This testimonio is from the point of view of a Bolivian house wife of a mine worker. She narrates her life and through her story one gets to know about a particular community and a class of people. She narrates her childhood days in Pulacayo, how she eventually found her position in the society and her political inclination which started from house since her father was also involved in political activities.  The testimonio does not only talk about the present condition of the miners, their protest against the oppression or about the revolution but also about the history of Bolivia, the history is not probably a national history of the country but a history from the periphery or the margin.

The other important factor is the liberation of poor women, very similar to the discussion in No me agarran viva (which talks about the discrimination), but, the difference is that this testtimonio is like an awareness that evolved gradually among the women suffering the oppression just like their husband. However, the oppression suffered by them and the children were not being noticed because they were not contributing economically. Domitila in the book says that household work that women do are not being paid, but, due to the low wage of the husband, the women and the children also suffered. This made them organize the ‘house wives’ committee of siglo XX’ which can deal with issues of the house wives and gradually it became a strong organization which carried protests and revolutionary activities simultaneously with other major organizations of miners. It also solved many problems of unemployment and fought on behalf of the women to provide them jobs to sustain their families in the cases where the husband is retired or died mining.  I think that the liberation of the women were not just restricted to the voice to be heard within its own community, class or fight for equal participation rather her speech in the tribunal in Mexico was very strong where she argues that it is problematic in the feminist ideology to ignore the varied problems of women from different parts and ask for a solidarity on the basis of weaker sex or gender discrimination because every community has its own problem and the fight against the gender oppression has to be addressed from within that community (pg 201, 202).

Another important factor of the testimonio is the introduction of the compiler where she mentions that how different the two speeches are made by Domitila – one in the public and the other as personal conversation which includes the richness of the popular speech and which she has maintained in the book (Pg 10). Domitila also says that testimonies are important and should be written to know about the past revolutions and also about the mistakes that have been committed in that revolution so that one could learn from it and could organize in a much better manner.  “We should never underrate the struggle of the people”  (pg 40).

Este libro tiene ocho cuentos, algunos son muy cortos y otros son muy largos. Es interesante la manera de organizar los cuentos de cortos a largos. El otro factor es la manera de narrar – cada cuento tiene muchos narradores y no hay una marca especifica cuando el narrador cambia. Además, los cuentos como She came in through the bathroom, ¿Y ese pequeño rasguño en tu  mejilla? no empieza con la letra mayúscula con cada párrafo nuevo ni después del punto final cuando empieza la nueva frase. Es un desafío, creo que, de la manera de narrar los cuentos o al formato o las reglas de narrar. Dentro de los cuentos también ella desafía y cuestiona las reglas fijas de la sociedad. El cuento como Memorias de una hidrofobica  tiene pequeños cuentos dentro de ese título – es interesante. Se llama Cuentos sucios por la misma razón de romper las reglas y que con cada cuento da la impresión de subvertir las normas de la sociedad.

La mayoría de los cuentos cuestionan las reglas de la sociedad y específicamente habla desde la perspectiva de la mujer. En algunos cuentos la mujer rompe el papel estereotipada de cuidarse de la familia y sale con su nuevo amante al otro país (el cuento – ¿Y ese pequeño rasguño en tu mejilla?) es un dialogo entre la hija y la madre donde la madre se enamora del novio de su hija y salió con el pero regreso a su familia después de algunos años. Está narrada en la primera persona por la hija a diferencia de otros cuentos donde la narración empieza con la tercera voz pero interrumpida con otras voces narrativas también.  Las frases interesantes son: para eso querías venir desde Europa a esta sucia y calurosa ciudad tropical del tercer mundo, del cuarto mundo, del último mundo (Pg 38) y la otra es: algo que los haga no ser solamente papa y mama sino personas imperfectas que sufren, que sienten, que suenan (Pg 41).

Frases como: todos creen que viajaste de nuevo y a nadie le sorprende porque tú siempre fuiste un poco rara e inquieta abandonado el hogar y los hijos, abandonando a todos sin decirle a adiós a nadie (42). Me parece importante porque su mama no cumple las reglas que la sociedad impone y por eso es un poco rara. Hay frases en el cuento tan cortos que parecen como poesía.

