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Concept Mapping (Wrath (Moshin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Moshin…
Concept Mapping
Wrath
Moshin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Moshin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist follows the recounting of a man named Changez’s life and his experience trying to assimilate into America
He gets a dream job at Underwood Samson and with an Ivy League degree lives a near perfect life, except the racial undertones in American society prompt him to hate America
Themes of Identity, wrath, and racial imbued emotions all come together to define Changez as a character.
Changez was always viewed as an outsider due to his race and struggles to accept his identity until he fully realizes how he despises America
His narration fully reveals his true feelings when he thinks he could “shatter the bones of [stranger’s] skull” which shows his radical mindset (Hamid 54). Changez did not think of just hurting the individual, but murder him showing his hostile mindset, that led Changez becoming a villain of America.
bell hooks, "Representations of Whiteness in Black Imagination"
African Americans face hardships such as being forced to conform to the white dominated society
United States has a history of subjecting African Americans to racism
Hook’s representation of Black Imagination explores anger because white people never tried to understand the struggles African Americans faced
Black people were subject to terrible working conditions and were punished a vast amount for minor offenses
James Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son"
Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son argues that African Americans were always portrayed in a negative light in literature
African Americans are forced to conform. Wrath comes from negative stereotypes of African Americans and not viewing how the African American community actually is
Amia Srinivasan, "The Aptness of Anger" excerpt
Srinivasan writes in “The Aptness of Anger” uses Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry, sin not” to bring across the point that anger is counterproductive and a sin (Srinivasan 123)
She also mentions “anger presents its object as involving a moral violation: not just a violation of how one wishes things were, but a violation of how things ought to be” furthering the point that anger should not promote action (Srinivasan 128)
Anger should not be acted upon because it is counterproductive
Anna Deveare Smith, Twilight, Los Angeles
Four police officers were completely exonerated of police brutality and beating charges even though everything was recorded on camera
This caused an ensuing riots Anna Deveare Smith talks about in Twilight Los Angeles
McCone Commission swore to increase quality of living for African American communities.
In the play wrath incites action against racism
Deborah Gould, Moving Politics excerpt
ACT UP movement advocates investigation of the challenges faced by gay men and women with aids
Deborah Gould writes in Moving Politics about a pro-sex atitude and the arousal of sexual meetings
Deborah Gould fits the theme of anger because it explores the emotions of the gay community and their caus. The people are angry that AIDS victims are left supportless
She also mentions the sadness experienced after every drug failed to slow the AIDs epidemic
Martha Nussbaum, "Beyond Anger"
Connection:
Nussbaum and Srinivasan both proclaim anger does have the capability to damage a relationship, but their approach differs.
Srinivasan argues anger is never okay and is counterproductive. It can lead to a situation worsening because of anger
Nussbaum argues that anger has a positive potential outcome of growth. It can be used as a learning experience
Connection:
Martha Nussbaum: "There's no emotion we ought to think harder and more clearly than anger."
Anger is a destructive and power tool and that is why many people wield it. However, it can inflict significant damage that may be unwarranted, says that if the other person is not looking for vengeance that a more appropriate emotion would be grief or mourning.
believes that anger is an effective attention grabber and has been effective in politics.
view on anger is that it is not a smart aspect for someone to surround their lives with
Nussbaum argues in "Beyond Anger" that anger can be used to be productive and could help a relationship grow
Nussbaum mentions the benefits of anger and how channeling it can be useful in some situations. She mentions it can be used as a learning experience in a relationship
Racial imbued emotions
David Eng and Shinhee Han, "A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia" excerpt
Mourning is experienced when a person experiences loss, but successfully overcomes those feelings and recovers
Themes of Racial imbued emotions come into play with melancholia and the feelings of African Americans
A Dialogue of Racial Melancholia by David Eng and Shinhee Han claim that melancholia and mourning are different than what Sigmund Freud proposed
Melancholia is when a person has an empty void that they feel is unfillable no matter what they do. They constantly fight with themselves to try to overcome this void, but they are not able to
Connection:
Freud and David Eng and Shinhee Han all talk about the relationship between mourning and melancholia and explore the differences. They both agree melancholia is a more severe and dangerous emotion than mourning, but Freud argues mourning is similar while Eng and Han argue the opposite. Even though they disagree on the definition of terms, they both explore racial imbued emotions when it comes to melancholia and mourning.
Gloria Anzaldua, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue
Gloria Anzadua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue, by introducing herself as the protagonist in the dentist office where her tongue is an issue. This prompts a flashback when she was in school and punished for trying to connect the teacher
Racial imbued emotions such as shame because Gloria is a Chicano who are looked down upon by white and hispanic people
She faces shame when she speaks up and is attacked because of her identity. Her culture places rules on women like how they should shape their personalities
Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia excerpt
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology, argue that mourning and melancholia are extremely similar and that they both deal with loss and the complexity of the emotions prompted from those experiences
Melancholia is unhealthy and an early indicator of disease
Freud describes mourning as dealing with the loss of something very important to you and how to deal with those emotions. He considers mourning healthy and necessary with dealing with grief
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison writes about Pecola and her struggles with identity, contempt, and racial melancholia. Pecola lives a hard life with her mother not caring about her and her father who is a drunk and eventually rapes her. Pecola rejects herself as something ugly and that being the reason she is not loved.
