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Signing identity: Rethinking U.S. poetry, acts of translating American Sign Language, African American, and Chicano poetry and the language of silence

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Signing identity: Rethinking U.S. poetry, acts of translating American Sign Language, African American, and Chicano poetry and the language of silence

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Content SIGNING IDENTITY: RETHINKING U.S. POETRY, ACTS OF TRANSLATING
AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE, AFRICAN AMERICAN, AND CHIC ANO POETRY
AND THE LANGUAGE OF SILENCE
by
Shauna Lee Eddy
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
in Partial Fulfillment o f the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ENGLISH)
Copyright 2002
December 2002
Shauna Lee Eddy
UM I Number: DP23208
All rights reserved
INFORMATION TO ALL U SER S
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a note will indicate the deletion.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
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This dissertation ,, w ritte n b y
U nder th e d irectio n o f h.&T. D issertation
C om m ittee, an d a p p ro ved b y a ll its m em bers,
h as been p re se n te d to a n d a ccep ted b y The
G raduate School, in p a rtia l fu lfillm en t o f
requ irem en ts fo r th e degree o f
D ate M ay 1 4 , 2004
DISSER TA TIO N COM M ITTEE
Chairperson
Dedication
This dissertation is dedicated to my family because I love them and because they had so
much to do with its genesis: to my parents, Richard and Sallie Eddy; my siblings, Sara,
Todd, Suzanne and Joseph; to my nieces and nephews, Michael, Ashley, Stephanie, and
Nathan Porter and Kira Smith; to my new daughters, Brandi, Jeanna, and Dionna Sanders;
and to my in-laws, Melvin and Mildred Sanders, Danette, Marcel, Tamara, and Alexis
Reed, Melvin, Jr., Elisha, Krystal, Kristina, and Melanie Sanders.
I especially dedicate this to my father, Richard Leland Eddy, who is still with us and who
suffered much worse with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment than I did during
the final writing phase and defense o f the project.
Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to my husband, my best friend, and my soul mate,
Marvin Sanders, who gives life and sustenance to my dreams. Thank you, and I love you.
And to my son, Ari Lorenzo Sanders, bom during the submission process. I love you.
Always.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the incomparable help o f my committee: Teresa
McKenna, Chair; Thomas Gustafson; David St. John; Judith Jackson-Fossett; and Thomas
Habinek. I could not have imagined a more supportive and stimulating committee. The
hours they spent reading my many drafts, learning about ASL and ASL poetry, and
allowing me to pursue a nontraditional project far surpassed any work required o f them. I
truly appreciate not only the acuity o f their direction and reading but also the enthusiasm
and kindness with which they accepted the possibility that a project such as this could
contribute to an overall academic community. I also found the example o f their own
scholarship a great incentive and (as yet) unreachable goal but one to which I aspire
nonetheless. No one could have had a better or more perfect committee.
J. Liora Gubkin, who has read more drafts o f each section o f each chapter than any
other person alive, deserves credit and acclaim. Our weekly, occasionally bi-weekly,
conversations and dissertation exchanges invigorated and enlightened this dissertation in
ways that could not have happened without the stunning and brilliant work o f her
dissertation. In many ways, she was the reader for whom I most wrote. The opportunity
to work with a scholar and person o f Liora’s caliber has been an honor (and I highly
recommend her own dissertation.
My family, who took me in during the writing o f this dissertation, deserve not only
thanks but also credit in its completion. Without the basement office space they provided
me, the emotional and spiritual strength they offered and sustained, and their desire to see
me succeed, I may not have finished this dissertation. I want to thank them for everything
iv
they did and do for me.
My husband, Marvin, listened to my every idea, listened to me read each chapter to
him (over the phone for three years), give me critical insight into Deaf culture and ASL,
and selflessly teamed with me to translate the poem in Chapter Four. He also volunteered
to sign the poetry included on the CD-Rom. Despite this intellectual and artistic help, it
was his love that kept me going when I ran into blocks and exhaustion. He never lost faith
in me nor in my ability to successfully complete this project. I love you.
I thank all o f you.
V
Table o f Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
Abstract vii
Introduction
Map of a Family: Identity and Interanimation 1
Chapter One
Sickness Unto Death Denied: Epistemic Violence and
Colonization of African Americans, Chicanos and the Deaf 13
African Americans, Chicanos, and the Deaf as Nations 19
Violence and Language: Epistemic Violence and Colonization 26
Cultural Identity and Epistemic Violence:
The Beginning of the Gaze 48
Epistemic Violence and the Creation of a Self-Other
Relationship: Resisting the Gaze 57
Chapter Two
Poetic Traditions as "The House of the Poet": Metaphors
for the Construction of Identity 81
Everyday Language, Poetic Language and Poetry:
Metaphors of a Genre 82
Poetic Language and Cultural Identity: Poetry as a Tool
for Identity Construction 96
Poetic Language and Cultural Identity: Black Arts Movement 104
Poetic Language and Cultural Identity: El Moviemento 111
Poetic Language and Cultural Identity: Deaf Empowerment 121
Challenges to Poetry, Poetic Traditions, and the
Construction of Cultural Identity 129
Chapter Three
Tricksters and Bridges: Toward Ethical Metaphors of and Approaches to
Translation 146
Challenges of and Reasons for Translation 147
Translator as Trickster: Impossible, Necessary, and Done 157
(Anti)mediation: Negotiating Centers and Peripheries in
"To A Hearing Mother" 164
Translating "To A Hearing Mother" Continued:
Unresolvable Tensions 168
Ambiguities of Language: Translations of Tension 176
Broken Tension: Pane of Glass Theory 187
vi
ASL, Translation Theory, and Ethics: Translating
Clayton Valli’s "The Bridge" 192
Chapter Four
Translation as Border Work: A New Paradigm
Borderlands: Ambiguity and Tension
Border Work and Translation: Deconstructing Nationalism
"jaguila!": To Translate or Not to Translate
"bien truchas": Borderland Survival
An Application: Reasons for and Difficulties of Translating
"jaguila!" for the Deaf
An Application Continued: The Translation Process
Chapter Five
Redefining U.S. Poetry: Implications of This Study on Pedagogy
Review of Arguments
Bringing it All Together: The Trend in Contemporary Poeti<
The Need for a New Pedagogy
Interanimation in the Classroom
Translation as Interanimation: Teaching U.S. Literatures
Teaching ASL Poetry in U.S. Literature Classes
Lectures on ASL and ASL Poetry
Handouts
Sample Paper Assignment
Conclusion
Conclusion
Coda. What Is and What Might Be 329
What Is 329
What Might Be 332
Bibliography 333
Appendixes
Appendix I: ASL Grammar 352
ASL as a Natural Language: Grammar 352
Parameters 353
Minimal Pairs, Two Rules of ASL, and Intrusion Errors 363
Morphology 368
Pronominalization 371
Syntax 371
Appendix II: Translations of "To a Hearing Mother" 376
205
207
217
226
239
249
255
268
268
271
280
283
291
294
296
323
325
327
Shauna Lee Eddy Teresa McKenna
ABSTRACT
SIGNING IDENTITY: RETHINKING U.S. POETRY, ACTS OF TRANSLATING
AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE, AFRICAN AMERICAN, AND CHICANO POETRY
AND THE LANGUAGE OF SILENCE
This dissertation interrogates issues o f national cultural identity articulated in
poetic discourse through an exploration o f late 20t h Century Deaf (American Sign
Language/ASL), African American, and Chicano poetic language and products. Further, I
investigate the effects of various translation theories and methods on publically articulated
national identities found in poetry and poetic language. The project as a whole poses
these questions: What does it mean to not hear when we traditionally conceive o f poetry
as voice? What happens to poetry as genre when we add a body o f poetic literature that is
signed rather than voiced? What constitutes U.S. literature? How can we conceive
translation as a tool for resisting hegemony rather than as a tool for reinforcing hegemony?
What role does translation play in U.S. literature and in U.S. literary pedagogy? What
role should it play? In answer, I offer new metaphors for encountering and discussing
alterity and a new paradigm for translation.
Introduction
Map of a Family: Identity and Interanimation
my story is
how deep the heart runs
to hide & laugh
with your hands
over your blank mouth
face behind the mask
talking in tongues
Yusef Komunyakaa, "Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival"
When I took a Chicano literature class offered by Teresa McKenna, die poetry we read
piqued my interest. We looked at ideas of ethnicity and nationality, culture and identity. I insisted
that my family join me in this exploration, and so I took my books home to share with them. I
found myself elaborating on the concepts of identity we discussed in class around the dinner table
with my family and explaining how the poetry worked towards a definition of being Chicano. On
one of these nights, my brother, who is Mexican-American, wrinkled his forehead and asked how,
in any way, he was part of the poetic tradition I'd been talking about. His question and the
discussion we had following it forced me to wonder how a community based on cultural or racial
identity deals with people who should but don't fit the general definitions of cultural or racial
identity. The texts we had read to that point in the class operated on the assumption that any
Mexican American in the audience could and would relate to at least a few of a particular set of
cultural experiences. My brother did not. While my family made significant efforts to learn about
and continue cultural traditions for him and for my sister, who is Native American, his cultural
experience outside of our home was more like my cultural experience, white middle-class, than the
cultural experience of many Chicanos. The lives and personas in the poetry we looked at were as
distant for him as for me. However, I reasoned, because he is Mexican American, something had
to be different in some way. And I wondered how he would be accepted by a Chicano community
such as those inscribed into the poetry.
I write as an outsider to the three groups (African American, Chicano, and Deaf) that
figure in this project. And yet, I write about my immediate family, a family in which four distinct
racial and ethnic identities exist and co-exist, separately and mixed together. How does a non-
traditional family approach issues of identity when socially proscribed identities erect unnatural
borders within the family? I became interested in the ways in which borders are erected and
maintained to establish cultural identities, what happens to those who live in the borderlands of
these identities, and how interconnections are formed despite these disparate traditions and cultural
identities. The choices we made in constructing our family illustrate the permeability of borders
which establish psychic and cultural borderlands: some in the family are African American and
Deaf; some are African American raised in a Deaf home married to a Caucasian spouse; some are
Mexican American, raised in a Caucasian home; some are Caucasian raised with Mexican
American and Native American3 siblings and married to an African American raised in a Deaf
home who already had three African American children raised in a Deaf home for several years and
who now have a Caucasian step mother. The borders between cultures clearly bleed into other
cultures and others are sewn together, creating a space between borders in which to live.
The process of writing this dissertation created a time and a space which allowed me to
realize that while my family may seem unique, an aberration, perhaps, we actually exist, in some
ways, as a microcosm of United States culture, a culture in which many cultures co-exist and
between which many borders are drawn and transgressed daily. Both my family and the United
3 One o f my sisters is Native American. However, she does not participate in
Native cultures nor does she have a particularly Native consciousness. Despite the many
opportunities she had to learn about her culture, she chose not to do so, unlike my brother
who has continued this discovery into his adulthood. Again, the borders are blurred
between cultures.
States need to find ways of communicating and living together that fairly and judiciously establish
each group as equal. The non-traditionai character of my family thus shadows, in some ways, die
non-traditional genealogy and globalization of the United States. The issues of interaction and
identity in my family speak to the situation as a whole. In fact, several contemporary critics
grapple with similar situations in their writings. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and
the collection of essays gathered and edited by Alfred Arteaga in An Other Tongue specifically
participate in such a project and offer helpful insights.2
Anderson’s notion of imagined communities provides one way in which people like my
brother, who are simultaneously part of a group and outside of the same group, can become a
member of the group. He argues that nations can be conceived by the imagination rather than
merely (or at all) geographically.3 For this reason, my brother can begin an induction into a
community by reading the poetry, for example, and imagining other people like him doing the same
thing. My family as a whole can read literature written by other non-traditional families and
become part of that community of people as well as reading the literature of our distinct heritages.
In this way, my family brings a number of communities into the family, and we participate at
varying levels in the construction of these communities. This does not mean that we take on or
appropriate any of the community identities established at the (problematic) centers of each
culture. Instead, we can use these cultural touchstones as ways of talking about and constructing
our family identity and as ways of interacting with each other and with people outside of our
family.
2 These are just two among many critics and authors who address the problematics
o f nation and ethnicity. Throughout the dissertation, I address and discuss a number o f
others who also contribute to this general conversation.
3 I offer a more in-depth analysis o f his argument in Chapter One.
4
The idea of interanimation Arteaga offers in his "Introduction" to An Other Tongue:
Nation and Ethnicity in the Linguistic Borderlands provides a helpful framework in which to
discuss the ways the three groups in this project can be brought together without misappropriating
any of the traditions. Interanimation assumes that the similarities between peoples (for this
dissertation, specifically between African Americans, Chicanos and the Deaf) are "like metaphor
(to use a simile for a metaphor) in that the worth of the perceived similarity rests on the recognition
of difference" (5). The metaphor works in several ways: first, the similarity(ies) between peoples
relies on their recognition that despite living in the same geographic nation-state, they are
significantly different from each other; and second, they have each been defined as different/Other
from the majority by the dominant political and cultural powers. Thus, there can be solidarity
among difference. In both of these ways, difference can be interrogated-we can look at the effect
of difference on history, language, culture, cultural processes and products, and we can interrogate
what it means to be different, what it means to be labeled as different or Other, and methods of
resisting hegemony can be proffered, and, in turn, interrogated. This kind of interrogation, which
is a process, a definition, and an example of interanimation, looks at the discourses of each group
with the world and allows that dialogue to enter into dialogue with the discourses of other groups
and their dialogues with the world. In the end, interanimation seeks a "bond in difference" (7).
This is die end this dissertation seeks; I do not bring these groups together to suggest that
they have nearly the same history or similar cultures, nor to look at one in terms of the others.
Rather, I hope to interanimate discussions of the three with the other two. Arteaga argues for a
possibility and reason for using Chicano literature and criticism as a way of "interrogating
difference" in his description of the inclusion of several non-Chicano authors and subjects in his
book. He says, "Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, for example, discusses postcolonial India and
considers the internal colonization of the Chicano; she does this not so much in an endeavor to read
one in terms of the other, but rather, to interrogate difference, to interanimate a Bengali accented
English with a Chicano accented one" (5). Spivak explains this interanimation in the interview
with Arteaga at the end of the book. She suggests that identity be thought of as a space rather than
as an essence, something which tells you who you are. The alternate storytelling she suggests as
the building blocks of history should be approached cautiously. She says that "alternate
storytelling doesn’ t give you an identity, if you think of identity as something intimately personal
which lets you know who you are. It gives you a whole field of representation within which
something like ‘identity’ can be represented as a basis for agency" (284). The claim of agency is
important. It buffers notions of identity and self-hood imposed from within as well as from
without. In other words, because of the agency created by conceiving identity as space, people like
my brother can look at the identity created by Chicanos who have a particular shared set of
experiences and find ways to define himself that acknowledge his absence from the cultural
experience and still allow him to claim his heritage. It also creates the space of my family as a
space in which to work through the many layers of identity present. This space further allows our
family to interrogate the differences and highlight the dialectic that is our family. But it can go
beyond that.
Interanimation also checks the potentially colonizing power of translation. A few years
ago, I took my first class in contemporary poetry, from David St. John, and became so enchanted
with it that I demanded that all my friends and relatives join in my process of discovery. This
group of friends and relatives included my husband’s parents, who are deaf. When I brought the
poetry to them from the class I took, I stumbled through the little American Sign Language (ASL) I
knew at the time to explain how I was reading the text-what I understood, and what I thought it
meant. While difficult, it proved not to be impossible because it required that I only translate the
English into ASL.
However, the next poetry class I took (an African-American poetry class at UCLA from
Harryette Mullen) made the task I'd set for all of us nearly impossible. The questions we as a class
grappled with throughout the term included: What makes a poem black? What makes a poet
black? Though I was reading poetry that often set out to define and articulate an identity for
African Americans, and though Marvin's parents are African American, because they are also deaf,
they could not read much of the poetry, especially the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, which
emphasized dialect, and of the Black Arts Movement, which in many ways insisted on a particular
urban dialect and form based on African languages and music. They had absolutely no way of
reading the texts since they were written largely in a dialect based on the sounds of a language
altered to articulate difference. African American poetry of these two traditions asserted an
African presence in American (U.S.) texts by altering the sounds of English words and infusing
phrases and whole poems with African musical rhythms and combinations. These differences are
inaccessible to the deaf, even the deaf who happen to also be African American.
This experience made me wonder about community and identity as expressed through this
kind of poetry and aesthetic. It also made me question the boundaries between cultures I had
previously accepted. I found it interesting that I, an ostensibly complete and obvious outsider, had
found a way into the text, but that people who are clearly insiders have no way into the text
without some form of translation. And when I attempted to translate the poems for him, I found
that, first, I didn't know enough signs (and using an ASL dictionary established that part of the
translation problem occurred because many of the words written in dialect did not have an exact
ASL equivalent) to offer a complete or adequate translation, and, second, that I didn't know how to
explain, in ASL, the effect of the dialect on the meaning of the poem.
In addition, Deaf Culture, especially as defined through its poetry and drama, has erected
boundaries for the community which determine who gets membership and who does not. For
many, those who belong to Deaf Culture include only those deaf people who were bom deaf, who
inherited ASL, and who participate in a specific way in the community. By this definition,
Marvin's parents, though deaf from early childhood, do not belong to that community, either.
Further, in their generation, deaf communities were segregated in much the same way hearing
communities were, and so they were at least once removed from both communities.4 Marvin also
falls into this murky cultural no-man’s land: he is a hearing African American male, but he was
raised by deaf parents, and ASL is his first language. His language acquisition is unique to
children of deaf parents, and even more particular to the oldest hearing child in a deaf home (which
he is) who also happens to be African American and culturally expected to talk the talk and walk
the walk. Which talk and which walk does he perform? He also grapples with ostracism in his
choice of spouse; he has been accused by a few of being a traitor, of selling out. Juan Bruce-
Novoa explains that according to social and political schemes which aim at a unified identity in
order to combat hegemonic practices in the larger culture, "the act[s] of crossing the cultural
frontier become a fearful violation of the group’s security, a betrayal of its integrity as well as that
of the individual. To guard against this threat, the tribe traditionally created tabus, stigmatizing the
exodus as a crime of abandonment and treason against the group of origin" (228). Marvin’s
originary group is already divided: he first belongs to both the African American and the Deaf
communities by birth.
Finally, my own immediate family (my parents and siblings) faces this cultural dilemma as
well. My brother and sister are not truly accepted by either group to which they racially belong,
4 An important result o f this experience was that I began to study ASL in college
courses and in community centers. Additionally, I spent more time with Marvin’s parents
and their friends, attempting to improve my ASL and to learn more about Deaf Culture. I
did this not to gain access to the community but to be better able to communicate with
Marvin’s parents. It was during this process that I first encountered ASL poetry.
8
but they face some ostracism by the group to which my parents, my other sister, and I belong. My
choice in spouse also generates a certain amount of criticism and accusations of betrayal by a few
people. The natural boundaries of family member and outsider, traditionally solid and fairly
uncomplicated, begin to crumble in a non-traditional family like mine, particularly as we branch
out to include even more cultures. Because of this, we continually look for ways to include and
respect each tradition and still create a cohesive family whole.
Poets as well as critics from these groups acknowledge the permeability of borders.
Mullen, for example, asked us to question what makes a poem or poet black because she and
people like her have to deal with the issue every day. She is an African American poet who grew
up in a middle-class home and who speaks Standard American English most of the time. She
explained that she often felt out of place in college because she didn’ t speak in the same ways that
her African American colleagues did. This boundary crossing background makes her texts suspect
to publishers who want an African American voice that is easily identifiahly African American and
to some poets who want to define her as one thing or the other when she actually is both. Ed
Roberson is another poet who poses difficult questions about what makes a person fit one kind of
identity or another and whose work challenges critics to categorize him. He is African American,
so he could be classified that way. However, he writes in a post-modern style, and so he could be
classified in that way, but to classify him as both provokes more questions of category and place
than can be easily answered by the already in place categories.
Throughout the genesis and writing of this project, I realized the great extent to which
everyone, particularly everyone in the U.S., relies on translation to complete the daily business of
life as well as to participate in national and cultural activities. While everyone in my family shares
some experiences with a group of people, we also had experiences that separated us. I discovered
that translation could not, and should not, be avoided within this group of people. If we were to
simultaneously come together as a family and respect and continue each of the cultural traditions,
we had to find ways to speak to each other, to allow our respective differences to animate the other
traditions without appropriating and losing any of them. In much the same way, the literatures of
each cultural and ethnic group in the U.S. face the challenges of communicating with the rest of the
country. Certain methods of translation can and do violate the cultural identity established by each
culture by domesticating the texts. Translations of this kind sustain and serve the hegemony most
groups seek to break down and thus present dangers to minority cultures. For this reason, I
searched for methods of translation which allow for the celebration of difference while facilitating
communication. The dissertation as a whole explores several of these methods. It also participates
in the kind of interanimation outlined by Arteaga and enacted by the authors of the essays in his
book, particularly by exploring the ideas of nationhood, national identity, the place of literature in
the construction of national identity, and the ways in which translation affects these projects. The
project as a whole poses the questions: What constitutes U.S. literature? What role does translation
actually have in U.S. literary pedagogy and what role should it have? The exegesis for these
questions came not just from the particulars of this project, but also from an American literature
class, taught by Tim Gustafson. Finally, I argue that the practice of interanimation through
dialectic coupled with agency acts as a standpoint against colonization.
Chapter One, "Sickness Unto Death Denied: Epistemic Violence and Colonization of
African Americans, Chicanos, and the Deaf," argues that African Americans, Chicanos, and the
Deaf share a colonized situation and history. I offer a discussion of colonial identity and shared
colonial condition which allows me to present several key tropes and metaphors for the dissertation
as a whole: the mirror and invisibility. I present a reading of the "Prologue" and "Epilogue" of
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, focusing on the epistemic violence and rewriting of Kierkegaard’s
well-known treatise on " th e sickness unto death." I conclude that poetic language, which differs
10
significantly from everyday language, works as a medium for those who have been colonized to
take the postcolonial prerogative and construct cultural identity.
Chapter two, "Poetic Traditions as ‘ The House of the Poet’: Metaphors for the
Construction of Identity," continues the argument that poetic language is a medium of identity
construction for these three groups. Specifically, this project now examines the role of poetic
language in the work of identity construction within a colonial context and explores the effect
translation has on that identity through a look at specific poems, poetic traditions, and the role of
genre and performance. I claim that each group has poetic traditions which allow us to trace and
examine the cultural and national identities which have been and continue to be established. In the
assertion that poetic language constructs identity is the inherent argument that poetic language
differs from everyday language in significant ways. The beginning of chapter two addresses that
claim via the metaphor of a house-the house of the poet/writer/poetry. The rest of the chapter
explores the poetic traditions of African Americans, Chicanos, and the Deaf beginning with the
1960s5 (with occasional references to earlier movements), in order to articulate established cultural
and national identities for these groups, and, finally, looks at challenges to constructing identity
through poetic traditions.
Chapter three, "Tricksters and Bridges: Toward Ethical Metaphors of and Approaches to
Translation," asserts that the political gestures created by the connection between poetry, poetic
tradition, and cultural and national identity is transformed by the translation process. An
exploration of what happens to the articulated national identities in poetic language during the
process of translation forms the base of chapter three. I argue that translating the poetry of these
S I begin my study in the 1960s because ASL poetry did not exist before then. In
addition, during the 1960s and early 1970s, all three groups participated in both civil rights
movements and literary movements. Thus, during this time, all three groups converged in
goals and political activities.
11
three groups may offer an important way to resist colonialism and assert the already-present
cultural power and importance of each group. I argue that translation, if ethical, does this by
preserving identity and allowing a self-definition to cross borders rather than having one group
defined by another through the process of translation. Translation allows people to connect by
making knowledge available beyond the boundaries of community and nation. However, the
chapter also acknowledges the inherent danger of translation-the danger of assimilation. Chapter
three focuses primarily on the issues and problems of translating ASL poetry into a written English
in order to offer ways in which ASL poetry and culture can elucidate discussions of ethnic
literature in general. To facilitate the discussion, I propose the trickster as an apt metaphor for the
translator.
Chapter four, "Translation as Border W ork: A New Paradigm," offers the Chicano trope
of the border as a new paradigm for ethical translation. Since the entire dissertation relies on the
claim that these three groups are nations, and since nations are defined by borders, and since
borders are not just ways of dividing nations but are also points of contact between nations, border
work as a metaphor and paradigm for translation governs the chapter. The chapter focuses on the
ways in which translation can enact the work and world of the borderlands. I work through this
argument via a reading of a poem by Evangelina Vigil, "jaguila!" and through a translation of the
poem into American Sign Language and Mexican Sign Language.
Chapter five, "Redefining U.S. Poetry: Implications of This Study on Pedagogy," brings
the arguments of the previous four chapters together in order to offer a new definition of U.S.
poetry for pedagogical purposes. I review the arguments, review the current trend in poetics, and
then suggest new ways of perceiving and enacting a new definition. I focus on how the first four
chapters enliven a discussion and pedagogy of both ethnic literatures and U.S. American studies.
This chapter reads several poems in the context of the previous four chapters and offers reasons
12
why it is important to interanimate U.S. literature in this way, looking at the ways in which the
project connects them, rather than in the traditional ways.
13
Chapter I
Sickness Unto Death Denied: Epistemic Violence and Colonization o f African
Americans, Chicanos and the Deaf
This otherness, this
"Not-being-us" is all there is to look at
In the mirror, though no one can say
How it came to be this way.
John Ashbery, "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror"
Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have
been surrounded by mirrors o f hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see
only my surroundings, themselves, or figments o f their imagination-indeed anything
and everything except me.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
This sickness is not unto death.
John 11:4
The Sickness unto Death is Despair. . . . Despair is a sickness o f the spirit, o f the self,
and so can have three forms: being unconscious in despair o f having a self (inauthentic
despair), not wanting in despair to be oneself, and wanting in despair to be oneself. . . .
the torment o f despair is precisely the inability to die.
Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
You go along for years not knowing something is wrong, then suddenly you discover
that you’re as transparent as air. At first you tell yourself that it’s all a dirty joke, or
that it’s due to the "political situation." But deep down you come to suspect that
you’re to blame, and you stand naked and shivering before the millions o f eyes who
look through you unseeingly. That is the real soul-sickness, the spear in the side, the
drag by the neck through the mob-angry town, the Grand Inquisition, the embrace of
the Maiden, the rip in the belly with the guts spilling out, the trip to the chamber with
the deadly gas that ends in the oven so hygienically clean-only it’s worse because you
continue stupidly to live. But live you must, and you can either make passive love to
your sickness or bum it out and go on to the next conflicting phase.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
On his deathbed, an invisible man’s grandfather shocks his family with the
revelation that in contrast to his seeming docility and social insignificance, he has lived
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a duplicitous life-the life o f "a traitor . . . .and a spy" (16). The occasion o f the
revelation is the need to give his children and his grandchildren essential advice: "Live
with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine
‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit
or bust wide open" (16). The transparent, powerless position o f a former slave quietly
living out his life in the backwoods o f the South creates the very power that allows the
grandfather to infiltrate the enemy-the dominant white society which insists on and
enforces his lesser status. This position also gives him the potential to "overcome" and
"undermine," to eventually "bust ‘em wide open" (16). The Invisible Man, while
completely affected by this revelation (the fact o f the revelation and the imperative of
it), after years o f frustration and battle, finally locates the essential flaw and finds a
different method o f disruption. The flaw the Invisible Man uncovers is that "us" and
"them" are so connected that they are almost the same; thus, the distance between "us"
and "them" is illusion, created by the gaze o f the colonizer on the colonized. He says,
" ‘Agree ‘em to death and destruction,’ grandfather had advised. Hell, weren’t they
their own death and their own destruction except as the principle lived in them and in
us? And here’s the cream o f the joke: Weren’t we part o f them as well as apart from
them and subject to die when they died?" (575). The Invisible Man points out that
since "us" and "them" are inextricably linked, to destroy the enemy ("them") is to
destroy the self ("us").
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The realization o f this flaw leads him to recognize the need for a new method o f
disruption which will allow him to challenge colonial/oppressive power in three ways.
First, he needs a method o f disruption that allows him to "carry on a fight against them
without their knowing it" (5), thereby subverting unethical and cultural authority and
power without significant risk. Second, his disruption needs to allow him to write his
life into visibility, which (partially) turns his bitterness and anger into love (579-580)
because he recognizes the abyss o f pure anger and hatred. He argues that love more
completely breaks the gaze and the power o f the colonizer than hate does because love
recognizes the inevitability o f their connection without giving in to the current or
colonized positioning o f the self. Finally, he needs a disruption method that gives him
the power to speak for himself and, importantly, for "them/you/us" J -the gazer: "Being
invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do?
What else but tiy to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking
through? And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower
frequencies, I speak for you?" (581). In the frightening realization that even by
speaking his invisibility into visibility, he illustrates his connection to those who have
power over him, the Invisible Man articulates the dilemma o f colonialism: the
unavoidable conflagration o f self and other, o f colonizer and colonized.
Thus, the socially and culturally imposed "us-them" relationship implied by the
Invisible Man’s grandfather, both in the language o f his advice and in the positionality
‘A discussion o f Ellison’s second pronoun use begins on page 74.
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assumed in and by his advice, and imposed by the colonizers, proves false in the
protagonist’s experience. Trying to live a life based on this imposed condition and on
these assumptions results in confusion and anguish. Because he recognizes that identity
for both the colonizer and the colonized was bom at the moment o f the first colonial
thought, he understands that to erase the colonizer is to erase the colonized. Since the
Invisible Man’s experience relies so heavily on the idea o f the gaze and the object,
another way to state this dilemma is that the gazer (the colonizer) and the gazee (the
colonized) are not entirely separate but are inextricably linked, that identity, because o f
the colonial situation, was bom for both at the moment o f the first objectifying gaze.
The Invisible Man understands that to erase the gaze is to erase the existence o f not
just the gaze but also o f the object seeking a way out o f the subordinate position. Thus
the Invisible Man realizes that he cannot fight the colonizer by completely destroying
the colonizer, at least not at first, because to do so would be to also destroy the
colonized, the self. The realization forces the Invisible Man to seek ways to disrupt the
us-them relationship and assert his identity as separate from the gazer but
simultaneously to preserve the imposed identity in order to preserve existence and self
hood. The invisible man’s quandary reveals the bidirectional destruction o f epistemic
violence, a social rather than religious sickness unto death.2
2 "Epistemic violence" is a term used by Homi Bhabha in The Location o f
Culture; it is defined, discussed and illustrated later in the chapter, beginning on page
25.
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Ellison’s protagonist illustrates a specific instance o f epistemic violence which
results in the psychic and national damage caused by imposing a definition o f the
minority by the majority onto the world, most forcibly onto the minority it seeks to
define. The Invisible Man speaks one who has encountered epistemic violence. His
specific experience therefore illuminates (but does not represent) the position and
potential power, the postcolonial prerogative, o f colonized peoples. The postcolonial
prerogative, according to Bhabha, involves redefining social status and position as well
as mimicking the colonizer in an effort to diminish the colonizer’s power, particularly
the power to define the colonized. Noted for its beauty and density, the "Prologue" to
Invisible Man contains and constructs several treatises on social ethics, literary theory,
genre, racial interaction, ethnicity, freedom, familial relations, psychological egoism,
Kant’s categorical imperative, and identity, among other issues and topics.
Importantly, Ellison constructs his protagonist’s views using, not the typical language
o f philosophy, science or sociology, but rather poetic language.
Ellison's emphasis on identity and identity construction approaches ethnicity in
innovative ways and offers important avenues for translation processes and practices.
The structure and the style o f the "Prologue" introduce reader/audience issues central
to this dissertation and blur the lines o f genre, an issue which plays a significant role in
both translation and the poetic traditions o f the three groups studied in this
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dissertation.3 For these reasons, this chapter offers a reading of the "Prologue” once
the premises o f the chapter are laid out. The premises o f this chapter are that African
Americans, Chicanos, and the Deaf are nations existing within the physical boundaries
o f the United States4 , that despite differences in specific experiences, the shared
colonial situation, and especially the shared experience o f epistemic violence, is
significant, and that, in important ways, each group constructs and articulates its
colonial identity via poetic language. As I argued in my Preface, I use these groups not
to read one in terms o f the others but to allow them to interanimate not only each other
but also ethnic and literary studies in the U.S. Ellison’s text functions as the urtext for
this dissertation because it encounters and questions both the construction and the
articulation o f identity, because it addresses the status o f groups within the United
States as nations, because it uses poetic language to work through these issues, and
because it provides a useful touchstone for each o f the propositions made through the
dissertation. These propositions include the claim that within the United States, many
cultural nations exist, that these nations often use poetic language to both articulate and
3 In addition, a reading o f the "Prologue" allows me to make an argument for the
contributions African American literature makes to my overall claim. Chapter one
focuses on some o f the contributions made by African Americans. Chapter two
explores the histories o f all three groups in this project. Chapter three focuses on the
contributions o f the Deaf to my argument. Chapter four focuses on the contributions
o f Chicanos to my argument. Chapter five brings all three groups together. In each
chapter, each o f the three groups will be discussed, but the focus is as outlined above.
4 It is interesting that Native Americans are identified as nations (and have been
for some time); their designation as nations, while allowing preservation o f cultural
identity to a certain extent, is not unproblematic. The work o f Eric Cheyfitz is a good
place to begin looking at nationhood within Native American cultures.
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assert national identity, that this articulation speaks back to the colonizer via the
postcolonial prerogative, that translation blurs the borders o f these nations, and that the
articulation ultimately articulates not only the speaking nation but also the nation
addressed. Finally, I propose that translation potentially participates in speaking back,
becoming what Tejaswini Niranjana calls "a strategy o f resistance rather than one of
containment" (36).
African Americans. Chicanos. and the Deaf as Nations
The process o f self-identification in the formation o f these communities (African
American, Chicano, and Deaf) calls traditional notions o f nation into question.
Because I will be claiming that and exploring the ways in which poetic language
constructs a cultural and national identity for each o f these three groups, an
understanding o f them as nations is necessary. Defining each group as merely a sub
group o f a larger rather than as independent nations participates in the further
colonization o f each group, detracting from their already-existing power and making
further voice within the United States even more difficult than it has been historically.
Benedict Anderson’s definition o f a modem nation explains the ways in which African
Americans, Chicanos, and the Deaf are separate, non-geographical nations within the
nation o f the United States rather than sub-groups o f people within a single,
uncontested nation. He says that a nation "is an imagined political community-and
imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign" (6). These imagined communities
exist in-progress, much as generally accepted nations exist in-progress: always fluid and
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working to construct, revive,5 and express identity and policy. The politics o f each o f
these three nations differ in specifics, but they are similar in that they seek to resist the
domination o f the colonizer (regarding the Deaf, this includes the hearing who have
used power to dominate and oppress)6 and revise the institutions of power which serve
the colonizers in their domination. The national borders o f each nation are comprised
o f such things as blood-lines, physical features and conditions, and history. These
borders, unlike geographic borders, allow for degrees o f citizenship (due to degrees o f
blood relation or lines) because o f their permeability. With permeability comes the
overlapping o f identities: one may be both African American and Chicano; one may be
African American, Chicano, and deaf simultaneously. Citizenship in these nations is
thus not all or nothing; citizens can move back and forth and between borders.
However, being born into one or more o f these nations does not guarantee or require
5 "Revive," in this sense, is problematic because while it is impossible to actually
revive ancient or previous/historical identities, much o f the work done in constructing
national identities for these groups (particularly for African Americans and Chicanos)
relies on the retrieval o f previously oppressed and denigrated histories and cultures. It
is this project to which I refer when I say "revive." A discussion o f this follows on
pages 49-52.
6 In all cases, when I refer to colonizers or European colonizers, I am referring
specifically to those who have unconscionably oppressed or who, with present ability to
stop or prevent oppression and domination, have stood by while others have been
oppressed.
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citizenship. Instead, citizenship is a cultural and political choice. Thus, a fixed
definition of identity fails to describe and organize these in-process nations.7
Members o f each nation come together in what Anderson calls "homogeneous,
empty time" (25) because they can imagine others like them doing and experiencing the
"same" things. Anderson explains that they have "complete confidence in their steady,
anonymous, simultaneous activity" (Anderson 26) which, for these nations, includes the
experience o f being a minority in the U.S. A powerful simultaneous, autonomous
activity is reading or experiencing language, particularly poetic language. A person
reading Evangelina Vigil’s poetry for the first time can imagine others like her or him
experiencing the same exhilaration and connection-others on a different coast, in a city
or small town, doing exactly the same thing at the same time. This coming together
with people never met nor seen before occurs only because o f the reading/language
activity, but the effect is that it does bring people together who would not have been
able to come together before or otherwise. Importantly, the language o f the text acts
to bring these people together as much as the reading activity itself.
For example, Langston Hughes writes, in "The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain," an observation o f "his" people at the time. He says, "we have an honest
American Negro literature already with us. . . . Our folk music, having achieved
7 Within differential identities lies a problem o f the national aesthetics o f each
nation which posits a single identity in its quest for solidarity and political power.
Questions o f poetic language and its use arise in this quest and will form the crux o f
this project.
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worldwide fame, offers itself to the genius o f the great individual American Negro
composer who is to come. And within the next decade I expect to see the Negro
dancers who will dance like flame and the singers who will continue to carry our songs
to all who listen . . (228). The audience is not specifically the United States
audience in general, though anyone who can read English can read this as an audience.
The intended audience is the African-American nation as suggested by the use o f "our"
and "we." As Anderson notes o f an Indonesian short story which employs this same
technique, "Even if polylingual Dutch colonial censors could join his readership, they
are excluded from this ‘ourness,’ as can be seen from the fact that the young man’s
anger is directed at ‘the,’ not ‘our,’ social system" (32). Similarly, even if white
Americans read Hughes’ essay, they are excluded from the ‘ourness’ because it is
limited to members o f the African-American community and nation. Evidence o f
nation formation in homogeneous, empty time is found in the language and specific,
unique language differences o f each nation. Works which not only use or imply the
‘ourness’ found in Hughes but also do so in a vernacular specific to African Americans,
or in Spanish, or a mixture o f Spanish and English, as in the case o f Chicanos, or in the
performative language o f the Deaf, ASL, emphasize even more the nationalism o f the
artists and community and nation members. Language and language-use mark each
nation as distinct, and it is often through poetic language that the identity, politics and
political aims o f the nation are disseminated and galvanized. In Ellison’s "Prologue,"
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the Invisible Man’s use o f "you" and "m e" or " I " create a similar distinction.® Thus,
language, and for this project, poetic language, work to construct and disseminate
cultural, national, and colonial identity 9
In The Location o f Culture, Homi Bhabha offers three conditions o f colonial
identity: "First: to exist is to be called into being in relation to an otherness, its look or
locus" (44). This condition demands, for example, that indigenous peoples in the
Americas be called and identified as natives, particularly in relation to those who came
later and colonized both the land and the people and their cultures. It also means that
for a member o f the colonized group to achieve rank or success within the power
structure o f the imperialist condition, this person must be different in his or her
difference. This condition creates and allows the problem o f "the dream o f the
inversion o f roles" (44) to develop, in which the colonized, rather than envisioning
freedom as the absence o f the colonial hierarchy instead envision freedom as being in
the opposite position in the hierarchy. From this condition, cultures acquire members
who attempt to imitate the colonizer, not to overthrow the colonizer but to become the
colonizer. In fact, members o f a subordinate culture who achieve success according to
colonists’ definitions o f success are often accused o f selling out, even if their intention
8 A more thorough discussion o f Ellison’s pronouns follows at the end o f the
chapter, beginning on page 74.
9 The specific aesthetic histories and movements o f each group is offered and
explored in Chapter Two.
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is not to sell out or betray their culture. In other words, this condition o f colonial
identity further violates the colonized by sowing strife within the subordinate culture.
The second condition is that the colonized exist in a fragmented state: "the very
place o f identification, caught in the tension o f demand and desire, is a place of
splitting. . . . it is a doubling, dissembling image o f being in at least two places at once
that makes it impossible for the devalued, insatiable evolue . . . to accept the
colonizer’s invitation to identity" (44). The idea and act o f mimicry as a political
statement find their origin in this reality o f colonial identity. The disadvantages o f
being fragmented by the colonizer, Bhabha suggests, allows the colonized object to
reverse ideas o f identity and alterity in acts o f mimicry. The African-American cultural
Signifying), as outlined by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and others, participates in this
reversal o f identity and alterity.
Finally, the third condition o f colonial identity: "the question o f identification is
never the affirmation o f a pre-given identity, never a .se/f-fulfilling prophecy-it is always
the production o f an image o f identity and the transformation o f the subject in assuming
that image" (45). As noted earlier, the first colonizing moment gives birth to both the
colonizer and the colonized as colonized and colonizer. Because o f this, in order to
assert and then maintain the colonial condition, the colonizer re-defines the colonized
and removes, as much as possible, any evidence o f previous identity and culture.
Because o f power differentiation, the colonized seldom successfully entirely overthrow
this imposed image o f themselves. Thus, colonial identity is at least once removed
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from the self and originates outside o f the self. Each o f these three conditions
illustrates moments and types o f epistemic violence.
Violence and Language: Epistemic Violence and Colonization
African Americans, Chicanos, and the Deaf have all been subjected to the
epistemic violence inherent in these conditions o f colonial identity in various ways. For
example, European colonizers placed all three in the position o f Other: African
Americans and Chicanos on the basis o f skin color, and the Deaf on the basis o f a
physical condition.1 0 Since this otherness relies entirely upon physicality, each group is
called into being at the moment o f the gaze (in all its implications). The Deaf often
immediately fell into the splitting and doubling o f self and other because being deaf was
not limited to populations already othered by skin color and thus the deaf were both
part o f and separate from the colonizing self, making the construction and acceptance
o f the deaf as absolute "other" difficult. Enforced shared language, miscegenation, and
shared humanity blur the lines o f self-other constructions for African Americans and
Chicanos and allow a place to resist "the colonizer’s invitation to identity" (44). These
conditions require that an image o f each group be created by the colonizer in order to
maintain colonial hierarchy. The continued gaze o f the colonizer seeks to force the
1 0 While skin color is certainly part o f an individual’s physical makeup, I am
distinguishing between physicality in general and a physical condition, such as deafness,
blindness, etc. Also important to note at this point, issues o f otherness exist within
these groups as well; for example, to be both African American and Deaf is to be
othered by both hearing and African American communities. The artistic
representation o f this continuing othering and o f the ways in which this other’s other
situation affects literature is explored more frilly in the next chapter.
colonized to transform in such a way that they begin to assume the image created by
the colonizers. Historically, these efforts occurred through the process and effects of
colonialism; they occur today in more subtle and insidious ways since most politicians
and others making policy decisions refuse to acknowledge the colonized condition o f
many who live in the United States. Thus, colonial identity relies on the actual,
physical conditions o f colonialism.
Colonization is characterized by violence, violence to body, land, language,
culture-to every facet o f life. Hugely diverse peoples share this experience and come
together against colonization and its residual effects; what binds them together is their
common history and experience o f violence. It is accepted now in scholarship to look
at minority discourse as coming from people who have been colonized (see theorists
such as Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Eric Cheyfitz, Harlan Lane).
Viewing the Deaf as colonized is not generally assumed. However, I make the claim
that, given the definition o f colonization, the Deaf are a colonized people. Harlan Lane
offers a helpful use o f the term colonization: "Colonialism is the standard, as it were,
against which other forms o f cultural oppression can be scaled, involving as it did the
physical subjugation o f a disempowered people, the imposition o f alien language and
mores, and the regulation o f education in behalf o f the colonizer’s goals" (32). The
experiences o f each o f these groups fit this definition. While much has been written
validating these claims (historical and present claims) for African Americans and
Chicanos, only a handful o f published arguments exist which do the same for the Deaf.
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Additionally, the colonial condition o f the Deaf is largely unknown. Because o f the
amount o f literature about and general acceptance o f African-Americans and Chicanos
as colonized peoples, I will focus here on the Deaf as a colonized people.1 1
The Deaf continue to experience subjugation in the three areas Lane delineated:
subjugation o f the body, o f language, and o f education. In fact, the history o f
subjugation continues for the deaf at an intense level because the bodies o f the deaf are
still largely controlled by the hearing population. Recent "advances" in medicine,
specifically cochlear implants, have been thrust upon the deaf with the dominant,
hearing assumption that it is better to be hearing than to be deaf. In many cases, the
deaf individual is not given a choice about receiving the cochlear implant. Instead o f
consulting the individual and the Deaf community (whose experience with the success
o f the cochlear implant, in contrast to medical claims, would suggest it merely invades
the deaf body with very little actual success-see Lane, The Mask o f Benevolence, 3-6),
doctors consult with hearing family members and hearing medical professionals to
make the decision. Turning to the hearing community to make decisions about the deaf
U I will focus this portion o f the chapter on the deaf as a colonized people. The
colonized situation o f African Americans and o f Chicanos is equally important to this
project. Because many powerful and convincing arguments about these two groups as
colonized peoples exist, however, I try in this section to make the argument for the
deaf to be included in this category. Following a fairly lengthy discussion o f the deaf as
colonized, I offer an extremely brief overview o f the colonization o f African Americans
and o f the Chicanos, hoping that my readers will both be aware o f existing arguments
and read those already published. I also hope that my discussion helps to balance the
available information on the three groups and prepare my reader for the argument o f
this dissertation.
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body reinforces not only the colonial condition o f the deaf physically, but also
reinforces the colonial assumption that the deaf are handicapped and incapable of
making informed decisions about their bodies and culture.
However, the cochlear implant is merely the latest in a long line o f medical
experiments on the deaf body. The treatment o f the deaf by doctors such as Dr.
Prosper Meniere and Dr. Jean-Marc Itard make it clear that the deaf body has been and
continues to be violently colonized, not just in the U.S. but also worldwide. Meniere
claimed, "The deaf believe that they are our equals in all respects. We should be
generous and not destroy that illusion. But whatever they believe, deafness is an
infirmity and we should repair it whether the person who has it is disturbed by it or not"
(qtd. in A. Houdin 14). Meniere succeeded Jean-Marc Itard as the resident physician
and otologist at the Paris school for the deaf. Before Meniere, who continued medical
experiments on his deaf pupils despite the failures o f his predecessor, Itard practiced
ferocious medicine on his patients. Itard, a proponent o f oralism,1 2 failed utterly with
his pedagogical cures and thus turned to medical experiments to cure deafness. He
began by applying electricity to the ears o f some o f his students because he believed
that some analogy existed between the paralysis o f a limb (such as the leg o f a frog his
contemporary Italian scientists had recently experimented on) and the paralysis o f an
organ. When this didn’t work, Itard turned to piercing the ear drums o f a number o f
1 2 Oralism is the practice o f attempting to teach the deaf to both lip read (as
mentioned elsewhere in this chapter, a nearly impossible task) and to speak rather than
sign.
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students. One student died from this, but Itard claimed that before he died, the
student’s ear discharged a fluid, causing the student to recover some hearing and
speech. No medical evidence exists to support his claim, but Itard insisted that this was
the result. Medical evidence today, in fact, suggests that a deaf person cannot recover
hearing and learn speech quickly. It takes years, even with the very few successful
cochlear implants.
Despite the lack o f evidence, his claim allowed Itard to move on to his next
experiment: he improved an existing probe which he inserted into his patients’
Eustachian tube, which leads from the throat to the ear, in an attempt to flush out the
"lymphatic excrement" (Lane 212). He subjected 120 students (all but 24 attending the
Paris school) to this ineffective and extremely painful procedure. Lane summarizes
more o f his experiments:
Itard dispensed a secret brew into the ears o f every pupil in the
school who was not bom deaf, a few drops a day for two
weeks-without effect. With other students he tried a regime o f
daily purgatives; still others had their ears covered with a bandage
soaked in a blistering agent. Within a few days, the ear lost all its
skin, oozed pus, and was excruciatingly painful. When it scabbed,
Itard reapplied the bandage and the would reopened. Then the
cycle was repeated, with caustic soda spread on the skin behind
the ear. All o f this was to no avail. Still Itard remained relentless
in his search for a cure. He tried fracturing the skull o f a few
pupils, striking the area just behind the ear with a hammer. With a
dozen pupils he applied a white-hot metal button behind the ear,
which lead to pus and a scab in about a week. Yet another o f his
treatments was to thread a string through the pupil’s neck with a
seton needle, which caused a suppurating would that supposedly
allowed feculent humors to dry up. It was all a miserable failure.
"Medicine does not work on the dead," Itard finally concluded,
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"and as far as I am concerned the ear is dead in the deaf-mute."
(213)
In spite o f the clear failure o f these medical procedures and experiments, scientists and
doctors continued and continue to subject the deaf body to painful and invasive
procedures in an attempt to cure deafness.
The slaves in the Unites States faced similar disregard for and colonization o f
the body. Many documents exist which testify to the colonization o f the African body
beyond enslavement. A major difference between the treatment o f the deaf body and
that o f the African body involves the value o f their respective bodies: the slave’s body
had commercial value for the owner and so slave owners sought to meet the medical
needs o f their slaves1 3 while the deaf body was and is seen as damaged and o f not as
much value as a healthy, "normal" body. The disregard most often visited upon the
African body came in the form o f epistemic violence and disregard. Toni Morrison’s
Beloved offers an insightful passage depicting this kind o f colonization. The impact o f
Schoolteacher’s "scientific" approach to the lack o f humanness in the slaves occurred
like this: " Schoolteacher’d wrap that string all over my head, ‘cross my nose, around
1 3 Peter Kolchin, in American Slavery: 1619-1877, notes, "slave owners lacked
knowledge o f how to deal effectively with most diseases, but they worried a good deal
about the health o f their people-who represented valuable investments-and took
whatever action they thought necessary to maintain it" (114). He later says, "The
medical care that slave owners provided did not significantly improve the health of their
slaves, but it did reflect the widespread concern o f masters for the well-being o f those
slaves" (115). This concern and provision o f medical care stemmed not from
humanitarian virtues but rather from profit motivation. The body o f the African slave
remained colonized.
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my behind. Number my teeth" (191). He later instructs his students, his nephews, on
how to use physical characteristics to define the slave: "No, no. That’s not the way. I
told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right. And
don’t forget to line them up" (193). Invisible Man presents the main character with a
similar situation: the Invisible Man finds himself in a hospital with doctors who subject
him to myriad medical experiments, ostensibly to cure him o f who he is. In both
Morrison and Ellison, poetic language articulates and represents the epistemic violence,
on both an individual and national level, o f the colonization o f the body. The violence
to the psyche created by these kinds o f physical "evidence" and experiments parallels
the damage done to the deaf psyche because o f the medical experiments visited upon
them in efforts to cure their deafness.
When Itard’s and Meniere’s experiments failed, they both turned to eugenics,
the then science o f creating a better race through genetics. Alexander Graham Bell, a
figure most hearing people see as a champion o f the deaf and as a great inventor but
who the deaf see as an enemy, joined them in this "intellectual and scientific" pursuit.
He believed strongly in discouraging the deaf from marrying and having children,
believing that it would lead to more "undesirables." Even then, medical evidence
suggested that very little about deafness was hereditary. However, eugencists
proposed to fight deafness by preventing marriage and child-bearing between deaf
adults. The medical evidence o f the time pointed to scarlet fever as the leading cause of
32
deafness, but instead o f waging a war on scarlet fever, eugencists waged war on the
deaf.
Bell was not the first powerful or prominent person to relegate the deaf to an
inferior status in society nor the first to denigrate signed languages. One o f the most
influential people to do this was Aristotle who claimed that speech and language were
the same thing and could not exist independently o f each other. For this reason, the
deaf in ancient Greece were most often left outside to die, and in Rome, those bom
deaf were denied citizenship.1 4 Bell’s notions o f the deaf began at the point Aristotle’s
leaves off: speech and language are one and the same. However, Bell takes this idea to
it’s furthest and most frightening conclusion. He concluded that signed languages
allowed the deaf to proliferate "their kind." According to Lane, "Bell sought to banish
the sign language; to disperse the deaf and discourage their socializing, organizing,
publishing, and marriage; to have deaf children educated in and use exclusively the
majority language. To this cause he devoted his great prestige, personal fortune and
tireless efforts" (340). Those who resisted his advances and assumptions were put
down by his supposed devotion to the deaf; after all, he argued, he married a deaf
woman. Bell’s marriage conformed to his eugenicist beliefs. He opposed the
intramarriage o f the deaf, not the intermarriage o f the deaf and hearing.
1 4 For a brief, but helpful, overview o f the history o f the deaf and signed
languages, read the first chapter o f Jerome D. Schein’s and David A. Stewart’s
Language in Motion: Exploring the Nature o f Sign.
His stance as a eugenicist made him, in the words o f the first president o f the
National Association o f the Deaf, "the most to be feared enemy o f the American deaf,
past and present" (qtd. in Lane, When the M ind Hears 340). In an essay entitled,
"How to Improve the Race," Bell makes clear his beliefs. He regrets the restrictions
placed on "scientists" interested in creating the perfect race and in improving existing
races through what would come to be genetics. Bell was eventually accepted into the
American Breeders’ Association. As Lane explains, this association "thrived on a
murky brew o f Darwinism, racism, elitism, Mendelian genetics, and social reform"
(355). Bell served on a specific committee for the Breeders’ Association, the section
which emphasized "the value o f superior blood and the menace to society o f inferior
blood" (355). Bell’s work for the American Breeders’ Association affected more than
the deaf; one result o f his work and that o f those with whom he worked, were the
sterilization laws. Another result affected immigration to the United States, restrictions
based on race and social standing. Bell also proposed that every male between certain
ages in the United States submit to a physical fitness test. Each man would receive a
certificate o f health or o f unfitness, which he would be required to produce at specific
times, including interviews with future in-laws. This movement hoped to improve the
race. Most terrifying for the deaf, Bell proposed the eventual elimination o f the deaf
from the "human stock" (359).
Instead o f approaching eugenics from a medical standpoint, Bell began with the
language and culture o f the deaf. Unlike the deaf body, the language o f the Deaf
enjoyed acceptance as a form o f communication, though not at the status o f a natural
language, for several centuries. However, at the turn o f the 20* century, Bell
successfully de-legitimatized ASL and removed it from deaf education. Bell feared that
the deaf would continue to marry and reproduce, despite evidence that very little about
deafness is hereditary, if allowed to continue communicating in sign, if allowed to
continue gathering at schools for the deaf, if allowed to live together. He went to great
lengths to prevent people from donating their land so that the deaf could establish a
deaf state or even a deaf city. Bell’s invention o f the telephone and his immense
influence in deaf education led to the eventual eradication o f sign in deaf schools. This
led to a lack o f interpreters for the deaf since they were taught oralism and English and
thus expected to know it and to lip-read sufficiently to get along in a hearing society
unfamiliar with the specific needs o f the deaf.1 5 Bell’s insistence that the deaf learn
English stemmed also from his belief that in an English speaking country (translation: in
a country governed by people who speak English), English should be the only form o f
communication. He said, "in an English speaking country like the United States, the
1 5 For a more complete history and analysis o f Bell’s influence on and
colonization o f the deaf, I recommend the following texts: When the M ind Hears: A
History o f the Deaf, by Harlan Lane, particularly chapter eleven, "The Denial"; The
Mask o f Benevolence: Disabling the D eaf Community, by Harlan Lane, particularly
part seven, "Bio-power Versus the Deaf Child"; Forbidden Signs: American Culture
and the Campaign Against Sign Language, by Douglas C. Baynton, particularly
chapter one, "Foreigners in Their Own Land" and chapter six, "The Unnatural
Language o f Signs: Normality"; and Language in Motion: Exploring the Nature o f
Sign, by Jerome D. Schein and David A. Stewart, especially particularly the section on
the Rochester Method on page 81.
35
English language, and the English language alone, should be used as the means of
communication and instruction-at least in schools supported at public expense" (qtd. in
Baynton 28, emphasis in original). This claim affects more than the deaf. It also
comments on the kind o f education Bell proposed for all people for whom English is
not the first language, including immigrants and Chicanos.1 6 The submersion method o f
education stems from these and like ideas. In the submersion method, instruction in the
classroom is entirely in English, and Earl Shorris, in Latinos: A Biography o f the
People, points out that "submersion depends on shame. In the submersion method
children learn to devalue their culture as well as their language" (173). N ot only
pedagogy was affected by Bell and his colleagues. Feelings o f nationalism, spurred by
World War I in particular, created a need for the Supreme Court to step in and prevent
persecution based on language use. However, the Supreme Court’s decision did not
change the attitudes towards nor the practices o f educators towards Spanish. Shorris
explains, "During World War I, nationalistic and patriotic feeling led to legal
xenophobia: A town in Ohio fined people twenty-five dollars for speaking German in
public. Not until 1923 did the Supreme Court strike down laws prohibiting private
schools from teaching in languages other than English. Even so, children were
forbidden to speak Spanish in the classroom or the schoolyard in the Southwest for
most o f this [the 20*] century" (173-174).
1 6 Thus, Bell’s colonization o f the deaf has far-reaching implications for the
educational system in the U .S., and these implications bring together the Deaf,
Chicanos, and African Americans in this way.
Bell’s efforts to delegitimize ASL joined the efforts o f an international congress,
the World Congress for Improving the Welfare o f Deaf-Mutes, a congress supposedly
for rather than about the deaf. At their meetings, hearing educators voted on the best
systems o f education for the deaf. The deaf educators and the deaf students, allowed
to attend the first few conferences, were eventually banned from even attending
meetings which determined their fate. The reason for their banishment is that more
deaf than hearing attended, making it possible for the deaf to overturn previous and
upcoming decisions about the exclusion o f signed languages in their education and
about the exclusion o f deaf educators from their education. Lane notes,
In America, Bell’s oralist crusade reduced the number o f deaf
teachers to a slight fraction o f the total, where it remains
currently; in the European nations, where the control o f education
is centralized, the deaf teachers were eliminated to the last man.
Soon there would be no need for laws to exclude them, for the
reduced intellectual achievements attainable under the new oralist
regime effectively prevented the deaf from aspiring to any such
career. ( When the M ind Hears 398)
Where before Bell’s crusade, the deaf enjoyed a wide variety o f highly trained and
skilled professions (doctors, lawyers, educators, and others requiring higher education),
following Bell’s crusade, the deaf were reduced to manual laborers if they were able to
find employment at all. In fact, the president o f the World Congress proposed
gardening as the profession o f choice for the deaf. Lane suggests that the end result of
this congress was the infanfilizing o f the deaf. He says, "The suppression o f sign, the
firing o f deaf faculty, the retrenchment o f educational goals, and the medical model o f
the deaf as defective all conduced to Milan’s [where the first congress was held]
37
catastrophic effect: the infantilizing o f deaf young men and women" (401). The
infantilization o f the deaf parallels similar infantilization o f African American slaves and
o f Chicanos in the U.S.
Slave owners enforced paternalism by making literacy illegal and often
preventing their slaves from attending Sunday School. Kolchin reports, "Fearing that
literacy would promote excessive independence among slaves, most (though not all)
slave owners opposed teaching their people to read or allowing them to attend Sunday
school, thereby subverting the central Protestant tenet that each individual must be able
to read the Bible" (116). Like the infantilization o f the deaf, slave owners justified the
limitations placed on their slaves by claiming that they protected them and loved them.
The World Congress saw its mission as protecting the deaf from the world. Slave
owners saw their mission as a divinely imposed one o f enlightening the unenlightened
(often, in their minds, unenlightened meant unenlightenable). In addition, the
infantilization o f the deaf parallels the metaphor or image o f the slave as child. Kolchin
explains, "Over and over, slave owners returned to the metaphor o f slaves as children,
stressing that they needed loving and firm but above all consistent management if they
were not to be spoiled" (119).
A similar infantilization o f Chicanos occurred in the U. S. Jose E. Limon notes
the paternalism practiced on Chicanos, particularly in Texas, in his book Dancing with
the Devil: Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American South Texas. He
describes the paternalistic relationship between a Chicano student, Jovita Gonzalez, and
38
her anglo professor/mentor, J. Frank Dobie and suggests that the relationship is
indicative o f the relationship established by European Americans with Chicanos in
Texas. He says o f Gonzalez, "she articulates a class/race paternalism and colonialist
attitude consistent with that o f her padrino, Dobie, thereby reinforcing Anglo-
American capitalistic dominance in Texas as a whole" (69). Gonzalez describes the
relationship between Anglo-American and Chicano in this way: "[it] is a racial struggle,
a fight between an aggressive, conquering and materialistic people on the one hand, and
a volatile but passive and easily satisfied race on the other" (qtd. in Limon 66).