El otro cuento que me parece interesante es Sin remitente que se trata de dos mejores amigas pero todo cambia cuando una de estas está casada y empieza a evitar a su amiga porque piensa que ya que ella no está casada, no tiene hijos, así que no puede entender los problemas de una mujer casada. La frase interesante: eres soltera y todos los hombres que vienen lo hacen con sus esposas. Estarías fuera de lugar y las esposas podrían sentirse amenazadas, tu sabes, por aquello de la competencia entre mujeres. (54). Anabell se sintió rechazada. Reconoció el comienzo de la distancia afectiva. Era cierto. No tenía la experiencia práctica del matrimonio y la maternidad, pero consideraba que eso no la alejaba de su condición de ser humano, capaz de escuchar y ponerse en los zapatos ajenos para ayudar a su amiga en cualquier circunstancia (55). El cuento Y todos esos hombres viéndome se trata de uno de los problemas importantes es sobre la mirada, especialmente la mirada de los hombres hacia una mujer. La narradora de ese cuento menciona como: siempre te miraran como un pedazo de carne que cuelga del gancho de la carnicería. Un apetitoso pedazo de carne para hartarse. Y luego defecarlo. Y olvidarse (78). Al otro lado, la narradora que es una bailarín en un bar y tiene 34 años por eso se preocupa y tiene miedo si un día los hombres del bar le ignoren y le exijan el despido. Me fascina mucho esta ambivalencia con el concepto de mirada – en un momento se rechaza la mirada pero en profesiones como suyas se necesita esa mirada!!!

Es un testimonio de un esclavo cubano, Esteban Montejo, que cumplía más que 103 anos. Barnet le introduce a Montejo en las primeras páginas y casi narra su historia inicial (donde nació, sus actividades revolucionarias, la guerra Mal tiempo en que se participo en Cuba contra España, la condición específicamente de los esclavos después de ganar en la guerra). Barnet dice: “Oyéndolo a el uno aprende mucho de la historia de Cuba. La parte de adentro que es lo que a veces no está en los libros de texto” (Pg 12). Yo creo que es un elemento importante de los testimonios porque, como vemos en Si me permiten hablar, no solo es una voz desde abajo sino desafía la historia nacional de un país y así crea la complejidad entre los textos históricos. Además, yo creo que la diferencia entre historia y los elementos históricos de los testimonios es que la historia generalmente inclina más sobre evidencias y hechos, al otro lado los testimonios es una narración desde el punto de memoria.  El otro aspecto importante en la introducción y en el testimonio es la presencia de elementos literarios. Como en la pag. 13: “cuando muchas cadenas quedan por romper definitivamente para que el hombre alcance la plenitud de su existencia con dignidad, este libro constituye un grito de libertad. La vida de Esteban Montejo es simoblo de esta lucha que cada uno de los seres humanos que habitan este planeta esta en el deber de librar, “porque la verdad no se puede callar. Y aunque mañana yo me muera, la vergüenza no la pierdo por nada… por eso digo que quiero morirme, para echar todas las batallas que vengan. Ahora, no me meto en trincheras no cojo armas de eas de hoy. Con un machete me basta”. Esto da la importancia sobre el género de testimonio que no solo se sirve como un conocimiento de una comunidad o de la historia sino también para la literatura ¡¡Este testimonio especialmente tiene ese aspecto literario porque Esteban Montejo habla mucho de las costumbres sobrenaturales de los africanos que me parecen como historias de fantasmas!!

