Disney Does Derrida: John Granger at Lumos 2006; Decons and Red Hens

Intro So, here finally, after much ado, is my write up of John Granger's talk on Rowling as what I will call a "Post-Post-Modern." First, by way of intro there were some cool things in Granger's Intro. The first is the commonly noted Minesweeper thing. When I saw on her site "99 seconds ..." I was like Harry and Ron about Hermione's thoughts on the Half-Blood Prince being Eileen Prince - "No Way!" - I think the best I ever did was 169 seconds, and I was flying (for me). But what Granger notes here is very true, MS is definitely not all about logic - I have come down to things in MS that are straight up 50-50 draws as far as logic goes. According to Granger it is "pattern recognition" and Rowling has pattern expert in her blood (hence the ability to work well in the area of plot construction and ability to have a sort of catalogue of conventions ready to mind to the level of being able to manage not only using up to 12 genres plot-structure types interwoven and also manage to break from each at key points as tip offs for the reader as far as what to pay attention to). The second was the way he described literature as having a "timely" side and a "timeless" side, which I thought was a really good way to encapsulate it because immediately made me think of kronos and kairos but it also brought to mind what I have learned thus far in Biblical studies of the two primary paths to studying the literature: diachronic methods ("timely" methods such as historical setting/criticism, source criticism etc) and synchronic methods ("timeless" methods such as structural analysis etc) Terms of Estrangement The title for this sub-heading is my own for the terms used in what Granger is discussing, which is really, at base, a process of arriving at true communion/unity by way of the necessary prior deconstruction of false models/ideas of unity. In the essay as it appears on the Lumos CD, one of the tenets of Postmodernism Granger lists is "unity is ignorance, pluralism is deliverance" and the way he ties that out with Rowling as a postmodern who even PoMos the PoMos made me think of Aristotle's criticism of Plato's Republic: that the ideal in the Republic seemed to be of a choir all singing exactly the same melody line in unison, when what should be strived for is the harmony of uniquely distinct notes in concert together. So, here are some of the pertinent terms to Postmodernism (Granger recommends reading Lawrence Cahoone's From Postmodernism to Modernism: An Anthology). 1. Metanarrative: This is also called the "Grand Narrative" and the object of PoMo lit is usually to deconstruct the wrong, prevailing metanarrative and offer an alternative in its place. The term "meta" itself means "with or after," and so, for example, "metaphysics" is that which is left to discuss in reality after you get beyond the physics of the material world. Meta-Narrative is then the narrative that is left after the narrative proper is gotten beyond, the narrative that underlies (as prejudices etc) the narrative proper and which the narrative proper shows the deconstruction of. Granger has two examples here, one he drew out more clearly in the talk and the other more clearly in the paper. The first is what I would call the "internal self-perception of the wizarding world" - the four houses as the sort of ground of reality but with no point of deeper unity. The second is what I would call the WW's perception of itself as it does and should function in relation to those outside itself, that is the statue of magical brethren: The WW has this image of itself in the wizard and witch with the goblin , house-elf and centaur all looking adoringly up at it and, as Dumbledore tells Harry ... that statue is a lie. Operating alongside, or maybe rather as part of, these two, is the whole issue of how the wizarding world relates to the muggle world. Granger makes the statement that we are not allowed in the text to be pro-muggle. As I'll note below, I'm not quite sure how to take this and may simply need to absorb his paper more. I don't think it is Rowling's take on muggles per se - Granger uses the example of the campground ticket-taker in GOF and Frank Bryce in GOF as the only positive muggle characters and simply being thrown in for mechanical reasons because we need muggles for Voldy and the death eaters to torture or kill and need to know that it was not something they deserved (as we might feel if somebody tortured Vernon Dursely) ... which I'm not sure is exactly the case. The campground owner, maybe ... but I think we see some actual courage in the case of Frank Bryce. However, Granger may be mainly pointing out that under the metanarratives of the wizarding world, which, as Granger notes, Harry has largely accepted (especially the 4 houses metanarrative in the form of the Slytherin-Gryffindor antithesis), we the audience are tempted to buy those metanarratives and see Frank Bryce as a mere plot mechanics character. 