Describing Chicanos as "passive and easily satisfied" perpetuates the myths and
stereotypes which rely on the image o f child-like or infant characteristics and allows the
colonizer to claim that Chicanos, like the Deaf and African Americans, require
domination.
The World Congress for Improving the Welfare o f Deaf-Mutes continued to
assert oralism as the most effective pedagogy even after studies o f students educated
under oralism proved it ineffective. Psychologists A. Binet and T. Simon systematically
evaluated the effects o f oralism on deaf students. They examined graduates o f schools
in which oralism was the only pedagogy and found that oralism was not just less
effective than sign as a pedagogy but that oralism actually made it impossible for the
deaf to learn and to communicate. They report, "People are mistaken about the
practical result o f the oral method. It seems to us a sort o f luxury education, which
boosts morale rather than yielding useful and tangible results. It does not enable deaf-
39
mutes to get jobs; it does not permit them to exchange ideas with strangers; it does not
allow them even a consecutive conversation with their intimates; and deaf-mutes who
have not learned to speak earn their living just as easily as those who have acquired this
semblance o f speech" (qtd. in Lane 400). In addition, the silent press (a press by and
for the deaf) labels oralism a method o f "violence, oppression, obscurantism,
charlatanism, which only makes idiots o f the poor deaf-mute children" and it called
Magnat, who "refined" oralism to what he called "pure oralism," "the inventor o f this
torture o f the tongue, nose, throat, and eyes called the pure oral method" (qtd. in Lane
404).
Not until the 1960s, with the work o f William A. Stokoe, did any scholar think
to challenge the assumptions o f Bell and his colleagues, and it wasn’t until the 1970s,
with a study done by Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima, that ASL was finally
acknowledged as a natural language. When William A. Stokoe discovered that the
signs his students used differed from the signs his teacher used, he began an ongoing
joumey-that o f totally legitimizing ASL as a language rather than as a system o f
pantomime. Until that time, centuries had passed in the study o f language with very
little attention given to signed languages. Very little, if any, record o f signed language
studies done prior to the 1700s exists. A few records o f studies done on the sign
language o f the Trappist monks, and some in Spanish, exist. Most o f those studies,
however, were not language studies per se, but rather attempts at recording the sign
languages o f the time and are thus lexical studies rather than language or linguistic
40
studies. The few dictionaries published before Stokoe’s work, in the early 1960s,
included no information about the grammatical structure o f ASL; some included
pictures o f the signs, but others merely included descriptions o f how to make certain
signs.1 7 The project o f legitimizing ASL encountered tremendous resistance against
admitting ASL as a language. Part o f this resistance stems from the revolutionary
effect on language studies ASL demands. Linguists and scholars could no longer think
o f language in the same way once ASL was admitted because it questions traditional
notions and definitions o f language. It also requires a complete overhaul o f definitions
and studies o f language-structure, use, and acquisition.
Understanding traditional attitudes and thoughts towards signed languages,
which include the following, help clarify the resistance to ASL by educators, linguists,
and policy makers:
1. If it’s not spoken, it’s not a language
2. Signed languages are "bad" languages
3. Signed languages are "broken" forms o f spoken languages
4. Signed languages are not languages-period.
5. Signed languages are "primitive"-concrete and not capable o f
conceiving or conveying abstract thought.
I 7 Harlan Lane’s book When the M ind Hears offers a beautifully written and
very thorough history o f signed.
41
These attitudes most often (though sometimes subconsciously) stem from answers to
the following philosophical, moral, and social questions: What is it like to be deaf? and
Is it better to be deaf or to be hearing? These questions come from the preface o f
Lane’s The Mask o f Benevolence. He suggests that when most hearing people
consider the above questions, they make extrapolative leaps or egocentric errors, and
he posits that the hearing tend to imagine deafness as the absence o f sound-as
silence-and thus as being without communication. If an average hearing person were
to become deaf right this second, he or she would most likely be "isolated, disoriented,
uncommunicative, and unreceptive to communication. [Our] ties to other people
would be ruptured" (11). Many children are censured with silence as children, and thus
silence holds for the hearing ominous memories and projections. Lane explains, "What
motivates the extrapolative error in disinterested laymen is existential dread. There but
for the grace o f God go I" (11). From this extrapolative error, most hearing people
make the unconscious logical leap that the deaf deserve sympathy because the hearing
deserve sympathy. The hearing can imagine fewer tragedies so life-altering and
frightening.
Because these leaps, errors and fear probably occur in the psyches o f most
hearing people, they/we project these same fears onto the deaf and assume that they,
too, are isolated and without communication. However, for the Deaf, the concept o f
the English word "silence" is articulated as the absence o f communication, not as the
absence o f sound. The English "silence" means the absence o f ASL. Unfortunately,
42
since the early part o f the twentieth century, the government, educators, many parents
o f deaf children, and society at large have imposed silence upon the Deaf Community.
ASL is just now re-entering classrooms o f deaf children-still with great resistance,
particularly in certain regions o f the United States and in the world.1 8
To the second question, is it better to be hearing or to be deaf, Lane offers an
insightful response. He says,
the question makes no sense except in relation to a cultural
"frame." To know what it is to be a member o f the deaf
community is to imagine how you would think, feel, and react if
you had grown up deaf, if manual language had been your main
means o f communication, if your eyes were the portals o f your
mind, if most o f your friends were deaf, if you had learned that
there were children who couldn’t sign only after you had known
dozens who could, if the people you admired were deaf, if you
had struggled daily for as long as you can remember with the
ignorance and uncommunicativeness o f hearing people, i f . . . if, in
a word, you were deaf, ([ellipses and emphasis in original] 12)
The subjugation o f deaf bodies, language, legal rights and freedoms, and education to
hearing assumptions and power suggest that the Deaf indeed live in a colonial
situation.1 9 Thus, the deaf exist as a colonized people, even now. Each o f the three
groups emphasized in this dissertation share a colonial condition, and both the
1 8 For example, in 1982, British educators and educational experts said,
"Developing deaf pupils’ ability to communicate, preferably in an oral way, is the
central goal o f deaf education"; in 1986, the same group o f educators remarked,
"Language development must be the central facet o f their educational programme"
(qtd. in Lane, M ask 215). Language development, for these educators and for their
counterparts in the United States means spoken and written English, not sign language.
1 9 For a complete argument o f the Deaf as a colonized people, see Harlan
Lane’s The Mask o f Benevolence, especially "Part Two."
43
similarities and the differences between the colonial experiences o f the three groups are
important.
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonization in the Americas is
characterized by large-scale violence and upheaval. Slavery existed as a by-product o f
colonialism and as a powerful tool for the continuation o f colonial power in the United
States. Slave traders brought African slaves to a country already framed and run by
colonialism: England, France, Spain, and Portugal colonized the Americas. Some of
those who colonized the Americas soon began to see themselves as the colonized and
chose to rid themselves o f European power, though they did not rid themselves o f the
idea, conventions, and structures/ hierarchies o f colonization or o f a colonial world
view. Once the colonies, which eventually became the United States, gained
independence from England-in a violent war that in many ways further exploited the
already colonized natives and slaves (and did not free them)-they united, imitated, and
continued the colonial practices o f their previous colonizer by perpetuating the
victimization and colonization o f the indigenous peoples o f the Americas. In addition,
the United States colonized other colonies in a series o f wars which both freed and re
enslaved the ancestors o f Chicanos. The colonizers thrust African slaves into this
colonial situation, both prior to and after the Revolutionary War (though the majority
o f slaves brought directly from Africa were brought after the War). Violently tom
from their homelands, Africans were subjected to an indescribably horrible
experience-the Middle Passage-and were then sold as slaves in the Americas,
44
becoming yet another group o f people colonized by Europeans in the Americas. They
gained some freedom through another incredibly violent war, the Civil War 2 0 Thus,
African Americans and Chicanos share a history o f large-scale violence as well as more
localized and personal violence. As mentioned earlier, the Deaf in America, on the
other hand, have experienced the displacement and localized violence o f colonialism
but not the wars and large-scale violence, along with the upheaval they brought, o f 17t h ,
IS* and 19* century colonialism. In addition to the physical violence colonialism
practiced, epistemic violence accompanies every act o f physical violence. Epistemic
violence finds its origins in the legitimization o f and rationales for colonialism. Edward
Said offers the following observations on imperialism and colonialism: " ‘imperialism’
means the practice, the theoiy, and the attitudes o f a dominating metropolitan center
ruling a distant territory; ‘colonialism,’ which is almost always a consequence o f
imperialism, is the implanting o f settlements on distant territory" (9). Very little o f this
definition applies directly to the oppressive governing o f peoples within the United
States (with the exception o f the indigenous peoples o f the Americas) if the emphasis
remains on distant territories. However, as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese notes, Franz
Fanon’s writings "raise[d] the concept o f colonization to the status o f a metaphor for
the dependent status o f all subgroups in a dominant culture" (199). In this way, both
2 0 This extremely brief overview is not intended as a comprehensive statement
nor even as a comprehensive outline o f the history o f these peoples. Rather, I am
situating these three groups as colonized peoples, as nations with a shared colonial
condition.
45
imperialism and colonialism (since they are closely linked) can occur within the
boundaries o f the imperialist/colonizing nation if one group o f people within that
nation exercises power and subjugates or oppresses other people in the nation on the
basis o f race, culture, language, and physicaiity. The justifications for colonialism,
whether in a distant territory or within the home nation, are the same. Said explains,
"Both [imperialism and colonialism] are supported and perhaps even impelled by
impressive ideological formations that include notions that certain territories and people
require and beseech domination, as well as forms o f knowledge affiliated with
domination" (9). The proposition that some people inherently require domination
forms the base o f epistemic violence in the colonial situation. Without this element,
superiority and inferiority become ambiguous and problematic. With the belief that
some require domination comes the justification for and impetus to create a subject-
object relationship-one that begins with the gaze o f the subject dissembling the object
into manageable parts. These justifications historically and, to a certain extent, today,
apply to groups within the United States, in this case to African Americans, Chicanos,
and the Deaf. Again, considerable work has been done on the history o f African
Americans and Chicanos; less has been done on, and thus less is known about, the
history o f the Deaf, though this body o f work is growing.
Though some advances occasionally occur, U.S. society still characterizes the
deaf as needing the superior ability o f hearing people to make decisions. As a result,
society denies the Deaf cultural and physical autonomy, particularly if they insist on
46
their wholeness and completeness as human beings. Lane explains this colonial
condition as a contract which the Deaf are expected to honor though they had no part
in its formation and though it subjects them to domination. Lane says, "the person who
is disabled (in our eyes) is expected to be disabled; to accept his role as such and to
conform, grosso modo, to our representation o f him" (9). The representation o f the
deaf comes from the colonizer’s gaze and is thus an instance o f epistemic violence,
further intensified by the colonizer’s expectation that the deaf will fulfill the contract
based on an imposed representation o f the D/deaf. The fulfilment o f this contract by
the Deaf would give the hearing participants in the contract such total control that they
would have absolute power o f naming and defining the D eaf as individuals and as a
group. Equally important, the Deaf would have agreed to the dichotomy o f identity
facing them, agreed that no other option exists for them. "In return we will class him
not among the bad (prostitutes, drug addicts, delinquents) but among the sick. The
sick and the infirm have a claim on our tolerance and, even more, on our ‘reasonable
accommodation,’ our compassion, our help" (9). This contract the colonists require o f
the Deaf is the "colonizer’s invitation to identity" (Bhabha 44) and a form o f epistemic
violence.
In The M ask o f Benevolence, Harlan Lane presents his observations o f the
comparisons between descriptions o f the D eaf and descriptions o f Africans during
colonization (and after). The observations are stunningly similar, and parallel lists of
descriptions o f African Americans (as slaves and later) and o f Chicanos proffered by
47
dominant powers, especially in legal documents, religious sermons, and literature, can
be compiled. Though Scientific Racism and eugenicism have fallen from grace, society
still assigns stigmas to minorities. Erving Goffinan, a sociologist, suggests that social
stigma comes in three kinds: tribal, physical, characterological.2 1 Each o f these
categories has been ascribed to the Deaf as well as to African Americans and Chicanos.
Lane explains,
Physically, they are judged defective; this is commonly taken to
give rise to undesirable character traits, such as concreteness o f
thought and impulsive behavior. Hearing people may also view
deaf people as
clannish-even, indeed, an undesirable world apart, social deviants.
. . . But even if the deaf community were known for what it is, a
linguistic and cultural minority with a rich and unique heritage, it
would still be subject to tribal stigma, as is, for example, the
Hispanic-American community. (7)
As Lane implies, minority communities are stigmatized, and the tribal stigma for
African Americans, Chicanos, and the D eaf stems in part from language use. The
insistence on retaining and constructing a unique cultural identity by speaking Black
English or Ebonics, by refusing to relinquish Spanish and native languages but instead
not only continuing to speak these languages but also to infuse the English Chicanos
speak with Spanish and Indian phrases and influences, and resisting oralism and
2 1 While Goffinan presented these categories some time ago, as recently as 1998
scholars in sociology and psychology both rely on and refer to his work and base their
research and conclusions on these categories (see, for example, Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin 24.2 (1998): 163-172.).
48
Signing Exact English (SEE)2 2 in favor o f ASL, not only constructs specific cultural
identities through language but also creates the sense o f community that outsiders
resent and thus term clannish. The poetry o f each o f these three groups historically
seeks to throw off the images created by the colonists’ descriptions and to assert an
independent identity. This continues to be true, though the techniques differ and the
issues o f identity have broadened.
Cultural Identity and Epistemic Violence: The Beginning o f the Gaze
One o f the more insidious effects o f colonialism is the violence done to a
people’s sense o f themselves-to their identity. Identity is a slippery term at best, and
definitions o f identity as a concept abound. Identity involves more than how one sees
or defines oneself because included in that process o f self-definition is the experience o f
how others see and identify that self-and that involves cultural "knowledge,"
stereotypes, laws, and history. This view from the outside becomes epistemic violence
wherein the body o f the person in question is broken up into various, often threatening,
parts. As noted, this allows the gazer to feel and to be socially superior to the object.
For centuries, this was one method European colonizers used to subjugate the peoples
in their colonies in order to re-define them in non-threatening ways. Ellison’s
"Prologue" suggests that minority self-identity has been forced to be defined and
constructed against the larger, more formidable (because o f power differentiation)
2 2 SEE is a sign system created by humans in an attempt to impose English
grammar and ideology on the deaf and as a way o f teaching the deaf English-it is not a
natural language though it is signed.
definition o f the minority by the majority. The definition and construction o f identity
under these circumstances lends itself to the formation o f an andersonian nation.
Further, the clash between the self definition and imposed definition o f the minority
subject occurs around issues o f ocularity: invisibility and the gaze.
Aristotle’s physics2 3 makes the argument that everything there is to know about
the world can be divined2 4 empirically. Until the physics revolution o f the 18t h century,
with few exceptions, this argument determined how Western civilization encountered
the world and its many peoples. Despite the understanding o f that which is beyond
sight/empirical knowledge that modem and contemporary science offers, cultural and
political power and hierarchies are often still predicated on and justified by a skewed
version o f Aristotle’s claim. Scientific racism, one o f the more insidious mutations of
observable physics, though now discredited, continues to underlie much social/cultural
interaction. Cultural theories, including postcolonialism, take as part o f their study the
exploration and critique o f the continuing effects this world view created. Ellison and
readings o f his work participate in this critique o f both scientific racism and the
possibility o f completely divining the world empirically by questioning what and how
we actually see: how we see the world and, importantly, how the world sees us.
^Aristotle’s physics and theories o f the world are found section seven of his
Metaphysics.
2 4 The use o f "divined" here intends its implications: to figure out as well as to
create. This connection is important because o f the power a dominant culture, in the
case o f the Invisible Man, the U.S. white culture, gives itself to create (and sustain the
specifics o f the creation of) the Other.
50
The "Prologue" asks a series o f still timely and essential questions: If the most
highly visible members o f a society, a minority defined by dark skin color, can be made
invisible, not by the minority but by the dominant culture, does the minority actually
change to meet the demand o f the majority? In other words, if a portion o f the visible,
observable world is made to disappear for social and cultural reasons, does the world
itself change? This posits the question o f who gazes at and divines the world: the
invisible minority who ostensibly can still see all o f the world? or the visible, dominant
culture, who are both able to divine/create the world and unable to see the world
because o f deliberately obscuring parts o f it and thus forced (self-enforced) to view a
putative rather than "objective" world? This, in turn, implies the question o f
authority-who, which gazer, uses their "empirical" data to write, and therefore
construct, the world? For example, does the subject-majority use their constructed
empirical data, or does the object-minority use theirs? Finally, representation becomes
an issue: In writing and constructing the world, who represents whom and what? Can
language ever represent the visual (questions and issues o f ekphrasis)? Can one
group/person ever represent another-or even the self? These questions lead back to
the inextricable link between colonizer and colonized in the colonial situation discussed
earlier. Epistemic violence acts to erase the colonized, but a trace, a shadow, always
remains to disrupt the facile attempt at reconstructing the world in a way that seeks to
give the colonizer power over a group o f people (the right to superiority) while at the
same time erasing that which makes it uncomfortable. Those forced into the minority
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position soon take advantage o f the trace and o f the forced invisibility. Often, this
resistance occurs in and through poetic language and can be enacted by translation.
Ellison’s Invisible Man stands as a prime articulation and example of both the problem
and o f a resistance to it.
The questions Ellison’s "Prologue" raise imply the complicated relationship
between self and other. Contemporary cultural theory observes that previous ways o f
discussing and constructing identity ignored the reality o f identity construction. Critics,
such as Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Abdul JanMohamed and Edward Said, among
others, question the composition o f Self and Other as absolute difference. Their
theories suggest that difference in reality problematizes the categorical neatness o f Self
and Other which colonists and many in power desire and need in order to proliferate
their power and status. They also claim that difference really exists between this
dichotomy rather than in the dichotomy. For example, they claim that difference exists
between U.S. American and African/African American identity rather than neatly and
absolutely as either one. Thus, one U.S. citizen differs from another not by being either
Irish American or by being African American but because o f what exists between these
two ancestries and ways o f being U.S. citizens. These theories and discussions attempt
to deconstruct binaries, particularly that o f Self and Other, in the construction o f
identity. Ellison’s narrator participates in this project by questioning the bifurcation of
self and other, black and white, and places himself in an ever-shifting between-ness
rather than in either position o f the socially perceived scale-come-spectrum.
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Edward Said challenges the belief that any identity, including cultural identity,
can be essentialized. In order to essentialize identity, identity would necessarily exist in
a vacuum. The complicated and complex narrative in the "Prologue" allows us to "deal
with the formation o f cultural identities understood not as essentializations (although
part o f their enduring appeal is that they seem and are considered to be like
essentializations) but as contrapuntal ensembles, for it is the case that no identity can
ever exist by itself and without an array o f opposites, negatives, oppositions" (Said 52).
Identity construction occurs in context, and contemporary theories o f identity in
conjunction with readings o f literary texts, allows us to explore the betweenness o f
identity construction-the between that exists between Self and Other, between one
culture and another, between one text and another, between colonized and colonizer,
between any socially constructed binary. In addition, the "Prologue" allows us to
question the (almost) always close, and often overlapped, association between identity
and physicality (race, gender, perceived physical abilities or disabilities).
As noted earlier, identity involves more than how one sees or defines oneself
because included in any process o f self-definition is how others see and identify that
self. This view from the outside can, and often does, take the form o f epistemic
violence. The imposed metonymy o f epistemic violence allows the gaze to (violently)
disassemble the object and master the parts in order to control the whole (Bhabha 42).
Epistemic violence not only breaks the whole into parts theoretically, it also breaks the
wholeness o f self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-definition into parts, resulting in
psychic and cultural damage. The damage might manifest itself in such ways as loss o f
cultural heritage and history, loss o f language, and loss o f cultural and personal
identity. The damage also asserts itself in not allowing the object to re-define itself in
relation to the new situation. Instead, the object is defined entirely, for the colonial
situation, from the outside. Soren Kierkegaard argues that those who do not attain
self-awareness despair and that despair, a sickness, leads to a kind o f death-the death
o f the self. The effects o f the damage caused by epistemic violence suggests that the
despair Kierkegaard finally determines is necessary for the progression o f the spirit
must be reconsidered in light o f oppression. However, his claim that to lose the self is
to die is important to an argument about colonialism and its effects.
Kierkegaard’s theory o f sickness unto death rests on the assumption that the
self is autonomous and free to embark on a journey towards self-awareness which
encounters and should ultimately master despair. He says that the lowest form o f
despair is that "which in despair did not want to be itself' (104). According to
Kierkegaard, the self who resists self-awareness refuses the journey towards the self. A
basic and important assumption o f his philosophy is that the journey toward the self is a
journey towards God-to refuse the journey toward the self is to refuse God.
Conversely, to refuse God is to refuse the self. In a colonial situation, the self who
does not achieve self-awareness fails not because he or she refuses God but because the
colonizer removes the possibility for self-awareness. Rather, the colonizer hopes and
tries to remove the possibility. However one sees the self, in order to resist and refuse,
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the self must have the freedom to first see the possibility o f a self and then to either
accept or refuse. What happens to a self who wants self-awareness but finds that, at
every turn, the journey is blocked by those with power to name, to control?
Ellison’s Invisible Man desires self-awareness but is thwarted until he discovers
a way to resist the epistemic violence o f outside-of-self naming that so far has blocked
his journey. It is in and through this resistance that he finally names himself and
realizes that this is what his journey has been about and what has been denied him.
Echoing Kierkegaard, the Invisible Man says, " I love light. . . . Light confirms my
reality and gives birth to my form. . . . Without light, I am not only invisible, but
formless as well; and to be unaware o f one’s form is to live a death. I myself, after
existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility" (6-
7). Thus the Invisible Man moves from what Kierkegaard calls "being unconscious in
despair o f having a self' (43) to a realization o f despair and, finally, to a knowledge
"that despair cannot consume his self, that this is precisely the torment o f contradiction
in despair" (51). It is this moment, this realization, that supports and demonstrates that
the ultimate success o f the goal o f epistemic violence can be made impossible, and it is
the moment from which Bhabha’s subversion begins. In other words, the ultimate goal
o f epistemic violence is to remake the object by a gaze that undermines autonomy, self
hood, identity, and history in order to cement the colonial situation. The Invisible Man
finally realizes that once he acknowledges the colonial situation into which he has been
thrust and recognizes it as despair, he regains some control over his identity and,
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importantly, the image o f his identity. This recognition makes achieving the ultimate
goal o f epistemic violence impossible.
Thus, in the process o f epistemic violence, the object sometimes resists the
mastering, the putting-back-together by the gazer. This resistance illumines and insists
upon the between space created by both the Self70ther construction imposed by the
gaze and the betweenness o f the parts created by the disassembling o f epistemic
violence. It also suggests that the damage o f epistemic violence reflects back to the
gaze, fragmenting the gazer more than the object. In this way, it foregrounds the
instability o f the gaze rather than the powerlessness o f the object. Bart Moore-Gilbert
notes that the "stereotype [is] evidence not o f the stability o f the ‘disciplinary gaze’ o f
the colonizer, or security in his own conception o f himself, but o f the degree to which
the colonizer’s identity (and authority) is in fact fractured and destabilized by
contradictory psychic responses to the colonized Other" (117). Tejaswini Niranjana
agrees, stating, "Colonial discourse, although it creates identities for those it transfixes
by its gaze o f power, is profoundly ambivalent at the source o f its authority" (40).
Thus, when the Hearing stereotype the Deaf as "dependent," "explosive," and
"neurotic" (Lane 36), the Hearing define themselves more than they define the
Deaf-they comment on their own positionality, and their attitudes towards that
positionality, more than on the positionality o f the D eaf or on the Deaf themselves.
Similarly, when European Americans interested in maintaining majority power
stereotype both African Americans and Chicanos, the stereotype defines the European
American more than it defines either African Americans or Chicanos. However, that
this commentary occurs does not mitigate, change, justify, or in any other way
materially affect the hierarchy o f the colonial condition. The epistemic violence o f
stereotyping still occurs. African Americans, Chicanos, and the Deaf encounter and
resist these stereotypes caused by epistemic violence in many ways, but an important
way occurs in and through poetic language, such as that o f Ellison’s Invisible Mem.
Ellison depicts epistemic violence by juxtaposing physical and psychic violence.
The African-American protagonist o f Invisible Man bumps into a blond-haired, blue
eyed man who, because o f the Invisible Man’s skin color-his identity as determined by
his physicality-insults him (enacts epistemic violence). The form o f insult is significant:
the man "called me an insulting name" (4). To name the Other is to impose upon the
other an identity. This imposition o f identity is what many in the African-American
community term being "called out my name"-having a self-constructed identity
supplanted and replaced by an outside-of-self-created identity. In this case, the calling
out his name not only refuses the possibility o f self-naming, certainly injurious enough,
but compounds the injury by creating an insulting name and thus a denigrated identity.
Though the Invisible Man initially responds with physical violence, at the last minute he
pulls back and reflects on the splitting in the image o f master and slave, colonizer and
colonized. He realizes that "the man had not seen me, actually; that he, as far as he
knew, was in the midst o f a walking nightmare! . . . [He was] a man almost killed by a
phantom. . . . Something in this man’s thick head had sprung out and beaten him within
an inch o f his life, . . . Poor fool, poor blind fool, I thought with sincere compassion,
mugged by an invisible man" (4-5). The realization that the blond man feared
something he could not actually see illustrates the surface o f epistemic violence. The
Invisible Man suffers verbal aggression simply because the dominant society defines the
color o f his skin as dangerous and, importantly and ironically, simultaneously as
insignificant. The blond man turns the unresolvable tension in the space between these
definitions into an occasion o f epistemic violence which allows him to push the tension
off onto the Invisible Man.
Epistemic Violence and the Creation o f a Self-Other Relationship: Resisting the Gaze
According to Emmanuel Levinas, Other2 5 calls a person out o f him or herself
and reminds the individual soul/person that he or she is not impenetrable (Collected
48), that the freedom o f an individual (which, in Western culture, is "the reduction of
other to the same") is problematic and unjust (48, 91 emphasis in original). Though
Other is not evil or negative, people most often perceive alterity as negative. We like
things to be like us, to be in harmony with us, even though violence to the other may be
the only way o f achieving this. What cannot be made the same, cannot be reconciled
with " I," is Other. Though we may at first think we really don’t want to be reconciled
with the Other, because o f our fear o f difference we often subconsciously try to
2 5 Central to Levinas’ theory o f the Other is his belief that God is the ultimate
Other; while this is important to his discussion, it does not specifically change or
enliven this discussion.
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reconcile ourselves anyway. When power and cultural belonging or nationalism enter
the self-other equation, the forced attempt at reconciliation occurs consciously. The
reconciliatory act which may have been about connection before becomes a political
choice to erase difference and maintain status quo.
For example, many English-only speaking Americans try to make Chicanos the
same (Self-U .S. American) by imposing an English-only social code. When this fails to
force Chicanos to give up Spanish as both a language of communication and commerce
and a language o f culture and identity, those English-only speaking Americans insisting
on sameness name Chicanos Other. The Other is nameless until someone (the
subject/I) names the Other. Thus, the power hierarchy is created and maintained
through language, through naming. This imposed naming is epistemic violence, and it
is this violence that is visited upon the Invisible Man by the blond man. The deeper
level, that o f the damage done to the psyche and its ability to self-define, however, is
much more violent. Once the Invisible Man realizes the colonial situation and epistemic
violence, he must negotiate his self-defined identity and the identity imposed by an
unknown but culturally powerful stranger (a stranger who is culturally powerful on the
sole basis o f skin color and gender). It is this realization that calls into question his
self-definition and self-constructed identity and forms the beginning o f his resistance
and subversion.
Epistemic violence in this case proposes the putative success at breaking out o f
the demeaned identity assigned to a person or group o f persons on a low point on the
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social hierarchy, such as the colonized (through education or similar advancement),
while at the same time denying that success: the successful Other no longer fits into
the Othered identity, but also does not fit into the identity o f the Same/Self. The
colonized is neither colonized nor colonizer but something in between. In the previous
example, then, a Chicano is both U.S. American, supposedly with the political rights
afforded U.S. citizens by the Constitution, certainly with the right to demand those
rights, and simultaneously, a member o f a minority culture positioned by the colonizers
on a lower position in the colonial hierarchy. Because o f this positioning, "inalienable"
constitutional rights often disappear or never exist for Chicanos and African Americans
who experience a similar othering.
In situations like this, the two versions o f the self clash and, according to
Bhabha, what happens between in the space and time o f those two versions o f the self,
rather than either one o f the selves becoming the Selfridentity, is that the identity given
to the colonized splits and, in instances o f epistemic violence, the shattered identity
wars within the one self. The example Bhabha cites is Franz Fanon who was
continually told how different he was from the other Other (from the other colonized
defined as Other) because he was highly educated, highly successful, and therefore an
Other who both resembled and did not resemble the colonizer and the colonized,
placing him somewhere ambiguously in the middle and left alone to situate himself
4
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internally (externally, he had much less freedom to situate himself) 2 6 The hybrid self
created between self and other, established by the gaze, can also function as resistance.
Niranjana argues, "Hybridity leads to proliferating differences that escape the
‘surveillance’ o f the discriminatory eye" (40). The hybrid "other" thus defies the
defining gaze in its very fulfillment o f its (the gaze’s) imperative: it conforms to the
definition to such an extent that the self bifurcates and in the process presents the gaze
with emptiness-the spaces between the fractured identity-at which to gaze. Niranjana
continues, "The hybrid (subject or context), therefore, involves translation,
deformation, displacement" (40). The gaze unintentionally offers a space for resistance
in which the colonized self/object can displace the gaze and imposed identity by
translating it into something or someone who is both and neither, who lives and exists
between. When this identity is articulated through poetic language, the translation from
experience to enunciation further resists the gaze, at least internally.2 7 Epistemic
violence allows for this, unintentionally, but the possibility is one which should not have
to exist because the violence should not be there.
The creation and existence o f the different Other prompted Homi Bhabha to
suggest that in addition to the two already existing ways o f discussing and analyzing
2 6 Epistemic violence, importantly, cannot be inflicted bidirectionally-only the
colonizer/dominant group has the social power to inflict epistemic violence; any
resistance by the colonized remains resistance because o f power differentiation.
^Actual translation o f texts which articulate this resistant identity offers further
possibilities to the colonial self, allowing the self to situate itself, to a degree, externally
as well as internally.
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identity a third way o f talking about identity needs to be added. The two which already
exist, according to Bhabha, include, "the philosophical tradition o f identity as the
process o f self-reflection in the mirror o f (human) nature; and the anthropological view
o f the difference o f human identity as located in the division o f Nature/Culture" (46).
Poetic language continues to participate in discussions o f identity and in the
construction o f identity. For example, the British Romantic poets embraced the first
method o f articulating identity or human nature wholeheartedly. One o f the breaks
Romantic poets made from previous approaches to poetry was the move from art as
imitation to art as self-creation, this creation being achieved by tapping into the depths
o f nature and, using imagination, articulating the self in what is found.2 8
The second approach to identity is exemplified by the Modernist obsession with
masks and masking. The turn to the "primitive" by many o f the modem poets suggests
that by donning the physical image o f the Other, by donning that identity via the mask,
one could change identity by changing culture. Importantly, this masking for the
modernists occurs via poetic language-modemist poets often constructed masks that
allowed them to believe they not only understood other cultures but actually
participated in them. For example, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot corresponded with each
other for years as if they were different people: Eliot wrote as Old Possum, and Pound
wrote as Brer Rabbit. This correspondence allowed both to put on masks and to speak
2 8 A helpful explanation o f the Romantic approach to identity can be found in
Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, particularly in the first chapter,
"The Contingency o f Language."
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and experience life, to a certain controversial extent, as people other than themselves.2 9
This move to create identity through masks posits the question o f whether identity is
constituted by an innate human nature or by the culture in which (or against which) the
person lives and functions, and makes precarious the possibility o f having any identity
at all. Michael North explains that masks are
one o f the recurrent motifs o f modernism, a movement obsessed
with personae, metamorphoses, doubles, and mythic parallels.
This obsession with what Robert Langbaum once called the
"mysteries o f identity" is especially strong, for obvious reasons,
among the expatriates who form such a large proportion o f the
early generation o f modernists. To feel oneself in two places at
once, at home and abroad, is almost to feel as two persons and
thus to acquire a skepticism about the possibility o f ever having an
identity, if that means being just one thing. Seen in this light, a
mask is the embodiment o f the variability and indeterminacy o f
human identity. (67)
The image o f indeterminate identity finds its echo in the addition to the discussions o f
identity for which Bhabha argues. His addition requires that the colonial (colonial,
post-colonial, neo-colonial) condition o f most o f the world be taken into account and
locates identity in the process o f doubling and splitting. He says, "In the postcolonial
text the problem o f identity returns as a persistent questioning o f the frame, the space
o f representation, where the image-missing person, invisible eye, Oriental stereotype-is
2 9 For a complete discussion o f this relationship, this correspondence, and the
issues o f identity involved, see Michael North’s The Dialect o f Modernism: Race,
Language & Twentieth-Century Literature. His informative discussion o f these two
poets and their masking is in chapter four.
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confronted with its difference, its Other" (46). This identity, he claims, is best reached
through enunciation, or language.
Enunciation, agrees Levinas, is the necessary by-product o f a Self-Other
encounter because the encounter inherently articulates " I " and "You." To intimate or
to say "you," according to Levinas, is "the primary fact o f Saying [Dire]" (Alterity 93).
In every Self-Other/I-You encounter dialogue is necessarily present, and the conditions
o f the dialogue are important. Levinas explains, "All saying is direct discourse or part
o f direct discourse. Saying is that rectitude from me to you, that directness o f the face-
to-face, directness o f the encounter par excellence, o f which the geometer’s straight
line may be just an optic metaphor" (93). Thus, in every Self-Other contact, even when
a person merely thinks the Other, saying occurs, which places both the self and the
other in a direct encounter. However, the encounter is not necessarily an equal
encounter-the "directness o f the face-to-face . . . o f which the geometer’s straight line
may be just an optic metaphor" is telling. The face-to-face almost always occurs within
a structure o f hierarchy in which the self looks down to or on the other. In cases of
social self-other encounters, the Self is the dominant culture which looks down to or on
and defines the Other. The encounter becomes in this way an issue o f distance:
"Directness o f the face-to-face, a ‘between us’ [entre-nons], already conversation
[entre-tien], already dia-logue and hence distance and quite the opposite o f the contact
in which coincidence and identification occur" (93). Since the conversation, thus the
saying, already exists, enunciation becomes the best tool for the Other to appropriate
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and use to subvert the imposed hierarchy. An important form o f enunciation is the
poetic language o f writing and composition,3 0 particularly since writing/composition
implies the always already present conversation or dialogue between self and other, and
allows the colonized to perform resistance and revolution on a variety o f levels:
individual, communal, national, international.
The ambiguity o f poetic language, enhanced in many cases by the indeterminacy
o f writing/composition, forces attention to the splitting and doubling o f meaning o f
articulation and is particularly effective when challenging imposed unitary notions o f
identity caused by epistemic violence. The Invisible Man acknowledges the power o f
enunciation in the very writing o f his story, but he also wonders about the ambiguity o f
intention involved and included in writing-as-resistance. He says, "Could this
compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white be thus an urge to make music
o f invisibility? But I am an orator, a rabble rouser-Am? I was, and perhaps shall be
again. Who knows? All sickness is not unto death, neither is invisibility" (13-14).
Later, in the "Epilogue,,,3, he remarks, "The very act o f trying to put it all down has
confused me and negated some o f the anger and some o f the bitterness" (579). It
seems that the hope the Invisible Man desires to find or create in the act o f writing as
3 0 I include composition with writing because ASL is a performative rather than
written language.
3 1 It is important to remember that both the "Prologue" and "Epilogue" are
written after the experiences related in the book; they act as a frame for the story and
suggest that the story is told in a single setting, at a single time. The realizations in the
"Epilogue," then, occur in a short period o f time rather than over the twenty years the
story covers.
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resistance challenges not only the imposed and unitary notion o f his identity but also
the self-created notion o f his identity inscribed into his story. The resistant act does not
actually fail, however. The Invisible Man realizes that "In order to get some o f it down
I have to love. I sell you no phony forgiveness. I’m a desperate man-but too much o f
your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as
through hate. So I approach it through division" (580). He embraces and turns
division into a tool benefitting his self-articulation and suggests that in this resistance,
bifurcation, division, and continual turning o f definitions and approaches, the colonized
not only write self-definitions (themselves) but also, as noted earlier, help form the
identity o f the colonizer: "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for
you?" he asks (581). The Invisible Man’s stoiy, his memory o f his journey to self-
awareness shaped by the realizations o f being invisible, gives him a certain power. His
memory and the articulation o f it allow him to push past the imposed identity which
previously prevented him from knowing and achieving kierkegaardean despair.
W. J. T. Mitchell argues that "To lack memory is to be a slave o f time, confined
to space; to have memory is to use space as an instrument in the control o f time and
language" (194). Without memory, which becomes the journey to self-awareness, the
colonized remained "confined to space"-the subordinate space. However, with the
enunciation o f memory and thus self-awareness, the colonized are able to "use space
[their position] as an instrument in the control o f time and language" because the real
conditions in which they exist can be manipulated. Michael Taussig points out that the
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silencing o f this memory by the dominant culture fails to erase memory, though it does
push it down far enough to be difficult to retrieve. This silencing, though, eventually
turns back on the silencer if the memory is ever retrieved and articulated. He says,
"Silencing serves not only to preserve memory as nightmare within the fastness o f the
individual, but to prevent the collective harnessing o f the magical power o f . . . ‘the
unquiet souls’ o f the space o f death-the souls that return again and again and haunt the
living. . . . What is aimed at is the relocation and refunctioning of collective memory"
(48, emphasis in original). The haunting the Invisible Man visits on society combined
with the writing o f his story allows him to move from the kierkegaardean death o f not
realizing despair, and therefore being unable to embark on the journey o f self-
awareness, to the ability to control the self, to be autonomous. Thus, imposed identity
calls for a lack or suppression o f memory, but the writing/composition that colonial
subjects perform in the space between Self and Other (imposed definition o f the Self as
Other) re-instates the possibility o f memory to control language and time, essential
tools for self-constructing identity.
Thus, in the project o f writing/composing an identity that splits and challenges
dualities, the author occupies a unique position: "By disrupting the stability o f the ego,
expressed in the equivalence between image and identity, the secret art o f invisibleness
o f which the migrant poet speaks changes the very terms o f our recognition o f the
person" (Bhabha 46-47). The fact o f this change and the various methods used to
bring about the change poses "the question o f identity . . . uncertainly, tenebrously,
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between shadow and substance" (49). An identity and ever-continuing and shifting
articulation o f identity which moves between shadow and substance constantly brushes
against and disturbs colonists’ definitions not only o f the colonized but also o f
themselves. The colonial subject writing back thus has the ability to "haunt" the
colonizer by virtue o f being invisible and transitory combined with being perceived
(already) as dangerous (interestingly despite being made invisible in the way the
Invisible Man is made invisible, in the way the language o f minorities in the U.S. is
made invisible, in the way the wholeness o f the Deaf is made invisible). The ability to
haunt makes known the presence o f the invisible person in a way that disturbs rather
than satisfies those who render physically and culturally highly visible people invisible.
The haunting and insistence on invisible presence occurs through a kind of
writing which empowers the disempowered. Ellison’s protagonist speaks eloquently o f
both the gaze and the voice o f invisibility and the destabilizing, splitting effect o f that
voice. The first paragraph o f the "Prologue" describes the phenomenon o f highly-
visible invisibility:
I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who
haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one o f your Hollywood-movie
ectoplasms. I am a man o f substance, o f flesh and bone, fiber and
liquids-and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible,
understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the
bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as
though I have been surrounded by mirrors o f hard, distorting
glass. When they approach they see only my surroundings,
themselves, or figments o f their imagination-indeed, everything
and anything except me. (3)
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The invisibility ironically conies from a gaze: the gaze o f the master or colonizer
refusing to see an image that is not distorted because to do so would risk rearranging
neat hierarchies upon which Imperialism, in all its forms, is bases!. The mirrors that
surround the protagonist and reflect distorted images to him are the gaze o f those who
see through or past him: "When they approach they see only my surroundings,
themselves, or figments o f their imagination-indeed, everything and anything except
me" (3). This statement places the visible and the invisible not only in close proximity,
close enough for both look into the same mirror, but also causes an overlap: the mirror
holds, simultaneously, the image o f both the Invisible Man and those who refuse to see
him. The effect on the object o f the gaze is the inability to see the self in the mirror.
Adrienne Rich explains, "When those who have power to name and to socially
construct reality choose not to see you or her you, whether you are dark-skinned, old,
disabled, female, or speak with a different accent or dialect than theirs, when someone
with the authority o f a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a
moment o f psychic disequilibrium, as If you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet
you know you exist and other like you, that this is a game with mirrors" (199).
Distortion is the only means by which the gazer can look into the mirror and retain a
colonizing ideology.
Louis Althusser explains that since "it is not their real conditions o f existence,
their real world, that ‘men’ "represent to themselves’ in ideology, but above all it is
their relation to those conditions o f existence which is represented to them there"
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(242), those gazing unseeingly into the mirror are able to imagine the mirror, and thus
their world, as holding only what is desirable and what reinforces their self-conception
and social position. Thus, "[i]t is this relation which is at the centre o f every
ideological, i.e. imaginary, representation o f the real world. . . . it is the imaginary
nature o f this relation which underlies all the imaginary distortion that we can observe
(if we do not live in its truth) in all ideology" (242). The ideology (o f those who gaze
into the mirror in which the image o f the Invisible Man is found) allows them to
imagine the Invisible Man’s absence by distorting the observable image-by distorting
the empirical world in order to divine a world compatible with desire and social greed.
Thus, the invisibility lies, originally, in the field o f vision and perception.
Field o f vision and perception relies heavily on an immediate and absolute
connection between identity and physicality. When this field o f vision becomes a tool
o f colonialism, the connection between identity and physicality diminishes the
possibility o f questioning or changing the first perception and reinforces the colonial
hierarchy. Thus, locating identity solely with physicality, as this kind o f gaze does,
erases the possibility o f depth-it begins and ends with the surface o f the physical
person.3 2 Bhabha notes, "What is profoundly unresolved, even erased, in the discourses
3 2 As noted earlier, I acknowledge that deafness cannot be seen; however, the
condition o f deafness, once noted, is characterized in part by the use o f sign language, a
visual language. This language sets the D eaf apart visually and, in the way that skin
color sets a person apart visually, an immediate and absolute connection between
identity and physicality is established-and this most often, as with people o f color,
erases possibilities o f depth.
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o f poststructuralism is that perspective o f depth through which the authenticity o f
identity comes to be reflected in the glassy metaphorics o f the mirror and its mimetic or
realist narratives" (48). Though Ellison’s protagonist is not participating directly in
poststructuralist discourse, the result in this instance is the same. The gaze o f those
refusing to see the Invisible Man relies on "glassy metaphorics o f the mirror" to achieve
its goal o f ignoring something irritating or, if acknowledged, dangerous. Ellison uses
poetic language to examine and expose the epistemic violence inherent in this gaze.
The second paragraph o f Invisible Mari’ s "Prologue" begins with a reflection on the
insistence o f the gazer to link identity with physicality, "Nor is my invisibility exactly a
matter o f a biochemical accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer
occurs because o f a peculiar disposition o f the eyes o f those with whom I come in
contact. A matter o f the construction o f their inner eyes, those eyes with which they
look through their physical eyes upon reality" (3). The disposition o f the eyes comes
from the colonizers’ desire to maintain hierarchy and comfort level. Similarly, as Lane
notes, Hearing people are disposed to think o f the Deaf as being worthy o f sympathy
because o f how that position affects themselves, not because o f how it affects the Deaf.
But the Invisible Man, in this reflection, manages to reverse the hierarchy o f the
insistence on physicality and identity by suggesting that the link exists within the body
o f the gazer rather than in the body o f the object o f the gaze.
This power o f reversal finds further demonstration in the rest o f this paragraph.
The protagonist acknowledges some effects o f this on his own identity and hints at the
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possibility o f play and power which can come from redirecting, as Bhabha suggests, the
questions o f identity. The Invisible Man says,
I am not complaining, nor am I protesting, either. It is sometimes
advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather
wearing on the nerves. Then, too, you’re constantly being
bumped against by those o f poor vision. Or again, you often
doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren’t simply
a phantom in other people’s minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare
which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy. It’s when
you feel like this that, out o f resentment, you begin to bump
people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most o f the
time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do
exist in the real world, that you’re a part o f all the sound and
anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you
swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it is seldom
successful. (3-4)
While the epistemic violence takes its toll, the Invisible Man manages to extract a
semblance o f power from the seemingly hopeless condition o f invisibility. He bumps
back, pushes against the imposed positioning o f his self in society and begins to re
position himself by refusing the absolute position (and absoluteness o f the position) of
subordinated other. This re-positioning from within the same position allows the object
o f the gaze to redirect the questions o f identity. Bhabha notes, "What is interrogated is
not simply the image o f the person, but the discursive and disciplinary place from which
questions o f identity are strategically and institutionally posed" (47). The times when
"strik[ing] out with your fists" and "curs[ing] and . . . swearfing] to make them
recognize you" fail occur at the same time the encounter with the object o f the gaze
forces the image the gazer has o f that object to exceed expectations. At this time, the
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invisibility, or the will to invisibility by the gazer, becomes stronger and the gaze slips
around and through the object trying to become the subject, creating a contiguity
between self and other that makes the binary impossible. This contiguity, created by
the fact o f the gaze, is, as Bhabha explains, a problem and "problematic o f colonial
representation and individuation that reverses the effects o f the colonialist disavowal,
so that the other ‘denied’ knowledge enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange
the basis o f its authority" (114). While the gaze inherently engenders its own cracks in
its authority, the gaze still comes form and enforces colonial power. Thus, while the
hybrid, bifurcated self slips around the gaze and "estranges" the foundations o f colonial
authority, colonial hierarchy remains in place and determines real-life situations.
However, Bhabha argues that this attempt, though apparently unsuccessful,
actually leaves a "resistant trace" (49). He says, "Each time the encounter with identity
occurs at the point at which something exceeds the frame o f the image, it eludes the
eye, evacuates the self as site o f identity and autonomy and-most important-leaves a
resistant trace, a stain o f the subject, a sign o f resistance" (49). The gaze imposes a
false frame on the object’s identity. It must in order to successfully distort the image
and sustain an ideology in which the gazer remains in the subject position. When the
object "exceeds the frame," however, "[w]e are no longer confronted with an
ontological problem o f being but with the discursive strategy o f the moment o f
interrogation, a moment in which the demand o f identification becomes, primarily, a
response to other questions o f signification and desire, culture and politics" (49-50).
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Identity, in this manner, becomes not a matter o f ontology but o f performance, and the
enactment o f "being" leaves a trace o f the performance, and thus o f self-created
identity, behind.
This trace occurs most effectively in writing/composing, in "the discursive
strategy o f the moment o f interrogation"; enunciation through writing/composing is
also the place at which the gaze is most effectively thwarted. Writing/composing is
effective because it imagines identity as a discursive system rather than as a fixed
image. Bhabha explains that the "place” or position o f the Other "must not be imaged .
. . as a fixed phenomenological point opposed to the self, that represents a culturally
alien consciousness. The Other must be seen as the necessary negation o f a primordial
identity-cultural or psychic-that introduces the system o f differentiation which enables
the cultural to be signified as a linguistic, symbolic, historic reality" (51-52).
Writing/composing, the system o f differentiation, allows the object to push the bounds
o f object and transgress the bounds o f subject, leaving a remnant o f that transgression
behind. Along with the trace, the claim to identity via physicality is refused. For
Ellison’s Invisible Man, the recognition o f the power o f writing/composing stemmed
from an experience with music, with jazz music-an art form in itself which challenges
the categories o f identity assigned by those in power to the objects o f the gaze (only
here, we would need to add the objects o f the ear, similar to the gaze except that the
objects are sounds rather than physical images). This discovery connects identity and
articulation to time and space. The Invisible Man remarks,
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Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense o f
time, you’re never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and
sometimes behind. Instead o f the swift and imperceptible flowing
o f time, you are aware o f its nodes, those points where time
stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the
breaks and look around. . . . I discovered a new analytical way of
listening to music. The unheard sounds came through, and each
melodic line existed o f itself, stood out clearly from all the rest,
said its piece, and waited patiently for the other voices to speak.
That night I found myself hearing not only in time, but in space as
well. (8-9)
Bhabha suggests that for a reader, this experience o f time and space allows for the play
o f identity. He says, "The reader is positioned-together with the enunciation o f the
question o f identity-in an undecidable space between ‘desire and fulfillment between
perpetration and its recollection. . . . Neither future nor present but between the tw o’"
(54). Language, and for this project, especially poetic language, thus functions as a
tool to both subvert authority and to articulate and construct identity.
The structure and composition o f the "Prologue," especially when combined
with the "Epilogue," enacts the "between" and shifting positions of self and other by
exploring the positioning o f the reader and the enunciation o f identity. The poetic
language employed creates this betweenness. The narrator speaks directly to the
reader-hardly a new technique-by using the second-person pronoun "you." If the text
were a traditional modernist or late-modemist text, the pronoun would simply be a
"substitute for the first-person pronoun, indicating that the character is ‘talking to
himself,’ addressing himself or some interiorized alter ego in a kind o f interior
dialogue" (McHale 223). Or, it might "stand for the third-person pronoun o f the
fictional character, functioning in a kind o f displaced free indirect discourse" (223).
However, the text does not stop with these methods, though on occasion Ellison’s
"you" is purely a substitute for the first- and third-person pronouns or purely vocative.
What allows Ellison’s "you" to participate in-in fact, demand-the play o f identity
writing back is that it "functions as an invitation to the reader to project himself or
herself into the gap opened in the discourse by the presence o f you" (224). Thus, "you"
functions to highlight the poetic language and to create Anderson’s connected
readership occurring in "homogenous, empty time" (25).
The "Prologue" begins with a use o f "you" most closely allied with what Brian
McHale termed "a substitute for the first-person pronoun" (223). The Invisible Man
says, "nor am I one o f your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms" (3) and "You ache with the
need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part o f all
the sound and anguish ..." (4) and "Yet when you have lived invisible as long as I have
you develop a certain ingenuity" (7). The "you" in each o f these instances (and in a few
other instances throughout the text) does not designate the reader as a character, nor
does it initiate a conversation which requires an actual response from the reader. It
does, however, draw the reader in as a participant in the telling o f the story-both inside
and outside o f the storytelling position, inside and outside o f the Invisible Man’s
experience ("your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms" places the reader outside the
experience looking in, needing markers and directions; "You ache with the need to
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convince yourself," on the other hand, assumes an insider position for the reader). The
"you" used to draw the reader into the story and telling continues until the marijuana-
induced dream sequence which leads to his realization discussed earlier.
Immediately following this revelation, the "you" shifts and begins to hover
between the first and second o f McHale’s descriptions o f modernist uses o f the second-
person pronoun, the Invisible Man says, "Since you never recognize me even when in
closest contact with me" (13). Here, the "you" is clearly a third-person character, and
the narrator is relying on free indirect discourse to involve his reader. The next
instance o f "you," however, moves back to the first use, "you hear this music simply
because music is heard and seldom seen" (13). The narrator moves immediately back,
though, with "I can hear you say" (14). The disruption lies not in an unusual,
postmodern second-person pronoun but in the shifting between various uses o f "you,"
destabilizing narrative continuity and fluidity. The disruption gains power when the
"Prologue" and "Epilogue" are read together. The "Epilogue" ends with an address to
the reader which begins: " ‘Ah,’ I can hear you say, ‘so it was all a build-up to bore us
with his buggy jiving. He only wanted us to listen to him rave’" (581). The Invisible
Man, by his own admission, is a loner and has not yet left the security and isolation o f
his hole to re-engage society (13). In addition, he is writing his story-putting it down
in black and white-not telling it to a specific and present listener (character). Who,
then, is the "you"? "The reader" seems to be the most reasonable answer, but it only
fits some o f the time-the distance between the narrator and the reader moves in and out
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o f confidentiality and suspicion, between implied presence and impossible presence.
The only way to hear the story is to slip into the breaks o f the Invisible Man’s music.
Identity thus occurs not as a designation, by anybody, but instead as an act o f
"slipping into the breaks," and it is experienced by others through "hearing [or reading]
not only in time, but in space as well"-in other words, it is experienced differently than
ever before and in completely unexpected and unanticipated ways. The reader o f
Invisible Man cannot, therefore, come face-to-face-cannot have a direct Self-Other
encounter with-the narrator. Instead, as Bhabha notes.
It is through that space o f enunciation that problems o f meaning
and being enter the discourses o f poststructuralism, as the
problematic o f subjection and identification. . . . In the world o f
double inscriptions that we have now entered, in this space o f
writing, there can be no such face-to-face epiphanies in the mirror
o f nature. On one level, what confronts you, the reader, in the
incomplete portrait o f the postcolonial bourgeois-who looks
uncannily like the metropolitan intellectual-is the ambivalence o f
your desire for the Other: ‘You! hypocrite lecteur! -mon
semblable, -mon Jrere! ’
That disturbance o f your voyeuristic look enacts the
complexity and contradictions o f your desire to see, to fix cultural
difference in a containable, visible object. . . . [However,] the very
question o f identification only emerges in-between disavowal and
designation. It is performed in the agonistic struggle between the
epistemological, visual demand for a knowledge o f the Other, and
its representation in the act o f articulation and enunciation. (50)
Ellison’s Invisible Man performs his "struggle between the epistemological, visual
demand for a knowledge o f the Other, and its representation in the act o f articulation
and enunciation" not through the enunciation o f music but through the act o f writing,
through poetic language. O f this act, he says, "And so I play the invisible music o f my
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isolation. The last statement doesn’t seem just right, does it? But it is; you hear this
music simply because music is heard and seldom seen, except by musicians. Could this
compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white be thus an urge to make music
o f invisibility?" (13-14). He follows this with the claim that his reader might label him
irresponsible-because he uses his invisibility to his selfish advantage. For him to act
responsibly in the way demanded would require that the voyeur, or the one gazing, also
act responsibly, since "Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form
o f agreement" (14). Bhabha suggests that to recognize the Invisible Man or the
missing person gives that person a certain amount o f power: "To see a missing person,
or to look at [to, in Ellison’s terms, recognize] Invisibleness, is to emphasize the
subject’s transitive demand for a direct object o f self-reflection, a point o f presence
that would maintain its privileged enunciatory position qua subject" (47, emphasis in
original). Maintaining this position by undistorting the image in the mirror, however,
also presents problems: "To see a missing person is to transgress that demand; the " I "
in the position o f mastery is, at that same time, the place o f its absence, its re
presentation. We witness the alienation o f the eye through the sound o f the signifier as
the scopic desire (to look/to be looked at) emerges and is erased in the feint o f writing"
(47). Thus, the pretense o f writing/composing, o f the attack at the master, allows the
object to, in a highly visible fashion, invisibly take on the master role o f gazing at rather
than being the object o f the gaze, "to look and not be seen" (47) and simultaneously
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remain unable to do so because invisibility is required o f the object and cannot be the
condition o f the subject.
What remains is the in-between, the space o f negotiation. "To look and not be
seen" is the advice the Invisible Man’s grandfather offers-to be a spy, a traitor, an
infiltrator. "Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em
with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em
swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open" (16). The Invisible Man, by the end o f
his twenty-year experience, realizes the impossibility and the simultaneous necessity of
following this advice-he is both part o f and apart from the gazer. Thus, to spy on the
gazer is to spy on himself, and, because the gazer cannot see the object, to spy on the
gazer is to erase the self. The hierarchy itself makes the Invisible Man invisible. By
demanding the right to journey through the "sickness unto death" aware o f despair, the
Invisible Man questions the hierarchy, the reader’s role in the hierarchy, and posits a
future in which invisibility and the gaze might negotiate a new Self-Other encounter
which openly occurs between the binary. He takes the postcolonial prerogative, which,
as noted earlier, is the choice to write back and resist the imposed definitions and
stereotypes created by epistemic violence. The post-colonial prerogative, when tied
directly to poetic language, relies in part on Octavio Paz’s assertion that "Man is a
being who has created himself in creating a language. By means o f the word, man is a
metaphor o f himself' {Bow 24). The journey the Invisible Man takes towards self
definition uses poetic language as the vehicle o f self-identification. Importantly, this
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vehicle cannot exist independently-it cannot reside solely within the Invisible M an-if it
is to write back and participate in the construction o f a national and cultural identity or
in the articulation o f that national and cultural identity. Rather, this "require[s] that the
poem be sustained by a common language. Not by popular or colloquial speech, as is
supposed now, but by the language o f a community: city, nation, class, group, or sect"
(28). Thus, the use o f poetic language allows a nation to define itself even within a
colonial context.
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Chapter II
Poetic Traditions as "The House o f the Poet": Metaphors for the Construction o f
Identity
I see the house o f the poet,
weird and quiet, right in its out of place, across
a wheeling field come o ff some wind’s cart
that tilts up into fUry’s trees above the house
Ed Roberson, "Photograph: The House o f the Poet"
This poem has a door, a locked door,
and windows drawn against the day,
but at night the lights come on, one
in each room, and the neighbors swear
they hear music and the sound o f dancing.
Phillip Levine, "The House"
In creating the language o f European nations, legends and epic poems helped to create
those same nations. And in a profound sense they founded them: they gave them
consciousness o f themselves. Indeed, by means of poetry, the common language was
changed into mythical images endowed with archetypal value.
Octavio Paz, The Bow and the Lyre
I have trouble with questions o f identity or voice. I’m much more interested in
questions o f space, because identity and voice are such powerful concepts metaphors
that after a while you begin to believe that you are what you’re fighting for. In the long
run, especially if your fight is succeeding and there is a leading power-group, it can
become oppressive, especially for women, whose identity is always up for grabs.
Whereas, if you are clearing a space, from where to create a perspective, it is a self-
separating project, which has the same politics, is against territorial occupation, but
need not bring in questions o f identity, voice, what am I, all o f which can become very
individualistic also.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Bonding in Difference"
Few people agree about what the creation of cultural and national identities
should involve, what they mean, and whether or not group identities facilitate or hinder
progress and communication. Paz argues that language creates a group identity.
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Spivak, on the other hand, cautions against adopting the identity wholesale, suggesting
that identity, precisely because it generally links into a group political paradigm o f some
sort, is too slippery to be useful; instead, she suggests that one should seek voice and
perspective rather than identity as it is currently conceived. Whatever the definition o f
identity, groups do participate in the creation o f group and individual identities.
Chapter One o f this dissertation argued that African Americans, Chicanos, and the Deaf
share a colonialized situation, particularly that o f epistemic violence, that these groups
are nations, and that they establish their identity against colonial violence through
poetic language. This chapter traces the development o f these national identities during
the 1960s and 1970s and explores the advantages o f and problems with using poetic
language to create and assert these identities. Additionally, this chapter looks at poetry
and accessibility, a motivating factor behind using artistic production in the creation of
national identity.
Everyday Language, Poetic Language and Poetry: Metaphors o f a Genre
A few years ago, when Toni Morrison’s Beloved was first published, I
described the book to a friend as "one o f the most poetic novels I have ever read."
What did I mean, poetic novel? What about the language o f that book differed so
significantly from what I had come to expect from novels that I felt compelled to
describe it as poetic? Does my reaction to Beloved suggest that other novels employ
language other than poetic? And what distinguishes the language o f genres? In what
ways does the language o f literature differ from the language we use daily with friends,
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family, and colleagues? These questions lead to the heart o f my claim: poetic language
differs significantly from everyday language. Because o f the specifics o f this difference,
poetic language more effectively constructs cultural identity than does everyday
language though the nuances and experience o f everyday language certainly inform
poetic language. Everyday language particularly effects the poetic language which
seeks to represent and create an identity based on language use (i.e., the African
American poetry o f the Black Arts Movement, the Chicano poetry o f the Chicano
Movement, and the ASL poetry o f the D eaf Empowerment Movement). Roman
Jakobson argues that the distinction between everyday language and poetic language
lies in the difference between selection and combination: "where the poetic function is
predominant, ‘the principle o f equivalence’ is projected ‘from the axis o f selection into
the axis o f combination’" (Princeton 927). Thus, poetic language is organized in such
a way as to create and facilitate multiple meanings and layers o f meanings generally not
intended in everyday language. Poetic language, instead, intends multivalence while
everyday language intends and attempts to facilitate direct communication.