Empieza con la narración de su nacimiento como un esclavo y como se ocultaba en los bosques hasta que se aboliera la esclavitud en Cuba. Habla de las condiciones en que los africanos trabajan en los ingenios, las enfermedades que se enfrentaban, la rutina diaria de ellos,  sus costumbres y fiestas que celebraban. También habla de la discriminación no solo entre un negro y un blanco  sino existe un tipo de discriminación de Montejo hacia los indios (Pg 73). Menciona sobre las actitudes y las costumbres de personas de etnicidad diferentes (por ejemplo: los filipinos, chinos, isleños, indios etc.).  Habla sobre la guerra Mal tiempo contra los españoles pero es interesante anotar que no era una guerra muy enfocada hacia una victoria importante de liberación sino hay problemas y conflictos entre los grupos que estaban luchando. Hay opresión, engaños, torturas entre ellos. Puede ser que una historia nacional evitaría estas historias para mostrar la importancia de ganar la guerra pero según este testimonio, vemos, que nada cambio después de ganar la guerra salvo a unas días de celebración y luego continuando con el mismo trabajo.

Este testimonio es de alguna manera similar que el testimonio de Rigoberta Menchu donde la vida, la rutina diaria de la gente, las costumbres y el respeto hacia la naturaleza juegan el papel importante.

A city has many spaces that are most of the time unknown to us (the citizens of the city). We generally inhabit the spaces in which we feel comfortable and at ease. The different spaces of the city came to my mind recently when I visited East Hastings. Actually I had planned to go some other place but I took a wrong bus and landed up in East Hastings, Vancouver. The moment I got down from the bus I felt uncomfortable and uneasy of the place. I was scared and I became conscious of myself, my position in the city (though I am just a student arrived here few months before from a third world country), the places that belongs to me or I belong to them and indeed, this isn’t the place I belong to. I was accompanied by my husband; we both were looking around trying to locate ourselves and find the place where we have to go, when we realized that we are at a wrong place and probably we took a wrong bus. Since I was a little scared, I wanted to find the bus stop to return back while my husband was busy seeing the locality with which he is not familiar with. He tells me “which strange place is this”? I just told him lets go. We left the place with the next bus but I wondered why ‘strange’. Is it not Vancouver, British Columbia? When we visit other parts of the city we never say each other ‘strange’ place. We walk down the street, buy vegetables from a shop, eat in a restaurant or drink coffee in any coffee shop but we never use the word ‘strange’. We do compare between different places but I do not remember if ever since we came to Vancouver we used the strange for any part of the city apart from this place.

I started thinking about India and I realized that I do not know where the “Red Light area” exists for example in Delhi. I have lived in the city for 10 years and I was never aware of the ‘strange’ places or spaces that the city owns, only recently when I was sharing this experience with one of my friends in India I got to know the location of the ‘strange’ place.  It is interesting to find these places in every city (it has to be a part of most of the cities) but so little talked about them in our daily conversation. We at times do talk about the slums, the problems that slum dwellers face even in class discussions and their poverty but I do not remember of discussing the life or the problems faced by the inhabitants of places like East Hastings which does not only comprise of poverty but also drug trafficking and  prostitution. It is probably easy to talk about poverty but not about drugs and prostitution, I believe!! I do not know whether these places are unknown to us (as in my case not knowing exactly which part of the city is called Red Light area in Delhi), unfamiliar or silenced places but they have a strong existence in the city. Why then these places exist when they are unknown, unfamiliar or strange to us? Does the city need them, if so, then why strange or unknown? Why do not we talk about these places in our daily conversation? Why people say that they hesitate to go to these places when they are also parts of the same city?

I had a very new experience while travelling through literary theory. There are many things that I want to share about the journey. I had studied the authors in my final year of Masters Program in India but they were lecture classes where the teacher dictated notes about a particular theory and we wrote them down without thinking. Therefore, reflecting upon these theories was never possible or a discussion was not there. I had diaries full of notes which I somehow forgot to bring here and I think in certain ways it was a blessing in disguise because I had to read them all. I started understanding the difference between reading them and taking notes from the teacher on them. Notes are very easy to understand as they are generally dictated in a very comprehensive way whereas reading the authors was completely a new experience for me.  I say this as a journey precisely because of the act of reading them. This act of reading took me through various phases of emotions – anger, frustration, irritation, excitation (when finally I was able to understand some parts of it) etc.

