Test 1 Mata Kuliah Seminar on Literature

Naturalisme dalam Kaitannya dengan Relasi Kuasa dan Determinisme dalam The Call of the Wild

Dari berbagai macam gerakan kesusastraan, terdapat satu gerakan yang bernama Naturalisme. Ada beberapa faktor yang menyebabkan kemunculan dari gerakan ini, dan beberapa faktor tersebut adalahteori evolusi dan pemberontakan para penulis aliran naturalism terhadap nilai moral di tempat mereka berada. Mengenai salah satu faktor penyebab timbulnya naturalisme, naturalism “terisnpirasi oleh teori evolusi Darwin dan terus mempertahankan doktrin bahwa manusia, sebagai bagian dari kerajaan hewan, adalah subyek bagi hukum alam.” Mengenai sebab mengapa mereka memberontak pada nilai moral di masa itu, “mereka,” para naturalis, “memberontak pada situasi yang tidak dapat ditoleransi di tempat mereka berada.” Situasi tersebut adalah situasi ketika moral dan kehidupan manusia yang beradab dijunjung tinggi (genteel tradition) oleh kebanyakan orang saat itu yang merupakan pengaruh dari agama Kristen, dan sebagai bentuk ketidaksetujuan mereka terhadap tradisi tersebut, peulis naturalis menulis:

“They were in rebellion against the genteel tradition because, like writers from the beginning of time, they had an urgent need for telling the truth about themselves, and because there was no existing medium in which they were privileged to tell it.” (Cowley, 2004)

Selain tradisi tersebut yang dilakukan oleh masyarakat saat itu (seperti menerapkan sensor pada media cetak) secara umum, naturalis menentang agama Kristen dan mereka tidak setuju terhadap ide bahwa manusia memainkan perannya dalam kehidupan dengan mengadopsi nilai moral. Para penulis aliran naturalism sejalan terhadap gagasan yang menyatakan bahwa takdir manusia dikendalikan oleh kekuatan alam itu sendiri, dan oleh karena itu, peran yang seharusnya dijalani oleh manusia adalah, tidak lebih dari sekedar pengamat dari alam dengan kekuatannya yang sangat besar:

“Reading and experience led to the same convictions: that Christianity was a sham, that all moral professions were false, that there was nothing real in the world but force and, for themselves, no respectable role to play except that of detached observers gathering the facts and printing as many of them as their publishers would permit.” (Cowley, 2004)

Lebih jauh lagi, naturalis tidak percaya pada kebudiluhuran manusia, dan karenanya hal tersebut bisa jadi merupakan faktor utama mereka tidak sejalan dengan penerapan nilai moral di kehidupan social. Lalu, melalui tulisan, pembuatan karya sastra, naturalis berusaha melawan tradisi yang bukan merupakan pilihan mereka. Selain menerapkan konsep “bukan manusia (not men)” dan “untuk mengambil gagasan tanggung jawab  manusia dari kesusastraan,” mereka menulis untuk memperkenalkan standar baru selain standar yang sudah ada dan telah diterapkan oleh masyarakat pada saat itu:

“Try as they would, they could not remain merely observers. They had to revolt against the moral standards of their time; and the revolt involved them more or less consciously in the effort to impose new standards that would be closer to what they regarded as natural laws.” (Cowley, 2004)

Setelah menjelaskan latar belakang penulis naturalism dalam menulis karya mereka, penjelasan mengenai naturalisme sebagai gerakan atau gaya dalam kesusastraan akan dijelaskan selanjutnya. Seperti yang dikatakan oleh Oscar Cargill, naturalism dalam sastra didefinisikan oleh karakteristiknya yaitu pessimistic determinism:

“Naturalism in literature has been defined by Oscar Cargill as pessimistic determinism, and the definition is true so far as it goes. The naturalists were all determinists in that they believed in the omnipotence of natural forces. They were pessimists in that they believed in the absolute incapacity of men and women to shape their own destinies.” (Cowley, 2004)

Sederhananya, penulis gerakan naturalism teguh dalam pendiriannya bahwa kekuatan alam jauh lebih kuat dan besar saat ia dibandingkan dengan manusia yang hidup dalam alam tersebut. Namun, mereka juga percaya bahwa manusia tidak memiliki kemampuan dalam merencanakan, mengatur takdir mereke oleh mereka sendiri. Nampaknya, ini sangat beralasan, karena penulis dalam gerakan naturalism menganggap kekuatan alam, dan mungkin efek yang dihasilkan oleh kekuatan tersebut pada kehidupan manusia, berada di luar jangkauan, kuasa mereka. Lebih lanjut, penulis dari gerakan naturalism melihat manusia sebagai “korban dari kekuatan yang berada di luar kuasanya,” bahwa “laki-laki dan perempuan merupakan bagian dari alam dan subyek dari hukum alam yang acuh tak acuh,” dan “manusia bukan apa-apa, hanya sekedar bagian dari kerajaan hewan, tidak lebih dari ephemerides yang berpendar dan jatuh dan terlupakan antara pagi dan senja.”

Keunggulan kekuatan alam atas manusia dijelaskan lebih jauh lagi dalam hal pandangannya dalam karya sastra naturalism:

“Men were naught, life was naught; FORCE only existed—FORCE that brought men into the world, FORCE that made the wheat grow, FORCE that garnered it from the soil to give place to the succeeding crop.” (Cowley, 2004)

Sebagai bukti bahwa takdir manusia ditentukan oleh kekuatan alam, konsep faktor hereditas merupakan bagian dari karya sastra naturalism. Menurut Norris, faktor hereditas tersebut adalah jahat, dan mewariskan keburukan/kejahatan. Hal itu bisa berarti apapun, namun yang pasti terdapat sesuatu yang diwariskan oleh satu generasi manusia ke generasi manusia selanjutnya. Dalam hal ini, manusia tak berdaya menghadapi alam:

“Below the fine fabric of all that was good in him,” Norris said, “ran the foul stream of hereditary evil, like a sewer. The vices and sins of his father and of his father’s father, to the third and fourth and five hundredth generation, tainted him. The evil of an entire race flowed in his veins. Why should it be? He did not desire it. Was he to blame?” (Cowley, 2004)

Lebih lanjut, dalam pandangan naturalis, “tidak ada yang disalahkan di dunia ini dimana laki-laki dan perempuan adalah subyek dari hukum yang mengatur segala benda (nobody was to blame in this world where men and women are subject to the laws of things).”

