hell is Other people

I have a great story to tell you. It is a story about our story, untold but lived, before good and evil. There was no other, yet we were indivisibly different.

Then there were Others. The Others were not as we were (yet were of our number) and in gathering they sought differentation – heterogeny – tribe. Each strove to diverge from us by distinguishing themselves as Other – they sought to change through change, and the Others exhausted themselves in this manner, inversion, perversion, difference into coalescence. There was an Other – formless – who was not yet agent; not lateral, mesial, it chose to create, it chose to be.

The Other spoke and came into being, delineating self, delineating tribe. The Others saw what they had wrought, knew secession, knew irrevocability. They begged that the last call back its story, that creation be undone, but it was done, and the story was told, and the Others were apart from us; genesis over alteration.

“L’enfer, c’est les Autres.”

Garcin, No Exit (Jean-Paul Sartre).

I found this assignment somewhat difficult. Consistency and fluency were challenges – and I found it trying to ‘take’ a story, especially one predicated on ‘othering’ (a term borrowed from Edward Saïd) – but I’m glad to have done it – I think it was valuable. I do feel that I wasn’t able to make the story as long as I would have liked.

I was really interested in the Witch People in King’s retelling of Silko’s story and the way in which he characterized them as non-coloured and non-gendered.  I’m not sure who to attribute this to as I haven’t read Ceremony but I felt like this was ‘sweeping differences under the rug’, so to speak. The story was of course not written/told in the context in which I read it and as such I do not expect it to resolve contemporary issues; I did feel that it wasn’t the ‘right’ approach to take. This is a purely emotional reaction; I felt like the story absolved the teller/listener of responsibility for evil, or of their obligation to explain ‘evil’, and I prefer resolution to absolution. This made it a bit more difficult for me, and I fully recognize that it’s a bit of a ridiculous hang-up to have (and hang-ups seem inappropriate anyway). I also found the source material a bit inconsistent, which might be a product of my interpretation; yet that is my interpretation.

Some intersections I can’t revisit; I had thought of taking my classmates’ stories and assembling a sort of metanarrative but there were a few obstacles there. I might have liked to redo the creation stories in King (I’ve always wanted to rewrite Genesis), or something a bit longer. I also would have liked to integrate something about ritual, or at least drawn on a more anthropological background in processes of ‘othering’. I have found my anthropology books from first year and will catch up as soon as possible.

I was only able to perform the story for my brother, as he’s the only family member within range, and I’m not sure if he heard me or not. It was quite a performance, though – I was reciting while driving and had to compete with traffic to be heard. I also considered working in video format but (to be forthright) I’ve just had a haircut and I’m not sure about it; I’ll be keeping that under wraps for as long as possible.

Thanks for reading!

Joey Levesque

Works Cited:

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979. Print.

Sartre, Jean. No Exit, and Three Other Plays. Vintage International ed. New York: Vintage International, 1989. Print.

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York, N.Y.: Penguin, 1986. Print.

Please note that I’ve linked to listings on Wikipedia and Google Books in place of sources in print. If this is inappropriate please let me know and I’ll find alternatives and/or ameliorate my citation.