eBook - ePub
Market Aesthetics
The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction
Elena Machado SĂĄez
This is a test
Partager le livre
- 264 pages
- English
- ePUB (adapté aux mobiles)
- Disponible sur iOS et Android
eBook - ePub
Market Aesthetics
The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction
Elena Machado SĂĄez
DĂ©tails du livre
Aperçu du livre
Table des matiĂšres
Citations
Ă propos de ce livre
In Market Aesthetics, Elena Machado SĂĄez explores the popularity of Caribbean diasporic writing within an interdisciplinary, comparative, and pan-ethnic framework. She contests established readings of authors such as Junot DĂaz, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and Robert Antoni while showcasing the work of emerging writers such as David Chariandy, Marlon James, and Monique Roffey. By reading these writers as part of a transnational literary trend rather than within isolated national ethnic traditions, the author is able to show how this fiction adopts market aesthetics to engage the mixed blessings of multiculturalism and globalization via the themes of gender and sexuality.
New World Studies
Modern Language Initiative
Foire aux questions
Comment puis-je résilier mon abonnement ?
Il vous suffit de vous rendre dans la section compte dans paramĂštres et de cliquer sur « RĂ©silier lâabonnement ». Câest aussi simple que cela ! Une fois que vous aurez rĂ©siliĂ© votre abonnement, il restera actif pour le reste de la pĂ©riode pour laquelle vous avez payĂ©. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Puis-je / comment puis-je télécharger des livres ?
Pour le moment, tous nos livres en format ePub adaptĂ©s aux mobiles peuvent ĂȘtre tĂ©lĂ©chargĂ©s via lâapplication. La plupart de nos PDF sont Ă©galement disponibles en tĂ©lĂ©chargement et les autres seront tĂ©lĂ©chargeables trĂšs prochainement. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Quelle est la différence entre les formules tarifaires ?
Les deux abonnements vous donnent un accĂšs complet Ă la bibliothĂšque et Ă toutes les fonctionnalitĂ©s de Perlego. Les seules diffĂ©rences sont les tarifs ainsi que la pĂ©riode dâabonnement : avec lâabonnement annuel, vous Ă©conomiserez environ 30 % par rapport Ă 12 mois dâabonnement mensuel.
Quâest-ce que Perlego ?
Nous sommes un service dâabonnement Ă des ouvrages universitaires en ligne, oĂč vous pouvez accĂ©der Ă toute une bibliothĂšque pour un prix infĂ©rieur Ă celui dâun seul livre par mois. Avec plus dâun million de livres sur plus de 1 000 sujets, nous avons ce quâil vous faut ! DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Prenez-vous en charge la synthÚse vocale ?
Recherchez le symbole Ăcouter sur votre prochain livre pour voir si vous pouvez lâĂ©couter. Lâoutil Ăcouter lit le texte Ă haute voix pour vous, en surlignant le passage qui est en cours de lecture. Vous pouvez le mettre sur pause, lâaccĂ©lĂ©rer ou le ralentir. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Est-ce que Market Aesthetics est un PDF/ePUB en ligne ?
Oui, vous pouvez accĂ©der Ă Market Aesthetics par Elena Machado SĂĄez en format PDF et/ou ePUB ainsi quâĂ dâautres livres populaires dans Literature et Latin American & Caribbean Literary Criticism. Nous disposons de plus dâun million dâouvrages Ă dĂ©couvrir dans notre catalogue.
