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    (Cultural Anthropology 1987-Aug Vol. 2 Iss. 3) John Dorst - Rereading Mules and Men - Toward The Death of The Ethnographer (1987) (10.1525 - Can.1987.2.3.02a00030) - Libgen - Li

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    (Cultural Anthropology 1987-Aug Vol. 2 Iss. 3) John Dorst - Rereading Mules and Men - Toward The Death of The Ethnographer (1987) (10.1525 - Can.1987.2.3.02a00030) - Libgen - Li

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    [Cultural Anthropology 1987-aug vol. 2 iss. 3] John Dorst - Rereading Mules and Men_ Toward the Death of the Ethnographer (1987) [10.1525_can.1987.2.3.02a00030] - libgen.li

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    (Cultural Anthropology 1987-Aug Vol. 2 Iss. 3) John Dorst - Rereading Mules and Men - Toward The Death of The Ethnographer (1987) (10.1525 - Can.1987.2.3.02a00030) - Libgen - Li

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    Rereading Mules and Men: Toward the Death of the Ethnographer John Dorst Deparment of EnglishiAmerican Shulies Program ‘University of Wyoming It goes without saying that Zora Neale Hurston, flamboyant celebrity of the Harlem Renaissance and devoted student of Papa Franz Boas, is a noncanonical author. Her race, sex, regional origin, and class background insure her marg ality to the Great Tradition of Western letters. But, as Barbara Johnson points out, Hurston is not only an “example of the non-canonical writer," but a “commen {ator” upon the ideology of the canon (Johnson 1985:279). Indeed, aspects of her work can be read as a commentary upon premises that undergird bourgeois ide- ology itself. My contention in this essay is that of all Hurston’s work, i is her ethnography, especially Mules and Men, that realizes this disruptive commentary ‘most fully, ‘As Hurston gains her rightful place in American letters, most of the serious critical attention is directed toward her fiction. Certainly the importance of Mules and Men, Hurston’s collection of southern black folklore, has been acknow!- edged. For example, Alice Walker includes it on her list of ten essential books (Walker 1977-xi). But the close attention afforded Hurston’s stores and novels, especially Their Eyes Were Watching God, hs not been matched by critical reas- sessment in the social sciences of her ethnographies and folklore studies. I will argue that Hurston’s social scientific work, though not extensive, is more impor- {ant than her fiction from the perspective of contemporary critical theory, and that Mules and Men beats interestingly on current discussions of ethnographic prac- tice, Though her ethnographies are literary and her fiction is highly ethnographic, these two sides of her writing strain against one another. In the latter she operates comfortably within the frame of Western ideology. In the former she makes trou- ble for that ideology. For purposes here I will focus on Mules and Men (Hurston 1978a)! and Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston 1978b), accepting the apparent consensus that these are the best examples of the two modes in which Hurston worked. Alice ‘Walker includes them both on her list of essential books, and her reasons typify the reception of these two texts. She picks Mules and Men because, she says, “I ‘would need to be able to pass on to younger generations the life of American blacks as legend and myth; and Their Eyes Were Watching God because | would want fo enjoy myself while identifying with the black heroine, Janie Crawford, 0s 306 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 4s she acted out many roles in a variety of settings, and functioned (with spectac- ‘lar results!) in romantic and sensual love. There is no book more important to me ‘than this one" (1977-xi). ‘While these might not be everyone's reasons for valuing the two books, they reflect general notions about how books of certain kinds can be legitimately eval- uuated. Hurston’s work has been and continues to be received according to the conventions of a problematic that takes for granted a void between the work of the ethnographer and that of the creative artist. The former is judged for its data ‘and method, the latter for its capacity to entertain and inspire. ‘That difference notwithstanding, however, some of the same axioms of re- ception underlie both realist fiction and realist ethnography:* the traditions in ‘which Hurston was working in the 20s and 30s, Foremost among these axioms is the assumption of a stable, sell-identical, authoritative subject, a fully present ‘consciousness standing over against an external reality that the subject can register nd interpret, This stable, unproblematic subject is assumed for the producers of texts, the readers of texts, and the figures represented within texts. ‘One effect of this assumption isthe privileging of authorial intention as de- terminate ofa text's meaning. Another is the unexamined acceptance of empiti- ‘ism as a key premise of interpretation, Empiricism, the conviction that experience is the source of knowledge, is one of the main determinants of naraive structure in the classic realist novels ofthe canon. Dorthea Brooke, Gwendolen (Harieth], Isabel Archer, and, ina rather diferent way ‘Conrad's Marlow, all learn from experience, moving in the course of the narrative towards an enhanced awareness of themselves andthe world. (Belsey 1982:123] ‘The same could be said of Janie Crawford, heroine of Hurston’s novel. She inhabits the familiar innocence-to-experience plot, complete with the emphatic closure one expects in the classical tradition. At least formally the novel is well within the ideologically prescribed guidelines for the bourgeois literary artifact, ‘and Walker's desire to identify with Janie’s experience is the canonically appro- priate response.