Borges’ story “The South” is difficult to understand upon first glance. After reading it, I honestly did not grasp its meaning or the message it was attempting to transmit. I needed to read it a second time in order to pick up on more details, but I also needed to inquire more about the author and the cultural context in which this story was written. Borges is an Argentinian writer and given that Juan, the protagonist, is also an Argentinian national (born and raised in Buenos Aires, although a man of German descent), there seems to be an important reflection about Argentinian culture and identity. Furthermore, I believe Borges was inspired to write this story after his near death experience. It seems that something from his personal experience triggered in him a need to tell this story. The story begins with Juan rushing home to open and read his copy of Arabian Nights when he suffers a head injury. His experience in the hospital is described as a very negative experience, even comparing it to hell. Nurses are strapping him to the bed and shaving his head. Juan did not want to die this way and in the process, travels in his mind to the south of Argentina (in the countryside). This moment of travel in the story is very significant; Juan is drawn to the countryside for a reason that is not immediately clear to the reader. Is there something special in the south that Juan must experience before death? There is a sharp contrast in setting between the scene described in the hospital (hell) and the scene described in the countryside (peace and tranquility, heaven-like). This symbolic contrast emphasizes Juan’s deep affinity to the countryside as opposed to the city. When in the countryside, Juan goes to a bar where he meets two gauchos. I had no idea what this was, but Wikipedia tells me that they are a very important symbol of Argentinian nationalism and culture. Juan gets into a fight with one of them and after being challenged to a “knife dual” outside, he accepts the challenge despite knowing that he will not be able to survive. But death here is defined as liberation. For Juan, “this is the death he would have dreamed or chosen”. Although I am not familiar with Argentinian culture, it appears to me that Juan’s praiseful representation of the south and his pejorative depiction of the city is not at all what one would expect. It is generally Buenos Aires that is considered as being an emblem of Argentinian culture and the south as being uncivilized (this makes me think of Williams’ “Culture is Ordinary”). Only Buenos Aires seems to be associated with Argentinian culture, but as Juan’s journey illustrates, culture is ordinary. Death ironically liberates him from a culturally constructed identity. Although gauchos were once viewed negatively, they are regarded very highly in Argentinian culture today (googling “gauchos” tells me this). The fact that Juan must symbolically retreat where the gauchos are as a way to liberate himself suggests that one must recognize his or her past/origins to move forward in the present and construct a culturally stable identity. Perhaps it is in the countryside where lie the origins of Juan’s true identity and not between the pages of the Arabian Nights.

Guha 

This article had a very interesting take on how history is viewed in the eyes of the reader. I think one of the main aspects of the article is the manipulative description of the people who revolt and of their actions. As the author explains by giving examples of some of the metaphors used to describe these people as: “they break out like thunder storms, heave like earthquakes, spread like wildfires, infect like epidemics” which clearly gives the sense of a rebellion that is done without thinking, in a very wild and “natural” way (in a negative sense of the word), as uncivilized, more reflexive rather than intentional and conscious. The reading starts off by stating that there is a misconception that peasant revolts arise with a lack of consciousness on the part of that group of people. Or as Guha puts it “insurgency is regarded as external to the peasant’s consciousness and Cause is made to stand in as a phantom surrogate for Reason”. In fact, Guha wants to show that this is not so and that there is in fact a precursor to the revolt, that there is often an originating mobilization that does not include violence.

The author explains the reason why this kind of representation of the revolts is possible by talking about the three discourses that are used when talking about these events: primary, secondary and tertiary:

Primary: – almost always official (originated with bureaucrats, soldiers, sleuths, people who were directly employed by the government, or people not officially working for the government but with personal interest in supporting the government.
Secondary: -uses primary source as material but this material is transformed due to the time gap between the discourse and the event. Although supposed to be less biased and has more perspective, this is not usually the case.
Tertiary: – considered as “further removed in time” as it looks at events from the third person perspective. As discussed in the article: “This literature is distinguished by its effort to break away from the code of counterinsurgency. It adopts the insurgent’s point of view and regards, with him, as ‘fine’ what the other side calls ‘terrible’, and vice versa. It leaves the reader in no doubt that it wants the rebels and not their enemies to win”

This hierarchy is inherently flawed when adopted to analyze history. Primary sources are coming from the elite of society and thus, do not shed any light on the perspective of the “peasant revolts”. In addition, all negative discourse and misconceptions regarding peasant revolt is passed off as the most accurate information. It is not until we get to a tertiary level, before we start to get a sense of the standpoint of the so called other side. By that time, this information is passed off as nonsense and deemed fictitious and borderline propagandist. In today’s time, it is all about media control and what is allowed to be exposed to the public eye and what is not.

