Cultural Histories Influences on Narratives

I often feel as if I have no history. That probably comes from the fact that I feel as if I have no culture either. My ethnic friends often call me a “WASP” (white, Anglo-saxon, protestant), which is just the slang term for “ridiculously white.” I don’t really have a cultural identity. There are no clubs or groups for people like me at school. I don’t really face much discrimination and/or problems because of my ethnicity to warrant support from others of my “race.” So reading cultural-based novels really makess me realize how much history a person carries with them, based on their ethnicity or race, and how little cultural history I seemed to have. Most cultural-based novels touch upon the idea of cultural histories- how it is passed down, re-told, remembered and forgotten— and how these histories affect the characters and impact the narratives.

Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire is a book that deals very much with the importance of history. It was one of the only books that dealt with my “WASP” history at all, though not in a very good light. I got to read about how my “history” was shaped by the slaughter of other people’s cultures. Memory of Fire is the perfect example of how history shapes a narrative. In Galeano’s work he uses history to form his linear narrative. Before the narrative even starts Galeano writes a description of exactly how he uses history to shape the narrative of his book (and even the ones to follow) in a section titled “This Book.”

This book is the first of a trilogy. It is divided into to parts. In one indigenous creation myths raise the curtain on pre-Columbian America. In the other, the history of America unfolds from the end of the fifteenth century to the year 1700. The second volume… will cover the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The third volume will reach up to our times. (Galeano, xvi)

In this way Galeano fashions his novel in an historical chronological order starting from stories about the creation of the world that were, for specific cultures, taken to be historical accounts and, eventually, ending his historical accounts in present day America.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Indian culture-based novel The Namesake, like Galeano’s novel, is arranged in sections according to date. Chapter one is seemingly entitled 1968 and it ends in Chapter twelve which shows that the book has made the journey to 2000. It becomes obvious that Lahiri thought it important to show the time in which this novel takes place. But the narrative is not linear such as Galeano’s. The reader gets glimpses into the past of the characters before the year it starts and even into the future. In the last chapter Lahiri switches from narrating present tense to future tense. “He wonders if he will be married again one day, if he will ever have a child to name. A month from now, he will begin a new job at a smaller architectural practice, producing his own designs” (Lahiri, 289). Lahiri does not stay in the lines of the linear narrative to tell the histories of the characters. She shifts from past to present to future. This is because it takes all of these elements for the characters to come to terms with their cultural histories, new and old.

Toni Morrison, in her novel that deals with African-American culture, Song of Solomon, uses history to shape her narrative as well. In Morrison’s novel the idea of forgetting history or the absence of knowledge in regards to a familial or cultural history shape the events of the novel. Morrison takes the reader along on the same journey as the character, Milk Man, to find the truth of his family’s history. As Milk Man learns things, so does the reader. History does not reveal itself to the reader until it is revealed to a specific character. In this way history, much like in Momaday’s book, is not told in a direct linear fashion. History affects the narrative because the discovery or the recovery of forgotten or hidden stories or histories, pull the novel along. Additions the Dead’s family history and Milk Man’s cultural history serves to drive the narrative further. The best example of this is how Milk Man, from a small child, had a habit of always looking behind him. “It was becoming a habit—this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had” (35). But Milk Man’s future actually exists in his past.

It wasn’t true what he’d said… that it wasn’t important to find his people. Ever since Danville, his interest in his own people, not just the ones he men, had been growing… Who were they, and what were they like? …why did she want to keep that awful name? To wipe out the past? Slavery? His slave past? And why didn’t his own father, and Pilate, know any of their own relatives? (293)

He has to find out his history, familial, personal and cultural before he can become a man and deal with his future. The book mimics this idea by constantly moving forward aided by details of the past.

N. Scott Momaday’s autobiography The Names: A Memoir is also a story that is concerned with coming to terms with ones past cultural histories. The Names is created from his personal history as a Native American, and not (as in Galeano’s book) concerned with retelling the history in a linear fashion. This is because Momaday is not concerned with the actual order of how things happened historically as much as he is concerned with how he remembers, or even imagines, it. “In general my narrative is an autobiographical account. Specifically it is an act of the imagination… This is one way to tell a story. In this instance it is my way, and it is the way of my people” (Momaday, i). Momaday is explaining that, to re-tell a history in a non-linear fashion as he does in his novel, is to remain true to and to fully represent his culture. And as far as history is concerned in his narrative, Momaday believes that his history is shaped fully by him and not, as Galeano is concerned with, by the specific placement in time an event actually occurred. Therefore, there is no true linear version of history neither in his mind nor in his book.

I invented history… The past and the future were simply the large contingencies of a given moment; they bore upon the present and gave it shape. One does not pass through time, but time enters upon him in his place… Notions of the past and future are essentially notions of the present. In the same ay an idea of one’s ancestry and posterity is really an idea of the self. (Momaday, 97)

Since Momaday feels that history doesn’t just exist in dates, rather in memories and are as much in the present as it is in the past, so then does his narrative. Momaday is the perfect example of cultural histories shaping a narrative. His Indian culture doesn’t follow traditional, linear patterned narratives. Rather they allow their stories lines to flow and intermingle the present with the past.

