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Ethnocentric Realities
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20145 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1992 |
3,984 Words |
| Author
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Charles R. Larson
Charles R. Larson is an internationally known authority on
Third World literature. He is the author of The Emergence of
African Fiction, The Novel in the Third World, and American
Indian Fiction. His novel The Insect Colony is set in West
Africa during the Nigerian civil war. He has edited several
anthologies of international writing and served as general
editor of Collier Books' African/American Library. He teaches
literature at American University in Washington, D.C. |
The concept of universality has its foundations in the belief to use a gender-biased expression that tall men are brother, that we all share certain common feelings, emotions, even (in some instances) basic attitudes and traditions. An ennobling belief, to be sure, relating each and every one of us to a greater humanity and, by extension, to some kind of world community. We all experience the common emotions of love, anger, joy, and fulfillment. We admire certain kinds of achievement and success and pay particular respect to the individual who embodies those accomplishments, usually labeling him or her as hero or heroine. We believe that certain other kinds of activities are unacceptable; they go against the grain. These acts provide us with a context of what is right and wrong, good and evil. At birth, at death, and in times of great consternation, we share our feelings (both negative and positive) with others. This sharing makes life tolerable and unites us in our belief that we are all one.
The belief in oneness (or universality) is premised on the assumption that race, class culture, and gender are surmountable barriers. We are accustomed to viewing innovative productions of famous dramatic works which we believe demonstrate our sense of connectedness. There have been all-black productions of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and of Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie to prove to us that black people and white people are the same, once we forget about skin color. When Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959, some viewers said that what Hansberry had actually written was a Jewish play, in which the characters happened to be black. That statement further implied a sense of shared experiences between Jews and black people. The play was also compared to Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, implying another basic affinity, between black Americans and the Irish. We often go out of our way to draw parallels between disparate ethnic groups in order to demonstrate our connectedness.
A recent production of Shakespeare's King Lear further questions our concepts of gender and sexuality. Retitled Lear, the central role is not only played by a woman, but all of the other roles (except for the Fool) are reversed in gender. Thus Lear's three daughters--Cordelia, Regan, and Goneril--become males, her sons. The production presumes to break down our centuries-old bias against women in power but also demonstrates that women can be just as mean, foolish, and irascible as their masculine counterparts. (The fact that the Fool's role has not been gender reversed is equally revealing.) Yet is this what we really want to know? Is nothing
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