Whooeee QE, pt. 2
Mom wasn't a voodoo queen. Since the earliest days of my childhood, she had regaled me with tales of her own childhood in New Orleans living in the haunted house. An old slave house. You could hear the ghosts of slaves jumping off the roof. You could hear the kitchen dissemble only to find, upon exploration, nothing out of place. Pictures would not hang on the walls. Crazy stuff.
It was probably this story that, more than anything, led me to the subject of the QE which is, by the way, absolutely unrelated to my dissertation--a difference encouraged by really bad advice from my advisor (although whose advice would you compare his to?). I wanted to talk about ghosts.
First one advisor grabbed the subject and said, you should talk about mysticism--seances, wrappings, and of course, women. "How does the ghost story empower women?" Then my other advisor would say, "You should deal with Big Jim, Big Sixteen, Rawhead, etc. Talk about the way the ghost story subverts the cultural imperatives surrounding race relations. How does the spiritualist movement dove tail into abolition?" So women and African Americans. There wasn't a ghost that went unaffected. No wonder they wailed through the night. My lists changed five times. At first, the subject was the nineteenth century ghost story and its counterpart in film. I think the subject of my last QE was: whatever shit you'll let me do my test on. Honestly, if I get to pick the texts and there's no criteria for that choice whatsoever nor any body standing over me as "expert" to separate important works from unimportant works, how then could I have been forced to revise my list over and over again.
Finally, as the only understandable objection was that my subject matter was too broad, I got real specific: Ghost Stories of Louisiana. I liked 19th century Louisiana because it suggests a totally multicultural setting: African Americans (of various social standing), French and Spanish creoles, Cajuns, Americans--the point is that my professors couldn't immediately politicize the whole thing. They would talk about the elements within the slave's ghost stories and I could talk about the similarities between those stories and the one's told by Cajuns. I wanted to resist every attempt to turn my test on ghost stories into a test on being black in America.
I should point out that I am now, by virtue of my institution something of an expert on what it is, according to a large number of sources which I'm not sure I trust, to be black in America. My dissertation is on the ethical fallout from the Holocaust in America. It's not that I don't care about what it means to be black in America, I just don't want to make it my career. For most of my professors, that last statement is akin to saying, I don't want to drink water ever again--it's that unnatural. Case in point, I could have had a QE on ghost stories in Iowa, but they would have never allowed such a thing. I wonder if all this studying of the "marginalized other" has demarginalized them, and if so, how do they feel about being mainstreamed? There's a dis in there somewhere.
Having started the test, I related to my committee what I thought was an interesting fact that I'd learned only the night before: the most famous haunted house in New Orleans, made famous by George Washington Cable and numerous ghost stories is the house in which my mother lived all those years ago: 1140 Royal street.
Who cares! In any case, my examiners exhibited quite frequently that though they had made me wait two years for this test and had picked over my list of works with a fine toothed comb, they hadn't bothered to read any of them. One of them actually said, "Well, I know we've all read that story, but perhaps you could refresh my memory on what it was about." Another of my professors kept trying to go to sleep, but not before asking me, "in your studies did you happen to find migratory patterns to the images within the stories? Were they brought over from, for instance, Trinidad?"
Oh sure, let me just quickly tell you with all authority where ghost stories come from. Yeah. Because obviously I'd know...
What the fuck. The average slave ghost story runs a little something like this--"over in those woods there's a ghost, so don't go in there." I'm not kidding. That's about it. What part of that does he think was brought over from Trinidad.
"Well, you know, back in Africa, the story was "over in that jungle, there's a ghost, so don't go in there." Then when the slaves were brought to Haiti, you can see the Hoodoo influence: "over in those woods, there's a witch doctor, so don't go in there." But once the slaves were forced to live in the bog like territory of Louisiana the story shifted back again but with a slight variation: "over in that bog, there's a ghost, so don't go in there."
My main argument was that originally, for the swamp dwelling populace of Louisiana, the ghost story was a means for keeping people from walking off into the swamp or going into a house where people had been known to be killed or die from yellow fever. As time passed, the ghost story became a way of evoking more political outrage--slave ghosts, mistreated octoroon mistresses, etc.. At the turn of the twentieth century though, ghost stories became about selling tickets to tourists to go through a haunted house. Ghosts in Louisiana sell vengeance for slavery to a "white guilt" laden audience. Thus ghosts that were once white union soldiers become mistreated slaves as soon as there's a price of admission.
Towards the end of our conversation, one of my examiners asked me, "so would you say there's been a shift in the nature of ghost stories."
Shift? Absolutely not. No what I've discussed, I would call a broadening of a trend with different characteristics chronologically arranged, but a shift over time... that sounds too much like I had a point to what I've been saying for the last two hours.
To fully appreciate this, one should know that I developed a sore throat the day before. I talked like a madman and used the word "Commodify" about fifteen times.
In the end, I stepped out of the room. I felt like I'd been run over. I passed, of course, I think primarily because towards the end I started talking about white guilt--which meant, for my examiners, that either I felt white guilt myself, or believed that others should feel white guilt, which immediately qualified me as a white person credentialed to talk about subjects traditionally considered "black" and thus, no taboo had been transgressed and I could freely move on with my Ph.D. and all those other minuscule things I study like the rhetorical nature of good and evil. Little things, like that.
And so...Comprehensive exams, here I come!
It was probably this story that, more than anything, led me to the subject of the QE which is, by the way, absolutely unrelated to my dissertation--a difference encouraged by really bad advice from my advisor (although whose advice would you compare his to?). I wanted to talk about ghosts.