These intentions directly involve the recipient o f the language: poetic language
requires more o f the recipient than does everyday language. A recipient o f poetic
language is expected to both discover and to construct meaning based on the language
and organization o f language in a text (a written text, a spoken text, a performed
text)-in other words, to combine meanings and possible meanings in unique, often
insightful, ways. On the other hand, a recipient o f everyday language is expected to
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respond directly, in everyday language, and to accept the language as it is without
exhaustive interpretive acts‘-to select a meaning, not to combine meanings in various
ways or focus on and revel in the infinite play o f language. For example, when I ask
my parents to take care o f my dog, Dante, when I am gone, I do not expect them to
ponder my language, to look for meanings embedded in the words and in the
organization o f my words-to wonder, for instance, if I might be making metaphorical
or symbolic reference to The Divine Comedy, a reference which might require them to
turn to that text to begin deciphering my meaning. Rather, I expect them to agree or
not agree to actually take care o f Dante while I am gone. While Dante is, in fact,
named after the poet, his everyday needs do not require any understanding or
knowledge o f the poet or his works. However, were I to write a poem, I might expect
the reader to examine the structure, to look at the derivation o f words, to locate and
explore the figurative devices employed in the poem -to look for and create multivalent
meaning. The multivalence o f poetic language, when used to construct cultural
identity, potentially creates a multivalent rather than a unitary identity.2 Despite the
‘I am not saying that everyday language dismisses or does not require
interpretation; rather, I suggest that the interpretation o f everyday language begins with
the inherent need to interpret every speech act and seldom moves beyond that-to go
beyond would violate an unspoken contract between users o f everyday language as
well as needlessly and hopelessly complicate necessary functions o f language and
communication. Poetic language, though, ceases to exist without multiple and
continual interpretive/creative acts.
2 While poetic language has this potential, for many reasons, multivalent identity
within a single culture has seldom been a goal o f poetic and artistic movements,
particularly artistic movements connected to political movements-those seeking
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(perceived) elitism and knowledge required to read poetry in the western tradition, the
democratic nature o f the multivalence o f poetic language ideally allows many people to
participate in the construction o f cultural identity: communities o f writers as well as the
readers and watchers o f poetic language-importantly, the same readers who constitute
an andersonian nation. Still, poetic language and, in particular, poetry, are difficult to
define. What it is seems more problematic than what it does, and for this reason (at
least in part) poets and critics develop metaphors to make poetic language more
manageable. The metaphor I will focus on is the house because it intimates the
construction o f a place o f habitation, a community, a facade, and an inner life. All o f
these issues come to bear on the construction o f cultural identity because they allow
discussions o f poetic language and discussions o f cultural identity to come together.
Part o f poetry’s mystery lies in its refusal to be pinned down. The number o f
definitions o f poetry equals the number o f poets, philosophers, linguists, literary
theorists and teachers, students, and readers and lovers o f poetry. Each person
attempting to define poetry almost inevitably finally resorts to poetic devices-often to
poetry itself-as either the fundamental definition or as the proof o f the definition.
Octavio Paz points out, "one can argue endlessly about what poetry is" {Other Voice
77); and T. S. Eliot says, "we do not know what poetry is, or what it does or ought to
do, or o f what use it is" {Use o f Poetry 15). Yet, for centuries, poetry as profession,
freedom from oppression. This potential as well as its actual use will be discussed later
in this chapter, beginning on page . . .
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avocation and subject have occupied thousands, and the discussion surrounding poetry
is vast. In addition to issues o f form (meter, rhyme, rhythm) and subject, many
conversations concerning poetry address audience and accessibility.3
Philip Levine, a contemporary poet who often emphasizes and explores place
and the complexity o f human life, compares poetry to the structure and function o f a
house in his poem, aptly titled "The House." His metaphor gives the poem a door,
something which potentially allows a reader to enter and participate in the construction
o f meaning and which also potentially shuts out the reader (along with those personas
who populate the poem). This image o f the poem suggests not only that access to a
poem is not automatic but that what occurs in the poem happens behind the door,
within the house-in other words, the core o f the poem inhabits the poem’s interior.
Further, the door suggests that if the reader does not locate the door and figure out
how to open it (if the reader does not have the key to the poem), the meaning o f the
poem, the life or lives within the house, will not be available for the reader to encounter
or to share in its creation:
This poem has a door, a locked door,
and windows drawn against the day,
but at night the lights come on, one
in each room, and the neighbors swear
they hear music and the sound o f dancing. (1 . 1-5)
3 This issue is particularly important to a project which posits poetry as a
cultural production.
What happens within the structure o f the poem is alive and energetic. The structure of
the poem, as the narrator states later, encompasses this life, this activity, in a not-so-
exciting wrapping. The narrator says, "Who ever made this house / had no idea o f
beauty - it’s all gray (1 . 20-21). And yet, the music and dancing posit a certain
beauty (at least the potential for beauty) beyond the gray-walled trappings o f the house.
The beauty does reside entirely within, though. The poem claims that the life and
activity behind the locked door and closed windows, what lives in this place of
habitation fashioned by the language o f the poem, is secret not just because night life is
more exciting than life in the light o f day but because it is a poem, because, it implies,
by definition a poem is closed, locked up, and exists or lives differently than other
language and language constructs. According to the poem, the language used to create
the poem differs so significantly from everyday language that its layers o f meaning
require keys to open the poem’s possibilities:
. . . That is not why
the house is locked and no one goes
in or out all day long. That is because
this is a poem first and a house only
at night when everyone should be asleep. (1. 7-11)
By saying "this is a poem first and a house only / at night" (10-11) Levine’s narrator
creates the poem, or poetry, as the outer shell o f something, perhaps the life o f the
poet, or, more likely, the life o f the poet’s imagination or thoughts. Again, the narrator
explains that the life o f the poem exists behind-or beyond-its structure. However, a
sentence in between these two quotes cloaks this otherwise straightforward metaphor
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in mystery: "These days the neighbors will swear / to anything" (1 . 6-7). Who are the
neighbors who will swear to anything? Does someone ask them specific questions
about the activities o f the unknown inhabitants o f the house o f poetry? Does someone
ask them general questions about these same activities? Who would ask these
questions? Do they ask each other or is there an outsider’s outsider? Does this
questioning say that poetry is guarded? Do the neighbors guard the house, or do they
observe the guarding? Are the neighbors the reason the house needs to be guarded?
From what might poetry need to be guarded? What effects do their observations have
on the house and its interior? Perhaps these lines imply that readers are the neighbors,
or maybe the neighbors are other poets locked up in their own poetry houses. Perhaps,
one step further, the poem implies that poetics and critical theory, the close neighbors
and watchers o f poetry, have taken over and change along with whatever new trend
comes along; Marjorie PerlofF claims, "The real power . . . belongs not to the
postmodern artist. . . but to the poststructuralist theorist whose principles validate the
work" (Poetry On & O ff 15). Whoever the neighbors are and whatever they do, the
issues are accessibility and positionality, simple ideas the poem problematizes.
The poem creates two distinct communities, aside from the narrator, which
inhabit the poem, only one o f which inhabits the house o f poetry: the first community
mentioned is the community o f neighbors and others not allowed into the house (the
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milkman, those who deliver the newspaper, the world,4 even imagined/imaginary
wedding guests, a priest, a boy, and a plumber). All o f these people who populate the
poem-the only people mentioned specifically in the poem-dwell at the margins o f the
house, on the outside o f its life; the neighbors can look towards, but are unable to see
anything but light through, the windows o f the house. The second community resides
within the house o f poetry, in the center or interior o f the poem. While the residents o f
poetry might lay claim to the center o f this particular poem simply by a priori presence,
the outsiders actually reside within its interior, pushing the house’s occupants to the
outskirts or margins o f the poem. The reversal occurs because the poem focuses on
the inaccessibility o f and the lack o f interaction with the inferiority o f poetry. While the
poem endows poetry’s outsiders with bodies and with social functions and activities,
with vision, the inhabitants o f the house o f poetry are seen only as possibility by the
outsiders.
Ironically, though given vision, the outsiders must exist in a certain amount o f
darkness in order to see the light emanating from the house, in order to see and thus
articulate the possibility o f existence in the house. By contrast, the light, perhaps
reflecting conventional notions o f knowledge, originates within the house, with the
4 By implication, the world is not allowed in because even the newspapers do
not enter the house: "The papers pile / up on the front porch until the rain / turns them
into gray earth, and they run / down the stairs and say nothing / to anyone" (1 . 16-20).
The voice o f the world-the presence o f the world-resides in the newspapers not
allowed to speak or say anything to anyone while disappearing on the front porch. In
addition, this might be a comment on issues o f purity in poetry-a purity unaffected by
politics and the social world.
insiders who carry also traditional notions o f exciting, enlightened lives, suggesting that
the interior life is more joyful: the neighbors, the outsiders, can hear, but not participate
in, "music and the sound o f dancing" (1 . 5). Despite the gift o f vision and observation,
the neighbors cannot see the dancing-an activity not generally heard but seen. The gift
o f vision, the poem suggests, includes the gift o f imagination. The insider/outsider
dichotomy erected by the house and its boundaries, interestingly, includes a possibility
o f mediation: the door. Mediation remains only a possibility, however, because "the
house is locked and no one goes / in or out all day long" (1 . 8-9). The poem
emphasizes the lack o f mediation by repeating this notion near the end o f the poem:
"But no one is going in or out” (1 . 34).
Importantly, the narrator remains outside the house and outside the activity o f
the poem-we are given no description o f the poem’s actual interior, only the imagined
wedding scenario: "Think o f a marriage taking place at one / in the afternoon on a
Sunday in June / in the stuffy front room. The dining table / is set for twenty, and the
tall glasses / filled with red wine, the silver sparkling" (1. 29-33). The narrator’s idea o f
what the house/poetry is inside emphasizes the lack o f interaction, o f marriage between
the insiders and outsiders-suggesting, perhaps, that a tradition which stresses purity
loses not only vitality ("stuffy front room"), though retaining a semblance o f life
("music and the sound o f dancing"), but also the benefits o f communication or
interaction with other traditions-an intercultural marriage or traditions. Because the
interior o f the house is completely inaccessible and retains its closed insider
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positionality, the outside o f the house-and what can be seen only from the
outside-constitute the poem, and for this narrator (and thus the reader), the house o f
poetry remains locked.
Ed Roberson, a contemporary African American poet often described as
postmodernist, also writes o f poetry, accessibility, and positionality by using the house
metaphor in his poem, "V. Photograph: The House o f the Poet":5
I see the house o f the poet,
weird and quiet, right in its out o f place, across
a wheeling field come off some wind’s cart
that tilts up into fury’s trees above the house
and think a black man out to have such
signs in his cross
roads taken pictured too landmark status:
a small writing desk in a quite corner
won deep in the mass o f no less subject
than white tree worshipers o f paper
their cannibalist sacrifices
flipping through them offered that order
be maintained white where his ink darkened those sheets (66)
Roberson’s narrator emphasizes distance in this poem, and the possibility o f mediation,
a door, is completely absent. The overt reference to race/ethnicity cannot be
overlooked in the context o f accessibility. The lack o f accessibility highlights the
inherent but usually culturally deemed and overlooked link between ethnicity and
5 This poem is part of a longer piece entitled Interval and Final Day ’ s Concerts',
it is part o f his compilation Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In. Both titles and the work as
a whole emphasize the liminality and for, but difficulties of, connection.
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western poetic tradition. Thus, the persona in Roberson’s poem observes poetry from a
distance because the house is captured in a photograph. Its presence is several times
removed and therefore inaccessible to this poet-persona, not just to uneducated readers
or readers not inducted into methods o f reading poetry in general or o f reading a
specific body o f poetry. The narrator says, "I see the house o f the poet, / weird and
quiet, right in its out o f place, across / a wheeling field come off some wind’s cart / that
tilts up into fury’s trees above the house" (66). The poem begins with a description o f
the image or physical facade (ostensibly) o f an actual house in which a poet Jives-the
photograph admits a certain reference for the narrator’s experience in the first stanza.
Distance and isolation-part o f that which makes the quiet house remarkable
(simultaneously "out o f place" and "right")-dominate the image o f this house, real or
imaginative.
The language o f the poem, three-dimensional, particularly when spoken and
heard, in contrast to the always-two-dimensional photograph (the house o f
poetry)-doubles and triples back on itself. Take "right in its out o f place" (1 . 2), for
example: the house is "right"-it is in the correct place, situated properly; the house is
"right" there, designating, again, though differently, the space or position it occupies;
the house is not "right" because it is "out o f place"; the house is "out o f place" because
it is different from its surrounding fields and trees; the house is "out o f place" because it
is a photograph, decontextualized. The layers o f meaning could continue to fold into
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and overlap itself, depending on the reader. Still, the image and its layers suggest a
physical structure at this point-the house o f the poet.
The second stanza, however, begins to speak o f the house in a way that
challenges this image-the image o f an image o f a physical structure sitting alone
somewhere in a field. The second stanza moves the house from physical structure to
symbolic structure; further, the narrator says it is a structure to which a specific group
o f people have been/are being denied access (emphasized by the distance between the
narrator and the actual house-not just the vast field but also that it is a photograph or
an image o f the house) and to which they ought to have access, or at least have a
similar structure o f their own. The grammatical subject o f the first stanza, "I," carries
down to continue as the subject o f the second stanza; the line begins, "and [I] think . .
." (1 . 5). The typography o f the line puts a pause or a break after "think"-a space
between that word and the next idea: "a black man ought to have such" (1 . 5); the
typographical space enacts the audacity o f such a thought, forcing the reader’s eyes
across a larger-than-normal space:
and think a black man ought to have such (1. 5)
The chasm created by the typography is huge. Though the poem specifically argues
that the chasm is between the house o f the poet in the photograph and the idea that a
black man ought to share in this kind o f structure, it actually makes the argument that
the chasm is between Western poetry and poetic tradition and the idea that other kinds
o f poetry and artistic expression merit equal consideration. The poem asks its readers
to experience the distance in the act o f reading. The first stanza o f the poem, the
stanza in which the house o f the poet is described and before any radical thoughts are
openly introduced, is the only stanza o f the poem to not inscribe breaks and chasms
into its language; the other three stanzas inscribe the break between traditions and their
acceptance. In addition, the move from a description o f a single poet’s house to the
suggestion that "a black man ought to have such / signs in his cross- / roads taken
pictured too landmark status: / a small writing desk in a quiet comer" (66) asks the
reader to consider the house as the repository and gatekeeper o f the Poem, or, perhaps,
o f Western Poetry/Western Poetic Tradition.
Poetry thus becomes a "sign" and a "landmark," physical images suggesting
significance and vitality for a community. It also suggests that poetry occupies a place
above everything and everyone-a place demanding and commanding certain attitudes.
A landmark exists to point out the position o f one person or thing for other people. It
exists to commemorate an event or a person; it acts as a guide and as direction. The
poem, then, argues that poetry as sign and landmark is something that represents (as
was suggested by the title-a photograph), and that in representing it takes on a certain
social significance for its community. It is not until the third stanza and the final line o f
the poem that the issue o f access for a black man to the power o f landmarks and signs
in the town or literary community confronts the crossroads o f poetry, poetic tradition,
identity, and purity. The third stanza and the last line o f the poem read:
won deep in the mass o f no less subject
than white tree worshipers o f paper
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their cannibalist sacrifices
flipping through them offered that order
be maintained white where his ink darkened those sheets (66)
The image o f a lynching dominates the stanza, and the language takes pains to connect
the issue o f accessibility and purity in poetic traditions to the same issues of
accessibility and purity in Anglo-American history and society: the ink darkening the
sheets is simultaneously blood, semen, and writing/culture, all sacrificed and hanging
from the trees (with all of their implications o f life, paper/culture, and place) in order to
preserve Anglo-American cultural purity. In this way, the poem returns to the trees
surrounding the house in the first stanza, "fury’s trees," claiming that a poetic tradition
(the house) which allows only itself and images o f itself ("no less subject / than white
tree worshipers") to enter, to win, because o f self-worship, fear o f the Other, and
because o f cultural imperialism, cannibalizes itself. The poem insists that the European
standards and aesthetics o f the poem remain, a claim reminiscent o f the idea o f tradition
found in T. S. Eliot’s "Tradition and the Individual Talent."
Thus, Roberson’s poem claims that the poet, via poetry, affects and shapes
culture. It also suggests that the culture given life by poetry can also destroy poetry,
thus itself, if it closes itself o ff to the new and diverse. The suggestion is also that the
field o f poetry is a battlefield with high stakes, the victor emerging with the "small
writing desk in a comer" (66)-with the power to write and, by implication, to publish
poetry and thus participate in establishing the identity o f the culture or nation. Octavio
Paz, in his book The Bow and the Lyre, also argues that poetry shapes and gives birth
to a culture or a nation. He says, "In creating the language o f European nations,
legends and epic poems helped to create those same nations. And in a profound sense
they founded them: they gave them consciousness o f themselves. Indeed, by means o f
poetry, the common language was changed into mythical images endowed with
archetypal value" (Paz, Bow 29). Poetry, according to Paz, births a nation or a culture
by articulating that nation’s or culture’s self-identity, the way it conceives o f itself and
asserts itself to others. One way to talk about poetry, according to Roberson and Paz,
is to talk about it as a cultural product-a product which constructs culture and which
comes from culture when we speak o f culture, we also inherently speak o f issues o f
identity.
Poetic Language and Cultural Identity: Poetry as a Tool for Identity Construction
Considering poetry as a place o f habitation, as a sign/landmark o f community
and status, as a facade constructed to present a certain face to the world, and as
encompassing an inner life allows discussions o f cultural identity and poetic language to
intersect. Philip D. Ortega, editor o f the anthology, We Are Chicanos: An Anthology
o f Mexican-American Literature, posits that "a particular culture produces and evolves
a particular kind o f literature particularized even further by the language and linguistic
behavior o f that culture" (147), and Marta Ester Sanchez, author o f Contemporary
Chicana Poetry: A Critical Approach to an Emerging Literature, adds that
scholarship needs to acknowledge and explore the creation o f "cultural identity through
poetic language" (2). In her book, Sanchez explores issues o f cultural identity that
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arise through the designation "Chicana poet": gender identity, ethnic identity, and
literary/professional identity. Nathanial Mackey suggests that the link between society
and poetry is not just an ethnic issue-not just something people o f color need to
consider-but that it is a poetic issue, something all poets ought to consider. He says,
"Creative kinship and the lines o f affinity it effects are much more complex, jagged, and
indissociable than the totalizing pretensions o f canon formation tend to acknowledge"
and posits that former (and, to an extent, still present) tendencies to separate poetry
and cultural identity/politics is "a problem rooted in the imposition o f models o f
sameness upon a reality characterized by hybridity, diversity, mix" (3, 5). Thus the
problem o f separating poetic aesthetic and ethnicity is hegemonic. This section
explores the link between poetry and identity by looking at the views of various poets
and poetry critics. The following section assumes this link and looks at the intersection
o f these elements o f being and articulation by considering the junction o f cultural
movements, the articulation o f specific cultural identities, and the emergence o f cultural
literatures which seek to participate in the project o f identity construction. The poetic
traditions o f African Americans, Chicanos, and the D eaf will provide vehicles for the
discussion o f poetic language and cultural identity once the link has been discussed.
The claim that personal, cultural, and national identity is articulated and created
by poetry is a clear move away from views held earlier in the twentieth century.
Theories o f aesthetics which stem from the T.S. Eliot tradition tend to separate art and
politics or social issues. Political poetry or art, in this tradition, is not as good as art
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created for its own sake. These theories focus on the ways in which poetry purifies
language (insisting on an attention to poetry, not to poets) rather than on how language
affects and creates through its transformation, deliberate or "natural," community and
identity. Eliot’s call to purify language was joined later by Octavio Paz who, in The
Bow and the Lyre, explains, "The words o f the poet are also the words o f the tribe or
will be one day. The poet transforms, re-creates, and purifies the language; and later,
he shares it" (35). For Paz, poetry is the process by which words, used by average,
non-poet people as a means, and thus used as slaves to the people, are given back their
freedom. Words are not to serve but to be served by the poet. He says, "Each time we
are served by words, we mutilate them. But the poet is not served by words. He is
their servant. In serving them, he returns them to the plenitude o f their nature, makes
them recover their being. Thanks to poetry, language reconquers its original state. . . .
To purify language, the poet’s task, means to give it back its original nature" (37). In
other words, language stems from an "original nature," to which only the poet can
return it. Paz further asserts that poetry begins with violence: violence to language. He
says, "Poetic creation begins as violence to language. The first act in this operation is
the uprooting o f words. The poet wrests them from their habitual connections and
occupations: separated from the formless world o f speech, words become unique, as if
they had just been born. The second act is the return o f the word: the poem becomes
an object o f participation" {Bow 28). This idea is further substantiated by the claim that
poetry is only about language, not about people or cultures. T. S. Eliot, in "Tradition
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and the Individual Talent," argues that, "Poetry is not a turning loose o f emotion, but
an escape from emotion; it is not the expression o f personality, but an escape from
personality" (436). Both Eliot and Paz center poetry in language, as do most poets and
critics. However, Eliot and Paz erect unnatural boundaries around poetry, either
"wresting" them from culture or denying the influence o f everyday culture altogether.
Michael North’s The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language & Twentieth-Century
Literature, challenges the modernists’ claim that poetry purifies language. His
argument suggests that modernists were deeply attached to the idea o f re-creating the
self, often through the use o f masks (linguistic), not to the idea o f purifying language.
However, the "art for arts’s sake" attitude and the project o f purifying language did, at
least for the twentieth century, stem from the modernist poets.
Eagleton, on the other hand, focuses on the social origins (as opposed to
"natural" origins) and social uses o f aesthetics claiming that aesthetics serve as rallying
points for solidarity and become disciplines used either to justify and spread colonialism
or to resist colonialism and other forms o f oppression. He uses as an example
eighteenth-century Prussia in which the local land lords strictly governed the various
nation-states. Out o f this social and cultural situation, a group o f university professors
emerged (deliberately) as a literary/intellectual class who created new aesthetics that
sought to liberate the general populace from the dominating control o f the land lords.
In many ways they succeeded, but the new aesthetic was as limiting as it was liberating
because it imitated or re-instated the hierarchy it sought to destroy-they just created a
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different underclass. Germany in the eighteenth century consisted o f many separate,
feudal-absolutist states. No general culture held these states together, and so they are
characterized by their
particulars and idiosyncrasies. O f the social position o f the Germans at this time,
Eagleton tells us that the princes o f these states "imposed their imperious diktats
through elaborate bureaucracies, while a wretchedly exploited peasantry languished in
conditions often little better than bestial. Beneath this autocratic sway, an ineffectual
bourgeoisie remained cramped" (14). However, at the same time, a separate group of
people, Germany’s intellectual strata or class o f people, "were steadily growing, to
produce for the first time in the later eighteenth century a professional literary caste;
and this group showed all the signs o f exerting a cultural and spiritual leadership
beyond the reach o f the self-serving aristocracy" (14-15). The leadership referred to
here is leadership o f and through an aesthetic which promised to liberate Germans from
the autocracy if they followed its prescriptions.
Richard Rorty’s writings on the contingency o f language also challenge the idea
o f a "natural" origin o f language, which suggests the need for purification. According
to Rorty, language is not something which expresses or reflects/represents; rather, it is
a set o f "noises and inscriptions presently being produced by" humanity (14). He
suggests that we think about language "not as the name o f a medium between self and
reality but simply as a flag which signals the desirability o f using a certain vocabulary
when trying to cope with certain kinds o f organisms" (15). The result o f envisioning
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language in this way, says Rorty, is the realization that language and culture are entirely
contingent, as much as biological life is contingent in evolutionary theories. Language,
seen this way, becomes a series o f metaphors (20) which change according to need and
when they become naturalized. The change associates language and meaning. Rorty
continues, "A sense o f human history as the history o f successive metaphors would let
us see the poet, in the generic sense o f the maker o f new words, the shaper o f new
languages, as the vanguard o f the species" (20).
Helen Vendler’s writings about poetry move between two views o f poetry. On
the one hand, she argues, referencing Marvell, that all that enters the poem enters it "in
order to color everything with the mind’s color, reducing to zero (‘annihilating,’ said
Marvell) the entire creation into its own mentality" (Vendler Music 39). In other
words, she posits that culture-specific ideas and images/objects and anything carrying
political and civic agendas switch loyalties from the ideology out o f which they come to
the poem itself. In other words, language allies itself with the process and inner life and
action o f the poem giving it the same political affect as descriptions o f "nonpolitical"
images. The Marvell poem Vendler uses as an example in her work reads: "The mind,
that ocean where each kind / Doth straight its own resemblance find; / Yet it creates,
transcending these, / Far other worlds and other seas, / Annihilating all that’s made / To
a green thought in a green shade.” Using this image of the mind’s work in poetry,
Vendler makes her claim that poetry is an inward rather than an outward act, and it is
therefore apolitical in intent and effect. She explains,
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Naturally, all kinds o f ethical and civic topics turn up in poetry, as
do trees and flowers and ladies’ eyes; but they are all material for
the transformation into green. Once they are ‘greened,’ they enter
into the dynamic system o f relations within the poem, and their
allegiance is reordered in that magnetic field, which extends
outward to the entire oeuvre o f the poet, and thence to culture
itself. The referentiality o f language in a poem is more inward
than outward, even when the topic o f the poem is a civic or
ethical or mimetic one. (40)
In this chapter, her claim that the language o f a poem moves inward rather than
outward seems to apply to all poetry and all poets, suggesting that poets or specific
poems whose aims differ do not qualify as poetry worthy o f note. The assumption, now
regularly questioned by various groups o f literary and cultural critics, is that there are
categories o f literature which are inherently apolitical. The counter argument to this
position would begin with the claim that while the references in any given poem-even
in many or most mainstream poems-may be inward and assiduously adhered to, the
aesthetic described by Vendler-the choice to move the poem inward rather than
outward, to adhere to or to promote that specific apolitical aesthetic, is as political as is
choosing to move the language-"the referentiality o f language in a poem," outward.
Another assumption o f this position asserts that poetry which does not manage to
achieve this inward rather than outward movement (also assuming that’s always the
goal o f a "serious" poet), and especially poetry which does not seek to achieve this
"greening" is somehow not really or not completely poetry.
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On the other hand, Vendler posits that poetry is cultural and political; she does
not reject all poetry and poets whose vision o f poetry is political and social.6 One o f
her analyses o f Czeslaw Milosz and Seamus Heaney concludes with the observation
that "It is important to each o f them that poetry does perform a social function; it is
equally important to them to remove it from a direct and journalistic mimesis. The poet
indeed witnesses, constructs, and records; but the creation o f a symbolic and musical
form is the imperative, in the end, which he must serve if his witness is to be believed"
(Music 131). Importantly, both stances can be said to be about identity: does the poet,
or the critic, align her or himself with Western philosophical traditions which call for art
for art’s sake, or do they align themselves with cultures and cultural traditions which
call for different politics and articulations o f self-hood and significance?
Edward W. Said, in Culture and Imperialism, argues that anything and
everything culture-specific and subtlely or overtly political in literature must be
understood and clear before we can understand poetry. Speaking primarily about
novels, though the argument can be applied to poetry since poetry often narrates
national stories (or stories which become national) as well as articulating the
philosophies out o f which the stories come and into which the stories often become,
says, "stories are at the heart o f what explorers and novelists [and poets] say about
strange regions o f the world; they also become the method colonized people use to
6 While Vendler does acknowledge poetry and poets whose primary goal is
political/civic and social, she often tries to explain this away.
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assert their own identity and the existence o f their own history" (xii). If we replaced
"strange regions o f the world" with "strange regions o f the country," we could be
talking about the ways the dominant culture in the United States talk about, narrate,
minority nations within the United States. We could also be talking about the ways
these stories have often been used by U.S. minorities to "assert their own identity and
the existence o f their own history."
Poetic Language. Cultural Identity, and Poetic Traditions: Black Arts Movement
The recent poetic traditions o f African Americans, Chicanos, and the D eaf offer
versions o f their respective cultural stories and identities. Amiri Baraka once wrote,
We want a black poem. And a
Black World.
Let the world be a Black Poem
And Let All Black People Speak This Poem
Silently
or LOUD (Baraka 143)
In this poem, Baraka directly connects poetry with cultural identity and highlights the
power and political position o f that connection: "Let the world be a Black Poem." He
also exhorts African American poets to write only overtly political poems until the
political and social goals o f the Movement are achieved. His poem also implies that
aesthetics, or beauty, are as inherently a part o f political poems as they are a part o f
love poems. He says, "Let there be no love poems written / until love can exist freely
and / cleanly" (143). The last stanza o f that poem, above, becomes a call to African
American writers to join in the Black Arts Movement with vigor, focusing their
energies solely on things Black. The New Princeton Encyclopedia offers Imamu Amiri
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Baraka’s work, Black Magic: Poems 1961-1967, as the benchmark for the Black Arts
Movement. In this book o f poetry, Baraka writes stridently about the aesthetics o f this
coming movement and proposes a blueprint for Black poetry in his poem, "Black Art."
Clearly, Baraka wrote during a time o f social as well as literary fervor.
The Civil Rights Movement and the political climate surrounding it galvanized
the desires o f many African-American writers to create an autonomous literary heritage
and community identity separate from white America. Addison Gayle, Jr., in his
"Introduction" to an anthology o f poetry written by African Americans in the seventies,
explains that the history o f Africans in the U.S. is one o f cultural marginality. African
Americans, he points out, were torn from African cultures, thrown into a slave culture,
but denied the culture o f their new home. Many African American authors during the
Black Arts Movement turned these experiences into a literature of reaction. He says,
"The reaction o f Blacks in general and black poets in particular was to search for a
sense o f identity, o f cultural security in a hostile and strange environment" (xviii).
These reactions represented in the poetry which searched for identity and security
included arguments for the humanity o f African Americans and for a poetry o f
catharsis. A problem which became clear because o f this reactionary literature,
according to Gayle, was the lack o f "images and symbols" o f their own, images and
symbols which would both celebrate and interrogate African American culture. Gayle
argues that African American poets o f the sixties and seventies recognized this problem
and set out to create and reclaim images and symbols o f their own.
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Gayle adds another dimension to the argument o f a need for a Black Aesthetic;
he points out that the poets writing before the sixties could believe the nation could and
would change; poets writing after the Civil Rights Movement, after the Black Power
movement, and after the assassination o f Martin Luther King, Jr.,
on the other hand, have witnessed the holocaust reborn, faced
universal white resistance as they struggled for manhood rights,
have known the indiscriminate murder o f black people from
Mississippi to New York, have borne witness to the
transformation o f white liberals from allies to rednecks, and have
begun a movement designed to take Blacks outside American
history and culture, (xxiii)
The traumatic and horrible social conditions and positionality inspired many artists to
abandon any previous ties to European aesthetics and forge an aesthetic o f their own,
one which made room for social protest, historical and contemporary issues o f
positionality, language o f the non-literary/social elite, artistic traditions o f common
African American people, and strong emotions linked to these ideas, particularly anger
and resistance. In this way, the Black Arts Movement responded to issues and
questions o f the relationship between art and society. Norris B. Clark, in an essay
entitled "Gwendolyn Brooks and a Black Aesthetic," suggests that the Black Aesthetic
was to serve three purposes: "to provide black writers with another alternative to
secure positive identities as black writers;. . . to create political and social alternatives
for the black community; and . . . to answer, in a provocative context. . . ‘Questions
concerning the relationship between literature and society; between the life experiences
o f social human beings and the art that they produce’" (81). The answers provided by
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the Black Arts Movement closely link literature and life, mirroring the notions o f Paz
and Roberson that the relationship is reciprocal: not only does life and social conditions
affect art, but art also works to construct social reality and identity.
Writing four years later, Don L. Lee presents an assessment o f the Black Arts
Movement, o f the state o f African American writing and writers, a testimonial o f the
Black Arts Movement, suggestions for improvement, and prophecies for African
Americans writing in The U.S.. In fact, the first sentence o f his short work says, "It’s
time to freshen the air, to declare a direction" (13). The Black Arts Movement,
according to Lee, changed the definition o f African American authors from "writers
who happened to be Black" to a "Black man who chose words as a part o f his lifestyle"
(13). 7 Though no clearer definition is offered, the suggestion is that the Black Arts
Movement brought together writing and identity for African Americans in ways that
had been to that point ignored. Despite vague definitions, the origins o f the Black Arts
Movement can be traced to New York’s Umbra Workshop. Lorenzo Thomas, in "The
Shadow World: New York’s Umbra Workshop & Origins o f the Black Arts
Movement," notes that several groups with differing styles and voices shared a
common goal or orientation. He explains, "the young black writers in those years
approached their work with a sense o f outrage and with a missionary zeal borrowed
7 This definition o f African American writers clearly poses questions o f gender
and equality within the movement. This will be addressed later in this chapter (under
the heading Challenges to Poetry, Poetic Traditions, and the Construction o f Cultural
Identity) and in Chapter IV with readings o f specific poets; this section is primarily and
overview o f the movements o f each group.
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from the Southern Civil Rights struggle and heightened by an urgency bred by their
urban surroundings" (53). A major contribution to the development o f a black
aesthetic was N. H. Pritchard’s study o f the African underpinnings o f "Black English."
Thomas explains, "Pritchard’s early experiments, which were to lead to a ‘transrealism’
that resembles concrete poetiy, resulted in poems written in tampered English in which
the combination o f sounds approximated vocal styles and tones o f African languages"
(55). These experiments and the resulting poetry established the bases for much o f the
criteria o f the black aesthetic.
The "full maturity and strength" o f the black aesthetic and its art is described by
Thomas in this way, "an African song in American English, drawing upon the syntax o f
traditional proverbs and the tersely sentimental tones o f Rhythm & Blues" (57). The
black aesthetic was conceived as a means for black artists to declare war on the
mainstreams o f European aesthetics and artistic criteria. In doing so, the black artists
who engaged in this "war" created new aesthetic criteria. Clark’s position, however, is
that the black aesthetic did not promote art, only black nationalism. He says, "As such,
they were following the ideology o f race first, then art. In its broadest context, a black
aesthetic has been conceived by some black writers as one that supports, regardless o f
literary ability, any black artist who speaks honestly to and about black people" (82).
Clark also points out that many African-American authors whose writings are admired
by both African-American critics and white or mainstream critics chose not to
participate in the black aesthetic movement though they do promote raising the
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consciousness o f both the "black masses” and mainstream to the beauty, art, and
heritage o f African Americans.® The emphasis Thomas gives the Rhythm & Blues in
this aesthetic is not accidental. African-American music’s role in the black aesthetic
affects not only the tones and rhythms o f the poetry but also the vernacular, and thus
the language, o f the poetry. In addition, the music serves as a metaphor for the
problems o f the aesthetic within the black community as it affects individual and
community identity and as a metaphor for the individual and community identity
involving the larger American population.
The tension between these issues, between the individual-level self/other
separation and the within-the-community, collective self/other creates a double-voiced
speaking back to imposed definitions o f race and culture which participates in the act o f
racial self-definition-defining the act by this participation as a shifting, evolving, and
shadowy act: an act o f invisibility creating visibility. The double-voicedness, an echo o f
DuBois’ double-consciousness, allows Black intellectuals and authors to dance
®According to Clark, the group o f artists who did not participate in the black
aesthetic movement but who successfully raised consciousness "were more concerned
with aesthetic expression in art [as opposed to aesthetic expression as "the rhetoric o f
black nationalism"]. Artists such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Clarence Major, Ron Milner,
and Ishmael Reed" rejected the black aesthetic for artistic rather than political reasons;
they still operated within the and for the concept o f nationalism, but they chose to do
so by using a different aesthetics. Clark continues, "They, like Julian Mayfield, Toni
Morrison, Michael S. Harper, William Harris, William Melvin Kelly, Ron Welbum, or
Albert Young, realized that political persuasion (propaganda), rhetorical inanities,
‘Black English,’ or a strict adherence to a political dogma would be insufficient to
promote the aesthetic qualities o f art" (82). Clark’s position points out that many
important African American authors did not support the Black Aesthetic Movement; it
also suggests that audience was affected by the decision o f criteria for black aesthetics.
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between the positions o f center (self) and circumference (other) without ever alighting
at either position but to still embrace both self and other. They thus exist in and
celebrate the position o f between-ness and the navigational process which allows this
liminal space and the power both the space and the movement renders them. LeRoi
Jones (who later becomes Imamu Amiri Baraka, and still later Amiri Baraka) explains
in his book, Blues People, the possibilities this position can afford:
There was always a border beyond which the Negro could not go,
whether musically or socially. There was always a possible
limitation to any dilution or excession o f cultural or spiritual
references. The Negro could not ever become white and that was
his strength; at some point, always, he could not participate in the
dominant tenor o f the white man’s culture. It was at this juncture
that he had to make use o f other resources, whether African,
subcultural, or hermetic. And it was this boundary, this no man’s
land, that provided the logic and beauty o f his music. (80)
The blues, and, by extension, poetry which enact the blues thus speak in the space
between in a way that challenges the historical narrative o f the nation. Bhabha explains
the possibilities o f speaking back from the margins in a double-voice, from the "no
man’s land" Jones describes, in this way, "Indeed the exercise o f power may be both
more politically effective and psychically affective because their discursive liminality
may provide greater scope for strategic movement and negotiation" ("DissemiNation"
296-297). African American poets effectively use this position, and one o f the most
important ways they do this is through the trope and structure o f the blues and the
blues figures. Jones later elucidates the power o f simultaneous insider/outsider position
I l l
by claiming that "this nonconformity should be put to use. The vantage point is
classically perfect-outside and inside at the same time" {Home: Social Essays 164).
Poetic Language. Cultural Identity, and Poetic Traditions: El Movimento
Chicano aesthetics originated from social conditions as well; and like the
tensions between peoples within the same culture out o f which the black aesthetic
comes, Chicano/a aesthetics generate and sustain certain tensions. Relating personal
experiences with racism, F. Arturo Rosales notes, "The Arizona sergeant’s posturing,
exaggerated as it might have been, provided one o f my first real indications that
Mexicans shared with Blacks a debilitating burden o f oppression" (xiv). He further
notes, however, that
The dynamics o f Anglo-American racism towards Mexicans . . .
[is a process which has] a distinct historical construction from the
one affecting Blacks. . . . The legal and moral justification for
demanding an end to unequal treatment resided in the founding
principles o f the United States. In essence, while both Blacks and
Chicanos charged these guarantees were violated or hypocritically
never meant to include them, the specifics o f the violations were
disparate, (xiv, xix)
Thus, while African Americans and Chicanos share certain colonial conditions, the
particulars differ in significant ways. Philip D. Ortega points out that while the identity
constructed in and by African American poetry relies on specific dialects o f U.S.
English, the identity constructed in and by Chicano poetry relies not only on dialects o f
U.S. English but also on dialects o f both U.S. and Mexican Spanish. "Moreover," he
contends, "it [Chicano poetry] has produced a mixture o f the two languages resulting in
a unique kind o f binary phenomena, in which the linguistic symbols o f two languages
are mixed in utterances using either language’s syntactic structure" (148). Dual
language literature participates in the presentation o f Ortega’s "binary phenomena."
However, the dichotomy between English and Spanish does not force the Chicano/a to
choose one or the other identity but allows the poet to create a dual- or multi-language
identity that maximizes the possibilities o f the space between languages. According to
the editors o f the first Chicano literary anthology, Octavio Ignacio Romano-V and
Herminio Rios (the anthology is El Espejo-The Mirror: Selected Chicano Literature),
a mirror best represents this binary-ness. The preface to their anthology states, "Para
conocerse, para saber quienes son, a algunos les basta con ver su reflejo. Por eso . , .
EL ESPEJO-THE MIRROR. Que este libro sirva de espejo para los muchos que aqui
se ven." (vi). Translated into English, at the bottom o f the page, and thus mirroring the
Spanish preface, the Preface reads, "To know themselves and who they are, there are
those who need no reflection other than their own. Thus . . . EL ESPEJO-THE
MIRROR. Enough said . . . let this book speak for itself, and for the people it
represents" (vi). Though the only reflection needed to identify, and, they imply, to
articulate oneself is the self, the distance between the mirror and the self creates a
telling metaphor for the between-ness and border-crossing nature o f Chicano identity.
The binary phenomena, further, involves identity issues that span language, land,
border, and national affiliation.
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The Chicano Movement(s)9 o f the 1960s and 1970s pushed towards an
aesthetic o f nationalism which was widely accepted at the time and continues to be a
force today. Bruce-Novoa offers three texts as key and fundamental texts for the
Chicano Movement(s): Yo soy Joaquin/I Am Joaquin, by Rodolfo Gonzales, Perrosy
antiperros, by Sergio Elizondo, and With a Pistol in His Hand, A Border Ballad and
its Hero, by Americo Paredes. The last work, he notes, did not achieve critical acclaim
in its time, but it has become an influential Chicano text. He then suggests that while
those three were the first, the works o f Chicana poets Bernice Zamora and Lorna Dee
Cervantes were "the most significant poets from the first two decades o f contemporary
Chicano literature" (240). He argues in the essay, "Dialogical Strategies, Monological
Goals: Chicano Literature," that these texts affected the literature and culture in new
ways because they challenged the group as a whole to question and confront "a
Chicano male chauvinist literary tradition" (240). This was significant because it
9 I add the parenthetical " s" here for the following reason: Bruce-Novoa points
out that
Chicano intellectuals now question the term movement, rejecting
the ideological singularity and monological culture it implies. N o
such unity existed, rather many local manifestations which never
achieved enough coherence among themselves to justify the
terminology. And it could not have arisen because a single
monological Chicano culture has never existed which could serve
as a base for the new one. The term, then, turns out to have been
an example o f the rhetoric o f desire o f unity, a utopian strategy,
idealistic and ultimately unrealizable, a classic reification o f the
logocentric dream o f hegemony. (242)
However, to just put the " s" there, without the parentheses, would not accurately
represent the intentions o f the original activists o f the two decades.
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highlighted the dialogic nature o f Chicanos in spite o f the move towards absolute unity,
a unity presented to those outside the community. Rosales explains, "A virulent
cultural nationalism came to be an integral part o f the movimiento although its
expression differed depending on region" (xix). The differences which surfaced within
a movement aiming at internal unity in order to combat U.S. hegemony created a need
and space for Chicano criticism. A seminal essay by Joseph Sommers, "From the
Critical Premise to the Product: Critical Modes and Their Application to a Chicano
Literary Text," published in 1977, examines the assumptions made by those actively
involved in the work on the political front as well as the assumptions o f the literature
produced during the Chicano Movement(s). An affect o f his works and the works o f
other Chicano critics who wrote during the Movement(s) and who write now
functioned to further the change in consciousness among many Chicanos which
paralleled the goals o f the Movement(s). One important affect is the change in self-
definition, a change for which the mirror is an apt metaphor. Chicanos were/are
encouraged to view themselves as active subjects, to envision themselves out o f the
victim/victimizer dichotomy created by the dominant U.S. culture. The literary and
critical works o f the Movement(s) articulated, enacted, and brought to the cultural
consciousness a realization o f the state o f tension in which Chicanos live.1 0 Bruce-
Novoa adds, "The goal o f the inner-oriented strategies was to produce monological
unity; that o f the exterior-oriented was to fragment the supposedly
1 0 I will discuss later the challenges this tension creates for a translator.
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monolithic/monologic Anglo American culture by forcing it to dialogue with residents
o f Mexican ethnicity, a dialogue which in itself would constitute a de facto recognition
o f the Chicano as an interlocutor" (226). Thus, even a deliberate move towards unity
in order to affect social and political change emphasized the dialogic nature o f the
Chicano group itself.
The tension created by the aims o f the Movement(s) and its cultural products
are played out in the very term "Chicano." Nobody is sure o f how the word came
about; however, the name gained the power, over time, to bring disparate people
together in a common cause. Some theories o f the origin o f this name, according to
Ortega, include the following:
Some explanations ascribe the word to Nahuatl origin, suggesting
that the Indians pronounced the word ‘Mexicano’ as ‘Me-shi-ca-
noh,’ and that in time the soft ‘shi’ was replaced by the hard ‘chi.’
Other explanations suggest the word is a mixture o f two words
containing elements o f each .... Such words have been
‘Chihuahua’ + ‘Mexicano’; ‘Chicago’ + Mexicano; ‘chico’ +
‘ano,’ etc. Despite the tenuous origin o f the word ‘Chicano’ it
continues to gain ground in the identification o f Americans o f
Mexican ancestry as it gains in usage, (xv)
This explanation looks to etymology for an explanation o f the word. Other approaches
produce equally interesting insight into the term and its ramifications. Bruce-Novoa
explains, "The term Chicano encapsuled dual strategies: while it united an imagined
community interiorly, simultaneously it differentiated the group, not only from the Anglo
Americans, but also from the national culture o f Mexico" (227). Again, the very language
o f the Movement(s), including its name, enacts the tension between cultures and languages
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in which the Chicano most often lives. Perez-Torres agrees and uses the word Chicano as
an example o f the tensions engendered by the various literary and aesthetic movements in
Chicano history. The struggle for the name, which took place primarily in the 1960s and
1970s, created a sense of, perhaps even the reality of, solidarity for many U.S. citizens o f
Mexican and Mexican- Indian descent, but for others, it created a boundary over which
they could not cross. Part o f this boundary, he suggests, comes from issues o f sexuality
and its relationship to cultural and communal identity, out o f differing goals in education,
and out o f language use. He says, "Although many o f us are bilingual, many o f us are
solely English speakers; does language remain the marker o f the Chicano/a?" (2). Despite
the answers to this question, language and its use remain primary markers o f the literature
which participates in Chicano/a aesthetics. Ortega agrees and posits that this marker
which distinguishes and allows for unique beauty is also the reason for its exclusion from
U.S. American literary canon. He points out that while both British and Hispanic roots
have produced exciting and dynamic literature, only that stemming from British roots has
been studied as U.S. American literature. "The reason advanced has been that such works
are not properly within the traditional Anglo-American definition o f American literature.
Linguistic chauvinism has been the principal reason for the exclusion o f Spanish-language
literature o f the United States from the corpus o f American literature" (Ortega xvii-xviii).
Perez-Torres argues that the strength o f Chicano/a poetics is in the moves and shifts made
by the movements in order to deal with these questions.
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Alfred Arteaga, in Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities, pushes the
distinction further by positing that certain, specific tropes mark Chicano aesthetics as
Chicano. He also argues that language use plays a large role in Chicano aesthetics. The
difference between the arguments raised by Arteaga and Perez-Torres is that while
Perez-Torres argues for continually evolving and shifting aesthetics, Arteaga suggests
continuity in the major tropes and language techniques. Major tropes in Chicano poetry
include Indianness, hybridity, borders, binaries (or difrasismo), and, most specifically,
language. Linguistic features, he claims, demonstrate to varying degrees "interlingualism"
by using English, Spanish, calo (Chicano slang), Nahuatl, or any mixture o f the four. This
linguistic technique allows poetry to work through in language what the border works'
through with culture and the nation. In addition, it is what "mestizaje does racially with
the body" (10). Arteaga describes Chicano poetry as doing the following:
elements o f difference interact in play and in competition within
the parameters o f chicanismo. This is as much as to say that the
poetics o f chicanismo are such that they locate the work o f the
poem in the working out o f the individual, that an interlingual
poem about border crossing or about Quetzalcoatl is a poem
about hybridity, and that hybridity is the mode o f both Chicano
poem and Chicano subject" (10).
In many Chicano poems, then, English, Spanish, and hybridity along with occasional calo
and Nahuatl, work together to create Chicano cultural identity and actualize the discourse
o f the border. Rosales notes, "Cultural renewal and the search for identity became pivotal
parts o f the overall 1960s ambience" (xvii). This definition o f Chicano aesthetics hovers
around nationalism and language but resists any attempts to pin it down to a single
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definition. Romano-V and Rios C., however, do outline seven points which, in their
opinion, characterize Chicano literature and establish the general world view and tenets o f
what they consider Chicano literature. The most important points for this project are the
second and seventh points, parts o f which are presented here first in Spanish and second in
English (this is also the order o f expression in the book when translations are offered):1 1
2. Presentamos obras creadas por la imagination critica de
escritores chicanos que han sabido, con meras palabras, dar
expresion a una conteplacion de su estado animico. Siendo asi,
las obras reflejaran no solamente inspiration poetiea, sino que
tambien reflejaran un dominio de la tecnica literaria. La expresion
artistica se revela mediante dos sistemas linguisticos, a veces
empleados separadamente y a veces mezclados cuando asi lo
exige la sensibilidad del escritor. En todos los casos se presentan
las selecciones en su forma lingiiistica original. Se facilitan
traduciones de un numero de ellas.
Ya que las obras literarias reflejan lo que la sociedad tenga
de reflejo, a veces se revelevan dolorosas llagas y se presenta una
critica fuerte. Pero aqui veremos que por mas fuerte que sea la
critica se evitan los sermoneeos y los martillazos que adormecen
la sensibilidad. Aun mas, no es esta una literatura que solamente
reacciona ante la cosiedad anglo-norteamericana, sino que es una
literatura que va recreando sus leyendas, sus mitos, sondeando las
zonas mas intimas de la subconciencia colectiva, y en fin, que va
defninendose, dandose forma y contenido, creando en vez de
reaccionando. Claro esta que se nutre de sus raices
precolombinas e hispanas asi como de otras fuentes occidentales,
pero insiste en su propio derecho de ser. (x)
7. La literatura ya existente en el suelo ancestral de los
chicanos desde el siglo pasado y la cretiente voz de autores
chicanos acoplada a la fuerte demanda de parte del pueblo
“ Though this quote is long, and made longer by adding the English translation
immediately after the Spanish version, I feel it is important to include both in the text
rather than relegate one to a footnote or appendix. I am uncomfortable with the idea o f
glossing over the dual-language identity expressed in Chicano literature and criticism by
separating the languages in an examination o f Chicano identity issues.
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chicano por obras chicanas que reflejen experiencias chicanas
desde un punto de vista chicano, hacen imprescindible esta
presentation de literatura chicana autoctona, joven pero con
derecho de ser.
^Que no hay excritores chicanos? ^Que no hay obras
chicanas? Mentiras. Estos excritores y sus obras lo desmienten.
(xi)
2. We are presenting here works created by the critical
imagination o f Chicano writers who have been able to express
their psychological states in linguistic form. This being the case,
the works not only reflect poetic inspiration, but also they reflect a
mastery o f literary technique. Artistic expression is here revealed
by means o f two linguistic systems employed separately at times
and at times combining the two systems when the sensibility o f the
author demands it. We have presented the selections in their
original linguistic forms in all cases. Translations o f a number o f
selections have been provided.
Since literary works provide the reflection o f a society,
painful sores must at times be revealed and a strong criticism may
be forthcoming. But in the works presented here we will see that
however strong the criticism may be, both sermonizing and the
hammer-blows that dull one’s sensibilities are avoided. Similarly,
contained in this volume is not a literature that merely reacts to
Anglo-American society, but rather a literature that is recreating is
own legends, its myths. It is a literature that in defining itself,
giving itself form and content, creating rather than reacting. It is
obvious that it draws from its pre-Columbian and Hispanic roots,
as well as from other Western sources. But, above all, it insists on
its own right to exist, (xiii)
7. The literature already in existence in the ancestral home o f
the Chicanos, as well as the ever increasing voices o f Chicano
authors, coupled with a strong demand by the Chicano community
for works by Chicano authors which reflect Chicano experiences
from a Chicano perspective, make the presentation o f this
anthology o f authochtonous Chicano literature imperative. This
literature may be young in terms o f history, but it has the full right
to exist.
Some may say that there are no Chicano writers. Others
will say that there are no Chicano works. These are lies. The
following writers readily dispel these allegations, (xiv)
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For this project, the most salient points o f these passages include the editors’ assertions
that linguistic versatility characterizes Chicano literature, that Chicano literature is defined
as works "by Chicano authors which reflect Chicano experiences from a Chicano
perspective," that Chicano poetry is artistic and not nationalistic propaganda, that it is
creative and historically based, and, finally, that Chicano literature asserts its right to exist
autonomously as Chicano literature.1 2 As these tenets point out, many Chicano writers
believe and write from the belief that Chicano literature in some way reflects Chicano
identity. In addition, the editors acknowledge that this reflection is also, simultaneously, a
creation o f Chicano identity, drawing on the past and on the present in this project.
Central to the project is the issue o f language, particularly the implement o f a dual
language system which is part o f the reflection o f identity. The urge and need for
indigenous Chicano literature played a role in its creation, but in turn the literature has
worked to create Chicano identity.
A significant characteristic o f Chicano literature, hinted at by these editors ("a
strong demand by the Chicano community for works by Chicano authors which reflected
Chicano experiences from a Chicano perspective, make the presentation o f this anthology
o f authochtonous Chicano literature imperative"), is the grassroots or arte del pueblo base
o f much Chicano literature, a base which directly and intimately connected the artistic
movement to the political movement o f the 60s and 70s. Ivan Karp and Stevan D. Lavine
1 2 The implications o f these characteristics for translation will be addressed in
Chapter Four.
121
note, "La Causa, the farmworker’s struggle, was a grass-roots uprising that provided the
infinitely complex human essence necessary for creating a true people’s art. . . .The
pervasive aesthetic norm [was] rasquachismo, a bawdy, irreverent, satiric, and ironic
world view" (134-135).
Poetic Language. Cultural Identity, and Poetic Traditions: D eaf Empowerment
The developing Deaf aesthetic, like both the black and Chicano aesthetics, finds its
roots in oppression. For centuries,1 3 lasting until the 1960-70s, American Sign Language
was not considered a true language; instead, it was considered to be manual pantomime
which relied heavily and exclusively on English and other spoken and written languages.
Like the Chicanos who participated in the civil rights movements o f the 1960s, the Deaf
fought for a certain degree o f separation-specifically in education. The advances made by
the Civil Rights movements in education, particularly desegregation, were extended to
include everyone. For the Deaf, this meant the dismantling o f the very institutions which
allowed their language and culture to both flourish and to be passed down from generation
to generation; additionally, it meant that English was the only language used in the
1 3 Sign language began with the first contact o f deaf people with each other;
while their languages were the object o f a few studies over the millennia, scholars never
asserted (at least publically) that their languages were natural languages with the same
values associated with natural spoken languages. However, the deaf were encouraged
to learn and communicate in their own languages until the early 20t h century when
Alexander Graham Bell decided that ASL was derogatory to humanity-that it was an
aping o f English. Because o f his political clout, educators were swayed by his
argument and ASL disappeared from the classrooms o f the Deaf until the 1980s, when
it slowly began re-emerging, due largely to the deaf empowerment movement o f the
70s.
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classrooms, a language which can only be learned to a small degree by the Deaf. English
as a written language is taught to and can be learned by deaf children and adults, but
English as a spoken language, while taught, cannot be learned. The myth o f lipreading
continues to haunt U.S. citizens and residents who are deaf. Only 10% o f the language
can be accurately lip read, and this leaves students who must rely on lipreading at a severe
disadvantage. As noted in chapter one, American Sign Language is a distinct language
with its own grammar and syntax. A large number o f studies and arguments have been
made, particularly in recent years, to finally prove ASL is a language.
As noted in chapter one, the impact o f ASL on linguistic studies revolutionized
how we define and discuss language, both everyday language and poetic language. In
1960, William C. Stokoe, a professor at Gallaudet University (then Gallaudet College)
published a controversial study entitled Sign Language Structure: An Outline o f the
Visual Communication System o f the D eaf Attitudes towards and treatment o f the Deaf
prior to very recent years were determined by the prevailing theories o f deafness at that
time which defined the Deaf in pathological terms rather than in cultural terms. As a
result, learning the language o f the D eaf was not only seen as unimportant, it was strongly
discouraged since the belief was that the Deaf needed to learn to speak English (or the
spoken language o f whatever country a deaf person lived in) in order to live a happy and
productive life. These theories assumed that the signing communication o f the deaf was a
pantomime o f English and not an independent communication system; the idea that signing
constitutes a language was an impossibility. Educators who worked with the deaf seldom
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learned to sign, and when they did, they often learned sign concurrent with their positions
teaching the deaf. While still a student o f sign language, Stokoe discovered that the signs
his students used differed from the signs his hearing teachers taught; his book presented
the bold claim that far from pantomime, the signs his students used among themselves
constituted not only a language but also a natural language. This claim challenged the
very foundation o f Deaf pedagogy and, if proved, would require all teachers o f the Deaf to
learn and become fluent in the language o f their students. Though his work inspired a
dramatic increase in sign language scholarship, the administrators at Gallaudet College
revoked his chair and threatened his job for its then audacious supposition. Despite the
tension in the academic world, Stokoe followed his study by co-authoring the first ASL
dictionary based on linguistic principles.
In 1970, a section at the Salk Institute in San Diego, directed primarily by Ursula
Bellugi, a cognitive psychologist, and Edward Klima, a linguist, was formed to fully
investigate the claims and possibilities o f Stokoe’s work. Their findings legitimized
Stokoe’s claim: ASL is a natural language. Douglas C. Baynton, explains,
Linguists today speak o f sign languages in the plural— American
Sign Language, British Sign Language, Danish Sign Language,
and so on— which, like spoken languages, are specific to their
respective linguistic communities and are mutually unintelligible.
They describe them as ‘natural languages,’ meaning that they
evolved within these specific communities and are creatures o f
culture and history, as opposed to such artificial languages as
Esperanto, signed English systems, or computer languages. (108)
With the admission o f ASL as a natural language, linguists had to incorporate a l anguage
based on the modulation o f space into their definition o f language which was then based
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on the modulation o f sound; for several years, the solution was to use different vocabulary
for signed languages: for example, instead o f phonemes, signed languages were composed
o f cheremes. Stokoe, not wanting to infringe too much in the field o f linguistics with his
book, called the smallest parts o f signed languages cheremes, a word close to phonemes
but without the traditional aural implications. This differentiation also allowed linguists to
still keep ASL at bay— they were able to consider ASL as more than pantomime but not
give it the full status o f language. However, further research, again spear-headed by
Klima and Bellugi, suggested that spoken and signed languages were not radically
different; currently phonemes refer to the smallest parts o f signed languages as well as the
smallest parts o f spoken languages, and language is no longer characterized nor defined by
the modulation o f sound, at all.
Since then, more and more literature o f U.S. deaf authors has been published,
both in print and in video format. With the publication o f Klima and Bellugi’s study came
the final acknowledgment that ASL is a language. D eaf students and teachers began to
imagine the possibilities o f art written and performed in ASL as opposed to English. Two
types o f ASL poetry, or deaf poetry, exist: written and signed. The two differ
significantly. The written poetry more or less follows poetic forms established by
traditions o f English language poetry, suggesting a mastery o f language meant to be
heard.1 4 Jill Jepson, in the introduction to No Walls o f Stone: An Anthology o f Literature
1 4 It is extremely important to note that D eaf poetry written in English is not a
transcription o f ASL; ASL cannot be transcribed, and no written version o f it has ever
been successfully created. The poetry written in English is Deaf in its use o f English-in
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by D eaf and Hard o f Hearing Writers, opens one way o f discussing what translation
between English and ASL is and why it is necessary when the languages in many ways
share a vocabulary. She says, "Their works are translated here, by the poets themselves,
into English. Coming from a visual/gestural language, their works are strikingly different
from most English poetry. To readers accustomed to the sound o f poetry composed in
English or other spoken languages, these poems sound unique, even strange, and their
beauty is in some cases revealed visually by the spacing on the page, an analog to the
performance o f signed poetry" (12).
While Jepson and other scholars like her assert the equality o f deaf poetry to
English poetry, many still question the quality o f poetry written by an individual who has
no way o f hearing scansion or rhymes. In a recent dissertation on ASL poetry, Alec
Ormsby contributes an articulate history o f the interaction between English poetry and the
deaf, an analysis o f deaf poets who write English poems, and an analysis o f ASL poetry.