Presley menjelaskan kondisi alam dalam ruang lingkup naturalisme seperti tidak kenal ampun, tidak mentoleransi, dan siap menghancurkan manusia dan kehidupannya. Walaupun Presley menjelaskannya dengan demikian, Presley tidak mngartikan alam sebagai sesuatu yang kacau atau berbahaya, dan menjelaskan kalau kekuatan tersebut bekerja seperti mengalir dan alami, atau seperti memang sudah seharusnya terjadi.

  “There was no malevolence in Nature … Colossal indifference only, a vast trend toward appointed goals. Nature was, then, a gigantic engine, a vast, cyclopean power, huge, terrible, a leviathan with a heart of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no tolerance; crushing out the human atom standing in its way, with nirvanic calm.” (Cowley, 2004)

Meskipun konsep yang diadaptasi oleh penulis gerakan anturalisme yang dimana kekuatan alam merupakan hal yang lebih unggul, atau maha kuasa, bukan berarti manusia tidak dapat melakukan apapun untuk dapat mengatasi apaun yang diberikan alam pada mereka. Dalam kutipan selanjutnya, kesulitan yang diberikan oleh alam, dalam ruang lingkup naturalism, ditunjukkan sebagai kekuatan yang mendorong manusia untuk berevolusi mundur (devolve) dan mengubahnya menjadi “the beast within.”

“A favorite theme in naturalistic fiction is that of the beast within. As the result of some crisis—usually a fight, a shipwreck, or an expedition into the Arctic—the veneer of civilization drops or is stripped away and we are faced with “the primal instinct of the brute struggling for its life and for the life of its young.”” (Cowley, 2004)

The Beast, yang secara umum dianggap primitif atau tidak berkebudayaan, adalah tahap selanjutnya dari evolusi versi sastra aliran naturalism, atau lebih tepat disebut devolusi/evolusi mundur.

“When evolution is treated in their novels, it almost always takes the opposite form of devolution or degeneration. It is seldom that the hero evolves toward a superhuman nature, as in Nietzsche’s dream; instead he sinks backward toward the beasts." (Cowley, 2004)

Lebih lanjut, tahap devolusi dalam sastra naturalism dimulai dari “manusia yang berbudaya berubah menjadi manusia barbar atau liar, manusia liar berubah menjadi manusia primitive dan manusia primitive direduksi menjadi elemen-elemen kimiawi yang menyusunnya (“civilized man became a barbarian or a savage, the savage became a brute and the brute was reduced to its chemical elements).”

.”

Sejauh ini, kekuatan alam didefinisikan sebagai hal yang memiliki karakter fisik dan biologis, dan dapat dikatakan bahwa kekuatan tersebut yang memiliki karakteristik demikian lebih unggul diandingkan manusia. Dalam hukum social, hukum alam tersebut berlaku seperti yang Jack London ungkapkan “prinsip biologis yang demikian, seperti seleksi alam dan yang paling dapat beradaptasilah yang bertahan, merupakan hukum social manusia (“that such biological principles as natural selection and the survival of the fittest were also the laws of human society.”)

Lebih lanjut, naturalis agaknya mengaitkan kekuatan alam dengan faktor-faktor social untuk menunjukkan manusia hanyalah sekedar subyek dari kekuatan alam:

“They believed that men were subject to natural forces, but they felt those forces were best displayed when they led to unlimited wealth, utter squalor, collective orgies, blood, and sudden death.” (Cowley, 2004)

Pembahasan mengenai apa itu naturalism dan sastra naturalism menunjukkan bahwa terdapat relasi kuasa dalam pandangan naturalism dan sastra naturalism. Foucault dalam Discipline and Punish membicarakan sedikit tentang relasi kuasa. Dalam kutipan berikut, ditunjukkan bahwa tubuh dimiliki oleh manusia namun alam dapat meakukan apapun kepada tubuh tersebut:

“But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.” (Foucault, 2004)

Foucault juga menyatakan, agar tubuh tersebut dapat menjadi kekuatan yang memiliki kegunaan, selain harus memiliki sifat produktif, tubuh tersebut harus ditaklukan (be subjected) melalui penaklukan (subjection):

“This subjection is not only obtained by the instruments of violence or ideology; it can also be direct, physical, pitting force against force, bearing on material elements, and yet without involving violence; it may be calculated, organized, technically thought out; it may be subtle, make use neither of weapons nor of terror and yet remain of a physical order.” (Foucault, 2004)

Lebih jauh, Foucault menjelaskan kuasa yang dimaksud bukan merupakan kewajiban atau larangan bagi mereka yang tidak memilikinya, dan kuasa tersebut juga menggunakan tekanan yang, bagi saya, dikenakan pada mereka, orang-orang yang berada dalam pengaruh kuasa tersebut:

“… this power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who "do not have it"; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them; it exerts pressure upon them, just as they themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the grip it has on them.” (Foucault, 2004)

Seperti yang sudah dibahas sebelumnya, sastra naturalism memiliki salah satu karakteristik yaitu determinisme, disamping pesimistis.

