Monday, March 21, 2011

So What is the "What" in "What is the What?"

When I first read What Is the What?, the grammatical strangeness of the title continued to haunt me. What did it mean? How does one invest meaning in such an unstable signifier? But instead of seeing it as a static unit of meaning, thinking about it lead me to understand how the symbolic significance of the What constantly evolves throughout the novel. At first, the What is described as the key element in the Dinka creation myth. In the creation myth, God offers a Dinka man and woman two choices; they may either choose the cow, or they may choose the What, an unknown. In the first version offered to the reader, the Dinka choose the cow as they would be “fools to pass up the cattle for the idea of the What” (Eggers 62). As Valentino’s father tells the story, he says, “They knew that they would live in peace with the cattle, and that if they helped the cattle eat and drink, the cattle would give man their milk, would multiply every year and keep the monyjang happy…And God has proven that this was the correct decision. God was testing the man. He was testing the man, to see if he could appreciate what he had been given, if he could take pleasure in the bounty before him, rather than trade it for the unknown” (Eggers 62). Here the What is associated with Dinka superiority precisely because they chose correctly. They chose what was before them rather than the unknown.

However, the What is re-characterized throughout the novel in a number of ways. As the What is unmoored from its association to Dinka prudence, it functions less as a negation than as an affirmation of Dinka possibility. I’d like to add that the What comes to ultimately symbolize agency and possibility, the hope that the Dinka will make better choices, that they will no longer balk from unknown futures. The very evacuation of a specific meaning in the What points toward its function as an empty placeholder for possibility and agency.

Throughout the novel, Eggers decribes Valentino as trapped within systems of dependency in the refugee camps. The children are educated, but the hope in using this education remains dim when it does not directly translate into an (eventual) material change. In this way, they are victims of not only the civil war, but of the system of foreign aid itself in relegating them, as Valentino notes, as “helpless humans” (xiii). Moreover, the What’s meaning shifts in response to Dinka agency. In the beginning, the What possesses a stable meaning. It is the symbol of Dinka prosperity and prudence, and this is reflected in the peaceful village of Marial Bai. However, as the novel progresses, the What becomes ambiguous. Valentino first questions this when he encounters the mysterious man in the forest during his long walk away from what was a world of security and meaning. He asks, what is the what? The mysterious man asks for his ideas. Valentino suggests the What could be the horse (the symbol of the Arabs), the Ak-47 (war), airplanes (modernization), or education (Western liberal discourse of development). Valentino’s suggestions subtly refer to the possibility that the Dinka may have made the wrong choice of the creation myth. Valentino’s failed bike ride further suggests a fear of the unknown (since what is more terrifying to a child then their first bike ride without the help of an adult, of pedaling into some unknown future?).

However, the passage I really wanted to talk about was the one where Valentino speaks to Daniel of the importance of being brave, of taking risks in the hopes of claiming a better, albeit unknowable future. “I told them that the mistakes of the Dinka before us were errors of timidity, of choosing what was before us over what might be. Our people, I said, had been punished for centuries for our errors, but now we were being given a chance to rectify all that. We had been tested as none other before had been tested. We had been sent into the unknown once, and then again and again. We had been thrown this way and that, like rain in the wind of a hysterical storm.

But we’re no longer rain, I said, - we’re no longer seeds. We’re men. Now we can stand and decide. This is our first chance to choose our own unknown. (531 -532)

The What then, in momentarily occupying a negative space, emerges as a sign of agency. Valentino alludes to the creation myth as the “mistakes of the Dinka before us were errors of timidity”. He argues that choosing safely was a false choice since after all, the Sudanese have been “sent into the unknown once, and then again and again”. In other words, to exercise one’s agency is to be able to make choices and not be controlled by the choices themselves. His reference to their status as grown men also indicates a final iteration of the What as the choice to “choose our own unknown.” As such, the What functions as an evolving symbol that assumes meaning depending on its context – it is identified as a symbol of timidity, but it also emerges as a trope for boundless possibility precisely in its lack of stable meaning.

In this way, attempting to answer the question of the novel – what is the what – implicitly refers to the quest for agency, a solution to the seemingly overwhelming problems. In other words, the phrasing itself demands a substitution of signifiers – what is the answer to the Dinka’s problems? What is the meaning of hope itself? – in deciphering its resistance to meaning. Moreover, the grammatical instability of “what” further emphasizes its purposefully ambiguity; according to dictionary.com, “what” can be a: pronoun, noun, adjective, adverb, interjection, conjunction, and lastly, idiom. The very instability of what as a signifier clarifies why it is so difficult to locate its signified; “what” can essentially mean anything, but I think Eggers specifically chose this strange syntactical construction to refer to the multiplicity of forms hope can take. This has particular salience to human rights literature since this form of hope becomes critical in sustaining hope itself. However, this points not to the debility of human rights, but to an approach that privileges a sentiment and momentum for change while acknowledging concrete specificities remain a challenge in realizing the oftentimes ambiguous of hope of human rights.

This inclination towards sliding down the chain of signifiers is again reflected in Valentino’s attempt to answer it with the mysterious man of the forest. The prevention of Valentino to exercise agency fosters a sense of despair that haunts the entire novel; indeed even Valentino seems to note how loyally calamity follows him. This parallels the numerous other scenes where Valentino denies the likelihood of change, such as when Noriyaki successfully orders the laptop, or when Tabitha derides Valentino for lacking the courage to run away, to make a better life for themselves. Yet the previously quoted passage’s allusion to the significance of the What however prepares the reader for the great hope of the novel, which is to grant Valentino agency not in the power to produce material change, but in the power to hope again.

3 comments:

  1. Great description. It took me two years to finish the book as I literally kept losing it- misplacing it-. This was a great link to the the beginning and end and analysis of the What.

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  2. To my mind "the power to hope again" is the object of the search of many South Sudanese seeking refuge from the almost endemic violence in their country. I am writing a novel of my own in which two characters are a South Sudanese father and son making a new life in Australia and the What has become stronger in the son than the father. I found this post an enlightening read.

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