The pastness of the past, and its presence.

In Archive Fever, Derrida writes that

. . . the question of the archive is not, we repeat, a question of the past. It is not the question of a concept dealing with the past that might already be at our disposal or not at our disposal, an archivable concept of the archive. It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow. The archive: if we want to know what that will have meant, we will only know in times to come. Perhaps. (36)

Interesting, then, that it is not until page 527 that Saleem seems to bring his narrative to the present moment, making promises about tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

But this passage leads me back to the last paragraphs of Midnight's Children, where Saleem asserts, "I shall have to write the future as I have written the past, to set it down with the absolute certainty of a prophet. But the future cannot be preserved in a jar; one jar must remain empty . . . What cannot be pickled, because it has not taken place, is that I shall reach my birthday[. . .]" (532).

Is Saleem's treatment of the future, whether as "prophecy" or as emblematized by the empty jar, what Derrida had in mind when he said that the question of the archive is "a question of the future"?

the imperial archive

I have been thinking about the relationship between Richard's The Imperial Archive and Rushdie's Midnight's Children. It is a little odd to be commenting on a piece that involves an analysis of Imperial Britain and comparing it to a narrative about a country transitioning from the rule of Imperial Britain to its own rule.

Here are some of the highlights from our discussion of Richards' piece:

• The British Empire created the most data-intensive empire in history through the unification of knowledge.
• Imperialism, then, becomes the control of knowledge.
• Knowledge is both positive and comprehensive for this system.
• Power draws its breath from knowledge (p. 8).
• Information and Imperialism are connected.

So what does this have to do with Rushdie?

Everything!

Rushdie's piece is written as a fictional memoir of the events surrounding India's separation from Imperial rule. Simply by writing this piece, Rushdie may be making the following comments concerning imperialism.

• The data-intensiveness of the unification of knowledge is flawed because it excludes.
• The control of knowledge only suggests that knowledge can be contained.
• Knowledge (positive and comprehensive) cannot take into account narrative.
• India/Rushdie, by creating knowledge in a way different from the imperial archive, gains power.
• Information and imperialism are connected. The story must be told.

Note the direct relationship between these points and Richards' points. Are these accurate?

Midnight's Structure

How can we understand Midnight’s Children in light of Foucault’s understanding of the archive? Let’s start with Foucault.

Foucault considers the construction of the archive from the bottom – the base of structure that organizes and creates order. In the introduction to The Order of Things, Foucault states:

[...]I am concerned here with observing how a culture experiences the propinquity of things, how it establishes the tabula of their relationships and the order by which they must be considered. (xxiv)

He writes here of understanding the archaeology of culture, that which is used to create order and thus understanding within a culture. The tabula is the ground from which items can be compared/contrasted/discriminated, thus establishing order and meaning. In this exploration of archaeologies, Foucault turns to two works of fiction as exemplars of both the arbitrary construction of this order and the way in which it is transmitted. In Order, he begins by considering Borges’ Chinese encyclopedia with its seemingly odd categorization of creatures, emphasizing the archive as arbitrary and constructed. In Language, counter-memory, practice, he explicates Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony, paying particular attention to the construction of the fantastic and the positioning of Temptation among, within, and encompassing other books/works. Here, he considers the construction of the library through repetition:

Only the assiduous clamor created by repetition can transmit to us what only happened once. The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from book to book, in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries; it is born and takes shape in the interval between books. It is a phenomenon of the library. (91)

Thus repetition also works as establishing a ground for order, reasserting events or concepts to create new meaning in the spaces between.

Foucault is concerned throughout with the places where things touch, the intervals that exist between theses spaces, and how these delineations then create order and meaning for a culture. Juxtaposing this structure with Rushdie’s novel both establishes and validates Saleem Sinai’s assertions, offering clarity – a map or path – through the winding narrative.

Determining the archeology of culture is precisely the task of Saleem Sinai as narrator of Midnight's Children. His story is quite literally that of India, both in his telling (allowing ownership and shaping of the story) and in the intertwining of his life (and the lives of his family members) with the political developments of his country. This order is established in the first lines of the novel when Sinai outlines several important incidents in the story of his life - his birth at the stroke of midnight; the synchronicity of this with the rebirth of India as an independent nation; the importance of his nose, nicknames, and snot. This moment passes almost immediately into the past, with the retelling of his grandfather's history, again, with special emphasis on the nose.

In and of itself, this is not a terribly unusual beginning for any story; in Foucauldian terms, though, this lays the first table, establishing some categories for understanding the novel. Autobiographical stories are also often begun with the very beginning - the moment of birth, perhaps even the circumstances of that moment, which later serve to reveal something of someone's life. But this structure is repeated throughout the novel, both through the recurring themes (of noses, progeny, snot) and in the literal structure of preview (and later repetition of these important points).

Thus the winding narrative which constantly folds back upon itself is, in a Borges-ish way, very much an ordered archive.

Please believe that I am falling apart.