“Determinism is a philosophical position according to which all human actions are predetermined. According to it, a person in a given situation may think that he is able to do this or that, but in every case the stars, the laws of physics, his character, the conditioning he has received or something else makes him unable to do any but one thing. It is essential to note that determinists do not say that some actions of some people are determined.” (Cowburn, 2007)

Menjelaskan lagi lebih jauh, determinisme dalam karya sastra terletak pada konsep hereditas:

“In the nineteenth century, some novelists thought that determinism was an essential element of the modern (scientific) world-view, and accepted it. These were the Naturalistic novelists, some of whom believed that heredity determines a person’s nature, which determines his or her actions.” (Cowburn, 2007)

Melalui determinisme dan relasi kuasa ini, “hukum” naturalisme dijalankan dalam karya sastra. Jika Foucault mengatakan kalau tubuh baru akan memiliki kegunaan tidak hanya saat tubuh tersebut memiliki sifat produktif, tetapi juga harus melalui proses “penaklukan” (subjection) sehingga terkondisi menjadi “ditaklukan” (be subjected),  maka proses dan kondisi tersebut dimungkinkan melalui “hukum” naturalisme dimana manusia dan makhluk hidup lainnya diuji lewat berbagai kondisi di dalam alam. Sedangkan konsep hereditas digunakan untuk mengunci, memastikan manusia, dan makhluk hidup lainnya, dalam ruang lingkup sastra naturalism untuk tidak dapat mengatur takdirnya, karena manusia tidak bisa menentukan apa yang akan dan tidak akan diwariskan olehnya kepada generasi selanjutnya.

Referensi

Cowburn, J. (2007). Determinism. In J. Cowburn, Free Will, Predestination, and Determinism (pp. 144, 161, 164). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Cowley, M. (2004). Naturalism in American Literature. In H. Bloom, American Naturalism (pp. 49-78). Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publications.

Foucault, M. (2004). Discipline and Punish. In J. Rivkin, & M. Ryan (Eds.), Literary Theory: An Anthology Second Edition (pp. 549-551). Malden, Massachusetts.

Naturalism in Relation to Power Relations and Determinism in The Call of the Wild

Naturalism in Relation to Power Relations and Determinism in The Call of the Wild

Among many kinds of literary movements, there is one movement called Naturalism. There are some factors responsible for the emergence of the movement, and they are the evolution theory and the writers’, the people’s rebellion against the moral values at home. In terms of the factor of evolution theory because of which naturalism emerged, naturalism “inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution and kept repeating the doctrine that men, being part of the animal kingdom, were subject to natural laws.” In terms of the rebellion cause, “they”, naturalists, “were rebelling against intolerable situation at home.” This intolerable situation was the genteel tradition which was practiced by most people at that time in the society from the influence of Christianity, and to express this disagreement with the tradition, the naturalists write:

 “They were in rebellion against the genteel tradition because, like writers from the beginning of time, they had an urgent need for telling the truth about themselves, and because there was no existing medium in which they were privileged to tell it.” (Cowley, 2004)

Besides the genteel tradition practiced in the society at that time (for example, in the form of censorship in printed media) naturalists in general were against Christianity and they disagree with humans playing their “role” in life by adopting moral values. The naturalists are in accordance with the idea that the only force that controls human’s fate is the force of the nature itself, and thus, the role humans should take is the role of mere observer of the very powerful nature:

“Reading and experience led to the same convictions: that Christianity was a sham, that all moral professions were false, that there was nothing real in the world but force and, for themselves, no respectable role to play except that of detached observers gathering the facts and printing as many of them as their publishers would permit.” (Cowley, 2004)

Moreover, naturalists don’t believe in human nobility, and thus perhaps the main factor which made them disagree against the adoption of moral values in social life. Then, through writing, making literary works, naturalists try to fight the tradition they did not preferred. Besides adopting “not men” as its constant echo and “to subtract from literature the whole notion of human responsibility,” they write to introduce new standards asides from the current standard which was adopted by the society at that time:

“Try as they would, they could not remain merely observers. They had to revolt against the moral standards of their time; and the revolt involved them more or less consciously in the effort to impose new standards that would be closer to what they regarded as natural laws.” (Cowley, 2004)

Enough with naturalistic writers’ background in doing their writing, discussing naturalism in terms of literary style or movement is what will come up next. As Oscar Cargill stated, naturalism in literature is defined by its pessimistic determinism characteristic. Further explanation:

“Naturalism in literature has been defined by Oscar Cargill as pessimistic determinism, and the definition is true so far as it goes. The naturalists were all determinists in that they believed in the omnipotence of natural forces. They were pessimists in that they believed in the absolute incapacity of men and women to shape their own destinies.” (Cowley, 2004)

To put it simply, writers of naturalism movement determined, strongly believed that natural forces are far superior and powerful when they are compared to humans live inside the nature. But, they also believe that humans don’t have a chance in shaping, making their fate by themselves. This is rational, since naturalistic writers see natural forces, and perhaps its effect on human’s life, as beyond the control of human hands. In addition to that view, writers of naturalism movement see human as “the victim of forces which he has no control,” “… men and women are part of nature and subject to the same indifferent laws,” and that “men were nothings, mere animalculae, mere ephemerides that fluttered and fell and were forgotten between dawn and dusk.”

The superiority of natural forces, or simply force, is further explained in terms of its view in naturalistic works:

 “Men were naught, life was naught; FORCE only existed—FORCE that brought men into the world, FORCE that made the wheat grow, FORCE that garnered it from the soil to give place to the succeeding crop.” (Cowley, 2004)

As a prove that man’s fate is judged, determined by natural forces, the concept of hereditary factor is also a part of naturalistic literature. In the words of Norris, this hereditary is evil, it inherits evilness, it could mean anything, but surely there is something inherited from one generation of humans to other generation of humans, and it can be anything. In this case, human is powerless against nature:

 “Below the fine fabric of all that was good in him,” Norris said, “ran the foul stream of hereditary evil, like a sewer. The vices and sins of his father and of his father’s father, to the third and fourth and five hundredth generation, tainted him. The evil of an entire race flowed in his veins. Why should it be? He did not desire it. Was he to blame?” (Cowley, 2004)

Furthermore, in naturalists’ view, “nobody was to blame in this world where men and women are subject to the laws of things.”

Explaining further characteristic of nature, Peters described nature in naturalism scope as unforgiven, having no tolerance, and ready to crush humans and their life. Although Presley described it that way, bad way, Presley didn’t mean that nature is malevolent or chaotic, explaining it as if the force it has works in some kind of fluid and natural, or supposed to happen.

