Blog 4, Coleen Herbert

    One notion of "Americaness" that Anderson touches on that I definitely can't relate to is that of rebellion. My roots in America extend back to the 1920s. I don't consider myself to have Creole roots. I do, however, consider myself to have Creole history. We discussed in class the idea of "owning" history, or feeling included in a cultural history or narrative. While I'm not a person of color, the history of American people of color is also my own. The dominant discourse is quick to marginalize and separate history when it is in fact a collective.
    I had always assumed the opposite of Anderson about the birth of Nationalism. Anderson writes that "neither economic interest, Liberalism, nor Enlightenment could, or did, create in themselves a kind, or shape, of imagined community to be defended from these regimes' depredations" (65). For some reason, a combination of these parts was what was always taught to me. In the expansion of his thesis, Anderson deconstructs and de-centers a la G.C. Spivak.
    I think that Spivak's subaltern has been reiterated endlessly since the piece's publication. For instance, waves of queer suicides and suicides committed by people who have mental illness seem to me to be examples of the subaltern speaking. Each of these groups has been oppressed (more often violently than not) in a such a way as to impose silence upon them. The institutionalization of the mentally ill can be viewed as a sort of hate crime in itself. I would argue, however, that the examples are more prominent for homophobia.
  Americaness to me is about absence and oppression, about connecting with people via difference. When Diouana takes back the mask she gave her mistress in  La Noire de..., the subaltern speaks. Diouana is kept at arms length from Frenchness. Instead of admission to a culture, she is racially barred from gaining access to a world outside of the apartment that she lives in. By taking back the mask, Diouana's silence speaks. She refuses to be remember that she is a "maid". She refuses to let her culture be signified as an art piece in a Frenchwoman's home. Americaness and all other "nesses" are active pathways that can be forfeited with silence. I think that the ness is conveyed by the subaltern.