Pictures of Derry 2009

I can't help it

Every time Edward says something of a Debbie-downerish nature about how pathetic he feels, I can't help but hear Eor's voice in my head:

"Eeyore, the old grey Donkey, stood by the side of the stream, and looked at himself in the water.

'Pathetic,' he said. 'That's what it is. Pathetic.'
He turned and walked slowly down the stream for twenty yards, splashed across it, and walked slowly back on the other side. Then he looked at himself in the water again.
'As I thought,' he said. 'No better from this side. But nobody minds. Nobody cares. Pathetic, that's what it is.'"

Obliviousness

    It is virtually unbelievable that somebody who “experienced” the loss of Palestine could have been so ignorant of the actual event as Said was. Being unaware of the forced expulsion of a people seems an impossible state to achieve, but thanks to the overprotectiveness of his parents, Said did. In chapter 6 he said he was “scarcely conscious” and essentially an “unknowing witness” of the “scale of dislocation” Palestinian refugees experienced. And I had to ask if this was just another item in a long list of disservices committed by Said’s parents. We’ve seen a lot of questionable parenting out of Said’s guardians, but surprisingly I could not add Said’s obliviousness to that list. 
    As a parent, if I had the wealth and the power to shield my children from the kinds of atrocities committed in partition then I certainly would bring my full influence to bear. So though we may find fault with much of Said’s upbringing, I cannot see how he would have benefited from being exposed to such tragic events as a child. Had his family openly shared their feelings of dislocation and confusion over the loss of home and culture he likely would not have benefited. Said was a teenager during this time, and already struggling with identity formation (the primary concern of the teenage years). Adding the expulsion of Palestine to the mix could have crippled his efforts, his identity being so much in flux as it already was.
    And Said was not completely oblivious to these events. He saw first hand the suffering of the Palestinian refugees and it obviously made a lasting impression on him. He was a “second hand” witness to these events kept at a distance as he was by his parents, but perhaps this distance was necessary to tell this story. This distance gives him an objectiveness or scholarly perspective on the loss of Palestine. Not caught up in the actual events Said perhaps gained perspective on the situation and was able to focus on what really mattered: the human cost. All he sees is the misery and suffering of a displaced people and he does not get caught up in the political and social machinations that prompted the events.
    Confused by the events of “Out of Place” I attempted to do some research online. Nearly every article I found about Palestine on Wikipedia was qualified with a statement about the questionable objectivity of the entry. None of them mentioned the things Said did: the worry lines in the faces of the refugees, the destitute and begging children, the joblessness, and desperate need for medical care.  So though we do not see the actual event of partition in Said’s memoir as we did in Sidhwa’s first-hand fictional account, having left the hot button political issues out the reader takes Said’s perspective and focuses on what is important — the people.

