The Point of the Mu'tafikah Subplot

I am a lover of art museums, so Chapter 23 -- the scene in the Mu'tafikah den -- hit me where it hurts. However, I'm also a lover of the critical nature of postmodernist writings, and Reed makes some very valid points about the artificial and restrictive nature of the Western idea of consumption of art. So, it was a section I enjoyed, even if it was a little painful to read.

One of the concepts that I've been following since before Ragtime is the arbitrary -- or at least, seemingly arbitrary -- nature of what we consider to be noteworthy enough to have some sort of cultural or historical relevance -- what we choose to deem to be important. It's a concept that keeps popping up. In the embryonic stages of the course, we discussed the completely overwhelming nature of trying to preserve one time period, trying to capture even the smallest moment in history, setting us up for critiquing metanarratives, for those are the stories that we have chosen to capture. In Ragtime, the fixation upon the Morgan Library reminds us of how the "notable" items from other cultures shapes our perception of them. In the White readings, we are given some guidelines for determining what matters and what doesn't. And now, in Mumbo Jumbo, we receive perhaps the most forceful statement about preservation of non-Western cultures: that objects are to be placed under the control of the powers-that-be in an attempt to remove their power.

A paradox exists in the Wallflower Order's attitude towards African, Asian, and South American culture. On one hand, they value their art -- masks, sculptures, etc. -- as "treasures," and attempt to display them to the public at the Center for Art Detention. On the other hand, they do everything in their power to stop the spread of a different form of culture that same African culture, Jes Grew. Initially, I thought Reed made a point to illustrate this contradiction with the mu'tafikah, and to portray the randomness with with the empowered groups selects meaningful focal points in the culture of the disempowered group(s). However, upon further examination, Reed has a much different thesis: that the Wallflower Order purposefully displays global artifacts in the C.A.D. as a sort of cultural strangulation; as a way to control them.

Jes Grew is much harder to control because it cannot be popped inside a glass case. The powers-that-be are unable to contain it, which is why they denounce Jes Grew while hailing tribal masks as invaluable. When we think of Reed's analogy of non-white cultures as plagues, the C.A.D. takes on the qualities of not simply a prison, but a quarantine. All the precautions of an art museum --thick glass, no touching of the pieces, standing back __ number of feet -- are reminiscent of precautions taken against the spread of a disease.

Agora Week's reading about the Egyptian equivalent of Mumbo Jumbo's 1920s account of the spread of black culture discussed how the Templar's religion -- Christianity -- "compromised" with the Osirian traditions -- turning Isis into the Virgin Mary, for instance. Here is another example of the Wallflower Orders seeming to have embraced and incorporated some elements of non-white culture with the purpose of controlling the other culture and undermining its spread.

Literary Theory Isn't All Bullshit

It has come to my attention that I misspelled Doctorow somewhere around four times in my last blog post. In the spirit of the passive-aggressiveness that has been pervading this course as of late, I would like to give my thanks to all who helped bring this to my attention.

As we moved through our interlude discussions of the links between history and fiction, I found myself incredibly thankful that I had the experience of reading a postmodern piece of historical fiction, Ragtime, under my belt. As they say, seeing is believing, and its much easier to conceive of these ideas when we have had an example of a work that is concerned with the same questions of the subjectivity of the past. So, I will be attempting to look at Ragtime as a work of history and of fiction in a sort of case study to test some of the ideas that we've been discussing in class over the past few days.

One point that White makes that is pretty easy to evaluate is that history needs to use narrativity to increase its appeal to the reader. Obviously, Doctorow weaves his story into narrative form, making his characters compelling in and of themselves, rather than solely as objects of historical study.

When I first began this exercise, it really threw me for a loop. It's hard to give the same amount of credence to Harry K. Thaw flashing Harry Houdini through a set of prison bars as to a history textbooks portrayal of Washington crossing the Delaware. But, from a surface reading of White, that's what he wants me to do. However, upon further elaboration, he does give us a sort of out -- we get some rules as to determine what we should believe. On page 20, he says that events can be considered real "not because they occurred but because, first, they were remembered and, second, they are capable of finding a place in a chronologically ordered sequence." The Thaw-Houdini incident fails both stipulations -- we're told that Houdini tells nobody, and it's pretty safe to assume that the lunatic Thaw doesn't either. So it's not remembered. The finding a place in a chronologically ordered sequence bit is more interesting. (Of course, this is a moot point, because the first stipulation has failed. But let's just go with it). I interpret that to be that it not only makes sense that they happened within the time -- that, for example, there wouldn't have been computerized security systems in the prison -- but also that they fit into a sequence that we care about. We care about the sit-in because they're representative of the larger event of the Civil Right's Movement, which we have deemed to be important. Perhaps I found it so difficult to give historical credence to this weird incident between Houdini and Thaw because I couldn't see the larger context that it fit into.

Additionally, there seems to be a little bit of disdain for the metanarrative in historical education. While thinking about what the "postmodern history" class might look like, it would be tempting to demand the abolition of metanarrative. But I actually think that metanarrative in my historical education has been extremely important in helping me develop a nuanced and critical view. The process of learning and unlearning one's broken ideas of history is a very postmodern exercise. Anyway, Doctorow's use of metanarrative enhances the postmodernism of the book -- his ironic treatment of traditionally accepted ideas about America at the turn of the century resonates with us because we have been educated in those ideas. If the metanarrative indoctrination aspect of history fades away, so will the appeal of Ragtime.