While his project furthers the discussion o f ASL poetry, he asserts a disturbing
interpretation o f written ASL poetry. He claims that despite the amazing achievements o f
poets like Clayton Valli and Ella Mae Lentz, the two most significant D eaf poets o f the
D eaf Empowerment Movement who continue to create and publish performed ASL
poetry, written ASL poetry lags behind in perfection o f language (language meaning, I
assume, the English language). The assumptions behind such judgements o f literary value
the noticeably ASL construction o f sentences and ideas-and in its presentation o f Deaf
identity; it is not D eaf poetry in the same way that poetry composed in ASL is, though
they both have a place in Deaf culture.
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suggest three things. First, this judgement assumes that "perfect language" exists, even if
just as a goal. Second, it assumes that Standard American English is the language ASL
poets are most interested in, suggesting that revision o f Standard American English similar
to the revisions made by dialects is not a possible language-use tactic for ASL poets.
Finally, it assumes that Western culture values a written literary development based on
chronology or longevity; what is valued then is a long literary history with specific
chronological developments which a culture with little written literature can only hope to
match sometime in the future.
Signed, or performed, poetry makes use o f poetics and figurative language in ways
that are both different from and similar to the poetics and figurative language o f written
poetry. ASL poetry uses space and visual patterns rather than scansion to create rhyme
and meter. A deaf poet might use repeated hand shapes (different words which use the
same basic hand shape, such as "family" and "important"), repeat sign movements, or
integrate head movements with individual signs to create ASL rhyme. The specific
patterns and rhythms emphasized in signed/performed ASL poetry include palm
orientation, sides (left or right), how the signing space is utilized, one hand signs versus
two hand signs, alternating between hands signing, the pace o f signing (which changes
depending on the tone), and movement, letter patterns, and number patterns. These
patterns come from a long tradition o f signed literature called handshape stories.1 5 Poets
1 5 Handshape stories are a common and frequently used form o f communication
and entertainment among the Deaf. In a handshape stoiy, the signs must be selected
according to specific rules. These stories come in three types: ABC stories, which are
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adapt the rules governing this literature to fit the demands o f poetry. For example, a poem
entitled "Flash," by Clayton Valli, creates a brief, elliptic narrative through handshapes that
spell the word "flash" forwards and backwards in this pattern: h, s, a, 1 , f, f, 1 , a, s, h, h, s,
a, 1 , f. The signs created by these handshapes never refer to the English letters; instead, it
uses a pattern from English with signs from ASL.
Tone is created with body movement ("body language"), facial expressions, and
with the use o f space (for example, making the signs large or small creates different
tones). ASL poetry also uses traditional ASL storytelling techniques in much the same
way that many English poems create narratives (for example, Robert Browning’s dramatic
monologues rely on the audience’s familiarity with imagined dialogue). Until recently
(within the last five years), the sign for ASL poetry and English poetry were the same;
now, a new sign exists (without an equivalent English word, though the closest word is
"expression"), to more accurately emphasize the differences and the strengths o f ASL
poetry; this move separates ASL poetry and its aesthetic from English poetry in ways that
help to form solidarity and communal identity among the Deaf. This use o f ASL, a poetic
use, differs from everyday ASL use in its rhythm, sign combinations, and patterns. In
told by using the handshapes o f the alphabet, in order, to tell a story unrelated to the
alphabet. This kind o f story uses an English language pattern (the alphabet) and ASL
signs. The second kind o f handshape story is the number story. Instead o f using the
alphabet as the pattern for the handshape choices, the storyteller uses numbers in
numerical order to create a narrative in ASL. Again, the pattern is English and the
meaning is ASL. The final kind o f handshape story involves telling an entire story with
one handshape. These stories allow the storyteller to display mastery o f language,
versatility and inventiveness.
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other words, it differs from everyday ASL in the same way that poetic English differs from
everyday English.
Despite these radical reforms, we as literary academics, critics, professors and
poets have not changed our ways o f talking about poetry or translation now that we think
o f language differently. The insights into poetry, language, and performance that reading
and translating to and from ASL poetry could offer have been overlooked, primarily by
those who are unaware o f its existence, to the detriment o f colonial, cultural, and literary
studies. For example, a recently published book, Close Listening: Poetry and the
Performed Word, edited by Charles Bernstein and published in 1998, emphasizes the link
between poetry and performance; it does not, however, consider at all ASL poetry, a
poetry which can only be performed unless translated, a poetry in which the inscription is
in the performance. A more immediate example for this project is the paucity o f research
into and writing about translation to and from ASL. Further, the limited literature about
I
translating to and from ASL that does exist assumes that the language is just signed
English; it is not. In fact, signing exact English (called SEE Sign) is totally and
completely different from ASL; SEE Sign is an artificial language while ASL is a natural
langauge. The conflation o f the two languages by scholars blinds the reader/viewer to the
depth and beauty o f literature composed in ASL. Another myth preventing the thorough
study o f ASL literature is the assumption that ASL is always already poetic, that there is
little distinction between everyday ASL and poetic ASL. Like the other myths, this is not
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true. ASL literature relies on multivalence, creates and uses figurative language, and
employs rhythm in different ways than does everyday ASL.
The Black Arts Movement, the Chicano Movement, and the Deaf Empowerment
Movement all employed poetic language, particularly poetry, to help articulate and
construct cultural identities which could help attain the political as well as cultural goals o f
each group. Without this articulation and construction o f unique cultural identities, the
voices o f members o f each group would have remained oppressed and possibly silent.
However, the results o f the movements and the inherent difficulties o f such movements are
not without problems. If we accept the notion that part o f poetiy’s project or its end is
the creation o f identity, and if, further, we accept the construction o f identity as a
cultural/political act, w e can begin to talk about poetry as "cultural engagement." Bhabha
takes this a step further, into the realm o f performance: "Terms o f cultural engagement,
whether antagonistic or affiliative, are produced performatively. . . . The social articulation
o f difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks
to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments o f historical transformation" (2).
This social articulation o f difference encounters certain problems when combined with
movements o f cultural solidarity.
Challenges to Poetry. Poetic Traditions, and the Construction o f Cultural Identity
The problems with aesthetics based on solidarity are at least five. First, a group-
specific aesthetic leads to fixed "identities" which can not only limit creativity but also do
limit those included within the group. Current critical writing is beginning to
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acknowledge class issues involved, but none so far really address the issues o f people
within the "bloodline" who have no access to the literature written by people defining
them. In an article about the poetry o f Gwendolyn Brooks, Clark observes that the Black
Aesthetic affected the success o f her poetry because o f the way it affected audience.
Making the aesthetic accept only functional art not only limited the kinds o f writing
acceptable by the group but it also limits the group for whom it is functional to only those
who already believe the agenda o f black nationalism as interpreted by the black aesthetic.
Clark says, "The aesthetic success o f Gwendolyn Brooks’s later poetry, and her sense o f
its failure, reflects the historical literary dilemma o f cognitively and emotively appreciated
the truth and beauty o f a black experience and art per se. To create art reductively, only
for one group, limits the art; to create art without letting it organically or ontologically
exist limits the number o f persons who have the faculties with which to appreciate it" (96).
Clark’s critique o f the Black Arts Movement can easily apply to each o f the three groups
in the project. Each has a history o f violent and psychic oppression. As noted in Chapter
One, African Americans endured the Middle Passage and slavery. Chicanos endured
numerous wars and violent suppression, particularly during the westward expansion o f the
U.S. The D eaf endured painful medical experiments and the disappearance o f their
language. The move to create a unified front to stave off further oppression and to alter
social systems which serve the dominant culture’s hegemonic hierarchy is necessary.
However, out o f these moves came another kind o f hierarchy, one which excluded
members o f each group. Both African Americans and Chicanos unconsciously excluded
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their deaf members. Jepson asserts, "Historically, deaf people have been one o f the most
disenfranchised groups. The history o f deaf people is one o f stigma, marginalization, and
domination by the hearing world" (2). Because o f this exclusion, the deaf are created as
the Other’s Other, a reenactment o f the dominant exclusionary system which seeks to
colonize rather than a revision o f that system which would write out the colonizing
impulse. The Deaf have also incorporated exclusionary practices in their movement. Only
those members who have inherited ASL and who share common beliefs are included in the
community. This creates the deaf (as opposed to the Deaf) as the Other’s Other’s Other,
thrice removed from any social or political center.
Second, these aesthetics fail to permanently undermine the Other(ed) ideological
foundation o f U.S. society. If, as proponents o f group-specific aesthetics argue, the need
for a distinct aesthetic based on culture and language arises in part out o f the imperialist
impulses o f the dominating or colonizing culture, creating an aesthetic which itself
dominates and colonizes essentially imitates the structure o f the dominant ideology. Thus,
the art merely proposes to be distinct without actually being distinct. Gayatri Spivak notes
that "Neocolonialism is fabricating its allies by proposing a share o f the center in a
seemingly new way (not a rupture but a displacement): disciplinary support for the
conviction o f authentic marginality by the (aspiring) elite" (58). Group-specific aesthetics
appears vulnerable to this critique. Not only space in the canon but also space in the
canon based specifically on identity entices followers to create and adhere to aesthetics
steeped in the "authentic" group attributes.
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Spivak notes, "When a culture identity is thrust upon one because the center wants
an identifiable margin, claims for marginality assure validation from the center" (55).
Bruce-Novoa agrees. He argues that recreating the original system by merely redefining
the center causes its own problems. He says, "Members continually have to check their
behavior against the central paradigm; similarity is conceived o f as proximity to the axis
mundi and distance from the enemy. Those who inhabit the periphery o f the circle,
nearest the enemy, as well as those who straddle the border and openly incarnate the
assimilation process-biologically or culturally-are always suspected o f treason" (229).
The validation o f literary and artistic works thus comes only when the marginalized culture
acts, or writes, as expected, and the result has been that writers who do not conform to
the rules which allow for validation and recognition find rejection from the supposedly
liberating aesthetic and audience. For example, one o f the problems African American
poets face in light o f the aesthetics o f the Black Arts Movement still in place is expressed
by Aldon Lynn Nielsen in Black Chant: Language o f African-American Postmodernism:
"If Major is right when he says that to be a black poet is to be unpopular, then poets
whose works interrogate what literary society conceives to be blackness, what languages
and what forms are critically associated with constructions o f cultural blackness, might
expect that their works may meet with something less than immediate approbation" (168-
169). In this instance, and in others like it, authors who would otherwise be free to
choose the cultural identity and be protected by the nation (the African-American nation,
the Chicano nation, or the deaf nation) are marginalized by that nation because they create
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their identity in ways different from the created center o f the nation. These authors, then,
are not liberated in any way by the aesthetic.
Perez-Torres presents a definition o f minority literature which focuses on the
artistic representation o f specific groups o f people considered in some way or another
minorities. His description and argument center around the meaning o f "minor" in
minority literature. He says, re-capping the results o f other studies into minority literature,
"Their analysis o f . . . ‘minor’ literature highlights three main features: 1) a minor
literature employs a language suitable for ‘strange and minor uses’ because o f its high
coefficient o f deterritorialization; 2) this literature has an immediate social and political
function; and 3) it fosters collective rather than individual utterances" (216). The
validation from the center o f the margin risks merely validating the literature as minor (as
opposed to significant) and reducing the possibilities o f creating individual identity
alongside communal identity.
Third, group-specific aesthetics often close down rather than open up a space in
which poets, artists, and individuals can articulate difference or identity. For example,
language in the Black Arts Movement (also called the Black Aesthetic) serves as a main
identifying factor. It calls for "a poetic diction rooted in black speech and black music"
(Nielsen 9), a movement o f linguistic "realism." Nielsen argues that "Current commitment
to a critical preference for linguistic ‘realism’ in the study o f black writing . . . assume
facts not in evidence, assume that the contours o f black orality are already fully known and
understood. Too much current theorizing about black poetics secures its success with a
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critical readership by eliminating from consideration those poetic practices that might
disrupt totalizing theories o f what constitutes black vernacular" (9-10). The theory o f
"what constitutes black vernacular" arose out o f a need to create an African American
nation within in the United States, to bring together as a valid community, all African
Americans, and literary leaders turned to a specific vernacular and music to accomplish
this goal. Similar motives accompanied the creation o f Chicano and Deaf aesthetics.
Parallels can be drawn between the languages and language-use o f the three
groups in this study and the effect that the lexographic revolution had in eighteenth-
century Europe. Anderson says, "The lexographic revolution in Europe, however, created,
and gradually spread, the conviction that languages (in Europe at least) were, so to speak,
the personal property o f quite specific groups— their daily speakers and readers— and
moreover that these groups, imagined as communities, were entitled to their autonomous
place in a fraternity o f equals" (84). African American authors who write in the prescribed
vernacular assure both themselves and their audience that they exist in homogenous,
empty time with millions o f others like them. Not only does this bring a community
together, it protects the community. Although the preservation o f the nation originated
as a way for those already in control to retain control, nationalism serves to protect "sub"-
nationalisms in much the same way. " ‘Official nationalism’ was from the start a conscious,
self-protective policy, intimately linked to the preservation o f imperial-dynastic interests"
(159). While a group o f people in a minority position do not generally create policies
(since this privilege is reserved for those in power to create and enforce), a movement
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does have the power to create and enforce policies for its own people. In other words,
though minorities do not create policies on a macro level because they are not given
political/macro power, they can still reenact the hierarchical policies and programs and
create policies on a micro level.
It is the creation and choice o f these policies which are problematic because in
addition to bringing together an imagined community and allowing for the power that
comes with that, this movement’s policies which determine the boundaries o f
language/vernacular lock out African Americans or Chicanos whose identity and language
differ from the print-language vernacular. The assumption allowed to dominate in these
movements has been that one and only one African American or Chicano identity exists or
has power to speak for all. And while the assumption may have been made originally as a
place to start, as a way o f creating the community and a place and voice for marginalized
peoples, the assumption imitates other exclusionary policies. The effects o f these
assumptions and imaginings could be thought to exist only in the literature or intellectual
realms; however, they actually create reality. Anderson explains the situation in Asia
which has parallel to this discussion:
Guided by its imagined map [read identity] it organized the new
educational, juridical, public-health, police, and immigration
bureaucracies it was building on the principle o f ethno-racial
hierarchies [read single identities] which were, however, always
understood in terms o f parallel series. The flow o f subject
populations through the mesh o f differential schools, courts,
clinics, police stations, and immigration offices created ‘traffic-
habits’ which in time gave real social life to the state’s [read
movement’s] earlier fantasies. (169)
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The political choice to create a particular aesthetic carries with it both positive and
negative consequences. The positive results seem to outweigh the negative, but by
adopting the pattern o f a central power language in order to create a community rather
than creating an aesthetic and community which allows for a variety o f identities within the
community/nation presents problems.
For example, Harryette Mullen writes:
if your complexion is a mess
our elixir spells skin success
you’ll have appeal bewitch be adored
hechizando con crema dermoblanqueadora
what we sell is enlightenment
nothing less than beauty itself
since when can be seen in the dark
what shines hidden in dirt
double dutch darky
take kisses back to Africa
they dipped you in a vat
at the wacky chocolate factory
color w e’ve got in spades
melanin gives perpetual shade
though rhythm’s no answer to cancer
pancakes pale and butter can get rancid (34)
By calling attention to the superficiality o f making skin the measure o f worth, and by
emphasizing a form o f vision which does not actually see ("since when can be seen in the
dark / what shines hidden in dirt"), Mullen confronts notions o f difference and issues o f
invisibility in relation to identity. The challenge to identity occurs on several levels—
linguistic, imagistic, metaphoric, and grammatic. The beginning o f this page in Muse &
Drudge suggests that to have physical characteristics common to African Americans,
specifically, to have dark skin, necessarily includes a skin "problem"; the ironic solution
offered by the poem’s persona is a magic "elixir," a dermatological product which
promises to magically bleach the skin white. Since the problem (historically, dark skin
causes deficiencies in character and intellect) is considered or "seen" to stem from the dark
skin itself, muses the persona, the solution is equally superficial: a potion which alters the
color o f the skin thus literally erasing the "problem."
Additionally, the potion leaves the dark skinned "you" in the poem not only white,
but also endowed with magical powers. The magic o f the elixir transfers to the user,
enabling that person to affect rather than to be affected (as the form position o f dark
object entailed) by bewitching the gazer. The bewitching involves enunciation: the origin
o f to adore is orare, to speak or to pray. The partaker o f this elixir is thus assured
adoration (including, it suggests, verbal) by those who look at her. Fittingly, part o f the
bewitching occurring in this first stanza occurs linguistically; English is mixed with
Spanish. The mixture o f languages is a form o f magic because language calls things or
people into being by first recognizing them and second naming them.1 6 Importantly,
Mullen did not create this mixture. Instead, U.S. marketing called this particular notion
into being. Mullen plays on the power consumer culture has to challenge notions o f self
1 6 Kenneth Burke notes, "because he failed to take the ‘concreteness and . . .
facts’ o f the unknown islands as the ground o f his deliberations, Columbus could not
realize his discovery. Then, as the story goes, Amerigo Vespucci achieved the power
to project his own name upon two continents simply by recognizing their existence"
(Philosophy o f Literary Form 2).
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and culture; the term has been used to convince those with darker skin to try certain
products which supposedly lighten the skin. Consumer culture, in this way, creates ways
for people to make money off o f the insecurities o f certain people created by cultural
dominance.
However, Mullen’s use o f language still merits note. The languages are mixed in
several ways. First, the first three lines o f the stanza are in English and the last line is in
Spanish. Second, the last word o f the stanza is a word which mixes the English "dermo"
with the Spanish " blanque" to which is added "adora," itself a mystery: it can be either
the suffix "-adorn" or a form o f the verb " a d o r a r to adore. With the creation o f this
word "dermoblanqueadora," white skin to be adored, the persona, the former dark skinned
object, takes over the ownership o f the concept. Another significance o f this, in Bhabhian
terms, is the doubling that occurs. The mirrored image o f the English "you’ll have appeal
bewitch be adored" in the Spanish "hechizando con crema dermoblanqueadora" allows for
a splitting "so that both positions [statements which suggest identity tied to language] are
partial; neither is sufficient unto itself' (Bhabha 50). This splitting o f the linguistic image
allows for another split which occurs in the definition o f what an African American is and
says and what a Chicano (or someone o f a different Hispanic descent) is and says; by
mixing Spanish and English rather than English and Black English, Mullen challenges
stereotypes o f African American poets and identity. Instead o f writing in the proscribed
Black English, Mullen, a middle-class African American, writes in a mixture o f Spanish,
English, and American Spanish. By crossing language boundaries, this poem crosses
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cultural boundaries and asserts the possibilities o f multivalent identity within African
American as well as within American culture.
The second stanza challenges notions o f enlightenment, mocking the idea that to
be white is to be enlightened while to be anything but white, by extension, is to need
enlightenment, a significant justification used in colonialist projects: "what w e sell is
enlightenment / nothing less than beauty itself’ (34). What is being sold is understanding,
but it is an understanding o f beauty that is paradoxical: the consumer culture o f beauty has
always sold the same thing, even if in different "clothing": that which will make you
beautiful is something that has the power to make you different. The understanding it sells
you, then, is that what you are is not beautiful; you always need something to make you
different than you are if you are to be beautiful. Additionally, the doubling o f
Enlightenment and enlightenment suggests a split between the two concepts. The
Enlightenment philosophy o f the self posits the creative power o f human beings. Burke
explains, "Countering the inequalities o f societal origin, it deeded each man with a natal
estate in nature and pictured him then entering into political relations voluntarily and
freely" (Philosophy o f Literary Form 3). The result o f such a vision o f the self is freeing
because the trappings o f feudal life disappear: "This ontological separation and
abstraction liberated the individual from a net o f social and political interdependencies and,
by rendering him inherently whole and self-sufficient, empowered him to act upon the
world on his own (and on his own behalf). N o longer defined primarily by family or class,
a man molded himself, then the world in his image" (3-4). The Enlightened were limited,
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however, to Europeans, and their ’ ’ mission" became to spread Enlightenment without ever
intending to share its benefits~to bring "light" to the dark corners o f the earth and to shine
from above. Mullen juxtaposes the assumptions o f the Enlightenment and their enactment
with their association with skin color, with physicality rather than with the "soul,"
suggesting an element o f the ridiculous in placing such importance and significance on the
surface.
Thus, it is between Enlightenment and enlightenment, in the space provided by the
splitting, that the notion o f identity can be renegotiated but never fixed. The reference to
physicality as a marker o f identity and status in both stanzas is made further nonsensical in
the third stanza: "double dutch darky I... I they dipped you in a vat / at the wacky
chocolate factory" (34). The physical appearance is given the same significance as the
candy coating o f candy in a factory— itself an image which doubles. Whose factory and
what is actually being produced? asks the reader. The final stanza on this page again
challenges the notion o f Enlightenment politics by claiming that "pancakes pale and butter
can get rancid" (34); in this case, it is those who are Enlightened who are identified with
disease (cancer) and with food, food which goes bad. The Aunt Jemima image turns back
on the consumerism that created it and becomes, instead o f black, white. The foundations
o f colonialist culture, then, are challenged, leaving a space for a renegotiation o f culture
and identity. However, movements such as the Black Arts Movement which insist on a
specific way o f being Black, especially specific ways o f speaking Black, have not created
room for a poem such as Mullen’s; writing against the Black Arts Movement’s notions o f
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Blackness creates a site o f free articulation for Mullen, a difference which, because o f
publishing and review power, can be silenced.
A fourth problem is the issue o f "purity," or authenticity. Group-specific aesthetics
as well as the more standard literary aesthetics seek a type o f literary purity— an attempt to
generate literature which purely represents that which is valued by the community and to
keep out anything which by its form or by its content questions or challenges the values of
the aesthetic. In addition, this purity implies a "pure" culture and history, which, as
Bhabha reminds us, "elides the always-already present marginal positions" (294) even
within a minority group. For both African Americans and Chicanos, an originary point of
purity concerns ancestries. African Americans trace their ancestries back to Africa and
rarely include the ancestries o f Europeans who may have (most likely did) mix (originally,
almost all o f the time, this mixing resulted from rape— violent subjection o f African women
to the physical appetites o f white or European men) with the African ancestries before,
during, and after slavery. This stance is particularly important in the Black Arts
Movement. Similarly, "Spanish-speaking mestizo Mexicans [and Chicanos] trace their
ancestries, not to Castilian conquistadors, but to half-obliterated Aztecs, Mayans, Toltecs
and Zapotecs" (Anderson 154). As with the violent mixing o f African and European
blood, the mestizaje o f Chicanos originated almost always in the violent subjugation o f
Indian women to the physical appetites o f European men. The purity, therefore, is not
biologically the same as "pure-blooded" claims; rather, it is purity in the sense that the
ancestries trace back to a pure ancestral past before the violent intervention o f Europeans.
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Two important questions in relation to the idea or ideology o f purity and how it
functions within an aesthetic are first, how tenable is this purity? and, second, how
desirable is this purity? Finally, it raises the question o f authentic poetic diction. Nielsen
reveals the carefully orchestrated "authenticity" o f art in the Black Arts movement:
even at the height o f the Black Arts movement’s calls for
poetic diction rooted in black speech and black music, the
typographic representations o f that speech were formulated in
accordance with poetic practices already worked out by poets
such as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Jayne Cortez, Sonia Sanchez,
and David Henderson, black poets whose confrontations with
modernist poetics on the ground o f language established the
formal practices followed by subsequent African-American writers
intent upon locating a black aesthetic in traditions o f black oraJity
and musical improvisation. (9)
Thus, the black orality and improvisation presented by these and artists with similar
aesthetics and goals are imagined and deliberately constructed versions o f black orality
and musical improvisation to achieve a specific flavor and goal; they are not
representative. This imagining and its repercussions need to be acknowledged and
examined. Edward W. Said explains ( < Culture and Imperialism), "In the United States this
concern over cultural identity has o f course yielded up the contest over what books and
authorities consitute ‘our’ tradition. In the main, trying to say that this or that book is (or
is not) part o f ‘our’ tradition is one o f the most debilitating exercises imaginable" (xxv).
Finally, a fifth problem involves the reading strategies these movements can
engender. Nathaniel Mackey argues that emphasizing issues o f accessibility for and o f
writers from "socially marginalized groups" hinders the artistic reception and appreciation
o f their work. He says,
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This has resulted in shallow, simplistic readings that belabor the
most obvious aspects o f the writer’s work and situation, readings
that go something like this. ‘So-and-so is a black writer. Black
people are victims o f racism. So-and-so’s writing speaks out
against racism.’ It has yet to be shown that such simplifications
have had any positive political effect, if, indeed they have had any
political effect at all. . . . the ascription o f only the most obvious
orders o f statement to the work o f black writers, the confinement
of the work to racial readings that tell us only what we already
know, is a symptom o f the social othering such readings
presumably oppose. (18)
Many authors o f color agree with Mackey-writers such as Robert Hayden and Gwendolyn
Brooks. However, many disagree and claim that the investment in cultural identity, the
value o f cultural identity, is too high to dismiss because the reading strategies people
employ continue the oppression. Perhaps, this position suggests, it is education and
academia that need to change and redress their reading and teaching approaches to
incorporate the kinds o f difference cultural movements present and for which they argue.
Whatever the answer to this and the other complaints against movements o f
solidarity, poetry and culture move hand-in-hand. However, the current trend, as Said
notes, is that recent literature from cultural groups resists the notion o f unitary identity as
being central and essential to the movements just discussed. These new works also
address the problems o f those movements. Instead o f creating and insisting on a unitary
notion o f identity, this literature seeks to represent and express the diversity o f identity
both within and between cultures. Though Said is optimistic about the current state o f
literature and publishing o f minority groups, particularly in the United States, and the hold
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the nationalist notions o f a nation’s literature has on both authors and publishers, Said’s
vision o f what must happen remains solid:
Gone are the binary oppositions dear to the nationalist and
imperialist enterprise. Instead we begin to sense that old authority
cannot simply be replaced by new authority, but that new
alignments made across borders, types, nations, and essences are
rapidly coming into view, and it is those new alignments that now
provoke and challenge the fundamentally static notion o f identity
that has been the core o f cultural thought during the era o f
imperialism, (xxiv-xxv).
In order to achieve this understanding o f the multiplicity o f identity in the United States,
Said suggests that we begin to acknowledge "that as an immigrant settler society
superimposed on the ruins o f considerable native presence, American identity is too varied
to be a unitary and homogenous thing; indeed the battle within it is between advocates o f a
unitary identity and those who see the whole as a complex but not reductively unified one"
(xxv). Nationalist notions o f identity can only work within this second notion if these
identities are not themselves founded on notions o f unitary identity within their own
group. Spivak further addresses the problem o f unitary identity. She says,
I have trouble with questions o f identity or voice. I’m much more
interested in questions o f space, because identity and voice are
such powerful concepts metaphors that after a while you begin to
believe that you are what you’re fighting for. In the long run,
especially if your fight is succeeding and there is a leading power-
group, it can become oppressive, especially for women, whose
identity is always up for grabs. Whereas, if you are clearing a
space, from where to create a perspective, it is a self-separating
project, which has the same politics, is against territorial
occupation, but need not bring in questions o f identity, voice,
what am I, all o f which can become very individualistic also.
("Bonding" 278-279)
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Spivak’s metaphor o f space, as opposed to identity and voice, allows for, indeed
encourages, multivalence and diversity, even within a single cultural group. She also
implicitly acknowledges the permeability o f the boundaries between and within cultures.
Inscribed within a goal towards multivalent notions o f identity is, again, the issue
o f access: it opens up possibilities for participants (in this case, readers) and creators
(poets and those who craft poetic language) to come together in the construction o f the
house o f poetry. The construction o f the door, however, remains difficult and
touchy-many still feel the need to guard against the presence and strictures o f Western
Tradition; others feel the need to guard against members o f their own groups; still others
recognize the power o f readers, particularly readers outside o f their larger cultural group
who may not know much o f the background (the scaffolding) o f a given work o f
literature. Part o f this uneducated readership falls outside the language group and/or
country o f the originating culture; in the U.S., a readership outside o f the language group
does not even have to live outside o f the country to be so outside the culture as to need a
specific key to enter the house o f poetry. Thus, one o f the most significant challenges to
identities constructed by poetry, both unitary and multivalent identity, is translation.
Translation as a door to the house o f poetry posits issues o f ethics, boundaries, property
rights, maps/geography, knowledge, and neighbors, among others.
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Chapter III
Tricksters and Bridges: Toward Ethical Metaphors o f and Approaches to Translation
Good translation . . . can be defined as that in which the dialectic o f impenetrability and
ingress, o f intractable alienness and felt "at-homeness" remains unresolved, but
expressive. Out o f the tension o f resistance and affinity, a tension directly proportional
to the proximity o f the two languages and historical communities, grows the elucidative
strangeness o f the great translation.
George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects o f Language and Translation
The blurring o f cultural boundaries obscures the task o f translation. Cultural
interpenetration appears to mean that the act o f translation becomes less difficult. But
is this so? Or does the convergence o f cultures rather not make translation more
difficult as the boundaries between the own and the other seem to fade? Does not
translation rather imply that what is read, assimilated, and therefore remembered,
hovers at the edge o f identity, as something that is neither quite own nor quite other?
Gabriel Motakin, "Memory and Cultural Translation," The Translatability o f Cultures
Chapter one o f this dissertation argued that contemporary African American,
Chicano and D eaf (ASL) poetry and poetic discourse share a colonialized context and
have similar political agendas, including self-definition. Identity is a contested arena,
and self-definition is an important political gesture made by authors in each group.
Finally, I argued that many use poetic language to resist epistemic violence and to
construct national identity. Chapter two discussed the poetry o f these three groups in
light o f colonialism in order to establish the connection between poetry, poetic
tradition, and cultural identity, a connection that is bound to political and social
ideology. The political gestures created by this connection and by the articulation o f
national poetry are transformed by the translation process, and an exploration o f what
happens to constructed identities during this process forms the basis o f this chapter. I
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focus primarily on the role the translator plays in this process and the ethical
implications o f certain kinds o f translation decisions.
Challenges o f and Reasons for Translation
The literature o f colonized peoples presents challenges to readers, critics,
academics, students, and translators, especially when the colonized live within the
boundaries o f and among the population o f the colonizing country/nation and speak a
mixture o f languages. The United States myth o f the melting pot leads many to believe
that American-ness1 is singular: one people, one culture, one language. The differences
in language, when acknowledged, are resented and seen as impositions on "true" U.S.
citizens. By the third generation, most U.S. immigrants have succeeded in fitting in, to
varying degrees, by losing an original language and by adopting English as the first
language, thereby also adopting many o f the cultural norms inscribed in U.S. American
English. However, linguistic heritages are sometimes preserved, sometimes created, by
artists who hope to maintain unique cultural identity in the face o f cultural
homogenization. The tension between the many cultures and languages which
'Using the term "American" is problematic. U.S. citizens often, particularly in the
national political arena, use "American" to mean only the U.S. In doing so, the rest o f
the Americas are elided. Many Chicano critics and authors delineate between the U.S.
and America. However, even this is problematic. Many ethnic groups and cultural
nations in the U.S. have defined themselves with the term, for example, African
Americans and Asian Americans. I am uncomfortable re-naming any group o f people,
but I am equally uncomfortable ignoring the elision o f all o f the Americas by
designating the U.S. as America. Therefore, I attempt to use U.S. whenever possible.
However, occasionally the word "America" will be more appropriate.
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compose the U.S. and what are perceived to be U.S. culture and language blur cultural
boundaries and affect how Americans see translation. Gabriel Motzkin notes,
The blurring o f cultural boundaries obscures the task o f
translation. Cultural interpenetration appears to mean that the act
o f translation becomes less difficult. But is this so? Or does the
convergence o f cultures rather not make translation more difficult
as the boundaries between the own and the other seem to fade?
Does not translation rather imply that what is read, assimilated,
and therefore remembered, hovers at the edge o f identity, as
something that is neither quite own nor quite other?
Motzkin later posits that in order for a people to exist as a people, in our case, for U.S.
citizens to exist as country and not as so many English, Irish, Africans, Asians,
Russians, Jews, French, Native Americans, Mexicans, a new identity has to be
created-one that incorporates the identities and origins o f each culture involved. In the
creation o f this new identity, though, the need for continued translation is
elided-particularly the U.S. when we take into account the troubled and colonial
history o f its land and most o f its people. However, artists from these groups often
create in dialect or language combinations in order to preserve and create cultural
identity which resists homogenization. Depending on the intended audience, these
creations require cultural, if not also linguistic, translation, the agent o f which is the
translator who functions as a mediator much like the door o f poetry. This mediator,
though, exists with options and as part o f ethical systems. Thus, translating
multilingual texts and texts written in dialect into single-language texts challenges the
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translator to choose a method o f translation that participates in an "ethics o f
difference"2 rather than in a hegemonic enterprise.3
An ethical translation mediates two language cultures without domesticating or
colonizing the original to better suit the target culture’s sensibilities. An ethical
translation also acknowledges its participation in identity construction and respects the
self-articulated identity o f the source culture. Often, resisting the domesticating
impulse is easier when the source culture is perceived as absolutely foreign. It becomes
much more difficult when a translator is presented with a text which seems to come
from the same culture as the target culture (the source and the target culture seem to be
the same culture), e.g., a U.S. text to translate for an U.S. audience. Translating in this
situation raises questions about U.S. identity and culture-how different is one person
who lives in the U.S. from another? How much overlap o f identity is present and can
be assumed in any given U.S. text, particularly since the U.S. houses such a large array
o f ethnicities and cultures?4 Ethics in this situation moves from a fairly clear-cut self-
other (domestic-foreign) relationship to a self-other/self-other (domestic-
foreign/domestic-foreign) relationship. African American, Chicano and ASL texts fall
directly into the middle o f this murky ethical dilemma.
2 This phrase comes from Lawrence Venuti’s book title: The Scandals o f Translation:
Toward an Ethics o f Difference.
3 The political ramifications will be more fully discussed in Chapter IV, though this
chapter provides the foundation for that discussion/dialogue.
4 This dilemma is the same dilemma discussed at the beginning o f the chapter, but it has
specific application here.
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I suggest that the literatures o f all U.S. cultures should be ethically translated
for the following reasons. First, accurate knowledge o f other cultures combats racism
and questions oppression which may have previously been assumed to be justified.
Second, ethical translation potentially combats internal colonialism by establishing a
nation community and by preserving the cultural identity inscribed in the original text
rather than allowing the dominant culture to domesticate the text. In addition, many in
the U.S. do not have access to U.S. texts; this creates artificial boundaries and shuts
down dialogue rather than fostering dialogic interactions. In order for translation to
effectively disrupt the traditional victim/victimizer binary, it must operate with ethical
standards. Third, certain kinds o f and presentations o f translation enact this dialogic
interaction. Bruce-Novoa, writing about the poetry o f Rodolfo Gonzales and Sergio
Elizondo, argues that presenting a translation next to the original allows the reader to
enter into dialogue with the text and with the languages and their cultures, a dialogue
which is a microcosm o f the kind o f dialogic that can occur between cultures. He says,
The two that appeared in bilingual formats, with the two versions
juxtaposed verse by verse, produce a dialogue between the
languages. With the two languages side by side, a visual
interaction, a synecdoche for cultural interaction, arises within the
space o f the reading. The text can be read monologically, readers
choosing one o f the other version, or bilingually by reading one
and then the other. But the reality o f the text is interlingual in as
much as the two versions interrelate to create a truly dialogical
structure that accurately reflects the context from which the text
arose and to which it redirects itself. Continually they remind us
that the readers to whom the text directs itself are, if not in fact at
least ideally, products and producers o f a mixture o f Spanish and
English which ultimately is the essence o f the group’s cultural
definition. (236-237)
The reader plays an important role in moving the text from a monologic text to a
heteroglossic text. The translation o f the text facilitates this move and allows the
reader to enter into dialogue not just with the text but also with the context out o f
which the text came. Finally, as I pointed out in the Preface, the boundaries and
borders between the different cultures are permeable. Because people can be (and are)
sometimes both African American and Chicano, or African American and Deaf, or Deaf
and Chicano, or African American, Chicano, and D eaf simultaneously, the borders
between the groups cannot withstand serious scrutiny. Translation already exists
between these groups, and so a discussion o f the ethics o f this already-present situation
is important. Additionally, since literature and poetic language play such a large role in
the construction o f cultural identity and thus in the borders surrounding each culture,
ethically translating the literatures potentially promotes an exploration o f this between
space.
Each o f the three groups in this project face different but difficult translation
issues. Many people in the U.S. do not understand the dialect in which much African
American poetry is written. Even more prominent is the distance between cultures
within the U.S. and the impact this has on the reading and understanding o f African
American poetry. This body o f literature faces more cultural translation issues when
the text is translated for a U.S. audience. However, if the poetry is to be translated for
the Deaf, particularly for the African American D eaf community, then linguistic
translation issues arise: how do you translate dialect into another language? Chicanos
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face equally difficult but different challenges. Much o f Chicano poetry is written in two
or more languages. Many Chicano poets include within their reasons for this choice a
deliberately limited audience, an act o f self-preservation as well as a drive toward
internal unity. Bruce-Novoa notes that this monologic goal towards unity motivated a
number o f Chicano poets in the 1960s and 1970s. However, he argues, the multiple
languages themselves open up the interior to difference and splitting. Translating these
already fractured texts into another language presents the translator with a series o f
ethical questions: should the text be translated into a single language? Should a
translation preserve the original multilingual construction o f the poem? If so, how is
the audience affected? Who is able to accurately translate to and from at least four
different languages? When these ideas are offered to the Deaf as ways o f disseminating
their cultural products, certain problems arise. Using the Deaf and ASL poetry as a
prototype for this discussion, I will spend some time discussing the role o f the
translator and the many options open to translators before returning to a discussion o f
the three cultures which drive this project.
The challenges o f working with texts translated to or from a performed
language, such as ASL, rather than a spoken/written language are manifold, but the
importance o f doing so is equally many. Throughout this chapter, the issues, problems,
and benefits o f translating ASL into English will act as the lens for an exploration o f
translation theories, for a search for ethical translation methods in general, and for
strategies o f translating African American and Chicano poetry in particular. Focusing
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on translating from ASL not only allows academics’ understanding o f language and
translation to continue expanding, but our understanding o f what poetry is, what it
means to be "other" or minority, and how we teach these topics will be under constant
revision both in our scholarship and in our classrooms. For example, the ways we read
and teach African American and Chicano poetry will be radically altered once we begin
rethinking the ways in which the academy, even recently, categorizes and teaches this
literature. Understanding what translation is and does can potentially enhance our
teaching o f what we now deem traditional U.S. literature, as well. These revisions in
scholarship and pedagogy provide the foundation for acknowledging and building a
bridge between languages and cultures that co-exist physically but which, culturally,
inhabit opposite sides o f a huge abyss.5
Because o f its inherent nature and function, a bridge between cultures
simultaneously connects and endangers the cultures, particularly the minority or foreign
culture, by allowing the dominant, hegemonic culture clear and open access to the
culture, thus offering more to appropriate and dominate. Gerald Viznor notes,
"Science, translation, and the discoveries o f otherness in tribal cultures, are the histories
o f racialism and the metanarratives o f dominance" (140-141). Translation has
5 I am aware o f the false dichotomy between self and other; the chapter as a whole
problematizes this dichotomy.
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traditionally worked in favor o f the dominant culture;6 however, translation
reconceived within an ethical framework allows for a dynamic tension which resists
total appropriation and suppression. The metaphor o f the bridge as mediator, which
brings together opportunity (for growth, for larger/broader interaction with the
"outside," increased understanding) and threat (o f invasion, o f appropriation, o f
dominance) can be understood better using Walter Benjamin’s and Franz Rosenzweig’s
notion o f language and translation as redemption.7 The question here is redemption
from what? and, related, "what or who is being redeemed by what or whom?" I
propose that both the target and source languages and cultures are potentially
redeemed by the translation process. In the U.S. culture, the source culture can be
redeemed from oppression, obscurity, and a unitary view o f itself. In other words,
ethical translation facilitates breaking out o f the victim/victimizer binary and redefining
society and the social positions which create a society. The target culture (also U.S.
culture) can be redeemed from the drive to oppress and to dominate, from imposing
incorrect and dangerous stereotypes onto the target culture (culturally, legally,
politically), and from a unitary view o f itself. Again, ultimately, cultures can be
redeemed from false dichotomies, from hierarchy to societies which create and define
6 This problem o f translation, a problem Venuti calls the domesticating problem, is
discussed later in the chapter.
7 Walter Benjamin and Franz Rosenzweig, two 20t t l -century Jewish philosophers,
corresponded for years about the nature o f language and translation. A more thorough
discussion o f their (very different) theories o f language and translation as redemption
follows later in this chapter.
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themselves differently. When a translation keeps the two cultures involved in any
specific translation in constant tension by refusing to allow language to completely or
officially represent the identity o f the translated culture, the process o f always already
incomplete transcultural communication performed by translation becomes the never
complete, always in-process redemptive act/experience. This is especially significant if
the identity articulated in a specific translation is one that conforms to the target-
language culture’s definition o f the source-language identity. The refusal, then, to
resolve meaning, iconicity8 , and identity into an absolute creates and sustains the
opacity necessary to allow the translation process to redeem both cultures involved
from the dangers o f creating and attempting to operate from a position o f unitary
subjectivity and to allow us to challenge and deconstruct the dichotomy o f self and
other.
In this chapter, I posit translation as a medium for the creation o f multiple
subjectivity. If w e are to take seriously the postmodern idea o f multiplicity, then a
model for subjectivity which encourages multiplicity and multivalence rather than
closing down possibility (o f choice, o f identity, o f meaning) needs to be explored.
8 Charles Bernstein notes, "Iconicity refers to the ability o f language to present, rather
than represent or designate, its meaning. Here meaning is not something that
accompanies the word but is performed by it. One o f the primary features o f poetry as
a medium is to foreground the various iconic features o f language" (17).
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Translation can act as a medium for multiple subjectivity and subjectivities9 because it
invites new uses and views o f language and, thus, culture. If w e become familiar with
or fluent in another language, w e learn new ways o f thinking and knowing that were
not possible in our own language. This new knowledge and understanding allow the
possibility o f respect for other cultures and other ways o f being. When a translation
calls for this vision o f possibility and difference, it participates in what Venuti calls an
"ethics o f difference." Yenuti remarks,
translation concerned with limiting its ethnocentrism .... can
deviate from domestic norms to signal the foreignness o f the
foreign text and create a readership that is more open to linguistic
and cultural differences-yet without resorting to stylistic
experiments that are so estranging as to be self-defeating. The
key factor is the translator’s ambivalence toward domestic norms
and the institutional practices in which they are implemented, a
reluctance to identify completely with them coupled with
determination to address diverse cultural constituencies, elite and
popular. In attempting to straddle the foreign and domestic
cultures as well as domestic readerships, a translation practice
cannot fail to produce a text that is a potential source o f cultural
change. {Ethics 87)
Becoming aware o f one’s own ethnocentrism starts a translator down this road to
ethical translation. Because we are always already steeped in our first language, and
9 The distinction I am making between subjectivity and subjectivities is important to my
argument. Multiple subjectivity implies that within an individual’s own
subjectivity-experience and world view-meaning exists in tension and flux, altering to
take in the new. An individual with multiple subjectivity questions the coherence and
reliability o f experience and recognizes the tension between experience and meaning.
Multiple subjectivities, on the other hand, implies a larger scope; for my purposes, it
implies a political entity-such as a nation (in all the ways discussed in chapter one)--
which acknowledges and cultivates difference. Both multiple subjectivity and
subjectivities are necessary to allow new uses and views o f language and culture.
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because language is the vehicle and medium o f culture, issues o f ethnocentrism are
inherent in translation.
Thus, an ethical approach to translation is one that resists reinforcing cultural
norms1 0 because doing so would elide the difference inherent in the foreign text-would
elide the foreignness and originality o f the source-language text. By "stradd[ling] the
foreign and domestic cultures as well as domestic readerships” the translator attempts
to mediate without favoring one side; by so doing, a translator opens a way towards or
opportunity for cultural change. This method o f translation also acknowledges and
enacts what Rosenzweig deems the impossible but necessary to occur. He argues that
while translation is theoretically impossible, "in the course o f the ‘impossible’ and
necessary compromises which in their sequence make the stuff o f life, this theoretical
impossibility will give us the courage o f a modesty which will then demand o f the
translation not anything impossible but simply whatever must be done" (Glatzer 255).
By defining translation as "impossible" and simultaneously "necessary," Rosenzweig
introduces his notion o f translation’s relation to dialectic and paradox.
Translator as Trickster: Impossible, Necessary, and Done
An illustration1 1 : The character o f Theseus, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer
N ight’ s Dream, confronts the paradox o f something that is simultaneously impossible
1 0 Cultural norms and their relation to translation will be discussed and defined
throughout this chapter.
uThis illustration had its genesis in various conversations about Shakespeare and
folklore with Jill Terry Rudy.
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and necessary and still completed. Firmly centered in his reality, he doubts the
experiences o f the two couples who spent the night in the fantastical world o f the
fairies. He attributes their experiences to imagination since fairies and the related
goings on o f the night before are impossible according to the physical laws which
govern his perceived world. And so, as he leads the couples from the evening’s
festivities and to bed, he jests, "£ tis almost fairy time" (V.i.365) intending a barb and,
simultaneously, introducing the re-entrance o f the fairies. As he speaks this, the fairies
enter the world to bless his bed and family-the impossible happens. In the world
constituted by this play, the blessings o f the fairies facilitate continued life and
prosperity for the newly wedded royal family. The worlds are mediated by Puck,1 2 a
member o f the fairy world who also speaks the language o f the humans and who can
deliver the gods’/fairies’ messages and interact with the humans for them. This
impossible but necessary mediating function is highlighted in this play by Puck’s ability
to mediate between the fantastical world o f the play (the world o f imagination) and the
play’s audience (the world o f reality), whether a physical audience (in a performance)
or an implied audience (readers). The artifice o f language (also an impossible but
necessary phenomenon which is done-necessary for communication but "impossible" in
that language is only random signs and symbols randomly assigned social
1 2 For an informative and interesting discussion o f Puck as a mediator and trickster, see
Jill Terry’s Traditions, Tricksters, and Zora Neale Hurston's Storytelling, especially
pages 10-12.
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meaning/relevance) is highlighted by the fact o f Puck’s mediation with the audience-a
mediation which seeks to unite text and reader, performer/performance and audience.
His final speech, presented here in whole, runs through various levels and
possibilities o f mediation:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this (and all is mended),
That you have but slumber’d here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
N ow to scape the serpents tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else, the Puck a liar call.
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends. V I. 423-438.
Puck’s speech comments on mediation in many ways and offers insight into the
possibilities o f translation, particularly translation as seen by Benjamin and Rosenzweig.
First, the speech places mediation at the point o f language: "Think but this (and all is
mended)" (424). Thinking is an activity possible only through language, and if we, the
recipients o f the play, think (that the performance has been only a dream), everything is
mended. In other words, language makes possible a restoration to an original state.
Second, that which is being mended, restituted, restored, or brought together, is
the life and minds o f the audience (reality) and the play (the "vision" and/or "dream”).
In this place and moment o f fusion, the limitations and constraints o f physical reality
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come together with play, multivalence and infinite possibility. These possibilities exist
outside our expectations because our expectations are governed by what we are able to
think, which is both possible because o f and limited to language. In other words,
translation brings to a person’s consciousness things previously inconceivable because
o f the limits o f language.1 3
Third, the redemption and mending occurring in the play is reciprocal: the
"gentles" (the audience) pardons but the players "make amends."1 4 Unlike a Christian
principle o f redemption (applicable because o f Shakespeare’s culture and the culture of
half o f the play’s participants), in which Christ, an all-powerful being both pardons and
makes amends (atones), redemption in this situation, the play, puts the burden o f both
on the two non-deity parties involved. Fourth, Puck/Robin (importantly, Puck, who is
both Puck and Robin to facilitate his mediation and to establish his dual identity and
function) unites the players and the audience: "Give me your hands, if we be friends /
And Robin shall restore amends." Puck acts as the fairy personality, Robin as the
human personality, and while Puck’s character may be suspicious to the audiences,
Robin, as suggested by these lines, is above reproach and capable o f restoring amends.
1 3 This claim is somewhat controversial. Most translators and translation theorists
believe that what is conceivable in one language is not conceivable in exactly the same
way in another language. However, many linguists believe that each language has the
capability o f conceiving exactly the same things. I have found more evidence for the
first claim.
1 4 A discussion o f the full implications o f this for translation is discussed in a few
paragraphs-in relation to Benjamin’s philosophies.
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By uniting the players and the audience, Robin brings together (restores) reality and
possibility, imagination and life, action and language, the spirit and the physical.
Finally, the phrase "restore amends" is significant and relevant: one makes
amends, so to restore amends means to make them again, to reinstate what already
existed and had been amended before. This is Benjamin’s and Rosenzweig’s theory o f
translation: translation brings languages back together, since they were once one,
before the incident at the Tower o f Babel, and restores them to their perfect state, the
Adamic language, the language o f perfection and redemption from earthly life. They
argue that translation is the gesture towards the union o f all languages into one perfect
language-the impossible and yet necessary which does, in fact, occur, though
imperfectly.
For Rosenzweig, translation bridges the spaces between languages and cultures.
He also considers translation redemptive. Handelman comments that "for Rosenzweig
translation was redemptive because it enabled communication, made a bridge between
humans and among different tongues" (26). Translation, then, is practical. The
incommunicability o f ultimate meaning is the impossible in Rosenzweig’s paradigm, but
the bridge he believes in is the practically necessaiy (and done) reality o f translation.
Handelman argues that Benjamin also views translation as redemptive, but for different
reasons: "Benjamin connected translation to the utopian and redemptive elements o f
language. . . . for Benjamin, the ultimate aim o f translation is not human
communicability but that ‘pure language’ o f ultimate meaning which is finally
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incommunicable" (26). Benjamin’s notion o f translation can be compared to the
mediation that must occur between the law, reality (human experience), and atonement,
wherein the inherent imperfection o f humans in attaining the perfect law is mediated by
sacrifice and atonement.1 S
Because Benjamin was Jewish and acknowledged and proclaimed his reliance
on Judaism for his philosophy, a (very) basic understanding o f the purpose o f Yom
Kippur (the Day o f Atonement) is helpful, Leviticus establishes repentance (afflicting
your own soul with your sins for pardon) as the reason for Yom Kippur-it is a day set
aside for members o f the Jewish community to come together as a community and to
atone for sin. A key concept in the service o f atonement is teshuvah (repentance). The
root o f the word, shuv, means "to turn "-to return to a clean self. Importantly, the
congregation at a Yom Kippur service recites, as a community, a confession, a standard
litany o f sins, recited alphabetically in whatever language the service is in. Enunciating
the confession together emphasizes the belief set forth by the Rabbis: God does not
forgive sins committed against other people until things are set right with the person/s
sinned against. Thus, a person seeking redemption asks the pardon o f specific people
and atones for the sin to that person. This makes redemption reciprocal in a very real
way: the two people involved enact redemption. Enunciating the confessions as a
community adds another
I 5 Over the centuries, what should be sacrificed has changed, but the concept remains
essentially the same.
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layer to this action: it emphasizes a community seeking unity with each other and with
God.
The parallel with A M idsummer’ s Night Dream and with translation is this:
When Puck says "If you pardon, we will mend," he articulates a similar notion o f what
redemption is, does, and requires. The "you" is fairly clear in the text (the "gentles" or
the audience), but the "we" is much more ambiguous: on a surface level, "we" refers to
the players, but it could also refer to the fairies, to the humans, or it could refer to both
the audience and the players, coming together as a community at the end-unified by
Puck’s verbal gestures. Like the audience (reality) and the players (imagination), and
like a Jewish congregation and Deity, the tension between language as it exists today
(totally fallen) and the Adamic language (perfect language) enacts the gap between
what is and possibility. Benjamin posits translation as the vehicle for mediating the gap
and re-attaining/restoring perfection to language.
Either way, impossible or necessary (and done), or perfecting language,
translation for both Rosenzweig and Benjamin requires a process similar to a never-
ending pilgrimage-particularly since for both translation was inherently connected to
religion and the sacred word. Translation viewed in this way becomes a journey to the
shado wy space between such (false) dichotomies as the space between self and other,
between languages, between cultures, and between ethical and unethical choices. The
journey must be mediated by someone-in this case, the translator. The translator, like
Puck, because o f the mediating function, can be compared to a trickster.
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(Anti)mediation: Negotiating Centers and Peripheries in "To A Hearing M other"
Let us begin with a concrete example: Signing into a mirror tilted back and
away from the poet, Ella Mae Lentz narrates a lyric about the division between the
Deaf1 6 and hearing worlds in her poem, "To a Hearing Mother." The poem,
transliterated into English,1 7 goes like this:1 8
You me different; World world different; Language language
different; Experience experience grow-up different. You grow-up
no deaf; Maybe one here one there; Dismiss. I grow-up I-know,
Hearing Everywhere. Oppress-me. Now you pregnant; Give-
birth; Boy. Deaf. Shock. Feelings-sink. Me-happy. Excited.
You-want-become same, [clapping-hearing clapping]. But grow-
up will we-same; Your hair, eyes, body. You-same. But his
soul/spirit, mind, feelings. Me-same. He your son but he my
people. Yours? Mine? Which? Here idea. Tree. Blank. Don’t-
know deaf. Alone. Lonely. Wilt. But yours. Blank soul. But
1 6 To reiterate a point made in Chapter One, a distinction between deaf and D eaf is
important; deaf refers to a physical condition while D eaf refers to a culture.
1 7 I have hyphenated words in this transliteration that are signed with a single sign.
1 8 I am double-spacing this instead o f single-spacing it because it is a transliteration
rather than a direct quote and because the punctuation is unusual making it difficult to
read in a single-spaced format.
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without you, wilt. Without our people, wonderful language,
language disappears. We-two-struggle. We-two-saw-tree. We-
two-cut-tree. Tree-falls. Dies. Better we-two work together.
Rich soil together. Grow. Grow, Grow.1 9
At first glance, this poem presents few problems for a translator: the narrative is
straight-forward, the metaphor at the end is one familiar to speaking/hearing people.
Quickly though, a reader begins to ask, how do I read this poem? Every poem posits
this question, but it becomes even more important if and when the reader realizes that
the original o f this poem has both temporal and spatial elements not present in any
written translation. A reader might wonder about the pace o f the poem: are the
repeated words run together, hinting at a breathless pace? How much time should
elapse between each utterance if they are not run together? A reader might also
wonder if emphasis/stress is placed on one o f the repeated words, or if the two agents
o f the poem are physically present (as opposed to the implied presence o f one in
dramatic monologues). These and like questions make it evident that a translator o f
ASL poetry needs to consider the performance and space in every translation since it is
part o f the poem’s composition (is, in fact, an element o f ASL poetry)-without it, the
poem would not be ASL. Another issue which then arises concerns genre: since these
1 9 An appendix at the back o f this paper offers two different versions o f this poem in
English which emphasize spatiality and hint at temporality.
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elements are performative, is the text still a poem when or once it is translated into a
written language such as English? An ethical and talented translator should be able to
find poetic devices in English which approximate the performative and spatial elements
o f the poem, but much o f the inherent/inscribed (and cultural) meaning is lost when the
poem is translated into a written text.2 0
In "To a Hearing Mother," space creates both the tone and the overall meaning
o f the poem: the unresolvable distance and tension between the D eaf and hearing
worlds. While the individual signs suggest that difference is the problem which is
solved at the end o f the poem, the use o f space in the poem resists that resolution. The
spacing used when signing the poem retains the original distance and emphasizes the
resulting tension. The poem, when signed, contextually alters the meaning o f the
English words (o f the translation) substantially. The choices made in positioning the
signs (choices o f space) become clear to the non-signer only later, if at all. The
positions o f the signs for each word are manipulated by the signer in order to inscribe
the meaning o f the poem and to establish the physical as well as cultural position o f the
“ The loss is similar to the loss o f translating a poem written in dialect or in a dual
language into Standard American English. Since we don’t often (if ever) translate
these texts, either because we teach them in specialized classes in which the students
are expected to have some familiarity with both languages (as in the case o f Chicano
poetry and some African American poetry classes) or because w e don’t feel the need to
translate as in the ways many African American literature classes) the assumption that
ASL poetry must be translated is pregnant with ethical and political baggage. These
issues are the core o f Chapter IV and so will not be discussed here. This chapter
provides a discussion o f translation theories as background for the discussion o f their
application in Chapter IV.
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agent in the poem. For example, "you" is signed away, at arm’s length, from the
signer’s body; "me" is signed immediately next to the signer’s body. "Different," a sign
usually created by moving the crossed index fingers o f both hands from in front o f the
body away from each other, each ending up on one side o f the body, is signed at an
angle-the index fingers are crossed in a position between the "you" and "me," and the
fingers end up at those positions, respectively (thus, the fingers move in and out in
relation to the signer’s body rather than out and out). This spatial pattern is repeated
throughout the poem, and, in fact, acts as both the rhythm and the rhyme o f the poem.
The hearing world, the person representing the hearing world, is signed away from the
poet’s body. The D eaf world, on the other hand, is signed close to the signer’s body,
off to the side, almost protectively.
Each time the hearing mother’s deaf son enters the poem, he is signed close to
the signer’s body, even at the end, in the tree metaphor, which ostensibly offers the
solution to the problem. At the end, the distance between the worlds remains. The
narrative suggests a solution: "Better we-two work together. Rich soil. Grow. Grow.
Grow." The statement claims that if the Hearing Mother and the D eaf community come
together in raising the deaf child, that child will flourish personally and culturally, thus
resolving the problem. But the signing o f the poem, its performance in which meaning
is inscribed, suggests that at least one o f the groups will not accept the solution.
Enacting the history o f Deaf colonization, its continued oppression, and the current
move towards decolonization, the articulation o f the poem preserves the distance
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between social and cultural categories, between perceptions and realities. For example,
it highlights the distance between the hearing world’s perception o f deafness as a
disability-a tragedy-requiring the help and intervention o f the "intact" or "whole"
members o f society and the Deaf world’s perception o f deafness as a rich and beautiful
culture enhanced by, rather than disabled by, physical deafness. In this way, the
problem in the poem resists facile resolution and bears out the real-world tensions
between the hearing and the Deaf. For this reason, the signing does not move to the
center of, or between, the agents in the poem. The inscription o f the tension is in the
use o f space; how, then, do we translate this poem into a written language?
Translating "To A Hearing Mother" Continued: Unresolvable Tensions
Despite Lentz’s authorship and performance o f the poem, if it is ever to be seen
by non-signers, even if it is ever to be seen by most hearing mothers o f deaf children,
the poem will probably have to be translated.2 1 Since the poem is a conversation
between the Deaf and Hearing worlds, the hearing, if they are to learn the lesson o f the
poem, must have access to it. Like many Chicano poets who write in a bi- or
multilingual form, Lentz may have deliberately limited her audience. However, as a
D eaf activist, she generally chooses to speak for herself to the hearing community. In
addition, Lentz is deaf and Deaf. She must always have an interpreter or be speaking
to a fluent signer to speak to the Hearing world. The dangers and advantages o f
2 IThis issue is expanded at the end o f Chapter IV to include the reasons for translating
written poetry into ASL.
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translating take on a new significance when we realize that the D eaf must rely on
hearing interpreters/translators for every communication with the Hearing world. This
dilemma parallels the dilemma o f translating this poem.
It is a specific instance o f the ethical dilemma translation always already faces:
the original text, like the content o f the poem and like the references to the Deaf,
remains close-to the body or to the culture-but the translator, like the Hearing Mother,
is, by mere positionality and, in some cases, by political and cultural choice, distanced.
The translator’s position, by definition, is actually simultaneously one o f closeness and
distance: the translator is close either to the source or the target culture, by virtue o f
coming from/being part o f one o f them. The translator is also, therefore, distanced
from, or not frilly part of, the other culture. This position endows the translator with
the power to choose a translation method and with the power o f representation. A
translation o f "To a Hearing Mother," if ethical, will construct the Deaf in a way that
furthers the D eaf s own self-construction and will retain the tension between Deaf and
hearing worlds created in the original poem, particularly since this tension articulates
part o f the historical background for Deaf identity.
