Hey Guys,
Been thinking a lot about Latnah and the position of women in general in Banjo. Anyway, Latnah seemed to really demand discussion as she is the subject of the book's terminal conversation. Or she is the entrance to a conversation about women in general, maybe. I started looking over this final paragraph of speech (by Banjo) and noted a few remarkable abnormalities. First: Banjo replies to Ray's question about including Latnah in their journey, "Don't get soft ovah any one wimmens, pardner." (The italics are mine). What are we to make of this incongruous pluralization? Banjo has intimated in previous chapters that all women are the same to him, is this simply an instance of that misogyny made grammatically manifest? Is it possible that Latnah means nothing more to Banjo than any other woman might? Skipping ahead to the third sentence in what is purported to be Banjo's (!) dialogue we get: "A woman is a conjunction." Lets forget about the semantic weight of that line for a second and just focus on the dialect McKay uses: that's not how Banjo talks. Ever. And McKay makes obvious this discrepancy by juxtaposing wimmens and woman in the same paragraph. That word alone is enough to signal that something has gone seriously awry in Banjo's speech patterning, but then that word is metaphorized as a conjunction. As a piece of grammar! Banjo doesn't say shit like that. Ray might, though I can't recall an instance in which he has. The narrator (whatever polyglot of voices and characters that actually is) might as well, since grammar and words are presumably the narrator's business, but this feels almost like a new voice, one that is suddenly as concerned with the physical stuff of making novels as the characters that stuff is used to portray. One, in fact, that equates the two: "A woman is a conjunction." Or maybe it's the same voice that wrote "A story without a plot". Ultimately it's probably futile to attempt assigning this voice to anyone; the significant thing is that I don't see how it could possibly be the voice of Banjo we've become accustomed to. So what's going on? What is happening to speech and to agency as the book ends? What is invading Banjo's voice? And we've got to remember that it still is Banjo's voice. I don't mean to take this statement away from him, just to note that something has changed very quickly and strangely.
Also, what is being said in that line "A woman is a conjunction."? Moments after Banjo has grammatically stripped Latnah of any individuality is this new voice restoring some of it? Is Latnah, being mixed race, being as James called her (I think) "the book's phantom architecture", the conjunction actually being discussed in this sentence? Is Banjo unconsciously thinking about Latnah since she is, after all, the catalyst of this discourse on women and male partnership? Is this the voice of Banjo's unconscious that talks about women as conjunctions? What the fuck?
Also just noticed that the copy of the book that like everyone except Erica has is red, white and blue (as are the flags of the U.S., England and France) and that the title Banjo is filled with red and white horizontal stripes (like the U.S. flag, but not like Britain and France). Significant? Obviously not a choice made by McKay, but perhaps by a publisher and authorized by him. Regardless, it can be interesting to think about the information we (unwittingly?) receive from a book's packaging.
Ok. Sorry. I'm done.
Jess
I really like the meditation on voice and diction here, Jess, and the question of packaging that you raise at the end is not at all insignificant. Fancy theorists like to call this stuff the "paratextual elements" of our reading experience and I do think they influence our perception of the text "itself." I like the phrase "phantom architecture," though I can't take credit for it; my own phrase for Latnah was "structuring absence," and I think it was Stephen who riffed on it with the term "phantom." I'm going to leave that issue to Michelle Stephens, for whom Latnah's character (specifically her disavowal at the plot level) is central to the novel. I'm intrigued, though, by the incongruity in Banjo's speech that you've identified in his use of the word "conjunction." It makes me think about what task conjunctions perform grammatically, and whether McKay is indicating that women (all? this one?) are just mediating moments between subjects (which are of course male). Hmmm. And how if at all shall we factor McKay's homosexuality into these considerations?
ReplyDeleteI really like that you brought this up, Jess, the incongruity jumped out at me too when I read it, but I didn't think too much of it. But now that you bring it up, I'm going to attempt an answer...
ReplyDeleteNot looking at it grammatically, nor how the character's voice changes, it is an important utterance coming from Banjo that shows how he doesn't change at the end of the novel. He's still drifting along, and no one person, let alone a woman, is going to change him. He was able to accept Latnah as easily as he was able to let go of her, but she clearly made an impression on the other fellas who were charmed by her presence.
As essential as Latnah was to the group dynamic, Banjo didn't see her as an equal. He dubs her a conjunction, which grammatically, functions to coordinate or subordinate [sentences]. In either case, a conjunction is used to link two parts of a sentence together, acting either to coordinate two sentences or to add a subordinating clause to a sentence, but it cannot function on its own. If, as Prof. Davis suggests, we view the males as the sentences, it is possible to see how Latnah is a component of the group to the extent she brought some order, but according to Banjo, remained a subordinate. Latnah certainly held her own, but she was very elusive [a phantom, if you will] which contributed to her role as a conjunction, since she was not seen as an equal in Banjo’s eyes. Although it was not grammatically phrased in Banjo’s voice, the phrase distinctly reiterates and reinforces Banjo’s character as someone who only cares for himself.
I don’t know if this begins to answer the question, maybe I just danced around it, but the importance of Banjo’s speech illustrates how his character does not change at the end of the novel, since it is a story without a plot.