"Out of Place" by Hypenated American Standards

I've been knocking some ideas around in my head about this novel and what it truely means to be "out of place", either within a country, within social standards, and/or even within familial relations. I find the Edward/"Edward" dynamic interesting (and I will kill myself for mentioning this, but I feel that blogs are here for us to spill out thoughts with disregard to find our paths to intellectual enlightenment through developing connections between ourselves and the culture that rules us. Us, being Americans, are hopelessly infatuated with pop culture whether we find it vulgar or otherwise. Stating that, can I interject a monkeywrench and say that I can't help but think of the friggin' Twilight saga whenever I see Edward and "Edward" pop in my head? I'm not a Twilight fan AT ALL but I can't seem to get away from it and I know it probably may work with what I'm trying to work out in my mind in regarda to feeling and even embodying the notion of being "in" or "out" of a place). Wow, that's a long tangent, but I'll see what I can do.
I'll begin with the hypenated "-American" aspect that I came across while surfing the net on my mobile while awaiting test results at my doctor's office. I found an article that I found somewhat intellectually stimulating regarding the memoir and the correlation between the US's relationship with the Middle East in the wake of 9/11. Now, the article (the website I will post at the end of my train of thought, so as to not get lost on the way to hopefully finding some sort of understanding) names a few instances in which being an Arab-American in the wake of 9/11 is to be completely cut off from the overall culture (the music, the art, the language, the various religious customs, etc.) so as to conform to ultimate American-ness, and yet be completely cut off from the American side of that hypenation, either by choice or by outside force. The article has an interesting quote that is published at an interesting time: in April 2003, a quote shows up stating that "Now is the best time to be Arab-American". Not even 2 years after 9/11 and barely a few days after the fall of Baghdad, after hardships have arisen among those Arab natives as well as American-born descendents of Arabs, and its the best time to be Arab-American? I'm not so sure, but then again I'm not at all political, so who knows, maybe certain backlash and hardships makes the heart... well, heartier. I find this puzzling, as Said's memoir seems so melancholic in juxtaposition to that statement. Being "Out of Place" in so many cultures is the integral theme of the book, yet this statement seems to sort of call attention to both aspects of the hypenation despite the fact that now these people were targets, especially in the wake of 9/11. As "Americans" the hypenated bunch are to reject their native culturebut the ghost of "Arab" still looms above them and they are isolated from American culture. No matter what, they are out of place among the familiar and the distantly familiar, a reconciliation that seems out of reach. Does this seem like a good time to be anything that is torn from the roots of existing as a cultural driving force, and yet divided and obliterated within the realm of social commentary? I suppose it can be debated amongst those that debate what is P.C. or not (ie. America is for everyone, but not those who threaten the idea of an established America, and we will racially profile anyone who remotely looks like our idea of a terrorist through our mysterious "findings"). And I find it funny how now such things are ingrained in our pop culture, Bin Laden parodied on South Park and Family Guy as well as other satires, so as to perpetuate the idea of separating yet combining fundamental ideas through stereotypes, a common ground for everybody. The only thing is, how can we get rid of the hyphen and the adjective of a distinguishing nationality and become one nationality under a single umbrella moniker? Or, does this concept only apply to winning gold medals at the Olympic Games? Oh, is that my inner voice?
Here is the article website just in case you wanted to look over it: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-16192242/edward-said-out-place.html

Palestine a Borderland?

I was surprised to find so many connections between “What is Eastern Europe? A Philosophical Approach” and Edward Said’s memoir “Out of Place.” The two pieces are inherently about different places, but the notion of borderlands, and the borderland self translates to Said’s struggle with identity and the confusion over Palestine itself, ‘a place that no longer exists.’ (Said xi)
“Out of Place” begins with the invention of “Edward” a role that the author continuously found himself distant from. The inner Edward, was not the American Edward his parents wanted him to be. He was an Arab in colonial schools, and a blatant falsity at the American school with his plain white socks. And so he felt. According to Sushytska’s framework, for Edward, the “other” was within the self, the “non-west” within the west. (Sushytska 11)
Similarly, at the beginning of his book Said states, “I have never known what language I spoke first, Arabic or English, or which one was really mine beyond any doubt.” (Said 4) This contradicts what Merleau-Ponty says about language (cited in Sushytska’s work), “We may speak several languages, but one of them always remains the one in which we live…” (Sushytska 9) By not knowing his lived language, it becomes more reasonable that Said eventually finds solace by finally acquiring his academic mind as his lived space, but also seemingly impossible.
In “What is Eastern Europe?” three kinds of borderland interaction (Sushytska 8) parallel Said’s awakening of his relationship to his space and identity. In the first stage, young Edward hasn’t acknowledged feeling “Out of Place” as anything more than his personal failure, and doesn’t seem to notice his surroundings as he does when grows older.
The second type of relation to borderlands is one that acknowledges the “spatial forms,” develops attitudes, but is not conscious. Moving outside of the space changes this person. In Said’s memoir I found that his borderland interaction paralleled the differences of his vacationing in Lebanon compared to his life in Cairo, and his level of comfort at his Palestinian school compared to his colonial school.
The third kind of interaction is simply a conscious one. This point in the story is difficult for me to place on an exact moment, but it exerts itself as an articulation of the feelings that have been developing throughout his life.
An interesting point in the story for me was how he found community being a troublemaker with the other Arab boys. It confronted the colonial powers at hand, serving as a microcosm for Egypt at the time. Most striking was when he locked his teacher in the closet, presenting it as a zoo with the Englishman in his “natural state.” This screamed “otherness” to me, (also reminding me of Africans and Native Americans being exhibits in early carnivals), and remained in my memory as a bench mark that got “Edward” to the point of writing “Orientalism.”
The most significant connection I made between “What is Eastern Europe?” and “Out of Place” was the similar conclusions on the formation and reformation of identity. This helped me communicate the refute of nationalism (specifically Zionism) I felt by Said’s peace with himself. “I occasionally experience myself as a cluster of flowing currents. I prefer this to the idea of a solid self…and at their best [the currents], they require no reconciling, no harmonizing. They are ‘off’ and out of place, but at least they are always in motion…” Sushytska brings up movement (Sushytska 11) and Heraclitus’ idea that the self is continually becoming and re-becoming the self. (Sushytska 3) The nation-state proves the antithesis by being a static form of identity that excludes the other from its strict borders.
The whole book Said is touchingly out of place, but in the end he views this as a good thing, “With so many dissonances in my life I have learned actually to prefer being not quite right and out of place.” This borderland identity has given Said a “vantage point” (Sushytska 12) to critique the west and colonialism. Sushytska ends her article with the conclusion that the first step to an Eastern European identity of movement is to confront otherness and admit, “…I am already other to myself…” (Sushytska 14) This is how Said begins and frames his memoir.