As a person with a feeling of disconnect from a particular culture, I find myself being drawn into the various re-tellings of cultural histories from various novels. In Memory of Fire Galeano uses actual events to form his linear re-telling of history from a particular culture’s perspective. In the The Namesake Lahiri follows a linear narrative in her chapters, but within those chapters the narrative slips from present to past to highlight the journey her characters take to find their cultural identities. The narrative of Song of Solomon is guided by the discovery of cultural/personal history. And then, of course, N. Scott Momoday’s autobiography The Names follows his cultural idea of history by not retelling his story in any sort of linear fashion. Culture has a profound effect on the telling of a person’s history. As I feel stripped of culture I also feel stripped of history. But, if Momaday is correct and we, as individuals, can make our own history I am not without hope of one day having my own history to discover and then, hopefully one day, to narrate for future generations.

Body Worlds: The Artistic Exhibition of Real Human Bodies

Short essay on the Body Worlds exhibit by Dr. Gunther von Hagens.

I have never had a very strong stomach, a fact which led me to fail Biology in high school because of a marked number of absences on days in which dissections were to take place. So right before I entered the Body Worlds exhibit at the California Science Center (described to me as “a biology textbook come to life”) I took a deep breath and reminded myself that, this time, ditching was not an option. My only hope was that I would find this exhibit to be more artistic than disgusting. I was more than happy; I was relieved to find that Dr. Gunther von Hagens’ “Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies” exceeded my hopes. Dr. von Hagens did an excellent job of introducing and exhibiting works of a new style of Anatomical Realism.

As I came face to face with my first dissected body I found that von Hagens’ plastination process had hardened all the normally soft and squishy human parts, which made the bodies look comfortingly fake and also hauntingly beautiful. I was delighted to find that, not only was I not passing out from horror and disgust, but that I found the entire body quite aesthetically pleasing. The bodies I was dreading were more like works of art that filled my imagination and piqued my curiosity— each body drawing me further and further into the exhibit and touching me on so many different levels, as all good works of art should do.

I attended the exhibit with my best friend who, like me, is an art history student. So it wasn’t too unlikely that we both found ourselves drawn to the artist renderings of human figures that were hung on the walls surrounding the plastinated bodies and body parts. We seemed to be the only two people in the over-crowded room who could tear their eyes away from the physical exhibits to appreciate the artwork on the walls. We stood in front of the oversized banners that hung from the ceilings and stared at the beautiful detailed sketches of limbs, muscular structures, and nude bodies. The effect that these banners was two-fold—they were aesthetically pleasing but also worked to give a nod to the artists of the past whose works, that bridged both art and science, were the stepping stones that made this exhibit possible many years later. I especially liked the addition of the drawings to the exhibit because it was nice to see wonderful examples of the two styles of Anatomical Realism intermixed, the old amongst the new.

The first style of Anatomical Realism had, until the opening of Body Worlds, been the only style for a very long period of time. The most famous of all Anatomical Realists was Leonardo DaVinci whose most famous anatomical drawing is the “Vitruvian Man” (see Fig. 1) which was one of the artworks displayed in the exhibit. As you can see by the drawing, this style aimed to show a higher reality of dissection by displaying beautiful, idealized bodies and body parts that float in the air with no reference to any one dissected person. These drawings were beautiful and always strived for perfection. The early anatomical illustrations began to achieve greater technical precision as knowledge about the boundaries and surfaces of the human body, due to scientific studies (and grave robbing), became more sophisticated.

The second style of Anatomical Realism is a direct result of the knowledge gained by those anatomical illustrations. Body Worlds is a perfect example of that newer style which aimed to show the reality of dissection— the cutting open of a particular body with all the furniture of the dissection. It shows the ugliness of anatomical mutilation (see Fig. 2). Until plastination this art style has not been able to be offered for mass viewings by the general public.

There are many people who viewed this exhibit with disgust. There are many people who questioned the ethics behind it. There are many people who were outraged and upset over the very existence of it. I am not one of those people. In fact, I had a hard time trying to see the exhibit any way other than a highly stylized art exhibit. I did not encounter one negative feeling while walking from one art piece to the next and, in fact, found the much-debated “Pregnant Woman” to be the most artistic of all the pieces.

Many of the people around me exclaimed how “sick” it was that von Hagens had her “posing” like a “sexual object.” I understood that viewers were taking issue with the position of her arm, slung up over her head in a way that could be taken to be sexually suggestive. Later that night, as I was lying in bed, that particular piece stayed with me. I began to wonder if there was another way von Hagens could have displayed her body that would have been less controversial. I shifted onto my side and played with that idea as I played with the position of my arm. No matter where I placed it, my arm interfered with or blocked the sight of my stomach. It became obvious that her “pose” was the perfect way to display the beauty of her pregnant stomach. Even more, it was a uniquely feminine position that displayed the deeper meaning and entire point behind this particular body— a woman who had the ability to create and sustain the life of a child.

Dr. Gunther von Hagens is not only a scientific pioneer, but also a very talented and groundbreaking artist. I have sat in many Art History classes and walked through hallways filled with artwork in all kinds of museums of all kinds of genres, and this exhibit was unlike anything I had ever seen. Because of “Body Worlds” I got the chance to experience a new style of Anatomical Realism that enriched my mind and helped me experience a style of art in a brand new and exciting way. Von Hagens’ exhibit should not only be celebrated for its scientific advancements but also for its undeniable artistic value.
fig. 1 fig. 2

Copyright Megan Tharpe 2005