2. Post-Structuralism: "Structures" means the societal institutions which carry and enforce the metanarratives. Thus, in post-modernism, "All these structures, as vehicles of prejudicial and confining metanarratives, are the authorities the spirit of our times tells us to resist." (From Granger's DDD paper) 3. Deconstruction: This is basically what gets done to the metanarratives and sturctures. I n general, in thinking about what I am going to say below, I think (and this is what I think Granger is arguing and Rowling is doing) that some deconstruction is necessary - but just for clarity, as far as I have been able to get a handle on the terms involved, deconstructionism refers specifically to the deconstruction phase only, whereas post-modernism and post-structuralism are more wholistic terms that also encompass the "rebuilding" phase and what type of rebuilding it is to be. When I speak below of "Deconstructionism" or "hard-line/core deconstructionism" I am addressing more what seems to me to be a camp that operates on the assumption that for the most part all language falls apart as a means of true communications and that the only thing you can do is to reconstruct a meaning radically incongruous to the original and use it for your own ends. House Guests and House Elves, Chiasm of books 2 and 6 and Red Hen. This whole thing of deconstructionism is where I wanted to touch on some of what has been discussed regarding Red Hen's theories, especially since "deconstructing" is the term which Pauli used of RH in conversation with me even before we started to get into all this talk of PoMos. This came to the fore of my mind in hearing that RH's theories on Dumbledore concern him being manipulative and conniving (which I admit, I have not gotten around to reading those particular essays myself ... but the details related seem pretty specific ... that DD intended the death eaters to get into the castle while he was absent, thus seriously risking safety of staff and students, and that he even fixed the broken cabinet himself for that end). The example that has come to mind recently in listening to HBP is a chiastic pairing between books 2 and 6 which involves the Dursleys and their houseguests and a house elf. In book 2 you have the Masons and Dobby and in book 6 you have Dumbledore and Kreacher. As for the book 4 center of chiasm, you have Winky and the Crouch family, ie a house elf in relation to her wizard family. In book 2 you have the Dursleys relating to a muggle superior (whom Vernon is sycophantically trying to suck up to) , impacted by the actions of an oppressed house-elf trying to save Harry. By way of the examination of house-elves being dragged by their family into complicity in dark deeds in book 4 you wind up in book 6 with muggle-raised Harry being the owner of a house elf and this being unveiled in the Dursley's sitting room as they are about to be upbraided, this time by a wizard who is their superior. The question is where it goes from there. And that really is the question. Red Hen seems to take the thing of deconstructing the wizarding world prejudice/metanarrative to the extent of including Dumbledore, unequivocally, in the same boat as Fudge, Umbridge and the rest. Thus, going back to that statue in the ministry that was destroyed in book 5, when Dumbledore animates the statues so that they protect Harry and get shattered for his protection ... there you have it, puppet-master Dumbledore the manipulative wizard simply using the downtrodden as cannon fodder and shields. Of course he may also be using simply the "image" (the eikon) that wizards have built of how they think these magical brethren adore them ... and even then I am sure you could read that a certain way if you wanted, that he should have just walked in the day the statue was built and smashed it rather than waiting till now to use it to protect Harry etc etc And so it is with his advice to Harry concerning Kreacher. Kreacher is a house elf (and I liked the feminist reading Granger has here of house elves being roughly allegorical of oppressed house wives) and has dignity ... should he be made against his will to go do work at Hogwarts? The thing is, work is in Kreacher's blood, and he is in a pretty bad state ... he would rather be kicked by Draco Malfoy than spoken to by Hermione Granger. All things considered, including, yes, the practicality of the knowledge he possesses, this is the best course of action. For one it puts him around his own kindred. Granted they have a much different take on things than he does and I'm not sure any of them will persuade him of anything in conversation (the majority tend to steer clear of Dobby and Winky a bit too), but it is probably the best thing for him. In the reality of the Wizarding World as it exists, a house elf without a place to serve is a person without a home ... and Hogwarts under Dumbledore is the best home a house