Tag: memory

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Trapped

Bodies bear history. This is the idea that stuck with me the most this week. In “The Octoroon”, Zoe’s body bears the history of sexual abuse and racial encounter. She is the manifestation of crisis, violence, and liminality. Viewing Zoe from this lens is trapping. We are born with one body – Zoe cannot change the circumstances around her birth or the history that her body represents. Her body bears a story that cannot be simply erased.

Zoe feels trapped in her body, in her state as “The Octoroon”. She is disgusted by the impurity in her blood. She feels liminality in her identity, and to have power over her body she commits suicide. Zoe feels no other option.

This past semester I took a course in human genetics. We studied the concept of epigenetics, or how our DNA changes after we are born based on our environment. For example, identical twins, whose genetic makeup comes from the same egg, can have differences in their genome later in life based on their environment. This poses an interesting question to how the octoroon would be perceived today in the context of new innovations in science. We are learning so much about how to control and change our DNA, which Zoe feels so trapped by.

Another concept in epigenetics that focuses on bodies carrying history is how changes in our parent’s DNA can be passed down to us. It was long thought that changes in DNA throughout someone life were not passed onto children. But, it was found through studies of a famine in Holland during World War II, that changes in DNA caused by malnutrition were passed onto successive generations. I think epigenetics is interesting to look at concerning “The Octoroon”, which is so focused on the makeup of Zoe’s DNA and how it defines her status.

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The Versatility of Performance

When reading the Roach piece, I felt very confused by the multiple contexts which he used the word “performance” in. Roach used “performance” to describe cultures, practices, and holidays. He uses the word as a verb, noun, and adjective. The most distinct context of “performance” I found while reading was on page 13: “the materials of the present study are thematized under categories of those restored behaviors that function as vehicles of cultural transmission. Each category pairs a form of collective memory with enactments that embody it through performance: death and burials, violence and sacrifices, laws and (dis)obedience, origins and segregation.” This quote stood out to me because laws, segregation, burials… these do not seem like performances to me. But, Roach’s article shows that performances are intertwined with and necessary to process and understand shared memory. When a death is experienced, disobedience is seen in society or people come from different backgrounds, our natural reaction as a society is to find a way to deal with this. Roach’s quote suggests and brings to light that burials help the living cope, laws help normalize society (in negative and positive ways) and segregation results from a society that creates differences that do not exist. These performances are ways that society forgets and attempts to erase and recreate.

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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.