* We find in Mules and Men a text that has some remarkable sim~ ilarties to Their Eyes Were Watching God, an issue I will return to, but which ‘quite thoroughly calls into question the very premise of empiricism and the con- ception of the subject that underlies it. ‘To appreciate this fact requires that we abandon the canonical mode of read- ing typically applied to Hurston’s work, the mode represented, for example, by Robert Hemenway's excellent literary biography of Hurston (197). Hemenway is mainly concerned with identifying Hurston’s conscious intention in writing ‘Mules and Men as te precondition for appreciating its unusual form. “*On the one hhand,” he says, *“[Hurston] was trying to represent the artistic content of black folklore; on the other, she was trying to suggest the behavioral significance of the folkloric events" (1977:167-168). The conventional folklore collection of the ‘day, with its isolated texts, comparative notes, and, at best, is ethnographic in- troduction or note on field methods, could not achieve this dual purpose. Hur- ston’s solution was to present her data, primarily folktales, as dramatic perfor- ‘TOWARD THE DEATH OF THE ETHNOGRAPHER 307 ‘mances emerging from the natural flow of everyday life on the store porches and in te jook joints of Blacksouth folk culture. ‘The trade-off this solution imposes, of course, isthe book's uncertain status inthe academy. An apologetic leterto Boss explaining her approach betrays Hur- ston's anxiety that she has compromised the book's usefulness to the social sc ences as then practiced (Hemenway 1977:163-168). It was, afterall, almost en- tiely innocent of scholarly apparatus, and the dramatic contexts that frame the tales are in some sense fictional construts* Inthis day of ethnographic experimentation itis precisely these properties of Hurston’s text that give it immediate interest. Bu it would be selling Mules and ‘Men short merely to identify it as an early example of such experimentation, thereby foreclosing onits more radical implications. Read solely as an experiment in the presentation of ethnographic data, Mules and Men still functions smoothly as an instrument for the facile consumption of cultural Otherness. Hurston’s use ‘ofthe fieldworker as a controlling point of view isthe rhetorical device most r= sponsible for this effect. -Hemenway's canonical reading emphasizes jut those qualities that insert the ader effortlessly into the text by way of identification with the fieldworker. “From the very fist pages,”* he says, “Hurston creates a self-effacing persona, inviting the reader to participate in collective rituals" (1977:166). This fietion- alized “self-effacing reporter” serves to dramatize the process of collecting and make the reader feel par of the scene" (1977:164). The fictional Zora, Hurston’s literary creation, “becomes part of each community she encounters, accepted by Virtue of her race and her sympathy with communal ways. As she is accepted, so isthe reader. Each experience inthe book begins with her admission into a group" (197:167) emenway's emphasis onthe process through which Mules and Men opens ‘comfortable space for readers to inhabit i in keeping withthe lberalclassial notion that literature broadens us by allowing for our identification withthe de~ Picted experiences of others. The ideology of empiricism is operating here as clearly as in Walker's response to Hurston's novel. This ideology, however, and the mode of reading it require that we ignore or suppress a great deal. What it clides are the elements that suggest readings in which the subject position avail- able to the reader, the conceptual position the reader takes up in order to recognize a particular coherence in the text, shows itself to be highly unstable and resistant tocasy appropriation, More specifically it suppresses those features of Zora’s"” fieldwork that disrupt the notion that experience leads to knowledge in the cen- tered subject. ‘Lam certainly not claiming that Hurston set out to conduct a theoretically informed critique of bourgeois ideological foundations—quite the contrary. One suspects she would have endorsed Hemenway's reading. Nevertheless her the- torical strategy of placing the folktales in the dramatic frame of a fieldwork ac- count leads her ultimately toa disruptive exploration of participant-observation, the privileged research method of 20th-century cultural anthropology and the ground of authority in realist ethnography. 