American Latency

The proceeding is the final essay of my extended undergraduate career. It is a Critical Reflection on some of the themes of an English Literature course entitled, Topics in Literature circa 1700-1850: American Unconcious.  I think the title of the course alone, if you know my thought processes, will easily guide you to what I believe about America's "unconsciousness." The prompt for the critical reflection was to suggest a work, any genre, any type, from any time period to add to the class syllabus. I got an A in the class.

American Latency

Surface readings are necessary but there is always deeper understanding to be gained. Our actions should not be excused because of what is latent because we do not truly know what we are looking for, we may not know (how can we know?) what is being concealed. How can you balance what is presumed latent with what is empirical? Still, undoubtedly the human mind is affected by all sorts of stimuli some we can see, a lot we cannot. For example, when I think about what is latent and how it can affect us, I always think to myself “they add that smell to gasoline.” Can you imagine if someone wasn’t genius enough to add smell to gasoline? Even worse, what else are we inhaling that is so small that we cannot see it and also does not have a smell? Or even worse, are our bodies being drowned in WiFi, Bluetooth and other electronic signals? What is the true effect of technology on our physical bodies and our minds, not just the mind contextually but physically? The universe is not just our senses or what we perceive. History is not what we perceive either. Reality exists in our minds but it also exists without us, I believe. Reality is a self-sustaining life-generating machine that keeps turning out beings with the consciousness to perceive it, or at least parts of it. I loved this class because it explored what is latent in history in similar ways. What is not being said? What was not written on the page?

            

Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I Woman?” was a very interesting work to add to the syllabus. I think it was there because of what is latent in that question. Truth is a former slave, a black woman, and although white women had very restricted rights socially and civically, they were not treated the same as and still are not treated the same as black women. For example, not only were black women slaves and servants but they were also test subjects for early “gynecologists” who used the bodies of slave women for the health of white women’s vagina.

What is latent in Sojourner's Truth question is that race trumps womanhood. There is no camaraderie in womanhood or being a woman because black people as a whole were assigned and deemed inferior. It has constantly been attempted to give the automatic credibility of claiming something as "scientific" to find some innate inferiority in black people and could not find it. White society did not and does not separate themselves from each other just as they do not separate black people from each other, black men, women, and children are all treated the same.

            

Furthermore, Sojourner Truth did not write down her speech. Her words should be attributed to a poet named Frances Gage. This can be likened to our study of authorship with Washington Irving’s Sketchbook, Irving is Francis Gage and Truth is Geoffrey Crayon. History is written as well with similar authorship. The victors get to destroy the history of others then rewrite history with the punishment of their conscious guilt, which can manifest in hauntings, or madness or mental illness, as if murdering millions of people and attempting to justify it is not a signifier of some very degenerate and deep mental illness.

            

The work I would like to suggest is Francis Cress Welsing’s The Isis Papers. The Isis Papers is a very controversial work and I do understand that. Some of what Dr. Welsing writes will be offensive or shocking as is proven by its reception from some academics and critics. I propose this because the work is strictly involved in attempting to explain race from what is latent in the dominant American society, which is an amalgamation of many European cultures and ethnicities, cultures grouped by the classification white. The Isis Papers is a very strong perspective from the view of the oppressed. Dr. Welsing essentially argues that the oppressor is insecure so that is why the oppressor must oppress. They created a position in the world to defend and built a society and world that would ensure that position.

Dr. Welsing’s work can be used as a rhetorical tool. Why are groups of people in such gross competition with each other? What are they attempting to attain and maintain? Colonization and Imperialism were definitely about amassing, hoarding resources but there is an underlying reason as to why the European must horde the world’s resources. Also, I would like to add that black people especially in early American Literature have to read so much about a terrible history (I guess we don't have to take these classes, maybe we should have been exterminated so we could not do so?). Then listen to attempts to justify and then exalt why history as experienced was experienced. How condescending “I’m sorry we murdered and enslaved all of your people and killed your culture and language but we feel really really bad about it, in fact, I’m brooding in my mansion right now, I’m haunted by it. I’m going to write about it. I see a ghost!” I think The Isis Papers should be considered in the pantheon of great postcolonial works because of how it perceives a colonial power.

            

I think the course would be different because it would interject something latent about the behavior of the author that needs to have a story to tell. Dr. Welsing is a woman from an oppressed race using some of the same reasoning and logic as the oppressors, with some very compelling arguments. The oppressors have probably hundreds of thousands of pages and millions of hours of research and criticism about black people. Not to mention scientific racism, phrenology, and eugenics have thousands upon thousands of pages dedicated to what is “inherent” in black people and people in general with the European always on top for some reason. The Isis Papers would also be a black woman in her own words asserting her thought processes and not having them prescribed to her.