Like Beth Coleman's argument for race as technology, Toni Morrison argues for race as a kind of technology in literary terms. Coleman calls race a tool that uses us even as we use it, and suggests that a more ethical, liberated humanity can result through better understanding this relationship; Morrison characterizes Africanism as a tool that writers used and are used by in their pursuit of writing American-ness, and suggests we may better understand our literature through acknowledging this invisible mechanism. Morrison writes, “The ideological dependence on racialism is intact and, like its metaphysical existence, offers in historical, political, and literary discourse a safe route into meditations on morality and ethics; a way of examining the mind-body dichotomy; a way of thinking about justice; a way of contemplating the modern world,” (64). I found this characterization of race as a “way,” or “prosthesis,” (like Madison mentioned) or “tool” in literary discourse productive to thinking about race as technology in terms of this course.
Something illuminating about the way Morrison conceives of race as a kind of literary technology is her emphasis on the boundedness (rather than flexibility) of the ways race was/is conventionally deployed in American literature. Race can only be used in certain ways; grapple with race unconventionally and your novel will be “marked with decline.” Coleman, on the other hand, argues for the almost limitless mutability of the ways race can be harnessed as a technology. In this way, it is clear that while they both appreciate the reflexive technique of race in literature and in human political and social life, Coleman and Morrison conceive of this tool in very different ways.
The opposition between the aspect of limitlessness written into a reflexive, flexible technology that theoretically offers itself to any user and a technology that has a set, established way of working is the opposition that Kelly Dobson’s work so playfully, brilliantly straddles. Her remark that technology “teaches us to be human” struck me as extremely insightful—sure, phones and blenders are meant to suit the particular needs of our keenly individualized lifestyles, but these tools also show us what it is to be normal. You can’t use race or technology for just anything—a screwdriver can’t be a hat, and you can’t sell your race on the internet. Race and technology have typical uses, and the interruption, failure, or excessive, playful attention to these uses is figured as incorrect, problematic, or a joke. It occurs to me (has this been Haraway’s point all along? Am I getting to it in a new way or no?) that if we consider Morrison (which overlaps to a certain extent with Dobson’s) view of (race as a) technology with having very specific rules for use (rules that were made to be broken) humor or mis-use of race and of technology might be a kind of limit to the way race can be seen as a technology.
Yes, I think the limits of race as technology alone can be exposed by the line where uses of technology become absurd or fatuous: a screwdriver is not a hat. However, I think that realm can bring us somewhere regardless. I see a certain potential for art, for poiesis, in such improper usages of technology: it can make strong statements about technology and our relationships to it. If I choose to go around wearing a screwdriver as a hat, perhaps I am just unhinged, but perhaps I am pointing out something profound about the reality of a screwdriver?
ReplyDeleteAs you seem to be pointing to by saying "rules that were made to be broken," the framework of race as technology can break down at its borders into art. That artistic potential may be incredibly powerful, and like Haraway we may rejoice in such "illegitimate fusions" of supposedly disparate things.