us to situated knowledge. The incorporation of individual positions into our conception of identity and its construction “allows for an acknowledgement of how the social categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality function in individual lives without reducing individuals to those social determinants” (Moya, “Postmodernism” 80, italics in original). Such a theory, as Somers and Gibson put it, “begin[s] from difference” (55) to shift the perception of identities situated as other: it recognizes the differences present in them, without attempting to assimilate them into a single, overarching category — or without critically dissecting them into virtual non-existence. Moya’s conception of identity categories as fundamental, yet not defining for individuals allows to uphold intersectionality while avoiding the pathologizing of difference, by accommodating identity narratives to fit difference within their defaults so that others no longer have to fit around a presumed universal. By following this conception, then, it becomes possible for others to conceive of themselves as subjects — merely different subjects than those presented by the current norm. Such a conception of identity is not yet implemented in our current social system; it is not possible, under prevailing binary power dynamics, for women to read themselves as subjects, precisely because ideological apparatuses and dominant, universal images continue to reflect their image as others. However, there are ways of implementing Moya’s idea. In hooks’ words: One of the most significant forms of power held by the weak is ‘the refusal to accept the definition of oneself that is put forward by the powerful’. Women need to know that they can reject the powerful’s definition of their reality — that they can do so even if they are poor, exploited, or trapped in oppressive circumstances. They need to know that the exercise of this basic personal power is an act of resistance and strength. (Feminist Theory 92) This power to reject imposed definitions of themselves is not immediately available to these social others, as they may have, as explained above, internalized their condition as such and therefore come to believe in their own inferiority. However, the fact is that this rejection 49 can still be encouraged and exercised through certain mechanisms of resistance, not the least of which is fictional narratives. As the next chapter demonstrates, the consumption of fiction has a central role for the individuals’ identity construction, and so that they can influence their selfimage — their perceptions of themselves, and of their power. Thus, fiction can encourage the rejection of these images by giving back reflections that show the repurposing of the dominant mechanisms at work, and that reconceptualize their power. Fiction, in other words, could repurpose or even remake the norm, offering new ways of seeing and of being which disrupt the smooth functioning of subjectifying identifications. CHAPTER 3: FICTION AS THE MIRROR How do I, choosing messages from the code of others in order to participate in the universal theme of Language, pull SHE from all the myriad symbols and sightings of HE? (Susan Howe) It is possible to extract two clear conclusions from the previous chapter. Firstly, narrative is not limited to a representational form used to articulate an individual’s history and, consequently, identity; rather, narrative can be considered an ontological condition of social life […]; that people construct identities (however multiple and changing) by locating themselves or being located within a repertoire of emplotted stories; that ‘experience’ is constituted through narratives […] and that people are guided to act in certain ways, and not others, on the basis of projections, expectations, and memories derived from a multiplicity but ultimately limited repertoire of available social, public, and cultural narratives. (Somers and Gibson 38-39, italics in original) Thence, narrative becomes a mechanism guiding the functioning of social relationships as well as the inner functioning of identity, and thus works at several levels, simultaneously, in a constitutive manner — not necessarily, or only, a representational one. Given this, identities are not monolithic, but as variable, mutable, dynamic, and subjective as the narratives they articulate and are articulated by. They change in response not only to events, but also to “that which could have happened differently or which might not have happened at all”, hypotheticals which subjects incorporate into their configuration of said events (Ricoeur 142), and which thus frame the events differently for each individual. Secondly, if this is so and narrative can be considered a form of ontological construction, fiction does much more than represent or imitate the mechanisms and relationships which coordinate and make up primary reality — it contributes to their creation, as Bruner suggests (3-5). Rimmon-Kenan’s concept of narration as a mode of access encapsulates this idea: she conceives of narrative not as a mimetic, referential, or direct representation of reality, but rather as an approach or passage into a different signifying system, embodied in the fictional world, which readers are granted access to through the performative repetition of the processes of the text in the act of reading. If this is so, fiction may also function as a totalizing discourse in the way of Lyotard’s grand narratives — that is, it can validate the universalizing narratives that constitute the universal subject, and thus validate its superiority. In looking for its reflection, its idem, the universal subject becomes seemingly endlessly present, colonizing both the spaces of primary reality and those of fiction. As a consequence, those perceived as other within the primary world will be depicted accordingly in fiction, even if the secondary, fictional world differs greatly from our own: other identities will be represented as other, with their difference 52 carrying over into the fiction and invalidating or impeding their perception of themselves as fully-fledged subjects, both within and outside the fictional context — or else not represented at all. Thus, fictional narratives will tend to endorse and reproduce the social narratives of universalism in place, and hence perpetuate the subject’s conception of this difference as somehow undesirable or unacceptable. Yet, despite fictional narratives being one of the many tools at the service of perpetuating dominant discourses, they are also one that can be seized and repurposed in order to achieve the opposite, and become a space for the reframing of difference. By the very virtue of its being not-real, fiction constitutes a space for exploration and rehearsal, for what Ricoeur called “imaginative variations”, that is, “thought experiments” that are engendered and sought out by the selves in constructing their own narratives (Ricoeur 148). In other words, these are hypothetical scenarios which the self purposefully seeks before they take any action, considering how said action may define them and influence the view others have of them. Not only that: imaginative variations also serve to explore the moral realm through mental experiment, putting the subject’s sense of ethics to the test. By prefiguring the result of an action, imagining positive or negative responses, and praising or blaming the agent accordingly, the subjects may submit themselves to moral judgement before any effect actualizes in the world around them. Fiction, then, also functions as an imaginative variation — an exploration or rehearsal ground for moral or immoral acts, for different roles and social categories, or for participation in situations that are normally unavailable to the subject, which permits the free exploration of the consequences of these variations without necessarily having harmful consequences on the subject’s identity, actions, or behaviours. On the other hand, the ontological status of fiction allows to posit the idea that consuming fictional narratives of other lives could potentially produce similar effects on identity, or one’s perception of it, as the communication and incorporation of social narratives and of others’ identity narratives. After all, the narratives of others are also, in a way, fictions consumed by the subject. The quandary of other minds would therefore function at both a ‘real’ (to mean our existing, primary world) and a fictional level; the question is, then, whether fiction may grant us access to another self, to the mind of another, in a different fashion than the process of mutual recognition and communication is able to — and thus affect our identitybuilding in particular ways. In order to explore that possibility, I would like to take advantage of Alan Palmer’s work, Fictional Minds, for two major reasons: firstly, because he takes up the importance which Merleau-Ponty gave to intersubjectivity and applies it to his study of fiction; secondly, because his concept of fictional minds serves to explain, at least partly, the importance of fictional representations as mirrors. Palmer first turns to Colwyn Trevarthen’s concept of “intersubjective first” to express how, if perception is — as Merleau-Ponty had suggested — an act of communication, intersubjectivity is then at the core of the human mind: The Western philosophical tradition (as exemplified by René Descartes and Immanuel Kant) generally assumes that human minds are inherently separate in their purposes and experiences […] [People] construct an awareness of the self in society but remain single subjectivities […] We will call this view of intelligent and civilized cooperation as an artificial acquisition the […] “subjective first” position… A different conception of human consciousness […] perceives interpersonal awareness, cooperative action in society, and cultural learning as manifestations of innate motives for sympathy in purposes, interests, and feelings – that is, a 53 human mind is equipped with needs for dialogue [and] intermental engagement with other minds… We will call this view of how human cooperation arises the […] “intersubjective first” position. (Trevarthen 1999, quoted in Palmer 5) This “intersubjective first” position is what Palmer takes as his starting point in order to argue that “narrative fiction is, in essence, the presentation of real mental functioning” (5): of fictional thought processes and feelings in response to narrative events, as well as the actions resulting from them, within different fictional contexts. It follows, then, that the study of fiction is the study of consciousness — “that the study of the novel is the study of fictional mental functioning” (Palmer 5). Fiction, then, in the very act of creating a character, also creates a “fictional mind” — an-other identity which, through the act of reading, we receive and incorporate into our own for the purposes of emplotment. This is how fiction could potentially produce a similar effect on one’s identity as interpersonal communication with a non-fictional other, because the consumption of fiction, in Palmer’s terms, is an interaction between two minds. However, one of those minds is fictional, and therefore static — unable to change beyond the fiction’s scope —, which eliminates the need to decode the other’s behaviour, as we may assume that what is established in the fictional narrative to be accurate. A paradox is thus created: “to read ‘she felt happy’ is the most natural thing in the world: we know what it is to feel happy. In another sense, it is the oddest: we do not know and can never know what it is to experience directly how another person can feel happy” (Palmer 10). This acknowledges, first, that fiction is capable of granting close access to the thoughts of another — an access which, unlike in interpersonal interaction, we can assume to be accurate or ‘true’; second, it suggests that the mind and its workings are at once individual (private and non-communicable) and a collective (public, or shared) experience. This idea can be related to Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the body as the channel or intermediary through which our inner worlds are exteriorized, and therefore made understandable, meaning that, as anthropologist Clifford Geertz argued, “thought is consummately social” (quoted in Palmer 11). In interacting, our bodies’ behaviours make us — our minds — accessible, and in the same way, others can make themselves accessible to us. This process takes place very similarly through fiction, as the intentional descriptions of characters’ thoughts and actions (the descriptions of their minds and bodies) are used to give crucial information about them: Just as in real life the individual constructs the minds of others from their behavior and speech, so the reader infers the workings of fictional minds and sees these minds in action from observation of character’s behavior and speech. In one sense, as Laing says, we are invisible to each other. But in another sense the workings of our minds are perfectly visible to others in our actions, and the workings of fictional minds are perfectly visible to readers from characters’ actions. (Palmer 11) Palmer is thus critical of some of the more formalist and structuralist narratological approaches, such as Vladimir Propp’s (1928) or Joseph Campbell’s (1949). These approaches create character typologies according to the roles — or “functions”, to use Propp’s own term — which they occupy or carry out in the tale, so that Palmer argues that they regard the characters as types, instead of individual beings, thus forfeiting the consideration as minds or consciousnesses that Palmer advocates for. If narrative truly is a process of communication of a self, and “if the ways in which characters are constructed by readers are to be fully understood, 54 they have to be regarded as fictional beings that are related to world view and time-space” (Palmer 30), that is, as more than inalterable typologies. To do so, Palmer argues, requires a step beyond the bounds of these perspectives, without making the mistake of disregarding their analytical worth, insofar as characters can function both ways — as “elements in the narrative structure as well as beings” (Palmer 31). Given that characters are not self-contained entities, but rather interact with different levels of the narrative and are “at the same time devices in the communication of meaning” (Jannidis, Paragraph 25), action or function is not the only device or role through which they can communicate meaning, which is why other approaches propose different descriptors (see Pelan 1987, Eder 2008). Manfred Jahn theorizes that this evolution of narratology has tended towards more flexible conceptions of its categories, considering them more dependent on interpretation than they previously were. As far as characters are concerned, Jahn argues that they are most often conceived of as “pragmatic identities […], situated entities driven by affects, purposes, motives and intentions” (Jahn, “Postclassical Narratology”), much as non-fictional identities are seen to be. In order to give fictional characters this dimension, Palmer proposes regarding the physical happenings recounted in the narrative “not as events”, as Ricoeur termed them, “but as experiences” (Palmer 31, italics in original). While Ricoeur’s emplotment involved individuals choosing to recount certain events from which they drew meaning in order to construct a coherent identity, Palmer argues that fictional narratives choose certain events as part of their plot precisely because of the impact they have upon the fictional character’s minds. In other words, narrative events are in fact the personal experiences that have most affected the construction of this fictional identity; therefore, they will also impact the readers’ construction of these fictional entities, as readers are encouraged to draw meaning from the characters’ feelings, reactions, and responses to such events. The role of readers is therefore crucial in the construction of fictional characters, since “a reader must project a pragmatic identity on fictional characters in order to understand description and narrated perception, speech, and action” as well as to “invest them [the characters] with psychological identities” (Jahn, “Postclassical Narratology”). Similarly, Palmer argues that these “mental events […] have to be recovered (rightly or wrongly) by the reader from the discourse as part of the operation of assembling characters’ purported mental functioning” (Palmer 31). These descriptions of the process of characterization, as a “succession of individual operations that result in a continual patterning and repatterning until a coherent fictional personality emerges” (40), call to mind the above-described process of emplotment, the collecting and retelling of life stories and events through which a coherent, cohesive identity is born. In the same way as individuals, in non-fictional interactions, come to deduce another’s character from their actions, and tend to interpret subsequent interactions in light of that information, so do readers craft a character’s identity “from an individual action […] toward a supposed disposition or trait”, while “subsequent actions are interpreted by the reader in the context of the whole of the character’s mind as hypothesized up until that point” (Palmer 40). This is why, despite the fictional mind’s inherent unchangeability, it is still possible for characters to be mutable: they evolve for as long as they inhabit the readers’ minds, as new information is progressively revealed that makes it possible to interpret the characters’ actions differently, thus changing the shape of their identities. To conceive of a fictional character as “non-actual”, as a being “who exists in a possible world and who can be ascribed physical, social, and mental properties” (Palmer 38), allows to deduce that fiction can be — and, indeed, is — incorporated into regular processes of identity construction, as the characters come to be perceived as functional identities for as long as individuals interact with and absorb their narratives. If the other is the mirror in which we seek 55 ourselves, and if fiction can take up that position, then fiction itself becomes a mirror — which inevitably brings to mind, yet again, the mimetic doctrine. Toril Moi refers to this approach to fiction as mimesis as “extreme reflectionism”, which posits that the artist’s selective creation should be measured against ‘real life’, thus assuming that the only constraint on the artist’s work is his or her perception of the ‘real world’. [… W]riting is seen as a more or less faithful reproduction of an external reality to which we all have equal and unbiased access. (Moi 45) This position therefore continues to uphold the idea that fiction is a reflection of an external, objective ‘reality’, which then takes on the character of truth as established in Chapter 1. However, if — as was also established in Chapter 1 — reality is multiple, “not only something we construct, but a controversial construct at that” (Moi 45), this means that fiction is itself constructed from a distinct and individualized point of view. The authors’ positions on the grid, their situated knowledges and distinct perspectives — their ways of seeing — are imprinted into the fiction. Given that the privileges inherent to the position of universal subject have ensured that the creation of fictional narratives is most accessible to those in said position, and given that fiction is not an independent entity — it is in constant interaction with the narratives structuring the world we inhabit —, it is easy to understand how, as previously argued, fiction will tend to reflect and reinforce the narratives predominantly at work in primary reality; yet, simultaneously, it becomes more difficult to argue that misrepresentation is a possibility. It is the idea that there is a single, objective reality to be referenced that “enables us to criticize the author on the grounds that he or she has created an incorrect model of the reality we somehow all know” (Moi 45). It is easy to infer how this problematizes the fictional representation of otherness. On the one hand, even if the predominance of specific narratives results in the fictional reflections being inaccurate or distorted when representing non-dominant narratives, an argument could be made that these are simply different perceptions of that particular reality. Many authors — such as Judith Butler and bell hooks as seen in the previous chapter, as well as Gayatri Spivak in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” — have already questioned the possibility for identity categories to be represented in any way that may be deemed accurate, or that truly conveys what it means to exist within the social and cultural parameters that define those identity categories. Identity categories tend towards essentialism, toward finding common ground from which to build a universalistic category, so that they risk the superimposition of an individual experience over the differences which compose any identity category, as well as the other categories and associated narratives that intersect with them. But, to recall the case study of choice, if even a woman “cannot be trusted to speak accurately for and about ‘women’, then how is it possible to speak about ‘women’ at all?” (Moya, “Introduction” 4). Sara Ahmed explains this issue in terms of “speaking for”: she holds that the “universalism of ‘speaking for’ the other […] is premised on fantasies of absolute proximity or absolute distance” (Encounters 166), which embodies the duality inherent to the other position. To speak for the other, or to attempt to represent the other, involves on the one hand “a refusal to encounter, to get close enough to face the others; it judges from afar by reading ‘the other’ as a sign of the universal” (Ahmed, Encounters 166, italics in original). On the other hand, this universalism is also “a fantasy of proximity”, a fantasy that “one can inhabit the place of the other, that one already knows what ‘the other’ means (and therefore needs)” (Encounters 166). Thus, in attempting to represent the other, the subject does so from a perspective external to its otherness, which leads to assumptions and 56 inferences derived from their own situated (hence biased) knowledges; in turn, this erases the particularities of the other’s difference, or presents them under a negative light with respect to the subject’s own qualities, which are socially dominant. In the context of fiction, then, this universalistic tendency means that fictional representations tend to speak for social others in ways that are questionable, insofar as they contribute to the other’s social and discursive position as marginal — or else to its erasure, by depriving it of representation entirely. Yet, if to qualify these representations as “inauthentic” or somehow unfaithful to an external reality would be to err on the side of mimesis, how may one criticize them at all for their perceived shortcomings? Well, to consider the ‘real’ as a subjective, mutable construct does not mean that fictional works cannot be held accountable for the ways in which they misrepresent individuals or experiences. Instead of for “failing to be ‘true to life’” or “not presenting ‘an authentic expression of real experience’”, these misrepresentations should be criticized on grounds of “having selected and shaped their fictional universe according to oppressive and objectionable ideological assumptions” (Moi 45-46). In other words, what can be denounced is not the fiction’s authenticity, or lack thereof, but the bias in the facets of reality that they choose to represent. This inevitably present bias of fiction also influences its possibilities as a mirror. Since, as argued above, fiction also reflects the human mind, offering up fictional narratives of identity, its consumers (readers, as well as viewers, or players) can find within them a reflection of themselves. However, regardless of how much the readers’ experiences differ from those depicted in the fiction, they will still look for themselves within it. They turn to the narratives offered by fiction as they might towards a reflective surface, seeking to reaffirm their selves even as they are confronted with fictional minds deeply unlike their own. In order to explain “how ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ worlds”, and minds, “may interrelate psychologically” (Andringa 208), theorists have turned to two major concepts in particular: empathy and identification. The former will be dealt with in the subsequent chapter; identification, on the other hand, is a psychoanalytical term defined as “a psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides” (Laplanche and Pontalis, quoted in Roth 58). Freud also pointed out that identification takes place when an individual “finds it difficult to part from the object and thus introjects him as part of his ‘ego’ by identifying with him” (quoted in Roth 58). The term has been repurposed to speak more specifically of what happens within the reader during the consumption of fiction; in this sense, Roth interestingly argues that “in real life the other remains for ever different and an outsider”, thus implying that interactions in primary reality, with non-fictional others, are less “powerful and experiential” than interactions with fictional minds (57), and thus result in less knowledge of the other than that allowed by fiction. In Roth’s words, Reading a book […] incorporates within what is happening to and in the other, as told in a much deeper and complex manner than that which is perceived through our senses in real life, enabling us to also feel ourselves and the complex processes of change we are undergoing through identifying with the literary character. (57) It is possible that identification with fictional minds may entail some sort of introjection or ‘ego-confusion’, which Roth refers to as “internalized identification” — by which the “object or its characteristics become part of the representations of the self” (59). According to these definitions, identification would have a stronger impact — and thus result in better, deeper 57 knowledge of the other — when it takes place with fictional minds than with non-fictional others. However disputable this idea may be, it nonetheless serves to emphasize the fact that a difference is often perceived in the way we approach fictional minds with respect to nonfictional others. Some theorists have contested these ideas on the basis that readers act and react “as witnesses to what happens to the characters and thus cannot substitute themselves for them” (see Andringa 208). According to this approach, readers establish an affective relationship with fictional minds and are thus affected by them only insofar as they witness and come to an understanding of their situations and emotional states. Andringa, for instance, proposes a middle ground by defining identification simply as “the feeling or the belief that one shares qualities, emotional experiences, or attitudes with another (existing or fictitious) person” (208-209). This suggests an element of what Roth refers to as internalized identification, as it requires an assimilation of the other’s aspects on the subject’s part; simultaneously, however, it also implies a measure of what Roth calls “projective identification”, insofar as it requires the individual to “[project] an aspect of his inner world on to and into the object” (Roth 65; see also Andringa 209). In other words, we do not simply relate to the fiction as witnesses, nor do we simply project our own beliefs and emotions onto the fictional characters as with some sort of blank slate — as we might, unimpeded, in the reflection of an actual mirror. Rather, identification involves both introjection and projection in a very complex process that can, and necessarily does, shift during the reading as the experience of the fictional text evolves. It is thus no wonder that typologies of identification vary quite wildly: where Roth, following psychoanalysis, establishes seven kinds of identification (see Chapter 3 of A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature, pp. 55-79), Andringa follows Schoenmakers and van Vliet in recognizing only two: “similarity identification”, based on the recognition of similarities between the readers and the fiction, or “wish identification”, whereby readers “perceive aspects or qualities they would like to have or to be like” (209). In other words, one works on the basis of resemblance and the other of aspiration, yet in either case the