The other part of the journey was writing blogs. I never wrote any blog before this nor have I read so much on blogs. I am always very afraid to speak in front of everybody about my views and also hesitate that everybody read or listen to me. But this concept which initially made me feel so nervous had actually benefited me in many ways. First, I read the articles every week to write something on the blog and at times not once but twice or thrice especially the one about which I was writing. Earlier I was only bothered about writing something on the blog as part of the work that has to be completed but slowly I also started reading other blogs and it was interesting when I started receiving comments on what I wrote. The hesitation that I had earlier about my classmates reading what I think has somehow started disappearing and now I enjoy a discussion on this forum and also share my opinions. The other relation between the blog and the reading that I found interesting is when I re- read my blog. Earlier they were just a summary of the text in my own words, later I started comparing them with each other (texts) and see how they were different, much later there was observation of the reading of different periods and in the last few blogs I started relating the articles with incidences from my country.

I think it would be far more enjoyable if we had read it in two semesters so that we had less reading for each class and then the discussion in the class. For me, it was a sudden stop in that journey when I just started enjoying my travel through the literary theory!!

We read that art was exclusively meant for the royal and the elite class in the Middle Ages. Masses were not allowed to enter in the area where it was projected. As Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan in the “Introduction: The politics of Culture” says that art was viewed and appreciated only by the literate and elite people and it was kept away from the masses because ‘that might impel them to rebellion’ (1233). But we see that with the advancement of technology art started becoming available for the masses especially with photography which started reproducing as many copies as needed by the masses. Hence, technology brought entertainment for everybody. But capitalism in a way has appropriated the availability of entertainment to the masses for its own convenience in a very subtle way. It provides entertainment – film, art, music etc. but supervises the images shown on television. In a way I feel it dominates and also creates superficial tastes for us. I remember during 1980s and probably 90s when in India there were rebellions from every corner of the country especially Kashmir we could see lots of national songs and videos were shown that are done by the popular personalities of the country which talked about the unity that one should have in the country. Which in a very subtle manner stopped us to think about the rebellions or rather it developed in our mind a negative approach towards the states that revolted. These videos were so emotional that it could bring tears in one’s eyes. However, we do not find similar videos that are composed in recent time.

It is interesting to note that ‘culture comes from below’ (1234) but the role that ‘people from below’ or masses play in constructing their culture for themselves. Does it reflect that masses are not conscious about what they see on television? As Marx Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in ‘The Culture Industry as Mass Deception’ says that there is uniformity of media and the continuous projection of stereotypical images who are mocked and the mockery creates entertainment. But who are the stereotyped image? Is he rich man who is mocked or a member of the royal family? Generally we see the mocking images are the masses themselves or the marginalized people of society. Such as a fat lady, a gay couple or a man of color who is projected as the bad guy. In India nowadays every channel conducts a reality show where they bring the poor or lower income people and talk about their dreams, shows their poverty stricken condition and relates it to their dreams of leaving behind their present condition and to get a better place to live. So we get entertainment from the poverty of another person, we laugh when we see a fat woman on television. I wonder, in a heterogeneous society where media is more or less homogeneous and definitely ideology plays a crucial role in it, whether we are conscious of our culture or is it the dominant group which sets culture for us?

It is interesting to observe the terminologies that I came across this week’s reading. Colonialism, Post – colonialism, anti-colonial, and decolonizing………. Few years back in India when I was first introduced the term and read just the basic concept of Post – Colonialism I was very fascinated with it. I was thinking about my research topic at that time and I told my supervisor that I want to focus on Latin American literature in Post colonial era. She asked me what do I understand by Post colonialism and I said the phase after colonialism is post colonialism. She told me that I have to study it in depth to understand it as it is not as simple as I have understood it. Anyways, my research topic shifted to something else where I had to focus and study other theories. All that I understood at that time about Post colonialism was that it is a complex phenomenon and cannot be simplified in the manner as I did it.

