The concept I touched on in my previous posts hinted at the idea of duality in Dusklands, but I did not delve into this as much as I could have mostly because it was something that was brought to my attention by someone else. The idea of a battle between the bodily existence and the conceptual existence is really one of the things that I was trying to get at. The characters can live out their existence and believe in the concept of the colonizer, but does that mean they can embody it? Not necessarily, as is shown by the fact that the bodily existence of both Jacobus and Eugene suffers from their inability to see the concept of the colonizer as what it is, a concept that has been constructed by not just someone, but several people, something inorganic, which they mean to accept as tangible and organic. This concept cannot be lived out because things are simply not as black and white as they might have seem for Jacobus and Eugene. They want to subscribe to the idea of difference, trying to determine who they are based off what they are not. However, both characters find that they have more in common with the other than they had initially thought. The "other," is not quite the other, and can share many things in common with the self. It is like looking at a mirror, thinking that the face that looks back at you is different from you, only to realize that what you have been looking at all along has been your own self. For example, Jacobus has to begin to rethink his ideas of the Namaqua when he is faced with the fact they are proud people, like him. Therefore, he finds himself in the position of having to account for this similarity, which is contrary to what he had known. While acknowledging this fact, that they possess will, unlike his slaves, he has to explicate the difference by subjecting them again to the narrative of the colonizer, without conceding the fact that this same narrative has begun to fail him. Similarly, Eugene tries to explain his failure at work and his marriage by coming to the idea that he is a misunderstood genius. The oppressors then can be seen as being brutalized by their own narrative, in their attempts to oppress others. Their physical bodies must endure the pain that their egos cannot endure when their idea of the colonizer/colonized relationship is subverted. Dusklands does not simply place all answers in one's lap. One has to dig through the text to realize that even though these two characters are horrible, and although it may seem like there is no punishment administered, there is no worse punishment for them than being trapped in their crumbling ideals, because they have seen the light between the cracks of their broken mirror, but they cannot bring themselves to accept what is beyond it.
(EDITED: September 27, 2011 12:31 to be double spaced)
(Haiti Slave uprising, the slaves hang old masters)
(EDITED: September 27, 2011 12:31 to be double spaced)