D eaf identity, including the work o f constructing identity performed by ASL
poetry, is yet nascent and faces certain dangers when confronted with occasions o f
translation, especially since so few academics recognize ASL poetry as literature
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worthy o f serious attention.2 2 As Lawrence Venuti remarks, "asymmetries, inequities,
relations o f domination and dependence exist in every act o f translating, o f putting the
translated in the service o f the translating culture" (Ethics 4). A translator o f ASL
literature into a written form should feel obligated to preserve the Deaf cultural
identity, politics, concerns, and issues articulated or constructed in the original when
making cultural products o f the Deaf available to hearing audiences. The translator’s
marginal position allows her or him to choose how to mediate the two cultures:
ethically or not. "To a Hearing Mother" not only enacts the dilemma o f translation but
also enacts the marginal, yet mediational, position o f the translator. The only signs
signed between the poem’s two agents ("different," "which," "together," "rich soil" and
the first instance o f "grow"-the other two are signed near the signer’s body) focus on
the need for and the possibility o f mediation. The poem also suggests that the
mediation, though necessary, is ultimately impossible in an absolute sense. It thus
2 2 In addition to the physical, social, and linguistic oppression o f the Deaf, this culture
faces nearly insurmountable obstacles; despite the overwhelming evidence that ASL is a
natural language, most hearing people continue to think o f ASL as gestural and
pictorial English. With this belief, it is impossible to seriously consider literature
composed in ASL. This situation finds a voice in theory; W. J. T. Mitchell reports
Gotthold Lessing (an influential German theorist interested in idealist aesthetics) as
saying, "For poets to ‘employ the same artistic machinery’ as the painter would be to
‘convert a superior being into a doll.’ It would make as much sense, argues Lessing,
‘as if a man, with the power and privilege o f speech, were to employ the signs which
the mutes . . . had invented to supply the want o f a voice" (155). Though written in
1969, relatively little progress has been made in the area o f ASL literature; if viewed as
voiceless and "in want o f a voice," ASL poets and authors have little literary authority.
Since literature is an important way to proliferate a national identity, the construction
o f Deaf identity by the D eaf faces tremendous difficulties.
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enacts Rosenzweig’s translation paradox. The trickster figure2 3 personifies this
impossible but necessary and done paradox and the ethical dilemmas it embodies,
mediating languages and cultures and offering the possibility o f redemption.
Viewing the translator as a trickster allows the marginalization o f the translator
to take on new meaning and power in the construction o f identity. Tricksters perform
translation through a process o f (anti)mediation which is a simultaneous bringing
together and a distancing o f two parties, in this case two language cultures.
(Anti)mediation acknowledges that translators mediate two cultures and that the
mediation is necessarily imperfect and fraught with ethical and practical problems.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., explains (anti)mediation as interpretive, defining work which
occurs, metaphorically and often physically, at the crossroads. He describes
(anti)mediation through the character o f the American Signifying) Monkey, a
character transposed (in its own way translated) from various African cultural
tricksters. He says, "Indeed, the Monkey is a term o f (anti)mediation, as are all
trickster figures, between two forces he seeks to oppose for his own contentious
purposes, and then to reconcile" (56). Tricksters traditionally mediated worlds o f
humans and worlds o f gods, and it is often through this kind o f mediation that the
trickster gives the humans what they need to survive, even when this may not be his
intention. Mahadev L. Apte remarks, "The trickster’s acts, though not intended to be
2 3 All o f the literature I have read about traditional cultural tricksters talk about them
and offer examples o f them as being male; for this reason, I refer to the trickster as
male unless speaking o f literary tricksters or when speaking o f translators as tricksters.
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altruistic, provide many o f the natural elements essential for the survival and
perpetuation o f humans. The trickster is also a destructive force, however" (225). In
intending, for example, to thwart human progress, the trickster could make the gods’
understanding o f fire accessible, through inadvertent translation, to the humans, thereby
providing them with that natural element and allowing their existence to continue and
progress. On occasions o f helpful translation, tricksters bring the worlds o f humans
and deity closer; on other occasions, when the trickster, for his own purposes, chooses
to suspend communication and withhold information, his mediation, such as it is,
distances humans and deity.2 4 However, in either case, the mediation or withholding of
mediation is always already imperfect.
Even when a trickster mediates by translating effectively, the actual, original
meaning intended by the gods cannot be purely transmitted and convey the original
meaning/intention for the same reasons that simply spelling a word from one language
in the alphabet o f another fails to literally convey the original intention. This inability of
language to first be literal and second to be capable o f offering a literal transliteration
coupled with the need to communicate is what changes mediation to (anti)mediation.
An anecdotal example o f (anti)mediation might illuminate this claim: were I to tell you
a story from my personal life-say the time I bumped into Michael Jordan-no matter
how desperately I wanted you to experience my story as I experienced it, by virtue o f
2 4 In literature, the humans/gods hierarchy is replaced with a culture/culture system
which is sometimes based on a hierarchy o f difference and sometimes based on
difference alone.
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having to use language and o f having to transport you back in time to November 22,
1992, you could not really be there. You would necessarily be twice removed at best:
by time and by language, which can never truly signify the signified. Thus,
(anti)mediation simultaneously brings together and keeps apart the storyteller and the
listener/reader who might appreciate but can never fully understand the life or moment
the storytelling celebrates.
In the space (anti)mediation voids between these two purposes and actions,
what Lawrence Venuti has termed foreignizing translation can occur. A foreignizing
translation resists the urge to domesticate a source language text. Instead, it seeks to
retain the flavor o f the original, the identity o f the original, by introducing into the
target language new ways o f using its own language and thus o f seeing and
encountering the world. Venuti defines some foreignizing translation methods as
"minoritizing" and having specific cultural aims. He says, "The aim o f minoritizing
translation is ‘never to acquire the majority,’ never to erect a new standard or to
establish a new canon, but rather to promote cultural innovation as well as the
understanding o f cultural difference by proliferating the variables in English" (11).
Translations o f ASL poetry which participate in foreignizing or minoritizing methods
allow ASL to enrich English (in such areas as performativity, speech acts, temporality
in language) rather than erase the unique language elements (thus, the unique approach
to the world) present in ASL. When we place the trickster in the role o f telling the
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story, o f translating the experience or text, ethical and creative/literary issues claim a
prominent role in the (anti)mediation/translation process.
Though the (anti)mediation performed by translation and translators does not
necessarily (though it could) involve the guile many trickster figures embody,
translators engaged in a foreignizing method do seek the results o f this mediating trick.
They use translation to mediate between two languages and cultures, first placing them
in opposition (through the foreignizing method) and then to bridge, though not to
reconcile, the cultures by making the source-language text still available and accessible
in the target language without attempting to domesticate or reduce them to the same.
Emphasizing the instantaneous bringing together and pulling apart o f (anti)mediation
and foreignizing translation, Anurahda Dingwaney and Carol Maier call what happens
in (anti)mediation "im-mediation." They say, " ‘Im-mediation’ results from the
simultaneous distancing and participation that characterizes translation directed by
conciencia as both self-consciousness and conscience as ethical responsibility"
("Translation as a Method" 315). An aim o f (anti)mediation/im-mediation is to
challenge the status or power o f one o f the two language cultures over the other in
order to liberate the dominated/colonized and create an independent identity via
language. Ethical responsibility enters the process by challenging the translation and
both cultures, particularly the previously dominated/colonized culture, to resist the
desire to reverse (and the possibility o f reversing) the hierarchy-to come out on top, as
it were-because, while reversing the hierarchy would liberate the dominated and
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colonized peoples, it would not liberate the subordinate position o f the dominated.
Without this challenge to resist reversal, the hierarchy the translator seeks to undermine
would simply be reinscribed and reinforced, calling for the process to repeat itself and
at the same time nullifying the process. An ethical translator seeks through his or her
translation method and choice o f text to challenge the structure o f power and hierarchy,
not to reinforce it.
Similarly, tricksters, because o f their in-between position, challenge hierarchical
structures through their translation choices. It is the structure itself, not the specific
people who occupy the various positions within the structure, which keep them in their
liminal position. Their (anti)mediation challenges and seeks to undermine, at times to
benefit, both the gods and the humans in order to escape their imposed position within
the hierarchy. Literary tricksters,2 5 on the other hand, seek to level hierarchy not
always for personal reasons, such as escaping a specific social situation or role like a
traditional trickster (though a few do this also). Instead, they primarily seek to
mediate, to facilitate communication between two parties otherwise incapable of
productive interaction. Traditional and literary tricksters, then, mediate; that is their
function, and translation is mediation.
2 5 Literaiy tricksters abound in American and British literature; each trickster has a
specific role to play in the text, not always the same as others, but the similarities which
bring them together center around the ability to mediate between two people, two
cultures, two languages, etc. Some literary tricksters include Puck from Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’ s Dream, Phoeby from Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching
God, Ishmael in Melville’s Moby Dick.
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Ambiguities of Lansmase: Translations o f Tension
Translation is thus both the gift and the business o f tricksters who are, in every
sense, translators. As Jill Terry notes, "Tricksters embody the process o f interpretation
because they can speak with a double-voice and shift between the periphery and center
o f their societies and another social world" (9). Though translators/tricksters "know"
two cultures, two languages, and the worlds they create, their knowledge is subject to
the same challenges to which all knowledge is subjected, indeterminacy, infinite play o f
signifiers, and multiplicity. Therefore, they must interpret as they go. This interpretive
process is more complicated for translators than for traditional tricksters. A translator,
for example, cannot share the luxury o f detachment the trickster enjoys because he or
she is actually part o f one o f the cultures/communities rather than absolutely between
both. However, translators still function as tricksters because they mediate difference
and because they hold the power to facilitate or complicate/obscure communication.
Karl Kerenyi explains that a trickster is an "intermediary . . . the messenger and
mediator . . . the hoverer-between-worlds who dwells in a world o f his own" (188-
189); W. D. O’Flaherty adds that the trickster acts "as a mediating agent. . . ,
catalyzing the transition from one phase to the next" (73). A translator’s ability to
speak, and therefore to think in, another language offers him or her the position o f
marginality, along with its unique power, though the language ability in itself does not
marginalize the translator.
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However, the work o f translation-its place in academia (tenure issues, pay,
research funds), in publishing (until the 1990s, a translator was paid by the word-a few
pennies per word), and in cultural communities-does marginalize the translator and
places her or him at the crossroads o f several communities. Venuti offers a thorough
and convincing argument for the invisibility, and thus liminality, o f the translator. He
ascribes the undervaluing o f service to the problematics o f authorship and disputes over
copyright associated with translation and by pointing out the possible culpability o f
translators themselves.2 6 The translator can choose to further marginalize his or her
position by choosing a domesticating translation method. This retains the invisibility by
offering "fluent translations that invisibly inscribe foreign texts with English-language
values and providing] readers with the narcissistic experience o f recognizing their own
culture in a cultural other" (15). Though characterized by pressing issues, this
marginalization more directly aligns the translator with the trickster and endows
translation with some o f the ambiguous possibilities o f the trickster. As Margaret
Brady, a scholar o f literary and Native American tricksters, suggests, a trickster is
"ambiguous and paradoxical [in] nature" who juxtaposes "absolute opposites in such a
way that is neither orderly nor chaotic, and yet both" (32) and who juggles "the
possibility o f order and the threat o f chaos" (35). A translator
2 6 This argument is found in Venuti’s book, The Translator’ s Invisibility: A History o f
Translation. London: Routledge, 1995.
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works-translates-between the possibility o f order and the possibility o f chaos in the
meaning- and culture-making project o f language.
However, as noted earlier, a translator does not share the detachment o f the
trickster and is thus more heavily and significantly influenced by language and
culture-particularly the translator’s own culture. This influence is neither inherently
good nor inherently bad, but it does exist on conscious and unconscious levels. If used
ethically, the space between order and chaos coupled with cultural influence can help
the translator resist reduction. Mary N. Layoun explains, "Even as translators are
‘between language and cultures,’ they are also very much of, in, and subject to specific
languages and cultures at a given moment" (268). As both language and culture exist
in constant states o f flux, the space between in which trickster/translators exist never
stands still. Thus, meaning can never be fully, once and for all, decided. Gates claims
that a trickster "dwells at the margins o f discourse, . . . ever embodying the ambiguities
o f language" (52). Embodying the ambiguities o f language acknowledges the ever and
a priori present distance between signifier and signified and questions the putative,
stable, and reductive classifications o f people and cultures. Refusing reduction allows
the represented culture to resist imposed and confining definitions. The translator thus
has the opportunity to participate in decolonizing or retaining the cultural independence
and independent identity o f the source culture by allowing ambiguity to flourish and
tensions to remain unresolved.
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Jean-Jacques Lecercle posits that because o f ambiguity in language, a portion o f
language and what w e wish to communicate is untranslatable, in every sense
(intralingual, interlingual, intracultural, intercultural translations as well as translation as
understanding). He says, "language is both dependent on and independent o f the
subject" (239). When language depends on the subject, it attains its intention: "bread"
intends that substance o f flour, water, yeast, salt, sugar, milk, and oil we bake and then
eat. On the other hand, as Benjamin points out, ("bread" and) pain and trot, while
each words for that same substance w e eat, do not intend the same thing. For various
cultural and linguistic reasons, pain means something entirely different to the French
than brot means to the Germans (74). This untranslatable difference, the independence
from the subject, is what Lecercle calls the remainder. In the case o f ASL, the
remainder presents itself most insistently in the need to use ASL to define and explain
ASL, to an extent the same metalanguage quandary every natural language encounters.
However, in translating ASL, the metalanguage quandary and, thus, the remainder,
carry over. As W. J. T. Mitchell notes, "Like the masses, the colonized, the powerless
and voiceless everywhere, visual representation cannot represent itself; it must be
represented" (157). While ASL is not visual representation but verbal representation, it
occurs spatially and thus the comparison to visual representation makes sense. For
example, "To a Hearing Mother" relies on space to create and sustain the tension
between the Deaf and Hearing worlds; to convey that meaning, I can only describe the
signing-I cannot recreate it, exactly, in a transliteration o f the poem. The gap between
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the poem and my description o f the signing is the remainder. Also important, the Deaf
as colonized and voiceless, by traditional definitions, must be represented in the same
way the language o f the Deaf must be represented. However, ASL poetry cannot
simply be represented in the same way a description o f a visual object (a painting, for
example) can be represented verbally; ASL poetry must be translated rather than
described. Thus, the problem o f translating the performed distance inscribed in "To a
Hearing Mother" into a non-performative/written language is the problem o f the
remainder; it is also the benefit and opportunity o f the remainder.
These ambiguities, or remainders o f language and culture, resist the efforts o f
those who try to pin down specific meanings, whether for practical purposes or in an
effort to dominate and control others. This ambiguity and its resistant power are the
benefit o f the remainder. Meaning is relegated to the space between texts and
audience, between self and other,2 7 between any two people or groups o f people
needing a mediator to communicate; a translator/trickster’s interpretation explores this
space. Lecercle’s descriptions o f the remainder simultaneously assert the existence and
value o f the space between and reinforce dichotomies. His work thus speaks to this
2 7 At a conference I attended on translation at New York University in April, 1999, a
discussion between the participants brought up the problem o f the term "other": it
reinforces dichotomies and thus distance. The distance can, we decided, allow us to
continue abdicating social and ethical responsibilities; in addition, it reinforces
dangerous dichotomies which have allowed and continue to allow justification for
domination and oppression. I believe that the term and what it seeks to represent need
to be addressed, though this is not the place for that discussion. A different term here,
however, would be misleading, and so I have chosen to continue to use "other" to
designate a person or persons who are not the self.
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project. He characterizes the remainder as "constitutive," as nomadic frontiers, a view
o f language as governed by a tension between rules (language remains a rule-governed
activity) and rule-breaking (this type o f creativity is as important as rule-governed
creativity)" (25). If the remainder is "constitutive"-if it makes language language-then
the remainder calls into question the power o f language to name, even to mean. The
remainder in this way takes on trickster attributes. It also articulates the problem o f the
tension created by performance and space in "To a Hearing Mother," and thus
articulates the problem o f translation. "To a Hearing Mother" ends with this: "Better
we-two work together. Rich soil together. Grow. Grow. Grow." A constitutive and
rule-governed look at this passage might claim that the agent/speaker o f the poem
suggests that the Deaf community and the Hearing parents are the "rich soil" that will
allow the deaf child to flourish-it names the meaning o f the signs as well as names the
solution to the poem’s problem: cooperation. However, a nomadic and rule-breaking
approach notes the performative and spatial meaning o f the phrase: the Deaf
community and the Hearing parents are and remain separated by language and culture,
by world views-by every social experience. The space between the two readings, the
remainder, refuses either interpretation to lay final claim to the poem’s name.
The trickster connection and image continues with the second description o f the
remainder: "nomadic frontiers." Since a trickster lives between worlds, always shifting
and traveling between them, the trickster is nomadic, and language is his frontier. A
translator participates in the implications o f this description as well. Translation
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inherently questions the ability o f language to name by knowing that other names exist
for the same thing (and, as in the case o f bread, pain, and brat, realizing that these
different names change that which is named-the signifiers alter the signified)-the
naming, then, while "done" is transitory, liminal, and ultimately impossible as the
practice o f translation proves it doesn’t actually ever succeed at naming (at pinning
something down to a single meaning/name). This resistance to resolution presents itself
vividly in translation particularly since translation’s practical aim is to offer a name for a
text. Thus, translation is (anti)mediation-it brings together the signifier and the
signified while simultaneously highlighting the impossibility o f bringing them
together-it pulls apart the signified and the signifier.
A translator is also nomadic intellectually, culturally, and linguistically-always,
moving between cultures in order to maintain fluency and cultural knowledge. Both
the trickster and the translator must follow linguistic rules and break them-within the
same speech act-in order to communicate. In this way, they work in the space between
rule keeping and rule breaking. However, their work really suggests that the remainder
challenges the very dichotomy to which Lecercle claims it gives birth. The fluidity o f
the remainder posits that language, especially language in translation, never fully alights
on either rule keeping or rule breaking. Thus the remainder is less a view o f language
governed by rules (keeping or breaking them), as Lecercle claims, than it is language in
use, implying language in action used by agents whose linguistic and cultural identities
are complex and irreducible.
Approaching translation through the lens o f a trickster using the remainder as a
tool is the discovery o f language as a space and time between rather than as a product.
In other words, viewed in this way, translation becomes a space and time between the
individual and the community, between dominant and subordinate cultures, between
dominant narratives and discursive narratives. In each case, translation requires both a
place and a time for negotiation. Homi Bhabha, in his essay, "Of Mimicry and Man:
The Ambivalence o f Colonial Discourse," suggests that writing, or language, lies
between self and other. His claim about writing differs from Levinas’ claim that
dialogue is the space between self and other in that it more explicitly acknowledges and
relies on the subordinate position o f the colonial subject/other.2 ® Discussing mimicry,
Bhabha points out that the colonial subject who is educated by the colonists,
particularly if he or she leaves the colony and goes to the colonizing home to be
educated, comes back to the colony as neither-for example, neither English nor Indian.
Rather, as seen by the English, he or she merely mimics the English, and this mimicry,
because it makes the subject neither English nor Indian, disrupts the economy o f power
relations. This could erase the tension within the colonized community-the resistance
to the educated by his or her own people because it creates the potential for mediation.
This potential, though, is accompanied by an enforced distancing (a pulling
apart). Bhabha says, "What emerges between mimesis and mimicry is a writing, a
2 8 Another important distinction between Levinas and Bhabha is that for Levinas, the
ultimate Other is God; for Bhabha, the self-other relationship is political and
social/cultural.
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mode o f representation, that marginalizes the monumentality o f history, quite simply
mocks its power to be a model, that power which supposedly makes it imitable" (128).
The writing Bhabha terms mimicry enacts the (anti)mediation performed by
tricksters-it seeks to disrupt the hierarchy by using language (both the colonizer’s
language and the language o f the oppressed) to subvert the language o f
domination/power while simultaneously appearing to support it and to speak in the
deferential language o f the oppressed. In doing so, the colonial-subject-tumed-trickster
translates the oppressor’s language, manipulating the remainder (delegated, as a rule, to
the "lesser" position-the position o f the oppressed) to challenge the identity o f the
colonized constructed by the colonizer. "To a Hearing Mother" performs a similar
writing act: the poem, in the language o f the (here language means the knowledge and
communication system) o f the hearing world-the language o f linear narrative and
common metaphor-claims that the problem o f raising a deaf child bom to hearing
parents can be easily solved; the poem, in the language o f the D eaf (manipulating the
remainder into a tool o f power) asserts that, given the current social system and
dominant culture, the problem cannot be so facilely resolved. The colonized, the Deaf
poet, mimics the dominant language and culture but turns the mimicry into a language,
a writing o f resistance, a writing that establishes the tension o f the remainder, thus
erasing (at least linguistically) the hierarchy and refusing reduction.
Writing, then, lies between self and other, between individual and community,
between almost anything that implies some kind o f hierarchy. This writing seeks to
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disrupt power systems by undermining the language that constructs and supports those
systems. In the way that the remainder challenges the power o f linguistics to be or to
construct a model for language and thus epistemology, writing challenges the power
social constructs claim. The writing between, the remainder,
undermines not only discreteness, but also the arbitrary character
o f signs. . . . They [remainders] are the exorbitant points where
lalangue [remainder] returns, the interior limits that, within
longue itself, threaten the system. . . . What is treated by langue
as a lack, an exception, and is largely ignored by it as it would like
to ignore the points where the system fails, where the structure
becomes uncertain and threatens to collapse, is treated by
lalangue as an excess, a locus for the proliferation o f meaning.
(Lecercle 40)
This linguistic metaphor elucidates Bhabha’s commentary on the monumental power o f
history, its power to be a model, and the subversive role remainders play in thwarting
the proliferation o f this kind o f history as power and model. Bhabha’s point relies on
the understanding that history is written from particular points o f view, historically
from the conqueror’s point o f view, and is used to perpetuate itself in order to maintain
the social hierarchy established at the moment o f colonization. This history o f the
conqueror doubly perpetuates the colonizer’s world view in the language o f the
history-the history is written in the language o f the colonizer, inscribing the world view
and culture into the story via its very language use. The writing o f a colonial subject2 9
2 9 Abdul JanMohamed offers an important and accurate critique o f Bhabha’s
assumptions o f the unity o f the colonial subject and the ambiguity o f colonial discourse.
For this reason, I have chosen to write about " a " colonial subject rather than "the"
colonial subject.
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aware o f the construct o f history emphasizes the points "where the system fails, where
the structure becomes uncertain and threatens to collapse" just as the remainder
emphasizes these points in language systems. Similarly, a colonial subject educated by
the colonists who returns to the colony as both/and and simultaneously as neither/nor
personifies the failure o f the social hierarchy to maintain its neat and facile categories
and creates situations in which the system becomes uncertain. Pushed to its logical
conclusion, it presents the possibility o f the system’s collapse. The writing o f a colonial
subject also seeks out and highlights those places in the conqueror’s language that
collapse and fail to inscribe the intentions o f dominance and superiority.
"To a Hearing Mother" and other poems composed in ASL also subvert the
narrative/history o f literature, particularly o f poetry-they challenge the tyranny o f
sound as the key element o f poetry and offer new definitions o f and ways o f
approaching the genre. ASL poetry points out where traditional and current notions o f
genre become uncertain systems o f literature and literary conventions. In undermining
categories o f literature and language, particularly national literatures, ASL poetry
participates in rethinking and reconfiguring national identities, suggesting that one
identity is not sufficient. Language, or writing, in this way acts as a trickster who
participates in articulating a national narrative, and through national narrative, the
trickster subverts the history which makes all people fit into one and posits a narrative
which challenges the purist history, offering versions o f history from the
dominated/colonized peoples within the nation. The new national narrative which takes
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into account and emphasizes the breakdown o f colonial power systems articulates a
new identity for the conquered as subjects-no longer objects subjugated by imposed
systems and hierarchies.
Broken Tension: Pane o f Glass Theory
Tricksters’/translators’ interpretations, then, participate in the construction o f
identities and worlds; their position at the margins and crossroads o f each society
enhances the tricksters’ ambiguity. Their language use, their existence, and their work
are dual, permitting them to intercede in power plays and relationships. Terry posits,
"Tricksters’ duality and shifting, often through violations o f social norms, help define
and unite different views leading to ‘an incorporation o f the outsider, a leveling o f
hierarchy, a reversal o f statuses.’ This violation o f social norms becomes a critical
process showing the multiple aspects o f a system as it redefines that system through
differences" (9-10). An important parallel between the mythical position o f tricksters
and ASL interpreters/translators3 0 needs to be mentioned. Just as a trickster never
comes from the community o f humans and is more closely allied with community o f
3 0 The terms translator and interpreter, though similar, generally refer to acts o f making
one language available in another at different times: the translator makes the target
language available to the source culture in writing-in other words, not in immediate
time; the interpreter, on the other hand, facilitates communication between two
language cultures immediately, as the communication happens. In the Deaf community,
the terms are often used interchangeably because o f the temporal/spatial aspect o f ASL.
The issues and problems o f translation discussed throughout this paper apply directly to
ASL interpreting as well as translating ASL literature, though they become most
glaringly obvious in situations such as the court room, banks, social security offices,
etc.
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gods and other immortals, so, too, an interpreter/translator o f ASL can never come
from the Deaf community.3 1 The power an interpreter/translator for the D eaf inherently
carries is analogous to the trickster’s power found in his duality and thus in his ability
to perform the "critical process showing multiple aspects o f a system as it redefines that
system through differences" (Terry 10). This power and position shared by the ASL
interpreter/translator stand in the center o f an ethical controversy. The trickster image
works particularly well in instances o f ASL interpreting: the hierarchy o f gods and
humans makes an uncanny fit because o f the way the Deaf are perceived by the hearing
world. Since the interpreter must come from the hearing world, and since the deaf are
viewed most often as disabled-they are viewed pathologically rather than culturally-the
social distance between the hearing and the D eaf is as great as the cultural distance
between gods and humans.
The prevailing theory and practice o f ASL interpreting, which can be likened to
a pane o f glass, requires the interpreter to be completely transparent (like a pane o f
glass) with all attention (and attention only) to what the interpreting community defines
3 1 While an interpreter o f a spoken language, such as Italian, can be either a non-native
Italian speaker who studied and became fluent in Italian or a native Italian speaker who
studied and became fluent in another language, an interpreter o f ASL can never be a
native ASL/deaf individual. Because a deaf person cannot hear, and because only
about 10% o f any language can in reality be lip-read, the same facility to be bi-lingual
does not exist for the deaf person. He or she cannot, in a speaking situation, interpret
for another deaf person because she or he cannot hear, and thus cannot interpret, what
the hearing person says for the deaf person. The interpreter thus acts as a traditional
trickster, holding all the power o f communication and the power o f withholding
communication as tricksters do in traditional trickster narratives.
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as fidelity. In other words, the interpreter translates only and exactly what each party
actually says/signs. While this seems equitable and ethical, and while it clearly avoids
litigious situations, it does not take into account the hierarchy inherent in each
encounter needing interpretation-an encounter in which the D eaf individual is always
already in the subordinate, subaltern (and needy) position: it is the Deaf who need
interpreters, who must always come from outside their community, to conduct their
business with the hearing world; neither the interpreter nor the other person involved in
the encounter can ever come from, and therefore can never fully understand, the Deaf
community.3 2 The pane o f glass method reinscribes the deaf/Deaf s politically and
socially subordinate status by not allowing the interpreter to mediate in a way that
balances or equalizes the positions o f the D eaf and the other person involved-to
explain words and terms which have no equivalent (and thus no meaning) in ASL.
Instead o f offering an explanation o f such words and terms, the interpreter, under this
method, is required to simply finger spell the word and move on, whether or not the
Deaf person has any frame o f reference or understanding o f that spelled word.
The Deaf person is forced, then, to either show ignorance (thus articulating and
highlighting the minority/subordinate status) or to pretend to understand (thus
3 2 One group o f interpreters most fully understands and participates in the Deaf
community: Children o f D eaf Adults (CODA). These individuals, if they choose
interpreting as a profession, most successfully move from center to periphery o f both
the Hearing and the D eaf worlds. However, even CODA cannot fully penetrate and be
in the center o f the Deaf community because they are not deaf and cannot, despite their
emotional and physical proximity to the Deaf, know what it is like to be or to think
deaf/Deaf.
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remaining ignorant and unable to effectively and adequately conduct the business at
hand-which results in continued minority standing). If the D eaf individual wants to ask
the interpreter without the hearing party understanding what is said, he or she is unable
to do so as the interpreter is required to interpret everything said or signed. The
interpreting community maintains their alliance to the pane o f glass method because it
protects them legally-they cannot be held responsible for misinterpretations if they
offer none. If, for example, an interpreter offers a definition or explanation o f a specific
term that is inaccurate and the D eaf person acts upon that incorrect information, the
interpreter can be held legally responsible for the outcome by either the deaf/Deaf client
or by the Hearing party. An interpreter’s license, therefore, requires that an interpreter
take an oath, called the Code o f Ethics, which is similar to the Hippocratic Oath.3 3
Despite the seeming judiciousness and soundness o f this position, the overall result is
the reinscribed subordinate position o f the Deaf.
^Interpreters for the Deaf, in most states, must pass a national test which rates their
abilities and categorizes their specialities. The Registry o f Interpreters for the Deaf
(RID) is the national rating and licensing board for interpreters. In a document written
in 1976, which is still current, RID, Inc., "set forth the following principles o f ethical
behavior to protect and guide the interpreter/transliteration, the consumer (hearing and
hearing impaired) and the professionalism o f interpreters as well as to ensure for all the
rights to communicate." These principles replaced an earlier set o f principles which
allowed for, in fact, required, mediation on the part o f the interpreter on behalf o f the
Deaf. The change came not just because interpreters wanted more rights or less
responsibility but also stemmed from the desire o f many Deaf to be more independent.
The result, however, is this new Code o f Ethics. The principles include, among others,
the agreement to not "counsel, advise, or interject personal opinion" at all, thus
establishing the interpreter as a pane o f glass. ("Code o f Ethics," handout in an El
Camino College ASL Interpreting Course)
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The relationship between the pane o f glass interpreting method and literary
translation is two-fold: first, the invisibility o f the translator and second the process o f
reinscribing subordination. The invisibility which reduces the cultural and linguistic
difference o f the source-language text to the same makes o f the translator a pane o f
glass; this is the least ethical o f the translation methods because it erases the presence
o f the translator and o f difference. The pane o f glass method erases the presence o f the
interpreter-the goal is to create a conversation that occurs as if the interpreter were not
there. However, it fails to erase the cultural difference because the interpreter is
necessarily and actually physically present (a difficult thing to erase) and because both
the interpreter and the method reinscribe the difference o f deafness-the method far
more insidiously than the presence o f the interpreter. This dilemma offers insight into
the problems o f domesticating translation: while the translator is invisible to the
individual reader, the translator’s choices make the translation highly visible to the
source-language culture because their subordinate position is further enforced and their
best art and aesthetic expression is appropriated and reduced to the same as the target-
language culture.
The distance between D eaf and Hearing worlds inscribed in "To a Hearing
Mother" acknowledges this enforced subordination (caused by more than just the Code
o f Ethics) by maintaining the distance between the worlds in the performance o f the
poem. While the poem’s narration offers a reasonable solution to the tension between
the Deaf community and Hearing parents o f deaf children, to work together, the
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signing o f the poem suggests that the D eaf realize that current translation and
interpretation theories and practices currently in use, educational theories, social
perceptions, medical perceptions, make the proffered solution impossible. A
translator’s written version o f the poem, if ethical, should formally enact the distance
between the worlds while simultaneously narrating a solution to the problem. The
question remains: How, then, do we translate this poem? Perhaps adding another ASL
poem and the challenges o f its translation to this discussion will aid in answering the
question.
ASL, Translation Theory, and Ethics: Translating Clavton Valli’ s "The Bridge"
In order to offer a foreignizing translation o f an ASL poem, specific practical
questions must accompany theoretical issues. Some questions a translator must ask o f
an ASL poem include: what is the poem about? what might it mean? is there an
agent? when and where did the action in the poem happen? how do we determine line
length and line breaks? how do we retain the sense o f perspective present in the ASL
version? what do we do about punctuation? what about the original culture is inscribed
in the language o f this poem and how do we present that in the target language? A
place to begin answering these questions, perhaps, is the methods used by the D eaf to
translation written poems into ASL.
Signed poems originally consisted entirely o f English poems translated into
ASL, a process which proves complicated; Lou Fant, a founding member o f the
National Theatre o f the Deaf and signed poetry performer, reports, "translating material
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into signed language provoked serious arguments within the company about which
'form’ o f the sign language should be used for the stage" (Padden and Humphries 81).
Choosing which form o f sign language, primarily ASL or SEE Sign, to translate an
English poem into depends largely on the poem. In the 1960s Eric Malzkun translated
Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky"; he met the challenges o f translating a nonsense poem
full o f remainders into ASL by mirroring the fantastic word creations o f Carroll’s poem
with "equally fantastic sign creations" (Padden and Humphries 85). Carroll’s poem
combines words to create new words-for example, slimy and lithe become "slithe."
Similarly, Malzkun combined signs to create new signs; for example, to translate
Carroll’s " ‘whiffling through the wood,’ Malzkun took parts o f signs for broad-footed
animals and combined them to form the legs, feet, and flaring eyes o f a terrible animal
thrashing its way through the brush" (85). Far from merely acting out the poem,
Malzkun used the different morphemes and handshapes o f his language to ewact the
morphemes and parts o f words in the original. Malzkun’s translation recognized signs
o f difference, cultural markers, in Carroll’s poem, and allowed them to operate in his
own language rather than domesticating them to produce poetics familiar to his D eaf
audience. Thus, the trickster-like qualities o f the language were allowed, in translation,
to continue resisting absolutes. Translating from ASL must follow Malzkun’s lead and
not domesticate the text to make it more palatable to English readers; doing so would
add to the prevailing, inaccurate stereotype o f ASL as gestural English.
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Clayton Valli’s poem, "The Bridge," presents interesting issues for a discussion
o f translation. Though pictures o f the various signs used to compose this piece follow,
the performance-thus the poem -is not (cannot be) represented on these pages. Maybe
you do not know ASL. Let me encourage you to envision what might represent each
word I transliterate; as you do this, try to imagine them in terras o f the pictures below.
As I offer a direct transliteration o f the poem, imagine what your reading process
would be if you could enact the w ords-if you could sign.3 4 A direct transliteration o f
"The Bridge" sounds like this:3 5
water sea (or ocean) boat-go ship-go see (or look) bridge-
distance (or horizon) shape-of-bridge (or road-on-bridge)
moving-cars-stop bridge-open boat-go-under flag-wave people-
look-down/people-look-up bridge-close ship-go see (or look)
bridge-distance (or horizon).
How did your reading o f the poem go? What was lost by the absence o f spatial and
performative elements? What was gained by reading the poem with gestures in mind?
Was your translation literal? metaphorical? Did you strive for a foreignizing method? a
domesticating method? something entirely different? Keep these questions and your
answers to them in mind as I discuss the poem’s meaning and then various methods o f
translating the poem.3 6
3 4 Reading the poem this way is the reverse o f my translation process.
3 5 Some signs in ASL can mean more than one thing at once; I signify this in the
transliteration by giving one meaning followed by an "or" clause.
3 6 Now that you have attempted to envision this poem, go to the CD-Rom which
accompanies this dissertation to see the poem performed by Marvin Sanders.
"The Bridge" uses as its structure a handshape pattern (a number pattern)
common to ASL narratives and poetry: the poem is composed entirely o f the shapes of
a specific number pattern 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. No other handshape or order enters the
poem at any time.3 7 Dr. Sam Supulla explains, "In handshape stories all the signs used
must be chosen and ordered according to specific rules. . . . Number stories are similar
to ABC stories, but use signs in the handshapes o f ASL numbers from 1 to 10, 15, or
20" (Signing Naturally 16). Valli borrows the idea and basic structure o f a narrative
format and turns it into a poetic device which he then combines with other poetic
devices to create a complex poem. The numbers which form the handshapes and
pattern o f "The Bridge" follow this progression: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,
1. In this poem, many o f the signs combine two parts o f ASL grammar in one sign;
this is common in ASL and is called inflection or agreement. Most ASL verbs change
their movement to indicate the subject and the object o f the verb. When using an
inflection or agreement verb, there is no need to sign the pronouns or nouns separately;
one sign inscribes the subject, the verb, and the object. Many inflection or agreement
verbs also indicate reciprocity and spaciality. Each sign in this poem indicates a
handshape (a number handshape) and also has a grammatical function. The chart
3 7 In ASL, all numbers are counted on one hand, necessitating specific shapes for the
numbers. Numbers one to five are similar to the ways in which hearing people count
from one to five (though the order is slightly different to avoid confusing the number
three with the letter "w"); numbers after five each have a specific handshape and
sometimes a specific movement as well.
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below links each transliterated English word with the handshape number and with the
grammatical function o f the sign to which it corresponds.
English Equivalent Grammatical Function Number
Handshape
water noun 6
sea (or ocean) adjective 5
boat-go noun & verb 4
ship-go adjective & verb 3
see (or look) verb 2
bridge-distance (or horizon) noun & adjective 1
shape-of-bridge (or road-on-bridge) adjective or noun 2
moving-cars-stop adverb, noun, & verb 3
bridge-open noun & verb 4
boat-go-under (or boat-go-through) noun & verb 5
flag-wave noun & verb 6
people-look-down/people-look-up noun & verb/noun & verb 5
bridge-close noun & verb 4
ship-go adjective & verb 3
see (or look) verb 2
bridge-distance (or horizon) noun & adjective 1
The signs in this poem clearly do not intend numbers as their meaning, yet the
numerical representation shadows the grammatical function and adds the depth both
found and lost in the remainder. The loss is similar to the loss found when translating
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poetry from one written language to the next; the rhyming words in the source
language will probably not rhyme in the target language. In Canto 26 o f Dante
Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, for example, Ulysses describes an event to Dante. The
meaning constructed by and through as well as the effect o f the terza rima used
throughout the Divine Comedy is lost in translation:
Considerate la vostra semenza
fatti non foste a viver come bruti
ma per seguir virtute e canonscenza.
Li miei compagni fee’ io si aguti
con questa orazion picciola, al cammino,
che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti;
e volta nostra poppa nel mattino,
de’ remi facemmo ali al folle volo,
sempre acquistando dal lato maneino. 118-126
Allen Mandelbaum’s translation, generally considered one o f the best translations,
works to retain the emphases created by the rhyming pattern, but the power o f the
emphasis is lost:
Consider well the seed that gave you birth:
you were not made to live your lives as brutes,
but to be followers o f worth and knowledge.
I spurred my comrades with this brief address
to meet the journey with such eagerness
that I could hardly, then, have held them back;
and having turned our stem toward morning, we
made wings out o f our oars in a wild flight
and always gained upon our left-hand side. 118-126
The terza rima rhymes i nal 2 1 2 3 2 3 4 3 pattern creating an interlinking pattern
among the tercets. The middle line o f the first tercet links to the first and third rhyme o f
the second tercet. This allows Dante to suggest a connection between the words
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"brutti" (brutes) and " aguti" (to spur on or to sharpen): Ulysses urges his men by
appealing to their sense o f self-worth, claiming that they were not bom brutes, and
since he is their superior, the claims is that he also was not born a brute. However, by
linking "brute" and "spurred," Dante implies that Ulysses, at least, acts brutishly. No
English translation can capture this exactly, and so the meanings created by the specific
rhyme schemes (the words and meanings emphasized by rhyming and falling in a certain
place in the rhythm) is left behind or lost in a translation; they are the remainder that is
untranslatable. Similarly, a translation into English from ASL loses the shadow o f the
number handshapes but should work towards finding a corresponding effect.
One translatable element o f Valli’s poem is chiasmus; while a translator cannot
create the exact same chiasmus (the numbers), she or he could still incorporate physical
chiasmus (and the ensuing chiasmus o f ideas/narration) to retain parts o f Valli’s
aesthetic. Valli’s number pattern utilizes chiasmas-a general scheme o f patterning two
pairs o f elements which can be manifested on one or many levels. The elements which
can be repeated in reverse in chiasmus include phonological (which are sound or
handshape pattems-remember that phonemes now refer to the smallest part o f any
language, not just spoken languages), lexical or morphological (which is word or sign
repetition), syntactic (which is phrase- or clause-construction), or semantic/thematic—
on the semantic/thematic level, chiasmas requires the presence o f one o f the first three
elements. In "The Bridge," the middle number pattern, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 completes two
chiasmas pattems-the first and second patterns cross, and the second and third patterns
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cross: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. In addition, the
meaning o f the poem (the semantic/thematic level) reverses in the second half o f the
poem. The poem begins with a boat moving toward a bridge on the horizon, the
encounter at the bridge occurs in the center o f the poem’s structure, and the poem ends
with a boat moving away from the bridge, again on the horizon. The structure o f the
poem, the number pattern and chiasmas, work to focus the reader on the key iconic
moment in the poem in which the expressive and descriptive elements unite: a boat
passes between the raised ends o f the bridge, the passage itself the center o f an
architectural chiasmas (the bridge) which connects a geographic chiasmas: land close
enough to be bridged, beyond, in both directions, open sea. On both sides o f the
bridge, cars and people act by stopping, and the connection o f land broken by the
raised bridge is replaced by the connection made when the eyes o f the commuters and
the boat passengers meet, further emphasized by being inscribed in one sign, with one
number handshape (5); this presence and action occur only in the center o f the poem.
The image o f a boat passing through the center o f the space voided by the raised
bridge, through the center o f the cars and people, as the center or focus o f attention
within and outside o f the poem, functions as a metaphorical allusion which is left
unspecified; the poem requires its audience to participate in the meaning-making act by
inferring that the meaning is something more than this moment and by constructing that
meaning within the context o f the poem. To encourage this participation, the poem
also relies on a simultaneous absence and presence o f a witnessing point o f view by not
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articulating an agent. Since poetry written without an agent is uncommon in English,
an agentless poem poses problems o f voice, syntax, and poetic structure for a
translator.
The translator’s work allows two people to bridge both language and culture
gaps by mediating within that gap. Rosenzweig writes, "The translator makes himself
a mouthpiece for an alien voice and transmits it across the chasm o f space or time. If
this alien voice has something to communicate, the language will be different from what
it was before. This is the criterion for conscientious translating" (qtd. in Glatzer 253).
We can learn translation strategies for ASL from translation methods used by scholars
translating classical Chinese and Japanese poetry in creating a foreignizing translation
method for ASL. An agent in Classical Chinese and Japanese poetry is rare; similarly,
ASL poetry often employs an agentless technique. In conversational ASL, a space is
designated for the person to whom a pronoun would belong, and the pronoun is formed
by pointing to that space throughout the conversation or performance. For poetry, this
means that when an agent is specified, the agent is often ambiguous; in agentless ASL
poetry, ambiguity multiplies. In the introduction to his book, Chinese Poetry: An
Anthology o f Major Modes and Genres, Wai-lim Yip addresses the question o f agency
in Chinese poetry; his comments are helpful in understanding how agency works in
poetry and in how we can begin to translate "The Bridge." Yip suggests that a
translator ask who the agent o f a given poem is; he continues.
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How are we to arbitrate this? Shall we assum e. . . that
the speaker " I" is always crouched behind the poetic
statement or image? What is the difference between
putting the " I " in the poem and not putting it there? Is it
possible not to have the personal pronoun? To have it
thus is to specify the speaker or agent o f the action,
restricting the poem, at least on a linguistic level, to one
participant only, whereas freedom from the personal
pronoun universalizes the state o f being or feeling,
providing a scene or situation into which all the readers
would move, as it were, to take part directly. (3)
Performative, or cinematic, techniques often encourage direct reader participation.
Recall that many o f the signs in "The Bridge" combine various grammatical elements;
this, coupled with the performative nature o f the original, creates a cinematic quality, a
quality a translation should retain. Yip’s translation strategies offer ways o f re-creating
in English the cinematic nature o f ASL poetry. The first phrase o f "The Bridge,"
"water sea (or ocean) boat-go see (or look) bridge-distance (or horizon)," when
translated into something like "As the boat sails, I see a bridge in the distance" or "A
boat sails on the ocean; look, a bridge on the horizon" "immediately loses its cinematic
visuality promoted by what [Yip] once called ‘spotlighting activity’ or what the film
makers called ‘mobile point o f view’ o f the spectator, [it] loses the acting-out o f the
objects, the wowmess and the concreteness o f the moment" (7). Both translations o f this
phrase insert an agent directly or indirectly. However, translating the phrase as, "A
boat. / Open sea. / Horizon: a bridge" directly captures "visual events as they emerge
and act themselves out before us, releasing them from the restrictive concept o f time
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and space, letting them leap out directly from the undifferentiated mode o f existence
instead o f standing between the reader and the events explaining them, analyzing them"
(Yip 7).
Again, Yip’s translation process is suggestive for tackling semantic issues when
translating poetry from ASL into English. Like classical Chinese, ASL is a tenseless
language-the tense o f a sign is determined by context or by adding the sign "finish" for
the past and "future” for the future; it is not determined by endings or inflected forms o f
any given sign. Another feature o f ASL which is similar to Asian languages is the lack
o f articles; ASL simply does not have them. Chinese is written in characters, not in an
alphabet; ASL is not composed o f letters in an alphabet but o f handshapes-the only
time words are fmgerspelled is when a word is calqued from a spoken language. Yip
suggests that translators o f Chinese need to assess the differences between the language
demands o f Chinese and the language demands o f English; the suggestion should be
applied to the translators o f ASL. He says,
How is [a reader or translator] to respond to a poem written in a
language in which such rigid syntactical demands [such as the
demands governing English grammar] are sparse, if not absent? Is
he to supply some o f the missing links between the characters?
This is perhaps the first question any reader will attempt to
answer. Many readers and translators simply go ahead and do it
without reflecting a bit whether such an act is legitimate,
aesthetically speaking. (2)
Simply filling in the gaps, according to Yip, hinders the original inscription o f meaning
and image-it performs a domesticating translation. A more foreignizing translation
technique considers the cultural context out o f which a poem stems and retains the
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unique syntax o f the source-language to the greatest degree possible. In other words,
he suggests that we cannot separate cultural translation from literary translation
because "the translator’s interference in the direct contact o f the [image] with the
reader . . . violates the life o f the [poetic] moment" (10).
In a 1999 lecture on the haiku in Salt Lake City, poet Jorie Graham posited that
a poem which does not involve the reader immediately in a physical way, fails. The
presence o f an agent in a poem often gets in the way o f the reader’s direct and sensual
participation in a poetic moment; this hindrance heightens if a translator creates an
agent in order to make readers in the target language more comfortable with a
translated poem. Yip explains the absence o f the translator’s direct presence in the
poem as resisting the urge to utilize "the perspective o f the ego as a means o f ordering
the Phenomenon before them" (7). Adding an agent to a poem that deliberately avoids
agency domesticates the foreign and loses the original poetic moment in the process. A
foreignizing translation method re-creates the agentless position o f the original poem
and allows the original to disturb or challenge the target-language reader. The
possibility o f disturbance also establishes a possibility o f an encounter with what we
might consider the Other on its own terms rather than completely eliding alterity; this
possibility challenges and problemetizes the notion o f Other, as well. Venuti defines
some foreignizing translation methods as "minoritizing" and having specific cultural
aims; he says, "The aim o f minoritizing translation is ‘never to acquire the majority,’
never to erect a new standard or to establish a new canon, but rather to promote
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cultural innovation as well as the understanding o f cultural difference by proliferating
the variables in English" (11). The presence o f foreign languages within a dominant
language country, such as ASL in the United States, can complicate this process. Most
ASL poets desire the formation o f an ASL literary canon, not to replace any other
canon but to coexist; however, ASL poets also hope to disturb the power o f English
and hearing culture over ASL and Deaf culture in the U.S. Translators who offer
foreignizing or minoritizing translations o f ASL poetry allow the language and culture
o f the D eaf to challenge cultural values which discriminate against the D eaf and
participate in the formation o f D eaf identity. Importantly, these translations also
participate in the construction o f a bridge across the abyss separating hearing and Deaf
Americans. This bridge both allows the possibility o f connection and provides a new
avenue for continued cultural oppression and invasion; translators should therefore
approach this bridge thoughtfully and ethically because their mediation holds the
possibility o f redemption.
Chapter IV
Translation as Border Work: A New Paradigm
Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from
them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. The borderlands
are a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue o f an unnatural
boundary. It is in a constant state o f transition.
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New M estiza
In light o f such decenterings, to ‘theorize’ becomes a newly problematic activity, for
theory is now written not from a condition o f critical ‘distance,’ but rather from a place
o f hybridity and betweenness in our global Borderlands composed o f historically
connected postcolonial spaces.
Jose David Saldivar, The D ialectics o f Our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique,
and Literary History
Anzaldua and Saldivar both assert that the borderlands (for Anzaldua,
specifically the borderlands in which Chicanos live) serve as a space in which to work
through tensions by engaging in dialogue. While set up to "distinguish us from them,"
they can actually function as spaces rather than as dividing lines. The dialogues which
occur in and because o f these spaces can seek to resolve practical concerns, such as
currency and citizenship for reasons o f voting and taxes. The dialogues can also seek
to engage problems o f identity and citizenship for reasons o f asserting identity or to aid
in the negotiation o f "postcolonial spaces." In each case, the borderlands present both
an opportunity and a threat and thus offer the possibility o f redemption. The
redemptive possibilities available to a translator/trickster, as noted in Chapter Three,
establish a unique set o f tensions which, in turn, create a space for redemption,
negotiation, and dialectic. In the context o f Chicano studies this set o f tensions
becomes a kind, or type, o f physical and metaphysical borderland. This chapter moves
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my focus from the translator to translation itself, offering the Chicano trope o f the
border as an apt metaphor and paradigm for ethical translation.1
I argue that looking at translation through the lens o f Chicano literature and
critical theory, especially the issues o f border/s and borderlands in this body o f
literature and critical discourse, offers new perspectives on the work o f translation as
well as resources from which to create a new paradigm for ethical translation. These
perspectives and resources thus make significant contributions to, in fact, transform,
both translation and U.S. literary studies. Chicano literature and critical studies offers
the physical borders between Mexico and the U.S. and the less physical borders,
particularly in the U.S. but also throughout the Americas, between races (indigenous
peoples, Europeans, and mestiza2 ), and between economic and social classes, as a
metaphor for Chicano experience. As such, the border-as-trope and the border-as-
metaphor allow critics and artists to work out cultural identity, to contest stereotypes,
and to, most importantly for this project, emphasize the unresolvable tension between
binaries. This unresolvable tension, if sustained, "speaks back to the empire" without
reinscribing its original structure/hierarchy and the results o f that structure. In this
way, the tension and paradigm deconstruct colonialism and offer dialectic in a
* 1 discussed and defined ethical translation in Chapter Three.
2 I recognize that this list does not include all nationalities living in the U.S.
However, I am focusing here on the borders specific to Chicanos.
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problemetized form and interanimation as the optimum method for intercultural
relations.
Borderlands: Am bisuitv and Tension
Both these poets [Loma Dee Cervantes and Ana Castillo] position Aztlan in the impossible
interstices between imagination and history. In their negative recollection of repressive social
forms, their works indicate how historically grounded the Chicano poetic imagination is. This
history constructs a fluid mending and blending, repression and destruction of cultures. This
tempestuous sense of motion marks that region termed the ‘borderlands.’ Not a homeland, not
a perpetuation of origin, the borderlands allude to an illimitable terrain marked by dreams and
rupture, marked by history and the various hopes that history can exemplify. The borderlands
represents the multiplicity and dynamism of Chicano experiences and cultures. It is a terrain in
which Mexicans, Chicanos, and mestizos live among the various worlds comprising their
cultural and political landscapes.
Rafael Perez-Torres, Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, Against Margins
The borderlands as metaphor and reality for Chicanos connote myriad
conditions and realities: a space or place o f habitation, a consciousness, a way o f life,
an identity, a possibility, a language, a struggle, a cultural collision, a place of
unification, a place o f division, a place o f repression, a place o f resistance, a place, as
Perez-Torres notes, o f "multiplicity and dynamism" (92). Further, borderlands create
various dilemmas, amalgamations, and a "state o f mental nepantilism” 3 (Anzaldua 78).
3 Anzaldua explains that the word is "an Aztec word meaning torn between
ways" (78). "Nepantilism" thus captures and enacts many issues in this chapter. First,
the way I present the word encapsulates a dilemma facing mulitilingual Chicanos":
when, how much, and why does one translate for non-Chicanos? I explore this issue
more fully in the section entitled " jaguilai": To Translate or Not to Translate." Second,
its meaning also captures borderland existence. For Chicanos, the borderlands
epitomize the real-life situation o f many: tom between U.S. and Mexican ways,
between the cultural "ways" inscribed in Spanish, calo, Nahuatl, and English, between
myriad other ways.
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The list, which could go on, internally sustains a sense of irony and tension between
opposites and between choices and situations which do not always neatly fall into
categorical opposites. Sustaining this tension becomes the work o f the border-to
refuse to become completely either one or the other is to exist at the border, to live in
the borderlands. As Anzaldua notes,
In perceiving conflicting information and points o f view, she [the
mestiza] is subjected to a swamping o f her psychological borders.
She has discovered that she can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid
boundaries. The borders and walls that are supposed to keep the
undesirable ideas out are entrenched in habits and patterns o f
behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy within. Rigidity
means death. Only by remaining flexible is she able to stretch the
psyche horizontally and vertically. (79)
Anzaldua posits that the borders erected between cultures, languages, and points o f
view, if accepted wholesale by the mestiza or Chicano, entrench her in patterns and
habits which not only allow for but also perpetuate the continued colonization o f
herself. The internal conflict created by the "psychological borders" o f the colonization
offer the mestiza some choices, among which are rigidity and flexibility.
Rigidity requires accepting the established borders and falling into the patterns
and habits necessitated by this acceptance. On the other hand, flexibility offers the
mestiza the power to transform the conflict o f and between the borders into a space for
continual and continuous negotiation which resists repression and broadens the
horizons o f possibility. As Anzaldua makes clear, the first choice, rigidity, leads to
death: cultural death, death o f the mestiza self, and the death o f possibility. The second
choice leads instead to life: expanded horizons and possibilities and the power to
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negotiate identity in ways which resist hegemony and domination. Further, this choice
allows the borderland resident to affect the construction o f the walls and boundaries-to
metaphorically replace the rigid brick and mortar o f the walls with more porous and
permeable materials.4 Finally, this choice highlights the problematic polarity o f borders
and colonization.
Thus, acknowledging as false imposed binaries and dualities which have created
them by unveiling and emphasizing their inherent ambiguity and then breaking down the
dualities and binaries comprises border work. The tension created in this breaking
down allows the border inhabitant to create a new space for living in addition to
creating a new paradigm for cultural interaction, a paradigm based on interanimation
and dialectic. The new paradigm asks that people and institutions enact the tension of
the border in their interactions, refusing the sharp delineations o f self and other, o f one
nation against another, and replace these with a tolerance for ambiguity and an always
in process self-construction that acknowledges, without appropriating, difference. The
paradigm, then, is one o f tolerance for ambiguity and on-going construction o f self,
other, and, especially, the dynamic space between binaries. Chicano literature, as the
model for this paradigm, already enacts the border as it, like Chicanos themselves,
4 The spaces that the Invisible Man discovers between Louis Armstrong’s music
function as a kind o f borderland in which the Invisible Man can negotiate identity
beyond the boundaries assigned to him by society. The spaces between the sounds
become the porous material o f the borderlands, a space which can be crossed and
recrossed at will. Similarly, the signing style Lentz uses in "To a Hearing Mother"
creates a space between D eaf and Hearing cultures in which to negotiate difference (see
Chapter Three).
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exist, "fsjuspended between worlds” (Perez-Torres 24). The elasticity o f this
suspended state establishes the means by which to expand, tolerate, and perpetuate the
tension o f the new paradigm.
This project explores what can be considered an ironic exile: the space o f the
borderlands acts as a kind o f homeland and simultaneously becomes the place to which
people exiled from U.S. and Mexican cultures and nations go to fashion their identity
and place in the world. The borderlands function as both the site and sign o f exile.
Chicanos do not live fully as Mexicans nor as U.S. residents because their lives inhabit,
enact, and express both and thus neither. In addition, the historical colonization and
appropriation o f the geographical, physical borderlands holds a history o f literal and
physical exile for people indigenous to the Americas. At the same time, the exile is
ironic-the borderlands have become a site o f projects o f cultural recuperation and
creation, a place to which Chicanos go (physically, intellectually, spiritually) to
establish political and social voice, to empower themselves. In this way,
The refusal to be delimited, while simultaneously claiming
numerous heritages and influences, allows for a rearticulation o f
the relationship between self and society, self and history, self and
land But Aztlan as a realm o f historical convergence and
discontinuous positionalities becomes another configuration
embraced and employed in the borderlands that is Chicano
culture. (Perez-Torres 96)
Despite the theoretical opportunities Chicanos create and are creating out o f this ironic
exile, the borderlands, like the bridge that is translation, also hold innate dangers.
Political power and social mobility in the U.S. remain primarily the province o f the
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majority. Articulating identity from the borderlands both offers Chicanos the
empowerment o f self-articulation while offering the majority more opportunities and
more culture to appropriate and domesticate. This is the tension between exile and
homeland in a border context. Similarly, ethical translation creates a tension between
exile and homeland along with their inherent dangers and opportunities.5 The border as
paradigm for translation presents occasions for avoiding problems o f domestication,
appropriation, and misrepresentation.
One way this new paradigm attacks the current and traditional problems o f
translation is that it allows translation to avoid facile binaries a translation encounters in
source and target texts and to explore and negotiate the borderlands between cultures
and languages. In this way, translation participates in postcolonial discourse and
projects which subvert imposed binary differences between self and other and between
colonizer and colonized. In the words o f Perez-Torres, "the terms ‘postmodern’ and
‘postcolonial’ both inscribe the very thing they seek to distance. There is, in the critical
discussion o f these terms, a simultaneous destruction and return o f the colonial and the
modem" (246). The dilemma Ellison’s Invisible Man faces in writing himself out of
invisibility into visibility appears here again: the dichotomy o f colonizer/colonized
creates both the colonizer and the colonized. Like the Invisible Man who finds he
5 These dangers and opportunities, discussed more fully in Chapter Three,
include such things as the danger o f further cultural appropriation and domination and
the opportunity to self-define, to participate actively in the construction o f cultural and
national identity.
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speaks for both self and other, and in this way cannot fully extract himself without in
some way destroying himself, borderland residents cannot simply destroy either side of
the border without also, in some way, destroying themselves because o f the nature o f
destruction itself.
In order to deconstruct this binary, the dichotomy must be negotiated in ways
that break it down without destroying the colonized in the process. The negotiation
thus needs to seek ways that attack the structure o f colonialism; the example o f
Chicano border work offers promising possibilities. The back-and-forth movement
created in border work deconstructs facile binaries by emphasizing the space between
them. Emphasizing this middle ground-the borderland-detracts from the traditional
and disempowering emphasis on the colonizer/colonized binary by moving the emphasis
from either and both sides towards an ambiguous, opaque center. When the emphasis
rests on the colonizer or on the colonized, the denigrating stereotyped and proscribed
roles reinscribe the structure and condition o f colonialism. When the emphasis turns to
the fluid borderlands, on the other hand, the foundations o f colonization and its
structure erode. In this way, the negotiation facilitated by the fluidity works to
deconstruct the hegemonic enterprise that is colonialism. Perez-Torres notes, "The
model we should bear in mind is not teleological or progressive-a moving beyond-but
rather one that allows for transgression and movement back and forth. The model is
one o f crossing borders" (246). This model is the paradigm I suggest for translation
because it both intensifies and prolongs the contact between languages and cultures
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which, importantly, resists the traditional complete transference from and domestication
o f one to the other. In other words, were translation to enact the work o f the
borderlands, a translated text would move between source and target cultures,
requiring that readers participate more actively in the translation process itself rather
than eliding the "foreign-ness" o f the original. While this method risks the problems o f
ambiguity (difficulty in comprehension, requiring more concentration and work from
readers used to domesticated texts; this risks limiting the readership o f the translation),
the benefits far outweigh the possible risks.
The trope and figure o f the border and borderlands which Chicano studies
brings to and offers this project functions as the focal point o f the argument in this
chapter: translation can participate in border work similar to and model the border
work o f Chicano literature and critical theory. Translation inherently works with self
(source culture/text) and other (target culture/translated text), and many view
translating texts as moving the source or original text beyond the limited audience of
the source-language speaking audience to a larger, even more global, audience.