308 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY empiricism and the unexamined acceptance of subjects as stable, self-iden- tical entities is crucial to our literary canon, they are also essential articles of faith for the social sciences, or were up until quite recently. The authority ofthe eth- rnographic account depends upon the reader's confidence thatthe ethnographer has ‘experienced the subject culture firsthand. Entirely outside awareness is the prior assumption that the ethnographer represents a centered consciousness capable of recording meaningful data and making sense of it. As soon as one calls into ques- tion the notion that observer and observed (and consumers of anthropological texts) are fixed entities capable of establishing various relations of identification and detachment, the whole enterprise of ethnographic realism begins to unravel. Mules and Men, | want to argue, calls into question just these taken-for-granted fixities. Init we see participant-observation fieldwork taken about as fara it can {g0. The text brings us up hard against the inherent paradoxes of this method, Which are the paradoxes of empirical ideology generally ‘What I propose, then, is an anticanonical reading of Mules and Men, one that highlights those elements that run counter tothe easy totalization and tight closure privileged by the libera/classical literary and ethnographic traditions. Behind the fieldworker's easy rapport with her informants, behind the tale-elling episodes and the social vignettes that scem to give the reader easy access to the Otherness ‘of Blacksouth folk culture, there exists a narrative shadow. Mules and Men in- seribes a trajectory—not so visible perhaps as to be called a plot—which in some sense is about the instability of the subject position. One way to make this trajec- tory more visible is to notice how it closely parallels the fully realized innocence- to-experience plot of Their Eyes Were Watching God. “The novel's heroine, Janie Crawford, travels from childhood to maturity and ‘a kind of fulfillment by distinct stages associated with specifi locations: from her ‘grandmother's house in the backyard of the wealthy, white Washburns, to the ‘equally safe and equally deadening life on her first husband’s small farm; from there to Jody Starks’s store, where she passively observes the life ofthe town as itpasses through the mouths ofthe store porch conclave; and from there finally to self-realization in Tea Cake’s world of Everglades muck. Abstractly, the move~ ‘ment is from deadening security to risk and the completion of authentic being, ‘The overall movement of Mules and Men, underplayed and easily over- looked when we are reading the book only as a folktale collection, is a striking echo of the novel's plot.* Zora travels from the relative security of home ground toalien realms, The first stage is her tip tothe alien realm of her childhood home- town, Eatonville, Florida, the same town Jody Starks builds in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zora, like Janie, observes the life on the store porch—the same porch as in the novel—without actively entering in. Then, again like Janie, she ventures off the porch and into the swamp, that is, to the sawmill camps of Polk ‘County. Like Tea Cake's muck, these camps, and especially their jook joins, are the realm of the truly Other, the “Negro farthest down’” who is ever the hero of Hurston’s fieldwork. They are also the realm of risk and fullest life, the realm in Hurston’s literary universe of fullest cultural authenticity ‘Mules and Men and Their Eyes Were Watching God share, then, not only an ‘organizational principle, but also the central theme of a quest for authenticity of ‘TOWARD THE DEATH OF THE ETHNOGRAPHER 309 some sort. The remarkable thing is how differently these quests turn out. The novel concludes in the completion of the subject as a fully realized self—a kind of fulfillment and closure. The narrative trajectory of Mules and Men leads inthe ‘opposite direction. The fieldwork experience embodies a radical inauthenticity of subject and a disruption of identity through encounter with an alien Other. Mules and Men thus inscribes (at least) two movements that cut against one another: there isthe tale collection, presented as a series of dramatized performances, that ‘conveys a sense of accessible cultural Otherness, but also the structure ofthe col- lector's experience, which denies the possibilty of closure in the Other. Perhaps this willbe clearer if we observe how the novel and the tale collec- tion develop their quests for authenticity. In both books this quest is realized through two closely integrated codes: folkloric and erotic. These codes, dominant in the novel, are visible but peripheral in Mules and Men and have becn ignored in the reception ofthat book. Janie's quest for personal fulfillment clearly comprises both the full reali- zation of her sexual being and the realization of her own voice, especialy as sym- bolized by her assumption of a role as active participant in