Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play by Jennifer DeVere Brody
This is a pretty good example of how I write "academically". I think that this might work because its not really based solely on the book and I think can be understood without having read the book. Let's see if I'm right :)
Oh, a quick note: When I say "queer quotation marks" I am talking about the function of quotation marks to question a straight forward meaning or objectivity of a word and find alternative or multiple meanings within that word/idea.
The connections between Jennifer DeVere Brody's book and other texts and articles we have discussed this semester are many. Brody speaks of the performance of punctuation, of memories that have appeared to have disappeared, of community and art, and of repetitions, silences and improvisation. However, something that we have not (explicitly) covered this semester are notions of citizenship and nation, which Brody addresses via the hyphen.
Last semester I wrote a paper arguing that George W. Bush used the rhetoric of "patriotism" to fabricate a nationalist "American" identity after 9/11 (note queer quotations). Similarly, Brody shows the ways in which post-9/11 America was constructed as a unified, non-hyphenated body of citizens who stripped themselves (and each other) of their allegiances to other nations. But what is perhaps more interesting and important is Brody's use of "The Race for One" and/as "The Race for None" and how this logic was/is located in a linear, seemingly progressive line of temporal evolution. To consider the implications that (most) white Americans have already forgotten(?) their hyphenated European identities while (some/many?) people of color have not, serves to reinforce the notion that white people and whiteness is more "evolved" than black people and blackness. Furthermore, this "lag" in the linear progression of time serves to separate and therefore hinder the ideal (white) America that means to create a "race of one" that ultimately is a "race of none" (read: white).
Brody also argues that the hyphen serves as a "space of friction," (87) a moving performance that "always act(s)" (85). I would like to consider the implications of this notion through Theodore Roosevelt's argument that, "Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance" (Brody, 88). What interests me in Roosevelt's statement is the naturalized/naturalizing connection that Roosevelt makes between one's spirit and soul and one's physical/geographic location. To be sure, Roosevelt not only assumes that love for one land necessarily requires the "forgetting" of another, but also that America/ns have always already insisted/required/forced "outsiders" to remain just that. I am reminded here of the article last class that pointed out that enslaved black women's bodies were used as experiments for "science" because they were simultaneously viewed as different yet similar to white women's bodies. Although America has continuously insisted on the "differences" of people of color, the moment their sameness is viewed as useful, they are condemned for claiming such differences. Also, to argue that Roosevelt, like George W. Bush, cannot conceive of a diasporic identity that reaches across time and space, history and borders of all kinds, is only the tip of the iceberg. This kind of "friction" is, as Brody argues, "impossible,"(85) yet powerful.
To conclude, as Brody argues, it is not enough to argue that the American ideal of unity, or "the race of one," is void of racial distinction in favor of an "American" identity, but rather that this ideal is based on, grounded in, and perpetuated through a notion that whiteness and white America is a "race of none". Far too often, as could/can clearly be seen when speaking of "race" in the upcoming presidential election, as well as the primary, it was clear that speakers meant black. Whiteness continues to be cast as neutral, normal, and even natural and hence, lacking racial classification. Therefore, the American vision of a non-hyphenated, unified "one" is always already the "race of none": whiteness. Interestingly enough, the performance of whiteness might actually show its face here, as those who assimilate to white norms, standards and values are closer (is it ever fully achieved?) to the American ideal than those who maintain (openly) their hyphens, their (physical/spiritual) moving between (artificial/fabricated) borders. Finally, Brody posits the question, "Is this shifting space actually liberatory?" (107). Is the use of the hyphen serving only to reinforce these artificial boundaries and borders that have been erected for the sole purpose of segregation, or should we be moving toward a "unity"(queer) that dissolves these borders and seeks to un-cover/dis-cover the "me" in "you" and vice versa? Are we at a space that allows for this type of radical thinking/acting and what implications would it have on the politics of community and solidarity?
I find your paper really interesting from not only a cultural perspective but also from a scientific perspective.
Admittedly, I haven't even heard of this author whose works you are dissecting. This cultural concept of evolution -- increasing homogeneity (either forced/unforced) of memories clashes with the scientific perception of what evolution is -- diversity of adaptive structural form or genetics. Another perception -- that black people remember more of their ancestry as compared to white (and thus somehow retain more of their "ancestral identities") also is at loggerheads with what we are finding in genetics -- that self-reported ancestry can widely fluctuate from the "real" genetic ancestry. So the modern cultural concept of the "more evolved" is simply one who espouses equality of races or... more political correctness? :)
Haha... so it would seem that the countries of Europe by coming together (at least) economically as a European Union, has recognized and come to accept an identity that encompasses the diversity of its peoples more than the US has.
This question: "Are we at a space that allows for this type of radical thinking/acting and what implications would it have on the politics of community and solidarity?" throws open a number of doors for argument.
Regardless of the putative beneficial effects of a non-hyphenated future on the unity of a community/nation in text (no African-American, just American), the practical implications on science, especially epidemiology (disease determinants among populations) and drug-design, would not be something I would want to deal with, as a scientist or a doctor. If genetics and by proxy, self-report, helps me predict risk of disease or prognosis of patient populations and stratify my treatment better towards a more personalized and thus, effective medicine, I would much rather prefer that hyphenations existed - at least on record.
Cuturally, getting rid of hyphenations is just a symbolic and administrative move. Can this move erase the hyphenations within the "spirit and the soul" of european/african/hispanic/native/asian Americans? I think the US is not at that level of radical action yet because as you pointed out, the hyphens are still being used generously as a crutch and operative in electoral politics of this country.
BTW, do you read this :::link::: ?