“There was no malevolence in Nature … Colossal indifference only, a vast trend toward appointed goals. Nature was, then, a gigantic engine, a vast, cyclopean power, huge, terrible, a leviathan with a heart of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no tolerance; crushing out the human atom standing in its way, with nirvanic calm.” (Cowley, 2004)

Although the concept adopted by naturalistic writers in which nature forces are far more superior, or simply omnipotent, that doesn’t mean humans are left completely unable to cope with anything nature give them. In the next excerpt, I see hardships given by nature, in naturalism scope, as the force that compels humans to devolve (instead of evolve) and turn him into “the beast within.”

“A favorite theme in naturalistic fiction is that of the beast within. As the result of some crisis—usually a fight, a shipwreck, or an expedition into the Arctic—the veneer of civilization drops or is stripped away and we are faced with “the primal instinct of the brute struggling for its life and for the life of its young.”” (Cowley, 2004)

The beast, which commonly referred to as the primitive or uncivilized, is the next step in naturalistic literature’s evolution, or it should be called devolution.

“When evolution is treated in their novels, it almost always takes the opposite form of devolution or degeneration. It is seldom that the hero evolves toward a superhuman nature, as in Nietzsche’s dream; instead he sinks backward toward the beasts." (Cowley, 2004)

Moreover, the step of devolution in naturalistic literature is started from “civilized man became a barbarian or a savage, the savage became a brute and the brute was reduced to its chemical elements.”

So far, nature forces are defined by something biological and physical, which can be said that biological and physical forces are superior, above human’s position in mother nature. In social laws, in human society, the laws continue to live on as Jack London believed “that such biological principles as natural selection and the survival of the fittest were also the laws of human society.”

Furthermore, whether in the vast nature and in smaller society, an individual will pay the price if he resist the law of nature and the forces living in society or nature:

 “.. Men are “human insects” whose brief lives are completely determined by society or nature. The individual is crushed in a moment if he resists; and his struggle, instead of being tragic, is merely pitiful or ironic, as if we had seen a mountain stir itself to overwhelm a fly.” (Cowley, 2004)

Moreover, naturalists seem to relate natural forces with social factors to display that men is mere subjects to natural forces:

“They believed that men were subject to natural forces, but they felt those forces were best displayed when they led to unlimited wealth, utter squalor, collective orgies, blood, and sudden death.” (Cowley, 2004)

The discussion about what and how naturalism and naturalistic literature is shows that there is power relations in both naturalism views and in naturalistic literature. Foucault in Discipline and Punish talk a little bit about power relations. In the next excerpt, I see the body belongs to human, and nature does anything it want to it:

“But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.” (Foucault, 2004)

Foucault also stated that in order for the body to be a useful force, besides being productive, the body must also be subjected through subjection:

“This subjection is not only obtained by the instruments of violence or ideology; it can also be direct, physical, pitting force against force, bearing on material elements, and yet without involving violence; it may be calculated, organized, technically thought out; it may be subtle, make use neither of weapons nor of terror and yet remain of a physical order.” (Foucault, 2004)

Moreover, he explained that the power is not an obligation or prohibition for those who do not have it, and it also exerts pressure, in my view, on people under the effect of the power, referred to as “them:”

“… this power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who "do not have it"; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them; it exerts pressure upon them, just as they themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the grip it has on them.” (Foucault, 2004)

As I have discussed earlier, naturalistic literature’s characteristic, one of which, is determinism besides pessimistic. Knowing that fact, determinism should be added to examine naturalistic literature:

“Determinism is a philosophical position according to which all human actions are predetermined. According to it, a person in a given situation may think that he is able to do this or that, but in every case the stars, the laws of physics, his character, the conditioning he has received or something else makes him unable to do any but one thing. It is essential to note that determinists do not say that some actions of some people are determined.” (Cowburn, 2007)

Besides determinism, indeterminism is also there and there is a difference between both concepts:

“By determinism, then, I mean the view that every event A is so connected with a later event B that, given A, B must occur. By indeterminism I mean the view that there is some event B that is not so connected with any previous event A that, given A, it must occur.” (Cowburn, 2007)

Further explaining it, determinism in literature of naturalism lies in the concept of heredity:

“In the nineteenth century, some novelists thought that determinism was an essential element of the modern (scientific) world-view, and accepted it. These were the Naturalistic novelists, some of whom believed that heredity determines a person’s nature, which determines his or her actions.” (Cowburn, 2007)

In Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, The main protagonist, a dog named Buck, is at first a fully domesticated dog, a normal dog, a companion to man. Then, the nature of Buck gradually changed as he progresses through the journey into wilderness, the seemingly never ending winter of Klondike. Buck seems to be a “victim” of the natural laws in The Call of the Wild, which is a naturalistic literature, and also a tool nature used to test men, and it is when Buck attained his beastly form at the end of the story.

Seeing from the perspective of determinism, Buck’s fate is predetermined by the nature in the form of heredity. It is not seldom in the story, the speaker keep saying that Buck has inside of him the “memories” of the past, memories of his ancestor, believed to be wolves or wild dogs, and that heredity, in the story, drove him to, let’s say, approach and use the more beastly side of him such as when he faced confrontation with the current leader of the pulling sledge pack, Spitz. If it is not because of his beastly side, said to be the inheritance of his ancestors, Buck will never defeat Spitz.

