"Interaction," "integration" and "intercommunication" were key words uttered at a reading to celebrate the opening of the John Hope Franklin Center this past Monday. But what does that mean, exactly?
To answer that question, the Center chose two perfectly p.c. writers to read from their new works. Ariel Dorfman and Yvette Christianse are two trendy intellectuals who are professors in the English department at Duke and Fordham, respectively. Both are members of the "in" crowd because their work covers all the right topics-race, class and gender-and their speech incorporates all the -ism's and -ocracies necessary to their profession, and even invents new ones.
Here's how these readings work: First comes the typical congratulatory intro: "No matter how many times we die our hair pink and no matter how many black and gray articles of clothing we wear, we will never live up to the amazingism and fabulocracy that these intellectuals ontologically symbollize." When the actual speakers finally make it to the podium and finish grinning from all the unctuous adulation, they put earnest world-saving looks in their eyes and try to get down to business.
Writers like Dorfman and Christianse do deserve praise, for they have a wealth of sights and experiences to draw on. Christianse, the first to read, was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, during apartheid and spent the first half of her life fighting the regime by passing out banned books.
With the experiences and courage she obviously has, you'd think Christianse could speak "-ism"-free. Every other word from her mouth, though, was "colonialism," "post-colonialism" and my favorite, "pigmentocracy." Why not simply call apartheid and white supremacy by their names?
However, as Christianse read her best known poem, "Castaway," her work spoke for itself. Her writing sings as it tells the story of various characters and their experiences on the island of St. Helena, just off the coast of Africa. Christianse's new book, Sylla, parallels the plot of Toni Morrison's Beloved: A mother kills her son in order to save him from the toils of slavery. Though the setting is different, the narrative's power is the same.
Dorfman's history is equally impressive. He was born in Chile, then lived in New York for 10 years, then returned to Chile until forced to flee in 1973 after a coup ousted then-President Salvador Allende. Dorfman has written numerous plays, novels and essays, including the well-known Death and the Maiden and recent Speak Truth To Power. On Monday, he read from his next book, Blake's Therapy, scheduled for publication this spring. The book is about an executive for a multi-national corporation that is forced to downsize because of an economic crisis, and his ensuing mental breakdown. The section Dorfman read was a quick, witty dialogue that made you wish the book was coming out sooner.
The initial impression of works tinged with "issues of race, gender, multiculturalism, and colonialism," may be a positive one to some-but do those phrases give anyone a clue what the books are about or why they should read them? Why must clichéd terms cloak perfectly good books, just because they are about these themes? Do trendy themes make these books readable, or does their writing? It leads one to wonder what happened to writers writing for the sake of their own work instead of conforming to the multi-inter-pseudo-psycho-epistemologization of speech. Why must "intellectuals," whomever they may be, repeat useless catchphrases just to assert their identities?
Dorfman and Christianse don't need this sort of pedagogical puffery. Both their books are terrific reads. They do not need -isms. If you are looking for flowing poetry with a musical sound, or terrific, suspenseful adventure with political commentary, buy these books. But please, skip their readings.
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