Coverdale & Pierre: Arguing Across Texts

I think one of things that jumped out at me most from the most recent reading is the relationship of Pierre and his cousin Glen which is, to say the least, weird. Melville describes their relationship as spicy, jealous, passionate “boy-love” (216). It immediately reminded me both of Coverdale and Hollingsworth’s homosocial connection, as well as the connection between Melville and Hawthorne.

I was also reminded of the letters between Melville and Hawthorne and Temple’s “Ineffable Socialities” in which she argues that “Pierre’s attraction for Isabel mirrors Melville’s attraction for Hawthorne” (127). I’d have to say that much more about their relationship can be gleaned from looking at Hawthorne’s perspective as mirroring Coverdale’s relationship with Hollingsworth, and reading Melville as conflated with Pierre in his discussion of Glen (I am starting to find it interesting how Melville’s conscious seems to drift between Pierre and the narrator).

From the letters and from Temple’s analysis we know that the relationship between Hawthorne and Melville started to drift apart after a while, largely due to Hawthorne distancing himself. This is directly mirrored in what I would argue is Hawthorne’s perspective of a homosocial bond: Coverdale retreating from Hollingsworth into his hermitage in the woods to hide away, to pull at the bond, to push against its tensile strength until it snaps suddenly (110-111). Temple argues that Hawthorne/Coverdale is ultimately unable to overcome social institutions, and thus has his characters capitulate some part of themselves in favor of maintaining the status quo.

In thinking of Melville as Pierre, we gain the opposite side of the argument. We are privileged to observe from the other half of the homosocial bond. Pierre is the half that seeks to continue the bond, despite the fact that Glen has obviously moved on and no longer feels any sort of devotion or love for Pierre. There is a lot of interesting commentary in this passage on writing, especially in greetings – and Pierre judges his relationship with Glen based on the gratuitous introductory “Dear….’s” that he uses (219).

The narrator notes how “the eventual love for the other sex forever dismiss[es] the preliminary love-friendship of boys” (217). What I find interesting is how despite Pierre “getting over” Glen, the “love for the other sex” that he replaces it with is for his own sister Isabel – and in this way, Melville/Pierre refuse to succumb to rules/institution like Hawthorne does , Melville’s characters actively rebel against the normative even while seemingly following a “typical” pattern in love.

Technology, Community, and Early America

I wanted to add some thoughts to those of you who are wondering, “Great, but how does all of this relate to sex and sin?” I hope that in part what is unfolding over the semester is a sense that the early national through antebellum periods were concerned about the bonds of citizenship: were men supposed to be in a kind of brotherhood of the nation? Is that what a democracy or a republic requires?

If so, then what happens as the country becomes more alienated, even as it grows closer in physical proximity? Do we become a nation of Coverdales–people longing for connection but unable to consummate human relationships for fear of physical and emotional intimacy? And if we are a nation of Coverdales, then how will our democracy survive?

The texts we have read (and will read) investigate these questions by looking at the bonds that connect us—bonds of kinship, bonds of sexual desire, bonds of same-sex affiliation. Many posit that there is something unhealthy or damaging about the heterosexual coupling (or the nuclear family more broadly) because coupling further isolates people and because it thwarts a larger sense of community (and often is devoid of physicality, sensuality, and intimacy, which are arguably also essential to a democracy). I think where these texts differ is on their views about what are the possible alternatives to the traditional heterosexual coupling.

So, the reason I have brought up all of these questions in relation to technology is because I want us to consider what we as twenty-first century Americans think of these issues and whether we believe that technology further alienates us and further thwarts the practice of good citizenship. In other words, does technology turn us even further into suggestible crackpots like in Wieland or further into ogling voyeurs like in The Blithedale? Or does technology, despite (or maybe because of) its non-physicality, bring us somehow closer together? In other words, can technology “queer” citizenship?

Andrew brings up some really interesting and thought-provoking models to consider in his post below this one. I hope you will read it and comment on it, as well as post your own thoughts.

On Digitalizing Classrooms (and Thought)

I wanted to comment on the issues of digitalizing education (and how this effects and perhaps benefits the transmission of knowledge) Dr. Stockton said that she was working on Monday and thought that we could perhaps try to collectively think/speak/act in ways that might increase the educational (or fun) potential of the class.  And perhaps more importantly, how this class as an internet community with loose but structured links in the real world might serve to replicate some of the functions of more “organic” i-communities (blogs, forums, etc).  These topics are sort of pressing because they are happening, and we are a part of them.  AND they open up new possibilities for thinking, learning and becoming.  Digitalizing classrooms could provide less hierarchical modes of learning and interacting as a scholarly community.    Below is an excerpt from an email I sent to Dr. Stockton about this topic.  I’ll try to unpack the abtruse jargon used by the fairly obscure philosophers, I promise. :

“As far as the digital student and community topic goes, I think that is super interesting and also important considering that while perhaps currently difficult to talk about (at least in concrete/informed ways), the postmodern community is something that needs to be talked about and perhaps called into being.  I don’t know where you stand on this or where your theoretical grounding/allegiance lies, but I think  Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome can be a jump off point for how (global) internet communities can/do form and exist and change.  This is complicated of course by their ideas about  the normal conception of identity and representation, both of which are common focal points of i-communities.  However, I think the mutability and literal anonymity of virtual identities subverts such concerns.  Also Hardt and Negri’s idea about the multitude-as layed out in Empire and elaborated on in Multitude could also inform something working toward an understanding.  As well as, the commons, not their idea certainly, but considering their work is highly concerned with globalization (Westernization) and how the common/s rub up against systems of capital and Empire.”

So if you’re somehow miraculously still reading this, and Wikipedia didn’t help (or you didn’t care to open six new tabs), the rhizome is a concept originally pertaining to the structuring of knowledge itself (it actually originally pertains to plant biology and root structure, but whatever).  Deleuze and Guattari conceived as the traditional modes of storing, using and transmitting knowledge as hierarchical and linear, they called this arborescence (tree-like, vertical).  For a whole lot of reasons, they didn’t like this, so they hypothesized that instead knowledge was (or should/could be) rhizomatic, like grass roots–literally the roots of grass–it connects with numerous other, seemingly unrelated pieces of knowledge (or grass).  It creates connections, disjunctions, different connections and so on and so forth.  Such non-hierarchical, versatile and constantly changing forms of knowledge create opportunities for creativity and innovative thoughts and ways of thinking.  The rhizome was part of their attempt to combat the dominant system of logic, which they saw as reductive and hegemonic.  “Principles of connection and heterogenity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be”(D/G, A Thousand Plateaus).  This opposes the normal binary logic that through linguistics and ideology circumscribes one’s (our) ability to think .  It’s really a lot more complicated than this, and probably a lot more complicated than I could ever imagine–but such a model can be (and has been) applied to things other than knowledge.  Most notably, the internet.

Hardt and Negri’s multitude can be summed up as basically a social rhizome, an group of people seemingly very much unrelated, yet interconnected in strange ways ( or possibly not), there’s more to it that has a lot to do with hating capitalism–although the multitude is not reactionary, but I’ll spare everyone.  I’ve wasted way too much of my time on this, I’ll try to not waste yours.

So what happens when rhizomes become realized?  Can they be consciously implemented?  Should they?  Should our educations be non-hierarchical?  Is it too hard (too much work on our part) to make them not be?  Can top-down attempts to de-centralize power work (in this case a professor creating the digital community)?  Do we really care?