|
Books discussed in this article:
Edward Said's "The Hazards of Memoir Writing" and Arundhati
Roy's "The Great Indian Rape Trick I & II"
Theories regarding history as invented narrative have been controversial
and much debated over the past decade. While scholarly journals
have been the staple resource for new ideas in the area, new
writings have also emerged in the form of informal, almost confessional
letter writing by scholars for a new community readership. In
particular, there are two recent entries on the World Wide Web
that are worthy of study in their intimate, personal approach
to new theoretical perspectives on narrative and history. The
first is a short letter by Professor of English at Columbia
University, Edward Said, penned in response to heated criticism
by fellow academics about his own memoirs entitled, The Hazards
of Memoir Writing. The second entry is the blunt and caustic
feminist critique of the film/documentary Bandit Queen
by Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy entitled, The
Great Indian Rape Trick I & II.
Discussions that describe history as the product of choices
to include or exclude data according to culturally-specific
contexts and agendas have meant that the notion of documentary
has acquired newer, more unstable meanings that imply that the
writing of personal or public history cannot be a neutral endeavor.
On the other hand, notions of history as the objective documentation
of events persist in many disciplines. The discussion has often
parted the waters between positivist historians and social science
researchers who have faithfully pursued empirical, objective
truth-telling, and post-structuralist researchers who have approached
history as value-laden narrative, and as such, a product of
invention.
The recent publication of Edward Said's memoirs has provoked
debates, diatribes and offhanded editorial comments from academics
that use the Web as a means of immediate dialogue with their
fellow scholars and readers. Taking issue with factual inaccuracies
and omissions in the memoir entitled Out of Place, claims
have been made that facts have been changed in order to aggrandize
Said's position as a prominent representative of the Palestinian
cause. Implicit in the uproar is the assumption that life can
be narrated through a series of objective facts that are universally
comprehensible through the medium of language, and that these
facts are stable and unchanging.
In sharp contrast, in his defense of the memoir, The Hazards
of Memoir Writing, Said states that in reconstructing his
life story he did not work from any documentation whatsoever.
He makes a point of indicating that the primary intention in
writing the memoir was to work with his personal memories of
the events of his life, as those memories shifted and grew over
the fifty to sixty years of distance between the past and the
present. What becomes clear is that Said is unwilling to apply
a reductionist approach to memoir writing and unwilling to manipulate
memory to invent an oversimplified, monolithic narrative. Instead,
he has included erroneous remembrances, and attempted to invent
a narrative that admits its own value judgments, omissions and
reconstructions.
What is also interesting in the context of this debate, is that
Said has himself written several articles regarding history
as narrative and invention, such as "Invention, Memory and Place",
which appeared in the journal Critical Inquiry this past
winter. And, in fact, the scholars that continue to discuss
this charged issue must already be familiar with Said's important
theories on history as a useful, rather than authentic, construction
that has served to assert political agendas such as imperialism.
That his post-stucturalist, post-colonial interpretation of
history as invention would spill over into the writing of his
memoirs should come as no surprise. Moreover, while Said appears
uninterested in issues of authenticity in narrative, the body
of his work in the area of history reveals his interest in examining
his own writing for those exclusions that reveal something about
the nature of his values.
Perhaps it is director Shekhar Kapoor's refusal to acknowledge
any such exclusions, or examine the nature of selective fact-finding
in the making of the film Bandit Queen, about controversial
South Asian folk-heroine Phoolan Devi, that has enraged South
Indian novelist Arundhati Roy. In refuting the idea of an objective
truth that that does not betray the ideologies of the narrator,
Roy also raises some interesting questions regarding the adequacy
of Kapoor's appeal to some kind of empirical truth.
"I had a choice between Truth and Aesthetics. I chose Truth,
because Truth is Pure." (Shekhar Kapoor)
In Roy's blunt, informal, off-the-cuff rant, her statement is
clear: that the insidious appeal to capital "T" truth legitimates
all the agendas that lurk within any narrative and, moreover,
silences other voices. The arbitrary term truth, she argues,
is simply a word used to designate power and to silence anyone
who might dispute that truth. Further, she asserts that a narrative
cannot be adequate without the permission or contribution of
its living subject, and that the exclusion of the only female
subject's voice in the invention of this narrative reveals patriarchal,
political and economic interests.
As Phoolan Devi was never seen, interviewed or consulted by
the makers of the film, Roy states that the living voice of
Phoolan Devi (who was in prison and also embroiled in a court
battle at the time regarding the events of her life) was not
represented. Roy continues with a pointed, feminist interpretation
of the film's inclusions and exclusions that construct a narrative
that accepts, exploits and reinforces patriarchal ideas of rape,
power and womanhood. Furthermore, Roy denounces the film's other
noticeable omissions and inclusions that reveal either a state
or economic agenda, such as the decision not to include footage
about the state removal, in prison, of Phoolan Devi's uterus
in order to prevent reproduction, or the exploitation of violence
and rape in the film, designed to titillate audiences and fill
seats rather than inform.
What has become obvious is that the reductionist, positivist
school of understanding history has found resistance from a
tradition that finds its roots in hermeneutic discussions of
context. Moreover, the discussion that may have once been specific
to scholarly journals has now also pervaded the more immediate
and publicly consumed forum of dialogue of the Web. And, it
is perhaps in these more spontaneous and personal entries, written
by scholars and authors like Edward Said or Arundhati Roy, that
we might find that specific theories about how we discuss history
are relevant to daily living itself. In his defense of personal
history and memoir writing as a subjective selection of facts
and invention of narrative, Edward Said allows the prejudgments
of the narrator to be explicit. Similarly, Arundhati Roy's feminist
critique demands that the agendas of the makers of Bandit
Queen be revealed and that the idea of truth be unmasked
to reveal the claim to authority and power that intends to silence
the voice of dissent. As both writers approach history from
a post-colonial perspective, the concept of history as invented
narrative is one of the most important theories required to
expose the various social, political and economic agendas that
have shaped our personal as well as our collective histories.
Copyright © 2001 Priya Thomas. All Rights
Reserved.
Priya Thomas is a graduate student in the
MA program in Fine Arts at York University, Toronto. In addition
to her current work on a thesis entitled, "Writing in the
Stars: A Narrative of Celebrity in Dance Memoirs", she is
also releasing her third independent CD as a singer-songwriter.
Priya Thomas has toured with Radiohead, James, the Neville
Brothers and John Cale, amongst others, and will be touring
the Northeastern States this summer. More information can
be obtained at http://www.priyathomas.com
|