Spivak 

The concept of the subaltern is very intriguing. Specifically, I had never thought to analyze history in such a critical way. Attempting to look at history through the lens of those who were oppressed and deemed inferior provides a different perspective of past events. Too often we are provided with reports detailing the happenings of the elite in society – information that seems to lack a connection with the masses. Instead, we should be hearing from those who are oppressed and deemed inferior. Colonialism has been discussed through history from a specific lens, one that stands to reinforce the Western society’s so called positive influence on the world. However, as a people we must ask ourselves how accurate is the history that is presented to us? Who gives a voice to the “other” side? Delving into this field of literature and historiography lends itself to the idea that accounting for all parties involved in the historical events of the world is essential to grasping a full understanding of the events that have shaped the past. Giving a voice to, as Spivak suggests, “the masses”, allows one to see history from the perspective of the majority as opposed to the perspective of a significant, elite minority. The idea here is that the focus be on non-elites. That is, subalterns are the agents of political and social change, not politically elite figures. The impact of this literature on the world of today and of the future is invaluable. With all the change occurring in the world (take for example the Arab Spring), we must be cognizant of how we view reform and more importantly, how we interpret for future generations. But can the subaltern give a voice to the masses without entering the realm of the dominant discourse? If not, would this then mean that the subaltern, once given access to the dominant discourse, can never speak for all subalterns?

Edward Saïd’s Orientalism is one of the most foundational texts in postcolonial theory. Saïd argues that the notion of the “Orient” was initially a European construction. He explains that historically, the Orient was not defined according to its ontological characteristics but instead based on preconceived notions and ideas advanced by Europeans (that the Orient was a strange and exotic place etc.) in order to justify colonization and the domination of the Orient. In other words, Europeans had invented the concept of the Orient in such a way to assert the superiority of Western culture to all other cultures. Even though such ideas are false, they were perpetuated over time via European journalists and scholars who visited, studied and wrote about the Orient. According to Saïd, it is through such pejorative discourse that the European culture had defined and empowered itself.

This argument highlights; however, that contrary to what the European culture posited, the Orient has a history, a tradition, a culture and thus, is part of a reality that cannot simply be constructed for personal gain. As Saïd would say, the Orient is not “an inert fact of nature,” it has been consciously created by man. Therefore, one cannot come to study or understand the Orient without taking into account everything surrounding this culture, such as the relationship of power between Orient and Occident. But since the Orient has always been “Othered” by the Western world, a true discourse on the Orient has never really existed. Ironically, the discourse on the Orient is rooted in the Western world. For this reason, we should not accept such discourse since Oriental identity is purely founded upon relations of power.

As cliché as it may seem, Saïd is insinuating the idea that power is knowledge. In this case, since the Western world possesses power, it is only them who claim the right to construct knowledge. This inverted cliché suggests that the knowledge that we acquire is often times simply a construction. When a French historian travels to Lebanon, the story he tells about the history of Lebanon is nothing more than a construction that he transmits based on what he sees. He will thus transmit the history of Lebanon for a French audience but what he will write will be imposed on Lebanese people as a reality. This is precisely the problem since a simple story has now become an imposed reality. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that since knowledge is a construction, it is also constantly changing. Although Saïd is a scholar, he will never fully become rooted in the Western world, but rather always remain between both worlds. He sees how the Western world constructs the Orient and vice versa.

One of the problems that arise is that people from the Orient may actually begin to believe the definition that the Western world makes of them to the point where they integrate this erroneous discourse and refuse their own identity. This is sometimes the case in France where minorities of Algerian or African descent will no longer recognize their cultural roots to avoid social exclusion. This is nonetheless a manifestation of power since the dominant discourse imposes itself on a victim and this person will no longer identify with him or herself but instead, simply disappear in the vast majority. The possibility of hybridity is thus completely refused since only the Western discourse is considered as veritable.

But although there are many Western texts that discuss the Orient, these texts should never be considered as being natural or absolute. We should always be skeptical and mindful of Western constructions of the Orient. If we think of the plethora of wars that have occurred in the Middle East, for example, I would argue that these wars have never been at all about peacekeeping (especially when the US is involved). The latter is simply being used as a pretext to justify the domination and appropriation of resources of these countries. Just like the Western world has mythicized the Orient in order to mask a desire for colonization, it continues today to find whatever reasons it can to justify imperialist aims. This is why Saïd’s work is so influential: the implications and questions that it raises continue to be very pertinent today.

In “What is an Author?”, Michel Foucault looks closely into the relationship between author and text and the way in which the text points to this “figure” (101). Therefore, it seems to him that this relationship is of great importance.  To introduce the theme, he cites Beckett who states: “What does it matter who is speaking?” (101). For Foucault, this statement illustrates the ethical principles of contemporary writing or what he calls “écriture” (101).  He mentions two keys rules pertaining to contemporary writing. First, writing has freed itself from expression because it only refers to itself. He compares writing to the ways in which a game unfolds: it breaks through its own rules and creates space where the “writing subject” disappears. Second, there is a relationship between writing and death. Foucault mentions this in order to underscore the old tradition emphasized in the Greek epic or Arabian tales that seeks to prevent death and perpetuate the idea of immortality of the hero. On the other hand, Foucault explains how in western society, the tradition of perpetuating death has been totally transformed where the writer sacrifices life. Examples such as Flaubert, Proust and Kafka are all cited to show how western writers have their authors die and thus, writing as defined earlier by Foucault results in death.