In terms of power relations, at the beginning Buck is forced to obey the law of club. If he doesn’t obey the order from the man with the club, he will be beaten until he understands. The beating of his body is how human who is superior above him to subject Buck in subjection. Then when he is subjected, he finally became a useful force ready to be used. Furthermore, the power relation between the superior and inferior, between the man and Buck, “conditioned” Buck as a body that has useful value, in the first place

The predetermined factor from heredity and power relations with humans seem to act like catalyst or simply factors that helped Buck to gain his beastly form. The beast within the previously domesticated dog is awaken through labor in the harsh wilderness of Klondike, in which not only Buck must learn to survive from the weather, the climate, but also he has to learn to be the alpha dog in the sledge dog pack by the confrontation given by Spitz. Finally, the process of becoming the wild one is complete by the sacrifice of the character, John Thornton. Thornton gave Buck what he is lacking when he was laboring as a sledge dog, the love, the caring from a master. This sudden death of Thornton, happened when Buck following a wolf to its pack and then hunting together with them, killed by a tribe of Indians displayed Buck as a subject to natural forces. Besides the sudden death of Thornton the scene also portrayed Thornton as wealth for buck and an utter squalor, or in this case an utter loss adding more elements to display Buck as a subject to nature.

In the end, Buck gained his total beastly form and went for the tribe and annihilate all of them. The story then tells Buck as a legendary beast feared by man, and to me in that form Buck has successfully been altered to be superior as nature. He became a part of nature, the superior one, and he is, perhaps, the agent of nature ready to bring hardships, fear, and “to crush” humans and their life.

References

Cowburn, J. (2007). Determinism. In J. Cowburn, Free Will, Predestination, and Determinism (pp. 144, 161, 164). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Cowley, M. (2004). Naturalism in American Literature. In H. Bloom, American Naturalism (pp. 49-78). Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publications.

Foucault, M. (2004). Discipline and Punish. In J. Rivkin, & M. Ryan (Eds.), Literary Theory: An Anthology Second Edition (pp. 549-551). Malden, Massachusetts.

Proposed Research in Naturalism

Naturalism in literature emerged as a rebellion against genteel tradition promoted by Christianity at that time. In response to the tradition which adopted by most people in the society back to when it is still adopted, naturalists write, in order to impose new standards, beside the already existed standard. Naturalistic literature describes human’s life and fate are determined by nature, hence nature, in naturalistic literature, is portrayed as the force that is superior above human’s power. The works of naturalists do not praise human nobility, because they are not into it. Instead, the naturalists portrayed human, or the hero in the works of naturalist, able to devolve, instead of evolve, in order to cope with nature’s condition, or the condition given by nature, in naturalism’s scope.

Besides the superiority of nature, naturalism is characterized by pessimistic determinism in its work. The work shows, or the naturalists believe, that human’s fate is determined by nature. But, naturalism is also pessimistic that humans can change their own fate through their own means and effort.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London is one of naturalistic works. Naturalism, as previously explained, accentuate that nature is superior over human, and thus giving the possibility of power relations in the works of naturalists. Determinism is also a part of naturalistic literature, and it concerns the determined fate of life of humans in literature.

I propose to explore the way the laws of naturalism work in The Call of the Wild. It is done by examining the journey of Buck (the main protagonist of the novel, a dog in the novel described as having the inheritance of wolf or wild dog) from his totally-domesticated form to its final form, the full wild dog, a beast. Then in the process of which, I will examine the power relation between the humans that is interacting with Buck, and how they affect Buck’s progress to devolution. Finally, after Buck gained his primitive, beastly form I will examine whether or not determinism is in action and responsible of its devolution, and whether or not the final form of Buck is the way the nature in the novel devolve the animal, in order to make it a tool to the nature’s “advantage.”

The references I will use:

Cowburn, J. (2007). Determinism. In J. Cowburn, Free Will, Predestination, and Determinism (pp. 144, 161, 164). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Cowley, M. (2004). Naturalism in American Literature. In H. Bloom, American Naturalism (pp. 49-78). Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publications.

Foucault, M. (2004). Discipline and Punish. In J. Rivkin, & M. Ryan (Eds.), Literary Theory: An Anthology Second Edition (pp. 549-551). Malden, Massachusetts.

Empire Expansionism, Ideology, and, Desire

Empire Expansionism, Ideology, and Desire

In the process of finding my own skripsi topic, the basic topic for my skripsi as “Empire Expansionism” but, it does not end at that point. I have interested, currently (since I believe I will change the topic overtime, to find the one best suits, and concerns me the most), in discussing the altering of ideology, and if possible, culture, of the colonized nation in literature by the trying-to-expand Empire, the colonizer. To give more details about the topic, I want to know how the colonized nation’s ideology and culture are implemented and giving the nation benefit before the colonization occurs; I want to know how the process of culture and ideology alteration occurs; I want to know how long the effect of the alteration, such as how long it will occur, the outcome of it, etc.; I want to know how the literature explains it. So far, I only have the topic but not the object of research, the work that I will examine. That means I still don’t know yet, whether my topic is usable, or is possibly presented on one or some works of literature.

There is also something that I’d question about empire expansionism. Reading through American history, for example, the American land, then became the territory for the colonists, was one of the source of the empire’s wealth to build and to maintain the central, the mainland of the empire, in this term it is London or the Great Britain’s land. Knowing the fact, then, the sole desire of the empire to expand its territory, to lengthen the reach of its hands around the globe, must be to gain wealth and resource needed by the empire to make itself rich. But, what if that is not enough? What if what they really is not only the wealth of the colonized nation, but also the nation’s people along with their mind constructed to be the same as the empire for whatever reason beneficial for the empire. According to that base idea, perhaps ideology, beliefs (not only the religious ones), and also culture are parts of the empire’s expansion too.

Despite the example I’ve given, what I really want myself concern with is the expansion of Islamic empires. Today, for me, it seems very distorted and unclear the idea of certain Islamic empires that was warring with other non-Islamic empires for the glorious reason of expanding the influence of Islam as, what they believe, the truest belief, the belief that must be spread out throughout the globe. Now, when I make more specific of my topic, then I want to examine the empires’ true aim of expansion. How Islam is treated in such case? How Islam is used? How Islam is presented as a seemingly a part of the empire’s reason to expand itself? How the presence of desire is presented in the work? How the colonized nation’s ideology and culture be altered by this empires’ “Islamic expansion?” How both new and old ideology interact? Those are some question I’d like to answer myself.

The more specific topic I have explained previously must be put aside for now though, lack of references is the main reason for that. So, I will examine empire expansionism for now without making it specific.

