Overview of Ideas

Ok so this blog post is about a project for my capstone project. I had originally wanted to do a podcast, but I found that it was more effort than it was worth. It’s much better for me to do it this way. It’s supposed to be an informal thing, so I have decided to be very candid and straightforward in this and really explain my thought process as I go. 

I want to start off by talking about the ideas in my paper and what I want to add to it. My original paper was written for a class called “Methods of Literary study” and delved into New Historicism and “default whiteness” and looked at the concept of default whiteness from the perspective of minorities, who are automatically not a part of the dominant group, and often not considered in the dominant discourse. The stuff about discourses is a big deal for New Historicism and even back then when I originally wrote the paper, I thought it was pretty cool. At the time I was in another class called “The Novel,” a class that talked about what a novel was and some information about writing one. “Default Whiteness” was one of the things we talked about, and I think I do a good job of explaining it in my paper. In the most basic sense, it’s just the unconscious belief that white is the default race of characters in media if their race is not clearly stated. I thought it was an interesting concept. I was also reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and in that book, the “default race” is black. These ideas meshed together in my head and became my essay.

For this project, I have to incorporate other lenses of study or delve deeper into the original lens. I think I did a good enough job with New Historicism already, there aren’t any additional discourses I want to incorporate except for one. My own. The original paper was a traditional academic essay that argued certain things but did not blatantly include my own perspective. I don’t ever use the personal pronoun “I” in it until the end (for some reason). However, I think Reader Response is a super cool method of study and when I had written my final paper for the “Methods of Literary study” class, I mentioned that it was often the method of study that came most naturally to me. I think adding my own perspective is interesting because “default whiteness” is so prevalent, that even I, an African American writer, find myself assuming characters are white if their race is not directly stated. That’s such an interesting phenomenon in my opinion and makes me want to get into why I think that way and how being confronted with that concept made me feel. Because of these feelings, my rewrite would be much more of an opinion paper, which is fortunate because I have been writing things of that nature in my Non-Fiction class.

I also want to get into the psychological side of things. I was originally interested in Jung’s (pronounced like yoong, with the double o like boot) ideas of collective unconscious, but I think his other ideas are far more applicable. Individuation is what I’m most interested in here, which is the idea that we must accept all aspects of ourselves in order to find harmony. This plays into my ideas of reader response and I can talk about how I had to accept that I often assume white is the default and accepting that flaw helped me to be more mindful of it going forward. I also am a little interested in archetypes, specifically those of colors or those of black stereotypes (the wise mother-like black woman who sacrifices her well-being for the protagonist like Christophine in Wide Sargasso Sea, the humble over-respectful black man that lets himself be walked over like John Coffey in The Green Mile, etc). I’m not completely sure that the archetypes will be applicable, but they will be interesting to look into nonetheless.

I am also fascinated by Lacan’s ideas of Self. Growing up in a white majority country and watching so much media that is centered around white people could have affected how I developed my sense of self and I think it will add an interesting element to my reader-response focus.

Now that I’ve given a general overview of the ideas I would like to integrate into my paper, I will now go paragraph by paragraph explaining where these ideas will come into play in my rewrite. 

Introduction Paragraph

In my introduction for this paper, I start off by talking about the Bunny/Duck illusion. I mainly use it to compare the illusion to history and explain what New Historicism is. I really like the way this sets the scene for the paper and I often use metaphors to explain things, so I think that it works for me. I think I’ll find a way to add some reader response to it as well, something like, “someone who prescribes to Reader Response theory would focus on their own personal perspective of the image and what feelings it arouses in them.” I want to work hard to keep the integration of this new theory from feeling awkward or out of place and I’m still not sure I have figured it out yet. Right now, my thesis is “Using examples from popular literature and movies, we can see the power of the dominant discourse and explain why it is important to highlight deprivileged perspectives, even in the face of opposition.” I am still unsure how to add that personal touch to this paper. In the original, I did my best to keep my own opinion out of it. However, in this revision, I intend to add much more opinion and get into the psychology of these ideas as well. Perhaps something like “I believe that even non-white Americans find themselves affected by the dominant discourse, which is why it is so important to highlight deprivileged perspectives, even in the face of opposition.” This keeps the spirit of my original thesis, while also adding in the new perspective I wish to focus on. It is incredibly likely that this thesis will change completely as I go, but for now, this is ok enough.

Body Paragraph 1: The What of Default Whiteness

This paragraph goes into default whiteness and gives concrete examples of it. I chose Percy Jackson and the Sea Of Monsters by Rick Riordan because it was a book I have read many, many times and the difference in description was something that had never stood out to me until far more recently. I still think it’s a very good example and in my rewrite, I will go into how I missed these elements when I first read through the book. I then talk about Things Fall Apart which is such a cool counterexample and I’m really glad I was reading the book at the time I wrote the paper. I think it brilliantly shows inverts the default whiteness by making a point of the white character’s skin, but one element that I did not get into in the original is that idea of stereotyping that often comes along with the default whiteness. I have to email my professor for the article we read, but one element of it is that when non-white characters are introduced, they often are reduced to stereotypes to describe them. This does not happen in Rick Riordan’s book, but it is quite common and the article gave an example I believe. If I can get access to it, I will cite it here.

The Missing Body Paragraph 2: The Why of Default Whiteness

My original paper only has two body paragraphs. In college papers, it is customary to have three. I do not know why I only had two. In my rewrite, this paragraph will be almost completely new material. This is where I will get into the psychology of default whiteness and investigate how it affected my own sense of self. I’ll probably talk about how when I wrote comics as a child, the characters were white and I never thought about it that much because in all the comics I read, the characters were either white or not human. Spiderman was by far my favorite hero and I think that I would have loved Miles Morales and I think reading his comics as a child would have changed my sense of self greatly. I remember seeing Mace Windu in Star Wars and although I was not much of a Star Wars fan at the time, I thought that he was a very cool character. This is where a lot of the new theory will come in. One fear I have is that the paper will lose some focus with this approach. In the original paper, the focus is much more broad and focuses on a broader implication of these ideas in our society. I worry that if I add too much “me,” it will dilute that. Therefore, I will try to use myself as a source, if that makes sense. I will use my own personal experiences to add credence to my arguments, instead of making the entire paper about myself, if that makes sense. I will have to work very hard to do so, but perhaps I can frame it as my own perspective being a deprivileged perspective, tying it back to New Historicism.

Body Paragraph 3: The Effects of Default Whiteness

There is honestly not much to add in this section of the paper. Since I mainly plan to use the second paragraph to add that Reader Response theory, this paragraph may bring in the psychological concepts back from the previous paragraph, but I honestly don’t think there is much to change here.

Conclusion Paragraph

In my conclusion, I would recap the ideas and themes shared throughout the paper and I think that there is already a bit of that reader response here. Especially in this line, “I saw the movie before reading the book and if Rue had been cast as a white actress, I too would be a part of the dominant discourse.” The ideas from the rest of the paper will help me here and will guide me rewrite of this paragraph.

Reflection

I feel positive about this rewrite. I’m aware of the pitfalls and intend to avoid them. I think the paper is fine, but I can do better and this rewrite will help me to argue my points more effectively. We’ll see how it goes.