Page 220 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes 1. Inherent Inferiority
According to Europeans, Europeans must describe and analyze the Orient because Orientals
are not capable of describing or analyzing themselves. Not only is Orientalism an area of study
that can be pursued only by outsiders, but what defines them as outside of their subjea is,
exaaly, their ability to study it: "the Orientalist is outside the Orient, both as an existential and
as a moral fact". Orientalism is thus inherently and inevitably a study of what theorists often
call the otherÂ-of that which is opposite to the person doing the talking or thinking or studying.2
Since the opposite of studying is an inability to study, the other is always conceived by those
who study it to be unable to study itself, to see or speak for itself. Thus, what the study will
always focus on is how and why the other lacks one's own capabilities.
It's fairly obvious that our descriptions of childhood similarly purport to see and speak for
children, and that we believe them to be similarly incapable of speaking for themselves. As far
as I know, the writers and readers of the Children's Literature Association Quarterly ate adults;
children are not the ones who write either the texts we identify as children's literature or the
criticism of those texts. Said's words force us to face the uncomfortable conclusion that our
attempting to speak for and about children in these ways will always confirm their difference
from, and presumably, inferiority to, ourselves as thinkers and speakers.
Of course, we may claim to believe that the inability of children to speak for themselves is not
inferiority at all, but a wonderfully ideal state of innocence, just as Europeans have claimed
throughout history to admire what they have interpreted as a lack of analytical reason in
Orientals. But this supposed admiration of the inability to see and speak is undercut by the fact
that it is based at least in theory on observation-seeing-and then, spoken about; it makes the
other wonderful at the expense of making it not like us-in essence, not quite human. We
undercut our admiration of the inability to speak as we do ourselves in the very act of speaking
so enthusiastically about it.
2. Inherent Femaleness
Representations of those who can't see or speak for themselves are and must always be
engendered by outsiders-those who can see and speak. According to Lacan's theory of the
gaze, all such representations imply the right of he who observes and interpretes to observe
and interpretes; he who can fix others in his gaze, and thus define who they are as no more and
no less than what he sees, has authority over them. The representations of childhood we can
find in child psychology and in children's literature thus imply our belief in our own right to
power over children even just by existing. These representations, and the disciplines that
produce them, are imperialist in essence. Furthermore, I said "he who fixes others in his gaze"
deliberately.
In the history of art and in contemporary pin-up photography, it has traditionally been females
who are subject to a male gaze, and therefore defined as appropriate subjects to be gazed at—
available, passive and yielding to the convenience of detached observers. If the most obvious
subject of a male gaze is female, then maleness and femaleness can and do become metaphoric
qualities for gazers and gazees who aren't actually male or female: indeed, even oppressors
who are actually female tend to describe themselves in language which implies their own
aggressive maleness and the passive femaleness of those they oppress, both male and female.
For Europeans for whom the Orient is subject to the gaze, it is therefore, metaphorically,
female-and that allows Europe to represent itself and its own authority as male. Said describes
how "images ... of frank sexual attention to the Orient proliferated" as "scholars, administrators,
geographers, and commercial agents poured out their exuberant activity onto the fairly supine,
feminine Orient".
The parallel holds here also. Whether male or female, adults often describe their dealings with
children in language which manages to suggest something traditionally feminine about
childhood, something traditionally masculine about adulthood, and something sexual about
adult dealings with children. Scholars, administrators, writers, and teachers-we all pour out
exuberant activity onto what we assume are (or ought to be) the fairly supine bodies of children.

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