First, since basically I will examine something about empire, ‘Nation and Empire’ issue clearly have to be explained here. According to Parry, using Hobson’s argument, the empire is able to “exercise physical and discursive power over conquered territories and cultures” but, in Parry it’s, seemingly, limited to “possess and exploit space.” If discursive means can be applied to gain power in conquered territories and, especially, cultures, then can it be used to exploit resource other than space? Let’s say, the colonized nation’s people along with its culture and ideology, but then another question rose, do exploiting and possessing the culture and ideology of the colonized nation have any benefit at all to the empire?

Spivak in Can the Subaltern Speak? Stated:

… the oppressed, if given the chance (the problem of representation cannot be bypassed here), and on the way to solidarity through alliance politics (a Marxist thematic is at work here) can speak and know their conditions. (Spivak, 1995)

Is “The oppressed …. Can speak and know their conditions” a result of the interaction between the colonized and the colonizer? Can the colonized be oppressed culturally and ideologically? I got the interest to know whether the colonized is (for me is unconsciously) oppressed by the colonizer’s ideology and culture. But then again, is that really a matter? It is a matter to me because I think of a nation’s identity pre-colonization is the more original one than that of post-colonization, after the colonization it seems to me that the identity has to be distorted. Identity itself is a problem, need to have a specific definition of it to explain this.

My topic relates to oppression by one side to other sides, then there must be the superior and inferior force “playing” inside the circle of colonization, which is obvious if one should take it ignorantly. My reason that there is a kind of gender between the sides of colonial power and the colonized came from Cixous’s Hierarchical opposition according to man/woman opposition.

It's the classic opposition, dualist and hierarchical. Man/Woman automatically means great/small, superior/inferior . . . means high or low, means Nature/History, means transformation/inertia. In fact, every theory of culture, every theory of society, the whole conglomeration of symbolic systems-everything, that is, that's spoken, everything that's organized as discourse, art, religion, the family, language, everything that seizes us, everything that acts on us-it is all ordered around hierarchical oppositions that come back to the man/woman opposition, an opposition that can only be sustained by means of a difference posed by cultural discourse as "natural," the difference between activity and passivity. (Cixous & Kuhn, 1981)

So according to her statement regarding hierarchical opposition, it can be concluded that the superior one should be the colonizer, the empire in expansion. Automatically, the inferior one is the colonized nation. That also makes the colonizer the masculine and the colonized the feminine.

This is quite important because if it is related, what I have explained before, then “decapitation,” what I so far recognize as the shutting down of the oppressed voice, the oppressed means to struggle for freedom, can be one of the means to occupy, to possess the colonized, oppressed nation culture and ideology. And according to Cixous again, the superior, the masculine can “control” the feminine, the inferior, through their “education.” This education they have, then will be applied to the inferior to “shape” them according to the superior’s liking.

It's hard to imagine a more perfect example of a particular relationship between two economies: a masculine economy and a feminine economy, in which the masculine is governed by a rule that keeps time with two beats, three beats, four beats, with pipe and drum, exactly as it should be. An order that works by inculcation, by education: it's always a question of education. An education that consists of trying to make a soldier of the feminine by force, the force history keeps reserved for woman, the "capital" force that is effectively decapitation. (Cixous & Kuhn, 1981)

In Bhabha’s Of Mimicry and Men there’s a concept of “mimic man” that is created to “be employed in different departments of Labour” by making “a class of persons Indian in blood” into a class of person that, while keeping the previous qualities, at the same time, “English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” and the “mimic man” was made in “our English School.” This example is one of the factors that drives me to believe that the empire can play tricks to alter the colonized nation’s ideology and culture for their advantage.

What I can conclude from that then, the empire is purposefully making the colonized nation to mimic themselves and, seemingly, to forget their native culture and ideology. But, in the process of making the colonized nation’s people “belong” to them, they seemed to have done a mistake, as Bhabha stated: 

What emerges between mimesis and mimicry is a writing, a mode of represen-tation, that marginalizes the monumentality of history, quite simply mocks its power to be a model, that power which supposedly makes it imitable. (Bhabha, 1984)

It is as if, by making the colonized nation’s people to mimic them, the empire had given them the way to strike them back; with their own piece of culture, writing. And as Cixous stated, the feminine, the oppressed, must speak and they speak through writing, their own writing. If The case can be related, then the next interaction, the game of altering ideology and culture, come to the phase where the oppressed struggle to regain their freedom, themselves. Mimicry, although ambivalent, can be “an in-surgent counter-appeal.”

References

Bhabha, H. K. (1984). Of Mimicey and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse. October, Vol. 28, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis, 125-133.

Cixous, H., & Kuhn, A. (1981). Castration or Decapitation? Signs, Vol. 7, No. 1, 41-55.

Parry, B. (2004). Reading the Signs of Empire in Metropolitan Culture. In B. Parry, Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique (pp. 107-118). London: Routledge.

Spivak, G. (1995). Can the Subaltern Speak? In B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, & H. Tiffin (Eds.), The Post-colonial Studies Reader (pp. 24-28). London: Routledge.

To Mimic, To Defend

On the previous writing I wrote about the relation between literature and structure and also representation and structure. What I left behind, what I did not write in that writing is a conclusion that leads to a kind of question, do literature plus structure create representation? What made me come to such conclusion, or question, is that by structuring an image through the means of literature, anyone can represents anything and that also prove that literature does have some use for anyone too.

Now this usage of literature, or the usefulness of literature has been used, utilized by some. One of its examples is the writers of post-colonial literature. Reading such literature make me realize that such literature exist, and was made is for none other reason than to picture what colonialism had left behind on its once colonized territory. One of post-colonial works is One out of Many written by Naipaul. In that short story, the main protagonist, a native Indian, is, seemingly, forced in the end to adapt to his new life in the United States because the behavior he has always do doesn’t fit with the value in the new place.

What emerges between mimesis and mimicry is a writing, a mode of represen-tation, that marginalizes the monumentality of history, quite simply mocks its power to be a model, that power which supposedly makes it imitable.

