Slave and Master: Hegel and Kindred

Through Hegel's lens, once humans figure out what's around them, they start to assert themselves in the world. 2 year olds, typically called "the terrible two's" go through this series of events in their mind: I used to not know stuff. Now I know stuff. I know that glass shatters. Now I am going to shatter glass because I know how to manipulate glass in my world. Dana goes through this series of events in their mind: I used to know stuff--I used to know that I am free. Now, after weird time travel, I know that I am not. (She is thrust into an unknown world and has to start to learn about her environment just as a two year old has to learn about theirs.) Through time and observation, Dana now knows the ins and outs of slavery, and thus, knows how to assert herself through the obstacles she faces: she can manipulate her world (how to escape, how to trick, how to perservere) and can use her power of observation to get, or try to get, the result she wants.

In terms of power, Hegel has an interesting theory: that a master isn't a master without a slave. The master is dependent on the slave to guarantee his power--but really, his power is manifested in his appearance: he bustles around looking tough, playing the expected role of the master, but is really not doing anything--his power is just a show, because he already has power. He doesn't need to do anything to get it. The slave however, due to her forced observation (to get out of an unfavorable situation) has to do something to escape and get power. A perfect example in Kindred that shows this weird power difference is when Dana teaches the slave children how to read. The slave children genuinely want to learn how to read because it will help them escape their terrible lives. Rufus and the rest of the Weylan's don't read well because their safety doesn't depend on it--they are already free, white, slave owners. What good would reading do them? The slaves have an unhappiness that actually leads somewhere, while the masters have an unhappiness that leads nowhere because their unhappiness stems from their feigned power. The real power is in the slaves themselves.

In the novel, Dana is from the 1970's where she lives life without slavery, sees real progress from the slave era, and experiences the dreams that the slaves worked so hard to achieve but never got to really see the result of. In the slave era, the slaves had a sense of what ends their means would yield, but were never able to truly realize their results. Dana has the unique experience of living in the time where the results come to fruition, and goes back in time to see the changes and tiny progressions that led to the effect manifested in the 1970's. This is typical Hegel: his formula is that, when thinking of yourself, the self is split in two: the self that is thinking, and the self that is being thought about. Once the thinking self realizes that, then the self that is being thought about becomes the thinking self. Then the thinking self splits again into the thinking self and the self that is being thought. It goes on like that infinitely, like how you cannot attain the results of the dreams an era has--that the time has to realize itself and move on. But the slave era cannot realize itself as the slave era because they don't think that there is anything wrong with their time or the practices being done in it.

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut explores the myth of free will in his novel, Timequake, where in Februrary 2001, there is a rift in time, sending everyone and everything back to February 1991. This look at time travel is very different from what we have experienced in the novels that we read for class in that when they go back in time in Timequake, they are not given the opportunity to change their history: what has already happened will happen again, making everyone relive terrible choices, accidents, and so on. This is Vonnegut at his best; he makes a claim in this novel that free will doesn't exist--that everything must happen as it has already happened; you can't change it now, so how could you think you could change it then?
When the rerun in time finally stops once time has caught up to Februrary 2001, Vonnegut makes the claim that "the hiccuping Universe, not humanity, was responsible for any and all fatalities." (110) When skimmed over, this sentence goes against what Vonnegut's message is: it appears to say that humans with free will cause fatalities. However, when read more carefully, it is clear that it is not FREE WILL but HUMANITY that causes fatalities and other atrocious things in the world--humanity that has no free will; humanity that can't help but do the things it does, as it is in the nature of humanity itself that acts in that way--"When free will kicked in, I simply kept on trying to get the soup off me before it could seep all the way through to my underwear. Trout said, quite correctly, that my actions had been reflexes, and not sufficiently creative to be considered acts of free will. 'If you'd been thinking,' [Trout] said, 'you would have unzipped your pants and dropped them around your ankles, since they were already soaked with soup.' "(112)

Vonnegut stresses that his novel, Timequake, is really called Timequake 2, because the first Timequake was finished in the timeperiod of the rerun. After the rerun had stopped and "free will" was restored, Vonnegut went back to his novel and added in personal quips and anecdotes. The book that is in stores, and the book that has always been in stores since it was published, is Timequake 2, harkening back to Vonnegut's idea that free will is a sham--that Timequake was never Timequake at all until it was revisited after the rerun. It was predestined that the book would be the anecdote version. Timequake 1 never existed. That sounds stupid, and I can't really explain what I mean in written word, but trust that it at least makes sense to me in my head. Maybe if anyone is interested enough I can explain it more clearly in person.

Alice and Dana

Alice and Dana are an experiment in time: The same "substance" is placed in two different time periods and produce as many similarities as there are differences between them. Dana and Alice both come into slavery after being free, Rufus obsesses, controls, and loves both of them, they look the same, and they both stubbornly try to protect their dignity. However, Dana and Alice grew up and lived in separate times which obviously shaped them both as people. The fundamental things are the same between them, but the environments that they were exposed to affected and changed those "default" characteristics. Dana and Alice are the same, but the circumstances of the times gave Dana literacy and basic freedoms that the 1970's allowed, while Alice was forced into illiteracy and violent denial of her human freedoms by her time period. The novel suggests that if Dana lived in Alice's time, she would be almost identical to Alice and if Alice lived when Dana did, then she would be almost identical to Dana.

When Dana finds herself thrown into Alice's time, the similarities between them are present, but minimal. As time goes by when Dana is in the past, she begins to let go of her 1970's self and starts to adapt to her environment, becoming more and more like Alice. They both have some form of control over Rufus, while he still has a more overbearing control over them. Their approaches to his mastery is different, but not by much. Alice gives in to Rufus' demands to preserve herself and her family from being sold, beaten, or otherwise abused. Dana gives in to Rufus' demands to preserve herself and her family, because without Rufus, both she and her family would not exist.

An interesting section to read to develop this idea further can be found on pages 156-157:
In this excerpt, Alice has been beaten to the point of short-term amnesia. Dana had been cleaning her wounds and taking care of her while she was hurt, so she was there when Alice woke up. The part of this excerpt that resonates most is when Alice asks Dana, "What's it like to be a slave?" and Dana's response is, "I don't know. I wonder how Carrie is doing--in all that pain and not even able to scream." Alice replies, "How could you not know what it's like to be a slave. You are one."
What Alice, and some readers, don't recognize is that Dana answers Alice's question: that she is in all that pain and not even able to scream.
Back to my original point though, this dialogue could have been switched so that Dana was asking Alice what it's like to be a slave. The interchangeability of the two is alarming. That's all I've got developed so far. I'll revisit this blog later. :)