Foucault then questions the idea of work. He wonders: what is a work? Isn’t it simply what an author has written? He uses the examples of the Marquis de Sade. Thanks to Wikipedia, notice that the word “sadism” is derived from his name, which should give you a hint of what kind of a writer he was. The point is that Sade was not considered to be an author due to his scandalous nature, which raises the question about the status of his work and whether or not all written forms can be considered as works. Foucault further discusses the notion of writing (écriture) and claims that writing is not concerned with the act of writing or indication but should allow us to eschew references to the author and situate his absence (104). Another issue that Foucault raises is the question of the author’s name. He cleverly point out that one cannot simply use an author’s name as a simple reference since it will bias a reader’s point of view about a specific literary work. For example, when hearing the name “Plato”, we will automatically be inclined to linking this name to one of Plato’s famous works and thus lose the specificity of the actual text we are reading.

Foucault goes on to cite four characteristic of the “author-function”. First, since discourse was originally an act that could be placed in the “bipolar field of the profane and the sacred” (108), the author-function served to punish those responsible for transgressive discourse. Second, the author does not affect all discourses universally: we tend to question the author of literary texts but not so much scientific texts. Third, there is a problem of how to attribute a particular text to an author, especially when dealing with literary texts that have not yet been attributed to an author. The danger is that readers will often construct the author according to the criteria that they find pertinent. Finally, Foucault states that the “author” doesn’t uniquely refer to a real individual, but perhaps to an alter ego and functions much more like a narrator.

For Foucault, the author is not an infinite source of meaning, but rather an ideological product that is part of a larger system of beliefs that limits and restricts meaning. Despite agreeing with Barthes that the author-function may soon disappear, he does recognize that since there will always be a system of constraint that exists, absolute freedom cannot fully be attained. But to an extent, I don’t see this as being very problematic since we need to consider authorial intention. If absolute freedom were allowed, then there would be nothing limiting what we say about a text. I don’t know if I accept that all interpretations of a text can be considered as legitimate since this would literally devalue the author entirely, which for me doesn’t seem right.

I will use this opportunity to mainly discuss the character of the grandmother and the ending of the story. I am unsure of the general impressions of most readers when considering the grandmother, but personally, I found her to be quite superficial and manipulative. She doesn’t strike me as this harmless “lady” that she appears to be. Her cry out for Jesus at the end of the story made me quite sick, not because I have anything against religion, but because it did not feel genuine at all. From the beginning of the story, she seems to create a lot of negative energy. She mentions that there is a killer on the loose and instead of sharing the real reason why she doesn’t want to go to Florida (she wants to go to Tennessee instead), she simply scares the family about alleged reports of this killer. She even hides the cat in the car knowing that Bailey doesn’t want her to bring it. Even when the family takes the wrong turn to go to the plantation, Bailey was initially skeptical but she found a way to manipulate him into going, precisely through telling the children interesting stories about it and making them want to go.

It’s also hard to ignore the countless references of the grandmother as a lady-like figure. She seems to consider herself as a very classy person and constantly makes references to “back in the day” when people were more respectful and trustworthy. So it’s pretty easy to get sucked in to her discourse and be convinced that she is a moral and honorable individual. These moments to me were seen as red flags, especially near the end. And by the way, has the grandmother never watched an episode of  Criminal Minds. Her religious discourse is not going to help prevent the Misfit from shooting her or her family members. It was evidently an epic failure of reading the behavior of a criminal. I know that was random, but it needed to be mentioned. Now, if we think of the end, the grandmother’s narcissist attitude becomes more evident. She seems to be solely concerned with herself and apathetic towards the well being of her family. She immediately says: “I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady!” (131-132), thus showing that she is uniquely concerned about herself. Of course, some people would say, well, she does scream “Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy”, but does she really try to help her son? There is an ambiguity about her (her behaviors contradict one another), which makes it hard to decipher who she really is.

The end posed a lot of problems for me. I am unsure what to make of it. The grandmother is not someone that we seem to admire very much, but she is not painted as being a terrible human being either. But one quickly notices that she is not at all as perfect as we would think. Her supposed connection with the killer at the end of the story can be seen as a moment of metamorphosis where she becomes completely selfless. But one cannot forget that this only happens because she is in a situation where she needs to save her own life, thus we question the credibility of this moment. Knowing O’Connor’s religious background, she would interpret the end as a key breakthrough in the grandmother’s character since she comes to empathize with the Misfit prior to her death. In a way, she dies with no real regrets.

But although the Misfit states: “She would’ve been a good woman … if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (133), his last words regarding the killing of the grandmother are: “It’s no real pleasure in life” (133). This is deeply contradictory and we wonder what it really means? Has the grandmother’s newfound grace possibly affected the Misfit? Personally, I don’t buy this religious interpretation and I feel O’Connor is simply using the story as a religious motive. For me, it is the first part of this quote that most strikes me and that merits the most attention. It’s quite symbolic in the sense that the grandmother only seemed like a good woman and if everyone hadn’t always bought into it (like the Misfit, not to say that he is not a sadistic psycho), then maybe her true colors would have actually came out. For me, I remain skeptical about the grandmother and not very convinced neither by her “magical transformation” nor her divine influence on the killer.