What I see, when I relate the work with the above quotation from Bhabha’s Of Mimicry and Men, Naipaul represented post-colonial experience through the work, perhaps to describe it, and then displayed the mockery of the mimicry through the protagonist. The protagonist did the mimicry after experiencing unpleasant experience when he walked around in the United States only to find that everyone sees him as a weird person. The U.S., to my knowledge, doesn’t have anything to do with the colonizing of India by the British, but the seeing of the protagonist as a weird person by some people of the U.S. in the story, some of them being Indians too, displays that the colonized is weird, is different, is more inferior to the power of the West or the colonizer. The mimicry done by the protagonist seems to display that, even by mimicking the more powerful culture or values that do not belong to him, doesn’t solve his problem of finding his own new identity in the new place, because in the end the protagonist is having an identity crisis that led him to the decision that he won’t be the native/the colonized, and he won’t be the western side, colonizer side of a person.

Mimicry is like camouflage, not a harmonization or repression of difference, but a form of resemblance that differs/defends presence by displaying it in part, metonymically.

Relating that to Bhabha’s, I guess, the protagonist did that to defend himself from the eyes that see him as unfit or weird for them. It is not only about taste I think, but also about his identity to the people in the new place, America. He started to question why this “me”, the behavior that I have seems to be a problem, seems to be abnormal for them, where in my home, back in India, his behavior does just fine to the people there. A person only defends when he or she is in danger of something, and to the protagonist, perhaps, the danger came from the environment that rejects him through his conduct. The protagonist, that displays post-colonial experience, needed to mimic, because he needs camouflage to defend him and his presence, and the protagonist did it metonymically by trying to present himself as not himself, but as the new environment wants him to be.

Works cited:

Naipaul, V.S. One out of Many.

Bhabha, Homi. 1984. “Of Mimicry and Men: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse” in October, Vol. 28, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis (Spring, 1984; pp.125-133). The MIT Press retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/778467

Literature, Structure, Representation

On my previous writing, the first one, one of the sources of my writing is from Horace and his Art of Poetry which on some of its sections states or imply that usability of a poetry, or maybe even literature in common, is very important and Horace seemingly gives his attention mainly for the readers or the consumers of literature in that matter.

On the second writing, I examined how women have been being represented so bad, to me, that what people see are not the real women, but rather a construction made by male writers through their works of literature. Using Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic I found that problem faced by women.  

Now, in this new piece of writing, I will try to further examine both topic on my previous writings by adding the theme “Structure.”

The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, ²¹ or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. (Horace in Cultural Theory since Plato 2004, 83)

I used the same above quotation on my previous writing to explain that what Horace wanted people to understand is that a work of literature, or in this idea of his is poem, must be informative and delightful.

The structure is a simulacrum; it imitates a natural object in order to transform it. The purpose of this transformation is intelligibility, but in an interested, humanly useful manner. (Rowe  1995 , 35)

When Horace’s idea compared to Rowe’s interpretation on Barthes’ definition of structure, to me it makes sense, especially the “humanly useful manner” part. But, I realize this is not enough and decided to add more line from Rowe’s Structure.

Thus a “structure” is built upon a “foundation”, which is an essential part of the structure and compatible with all other elements, even in the case of a “foundation” that is perfectly natural… (Rowe  1995 ,24)

Horace’s “structure” of a literature must also be built upon a foundation, but what this foundation of his ideas be? Judging by his statement that literature must be delightful and informative, his foundation possibly is the consumer of literature, the readers or the people.

Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality. (Horace in Cultural Theory since Plato 2004, 83)

Back again to the previous examination, Horace’s statement also fit with Rowe’s, quoting Barthes, “it imitates natural object in order to transform it”, especially Horace’s statement I quoted above that seemingly insist that literature must be as close as possible to reality. All of this fitting comparison between Horace’s and Rowe’s, “humanly useful manner” with delightful and informative literature; and imitating a natural object with staying closely to reality, must be completed with the purpose Rowe’s suggest, after quoting Barthes, “intelligibility” which I will continue to examine it later on.

Move on to the next topic, and that is Representation, that I have already written about, in relation with structure.

At this point in our construction of a feminist poetics, then, we really must dissect in order to murder. And we must particularly do this in order to understand literature by women because, as we shall show, the images of “angel” and “monster” have been so ubiquitous throughout literature by men that they have also been pervade women’s writing to such an extent that few women have definitely “killed” either figure. (Gilbert and Gubar 1980, 812)

 “Structure” as a term increasingly referred to an activity of model building, which “dissected” what it imitates and reconstituted it in human terms. (Rowe 1995 , 35)

What interests me and also the similarity between the two quotations from two different writers and from two different ideas is the word “dissect.” In Gilbert and Gubar’s, women need to dissect literature so that they can escape the stereotype of being angelic and monstrous and become themselves.  The literature they must dissect is also not a random one, but literature works made by male writers who picture women as angelic or as monstrous. And, when I compare it to Rowe’s, interesting thing happened; both passages make sense. As Rowe’s quotation stated, this “dissecting” activity is needed to be done for women in Gilbert and Gubar’s context so that they can re-build their falsely-made image with the new, more correct ones.

I’d like to go back to the examination of the purpose of the transformation in Rowe’s “structure” that is “Intelligibility.” If I’m not mistakenly putting it, “Intelligibility” is more or less the same as “understanding”. Putting it that way, the transformation that happens in a structure (or structuring process?) has the purpose of giving or altering the understanding, the “intelligibility.” The example of this giving/altering the intelligibility can be seen in Gilbert and Gubar’s frequent use of example of male writers’ creation of angelic description and monstrous female creatures in their writing, The Madwoman in the Attic. While the intelligibility in Horace’s could be proved by referring to his statement that a poem, a work of literature, must be delightful and informative. “Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality,” “remain close to reality” doesn’t mean it must be exactly the same as in reality. For if it must be the same, there can be a possibility that the reality taken as an object of fiction doesn’t have the quality of delighting and informing, thus it must be altered, it must be transformed.