elf could hope to find in the present Wizarding World, precisely because, as Granger notes, he agrees with Hermione that house elves are mistreated (in short, he is willing to deconstruct his own world in hopes of helping it to become a better one). The thing is, the house-elves as a race are one of the "constituted others" that Granger notes as a key component to the metanarrative and structure to be (the action usually involves the salvation of an "other" in the process of deconstructing the metanarrative and sturctures that carry it). But if we take this instance of house elf treatment as condemning Dumbledore and that contributing to a reading of him as always manipulative and a wicked old wizard etc, we have to completely discount or deconstruct the character reactions to him of warm affection by other down-trodden, such as Lupin, Black and Hagrid. Dumbledore himself acknowledges making mistakes in regards to pairing Harry with Snape for occlumency lessons and not taking into account the impact their history will have on their ability to work together on it, and errors in judgment etc But to take it to the level that it sounds like it is being taken in some of the theories talked about, sounds like the deconstructionism is being taken too far, to the level where one has to deconstruct/discount the character responses to DD by other genuinely downtrodden and genuinely good characters (and ones who seem pretty discerning at that, I mean Lupin was able to approach Snape with thankfulness for the WB potion even though Snape exposed him in the end, and if all our "good Snape" theories are right, it would seem that Lupin at the Burrow is more right than he is at the end of HBP) Equal Time for RH Now, as I said, the one place I personally find some of Red Hen's theories more plausible is with regards to the issue of dementors and their role in the under-pinning of the narrative, Ie their role in Tom Riddle Jr coming about as he has and the role of the Ministry of Magic in allying with the dementors. This is place where, I will admit, there is a lot of mystery for me. Some of the things in Granger's paper I am still digesting and not exactly sure yet how to take or where I stand on them. For instance, he notes that it is fascinating that the very targets of some of the criticisms find the works interesting and fascinating. I do think that there can be constructive criticism of particular types and those types take it positively in good-natured humility ... I'm just not sure that the picture of the muggle prime minister in the first chapter of HBP is that much of a criticism when he is used as a foil for Fudge and Scrimgeour ... now those two themselves, however, if you take them as linking up to Blair, that is a criticism. The question of dementors is even more mysterious to me than that of the prime minister. Granger notes that their absence from the fountain sculpture as a "magical brethren" is as conspicuous as the absence of the giants, referring to them as among the "constituted others" class, and Kim Decina speaks of them (in one of the posts here) as "sentient beings." To be honest, I'm really not sure where I stand on this ... I haven't thought about it enough to really say fully. Rowling has spoken of them as the incarnation of despair and depression, which is pretty negative language, but then maybe despair and depression are like deconstruction in the present context ... the need is not to try to "kill" (nor to try to "use" it as the ministry does) it but to work through it to something more positive. Maybe dementors are like orcs, beings perverted from a healthier race (you would have to fill in a lot of back story there, but who knows, I guess you could have Hermione digging up some serious research on dementors in the library) and what the dementors were originally were was a form of empathy (which seems even now to be their main mode of operation, empathy to the level of feeding on psychic energy). Of course, all this also bears on the discussion of bipartite and tripartite anthropology, on which I have arrived at some thoughts that seem to me to make a little more sense. This is the one place in this post that I will get into official "theory." If I remember correctly in the one essay RH spoke of the potterverse definition of death as involving (on her theory) the separation of body and soul and the soul goes through that veil in the Department of Mysteries. The separation of body and soul is the traditional medieval definition of death but it would seem a bit problematic for all souls to have to go through that particular veil (I suppose it could happen, but I just wonder, if that is the "main" veil how the English MOM came to have it rather than say, the Russian etc). I tend to think of it more in terms of, well, the terms "intra-cosmic" and "extra-cosmic." One of St Bonaventure's criticisms of Aristotle's "unmoved mover" as adequate for thinking about God was that it is