The Transformation

Cyclical. That’s how I read this. It’s cyclic in the way that it repeats itself. In the string of repetition, in the opening of the text to the decision to include the languages from before the whaling ships arrived, the pidgin languages, the creole languages, and the other language offshoots.

Colonialism is cyclic.

Racism is cyclic.

Learning is cyclic.

We are born into it and we learn it and we repeat it.

Language in ways is cyclic. It recycles itself, regurgitates itself.

Especially the expansionist language.

Especially in its desire to assert itself.

Especially in its erasure.

But transformations also occur on a cycle. Butterflies aren’t born butterflies. Butterflies evolve into themselves through their life cycles. Becoming a butterfly takes tons of work (just ask a butterfly). Caterpillars build their cocoons at certain times of the year (on a cycle) and once they get into the cocoons, they go through a completely different set of stages. The cocoon gives them a place to transform. To grow wings. To become butterflies. The caterpillar must enter the pupa stage before it can become a butterfly or else it hasn’t transformed at all.

Accepting responsibility is a cycle (as a white person living on an occupied continent). Accepting responsibility occurs in four stages:

1) There’s denial. We feel the need to defend ourselves, the need to say I’M NOT RACIST or whatever the word is that we’re defending ourselves against. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed when confronted with these ideas. Sometimes we’re so overwhelmed that we shut everything out.

2) There’s avoidance and self-reflection. We feel the need to avoid everything that might even imply that we are what we say we’re not, or vice versa. When we see things that remind us, we think it’s about us specifically and feel guilty about it possibly being true. Then we go back to stage one and go into denial. After that, there’s a lot of reflection. We reflect on everything that we’ve ever said and repeat it over again and again in our heads. In fact, we don’t stop thinking about it. Unless we’re stuck in denial, then we just keep denying.

3) There’s recognition and a desire to know more. In this stage of the cycle, we no longer feel guilty about what we’ve learned about ourselves but we still think about it and think about it until our heads hurt. We see these things as true now and understand how our past selves were informed by the cyclic way in which our country (world?) is run, but we may not understand them completely. If it’s even possible to understand everything completely. When we watch television or read the news, we wonder how people are portrayed and why we never noticed it before.

4) There’s responsibility. Instead of avoiding the things that might imply that we are what we say we’re not, we accept that we probably are racist (or whatever) because we were born into a racist society which values our white skin over darker colored skin of any variation. And we want to learn about it now because we understand that it is not our fault, but that we feel completely inadequate to change anything. When we watch television or read the news, we suspect that it’s not giving us the full information. And if it is giving us any information at all, it’s probably giving us one side of that information. We may revert to any of the stages at this time in the cycle because transformation is a process and feeling overwhelmed and guilty (though not encouraged) is only human.

And that’s how I read The Transformation. As a cycle. As a cycle of cycles. As so many cycles interwoven into each other that I’m not sure where one ends and the other begins. And that’s why I liked that there was an inclusion of Theys in this cycle. Because it recognized the cycles and it needed to address them before it could accept responsibility for them. Because it goes through the cycle of responsibility by way of inclusion, by way of saying I am part of the problem. And that’s how we transform. By acknowledging the cycles that we must go through to get to that point and by acknowledging the cycles that harm.