The Politics of Nostalgia (was Nel #10: Class)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 41671

I wrote, about Rowling's use of stock characters and conventions:

> > What makes this interesting, to my mind, is that the particular 
> > *kinds* of stocks which are being used are emblematic of a 
> > literary approach to social class that is strongly aligned with a 
> > certain set of values and mores and judgements, a certain way of 
> > viewing the world, and that it is a way of viewing the world that 
> > elsewhere in the text, JKR seems to be going very far out of her 
> > way to critique and even to deride. 

Dicentra asked:

> What choice does she have, though? 

No choice at all if she wants to write in that particular nostalgic 
tradition, I agree.  But does her decision to write in that nostalgic 
tradition in the first place insert a certain political bias into the 
text?  I think that it does.  I think that JKR tries to combat it, 
but I don't think that in the end she is completely successful, 
possibly because much of the appeal of that nostalgic tradition 
in the first place may well reside in just those values that are 
embedded within it, values which co-exist rather uneasily with the 
author's more explicitly-stated progressive bias.

That's where I see a lot of the ambivalence slipping in.  I don't 
think that it's a problem only to be found in the Harry Potter 
books.  I think of it as a problem inherent to many different 
manifestations of "nostalgia."  


Dicentra:

> She wants to critique social bias and unenlightened social values, 
> but all she has to work with is a world that isn't ideal, even 
> though the world is of her own creating.

The elements of the world that I was writing about, though, I don't 
really see as of Rowling's own creating at all.  They're not elements 
that she herself invented. They're the conventions of a particular 
type of nostalgia, a nostalgia which to some extent I think may come 
with certain biases and values "hard-wired" in, so to speak.

I do think that Rowling has tried to reduce the bias inherent in the 
literary conventions that she has chosen to use.  She not only 
emphasizes the theme of the primacy of choice in the affairs of men, 
but she also puts its articulation in the mouth of Dumbledore,
the character most strongly marked as the voice of "Good" in the 
entire series.  The entire SPEW plotline of Book Four is interesting 
not only for its modernity, but also for its complexity, its 
fascinating refusal to resolve by novel's end.  And I also agree with 
Naama that Rowling pokes so much fun, and takes such pains to 
subvert, the "untrustworthy and/or funny foreigners" cliche that the 
fact that she also makes free use of this literary convention for 
comedic effect really does lose a lot of its punch.  

In the end, though, I do not feel that Rowling completely succeeds in 
separating the nostalgic tradition to which her writing looks from 
the political bias which is embedded in that tradition.  Others, it
would seem, disagree on this point, but I see a great deal of tension 
in the text, tension between the values it explicitly promotes and 
those which it implicitly reflects.


> As has been said, Harry has limited exposure to the people outside 
> the world of Hogwarts, but he does bump into them occassionally. 
> JKR could have decided to make Stan Shunpike an earnest poet 
> something equally against type, but that's too much granularity for 
> the role he plays. 

Alternatively, she could just have refrained from giving him a stock 
accent.

She did not do so, of course, because such a great part of the 
series' appeal -- for the author, I suspect, as well as for the 
reader -- lies in the cheerful embrace of just that body of nostalgic 
genre conventions to which Stan Steerpike belongs.  


Dicentra:

> To make Stan et al. too different from the literary tradition she's 
> plugged into would "feel wrong" in the wrong places. 

Yes, precisely!  That's just the point I was trying to make.  She has 
chosen to reference a literary tradition that not only upholds, but 
even *requires* certain social values to be represented in the text.

If the books didn't have that touch of archaism, then they would lose 
a great deal of their appeal, IMO.  Both Lilac and Darrin have, in 
the fairly recent past, cited the books' "old-fashioned" qualities as 
one of the very things that made them like them so much.  I am 
personally convinced that the nostalgic qualities of JKR's writing 
are one of the main reasons for the series' tremendous popularity.  

There is nothing wrong with that.  Nostalgia *is* appealing.  It 
also, however, tends to come complete with a whole lot of political 
baggage that sits somewhat less comfortably with contemporary 
progressive values, and that's precisely where I see the 
inconsistency, and even a certain degree of authorial ambivalence, 
slipping through the cracks of the text.


-- Elkins