The Fact of Whiteness: Female
Creators: name: Scibelli, Tara
Publisher: name: Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
Year: 2018
Subjects: poetry

description: Most of the classes I have taken in the Master of Arts in Humanities (MAH) program have explored the concept of the “Other,” approaching the subject through the study of art, literature, history, philosophy, and music. I have considered this idea most specifically in the context of late nineteenth-century realist art, arguing that Edward Said’s definition of “Orientalism” as applied to art by American art historian Linda Nochlin is a valid and even necessary way of understanding representations of subjugated races in paintings by late nineteenth-century artists who come from countries with imperialist ambitions.  Nochlin’s argument is that the historical political situation and power relations surrounding a work of art must be understood to really grasp its meaning. Consequently, things are not always as they appear in a painting or even a photo. The painter or photographer shapes the “truth” of a realist artwork. Therefore, the relationship of the creator to the object being depicted must be known to evaluate the merits of the representation. While providing context to a work of art is the art historian’s task, knowing the personal and historical circumstances that inspire an artwork can enhance the layperson’s understanding and consequent enjoyment of a piece of art as well.

Recognizing that subjectivity and circumstance create meaning applies not just to art but to all areas of life. But to step outside ourselves and understand why others come to different conclusions based on the same “evidence” can be difficult. Our current antagonistic political climate in which well-meaning people of the two major parties have such vastly dissimilar opinions is a good example of the extreme form such polarization can take. Sometimes, however, a new paradigm can shake up our world view so we see things from a changed perspective. This novel point of view can in turn inspire more empathy, helping us to improve our interpersonal relations and our politics. So although to date my work in the MAH program has been based on the critical study of art, for my capstone project I have chosen to write a series of poems. My hope is that by exploring contemporary topics in poetic form, I can engage the reader in a manner that a strictly research-based paper could not to illuminate subjectivity. Foremost, since I will be revealing my particular point of view on contemporary topics, my poetic fragments will build a picture of my identity.  I do realize, however, that though I attempt to self-define through the following selections, the reader will bring his or her own meanings to the work and will create different ideas of me or my subjects than I intend. As Roland Barthes states, the meanings of words contain a whole constantly-changing mythology (227-30). In addition to disclosing aspects of myself, I am hopeful that perhaps even more importantly I reveal some of the points of view of others with whom I do not share direct experience, if not with true authenticity at least with some empathy.

Regarding this last point, two theories pertaining to literary point-of-view are relevant. Mikhail Bakhtin argues in “Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff” that in order to understand something, it is “immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding – in time, in space, in culture” (7). Bakhtin had been asked by the editorial staff of the Novy Mir, a Russian literary magazine, to evaluate the state of literary scholarship in 1987. He attempts to provide an answer, but also says that “when evaluating our own times, our own contemporaneity, we always tend to err (in one direction or another)” (1).  Bakhtin also asserts that a foreign culture reveals itself only through its examination by another culture since interaction between two cultures is the only thing that can reveal depth of meaning in both. “We raise new questions for a foreign culture, ones that it did not raise itself; we seek answers to our own questions in it; and the foreign culture responds to us by revealing to us its new aspects” (Bakhtin 7). Although I am writing about issues affecting my contemporary society – not a foreign culture – from which I cannot stand apart, I do explore viewpoints outside of my specific circumstances in several poems. If Bakhtin is correct, my position outside the demographic groups I try to depict reveals aspects of those cultures that their self-examination would not illuminate. 

But perhaps these descriptions are mostly for readers like me. For to quote Barthes again, “our society is still a bourgeois society” (249). In other words, the audience with which my poetry will most likely resonate is middle- to upper-class “white” women who have had educational opportunities and cultural experiences similar to mine – and who read poetry. Nonetheless, I attempt to step outside myself in poems such as “The Balkans,” “Common Fruit,” and “White Coal,” in which I distill what I perceive are the political sentiments and personal feelings of individuals with whom I do not completely share characteristics in the hope of presenting commonalities we all share. Illuminating the personalizing details of the “other” is how we humanize rather than objectify each other. So though it is difficult to put oneself in another’s skin, requiring both introspection and listening to the experiences of the “other” through their own words and cultural products, it is a worthwhile enterprise to attempt. By compiling unexpected or highly descriptive linguistic images that unconsciously begin to create a new concept of something or someone, poetry can connect us and bring us greater understanding of each other. Ideally, engagement with poetry can force us to put aside divisive rhetoric for a few moments and immerse ourselves in the lives of others to create empathy.

