Over the past few weeks, our focus on life narratives in class has prompted me to re-consider their “autobiographical agency”(1) in shaping the global perception of cultures. In her book “Autobiographies in Transit: Soft Weapons”, and in particular in the chapter “Introduction Word Made Flesh: Whitlock argues that, as commodities exchanged through highly complex global networks, life narratives can influence our perception of the values, traditions and forms of thinking intrinsic to a culture or to a multitude of cultures. As a result, life narratives can contribute to reinforcing or defying cultural stereotypes, and consequently to fortifying or weakening cultural barriers. However, for me, it was difficult to grasp that a sole life narrative could have so much power, which has prompted me to question: How specifically do they achieve this? What literary features are involved in the molding and presentation of a culture and in the construction of cultural barriers?
Having read the blog Baghdad Burning, written by a 24-year-old female Iraqi woman in the midst of the American war invasion in Iraq with the pseudonym “Riverbend”, I became increasingly curious as to what these specific literary features were: how is it that they present cultures, and by consequence often reinforce cultural divisions?
Therefore, I sought to investigate the ways in which literary devices in Riverbend’s blog reinforce and challenge cultural divisions, by focusing in particular on her last blog entry. In the entry, written on the 9th of April, 2013, Riverbend reflects on the fall of Baghdad exactly ten years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as the events that have occurred since then and her feelings towards them. She comes to the realization she has become the voice of her nation and believes that it is her duty as a citizen to talk about what has happened in Iraq, assumingly to a Western audience. Inherent to the entry is a focus on the knowledge that Iraqis have gathered in last decade and the changes they wish to see in the future.
A particularly salient feature of this entry was the recurring repetition of collective pronoun “we”. In her emphasis on this collective gradual process of learning, Riverbend presents the Iraqi people as a strong united entity, demonstrating the tight communal bonds between the Iraqi people and. There is a determination and a willpower that also propels the passage onwards as each sentence picks up its momentum with a persistent: “we are learning”. However, the use of the pronoun “we” also excludes any foreigners, drawing a barrier between the East and the West in its creation of an exclusive group restricted only to the Iraqi. Although not as prominent in this entry, through the use of anecdotes relating to the struggles that face the Iraqis every day, Riverbend also shows the resilience of the Iraqi people, as they are able to persevere despite living in highly adverse political and social terrains. For example in the entry on the 31st of April of 2005, despite the electricity shortages and water shortages that they face and are becoming more pronounced with the passing days, they continue to move forward, driven by their need to survive.
Personally, looking specifically at these literary features of blogs such as Baghdad Burning can provide us with so much insight into what people from differing cultures are like. From first hand accounts of what their experiences are like, we can extract small details and deconstruct them to see what they perceive are the predominant qualities of their society and other global societies, and most importantly, how these cultures differ.
Links:
Whitlock, Gillian. Soft Weapons: Autobiography in transit. University of Chicago Press. USA. 2007.
Google Books preview: http://books.google.ca/books?id=4C09Yao332gC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false