Here, in UBC I got to read Post Colonialism again after those years where I was first clear about my ideas but got confused with it. However, Ania Loomba shakes my basic understanding of Post colonialism when she says “This makes it debatable whether once – colonized countries can be seen as properly ‘postcolonial’” (1104). The little that I understood in relation to my country, India, got shaken with this line. I started questioning myself ‘what is Post colonialism’. Not only that, I am also now confused with the term ‘colonialism’ when she says “’Colonialism’ is not just something that happens from outside a country or people, not just something that operates with the collusion of forces inside, but a version of it can be duplicated from within” (1106). Which made me curious about the terms and I started wondering whether post colonialism existed in India during the colonial period if colonialism can exist in Post colonial period? As Ania Loomba talks about the elites of Latin America who according to J. Jorge Klor de Alva ‘were never colonial subjects’. In the same way we still see the elements of colonialism existing in different parts of the world. For example in India, people after more than sixty years of Independence talk about whether we are truly independent or was it an illusion and we are still colonized probably by new colonial powers. Or the farfetched villages in India where we both are foreigners for each other (the villagers and people outside the villages. The urban people or other district people), they are ignorant about the policies and norms run by the Government of India but have their own norms and regulations and live with it. I do not know if we can term this as colonialism or decolonialism (contesting back to the ‘colonial Government’) or probably ‘Post-colonialism’.

What makes the terms especially colonialism or post colonial complex is their heterogeneity. They cannot be used homogeneously throughout. Though Post- colonialism could be termed loosely as a voice from the periphery and not from the centre but what I understood from the readings is that this peripheral voice could come from the Centre as well because even the centre is heterogeneous.

In most of this week’s reading I found a strong connection with literature and its various genres. In Frantz Fanon’s article “The Negro and Psychopathology” he mentions how an image is constructed by a child in Africa about ‘Negroes’ and he in school identifies himself/herself with the ‘explorer’ or with the ‘white’. Therefore, we see that the construction of the image starts from the childhood in school with readings; it develops and strengthens till the child grows. Fanon states “…..there is a constellation of postulates, a series of proposition that slowly and subtly – with the help of books, newspapers, schools and their texts, advertisements, films, radio – work their way into one’s mind and shape one’s view of the world of the group to which one belongs.”   In other words they are the ‘Ideological State apparatus’ as stated by Louis Althusser which constructs images, desires, wishes etc in our mind.

In Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s reading ‘Interrogating “whiteness”’ the above argument can very well be observed. There is a discussion on American literature in America as ‘white’ and an African – American literature as ‘black’ where the American literature or the ‘white’ literature is taught by white persons and Afro – American literature by persons of color. One can see not only the authors probably but even teachers are segregated by the color of the skin and I wonder whether students are also segregated. For instance white student will choose to study American literature and a non white student will choose Afro –American literature. However, we see in this article the important role of one of the ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ i.e. books or literature. Fishkin mentions how Dana Nelson examines ‘the ways in which seventeenth – , eighteenth – and early nineteenth – century white writers constructed versions of their own identity (and of American identity) by defining themselves as unlike various racial and ethnic “others”’.  Hence, Fanon says that the root of this problem is books – the magazines, adventures of Mickey Mouse, Tarzan stories – which the Antillean child reads are written by white men for white kids so the devil or the demon is always associated either with ‘Negroes’ or ‘Indians’ which distances the African kid from her/his culture and brings her/him closer to the ‘white’ culture which is after all an illusion especially when he grows up and develops a contact with Europe. The only solution to this problem as suggested by Fanon is creation of books and magazines for the African kids and until then this problem would exist.

It is also very interesting to note that in India people are obsessed with the skin color as white. The color white is also associated with beauty. There are various creams for both men and women to become fairer and it is further interesting to see that these companies are growing faster in the market which can be understood with the demand of these products in the country. Both men and women want to get married to a white skin person. While reading these articles I was wondering whether the connection with the white skin is actually deriving from the same root as the authors in this week’s reading are arguing about.

