Letting Go of My Established Principles

The article that most struck me this week was Suzanne Bost’s “Doing the Hemisphere Differently.” Bost claims, “It’s hard work for those of us educated in the US to unlearn the narratives and definitions that govern US academic studies” (235). I think part of what was so disorienting for me last week was the sense that I had to “unlearn” so much of what I was previously taught. I thought it was important to include texts by marginalized writers within the field of American studies, but I hadn’t even considered looking beyond the boundaries of the United States to Spanish literature written in Cuba, for example. I wanted to move beyond the canon, but at the same time I really liked reading the canonical works. I was having a hard time reconciling everything I love about what I’ve already learned with all of the new compelling ideas I was encountering. However, as Bost (along with the rest of the writers) argues, “we must be willing to surrender our own narrow perspectives to wider and longer views” (236). As hard as it is for me, I agree, especially because I don’t think there’s one objective truth or reality. We need multiple perspectives to have a more holistic understanding of American history. The stories that the white European settlers tell are of course different from the stories that the Native Americans tell. Yet, Bost challenged me to think about perspective in another way entirely. Multiple perspectives don’t have to be locked in time; instead, our multiple perspectives can be taken from across time. She explains that “we in the present bear the imprint of the past, but this imprinting is not linear or irreversible,” which is illustrated by Chicana/o writers creating “alternative pasts that are more useful than the real” (237). Not only did Bost get me thinking in a new way, she also showed one example of how texts by minority writers can enrich American studies—these Chicana/o writers bring something to American literature that’s entirely different from the norm.

Bost’s attention to difference rather than similarity was especially provocative. Last week’s readings got me thinking mostly about how we could link seemingly disparate texts together, seeking for connections by which we could compare them. Contact zones imply difference, but I wanted to seek hidden similarities. However, Bost highlights the importance of embracing difference (while admitting her postmodern bias). She argues, “Focusing on shared terms might never get past the dynamics of imperialism and resistance to imperialism, missing local realities and perceptions not defined by the empire” (238). In line with our class discussion last week, Bost’s argument articulates one way in which the “transnational” turn just reinforces American exceptionalism. Even if we read “outside” texts that we can compare to our US texts, we aren’t really fixing the problem. We have to be willing to seek out texts that at first glance may not seem to fit in with our US texts at all. In spite of, and perhaps because of, their differences, these types of texts will give us a fuller picture of American history. In her last paragraph, Bost asks, “What if we were to jettison familiar methods like genealogy or comparison and approach the Americas through collage or dialogue?” I’ve always loved the idea of a dialogue because it implies two equal parties bringing what they can to the table. The idea of “dialogue” is part of what made me embrace Porter’s “quadruple set of relations” last week—I saw her putting continents in dialogue with one another while keeping things organized. I’m normally big on organization and fitting things into neat little categories, but I’m going to try to let that go to see where it can take me in this class. We don’t need neatly organized continents in dialogue, we need individual texts in dialogue, or maybe in a collage as Bost suggests. We can even embrace the messy and incommensurable.