Demons in My Archive (and the Classroom)
Megha Baikadi
985 archives and feelings
Dr Alexis Lothian
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Writing Assignment Two, 10/8/2013
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¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Choose an object you’ve been drawn to write scholarly work about. What work does this do as part of a canonical or extra-canonical archive? Why does it matter? [reference at least two of the readings, 1000-2000 words.]
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¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Of all of the works I’ve gloried over, that have touched my heart and engaged my mind, the one I’ve kept coming back to in my scholarly work is Erik Flint’s Mother of Demons. I’ve only written the one paper on it, but every time I’ve planned a syllabus for a class, it always ends up on there (at the expense of quite a few other good and useful works). There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from my own preferences and understandings, to the kinds of questions I would like to raise with students, and a way of thinking about theory (I think my own actual theory has a lot more to do with the Way in the book, moreso than any of the actual theory-pieces I’ve read).
¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 3 A brief summary, because I know the novel isn’t necessarily familiar to everyone… The setup of the storyline begins with a spaceship, and a crash landing on an alien world, leaving a handful of survivors. Without getting into too much detail, the plot follows the struggle to survive and establish a society. The natives of that world are profoundly alien, with social structures (gender, politics, religion, and other kinds of ‘normalcy’) widely varied from human ‘norms’, and the adaption of the advanced human culture to both the political landscape and survival requirements (think warrior culture, from advanced peace and equality) is profound and fascinating. And the title character, the ‘Mother of Demons”, Indira, is one of the survivors from the original crash… who was a historian, and so was the one with the knowledge of history, both the advances their people would need to survive and the horrors that those ideas could bring. The Mother Of Demons, as a work, is concerned with the idea of ideas, including ways of thinking about history, gender, politics, secrecy, speech, and belief. The heart of the text is the power of ideas, both real and theoretical, as they are shown shaping the landscape of the world found in the text and the societies within.
¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 1 In the canon of class texts or texts students have or should read, or the archive of personal texts one has encountered, this book can be one (or one of many, depending on context) which challenge, question, and complicate things, which take concepts some would like to speak of as simple and show that there are so many more sides to the world. It can be used to draw to the surface quite a few topics that should be dragged into the classroom (kicking and screaming if necessary), including education and intention, cross-disciplinary work (a paleontologist and a historian more or less rule the world because they have relevant and vital knowledge), how societies are built, shaped, and imagined, what language does and who does what with it, and in short an interesting and difficult answer to the students question of what use are these kinds of knowledge outside the classroom.
¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 There are quite a few works that do some or all of these things, and I have really found value in a lot of them, but what draws me back to this one time and again are three separate things that really intersect and resist and explode in a number of ways. One is the way the alien cultures described provide alternate possibilities or questions to human assumptions, including gender, emotions, language, and history. The second point is the central emphasis on history, on ideas and ideology, and a serious look at pedagogy and what should, or should not be taught. And the third is one of the religions, or philosophies (or, well, theories as we mean them) found in the text, the Way of the Question. This philosophy holds that there is no Answer, there is only the Question, and actually seems in many ways similar to literary theory, especially deconstructive theory.
¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 5 As far as imagining alternatives and questioning the things we tend to think of as ‘natural’, a lot of science fiction does the same thing. Imagining alien cultures is fascinating that way, it lets ideas out to play in ways that human biology, or environment, or history have largely rendered invisible, impossible, and just strange to think about. Gender in this work, for example, is particularly complex, the biology of the species is not exactly analogous to humanity, and the human stereotypes cannot really function when mothers are separate from females, when the largest and the smallest work in battle as a single unit, where all ‘normal’ pairings are multiple. I also like the complication that comes from emotions always being visible, literally on one’s skin – this raises questions of the translations of race (what does it mean to always be one color, to have really outside associations coming to something one is born with) as well as other social practices like secrets or social deception or white lies when everyone knows you’re hiding something, or why berserk or battle rage should always come out colored as love (or, what color do we think it should be?). There is something here about queer allocations of space and time, ways things get mixed up and made strange, that reminded me of the reading we did of Freeman, Queer and Not Now.
¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 3 In looking at the emphasis on history and ideas, the book is asking what does it mean that we think, what we think, how do the concepts we have available change what we can or cannot become? This is especially interesting given the state of this settlement as without history (having lost most of the past, most of the adults, and the place of origin). And it also asks, looking at ideas we have marginalized and discarded in the quest for civilization – why were they there, what uses did those ideas have that we no longer can see, and what did we gain in having them or loose in refusing them (even when they have led through horrors)? This ties in with some of the things going on in Love’s Feeling Backwards, where it is those things which go against progress that can be most useful, and ways of moving backwards in time can be invaluable. Some of the solutions are backwards, primitive, queer, and violent, but they can offer solutions to things that civilization cannot, and that it isn’t a failure (or at least not a bad thing) to refuse notions of forward progress or inevitability. I also thought this fit quite well with our latest reading The Queer Art of Failure in the ways it explores backsliding, the notion of progress and prosperity and peace as a whole, and how it might work, or might not at all, in a situation of violence and survival and transformation. These ‘negatives’ may also lead to negative things, but they can also open avenues for ways to circumvent and survive places where conventional notions of progress bog down.
¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 And this book explicitly talks about pedagogy, about what we should or should not teach, about what it might mean to offer up, or lock away certain kinds of knowledge, or how the student must factor into the question of what to teach and how. There are two moments in the text, which draw my attention pedagogically. One is where Ushulubang, the ‘leader’ or originator of the way of the question scolds his disciples for believing in him, and following him, when what he wanted to teach them was how to think and question for themselves and not follow anyone. The other is the point where Joseph, once a child and student stands up to his teacher and the mother of demons, the historian and teacher, to demand the secrets she has been keeping, secrets about the past, about history, about the ways to think about how societies will shape over time. If I ever want to bring into a classroom some of the kinds of things teachers question, what and how to teach, or what canon means, or what we are doing with archives, and all of the things we need from or offer too emotional ways of looking at the world (and not, say, rational ones) then right here and with this book is one place to talk about it, with a scenario where the student must have a say in these matters, where the power and influence of the teacher must step aside (or backwards) to make way for the students’ power.
¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 2 I want that in my (future) classrooms. I want to have students ask questions, not look for (easy) answers or stop at the first plausible prepackaged category. I want students to learn (although I cannot say follow) the Way of the Question, where there is no answer but we find value in asking and looking, I want to show them this is how theory (and stories) are so useful and valuable in everyday life because it is how one looks at things, and understands what they find. I want that moment of saying I’m not the one with perfect English and I don’t know grammar (seriously, I’m careless and twisting), not the one who can distill a book into meanings or tell them what they should learn or think or be, I’m not the authority with answers but one who can show them paths that might lead them to their own questions. I want the students to look at what I (and other teachers, both in school and in society at large) are saying, what we’re offering for all of the good and terrible things that come with them… and I want that moment where to actually be what they are or must be it is necessary that they realize what they need to learn, and the strength to find it, to demand it, to tell me (as teacher) what I can give them and not impose on them. Offering alternative ways of looking and thinking also means the courage to let them disagree, go their own ways, or simply not take the paths I myself see.
¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 2 And I’m aware that this can (and probably should) lead to some difficult and possibly awkward moments in classroom dynamics. After all, a teacher without authority or students demanding answers pretty much overturns classroom power dynamics (at least traditional ones) but I think some really valuable moving and thinking and being can be done here, and I have been prepared to make a fool of myself for students’ learning before.
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¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 Works mentioned
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¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 Flint, Eric. Mother of Demons. Baen Ebooks online version. Simon & Shuster, New York, New York, 1997.
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¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010.
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¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 Love, Heather. “Introduction”. Introduction. Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard UP, 2007. 1-3.
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¶ 26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 0 Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke Up, 2011.
Wow…this sounds great. Nice description!
I don’t know this book at all — bad science fiction scholar! I shall try to read it now, though. Our crashing spaceship is occupied by humans, yes?
Yeah, the ship was humans from a future, more advanced time. they then were the aliens for the natives of that world