Informations
Sujet
Literature1. Mixed Blessings
Readerships, Postcolonial Ethics, and the Problem of Intimacy
As my introduction discussed, the genre of historical fiction poses challenges to the dominant understandings of globalization in the humanities. Caribbean diasporic fiction is especially attuned to the contradictions accompanying a contextually minded product entering a decontextualizing marketplace. In Voicing Memory (2003), Nick Nesbitt reminds us that in the contemporary public sphere, âonce repressedâ historical contexts are âno longer absentâ but have become âcommodit[ies] offered up in newspapers; on local television; in annual commemorationsâ (6). While Nesbitt is specifically referring to the way cultural institutions deploy the history of slavery as an empty commodity, he also accepts the broader implications of this phenomenon, that âmemory itself has become a commodity, circulating throughout society as mnemonic spectacleâ (6). I see historical fiction as an ideal cultural product for discussing how the market mediates the consumption of once marginalized histories. This chapter sets the stage for my later readings of the novels by theorizing how Caribbean diasporic historical fiction is responsive to its circulation as commodified memory. Caribbean diasporic fiction self-consciously frames itself as a commodity in order to propose a postcolonial ethics of reading history. The form and content of this genre seek to embody and reconcile some of the contradictory pressures imposed by the way it imagines its readerships. The concept of niche marketing proves useful for understanding the diverse range of audiences that such texts encounter and how the readershipsâ patronage of certain genres and styles shapes Caribbean diasporic writing. The authors rhetorically position their historical novels at the intersection of multiple readerships in order to comment on the challenges of narrating counterhistories in a mainstream public. Within their historical narratives, the writers often offer models of what can go right or wrong in cross-cultural interactions, seeking to flesh out the ethical (im)possibilities of intimacy.
Imagining Readers and Market Niches
Caribbean diasporic writers face unique problems of audience and authority. Hans Robert Jaussâs formulation of horizons in âThe Identity of the Poetic Text in the Changing Horizon of Understandingâ (1985) helps clarify the relationship between market processes and audience reception. Jauss sees the ââdialogicityâ of literary communication,â or the conversation initiated by a textâs circulation, as inevitably entailing a âproblem of otherness: between producer and recipient, between the past of the text and the present of the recipient, between different culturesâ (9). For Caribbean diasporic writers, this problem of otherness is heightened by the commodification of ethnicity, which complicates the objectives of the textâs ethical imperative of historical revision. Jaussâs use of horizon acknowledges how the imaginaries of both the writer and the reader inform the interpretation of a text. The writersâ horizons of expectation (en)gender a market aesthetics. The creative reimagining of the past is shaped by how the writers envision their contemporary and future audiences. The structure and content of market aesthetics anticipate the reaction(s) of an audience on the basis of the reader reception that Caribbean diasporic writers experienced with their prior works. I engage a paratextual archive of book reviews to supplement the way in which the novels âinfer the horizon of expectation of the contemporary publicâ (20).
Caribbean diasporic writers are aware of how the market positions them as the English-language representatives of their islands of origin and critically engage the market label of the author as authentic spokesperson. Taking advantage of the marketâs framing as well as the global circulation of their fiction, Caribbean diasporic writers see the dehistoricized condition of the contemporary public sphere as providing a gap of context that they are positioned to fill in. The authors recognize this dehistoricized condition as an opportunity to reach an audience unarmed with competing historical sensibilities. The pedagogical tool of historical fiction aims to teach readers to see evidence of the Caribbeanâs centrality to the formation of American, Canadian, and European politics and culture. Each historical novel reflects the writerâs unique implementation of pedagogy in terms of how the structure and form convey historical context to the reader. Caribbean diasporic authors employ a variety of pedagogical approaches: realist and postmodernist narratives, chronological and antichronological plots, didactic and Socratic forms. In chapters 2 and 3, I describe two approaches to the teacherly imperative: how writers either seek to historicize the decontextualization of the diaspora, as in the case of Andrea Levy and David Chariandy, or offer historical narratives of the Caribbean past to fill in the present gap of context, as in the case of Julia Alvarez, Michelle Cliff, and Marlon James.
While pedagogical strategies are expressed using a variety of modalities, Caribbean diasporic writers imagine the content of their historical vision in similar ways. The authors adopt a postcolonial approach to analyze historical progress, framing the Caribbean as a locale for the development of global capitalism and as a space whose consistent marginalization maintains empireâs illusion of economic independence, moral superiority, and impermeable national borders.1 Caribbean diasporic historical fiction is also fraught with ambivalence about its ability to transform readership sensibilities within a book market that packages ethnicity as a commodity and domesticates multicultural voices. The ethical imperative to inculcate a specifically postcolonial historical vision in its readers is fractured by writerly anxieties about the market packaging of the novels and whether such packaging will instead produce unengaged and uncritical readers of these counterhistories. The struggle to imagine an ethical pedagogical relationship between reader and author is encoded in the depictions of student-teacher encounters. For instance, Elizetteâs relationship with Verlia and Verliaâs with Abena in Dionne Brandâs In Another Place, Not Here are of mentee and mentor as well as of lovers. Verliaâs and Elizetteâs acquisition of a political education within the context of romantic intimacy emerges as a troubled allegory for the textâs relationship to its audience.