identification involves a search for a reflection, either of oneself or of an ideal, perfected version of oneself. It is important to notice, however, that similarity identification is not necessarily based on positive traits: while recalling the understanding of identification as “imitating models”, Slavoj Žižek notes that “the feature, the trait on the basis of which we identify with someone, is usually hidden — it is by no means necessarily a glamorous feature” (117), and is in fact often a flaw, or a hidden fear, or any negative trait that the subject may feel the need to conceal from others. While there can be negative consequences to this process (see Roth’s Chapter 3 for a psychoanalytical interpretation of these), identification is still, as far as fiction is concerned, responsible for the creation of “involvement as an emotional consequence”, as well as what establishes “a relationship between the recipient and the world of fiction” (Andringa 210, italics in original). In fact, it may be argued that identification is what makes it possible for the text to act as “a kind of mirror” (Implied Reader 281), in Wolfgang Iser’s words. Iser himself argues that this is so because the reader’s experience of the text “will reflect his own disposition” (Implied Reader 281), and also because each perspective or position within the text “appears against the others and is therefore not only itself but also a reflection and an illuminator of those others” (Iser, Act 98). Even so, he is still sceptical of over-reliance on the idea of reflection, or sameness, to explain the relationship between the reader and the text, reasoning that “[a] response that depends upon the reader finding a reflection of himself could scarcely bring the reader anything new” (Act 43, italics in original). This is because reflection is not an intersubjective experience, as suggested by the implicit power dynamic of the mirror: it is not an 64 to Judith Butler’s theory. In recognizing the hegemony of male discourse and male sexuality, which also dominate the fictional space, De Lauretis develops her theory under the assumption that the creation of alternative constructions and depictions of gender is only possible by operating “in the margins of hegemonic discourse” (De Lauretis 18, italics in original). This would mean seizing woman’s enforcedly liminal position as an other and subverting it to work for her, instead of against her — making her difference into an advantage to create a “view from elsewhere” that counteracts patriarchal social discourse (25). Interestingly, Althusser himself had also briefly considered the idea that the exploited class of individuals may take advantage of the very same apparatuses being enforced, and use their mechanisms to turn “the weapon of ideology against the classes in power” (21), deconstructing it with its own tools. Judith Butler also put forward a very similar line of thought in Gender Trouble by hinting at strategies that may use the very performance of gender in order to subvert it: “if the category […] is established through repeated acts, then the social action of bodies within the cultural field can withdraw the very power of reality that they themselves invested in the category” (Butler 168). Simply put, if bodily acts create a narrative that construes gender as a category, then the ontology created by this discourse can be deconstructed by re-signifying those same acts, or by performing different ones. As examples, concerning gender, Butler mentions parodic and imitative practices such as drag: in parodying the actions and behaviours which socially construct gender, they “implicitly [reveal] the imitative structure of gender itself — as well as its contingency” (Butler 187, italics in original), therefore openly re-appropriating the practice in order to subvert it and thus resignifying it — “unmasking the spectacle enacted for [our] gaze” (Žižek 119). The similarities of these arguments to De Lauretis’ are interesting precisely because she applies these ideas specifically to fictional representation, thus showing how fictional narratives, despite being used as instruments to reinforce and sustain hegemonic narratives of domination, can also be used conversely — to work against the systems of power in place by creating those “views from elsewhere” (De Lauretis 25). Diana Tietjens-Meyers refers to these as “counterfigurations”, which involve contesting hegemonic imagery in order to dislodge culturally normative prejudice (60). Tietjens-Meyers states that “the proliferation of self-generated figurations of socially excluded groups has the advantage of underscoring the contestability of all cultural figurations and thus politicizes them” (107). In other words, the self-representations of social others are able to highlight the constructedness and political nature of existing, hegemonic cultural narratives, exposing their universal applicability as a fraud and hence creating a counteractive discourse. Interestingly, De Lauretis suggests that the problem is not that these counterfigurations — these subversive representations of woman — have not yet been (or cannot be, as Irigaray had argued) produced, but rather “that what we have produced is not recognizable, precisely, as a representation” (De Lauretis 25) due to its limited effects. These individual narratives are not perceived to have repercussions on the status quo, on the symbolic system of grand narratives which orchestrate and constrict the social world; their effect is noticeable only at a smaller scale, at the level of “micropolitical practices of daily life and daily resistances” (De Lauretis 25), at “the ‘local’ level of resistances, in subjectivity and self-representation” (18). Thus, the impact of subversive fictional representations works, necessarily, at a local level, often limited to the very marginalities they represent rather than the system as a whole. It is these margins, however, that seem best suited to chip away at the base of the system, as both hooks and Henze suggest. De Lauretis also conceives of them as the perfect site of resistance, though this statement encapsulates a larger site of debate than this work can currently concern itself with. Nonetheless, I would posit that appealing to the very marginalities that need representation by 65 offering images from those same margins is in itself a most subversive act, as such representations are what was lacking to begin with. Henze’s own interpretation of the concept of identification comes in handy to elaborate on this point: he differentiates between “imaginary identification”10, a claim of one’s experience as equivalent to another’s, and “imaginative identification”, a recognition by which “individuals make the political decision to understand their experiences as like that of others” (Henze 241, italics mine). This means that individuals make a conscious decision to identify with others on the basis of perceived similarity, yet without attempting to assimilate this into an illusion of complete, seamless sameness. This, Henze argues, is a political choice, one meant to drive the movement of resistance forward by seeking common ground through empathy with the other’s experience — by recognizing it as similar to one’s own, and hence rendering it understandable. This makes the act of telling, of relaying one’s experiences through fiction, acquire a political dimension in two ways: in the telling, which is “performed for [the tellers] themselves (they are informing others of their conditions, their lives) and for their readers” (Henze 240); and in the interpreting of those narratives, because the “process of individual interpretation, drawing on the resources brought together by the group as a whole”, is what begins to produce collectivity by fostering understanding (240). Instead of being spoken for, as Ahmed put it, the mechanisms of fictional narratives allow social others to find their ability to speak for themselves and to represent themselves through these images, which work from their perspective to express their position on the grid and what it means to exist in its margins — the images which the authors in Chapter 1 expressed the need for. Such counterfigurations may, of course, have an effect in the hegemonic, privileged subject consuming them, in shifting their perceptions of their privileged position on the grid so that they may “recognize their situatedness in oppressive systems of power even if they do not directly experience those systems as oppressive”, and “learn to participate responsibly in them” (Henze 245). In presenting them with otherness in the form of a fictional mind that they are encouraged to identify with, their identification with the social other may begin to transform from symbolic, in Žižek’s conception, to imaginative, as per Henze’s definition — making these subjects cognizant of difference without attempting to absorb or assimilate it into some form of sameness. Valuable as the possibility of shifting the values and perceptions of the hegemonic subject is, I would still argue that the most significant benefit of fictional narratives lies in these self-representations being oriented and meant for the margins — towards other social others. This is because fictional narratives, in creating or else encouraging the recovery of voice and agency, contribute to altering these others’ self-perception as such. In the first and second chapters it was argued that social others find their process of identity formation impeded by the social and ideological systems which orchestrate their construction as such: they are forced to construct and perceive themselves as ‘other’, and hence to define themselves in the negative, as fundamentally lacking what would make them agential subjects. Chapter three shows how these others are also denied the positive reinforcement of their identity that subjects gain from fictional narratives, since they are ‘other’ and hence must identify with a position, a gaze, that is not their own — and which, in turn, makes them adapt to its requirements. This results in an enforced silencing, taking away their ability to self-represent. In order for them to be recognized as subjects in the current social order, as hooks argues, they must first reclaim the voice (and consequently the agency) taken from them. In simple terms, social change is made possible only by first facilitating change at an individual level, 10 Not to be confused with Žižek’s idea of “imaginary identification”, which he defines as “identification with the image in which we appear likeable to ourselves, with the image representing ‘what we would like to be’”, and which contrasts with the aforementioned “symbolic identification, identification with the very place from where we are being observed” (116). 66 the “local level of resistances” which De Lauretis so valued; and fictional narratives can prove useful, if not fundamental, tools to shift that self-perception. Fiction opens a door for the other to self-represent, to create representations — fictional minds — that look, think and exist like them: images that are created from their own position and which express their experiences in their own terms. In self-representing, the very idea of otherness is re-signified: they bypass oppressive mechanisms that reinforce its negative perceptions, such as the male gaze, and reappropriate the parts of their identity that had been seen and told from hegemonic perspectives. This provides a positive reinforcement for these subalterns’ sense of self. The fictional consciousnesses that they can identify with — in the sense of Henze’s imaginative identification, of seeing themselves, or someone like themselves, in these images — are incorporated into the self-narratives of those consuming the fictional narrative, a transformative incorporation that favours their movement from other to subject. Kevin Quashie expresses it, thinking specifically of Blackness, as “imagin[ing] a black world” (1): We do not live in a black world, this is true. But the as-if of such imagining can inspire how we might navigate the world that we indeed live in, the one that is antiblack and that resists and resents and despises our being. We do not live in a black world, but in a poem there is an orientation of such being waiting for us, these poems in our hands as a world of invitation. (154) The invitation condensed in these “poems”, these fictions, is an invitation “to imagine how we want to be in the world and then to move toward that being” (Quashie 147). For those who are named ‘other’, the very act of identifying themselves as subjects is an act of resistance: once this crucial shift in self-perception is achieved, or proven achievable, these liberated subjects become able to articulate active socio-political resistance against the hegemonic ideologies attempting to enforce their otherness. CHAPTER 4: FICTION AND THE READER Art is always made for the other, an imaginary other, it is true, but an other nevertheless. Art is a reaching toward, a bid to be seen and understood and recognized by another. (Siri Hustvedt) Even if we accept that fiction has the potential to represent the oppressed as full, recognizable subjects, and hence to encourage them to gain their voice and agency, there is still the question of how such acts of self-representation may gain significance beyond that “local level”, beyond the individuals affected by the hegemonic power structures. After all, if “mass media ignore the figurations that socially excluded groups conceive for themselves, [… h]ardly anyone will be exposed to [them], and [they] will not gain currency” (Tietjens-Meyers 113). Additionally, desirable as it is, widespread exposure to these representations is difficult to achieve and is no guarantee for widespread social change — likely not enough, in itself, to produce any significant shift in the systems at work. One may thus very well wonder what the ‘real’ impact of fictional representations in and beyond the consumer truly is — whether these ideal counterfigurations, in forcing a re-examination and thus eventual deconstruction of grand narratives, can become realized and have noticeable consequences for the fabric of our social and interpersonal primary reality. Reader-response theories seem like the best path towards a possible answer: if fictional narratives are to have extra-textual effects, if an “exchange between fiction and life” is to take place (Andringa 211), it must by necessity — as suggested in the previous chapter — take place through the consumers, the readers. Following the consistency of the mirror image, then, I have selected theories which point to the ways in which patterns of fictional consumption reproduce the specular dynamic, while simultaneously questioning it and its workings. The examination of theories of narrative empathy that follows provides a possible mechanism by which the effects of fiction may extend beyond the individuals in the moment of reading, as well as beyond the individuals’ self-perception into their relationships with the world around them. 4.1 Fiction and the Reader’s Response Roman Ingarden’s theory merits brief consideration, given the significant influence it had on later theorists and particularly on Wolfgang Iser, whose take on reader-response is the focus of this chapter. Ingarden grants the literary work a certain “character of reality”, which is nonetheless “not to be fully identified with the ontic character of truly existing real objects. In represented objectivities there is only an external habitus of reality, which does not intend, as it were, to be taken seriously, although, when the work is read, it can often happen that the reader […] considers to be real intentional objects which only simulate reality” (Ingarden 221). This phrasing seems to suggest that the literary work possesses an ontology of its own, yet importantly, Ingarden still seems to perceive it as a simulation, as lacking some quality which is fundamentally necessary to possess the condition of real. In spite of this, it is clear that the 68 narrative has some effect beyond itself, as a “good representation forces us” to “fictitiously transpose ourselves into the represented center of orientation and wander about in the represented world in fictione” (Ingarden 231). Though Ingarden does not clarify what constitutes a “good representation”, it might be deducible from his later statements that he regards it positively if it possesses “objective consistency” — that is, if the representation of the object or individual retains consistency throughout the work in order to properly simulate reality (302). This is similar to Ricoeur’s suggestion that narratives require coherence in order to be effective, and betrays the idea that a good representation is one that simulates reality — in other words, one that is mimetic. While willing to grant the fictional narrative a character of reality, Ingarden still conceives of literature as a derivation, an imitation — a reflection of reality, and not an act of ontological construction. Despite these reservations, however, Ingarden seems willing to admit that the work of fiction is capable of having extra-textual effects, at the very least upon the feelings and reactions of the person who consumes it: “The most important function that represented objective situations can perform is in exhibiting and manifesting determinate metaphysical qualities” (Ingarden 293), among which he numbers “the sublime, the tragic, the dreadful, the shocking, the inexplicable, the demonic, the holy, the sorrowful, the indescribable brightness of good fortune”, and so on (Ingarden 290-291). Ingarden argues that we are often oblivious or unable to contemplate these qualities, or experience them properly, due to their rarity and the very condition of our human experience. The work of art, on the other hand, by representing the situation in which the metaphysical quality is produced, allows it to be “genuinely manifested” so that “we are deeply moved by what is represented, even though it may be something that never really occurred” (Ingarden 297). This is again similar to Ricoeur’s idea of imaginative variations, as Ingarden admits that the work of fiction “can give us, at least in microcosm and as reflection, what we can never attain in real life” (293): it is a thought experiment by which we gain access to reflections of other experiences. In this line, Wolfgang Iser partially builds his theory on Ingarden’s work, but appears to go against previous aesthetic theories by depriving the text of its absolute authority as regards its own meaning. Iser believes that if meaning were already there, simply waiting to be deciphered, the very task of interpretation would be meaningless, as there would be nothing for the reader to do. This conception of interpretation as having the ultimate goal of deciphering meaning is derived from a binary approach to the relationship text/reader, as though it were the same subject/object dynamic previously applied to perception. This makes the meaning of the text into the object, which the reader — the subject — attempts to decode. Iser’s theory is groundbreaking in establishing meaning not as a static, predetermined object, but rather “the product of an interaction between the textual signals and the reader’s acts of comprehension” (Act 9). By discarding the binary text/reader, object/subject division, Iser turns the act of reading into a dynamic process by which both affect one another, much in the same way Merleau-Ponty turned the act of perception into mutual recognition. This is highly significant, as it establishes an intersubjective dynamic between text and reader where the former guides the interpretive act via textual strategies and structures, just as an individual can guide interpretations of their identity through bodily performances; however, unlike previous theories assumed, the text cannot exercise full control over the reader’s actualizations of it (see Iser, Act 24-25). This eliminates the idea of a one-sided imposition of meaning, and suggests that the reader is capable of not just interpreting but also of transforming the text. Importantly, Iser recognizes that “fictional texts constitute their own objects and do not copy something already in existence”, which is why “they cannot have the total determinacy of real objects” (Act 24). While this “total determinacy” of the “real” is certainly up for debate, it 69 is in these indeterminacies of the text that its control slips, allowing the reader’s input through a “spectrum of actualizations” (24). In other words, it is because these gaps exist that a multiplicity of interpretations becomes possible, which is why each reader is allowed a concretization, as Iser calls it — an interpretation derived from the reader’s (dis)position and background. To explain interpretation, Iser develops a so-called theme/horizon structure: the theme is the perspective in the foreground, that which the reader occupies at a given moment during the reading. This could be the narrator’s perspective, or that of a character, the plot, or even a specific space which the text designates for the reader to fill. This foreground is, however, always situated before the horizon of other perspectives which the reader occupied prior to the reading, and which now constitute the background of the reading experience. The dialectic between these two kinds of situated knowledges allows to unfold connections between the different textual and extra-textual perspectives, among which readers make a selection that influences their gestalt — their “consistent interpretation” of the text, and “a product of the interaction between text and reader” that cannot be traced exclusively back to either (Iser, Act 119). This process of selection varies among readers, and is conditioned by many factors, determined in no small part by readers’ dispositions and the backgrounds within which they operate, which Iser refers to as interpretive frameworks. While noticeably similar to the previously described mechanisms of perception and communication, the fundamental difference is that gestalt-forming — interpretation — involves an active role for the reader, who, rather than remaining passive, participates in the creation of textual meaning: “We always stand outside the given object, whereas we are situated inside the literary text. The relation between text and reader is therefore quite different from that between object and observer” (Iser, Act 109) because, in reading, become “caught up in the very thing we are producing” (Act 127). Such deep involvement is necessarily an illusion derived from the reading, but “we cannot, strictly speaking, watch ourselves having an illusion” (Gombrich, quoted in Iser, Act 127). Despite the illusory character which he grants to fiction, Iser therefore makes a similar point to Palmer in declaring that “in reading we think the thoughts of another person” (Act 126): “Whenever I read, I mentally pronounce an I, and yet the I which I pronounce is not myself” (Poulet, quoted in Iser, Act 154). Therefore, regardless of its being an “illusion”, fiction does alter our perspective, shifting our interpretive framework to adapt and suit that of the fictional world, as well as that of the perspective which we are encouraged to inhabit. This experience of the thoughts of another “must to a greater or lesser degree represent an unfamiliar experience […] which at any one moment must be partially inaccessible to us. For this reason, our selections tend to be guided by those parts of the experience that still seem to be familiar” (Act 126). If fiction-reading is an exploration of the mind of another, Iser is here arguing that we, as readers, attempt to access that experience and to immerse ourselves in it by first looking for what is familiar to us — driven by the “need to familiarize the unfamiliar” (Iser, Act 43) to facilitate our understanding. This need, and the fact that it is set into motion by the process of identification, shows that the process of consuming fiction may endow us with knowledge that enables the comprehension of another’s experience. Furthermore, it makes it so that the text can still have an effect on our emotional and personal responses, despite our awareness of its fictional nature. An illusion it may be, but it is one with considerable power — and with very ‘real’ consequences. As a consequence, we do not grasp the text “like an empirical object; nor do we comprehend it like a predicative fact; it owes its presence in our minds to our own reactions, and it is these that make us animate the meaning of the text as a reality” (Iser, Act 129). In other words, unlike objects with an empirical existence in primary reality, a text cannot exist — or, at least, its 70 purpose cannot be fulfilled — without being read, without the reader’s input. It is only through the reader that the text achieves its full realization, which explains the readers’ active role in the interpretive process: far from being limited to the passive absorption and internalization of textual content, the text is a trigger, rather than a source — one that kickstarts a process of reassembling and synthesizing. Though this process takes place within the reader in its entirety, it is only consistent interaction with the text that makes this process possible and, indeed, successful. Given this active role of the reader, Iser’s theory is of particular interest because the intersubjective structure of fiction-reading whereby text and reader affect one another suggests the possibility that the knowledge gained from the text, despite its fictional nature, is able to influence and even shift the reader’s previously held perspectives and ideas. Hence Iser’s admission that the text can act as “a kind of mirror” (Implied Reader 281), despite his scepticism about reflection as explained in chapter 3. Much like knowledge of another human being, however, one’s interpretation of the text is never complete; in fact, Iser goes as far as to claim that “total consumption of the text”, the total realization of its meaning, “would itself be ruinous to literature” (Act 29), because it would exhaust the possibilities of the text and render it obsolete, finite. Similarly, total knowledge of another individual can never be complete, and indeed it perhaps should not be: assuming that our interpretation of what existing as another entails is complete would imply that the other has nothing more to interest us, turning interaction into an unproductive process. If there is a reflection to be found in fiction, then, it is through the intersubjective relationship which Iser suggests, which places both text and reader in a place of equality and mutual interaction. Thus, the exercise of piecing a text together, of capturing textual signals and using them to fill in the blanks of information, as well as of inhabiting new perspectives for extended periods of time, can constitute good practice for the exercise of intersubjective communication with another individual. However, there are specifics to the act of reading — certain crucial differences which set it apart from actual interpersonal communication, despite the similarities between both processes. In fictional consumption, “there is no face-to-face situation” (Iser, Act 166), so that it is impossible for text and reader to learn directly from one another in each specific situation: the “text cannot adapt itself to each reader with whom it comes in contact”, and the reader “can never learn from the text how accurate or inaccurate are his views of it” (Act 166). Furthermore, interaction “has a regulative context” which the interlocutors can reference, yet there is “no such frame of reference governing the text-reader relationship” (Act 166), where the frameworks of the text and the reader are not only different, but in many cases conflicting. On top of this, there is the added layer of difficulty that the text is not an active, sentient entity, so that it falls upon the reader to reassemble “the codes which might regulate this interaction […] before any frame of reference can be established” (Iser, Act 166). Yet the reader must still bounce off of the text, for to fill its blanks and reassemble an interpretation according exclusively to the reader’s own projections is to fail in the communicative process (see Iser, Act 167). This makes each concretization of the text not completely subjective, but rather, as mentioned above, guided by textual structures and strategies — so that the text is always the point of departure, regardless of how differently its gaps may be filled and its meanings restructured. The subject’s active participation in the text means that this consuming subject constitutes