However, such an approach to translation works on a one-way-only basis: source to
target. The source culture does not usually change because o f a translation to a target
culture. Rather, translation presents the target culture with an opportunity for change.
Employing the border and border work as a paradigm for translation allows translation
to encounter the possibility o f a more equal, participatory activity which never ends and
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thus retains and relies on a tension between the two.6 An ethical translation gives the
source culture a previously unthinkable occasion to more actively participate in the
cultural exchange that is ethical translation. Thus, the back-and-forth movement
between source and target cultures offered by the perspective o f border transgression
allows translators to make ethical choices not previously available. The refusal to
choose either the source or target cultures as the key to translation but to keep the two
in constant tension potentially and ideally creates an always-already on-going and equal
relationship between the tw o.7
In this way, translation can potentially contribute to what Rafael Perez-Torres
describes as the "sense o f wonder in the very act o f movement" (271) involved in
border work. Wonder, he argues, comprises the essence o f what Chicano literature and
critical theory brings to any literary and cultural discussion and to the U.S. canon. He
says,
Positioning itself against the margins o f history, against the
mystifications o f prejudice, Chicano culture also positions itself in
relation to marginality and mythology as it migrates through a
difficult terrain. It moves across worlds, carrying a contraband o f
hope from one to another. In motion, the culture can cast a
glance along the far horizons o f those worlds, guess at what lies
just beyond them. The wonder made evident in Chicano culture
6 The possibility o f a never-ending translation is discussed later in the chapter
and draws on the Benjamin-Rosenzweig discussion in Chapter Three.
7 This may appear optimistic and impossible in reality. However, models
function as the goals to which people and projects aspire, and thus as a model for
ethical interactions, this is the ultimate goal.
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is not getting beyond those horizons. The wonder is the
movement between. (271)
This claim o f wonder is significant. "Wonder" connotes both astonishment at the
miraculous and a sense o f doubt and questioning. It implies that definitions o f identity
never become fixed, thus allowing for dynamic rather than static identification and
interaction. The dynamism o f border crossing, its wonder, lies in its ability not only to
subvert colonial power but in its ability to subvert its very structure (the astounding
miracle) by questioning the structure and institution o f colonialism. By claiming that
translation carries the potential to participate in the movement between worlds Chicano
literature already enacts, I am not suggesting that translation comes out o f the same
context, exists in the same context, or offers and creates this wonder in itself. Rather, I
suggest that Chicano literature and critical theory not only enliven and contribute to a
discussion o f translation and U.S. cultural and literary studies but also offer a unique
and invaluable perspective on these studies-it interanimates U.S. literature. Gloria
Anzaldua invites people to take the lead offered by Chicanos: "They will come to see
that they are not helping us but following our lead" (85). It is from this point that my
look at translation and Chicano poetry begins.
Just as a translator/trickster moves between languages and cultures, making
cultural products and, to an extent, cultural knowledge, available beyond the borders
and boundaries o f the original audience, so, too, does translation itself transgress
borders, and the "contraband" it carries from one language/culture to the other
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includes cultural knowledge as well as the "hope" and possibility o f the empowerment
which comes from self-constructed identity. The borders crossed by translation are the
same borders which exist physically, politically, and socially. People in power erect
borders to create sharp and specific demarcations which serve the interest o f nations,
cultures, and, most especially, power. For example, borders determine tax zones,
voting areas, and other politically motivated categories. Other kinds o f borders, such
as implied but socially imposed borders, determine social and economic class and
mobility. Transgressing borders with translation and with code-switching8 makes
permeable what must, in order to maintain political and social status quo, remain
sharply defined. People and institutions in power use these sharp borders to define the
outlines and edges o f a nation, o f a people, and o f a culture.
Despite the multifaceted functions borders serve, people and nations erect them
for specific political, social, and cultural purposes; they do not exist a priori. Gloria
Anzaldua explains the artifice o f these sharply defined borders and the space between
the nations and cultures they inherently and inadvertently create: "The borderlands are
a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue o f an unnatural
boundary. It is in a constant state o f transition" (3). Because borders serve political,
cultural, and social purposes and because politics, cultures, and societies constantly
8 Code-switching is the movement between different languages and linguistic
codes, or the altering o f linguistic codes. Perez-Torres explains the significance o f
code-switching in Chicano poetry in this way, "From a sociolinguistic perspective, this
particular speech-act establishes or disrupts social roles, aids or precludes the
construction o f community" (213).
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change, the spaces created by borders necessarily change as well. This change blurs the
edges o f sharp borders in spite o f the best efforts o f those whose interests benefit from
clearly marked borders-or at least the illusion o f clearly marked borders. Once erected,
borders also create space for challenging the same powers and people who created
them. Borders thus create the points at which a culture can question itself, at which the
definitions become ambiguous and lay foundations for alternatives. Additionally,
borders establish points o f contact between cultures and languages. With the softening
o f the sharp edges o f borders comes ambiguity and unresol vable tension.9
Border Work and Translation: Deconstructing Nationalism
"W hat is la patria?" What is this notion of a country that will make so many people die for its
freedom only to have a whole other set of its people put it back in a ball a chain again?
Julia Alvarez, In the Name o f Salome
Translation participates in making borders permeable by blurring demarcations
and difference while simultaneously highlighting and maintaining difference. For some,
this is an opportunity; for others, it is a threat. Arteaga explains the power o f sharply
defined borders and the threat o f ambiguous borders. He says, "A thin border is
preferable to a thick one because narrowness renders its discrimination unequivocal.
Broadness invites ambiguity and subjects difference to an unclear zone and to a gray
scale" (Chicano Poetics 93). Ambiguity threatens facile categories and classifications
and defies stereotypes as well as figures and tropes o f unitary nationalism-the force
9 This tension will be a thread throughout this discussion and chapter.
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behind maintaining dominant cultural ideology and hegemony. Unitary nationalism
requires unmistakable and unqualified distinctions between us and them, between self
and other. Nationalism also requires dedication to the division between self and other,
most especially to the idea and notion o f self created by the nation. Without this sharp
border, the foundations o f nationalism crumble.
The crumbling then calls into question the notion o f nation, and thus national
and political power. Arteaga explains,
The inhabitants o f the border zone who partake in messy cultural
interplay cannot be contained on the narrow conceptual axis o f
monologic nationalism. Their physical presence belies the
fantastically thin border; they blur the hard-edged distinctions.
They are ill defining and ill defined, and cannot become subjects in
the same way as nationalists. They cannot because for them there
is no metonymic link o f nation, place, language, and identity. (94)
Whole groups o f people incapable o f being contained by an imposed (from within or
from without) identity do more than threaten internal national chaos or national identity
crises. In doing so, this refusal and resistance create a space for dialectic and balanced
negotiation. With the break down o f traditional and political notions o f nations and
power comes the need to reconceptualize social structures and the ultimate, perhaps
excessively optimistic, opportunity to elide discrimination rather than difference and
peoples. Guillermo Gomez-Pena says, "With the dismantling o f this mythology, I look,
if not to create an instantaneous space for intercultural communication, at least to
contribute to the creation o f the groundwork and theoretical principles for a future
dialogue that is capable o f transcending the profound historical resentments that exist
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between the communities on either side o f the border" (133). The work o f translation,
if ethical, can participate in this project for several reasons.
Ethical translation inherently challenges hegemony by undermining the unitary
subjectivity which drives nationalism and by offering, instead, multiple subjectivity.
Ethical translation places these multiple subjectivities on an equal plane rather than
reinscribing the original or creating a new hierarchy. The difficulties o f sustaining
multiple subjectivities and making every day, practical decisions within this framework
become the same dilemmas which reconceptualize society and policy. This activity
requires and becomes "movement between" the previous borders o f worlds, languages,
and cultures-it becomes the wonder o f border work. Thus, while the tension and
opacity created by this kind o f border work make governing more difficult, it also
allows "government" to transcend nationalism.
The permeability o f borders created by translation inherently inscribes cultural
significance into the translation process, particularly when the original text already blurs
the borders o f two or more cultures, as is often the case in Chicano literature, African
American literature, and ASL literature.1 0 The translator faces politically and culturally
charged and significant choices when translating texts which seek to blur the
1 0 Each o f these three kinds o f literature inherently blur the boundaries and
borders o f nations in different ways. This chapter focuses on how Chicano literature
does this, so I will not discuss that here. African American literature blurs boundaries
between standard and dialect English as well as between class and race. ASL literature
blurs the boundaries between hearing and deaf cultures and languages while
simultaneously requiring that definitions o f what it means to be U.S./American be
redefined.
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boundaries1 1 in the original: will the translation allow the source text to enhance
translation’s already-present border-crossing/border-blurring function? will the
translation instead re-inscribe the borders the source text seeks to blur and question?
These questions posit important issues for translation and translation studies. The
balance between the effects o f translation depends on the ethics o f the translator.
While ethical choices exist in translating texts from each o f the three groups in
this project, the issue o f borders and the hybridization involved in transgressing borders
occurs as trope, metaphor, subject, and object in most Chicano poetry. A number o f
critics and theorists o f Chicano literature argue the significance o f the border and
borderlands for Chicano literature and Chicano studies. For example, in a reading o f a
specific poem, Teresa McKenna offers insight into the function o f the border in
Chicano literature. She says, Americo Paredes, a Chicano poet o f corridos,1 2 "gives an
encompassing view o f an area which geographically, as well as politically and
“Later in the chapter, I will discuss other borders translation transgresses-the
borders between genre and canons.
1 2 Paredes entered the intellectual scene in Texas in the 1950s. His most famous
work, With H is P istol in H is Hand: A Border B allad and Its Hero, participates in
literary border work. Jose E. Limon explains, "In 1958, a new scholar appeared to
offer an analytically advanced, comprehensive, and compelling elaboration o f the
Texas-Mexican male heroic tradition and its corridos. Celebrated in folksong and
legend, such a hero defends his rights and those o f his people ‘with his pistol in his
hand,’ the new corrido line and title o f the most important ethnographic work o f this
new intellectual figure, Americo Paredes" (76). Corridos are poetic ballads which
celebrate cultural heros o f the southwest. Limon offers the following explanation o f
corridos: "Most corridos spoke from the point o f view o f the dispossessed, to be sung
among them and not to the race/class enemy" (50).
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culturally, stands as figure and metaphor for the transition between nations and the
complex o f connections which continue to exist for all Mexicans whether border
residents or not’" (qtd. in Saldivar 53-54). McKenna’s analysis suggests that the
border as cultural place exists conceptually as well as physically and geographically.
This claim resonates with the discussion o f nations informed by Anderson and
discussed in Chapter One. Geography no longer fully defines what constitutes a nation.
In fact, geography can, particularly in light o f border work and border crossing,
contribute to the break down o f traditional, geography-based notions o f nation. When
Chicano literature transforms the border between Mexico and the U.S. into an
ambiguous, continually changing metaphorical space in which national identity is both
contested and constructed and is always porous, it simultaneously creates the
possibility o f a new model for intercultural exchange. The specific challenges Chicano
literature poses to a translator and to the translation process, its effects and purpose,
further enhance the possibilities o f this border space.
Saldivar explains that Chicano literature sees itself as "participating in
Southwest cultural conversations, where Border culture is a serious contest o f codes
and representations" (77). Thus, the border is troped in Chicano literature,1 3 and the
significance o f it cannot be overlooked. The border makes unique the heteroglossic
nature o f Chicano literature. Arteaga posits, "It is this border context that
I 3 A discussion o f the border as trope and its significance continues throughout
the chapter.
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differentiates the styles o f linguistic interplay o f Chicano poetry from other styles o f
polyglot poetics" (69).
According to Arteaga and others, Chicanos not only write in polyglot poetics
but also live heteroglossically, a situation M. M. Bakhtin did not consider when he
claimed that poetry cannot be polyglossic because a single poetic voice governs the
entire work. Bakhtin argues that in poetry "the unity o f the language system and the
unity (and uniqueness) o f the poet’s individuality as reflected in his language and
speech, which is directly realized in this unity, are indispensable prerequisites o f poetic
style" (264). For a poet who exists in a bifurcated state, however, the poetic voice is
split, not unified, among various identities and voices.
Thus, contra Bakhtin’s influential statement that poetry is monoglossic, Chicano
poetry is poly- and heteroglossic. In her article, "Bilingualism & Dialogism: Another
Reading o f Loma Dee Cervantes’ Poetry," Ada Savin argues that "the very material,
content, and form o f bilingual poetry in general, and o f Chicano poetry in particular,
run counter to Bakhtin’s statements" (216).1 4 Bakhtin argues that dialogism is the
1 4 The statements to which Savin refers come from the essays in Bakhtin’s The
D ialogic Imagination: Four Essays; in these essays, according to the translators and
editors o f this book, Bakhtin argues that dialogism is
the characteristic epistemological mode o f a world dominated by
heteroglossia. Everything means, and is understood, as part o f a
greater whole-there is a constant interaction between meanings,
all o f which have the potential o f conditioning others. Which will
affect the other, how it will do so and in what degree is what is
actually settled at the moment o f the utterance. The dialogic
imperative, mandated by the pre-existence o f the language world
relative to any o f its current inhabitants, insures that there can be
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province o f prose, particularly that o f the novel, because poetic language traditionally
"chooses not to look beyond the boundaries o f its own language" (399). He posits that
poetry and poetic style are "fully adequate to a single language and a single linguistic
consciousness" (286). However, as Savin eloquently argues, bilingual poetry
challenges this notion by using an inherently heteroglossic and dialogic language and
form, asking that the readers o f the poetry move between language and cultural
boundaries and consciousnesses. According to Bakhtin, what makes the language o f
the poem unitary, even if more than one persona speaks, is that the poet’s uniqueness
and the unity o f the poetic voice "are indispensable prerequisites o f poetic style" (264).
However, a marker o f Chicano poetry is the dual identity, the double-voicedness o f the
poet and o f the poetic voice. Almost every Chicano critic, in fact, argues that this
hybridization is a necessary characteristic o f Chicano poetry.1 5
When we add the element o f translation and, particularly, translation into ASL
(which will be addressed at the end o f the chapter), the polyglossic nature o f Chicano
poetry must be addressed. A translator approaching a Chicano poem looking for a
no actual monologue. One may, like a primitive tribe that knows
only its own limits, be deluded into thinking there is one language,
or one may, as grammarians, certain political figures and
normative framers o f ‘literary languages’ do, seek in a
sophisticated way to achieve a unitary language. In both cases the
unitariness is relative to the overpowering force o f heteroglossia,
and thus dialogism. (426)
1 5 This claim recalls the questions Mullen asked in the African American Poetry
seminar at UCLA and creates its own set o f boundaries.
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unified voice, the kind o f unified voice Bakhtin defined, would find only confusion.
Only by acknowledging the double-voicedness, often the multi-voicedness, o f the poem
could a translator begin to translate the poem. When the language into which the
polyglossic poem is to be translated is a signed language, the polyglossic nature is
further highlighted. For example, because ASL and other signed languages are
performative, a translator might choose to have the signer sign both ASL and Mexican
Sign Language simultaneously to enact the double-voicedness o f the original poem.
The performance also further supports the claim that poetry can be heteroglossic
because the distance between author and performer is not only pronounced but also
performed.
Additionally, the border context carries with it all the history o f colonization
and violence the actual geographical border contains as well as the contemporary
colonial situation o f Chicanos in the U.S. An ethical translation o f any Chicano poem
which is already polyglot must find ways to translate the heteroglossic nature and
construction o f the poem without losing/eliding the integrity o f the heteroglossia as
well as ways to translate the history o f colonization, violence, and the beauty o f each
culture represented by the various languages. Since a heteroglossic/polyglot Chicano
poem inherently inscribes each o f these elements, an ethical translation would
necessarily enact the tensions created by the cohabitation o f these elements. By
looking to border work as the model for intercultural interaction, one can begin to
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approach translating a Chicano poem with some hope o f succeeding.1 6 While
seemingly insurmountable, and, importantly, despite a resistance from all sides to
translate this body o f literature, doing so is important. If done ethically, translation can
allow a culture the power o f self-articulation on an international (as opposed to internal
only) level, thus disempowering imposed definitions and stereotypes. As discussed in
Chapter Three, translating the various U.S. literatures for U.S. readers opens
previously closed and unthinkable avenues for intercultural communication and
understanding which, ultimately, offers the hope o f co-existing equally while retaining
individual cultural identity.
The role o f the border in Chicano studies contributes to the larger argument o f
this project by creating continuities between peoples who exist as U.S. citizens and
simultaneously as citizens o f other cultural nations. By looking at contemporary and
experimental Chicano literature, "we shift from a totalizing interpretation toward
analysis informed by postcolonial location and liminality so that w e can begin to remap
cultural theory in the Borderlands and further question how the U. S. academy, itself a
political institution, can respond to the conditions that generated our oppression"
(Saldivar 149). A reading o f Evangelina Vigil’s "jaguila!" serves as the backdrop and
reference point for this discussion o f translation as border work. The translation and
1 6 Many o f the specific challenges are worked out in the next section.
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genre issues posed by ASL in the previous chapter both underlie and enliven this
discussion.1 7
" idguila!": To Translate or N ot to Translate
Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without always having to translate, while I
still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to
accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be
illegitimate.
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Most o f the poems in Vigil’s Thirty an ’ Seen A Lot employ a dialogism and
heteroglossia. She writes in Spanish, English, and cal6, often all in the same poem.
Her poem, "jaguila!,"combines all three languages and offers what appears to be a
complex, parable-like lesson on identity construction and on maintaining one’s own
seme o f identity. The poem resembles a parable in that it offers a brief narration with
an embedded lesson. Once the use o f heteroglossia becomes clear, however, the poem
moves from parable to parable and meditation. Adding a meditation on the parable to
the structure and enacting it in the language and construction o f the poem occurs only
because o f the heteroglossia-without it, the poem would be only a parable. In other
words, the poem could not be written or translated into one language and retain the
meditative quality created at the end. The combination o f poetic styles requires that the
poem exist polyglossically. The poem, in its entirety, goes like this:
1 7 The effects and implications o f both will come to bear on several African-
American poems as well as two poems by Caucasian Americans in the next chapter to
further suggest the far-reaching implications o f this study.
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jaguila!
one’s sense o f being
bounces
off things
and people
so then
one has to keep those eyes
bien truchas
es decir
ser
como aquel senor
que el otro dia vi
sentado en la plaza:
el solo y viejo
pero bien aguila
he saw all
even in his senility
Composed o f sixteen lines (eight in English, eight in two kinds o f Spanish), the poem
uses several framing devices: first, English frames the poem, ensconcing the calo and
Spanish; second, in the title, the word is framed by the punctuation marks o f a Spanish
exclamatory statement; finally, the word itself is framed alphabetically by "a’s." The
only other mark o f punctuation in the poem occurs later, at the end o f the twelfth line.1 8
Two lines in the poem consist o f a single word-the significance o f which will be
discussed throughout. No word is capitalized in the poem, and the tone moves
between formal and informal, situating the poem and the effect o f the poem between
1 8 The significance o f this will be discussed in a few paragraphs.
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the two. The form o f the poem as a whole focuses the reader on the "spaces between."
A translation thus faces multiple challenges: it must devise methods which allow it both
the parable and the meditation (created in the original by the heteroglossia). It must
also find ways to embed the title as it is in the original, and it must move between
formal and informal language in its construction. All o f this must focus the reader o f
the translated text on the "spaces between" as well.
The very title captures the multiple borders which resonate throughout the
poem and again draws attention to the betweenness-the borderlands-created in the
poem. The title, "jaguila!," meaning, in English, "eagle," is a significant cultural icon
for Mexican, Chicano and U.S. cultures and histories. Since the title is in Spanish, it
seems to point to the legends and impact the eagle has on Chicano culture and identity.
The eagle is part o f the Mexican flag and history. According to Aztec legend the
Aztecs were to stop their migration from the north and settle where the eagle landed on
a cactus. This occurred in the Anahuac valley which became Tenochtitlan and Mexico
City today. Anzaldua tells the story in this way, and includes the following explanation:
" Huitzilopochtli, the God o f War, guided them to the place (that later became Mexico
City) where an eagle with a writhing serpent in its beak perched on a cactus. The eagle
symbolizes the spirit (as the sun, the father); the serpent symbolizes the soul (as the
earth, the mother)" (5). When only the eagle is present, however, the tension created
by the serpent and eagle together is implied rather than stated. The tension between
absence and presence thus also exists, commencing and constituting a central
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theme/issue in the poem. Centuries later, Cesar Chavez took the symbol o f the eagle
and made it the center image o f his United Farmworkers flag, thus creating a link
between past and present, Mexico and the U.S., landowner and migrant farmworker,
and in the process representing the space between the presence and absence o f both
countries for Chicano farm workers in the U.S. A translation o f the title from Spanish
to any other language risks losing this essential cultural information and its attendant
tension.
The U.S. uses the eagle in its Great Seal, Presidential Seal and other official
documents to represent several things. The eagle breaks through the clouds into
thirteen stars, originally suggesting that the U.S. would also break through the clouds
o f England’s oppression and enter the freedom and possibility represented by the
stars-seemingly endless possibility. The seal captures the eagle in flight, with no
support, suggesting that the U.S. should rely on its own virtues and be independent.
Finally, because Charles Thompson, the creator o f the Great Seal, was adopted by the
Delaware Indians and chose the eagle because o f their legends, the eagle represents a
tie to history and to land.1 9 In some ways, the confluence o f the eagle icon blurs the
lines between the Anglo and Native American traditions, inadvertently calling into
question the eagle as national symbol for the colonial U.S. power and opening the
space between purpose and reality. The image o f the eagle thus holds the whole
1 9 I am not suggesting that the eagle represents a connection with or agreement
between the U.S. government and Native Americans, Rather, I am listing the reasons
Thompson chose the eagle.
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history o f the U.S. in ironic ways. While the eagle is a foundational cultural icon for
Mexican and Chicano cultures, since the poem is in both English and Spanish, the
cultural implications o f and background o f the U.S. eagle intersect with the Mexican
and Chicano eagles, thereby blurring borders which are acknowledged by cartographers
and politicians but which are simultaneously resisted by those living in the borderlands.
The many spaces between the various binaries inscribed in the title resonate throughout
the poem.
The first stanza o f the poem, "one’s sense o f being / bounces / off things I and
people" posits identity as a sense-suggesting it may be something just out o f reach,
only partly because it is intangible. The other reason involves the continual tension that
resists definitive self-hood. Importantly, it is not one’s being, or even one’s identity,
that bounces off things and people, but rather one’s sense o f one’s being-the way one
perceives oneself and thus constructs oneself. Articulating identity in this way creates a
space between the physical self and the perception o f the self.2 0 This poses the question
o f how much influence outside factors exert in the formation o f identity. The sense o f
identity encounters, even, to some extent, relies on what is other or outside because the
shape o f that sense is created by the movement between "things and people" as well as
between the physical self and the perception o f self. This reliance on what is outside
may be present, but it does not entirely control the sense o f identity or it would not
2 0 The image and metaphor o f the mirror, in both Chapters One and Two comes
to mind at this juncture. A mirror presents an image o f the self that is not the self and
requires space between the physical self and the image o f the self.
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"bounce / off o f things / and people." If one’s identity is always-already transitory, in-
the-making, it can not be pinned down or hegemonized.
The assertion o f independence, however, is countered by the physical contact
implied in the stanza. Despite the metaphysical "reality" o f this independence created
by a dynamic identity and identity process, the physical and political/social realities o f
living in a society entrenched in hierarchy, in the stratification o f people based on
physical and linguistic differences presses down on and potentially limits the
metaphysical freedom and independence. The poem’s persona presents the experience
as the existence between metaphysical existence ("one’s sense o f being") and
society-bouncing o ff things and people. Bouncing off things and people suggests a
specific kind o f physical contact which could be, though is not necessarily, violent.
Whether or not the contact is physically violent, the poem suggests that it is at least
violent in a bhabhian way. The persona encounters epistemic violence. The contact
qualifies as epistemic violence because the sense o f being is involved, and it certainly
disrupts and disturbs the persona enough to require her-or, more generally, one-to be
alert and protective o f the identity. Thus, epistemic violence plays a part in the poem,
coming to bear more strongly on the poem’s persona as the poem continues.
Throughout, epistemic violence serves not just to further enhance the betweenness
created by the title but also to represent the marginal situation in which many in the
U.S. live.
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The assertion o f independence, echoing Descartes’ famous and problematic, " I
think, therefore I am" (53) countered by the physical contact, questions traditional
notions o f identity and epistemology. Descartes reasons that he exists because he is
able to articulate, to think, that he exists. In his endeavors to define and explain
epistemology, he began by rejecting the Aristotelean claim that what one knows
depends on the senses and replaced the empirical approach with one o f reason.
Reasoning, our faculties and powers o f reasoning, allow us to know, according to
Descartes. However, his claim also suggests that being is entirely internal and that we
have complete control over our being and our sense o f being. Vigil’s persona, on the
other hand, suggests that being, and one’s sense o f being, constantly battered by the
outside, is determined in part by that outside. The line thus sets up and sustains a
tension between culture and philosophy, between epistemology and metaphysics.
Finally, the stanza suggests that where one is located determines a large part o f
the identity. Because the encounter with things and people occurs momentarily and
continually changes, the self really exists between the things and people with which and
with whom it comes into contact. Location thus determines which things and people
the identity bounces off o f and bumps into, posing the issue o f survival. The "bien
truchas" o f the second stanza points out that in order to survive this violent
construction o f identity, a person would need to strive to have one’s sense o f self
totally located in the self rather than dependent on the outside. Vigil’s choice to deal
with one’s sense o f being, rather than one’s actual physical being, echoes the issues of
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invisibility with which Ellison’s Invisible Man grapples. The Invisible Man does not
question his physical existence. Rather, he questions his social and political
existence-the meaning o f his existence. He wonders what makes a thinking being
(someone who exists) meaningful. Similarly, the persona in this poem engages the
complexities o f a social and physical existence which occur at various interstices.
Vigil’s use o f "bien truchas" at this juncture in the poem allows an informed reader to
realize that the poem functions primarily as a meditation on questions and issues of
social and cultural "being" and demonstrates that for Chicanos the multilingual
presentation and construction o f the poem enacts the borderland "being" o f many o f
their lives.
The use o f "bien truchas" also establishes the first unique translation challenge
inherent in Chicano poetry and literature. I ask my reader to pause in the interpretation
o f this poem. I do not translate "bien truchas" here purposely. N ot translating the
phrase for readers unfamiliar with calo performs and enacts the many issues and
challenges o f translating Chicano and other multilingual and/or multicultural texts
which this chapter addresses. In considering these issues and challenges, Venuti’s
foreignizing translation techniques offer insight and helpful suggestions. Certain
questions innate in a foreignizing approach come to bear. First, in translating a
multilingual2 1 poem, does the translator domesticate the text by translating a line
2 1 The choice to use "multilingual" rather than "bilingual" is deliberate. While
calo is a form o f Spanish and often referred to as a code, I attempt to retain it’s
autonomy by affording it the name language. In addition, many Chicano poets employ
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already in a language different from the rest o f the poem (this is the only line in calo)
and make the text monolingual, or does the translator retain the heteroglossia? If a
translator, attempting to make the poem more accessible to a general, English-
speaking-only U.S. audience, chooses to retain the heteroglossia o f the original, the
translation faces becoming moot. English is already one o f the languages and voices in
the poem. If a translator makes the entire poem English, then the heteroglossia faces
elision. If a translator retains three languages, then the original issue o f audience
reasserts itself. Thus, the question o f whether to translate or not to translate a
multilingual text arises.
Does leaving the line in the original language preserve the integrity o f the poem
but distance the reader o f the translation too much, thus rendering the translation (and
therefore the poem) so incomprehensible that the reader stops and never reads or
understands the poem’s beauty, message, and cultural work? Again, the challenges
invite-indeed, require-a new method, at the least, and, ideally, a new paradigm for
translation. The between space created by the various languages, by the various
cultures inscribed in these languages, and by the two existing translation methods
simultaneously makes translation, as generally understood, difficult and creates an
Nahuatl, an Indian language, as well, thus adding yet another language to the Spanish
and English most commonly associate with Chicanos. About half o f the critics I
studied used "multilingual"; the other half used "bilingual." Both choices were
deliberate and explained. I hope to further subvert the colonial practice o f devaluing
the languages o f Chicanos by using "multilingual." As a non-Chicano, I think this is the
more ethical choice. Were I Chicano, I might have made a different, equally ethical
choice.
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opportunity to transform translation into border work-asking it to resist completion
and thus maintain and enact the tensions which make up the poem. Clearly, a
translation, in order to be published, must offer a "finished" product. However, a
"finished" translation, if it participates in border work, resists completion in its very
composition: it employs foreignizing techniques in ways that require the reader to
actively participate in the translation process.2 2 In order to accomplish this, the
translation must retain the ambiguity and opacity created by the heteroglossia and code
switching present in the original while simultaneously allowing the reader enough
access to the text to participate in translating it. The translation thus also enacts the
betweenness o f the original by placing the reader between original and translation,
between understanding and the working to understand. In other words, the translation
method must effectively transmit not just the words o f the poem but also its
multifaceted performance.2 3
Another issue I raise by not translating the phrase here is the purpose and effect
o f cultural knowledge and the political and social implications inherent in a poem such
as "jaguila." By not translating the phrase, the bold and central use o f the one calo line
can take center stage in my discussion o f the poem, further highlighting its centrality in
2 2 A more explicit explanation o f and some examples o f this kind o f incomplete
translation follow throughout the chapter.
2 3 This raises the following questions, too broad to fully explore in this chapter:
what is the purpose o f literature? what is the purpose o f specific poets? what is the
purpose o f translation? and, finally, what is the ideal relationship between author/text
and reader/audience?
n e
the poem. My choice might foreground for my readers the discomfort o f a people
living in conditions o f code-switching who share feelings o f linguistic inadequacy as
well as participate in the postmodern game o f signifier and signified, or it might just
give readers an excuse to dismiss the poem. Thus, leaving the original demands a
reckoning with audience and text.2 4
Finally, refusing to translate the phrase at this point2 5 highlights the work o f the
poem -does the poem intentionally create a specific, limited audience-an audience able
to switch linguistic and cultural codes? does the poem, with its code-switching and
unapologetic multilingual construction, deliberately limit the audience? or does it ask
the readers to seek the necessary knowledge to understand the poem? In other words,
does the poem solicit interanimation and education? While the publication and nation
wide distribution o f the poem implies that Vigil seeks a large readership, one not
limited to Chicanos, issues o f borders and cultural survival arise with these questions.
If the intended readership is the U.S. public in general, then access to cultural
knowledge is essential.
However, both linguistic and cultural translation, which offer the cultural
knowledge necessary to read and understand the poem for many U.S. readers, requires
a deeper look at the issue o f borders and transgressing borders. Anzaldua writes,
"Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without always having to
2 4 This purpose weaves in and out o f the following discussion.
2 5 I do offer a translation o f and discussion o f the phrase later in this section.
237
translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak
Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than
having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate" (59). Anzaldua
articulates a central problem the translator o f minority literature in the U.S. faces: both
the author and the translator must decide if the translation is about blurring the
boundaries between cultures and creating cultural knowledge which originates from the
source culture or if translation is an accommodation, an acquiescence to the dominant
culture which could render the work o f the original, multilingual text invisible. The
question o f blurring borders, in this case, becomes the question o f which borders need
to be blurred and made permeable: only those erected by those in power? or all
borders? who makes the decision and what are the ethics involved in both the decision
and in making the decision? The answers to these questions and my purpose in
presenting the discussion in this manner become more clear as the discussion
progresses.
The first stanza o f the poem asks the reader to wonder what kinds o f things the
sense o f self encounters. "People" is pretty easy to conceive-it suggests anyone and
everyone (it is, thus, simultaneously broad and specific, recalling the central issue o f
unresolvable tension and the effects o f that tension as well as continuing the insistence
that meaning lies between). "[Tjhings"2 6 is more difficult: does the persona mean
2 6 While "things," when used in scholarly discourse, points to an inability o f the
author to be specific-suggesting that the author needs to do more research, I use
"things" throughout these questions because that is the specific word the poem uses.
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physical "things"? ideological and/or philosophical things? both? spiritual things?
aesthetic things? social things, such as stereotypes, laws, and cultural mores? could
these things also be language? what kinds o f things does an identity encounter so
significantly that it needs to be mentioned-before people? In the context o f Chicano
(and other ethnic poetry), things could be those cultural "things" which resist or erase
the ethnic identity .2 7 Certainly these things include some from each o f the categories
above because all o f them work to create the public sense o f identity for groups o f
people everywhere, perhaps in unique ways in the U.S. since it has constructed itself as
the "melting pot" o f all cultures and people.
The indefinite tone created by "things” continues with Vigil’s use o f "one" as
the pronoun. Her choice distances both the persona in the poem and the reader: it
distances the identity from the things and people into which the persona’s sense o f
identity collides, and it creates a greater than usual distance between the persona and
the reader. The choice to distance both persona and reader lead to significant
questions: does it in any way enact the impersonal, survival-motivated view from above
o f an eagle, a predatory bird, suggesting that the relationship between the persona and
the dominant culture (the things and people) is one o f hierarchy and danger? The
To use another word restricts the integrity o f the poem in its interpretation.
2 7 For example, the "thing" Ellison’s Invisible Man encounters which both resist
and erase his identity include the desire for upward mobility by Bledsoe and the
dominant culture’s discomfort with and fear o f his presence as an intelligent and
educated African-American male.
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answers to these questions depend upon the reader and upon the reader’s cultural
knowledge and access to new cultural knowledge.2 8
"bien truchas": Borderland Survival
What would be code-switching on a sociodiscursive stage becomes on an aesthetic level something
more complex. Rather than ‘bilingual,’ Chicano poetry is better characterized as interlingual. As
Juan Bruce-Novoa explains in Chicano Poetry, many poems draw together two (or more) languages
within the text. These languages are thus positioned in ‘a state o f tension which produces a third, an
‘inter’ possibility of language. ‘Bilingualism’ implies moving from one language code to another,
‘interlingualism’ implies the constant tension of the two at once. ’ The interlingual forms a highly
fluid and complex textuality that lays bare the tensions at work in the articulation of Chicano poetic
voices.. . . The mestizaje of linguistic form, interlingualism reveals some of the dichotomous
conditions through and against which the Chicano poetic speaker voices the discontinuity of Chicano
subjectivity and agency.
Raphael Perez-Torres, Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, Against Margins
The second stanza introduces the first use o f a language other than English as
well as the only line in calo. The significance o f the code-switching here furthers the
themes and tensions o f the poem. Bruce-Novoa explains the ways in which this
strategy enhances these tensions. He says that in bilingual or multilingual poetry,
languages are positioned in "a state o f tension which produces a third [or fourth], an
‘inter’ possibility o f language. ‘Bilingualism’ implies moving from one language code
to another; ‘interlingualism’ implies the constant tension o f the two at once" (qtd. in
Perez-Torres 213). Thus the borderlands created throughout the poem, both
thematically and linguistically, exists in its construction as w ell-in the code-switching
itself. The movement between the three languages, initiated by the title and
2 8 Again, this idea o f cultural knowledge and access to it function as keystones
throughout the chapter.
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readdressed with the first use o f calo in this stanza, creates the possibility o f something
between the three languages used in the poem. The poem never resolves itself into a
single language, thus demanding that the tension between each o f the languages remain
in a reading o f the poem. An ethical translation would need to find ways to translate
this tension for the new reader/audience.
The stanza reads, "so then / one has to keep those eyes / bien truchas." An
understanding o f "bien truchas" illuminates the rest o f the stanza as well as the whole
poem. The phrase means to be hyper-aware, to be defensive, and to be on the look
out, to be, in other words, centered in the self as a defense against the outside world.
The hard attitude transmitted by the calo creates the overall attitude o f the poem. The
stanza also links the idea o f identity and the sense a person has o f him or herself to the
ideas o f sight and insight by asking and then offering answers to which eyes "those
eyes" denote. Since "those eyes" comes before "bien truchas," a reader first asks
whose eyes need to be kept alert/very open/wide open? The most obvious answer is
the "one" mentioned earlier (possibly, though not definitely, the persona o f the poem).
However, the specific "those" brings in a specificity that is at once specific and
completely general: it is not defined, and it has no antecedent. A second possibility is
that it is the eyes o f the soul (the traditional core o f the identity) rather than the
physical eyes. This answer would fit, perhaps, with the language change at this point:
the persona moves from speaking in English (and very stilted, third-person, removed
English) to speaking in colloquial Spanish at this point. Perhaps the eyes mentioned,
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then, are the cultural eyes, and thus the Spanish is more appropriate here. This is also
the only Spanish/calo line in the same stanza as English lines, opening the gap between
Anglo and Chicano cultures. Combining the two languages in the same stanza places
the identity, once again, somewhere between. It also places identity within the
negotiation o f difference rather than in one o f the things being negotiated. Once the
attitude and origin o f "bien truchas" comes to bear on the phrase, it is more likely that
"those eyes" mean the eyes that see as opposed to the eyes that look-the eyes capable
o f insight and protection. Importantly, even though this last possibility is the most
likely, particularly in the context o f "bien truchas," the poem does not definitively
answer the question, nor does it offer an exact interpretation. Instead, the poem insists
that the tension between possibilities remain, thus maintaining the elasticity present
throughout the poem. Despite this tension and refusal to alight on a single meaning,
"bien truchas" still determines and creates the tension and thereby acts as the core o f
the poem, the moment upon which the meaning o f the whole poem turns.
Arteaga notes,
The Chicano utterance plays against that backdrop, interanimating
bordered differences in the act. This is perhaps why interlingual
play is so prevalent in Chicano poetry: it is valorized in a poetics
o f hybridization that foregrounds in verse the discursive interplay
o f quotidian speech. And in a sense, this speaking style defines
the Chicano: intercultural heteroglot. To be Chicano is to
negotiate difference; it is a process, an active interanimating o f
competing discourses. Chicano calo and hybridized poetics put
into motion unfinalized selves, failing at monologue, falling
outside national subjectivity. Dialogism makes for a continual
coming to be. (95)
Since calo inherently suggests a "continual coming to be," and since the poem explores
this process o f coming to be, this line functions as the core o f the poem. Additionally,
the use o f calo brings together the different languages and cultures present in the poem:
Chicano, Mexican, and U.S., creating a heteroglossic borderland within the poem. The
dialogic nature o f the poem-its inherent heteroglossia-requires that a person reading it
(which means translating, to some degree, since it is written in three languages)
determine meaning; however, meaning calls itself into question by the very meaning-
making process. In other words, the process o f interpretation itself enters the
borderlands o f language and culture, constantly changes, and refuses absolute
interpretation.
The third stanza introduces another linguistic and heteroglossic issue: internal
translation. It begins, "es decir," which means "which is to say." The phrase "es decir"
offers a cultural translation, a translation that attempts to explain "bien truchas" without
offering a linguistic translation. Such a choice raises the issue o f audience: which
audience needs the translation? is it the same audience that needs clarification on the
formation o f identity and the need for caution or is it a different audience? if it is a
different audience, how does the poem sustain more than one audience? why is
clarification necessary in a multilingual poem since the multilingual-ness suggests that
the persona already expects the reader to move between the three language codes?
does it relate to the third-person English/first-person Spanish issue? These questions o f
audience pose challenges for a translator as well as for a reader, particularly the
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question that asks how a poem might sustain two separate audiences. The dialogic
nature o f the poem holds part o f that answer. The other parts o f the answer must be
constructed by the various audiences as they read, and their answers depend upon the
amount o f cultural consciousness and knowledge they possess. A Chicano audience
might understand the borderlands created by the poem’s construction immediately. A
general U.S. audience, on the other hand, would probably not perceive the presence o f
a borderland even if they understood the various languages and the play between them.
A translator should gauge the purpose o f the poem in order to determine how it
interacts with the intended audience before making translation choices. A translation
should maintain more than one audience in ways similar to the original.
This phrase also marks a significant change in tone, form, and content: the first
two stanzas are short, clipped, formal English with the exception o f the last line o f the
second stanza. This line, the "bien truchas" mentioned earlier, acts as a border between
the English and the Spanish o f the next seven lines and thus metaphorically between the
formal, yet straightforward English and the Spanish parable-like nature o f the middle.
As the border, it also enacts the ambiguous space through which the persona passes to
assume the more personal, conspiratorial tone o f the Spanish from the western-
philosophical-infiueneed tone o f the English in the first two stanzas. The first stanza
has four lines, and the second stanza has three, only two o f which are in English. The
third stanza, on the other hand, has seven lines. The final stanza, in English, has two.
Thus, each language has eight lines total, though one line o f the Spanish is calo. The
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English is split, six lines at the beginning and the final tw o lines. The Spanish lines
comprise the middle o f the poem, though the first line, the calo, is in a separate stanza.
The first six English lines use the very impersonal pronoun ''one” which lends the poem
a universal tone. The final two stanzas use "he" and "his," clearly more specific and
contextualized by the Spanish lines. The break comes with the calo, making it
impossible for the English "one" to be completely universal and suggesting, instead,
that the impersonal tone enacts the ways in which the Chicano subject is perceived by
the U.S. English-speaking population. The line thus acts as a border which prevents
colonialism and further appropriation o f Chicano culture. A translation must take this
into consideration and fully address the issue articulated by Anzaldua: is a translation
an acquiescence to a colonizer? How can a translation avoid participating in colonial
projects and simultaneously make the text available to a broader audience? Once the
text is translated and a broader audience has access to the poem, the effective border o f
the original may become so porous as to allow the border to be penetrated and
destroyed by a dominant culture. If, however, the translation finds ways to retain the
dialogic and heteroglossic nature o f the original, the border remains, and the new
audience faces similar interpretive challenges as the original audience does.
The next line, "ser," means "to be," and makes complete the tie to the identity
search constructed in the first two stanzas. Importantly, it is only a one-word line. The
only other one-word line in the poem is "bounces," which seems to carry with it a great
deal o f the meaning o f the poem as a whole: the sense o f the arbitrary in cultural and
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personal identity as well as the confusion and difficulty o f establishing and articulating
that identity. This emphasis on identity in these lines, however, does not detract from
"bien truchas" as the center or core o f the poem. Rather, it functions to emphasize the
importance o f the kind o f being "bien truchas" inscribes and for which it argues. The
line also functions to link the meditative tone o f the poem so far to the narrative that
follows, thus tying together the parable and the meditation.
The third line o f this third stanza reads, "como aquel senor,” which, loosely
translated, is "like that man." The Spanish implies that the persona sees a specific man.
However, when combined with the impersonal use o f "one" earlier, this man could be
any man or all men, a kind o f everyman, a universal representation o f an idea or o f a
figure. That he is specific, however, continues the tension between binaries. Later, we
learn that this man is old and alone ("el solo y viejo"). This highlights the possibility
that he represents something, perhaps the older generations who are the keepers o f
cultural history and identity because they lived it and have listened to (supposedly,
hopefully) their elders. However, the poem carefully insists that even this identity and
history is constructed (as established by the first stanza-that it is always-already under
construction). And yet, w e cannot dismiss the specificity o f "aquel," that man.
The specificity could point to a particular representation, or it could merely
allow the poet to situates the man in a specific place, the plaza. The next line reads,
"sentado en la plaza:". This line is important for several reasons. First, the Spanish
"sentado" has a much more permanent connotation, in the context o f the poem, than
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the English translation allows. Thus, the old man is not just sitting in the plaza one day
but approaches the status o f a permanent fixture in the plaza-a cultural figure as
opposed to a single, arbitrary person. This contributes to the parable-like feeling o f the
poem. Second, the only mark o f punctuation (aside from the title) occurs at the end o f
this line, and the word "plaza" is thus emphasized. In many ways, this word could
capture the poem and act as a vital organ, perhaps as the heart, o f the poem if the
reader did not understand calo or the cultural tensions present in the poem. Plazas
connote meeting places for a town or a city-for a community-a place o f
communication and connection, the exchange o f ideas and/or information, a place o f
local intimacy wherein people come to get water, to wash, to stroll in pairs or groups,
and participate in other community-oriented activities. In these and other ways, the
plaza acts as the heart o f the community and thus enacts and represents its character
and identity.
Anzaldua adds that the plaza, in Mexico, functions as a place to contemplate
borders and border-crossing. She says, "South o f the border, called North America’s
rubbish dump by Chicanos, mexiccmos congregate in the plazas to talk about the best
way to cross" (11). The colon at the end o f the word, in a traditional reading, suggests
that what follows is the lesson o f or key to the parable. However, as noted earlier, the
actual core o f the poem lies in the "bien truchas" o f the second stanza. And so another
reason for the colon must be explored. The centrality o f place, though not the core o f
the poem, remains culturally significant. The plaza acts, here, as a border o f sorts: the
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border between private and public, between personal and social, between private homes
and public property. The colon also marks the move from the parable-like tone in the
poem to the more meditative tone with which the poem ends.
The next two lines, "el solo y viejo / per bien aguila" ("himself alone and old /
yet a proper eagle"), establish the man’s age and his situation: he is alone; he is old; and
he is like an eagle. Thus, these lines recall the title and its attendant cultural
background. At this point, a reader re-encounters the tension o f the eagle icon. That
the repetition o f the title is in Spanish and is the last word in Spanish in the poem
suggests that within this image lies the history o f the borderlands: colonization warring
with ideas o f freedom and individuality. While the man sits alone and old in the plaza,
his vision, because he remains, the poem implies, "bien truchas," is sharp and clear, like
the vision o f an eagle.
In addition, these lines set up the return to English o f the last two lines in the
poem. The last two lines o f the poem, "he saw all / even in his senility," recall the irony
and the tension o f the poem. Even though the old man is alone and senile, thus without
memory or, in some way, life, he sees all: his vision o f life is separate from that earned
through experience. In other words, because memory o f our personal experiences
fades over time and disappears with the onset o f senility, the specific lessons and the
clarity o f those experiences, the poem suggests, are not what allow us or cultures to
survive. Instead, it is the memory o f how to survive that lasts and that allows a culture
to perpetuate itself. Thus, the old man’s vision is something other than that which
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comes from his life’s experiences. That these lines and this "lesson" come to the reader
in English is important: for Chicanos, it is the English o f U.S. colonization which has
erased or colored cultural history and experience. The senility seems to lie within the
language itself.
Other interpretive possibilities exist, o f course; the poem insists on tension and
opacity to the end. Perhaps the old man represents the discarded and dispossessed in
U.S. culture-we don’t care for, much less pay attention to, the elderly and assume that
the senility which sometimes accompanies old age renders the elderly useless.
However, the poem suggests that despite this senility (the lack o f specific memories),
the old man (the elderly-the keepers o f culture) sees everything with the clarity o f an
eagle’s vision. Thus the poem posits an important question, particularly for Chicanos
and others in the U.S. who have had their history taken from them with the removal of
original language and culture: how do you have a history with no memory? The poem
goes beyond material existence, the things out o f which we generally construct
memory, to the memory o f how to survive. This memory is what the persona in the
poem seeks and needs. This is also part o f why "bien truchas" is so central to the
poem: in the chaos and tension created by bouncing off things and people that
ostensibly construct the self, the persona keeps her eyes open for that memory which
will ensure self-survival.
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An Application: Reasons for and Difficulties o f Translating "idmiila!" for the D eaf
The polyglossic within Chicano texts functions to establish a particular relationship with the
reader. Through its processes o f inclusion and exclusion, the interlingual Chicano text defines
its readership. Although this may provide an exclusionist feeling, the more pressing issue has to
do with representational power. The literary texts reconstruct a voice, portray a community,
enact a union between linguistically apt readers. This does not mean that any reader proficient
in Spanish immediately gains access to interlingual texts. The use o f calo, the re-creation o f
regional dialects, the specificity o f speech-acts that occur within tire borderlands o f Chicano
social networks all are matrices that form the hermeneutic grids o f a text, which inflect a range
o f Chicano poetic expression. Familiarity with and recognition o f speech patterns forms one o f
the draws and requirements o f comprehension within Chicano poetic discourse.
Rafael Perez-Torres, Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, Against Margins
Since many Deaf read English as a second language, the need to translate U.S.
poetry for the D eaf may seem moot. However, for most Deaf, English as a second
language is primarily functional. The nuances inherent in poetic language are not
readily available, and when those nuances rely on sound for transmission, the
accessibility diminishes even further. Translating written poetry into ASL allows the
D eaf access to the artistic merits and beauty o f written poetry. This need becomes
more pronounced when the written poem uses more than one written language. The
Deaf in the U.S. are not taught Spanish. Chicano poetry is thus outside the education
o f the Deaf. Even the Deaf with Mexican and native ancestry, who may sign both ASL
and Mexican Sign Language (MSL), will not be taught to read or write Spanish, and
certainly not calo, in public or deaf schools. However, many D eaf are also
Chicano-politically and in some ways socially. Chicano poetry thus, in part, defines or
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articulates who they are 2 9 Since the poetry culturally defines these people as well as
those generally considered Chicano, it could be argued that they should have access to
and the ability to participate in the communities constructed by Chicano poetry and in
the process o f that construction. Also, because Chicano poetry is also U.S. poetry and
has significant contributions to make to U.S. culture and the conversations o f culture
and literature, ethically translating Chicano poetry offers Chicano poets more power of
voice and authority to a larger audience.
Translating written poetry and its interpretive possibilities from a multilingual,
polyglossic original into a signed language poses unique problems. First, as noted in
the previous chapters, translating any written text into a performative language requires
substantial changes to language itself. As a small example, the accents (the physical
marks o f punctuation) o f Spanish cannot be performed in a signed
language-punctuation exists as pauses, o f varying lengths, when it exists at all.
Another problem o f translating a multilingual poem rests on the requirements o f the
genre. Poetry uses language sparingly and carefully, choosing each word for its
rhythm, nuance, etymology, and, in spoken/written languages, for its sound-in signed
languages, the sign is chosen also for its handshape and other rhyming capabilities
rather than for its sound. When translating from a written/spoken language to a signed
language, the issue o f vocabulary thus also arises: spoken/written languages generally
have thousands more words than signed languages have signs. Because o f sign
2 9 This situation is similar to the situation outlined in my Introduction.
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language’s unique ability to use space to create meaning and to sign several things
simultaneously, fewer words/signs exist to represent the same number o f and kinds o f
ideas represented by spoken/written languages. A translation into a signed language
faces the problem o f a repetition not present in the original.
Third, translating a multilingual text requires that the translator know more than
one sign language; this is much less common for an ASL translator than for a Chicano
poet and/or translator. However, a number o f studies and anecdotes among the Deaf
suggest that while the world’s various signed languages differ significantly, a certain
level o f understanding o f handshapes and the ways in which signed languages operate
makes learning another signed language possible over a short period o f time. This does
not mean that ASL is a universal language for deaf people around the world nor that
even the handshapes transfer from one signed language to the next. For example, the
sign for "deaf' in ASL is the same sign for "a hearing person" in New Zealand Sign
Language. The Argentine Sign Language sign for "vice" means "thirsty" in ASL.
However, "because deaf people are adept at using gestures and their bodies for
communicating, they more freely communicate with their deaf counterparts around the
world than do most individuals reliant on speech" (Schein and Stewart 83). Despite
this ability to communicate, translation requires that a translator have an intimate
knowledge o f at least two languages, and a translator o f a multilingual text has to have
an intimate knowledge o f at least six languages. In the case o f a translator for Vigil’s
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poem, he or she would have to know English, Spanish, calo, ASL, MSL and the sign
equivalent o f calo if the translation attempts to retain the polyglossia o f the original.
Finally, as with all translations, the language ability o f the audience(s) comes to
bear on translation choices. While a translation o f multilingual poems requires certain
language abilities o f the translator, the translator also has to remember that the author
o f the original chose a multilingual approach purposefully, perhaps deliberately limiting
the audience or deliberately asking the audience to seek education and knowledge.
Perez-Torres explains, "The polyglossic within Chicano texts functions to establish a
particular relationship with the reader. Through its processes o f inclusion and
exclusion, the interlingual Chicano text defines its readership" (214). Thus, the original
audience is generally deliberately limited. A translation which erases the multilingual
nature o f the original risks transgressing important cultural borders in ways which
appropriate rather than in ways which encourage interanimating border crossings. A
translation which retains the multilingual nature o f the original, on the other hand, risks
creating an even smaller audience for the translation than the original created.
Because I am not fluent in the six languages required to translate " jaguila!" into
sign language and at the same time retain its original polyglossia, I sought the help o f
Marvin Sanders in my translation. Sanders is a native ASL signer (it is his first
language though he is hearing) and he is equally fluent in English. His interactions with
various deaf communities in Los Angeles brings him into frequent contact with MSL,
though he is not as fluent in that language as he is in ASL. Together with my
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knowledge o f English, ASL, Spanish and the understanding o f the calo in this poem,
we were able to offer several translations o f this poem. We decided that because most
Deaf in the U.S. are not familiar with three signed languages, we would offer several
translations o f the poem: because o f its performative nature, we have the option o f
presenting three translations o f the poem simultaneously. One person signs the poem
entirely in ASL. This person stands the furthest back o f the three people. The middle
signer signs the poem in both ASL and in ASL and MSL at the same time, the right
hand signing ASL and the left hand signing ASL for the English and MSL for the
Spanish. The final translation uses three signers, one who signs the English in ASL,
another who signs the Spanish in MSL, and the final person who fingerspells the calo in
order to distinguish it from both ASL and MSL.
We offer this method o f translation as the ideal for a polyglossic text,
acknowledging the idealistic nature o f the process. The problem o f labor and resources
for this kind o f translation is significant and recalls, again, the issue o f audience. Five
performers plus translators able to work with six languages do not come about in many
hearing poetry events. However, the Deaf encounter poetry in a different kind o f
reading situation. While hearing poets often participate in poetry readings, by and
large, hearing people encounter poetry in small classrooms or individually. For the
Deaf, poetry is a performance, and while they can purchase video tapes o f the poetry,
most o f the Deaf read the poetry at performances. These performances are well
attended, and many people capable o f performing the poems attend. In fact, the poets
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only sometimes perform their own pieces, allowing, instead, for others to perform
them. For this reason, our translation technique does not present insurmountable
obstacles for the Deaf.
Offering three translations simultaneously enacts border work in several ways.
First, the borders between ASL, MSL, and calo are both respected and transgressed.
In other words, the translation insists on the movement between the languages rather
than alighting on one, rather than crossing the border from one language to the other.
Second, the meaning o f the poem, because it is not located in any one o f the three
translations but in the simultaneous presentation o f the three, exists in a metaphoric
exile, moving from one to the next until understanding and interpretation occur. Third,
this kind o f translation both forces and acknowledges the issue o f audience and
language ability: while a D eaf person who does not know MSL or calo can focus on
the ASL-only translation, that translator stands the furthest back and so the audience is
immediately bombarded with the other languages while attempting to access the ASL
version. The polyglossic effect o f the original remains. Finally, the borders between
reading, interpretation, and translation blur in any translation, but particularly in a
translation which offers three literally simultaneously, rather than several successively
on the page.
John Felstiner argues, "translating any p o e t. . . appropriates all the resources of
interpretive criticism. Even more than that: in translating, as in parody, critical and
creative activity converge. The fullest reading o f a poem gets realized moment by
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moment in the writing o f a poem. So translation presents not merely a paradigm but
the utmost case o f engaged literary interpretation" (94). In a real-time simultaneous
presentation o f several translations, not only are the borders between writing and
translating, between interpretation and translation, blurred, but also the borders
between time are blurred. Instead o f reading an interpretation, or several
interpretations, o f the original as you come to them, this kind o f translation asks the
reader to process all three at the same time-the borders between audience and
author/performer, then, blur not only the same way they do in traditional, written
translations, but also in the time lapse usually afforded the reading activity. This is
particularly clear when one o f the three translations simultaneously offers the poem in
two versions. In this way, our translations rely on interanimation. This blurring o f
borders highlights the wonder o f border work discussed earlier-the wonder is in this
transgressive.
An Application Continued: The Translation Process
I will focus first on the translation entirely into ASL because each o f the
following translations depend so much on that translation. Even though the translation
into ASL only is the least faithful to the original, it highlights the difficulties o f
translating from written to signed languages, the first problem noted above. It also
addresses the second problem listed above, that o f genre and the demands genre makes
on translation. Some o f the translation issues carried over with each translation, the
most important being the starting point. We began our translation process with the
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phrase and idea o f "bien truchas." Since my interpretation o f the poem asserts this as
the core moment in the poem, the moment upon which the meaning o f the poem turns,
we felt a translation o f the poem needed to focus on this phrase in order to establish the
kind o f signs chosen for the rest, the handshapes we wanted to focus on to create the
synthesis and unity o f the poem, and the kind o f rhythm we would use throughout.
Because, as I discussed earlier, "bien truchas" establishes an edge to the poem, suggests
that the persona uses language and culture as a shell to ward off the pain o f bumping
into "things and people," the sign we chose for this phrase had to also establish a self-
protective tone and meaning, whether that sign was in ASL, MSL, or the sign
equivalent o f calo.
I pointed out earlier that the English in the poem is in third person while the
Spanish is first person. ASL does not have signs in the third person-or in any person
as we know it in English. Instead, a position is established, a particular signing area,
and the signer points to that position whenever referring to a third party in any given
situation. At least two people must be designated away from the signer in order to
establish a third person; if only one person is designated, the signer would be signing in
the second person. If we were to choose that method o f signing to establish the third
person, we would be implying two specific people, thus nullifying the generality o f
"one" to represent more than one person. In addition, in order to sign in the third
person, a signer points to the position designated for that agent and then signs as if he
or she were that agent, putting the signing back into the first person. In ASL there is
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no way to sign "one’s sense o f being" and keep it open, the way it is in English or other
written languages. For this reason, we translated the entire poem into first person.
Using the first person not only solved the problem o f how to sign the opening pronoun,
but it also allowed us to focus on "bien truchas" and find a sign that transmitted the full
meaning o f the phrase. Had we attempted to translate in the third person, using the
signing area away from the signer’s body, we would not have been able to create the
same emotion and sense o f defensiveness located in "bien truchas."
Our translation o f the poem into ASL, if transcribed into English (and
remember that ASL is not really ever written-this just allows me to present the order
into which w e put the poem and to discuss the different signs we chose), looks like
this:
eagle!
my understand-who? [rhet] myself
create-how? [rhet]
many different experience
and meet
therefore
everything I need
aware
what? I say
you need-what? [rhet]3 0
same-who? [rhet]-that man
3 0 We found this particular rhetorical problematic. While we needed to put it in
there to transfer the sense o f "ser," since "to be" does not exist in ASL, we worried that
the close repetition o f rhetoricals could be confusing. We finally decided to leave it in
to retain the sense o f the original and because it enacts a foreignizing strategy.
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saw other day
sitting every day-where? [rhet]-p-l-a-z-a everyone
socialize, meet, city center
old and alone-who? [rhet]~himself
but always aware same eagle
old-man he forgot-what? [rhet] everything
doesn’t matter-Why? He understand everything
After considering and working with the idea o f "bien truchas," we moved to the title.
We translated the title directly as "eagle." We briefly considered fingerspelling the
Spanish original title, moving towards a foreignizing tactic, but decided in the end that
the force o f the image drives much o f the poem and provides a sustained tension
throughout. To make it inaccessible to a D eaf audience unfamiliar with MSL from the
beginning risked losing the meaning o f the poem altogether. However, in order to
maintain the symbolic power o f the title, and in order to enact the punctuation o f the
original, we add a classifier and emotive, highly expressive facial expressions to the
sign. As Marvin signs "eagle," he emphasizes, with his eyes and the rest o f his face,
awareness. In addition, to incorporate the Spanish punctuation, w e add the classifier
"pow" which conveys intensity. From there, keeping in mind the resonance o f "bien
truchas," we moved to the first stanza.
ASL uses rhetoricals in place o f both prepositions and sometimes verbs.
Instead o f saying "one’s sense o f being," then, to translate it into the first person and to
put it into a sign that exists in ASL ("sense" as meant here and "being" don’t exist), we
translated the line to "my understanding o f myself." However, that line is in English,
the grammar is English. To say the same thing in ASL, we had to state the key idea
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and then use a rhetorical: my understand (because gerunds do not exist in ASL) who?
(who is it that I understand?) myself.