not a properly "supernatural" concept, it is solely "intra-cosmic," within this cosmos. If the potterverse definition of death were the separation of body and soul and then simply that the soul leaves this cosmos (the "potterverse proper," as it were), the veil could be simply a special pathway to that "extra-cosmic beyond" - not necessarily the only pathway though. I think it was Kim Decina who was pondering in a comment that the Wizarding World at least does not seem to ... but the dementors kiss seems to me to be worse than death, which is exactly how those such as Lupin describe it. In fact it seems to me like it might be a lot like a Horcrux, at least as far as going "extra-cosmic" is concerned. In other words, in an HC the soul still has an anchor in the material world and death cannot happen because a part of the soul is still anchored in the material world (my own reading is that it is not so much a quantitative balance thing, but rather any part of the soul still having an anchor to material ... at least that seems to me to be Slughorn's explanation of the matter in HBP) . In other words, what I am "theorizing" is that just as memory removal with a wand does not remove the memory entirely, so the DK causes a basic separation of body and soul but, because the souls is still anchored in this world (intra-cosmic) in the dementor, some "residual" soul is left animating the body mildly (kind of like the left over twitching legs when you kill a daddy-long-legs spider or a wasp). Of course there is the deal that you are left with memory in the remaining body, that the self-reflexive capacity is left in the part tied to the body ... bet then, from what I remember one would be left not with all memory or sense of self, only the bad memories. In terms of what I ramble a little bit below here, about hell, it is an interesting question, the language in the Gospels of "losing your soul" and the question of "self-awareness" in hell ... of course a lot of that would be speculation and I hope that I never have any empirical data on it. Now, there are other questions that arise ... like how would you get a soul back out of a dementor so that natural death could occur by the soul being released to go "extra-cosmic"? Kill the Dementor? How? and is that even moral (as Kim Decina would say it is not, and Granger sounds like he might agree ... and they very well may be exactly right)? Could you convert a dementor to give up the souls it has sucked out? And How would you do this on a wholescale level? Rowling's potterverse has Hope, and hope is an eschatological concept, and the place beyond the veil may be "extra-cosmic" but the potterverse itself does not really have the eschatological proper in it (as does Tolkien's Arda, where it speaks of a time at the end when the elves will go from the halls of Mandos and Valinor to join mortal men in where they went in death ... I am not saying this is a bad thing of Rowling's world, just a difference from Tolkien's world) ... so you couldn't really speak, as of yet (and within the 7 book framework, since it seems the series will end with Hogwarts still operating with one of Harry's classmates returning as a teacher) of a "coming time" when all will be set right for sure (Ie all the souls released from dementors and all ... Luna does speak of "seeing them again" but this can be on an individual basis, at death, rather than a general resurrection). In the end I guess all I am saying is that I see possibilities in RH's dementor theory. I'm not sure what all of the ramifications are ... but it seems to me to have possibilities not wholly foreign to the Potterverse as Rowling has written it thus far, and without completely deconstructing it. (Actually what the after existence of one who has been kissed most reminds me of is Hell ... the "loss of one's soul," in parable language ... interesting questions there ... will have to ponder that some more). The Spiral Now, the bringing up of the whole dementors issue was not meant to be just using the RH matter as a springboard to present more arguments for my reading of dementors - there is a directional issue in question and in debate with the more hard-line deconstructionist camp. The way I had Deconstructionism explained to me in Lit Crit class my last semester of undergrad was using the example of a spiral. 