no small part of the narrative that is being consumed, thus allowing for the possibility of interpretive bias; yet the text’s guidelines and set-out perspectives are there precisely to limit and direct the reader’s input. This is how “the same intersubjective structure of the literary text may give rise to so many different subjective realizations”, because readers interpret from different positions, yet “without this structure [of the text] there could be no basis 71 for comparing and assessing interpretations” (Iser, Act 118). The significance of this is that our experience of a fictional mind, as accessed via the fictional text, can also be accessed by others in turn, and therefore compared, criticized, and even altered by their perceptions of our textual experience. This is why interpretations of a text are still subject to change even after the reading ends, because they are influenced by the concretizations of others and their opinions on our own — as well as by one’s own re-readings of the text. This means two things: firstly, that by composing a literary text, marginalized individuals can include their perspective — their gestalt — within the writing for it to be reassembled by the reader, guiding their interpretation towards a different perception of what it means to exist as this specific marginal identity, and thus partly explaining the importance of making space for the voices and presences of marginalized subjects in creative fields. Secondly, it means that the resulting interpretation may be further questioned and revised in real-world contexts, thus giving way to re-interpretation and critical analysis that develop and dissect the new knowledge obtained through the fiction, thus contributing to its having a more lasting effect or impression on the consuming subject. In turn, this may aid in the deconstruction of dominant discourses around the social position of these marginalized individuals. In fact, Iser holds that the only successful outcome of the reading process is for “changes in the reader’s projections” to be produced: “It is only through readjustment of his own projections that the reader can experience something previously not within his experience” (Act 167), and hence acquire useful knowledge that will alter previously-held perspectives. These theories thus support the understanding of fiction as a learning process, a tool which provides an approach to otherness — to another mind, another experience, even another world — which enables a fuller, more complete understanding of difference, and is thus capable of prompting a different response to it. Therefore, the learning process, the new knowledge obtained through the fictional work, implies potential extratextual impact: it may shift the readers’ perceptions, both of their own and of other identities, as well as their social, cultural, and ethical politics and beliefs. In turn, this would become a catalyst — or create the adequate mental state — for further, deeper extratextual changes beyond the individual, by making it harder to pass judgement on difference, or depersonalize it, or dismiss it. While reader-response theory does not delve much further on the mechanisms by which the consumer of fiction may be encouraged to take this fictionally-earned knowledge and apply it to real individuals or situations, this argument is precisely what some theorists of narrative empathy (and of empathy in general, as a psychosocial process) have focused on. 4.2 Fiction and the Empathic Response The following quote encapsulates the major arguments thus far: “We read the world, especially the people we encounter” (Iacoboni 3, italics in original). In interacting with the world around us, and with other individuals in it, we constantly interpret it and are interpreted in turn. There is no perception without interpretation: as we do with fictional texts, we take signals and cues (bodily or otherwise) from others in order to discern what they are doing, what they are thinking, and what they are feeling. Science puzzled over human understanding and sharing of feelings up until the discovery of so-called mirror neurons, which it now continues to puzzle over. Experimental evidence has shown that this special kind of neurons would fire both when individuals themselves perform an action, and when the same or a similar action is performed by somebody else, thus mirroring the other’s behaviour (see Iacoboni 10-11). Further neurological studies suggest that these neurons may be at the core of the physical mirroring or mimicry which humans and primates perform, and which is a fundamental part of their psychosocial development. Imitation contributes to the development and proper functioning of these mirror 72 neurons, which seem to “originate early in life when other people’s behavior is the reflection of our own behavior” (Iacoboni 134, italics in original). Therefore, empirical data suggests that mirror neurons are at the core of what makes us relate to others, which contributes to the explanation of intersubjectivity and of the self’s primordial need for others from a neurological, scientific point of view: growing up in isolation is shown to render the individual unable “to develop self-recognition” properly, whereas a “rich social context facilitates it”, the crucial factor being “the presence of others — the continuous relations and interactions one must have with other individuals” (Iacoboni 139). Indeed, because mirror neurons are only activated through the interaction between self and other, “[s]elf-recognition and imitation go together” (Iacoboni 135). While this study is not concerned with neuroscientific investigation, I bring up the discovery and ongoing research on the workings of mirror neurons not simply because it aptly follows and supports the use of the mirror as a structuring trope for this study, but also because they demonstrate the human predisposition to empathy — given that they are considered to be (one of) the biological source(s) behind empathic response. Marco Iacoboni describes his own scientific experiments, carried out in pursuit of this hypothesis, in chapter four of his book Mirroring People. His results appear to suggest that mirror neuron areas help us understand the emotions of other people by some form of inner imitation. According to this […] hypothesis of empathy, our mirror neurons fire when we see others expressing their emotions, as if we were making those facial expressions ourselves. By means of this firing, the neurons also send signals to emotional brain centers in the limbic system to make us feel what other people feel. (Iacoboni 119) This process is “effortless, automatic, and unconscious” (120, italics in original), so that the individual does not actually have the intention to understand the other, nor is making a conscious effort to do so. The brain carries out the process almost instinctively: when the neurons fire, the brain behaves in such a way as if it were actually experiencing the same emotion as another — but this, much like the involvement created through fiction, is a simulated response to a perceived trigger. However, the fact that it is a simulation does not take away its power and potential. The brain acts and behaves as if we were experiencing the same emotion, even down to the biological, organic mechanisms that activate in the experience of empathy. Furthermore, although Iacoboni’s study places a great deal of emphasis on visual perception by focusing on facial expressions (which goes back to the issue of ocularcentrism and its limitations), other experiments suggest that “more abstract situations” where the face, body, and other gestures are not immediately visible can still produce empathy “by mirroring the affective aspect of pain” (Iacoboni 124). In this case, the active areas of the brain correspond to those “that process the emotional aspect of pain”, rather than the “tactile” or “sensory regions” (125), meaning it is still possible to process empathic response even if the individual does not personally feel physical pain or directly watch another feeling it. Therefore, this idea offers an explanation for how fiction can trigger empathy, producing emotional and psychological responses in the reader that are similar to those produced by non-fictional individuals and empirical triggers. Iacoboni himself argues that we “have empathy for the fictional characters — we know how they’re feeling — because we literally experience the same feelings ourselves” (4),11 a process which 11 Though there seems to be no direct scientific data regarding how fiction-reading triggers mirror neurons, see a discussion of this possibility in greater depth at Clay, Zanna and Marco Iacoboni, “Mirroring Fictional Others”, in The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology, edited by Elizabeth Schellekens and Peter Goldie, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 313329. 73 mirrors (pun very much intended) the one provoked when we perceive another person’s bodily or facial expressions, which our mirror neurons trigger to match with a certain emotion. This is an idea which other authors, including writers of fiction, have expressed before, as exemplified by Marcel Proust in his novel Time Regained (1931): By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds at our disposal, differing more widely from each other than those which roll round the infinite. (116) With reader-response theories seemingly supporting this idea, empathy therefore appears to be at the root, or one fundamental trigger, of this process of getting to know another — at least in theory. A considerable body of theoretical work is reluctant to acknowledge the value of empathic response in this sense, or to consider it as true knowledge of another; in this vein, it is worth mentioning the questioning of the idea that the process of empathy, and of discerning another’s thoughts and feelings, is “effortless” and “instinctual”, as Iacoboni suggested above. This idea comes from the point of view of cognitive science, which has a different frame of reference for “measuring the relative ‘success’ of mind-reading”, as some scholars have dubbed this process (Zunshine 274). To say that “we could effortlessly […] figure out what the person whose behavior we are trying to explain is thinking” implies that we do so “correctly, unambiguously, nearly telepathically” (274), but to apply this process to fiction shows — from the perspective of literary criticism — that “the process of attributing thoughts, beliefs, and desires to other people may lead to misinterpreting those thoughts, beliefs, and desires” (Zunshine 274), and hence is not as straightforward as Iacoboni suggested. Before delving any further into narrative empathy, however, it is important to note the distinct terms which have been used to designate this kind of emotional response, so as to prevent any confusion due to their shifting meanings. The concept of ‘sympathy’ was originally used to refer to the faculty we nowadays think of as ‘empathy’. During the eighteenth century, sympathy was thought of as a “moral faculty” (Hunt 65) which “made us good citizens” and “tempered our self-interest” (Keen 44), thus conceived of by many authors of the time as the root of altruistic concern (see Keen 42-44, Hunt 65), erasing self-absorption and orienting humans towards each other. In a very similar way, nineteenth-century Romantics continued to employ the term with the same meaning: they would invite their readers to fuse with themselves and with the objects of their representation. Readers feel with writers and with characters or representations, and readers in the real world regard the objects of their gaze as if they were representations. Writers in the real world do the same thing with their subjects, recognizing and representing them as material for sympathetic identification. (Keen 51) The term ‘empathy’, on the other hand, was coined more recently, in the early twentieth century and as a translation for the German Einfühlung. However, ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’ are nowadays not used synonymously — many theorists agree on making a distinction, though not all of them do so on the same terms. Suzanne Keen, for instance, names “the spontaneous, responsive sharing of an appropriate feeling as empathy, and the more complex, differentiated feeling for another as sympathy (sometimes called empathic concern)” (4, italics in original). 80 and afterwards through its dissection and discussion in pedagogical and social environments, be it classrooms, book clubs, or even social media — anywhere involving some sort of guidance in the examination of one’s responses. While this discussion with others is not free of the aforementioned social judgements and preconceptions which may constrain one’s responses, rather than guide them, this creates the premise that even interaction with fiction requires and benefits from the presence of the other. While the response may be hindered or concealed in these social interactions, shifting the emphasis to what happens after the moment of reading avoids placing the burden of social responsibility and calling to action on the fiction itself. It places its weight instead on the reading individual and the pedagogical processes taking place around the fiction, so that the power often attributed to fiction lies instead in who is consuming it and how: “living people bring empathy to the novel, and they alone have the capacity to convert their emotional fusion with the denizens of make-believe worlds into actions on behalf of real others. That they rarely decide to do so should not be taken as a sign of fiction’s failings” (Keen 168). In the same vein, Chabot Davis argues that, though “people may feel sympathy without becoming political actors”, this is not “a fault inherent in the emotion, […] but rather stems from multiple causes” — not the least of which being the “loss of faith in the power of the individual to effect change” (404). The capabilities of narrative empathy to create change lie, then, at the individual, “local level of resistance” emphasized by De Lauretis; to underestimate the importance of this individual understanding is to “give up on empathy’s promise of fostering cross-cultural understanding and desires for social justice and equality” (Chabot Davis 406), a blunder which “left-oriented scholars cannot afford to” commit (406). Furthermore, the above theories (Keen’s, Nussbaum’s, Hunt’s, and even Chabot Davis’) all presumably refer to the potential effects of empathy over hegemonic subjects, to its effect in opening their minds to the presence of otherness and helping them understand it — which, in turn, alters the hegemonic view of difference as inherently negative or inferior. In my opinion, the importance that empathy towards a representation of a fictional mind like oneself — one that shares the individual’s otherness in terms of identity — can have for a social other, for one who is taught by the ideologies at work to perceive themselves as inferior, as insufficient, or worse, as inherently associated with negative traits that cannot be left behind or ignored. For an other like woman, who, as explained in chapter 2, is made into the object of the male gaze, into a “total object of fantasy” (Rose 74), to identify and be able to empathize with an image and a narrative of woman is already a deconstruction of her symbolic identification with the male gaze. And to have a female character that is neither vilified nor elevated, as an other would be, but simply represented, is extremely valuable for her process of identity formation. If narrative empathy therefore proves able to contribute to a healthier process of identity formation for marginalized individuals, whether through the validation of their own difference or through a better understanding of another’s, that very act has transformed the world in a way that was not previously present — which at least partly explains why representation truly matters. It is not so much meant to produce empathy on the hegemonic subject. Though a welcome side effect, research clearly shows that it will produce no foreseeable result without a pedagogical and social background to support and enhance prosocial action beyond the point of reading. Rather, representations are meant precisely to reflect — and give a voice to — the individuals that had been deprived of a reflection, and that were in fact relegated to the status of one within the specular power dynamic. Those that are marginalized, displaced, otherized, are the ones who can benefit the most from fictional representations that produce narrative empathy; not for another, necessarily, but empathy for themselves. Connection with a fictional image in this way — the recognition of their experiences and feelings as like those of another 81 — can help in establishing an empathic relationship with their own identity-as-other, and allow them to understand that this difference that has rendered them other is exactly that — difference, not inferiority, nor contemptible or reprehensible abnormality. It teaches these individuals to perceive themselves not as specularized others, but as complex subjects worthy of the name. CHAPTER 5: THE NARRATIVES OF FANTASY There are only two worlds -- your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. These worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters. (Neil Gaiman) Having reviewed the particularities around fictional narratives and fictional minds, as well as their potential extra-textual effects of deep significance for identity construction, it is now time to delve further into the peculiarities inherent to fantasy fiction, the object of study at the core of this work. As with previously revised concepts, such as ‘representation’ and ‘identity’, the word ‘fantasy’ conceals a long and complex history that shall not (could not) be revised in its entirety. In the interest of clarity, this chapter will briefly review the terms ‘fantasy’ and ‘the fantastic’ as discussed throughout several major theories, arranged in approximate chronological order. In so doing, I hope not only to illustrate the kind of fictions that fall under these umbrella terms, but also to offer a characterization of fantasy that will serve to describe the case study I analyze in later chapters. Furthermore, these theories consider the subversive political potential which the particularities of fantasy hold, and as such make up the bare bones of the argument introduced in subsequent chapters.13 Moving directly forward, then, one of the most famous theoretical attempts to define, or perhaps more exactly categorize, fantasy is Tzvetan Todorov’s. Despite its alleged limitations, his definition remains quotable today because of how it localizes the fantastic not necessarily as a feature of the text itself, but rather as part of the consumer’s, the reader’s, response to it: In a world which is indeed our world, […] there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar world. The person who experiences the event must opt for one of two possible solutions: either he is the victim of an illusion of the senses […] and [the] laws of the world then remain what they are; or else the event has indeed taken place, it is an integral part of reality — but then this reality is controlled by laws unknown to us. (Todorov 25) 13 I will not here be surveying the roots of fantasy in detail; they can be traced down to mythology and oral lore, and thus extremely far back, so that they shall only be briefly mentioned further on as part of the manifold influences structuring the current fantasy canon. 84 Thus, the fantastic implies a suspension of the rules of the known, natural world, which are interrupted by contact with the impossible — “an event […] which reason”, or at least reason derived from the knowledge we possess, “can no longer explain” (Todorov 28). It is “always a break in the acknowledged order, an irruption of the inadmissible within the changeless everyday legality” (Roger Caillois, quoted in Todorov 26). Indeed, explanations are often useless when it comes to the fantastic: “It is sometimes necessary to keep a loophole for a natural explanation, but I might add that this hole should be small enough to be unusable” (M. R. James, quoted in Todorov 26). This unexplainable event is what leads to hesitation, to doubting one’s own perception and knowledge; the Todorovian experience of the fantastic, then, lasts only for as long as this uncertainty between two possibilities does. This is thought of as describing the encounter with the fantastic, meaning the moment when the reader first comes into contact with the impossible, forcing a reassessment of their previous knowledge in order to accommodate this new apparent impossibility: “Either total faith or total incredulity would lead us beyond the fantastic: it is hesitation which sustains its life” (Todorov 31). However, we now face the question of who must hesitate to sustain the fantastic, since this uncertainty can be localized within the characters of the narrative as well. If the reader (not the actual reader, but rather the implied reader figuring as a role or perspective within the text [see Todorov 31]) were to know the truth of the matter — that is, if they already knew whether the event was an illusion or truly supernatural, the reader’s role would only be that of an observer of the characters’ journey to come to conclusions that they already knew beforehand. Hesitation would no longer be sustained. This is why Todorov holds “the reader’s hesitation” as “the first condition of the fantastic” (31, italics in original), because it is a necessary condition that the reader be made to hesitate, whereas the characters may not necessarily share the same doubt. However, Todorov’s “rule of identification” seems to imply that characters in the fantastic commonly represent the same experience of uncertainty within the work (Todorov 32). Thus, the second, optional condition is that the narrative may have a character experiencing this same hesitation, entrusting “the reader’s role […] to a character” (33). The third and final condition of the fantastic is, according to Todorov, localized in the reader’s attitude towards the text: they “will reject allegorical as well as ‘poetic’ interpretations” (Todorov 33), because such readings imply not taking the supernatural events literally, but rather metaphorically, which prevents questioning their nature — and hence, uncertainty. Of course, any narrative can be understood as fantastic to this extent. All narratives demand a suspension of known rules in order to accommodate the fictional premise: even realist fiction, which makes a point of its resemblance to reality, must deviate from it in order to develop its fictional events. Terry Eagleton phrased it quite aptly in his description of Dickens’ London: “The imaginary London of Bleak House exists as the product of a representational process which signifies, not ‘Victorian England’ as such, but certain of Victorian England’s ways of signifying itself […]. Fiction[’s …] ‘history’ is imaginary because it negotiates a particular ideological experience of real history” (Eagleton 77, italics in original). While fantasy may be argued to push this further, since it requires the acceptance of what is thought of as impossible, it is nonetheless “not possible to define the fantastic in terms of opposition to the faithful reproduction of reality, or in terms of opposition to naturalism” (Todorov 36), because the fantastic requires the real in order to produce its effect of hesitation. Such hesitation must either take place between the real and the “illusory”, the uncertainty “not that the events occurred, but that our understanding of them was correct” or else only “a trick, or an error of perception” (Todorov 36); or between the real and the “imaginary”, whether “what we believe we perceive is not in fact a product of the imagination” (36), so that the event may not even have occurred at all. The ambiguity, 85 the consistent reference to known reality, must be maintained throughout the text. However, by the end of the story, “the reader makes a decision even if the character does not” (Todorov 41): if the decision is towards incredulity, and the text permits an explanation of the events, we move into the genre of the uncanny; on the other hand, if the reader leans towards faith, and believes that known laws need to be adjusted, we enter the marvellous (Todorov 41). These two tendencies are perfectly exemplified in eighteenth-century Gothic novels: “the supernatural explained (the ‘uncanny’), as it appears in the novels of Clara Reeves and Ann Radcliffe; and […] the supernatural accepted (the ‘marvelous’), which is characteristic of the works of Horace Walpole, M. G. Lewis, and Maturin” (Todorov 42). With this in mind, Todorov creates a gradation of sub-genres: the pure uncanny, the fantastic-uncanny, the fantastic-marvellous, and the pure marvellous (see Todorov 44). The fantastic “in its pure state” would be, to him, located at “the medial line separating the fantastic-uncanny from the fantastic-marvelous. This line corresponds perfectly to the nature of the fantastic, a frontier between two adjacent realms” (Todorov 44). This Todorovian approach has extensively influenced subsequent criticism, although a major objection — posed particularly by Rosemary Jackson — was that Todorov did not sufficiently engage with the political implications of literature. In other words, he did not contend with the fact that the fantastic could express that which is unsaid and unseen, and in doing so voice transgressive impulses which threaten the status quo of primary reality. Yet Todorov does mention how “the fantastic permits us to cross certain frontiers that are inaccessible so long as we have no recourse to it” (158), meaning that it allows the exploration of themes that are censored, censured, or otherwise condemned or silenced (for instance, sexuality, madness, and other taboo topics). In fact, he goes as far as to assert that the fantastic has been rendered useless by the appearance of psychoanalysis, which has made these topics allowable, shifted the taboo so that many of these themes may now be dealt with openly: “There is no need today to resort to the devil in order to speak of an excessive sexual desire, and none to resort to vampires in order to designate the attraction exerted by corpses” (Todorov 161). He does also briefly interrogate “the function of the fantastic itself: which is to say, not the function of the supernatural events, but the function of their reactions they provoke” (Todorov 166), thus effectively locating the fantastic within the reaction to the text, rather than the fantastic being a quality inherent to it. Such a focus on response was already suggested in his emphasis on the reader’s attitude towards the text. However, Todorov raises these topics near the very end of his study, so that there is little time for him to explore them further. Not only that, he goes as far as to argue that the fantastic no longer exists, since “the last aesthetically satisfying examples of the genre” are located, according to Todorov, “in Maupassant’s tales” (166). No texts from nineteenth-century literature onwards, he argues, are able to produce the same hesitation, precisely due to the changes in the social and literary climate: “we can no longer believe in an immutable, external reality, nor in a literature which is merely the transcription of such a reality. Words have gained an autonomy which things have lost” (Todorov 168). Fantastic literature depends on postulating “the existence of the real, the natural, the normal, in order to attack it subsequently” (Todorov 173), but literature like Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (Todorov’s own chosen example) has already transcended the real — in its world, “the fantastic becomes the rule, not the exception” (173) and so hesitation no longer happens. One might argue, however, that Todorov’s patent inability to admit more modern literature within the fantastic, or even his broader genres of the uncanny or the marvellous, points to a flaw inherent to his theory rather than to an aesthetic flaw of the texts themselves. Indeed, despite its consistent usefulness as the first study “which refuses to borrow from extraliterary categories to ‘account for’ or explain the emergence and 86 existence of the [fantastic] form” (Jackson 26), Todorov’s theory of fantasy displays limitations — not only because it does not take the sociopolitical function of literature into consideration (or only does so very briefly), but also because it invites a rather rigid classification of texts into a limited