As a side note:
Palestine is not a country, (unlike the rabble-rousing advice my father gave me when choosing a subject for my sixth grade country report. My teacher told me I couldn’t do Palestine, that it was part of Israel [which is problematic in itself], and when I asked if I could report on Israel told me no and gave it to student with no backbone.) The geography of Palestine has been overtaken, and Palestinians displaced. More over, Palestinians can be Muslim, or Christian, or originally born in Lebanon like Said’s mother.
So to all of the conservative critics of “Out of Place” who claim that Said didn’t even really live in Palestine blah blah blah….. Conscious identity (see step 3) isn’t limited to a physical space. Sushytska relays the work of Mamardashvili in relation to Diaspora, “…one does not have to be physically present in a borderlands in order to actualize a certain way of being. We can ‘carry’ the place with us precisely because it has become us, and we have become it.” (Sushytska 8) I would argue that Palestine shares characteristics with borderlands in its uncertainty, and its ability as an identity (and specifically a complicated one.)

Identity and the Writer

    “Out of Place” is not just the story of Said’s lost world, as he said in the introduction. It is also not just a story about identity. “Out of Place” is also a story about the creation of a writer. In his memoir “Out of Place” we see how Said was shaped into a writer.
    Caught between so many worlds the reader can’t help but lose track of them all, Said becomes the penultimate observer. And isn’t that what good writers are, reporters — those who honestly and accurately observe, record and report? Just to survive, balanced precariously as he is as a superminority, he must see all and hear all because not to know all is to be humiliated by an ever-present throng of critics. Said’s insightfulness was thus born of necessity. And his insightfulness found expression in his writing.
    Said experienced two different education systems and thus (at least) two different cultures. Diversity of education goes a long way towards broadening one’s mind and one’s horizons. Even if Said did not know what delis or corner markets were, just reading about them made his world bigger. Knowing something “else” exists makes things that otherwise seem impossible, possible. The imagination thus finds room to stretch and grow.
    It may seem strange to talk about imagination in conjunction with Said, given how severely restricted his life was, but his regiment of unimaginative information made his imagination thirsty for beautiful things. And his father’s wealth and social connections game him access to beautiful things, such as opera and film.
    And at least one part of his education — his time in an American school — made education seem “homey” and fun. That was enough to make Said want more of it.
    We also see the rise of the critic in Said on page 102. Said hunted for ways to recreate his pleasurable experiences at the opera house and cinema through discussions, readings, and recordings, looking for confirmation of the validity of his feelings.
    The things that shaped Said’s identity also shaped him as a writer. Said’s conflicted feelings regarding his father are palpable in his writing. Said’s admiration and fear of his father, as well as his deep disappointment in him, fill page after page of his narrative. We become raw with the power of it and cannot help but think that Said is exercising the very demon that drives his writing, through his writing.
    After all the questionable parenting we’ve seen out of Said’s father (and his mother, for that matter) it was nice to see the side that Said prizes in Chapter 5. Unsurprisingly, it is not the side Said would term “father.” Rather, it’s the side that lives in a world of profits — the successful businessman. Interestingly enough, the many things Said describes his father accomplishing are decidedly American things, such as product catalogues, structuring his company into departments or divisions, and owning a product from manufacturing, to packaging to distribution. So though Said may not see the American in himself, we certainly see the American in his father. And perhaps Said can attribute his drive to succeed as a writer to his driven father.
    But I digress. Said’s theme of place and being out of place also seems to be a natural part of a writer’s journey. As a writer you are forever looking at things both from within your work, as its creator, and from outside your work, as the audience; there’s no sense in sending a message if you don’t send a message they can hear. So a writer’s consciousness is always split between two worlds and thus the writer lives between them, never fully belonging to one or the other, always out of place.