Concurrently, it is also important to recognize that human categories overlap. Delineating who is and who is not part of an ethnic or other type of group can be problematic and can fall into stereotyping if one is not careful.  Native American writer Leslie Silko once criticized fellow Indian writer Louise Erdrich’s novel The Beet Queen for not being rooted enough in “real” Native American experience (Castillo 15). In arguing against the necessity for “essentialism” in fiction – the belief that members of ethnic groups have intrinsically different and characteristic natures or dispositions – Susan Pérez Castillo, who discusses Silko’s critique in “Postmodernism, Native American Literature, and the Real: The Silko-Erdrich Controversy,” points out that “our perception of these groups (and of ourselves as members of one group and not another) is a discursive construct and not an ideal mystified category” (18). She quotes and seems to agree with scholar Werner Sollors’ assertion that it is difficult in today’s America to categorize a writer in just a single ethnic group since culture in the U.S. is an amalgamation of religions, cultures, and ideas (17).  Castillo points out that Erdrich’s heritage as a German-American with Chippewa blood is a factor that makes her “Indian” experience somewhat different from Silko’s Anglo-American/Mexican/Laguna roots. Consequently, it is more productive to evaluate “ethnic” texts as coming from “a dynamic, historically constructed process” rather than as a static entity (Castillo 18). Furthermore, although the real often penetrates the world of fiction, literature contains vastly “diverse levels of ontological stratification” and is “never an immutable mirror of a static reality” (18-19). So to judge any piece of literature either by how closely it conforms to the ethnicity of the writer or to reality is folly. At the same time, it would be foolish to deny the real-life referents in a work of fiction.  Instead, like Said and Nochlin, Castillo sees value in analyzing “the discursive systems that authorize some representations and suppress others” (20).  

In line with the points Castillo brings out about Silko and Erdrich’s ethnicities, despite my genetic “female whiteness,” I am the product of a variety of local influences in an increasingly global community. I grew up in Western Maryland on the edge of Appalachia but have spent most of my life in the metropolitan D.C./Baltimore area; regions which though geographically close are worlds apart culturally. I have been a stay-at-home mother and at other times have been employed full-time in the workforce. The pain of divorce and joint custody along with other personal traumas have shaped my psyche. I have participated in both traditional and liberal religious denominations. Most recently, the classes I have taken in the last couple of years in the Master of Arts in Humanities program at Hood have challenged my perceptions of history. They have given me critical tools to use when evaluating the products of culture. So whether one believes an outside view to come to a “truth” is necessary or whether one thinks ethnic categories are mythological constructs, Bakhtin and Castillo’s theoretical perspectives have informed my approach to this collection.

The poetry I have written covers a variety of issues currently in public discourse and is written using different conventions. The poems touch on motherhood/feminism, religion, LGBTQ issues, bullying, substance abuse, technology/social media, race, and income inequality. Like all art, they are best understood in the context of the times. Some poems have a serious tone, others are more humorous. Most are free verse, but a few have structured stanzas, rhyme schemes, and other traditional poetic elements. A couple of selections experiment with form.  I have been inspired to experiment with mixing styles and forms by the writer Sherman Alexie, a Native American author who blends typically “white European” literary forms in his various works as an expression of his multicultural background; refusing to identify with just one style of writing. He not only alternates between poetry and fiction in his many works, but also experiments within each genre’s style, mixing prose in poetry and poetry in prose within the same text. War Dances is one example of Alexie’s attempt to mix short stories with poems and is hard to categorize as just one or the other. In his just-released memoir You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, Alexie even mixes poetry with biography in an atypical fashion. Using multiple styles not only points out Alexie’s mixed influences, but also says to his readers that he accepts both cultures. In fact, Alexie refuses to vilify either Indian or white culture, but indicates both the positive and negative aspects of each in his writing. In the process of doing so, he humanizes both. Accordingly, I have also experimented a bit with a mix of genres and have not adhered to the strict “European” poetic forms I have been taught. And though this poetry is “contemporary” since written in 2017-2018 and attempts at times to achieve Barthes’ idea of a regressive semiological system through concision (244), it also sometimes attempts to put meaning into signs by using longer form. By condensing language, poetry tries to get at the meaning of things themselves. The word is just the sign for the object it represents. But sometimes, putting words together in a unique configuration the way some poems do can create new “things” or ideas. 