The work of diasporic writers circulates back to book markets in their Caribbean islands of origin, leading to criticisms about these authorsâ inability to authentically depict the nation-stateâs history. The fallout in the Dominican Republic over how Julia Alvarezâs In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) depicted the Mirabal sisters or in both the DR and Haiti regarding Edwidge Danticatâs portrayal of the 1937 massacre in The Farming of Bones (1998) come to mind. Many Caribbean diasporic writers, including Alvarez and Danticat, have voiced their discomfort about how their work is received by both island and diaspora readerships. David Chariandy, for instance, explains in a 2007 interview published in Callaloo that he was âdeeply concerned about titling my novel Soucouyantâ and how it âwould be received by those I imagined to be intimately familiar with the wordânamely, residents and first-generation immigrants from specific Caribbean islands like Trinidadâ (ââFiction of Belongingââ 810; emphasis added). Chariandy did not want his novelâs title âto suggest that the novel was going to offer authoritative insights on a legend that, I fully know, has been discussed and interpreted in many exciting ways, particularly by those with extensive âfirst handâ experience with the cultures of Trinidadâ (811). Chariandy imagines that his readershipsâ authority on the Caribbean culture and âintimate and lifelong knowledge of Canadaâ could call attention to his inadequacies as a representative voice for the Caribbean and its Canadian diaspora (810â11). His self-consciousness about his position as a writer is particularly evident when he declares that he is ânot a sociologistâ and is âusually quite wary of attempts to typify the attitudes of entire âpeoplesâ or âgenerationsââ (811).
Caribbean diasporic writers see the multiple readerships, regardless of training or cultural origin, as motivated by a similar desire to access a level of intimacy that facilitates authoritative knowledge of multicultural and postcolonial experiences. As Doris Sommer notes in Proceed with Caution (1999), many readers âfeel entitled to know everything as they approach a text, practically any text, with the conspiratorial intimacy of a potential partnerâ (ix). The sense of entitlement is concomitant with the readerâs desire to have intimate access to anOther knowledge. Intimacy is a defining facet of the relationship between reader and text, and readers who are outsiders or insiders to Caribbean culture seek to determine and measure the authenticity of the writer and his or her ability to speak with cultural authority. It makes sense that authors like David Chariandy are described as being âafflicted with imposter syndrome,â âconsumed with self-doubt,â and âstruggl[ing] with the potential impact of [public] recognitionâ (Lederman R1). The pedagogical project addresses this problematic by confronting readers with the unreliability of historical truth while at the same time remarking on the audienceâs complicity with processes of decontextualization. The conceptual bond between the Caribbean diasporic texts that I discuss is a writerly angst about producing comfortable observers despite or because of a postcolonial rendering of history: the writers claim a certain cultural authority in order to narrate these histories, yet they fear that exoticizing lenses will transform their authority into stereotype. Caribbean diasporic historical novels reference the challenges to their pedagogical project by depicting author-doubles in the form of narrators or historical figures who wrestle with their roles as authentic spokespersons.
Caribbean diasporic writers understand their work to be circulating within the publishing niches of postcolonial and multicultural literatures, and as a result they foresee encounters with different audiences: for example, the book club reader, the academic reader, and the classroom readerâin a variety of localities, including the Caribbean nation-state and diaspora. Additionally, the authors acknowledge the readers that they may never reach, the readerships they aspire to but cannot access (for instance, the conundrum of the illiterate reader depicted by Julia Alvarez in In the Name of SalomĂ©, David Chariandy in Soucouyant, and Marlon James in The Book of Night Women). While addressing multiple audiences, Caribbean diasporic writers encode specific readers into their texts. The pedagogical project of historical fiction imagines a global reader (book club or classroom reader) who, if not ignorant of history, at least needs to be taught or trained to envision history in a different way. At the same time, the postcolonial vision of history has market currency with the academic reader and his or her expectations for a âresistantâ text. Caribbean diasporic writers also imagine speaking back to Caribbean populations and nations; as Monique Roffey explains, âTrinidadians are my closest readers, the readers I care most aboutâ (âFor Booksâ Sake,â par. 21). I would therefore amend Robert Fraserâs claim in Book History through Postcolonial Eyes (2008) that âthe crisis of the postcolonial author . . . is one not so much of commodification as of audienceâ (185). I see commodification and reception as interrelated challenges, such that Caribbean diasporic historical fiction ambivalently engages with these nuanced contemporary contexts.
