Dissociation
One of the particularly striking passages from the first section of Londoners is the scene in which Galahad talks to his hand and blames "Black" for all of his problems, the pain and the frustration he experiences. He personifies the color black in his mind as a seperate identity, dissociating himself from it at the same time; does this amount to a claim that he is 'not black,' that black in fact is a form of 'other'? The pain of isolation/alienation drives Galahad to his 'theory'; by implication, this might also be seen as a metaphoric reference to 'non-white' identity and the dilemma it encounters. Are displaced/alienated cultural identities forced to negotiate their displacement/diaspora via dissociation with integral elements of identity (be they cultural, personal, spiritual, etc.)? There seems to be the implicit suggest that this is indeed the case.
posted by Nate at 1:41 PM
3 Comments:
I was intrigued by this passage as well, and I think this is an interesting idea. In the instance where Galahad gets ready for his date (85-86), he changes his entire appearance: hair, face, clothes, shoes. He looks completely different. His fashion sense can transform him into someone else, but he's still dark-skinned. People can learn to blend into a culture, change their speech, even adapt in their religion to match the dominant culture, but the most difficult things to change are nearly always the last to be accepted.
Yeah, I think you're right, Nathan: this is definitely a striking and important passage. It's almost like by "dissociating" the color from himself he's reifying racism and the "botheration" it causes: it becomes a kind of "thing" that isn't fair to his identity and humanity. I like how Hannah then connects the passage with the earlier moment and the emphasis on the mutability/constructedness (vs. the essential nature?) of Galahad's (anyone's) identity.
The hand scene also seems especially resonant given that it immediately follows that episode Matt brought up in class when Galahad encounters the little child and her (?) mother. The child is merely curious but the mother's reaction turns that curiosity into something far less innocent. The mother is trying to be polite, I suppose, but by assuming her child has insulted Galahad by referring to him as black she's revealing her own complicity in perpetuating that "botheration."
There's some interesting tension going on throughout the novel between this kind of dissociation and a kind of racial self-assertion. Galahad's got this powerful desire (as witnessed in this passage) to fit in with the society that he's currently inhabiting and become a full part of it, recognized in every sense as such (which, in his time and place, would mean switching races). But at the same time, everyone makes fun of Harris for completely denying his background.
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