Works cited:

Horace. Art of Poetry. 2004. in Adams, Hazard and Searle, Leroy. Critical Theory since Plato (3rd edition). United States: Wadsworth Publishing.

Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. 1979. “The Madwoman in the Attic” in Literary Theory: An Anthology ed. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael (2004, 2nd edition; pg. 812-825). United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.

Rowe, John Carlos. 1995. “Structure” in Critical Terms for Literary Study ed. Lentricchia Frank and McLaughlin Thomas (1995, 2^nd edition; pg 23-37). United States: The University of Chicago Press.

Literature for control

Ari Andika I.P.
180410110051

From my point of view, the majority of the public, especially in our country, see the work of literature as a mere entertainment, a means to kill time, or as an obligation set by an educational institution for a requirement of a study. But, especially after finish reading Plato’s Republic, what literature is to me is that literature is and has something more than that, something powerful and very influential to the public. Such role of influencing the public may be taken by media nowadays and may be that is also why the majority of public do not realize other definition of literature, especially as an influential thing. Influence through literature can be seen in the case of representation of somebody or of something. So far, for me, representation is a way to distort a real image and to show this distorted image to a group, if not all, of public to influence them in terms of the image or the meaning of the real image. Thus, the one that makes the representation control the public’s view about it. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar wrote a writing about this in Madwoman in the Attic, and it’s about how women being represented by male writers. This writing of mine try to discuss the writing while also trying to give different viewpoint on reading this writing.
The writing made by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, explained the representation of women as angels and monsters in society and in literature or what women are or should be on both worlds according to male writers. Women as angels, or having angelic characteristic, from Gilbert and Gubar’s work, means that women must be pleasing to her husband, doing all her act in selfless manner, submissive, and that “her virtue makes her man “great.” As Monsters, or as having monstrous quality, meaning, women are “trespassing” the boundaries that are set for them, and that boundaries, more or less, are the value men want women to have and to obey them. At least, these are all I got after finish reading their writing.
By making these images of women in their works, men try to control women to not surpass them and to stay still under their control. My first confusion raised here, what is the benefit men get by controlling women?
In all these incarnations – from Errour to Dullness, from Goneril and Regan to Chloe and Caelia – the female monster is a striking illustration of Simon de Beauvoir’s thesis that woman has been made to represent all of man’s ambivalent feelings about his own inability to control his own physical existence, his own birth and death.
The above quotation from The Madwoman in the Attic kind of help me out to determine my first confusion. I am quite satisfied when I knew that one of possible reason why men need control or power over women is that of their existence. Before women fight back, for all the oppression they’ve experienced for so long, undetermined for me, men’s position over women is undisturbed, thus kind of giving them assurance or justification that men must be placed over women or more superior than women by nature. But, when their belief is shaken, that women can be or are the same as men, they started to get anxious, they started to get confused and start to question the real meaning of their existence, and their role in life. Another possibility, men suddenly got surprised that what they have believed all this time is wrong and then tried to deny it, one of which by representing women in forms of monster, trying to justify that women is what they believed to be.
The creation of women as angels and monsters can be said as a product of patriarchal culture. My belief of which came from the fact that Gubar and Gilbert used a lot of examples taken from the work of male writers, not only to show that male writers dominated female writers, but also to show that it is male writers who have been for so long representing women in the way that is, perhaps, not to their liking or untrue.
 “Similarly, Milton, despite his undeniable misogyny (which we shall examine later), speaks of having been granted a vision of “my late espoused saint,” who
Came vested in all white, pure as her mind.
Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight”
The above quotation taken from Madwoman in the Attic is part of an explanation of Milton’s vision about his late wife and also about angelic woman. In their explanation, Gubar and Gilbert stated “In death, in other words, Milton’s human wife has taken on both the celestial brightness of Mary and (since she has been “washed from spot of childbed taint”) the virginal purity of Beatrice”. In my interpretation the line and the excerpt of Milton’s work show that, mean that by being dead, a woman can attain the seemingly holier form that is angelic, as if death was a way to escape from the less holy state of being human.
“She . . . leads a life of almost pure contemplation. . . .in considerable isolation on a country state. . .a life without external events – a life whose story cannot be told as there is no story. Her existence is not useless. On the contrary . . .she shines like a beacon in a dark world, like a motionless lighthouse by which others, the travelers whose lives do have a story, can set their course. When those involved in feeling and action turn to her in their need, they are never dismissed without advice and consolation. She is an ideal, a model of selflessness and of purity of heart.”
Another example I took from Madwoman in the Attic, which is of Goethe’s, seemingly showing that by becoming such a person described in the excerpt a woman will become a good, an angelic being, but by having “a life of almost pure contemplation”, living “in considerable isolation on a country state. . .a life without external events..” which seems to me a rather passive life, is what women want? By becoming the passive, while men are living more active life.
Besides angels, women also being portrayed as monsters by male writers such as the creation of Errour in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Sidney’s Cecropia, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, Goneril and Regan, alomh with other example mentioned by Gubar and Gilbert in the writing.
So far, perhaps, what I implied is that representation is a political act, because it concerns with gaining power by trying to lose the power of the “opposition” that is if the political means matters concerned with power. Now, what about the act of exposing representation, is that also a political act? I would say yes. That is because, to me, whether representation or the act of exposing it, is not that quite different, for exposing the representation means to help the oppressed, the made-powerless group to gain their power, and I guess this line from Gilbert and Gubar’s writing is in accordance with my argument: “… women were not only writing, they were conceiving fictional worlds in which patriarchal images and conventions were severely, radically revised.”
I believe there are still mistakes and holes I have to fix so that this writing of mine could become better. If I have the chance to update this writing, I would like to examine: the power of the pen (or the importance of literature on representing or influencing), this matter when related to subjectivity, and perhaps other things to come to be added to this writing.

Work cited:
Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. 1979. “The Madwoman in the Attic” in Literary Theory: An Anthology ed. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael (2004, 2nd edition; pg. 812-825). United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.