Tante: On she who was not as Demi Moore playing her but who could have been a Hester Prynne

Part 1 of our series on "Grandmothers in Our Words and Works"

More from this series to come...

Heba Elsherief, University of Toronto

Heba Elsherief is a PhD student and holds an MA in English from the University of Toronto. She researches perceived links between reading habits and ideology formation in Muslim/Diasporic contexts. She tweets @iamsheba.

Lonely as was Hester’s situation, and without a friend on earth who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art,—then, as now, almost the only one within a woman’s grasp—of needle-work.

— Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlett Letter (1850).

For a class in late 19th Century U.S. fiction, I read Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter. Set in a Massachusetts 17th century Puritan settlement and published in 1850, it tells the story of Hester Prynne who, having been separated from her much older and ill-matched husband, has an affair with the local pastor.  A daughter is born out of wedlock and the community punishes Hester by making her wear the letter “A” on her chest wherever she goes.  It is assumed that the “A” stands for adulteress, but interestingly Hawthorne’s narrator doesn’t explicitly state as such.  Indeed, the letter comes to symbolize a number of concepts and characteristics embodied by Hester as the story progresses.  Hester takes it upon herself to ornately embroider the “A” so that instead of it being a marker of her shame, it becomes a thing of beauty.  When she demonstrates her charitable nature, the “A” becomes akin to “Angel” and the narrator tells us it had the “the effect of the cross on a nun’s bosom.”  Finally, when Hester (in spite of the hardship and ostracization plaguing her) succeeds in making a life for herself and her daughter, the “A” comes to represent the word “Able.”

There was a Hollywood movie based on the book which stared Demi Moore in the role of Hester Prynne.  Many of my classmates lamented that they could not, in their minds, separate that interpretation from the novel itself.  I hadn’t seen the movie and was told that I shouldn’t, that it would ruin the book for me.  In any case, I was seeing someone else entirely while reading anyway.  In Hester Prynne, I saw my grandmother, mother of my mother.

Hester Prynne, as it turns out, has been heralded as a strong feminist character.  Some suggest that Hawthorne was inspired by women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; others suggest that he was inspired by his own mother.  Regardless, Hester (and her feminist consciousness) is rendered as lovingly as one might expect from a mid-19th century male author.

What I especially appreciated about Hawthorne’s rendition of Hester was the way in which he endowed her with strength.  Reading her, we knew that her strength, even in moments of confusion or weakness, would carry her through the trials.  Hester was tough, she would survive.  My grandmother was the same.

Let me tell you about my grandmother:

My grandmother was not perfect −for most of her life.  She loved me, yes, and was good to me but that does not mean that she could not also be harsh to others because she might have been.

My grandmother was illiterate −for most of her life.  She could trace sewing patterns from Burda magazines like it was nobody’s business, however.  Like Hester, she was a needle-wielder, her incredible (self-taught) sewing skills providing handsomely for herself and many of her family.

My grandmother lived in Egypt −for most of her life.  She peppered her Arabic with foreign words.  She refused to let me call her grandmother, insisted on the French word for aunt.  I do not know why, though I always just assumed it was because she did not want to seem old − but I think I may have been wrong about this now.  I called her Tante.

I think that she must have brushed up against British imperialism at some point (or maybe my training in postcolonial theories makes me think this) but she only spoke highly of her European friends and customers.  She spoke of them… almost dreamily.  There was one, married to a Soviet diplomat or royal, jaunting around Russia in a burgundy velvet cape with gold buttons made by grandmother.   There was another, a business capitalist from Sweden, who had promised my grandmother her own boutique, but proper young Egyptian women did not go off to live by themselves in Sweden (or anywhere else) back then.  

My grandmother was divorced −for most of her life.  This was a cultural taboo.  She married a younger man afterwards.  This was also taboo.  Some say she had to alter her birth certificate to make it culturally acceptable but gossip is never a good idea.  Although she and husband #2 stayed together until their respectful ends, she did not exist as his Mrs., and refused even the most innocent attempts of subjugation.  

My grandmother was superstitious −for most of her life.  On days when something important was on the line, especially, she would take precautions.  I am not sure what all those precautions were but I knew that if the first face she saw after heading out to work was one she thought pretty, all would be well.  

My grandmother found religion −near the end of her life.  She made the pilgrimage to Mecca, started praying and praying.  There are 5 prayers per day for a Muslim but she did them each twice.  To make up for those she missed in her previous life, she said, even when she was told that God forgives what happened before. What happened for most of her life.