Do you think that this is what Saleem had in mind? (via BoingBoing)

Rushdie and Borges: threads, trust, and whatnot

Rushdie carries and weaves threads across 500+ pages and Borges does so predominantly within chapters, but both are amazing at setting up 'ethereal' threads: ideas, concepts, issues, or statements that don’t physically exist in other parts of the story but have perpetual effects on the way one reads or interprets. For example, in the beginning of Midnight’s Children Saleem says, “I must commence the business of remaking my life” (4). So, from the outset we know there is the possibility of this not being entirely truthful—that he is “remaking” things. But another line, “In a kind of collective failure of imagination, we learned that we simply could not think our way out of our pasts” (131) implies a sense of unavoidable truth…indicating that he (they) would have it different if they could. Similarly, the opening story in Labryinths is about a conspiracy to create a fictional world and make it part of the “real”. Plus, the story of The Garden of Forking Paths tells us about a book/labyrinth. Both give us uncertainties to work with throughout their texts, perhaps knowing that the uncertainty would/could point us to some other understanding.

In addition to these things, Borges’ narrators as well as Rushdie’s Saleem have similar styles—a perpetual uncertain trustworthiness. You want to believe them, need to believe them, but know you can’t believe them in totality. That uncertainty, and their awareness of it, produces similar authorial tones.

But more than that, they have direct correlations; in the chapter Funes the Memorious Borges writes, “The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things” (92 in my text). This seems to me to echo the actions of the narrator of Rushdie’s work: Saleem, always trying to put off things—to put off telling parts of the story—as well as his own awareness of immortality. Plus, Funes creates his own system for classifying all the information he takes in—one which is not based on any preexisting system—and Saleem works similarly once he gains his incredible sense of smell (one that allows him to categorize smells that not everyone can smell—i.e., anger).

Any number of connections can be drawn between these two authors and we can examine their works in a variety of lights, but it seems to me that what stares at me the most is that I’m not sure how (or from what lens) to approach these two texts. They tend to work in the spaces between literature, history, philosophy, social commentary, and such. It’s a merging of styles to create.

Authorial Trust...can/should we?

I made it in, again, finally!!!

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I think the most important (and profound) statement in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children occurs on page 242:
‘I told you the truth […] Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.’
This passage, along with many others moments throughout, put us in a position of questioning the reliability of our narrator. On the one hand, we should trust the narrative because it is a truth—a memory’s truth, but a truth nonetheless. The narrator is not trying to deceive us, but rather positioning himself as being aware of the potential faults of memory, or story, or autobiography, or history.

On the other hand, the fact that it is ‘creat[ing] its own reality’ should raise caution flags. Lines like ‘Sometimes legends makes reality, and become more useful than the facts’ (47) and ‘because in autobiography, as in all literature, what actually happened is less important than what the author can manage to persuade his audience to believe’ (310) tend to lead one onto a path of skepticism. The narrator leaves these types of moments, along with open admission of mistakes in his ‘history’ or ‘chronology’ of events, and in doing so the trust is shaken.

The question for me, then, becomes does it matter? As we read this narrative—whether as historical commentary, social criticism, fiction, autobiography, philosophy, allegory, and so on—is trust necessary to take away what one needs? More importantly, is the uncertainty of trust exactly what the narrator needs? If we trusted him completely, would we possibly expect less meandering and uncertainty in the writing? If we didn’t trust him, would we need more moments of ‘proof?’

A Nose by any other name

Rushdie's imagery of the nose throughout the text Midnight's Children really struck me.. I read this novel not seeing it as an archive but rather looking for evidence of archives within it. The first thing that stuck out to me in a "triumphal arch" (p. 8) was the nose of Aadam Aziz. This was not the first reference to the olfactory organ. On the first page, Saleem Sinai, our narrator, lists among his nicknames "Snotnose" and "Sniffer"; and finishes the first paragraphe with "And I couldn't even wipe my own nose at the time." This imagery carries throughout much of the work as we see Saleem's history being told. Thick descriptions of his predecessors reveal that this nose is "a nose to start a family on" (p. 8) because the shape of the nose was an unmistakable of having been born a descendant of Aadam Aziz. This kind of archive, an archive of genetics and physicality, is one that we found our histories upon. As his mother commented at his birth: "look, janum, the poor fellow, he's got his grandfather's nose" (p. 131).
This nose resurfaces throughout the text and grounds Saleem Sinai's connection to and belonging to his family. This has interesting implications for the book which is about the senses in the physical and extra-ordinary ways.
The nose of Saleem Sinai, we come to discover, is not the nose of Aadam Aziz, but rather of a French grandmother from whose family Saleem was switched at birth. Two archives brought together and similar enough that they could be switched without recognition - even by the two sets of parents upon whom such deception was committed.
And yet, Saleem still identifies this nose with that of his grandfather. For him its similarity is such that the truth behind the archive does not matter as much as the archive itself, or what a reading of the archive itself might imply.