Mapping out the readerships for Caribbean diasporic writing is complicated by the fragmentation of the publishing industry. In Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace (2007), Sarah Brouillette makes the case that critics often ignore the fact that the corporatization and globalization of the publishing industry entail âthe twinned processes of niche fragmentation and market expansionâ (56). One niche market is that of âseriousâ literary fiction, and within that are numerous submarkets as well (including multicultural and postcolonial, which are of primary interest to me here). Brouillette argues that within this âfragmented market defined by a proliferation of choices, selling specific identities to distinct consumers facilitates the process of consumptionâ (66). Brouilletteâs analysis of the book market calls into question any mythic formulation of the global reader or claim that the book market produces one type of reading gaze. Rather, niche marketing circulates cultural production to very specific audiences, and as a result one of the main concerns of Caribbean diasporic writers is how their work is funneled into the categories of ethnic and postcolonial literatures and how those categories can shape the audience-text encounter. For example, Belinda Edmondson discusses the niche of African American literature in Caribbean Middlebrow: Leisure Culture and the Middle Class (2009). She describes the conflicted emotions of Caribbean authors regarding their marketing: âFor some Caribbean writers, the lure of the American market evokes contradictory desires: they wish not to be pigeonholed as black writers, yet they crave access to the lucrative African American reading market, which buys primarily black-authored booksâ (148â49). Silvio Torres-Saillant reiterates Edmondsonâs point in An Intellectual History of the Caribbean (2006) by remarking on the incorporation of Edwidge Danticat, Eric Walrond, and Paule Marshall into African American literature anthologies and noting how âthe designation African American is not devoid of its measure of elasticityâ (95). Perhaps this niche explains why some Caribbean diasporic writers make African American historical figures central in their novels: for instance, Caryl Phillipsâs Dancing in the Dark (2005) depicts Bahamian Bert Williamsâs success as a blackface minstrel celebrity in the United States.2
The incorporation of Caribbean diasporic writing into the niche market of African American writing is also indicative of how the literature is concerned with tracing the origins and migrations of its diasporas from a comparative ethnic perspective, drawing parallels between Caribbean and other immigrant diasporas. One of the best-known examples, Zadie Smithâs White Teeth (2000), narrates Irieâs Black British experience within the context of her Jamaican family and alongside that of East Indian and African immigrant communities.3 In addition to depicting the contemporary multicultural societies where the Caribbean diaspora finds itself, Caribbean diasporic writing is invested in illuminating historically marginalized ethnicities within the Caribbean. For instance, Cristina GarcĂaâs Monkey Hunting (2003) and Angie Cruzâs Let It Rain Coffee (2005) focus on the Asian experience within the Cuban and Dominican diasporas. Perhaps unsurprisingly, diaspora and interethnic relationships are dominant themes within the creative work of Caribbean diasporic writers. This comparative ethnic focus forms part of a broader ethical project of intercultural understanding by means of the global book market.
