Tag: culture

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Belonging in Gulliver’s Travels

In our discussion of Gulliver’s Travels this week, we touched on Gulliver and his sense of belonging in the world. I found Gulliver to be a peculiar character, as I cannot tell whether he hates the idea of belonging altogether or only belonging when connected to England and the Yahoos. In support of the former, Gulliver is always traveling and never stays in one place for too long (if he can help it). He is of English birth but has no true home; he transfers his “home” to wherever he is. Gulliver seems like he is the most comfortable when he is in the states of in-between found in his often aimless traveling. To most people, being in between two states is often an uncomfortable position. Gulliver, however, always seeks to set himself out into the unknown, leaving behind all sense of belonging in the process. 

On the other hand, Gulliver seems as though he is always ready to jump into a new culture, as long as it is not English. During his travels, he readily abandons the ways of life that he learned from his English origins in order to conform and belong with the peoples that he encounters. He adopts the customs of both the Lilliputians and the Houyhnhnms, learning their languages and contributing to their societies. Gulliver even sees the Houyhnhnms’ way of life as far superior to any of the peoples he’s seen before, including the English. Gulliver is a product of English society but, as a result of his travels, comes to completely reject his national origin and even his identity as a Yahoo. He does not reject all sense of identity and belonging, however, as he comes to express his wishes to find a place of belonging among the Houyhnhnms. So, is it just England (and the Yahoos that inhabit it) that Gulliver wants to abandon or is it all sense of belonging as well? What does the answer mean for us as the reader?

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Reflections on Race and Identity

Of the many topics covered in our discussions of Gilroy’s “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity,” I found the relations of nations, citizens, and ethnicities to race and our ideas of cultural identity to be the most fascinating, especially how concepts which seem very similar can have greatly different definitions.   As we discussed in class, I was really interested in how people, especially those transplanted in the Atlantic slave trade define themselves and their personal history.  For example, I would argue it is impossible to truly change one’s nation, because the idea of nation is essentially the same as one’s homeland, so even if a person were to move abroad for any reason, they could not change the fact of their nation of origin, which is tied to their cultural identity forever.  However, the issue also arises in terms of ancestral homeland, contrasted with each person’s country of origin.  Going forward in the course, I am interested in seeing how black writers and artists reckon with their split heritage, as both ancestors of Africa but also residents of modern America.

Furthermore, the ideas of citizenship and to a lesser extent ethnicity are more flexible and susceptible to change than nationality because they have to do more with self-representation and choice than the pre-determined nature of nationality.  For example, if I were go to Ireland, I would maintain my American nationality, but I could choose to become a citizen and more broadly adopt its distinct “ethnicity” and cultural identity.  Gilroy asserts in his piece that this sort of fluctuating citizenship and and cultural representation is very much a possibility, which also ties into the cultural notions of memory and performance from the Roach article.   I believe this mixture of chosen and unchangeable facets of our cultural identity gets to the core of Gilroy’s article, as he believes race is a fiction which we actualize in cultural practices and interactions.  Again, I am very interested as the semester goes on to learn more about the representation of one’s own culture and identity, as well as accepting and using those facets of personality, such as natioinality and homeland, which cannot truly be changed in order to somehow change or alter our ethnic identities as a whole.