Thought Thinking and Other Fun Things

So far, I’ve enjoyed this semester’s Bathhouse speakers/readers much more than any of the Bathhouse events I’ve ever been to. (But I’ve only been to three so that’s not really saying much.) Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stay for Douglas Kearney’s presentation yesterday because I had class, but I stayed until the end of Tisa Bryant’s. I find Bryant’s Unexplained Presence especially interesting because of how it blends so many genres into each other. Film, essay, “interstitial” pieces (I believe that’s what she called them) that break up the text, creative interjections WITHIN the essay/critical piece. While reading, I found it hard to discern where one ended and the other began. The only selection that I was familiar with in the PDFs was the Mansfield Park/Something in the Air piece. I had only read the book, so I’m not sure how the film may or may not compare. In the beginning of this essay Bryant says, “This is a different Fanny Price than the one invented by Jane Austen in Mansfield Park” but the more you read it…the more this Fanny Price is the Fanny Price in Jane Austen’s novel? Or is she? Or isn’t she? Or maybe she is? It bounces back and forth between scenes that are unfamiliar to me and scenes that I’ve read IN Austen’s novel. Throughout Bryant’s piece I kept saying to myself “DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN?” and “I DON’T REMEMBER ANY OF THIS. I’M SO CONFUSED.” I found myself wanting to re-read Mansfield Park through this new lens, to specifically look for the things that Bryant points out. By doing so, however, Bryant specifically highlights the things that she sets out to. In Austen’s novels, race is ignored. There is talk of servants. There is talk of “business,” but we never find anything out about these servants or this “business.” All we can ascertain from reading Mansfield Park is that Fanny ❤ Edmund.

The part that sticks out to me the most from Bryant's piece is on page 19, when she writes, "Fanny keeps to the edges, not quite first class in the household, as her Aunt Norris is quick to remind her. Her girl cousins are indulged and smug. She reads, she writes, she morphs into a third, a fourth body. Fanny Austen. Fanny Austen Rozema. History dull? Invention? Don't disturb this groove. The charm, the romance. It's all in the (un)making! Don't think of how infrequently they bathed. Don't grapple, viewer, with any difficulty with the marriage scheme. That Edumund, the soulmate (and first cousin!) of miss peaches and cream might instigate scenes of subject elsewhere, even upon his own children from his black mistress. O, speak obliquely, if at all, of history and its slaves. […] It is wild, too wild. The mass cult of Austen wants it tamed." There is so much in this one paragraph that I had trouble even formulating thoughts about it in class on Monday. I still don't even know what to say. It brings to question many of the things that Austen leaves out and that are always in the back of the reader's mind but unquestioned. Actually, recently, I re-read a Jane Austen novel and all I could think of was the time-frame and wonder about the militias and the business. I kept thinking about slavery and how these novels completely ignore black bodies and leave out black characters. I think Bryant does a really good job of pointing this out. That we know it. WE KNOW IT…but we keep reading these novels happily, like the time-frame, the history, is just background noise. Insignificant. Even though it's not. Even though we KNOW it's not. Even though it's actually really fucking important.

I also really enjoyed just looking at Douglas Kearney’s The Black Automaton. Visually it is so interesting. I also think his use of popular culture is extremely appealing. I’ve noticed one of the things he does, thematically I guess, is contrasting really serious material (Hurricane Katrina, Emmet Till, etc) from history/black history, with lyrics from things like…The Little Mermaid. Since I haven’t really read much of his novel and I wasn’t able to hear him speak, I kind of want to wait to say anymore. But overall, I’m really excited about both of these authors and intend to continue to read works from them.