The rest o f the stanza also had to be translated by meaning first since signing
"bounces" in ASL would suggest a physical narrative rather than a meditation. We
chose to sign the meaning created by the entire stanza-that the persona’s sense o f self
is created or constructed by life, by the things with which the persona comes into
contact. For this reason, we translated the stanza as "my understanding o f myself / is
created by / the many different experiences / and by the people with whom I come into
contact." Putting this in ASL required more rhetoricals and the understanding that
ASL verbs have the capacity to sign entire ideas (as in "meet") without signing
pronouns or adjectives. So, when the signer signs "meet," the idea signed is "people I
meet" because the handshape used is a classifier denoting people and the sign is
repeated several times to create the plural. And so the stanza becomes, "my
understand-who? [rhet] myself / create-how? [rhet] / many different experience / and
meet."
The second stanza, "so then / one has to keep those eyes I bien truchas"
presented more difficult translation challenges, in part because the key to the poem is in
these lines. In addition, this is the stanza which incorporates two languages. Finally,
because "those eyes" operate on a symbolic level not directly transferrable to ASL,
finding a parallel symbol or means o f expressing the meaning o f the original symbol had
to be found. We decided to rely heavily on the fifth o f the 4/5 parameters (discussed in
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Chapter One and in Appendix I) because it allows the performer to not only sign but
also to enact the meaning o f "bien truchas." We translated "so then" as "therefore," a
sign rarely used in conversational ASL but used when redirecting emphasis or
explanation, as is the case here. Again, instead o f using the third-person "one," we
used "I." The specific and simultaneously non-specific (because o f the lack o f
antecedent) "those eyes" presented almost as many problems as "bien truchas." When
one signs "eyes" in ASL, one signs a specific location and a specific physical entity.
The nuances carried by "eyes" in English-insight, understanding, wisdom-do not carry
over into ASL. We therefore chose to go again with the overall effect o f the English,
assuming that the stanza meant, in general, that a person needs to be constantly aware
o f all surroundings and possibilities. To say this in ASL, we translated the stanza as
"therefore / everything I need / aware." "Aware" in ASL, when combined with the fifth
o f the 4/5 parameters, facial expressions, conveys the original meaning o f the phrase:
to be hyper-aware, to be defensive, and to be on the look-out, to be, in other words,
centered in the self as a defense against the outside world. This facial expression is the
same expression used in the title. The signer, to establish the meaning o f the poem,
signs the stanza as close to the body as possible instead o f at a comfortable, generally
used, distance from the body, lowers the eyebrows, hunches the shoulders, opens the
eyes just barely but intensely, and moves the body in an arc, allowing the signer to
assess the total surroundings.
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The third stanza presented the greatest challenge because we had to first
translate the lines into English (removing the text once from the original) and then into
ASL (making the final translation twice removed from the original). However, since
the performance o f the three translations is simultaneous, the distance is mediated to a
certain extent. The first two lines o f this stanza were the most difficult to translate
because "which is to say" or "in other words" and "to be" do not transliterate, even
translate, into ASL. We translated "which is to say" into the English "what I’m
saying," and then into the ASL "what? I say," meaning "what I am saying." While not
an exact translation, the meaning is conveyed: the poem is moving from one tone and
mode o f expression (English) to another (Spanish). This change is reflected in the
facial expressions. The first two stanzas are signed with less intensity in the 4/5
parameter than is this third stanza to reflect the change from third person to first person
present in the original.
The one-word line o f the poem, "ser," stretched our translating abilities. As I
mentioned, the phrase "to be" does not have an ASL companion. First, ASL does not
conjugate verbs (see Appendix I for a more complete explanation o f ASL verbs). One
option we considered was fingerspelling "to be," a choice which would both convey the
exact meaning o f the Spanish and further the foreignizing technique we wished to
employ. However, the context o f the word, particularly in connection with the
meanings o f "bien truchas," required that we consider the full impact o f the phrase.
The contextual meaning and the parable-like nature o f the poem suggests that this
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stanza is offering a map for dealing with the many people and things which shape the
persona’s life. For this reason, we decided to translate "ser" as "you need-what?
[rhet]." The imperative o f "bien truchas" and "ser" compelled us to inscribe that
imperative into the ASL translation.
We found the third line o f this third stanza much easier to translate. We
translated "como aquel senor," ("like that man") as "same-who? [rhet] that man." In
order to sign this phrase, the signer must first set the stage. The man must be
designated before a classifier, a kind o f sign which functions as a short cut so that a
signer does not have to fully describe each person in a given story or literary work
every time that person enters the text, can be used. Therefore, the signer signs,
"same-who?" and then points to a specific space to the side (a space which will from
that point on always be the man sitting in the plaza) and signs "man." The signer can
then continue with the translation by signing "that man."
The next line o f the stanza, "que el otro dia vi," was not difficult to translate,
but it does emphasize the difference between Spanish and ASL grammar systems.
Unless "that" specifies a particular person or thing, ASL does not sign "that." In other
words, to sign "that the other day," a signer would simply drop the "that" because it has
no place in ASL grammar. We could have fingerspelled the word, but to do so would
be to transliterate rather than translate. Instead, we translated the line as "[I] saw other
day." Because o f the way ASL verbs work, signing " I" and then "saw" is redundant.
The sign moves from the signer’s body out to the previously designated place for the
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man seen. This movement already means " I saw”; therefore, to sign the pronoun " I "
and then the sign for "saw" actually translates as a repetitive " I I saw."
The next line, "sentado en la plaza," required that w e make a choice which
affects issues o f genre. Since "plaza" does not have a corresponding sign in ASL,
transferring the cultural significance was almost impossible. We had three choices,
first, we could fingerspell the word and then describe a plaza-set the scene for the
audience. This choice interrupts the rhythm and other poetic elements o f the poem.
Second, we could simply fingerspell the word and move on. This choice completely
omits the cultural significance o f the word. Finally, we could sign "area" and move on,
but the effects are the same as the second choice. We decided to work with the first
choice and find signs which could offer a brief but powerful image o f the plaza without
disrupting the translation as a whole too much. We chose the following translation:
"sit-where? [rhet] p-l-a-z-a3 1 city center, everyone socialize, meet." While the
translation is a bit longer than the original line, the final two signs move between the
signer and the place designated for the man sitting in the plaza, enacting the tension
present throughout the poem.
We translated "el solo y viejo" as "old, alone who?-himself." The sign for
"alone" creates a continuity between the "meet" o f the previous line and this line
because they use the same hand shape. However, the punctuation after "plaza" in the
original, a colon, suggests that the narrator pushes a separation between the old man
3 1 The hyphens between the letters means that the word is fingerspelled.
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and the plaza-a distance between the actively social lives in the plaza and the solitary
man. For this reason, we switched the order so that the translation enacts a similar
distancing. We further emphasized the distance by using the reflexive pronoun
"himself' instead o f the more common construction in ASL: pointing to the previously
designated spot for the old man and then signing "old and alone." "Himself' still points
to that spot, but its construction as a reflexive pronoun inherently distances the man
from the plaza’s other occupants because it emphasizes an internal existence, one o f
interiority.
The last line o f this stanza, "pero bien aguila," embeds the title, the tension o f
the symbol/icon, and a meditative tone. The line posits that even though the old man is
alone and distanced from society, he represents a way o f being which preserves identity
(in spite of, we find out in the next two lines, senility). He also epitomizes "bien
truchas." Our translation o f the line needed to find a way to convey these various
levels o f meaning. We began with a translation that was closer to a transliteration than
a translation: we considered "but himself good eagle." However, that translation is
bland and requires the reader to do all o f the interpretive work. We decided to
incorporate the message o f "bien truchas" and to connect the line with the title by using
the same sign and 4/5 parameter: "but always aware same eagle," meaning "but he is
always aware, just like an eagle.
The final stanza presented an interesting challenge: if we translated the stanza in
the order o f the original, the ASL would actually mean "he forgot everything which
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doesn’t really matter and he understands." This does not convey the power nor the
point o f this stanza. To avoid this problem and to convey the original meaning, we
reversed the order o f the lines, leaving us with "Old-man he forgot-what? [rhet]
everything / Doesn’t matter-Why? He understand everything." Again, had we
translated "he saw all" directly, the nuances o f seeing everything would be lost, and so
we reverted back to "understand." The original repeats the words associated with
vision, emphasizing the ability to see beyond; the translation repeats the signs for that
meaning-understanding.
I end my discussion o f our translation o f the poem with a brief overview o f the
other two translations: The second translation, the one in which the signer signs both
ASL and MSL simultaneously, allows me to begin addressing the final two translation
issues presented in the previous section (my discussion o f the final translation will finish
addressing these two issues): difficulties in faithfully translating polyglossic poetry and
issues o f audience. In this translation, the English is translated into ASL, and so the
first stanza, the first two lines o f the second stanza, and the fourth stanza remain the
same as the first translation. Because calo and Spanish are different, and because a sign
equivalent o f calo does not exist, we chose to fingerspell "bien truchas" and
simultaneously employ the ASL translation with the other hand and to retain the facial
expressions the 4/5 parameters allow. The signer then signs the third stanza only in
MSL on the right hand and the ASL translation on the left hand. Throughout, the ASL
translation occurs on the left hand (the less dominant signing hand). Refusing to rely
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on only one hand at any point in this translation emphasizes the betweenness and the
border work o f translation-it highlights the polyglossia o f the poem and frustrates the
unity o f the ASL-only translation. Additionally, the title is signed in MSL rather than in
ASL since the original is in Spanish. The final translation, the one which requires three
separate signers, uses the translations o f the previous versions, but they are split
between the three performers as described earlier. In addition, the signer who
fingerspells the calo stands in the center and two feet forward from the other signers to
emphasize the centrality o f both the language and the role played by the single line in
the poem.
As noted in the Introduction, the perspectives and models which Chicano
border theory offers translation allow translation to operate as a tool against
colonization. The kind o f foreignizing technique we tried to employ resists
domesticating impulses a translator may feel makes the text more accessible to a
general audience. Leaving the interanimation o f the triple translation in place allowed
us to create a translation in which the six languages interacted in new and unusual
ways. At times, when the struggle to allow the tensions in the original to exist in the
translation seemed impossible to complete, we were tempted to domesticate the poem
and make it fit an ASL paradigm. However, had we done so, our translation would
have participated in a dialogue based on colonization rather than refusing to
acknowledge its false hierarchy. Giving in would have made the translation process
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much easier, but the translation would not have been interesting, and it would not have
incorporated a border theory and paradigm.
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Chapter V
Redefining U.S. Poetry: Implications o f This Study on Pedagogy
[W]hat role does the interrogation of language that dichten (composing poetry) entails play in the
mass culture of the later twentieth century?
Marjorie Perloff, Wittgenstein’ s Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary
The meaning of a word is in its use in the language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
One can own a mirror [Spiegel] ; does one then own the reflection [Spiegelbild] that can be seen in
it?
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel
Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original? This would seem to explain
adequately the divergence of their standing in the realm of art. Moreover, it seems to be the only
conceivable reason for saying "the same thing" repeatedly. For what does a literary work " say"?
What does it communicate? It "tells" very little to those who understand it. Its essential quality is
not statement or the imparting of information. Yet any translation which intends to perform a
transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence something inessential. . . . If
the original does not exist for the reader’s sake, how could die translation be understood on the
basis of this premise? . . . the translatability of linguistic creations ought to be considered even if
men should prove unable to translate them Translation thus ultimately serves the purpose of
expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages.
Walter Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator"
Review o f Arguments
Chapter One offered a reading o f Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to illustrate the
definitions and examples o f epistemic violence. Within that reading, the mirror image
Ellison uses played an important role: it allowed Ellison to illustrate the distortions o f
perception, and it allowed me to suggest that the distortions created by a colonial situation
play out as epistemic violence. The trope o f invisibility, found in much o f African
American literature, facilitated a discussion o f identity and being central to the argument
o f the dissertation.
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Chapter Two presented the metaphor o f a house as a way to discuss poetry. In a
reading o f two poems, one by Ed Roberson and the other by Phillip Levine, I discussed
issues o f audience and access as they relate to poetry and posited that poetry as a house
presents the reader with the need for the right key to open the door. I presented a brief
overview o f the literary movements in the 1960s and 1970s that each group generated. I
did this to demonstrate that while the traditions o f each group differs significantly, the
convergence o f imaginative energy by three diverse groups at the same moment in history
bears mentioning and suggests that it is the colonial situation which creates a common
ground for each.
In Chapter Three, I proposed the trickster as an apt metaphor for a translator.
The movement between worlds and languages, which the trickster performs and which is
the trickster’s role, allowed me to discuss the role o f the translator in a new way.
Specifically, it allowed me to discuss the ethics o f translation, the possible effects o f
specific translation choices, and the unresolvable tension that is ethical translation. In
addition, I offered a reading o f two ASL poems, along with translations, as a way of
illustrating my premises. The specific challenges o f translating ASL poetry provided a
venue for discussing translation challenges, the many benefits o f translation, and the
innovations ASL poetry and translating ASL poetry brings to poetry and translation
studies in general. The chapter also suggests the various reasons translation is important,
even necessary, for audiences in the U.S. to read U.S. literature and in the teaching o f
U.S. literature.
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Chapter Four turned to the Chicano figure and trope o f the border and offered
border work as a paradigm for translation. Suggesting that border work be considered as
a new paradigm for translation, rather than as just a metaphor for translation, requires
careful consideration and an eye open to the dangers o f appropriation. Rather than
claiming that border work, wholesale, be lifted from Chicano studies and placed into
translation studies, I reviewed some critical stances on border work and suggested the
ways interanimation allows the trope to inform translation studies in ways which allow it
to function as a new paradigm. I offered a reading o f Evangelina Vigil’s "jaguila" to
demonstrate the border work evident in her language choices and in the specific images
she chose. Following that reading, I offered a translation o f the poem into ASL, outlining
the specific difficulties and choices I made in that translation. Since Chicano border work
exists, in part, because o f the fragmented or multi-identity o f Chicanos, the new paradigm
allows a translator to construct ways o f ethically translating multilingual, heteroglossic
texts.
In each o f the chapters, the role o f unresolvable tension was argued and presented.
Throughout, I argued that poetic language differs significantly from everyday language,
that African Americans, Chicanos, and the Deaf share a colonial situation (o f which
epistemic violence is a significant part), and that translation is an important way o f
combating colonization. The implications o f this shared past suggest that the various
layers and meanings o f colonialism in the U.S., in fact, the colonial identity o f the U.S.
cannot be ignored in any study and teaching o f U.S. literature. I presented several
metaphors as ways o f discussing the poetries o f these three groups and to provide an
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avenue for me to suggest, in this chapter, the ways in which they impact pedagogy in
English departments in the U.S. This chapter continues that discussion and will
accomplish several things. First, I begin with a statement by Ludwig Wittgenstein about
language and create a parallel to interanimation. Second, I will discuss various ways o f
rethinking the pedagogy o f American literature classes in terms o f interanimation. Third, I
will explore the role translation can and should play in a U.S. literature course taught in
the U.S. Finally, I will offer a narrative o f the ways in which I have incorporated
interanimation, ASL poetry, and translation into a literature classes.
Bringing It All Together: The Trend in Contemporary Poetics
The various arguments presented in the previous four chapters come together to
prove that we need to enact in our pedagogy a new definition o f what U.S. poetry is and
does. I suggest that many o f the traditionally "American" (U .S.) poets w e study in
university classes on contemporary American poetry1 are writing about the same things at
the same moments as the poets and authors who figure in this project, but that critics and
professors are not writing about and teaching them as doing so, specifically, we are not
writing about or teaching about these poets writing about identity and nation. This
absence o f attention to these issues is the result o f a loose tautology. We teach, for the
most part, a limited list o f poets whose works meet specific criteria, currently defined as
not including overtly political, socially motivated, or "ethnic" topics. Since those criteria
^ h ese include poets such as John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Jorie Graham,
Wallace Stevens, Frank Bidart, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Donald Davie, Ted
Hughes, Louise Gluck, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Philip Levine, James Merrill, Susan
Howe, A.R. Ammons, Charles Simic, and others.
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do not include politics, reformation, nation, colonization, access, and other topics
discussed in the previous chapters, our attention remains focused on the other topics
acceptable to the current criterion. Thus, we focus on the canon because the canon, as we
read it, addresses subjects and employs strategies present in canonical works. The
definition o f what makes it into the canon is, essentially, "the canon," thus creating the
tautology. This leads to erasing the other elements in favor o f established and
accepted/acceptable elements. Once a different criteria enters poetic discourse, however,
we can begin to see the other conversations already in progress in U.S. poetry. The
concentration o f these topics o f conversation is not coincidence or arbitrary. Poets, more
than critics, it seems, form communities which often cross boundaries (racial, socio
economic, political, ethnic, gender boundaries) which are erected in classroom and in
critical studies.
Interanimation, what Wittgenstein calls approaching poetry from another point,
allows us to see this already present conversation and thus offers us a possibility for
combating the ghettoization o f established minority literatures.2 In addition, the new point
2 With many critics, I suggest that creating special categories in survey courses on
American literature for "minority" writers and creating courses on specific "minority"
literatures as electives as the only platforms for teaching and encountering the multifaceted
U.S. literature results in the ghettoization o f these literatures. I acknowledge that (and
later briefly discuss) fully integrating minority literatures into survey course and courses on
U.S. American novels and poetry risks eliding the differences and requires that professors
who are not specialists in, for example, Chicano literature teach these texts. While the
risks are real, the necessity o f teaching the entire spectrum o f U.S. literature in a U.S.
literature course is imperative. What we need to do is find ways o f educating those who
teach; clearly, this will take at least a generation to fully accomplish. In addition, I am not
suggesting that we do away with courses on, for example, African American literature.
Instead, these should be specialized classes which take a specific segment o f U.S.
literature, already covered in U.S. literature courses, and explore it in-depth.
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o f access makes room for ASL poetry in our classrooms. I suggest that U.S. poetry is
that poetry written by residents o f the U.S., whether the poet is African American,
Caucasian, Asian, Chicano, Latino, male, female, or any other category in addition to
being a resident o f the U.S.3 I further argue that to exclude any group on the basis o f race
or ethnicity or to teach that group as minority literature elides the differences that make
U.S. literature what it is-for example, what it is that distinguishes U.S. literature and
poetry from English literature and poetry is the unique experience o f living and writing in
the U.S. Living in the U.S. entails includes negotiating a hugely diverse population with
multiple histories and languages.
This definition ofU .S . poetry can be compared to many poet’s definitions o f U.S.
poetry. For example, both Jorie Graham and A. Poulin, Jr., among others, already
acknowledge the diversity o f experience and language in U.S. poetry and back their
definitions up with the poets they include in the anthologies they edit. For example,
Poulin argues that "American poetry since 1945 may be viewed as the product o f the
dialectics o f generations" (645). He also writes fairly lengthy passages in his essay about
the "multiculturalism" o f contemporary U.S. poetry, suggesting not only reasons for this
trend but also focusing on the benefits o f the move. He says, "One o f the reasons that
multiculturalism is significant is because it is a revolution in American poetry that is not
rooted in aesthetics but in a nonaesthetic, nonliterary consideration-the sociology o f the
3 Aesthetics and beauty, standards and tests o f time should and do still apply in this
new approach to poetry. The criteria for these categories should be revised in ways that
do not compromise the values each poet and culture hold but instead should enhance
them.
melting pot. Racial configurations in some arenas o f discussion are often just as important
as aesthetic considerations" (656). While the assumption that racial configurations are
inherently always nonaesthetic is problematic, his comment suggests that poets view
poetry coming from different perspectives and backgrounds as vital and exciting rather
than as banal and propogandistic. He further explains that the contemporary trend in U.S.
stems in part from the diversity o f cultural experiences in the U. S. Concerning this
cultural diversity and its impact on the academy and the canon, he says,
multiculturalism in American poetry represents the culmination o f
the long, romantic tradition .... It is also perhaps the final
democratization o f the poet and o f poetry and the ostensible
destruction o f the poet’s Anglo-Saxon ivory tower. . . . O f course,
American poetry has always been the product o f a melting pot,
more often than not a poetry o f immigrants. But that has also
been the poetry o f assimilation written by men and a few women
whose entire sensibility and posture as artists has been shaped by a
European tradition. Now, American poetry is expanded to
include other traditions, other experiences. However, it is
essential to understand that while we are speaking o f such
‘multicultural’ poets as Li-Young Lee, Naomi Shihab Nye, Linda
Hogan, Gary Soto, and Yusef Komunyakaa, we are nevertheless
speaking o f American poets whose work is often influenced as
much by Whitman, Eliot, and Stevens as is the poetry o f Anne
Sexton, James Wright, and Robert Lowell. (656-657)
This claim is essential to my argument: because the poets o f each ethnic or cultural nation
articulates and performs an aesthetic particular to that group, and while their works serve
specific cultural and political purposes, they also participate in a larger conversation with
other poets who come from other backgrounds and perspectives. In other words, to
ignore in our pedagogies "ethnic" poets because they are "ethnic," is to ignore U.S. poets
who speak in important ways to U.S. concerns. It is also to say that the concerns o f
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African Americans or Chicanos or the D eaf (or Asian Americans, or any other group in
the U .S.) are their province, and theirs alone-to say, for example, that the Chicano
concerns are not also U.S. concerns. Finally, an important point Poulin makes that affects
this project specifically is that contemporary U.S. poetry "reflects . . . developments
[w hich]. . . . include the impact o f translation" (657). His argument supports my claim
that translation plays an important role in U.S. poetry. Poulin’s point focuses on the
effects translating from other languages into English has on the styles and subject matter
o f U.S. poetry. I add that in addition to acknowledging this addition to our canon and
aesthetic, we need to explore the methods o f translation which allow for this change and
realize that translations o f U.S. poetry already do and should continue even more to occur.
Similarly, Graham posits that honesty and masking create a sustained tension in the
poetic articulation o f U.S. selfhood, regardless o f a specific poet’s background. She says,
"the notion o f a mask or mythic persona created by language competes with the tradition
o f ‘honest’ speech on American soil, and there are many poets (this reader would argue
that it is all the significant ones) who attempt to merge the two impulses, in most instances
they marry, apparently happily, and the struggle goes underground; in some the tension
between the two is carried out on the surface o f the poem" ("Introduction" xxiii). She
also argues for a particular perspective on U.S. literature:
As for what is American about these poems .... Much o f the
poetry . . . was trying both to happen fast and have the
experience. That is the signature ambition o f our current poetry,
what is so brave in it, so American. Another way to say this is
that our poems promote voice-and personality-but not at the
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expense o f form and not at the expense o f imagery I found
no voice exclusively attached to region, race, gender, class; no
concerns limited by region, race, gender, and class. And I found
very few ‘pure’ examples o f one or another aesthetic
camp-finding many more poems to be incredibly fruitful and
moving hybrids o f styles, techniques and aesthetic premises, (xxix-
xxx)
What Graham describes and argues is that poets and poetry from each segment o f U.S.
reality already interact and converse rather than writing in cultural and ethnic vacuums.
This does not erase the differences o f experience or o f voice, the differences o f nation or
o f specific histories. Instead, Graham describes the interanimation which already exists in
U.S. poetry.
On the other hand, the literature written about contemporary poetry in the U.S. by
critics and academics is riddled with comments and assumptions that reject the
understanding o f poetry and o f the U.S. poetry "scene" forwarded by Poulin, Graham, and
other poets. Consider the following. Vendler4 writes, "No black has blackness as sole
identity" {Given 63). While offering this disclaimer, Vendler goes on to outline the
problems o f writing as a black woman poet, suggesting that the ethnic self, the ethnic
identity, must be overcome rather than explored in the language o f that self in order for
Dove and other African American poets to achieve poetic greatness. It is true that the
color o f a person’s skin, that the ethnic/cultural identity, is not the only identity marker o f
4 I cite a number o f examples from Vendler here. However, I am not disputing her
astute readings o f poetry nor suggesting that she readily and deliberately dismisses poets
o f color. And yet, when taken together, her readings o f Dove (and the absence o f other
poets o f color in her critical works) provide an interesting example o f the current critical
paradigm o f and stance towards contemporary U.S. poetry.
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a person, and, in fact, I have argued throughout that the borders between markers o f
identity resist facile categorization. However, a poet may choose to articulate a solely
black, for example, identity. Our general refusal to allow the political and social to
permeate the upper echelons o f academia has allowed us to overlook much o f what makes
poetry uniquely U.S. American. Vendler also writes,
Ringing declarations-about God, politics, sexism, parents-go
down well with unsophisticated audiences, but in our present
climate they sound tinny and false .... The language o f national
or familial violence flaps its tattered vocabulary with no more than
a melodramatic effect. The question for an American poet, living
in relative personal and national peace and plenty, is how to find
imaginative interest in life without invoking a false theatricality,
how to be modest without being dull, how to be moving without
being maudlin. (Soul 141)
Vendler’s statement rests on a few assumptions. First, she assumes that the political is
inherently unsophisticated in the literary world. Second, she assumes that national
violence, e.g., the colonizing violence the three groups o f the project continue to face, is
tired and melodramatic. Third, she implies that all American poets live in "relative
personal and national peace and plenty"-a privileged assumption, even in a global context.
Finally, she asserts that even if the poet lives in relative peace, safety, and plenty, a poem
which articulates or enacts the violence and poverty in which many U.S. residents live falls
under the melodramatic and tired category. These assumptions speak more o f current
academic values than it does o f Vendler as a person. The values the assumptions support
include "objective" distance as the source o f the imaginative and an interiority based on
experiences stemming from "relative personal and national peace and security." While
"relative" allows a large degree o f latitude, given the continued/continuing colonial
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experience-particularly epistemic violence-of the three groups/nations (and others in the
U.S.) in this project, any kind o f personal and "national" peace and security is not a given.
Later, Vendler remarks, "Dove solves the ‘color question’ in Thomas and Beulah
by having everyone in the central story be black, so that daily life is just daily life" {Soul
161). This statement is disturbing on several levels. First, it suggests that being black is a
problem, particularly for a poet since a poet is supposed to avoid articulating such political
identity markers. Second, the statement assumes that one is either black or not black-that
there are not gradations-despite the earlier claim that blackness is not the only identity
marker for an African American. Third, and related, she suggests that worlds cannot mesh
or meaningfully interact: a poet either writes about a black world or about a white world;
if the two worlds do interact in a poem, the poem and poet then falls prey to (perhaps
even creates, according to this paradigm) the ‘color question’ which makes the poem less
than aesthetic from the current academic perspective. This is particularly problematic in
this case since Dove is married to a Caucasian German man and has a mulatto daughter;
for Dove, then, the worlds are not clear-cut and to be forced to talk about a black world
or an aesthetic world (the fourth problem) in order to be considered at the top o f her form
forces her to erect unnatural boundaries within her own psyche and family.
Vendler is not the only critic to make such assumptions about poetry nor the only
critic to distance or marginalize writing that does not fit a particular set o f experiences and
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aesthetics. John Hollander,5 for example, support’s Vendler’s notion that the specifics o f
one’s life are to be overcome so that the poet can speak to a "general human condition,"
as if all humans do not grapple with the specifics o f life: social conditions, race, ethnicity,
gender, country, nation, politics. He says, "Real poetry always presents the paradigm o f a
general human struggle to make itself understood .... A poetic vocation consists partly in
the discovery that although one has been bom into a forceful and consequential biological
and social family group, one is actually an imaginative foundling . . . there is a sort o f
family romance that embraces serious poets and their serious poetic forbears" (6). To be
accepted into this poetic family, a poet should, he seems to argue, dismiss everything not
already considered "serious" by the "serious poets.1 ' Eliot’s "Tradition and the Individual
Talent" thus still informs, either overtly or inherently, much o f the critical works available
on poetry. The distinction between low art and high art still permeates discussion o f
poetry, particularly in university classrooms. Further evidence o f this attitude towards
poetries which address social and political or national issues and generate a different
aesthetic as a result can be found in the paucity o f poets o f color and other minority
groups in literary canons and in the classrooms.
5 I chose to use Vendler and Hollander as examples o f the critical trend in poetics
because they are not only influential critics who write prolifically, but they also teach at
respected, established, and Ivy League institutions: Harvard and Yale, respectively. The
authority which rests on them stems in part from the authority o f their employers.
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The Need for a New Pedagogy
Our classrooms need to reflect the diversity o f experience in the U.S. To present
U.S. literature as something above or beyond the colonial history and situation o f the U.S.
is to elide a general U.S. identity as well as the many specific U.S. identities. The audacity
o f including only, or even primarily, white male poets in a contemporary poetry class is
astounding. One might legitimately ask if we did not already fight the Civil War, if we
have not already had a series o f civil rights movements, such as the three outlined earlier in
this dissertation. If we acknowledge these events, we must ask ourselves why we teach
the literature o f a large portion o f the U.S. population as minority literatures, on the
fringes o f the "real" "American" experience. One might also ask: If in the U.S. alone more
than one million people are deaf, can w e legitimately claim that not even one o f them has
the talent o f a T.S. Eliot, John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, or any other widely respected
poet? Surely, at the beginning o f this new century, we do not still insist that the only way
to be a legitimate resident and poet o f this country is to both have and articulate only a
particular sensibility, a particular set o f experiences. And yet, if we look to the kinds o f
texts taught as "American," that is exactly what we are teaching, even while our mouths
are giving service to multiculturalism, pluralism, and wide-ranging acceptance. In this
chapter, I propose to offer ways o f teaching this project at the university level and o f ways
o f teaching what we now call minority literature as an integral part o f U.S. literature.
PerlofFs distinction between two primary theories o f poetry and her suggested
solution presents a helpful starting point. She suggests that the two current theories of
poetry which dominate the discourse o f the discipline right now are, first, "that poetry has
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an essentia! nature that is timeless and universal and that ergo there is no reason why the
poetic structures o f the 1980s should differ perceptibly from those o f earlier centuries.
Individual poets, by this account, are judged according to their ‘sensitivity’ and
‘craftsmanship,’ the appeal o f their subject matter and emotional range" {Poetics 2). This
approach creates the perspective which allows critics to view the specifics o f what we call
"ethnic" or "racial" experiences as inherently inappropriate for poetry. Thus, given this
assumption, Vendler can make the comments about anxiety o f influence and Rita Dove
even though she may dismiss similar criticisms o f Ginsberg. The second theory, which is
a
more self-consciously theoretical position, is that poetic discourse
(like the other discourses o f a given culture and moment) is
defined largely by what the dominant classes take it to be, that
indeed there is no such thing as ‘inherent’ poetic value, the
production o f poetry always being culture specific and
ideologically determined. As such, our role as critics is, in the
first place, to characterize the dominant discourse and then to read
against it that writing it has excluded or marginalized, thus
redefining the canon so as to give pride o f place to the hitherto
repressed. Ironically, this stance toward poetry turns out, at least
in practice, to be just as essentialist as the first [It suggests]
that suffering and exclusion provide the matrix within which the
poetic takes root. Indeed, the longing for the Authentic Other
brings us back, full circle, to the Romantic paradigm o f Common
Man and Noble Savage. (2)
This approach actually reifies a colonial hierarchy in a literary domain, making the distance
between cultural Self and Other so great that the tension, which could have allowed a
dialectic, snaps, revealing a chasm only. This allows the problems o f the group-specific
aesthetics discussed in chapter two. Perloff suggests that we can avoid the essentializing
o f both if we look at poetry in another way: "The impasse o f this particular version o f
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cultural poetics might, I think, be avoided by redefining the term dominant class as what
Charles Bernstein has called ‘official verse culture’" (Perloff Poetic 3). Thus, what has
been taught as "American" poetry, for the most part, fulfills the requirements o f form,
content, subject matter, stance, and voice o f what Bernstein calls "official verse culture."
Poetry which resists these regulations is not generally studied as serious poetry,
and the poetry o f the "minority" in the U.S. more often than not falls into this category.
To put all "minority" literature into general "American" literature courses, however, risks
losing the distinct character o f the minority work-risks absorption and/or appropriation.
This is particularly true when we consider the various backgrounds and educational
preparation o f those teaching literature. It takes courage and involves risk to turn over to
unknown people the task o f teaching one’s literature, particularly if that literature has
heretofore been under represented and misunderstood. The dangers cannot, and should
not, be quickly dismissed as less important than the benefits and values o f creating U.S.
poetry classes which truly represent U.S. poetry. The challenges o f ethical translation,
which take into account the dangers o f allowing an outside, often dominant group, access
to a culture which has been colonized or dominated, are similar to the dangers o f placing
the same literature in a different academic arena. The relative control authors and
professors who specialize in specific national literatures have over the dissemination and
presentation o f that literature can give way to the dominant discourse when the literature
becomes part o f U.S. American literature survey courses, for example. The depth o f
cultural information and knowledge which can be shared in a specialized class cannot
transfer entirely to a survey course, and this risks cultural misunderstanding and further
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appropriation. The Self o f the literature no longer has any control over the reception o f
the literature. However, this is where cultural and linguistic translation must enter the
arena. In addition, a new pedagogy and paradigm o f U.S. literature can, if approached
ethically, prevent the appropriation and domination.
I argue that we should eliminate "official verse culture" in favor o f what Graham
calls the "family argument" o f contemporary U.S. poetry. She says, "The poetic map o f
the country reads far less like a set o f rival encampments, as the various polemicists would
have us believe, and far more like a wonderfully varied and passionate family argument, in
which much cross-pollination is going on" ("Introduction" xxx). Graham's poetic family
is distinctly different from Hollander's sense o f poetic family. For Graham, the differences
enhance the conversation; for Hollander, they are the reason for exclusion. The cross
pollination, or interanimation, which allows the various voices o f the U.S. family to speak
and to be held in tension should function as the pedagogical paradigm in our classrooms.
The actual absence o f a meta-narrative in contemporary U.S. literature, especially in
poetry, lends itself to the redefinition o f U.S. literature in pedagogy and provides an
opening for the performance o f the reality o f U.S. poetry in the classroom. Again, this
move necessarily involves ethical translation, which, as I will argue, is, itself a form o f
interanimation.
Interanimation in the Classroom
Wittgenstein asserts in his Philosophical Investigations that when you approach
poetry (specifically, language) from a familiar entrance, you "know your way about," but
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that when you approach that same exact place from an unfamiliar entrance, you face
getting lost. He says, "Language is a labyrinth o f paths. You approach from one side and
know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer
know your way about" (#203). This claim, that the maze o f language inherently holds
many possibilities, coincides with the notion o f interanimation which has been essential in
my argument throughout this dissertation. Interanimation provides a vehicle by which we
can begin to approach language, here specifically poetry, from many vantage points. The
example I will use here is the image, trope, and metaphor o f a mirror, which recurs
throughout this project and throughout a large portion o f contemporary U.S. poetry.
John Ashbery’s "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," which won three prestigious
awards when it was published in 1972, has traditionally been read as Ashbery writing
about himself and, more commonly, that it is Ashbery writing about poetry. Vendler
posits, "it is popularly believed, with some reason, that the style itself is impenetrable, that
it is impossible to say what an Ashbery poem is ‘about.’ An alternative view says that
every Ashbery poem is about poetry-literally self-reflective, like his ‘Self-Portrait in a
Convex Mirror’" (Music 224). A reading which looks at the poem as one about poetry,
about itself, allows an interesting, plausible reading o f the poem, a reading perfectly
acceptable in and to the academy. However, if we look at his poem in light o f the
previous discussions about mirrors, reflection, representation, and language, we can
approach Ashbery’s poem from new entrances and perhaps find new ways o f talking about
and teaching the poem. My contention, then, is that while Ashbery’s poetry can be read as
poems about poetry, specifically this poem, and while Ashbery criticism focuses on these
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and similar issues, his poetry also participates in a conversation about identity and nation.
In the classroom, one could teach the poem, along with its criticisms, and then place it
alongside other works by U.S. poets and authors which provide new entrances or
approaches.
For example, Ashbery’s title asks that we pay particular attention to the mirror,
and yet, as Douglas Crase points out, in his article, "The Prophetic Ashbery," the trend in
critical approaches to the poem focuses so much on the first half o f the title that the
"whole thing is commonly referred to now as ‘Self-Portrait,’ revealing our bias toward the
private" (42). Crase’s article explores the complexity o f the title as a whole, focusing
primarily on the second half: "in a Convex Mirror." The title, playful and periphrastic, he
suggests, stands "for at least three things beyond that physical objet that actually is. One
is the imagination, the convex brain, the thing called negative capability. . . . Two is the
city, especially New York, which provides the imagination with its raw material. . . . And,
three, . . . is the poet’s style-for how else does an artist make himself an example if not in
his own style?" (43). The poem offers plenty o f support for this reading. Crase offers the
following passages as evidence: for the first, imagination, "And the vase is always full /
Because there is only just so much room / And it accommodates everything" (77); for the
second, the city, "We have seen the city; it is the gibbous / Mirrored eye o f
an insect. All things happen / On its balcony and are resumed within" (82-83); and for the
third, Ashbery’s style,
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The consonance o f the High Renaissance
Is present, though distorted by the mirror.
What is novel is the extreme care in rendering
The velleities o f the rounded reflecting surface
(It is the first mirror portrait),
So that you could be fooled for a moment
Before you realize the reflection isn’t yours. (74)
Crase focuses the remainder o f his discussion o f the title on Ashbery’s style in an
interesting and convincing exploration o f Mannerism.
Place Ellison’s Invisible Man into the conversation, however, and a different
emphasis arises. The mirror and its reflection come to speak to issues o f identity and
nation in addition to the previously noted subjects. The Invisible Man, says, "Like the
bodiless heads you sometimes see in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been
surrounded by mirrors o f hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my
surroundings, themselves, or figments o f their imagination-indeed, everything and
anything except me" (3). Here, the mirror represents the distortion o f a racist society
looking at itself and refusing to see what it does not want to see. The mirror also
encounters the absurd-"circus sideshows." Ellison describes the mirror as "hard,"
suggesting that it is unyielding, perhaps a participant in the epistemic violence o f the
Invisible Man’s situation. The mirror, as accomplice, makes it possible for the colonizing
gaze to "imagine" and the enforce the absence o f the Invisible M an-to create and then
insist upon his invisibility.
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Now, look again at the passage above,
The consonance o f the High Renaissance
Is present, though distorted by the mirror.
What is novel is the extreme care in rendering
The velleities o f the rounded reflecting surface
(It is the first mirror portrait),
So that you could be fooled for a moment
Before you realize the reflection isn’t yours. (74)
The new entrance to the passage highlights the distortion created by the shape o f the
mirror and creates a stark contrast to the Invisible Man’s mirror. Both Parmigianino and
Ashbery’s persona encounter a subtle mirror-one which embraces "velleities," which,
despite the distortion, is rounded and representative o f care and concern. Instead o f being
confronted immediately and violently o f his absence (as the Invisible Man is), this persona
gradually realizes his absence, which is not deliberately created by a colonizing gaze but is,
rather, the result o f the persona "looking in." Further, unlike the image in Ellison, the
excuse for epistemic violence, the image in Ashbery’s mirror, at first, is merely captive in
the mirror (continuing from the above quote): "that is, enough to make the point / That
the soul is a captive, treated humanely, kept / In suspension, unable to advance much
farther / Than your look as it intercepts the picture" (68-69), While the soul is held
captive, it is still treated humanely. The Invisible Man, attacked and violated by language,
does not share that humane treatment, though those who colonize African Americans
believe they are treated humanely. The epistemic violence is not shared, but the resulting
fragmentation o f epistemic violence enlivens a discussion o f the fragmentation throughout
Ashbery’s work.
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The persona in "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" confronts fragmentation at every
turn. Similarly, as I argued in Chapter One, the epistemic gaze o f the colonizer requires
the fragmentation o f the colonized self. The mirror acts as an apt metaphor for this
fragmentation. First, a mirror presents only an image o f a person, a representation o f that
person. Between the mirror, its image, and the self represented in the mirror is a space
which can never be frilly crossed. The self is thus divided into three parts: the image, the
self, and the perception o f the image o f the self. This is important. The perception o f the
image o f the self provides the impetus for the colonizer, in Invisible Man, to erase the
presence o f the Invisible Man. Remember, he says, "I am invisible, understand, simply
because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus
sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors o f hard, distorting glass.
When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments o f their
imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me" (3).
Read that with Ashbery’s lines: "Chiefly his reflection, o f which the portrait / Is the
reflection once removed. / The glass chose to reflect only what he saw / Which was
enough for his purpose: his image / Glazed, embalmed, projected at a 180-degree angle"
(68). In both passages, the distances between reality and image and perception dominate.
However, when read together, the deliberate distortion becomes more pronounced.
Ashbery’s interesting displacement o f responsibility, "The glass chose to reflect only what
he saw," offers several interpretive possibilities. First, the pronoun use can be interpreted
in at least two ways, "he" is Parmigianino or "he" is Ashbery’s persona looking at the
painting. Ellison also disrupts his text with the use o f indirect pronouns; "you" can mean
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the reader or a general "you" or the Invisible Man himself.6 Though remarkably different,
the mirror image in both, when read together, emphasizes distance between self and other
and raise the issue o f representation and identity via reflection. Mirrors present a surface
image to be perceived. Ashbery writes, "But your eyes proclaim / That everything is
surface. The surface is what’s there / And nothing can exist except what’s there" (70).
When read with Invisible Man, the deep social and cultural implications o f presenting and
accepting the surface o f what is perceived in the image in a mirror carry a different
significance. While Ashbery was certainly not writing about the complexities o f an African
American presence in the U.S., his comments on mirrors, their distortions and the
necessary surface perception, can enter into dialogue with texts like Ellison’s and others.
Second, choice remains key: in Ellison, the choice is made by those looking into
the mirror and choosing to not see the Invisible Man. The Invisible Man connects this to
responsibility directly. He says, "Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is
a form o f agreement" (14). Social responsibility, according to the Invisible Man, does not
apply to him since society does not recognize him. Ashbery’s choice is somewhat
different, although, as w e will see, it becomes contractual when read next to Ellison. In
Ashbery, the glass, an inanimate object incapable o f thought or action chooses: "The glass
chose"; coupled with the vague pronoun use, the line suggests that responsibility, like the
image and the perception, is removed from the persona. M. K. Biasing argues,
6 I offered a reading and discussion o f Ellison’s pronoun use at the end o f Chapter
One.
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His interchangeable pronouns contribute to the same end: ‘The
personal pronouns in my work very often seem to be like variables
in an equation. ‘You’ can be myself or it can be another person . .
. and so can ‘he’ and ‘she’ for that matter and ‘w e.’1 The equation
stands above such variables as subject matter and persons.
Stripped o f these contingencies, the syntactic and rhetorical
structures o f communication or expression emerge as absolute
forms o f human discourse that rise ‘far above’ realism and
metaphysics. (202)
The pronouns in both texts thus allow responsibility to be both foregrounded and put in
the background.
The ambiguity o f self, reflection, and perception coupled with the ambiguity o f
pronouns also appears in Lentz’s "To A Hearing Mother." The poet signs the entire poem
looking into a mirror, and the camera’s eye is focused on the mirror, so that the audience
o f the video format sees only the reflection. This removes the Deaf speaker even more
from a Hearing audience, emphasizing the distance between the two sensibilities and
experiences. In addition, the self and other, in this way, are both reflections, performed
simultaneously by the same person (which mediates the distance between self and other
while also emphasizing the distance by relying entirely on reflection). This doubling o f
image resonates with multilingual Chicano poetry as well. Consider, for example, the
doubling and tripling o f "aguila" in Vigil’s poem o f the same name. The fragmentation
which mirrors and reflections create find another reflection in this kind o f poetry and
poetic device.7 The many different readings created by placing the Ashbery poem next to
7 Again, I am not intending to offer a complete reading o f any o f these poems or a
complete analysis o f this particular combination. Rather, I am offering suggestions o f how
to teach U.S. poetry in a more representative manner and demonstrate the interpretive
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a poem from a different ethnic group but still from the same larger country and society
could go on. My point is not to offer a complete reading o f the poem in this context here.
Rather, I suggest that reading the two together offers new ways o f looking at U.S.
literature and enacts a pedagogy o f interanimation. For example, Paper assignments which
ask students to explore the kinds o f conversations which occur between these and like
texts can be given as a way o f discussing and defining U.S. literature. Another way o f
enacting interanimation in our classrooms is to incorporate (by first acknowledging the
need for ) translation.
Translation as Interanimation: Teaching U.S. Literatures
Any discussion o f interanimation and o f translation inherently raises questions o f
audience and purpose. Benjamin, in his essay, "The Task o f the Translator," asks for
whom a translation is intended: "Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand
the original?" (69). Benjamin’s question posits myriad related and significant questions:
what is the purpose o f translation? what are the effects o f translation? who should
translate? what should be translated? what role(s) does gender play? what role(s) does
ethnicity play? how does colonialism affect translation? does hybridized literature already
bring language together (in the way Benjamin suggests translation brings languages
together) and thus negate or diminish the need for translation-or does it enhance the
translation process and purpose? how does one translate hybridized literatures? how does
hierarchy intersect with translation? how do issues o f identity come to bear on translation
possibilities such an approach creates. For a review o f the Lentz and Vigil poems, refer to
Chapters Three and Four, respectively.
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and translated literature? is the dissemination o f the literature and culture o f the source
language culture desirable? what is the aim o f that dissemination? what are the dangers?
what are the political and cultural ramifications o f translating multilingual texts into single
language texts? what are the ramifications o f translating (or not translating) dialect poems
into standard language texts? how much does the issue o f access and cross-cultural
communication and connection play a role in issues o f translation? is transmission of
cultural identity and difference a function o f literature and thus o f translation? is
translation about language? about literature? about communication? how doe we translate
U.S. texts for people living in the U.S.? Arteaga notes, "The self and other conceived at
each site o f different histories, different local cultures, are conceived by different processes
o f subjectification, engendered by different displacements o f power" {Other Tongue 3).
Arteaga highlights the "different histories, different local cultures" involved in translation
and places them at the center o f power play and o f problems and the negotiation o f
subjectivity, thus connecting translation and the political nature o f language and language
issues to each o f the questions asked above. The issues o f translation and o f genre raised
in Chapters Three and Four insist that other questions be added to these: to what extent
does performance affect translation? how does one translate from a spoken/written
language to a performative language? how does one translate from a performative
language to a spoken/written language? how does the hybridization o f culture in the three
groups which are the focus o f this dissertation affect the language o f their poetries and the
translation o f their poetries? how does one translate heteroglossia? how does one
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translate dialogic poetry? Finally, and most importantly for this chapter, how does
translation affect pedagogy?
If a translation is only intended for those who understand the original, then
translation really has no place in a U.S. literature class taught in the U.S. However, if
there is some value for an ethical translation outside o f the original audience o f the text,
then the possibilities abound. For example, a poem like Loma Dee Cervantes’s poem,
"Poema Para Los Californios Muertos," cannot be adequately taught in a U.S. literature
class for which Spanish is not a prerequisite without translations o f the Spanish lines being
made available. However, to just offer the translations and not discussing the need for the
translation, the reasons for writing in multiple languages, and not interrogating the
translation strategy and presentation reduces the power o f the poem significantly.
Cervantes’ poem offers a potent critique o f the use o f history and the border in the
U.S. Ignoring the original presentation or glossing over the translation not only elides the
original poem but also enacts that which is critiqued in the poem. Cervantes offers this
poem as a reading o f the land as a mother who has been violated (one assumed by
colonists and colonization itself, by the idea o f manifest destiny still prevalent in U.S.
thought, by the disenfranchising o f a people indigenous to the land, among other things).
The persona says, "Californios moan like husbands o f the raped, / husbands de la tierra, /
tierra la madre" (42). The violation o f "los Californios" violates more than people, though
that in itself is significant, but the very earth, suggesting that the violation rocks the
foundations o f life. In conquering the land and the indigenous peoples and by forcing a
new life upon them, the colonizers essentially wipe out their history and replace it with one
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which justifies the continued superiority o f their race. By writing in two languages, by
mixing the t wo together, Cervantes not only inscribed the dual identity o f the Chicano into
the poem but also begins to reclaim the obliterated history, even though Spanish is also a
language o f colonization. The phrases about the lost people ("los antepasados muertos")
and o f that which has been vanquished are written in Spanish in an almost protective
manner: that which is o f value is written in Spanish. That which is set up as being o f value
but which merely represents the sensibility o f the conquerors, in fact, stands for the people
in the mind o f the conquerors, is written in English ("this brass plaque" and "On the
shelves there are bitter antiques"). A pedagogy which does not seek an understanding of
translation and the ethics involved risks losing these inscriptions.
In addition, reading traditionally "U.S." poetry, such as Graham’s M aterialism , in
concert with this poem, the multifaceted voices o f land and identity surface in new ways.
Graham’s text interrogates the bastions o f Western philosophy and thinking. When read
with Cervantes and other poets (such as Vigil, Mullen, Roberson), the interrogation
increases to include the results o f accepting those bastions o f thought for so long,
particularly when the need for linguistic and cultural translation emerge as necessities.
Both this example and the discussion o f mirrors in the previous section merely offer
sketches o f pedagogical possibilities and suggest that these innovations ought to be
included in U.S. poetry courses.
Teaching ASL Poetry in U.S. Literature Classes
Teaching ASL poetry in U.S. literature and poetry classes is probably the most
radical and controversial claim o f this project. I have successfully taught this poetry in
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two different English classes over the course o f three semesters. While I hope to continue
improving my teaching o f this literature, I can offer some tools and assignments which
suggest that this is not only possible but also important. The theoretical, pedagogical and
philosophical reasonings presented throughout the chapters and earlier in this one apply.
But rather than reviewing them here, I will present a narrative o f how I taught ASL poetry
and include the handouts and lectures I gave to make it possible. In each case, I had the
ideal situation. The university at which I taught these courses offers a minor in ASL; this
is unusual outside o f Gallaudet University. In fact, every other year, the ASL department
offers an ASL poetry class.8 As a result, in each section, I had at least two people who
signed as students. The effect was that these students were able to function as
intermediaries in the learning process. While ideal, this is not necessary to effectively
teach ASL poetry as U.S. poetry.
The lecture on ASL poetry consisted o f two intensive ASL days and then informed
the rest o f the semester. The lectures relied heavily on the information presented in earlier
chapters and in the appendixes to this dissertation. However, that information, because o f
time constraints and because o f the purpose o f the course and o f the lectures, was
remarkably abbreviated. I offer the notes from these lectures in order to give an example
o f the kind o f depth necessary for an overview. I give my students a handout o f the two
8 This class clearly offers the most extensive and intensive study o f ASL poetry.
However, I am not arguing that ASL poetry (or African American or Chicano or
Women’s or Anglo-American poetry) should be taught in its entirety in a U.S. poetry
class. Rather, I am suggesting that a U.S. poetiy class without ASL poetry (and African
American, Chicano, Asian American, Native American, Women’s, Indian American, Arab
American, and all other groups who now reside in the U .S.) is incomplete.
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poems presented to the class which offers a transliteration o f the poems and which gives
them an idea o f the grammatical functions o f the signs. In the presentations, I had Sanders
perform the poems several times so that the students could see the poems in their entirety
and also ask for specific parts to be repeated. While this may not be possible for every
course, people interested in broadening their definitions o f poetry can use this as a starting
point. A general overview o f ASL and D eaf poetry can be given and then the video tapes
o f the poems can be used. Ideally, however, since these lectures assume the ability to
sign, a professor o f U.S. poetry could invite a guest lecturer into the classroom to
introduce ASL, D eaf culture, and ASL poetry. The professor could then design
assignments which incorporate those lectures into the written material o f the class.
Lectures on ASL and ASL Poetry
These lectures and the handouts are followed by a sample paper assignment which
incorporates poetry, translation, and ASL poetry as an option.
Lecture I: ASL and ASL Poetry
I. History o f Signed Languages and American Sign Language, Specifically
A. Linguistic study o f signed languages is a relatively young science. As the
article I hope you read noted, When William A. Stokoe discovered that the
signs his students used differed from the signs his teacher used, he began a
journey still not complete— that o f totally legitimizing ASL as a language
rather than as a system o f pantomime. Until that time, centuries had passed
in the study o f language with very little attention given to signed languages.
There is very little, if any, record o f signed language studies done prior to
the 1700s. There are a few records o f studies done on the sign language of
the Trappist monks, and some in Spanish. Most o f those studies, however,
were not language studies per se, but rather attempts at recording the sign
languages o f the time, thus lexical studies rather than language studies.
The few dictionaries published before Stokoe’s work included no
information about the grammatical structure o f ASL; some included
pictures o f the signs, but others merely included descriptions o f how to
make the sign.
B. Harlan Lane’s book When the M ind Hears offers a beautifully written and
very thorough history o f signed languages; it’s one o f the few scholarly
books around that is truly delightful to read and simultaneously remarkably
informative. I highly recommend it.
C. One thing I want to emphasize about this history is the resistance against
admitting ASL as a language; part o f this resistance stems from the
revolutionary effect on language studies ASL demands. We could no
longer think o f language in the same way once ASL was admitted; it
required a complete overhaul o f definitions and studies o f language—
structure, use, and acquisition.
Attitudes Towards Signed Languages
A. Traditional attitudes and thoughts towards signed languages
1. If it’s not spoken, it’s not a language
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2. Signed languages are "bad" languages
3. Signed languages are "broken" forms o f spoken languages
4. Signed languages are not languages— period.
5. Signed languages are "primitive"— concrete and not capable o f
conceiving or conveying abstract thought.
B. Before we, and I include myself because before my personal interactions
with the deaf community I would have been inclined to make the following
assumptions, become too comfortable in saying, oh, but w e’re enlightened
linguists and scholars; o f course we think ASL is a language; o f course we
consider on an equal footing with spoken languages, I would like to ask
you two key questions.
1. What do you think it is like to be deaf?
2. Is it better to be deaf or to be hearing?
C. These questions come from the preface o f Harlan Lane’s second book on
the deaf, The M ask o f Benevolence. He suggests that when most hearing
people consider the above questions, they make extrapolative leaps or
egocentric errors.
1. We imagine deafness as the absence o f sound— as silence, and thus
as being without communication. If we were to become deaf right
this second, most o f us would be "isolated, disoriented,
uncommunicative, and unreceptive to communication. [Our] ties to
other people would be ruptured" (11). Many o f us were censured
with silence as children, and thus silence holds for us ominous
memories and projections. Lane explains, "What motivates the
extrapolative error in disinterested laymen is existential dread.
There but for the grace o f God go I" (11). From there, most
hearing people make the unconscious logical leap that deaf people
are deserving o f our sympathy because we are deserving o f our
sympathy; w e can imagine fewer tragedies so life-altering and
frightening. Because o f all o f this going on in our psyches, we
project our fears onto the deaf and assume that they, too, are
isolated and without communication. However, for the Deaf, the
concept o f the English word "silence" is articulated as the absence
o f communication, not sound; it means the absence o f ASL.
Unfortunately, since the early part o f this century, that is exactly the
situation the government, educators, many parents o f deaf children,
and society at large has imposed upon the D eaf Community. ASL
is just now re-entering classrooms o f deaf children.
As for the second question, is it better to be hearing or to be deaf,
Lane offers an insightful response which I would like to read in its
entirety. He says, "the question makes no sense except in relation
to a cultural ‘frame. ’ To know what it is to be a member o f the
deaf community is to imagine how you would think, feel, and react
if you had grown up deaf, if manual language had been your main
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means o f communication, if your eyes were the portals o f your
mind, if most o f your friends were deaf, if you had learned that
there were children who couldn’t sign only after you had known
dozens who could, if the people you admired were deaf, if you had
struggled daily for as long as you can remember with the ignorance
and uncommunicativeness o f hearing people, i f . . . if, in a word,
you were deaf' ([ellipses and emphasis in original] 12).
III. Phonology
A. Traditional definition
Phonology traditionally has been described as the study o f the smallest
parts o f a language or, more specifically, as the inventory o f the system o f
meaningful sounds in a language. For years, this meant the inventory o f the
smallest single sound possible in any given language. As linguists continue
to learn to understand the nature o f phonology, the traditional definition of
the smallest parts o f a language has been expanded to include parts o f sign.
Rather than saying phonology deals with the sound system o f a language,
even though in most cases it does, it is perhaps better to say that
phonology deals with the transmission system o f a language, whether it be
visual/gestural, or audio/vocal.
B. New definitions o f phonology as a result o f ASL studies
1. Stokoe’s contribution
Most o f us are familiar with what the smallest parts o f a spoken
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language are, but what is the smallest part o f a signed language?
H ow are those parts identified and analyzed? Originally, phonology
o f signed language was called cherology by Stokoe (Stokoe 1960,
qtd. in Link). Parts o f sign were identified as cheremes, just as
sounds are identified as phonemes. Variations o f a sound were
identified as allophones; likewise, variations o f signs were called
allochers.
2. New ways o f speaking o f phonology
Over time, it became obsolete to call this type o f analysis
cherology. Since so many principles o f phonology can be applied,
or applied with some modification, to signed languages, it became
unnecessary to develop a entirely new set o f terms and
accompanying principles.
3. Parameters
Sounds are analyzed by parameters based on their voicing quality
and their point and manner o f articulation. In English, the
parameters include voicing, non-voicing, place, and manner. Within
the place parameter, a linguist would consider such things as
interdental, labial, alvelor, velor, and glottal constructions o f sound.
Within the manner parameter, a linguist would consider such things
as stops, fricatives, affricates, and nasals (for example, " t" is an
alvelor stopped unvoiced sound, whereas " d " id an alvelor stopped
voiced sound). In ASL, signs are analyzed by what is called the 4/5
parameters. These include:
a. Hand shape
b. Location
c. Movement
d. Palm Orientation
e. Facial Expression, known in ASL as Non Manual Markers
or Signs
This last, facial expression, is the reason the parameters are called
4/5 parameters; non manual markers are the center o f today’s
current linguistic studies. It has been suggested that some signs
cannon be made without the use o f non manual markers.
Additionally, some non manual markers are specifically attached to
some signs and cannot be separated.
Hand shapes
1. Every sign has a hand shape. Most deaf signers feel this is obvious,
just as hearing people feel it’s obvious that every word has a
specific sound. However, when I first encountered ASL, I did not
right off notice that the hands repeated certain Hand shapes in the
formation o f different signs. An important characteristic o f Hand
shapes is that not any hand shape works in the formation o f a sign.
For example, the Star Trek Vulcan "live long and prosper" hand
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shape does not, in ASL, form any sign. Another example is the
Asian sign for BROTHER, which uses a hand shape which is
offensive in both English and ASL, and is considered vulgar.
However, the hand shape appears in many Asian signed languages
and works fine for them.
2. Additionally, signs are shaped by the requirements o f the body. For
example, ASL has what are called unmarked and marked signs.
The unmarked signs are the easiest, considered most natural, to
make and therefore make up the largest part o f signs; the marked
signs are much more difficult to form and make up about 7% o f
ASL signs. The seven most common unmarked Hand shapes are
the following: FIVE, B (or a variation o f B— the fingers are all
together, but the thumb is not curled in, called an open B), 1, A, S,
O, C. The six most marked Hand shapes are X, 7, R, T, E, 8.
3. Another important characteristic o f signs is that they are
constructed to be seen, and so our vision capabilities play a large
role in how signs are made. Some signs use one hand while others
use both hands. Signs made on the face and head tend to be one-
handed signs. Some examples o f these are BOY, MOTHER,
WISE, DEAF. Signs made on the chest and, especially, the waist
tend to be two-handed signs. Some examples o f these signs are
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RUSSIA, SKIRT, PREGNANT. This involves the use o f the next
parameter, location.
D. Location
1. It is important in Deaf culture to always look the signer in the eye;
to do otherwise is considered not only rude but also offensive.
Only two exceptions to this exist: when an unusual and long word
is finger spelled and when a sign is made outside the normal signing
space (for example DRIBBLE BALL). Therefore, signs need to be
made in places where our vision can clearly identify the sign while
simultaneously looking the signer in the eye.
2. Since the person who is watching, the Addressee, looks at the face
(eyes and mouth area) o f the Signer during a conversation, and not
at the hands, the face o f the Signer and the area immediately around
it is the area most clearly seen by the Addressee. Thus, more signs
in ASL are made in the face, head, and neck area than are made in
the chest and waist area. As evidence o f this, one researcher in
1978 randomly chose 606 signs from the Dictionary o f American
Sign Language and found the following number o f signs made in
two major locations:
Head, Face, Neck Locations 465 signs
Trunk Locations (shoulders to waist) 141 signs
More than 75% o f these signs were made in the area where the
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Addressee can see most clearly.