the community's verbal art. Jody prevents her from joining in the endless flow of store porch talk. This hindrance of Janie’s performance energies can hardly be separated from the ulti- ‘mate disruption oftheir marriage, which occurs when she impugns Jody's man- ‘hood, implying that her sexual energies are thwarted as well, Tea Cake, and the ‘world he represents, provide the occasion both for her t find an active voice— thei first encounter includes among other things a session of flirtatious ““woof- ing" (1978b:144-146)—and also for the full sexual blossoming she desperately desires. The same codes—the erotic and folkloric—are operating in Mules and Men, but their expression is less direct and more complicated. They play themselves ‘out not in terms of personal, individual growth, but in relation to the experience ‘of folklore fieldwork. Where the two codes run along parallel, mutually reinfore- ing tracks in the novel, in the folktale collection they mingle in complicated in- tersections. Mules and Men of course is not about, or at least not openly about, the personal search for a private authenticity. As an account of fieldwork it is about the search for and participation in the authentic Other. The erotic code frst emerges, then, not directly in relation tothe main character, the fieldworker, but through the folktales themselves and the interactions ofthe performers. ‘The Eatonville section ofthe book (chaps. 1-3) is much concerned with the theme of relationships between the sexes. For example, licensed by the perfor- ‘mance frame of the store porch, Gold playfully berates Ellis forhis preacher story She suggests the story isa lie, and then expands her criticism to all men—all of them good for nothing but telling lies. Some even “done quit lyin’ and gone to flyin’ ” (1978a:26). Gene Brazzle takes up the challenge and Shug joins the fray, ‘A general argument about the nature of men and women ensues. When it begins ‘to tum ugly, that is, when the tore porch is about tobe transformed from a frame for competitive talk to a frame for violent action, Armetta ois the water with her laughter. But before long Gold is “cracking" on Gene again. Gold tells her story 310. CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY bout the origin of blackness, and Gene accuses her of making the story up her- self; that is, of not telling an authentic le, “'lies" being the native term for folk- tales. The talk and storytelling again tur (o relations between the sexes and from there to the nature of love. Jack Oscar Johnson recites his poem about Sue, Sal, ‘and that Pretty Johnson gal. Before he starts, though, he suggests that when fin- ished he and Zora will go out to Montgomery to “git up a cool watermelon.” Jack’s wife, Clara, feigns jealousy about this proposed liaison and also about the fictional Sue, Sal, and Johnson gal of Jack’s recitation. Jack takes up the game and pretends to a secret courting life. Shug pursues the theme with her counter- story about three men courting one gal. From there the porch session goes off in various directions, but it ends on a note of intersexual conflict, as Ernest and Jon- nie Mae leave in a red hot family argument’ over Emest’s insulting reference to the size of Jonnie Mae's mouth. “The Eatonville section ofthe book ends with Zora being advised that the real place to hear stories and songs (the teal locus of folkloric authenticity) is Polk County, where the “water drink lak cherry wine."” As the night comes on, Bubber Mimms and Charlie Jones play and sing songs, teaching Zora the verses of, among others, “John Henry.”” It is a knowledge that figures prominently in sub- sequent events. They also tel stories of the world of the jook joints, work camps, and prison gangs, the alien world Zora is about to enter. Significantly, one Ella ‘Wall figures in the stories about Polk County jooks. She isto appear in the flesh later in the book. ‘One begins to realize that the erotic code operates in several planes of the text, and that these planes begin to overlap and merge. The symbolic world within the folklore itself, the social world of the performers, and the detached world of the fieldworker/observer begin to intersect. The theme of intersexual relations that «dominates the tales ofthe Eatonville episode and that is enacted “fictively,” that is, without risk, in the sanctioned performance space ofthe store porch, leaps out ‘of this charmed ciecle and stands forth as full social reality inthe Polk County ‘chapters. As the primary condition of this movement, the fieldworker, up to now safely passive observer, has to step off the porch and out into the perilous realm ‘of an alien Other. Clearly, Zora’s trip from porch fo swamp, the narrative expression of a shift in weight from observation to participation, has much in common with Janie’s trip from Jody's porch to Tea Cake's Everglades. Importantly, it is at this point of transition that both women become active in the folkloric code. Both find voices as performers. Notice, for example, that Zora’s first successful encounter with the sawmill community, like Janie’s with Tea Cake, is by