Since this is a creative writing project, my “Works Cited” list contains two types of sources. A few texts or authors are explicitly referred to in my poems or in this introduction. Other books and articles are sources that are best understood as inspirational. I drew on these sources for the general ideas expressed. I will now briefly put this latter type into some perspective. The longer non-fictional sources, such as W.E.B. du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickle and Dimed, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness, describe what it is like to exist in a particular social demographic or as a member of a certain societally-defined race, using first-hand experience, facts, and data. The shorter essays like Frantz Fanon’s “The Fact of Blackness” and Detlev Peukert’s “The Atomisation of Everyday Life” similarly discuss what it feels like to live inside a particular “skin” in a specific place and time. In fact, recognizing that my point of view in the following poems is defined by my race, class, and gender, I have titled the collection “The Fact of Whiteness: Female” as an allusion to Fanon’s essay and an upfront admission that the ideas expressed are circumscribed by my personal position in the world. Just as Franz Fanon laments an inability to separate his self-image from his place in society, I acknowledge and assert that my thoughts have been shaped by my skin color, demographic experiences, and life as a “white” female.

I have also recently read or re-read the works of influential Harlem Renaissance writer/poets Langston Hughes and James Baldwin as well as The Complete Works of Maya Angelou, all writers who feature in my first poem and whose voices and styles have shaped my work. The short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin and the novels Native Son by Richard Wright, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and both Flight and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie all speak from the points of view of young men who have been buffeted and displaced by the forces of society and/or their dysfunctional family situations. The careful crafting of these fictional voices and our resultant identification with their speakers allows us as readers to understand these adolescents’ stories in a compelling way that a simple recitation of facts would not as powerfully accomplish. Other fictional works like A Spool of Thread by Anne Tyler, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich attempt to tell more complete stories from the often contradictory yet sometimes enlightening points of view of several characters, illustrating that the truth of a situation is always subjective and complex. Thus I consider all these books creative ways of making the aforementioned point I try to bring out in my poetry; that a person’s race, class, gender, and the social factors surrounding them influence that individual’s way of thinking and inform the basis of their actions.

The remaining sources that have been influential in determining my poetic point of view include two lesser-known history books. I include both The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America by James Axtell and Progressive Inequality: Rich and Poor in New York, 1890-1920 by David Huyssen as postmodern history books that through a re-analysis of artifacts tell a different version of American history than the standard “white” traditional narrative. Similarly, the transcendentalist writings by authors Whitman and Thoreau as well as the philosophical “Allegory of the Cave” section in Plato’s The Republic have been long-time influences on my overall beliefs and ideas about human experience. Finally, a pocket guide of the moral principles of my long-time “religious faith,” Unitarian Universalism, is included on the list as having had an undeniable impact on values that appear, if only in passing, in my poetry.

American society today seems more divided than it ever has been in my lifetime. I think it is important for art to address this post-9/11, post-2016 election, social media-fueled confluence of circumstances, hopefully in a way that points to our similarities rather than our often fear-inspired differences. My poetry is an attempt to present alternative voices and ways of understanding how well-meaning people can come to vastly different conclusions about events, others, and life in general as a result of their different histories. Like Alexie, I have also written a couple of more personal poems to deep-dive into my particular experience in the wider culture. Above all, I have tried to provide an authentic, clear poetic voice to add to the complicated political, cultural, and societal debates of today.