E. Movement
1. Circular
PLEASE / SORRY
WORLD
2. Back-and-forth
TRAIN
TRAFFIC
F. Palm Orientation
1. Palm Up
MAYBE
MANY
2. Palm Down
BALANCE (opposite o f maybe)
CHILDREN
3. Palm Out
WONDERFUL / SUNDAY
SHOW-YOU
4. Palm In
DARK
G. Facial Expression, Non-manual signs
There are nine basic non-manual signs
1. ”cs" = very dose to the present time or to a particular place
a. arrive / just arrived
b. girl / that girl right there
2. "th" = careless or not paying attention
a. drive / drive without paying attention
b. write / write carelessly
3. "mm” = as expected, normal routine, getting along with no
problems
a. jog / jog at a regular pace
b. drive / drive along with no problems are as usual
4 "sta" = over and over again, hard, too much
a. try / try over and over again
b. work / work hard
5. "pursed lips" = veiy small, thin, narrow or very smooth, not rough
or quick, fast
a. wire / very thin wire
b. floor / very smooth floor
c. fast / very fast
6. "puffed cheeks" = a lot, huge number, many or far away in the
past or fat
a. trees / very large mass o f trees
b. long time ago / very long time ago
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7 . ”cha" ~ thick or very tall or high or huge
a. man / very muscular man
b. man / very tall man
8. "pah” = feeling relieved; finally
a. Joe finally arrived after being stuck in a snowstorm.
b. I am finally finished with my exam.
9. M pow” = disaster; splatter or running wild
a. I dropped an expensive vase.
b. When the father saw a big mess, he became enraged.
(LOSE-TEMPER-ASL LIST #3, 1)
H. Minimal Pairs
In many phonology discussions we hear much about minimal pairs. As
generally stated, minimal pairs occur in spoken languages when a pair o f
words have one and only one change between them. In English, some
minimal pairs may be PAT and BAT, or PAT and POT, or PAT and PAN.
Minimal pairs occur in ASL as well. I am not going to offer an
interpretation o f the signs at first; rather, I would like you to describe the
difference you see in their formation. After that, I will tell you what the
signs mean. Examples:
1. Minimal Pair on Hand shape
a. WHICH / DRIVE
b. APPLE / CANDY
2. Minimal Pair on Location
a. Old sign for CHINESE / SOUR
b. APPLE / ONION
c. Possible minimal trio? DRY, UGLY, SUMMER
3. Minimal Pair on Movement
a. SHORT / SOON
b. TRAIN / SHORT
4. Minimal Pair on Palm Orientation
a. NAME / CHAIR
b. RUDE / NAKED
Two Rules o f ASL
1. Symmetry
In the rule o f Symmetry, if both hands are used in the formation o f
a sign, they will be identical in hand shape and movement.
a. FOOTBALL
b. DARK
c. PROCEED (CONTINUE)
d. EXCITED
e. MAYBE
£ TRY
G. In each o f these examples, all o f the parameters equally
apply to both hands.
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2. Dominance
a. In dominance, all signers have a dominant hand. Just as
everyone has a dominant hand in writing, so it is with
signing. In the case o f signers, usually the dominant hand is
obvious in both writing and signing.
b. Dominance applies in another way to the formation o f sign.
In the rile o f Dominance, each o f the hands will have a
different hand shape, and only one (the dominant hand) will
move. Examples o f this are WORD, WEAK, CANDLE,
and FLATTER.
c. In addition, the rule o f Dominance says that the non
dominant hand will have one o f the seven unmarked Hand
shapes I mentioned before (5, OPEN B, 1, A, S, O, C).
J. Intrusion Errors
1. One important study that lends support to phonology o f ASL is that
o f intrusion errors, or more commonly called learner errors. In
spoken languages, it is common for learners to mispronounce
words or to have difficulty in producing certain sounds in certain
languages (for example, the rolled " r " o f many languages is foreign
and difficult for native English speakers). It is also common
practice for learners to want equivalents from their own native
language that could possibly be incorporated into the target
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language.
2. Likewise, such errors occur in ASL learning. However,
"mispronunciation" occurs by violating one or more o f the
parameters o f sign. Some o f the most common errors are the
following (when you watch these examples, ask yourself; What are
the errors in those examples? What parameter(s) is at issue?)
a. EXPERIENCE/PROSTITUTE (movement)
b. RUDE / NAKED (palm orientation)
c. FOOTBALL / PREGNANT (location)
d. MAKE / MAKE LOVE (slang) (movement and location)
IV. Morphology
English is a morphologically thin language; we only have eight, one o f which is the
"er/est" construction. ASL, like any other language, has it morphological
processes. I will describe three o f the most common.
A. Derivational: Nouns From Verbs
In English, we know about derivation, which most often describes the
process o f obtaining nouns from verbs, and vice versa. A similar process
occurs in ASL.
1. Examples
a. FLY / FLY TO
b. CALL / NAME ("call" is as in I will call her Eve, made
by "name" swept out in an arc in front o f the body, from the
index o f the LH up, out, and down)
c. SELL / STORE
d. PRINT / NEWSPAPER
e. SIT / CHAIR
2. What is it that sets those apart? It is the movement. Notice how
the verb form o f the sign often has a single, non-repeated
movement. The noun form, on the other hand, has a repeating
movement. It is this movement that often throws ASL learners.
Many believe upon first glance that the repeated movement is the
verb form; this may come from the old adage that verbs are action
words.
Inflectional: Pluralization
Repetitive movement is not restricted to derivations. Repetitive movement
is also a part of, among other things, pluralization. For example, TREE /
FOREST.
1, It is a common misconception among ASL learners that if one
wants to pluralize something in ASL, simply repeat it. This is not
necessarily the case. ASL has a rich system o f classifiers. Those
are signs which usually have no English equivalent, and so in order
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for you to understand how classifiers work in pluralization, I will
explain what they are and what they do.
a. Some classifiers are pronouns; when used as pronouns, the
noun must be signed first, the classifier second. Two
classifiers can be signed at the same time. Classifier nouns
are the most common use o f classifiers.
b. Some classifiers give information about the location; they
show where the actions took place.
c. Some classifiers function as verbs; they show the motion of
the nouns.
d. Some classifiers can function as adverbs; they show the kind
o f motions made by the nouns.
e. Classifiers are usually accompanied by non-manual signs.
f. The classifiers in ASL are CL:3, CL: 1; CL:B; CL: V (down);
CL:V (bent); CL:F; CL 1-1; CL:C; CL:5; CL:5 (bent);
CL:LI (I-l-u, for plane); CL:L; CL.FF; CL:LL; CL:CC;
CL BB; CL:55; CL: G
G. Some examples o f classifiers and their use in sentences or
conversation include: A teacher standing in front o f me
(sign TEACHER, then use CL: 1 to indicate where); a car
crashing into a tree (sign CAR and point to its designated
spot; sign TREE and point to its designated spot, then use
CL:3 crashing into CL;5); a mouse going into a hole (H-O-
L-E, sign mouse, then use CL:C for the hole and CL: V bent
for the mouse).
2. Classifiers can also be used for pluralization. Here are some
examples:
a. BOAT— 2h, CL:3 (left hand remains stationary, right moves
to the right) for row o f boats
b. CAR— 2h, CL:3 (same as above) for row o f cars
c. PEOPLE— 2h, CL: 5 for many people assembling somewhere
(5s come from opposite sides to come together in front o f
signer)
3. On other pluralization process is the incorporation o f a number.
For example, BROTHERS HAVE THREE, BOOKS HAVE 100
Pronominalization
A crucial feature o f ASL is its use o f space— that is, its use o f the area
around the Signer’s body. Just as English has pronouns to refer to a
particular person, object or phenomenon without having to repeat the noun
itself, ASL has a similar system. A Signer can take advantage o f the 3-
dimensional nature o f ASL by setting up or establishing non-present
referents (people, things, places) in specific locations around his or her
body. Then the Signer can point to those locations which stand for the
referents, and those points serve as pronouns.
Syntax
ASL has a number o f syntactic forms; I will discuss briefly the seven most common
sentence types; keep in mind that some o f these forms can also employ the
Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) form. Students o f ASL quickly recognize SVO forms,
often quite unconsciously. This same form exists in English, thus making a natural
transition for students. However, unlike English, ASL does not need a lot o f filler
words or signs. English: I am going to the store. ASL: I GO-TO STORE.
Notice that in ASL, there is no need for "am " or "the." The sentences given are
perfect progressive forms, but the important point here is that they are both SVO
forms. The subject, verb, and object fall in approximately the same location in the
sentences.
A. Yes/No Questions. These are questions that can be answered by
responding "yes" or "no." The non-manual signals for Yes/No questions
are a brow raise, widened eyes, and often a forward tilting o f the head or
body. Sometimes the shoulders are also raised. For example, do you
understand me? becomes (YOU) UNDERSTAND? and Is today Saturday
becomes TODAY SATURDAY?
B. Wh-Questions. These are questions that ask for specific information and
cannot be answered by responding yes or no. They use interrogative signs
such as WHAT, WHO, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, WHICH, HOW, HOW-
MANY/MUCH, etc. The non-manual signals for Wh-questioning are a
brown squint (although the brows are sometimes raised as well as brought
together) and frequently a tilting o f the head. Sometimes the body shifts
forward, and sometimes the shoulders are raised. For example, who is
your teacher becomes YOUR TEACHER WHO? and where is your dog?
becomes YOUR DOG WHERE?
Negative Sentences. Negative sentences indicate that something is not
true, did not happen, will not happen, etc. The non-manual sign is
composed o f a side-to-side head shake— frequently accompanied by a
frown, and sometimes a brow squint, a wrinkling o f the nose and or a
raised upper lip. For example, I do not understand ASL becomes I
UNDERSTAND ASL (NOT) and we both don’t know the answer
becomes WE-BOTH DON’T-KNOW ANSWER.
Topicalizations. This is a more common construction than the SVO native
English speakers are more comfortable with. ASL signers tend to indicate
the thing they want to talk about (called the Topic) first and then to make
some statement(s), question(s), etc., about that thing (the statement is
called the Comment). For this reason ASL is described as having a "topic-
comment" structure. The non-manual signals are the following: a. during
the signing o f the topic, the brows are raised, the head is tilted, the signer
maintains fairly constant eye gaze on the receiver; b. the last sign in the
topic is held slightly longer than usual, resulting in a pause; c. then, when
the comment is signed, the head position, brows, and gaze direction are
changed. How they change depends on the type o f comment that follows.
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The example used in the SVO definition, I GO-TO STORE in the topic—
comment form becomes STORE I GO-TO. Other uses o f topic-comment
form combine questions. For example, to say "Mary is excited because she
understands ASL" in the topic-comment form, you would need to sign
MARY EXCITED . . . WHY? (rhet-q) . . . UNDERSTAND ASL.
E. Conditionals. These sentences have two parts: a part that states a
condition and a part that describes the result o f this condition. This second
part can be a statement, question, or command. The condition is signed
first and is accompanied by a non-manual signal. This signal is composed
o f a brow raise, usually with the head tilted in one direction and,
sometimes, the body slightly inclined in one direction. Between the
condition and the result segment, there is a pause and a change in several o f
the non-manual behaviors that accompanied the condition segment. For
example, If it rains tomorrow, I will not got to the beach is signed
TOMORROW RAIN . . . I NOT GO-TO #BEACH; and Will you help me
later if I help you now? is signed NOW I-HELP-YOU . . . LATER YOU-
HELP-ME?
F. Rhetorical Questions. These questions are accompanied by a brow raise
and frequently a tilting o f the head. A Wh-word sign usually occurs with
this type o f question. Rhetorical questions are not true questions since the
receiver is not expected to respond; rather, they provide a way for the
signer to introduce and draw attention to the information that he will then
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supply. In effect, the signer is posing a question and then responding to it
her or himself. Rhetorical questions are frequently used in ASL
conversation, as I demonstrated in the topic-comment example. Other
examples include: The baby is happy because her mother is here is signed
BABY HAPPY . . . WHY . . . MOTHER HERE; and I do not know what
he said is signed HE SAY . . . WHAT . . . I DON’T-KNOW.
G, Assertions. Assertions are sentences asserting that something is true, did
happen, will happen, etc. The signers often use a head nod or repeated
nodding to emphasize that some thing is true, did happen, will happen, etc.
Often this nod or nodding is accompanied by a tightening o f closed lips.
For example, he is a good friend is signed (nodding) HE GOOD FRIEND;
and I will return is signed (nodding) I RETURN .
VI. Methods o f writing Sign
As o f yet, there is no widely accepted method o f writing in ASL. There have been
a few attempts, but none have been well received by the D eaf community (give
example o f discussion o f gloss in Jeffs class if there is time).
VII. ASL Poetry
A new literature began emerging from the D eaf community in the seventies, and
recently (within the last seven years) a new sign for poetry emerged. The old sign,
made this way (demonstrate) is related to music (show sign) and is still used to
refer to written poetry, but the new sign, made this way (demonstrate), is more
closely linked, according to ASL poets, to poetry based on vision rather than
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sound. ASL poetry, like poetry in all other languages, uses the grammar o f the
language in unique ways. This will be the topic o f discussion on Friday.
Lecture II: Lecture on Translation
Translation
L Genre
A. What is poetry?
B. Hannon and Holman definition o f poetry (398-399)
C. Should poetry be translated as poetry?
1. Epic poems (Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton)
2. Narrative/lyric poems
3. Sound poems
4. Image poems
5. Postmodem/poststructuralist
6. Etc.
D. Who should translate poetry?
II.. Walter Benjamin: "The Task o f the Translator"
A. Why translate?
B. For whom is a translation intended?
C. What does it mean that translation is a mode?
D. What does translatability mean?
E. What does Benjamin mean by life and afterlife in works o f art? what role
does translation play in this? Does a translation, according to Benjamin,
319
become a work o f art, complete with life and the possibility o f afterlife?
F. Explain Benjamin’s theory o f the kinship o f languages.
G. What is the distinction between kinship o f languages and
interchangeability?
H. What does Benjamin conclude the task o f the translator is?
Lawrence Venuti: The Scandals o f Translation
A. What does Venuti mean by the scandals o f translation?
B. How can translation be scandalous?
C. Is there a way for a translation to be completely free from scandal?
D. What solutions does Venuti suggest?
E. What kind o f agendas in translation does he discuss?
F. What does he mean by ethics o f translation?
G. How important is this?
ASL Poetry and Translation
I. Ezra Pound suggested that poetry should be composed o f three ideas: melopoeia,
logopoeia, and phanopoeia. (Define) Pay attention to how ASL uses these and
changes these as you view the poems and work on translating them,
n . ASL poetiy has changed in the last twenty years; it used to be related to the sign
for music (demonstrate), which suggests a certain distance between poetry and the
D eaf However, since the 1970s, ASL poets have created a new sign for poetry
(demonstrate) which is more closely related to visual poetry and connects the Deaf
to the art more intimately. D eaf poets have written poetry for centuries, but it is
320
only recently, in the past 20-25 years that signed poetry has developed. ASL
poetry, like poetry in all other languages, uses the grammar o f the language in
unique ways. Signed, or performed, poetry makes use o f poetics and figurative
language in ways that are both different and similar to the poetics and figurative
language o f written poetry. ASL poetry uses space and visual patterns rather
scansion to create rhyme and meter. A deaf poet might use repeated handshapes
(different words which use the same basic hand shape, such as "family" and
"important"), repeat sign movements, or integrate head movements with individual
signs to create ASL rhyme. The specific patterns and rhythms emphasized in
signed/performed ASL poetry include palm orientation, sides (left or right), how
the signing space is utilized, one hand signs versus two hand signs, alternating
between hands signing, the pace o f signing (which changes depending on the tone),
and movement, letter patterns, and number patterns. For example, a poem entitled
"Rabbit," by Clayton Valli, creates a brief, elliptic narrative through handshapes
progressing from the signed number one to the signed number ten. Tone is created
with body movement ("body language"), facial expressions, and with the use of
space (for example, making the signs large or small creates different tones). An
example o f how a deaf poet might use space to alter tone is found in a poem by
Ella May Lentz entitled, "Oh, Silence." Because the poem relates a conversation
between a man and a woman, Lentz found it necessary to make the gender
distinction with signs rather than using the storytelling technique o f simply
changing places with the change o f speakers. The poetic device she created is to
321
sign low and heavy to represent the man and to sign high and light to represent the
woman. Other figurative language, such as metaphor and simile, are used exactly
as they are in English. ASL poetry also uses traditional ASL stoiytelling
techniques in much the same way that many English poems create narratives (for
example, Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues relies on the audience’s
familiarity with imagined dialogue). Here are some examples and how what we
just talked about is used to create poetry. We will be focusing on two poems by
Clayton Valli, "The Bridge" and "Flash."
III. As you watch the poems, notice as much as you can parts o f the performance that
could be considered elements o f poetry; pay particular attention to the use o f the
body.
IV. Sign "The Bridge" (at least twice)
V. Discuss the bridge; use old handout I gave you with the transliteration, the parts o f
speech, etc. What kind o f poem is this? What poetic elements are present?
A. Chiasmus
B. Rhyme/rhyme scheme
C. Rhythm
D. Near-rhyme
E. Symbol
F. Metaphor
G. Personification?
H. Etc.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
D C .
X.
XI.
XII.
Xfll
322
I. This poem uses the signed numbers one through six, beginning with
number six, counting backwards to number one, forwards to number six,
and back to number one. The transitions between counting forwards and
backwards act as stanzas, and the repetition also acts as rhythm. Similar to
rabbit, the overt purpose is to create narrative meaning through signing
numbers in specific orders.
What poem form seems most appropriate to use when translating the poem into
English?
Translate the poem into two forms (in groups of two or three)
Now, let’s try a different kind of ASL poem-"Flash." Like "Bridge," "Flash" relies
on a narrative style passed down for centuries. Instead of using numbers to tell a
story, "Flash" uses letters-it is similar to the alphabet stories prevalent in Deaf
communities and literature. An alphabet story requires the storyteller to use the
entire alphabet, in order, in the telling o f the story. In other words, the handshapes
used to create the individual signs of the story must be composed of the letters of
the alphabet. "Flash" takes this basic idea and turns it into poetry.
Watch the poem (Marvin)
Here is the sign-for-word transliteration.
What poetic elements are used in this poem?
What form should we use to translate this poem into English? Why?
How do the translations affect the original meaning of the poem? What is lost in
323
going from the signed/performed poem to a written translation? What does this
tell us about poetry?
Handouts
"The Bridge"
English Equivalent Grammatical Function Number
Handshape
water noun 6
sea (or ocean) adjective 5
boat-go noun & verb 4
ship-go adjective & verb 3
see (or look) verb 2
bridge-distance (or horizon) noun & adjective 1
shape-of-bridge (or road-on-bridge) adjective or noun 2
moving-cars-stop adverb, noun, & verb 3
bridge-open noun & verb 4
boat-go-under (or boat-go-through) noun & verb 5
flag-wave noun & verb 6
people-look-down/people-look-up noun & verb/noun & verb 5
bridge-close noun & verb 4
ship-go adjective & verb 3
see (or look) verb 2
bridge-distance (or horizon) noun & adjective 1
"Flash"
English Equivalent Grammatica Expression/Non-manual Alphabet
1 Function markers handshape
324
We two or you and me noun Yes/no statement; eyebrows
up
H
(modified)
can verb Yes/no statement; eyebrows
up
S
race verb Yes/no statement; eyebrows
up
A
running or run adverb "puffed cheeks" L
no problem or whatever or
yea, we can
adjective or
noun/verb
"mm"; eyebrows up F
Shock or the opponent is
shocked or oh, my
goodness
noun/verb widened eyes/eyebrows up F
took off; he took off verb; n/v widened eyes/eyebrows up L
Gone, or he’s gone verb or n/v pursed lips A
Beat you or won verb "pow" S to
Beat you or won verb "pow" H
In my face prep phrase "innocent look"; eyebrows
down
H
Should have known; keep it
to myself
v; v/prep Assertion; brings head down;
continues innocent look
S
Not adv Shakes head no; eyebrows
down
A
Me pronoun
(objective)
Shakes head no; eyebrows
down
L
Expert; skilled adj. eyebrows down; assertion;
pah
F
Fool adj. puffed cheeks F to
Fool adj. puffed cheeks L
Thumbs up or ok or right adv. assertion; mm A
Honest adj. assertion StoH
Honest adj. assertion, conspiratorial H
325
Don’t tell V puffed cheeks S
Buddy leaves n/v pursed lips A
Fool leaves n/v pursed lips L
Gone adj. pursed lips F
Sample Paper Assignment
Genre, Literary Translation, and Critical Theory
Purpose:
As noted in the last paper assignment, the purpose o f a research paper is three-fold: to
help acquaint you with libraries and library research; to teach you to integrate outside
sources into your own arguments; and to encourage you to offer an in-depth reading of a
text(s). This paper also asks you to bring together all that we have learned and all on
which we have focused in this class: literary theories, reading strategies, writing
techniques, and understanding of genre.
Topic:
After our discussions of genre and translation, you are ready to write anew your
definitions of poetry, prose fiction, and drama; for this paper, we will focus on an in-depth
analysis o f poetry as genre.
Readings:
Essays from the packet; handouts; lectures.
Background:
Gabriel Motzkin posits,
The blurring of cultural boundaries obscures the task o f translation. Cultural
326
interpenetration appears to mean that the act o f translation becomes less difficult.
But is this so? Or does the convergence of cultures not rather make translation
more difficult as the boundaries between the own and the other seem to fade?
Does not translation rather imply that was is read, assimilated, and therefore
remembered, hovers at the edge o f identity, as something that is neither quite own
nor quite other? (265-266)
Translating American texts for American audiences seems redundant; it raises questions
about American identity and culture: how different is one American from another? How
much overlap of identity is present and can be assumed in any given American text,
particularly since America houses such a large array o f ethnicities and cultures? These
questions and issues are those this paper should address.
Audience:
The audience for this paper is the class members and me; you can therefore assume some
information (such as the information given in the ASL lectures and found in the essays in
the course packet), though not so much that your paper becomes unintelligible outside of
the class.
Assignment:
You are to develop an argument about poetry and translation based on our discussions,
the readings in the course packet, and on your research. Then, in a thesis-driven, 7-9 page
paper, answer some of the following questions-but you must address both genre and
translation:
What is poetry? What happens to a poem when it undergoes the process of
translation? How does a recognition of this transformation and o f the
translation process help us to understand genre, literature, and critical
theory better than we did before?
Consider these questions as you work through the issues above: What happens to a
formalist approach to or reading o f a specific poem once it has been translated? Does
translation in any way affect other critical theories/approaches? You may select any
poem, including an ASL poem. If you need to borrow a copy of the poem, please feel free
to ask me for mine. In addition, the ASL department on campus has an ASL video library
in which are several videos of ASL poetry.
Specifics of the Research Component:
You must use at least five sources, and no more than seven, aside from your primary text
(the translated poem/poem you choose to translate); only two o f those sources can come
from the course packet. You must follow ML A format absolutely; please remember
especially to not use a title page or a cover of any sort.
Conclusion
I have argued throughout this chapter that we need to redefine U.S. poetries in our
pedagogies so that we enact the multiplicity that is U.S. poetry. The backgrounds,
aesthetic movements, and cultural identities explored in this dissertation can be a unique
and productive starting point in this redefinition and reevaluation of pedagogy. I do not
suggest that we ignore or elide the current cannon or other cannons; instead, I suggest
that the dialogue which can occur between a broader spectrum o f U.S. poetry provides
328
opportunities for learning and growth not available with the current cannon being taught.
The layers and textures of meaning available with the addition o f ASL and Deaf literature
written in English to U.S. literature and studies courses offer new avenues of addressing
the poetry of tried and true greats such as Faulkner, Cather, Fitzgerald, Hemingway,
Wharton, and others. The shadow o f ASL within these texts if ASL poetry and literature
informs them allows the characters, the language, the landscape, and the multiplicity
within each text to resonate on new levels.
329
Conclusion
Coda: What Is and What Might Be
choice the thing that wrecks the sensuous here the glorious
here-
that wrecks the beauty,
choice the move that rips the wrappings of light, the
ever-tighter wrappings
of the layers of the
real: what is, what also is, what might be that is,
what could have been that is, what
might have been that is, what I say that is,
what the words say that is,
what you imagine the words say that is-Don’t move, don’t
wreck the shroud, don’t move-
Jorie Graham, "Fission"
What Is
As I conclude this project, my thoughts return to its genesis. My conversations
about identity, borders and boundaries, ethnicity, poetry, access, and negotiation have
continued with my family throughout the writing o f the dissertation. Interestingly, as
we discuss what I have read and what I have written, solutions to the original questions
and challenges of creating a unified family which celebrates diversity remain elusive.
But that is as it should be, I think. We don’t ask the exact same questions we asked
before-Wittgenstein and others would suggest that to even try to do so would be
impossible because words are new each time they are used-but we still question and
wonder.
330
Our questions seem to have taken on a different tenor as a result of this project.
Instead of focusing on the fact of our familial borderlands, in other words, instead of
speaking o f the wonder of both the presence o f borderlands and our previously
unquestioning acceptance of them as "normal," our conversations have shifted to much
more self-aware and self-conscious articulations of our shifting places within the space
o f our family. In some ways, the boundaries and border are more pronounced because
o f the heightened awareness of them this project created. This is a challenge of writing
or speaking about boundaries and borders in the first place.
By speaking them, or signing them, we acknowledge these borders and thereby
give them life and a certain power. I have noticed that we metaphorically tip-toed
around cultural identity and history for the first half or more of the writing process.
Some in the family felt threatened by the exploration of difference from this new
perspective, a perspective different from the previous exploration and celebration of
difference. Colonial histories seemed to put some members of the family automatically
on the defense; these same people needed to articulate, even prove, that they were not
complicitous in colonial endeavors. This need seemed to rest only with those who are
Caucasian. What I mean is, those who fit traditional definitions of "minority" did not
require an explanation from any member of the family-they knew already the positions
and intentions o f the Caucasian members. Because of this reaction, the family
eventually returned to the kind o f dialogue and interaction previously possible, but with
a difference.
331
The members of the family who, through this project, learned more of their
national cultures also underwent transitions. The interest level in connecting with a
national community based, in part, on skin color/ethnicity increased, and these members
felt a stronger desire to participate in the conversation about and in the construction of
cultural and national identity. Not only did these members enter the nation via an
Andersonian imaginative endeavor, but they also sought out new friends and new
experiences in order to determine the extent to which they could and wanted to belong
to their respective nations.
We now have more pronounced differences, but the bonds which tie us together
as a family and dialectic community strengthened throughout the process. Familial
intimacy, acceptance, and understanding did not truly suffer as a result of this project.
If anything, my family came closer together through the negotiation of multiple
identities, articulations, and performances o f identity. The distances between self and
other within our family have begun to change from an unacknowledged distance
(unacknowledged because it was never perceived) to an unresolvable, dynamic tension
full of potential which enacts the last lines of Graham’s poem, "Fission":
choice the thing that wrecks the sensuous here the glorious
here-
that wrecks the beauty,
choice the move that rips the wrappings of light, the
ever-tighter wrappings
of the layers of the
real: what is, what also is, what might be that is,
what could have been that is, what
might have been that is, what I say that is,
332
what the words say that is,
what you imagine the words say that is-Don’t move,
don’t
wreck the shroud, don’t move- (103)
I am not suggesting that discovering, acknowledging, an then enacting the kind of tension
found within the poetry and translation theory presented in this dissertation solve all
problems or make for an edenic (family) life. Rather, I am suggesting that this is an
interesting and fruitful place to begin reconceiving personal and national identity. The
choices available after we recognize the differences, the tension, hold the possibility for
this reconception.
What M isht Be
What might be is up to U.S. literature faculty and departments; the possibilities
wait in the awnings.
3 3 3
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353
Appendix I: ASL Grammar
ASL as a Natural Language: Grammar
Traditionally, phonology has been described as the study o f the smallest parts o f
a language or, more specifically, as the inventory o f the system o f meaningful sounds in
a language. For years, this meant the inventory o f the smallest single sound possible in
any given language. As linguists continue to learn to understand the nature o f
phonology, the traditional definition o f the smallest parts o f a language has been
expanded to include parts o f sign. Rather than saying phonology deals with the sound
system o f a language, even though in most cases it does, it is perhaps better to say that
phonology deals with the transmission system o f a language, whether it be
visual/gestural, or audio/vocal.
The smallest parts o f a spoken language are common knowledge, but what is
the smallest part o f a signed language? How are those parts identified and analyzed?
Originally, phonology o f signed language was called cherology by Stokoe (Stokoe
1960, qtd. in Link). Parts o f sign were identified as cheremes, just as sounds are
identified as phonemes. Variations o f a sound were identified as allophones; likewise,
variations o f signs were called allochers. Over time, it became obsolete to call this type
o f analysis cherology. Since so many principles o f phonology can be applied, or
applied with some modification, to signed languages, it is now unnecessary to develop
a entirely new set o f terms and accompanying principles.
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Parameters
Sounds are analyzed by parameters based on their voicing quality and their
point and manner o f articulation. In English, the parameters include voicing, non
voicing, place, and manner. Within the place parameter, a linguist would consider such
things as interdental, labial, alvelor, velor, and glottal constructions o f sound. Within
the manner parameter, a linguist would consider such things as stops, fricatives,
affricates, and nasals (for example, " t" is an alvelor stopped unvoiced sound, whereas
" d " id an alvelor stopped voiced sound). In ASL, signs are analyzed by what is called
the 4/5 parameters. These include:
1. Hand shape
2 Location
3. Movement
4. Palm Orientation
5. Facial Expression, known in ASL as Non Manual Markers or Signs
This last, facial expression, is the reason the parameters are called 4/5 parameters; non
manual markers are the center o f today’s current linguistic studies. It has been
suggested that some signs cannon be made without the use o f non manual markers.
Additionally, some non manual markers are specifically attached to some signs and
cannot be separated.
Eveiy sign has a hand shape. Most deaf signers feel this is obvious, just as
hearing people feel it’s obvious that every word has a specific sound. However, when I
355
first encountered ASL, I did not notice immediately that the hands repeated certain
hand shapes in the formation o f different signs. An important characteristic o f Hand
shapes is that not any hand shape works in the formation o f a sign. For example, the
Star Trek Vulcan "live long and prosper" hand shape does not, in ASL, form any sign.
Another example is the Asian sign for "brother," which uses a hand shape offensive in
both English and ASL and is considered vulgar. However, the hand shape appears in
many Asian signed languages and works effectively in those languages.
Additionally, signs are shaped by the requirements o f the body. For example,
ASL uses what are called unmarked and marked signs. The unmarked signs are the
easiest, are considered most natural to make, and therefore make up the largest part o f
the language. The marked signs are much more difficult to form and make up about
7% o f ASL. The seven most common unmarked hand shapes are the following: 5, B
(or a variation o f B--the fingers are all together, but the thumb is not curled in, called
an open B), 1, A, S, O, C. These are made in the following manner: a " 5" is made the
same way a hearing person would demonstrate the number 5 if counting on the hands.
A "B " is made by holding the hand, palm out, straight up, bringing the four fingers
together and crossing the thumb over the palm. A "1" is made the same way a hearing
person would demonstrate " 1" if counting on the hands. An "A " is made by making a
fist with either hand but placing the thumb on the outside o f the fingers instead o f in
front o f the fingers. An " S " is made like a fist. An "O " is made by making an open
fist-creating an open space between the palm and the fingers. A " C " is made by
356
making an open " B " and then relaxing the hand, slightly curving the fingers and thumb.
The six most marked hand shapes are X, 7, R, T, E, 8. These are made in the following
manner: An "X" is made by making a fist but leaving the index finger up and curling it
down slightly. A "7" is made by making a ”5" but bringing the thumb in touch the tip
o f the ring finger. An " R " is made by bringing the thumb in to hold the ring and pinkie
fingers down and crossing the index and middle fingers (which are left up). A " T " is
made by making a fist but placing the thumb between the index and middle fingers. An
" E " is made by bringing the thumb into the palm, in a perfect horizontal position and
then bringing the fingers down so that the tips rest on the horizontal thumb. An "8" is
made by making a " 5" and then bringing the thumb towards the palm to meet the tip o f
the middle finger.
Another important characteristic o f signs involves location, the second
parameter o f ASL. Signs are constructed to be seen, and so our vision capabilities play
a large role in how signs are made. Some signs use one hand while others use both
hands. Signs made on the face and head tend to be one-handed signs. Some examples
o f these are "boy," "mother," "wise," "deaf." These are made in the following manner:
"Boy" is signed by imitating gripping the visor o f a baseball cap-the hand is brought to
the forehead, palm down, the hand in a relaxed " C " position, and repeatedly closing the
thumb to the fingers. (This is the male area o f the face/head.) "Mother" is signed by
making a "5" with the right hand and bringing it to the chin, palm facing to the left, the
thumb tapping the chin twice. (This is the female area o f the face/head.) "Wise" is
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signed by making an "X " with the right hand and bringing it to the forehead, palm
facing left, and moving the index finger along with the hand up and down several times.
"Deaf’ is signed by using the " 1 " handshape; bring the right index finger to the ear,
touch the ear and then touch the right edge o f the mouth in a smooth motion. Signs
made on the chest and, especially, the waist tend to be two-handed signs. Some
examples o f these signs are "Russia,” "skirt," and "pregnant." "Russia" is signed by
creating the open "B " handshape with both hands and bringing them to the hips, the
thumb on the back portion o f the hips and the fingers in the front; tap the hips twice to
make the sign. "Skirt" is signed by placing both hands, in the " 5" handshape, in the
area a woman’s skirt begins (at the waist); with the palms facing in and slightly down
and the fingers pointing down, repeatedly move the hands from the waist downward
and outward. "Pregnant" is signed by putting both hands in the " 5" handshape and
bringing both hands in, palms facing in, from the sides, toward each other, and
entwining the fingers when they meet (imitating the shape o f a pregnant woman’s
stomach).
The location o f signs implies an important aspect o f D eaf culture , it is important
in Deaf culture to always look the signer in the eye; to do otherwise is considered not
only rude but also offensive. Only two exceptions to this exist: when an unusual and
long word is finger spelled and when a sign is made outside the normal signing space
(for example "dribble ball" which is signed between the thigh and the knee). Therefore,
signs need to be made in places where our vision can clearly identify the sign while
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simultaneously looking the signer in the eye. Since the person who is watching, the
Addressee, looks at the face (eyes and mouth area) o f the Signer during a conversation,
and not at the hands, the face o f the Signer and the area immediately around it is the
area most clearly seen by the Addressee. Thus, more signs in ASL are made in the
face, head, and neck area than are made in the chest and waist area. As evidence o f
this, one researcher in 1978 randomly chose 606 signs from the Dictionary of
American Sign Language and found the following number o f signs made in two major
locations:
Head, Face, Neck Locations 465 signs
Trunk Locations (shoulders to waist) 141 signs
More than 75% o f these signs were made in the area where the Addressee can see most
clearly.
The third parameter o f ASL, movement, requires more descriptions o f signs.
The first type o f movement, circular movement, includes such signs as "please,"
"sorry," and "world." "Please" is signed by making a " 5 " handshape, bringing it to the
chest, palm in, and rubbing the chest in a fairly large circular movement (towards the
right). "Sorry" is signed in a similar way; the " A " handshape is brought to the chest,
palm in, and the hand rubs the chest in a fairly large circular movement (towards the
right). "World" is signed in a different location but still uses the circular movement.
Both hands use the hand shape for the letter "W " (made by making the " 5 " handshape
and then bringing the thumb in to grip the tip o f the pinkie) and imitating the movement
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o f the earth around the sun: the two hands, in the "W " shape, begin in front o f the body
(just above the waist), palms facing each other. Then the right hand moves forward
and upward in an arc as the left hand moves back and upward around the right hand so
that they exchange positions.
The second kind o f movement, back-and-forth, also requires descriptions o f
signs; it includes such signs as "train" and "traffic." "Train" is signed by using the " H "
handshape (created by demonstrating a " 2" and then bringing the index and middle
fingers together-and then to make the letter, the hand is turned in so that the two
fingers are horizontal to the body) with both hands; the left hand is placed palm down,
fingers facing out, and the right hand, in the " H " handshape, also palm down, rubs back
and forth on top o f the left hand "H." "Traffic" is signed by using both hands, in the
" 5" position. The hands are brought up, palms facing each other (with the fingers up)
in front o f the body, in the chest area. The signer moves the right hand forward and the
left hand backward with a repeated alternating movement, the palms brushing each time
the hands pass.
The fourth parameter, palm orientation, also requires descriptions to explain it.
The first o f four orientations, palm up, includes such signs as "maybe" and "many."
"Maybe" is signed by placing both hands in the open "B " handshape, palms up in front
o f the body, the fingers facing forward; the hands move up and down, alternating (so
the sign begins with the right hand moving up and the left moving down) a repeated
double movement. "Many" is signed by putting both hands in the "S" handshape, palms
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up, in front o f the body; the hands then flick open to the " 5" handshape and close again
to the "S." The movement is repeated twice to create the sign.
The second o f the palm orientations, palm down, includes such signs as
"balance" and "children." "Balance" is created in a way similar to "maybe." Both
hands, in the open "B " handshape, are brought in front o f the body, a little out to the
sides. The palms face down, and the fingers face forward. The sign begins with the
right hand moving up, and the left hand moving down; the hands alternate positions and
movement as soon as that motion is repeated. The entire torso shifts slightly with each
movement to suggest the balancing o f something. The movement is repeated two or
three times. "Children" is signed by putting the right hand in the open "B " handshape,
bringing it near the right side o f the waist, palm down and fingers facing out. The hand
"pats" the air in the starting position and then arcs to the right to "pat" a second
position (as if patting children on the head).
The third palm orientation, palm out, includes such signs as "wonderful,"
"Sunday," and "show-you."1 "Wonderful" and "Sunday" are signed in exactly the same
way but in slightly different locations. "Wonderful" is created by putting both hands in
the "5" handshape, palms out, hands on either side o f the head (about an inch out). The
hands push forward slightly in a double movement. "Sunday" is signed in the same
way, but in front o f each shoulder instead o f at the face. "Show-you" is signed by
'In ASL, a sign often stands for two or more English words; I offer the ASL
translation by putting a hyphen between the English words that one sign constitutes.
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putting the left hand in the "B " handshape, palm facing out, and slightly in, and the
right hand in the " 1" handshape, palm in. The right index finger touches the open left
palm and both hands move slightly out towards the addressee.
The final palm orientation, palm in, includes such signs as "dark." and "angry."
"Dark" is signed by putting both hands in front o f the shoulders, palms in, in the open
"B " handshape; the elbows are bent at right angles, and the fingers are facing up. To
make the sign, bring the hands past each other in front o f the face, ending with the
wrists crossed and the fingers pointing in opposite directions at an angle in front o f the
chest. "Angry" is signed by bringing the right hand in front o f the face, palm in, in the
" 5" handshape, fingers up. To make the sign, bring the hand in slightly towards the
face simultaneously constricting the fingers into a curved " 5" shape and scowl.
The final parameter, facial expression or non-manual signs, include nine basic
non-manual signs: "cs," "th," "mm," "sta," "pursed lips," "puffed cheeks," "cha," "pah,"
and "pow." Some o f these non-manual signs can create sounds, but the sounds are not
important; the facial expression (which can inadvertently cause the sound) is the
parameter and is what is important. "Cs" suggests that what is being signed is very
close to the present time or very close to a particular place. For example, "cs" would
be used to say that someone has just arrived. It is created by using the facial expression
hearing people use when pronouncing the sound "cs": the lower lip moves slightly out,
and the chin moves slightly down. To make this non-manual sign, the shoulders lift as
the lip moves out. The same non-manual sign is used to say such things as "that girl
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there" or "that house right there." "T h" suggests that a person is careless or not
paying attention to what he or she is doing. This non-manual sign is created by placing
the tongue between the upper and lower teeth and letting it hang out onto the bottom
lip. In addition, the cheeks puff slightly out and the head lists to one side, imitating a
careless attitude. This non-manual sign might be used to say that someone is driving
without paying attention or to say that someone is doing any activity without care or
carelessly.
"M m " signifies that something is going along as expected; it also suggests that
something is normal or routine, or that a person or thing is getting along without
problems. For example, if a person wanted to say that a person is jogging along at a
regular pace, the signer would use the non-manual sign "m m " to create the sense o f
regularity. It is made by pressing the lips together, allowing the lips to move out at the
same time, and nodding the head slightly.
"Sta," while at times suggesting a regular movement, emphasizes the difficulty
or incessant repetition as opposed to a routine. For example, if a signer wants to say
that a person tried over and over again to accomplish a task, the non-manual "sta"
would be used. It is created by repeatedly lowering the jaw while nodding the head-an
imitation o f a hearing person pronouncing the letters/sound "sta" in an exaggerated
whisper. "Pursed lips" is used to create certain extremes: very small, very thin, very
narrow, very smooth and quick/fast. For example, if someone wanted to sign "very
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thin wire," he or she would purse the lips and breathe in (causing the cheeks to be
sucked into the mouth).
"Puffed cheeks" is another non-manual sign used to create extremes: a lot, huge
number, many, in the distant past, or fat. It is created by using air to puff the cheeks
out. To sign, for example, a very long time ago, a person would sign "past" while
puffing the cheeks out. "Cha" is a third non-manual sign to create extremes, this time
to sign very thick, very tall, very high, or huge. For example, to sign "very muscular
man," a signer would use the non-manual sign "cha." It is created by suddenly
lowering the jaw and signing the intended sign abruptly or suddenly.
The last two non-manual signs create specific emotions with a sign. "Pah"
indicates feeling relieved or that something has finally happened. For example, to sign
"Joe finally arrived after being stuck in a snowstorm" and created the sense that the
signer is relieved, "pah" would be signed at the end o f the sentence. It is created by
putting both hands in the " 1 " handshape, palms in, fingers up, and flipping them out, so
that the palms face out, in a quick motion and simultaneously, compressing the lips and
pushing them out (as if exhaling air after using the same mouth movement used to
pronoun "p"). The last non-manual sign, "pow," is used to create a sense o f disaster.
For example, to sign " I dropped an expensive vase," a signer would use "pow" while
making the other signs. It is made by imitating the mouth movement used to
pronounce "pow," but the sound is unnecessary.
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Minimal Pairs. Two Rules o f ASL. and Intrusion Errors
In many phonology discussions we hear much about minimal pairs. As
generally stated, minimal pairs occur in spoken languages when a pair o f words have
one and only one change between them. In English, some minimal pairs may be "pat"
and "bat," or "pat" and "pot," or "pat" and "pan." Minimal pairs occur in ASL as well,
with many more options; four o f the five parameters can create minimal pairs. For
example, a minimal pair using hand shape is "which" and "drive." To sign "which," a
fist is made with both hands, palms facing in, and the thumb on each hand facing up in
front o f the body (a slight exaggeration o f the " A " handshape). In alternating
movements, the hands move up and down (the right moves up first, the left down first).
The movement is repeated twice. To sign "drive," the exact position and movement is
used, but the thumbs are in, in the " S" position, instead o f up. The difference is only in
the placement o f the thumbs.
A minimal pair using location is "apple" and "onion." To sign "apple," the right
hand assumes the "X " position, with the knuckle o f the index finger at the right comer
o f the mouth; the wrist twists down twice. To sign "onion," a signer makes the same
handshape and the same movement, but the knuckle is at the comer o f the right eye
instead o f at the mouth. The difference here is in the placement o f the hand-its
location. Everything else about the signs are exactly the same.
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A minimal pair using movement2 is "to make/make" and a slang sign for "make
love." To sign "to make/make," make fists (in the " S" hand shape) with both hands,
bring them in front o f the body, and place the right fist on top o f the left fist, both
palms in. The sign begins with the wrists curled in and ends by twisting the fists in
opposite directions so that the wrists end facing each other. The movement occurs
once. To sign a slang for "make love," create the same sign, but repeat the movement
several times. The only difference between this pair is the amount/number of
movement(s).
A minimal pair using palm orientation is "name" and "chair.” To sign "name,"
use the " H " hand shape in both hands, palms facing in directly in front o f the body; tap
the middle finger side o f the right-hand "H " on the index finger side o f the left-hand
"H." To sign "chair," make the same movement and position, but face the palms down
so that the bottom side (the palm side) o f the right-hand " H " taps the top o f the left-
hand "H." The difference between these signs lies in the palm orientation only. Thus,
like spoken languages, ASL inherently includes minimal pairs.
ASL grammar includes many rules, but two o f the most important are the rule
o f symmetry and the rule o f dominance. In the rule o f symmetry, if both hands are used
in the formation o f a sign, they will be identical in hand shape and movement. For
example, to sign "dark" (described above in the palm in orientation section), both hands
2 Minimal pairs using movement also often create derivation, discussed in a few
paragraphs.
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make the exact same movement in toward the middle o f the body. Another example is
the sign for "continue or proceed." This sign is made by creating the " A " hand shape
with both hands, bringing the hands in front o f the body, palms down and the tips o f the
thumbs touching each other; the hands then smoothly move forward in a slow motion
out to arm’s length. The same applies for the sign "maybe," also described above in the
palm orientation section; though the hands are moving up and down alternately, they
are both in the same position and make the same movement. In each o f these
examples, all o f the parameters equally apply to both hands.
The rule o f dominance involves two elements: it determines which sign the
signer uses when using one hand, and it allows the hands to do different things in the
formation o f a sign; however, these things have specific requirements. All signers have
a dominant hand; just as almost everyone has a dominant hand in writing, so it is with
signing. In the case o f signers, usually the dominant hand is obvious and the same in
both writing and signing. Dominance applies in another way to the formation o f sign.
In the rule o f dominance, each o f the hands will have a different hand shape, and only
one (the dominant hand) will move. In addition, the rule o f dominance says that the
non-dominant hand will have one o f the seven unmarked hand shapes mentioned before
(5, OPEN B, 1, A, S, O, C). Examples o f signs created using the rule o f dominance
include "word," "weak," "candle," and "flatter."
These signs are made in the following manner: "Word" is signed by putting the
left hand in the " 1 " hand shape, finger pointing up, in front o f the body, a little to the
left, with the palm facing left. The right hand makes a fist, but the index finger and the
thumb are out and create horizontal lines (in the "G " hand shape); the index finger and
the thumb tap the index finger o f the left hand twice. ’ ’ Weak" is signed by putting the
left hand, in an open " B " hand shape, palm up, in front o f the body, and placing the
finger tips and the tip o f the thumb o f a "5" onto-touching-the palm o f the left hand
(slightly curved so that all tips can touch the palm o f the left hand); beginning in this
position, collapse the fingers o f the right hand into the palm twice. "Candle” is made
by putting the right hand in the " 1 " hand shape, palm facing right; the left hand is in the
"5" hand shape. With the extended right index finger touching the heel o f the left " 5 "
palm, facing right, wiggle the left fingers. "Flatter" is created by placing the left hand in
the " 1 " hand shape, in front o f the chest with the palm facing out. The right hand is in
the open " B " hand shape and is swung back and forth with a repeated movement,
brushing the fingers against the extended left index finger. In each o f these signs, the
hands have different hand shapes, and only hand moves; additionally, the non-dominant
hand always assumes one o f the unmarked hand shapes.
One important study that lends support to phonology o f ASL is that o f intrusion
errors, more commonly called learner errors. In spoken languages, it is common for
learners to mispronounce words or to have difficulty in producing certain sounds in
certain languages (for example, the rolled " r " o f many languages is foreign and difficult
for native English speakers). It is also common practice for learners to want
equivalents from their own native language that could possibly be incorporated into the
target language. Likewise, such errors occur in ASL learning. However,
"mispronunciation” occurs by violating one or more o f the parameters o f sign. Two o f
the most common errors are the following: "shy'V'prostitute” and
"football'Vpregnant." The intrusion error with the first pair occurs with a mistake
made with handshape; the intrusion error with the second pair occurs with a mistake
make in location. "Shy" is signed by putting the right hand in the " A " hand shape,
bringing it to the right side o f the face, at the cheek, palm down, and the wrist is
twisted to the right so that the palm ends up facing in, almost up. "Prostitute" is signed
in the same way, but the hand shape is different; the hand is in the same position, but
the fingers are relaxed-merely turned in so that the knuckles are against the cheek, but
the fingers are not tight in a fist. "Football" is signed by putting both hands in the " 5 "
handshape and bringing both hands in at the chest level, palms facing in, from the sides,
toward each other, and entwining the fingers when they meet; the movement is
repeated twice. As noted before, "pregnant" is signed by putting both hands in the " 5 "
handshape and bringing both hands in at the stomach level, palms facing in, from the
sides, toward each other, and entwining the fingers when they meet (imitating the shape
o f a pregnant woman’s stomach). The difference between the two signs is primarily in
location, though football also has the double movement.
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Morphology
English is a morphologically thin language; we only have eight, one o f which is
the "er/est" construction. ASL, like any other language, has it morphological
processes. Three o f the most common include derivation, inflection, and
pronominalization. In English, derivation most often describes the process o f obtaining
nouns from verbs, and vice versa. A similar process occurs in ASL. The difference in
signing nouns and verbs often confuses hearing students o f ASL; because we teach
verbs as action words in English, hearing students often reverse the motions-they use
the repeated motion for the verb and the single motion for the noun. However, in ASL,
exactly the opposite is true, particularly in derivation. The noun is signed with multiple
movements, and the verb is signed with one, smooth motion. For example, the act o f
flying in an airplane (or the act o f an airplane flying) is derived from the noun
airplane/plane. To sign "plane/airplane," make a " 5" with the right hand and then curl
the middle and ring fingers down (so that the thumb, the index finger, and the pinkie
are left facing up. The palm is face down, and the hand is placed near the right side o f
the head. Move the hand forward in several short, abrupt movements. To sign "to
fly/to fly in an airplane," make the same hand shape, place the hand in the same
position, but instead o f moving the hand forward in several short movements, push the
hand forward in one smooth movement.
Issues o f repetitive movement is not restricted to derivations; it is also a part of,
among other things, pluralization. In order to sign forest, for example, the sign for tree
is made, which begins in front o f the chest or slightly to the right o f the body; the sign
is then moved further to the right in a smooth motion. However, it is a common
misconception among ASL learners that if one wants to pluralize something in ASL,
simply repeat it. This is not necessarily the case. ASL has a rich system o f classifiers
which are signs that usually have no English equivalent. They are used to make a sign
plural, as shown in the above example. The sign for "tree" is made by bringing the left
arm across the body at a horizontal position, the palm down, in an open "B " hand
shape; the right arm is at a right angle, and the elbow sits on the top o f the left hand.
The right hand is in the " 5" position and moves back and forth from the wrist. This
hand shape is used as a classifier (CL:5). A classifier does not act as a parameter but
rather as a part o f grammar. Pluralization is not the only use o f classifiers in ASL.
Some classifiers are pronouns; when used as pronouns, the noun must be
signed first, the classifier second. Two classifiers can be signed at the same time.
Classifier nouns are the most common use o f classifiers. Some classifiers give
information about the location; they show where the actions took place. Other
classifiers function as verbs; they show the motion o f the nouns. Classifiers can also
function as adverbs; they show the kind o f motions made by the nouns. They are also
usually accompanied by non-manual signs. One designates a classifier in writing by
putting a "CL:" in front o f the hand shape. The classifiers in ASL are CL:3, CL: 1 ;
CL:B; CL:V (down); CL:V (bent); CL:F; CL 1-1; CL:C; CL:5; CL:5 (bent); CL:LI (I-
1-u, for plane); CL:L; CLEF; CL:LL; CL:CC; CL:BB; CL:55; CL: G. Some examples
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o f classifiers and their use in sentences or conversation include: A teacher standing in
front o f me (sign TEACHER, then use CL: 1 to indicate where); a car crashing into a
tree (sign CAR and point to its designated spot; sign TREE and point to its designated
spot, then use CL:3 crashing into CL:5); a mouse going into a hole (H-O-L-E, sign
mouse, then use CL:C for the hole and CL: V bent for the mouse).
Classifiers can also be used for pluralization. Here are some examples. To use
a classifier in constructing the sign for many boats, a signer signs CL and then offers
the sign for boat (both hands, in a five hand shape, cupped with the outside edge o f the
hands (where the pinkies are) touching. This designates the classifier. The signer then
replaces the "boat" sign with the hand shape "3" with both hands. The left hand
remains in the original signing position, directly in front o f the body, to the left-in the
natural position for the left arm bent at the elbow. The right hand begins immediately
next to the left hand and then moves, smoothly, to the right to signify a row o f boats.
The exact same sign and classifier is used for signing many cars. Another example o f
plural classifiers is one that allows a signer to convey many people coming from
different places to gather in one place. The signer signs "people" (the " p " hand shape
with both hands, alternating up and down in front o f the body) and then replaces that
sign with the hand shape for " 5" with both hands. The hands start out from the signer’s
body, one on each side o f the body, and a little up. To signify the gathering, the fingers
on both hands wiggle as the
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Pronominalization
A crucial feature o f ASL is its use o f space-that is, its use o f the area around
the Signer’s body. Just as English has pronouns to refer to a particular person, object
or phenomenon without having to repeat the noun itself, ASL has a similar system. A
Signer can take advantage o f the three-dimensional nature o f ASL by setting up or
establishing non-present referents (people, things, places) in specific locations around
his or her body. Then the Signer can point to those locations which stand for the
referents, and those points serve as pronouns. The implications o f the element o f ASL
grammar for poetry is in Chapter Four.
Syntax
ASL has a number o f syntactic forms; I will discuss briefly the seven most
common sentence types; keep in mind that some o f these forms can also employ the
Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) form. Students o f ASL quickly recognize SVO forms,
often quite unconsciously. This same form exists in English, thus making a natural
transition for students. However, unlike English, ASL does not need a lot o f filler
words or signs. English: I am going to the store. ASL. I GO-TO STORE. Notice
that in ASL, there is no need for "am " or "the." The sentences given are perfect
progressive forms, but the important point here is that they are both SVO forms. The
subject, verb, and object fall in approximately the same location in the sentences.
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The first kind o f ASL syntax is the "Yes/No Question." These are questions
that can be answered by responding "yes" or "no." The non-manual signals for Yes/No
questions are a brow raise, widened eyes, and often a forward tilting o f the head or
body. Sometimes the shoulders are also raised. For example, do you understand me?
becomes (YOU) UNDERSTAND? and Is today Saturday becomes TODAY
SATURDAY? The second sentence type is the "Wh-Question." These are questions
that ask for specific information and cannot be answered by responding yes or no.
They use interrogative signs such as WHAT, WHO, WHEN, WHERE, WHY,
WHICH, HOW, HOW-MANY/MUCH, etc. The non-manual signals for Wh-
questioning are a brown squint (although the brows are sometimes raised as well as
brought together) and frequently a tilting o f the head. Sometimes the body shifts
forward, and sometimes the shoulders are raised. For example, who is your teacher
becomes YOUR TEACHER WHO? and where is your dog? becomes YOUR DOG
WHERE?
The third sentence type is the "Negative Sentence." Negative sentences
indicate that something is not true, did not happen, will not happen. The non-manual
sign is composed o f a side-to-side head shake— frequently accompanied by a frown, and
sometimes a brow squint, a wrinkling o f the nose and or a raised upper lip. For
example, I do not understand ASL becomes I UNDERSTAND ASL (NOT) and we
both don’t know the answer becomes WE-BOTH DON’T-KNOW ANSWER. The
fourth kind o f sentence created in ASL is the "Topicalization." This is a more common
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construction than the SVO native English speakers are more comfortable with. ASL
signers tend to indicate the thing they want to talk about (called the Topic) first and
then to make some statement(s), question(s), about that thing (the statement is called
the Comment). For this reason ASL is described as having a "topic-comment"
structure. The non-manual signals are the following: a. during the signing o f the
topic, the brows are raised, the head is tilted, the signer maintains fairly constant eye
gaze on the receiver; b. the last sign in the topic is held slightly longer than usual,
resulting in a pause; c. then, when the comment is signed, the head position, brows,
and gaze direction are changed. How they change depends on the type o f comment
that follows. The example used in the SVO definition, IGO-TO STORE in the top ic-
comment form becomes STORE I GO-TO. Other uses o f topic-comment form
combine questions. For example, to say M Mary is excited because she understands
ASL" in the topic-comment form, you would need to sign MARY EXCITED . . .
WHY? (rhet-q) . . . UNDERSTAND ASL.
The "Conditional" is the fifth sentence construction. These sentences have two
parts: a part that states a condition and a part that describes the result o f this
condition. This second part can be a statement, question, or command. The condition
is signed first and is accompanied by a non-manual signal. This signal is composed o f a
brow raise, usually with the head tilted in one direction and, sometimes, the body
slightly inclined in one direction. Between the condition and the result segment, there
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condition segment. For example, If it rains tomorrow, I will not got to the beach is
signed TOMORROW RAIN . . . I NOT GO-TO #BEACH; and Will you help me later
if I help you now? is signed NOW I-HELP-YOU . . . LATER YOU-HELP-ME? The
sixth sentence type is the "Rhetorical Question." These questions are accompanied by
a brow raise and frequently a tilting o f the head. A Wh-word sign usually occurs with
this type o f question. Rhetorical questions are not true questions since the receiver is
not expected to respond; rather, they provide a way for the signer to introduce and
draw attention to the information that he will then supply. In effect, the signer is
posing a question and then responding to it her or himself Rhetorical questions are
frequently used in ASL conversation, as I demonstrated in the topic-comment example.
Other examples include: The baby is happy because her mother is here is signed BABY
HAPPY . . . WHY. . . MOTHER HERE; and I do not know what he said is signed HE
SAY . . . WHAT . . . I DON’T-KNOW. Finally, the last kind o f sentence construction
in ASL is the "Assertion." Assertions are sentences asserting that something is true,
did happen, will happen. The signers often use a head nod or repeated nodding to
emphasize that some thing is true, did happen, will happen. Often this nod or nodding
is accompanied by a tightening o f closed lips. For example, he is a good friend is
signed (nodding) HE GOOD FRIEND; and I will return is signed (nodding) I
RETURN.
Appendix II: Translations o f "To A Hearing Mother"
I. "To a Hearing Mother"
376
Different
Different
Different
Different.
You grow-up no deaf;
Maybe one here one there;
Dismiss.
I grow-up I-know,
Hearing Everywhere.
Oppress-me.
Now you pregnant; Give-birth; Boy.
Deaf.
You Me
World World
Language Language
Experience Experience grow-up
Shock.
Feelings-sink.
377
Me-happy. Excited.
You-want-become same.
[clapping-hearing clapping].
But grow-up will we-same;
Your hair, eyes, body. You-same.
But his soul/spirit, mind, feelings. Me-same.
He your son but he my people.
Yours? Mine? Which?
Here idea.
Tree. Blank.
Don’t-know deaf.
Alone.
Lonely.
Wilt.
But yours.
Blank soul.
But without you, wilt.
Without our people,
wonderful language,
language disappears.
379
We-two-struggle.
We-two-saw-tree.
We-two-cut-tree.
Tree-falls.
Dies.
Better we-two work together.
Rich soil together.
Grow. Grow. Grow.
II. "To a Hearing Mother"
You me
different;
World world
different;
Language language
380
different;
Experience experience grow-up
different.
You grow-up no deaf;
Maybe one here one there,
Dismiss.
I grow-up I-know,
Hearing Everywhere.
Oppress-me.
Now you pregnant;
Give-birth;
Boy.
Deaf.
Shock.
Feelings-sink.
Me-happy.
Excited.
381
You-want-become same.
[clapping-hearing clapping].
But grow-up will we-same;
Your hair, eyes, body.
You-same.
But his soul/spirit, mind, feelings.
Me-same.
He your son but he my people.
Yours?
Mine?
Which?
Here idea:
Tree. Blank.
Don’t-know deaf.
Alone. Lonely. Wilt.
But yours.
382
Blank soul.
But without you, wilt.
Without our people,
(without our) wonderful language, language disappears.
We-two-struggle.
W e-two-saw-tree.
We-two-cut-tree.
Tree-falls. Dies.
Better we-two work together.
Rich soil together.
Grow. Grow. Grow.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Eddy, Shauna Lee (author)

Core Title Signing identity: Rethinking U.S. poetry, acts of translating American Sign Language, African American, and Chicano poetry and the language of silence

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag African American studies,Black studies,Hispanic American studies,literature, American,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor McKenna, Teresa (committee chair), Gustafson, Thomas (committee member), Habinek, Thomas (committee member), Jackson-Fossett, Judith (committee member), St. John, David (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c20-245749

Unique identifier UC11255654

Identifier DP23208.pdf (filename),usctheses-c20-245749 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier DP23208.pdf

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Document Type Dissertation

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Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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