number of categories which inevitably fail to account for the variations and changeable nature of the fantastic. His extraordinary emphasis on hesitation contributes to this impression, excluding — as he himself had suggested — much modern fantasy from being considered as such, which quickly evidenced the need for more flexible theories of the fantastic. Attempting to make up for Todorov’s perceived failings, Rosemary Jackson developed her own theory of fantasy a few years later in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (1981). Here, she considers fantasy as a mode, as a set of “structural features underlying various works in different periods of time […] from which a number of related genres emerge” (Jackson 7). This means there is no one single definition for fantasy, since it is not a single entity — a single genre — which may be delimited and described with exactitude, but rather a range of works which share a set of features and structures in both form and content, which link them as “generated by similar unconscious desires” and therefore allow their association (Jackson 8). Interestingly, Jackson is very much against conceiving of fantasy as a way to escape or transcend reality, thus “fulfilling a desire for a ‘better’, more complete” one (Jackson 1); on the contrary, she argues that fantasy “is not to do with inventing another non-human world”, but rather “with inverting elements of this world, re-combining its constitutive features in new relations to produce something strange, unfamiliar, and apparently ‘new’, absolutely ‘other’ and different” (Jackson 8). Thus, fantasy in the Tolkienian line (Jackson cites such authors as C. S. Lewis and Ursula K. Le Guin, aside from Tolkien himself) would be closer to “faery, or romance literature” due to the “moral and religious allegories, parables and fables” that, Jackson argues, inform them (9). She establishes a distinction between these religious, supernatural fantasies, and secularized ones, which constitute what she would consider the ‘pure’ fantastic. In a supernatural economy, she argues, the source of difference is presented as otherworldly, as being outside or above the human, and often as an evil force, which constitutes “a displacement of human responsibility”, since these kinds of romance or fairy fantasies confine otherness to the supernatural, which Jackson traces back to their aforementioned roots in religious myth (Jackson 53). On the other hand, a natural economy describes otherness as “an externalization of part of the self” (55), a manifestation of the self’s own desires, guilt, and so on — so that other and self become closer, much more intimately related. Although in both kinds otherness is what threatens the world (the ‘real’) with dissolution, in a secularized fantasy otherness is “neither supernatural nor evil but […] that which is behind, or between” what is known (Jackson 57). Hence Jackson’s turn to psychoanalysis to describe her conception of the fantastic, since she holds it as a literature that deals repeatedly with unconscious and repressed material (see Jackson 61): this projection of the self’s own fears and desires unto others results in the Freudian uncanny, which in fantasy becomes materialized through the supernatural occurrence. This produces a feeling of estrangement, of the familiar becoming suddenly unfamiliar and confusing not by any essential change, but by revealing what is normally concealed. In Jackson’s own words, “[f]antastic literature transforms the ‘real’ through this kind of dis-covery. It does not introduce novelty, so much as uncover all that needs to remain hidden if the world is to be comfortably ‘known’. Its uncanny effects reveal an obscure, occluded region which lies behind the homely (heimlich)” (65). This makes it so that, significantly — and perhaps similarly to Todorov’s conception —, the fantastic cannot exist apart from the real. It “takes the real and breaks it” (Jackson 12), but to do so it first needs to assert reality, to begin from the mimetic, in order to subsequently 87 break with it and its familiarity. However, regardless of how much fantasy may recombine or invert or alter the real, it still “cannot exist independently of that ‘real’ world which it seems to find so frustratingly finite” (Jackson 20). Jackson thus agrees with the Freudian conception of imagination, which holds it as “quite incapable of inventing anything” (quoted in Jackson 8, italics in original), when it was upheld as limitless. This appears to present a limitation to the possibilities of the fantastic which may not be present in other typologies, but such a limitation is quite inescapable: fantasies do not exist in a vacuum, since no fiction at all can exist apart from the world which produces and surrounds it. Any human production is automatically overdetermined by its social and cultural context, by the predominant ideologies of the author’s time and location, by the author’s own particular ideas and prejudices, and so on. Rather than look upon this as a constraint, however, this unavoidable tether to reality is what enables and enhances the political dimension of fantasy. Jackson posits that this connection to the real is what allows the fantasy to problematize and question it through its own difference. Fantasy’s function, as a literature of desire, is thus twofold: it may express this desire, “tell of, manifest or show” it, or it may “expel desire, when this desire is a disturbing element which threatens cultural order and continuity” (Jackson 2, italics in original). Indeed, many times fantasy fulfils both functions at once, since hidden or silenced desires may be expelled by being expressed, through the vicarious experience which expression can provide. This condenses Jackson’s major point — the subversive function of fantasy, as a literature intimately tied to extra-textual politics and the interrogation (and implicit threat) of existing social norms. This notion runs through the entirety of Jackson’s argument, as she holds that the systems already in place (ideologically, culturally, socially) can only be overturned, subverted, rather than replaced with something new. Since this is the case, it can be concluded that fantasy is not able, nor does it seek, to replace the real: it rather exposes it, uncovering the parts of reality that remain hidden or censored, thus betraying an innate dissatisfaction with, and a refusal to account for or conform to, what is commonly known as ‘real’ or ‘possible. In fact, much of the time, such a refusal amounts to direct opposition. Fantasy’s concern with trying to make visible what is culturally invisible introduces an absence, an otherness, for which there is no language: “There can be no adequate linguistic representation of this ‘other’, for it has no place in life”, and this tendency “towards non-signification […] represents a dissolution of a culture’s signifying practice, the very means by which it establishes meaning” (Jackson 69). As Todorov had already mentioned and Jackson reasserts here, the uncanny in fantasy permits the articulation of taboo — the expression of what must be repressed for cultural continuity, thus threatening to significantly undermine cultural stability. On the other hand, Jackson does very briefly remark on the possibility that it might do the opposite. In vicariously fulfilling these taboo desires, fantasy may actually contribute to maintaining social norms: “they [fantasies] frequently serve (as does Gothic fiction) to reconfirm institutional order by supplying a vicarious fulfilment of desire and neutralizing an urge towards transgression” (Jackson 72). She does not elaborate any further upon this point, however, since her analysis focuses on fantasies which do betray this fundamental dissatisfaction with reality, dissolving, interrogating, or transgressing it. Interestingly, Jackson returns to the problematic of the visual as one of the major themes of fantasy, since — as discussed in chapter one — it is one of the pillars which sustain our notion of reality: An emphasis upon invisibility points to one of the central thematic concerns of the fantastic: problems of vision. In a culture which equates the ‘real’ with the ‘visible’ and gives the eye dominance over other sense organs, the un-real is that 88 which is in-visible. That which is not seen, or which threatens to be un-seeable, can only have a subversive function in relation to an epistemological and metaphysical system which makes ‘I see’ synonymous with ‘I understand’. (Jackson 45) With this emphasis on distortion, blurriness, and other difficulties or hallucinations relating to visual perception, the image of the mirror makes its appearance once more. Not only as a portal, though “many of the strange worlds of modern fantasy are located in, or through, or beyond, the mirror”, but rather as a means “to effect a transformation of the familiar into the unfamiliar” (Jackson 43), especially as concerns the relationship between self and other. As is implied by Jackson’s consistent mentions of otherness and difference, fantasy consistently problematizes the self/other dichotomy through the mirror itself: it is used consistently throughout many fantasies as “a metaphor for the production of other selves. A mirror produces distance. It establishes a different space, where our notions of self undergo radical change”, where “versions of self [are] transformed into another”, which suggests the instability of both reality as a whole and of the unitary identity which the self continuously constructs for its own benefit (Jackson 87). In fact, Jackson invokes Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage as explanatory of the process of ego formation which fantasies actually try to reverse: “The fragmentation of ‘character’ in fantasy deforms a ‘realistic’ language of unified, rational selves. […] Fantasies try to reverse or rupture the process of ego formation which took place during the mirror stage, i.e. they attempt to re-enter the imaginary. Dualism and dismemberment are symptoms of this desire” to be reunited with the other, to return to a self prior to the fragmentation created through the mirror stage (Jackson 90). In Jackson’s (and Lacan’s)14 typology, however, this attempt is automatically doomed to failure, since an imaginary realm cannot be articulated or represented, because it “is non-thetic, it has no ‘human’ discourse” (Jackson 90), which is why so many fantasies have a tragic or deadly ending — because “‘self’ cannot be united with ‘other’ without ceasing to be” (91). While extremely useful in its conception of fantasy as a subversive literature, Jackson’s typology of fantasy seems odd insofar as some of the best-known — or, as she herself puts it, “popular” (9) — fantasists of the time find no place within it. While she does stop to consider Tolkien’s work in particular, Jackson has no place for it in her account of the purely fantastic, maintaining that the expression of desire condensed in such fantasies is but romance and nostalgia, a supernatural economy of conservative and highly religious influence. To do so, however, seems unnecessarily reductive as well as actively exclusionary — and indeed, diametrically opposite to some of the more recent conceptions of what these works of fantasy achieve. To be entirely fair towards Jackson’s assessment, however, Tolkien did himself refer to fantasy as “fairy-story” in his seminal essay On Fairy Stories (1947), although he did so as a reference to the realm of dreams and fantasy, which he calls “Faërie” (Tolkien 32), and not so much in reference to the fairy tale as a genre. Even so, Tolkien was very much aware of the influence which such an ascendency exerted upon his work and his idea of fantasy, establishing how old “legends, dwindling down, became folktales, Märchen, fairy-stories — nursery-tales” (42), a closeness which Jackson is critical of. This critic insists that “fairy tales function differently from fantasies”, that they “are neutral, impersonalized […]. Structurally, too, fairy tales discourage belief in the importance or effectiveness of action for their narratives are ‘closed’” (Jackson 154, italics in original), and therefore fail to be subversive, because they encourage the reader to remain “a passive receiver of events” (154) before the narrator’s 14 Jackson makes her point here by relying on Lacan’s famous distinction between the two categories of the imaginary (imaginaire), and the symbolic (symbolique). The imaginary, as Jackson says, cannot be articulated because language, in Lacan’s terms, pertains to the realm of the symbolic. 89 authoritative position of omniscience. Furthermore, fairy tales make the promise of “wish fulfilment, magical satisfaction” (154), which she is undoubtedly dismissive of: “these more conservative fantasies simply go along with a desire to cease ‘to be’, a longing to transcend or escape the human. They avoid the difficulties of confrontation, that tension between the imaginary and the symbolic” (Jackson 156). It strikes as ironic, however, that Jackson would hold the fairy tale (and its derivatives) to be a conservative form compliant with the status quo when there is so much argument to the contrary. Alison Lurie has famously argued that fairy tales “are among the most subversive texts in children’s literature. Often, though usually in disguised form, they support the rights of disadvantaged members of the population […] against the establishment” (32). Since they stem from orally transmitted folklore, Lurie argues, fairy tales have always been in contact with the lower, discriminated spheres of society: their protagonists belong to marginal social groups (poor, orphaned, female…) and their plots often deal — in more or less covert ways — with “sex, death, low humor, and especially female initiative” (Lurie 37), offering precisely the kind of commentary that engages with social reality and threatens the status quo. Of course, much like Jackson herself argues of fantasy, this is a double-edged sword: the fairy tale may, and often does, reproduce the very norms it threatens. Concerning gender, for example, fairy tales may mirror gendered myths and perpetuate archetypal images of masculinity and femininity through what Cristina Bacchilega calls a “naturalizing technology”, meaning that the genre is employed to normalize the “ideological expectations and unspoken norms” of sociocultural hegemony (29). Nonetheless, arguments for the subversiveness of the form continue to be made, especially through retellings and reworkings of traditional fairy tales at the hands of contemporary writers, which display a capacity for experimentation and subversion distinguished by an “strident antisexist and antiauthoritarian perspective” (Zipes 2006, 178-179).15 Even forms that differ greatly from the uncanniness which Jackson favours are capable of subversion, which exposes the major issue with her typology of fantasy: in refusing to adapt her theoretical standards, Jackson’s theory is unable to account for Tolkien’s fantasy (as well as that of his contemporaries and successors) as anything but a failure. And yet, despite having been written earlier than both Todorov’s and Jackson’s theories, Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories presents some striking similarities to the ideas of these later critics. Much like Jackson, Tolkien establishes his so-called fairystories as “not primarily concerned with possibility, but with desirability” (Tolkien 55): the concern is not with whether the events of the narrative could or would plausibly happen, but with awakening in the reader a desire for something beyond the real, beyond “the social inhibition of such [psychological] drives” as Jackson describes (Attebery 21). However, unlike Jackson, Tolkien states that fantasies are successful if “they awakened desire, satisfying it while often whetting it unbearably” (55, italics mine). That is, their function is not only that of expelling or expressing desire, but also awakening it in the first place, and even intensifying it. In the words of C. S. Lewis: “fairy land arouses a longing for he [the child] knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth” (29). Both Tolkien and Lewis conceive of such desire positively, though this may be interpreted in religious terms in their case — as a desire for an encounter with or an experience of the divine. This does not necessarily make their thoughts any less applicable, however. As Attebery puts it, “longing engendered by fantasy has its roots in the various physical and emotional hungers we have all experienced from infancy”, and regardless of its origins, it remains “an 15 For more on the modern fairy tale and its subversive uses, see Jack Zipes’ 2006 study Fairy-Tales and the Art of Subversion. 96 surprise or amazement, relying instead on an assumption of realism which “denies the need for explication” in giving the fictional world cohesion in its own right (xx). This means that the audience shares “the assumptions of the world as much as a contemporary reader of Jane Austen shared the assumptions she presented in Pride and Prejudice” (Mendlesohn 59), meaning that the audience and characters are both supposed to share the defaults of the secondary world. This kind of fantasy, unlike Mendlesohn’s three others, does not require “that belief in the dividing line between the real and the not-real to function” (61), and seems to be the only one where a fantasy world in which no magic occurs becomes possible — so that Mendlesohn thinks of science fiction as a particularly illustrative example of this category (62). In turn, in intrusion fantasy, “the fantastic is the bringer of chaos” (Mendlesohn xxi), so it departs from the base of a “normal” world, and assumes its normality to be organized and predictable, which the fantastic interrupts. Intrusion fantasy can be set both within the actual world and a fictional one, and can thus begin from the category of the immersive, because intrusion is only dependent on the protagonist, not on the reader, recognizing normality as such. The position of both protagonist and reader is that of confusion, with no control of the events that unfold just below the surface level and continue to escalate throughout the narrative. Finally, liminal fantasy is the rarest in Mendlesohn’s typology, since it involves an invitation to cross the threshold into the fantastic, but choosing not to do so, so that the fantastic leaks through the portal instead (see Mendlesohn xxiii). The locus of the fantastic is thus the liminal moment, calling back to Todorov’s hesitation — except, Mendlesohn points out, liminal fantasy “is very clear that magic, or at least the possibility of magic, is part of the consensus reality” of this fictional world (xxiii). The liminal fantasy thus begins from what looks to be the primary, actual world, but as events of magical origin unfold, they do not surprise or alienate the characters. Resembling the concept of magical realism, this category therefore “casualizes the fantastic within the experience of the protagonist”, and in the meantime “estranges the reader”, the only one who hesitates before the fantastic (Mendlesohn xxiv). As can be seen, Mendlesohn’s concern with the standpoint or role which the audience is invited to take in each kind of fantasy returns, once again, to the importance of the consumer’s input. Even so, while Mendlesohn believes it possible for the audience to take any of the above-outlined positions, she argues “that the author seeks to control these choices, even while understanding the polysemous and proactive position of the reader” (Mendlesohn xviii). The relationship author-consumer, then, becomes once again dialogical, a blurred boundary. Clearly, however, Mendlesohn’s typology does not resemble previous classifications of fantasy: it does not have clear boundaries, like Todorov and Jackson had tried to impose, as its intent is not to create an all-encompassing typology. Rather than standing as an end in themselves, Mendlesohn’s categories are meant as tools to work across different genres and subgenres of fantasy. These four basic relationships may be modified, distorted, or combined, even within the same text. Mendlesohn herself goes over some examples of texts that do so, making these exceptions to her own rules useful in showing that “no theory that claims universal applicability is worth a damn” (Mendlesohn xvi). As Wolf’s and Mendlesohn’s approaches suggest, then, recent theories have become aware of their function as fallible descriptors, and stand out from their predecessors in rejecting any claim to such “universal applicability” — meaning not to create a categorization of fantasy, but to explain some of its overarching features, as well as how these kinds of texts relate to the audience. It is easy to conclude that fantasy as genre, and the fantastic as a mode, ought both to be looked at as “fuzzy sets”, combinations of features that elude exact definition; however, it is still possible to use the afore-described typologies as applicable tools to work with both the genre and the mode from a critical perspective. 97 The fantastic as mode, though much more inclusive, appears across too broad a variety of literatures to work as a useful descriptor for my current purpose. Still, it does not seem productive to offer here a delineation of what the fantasy genre itself entails. An “over-exact definition” would be more limiting than useful, perhaps “giving the name fantasy to what is only a minor subtype of fantasy” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 3), which seems indeed to have been the case for much of its history since the apparition of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in 1954. This work will thus be adhering to the idea of fantasy as a fuzzy set of works that defy the boundaries of known reality, based on the conceptions of Attebery’s and Mendlesohn’s theories — though all of the above have informed my own understanding of fantasy as a whole, as well as of the trilogy I analyze here. Speaking of, while I offer here a description of the theories surrounding the genre and its possibilities for political subversion, there is reoccurring mention of Tolkien over my own chosen case study, Nora K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy. The fact is that Tolkien’s work has had an extremely extensive, almost inescapable influence over both fantasy theorists (given Tolkien’s own theoretical essays on the subject) and the literary fantasy scene, so that any discussion of fantasy that does not mention his particular brand of the genre and its long-standing repercussions seems incomplete. With this in mind, I turn now to describing the fantasy canon from a literary standpoint, so as to trace the Tolkienian influence on the literary tradition which surrounds Jemisin’s own work — as well as to understand in what ways the presence of this tradition constrains or limits current conceptions of fantasy literature. 5.1 The Canons of Fantasy As noted in the previous chapter, this work adheres to Attebery’s use of the term fantasy to refer to the genre, and specifically to more modern versions of the genre as popularized after Tolkien during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. However, its discussion in terms of a literary tradition is inevitably complicated by its being a relatively recent, mutable form. Its shifting literary landscape and status as a “still ongoing cultural phenomenon” (Moran 1) in continued evolution has made many critics opt for a generalized understanding of fantasy on a “we know it when we see it” basis (Wilkins 4), opting to classify certain works as fantasy based on paratextual information — “such as jacket design and internal map illustrations” as far as the physical book is concerned, or the works “being stocked in specialist fantasy bookstores”, or being “discussed […] as fantasy by readers” (Wilkins 5). This conforms with the aforementioned development of the genre’s limitations being marked by consensus among readerships, by paratextual features or by marketing strategies, rather than by any intratextual parameter, yet also implies that the very peculiarities of fantasy have prevented the fixing of a clear canon, further complicating the discussion of the genre. A reassessment of the notion of ‘canon’ is thus required in order to discuss the literary tradition of fantasy. Here, Patrick Moran’s work on The Canons of Fantasy comes in useful, since he traces the notion as it specifically relates to the fantasy genre, and thus takes its particulars into consideration. A canon, Moran writes, can be seen as both descriptive and prescriptive: on the one hand, it includes the “most prototypical works: those which best embody the characteristics of the genre and which bring them to their highest degree of excellence” (Moran 7); on the other, it also assigns “value to individual works and authors” and “to a genre as a whole” (Moran 3), which “implies the idea of a rule, of a curated choice” of works “that deserves to be retained, studied and imitated” (7). This condenses the problematic of the literary establishment itself, which has received as much spirited defence as scathing critique: even when attempting to describe, a canon ends up prescribing, as it is “ultimately based on a criterion of quality, and on the belief that this quality is, to some extent, objective” (Moran 30). Texts elevated to a canonical position simultaneously 98 become a “standard through which to assess other texts in the genre” (31), a measure of value and adequacy that serves to exclude certain texts in favour of others. Inevitably, such favoured texts will be those which resonate with the hegemonic ideological apparatuses at work, which explains the consistent criticism the idea of a canon has received from postcolonial, feminist, and Marxist theories, which reject the establishment (and the idea that it is at all needed) on the basis of its exclusionary and elitist prerogatives. Taking this into account, Moran argues that a canon for fantasy ought to be treated like the genre itself, in terms of fuzzy sets or “gradients”, as he calls them: on the one hand, a “membership gradient”, by which “some texts are more obviously fantasy than others […], and the Venn diagram of genres inevitably creates fuzzy areas where categories overlap” (Moran 24); on the other, a “centrality gradient”, by which “some authors and some works are commonly perceived as being more central, more representative of the entire genre — more canonical” (Moran 24). By regarding the boundaries of the canon as fuzzy, its creation becomes the result of a consensus among several different factions, rather than a monolithic list of authors or works after the Harold Bloom fashion, curated by a few academic and critically-oriented individuals and chosen through prescriptive (and subjective, hence biased) criteria of excellence. The latter is much more restrictive, whereas conceiving of the canon as a fluid, mutable notion rather than a limited set can make the canon itself more varied and inclusive in terms of its selected works.19 Of course, the traditional factors still play a role: academic interest, for one, elevates texts to prestigious positions as worthy of analysis and critical attention — which arrived rather late for fantasy, only after Tolkien was published (see Moran 10); for another, publishing houses and booksellers continue to determine which texts are more valuable in terms of their success in the marketplace, since, after all, market value is still value. Nonetheless, Moran also highlights the role of authors, who have their own ideas about what a genre entails or should entail: their own acknowledgement of previous influences contributes to placing some works closer to the centre than others, which once again complicates things — for example, many mainstream authors are reluctant to apply the label of “fantasy” to their works (see Moran 9), which speaks to the genre’s marginalized position in terms of critical attention. Importantly, readers’ voices have acquired significant weight in the constitution of canonical works in recent years, becoming another factor to be taken into consideration. This is particularly so thanks to the Internet and its facilitation of interaction among audiences and the creation of community (Moran 10), and in no small part thanks to fan-voted awards like the Hugo. The increasingly transmedial and interactive nature of literature growing beyond books to encompass videogames, role-playing, and so on, has also been particularly significant where fantasy is concerned. This newfound interand transmediality has problematized the very “question of canon by warping our definition of what an author and a work are and by creating universes that live more in the readers’ imagination than in the written word alone” (Moran 56), so that the very idea of a canon being necessary is questioned more than ever. Such questioning, of course, easily extends to the question of whether fantasy has any need, or use, for a canon at all. The genre’s flexibility necessarily makes it difficult to define and study, yet it is also its great asset: it is what allows for its evolution and supports its subversive uses. It then stands to reason that attempting to impose a canon over it — and thence to impose unnecessary criteria of value and standing over its texts — would not really mean an improvement, but rather the opposite. Yet to trace a canon of any genre proves useful in one particular way: it allows to revise a history of significant works within the genre, and thus to create a sense of a continuing, 19 An idea famously suggested by Terry Eagleton in the first chapter of Literary Theory: An Introduction (University of Minnesota Press, 1996, first published 1983). 