While the market distribution of US, Canadian, and British Caribbean diasporic writing can intersect with the African American literary category, other types of publishing channels can produce a different set of classifications. In Caribbean Middlebrow, Belinda Edmondson distinguishes between the marketing approaches to anglophone Caribbean writing taken by mainstream versus independent publishers. While metropolitan publishers like Warner Aspect and Ballantine âare not shy about their commercial interest in subsuming Caribbean fiction into one of the prescribed categories,â Edmondson notes that independent presses often take a different approach, since they âcan afford to be more eclecticâ and to âconcentrate their marketing efforts on a smaller demographic of readersâ (157). Mainstream publishers seldom market Caribbean literature âoutside the African American genreâ because of a belief that âthe Caribbean still has no firm place in the American imaginationâ (158) and that the Caribbean readership is âtoo small to have its own marketing nicheâ (156). By contrast, independent publishers see the âun-place-abilityâ of Caribbean writing as a marketable element that appeals to âreaders looking for the âunusualâ or exoticâ (158). Edmondson gives the example of âBrooklyn-based independent publisher Akashic Booksâ as one small press that includes Caribbean fiction within its catalog, marketing it in âmuch the same way as its other popular fiction, aimed more or less exclusively at young white American college students with a taste for âundergroundâ themesâ (158). Distinguishing between the marketing tactics of major versus minor publishers provides a different perspective on niche market processes as a context for market aesthetics. To clarify the marketing priorities of small presses, Edmondson discusses Marlon James as a writer whose first novel was published by Akashic Books âto critical acclaimâ (159). James can be read as a writer who has experienced the marketing transition from an independent to a mainstream press since his second novel, which I discuss in chapter 3, was published by Riverhead, a division of Penguin. Edmondson cites Jamesâs assertion that âAkashicâs primary readership of white college students worked in his favorâ (159), and itâs clear that Riverhead marketed his second novel to an African American readership, since it was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award and led James to be named the Go On Girl! Book Clubâs 2012 Author of the Year. The fragmentation of the publishing economy in terms of niche marketing acts as a shared historical context shaping the market aesthetics and postcolonial ethics of Caribbean diasporic authors.
Aspirational Ethics of Market Aesthetics
The criticism concerning Caribbean diasporic literature often focuses on how an ethical relationship with the reader is facilitated and/or delimited by the market. In Exhibiting Slavery (2009), Vivian Nun Halloran argues that historical novels must meet the demands of an âaudience willing to spend a defined period of time learning about the past and being entertained in the processâ (13). For Halloran, the consumer demand for entertainment means that these postmodern historical novels lack an âethical perspectiveâ (15). Whereas Halloran positions consumption and ethics as incompatible, I depart from this analysis by situating market demands as an important context for the pedagogical ethics driving these Caribbean diasporic historical novels. Entertainment is one facet of market demands, but there are also academic markets for contextualization. Historical fiction is the product of a complex negotiation between the demands to entertain and to teach, to simplify and to complicate, to make history both palatable and challenging. While teaching the reader about certain historical events and figures, the form that relays historical content plays a key role in shaping reader engagement. The literary âlesson planâ is a combination of seducing the reader and undermining audience expectations.
The literary critics who review Caribbean diasporic fiction often echo the words of Ădouard Glissant, who in Caribbean Discourse (1989) calls for the Caribbean writer to âdig deepâ into the âcollective memoryâ in order to create a âprophetic vision of the pastâ that avoids the pitfalls of âa schematic chronologyâ or ânostalgic lamentâ (64). Academic readers privilege texts that they see uncovering lost and/or marginal cultural histories, while also expecting that this act of recovery is political, that it is prophetic about changing the contemporary perception of Caribbean society, culture, and history. Conversely, this literary mission is viewed as suspect if it falls into the trap of nostalgic sentimentality or of being too prescriptive and dogmatic about âwhat happenedâ in the newly recovered past. Santiago Juan-Navarroâs concept of the âactivist readerâ from Archival Reflections (2000) is productive for fleshing out the pedagogical impulse of diasporic historical fiction as well as the academic market pressures encountered by Caribbean diasporic writers. Juan-Navarro sees this genre positioning the reader in a way that âoblige[s] him or her to adopt a critical attitude toward the narrated events and to seek a political alternative to themâ (265). Inspiring critical thinking and political action, it converts the âactive readerâ into âan âactivist reader,â implicated not only in the creative process of the work, but also in the process of the transformation of the reality to which the work belongsâ (265). Historical novels train the reader through their structural and stylistic composition, some even encouraging the reader to participate in the narrativeâs construction of meaning. For Juan-Navarro, this training encourages or provokes the reader into a progressive political commitment with the ethical imperative of the historical novel, so that the reader is moved to address the fictionâs social critique by taking responsibility for transformin...