way of a fltatious ‘woofing session, in this case at a payday party (1978a:68-70). The minor firta tions ofthe Eatonville section are without real force, fetionalized by the perfor- ‘mance frame within which they occur. On the job, however, Zora is perceived as a serious object of attention. The woofing has a sharper edge of erotic possibility, ‘and she begins to establish herself by displaying her competence in this perfor- ‘Although the two books share a common narrative structure, essentially that ‘of the quest for authenticity in which safety is forsaken and risk embraced, they TOWARD THE DEATH OF THE ETHNOGRAPHER 311 are virtual opposites in ther treatments of subjectivity. Janie's quest leads to clo- ‘ure inthe unified subject, the heroine achieving the fulfillment of a personal au- thenticity. She has realized in her life experience the folk wisdom that “yuh got to go there to know there,"" and the novel ends appropriately with the tranquil image of Janie, alone in her bedroom, her horizon no longer choking her, but like 1 great fishnet draped around her shoulder, ‘*so much of life in its meshes" (1978b:286). This closure is all the more emphatic for being a private completion Janie is sufficient unto herself, with no need for connection to the larger com ‘munity How drastically diferent is the conclusion to the folktale collection: ‘Slim stuck ou the guitar to keep two struggling men from blocking my way. Lucy ‘was screaming. Crip had hold of Big Sweet's clothes in the back and Joe was slugging him lose. Curses, oath, cries, and the whole place was in motion. Blood was on the floor. I fell out the door over a man lying on the steps, who either fll himself ‘tying to run or got knocked down. I don't know. 1 was inthe car in a second and in high jst to quick, Jim and Slim helped me throw my bags into the car and I saw the sun sing 38 T approached Crescent City. [1978a:190] would suggest thatthe elided text of Mules and Men reveals that ultimately ceven to go there is not really to know there, We see in this text a disruption of ‘identity rater than a closure, the necessary result ofthe radical inauthenticty that is the etemal and inescapable scandal and dilemma of participant-observation fieldwork. This is clearest at the point where Zora is forced to create a bogus identity, a story that isa real lie, a deception, as opposed to the fictive lies of the tale tellers. Zora’s unannounced arrival atthe job, her litte Chevrolet, her $12 ‘dress—because of these things she is greeted with cool suspicion. She is treated to “the ole feather-bed tactics" by the lumber camp, most of whose residents are fugitives from the law. In her introduction, Hurston informs us that this i the strategy employed to deflect the attentions of whites and to thwart their surveil- lance. Her own response to this treatment is to construct a past for herself. She becomes a bootlegger wanted in Miami and Jacksonville, And she thereby also becomes quite literally the social science spy, a figure whose trace can never be fully climinated from the fieldwork enterprise, however well intentioned and aboveboard.* Her bootlegging story accepted and her understanding of social conventions and display demonstrated by the way she responds to Mr, Pitts's flirtatious woof- ‘ng atthe payday party, Zora is soon swept up in the celebration and overwhelmed ‘with dance requests. Finally, she reveals her competence as a performer by join- ing James Presley and Slim in singing “‘John Henry.”” “By the time the song was ‘over,” she says, “before Joe Willard lifted me down from the table knew that 1 was in the inner circle. I had first to convince the ‘job”” that I was not an enemy in the person of the law; and second, I had to prove that I was their kind. “Sohn Henry’ got me over my second hurdle” (19782:70). Since, of course, she is not really “their kind,” we see here a folklore performance functioning as a kind of deception 312. CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY ‘The paradox of authenticity at the heart of social science fieldwork plays itself out in Mules and Men particularly through the intersection of the folkloric and erotic codes, and “‘John Henry" becomes the most concentrated point of tersection. It is a song that belongs to the world of the jooks; it is a song that celebrates the prowess of the black working man, that “Negro farthest down" it is the item of folklore that Zora makes most her own asa folklore performer; and itis through her collaboration with Slim in performing it that she gets caught up in the erotic life of the sawmill camp. Up to this point of crucial folklore perfor- mance Zora has been the controlling observer, manipulating situations from a po- sition of superior knowledge, seeing but in a sense unseen. Yet itis precisely ar this point, where Zora is simultaneously observer/collector and participanuper- former, thatthe book’s trajectory takes its most significant turn. Her deceptions and her folklore performance are a kind of Fall whereby she loses the paradise of detached observation and becomes a mortal acto in the social drama. ‘An erotic undercurrent