99 interrelated tradition. Given that this work deals with contemporary fantasy novels, it becomes especially important to understand such a tradition, if indeed one is to be found, in order to understand where these newer works stem from and how they are influenced by the genre’s history — or, on the contrary, in what ways they attempt to deviate from it. This attempt to trace a canon of fantasy is therefore nothing but an attempt to draw on its history, and only one answer to a multifaceted question that is as mutable as the genre itself. To begin with the seventeenth through to approximately the nineteenth centuries, Todorov’s and Jackson’s theoretical works offer a good overview of the critical and academic conceptions of fantasy during that time. Mostly, it comprised what is nowadays known as “weird fiction”, a literature concerned with the uncanny and the grotesque, including works encompassing “fantasy, supernatural fiction and horror tales embodying transgressive material: tales where motifs of thinning and the uncanny predominate” (Clute 1000). Thus, the authors whom Todorov and Jackson mention as canonically fantastic are E. T. A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe or even Ann Radcliffe and other eighteenth-century writers in the Gothic and horror tradition, as well as Franz Kafka for early-twentieth-century experimental literature. Nowadays, these authors would doubtlessly be considered to write within the fantastic mode, but not necessarily within fantasy as a genre. The turning point in the general conception of fantasy can in fact quite easily be traced back to the popularization of J. R. R. Tolkien’s literary work, particularly The Lord of the Rings. It represented a stark departure from the aforementioned works in form, style, and content, and perfectly embodied the kind of fantasy that seemed to elude or fall outside Jackson’s and Todorov’s typologies. Furthermore, despite no canon having been established for the genre and its being an elusive notion in itself, Tolkien’s work is widely regarded to be the only one constant at the core of the genre since its publication, an absolute, central position which has had manifold consequences for fantasy as a whole. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Tolkien’s is a very specific brand of fantasy, with a peculiar set of features that has created what Attebery would term a sub-genre known, perhaps most commonly, as high fantasy. This term was first used “by Lloyd Alexander in a 1971 essay on ‘High Fantasy and Heroic Romance’”, and subsequently further delimited by Zahorski and Boyer (Stableford 198). By contrast, these authors use low fantasy as “an antonymic description of fantasies not set in secondary worlds, nor elevated in their literary style” (Clute 597), thus approximately equivalent to Mendlesohn’s intrusion fantasy (see Stableford 256). John Clute’s definition of high fantasy also relies on this same typology: “Fantasies set in otherworlds, specifically secondary worlds, and which deal with matters affecting the destiny of those worlds” (466), he writes in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. This is but one of the many denominations the sub-genre has received, “heroic fantasy” and “epic fantasy” being used particularly often. However, as per Clute, such terms have more specific implications of “larger than life quests” (7) and the presence of so-called “sword and sorcery”, although this denomination is often thought to lean towards formulaic pulp, “featuring muscular heroes in violent conflict with a variety of villains […] whose powers are — unlike the hero’s — supernatural in origin” (Clute 915). Additionally, Clute does suggest the term “adventurer fantasy” as an umbrella to encompass all of these sub-genres, including the formulaic sword and sorcery as well as other “stories whose protagonists need not be heroes”, but who are “men and women of all degrees (except the highest) attempting to survive, and make their livings” in fantasy worlds (Clute 915). This would avoid the “derogatory sting” Clute perceives in the concept of sword and sorcery, and bypass the more legendary dimensions of the words heroic and epic, but his term has yet to spread its use (Clute 7). In Mendlesohn’s typology, this sub-genre would most resemble her portal-quest fantasy, though this denomination is far too broad a descriptor — 100 being, of course, intended to suit a wider range of works. This makes it so that both theorists and audiences mostly stick to high fantasy or epic fantasy to characterize the trend which Tolkien is regarded as having initiated. As for what differentiates this sub-genre from previous (and subsequent) fantasies, Brian Attebery describes “five characteristics” which can be consistently found in works adhering to this tradition (Fantasy Tradition 12). Firstly, although (as mentioned earlier) nearly every fantasy “postulates another world, in which the fantastic or magical becomes the expected and normal”, the “magical Other World” of high fantasy tends to be very different, and “does not exist on the same plane or in the same time as our own” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 12). Simultaneously, however, the world displays some elements, commonly inspired by an idealized medievalism, “to evoke […] a nostalgia for the never-was” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 12), so that Rosemary Jackson was in this sense justified in describing Tolkien’s fantasy as nostalgic. Secondly, the “structural organization” of this genre “is the same as that of its ancestor, the fairy tale” (ibid. 13), a form which is itself pervasively influenced by the long oral tradition of popular folklore and legend. I have mentioned how Tolkien was very much aware of the closeness of these forms to the kind of “fairy-story” he himself was writing, tracing this ancestry in a downward line: “Epic, heroic legend, saga, then localised these stories [myths] in real places and humanised them by attributing them to ancestral heroes, mightier than men and yet already men. And finally these legends, dwindling down, became folktales, Märchen, fairy-stories — nursery-tales” (Tolkien 42). However, much criticism has been careful of this kind of statement — Patrick Moran, for instance, holds it to be “primarily a legitimization strategy” for modern fantasy (14), to give stability and credibility to a genre that remains relatively new and sustained by a recent academic and critical tradition. Though the connection with myth and folktale must necessarily be acknowledged, Moran maintains that fantasy written during “the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries” does not have “the same meaning […] that it had in antiquity or in the Middle Ages”, especially because these “[h]eroic and fabulous tales no longer represent the dominant narrative mode” (Moran 15). In spite of this, the high fantasy (sub)genre still displays a structure that can be described by Vladimir Propp’s morphology of the fairy tale, “beginning with an opening problem […] and proceeding through interdiction, violation of interdiction, lack, testing of the hero, receipt of a Magical Agent, and so on, to liquidation of the lack, punishment of the villain, and the hero’s marriage and ascent to the throne” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 13). This structure is much more fixed in fairy tales, whereas high fantasy has the freedom to play with it as it may, altering or even skipping each of these plot points; however, the ending must remain satisfactory, a requirement which appears to come from Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories. Tolkien argues in this essay that fantasy has a threefold function of “recovery of freshness of vision”, Escape, and Consolation (Tolkien 68), meaning “the Consolation of the Happy Ending” or “eucatastrophe”. This goes beyond simple “imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires” (Tolkien 75), because tragedy remains: “the joy of the happy ending […] does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure”, since these are “necessary to the joy of deliverance” (75). Thus, the ending need not be universally happy — but it does require the tying up of any loose ends and the denial of tragedy, of “universal final defeat […], giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief” (Tolkien 75). In his later work, Strategies of Fantasy, Attebery goes as far as to establish this as characteristic of fantasy in general: [T]he characteristic structure of fantasy is comic. It begins with a problem and ends with resolution. Death, despair, horror, and betrayal may enter into a 101 fantasy, but they must not be the final word. Much fantasy does not have what we could call a ‘happy ending’. […] But in each case the problem initially posed by the narrative has been solved, the task successfully completed. If it were otherwise, […] then we would not have the structural completeness of fantasy, but the truncated story-forms of absurdism or horror. (15) Attebery does not seem to impose this as a harsh requirement, arguing that this choice speaks “about the ways we seek for order”, rather “than about our expectations of finding it [order] in the real world” (Strategies 15). Still, such a statement has been criticized on grounds of the structural rigidity it imposes, since works without a satisfactory conclusion could not qualify as fantasy under this requirement. Still, eucatastrophe — or the comic structure — stands as common among high fantasy works, and thus a reliable indicator of the sub-genre in this case. The third characteristic of high fantasy, according to Attebery, pertains to the character of its hero, who is usually a human, or otherwise an individual that is “ordinary” and “limited […] in the unlimited realm of fantasy” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 13). This is necessary because, as Mendlesohn had established in her description of portal-quest fantasies, the reader is “tied to the protagonist” in the position of “companion-audience” (Mendlesohn 1), so that the hero acts as the audience’s “entry into the enchanted kingdom” and their “guide toward understanding the marvels therein” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 13). On the other hand, the fourth feature of high fantasy is that the hero’s companions are not held back by such limitations, and may therefore “be as extraordinary as imagination permits” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 13). The genre will thus usually feature “inhuman peoples” who “may be a little lower than man […], but not so low that they may not communicate with man. They may be higher, […] but not so high as to be above error and emotion” (Fantasy Tradition 13), and their interaction with the human or otherwise ordinary hero constitutes part of the wonder. The fifth, and final, staple of high fantasy is a system of actions within “a coherent and extractable order” that reflects a “strong polarization of good and evil” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 13). This is often represented through two major forces at odds which ultimately engage in a battle that is decisive for the future of the world; however, even small or seemingly insignificant actions usually begin a ripple cause-effect chain that gives them much larger significance in the great scheme of things. In Attebery’s words, “[a]cts in a fantasy are always meaningful, because everything connects with, or signifies, everything else” (Fantasy Tradition 13-14). Although Tolkien is often heralded as the representative of high fantasy, he was far from the first to inaugurate it and display such features in his work. Jamie Williamson refers to these works as “pregenre” fantasy, encompassing works that were written well before the 1960s, and thus before the concretization of fantasy that followed Tolkien’s success. One of the most significant representations of such concretization was the Ballantine Adult Fantasy20 Series, edited by Lin Carter and dedicated to reprinting such pregenre works, from authors such as George MacDonald or William Morris, many of whom Tolkien himself admired and “all of whom […] were authors of adult fiction” at a time when most fantasy was marketed for children (Clute 7).21 Williamson argues that, prior to the series’ publication, “there had been no identifiable 20 It is worth mentioning that “adult fantasy” is nowadays more often employed to refer to works featuring erotic or pornographic content (see Clute 7), since children are no longer thought of as the primary audience of the genre. The distinction is now more commonly made the other way around, by referring to “children’s fantasy”. 21 Tolkien himself was very much against this association of children and fantasy, considering it “an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the ‘nursery’, […] primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused. It is not the choice of the children […]. Children as a class […] neither like fairy-stories more, nor understand them better than adults do” (Tolkien 50). 102 genre resembling contemporary fantasy” (1): much of this prior work was classified under other labels, and had gone unrecognized and unidentified as fantasy. As such, when the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (henceforth BAFS for short) began to be published (in an attempt to draw the same audiences that had been drawn to Tolkien’s work), it constituted “the first time that fantasy was presented on its own terms as a genre in its own right” and the first time that “work now considered seminal in the genre was drawn together under a unified rubric” (Williamson 4). This means the BAFS pioneered the definition of the genre itself, since as the first it had “the power of determining a general historical canvas and implicitly shaping a canon of fantasy” (Williamson 4). Thus, after the series ended in the mid-1970s, a set of recognizable features began to be assignable to the genre. In turn, “new writers began to write more frequently to its specifications” (Williamson 6) in what effectually led to the slow establishment of a bestselling fantasy formula during the eighties, which eventually overshadowed the pregenre works of the BAFS: this formula is what “drove the mushrooming of the fantasy genre during the early 1980s into the full-grown sibling of science fiction and horror that it now is […]. And the phenomenon is not simply literary: with bestsellerdom, fantasy began to permeate mainstream popular culture through the media of games, films, and graphic novels” (Williamson 198). It is worth mentioning, however, that though Williamson mentions the inconsistencies in the use of the term “fantasy”, he does not make use of the genre-mode distinction as proposed by Attebery and Mendlesohn — despite its usefulness to reconcile the discrepancies he notes on the academic definitions of fantasy (citing Jackson’s Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion and Irwin’s The Game of the Impossible in particular) against the non-academic, popular conceptions of the genre, as well as their conflicting takes pertaining to the fantasy characters’ relationships to the impossible within the narrative (see Williamson 8-11). Williamson’s work is still useful, however, in its recognition of the role which the BAFS played in the establishment of a working, “informal canon of fantasy [that] has held through the succeeding decades” (5). Despite its recognition of pregenre writers, the BAFS was created in response to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and its unprecedented success, attempting to satisfy “the growing demand among readers for similar texts” (Moran 8). It was only after Tolkien’s work proved fantasy as profitable that these predecessors were receiving due credit, many years after having published themselves. This makes fantasy peculiar in that marketability and commercial success largely determined its inception as a genre: it “is not simply a timeless, unchanging entity, but was constructed, quite deliberately, to meet a new demand” (Williamson 6). Significantly, this implies that the BAFS editors were specifically looking for stories that had features and plots similar to the ones presented by Tolkien; in so doing, they effectively defined what the core of the genre eventually became, establishing high fantasy as the centre from which the genre departed — and, securely at the centre of that centre, was Tolkien. There is no one answer to what made Tolkien different from his predecessors despite the stark similarities amongst their writings, and much speculation surrounds the reasons behind his unprecedented success. Brian Attebery holds that The Lord of the Rings was the first extensive exploration of the possibilities of modern fantasy. It seemed on the one hand to sum up the whole Western tradition of the marvelous […]. On the other hand, the trilogy was an integrated story with a perception and a point of view that many readers found appropriate to the contemporary world: that is, it was not only a culminating work but also a seminal one. (Fantasy Tradition 154) 103 Indeed, the canonical status of The Lord of the Rings boasts a wide consensus that no other work has thus far managed, arguably to the extent that “no important work of fantasy written after Tolkien is free of his influence” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 12). Tolkien himself is “the only author of fantasy to be regularly considered as (potentially) belonging to the canon of general literature, as well as often hastily perceived as the father of fantasy” (Moran 2425). His magnum opus was successful and influential enough to be secured “as the book that established modern fantasy literature as a genre, setting its mode and its formula, both used (and abused) by later writers” (Fimi 335). Later writers who would, thenceforth, be perceived and positioned in relation to Tolkien — inevitably compared and contrasted with his achievement. This indisputable hegemony led to two different responses among later authors of fantasy: “either a desire to imitate (even ape) Tolkien, or the urge to react against his blueprint and create fantasy literature with its own distinct character and voice” (Fimi 335). Attempts have been made to trace Tolkien’s heritage through later writers, among them Williamson’s own.; I have relied mostly on Dimitra Fimi’s, in A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien (2014), and Tom Shippey’s J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2000) to outline a few examples of each of the above responses to Tolkien’s influence. Concerning the desire or attempt to imitate, Terry Brooks is likely to be the most famous example: he “slavishly imitated Tolkien” with the first volume of The Sword of Shannara series, published 1977 (Fimi 336). There is also Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, published 1960, for which he, like Tolkien, drew “upon Scandinavian mythological motifs and characters” (Fimi 338). Shippey also finds other similarities, such as the quest related to a talisman, the nature of the characters — as the protagonists “find themselves in contact with dwarves, a troll, and orc-analogues” — and even influences “on the level of scene and even more of phrase”, although this may be unconscious (Shippey, Tolkien 478). Unlike his predecessor, however, Garner wrote “low” fantasy, or intrusion fantasy in Mendlesohn’s terms, as he is “very much fascinated by the links between British myth, folklore, landscape and ancient ruins and sees ‘low’ fantasy as a way to express their interconnections”; this interest in the connection between myth and place was also present for Tolkien, though, so it is still possible to consider it an influence (Fimi 340). Other oft-quoted writers thought of as being on the same high fantasy current as Tolkien are Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time series, from 1990 to 2013) George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire saga, from 1996) or, more recently, Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive series, from 2010), who also co-wrote three books of The Wheel of Time. The best-selling popularity of more recent examples like Sanderson himself or Patrick Rothfuss (The Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy, from 2007), and the fact that it is possible to trace Attebery’s five core characteristics in these stories, shows that the Tolkienian high fantasy tradition continues to carry enormous weight. On the other hand, there are writers who react against Tolkien or deviate more consciously from his tradition, such as Diana Wynne Jones: she acknowledges a connection to Tolkien in her “debt to British myth and folklore”, as well as “Norse legends and tales” and a subtler use of “medieval literature, on the level of narrative structure and style”; however, she was also very “outspoken […] against the clichéd medieval trappings of much modern fantasy” (Fimi 338-339), which she mocks quite mercilessly in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1996). In this vein is also Michael Moorcock, who wrote fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s and was very openly frustrated with the hegemony of the Tolkienian heritage, criticizing it as a “reassuring, conservative, anti-urban and old-fashioned” form of fantasy that “does not question anything and never makes the reader uncomfortable” (Moran 37), a critique which strangely echoes Rosemary Jackson’s own (see Jackson 154). Moorcock even ended up being known as the 104 “Anti-Tolkien”, all due to how adamant he was “to defend and illustrate the possibility of a fantasy genre freed from Tolkien’s influence” (Moran 38). A mention is due in this regard to Ursula K. Le Guin as well, though she was not nearly as scathing as Moorcock was. Though her fantasies are often thought of “as ‘the next best thing’ after Tolkien” (Fimi 340), Le Guin deviated from and even actively questioned certain fantasy stereotypes, especially concerning gender and race. Her work does share certain similarities with Tolkien’s default, such as a fully fleshed-out secondary world (characteristically portal-quest and/or immersive fantasy), a single protagonist faced with a seemingly insurmountable quest, and some “central concerns” regarding “the importance of language […] and the significance of transmitting history and poetry via an oral tradition” (Fimi 341). However, unlike the medieval, vaguely European character of Middle-earth, “Earthsea is an archipelago of islands, and most of the heroes of its tales are copper-brown in complexion”, showing “Eastern” spirituality and “elements and traditions of tribal societies rather than the strict hierarchies and politics of medieval society” (Fimi 340). It is worth mentioning, however, that Le Guin read Tolkien quite late in her life, after she had already been writing for years and thus developed a style of her own: “I could count it lucky that I, personally, did not, and could not have, read Tolkien before I was twentyfive. Because I really wonder if I could have handled it […]. If I had known that one was there before me, one much greater than myself, I wonder if I would have had the witless courage to go on” (Le Guin 172-173). Such a statement speaks volumes about the expanse of Tolkien’s influence, and partially explains Le Guin’s ability to make the world of Earthsea unique while challenging “previous assumptions or givens of fantasy literature”, which were, in reality, “often established by Tolkien” (Fimi 341). More recently, some writers have also taken up the Tolkienian mantle, conscious of the baggage it carries, with a subversive intent behind their adherence to the characteristics of traditional high fantasy. A particularly poignant example of this is The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon (2019), who builds her secondary world’s mythology around female figures and matriarchal social structures. Laure Eve terms The Priory a “feminist successor to The Lord of the Rings” in her cover blurb.22 Whatever their uniqueness, however, these examples are presented as responses to Tolkien, as either adhering or deviating from his default, further cementing his central position. The genre itself was, “for several decades, […] built largely on the idea that Tolkien was its supreme representative” (Moran 31). In reality, despite many of the above authors establishing themselves as popular and well-known staples of fantasy, Tolkien still very much “occupies a disproportionate place within the genre. His position at the centre of its canon seems as eminent as it is immovable” (Moran 25). The Lord of the Rings, in turn, becomes for both authors and audiences a “mental template” for the essence of fantasy (Attebery, Strategies 14), a default that “seems to reshape all definitions of fantasy to fit itself” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 12). Essentially, then, what I have been calling high fantasy is “the first thing that generally comes to most people’s minds when thinking of fantasy” (Moran 33), an idea reinforced by many of the above authors who wrote within this tradition having themselves become representative instances of the genre as a whole. Thus, though fantasy does not in fact have a fixed canon, this central position of high fantasy presents a problem in two major respects: for one, it leaves little to no room in the public eye for sub-genres and variations of fantasy that do not follow this portal-quest, medievalist high fantasy model. In turn, works that do stick to this template are perceived as prototypical — and hence more canonical, in an overtaking of public perception that fails to reflect the inherent 22 ................................................................................................................................................... See the cover of Shannon, Samantha, The Priory of the Orange Tree. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. 