According to psychologist Harry
Sullivan in his book Clinical
Studies in Psychiatry, sublimation is the “unwitting substitution of a partial satisfaction with social
approval for the pursuit of a direct satisfaction which would be contrary to
one's ideals or to the judgment of social censors and other important people
who surround one” (14). A prime example of sublimation would be writing,
which Edwidge Danticat, an immigrant author from Haiti, uses to express her
grief and sympathy for the suffering Haitian citizens. We can see sublimation
in two of Danticat’s works, Krik?Krak!
and Create Dangerously, from two
different perspectives: the immigrant artist and women. The goal of this paper
is to perform a close reading of two excerpts from two of Danticat’s texts and
analyze how sublimation is evidenced therein.
First of all, in Create Dangerously, Danticat writes
several essays about the challenges and motivations that the immigrant artists
face when creating. In the first extract, she is clearly expressing her
personal motivations to write and share her stories, yet it is interesting how
she universalizes all immigrant artists and writes as a representative of all
artists who are taking risks: “The immigrant artist shares with all other
artists the desire to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world” (Create Dangerously 18). By using “the
immigrant artist” as the narrator instead of Danticat herself, she is putting
the focus on the writers who have sacrificed their safety for the sake of
literature. By narrating a big population’s story rather than that of one
person, she is building up more pathos and causing a stronger emotional impact
on readers. Narrating the story in a first-person-plural-point of view also
shows the pride Danticat feels as an immigrant artist and how all the writers
respect and understand each other. Due to the conviction and firmness with
which she makes her statement, she sounds more trustworthy as a source of
authority by generalizing the immigrant artists.
In addition, Danticat also
criticizes people who insist that she should live in Haiti, not in the United
States, to write. According to Danticat, she will not return to Haiti because
her words are too risky to be written in Haiti. She is “exiled” from her home
country so that she can continue doing two things: share powerful stories about
the horrors of the harsh dictatorship and the courage of the suffering
Haitians, and create awareness around the world about these issues. At one
point, she even admits that she has questioned herself various times: “Do I
know enough about where I’ve come from? Will I ever know enough about where I
am from?” (Create Dangerously 18).
However, according to her, the “guilt and self-doubt” she is feeling for not
living in Haiti is what defines her as a writer. She is not “risking torture,
beatings, and execution”(Create
Dangerously 18), which makes her doubt herself at times, yet she proudly
explains that she will continue to take on taboo issues and fight for justice
in Haiti from another country. However, readers could speculate and remain
doubtful regarding her justification: Is this merely an excuse based on her
fears of torture and execution? After all, she could have gotten even more
powerful stories if she wrote as a witness in Haiti.
As seen before, in Create Dangerously, writing is described
as a sacrifice for immigrant artists. On the other hand, in Krik? Krak! writing is described as
inappropriate for females. Krik? Krak!
is a collection of short stories by females of different generations from the
same family but also recounts some obstacles Danticat had to face as a female
writer. In this second extract from Krik?Krak!,
Danticat is remembering her first writing-related interaction with her mom:
“Her disappointment when you told her that words would be your life’s work...
She was angry at you for not understanding”(Krik?Krak!
221). Danticat shifts to a second-person point-of-view, pulls the reader into
action, and directly puts the readers in the shoes of female writers who are
challenged by their families. Writing “She was angry at you for not
understanding” rather than “she was angry at me for not understanding” allows
readers to understand how Danticat felt when she first told her mother that she
wanted to become a writer. This demonstrates how unexpected it was for females
to choose writing over cooking. Danticat is generalizing the experience of any
Haitian women who wants to write instead of following the family’s legacy and
being a dutiful mother through her use of the second person point of view.
Readers can infer that Danticat had
to face various obstacles to gain approval as a writer from her family only
because she was a woman. She includes female stereotypes such as, “They carve
onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their
hair in new shapes...” (Krik?Krak!
221) to demonstrate the type of behavior that is normally expected in Haitian
women. She also uses parallel syntax to emphasize the five examples of expected
female behaviors, and by the third example that starts with “they”, readers
expect the syntax pattern to continue. Just like how readers expect a certain
syntax, Haitian society expected women to “sit in dark corners”, “braid their
hair”, and “carve onion sculptures” and not diverge from these established
patriarchal norms. Readers also expect the syntax not to deviate from the
established pattern, just as Haitian society expected women not to deviate from
established ideals of female behavior. However, by challenging those
stereotypes and deciding to be a writer, Danticat is criticizing patriarchy and
the nation’s dependence on traditional gender norms. Danticat wanted to convey
that women could and should do so much more than just braid and cook to fight
for their freedom, and that they are as capable as men to write and change the
world around them.
Based on the paragraphs analyzed,
Danticat has a true inner desire: to “make a new world” (Create Dangerously 18). She wanted a new world in which there was
political and gender justice. In the first extract, her inner desire was to
criticize injustice, the corrupt government, and the violations of human
rights. She makes a call to arms for the immigrants to unite into one group and
gets the audience to understand their desire of wanting to reveal the
injustices of their home country. However, that didn’t mean she was literally
taking down the government or starting a riot with other people, as much as she
may have wanted to, because that action would have been suppressed and
threatened by the government who was contrary to her ideals. Rather, she was
subliming and expressing that inner desire through writing to gain supporters
and create awareness, which is a much more socially acceptable action that
provided her “partial satisfaction” (Sullivan 14).
In the second extract, Danticat’s
inner desire was for women’s freedom of speech to not be undermined by
society’s expectations. However, her quest for women to hold a more active role
in society strongly contradicted her mother’s principles. Instead of sustaining
the family the way her mom wanted (cooking and braiding), Danticat starts going
in a roundabout way and uses a different method to carry her family’s legacy
and tradition forward: writing. Ultimately, she wanted approval and support
from both Haitian women and men, but mostly from her mother. She was not
completely satisfied because her mother and other close family members didn’t
eventually approve of her passion for writing, but she was partially satisfied
because it fit her ideals and she did what she felt was best, which makes it a
perfect example of sublimation.
Sullivan
states that sublimation is replacing a “direct satisfaction” for a socially
acceptable partial one (14). In the analysis of these two texts from Danticat,
sublimation can be seen as Danticat replaces the “direct satisfaction” she
would have received from the specific goal of revolutionizing Haiti and gaining
her mother’s approval for the “partial” but more acceptable and general goal of
creating global awareness and gaining support from Haitian women. Thus,
although Danticat cannot single-handedly change Haiti and change her mother's
opinion of her life's work, through sublimation she has been able to reach a
partial satisfaction in raising awareness on the injustice in Haiti and
empowering Haitian women, slowly edging her way towards her larger, yet more
specific, personal goals.
Works Cited
Danticat,
Edwidge. Create Dangerously. New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013. Print.
Danticat,
Edwidge. Krik?Krak! New York:
Soho,Inc, 1995. Print.
Sullivan,
Harry. Clinical Studies in Psychiatry. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 1973. Print.
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