After our long talks about agency as a paradox on Friday, I could not help but to notice the liberating and restricting qualities of power in Asch's piece. A lot of what Asch points out while searching for that "outside world" is the off-kilter distribution of power in America, specifically American agriculture. The companies (often a one company monopoly) control the system completely, control the prices, products, and in some cases even the citizenship of their workers (295).
Since agency requires the power to act, it would seem as if the corporation had supreme agency in 1930's agriculture dynamic. The workers were in a constant struggle, freezing in paper-thin homes and surviving each year with less and less money. One Negro Asch met proclaimed that croppers "don't live here" they're "just here" (286). And so of course the companies were thriving, the more power/agency taken from the workers the more power/agency given to the companies. This power is freeing for the corporate men. They live lavishly and liberally as does the first landowner Asch meets. The man owns "four hundred acres" and Asch catches him in the act of buying a "beautiful new car" (285). These southern owners experience their agency, the agency to live a comfy life, amidst the surrounding tenant squalor.
But, as we discussed, agency is paradoxical, both freeing and constraining. And so while these companies are able to experience financial comfort and fancy things they also are being mentally constrained. Asch proposes the idea that "the worse you exploit somebody, the worse you hate them" (286). And its this exact intrusion of conscience that is so restrictive on the landowners and corporate men's lives. They are forced to hate, forced out of their own greed and objectification of their lower workers, and certainly the owners Asch meets share this disposition or lack of care. This is the other side of power.
Yet if the corporations are forced to hate those they oppress, doesn't that give the common croppers some power, some agency? The workers have no strains on their conscience. They know they are being oppressed and still don't often seem vengeful, as seen with the lack of participation in Aragon's meetings. But they can hate, and more importantly they can choose to hate, which is power/agency in itself. And they must hate, contrive a collective hate, in order to change this paradoxical power dynamic.
Good post, but I would disagree that the workers don't hate the corporation. Look at the lumberjacks. They threaten to smash the purchasing agents head in (301). This is a very obvious hate, but many of the other people that Asch bumps into on his journey express at least some contempt for their employers. The mother on page 287 says that she is going to keep her children in school or die trying because it is something that can not be taken away from them. If this does not portray a bitter citizen who hates her own circumstance and hates the fact that everything she has can be taken from her in an instant then I don't know what does. And this is due to the fact that she has nothing to bargain with against "the man". And the relationship between Chiver and Aragon challenges our understanding of hatred and, thus, agency. Chiver was an educated white land owner who lost everything and is clearly the inferior human being to Aragon in basically every conceivable way. Why does Chiver tolerate Aragon's presence and, more importantly, why does Aragon tolerate Chiver's presence? Chiver clearly tolerates Aragon because Aragon is a much more effective public speaker and can also serve as a translator, but Chiver seems to be only a hinderance to Aragon. Maybe because Aragon sees Chiver as a symbol for his campaign, a sign to everyone that no one is immune the giant monopolies that can crush who it wills?
ReplyDeleteJames, in a way your statement about the Chiver and Aragon as a pair resonates usefully with some notions of agency as cooperative and communal.
ReplyDeleteEven though Campbell deals with literary agency--whereas in discussing Asch we are concretizing agency as a form of power--her first proposition does kind of support what you say: "agency is communal, social, cooperative, and participatory ..." (3).
If we want to apply Campbell's definition to Aragon and Chiver as a pair, I might add that what makes their agency complete--rather, what allows us as readers to ascribe them agency--is the way that Asch portrays them as co-dependent.
This does make me think, now, about the differences between agency and power. What is it that Aragon and Chiver have, together? Separately? Is it agency? Is it power? Are they the same in this case?
-Prof. Graban