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Frankenstein: Intersectionality and the Creature
I’m going to do something different. I’m going to start with
a question that I’m not going to answer, and I will end the class with the same
question, which I still won’t answer. Here it is:
Is the creature
gendered feminine?
(explain difference between sex and gender in most basic
terms: We are not asking if the creature is female, but rather does he exhibit
feminine traits? (or for that matter, uniquely masculine traits?))
(reasons why I won’t answer: I don't want to bias your opinions (I am extremely biased!); I want to give you the tools to come up with your own answer to the question, etc; I am experimenting with basic teaching principles because I CAN!)
In the meantime, I’m going to give you some tools to think
about how to answer the question: I’ll give the same question to you at the end
of the class.
Three terms:
Binaries
Hierarchical binaries
Intersectionality
Binaries
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Anybody know what a binary is?
- (Shout out opposites)
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Tall
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Small
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Thin
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Hot
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Wide
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Good
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Ugly
Ok, now they get harder
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Love
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Green
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Light
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White
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Sun
Some of these pairings are neutral, some of them are not:
one half of the binary seems to be better than the other.
One foundational aspect of how we learn is to learn how to
categorize things into groups of twos: this is a simple way that we learn how
to understand the world, and so it is introduced to us at a fairly young age.
One of the difficult things about this is is that it’s a system of organizing
information that does not allow for a lot of flexibility or complexity.
The creature has a
number of binaries that he exists in: TAKE TO THE BOARD: (get them to list)
(give them “good”) child/parent, child/adult, evil/good, artificial/real,
unfeeling/ caring, dead/alive, etc –
One of the things that you may have noticed is that there is
a side of most pairings that you want to be, while others appear to be somewhat
neutral. So tall, beautiful, good, come to mind. White and Black can seem
neutral until you start to consider that these colours can also be shorthand
for race, and you can start to see the privilege inherent in the word white
over the other.
Binaries have two types of relationships: the relationship
between the two sides of the pairing (old vs young) as well as other halves of
binaries that are associated with them. (Old is associated with ugly and young
is associated with beauty, because the binaries are organized along positive
and negatives.)
The hierarchical
binary is therefore the idea that a) one side of the binary is usually
preferable and b) negative sides of binaries are associated with other negative
sides (and similarly for positive sides of the binaries, which are associated
with other positives).
I would like to complicate this idea of binaries, however. With
a little bit of whiteboard magic, I want to show you how we can remove some of
the simplicity from binaries:
(Turn VS into a LINE)
Explain the spectrum (using the example of the creature: pick any binary)
_______________________________
So let’s take a few minutes to think about the creature’s
binaries and hierarchical binaries: what are his perceived binaries, and where
would we map him on a spectrum of those binaries?
[Label quadrants of the room: old vs young, alive vs dead,
real vs artificial, good vs evil, caring vs unfeeling, etc]
In the group at your table, discuss what side of the binary
you would place the creature on. Find at least one passage in the text that
supports your idea. I’ll give you five (10?) minutes to do that.
5-10 minutes to discuss. – while we are discussing, write
down the binary spectrums with the “good” on the left, and the “bad” on the
right.
From the analysis of how binaries interact with one
another comes the idea of intersectionality.
various biological, social and cultural categories such
as gender, race, class, ability, sexual
orientation, religion, caste, species and other axes
of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels,
contributing to systematic injustice and social inequality
Observe:
Put the creature’s binaries down the page. (Go back to
board)
Place a dot where you think the creature exists.
Then put a vertical line through the dots. What verb would
you use to describe what the vertical line is doing to the horizontal lines?
-
Going through, passing through, intersecting!
Intersectionality is a term that we use in feminist studies
to think about identity: how identity is constructed both by the self and
externally by society.
Intersectionality is supposed to make us think about the way
that privilege works in society: if one side of the binary is usually
privileged, if you identify with or are identified as being part of multiple
privileged (or under-privileged) sides of the binary, that will affect the way
you are treated.
Based on intersecting binaries, who has privilege? How is
this person privileged or not?
Compare Donald Trump (as himself) to Gugu Mbatha-Raw (playing Dido Elizabeth Belle).
What privilege do they have? What ways are they oppressed by dominant cultural ideas?
In what ways do the intersections of their qualities overlap to create more or less privilege? (That is: wealth, race, gender, age, etc)
Consider these questions in regards to the creature:
Intersectionality allows us to think about how the creature
exists on a variety of spectrums rather than just one; is he young / old? Real
or artificial? Good or evil? Is he such a mixture of both sides that it’s
difficult to place him on any one side of the spectrum? All of these parts
together give us a much more complex vision of his identity, which is another
way of complicating his identity.
To put it another way, if we simply think: “is the creature
good or evil?” we must choose one side.
If we put him on a spectrum of good ----------- evil, we
might place him on different sides at different ends of the text.
If we then say that he exists on several other spectrums
(caring / uncaring; young / old; real / artificial; etc) do these other spectrums
not give us context to the original question of whether he is good or evil? (if
he is both real and artificial, and both alive and dead, might we be a little
less sure of where he definitively good or bad?
We can do the same thing with other characters from the
text:
Elizabeth, Victor. (is Elizabeth
intelligent or kind of imaginative and wispy? Is Victor good or bad?
A parent
or a child? A mother or father? Etc)
A final note to summarize:
Victor says that he “pursues nature to her hiding places”
·
Victor feminizes nature, here.
·
What do we learn from Victor in this very short
passage?
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Aggressive
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Gendered
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Eroticized and non-consensual
His project – making the creature – is feminized. The
science of discovery and the creation of life is feminized during the act of
making the creature … until the creature is formed, when it becomes male, and
is no longer referred to by Victor in the feminine.
Only when Victor sees that his pursuit has failed does he
consider it a failure, when the project becomes male / masculinzed.
What if, instead of being a
failed act by a masculine human, the creature is actually a successful response
by a feminine nature? What if the creature is nature’s intentional response to
Victor --- "to heck with you, Vic! Go back to your books!"
Does anybody have any final thoughts?
Here is your question that I will leave you with:
Is Frankenstein’s creature feminized?
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