I loved my grandmother dearly (she passed in 2006) but this piece is not meant as an ode to her nor is it a celebration of women who, like Hester (whether fictional or otherwise), inspire me or other women in the contemporary milieu to live a life of “Able”-ness as it were (even as “needlework” is not the only trade within our grasp).  Rather, this piece seeks to trouble the static representations that “grandmother” signifies in order to demonstrate the complexity and richness of experiences that we can draw on to enrich our own lives and work − or to make our own brand of “art.”  The grandmother trope can and should be akin to that shifting “A.”

References
Hawthorne, N. (1850). The scarlet letter. London and Newcastle-on-Tynedat: Walter Scott.

(Un)bordered Emancipation of the Activist/Academic “divide”: A Different Type of Discipline

Part 2 of 4 in our series on "Academia/Activism and other (unnecessary) binaries"

To read Part 1, click here. 

Allison Guess, CUNY Graduate Center

Allison Guess is entering into her second year as a PhD student in the program of Earth and Environmental Sciences (Geography) at the Graduate Center at CUNY. Her research focuses on Black land, Black people's relationships to land/place specifically as they relate to (voluntary reverse) migration, capitalist structures, anti-blackness, Black optimism and (Black) collective liberation. Allison calls herself a truth-telling messenger and geotheorist, a term she coined in 2014. You can follow Allison on Twitter at @AllisonGuess1

Before going back to college, I knew I didn’t want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.  —Assata Shakur (1999),  Assata Shakur: an Autobiography.

While some epistemological traditions approach dualities as reciprocal, balancing and thus necessary (Ohsawa 1931; Wilson 2009), others constitute them as binaries that are conflicting, competing, production-driven or abrasive. The latter type of binarism acts as a place-making technology, predicated on the creation, mapping, and regeneration of opposites. This plays out in numerous sites that are actually interdependent and complex. Such complex sites include but are not limited to human subjectivity as well as the human’s role in capitalism. Specifically the activist/academic “divide” smudges and destroys relationships that should be understood as complementary, relational, reciprocal, and transformative.

Many of us feel effects of artificial binaries. They create limitations that ignore the benefits of uniting dissimilar energies that could otherwise bring forth collective balance, powerful completion and shared abundance. Particularly, the line drawn between academia and activism remains clearly marked by architecture, accessibility, exposure, exclusivity, resources and other demarcations that impede democratization or the mutual exchange of knowledge and action. It is this very imbalance that leads some of us to uncritically accept artificial divisions, instead of using our different aptitudes to construct contingent, co-conspired and complementary communities. While many people have created situations that foster activist/academic unity, in some spheres the tendency of brutal and marginalizing binarism persists. Unless we challenge and change the forces that keep us apart, we will stagnate.

Typically colonial, certain understandings of duality partition the world into simple oppositions. Unfortunately, this mode of thinking keeps too many of us chained, isolated and incomplete. Activists and academics, while they can be one-in-the-same, and often are, ideally should build and appreciate each other’s crafts and talents by being relational and complementary, engaging in radical change. The act of doing critical and revolutionary scholarship should enhance the work that is already being done on the ground and contrarily, what is happening on the ground must fuel libratory scholarship. That said, the two crafts should mirror each other’s spirit. The rigor, robustness and nuance of our scholarship are necessary for our activism and the fearless, confrontational creativity of our activism must also come forth in our academic work. Each facet of the work, directly relates to the abolition of oppression. Together, we are to be the complete one-two-punch.

Consider the quote from Assata Shakur above. Shakur teaches us that in skillfully combining our duality we can realize an (un)limited, (un)boxed human complexity and capacity to get free. Unfortunately, before making this truthful assertion, Shakur explains that she did not want to become a particular type of intellectual, specifically the type of intellectual that is stereotypically situated in a library, out of touch -- one who might commonly be referred to as an inactive “armchair academic.” Consequently, by conjuring up this unbalanced and un(der)contextualized image of the intellectual, Shakur puts forward an anti-intellectual sentiment that neglects recognition that there is intellectual, creative work abounding across the so-called academic/activist “divide.”

While I am critical of Shakur’s contention, as any critical thinker should be, I raise this concern because of my deep admiration of Shakur’s life, work, love and sacrifice. In other words, I embrace Shakur’s reflection that collective completion results from merging energetic focuses. Shakur is helpful in making us see the negative effect of being static, (un)fluid and divided on the basis of our official roles. For Shakur an action-oriented process of “selection” and “re-selection,” of ancestors, (as well as skills and traits) (Williams 1977; Gilmore 2015) configure a sort of unity between the two crafts in order to bring forth strength and liberation for all.

