A Small Place: Working Notes

Subject position (vs. POV, e.g., of reader, of audience)
Second-person address
Finding articles (Galaxy, then looking at Works Cited)
Explain DSA process in working through this text
Also: The frame 'how a text functions' is better than 'what a text means'.

'Meaning' is difficult, especially 'the meaning'. Better to understand

different readings or interpretations, readings and interpretations that have

their own positions, agendas that extract a specific 'meaning' from a text,

'the meaning', according to one set of criteria.


From Alessandrini:
"In this sense, her language itself reflects the workings of a trauma that

cannot find its proper form of expression; the best Kincaid can do is to make

clear its unspeakability through this inappropriately banal style. This also

leads (as with Fanon) to a breaking of traditional genre categories, another

link between A Small Place and Black Skin, White Masks. Both Fanon and Kincaid

inhabit the paradox that this expression is always necessary and at the same

time never sufficientThis does not mean, however, that this form of imaginative

expression will not have any effect on the present and future. Indeed, it can

be argued that this form of expression, which attempts to make visible the

workings of historical trauma, is the necessary first step in the attempt to

undo this history and write a different future. This, I would argue, is

precisely the work that postcolonial criticism can and should do today."

This is getting at the genre or breaking with genre function I am looking to

study most specifically. Working in a way that pushes reader to reflect on his

subject position, like Descartes does, but in a non-accusatory or non-polarized

(right-wrong) way.


From Byerman:

"Jamaica  Kincaid's  first  three  works which  are  focused life  on Antigua,

Kincaid's  native island,  reflect a deep  hostility toward  that world. Though
the books employ  differing  discourses?fiction  and polemic?and focus  on
varying  aspects of  life there,  they share  an anger  about  that  island

that the  author  makes  little  effort  to  conceal."

But, doesn't she deserve to be angry? Isn't it healthy that she is addressing

that anger? Isn't it healthy that she is expressing her feelings. She's not

looking to shame or blame anyone, to emotionally manipulate. It's not about

"you"; it's about her getting working something out. Let her vent. It's an

important part of the trauma-healing process; and hasn't she suffered a deal of

trauma?

"From  the beginning,  Kincaid  establishes  her authority  by speaking
in  the  second  person to  the  "tourist," which  allows  her  to

characterize the  audience  and  its voice  in  the  text.  She  can  offend

without challenge"

But, her goal is not to offend! At least not in final terms. Her language is

blunt, but still more descriptive than impassioned. Her goal is not to injure

the other with her tone, message or rhetoric. She is, however, willing to allow

her words to enflame the reader as a rhetorical strategy, stir up their

emotions to get them to pay attention. That is the goal. It is rhetorical move:

to heighten the reader's awareness, not to emotionally perform violence. She

may speak words that perform violence, but that is not her goal. Her goal is to

vent. Are you allowing her to vent? She says these things, and rather than be

guarded or concerned about if the expression of her feelings will smart, she

lets it out. To live without reservations, which is Nietzsche's point.


From Alessandrini:
"The turn-about here is striking, and it represents something that underlies

both books: the need for the truth of slavery and colonialism to be stated and

acknowledged, precisely so that a full ethical engagement with these issues can

begin."

Ethical engagement of these issues. What does that look like? ACA is explaining

how these texts (how imaginative expression) set the stage for ethical

engagement.