previously confined to the tales and to the sanctioned space of performance begins to spark out in the social reality of the fieldwork situation. For example, as Zora contemplates joining the male swamp crew in a day on the job, she admires the concrete reality of which “John Henry” is the ‘mythological embodiment. Speaking of the cypress cutters, she says that “they scem to be able to do everything with their instrument that a blade can do. It is a ‘magnificent sight to watch the marvelous co-ordination between the handsome black torsos and the twirling axes" (1978a:71). When she goes tothe jook it has tobe with a woman, Big Sweet, rather than with her friend Clffert, because, as she explains, “it would mean that I'd be considered his property more or less and ‘other men would keep away from me, and being left alone is no way to collect folklore” (1978a:152). Sexual attraction is not a research tool openly acknowl- edged in the tradition of realist ethnography. ‘Mules and Men moves increasingly toward a drama of complicated sexual politics that entirely transcends the fieldwork, the dramatized performances, and the tales themselves. Toward the end, in fact, tale telling all but disappears.” What ‘comes to the fore is a social drama of the escalating confrontation between Big ‘Sweet and Ella Wall over the affections of Joe Willard. And Zora herself gets ‘caught in the meshes of a parallel conflict with Lucy. She is jealous of Zora's performance association with Slim, the two having become known around the ‘camps for their rendition of ““John Henry."” ‘As Thave said, the book moves from the Eatonville store porch tothe lumber ‘camps in the swamp. But within the later world itself there is a kind of progres- sion; that is, from the job, the more or less domestic and labor environment, to the jook, where the erotic life of the community is foregrounded. Ifthe store porch is a realm of conflict held within the neutralizing frame of play and performance, the jook as Hurston depicts it seems to be a realm of play and performance held ‘permanently open to violent confrontation by some frame of imminent crisis. Each stage in the progression ofthe book, from porch to jab to jook, marks ‘another step in the dissolution of the fieldworker's control and security and an increasing instability of the subject position she represents, In finding a participant ‘TOWARD THE DEATH OF THE ETHNOGRAPHER 313 role as, among other things, a folklore performer, she gets swept up willy-nilly in the erotic life ofthis alien world, drastically limiting her ability to observe. In ‘other words, she has enacted in the flesh the core paradox of fieldwork: the role ‘of participant-observer is really a precarious balance of contradictory postions and always susceptible to fissure. The fiction of the ethnographer as a unified sub- {ect i threatened with exposure. Furthermore, Zora has ceased to be the privileged observer. While Mules ‘and Men does not raise explicitly the politics of race, the Polk County chapters depict an environment of interracial surveillance. The men ofthe swamp crew tell their “lies” under the perpetual shadow of anticipated surveillance by their white bosses, “We better hurry on to work,” says Jim Allen as the crew heads for the rill, “befo" de bukra get in behind us” (1978a:80). When on one occasion atthe {ook the “Quarters Boss stepped in the door with a .45 in his hand and another ‘on hs hip” to stop a fight between Big Sweet and Ella Wall, Zora speculates that “te had been eavesdropping as usual” (1978a:161). The “feather-bed tacties"” used against Zora upon her arrival involve the strategic surender of the superficial in order to keep the meaningful unobserved. Many of the tales she records have to do with attempts to circumvent the white man’s surveillance. Regardless of its implicit claim to innocence, Zora’s ethnographic observa- tion is implicated in this surveillance. She too isa sort of eavesdropper. There is justification for her being subjected to the feather-bed treatment, though not ex= actly on the grounds the inhabitants of the job imagine. Her ole as privileged observer is most called into question, however, when she herself comes under the surveillance of an Other, the ultimate disruption ofthe supposedly transcendent, stable subject position ofthe ethnographic observer. ‘As the drama of sexual rivalry erupts into open conflict, we realize that Zora has become the object of Lucy's surveillance, and perhaps even of Big Sweet's ‘manipulations, as she operates behind the scenes to set up the violent confronta- tion, All ofthis goes on outside of Zora’s awareness, The result isthe final scene where Zora almost comes to a violent end, the definitive objectification, We re- lize at last that forall her sympathy and rapport, there is a whole world of mo- tivations, alliances, and animosities that she has barely glimpsed, much less pen- erated, Her response is flight. Infact, one might even say she has been expelled from the community. Heading north out of this realm of the alien Other, she quite lit-

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