2 persons stand on either side of a circle and one tosses out a piece of communication to the other. The "thing" under discussion is at the center of the circle and the circle then becomes a spiral. Which way the spiral goes is the issue of debate with hardcore Decon. What one person says will naturally conjure up additional thing for the other, and they will toss these back, and then in the back and forth the two start to move either inwards (as a traditional/realist understanding would say) or outwards (as a hardcore deconstructionist would say) on the spiral. A good traditionalist understanding of the movement would not say that you ever get to the center of the circle, but I suspect that the attempt to "sell" or con people with the promise of having made it there is one of the strongest driving factors behind the appeal of hardcore deconstructionism. It was either RASHI (Rabbi Schlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105) or Nachmanides (1194-1270 ... and if it was Nachmanides he was probably just expanding what he got from RASHI, everybody for a while after RASHI in Rabbinic Biblical commentary was basically commenting on RASHI) who noted that the Hebrew term "BeThoke" which means "in the midst" in the paradise narrative of Genesis 2, is a term of circumspection or circumlocution. It does not mean "in the middle" in a way that you could pin down the exact location - there is a mystery to it, which is the heart of the sacred. (For example, my material above cannot explain why vapormort would not just dissipate the way any other HC soul portion would dissipate when the bond was broken with the physical object, so it must be as Felicity thinks, that there is something unique to the original remaining "core," as it were). So even in a traditional realist understanding of communication being a moving inward on the circle does not presume that we ever, on this side of the veil, reach the dead center ... but it does believe we can get somewhere on an inward progression that is a true communication. Hardcore deconstruction seems to take the path that what Granger calls "postmodern realism" and what I will call below "congruous reconstructionism" is not possible - the text, or any piece of communication, cannot work as communication so the only thing really possible is to deconstruct it and build something wholly other, whatever suits your needs. The issue of discussing tripartite and bipartite anthropology and all that and whether Rowling is one or the other and whether or not the textual evidence on the dementors leans this way or that and all that, is an example of the spiral moving in or out. What is going on I think is that analogies in literature always break down, no matter what. One can look at that as proof of the idea that the spiral always moves outward and pretty soon "the center cannot hold" (I forget who said that though). I choose to take it along the lines of RASHI on the trees, that the analogy breaks down because what is at the center is the mystery of the human person, and you can't pin that type of mystery down so tightly. I of course still have my reading and thoughts that as far as "parts" go the bipartite is closer and that affects my reading of the way Rowling uses the language and suggests to my mind "bipartite" explanations for the phenomena in Rowling's works (since I do believe them to be, not "inspired" and inerrant descriptions of the way things technically are, but very creative images that convey something about the mysterious truth of our existence and life as human beings). I think a hardcore deconstructionist would say that what is at the heart of all human speech is continual antithetical rebellion. There is no real communication and no "congruous" reconstruction ... there is only ever oppression and rebellion in the form of deconstructing the oppressing metanarratives and structures, and then history repeating itself. Rowling as Recon This is where Granger comes in with the idea of "Postmodern Realism." The whole thing is that that idea of a spiral moving outward and the center falling apart is itself a metanarrative, and the fact is that you cannot operate without a metanarrative. The hardcore PoMo line would agree with the fact that you cannot but leads to all metanarratives being equal and the whole thing simply a continual power struggle, whereas "postmodern realism" sees the possibility of a real unity or communion that can be reached that is closer to a real truth, which is where the whole thing of love as the deeper magic comes in. In the end I think the school will survive (as indicated in that interview between POA and GOF, that somebody will come back in the end as a teacher) and with its four houses, but that there will be a new unity. One of the things I liked in Granger's presentation of the material at Lumos was the idea of PoMo-ing the PoMos. At first this might seem like a "stick it to 'em" mentality but I don't think there is necessarily a call for anything combative in it. It is basically the same thing that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) called for from Biblical Critical Scholars at one point ... to be even handed and apply the same tools of analyses to what goes into their own viewpoint as they apply "what is behind and after" the Biblical authors. Maurice Blondel was a well-noted French theologian writing on the issue of transmission and interpretation of tradition, who was noted for saying that you cannot ever get to that "completely objective" standpoint, you will always be who you are and where you are and