"converging realities : recording identity”

1Christine Peterson*[email protected]

"CONVERGING REALITIES : RECORDING IDENTITY”

Presentation by Christine Peterson New Mexico State University Graduate Student/ Dona Ana Community College Adjunct Instructor

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IDENTITY

• The idea of the narrator has shifted• Identity (how ‘character’ is

perceived) has changed • Influences on changing of identity

include reality television, which in turn, makes literature change

Christine Peterson*[email protected]

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THREE ASPECTS OF CHANGE

• Primary text: Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – And his perception of Real World: San

Francisco• Michael Bamberg’s “Who am I? Narration

and its contribution to self and identity”• The summation of it all: The Hills finale


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LITERARY TRADITION• Eggers is perfect for an

English 211 class – Plays with literary tradition– Mingles with different genres

• Stream of consciousness, screenplay mode, play format, interview, etc.

• Infused with pop culture, esp. Real World: San Francisco– Easy for students to ‘see’ the

book (setting, etc.)Christine Peterson*[email protected]

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FORMING IDENTITY

• Students either able to relate to Eggers’ work or find it aggravating (too many different genres to read)– If they find it aggravating, they are able

to pinpoint why


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HERO’S JOURNEY

• Shift in hero’s journey • Class tried to plot Eggers’ novel in a

hero’s journey, it swirled around instead of becoming linear

• Reality television shows just this– It sells because viewers like to see

people stagnant in a stage



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CLINICAL APPROACH

• “narrating enables speakers/writers to disassociate the speaking/writing self, and thereby take a reflective position…as character in past or fictitious time-space, make those past (or imagined) events relevant for the act of telling (a bodily activity in the here-and-now),” (Bamberg 5).


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MORE CLINICAL APPROACH

• Bamberg argues that designing characters as protagonists and antagonists in fictious time and space can open up territory for identity exploration-with the potential to transgress traditional boundaries and test out novel identities…

• Leaving an identity to be analyzed while leaving out the day to day mundane identity, dismisses the notion of how identities are formed.


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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PACT

Pact between author and reader that is not directly traceable down into the textual qualities. First person life story can use the first person to pretend the identity of author, narrator, and character the use of third person can be employed to camouflage its identity, (Bamberg 12).


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MIRRORED FICTION TRANSPORTS“Why at all, one could ask, do we rely on stories as seriated events of what actually happened when attempting to draw up a sense of who we are? It may be more adequate (and also safer) for a presentation of who we “really” are to rely on a series of hypothetical (imagined) events and position a sense of who we are in this fictitious story of made-up characters, in made-up time and place: the narrator’s sense of self, her identity may be shining through with much more clarity, much less opaqueness,” (Bamberg 3).


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THE MUNDANE“The coffee table is our home’s purgatory, the halfway point for everything eaten or worn or broken. It is covered with papers and books, two plastic plates, a half-dozen dirty utensils, an opened Rice Krisipie bar, and a Styrofoam container containing French fries that last night one of us decided were ‘too thick and squishy’ and were left uneaten. There is a package of pretzels that has been opened by the one person in the house who can’t open bags properly and so cuts holes in the middle with steak knives. There are at least four basketballs in the room, eight lacrosse balls, a skateboard, two backpacks, and a suitcase, still partially packed, which has not moved in four months. Next to the couch, on the floor are three glasses that once held milk and now hold its hardened remains. The family room and its perpetual state of disrepair is the problem that we are attempting to resolve. (Eggers).


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REALITY TELEVISION MEETS EGGERS

• “We gasp at the wretches on afternoon shows who reveal their hideous secrets in front of millions of similarly wretched viewers and yet. What have we taken from them? What have they given us? Nothing. We know that Janine had sex with her daughter’s boyfriend, but…then what? We will die and we will have protected … what?... we identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself. But it’s just the opposite, more is more is more—more bleeding, more giving. Theses things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see.


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CONSCIOUS OF LITERARY ELEMENTS

• “Right away, I think: symbolism. I look older. It’s also symbolic that, as we sit on the couch, in the dark, the light through her large windows, the weak yellow light from the streetlamp, brings her father into her face…That must mean something…” 289.

• “So I could be aware of the dangers of the self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated. Only caricatured” 270.


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DISCLAIMERS

PREFACE

‘For all the author’s bluster elsewhere, this is not, actually, work of pure nonfiction. Many parts have been fictionalized in varying degrees, for various purposes, (Eggers).


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THE HILLS: IDENTITY SHOWN AS SLICED



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WORKS CITED• “All Good Things.” The Hills. MTV. El Paso, Texas. 13

July 2010. Television. • Bamberg, Michael. “Who am I? Narration and its

contribution to self and identity.” Theory and Psychology. 21.1 (2011): 1-11. JSTOR. Web. 11 November 2012.

• Eggers, Dave. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. Print.

• http://footinmouthandheadupass.blogspot.com/2010/05/heros-journey-not-to-be-confused-with.html

"converging realities : recording identity”

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