akwardness/alienation

As I read through this book, I felt very differently about it. I, for one, did not mind Bapsi Sidwa's writing as much as some of my classmates, an issue which angered me so much. However, when I read Edward Said's Out of Place, I said to myself this is how an autobiography should be written. There was certainly moments when he was using language that was too complex for his age. However, he made it clear that it was introspective when he referred to himself as a sixty year old man that was writing about these events.
On to the topic at hand. As the title of autobiography implies, there were several moments in this novel when he felt a disconnect from his environment. As I was reading through this novel, I felt that there were three different sources of his discontent. These would be his heritage, his family, and his educational endeavors.

At the beginning of the book, Said immediately let it be known that he had a hard time defining his own heritage. For example, he stressed the fact that he had an English first name and an Arabic last name. This left him in a bind in terms of defining himself. He found no lineage which could trace his last name towards. He also had a problem finding out which language he spoke first and which one was "his". I feel that these are very interesting critiques of his past. These are deeper seeded issues than having a conflicted identity because one was born or grew up in a nation because his parents grew up in a different environment than the former did(i.e. myself). In what I think of as a method to try and nail down his heritage, he identified Arabic as a sweet language and English as a rough language, in reference to how his mother spoke to him in those respective languages. Its interesting that he feels that there is a conflict in existence. These problems of his heritage existed with him when he went to school. When he went to Victoria College, he stated that professors there treated him badly because of his ethnical identity. This lead him to rebel, which leads me into my next section.

Edward Said was alienated in every level of education that he entered into, seemingly. For every situation that he found himself connected with his environment, there were two in which he was severely disconnected. There were two main issues with him in regards to school. One, he had issues with his concentration. This incident was highlighted when he went on a field trip and was singled out for not paying attention to the tour given to him. This incident put him in a bad light. Even more disconcerting was his reputation as a troublemaker. When he was at Victoria College, as I eluded to in the previous paragraph he responded to professors mistreating him with mischief of his own. In other words, he fought fire with fire. It all culminated in an incident which he, alone, could not be blamed for. Another professor saw him out in the hall and put two and two together. The next day, he threw him out of the classroom without any further misdeed being done by Said. It is unclear whether he had been expelled permanently since his account of that was confusing to me, but he was not allowed to go back for a while. When he was at Princeton, he said that he was out of place in terms of the school social life. He claims that the university is not the respected institution that it is today. Said was only there as a scholar and nothing else, which I guess should have suited his purposes just fine.

Lastly, the main source of his alienation seemed to be his family, namely his parents. His father seemed to be a very strict disciplinarian, who preached mental toughness, which Edward did not have. The issues which Edward had were drilled even further into his head by his dad. For example, he got criticized for a terrible soccer performance and this incident was referred to in later years by his father. His mother's issue on the other hand was vacillating between affection and discontent with Edward. For example, when he was with a girl whom he had the potential to marry, Eva, she discouraged it not by disrespecting her as would usually be done, but by disrespecting him. He saw this as possibly a way for his mom to remain close with him. This was fine except that she would often play him off as a pawn against his siblings, all of which were females.

I would like to conclude this by mentioning some of my own thoughts. I am not opposed to the possibility that this is all exaggerated. By this I don't mean that his information was not factual, but that he could have handled his problems in a different way. It seemed that he tried to look at life very pessimistically, through a half-empty glass. He knew some of the risks of his actions, most notably being a troublemaker, and carried on with them anyways. To his credit, he seemed to have identified his place in my mind even if the title of the book doesn't imply it.