Similarly, Joy James theorizing the spirits (or the feelings) of love and rage explains,

Love and rage initially seem paradoxical, coupled as oddities. They are assumed by some to appear in exclusive sites, as distinct and unrelated experiences and feelings. But they coexist, with a dynamic ability to metamorphose or shape shift, one into the other. Love and rage are the impetus for much reflection, agonizing, action, and risk taking… Much as love and rage can balance and converge, so, too, can academia and activism.  (Joy James (2003), Academia, Activism, and Imprisoned Intellectuals) 

Here we see another application of dichotomy that maps out the strength of merging activism and academia, rather than, the unnecessary opposition housed in simplistic binary formulations. Ruth Wilson Gilmore also has some words to offer on the in-betweenness of academia and activism. Noting the difference between a scholar activist whose scholarship is based on urgency Gilmore leaves us with some thoughts on the real existence of being both activist and scholar. She explains,

Activist scholarship attempts to intervene in a particular historical-geographical moment by changing not only what people do but also how all of us think about ourselves and our time and place, by opening the world we make. (Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2008), Forgotten Places and the Seeds of Grassroots Planning).

Likewise, in an interview, Jasbir Puar says,

The binary or the finite distinctions between academic work and activist analysis is an impossible one for me to inhabit. Like many in my position, I could not tell you where my activist analysis ends and my academic work begins, or vice versa (Naomi Greyser (2012), Academic and Activist Assemblages: An Interview with Jasbir Puar)

Puar goes on to describe theory, commonly associated with the academy, and praxis, frequently linked to activism, as a “species divide” noting that it “push[es] the metaphor of the shelf-life of an idea or term or how language and discourse is a field of forces and creation of nonlinear, destabilizing unpredictability” (2012).

James Baldwin argued, “The impossible is the least that one can demand” (Baldwin, 1963). Failing to demand the elimination of partitions keeps us from understanding our prismatic human faculty and intricacy. Understanding and navigating both capacity and complexity are necessary skills in resisting, and winning against, complex and adaptive structures of oppression. So while the forces of global (racial) capitalism, patriarchy and revamped race ideologies and their tools of tyranny (i.e.: borders, walls, police) are continually inventive, as active resisters of these schemes, regardless of our day-job, we must supersede the violence by being wide, unlimited, unpredictable, adaptive and complete. The unpredictability and possibility inherent in deconstructing unnecessary binaries through abolition is what precisely allows for new forms of organizing to unfold. It’s a different kind of discipline.  

I will end my thoughts as someone very new to the academy. As a young twenty-something year-old dauntless proletariat Black woman, in PhD student garb whom co-fills activist, academic and many other spaces, I maintain that by not actively troubling hierarchies and the unserviceably narrow practices in academic/activist geographic practice, we contribute to the continual chafing in our quest for liberation. I am actively stretching what it is to be young, Black, woman and a scholar under capitalism. In both praxis and theory, there is power in numbers, authority in complexity and solidarity. Unbalanced seclusion and two-fold hierarchies keep us stationary and contained.  Boundary crossing and rejecting casted limits are our collective responsibility, our promise, and our tools.

References

Baldwin, J. (1963). The Fire Next Time. New York: Vintage International.

James, J. (2003). Academia, Activism, and Imprisoned Intellectuals. Social Justice, 30(2),             pp.3-7.

Ohsawa, G. (1973). The unique principle: the philosophy of macrobiotics. Chico, CA:        George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation.

Puar, J. (2012). Academic and Activist Assemblages: An Interview with Jasbir Puar.

Shakur, A. (1987). Assata. Chicago, Ill.: L. Hill.

Williams, R. (1977). Structures of Feeling. In: Marxism and Literature, 1st ed. Oxford University Press, pp.129-135.

Wilson Gilmore, R. (2008). Forgotten Places and the Seeds of Grassroots Planning. In: C. Hale, ed., Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship, 1st ed. London: University of California Press, Ltd., pp.31-61.

Wilson Gilmore, R. (2015). Extraction: Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence.

Wilson, A. (1996). How We Find Ourselves: Identity Development and Two Spirit People. Harvard Educational Review, 66(2), pp.303-318.