First one advisor grabbed the subject and said, you should talk about mysticism--seances, wrappings, and of course, women. "How does the ghost story empower women?" Then my other advisor would say, "You should deal with Big Jim, Big Sixteen, Rawhead, etc. Talk about the way the ghost story subverts the cultural imperatives surrounding race relations. How does the spiritualist movement dove tail into abolition?" So women and African Americans. There wasn't a ghost that went unaffected. No wonder they wailed through the night. My lists changed five times. At first, the subject was the nineteenth century ghost story and its counterpart in film. I think the subject of my last QE was: whatever shit you'll let me do my test on. Honestly, if I get to pick the texts and there's no criteria for that choice whatsoever nor any body standing over me as "expert" to separate important works from unimportant works, how then could I have been forced to revise my list over and over again.
Finally, as the only understandable objection was that my subject matter was too broad, I got real specific: Ghost Stories of Louisiana. I liked 19th century Louisiana because it suggests a totally multicultural setting: African Americans (of various social standing), French and Spanish creoles, Cajuns, Americans--the point is that my professors couldn't immediately politicize the whole thing. They would talk about the elements within the slave's ghost stories and I could talk about the similarities between those stories and the one's told by Cajuns. I wanted to resist every attempt to turn my test on ghost stories into a test on being black in America.
I should point out that I am now, by virtue of my institution something of an expert on what it is, according to a large number of sources which I'm not sure I trust, to be black in America. My dissertation is on the ethical fallout from the Holocaust in America. It's not that I don't care about what it means to be black in America, I just don't want to make it my career. For most of my professors, that last statement is akin to saying, I don't want to drink water ever again--it's that unnatural. Case in point, I could have had a QE on ghost stories in Iowa, but they would have never allowed such a thing. I wonder if all this studying of the "marginalized other" has demarginalized them, and if so, how do they feel about being mainstreamed? There's a dis in there somewhere.
Having started the test, I related to my committee what I thought was an interesting fact that I'd learned only the night before: the most famous haunted house in New Orleans, made famous by George Washington Cable and numerous ghost stories is the house in which my mother lived all those years ago: 1140 Royal street.
Who cares! In any case, my examiners exhibited quite frequently that though they had made me wait two years for this test and had picked over my list of works with a fine toothed comb, they hadn't bothered to read any of them. One of them actually said, "Well, I know we've all read that story, but perhaps you could refresh my memory on what it was about." Another of my professors kept trying to go to sleep, but not before asking me, "in your studies did you happen to find migratory patterns to the images within the stories? Were they brought over from, for instance, Trinidad?"
Oh sure, let me just quickly tell you with all authority where ghost stories come from. Yeah. Because obviously I'd know...
What the fuck. The average slave ghost story runs a little something like this--"over in those woods there's a ghost, so don't go in there." I'm not kidding. That's about it. What part of that does he think was brought over from Trinidad.
"Well, you know, back in Africa, the story was "over in that jungle, there's a ghost, so don't go in there." Then when the slaves were brought to Haiti, you can see the Hoodoo influence: "over in those woods, there's a witch doctor, so don't go in there." But once the slaves were forced to live in the bog like territory of Louisiana the story shifted back again but with a slight variation: "over in that bog, there's a ghost, so don't go in there."
My main argument was that originally, for the swamp dwelling populace of Louisiana, the ghost story was a means for keeping people from walking off into the swamp or going into a house where people had been known to be killed or die from yellow fever. As time passed, the ghost story became a way of evoking more political outrage--slave ghosts, mistreated octoroon mistresses, etc.. At the turn of the twentieth century though, ghost stories became about selling tickets to tourists to go through a haunted house. Ghosts in Louisiana sell vengeance for slavery to a "white guilt" laden audience. Thus ghosts that were once white union soldiers become mistreated slaves as soon as there's a price of admission.
Towards the end of our conversation, one of my examiners asked me, "so would you say there's been a shift in the nature of ghost stories."
Shift? Absolutely not. No what I've discussed, I would call a broadening of a trend with different characteristics chronologically arranged, but a shift over time... that sounds too much like I had a point to what I've been saying for the last two hours.
To fully appreciate this, one should know that I developed a sore throat the day before. I talked like a madman and used the word "Commodify" about fifteen times.
In the end, I stepped out of the room. I felt like I'd been run over. I passed, of course, I think primarily because towards the end I started talking about white guilt--which meant, for my examiners, that either I felt white guilt myself, or believed that others should feel white guilt, which immediately qualified me as a white person credentialed to talk about subjects traditionally considered "black" and thus, no taboo had been transgressed and I could freely move on with my Ph.D. and all those other minuscule things I study like the rhetorical nature of good and evil. Little things, like that.
And so...Comprehensive exams, here I come!
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
3:22 PM
1 Comments:
Commodify seems apt, and the trend certainly continues there to this day. You could surely trace that concept to the present day -- up through voodoo, the theatrics of Dr. John, and of course Mardi Gras. Katrina will likely add another layer to it all. Think of all the new ghosts created by that disaster!
ps I love that word octoroon. I think I might be an octoroon and just don't know it. Why else would I dig that NOLA vibe so much?
pps Now I'm reconsidering your post again, mulling over the philosophical question of what it means to inhereit guilt. Is racism wrong/immoral? Surely, no question. But, am I morally bound to assume responsibility for its past existence? I don't know if I believe in that. (That's distinct from saying I tolerate racism, as I do not.)
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