She soon comes to hate herself and her looks and wishes for blue eyes in hopes of improving her life
Pecola eventually succumbs to those emotions and goes insane and breaking. Racial turmoil plays a huge part in this book as Pecola, being African American, is looked down upon by society and the troubles at home lead to her breaking
Theme of racial imbued emotions and identity play a huge role in showing the reader its impacts and how identity can be forced to change due to those emotions of shame, contempt, and racial melancholia
Silvan Tomkin, excerpt from Shame and Its Sisters
Silvan Tomkins’ Shame and Its Sisters bring forth themes of racial imbued emotion and the idea of shame and contempt
Tomkins argues that shame, guilt, and shyness are very similar and shame prohibits passion and curiosity
Tomkins writes “Whenever an individual, a class, or a nation wishes to maintain a hierarchical relationship, or maintain aloofness it will have resort to contempt of the other. Contempt is the mark of the oppressor” (Tomkins 139)
Shame-humiliation is a less severe than contempt-disgust because it does not renounce the object permanently
Identity
Maxine Hong Kinston, The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior is broken up into 5 different stories about 5 different women and their life and the role Chinese culture plays
Woman Warrior explores the different ways stereotypes of women from Chinese culture affect these various women lives
They expected her alone to keep the traditional ways, which her brothers, now among the barbarians, could fumble without detection. The heavy, deep-rooted women were to maintain the past against the flood, safe for returning. But the rare urge west had fixed upon our family, and so my aunt crossed boundaries not delineated in space.
Tradition is a very important part of The Woman Warrior because tradition is what connects all 5 women and their stories and how they live their life through the stereotypes their traditions holds for women
Junot Diaz,
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Oscar Wao is described as a boy struggling to live up to his culture’s ideals leading to conflict with his identity. Oscar is a fat nerdy boy trying to find love.
Generational repetition is present in his family due to sexual violence leading to Oscar having difficulty finding true love
Identity is an important aspect of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao because Oscar struggles to find his own identity and characters in the book are consumed by ideals set by their culture
Yunior is also a victim of the cycle of detachment. He almost found love, but could not keep Lola in his grasp until finally after 10 years he would “finally try to say words that could have saved us” (327). The lack of finding true love is a theme that plagues every character
Connection:
Gran Fury and Oscar Wao explore love from a different viewpoint than the main culture of their respective countries. They are both subjected to shame and question identity in that they involve alternate forms of love. Gran Fury talks about the gay community and how they are trying to raise awareness through ACT UP. Oscar Wao is questioning his own culture through himself and his desire to be himself not the masculine ideal version his culture set up. The idea of counterculture comes into play and the rebellion from the old connects the two
Desire and Love
Audre Lorde, "A Litany for Survival"
Audre Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival” is a poem that uses stanzas to display the theme of desire and the desire to experience something new and the desire to make the most out of one’s life
First stanza is about two different kinds of people; those who constantly move around and those that are alone
Second Stanza propagates ideas of fear and how anticipation plays a role in those who are paranoid about their future and how they ignore the present and their past achievements
Third Stanza further mentions past achievements, but still mentions the lingering presence of fear
Fourth Stanza mentions that after one experiences pain and success they might as well cling to hope since they were not originally intended to survive that range of emotions
Gran Fury, selected works
Gran Fury is a collective of a group of artists protesting on the behalf of the ACT UP movement
Artists include: Richard Elovich, Avram Finkelstein, Amy Heard, Tom Kalin, John Lindell, Loring McAlpin, Marlene McCarty, Donald Moffett, Michael Nesline, Mark Simpson and Robert Vazquez-Pacheco
ACT UP is an AIDs awareness movement trying to get the Government to treat victims of AIDs with better treatment and the equal rights of the LGBTQ+ community such as same sex marriage and serving in the military
Jose Esteban Munoz, Cruising Utopia excerpt/Ernst Bloch, "Can Hope Be Disappointed"
Cruising Utopia spreads the ideas of the LGBTQ+ community and their realistic goals to obtain rights to same sex marriage and serving in the military
Munoz uses works of various artists such as Andy Warhol to advocate for equality and rights for the LGBTQ+ community
Theme of desire is present since the LGBTQ+ community desires equal rights and idea of hope for the eventual implementation of equal rights
Munoz uses his anthropologist background to provide a unique perspective to LGBTQ+ problems
Fear
Sarah Ahmed's
Affective Politics of Fear
Affective Politics of Fear by Sarah Ahmed advocates fear is bred from cultural stereotypes and misconceptions
Themes of racial imbued emotions such as contempt and fear are present explicitly mentioned when Ahmed says “Fear involves relationships of proximity, which are crucial to establishing the ‘apartness’ of white bodies. Such proximity involves the repetition of stereotypes (Ahmed 63)
In her paper, she argues “that anxiety can be described as ‘the tense anticipation of a threatening but vague event’, or a feeling of ‘uneasy suspense,’ while fear is described as an emotional reaction ‘to a threat that is identifiable’” (Ahmed 64).
Connection:
Affective Politics of Fear and
The Bluest Eye
both reference the contempt experienced by African Americans and the idea of what emotions are evoked from those racial imbued emotions and fear. Fear is not only held by white people, but by African Americans towards white people and society. In the Bluest Eye Pecola fears her own family and society since they cast her out and shame her for her identity.
Jordan Peele, Get Out
The movie Get Out by Jordan Peele puts Chris, the protagonist, at the forefront of a racist white family trying to mind control black people
Themes of identity come into play when in the movie old white people are on the verge of dying they transplant their identity and mind into that of a physically fit and young African American
Fear is present in the obvious fear birthed by ignorance that the white family had about African Americans. They see them as better humans which is why they are trying to transplant minds
The sunken place is a place that Chris goes to when he is hypnotized where he is behind a screen in his own mind unable to control anything. This can be paralleled to real life where black people were subject to the horrendous treatment as many had adopted the idea that black people were lesser beings
Shame comes into play when Pecola experiences her first period and how she is talked about by other children. People see her as an outsider shaming her for being different which brings about emotions like contempt and melancholia