have those particular presuppositions from your age working in your thinking, and the best way to move towards truth is to admit those and work as best you can at seeing what might be true in them and what you might need to strip away as a bad prejudice (in terms of "Tradition" they speak of positive developments co-existing alongside "deficit traditions" ... the latter of which would be a another name for "wrong-headed metanarratives"). This is basically along the lines of what Granger is saying in the beginning of his paper when he talks about first starting to ask the question of whether Jo is a PoMo, and thinking "well, how can she not be?" - just by the age she lives in. The Name by which I would call Granger's "Postmodern realism" is "Congruous Reconstructionism" (as opposed to hardcore deconstructionism). We cannot simply return to the "realism" thought of before the Enlightenment and the empiricism and skepticism of David Hume et al. The path ahead involves a reconstruction after the deconstruction, but I would say it involves a congruity with that tradition (I am here just expounding my own thoughts on Granger's, I think he would agree but just didn't put it in exactly this language/frame). For me it is part of that whole thing of how "Grace builds on nature." It can't be that nature simply remains basically unchanged (aka Pelagianism) and it also cannot be that Grace completely deconstructs nature and rebuilds, from the pieces, something unrecognizable. It is a "congruous reconstructionism" (albeit, in the case of Grace and nature, a radical one). In the end you cannot go back past Kant and Nietzsche, Derrida and Foucault - simply go back to the age of medieval Thomism. You cannot simply apply Matthew Arnold's approach of "beauty and truth" (or "truth and light" or "beauty and light" or some combination thereof - it's been a while since I read it) from his Essay in Criticism (1865, 1868) without dealing with the PoMo question. In the end you must come back to Arnold's way of thinking or lose the story as a story enjoyable by a human being, but you must deal with Deconstructionism etc. All of this has happened and there has to be some faith in the possibility moving forward to some real truth (I personally think that the 7 books, in addition to fitting chiastic structure and alchemical structure, also fit a "4 and 3" structure that loosely fits the cardinal and theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love ... and that in the building up to Harry's ability to love as central in the 7th book at least faintly echoes, "but the greatest of these is love." I think it was Aquinas who talked about how in heaven Faith and Hope will be transformed into knowledge and possession, but love will always be love ... or something like that - I'm paraphrasing loosely from memory) And this is where all of it kind of comes to a head. If the deconstruction of the metanarrative reaches the level of deconstructing the narrative proper to the point that everything your "average" reader gets is wrong, its gone to far and is not able to function as a positive literary communication. If we believe that Dumbledore is so wise that he cannot ever make mistakes, we have bought too far into a metanarrative that even DD himself is opposed to, but if we go to the level of seeing every bit of sympatheia and positive emotion that arises towards him as misguided, the deconstruction has gone to far, as Pauli said, it ruins the story as a story. If the "meaning" discovered by the deconstruction and reconstruction is so alien to that in the first reading experience of a reader who has genuine openness to truth, then something has gone wrong and you have to wonder why even start reading in the first place. In the language that Ratzinger used to the Biblical Scholars, you have to have sympatheia with the material - part of learning from stories, or maybe rather "being enriched," is that there has to be something in the experience of that first reading, where you read it because you get caught up in the characters and their stories, that the "critical meaning" hooks up with... which is what I was saying above about the warm regard that Lupin and Hagrid and others have for Dumbledore and that is part of the building of the warm regard we the reader have for him. That is one of Granger's notes on the whole PoMo thing is not having a "moral," being very wary of anything that smells even remotely like "preaching." One of the things I think about it is that narrative has its own distinct way of relating truth, and it is distinct from the way a discursive reasoning essay does it, and much confusion and bad thinking come from trying too much to force narrative truth into discursive form. Gordon Wenham as a book on OT studies along this line called Story as Torah - meaning NOT "story as a vehicle for moral law" but narrative itself as a distinct mode of communicating the deeper truth on which law should be based.