Date:         Mon, 31 Oct 94 13:13:16 EST
From: "Charles J. Stivale" <CSTIVAL-AT-CMS.CC.WAYNE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: d-g and nationalism



I am currently trying to think through a chapter entitled
"Constructing Minor(ity) Identity" in the context of the development
of Cajun music/dance spaces. This topic responds perhaps to the
question that Rennie Childress asks about nationalist subject
identities, and I present the a current draft of the opening
paragraphs of this chapter:

To pursue my reflection on the question "comment peut-on etre
Cajun?" (how can one be Cajun?) at the end of the twentieth century,
I wish to address the matter of "minor(ity) identity" at the crux of
much debate on taste and styles in music and dance in southern
Louisiana. In fact, identity in this region is quite precisely
*constructed* on the basis of many complex attributes, some of which
are highly dubious (most notably, racial origin). These attributes
contribute to establishing forms of "territory", i.e. of
territorializing identity, for example, by defining "tradition" (in
Cajun dance, music, festivities and rituals) and even of maintaining
"purity" of "traditions" in the face of "outside" influences. We may
thus understand the relationship of horizontal ("inside"/"outside")
to the vertical ("above"/"below") through the national/global vs.
regional/local opposition, both in general terms and in terms of
specific debates concerning forms of cultural expression.

   In this light, I place the suffix "-ity" of "minority" in
parentheses with two goals in mind: first, as the attribution of
"minority" to a social group of predominantly European origins may
appear incongruous, the term "minor(ity)" is a way to emphasize
nonetheless both the marginal status of this ethnic group of French
and French-Canadian heritage within American national culture and
the fact of their willing integration to this very culture. However,
the first use of this diacritical marker connects to a second: the
term "minor" has taken on a specific valence through research that
has extended Gilles Deleuze and Fe'lix Guattari's introduction and
development of this term (1986: _Kafka_). In this sense, then, I use
"minor(ity)" to emphasize at once the linguistic, discursive and
socio-political facets constituting the "minor(ity)" status of Cajun
culture and identity, constructed at the nexus of vertical
(above/below) and horizontal (outside/inside) relations. For "Cajun
identities" have evolved both as a regional identity throughout the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and as a re-constructed "global"
identity in the late twentieth century as a dual mode, at once of
self-affirmation and of resistance. I thus employ the concept of the
"minor" for artistic expression (Cajun music in its French dialect)
as forms of deterritorialization (shifting the folk-musical emphasis
away from 'American' forms) *and* of reterritorialization (through
claims for 'traditional' and 'authentic' forms of this music).

****
I want to develop this theorization of the "minor(ity)" a bit
further, but wish to employ concrete examples to draw this out.
Hence, at this point, the chapter will consist of three sections:
an analysis of the central "fais do-do" (Cajun party) scene in the
film "The Big Easy"; and a study of the thematics of
"de'paysement" (literally, "un-countrying") in selected
contemporary examples from the Cajun music repertoire, a thematics
that paradoxically enunciates the unstable, diasporic sense
of these identities while doing so as a way to affirm the fixity of
the very identity of something that might be called "Cajun".

I send this post knowing full well that lacunae exist in this
reflection, hence it's usefulness for discussion.

CJ Stivale, Wayne State U

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