Fighting words: hidden transcripts of resistance in the Babylonian Talmud, Homer's Odyssey and Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent
Date
2011-05-26
Authors
Shoichet, Jillian Grant
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Abstract
The study proposes that oral-traditonnal cultures, or cultures with a high degree of orality, use similar processes to hide political or social subversion in text. To test this hypothesis, the author examines three texts from three highly oral cultures: a tractate of the Babylonian Talmud, Homer's Odyssey and Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent. The author finds that in all three texts subversion is concealed according to what she defines as the three principles of disguise: articulation, by which a text hides secondary meaning through its use of diction and syntax; construction, by which a text incorporates hidden transcripts or meaning within its narrative or textual structure; and diversion, by which a text directs the audience away from subversive meaning by focusing attention on other elements. All three principles of disguise exploit the relationship between the written text and the oral-traditional environment in which the text was used.
The three-principle model of disguise enables us to set in comparative perspective relationships between the processes of communication and resistance in diverse cultures, and offers significant opportunities for comparative study. The author concludes that texts from diverse cultures may be employed similarly as extensions of oral tradition, especially when there is a need to conceal particular ideas from a dominant hegemony, and that reading these texts "against the grain" for evidence of subsurface subversion promises a deeper insight into both the function of text as a tool of resistance and the dynamics of human power relationships.
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Keywords
Homer -- Odyssey, Talmud, resistance (philosophy)