105 diversity of the fantastic. For another, there is the problem inherent to “any discussion of the literary canon in general: the predominance of dead white men” (Moran 56). It is a tempting and often widespread belief that fantasy has not been taken seriously enough as a genre to suffer from the same problems as mainstream literature; since it does not have a set canon and all we have are varying lists of particularly popular or favourite authors, it follows that fantasy also sidesteps the favouring of “white/heterosexual/cisgender/male authors […] at the expense of the representation of female, racialized and LGBTQ+ voices” (Moran 56). To perpetuate the idea that fantasy escapes these constraints by virtue of its escaping the canon, however, is to forget the fact that mechanisms of domination and hegemony reverberate at all levels of the cultural machine. It is worth questioning why Tolkien, the fantasy writer most likely to be taken seriously by the establishment, happens to be a white, male, heterosexual, cisgender and deceased university professor; why most fantasy heroes are white, male, heterosexual and cisgender characters whose adventures take place in worlds mostly inspired by the European Middle Ages (or at least a fantasized vision of the Western medieval era). (Moran 57) Furthermore, since the canon tends to reinforce its own bias, Tolkien’s limitless influence has led to a chain of influences among white males (and fewer, yet notable white women) imitating one another. The weaker aspects of Tolkien’s work — that sense of nostalgia for an unreal, Western, medieval-like past, the predominance of whiteness, maleness, and cisheterosexuality in both the secondary world as a whole and the characters the plot follows — are, in this way, canonized themselves, become immortalized as features of fantasy rather than “obsolete pieces of ideology which have become fossilized and have turned into fantasy tropes” (Moran 60). As a result, these features, plotlines, and character roles are replicated and reused in later works, passing forward unquestioningly that universal, hegemonic voice; in endless repetition, these features become staples, almost requirements for the genre, which lead to an inability — or unwillingness — to imagine more diverse presences occupying these spaces and playing these roles. This is at the root of the gender, sexual, and racial disparities generally found in literature, which Ebony Elizabeth Thomas attributes to “a massive failure of the collective imagination” (6). Indeed, although from the 1980s onwards it is possible to find authors questioning common tropes and exploring more diverse representations within fantasy (see Moran 64 for some relevant examples), this has not necessarily gone hand-in-hand with more diverse authorial presences. This is in spite of, or precisely due to, the fact that diverse voices tend to either play with the Tolkienian formula in ways that subvert its maleand white-centric core purposes and values or directly write against them, especially through using other sub-genres or blending different characteristics together. Thomas herself writes that “the Black fantastic has historically been liberating, activist artistic production in the face of erasure and marginalization” (8), yet “the fact remains that the vast majority of speculative narratives read and viewed in the United States are still written by White authors” (9). Similarly, despite the importance of female authorship being evident from the very beginnings of the Anglo-American fantasy tradition (Hope Mirrlees wrote Lud-in-the-Mist as early as 1926), it is rarer for them to reach the heights of popularity and influence of their male counterparts. Even Ursula Le Guin and her considerable status and popularity remain overshadowed by Tolkien, though his hegemony seems to be shifting as more, younger readers are introduced to the genre. Even though the genre has continued to constantly evolve, another major shift in the paradigm of fantasy — and a displacement in 112 creation and reality and the reader will find the connection too arduous to make; too little and it will fail to work as fantasy at all. (Armitt 24) Fantasy, then, as far as escape is concerned, is no more fantastic (in the sense of an imaginative exercise) than any other fiction can claim to be. And yet, no other genre, except perhaps romance literature (Clute himself mentions how Jane Austen’s novels “are notoriously read for escapist motives”, despite their meticulously realistic nature [321]), seems to have suffered quite as much of an instantaneous and dismissive association with escape. This association is likely due to the evident secondariness (to use Wolf’s term, referring to the distance between primary reality and the fictional premise) of fantasy’s fictional worlds, as well as its frequent use of portals and other similar devices to ‘transport’ its audience into different realities. Theorists have argued vehemently against this association, however, and strived to correct it. Kathryn Hume in particular identifies escapist or “escape literature” as an entirely separate type, indifferent to considerations of mode. Thus, whether they write within the mimetic or fantastic, an author of escapist literature “assumes our agreement that everyday reality is boring, unromantic — even depressing. Furthermore, the author believes nothing can be done to change that reality, so he offers to disengage us from its grey unpleasantness and to enfold us in comforting illusions” (Hume 56). These narratives “are sometimes called fantasy because of their raw daydream content, but they do not contravene the laws of physics or physiology”; in other words, they are “unrealistic but not a departure from what could physically happen in this world” (Hume 22), which, as previously discussed, fantasy necessarily implies. Besides, the sense of hopelessness which this definition hints at — an incapability to change a stagnant reality, and hence a desire to escape it — does not seem to necessarily hold true to fantasy, which fundamentally suggests change, mutability, and the subversion of preconceived notions of what reality is or stands for. Rather, within “the structure of fantasy”, as Clute puts it, “the term Escape has a more particular meaning” (321), one that is based on Tolkien’s oft-quoted defence of the notion: [I]t is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used […]. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than the jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics […] are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. (69) Tolkien’s understanding of Escape as one of the three essential functions of fantasy is not only more positive than the general conception of it, but also elevates escapism from a questionable attitude on part of the audience to a legitimate purpose of fiction, and of fantasy fiction most particularly. In fact, Tolkien re-signifies the notion into something possibly even beneficial, since it need not imply ignorance or unconcern with the circumstances of the primary, actual world. Not only that, this also correlates the very act of Escape with a noticeable effect over reality — at the very least as far as the individual’s perception of and relationship with it are concerned. Thus, escapism would become interpretable as a way to avoid becoming overwhelmed by circumstance, and obtaining a glimmer of hope in order to face the harshness of reality with renewed energy. Furthermore, the conception of fantasy as comforting wishfulfilment is behind much of the dismissiveness with which the notion of escape is often treated; 113 however, secondary worlds can be fraught with as much danger and bleakness as with wonder, so that to “automatically claim” that explorations of secondary worlds are “‘escapist’ (with the term being applied pejoratively) is to do them an injustice” (Wolf 35). The notion that readers of fantasy do so for the sake of wish-fulfilment becomes debatable when considering that “the stories set in many secondary worlds often include oppression, conflict, war, and dark times for their characters”, so that “it soon becomes clear that these are not worlds that someone would want to physically escape to, much less reside in” (Wolf 35). It is worth noting, however, that despite these attempts to destigmatize the notion of escape, the genre continued to be critically dismissed on grounds of unreality or illusion well into its history. Even very recent takes assume the “implicit invitation to escape this careworn world for a visit to a more appealing one, if only in one’s imagination” (Cart 98-99) as one of fantasy’s greater appeals. For instance, fantasist Tamora Pierce holds fantasy as especially important “to a group that I deeply hope is small: those whose lives are so grim that they cling to everything that takes them completely away for any length of time” (quoted in Cart 99). Such capacity to displace an audience away from a harsh reality and bring them comfort for a time is certainly worthwhile, and can be seen positively as such. However, this conception retains a sense of pity underneath it, of sympathy rather than empathy — as though those who read fantasy do so specifically to escape the bleakness of their lives, rather than for other purposes traditionally perceived as ‘higher’, such as self-improvement or educational enlightenment. Aside from assuming that readers turn to fantasy in an uncritical manner, as well as ignoring the fact that non-fantastic literatures can very well accomplish similar escapist functions, ideas like these have tinged the fantasy genre with an induced sense of guilt over the consumption of something for daydreaming26 or mere enjoyment, especially in the case of a genre that had for so long been dismissed as pulp-like: “Fantasy is the ultimate guilty pleasure, something in which we all indulge privately and often deliciously, be our daydreams of a romantic, opportunistic, consolationist or sexual nature, but in relation to which we are never encouraged to overindulge” (Armitt 1). This persistence has caused some theorists to avoid the concept altogether, resorting instead to conceptualizing the appeal of fantasy as “a sense of wonder”, created “by making the impossible seem familiar and the familiar seem new and strange” (Attebery, Fantasy Tradition 3). While the exploration of a hitherto unknown secondary world is doubtlessly much of fantasy’s appeal, it is also a prerogative of the genre to explore the real and bring new perspectives to it, what Tolkien had termed “Recovery”. In this author’s words, fantasy takes pains to express “the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle” (Tolkien 68). However, according to this same author, to impose this sole function on fantasy is to limit it, “for the reason that recovery of freshness of vision is its only virtue” (68). As mentioned earlier, some of the general academic and critical disregard which fantasy has experienced can be traced back to this equation with escapist wish-fulfilment, which is considered an expression of (wilful) ignorance: “From an academic point of view, fantasy criticism has traditionally carried an element of stigma, seemingly based on the assumption that the business of fantasy cannot ever be sufficiently ‘serious’ to merit proper scholarship” (Armitt 1). It must be remembered that disconnection from reality was one of the arguments Rosemary Jackson exhibited against Tolkien’s and Le Guin’s fantasies, as a direct connection to the real 26 In “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming”, Sigmund Freud suggests that all human beings daydream, yet only children may communicate such daydreams without shame: “the daydreamer carefully conceals his phantasies from other people because he feels he has reasons for being ashamed of them” (152), yet the writer is able to communicate these daydreams by legitimizing them in literature, producing “a great pleasure” in the audience and “overcoming the feeling of repulsion” which the communication of daydreams usually produces (153). 114 was, in her terms, required in order for fantasy to accomplish its subversive function. This lesser-than concept of fantasy and the fantastic seems to suggest that criticism conceived of the dynamic reality/fantasy as an exclusively dualistic conception, where the former is placed in a privileged position against the latter. Interestingly, this mirrors the dynamic subject/other, insofar as one of the poles is perceived and defined in negative, opposing terms to its dominant counterpart. Much in the same way as the other is conceived of as that which is not a subject, the fantastic is then conceptualized as that which is not real. Furthermore, if this is so, just as the other is initially conceived of as an entity completely separate and distinct from the subject, fantasy itself is also thought of as completely cut off from reality — which is impossible in itself, since the human mind would not be able to conceptualize such a thing. The turning point solidifying this perception seems to be located at the advent and quick establishment of the realist tradition from the mid-19th century onwards, which makes for an interesting counterpoint to the view of fantasy as an ancient genre spanning many centuries (departing from Greek and Latin mythos). However, as previously explored, such a view of fantasy is more-so an attempt to legitimize the genre against the hegemony of realism than anything else, since our contemporary idea of fantasy is very recent and has evolved considerably quickly. Indeed, the critical separation between realism and the fantastic as separate modes is itself relatively recent: Before the beginning of the scientific revolution in Western Europe in the 16th century, most Western literature contained huge amounts of material 20thcentury readers would think of as fantastical. […] There is no easy division between realism and the fantastical in writers before 1600 or so, and no genre of written literature, before about the early 19th century, seems to have been constituted so as deliberately to confront or contradict the ‘real’. Though fantasy certainly existed for many centuries before, […] it is quite something else to suggest that the perceived impossibility of these stories was their point — that they stood as a counter-statement to a dominant worldview. (Clute 338) Once nineteenth-century fantasy (after George McDonald, William Morris, and their contemporaries and successors) began to assert itself as consciously and deliberately deviating from reality and its hegemonic point of view, the realist tradition acquired its position of dominance, traditionally praised as a better or somehow superior literary form. This is especially evident in the fact that the literary canon as a whole has been markedly populated by realist fiction, by contrast to fantasy. Such perceived superiority comes from two major sources: firstly, the aforementioned association of fantasy with escapism and childish fancy (itself a dismissal of childhood that, as already explained, many critics and fantasists take issue with), and secondly the evident link of mimetic realism with actual, extra-textual reality, and hence with a sense of knowledge and truth. As Ian Watt argues, “[m]odern realism, of course, begins from the position that truth can be discovered by the individual through his senses”, relying on the “view that the external world is real, and that our senses give us a true report of it” (Watt 11). Jackson’s argument further supports this idea: “Realism, as an artistic practice, confirms the dominant ideas of what constitutes this outside [empirically verifiable, extra-textual] reality, by […] organizing and framing it through the unities of the text. It presents its practice as a neutral, innocent, and natural one, erasing its own artifice and construction of the real” (Jackson 83, italics in original). By its very nature making constant reference to this assumed extra-textual, observable reality, realist fiction reasserts its position of control through “an apparent belief that the external world is something over which human beings can attempt authority, and one 115 of its most important corollaries: that language can be made exactly to represent the world” (Hunter 129). Henry James articulates this idea in his essay “The Art of Fiction” (1884), where he argues that the novelist competes with life by condensing in his art a way of perceiving it, in order to most accurately show its truths as the author sees them. R. L. Stevenson quickly and famously contradicted this in his reply, “A Humble Remonstrance” (1884): “Mr. James utters his mind with a becoming fervour on the sanctity of truth to the novelist; on a more careful examination truth will seem a word of very debateable propriety […]. No art —to use the daring phrase of Mr. James— can successfully ‘compete with life’; and the art that seeks to do so is condemned to perish montibus aviis” (151). James’ argument is more stereotypically and mimetically realist in its belief that the novel can condense reality, and be made to represent it; on the other hand, Stevenson argues that the resemblance of fiction to life is “forced and material, as a shoe must still consist of leather” (153) — that is, exclusively functional, so that our minds can understand and conceptualize it. Under such fostered beliefs, fantasy — whose discourse departs as much as it can from representations of primary reality — becomes left out of the dominant literary economy. Its difference, “which is designed and significant, and is both the method and the meaning of the work” (Stevenson 153), becomes stigmatized as otherness, and is thence shunned. This comparison between the position of fantasy and the position of the other has already been posited by several theorists: Like the right hemisphere of our brains, and like woman in a culture where the standard of definition is man, fantasy has been the silent partner, ever since Plato and Aristotle promoted mimesis in their critical statements. (Hume 196). The mass-market paperback fantasy with a lurid cover is like the limited-edition excursion into fiction by the well-known poet in one all-important respect. Both are outside the culturally defined norm; both are Other. (Attebery, Strategies ix) The modern fantastic […] is a subversive literature. It exists alongside the ‘real’, on either side of the dominant cultural axis, as a muted presence, a silenced imaginary other. (Jackson 180) These descriptions convey much of what was already said in previous chapters about the other itself: a sense of inferiority, of something fundamentally different that distorts reality and truth, and that must therefore be controlled, dismissed, silenced. Though the image of the mirror can be understood as descriptive of the fantasy/reality dynamic, there have been attempts to exorcize fantasy from this position of distorted reflection. William Plank, for example, establishes imagination as the synthesizing force that reconciles both poles: If we admit that the existence of fantasy is as one term of the dialectic fantasy/ reality, we must also admit […] that the two terms find their synthesis in the imagination. Imagination, that is, the ability of the human mind to create images by means of which it explains the world to itself, the epistemological basis for perceptions of reality. These images, produced by the image-creating cognitive apparatus, are the manner in which that apparatus constructs the world as world. (Plank 79) Despite having been hailed as an essential quality and faculty of humankind, fundamental 116 for the creation of fiction, the association of imagination and of its adjective, imaginary, with fantasy — combined with the aforementioned hegemony of realism — have derived in their historical dismissal as “nonexistent, false, invalid” (Plank 79). However, the idea of something not being present in reality does not necessarily imply falsehood: as Plank himself argues above, the construction of images via the imagination is what “constructs the world as world” — in other words, it is what subjects build in order to explain the world to themselves and one another. This exercise in synthesis is best exemplified through ancient myths, which turned to fantastic narratives of interactions among gods to explain natural phenomena. In bridging the gap between reality and fantasy, then, imagination can be argued to establish a link between the process of reality construction and that of identity construction, since they both take place through similar mechanisms. Subjects build an image of the other after their own perceptions of what otherness entails, and simultaneously construct images that resemble or reflect the world, after their own perceptions of it, in order to make sense of the reality surrounding them. This ties with what was already suggested in previous chapters regarding the ontological impact of narrative: fiction, as an exercise in imagination, can be said to act as a bridge between the gaps in our perception. Its condition as a thought experiment means that fiction enables us to imagine difference, so that fiction can become a “meaning-giving experience” that “helps us find relationships between the I and the not-I, between man and the cosmos, between consciousness and reality” (Hume 27-28). Its condition as an otherized genre — something which has always existed in the margins of the real — perhaps makes fantasy in particular more suitable for this task: both the fantastic and the other are constructed through a process of imagination, based on individual perception and (perhaps mistaken) assumptions. Following the mirror dynamic, this places fantasy in the reflective position: it mirrors reality, but does not quite reflect it — rather distorting or shifting its image to reveal its hidden depths. Rosemary Jackson already pointed out that “many fantasies introduce mirrors, glasses, reflections, portraits, eyes — which see things myopically, or distortedly, or out of focus — to effect a transformation of the familiar into the unfamiliar” (Jackson 43). In so doing, fantasy “does not introduce novelty, so much as uncover all that needs to remain hidden if the world is to be comfortably known” (Jackson 65). In other words, fantasy becomes a vehicle for the representation of otherness, for all that has been culturally repressed or made invisible. In so doing, it shows the real from new angles, forcing the consumer into a position of estrangement, or into what Tolkien called a “recovery of freshness of vision” (68), forcing a different perspective upon the known world that reveals its hidden depths. Positioning fantasy and reality as the two sides of the mirror further stresses that they are not separate concepts, and supports the idea that they do not in fact conform a dualistic hierarchy, but rather are mutually dependent. On the one hand, as already established, fantasy is incapable of escaping the real, which imposes a necessary limit on its seemingly boundless capacity for imagination: “Fantasy re-combines and inverts the real, but it does not escape it […]. The fantastic cannot exist independently of that ‘real’ world which it seems to find so frustratingly finite” (Jackson 20). Furthermore, fantasy “is produced within, and determined by, its social context. Though it might struggle against the limits of this context, often being articulated upon that very struggle, it cannot be understood in isolation from it” (Jackson 3). As is the case for all fiction, this implies the impossibility of conceiving of fantasy as existing within a vacuum, apart from and unaffected by the realities that surround its creation — which in turn belies the dismissal of the genre on grounds of escapism. On the other hand, as Kathryn Hume mentions, the fantastic may be dependent on the mimetic, but the opposite is also true, as Armitt’s earlier quotation already suggested: even the most realistic fiction depends on a sense of the fantastic 117 for its presentation of events — given how primary reality is, as Stevenson argued, not as cohesive and condensable as fiction presents it. Both realism and fantasy are “dependent on the devices of past story-tellers”, although Attebery does argue that “fantasy is less able to disguise its dependence. It cannot pretend to be unmediated reporting. It cannot be validated by our sense of the realistic, and even though that sense is also determined […] by literary convention, we do not perceive the conventions that carve out particular genres and formulas from the mode of realism”, precisely because they are designed to imitate the discursive characteristics of the actual world (Strategies 9). This evidence of interdependence suggests that the relationship between these two poles is rather one of equality, but to think of it as such has noticeable consequences both for the general perception of fantasy and for its perceived effect(s) on the real. Firstly, it legitimizes the genre beyond prejudiced notions regarding escapism; secondly, it implies that fantasy, despite its apparent removal from reality, can still affect it and even alter it, perhaps beyond a single individual’s perception. Several of the aforementioned theories already suggest that the fantasy/reality relationship is not hierarchical: for instance, Doležel’s theory of possible worlds posits fictional worlds as unconstrained “by requirements of verisimilitude, truthfulness, or plausibility” and “shaped by historically changing aesthetic factors” (Doležel 19), and therefore as simultaneously independent of, yet connected to, actuality. Colin Manlove also writes how “several writers of fantasy […] see the worlds of fantasy as no less real than their own or any other” (xii) and “seek to show that the natural and supernatural orders are not so divided as might be thought” (Manlove 45-46). Brian Attebery, too, insists that fantasy has an impact “not in disordering, but in reordering reality. It reinforces our awareness of what is by showing us what might be, and uses the imaginary laws of the created world to postulate hidden principles on which our own might be organized” (Fantasy Tradition 36), even in the case of portal-quest or immersive fantasies, where the secondary world overrides or substitutes primary world defaults almost entirely. Similarly, Armitt emphasizes that “fantasy, in its utilization of a competing worlds model, always requires a re-thinking, never an evasion of the real” (172), and that the “boundary negotiations” between possibility and impossibility, between real and unreal, “are intrinsic to all fantasy, as are the means by which we move between competing worlds” (Armitt 8). As far as these “competing worlds” go, Mark Wolf also argues that “rather than having a strict delineation between Primary and secondary worlds, we have something of a spectrum connecting them, just as ‘fiction’ and ‘nonfiction’ are not as mutually exclusive as they may first appear” (Wolf 27). Now, if we accept the premise that the narratives of fantasy and of reality stand as two sides of a coin, mutually influential and building their worlds simultaneously with and against one another, it follows that our relationship to fantasy does have the potential to go beyond the simplicity of escaping to a different fictional world: it has the power to potentially alter, distort, or subvert the ‘real’ — which makes its parallel with otherness not at all coincidental. Both fantasy and otherness are perceived as existing outside the status quo, and neither can be rid of the political implications of such a position: despite their apparent removal or disconnection from the hegemonic universal, both fantasy and the other may still have effect(s) over such hegemony. This means that fantasy, as a genre, possesses enough power as to become an uncomfortable presence for the status quo. As Lynette Hunter explains, the generalized concern with the link between fantasy and reality is, at its core, a concern “with power, authority, and control”, hence the reason why some critics and academics have attempted and perhaps still “attempt to move fantasy into the non-authoritative by cutting it off from reality, denying all connections” (Hunter 37). Plank also relates the dynamic fantasy/reality to the idea of power as follows: 118 The mind’s ability to create images is the basic epistemological behavior of the human mind: the assignment of truth or validity to these images is the role of a politics of the intellect, a politics that is certainly related to the […] power of a culture. Politics is the study of power, and it is the political, technological power of a culture that defines what is real and what is fantastic. Reality therefore becomes an exercise in politics, and the fantastic is the realm of the powerless and the disaffected. (80) Therefore the status quo, as the dominant force over the narratives that rule human society, is then able to define a common agreement as to what reality is, as well as to grant power to such a definition in order to reassert itself as the hegemonic power. The system thus works circularly, as Althusser had already suggested: power “validates itself through its claim to being real, true, and right” (Plank 80), so that anything outside of this order is quickly dismissed as a mere fantasy, a distortion of the known — and the possibility of a different social order is consequently derided as utopian illusion. The fact that literary fantasy upsets this, changes it, “takes the real and breaks it” (Jackson 12), makes it dangerous because it “takes us into ‘another world’, beyond the looking-glass or the grave, removed in time or space, but a world that is a mirror image of, a revelation of, an analogy for, the everyday one” (Yarrow 84). Its very existence as a negative, as a not-reality, implies the possibility of subversion of the current order — much as Jackson had already argued; and this same threat is embodied in the figure of the other, the one who must be kept under submission, its difference monitored and controlled — but who, conversely, holds the key to the overturning of the system itself. It is precisely this position of marginality, of otherness, which makes it possible to argue that fantasy is particularly suitable to become a site of political and social resistance to cis-heterosexual, white-supremacist patriarchal systems and narratives. Of course, irrespective of fantasy’s peculiarities, all fiction stands in this comparatively marginal position with respect to primary reality, so it may well be argued that any form of fiction can function in the same way, if employed with such a purpose. However, it is my belief that the characteristics inherent to the fantasy genre as outlined in this and previous chapters make it particularly useful for the exploration and articulation of these resistances. As fantasy attempts to take us beyond the real, it also takes us beyond its discourses — specifically, beyond the mimetic, which has so often used its claim to truth and universal validity to exclude marginal voices altogether, or else to encase them within such marginal positions. When discussing fantasy’s connection to eroticism, Lucie Armitt mentions how “the distance fantasy establishes between worlds […] renders this exploration of the forbidden both ‘safer’ and, paradoxically, more immersive: we dream deeply, but ultimately re-surface unscathed” (141). This also holds true for fantasy’s exploration of otherness: in its secondary worlds, subjects may explore difference and conduct ideological experiments freely, under an impression of complete safety granted by the premise of fictionality — much in the vein of Ricoeur’s idea of rehearsals. As Iser put it, “a successful relationship between text and reader can only come about through changes in the reader’s projections” (Act 167). It is thus an ideal outcome, then, upon re-emergence into the primary world, for subjects to be in some way touched by the represented difference: the imaginative exercise would have achieved some change in their perception of the actual world, by rendering visible what was previously hidden and thus causing a shift in the preconceptions with which they previously filled the gaps in their perception. The experience of fantasy would then serve the end which is implied, in reader-response and narrative empathy theories, to be 119 the purpose of fiction as a whole: to enable not only the recognition of otherness, but also its positive perception and assimilation into the subject’s perception of the actual, primary world.27 However, as mentioned in the chapter on empathic response, this implies that fiction is, perhaps exclusively, oriented towards producing a change in the worldview of a hegemonic subject — in other words, the subject who benefits from some measure of the privilege of belonging to one or more categories of the universal (male, white, heterosexual, etc.). On the other hand, this work posits that the more significant function of the change fiction may prompt lies in its orientation towards the marginalized individuals themselves — towards their own perception of their identity and their social role(s). This, I would argue, is where fantasy’s exploration beyond the real may prove particularly beneficial; and yet, as shown throughout the previous section, many of the major or most influential works of fantasy have been predominantly marked by the white, male, cis-heterosexual point of view. In these fantasies, the representation of difference takes a secondary position — if it takes place at all. It is indeed very telling that fantasy has always been ready to imagine worlds where magic, dragons or elves exist, but not worlds where women live alongside men in equal terms, or where humans and elves could be anything but white-skinned. Fantasists have always been eager and willing to imagine the transcension of the physical laws of reality, yet not so much transcending the boundaries of sexism, racism, and other institutional oppressions which distinctively colour their fantasy worlds as written by and for a very definite set of defaults. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas gives her own experience as a Black reader of fantasy in her introduction to The Dark Fantastic, discussing how she felt — and, in fact, was actively told — that these worlds and stories were not meant for her, and were often barred to her presence altogether: “My mother was doing me a favor by letting me know that magic was inaccessible to me. The real world held trouble enough for young Black girls […]. In order to survive, I had to face reality” (1). This was so even despite the fact that there is a not inconsiderable tradition of writers of colour turning to science fiction and fantasy in order to convey their experiences, and to send messages of resistance and courage in the face of oppression. When fantasy, as a genre, has been overwhelmingly constructed and marketed for the universal, hegemonic subject, an economy is created where marginalized identities are prevented from inscribing or imagining themselves into the fiction. For them, it does not function as the “mirrors, windows and doors” which form the title of Rudine Sims Bishop’s essay, where she argues: “When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part” (Bishop 1). In other words, otherized individuals do not get to enjoy the escapist function of fantasy when the fantasy itself expels them, marginalizes them, in the same ways as the primary world does. Thomas phrases it in terms of positioning: “not everyone is positioned the same way in or by the fantastic”, so that neither characters nor narrators position marginalized readers as “possible interlocutor[s]” (1819). Instead, they are made to occupy the same otherized positions they do in the primary world, indirectly showing the inevitable connection between fantasy and primary reality. Thomas uses Jeffrey J. Cohen’s “Monster Culture: Seven Theses” (1996) to show how the marginalized individual (the character of colour, in particular) is always recognized and represented as an other within fantasy, much like the figure of the monster is. Thus, the consumers can never be made to identify with this other, because its perspective is that of the abject, the antagonist whom the hero (the protagonist) must face and destroy (see Thomas 70). The dark other’s movement beyond this position is inevitably thwarted in what Thomas refers to as “the dark fantastic cycle” (26). 27 See Keen 61-63 for examples of authors who take this stance. 120 This cycle refers to a repeated pattern in the roles followed by “Dark Others” in the fantastic. Though Thomas thinks very specifically of characters of colour, and hence her double-edged use of the adjective “Dark”, this pattern could also be read into other characters whose identities are otherized in both primary and secondary worlds. In Thomas’ pattern, the awesome persona of the dark other first appears as a “spectacle”. This presence disrupts or interrupts the fantastic, is unsettling because it should not be there. Precisely because of the way the fantastic as a tradition has been constructed — as fundamentally white, male, able-bodied, etc. — “issues of race and difference threaten to shake us out of the waking dream that we inhabit while engaged in the fantastic. The spectacle of the Dark Other in a speculative narrative leads to the hesitation that is the Todorovian hallmark of the fantastic” (Thomas 73). This hesitation disrupts the experience of the fantastic, which leads audiences to reject and lash out against this other’s presence. In this way, whether driven by fear, desire, or impulse (all possible responses to the monstrous other, according to Cohen), both characters and readers respond to the presence of the other with violence, which constitutes the third phase of Thomas’ cycle. The dark other must be subjugated, controlled, and at some point destroyed, as the conventions of fantasy demand of antagonists. This destruction results in the final phase of the cycle, “haunting”: even after its defeat, the dark other’s “present-absence nonetheless haunts the story”, since it cannot leave the narrative (Thomas 27). Its existence is required for the existence of the narrative itself, for without the dark other, Thomas contends, “there is neither conflict nor climax, neither rising action nor resolution. The Dark Other gives the story its excitement, its promise, its very meaning” (27) and thus inevitably remains, as this ambivalent state between presence and absence must sustain the story to its conclusion. Inevitably, this haunting prompts the repetition of the first phases, creating a vicious cycle that repeats itself text after text. However, there is one more phase which breaks this cycle: emancipation, “reached only when the Dark Other is liberated from spectacle, embodied hesitation, violence, and haunting” (Thomas 28), finally subverting its position and becoming a subject. To encounter narratives where emancipation actually takes place is rare, though, and they are “rarely as popular as those that feature trapped dark subjectivities […] because subverting the traditional positioning of the Dark Other in the fantastic requires radical rethinking of everything that we know” (28). That is, it requires emancipating imagination itself. Such an emancipation not only implies that subjects resist and reject the responses to the other — hesitation, violence — which the system encourages and reproduces, but also the reimagining of the subject/other positions in their entirety, since fantasy worlds continue to replicate their existence. It is not possible for these others to escape into a fantasy world where they are not other because the characters who are meant to represent them have experiences and concepts of their own difference that do not differ from what they already live through in primary reality. Thomas exemplifies this with the case of fictional representations of black womanhood: Black girl characters are always an instantiation of Blackness in the fantastic, and carry with them all the weight of Blackness in the real world. Many children and teens seek the fantastic as a means of escape; as we have seen, Black girl characters in mainstream science fiction and fantasy do not offer agency but are marked by the narrative for death and haunting. [… O]veridentification with Black story-girls often leads to heartbreak that is not unlike the pain found beyond the page and the screen. (Thomas 138) 121 The ‘weight’ not just of Blackness, but of difference in general, persecutes these characters in and beyond the page. For them to enter that phase of emancipation would thus require a fundamental rethinking of the dominant forms of myth-making and metanarratives that have continued to shape our societies, and in turn our imaginations as well (see Thomas 18). It is, I would argue, in this process of rethinking where the exploration beyond the real offered by fantasy comes in as particularly beneficial. As others, these identities have not enjoyed the autonomy and agency afforded to subjects in primary reality, nor been able to perceive themselves beyond the difference that marks them as undesirable or outsiders. Because they are not part of the universal default, they are always defined by their non-being — non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, etc. Realist discourse, as already established, departs exactly from this primary reality that is conditioned by these perspectives on others. The narratives constructing this primary reality, and the hegemonic perspectives dominating it, tend to encourage authors to reproduce them in their fictional (realistic) imaginings; hence the tendency of social others, when placed in realist fictions, to occupy the same disadvantageous positions they do in primary reality, their identities defined by the hegemonic systems against which they (often futilely) struggle. As long as these discourses, these dominant shapes of the imagination, continue to be relied on to create, fiction will remain unable to emancipate imagination beyond them. Of course, this presents an interesting conundrum, since traditionally a good or better representation is thought of as the one closest to reality — Toril Moi points out, for instance, how feminism’s “demand for new, realistic images of women takes it for granted that feminist writers should want to use realist fictional forms” (5-6). In other words, in order to represent woman in a three-dimensional, believable way that makes her feel seen, the representation should be accurate in relation to primary reality and reflect the extra-textual experience of what it means to be a woman. However, this presents us with two problems: the first is that it takes us back to the issue of the multiplicity and complexity of the female experience — the fact that there is no single quintessential experience of woman to be represented. Secondly, to be faithful to the dominant version of reality necessarily implies the reproduction of the patriarchal ideologies that affect women’s experiences: by working with a reality where women’s agency is necessarily limited, fictional representations can only adjust to the same predetermined roles and defaults assigned to them. The cycle is thus reproduced, and female characters become marked by their difference and are doomed to the violence and haunting to which the other is forced to submit. In Patricia Meyer Spacks’ words, in the case of the realist mode, “[f]emale rebellion may be perfectly justified, but there’s no good universe next door, no way out, young potential revolutionaries can’t find their revolution. So they marry in defeat or go mad in a complicated form of triumph, their meaning the inevitability of failure” (158). It is precisely that “good universe next door” which fantasy makes possible. While this is not in any way to argue that realist fiction cannot work subversively — there is plenty of evidence to the contrary —, the fact is that realism is “limited to the circumstances of the recognizable world” (Attebery, Strategies 92) and must therefore work from them. Fantasy, on the other hand, is a way to work beyond such limitations, and thus to open up possibilities that are otherwise unavailable. The possibilities for the other in fantasy are potentially limitless, a limitlessness only stoppered by the very social constructions that superimpose the positions of subject and other onto certain identities in the first place; primary world defaults and constructs that need no longer apply within the fantastic. Additionally, given that fiction works as one of the many myth-making tools that construct socio-cultural narratives around individuals, the difference implicit in the un-real discourse of fantasy can bring along the complete subversion 128 of oppression and subjugation at work in this secondary world. In terms of the dark fantastic cycle, Damaya and Syenite describe the stages of violence and haunting to which they are led by the oppressive systems at work, whereas their final unification into Essun’s grown-up perspective is argued to lead to a breaking of the cycle due to the role she takes throughout the second and third instalments of the trilogy. 7.1 Damaya Damaya is the name Essun had during her childhood; as such, this is a period of learning for both herself and the reader. It is through Damaya’s eyes that the reader begins to understand what an orogene exactly is, and what the consequences of being one are in this society. The inherent danger of orogeny, combined with its unpredictability — orogeny does not seem to be genetically transmitted, so that anyone can be born an orogene even if the parents are not —, provokes the irrational fear of the community around them, which Damaya experiences first-hand. When she is pushed by another child at creche, she loses control of her emotions and, subsequently, of her ability: she ices the air around herself and very nearly kills the boy who pushed her. Upon getting home, instead of receiving support or concern, she is instantly berated, her mother saying she had “hidden it from them […], pretended to be a child when she was really a monster, that was what monsters did” (Jemisin, Fifth Season 31). As it takes place with difference in the primary world, orogeny is otherized — vilified and immediately uprooted from the community, whether by direct violence or by having the offender be taken to the Fulcrum, which is what Damaya assumes will now happen to her. This association between orogeny and otherness, especially racial otherness, is discussed in further depth throughout chapter 8. Nonetheless, Damaya’s character arc can be considered a clear example of how the power dynamic of the gaze works at the individual level. After the incident at creche, she is locked up in her family’s barn without even a blanket or a bucket to relieve herself in, which naturally causes her to fear and resent her parents over such immediate, visceral rejection of a previously beloved daughter. She has been in the barn for two weeks by the time her assigned Fulcrum Guardian, a man named Schaffa, comes to take her to Yumenes. He explains that Damaya, contrary to what appearances suggest, was in fact lucky: “Not all parents do the right thing. Sometimes they don’t keep their child isolated, as the Fulcrum and we Guardians recommend. Sometimes they do, but we get the message too late, and by the time a Guardian arrives a mob has carried the child off and beaten her to death” (Fifth Season 35). The barn’s locked doors were not only keeping Damaya in, but also the rest of the community out. Perhaps, then, despite being unable to understand her existence as anything but a monstrosity, this meagre protection was a final, if warped and cruel, act of love from Damaya’s parents. The child thus can be said to enter the dark fantastic cycle in Thomas’ terms, though not because of her skin colour, but because of her ability: in a single moment of uncontrollable emotion triggered by a violent act, a little girl suddenly becomes something monstrous that must be locked up and contained. This is especially poignant in the case of orogeny: though Guardians have abilities against orogeny, the only means available to ordinary people to contain or resist it — and thus the reaction which they quickly resort to — is pure violence. Damaya is only saved from this by her parents’ barn, as well as Schaffa’s promptness in retrieving her to spirit her away to the Fulcrum as quickly and quietly as possible. As the more experienced adult, Schaffa soon cements his position as a mentor figure to Damaya during their trip to Yumenes, which makes him a suitable vehicle to impart further knowledge about the secondary world to the reader. This device is particularly characteristic of portal-quest fantasy, as mentioned earlier: the presence of the mentor positions “both protagonist 129 and reader as naïve” as they move together from the safe, understood world into something unfamiliar (Mendlesohn 2). Since Schaffa is also the only person to treat Damaya with any decency after the incident — as though she is still a human being, and not the monster she has become in everyone else’s eyes —, she attaches herself to him as a parent figure rather quickly, something Schaffa himself notices. While they travel, he begins to tell her the story of Misalem, the orogene who wrought great massacre on the Sanze Empire, and of Shemshena, the woman who stopped him — the first Guardian. Naturally, Damaya admires the woman and thinks he means to comfort her with the tale, but soon realizes that Schaffa “does not see her as a potential Shemshena”, but rather a potential Misalem (Jemisin, Fifth Season 93), a monster, a disaster waiting to happen. The story was in fact meant as a warning that Schaffa, as her Guardian, would stop at nothing to eliminate any threat Damaya might present. Angered and afraid at the implicit threat, Damaya concludes that, irrespective of how afraid she is of herself, and others of her, she does not want to be controlled in this way: ‘You don’t like that Misalem is the villain of the tale. That you are like Misalem: a potential threat, without a Shemshena to control you.’ […] ‘I don’t want to be a threat,’ she says in a small voice. Then, greatly daring, she adds, ‘But I don’t want to be… controlled… either. I want to be — […] Responsible. For myself.’ (Fifth Season 95) Though admiring her wish to take responsibility, Schaffa’s reply is cutting: “the fact of the matter, Damaya, is that you cannot control yourself. It isn’t your nature” (95), a word which speaks to the essentialist view of orogenes. The unfairness of this assessment angers Damaya further, and she declares she does not need him to control her — she is more than capable of controlling herself. This statement is as much an instinctive reaction against the total subjugation Schaffa’s control implies as it is an attempt to reaffirm herself as a subject, someone whose agency allows her to make responsible individual decisions without the intervention of external control. In response to this assertion, though, Schaffa’s demeanour completely shifts. He becomes frighteningly quiet as he takes Damaya’s hand in his own; very calmly, he asks her to prove that she can control herself, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, breaks her hand. Despite the swift, unbearable pain, Damaya does not reach for her power at all, reacting only by crying and screaming. “Very good”, Schaffa says soothingly, “You’ve controlled yourself through pain. […] Now comes the real test” (Fifth Season 98). This sudden, cruel act is a way to instantaneously teach Damaya two things that she had not yet quite grasped. Firstly, that her opinions and wants no longer count. Her voice is effectively silenced in this moment, both literally and figuratively: the pain in her hand deprives her of coherent speech, and hence of the ability to articulate any argument, and learning that swift punishment will follow if she dares to speak out against this treatment will ensure that she keeps quiet from this point forward. If agency, as Henze suggested, is an individual’s right to “speak for herself” (230), this moment shows Damaya’s agency being forcibly taken from her. Secondly, this teaches Damaya that she is no longer in her own power, but rather completely at Schaffa’s mercy. Unable to protect herself from a sudden cruelty that she did not expect, Damaya realizes that Schaffa may choose to hurt her at any point, with no consequences to him and without her having any say in the matter. This is the lesson he most thoroughly teaches her. When he threatens to crush the child’s hand altogether, so that it will not heal properly and be rendered unusable, Damaya screams “No!” in a panic, to which Schaffa replies: 130 ‘Never say no to me,’ he says. The words are hot against her skin. […] ‘Orogenes have no right to say no. I am your Guardian. I will break every bone in your hand, every bone in your body, if I deem it necessary to make the world safe from you.’ (Fifth Season 99, italics in original) It is thus that Damaya becomes a subaltern subject. In being deprived of her voice, she is also deprived of choice, showing the fundamental link between voice and agency that bell hooks suggested. The right to choose what happens to her, and to speak out against what she perceives as unfair, are taken from her in an instant as Schaffa shows her that he is the subject and she the other, the object, upon which he is free to act as he pleases. This moment can be seen as exemplifying the (violent) processes of instruction and repression by which the “Repressive State Apparatus” (Althusser 19) forces the individual to assimilate into the dominant ideology. And yet, this subjugation is also instantly justified: ‘Wh-why?’ Her voice is hitchy. […] She doesn’t understand. Her family has shown her that love is a lie. […] But she had thought Schaffa liked her. Schaffa keeps stroking her broken hand. ‘I love you,’ he says. (Fifth Season 99, italics in original) The state apparatuses thus mould the subjects’ identities by interpellating them through ideology, while punishing them if they fail to respond to or accept their position as ideological subjects (see Althusser 19). Here, Schaffa follows gentle words and teachings with unfathomably cruel actions (and vice versa), following violent repression with ideological manipulation in the shape of love. This, quickly recognizable as a standard pattern of abuse, teaches Damaya that Schaffa hurting her means he loves her, as it is necessary “so that you will hurt no one else” (Jemisin, Fifth Season 100), weaponizing the child’s need for love and recognition to make her obedient to Schaffa’s wishes. This is only the first of many instances of Damaya being abused and manipulated into reassessing her entire sense of self, coming to perceive herself as orogene and nothing else, much like social others are made unable to see beyond the otherness that marks them as unacceptable for the social system around them. Damaya then proceeds to equate this otherness with monstrosity, as she was taught to do from childhood: she was rejected because she is inherently dangerous, doomed to hurt those around her. In turn, this perceived dangerousness is used to justify the pain, punishment, and control of all aspects of her life that she will be forced to endure from now on. What little sense of an individual self that Damaya had begun to develop prior to the discovery of her orogeny is therefore erased. While she was raised as part of the dominant social narratives — she was a Strongback, like her mother (see Fifth Season 30) —, she is suddenly rendered unable to locate herself in them. Neither these social ideologies nor the individuals around her welcome her presence or are willing to interpellate her as a subject any longer, constructing her as an ‘other’ instead. Her parents cease to recognize her as their daughter, and her use name is stripped from her: “Within a comm or without one, you are orogene” (Jemisin, Fifth Season 34, italics in original), thus forcibly identified and framed as other, defined by her deviation from the norm. This forced identification with the abject, which she was raised to instinctively reject and fear, dissolves any other sense of herself that Damaya may have had under the social significance of orogeny: “It has never occurred to her that roggas — she stops herself. She. She is a rogga. All at once she does not like this word, which she has heard most of her life. It’s a bad word she’s not supposed to say […], and suddenly it seems uglier than it 131 already did” (Fifth Season 89). The gravity of the slur, and the complete abjection it conveys, is only fully understood once she realizes it applies to herself now. Internalizing this sense of her own difference leads her to use Schaffa’s own justifications to rationalize the hatred it inspires. It is particularly easy for her to do so, given that she has been on the other side — she was once accepted, interpellated as a functioning subject by the systems that otherize orogenes, so that she knows why people hate them so: It is terrible to know orogenes can kill so many, so easily. But then, she supposes that is why people hate them. Her. That is why people hate her. (Fifth Season 39, italics in original) Cut off from any other source of support, Damaya is still very young, and helpless despite her power; it is not difficult for Schaffa to manipulate her into believing that he truly is “the last person in the world who loves her” (Fifth Season 100). By the time Damaya reaches the Fulcrum, she has been “dominated, made an object” (hooks, Talking Back 129). The reader then proceeds to watch as she is assimilated into the Fulcrum’s doctrines, which is the final touch in the process of her othering. Life at the Fulcrum is designed to instil obedience and crush individuality among the recruits, called grits, with severe punishments applied to any infraction. Damaya might once have protested unfairness, but not after Schaffa’s lesson: “When she starts to forget what matters, she looks at her right hand […]. She remembers the pain, and the lesson that it taught” (Jemisin, Fifth Season 193), demonstrating how effectively her voice was subdued into submission. Still, the Fulcrum appears as the preferable alternative by offering a measure of safety against the complete social ostracization which these children faced or would face in the outside world. This safety, of course, is conditional: if the recruits wish to stay on and enjoy what protection the Fulcrum offers, they must think in terms of value, proving their usefulness and obedience to the instructors. This constant pressure to succeed, and knowledge of the possible consequences, wears the children out physically and psychologically — and, inevitably, pits them against one another. The extent of this undercurrent of hardship is painfully revealed when Damaya becomes the target of bullying after a boy, Maxixe, approaches her at lunch. The next morning, her shoes disappear, the first in a series of escalating events that make her decide to act before this causes her serious trouble. She tries to find out who it is by framing Maxixe for stealing her shoes a second time, hiding them in his trunk before having the instructors conduct a search; in so doing, she kickstarts a series of fearful accusations. Maxixe accuses Jasper, another of the students, of having taken Damaya’s shoes last time. Jasper flinches and blames another girl, nicknamed Crack as a cheeky reference to how close she is to losing control of her power: He almost spits the next words. ‘She sold them [Damaya’s shoes] for me. Traded them to one of the cleaning commless in exchange for liquor.’ And then he points at Crack. […] ‘You rusting cannibalson whore!’ Crack clenches her fists. ‘You let that old pervert feel you up for liquor and a letter, you know full well he wouldn’t give it to us just for shoes—’ ‘It was from my mother!’ Jasper’s definitely crying now. ‘I didn’t want him to, to, but I couldn’t… they wouldn’t let me write to her…’ (Fifth Season 207-208) 132 Liquor is the ultimate crime for Fulcrum orogenes, since drunkenness entails a loss of control, which is prized above all else. This, combined with Crack’s inability to keep up with her fellows, makes it so that she is never seen or heard from after this incident. Maxixe’s punishment is not disclosed, but it is harsh enough that he never speaks to Damaya again, and Jasper is exiled to the Arctic Fulcrum. This moment shows the reader two things. The first is how the children struggle to find ways to endure in this oppressive environment — by numbing themselves with substances, or desperately trying to regain contact with the lives they led before the Fulcrum. The second is that the system of the Fulcrum, enforced by instructors and Guardians alike, is designed to make sure that the children never become truly friendly with one another. Never being allowed to leave, children are cut off from any external sources of support, while also prevented from finding solace in one another: competition and hostilities are not only tolerated, but also subtly encouraged, so that they will enter conflicts that facilitate friction and isolation. In such conditions, the climate for resistance can never breed. Whether through assimilation and compliance, or through sheer ruthlessness in punishment and lifestyle, personhood is worn out and completely taken from these children. The Fulcrum can thus be thought of as both an ideological and a repressive state apparatus in Althusser’s terms, participating in and enforcing the ideological discourses (and systemic violence) against orogenes. Furthermore, it represents the third phase of Thomas’ dark fantastic cycle, violence, by which orogenes are subjugated, controlled, and eventually destroyed. Though this destruction is not always literal, their sense of their own humanity is taken from them so that they can only conceive of themselves as tools: She knows better now, than to want such a thing [a friend], or to believe that she will ever deserve one. (Friends do not exist. The Fulcrum is not a school. Grits are not children. Orogenes are not people. Weapons have no need of friends.) (Jemisin, Fifth Season 297) Therefore, throughout the book, Damaya’s voice becomes increasingly lifeless and lonely, and increasingly that of the specularized other in Irigaray’s terms — a pale reflection of what once was a human being. From the safety and security of her prior experience of social acceptance as an individual subject, to the uncertain innocence of her interactions with Schaffa after her first experience of rejection, to her slow indoctrination into the Fulcrum; this process isolates Damaya, until she becomes a haunting (to borrow Thomas’ use of the term) presence that loses her individuality and sense of self in favour of becoming orogene or, in other words, fully other. This shows Žižek’s symbolic identification with the gaze at work: Damaya shapes herself after what the dominant gaze perceives in her, performing the submission and obedience expected of her perceived inferiority and coming to understand and define herself entirely on the basis of her otherness. In turn, this legitimizes the rule of the oppressive system over her: if “[o]rogenes are not people” (Fifth Season 297), as she now believes, then the Fulcrum is right to imprison and subjugate them. The present-absence Damaya becomes denies her humanity and drives home the belief that she is only allowed to exist as a non-threatening, valuable being if she forgoes all feeling, all want, and becomes the useful weapon the Fulcrum is honing her to be. 7.2 Syenite Syenite embodies Essun’s late adolescence and young adulthood. She is Damaya having grown into herself and her skill, as well as completely assimilated into the Fulcrum’s systems — 133 subject to ideology, in Althusserian terms — so that the shift in tone from Damaya’s chapters to Syenite’s is always quite radical. Though the younger girl had always been a model student, Syenite is much more self-assured and headstrong than Damaya ever was. Her orogenic ability has granted her four rings — tokens of recognition from the oppressive system —, with potential for a fast ascent to a fifth, which gives her a rather privileged position for the likes of an orogene. We first meet her when she is being assigned to the supervision of a sort of mentor figure, a tenringer by the name of Alabaster — a name clearly meant to be ironic, given the very dark hue of his skin. Syenite is clearly displeased, not simply at the prospect of having to defer to the greater power and station of the ten-ringer, but also at the discernment that their assignment together is not a mere mentorship, but a coupling: they are to produce a child for the Fulcrum, a practice which the reader soon learns is extremely common. The more powerful Fulcrum orogenes are forced to breed, so that they will produce children very likely to inherit their power. Not even still — non-orogene — children go to waste, as they will become Guardians, ensuring their usefulness to the Fulcrum one way or the other. This is why the mission Syen and Alabaster have been assigned, the clearing of a harbour at the coastal comm of Allia, does not merit the power they both possess; it is merely a convenient excuse to keep them working alone together for months, long enough to conceive. When discussing this issue, Syenite’s superior, Feldspar, offers her a significant piece of information: ‘As a ten-ringer, he has the right to refuse any mission short of a declared emergency. You should know that.’ Wait. Syen’s fingers stop turning the cup, and her eyes flick up to meet those of the older woman. Is Feld saying what it sounds like she’s saying? Can’t be. […] And yet. Feldspar has given her a way out. Why? Feldspar smiles thinly. ‘I have six children.’ (Jemisin, Fifth Season 64) This makes for a brief, and very rare, instance of solidarity — not just between women, but also between orogenes. Further, it implies that orogenes lower than ten-rings have no right to refuse the commands to breed, whatever their status; the only reason Syenite has a way out is the fact that her assigned pair belongs to the highest rank. Alabaster himself makes Syen this same offer of refusal, which she rejects, knowing that the protection of his rank will not extend to herself: “Six children, Feldspar had. But Feldspar was never a particularly promising orogene. Syenite is. If Syen isn’t labeled difficult, they will kill her career and assign her permanently to the Fulcrum, leaving her nothing to do but lie on her back and turn men’s grunting and farting into babies. She’ll be lucky to have only six if that’s how things turn out” (Fifth Season 71). Her ascent in the Fulcrum’s hierarchy would be truncated, and she forced into uselessness, and she is much too tempted by the rewards of the Fulcrum to allow this. Having rooms to herself, being allowed to choose what missions and what people to dedicate her skill to — the “true reward of excellency” is the promise of “privacy. And choice” (Fifth Season 67), things which ought to be basic human rights but are turned into privileges for the Fulcrum’s servants. This is the way Syen’s ambitions strive, and this is why she is willing — if unhappy — to submit to the unwanted sexual relationship. Alabaster, however, turns out to be not at all what she had expected of a ten-ringer. Though sometimes rude to Syenite and erratic in his behaviour, he is easily flustered and not at all unkind; he never makes use of his superior rank to hurt or humiliate her in any way, and does not make the sexual relationship any more complicated than it needs to be — beyond his embarrassed blathering when Syen directly offers to take charge of the situation and put herself on top. Seeing 134 how agitated Alabaster is proves a relief to Syenite, as it shifts the perceived balance of power between them: “He is the weak one here, despite his ten rings. She’s the one who has to carry a child she doesn’t want, which might kill her and even if it doesn’t will change her body forever, if not her life—but here and now, at least, she is the one with all the power” (Jemisin, Fifth Season 70). Thus, where she’d once been intimidated, she now becomes merely frustrated at his embarrassment. After their coupling is done — methodically, robotically almost, an act devoid of both love and desire —, they have a conversation revealing that Syenite was born a feral, an orogene found outside of the Fulcrum, living a regular life as Damaya before discovering her power. The existence of ferals, Alabaster says, proves that “they’ll never understand orogeny; it’s not science, it’s something else” (Fifth Season 72). Orogeny can be bred for as much as the Fulcrum likes, and pairing up powerful orogenes does appear to increase the likelihood of the gift being passed on; yet it can and does still happen outside of these intentional breeding lines, so that the gift seems to be some sort of genetic mutation beyond the total control of the Fulcrum or any authority. Syenite cannot help but feel a sense of pride at the fact that the Fulcrum wants her to participate in those careful, restrictive breeding lines despite her feral status. She understands, however, that this makes her a willing participant in the discourse of her own inferiority, as she wonders “why a part of her is trying to find value in degradation” (73). Indeed, the reason why Syen and Alabaster’s relationship deteriorates further from this point forward is that Syenite has assimilated completely into the Fulcrum, and is trying to ascend in its hierarchy through excellency and compliance. She has internalized its norms and fully assimilated into the dominant discourse, so that she becomes an active participant in her own oppression as well as that of others. Alabaster, on the other hand, is much more cynical and able to articulate criticism against the systems Syen has assimilated into, without concealing his disdain for her meagre ambitions. Being the more experienced and higher ranked of the two, Alabaster substitutes Schaffa as the mentor figure. The fact that an orogene occupies this position instead of a Guardian makes the progression of Syenite’s narrative diametrically opposite to that of Damaya: where the latter fit the progression of the dark fantastic cycle in her process of indoctrination, Syenite starts from the other end — not quite a haunting figure as Thomas had understood it, but she does start out as fully othered, fully integrated into the system that positions her as inferior. She is an Althusserian subject, meaning one subjected to the ideological systems working against her, and as such unable (and in fact unwilling) to escape her containment. Thus, what Syen’s chapters show is a sort of reversal of Thomas’ cycle: instead of becoming increasingly subjugated, her point of view slowly radicalizes as Alabaster shows the extent of the oppression exercised by the Fulcrum, forcing her to question its teachings and promises. One particular event, during their trip to Allia, marks a strong turning point for Syenite and is what makes her question what the Fulcrum had made her consider as fact. There are tall towers, known as nodes, connected to the Fulcrum and scattered throughout strategic spots of the Stillness. Each tower houses a Fulcrum-trained orogene whose job is to quell shakes and other seismic events, to keep the area stable and its comms protected. Syenite believes these node maintainers have a “tedious duty […], the sort of thing they give to orogenes who’ll never make it to fourth ring—the ones who have lots of raw power and little control” (Jemisin, Fifth Season 119), and so she is surprised and confused to find Alabaster has been quelling the micro-shakes to relieve the burden on the node maintainers. As she puts it, “Earth knows they probably need something to keep them from dying of boredom” (119). Of course, she has never been to a node herself, and so Alabaster adamantly insists that they visit one, which strikes Syenite as just another of his strange outbursts. While on the way, an enormous shake begins, 135 which Alabaster manages to quell at great cost to his energy. He quickly realizes it was the node maintainer who set it off, which only makes their quest for the node tower more urgent. Upon arrival, they find that everyone in the tower and its surroundings has been killed — iced, in what is unmistakably an orogene’s act. The node maintainer sits at the top of the tower, and Syenite is horrified to discover that it is nothing but a child, sat in a metal chair and ran through with wires: ‘Even the least of us must serve the greater good,’ he [Alabaster] says, with no irony in his voice. The body in the node maintainer’s chair is small, and naked. Thin, its limbs atrophied. Hairless. There are things—tubes and pipes and things […]—going into the stick-arms, down the goggle-throat, across the narrow crotch. There’s a flexible bag on the corpse’s belly, attached to its belly somehow, and it’s full of—ugh. The bag needs to be changed. She focuses on all this, these little details, because it helps. Because there’s a part of her that’s gibbering. (Fifth Season 139) Both Syenite and the reader thus learn what happens to all those orogenes who cannot master their self-control, or who do not learn it at an appropriate pace. Alabaster shows her the scar where the child’s sessapinae were lesioned in order to erase agency while preserving orogeny, a sort of lobotomy that keeps the node children entirely submissive, yet fully useful. That is not all, however: Alabaster explains that the children must be kept sedated constantly, a more humane measure given that the lesions to the sessapinae cause them pain every time they use their orogeny — which they must do exclusively on instinct, lacking an active mind of their own. This particular node maintainer had somehow woken up and caused the shake that alerted them to his presence, and when Syenite asks if it was one of the doctors who woke the child, Alabaster nonchalantly replies: ‘Maybe. Or some local citizen who paid for the privilege.’ Alabaster actually shrugs, gesturing toward a still-livid bruise on the boy’s upper thigh. It’s in the shape of a hand, finger marks clearly visible even against the dark skin. ‘I’m told there are many who enjoy this sort of thing. A helplessness fetish, basically. They like it more if the victim is aware of what they’re doing.’ (Fifth Season 142) This is what the Fulcrum’s lies and concealments amount to: the child in the chair, exploited as both tool and sexual object, becomes monstrously abject in the full denial of its humanity. Though Syenite retches, horrified at the extent of this torment, Alabaster is just as ruthless in driving home his lesson as Schaffa was when he broke Damaya’s hand. “You think you matter?” he asks Syen, “You think any of us matter beyond what we can do for them? Whether we obey or not. [… E]ach of us is just another weapon, to them. Just a useful monster, just a bit of new blood to add to the breeding lines. Just another fucking rogga” (Fifth Season 143). The force of the slur becomes evident: there is no other name for the abjectness they are witness to. The pale imitation of personhood suggested by the polite use of orogene seems like mockery before this extent of loss: “Not people at all. Not orogenes. Politeness is an insult in the face of what she’s seen. Rogga: This is all they are” (Jemisin, Fifth Season 144). Much like Schaffa breaking Damaya’s hand, this moment drives home the fact that they are nothing but property, to be used and discarded, controlled and subjugated. And yet, while it seems as cruel as Schaffa’s lesson, it is meant to have the opposite effect: Alabaster is trying 136 to show Syen that she is a subject — not in the Althusserian sense, but a true subject. One who possesses the agency necessary to make her own choices, even within a system of oppression, and with the voice to articulate these injustices for what they are. While he is harsh, he is still the one that makes Syenite understand that she was never truly valued, that the skill she took pride in and whose importance she relied on is nothing but coin for her to barter with, to try and earn back small pieces of her own humanity. In other words, she realizes now that no amount of compliance will earn her any respect nor any real agency over her own body and self — not even that of a particularly useful weapon. Syenite’s temper after this moment is worse than ever as she projects and amplifies the dislike she’d already initially felt for Alabaster into misplaced anger. She lashes out at him for his so-called “crazy” behaviours — which are in reality expressions of his post-traumatic stress disorder, and as such responses he cannot really control. Though driven to arguing, Alabaster does not lash back at her, and instead extends understanding against her outbursts: ‘I think you hate me because… I’m someone you can hate. I’m here, I’m handy. But what you really hate is the world.’ […] ‘What do you mean, then, that I hate the world?’ ‘You hate the way we live. The way the world makes us live.’ (Fifth Season 123) Unable to redirect her anger effectively to the source of oppression, knowing there is little that Syenite, as an individual, can do in that regard, she instead turns against Alabaster for being the one pointing this out to her — and for seemingly not caring how much harm his revelations cause to Syen’s beliefs and expectations. He is helping her grasp her “liberated voice”, as bell hooks called it, but also “refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years” (Jemisin, Fifth Season 348), forcing Syen to recognize that she has been complicit with the system subjugating her and others. She has been keeping herself safe at the expense of both her own and others’ autonomy, and Alabaster is the one making her face these convenient, soothing lies, so that she can no longer exist within the system and content herself with self-preservation, as she has been until now. After what she has seen, Syenite cannot resume her unquestioning service to the Fulcrum; cannot want the same things she has wanted up until now, because she has seen their price. Incidentally, this shows how crucial empathy is to social justice: while Syen had been contented to think only of herself to survive, as well as to keep climbing the Fulcrum’s ladder, it is actually her realization that others are enduring much worse things from the same institution that makes her uncomfortable enough with the state of things to even have the thought of resistance. Yet survival must take precedence. Since the Fulcrum still owns both her and Alabaster, they must pretend that this moment of realization never happened at all in order to keep themselves safe from any retaliation. They must feign to understand that such atrocities are reasonable, given what they are and what they can do: “And if anyone asks how you feel about it, you understand that’s why they do these things to us. You know it’s for our own good” (Fifth Season 147). It is thus that they return to a semblance of normalcy after this life-altering, belief-shattering revelation and continue with the mission they have been assigned. When they finally reach the comm of Allia, Syenite attempts to clear out the harbour as requested, so that the trade routes may resume; the obstruction turns out to be one of the obelisks, deadciv technological geodes that float, seemingly aimlessly, throughout the skies of the Stillness. After she accidentally awakens the power of the one that was buried at sea, Syen 137 and Alabaster are targeted by one of the Fulcrum’s Guardians. Alabaster’s power is rendered useless by the wound of an obsidian knife, which both interferes with his orogeny and causes him enormous pain. In a desperate attempt to save the both of them, Syenite connects her orogeny to the obelisk she awakened and tries to draw on its power to fuel her own. Something goes awfully wrong, however, and a sudden burst of energy explodes — decimating Allia and freeing what was trapped inside the obelisk: a stone-eater, a humanoid creature of unknown origins whose body is made entirely out of stone. After losing consciousness, Syenite wakes up far away from Allia, on the island off the coast called Meov. Looking into the horizon, she is horrified to see that the coastal community has been completely destroyed, turned into what is now an active volcano. The only reason why she and Alabaster did not die along with it is that a different stone-eater rescued them, using its power to transport their bodies to the island at superhuman speeds through the earth itself. Upon waking, Alabaster reveals that he has actually known this stone-eater for some time — she gives no name, but he calls her Antimony — and that she appears harmless, though somehow attached to him, an interest that partly explains why she chose to save them both. When they set out to look for food and shelter, they are quickly found by the inhabitants of Meov. Despite initial, natural misgivings due to their unexpected appearance, Alabaster actually speaks their language (a fictional creole of sorts), and is thus able to smooth things over. Thanks to this, he also learns what is the most significant and shocking fact about the community at Meov: “They don’t kill their roggas, here”, he excitedly reveals to Syenite, “[t]hey put them in charge. And they’re really, really glad to see us” (Fifth Season 296). It is at this point that we see the first glimpse of what Thomas calls emancipation in Syenite’s character. Meov survives on fishing and piracy, raiding boats and coastal comms for whatever resources they cannot obtain on the island, whose rocky grounds cannot be cultivated. Syenite is shocked that they would be willing to live here at all, since the constant seismic movements make islands unsafe — just as quickly formed as they are destroyed. Yet this is precisely why the Sanze Empire would avoid the islands as settlements, and thanks to this Meov has escaped colonization entirely while keeping themselves and their island protected thanks to the abilities of orogenes. Here, orogenes are prized for what they can do, instead of feared, precisely because the comm recognizes that their ability is crucial for their survival. Alabaster and Syen are quickly welcomed into the comm, as the same power that made them so monstrous back in the continent is here admired and embraced as a strength. This shows how important positioning is for the perception of difference: since this comm was never touched by the dominant ideologies of the colonized continent, they do not have such things as use-castes, partly in rejection of the Sanze custom and partly because being surrounded by water protects them from many of the worst consequences of a Season, so that they need not be as worried as the continent is. In fact, when Syenite asks what happens if there is a Season, Alabaster replies, “I asked them that, too, and they just sort of laughed the question off. […] At least they’ll die free, they say” (Jemisin, Fifth Season 294), showing that they would rather choose death than survival through submission. This is painfully ironic given that the way Syenite has managed to survive up until now is precisely through careful and well-executed submission — by adapting her entire self, as much as she could, to the requirements of the Fulcrum’s gaze in a gamble for its approval. Meov, then, clearly recognizes difference as an advantage rather than something monstrous, a philosophy of radical acceptance that has made the island endure and flourish where so many other comms would already have perished. It is their willingness to embrace difference, rather than to categorize and control it, that allows them to be versatile enough to adapt to their environment — and not only survive, but also live. 144 Before now, she had always been able to cut ties and eventually overcome her past by changing herself to mould and adapt. As Damaya, she was left alone and friendless, so that there was no one to miss her when she erased herself in order to become Syenite; and as Syen, she lost everything and everyone she loved with the invasion of Meov, left once again alone and with no attachments. Now, though, the ties to the life she led as Essun are not gone. Jija lives, still, and hopefully so does her daughter, so that Essun needs to preserve this name, this self, even if she wishes to abandon it to suppress the pain: You think, maybe, you need to be someone else. You’re not sure who. Previous yous have been stronger and colder, or warmer and weaker; either set of qualities is better suited to getting you through the mess you’re in. […] You could become someone new, maybe. You’ve done that before; it’s surprisingly easy. A new name, a new focus, then try on the sleeves and slacks of a new personality to find the perfect fit. A few days and you’ll feel like you’ve never been anyone else. But. Only one you is Nassun’s mother. [… I]f she still lives, Nassun will need the mother she’s known all her life. (Fifth Season 172) She will then remain as Essun, not only to confront Jija and avenge Uche’s murder, but also for the sake of Nassun’s life — so that her daughter will not have to live without a mother, as Essun herself once did. Unable to cut herself off from these events, to desensitize herself to their consequences by pretending it happened to someone else, “Essun will have to make do with the broken bits of herself that Jija has left behind” (Fifth Season 172). It is quickly evident that Essun has chosen to embrace the kind of life which she, as Syenite, had detested, starting from the fact that she had two more children, despite her expressed reluctance when Alabaster proposed having another back at Meov. Motherhood has become a significant part of her life, especially as flashbacks to her life with Jija suggest that she was the one who took on the bulk of the childcare. Besides, her work as a creche teacher had her contributing to raising the comm’s children, something Syenite would doubtlessly have resented. This is the quiet, inactive life that she had once begged Innon to bring her out of: busying herself with homemaking and taking care of the children, as well as with a simple job that demands very little from her. Her skill with orogeny is kept hidden, and seemingly not used at all — though it is later revealed that she used it to sess her own children’s orogeny and quell the shakes they caused as babies, as well as to train Nassun in order to conceal it. Nonetheless, these are smaller, likely easier tasks for an orogene of her prowess than her previous, Fulcrum-assigned tasks, or the sea expeditions fraught with danger at Meov. This change in lifestyle is partly forced by circumstance, since leading a subtle life allows her to remain undiscovered by both the Fulcrum and the town itself; on the other hand, it also seems to fit the generally expected shift in a woman’s development, from a rebellious teenager to a settled-down, mature adult that is responsible and cares for others. At no point does Essun betray the same restlessness that once characterized Syen. She is certainly more sensible and rigid, but the absence of such restlessness goes beyond that of a regular process of growth from youth into adulthood. It also displays a regressive movement, from Syenite’s hopefulness and desire to strive for a better world, back to her prior desire for survival, for herself and for those few whom she holds dear. The ease with which the Fulcrum took everything from her, despite having grown more powerful and despite Alabaster’s protection, has caused her to lose that [Document text truncated for crawler view.]