As Bazin mentions in his essay ‘From what is cinema’ that cinema was a complete representation of reality for people like Muybridge, Lumiere, Niepce etc. and hence they tried to develop moving images of people to demonstrate the reality in true sense. This is how I would relate photography with cinema. Bazin further makes comparison of photography with painting and says that photography captures a three dimensional space whereas ‘the use of drawings’ only ‘satisfied the baroque need for the dramatic’. He beautifully defines the act of photography and its difference from painting, where he says that painting would always have the presence of the painter or his subjectivity would reflect in his work no matter how talented the painter is but it is only photography which can be created in the absence of the man. “All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence.” (162). He says that painting creates eternity whereas photography captures the time.

I agree with Bazin when he says that photography, though, is very objective unlike painting which is subjective, the role of selecting the objects to be photographed depends however on the photographer but the ‘originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent.’ We could see this in cinema, for example in the film Rear Window where the image captured from the window of the outside world is left open for the viewer to focus and interpret the image (many times). Or in one of the films made by Satyajit Ray, a famous Indian director, where he captures the image of a train passing through a village which still has no electricity or the excitement of two young kids looking at the train. We can understand how photography can capture the time in the image through the example of this film. Probably here the train was a source of introduction of the advancement of technology for the children who till then did not have any connection with technology. The other moments of capturing the time would be from the same film when one of the children fall sick and she is lying down on the floor beside a burning lamp which metaphorically demonstrates life and with the death of the child the flame goes off and the image captured is of darkness probably like the death.  The other interesting images would be the flight of stairs in one of the Russian film, the image of a factory from inside with its laborers working in a Charlie Chaplin film and the image of a never ending road in Easy Rider.

I believe that photography in cinema though, captures images from the real life but, it originates from the lens of the camera and it ‘contributes something to the order of natural creation instead of providing a substitute for it.’

In this week reading I could relate a lot to Derrida’s Differance and other post modern writing especially when I started reading Cixous but interestingly when I moved further or read a bit more it became really complex and serious!!!!

Cixous in ‘The Newly Born Woman’ started her essay talking about the binary opposition and the hierarchy that exists in it, like – active/passive, Sun/Moon, Man/Woman etc. and questions the symbolic order which is created by Man. She states that man has the authority over this symbolic order and woman is absent, ‘nonexistent’ in this order. Therefore, the relation that exists is between father and son, also she questions the rejection of femininity by men. She challenges all the ideas be it philosophical, poetic or artistic without recognizing the other in oneself.

Irigaray in ‘The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine’ targets the language as one of the important elements in the symbolic order. Therefore, she suggests that women should mimic because that is what they have done and practiced till now. She says “to play with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to it”.  Later in ‘Women on the Market’ she develops her argument based on Marx’s concept capitalist /proletariat. But surprisingly we see women are neither categorized under capitalists nor under proletariat but they are commodities or products exchanged and negotiated between two men. Although women are commodities that are ‘precious’, they are also ‘impenetrable, ungraspable and not susceptible to appropriation’. She also talks about the different role that are assigned to the women as per the convenience of the symbolic order – from a mother who cannot be exchanged anymore since she is a private property of the man as she says “This means that mothers, reproductive instruments marked with the name of the father and enclosed in his house, must be private property, excluded from exchange”, whereas in case of prostitutes their body is “useful” because it has been used already by man and “the more it has served, the more it is worth”.

However, Audre Lorde’s argument on this topic has given a new twist to the readings of Feminism. It has challenged the western feminist theory which focuses in deconstructing the binary opposition of the symbolic order and asks to look feminism in a broader sense to include women of color, third-world people, working class and older people so that a solidarity can be developed against the oppressors. She says “….white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class and age”.  Further, she also stresses that when we speak broadly about feminism or demonstration of women’s culture we should not limit our production of art forms to one specific genre and “to be aware of the effect of class and economic differences  on the supplies available for producing art “. I find this very interesting as it allows people to participate from across the world to express their views, ideas, frustration etc without any restriction to any forms. She also gives importance to older people and says that through them we can ‘examine the living memories’.

I felt after reading this text that feminism is not simply fighting against the binary opposition but rather fighting for other oppressed and marginalized groups and communities. But to fight for them one has to understand that their culture, concern, economic condition etc are different from the other and therefore it cannot be homogenized. Hence, feminism is a complex issue.