Thursday, April 17, 2008
add'l blog post for April 17th
Going back to Tuesday’s discussion about post modernism, a critique on it, and its relation to Dogeaters. The critique as I understood it was based on the notion that in post modernism, the high and low are placed next to each other with no emphasis of one over the other. Therefore, post modernism erases the chance for radical change because nothing is worse than the next, so there is no place for upward movement. Basically, I just want to try to work out this critique in relation to Dogeaters for myself. The ways that I noticed the high and the low placed next to each other were for example: the use of Mallat, President McKinley’s address, newspapers such as the Metro Manila Daily. Basically the use of outside texts to supplement and reinforce her fictional novel. While these texts are separate chapters that are placed next to the other chapters, Hagedorn uses the radio show “love letters” within the chapters. This is another example of the elevated and lowered in that the characters in some ways idolize the characters and actors of these shows and they are used in the novel’s character’s lives as an escape and as a model. Thirdly, within the narrative itself there is the juxtaposition of socio-economic class such as Severo and say Romeo. So while I haven’t finished the novel yet, from what I have read thus far, I think that this post modern novel does allow the chance of radical change at the risk of, like Seung-Hye said in class, possibly becoming commercialized like E. San Juan fears for Bulosan. I don’t think that its post modernist qualities take away its chance of warranting radical change. Rather, I think that the various juxtapositions allow for an interesting means of aiming towards change. The use of something more commonly known with the ficional stories of Hagedorn. However, what I might say is that Dogeaters’ audience is not a very wide range of people. Rather, I think it is targeted towards the highly educated, in colleges like ours, and doesn’t this take away from its ability to bring about radical change? Or maybe not even about who the targeted audience is, but who are the people who actually read Hagedorn. This is something not just aimed at Hagedorn but many different writers.
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1 comment:
Dear Hana,
I think you raise some really interesting questions about audience in your post. To push your analysis further, I have a couple of questions:
1) I think your point that Dogeaters has a target audience of the highly educated is a really interesting one. What are some of the features of the book that make you think so?
At a conference I attended, one of the presenters mentioned how Chang-Rae Lee, a prominent Asian American author, was quoted as saying that his critical works of Asian American literature are actually read mostly by "middle-class white women."
Frank Chin also clearly has his own ideas as to who is reading Asian American literature and to what ends.
What do you think readers outside of Hagedorn's target audience would be missing if they were to read the book?
2) I also think it's really interesting that you question the possibility of radical change by having a book that caters to the educated. What kind of dialogue do you think Dogeaters opens with the audience? Do you think Hagedorn motivates her readers to act? Or do you think that she only identifies the problems?
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