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Emma Liu
Prof. Amie Parry
MA Thesis Proposal
12-29-2004
The Neglected Ones: Subaltern Characters in Michelle Cliff’s Novels
No Telephone to Heaven and Abeng are two semi-autobiographical novels by Jamaican
woman writer, Michelle Cliff. The two novels depict the self-searching journey of the
protagonist, Clare Savage, a light-skin-colored and privileged woman, who tries to define and
locate herself in postcolonial Jamaica. By characterizing Clare as a self-contradictory subject
between the privileged status derived from her colonial heritage and light complexion, and
her desire to identify with the colonized people, Cliff also demonstrates the complex issues
that are entangled in Jamaican society, including history, memory, gender and class. The
difference between the two novels is that, Abeng tells the life of the younger Clare, in which
those issues are still not that clear or influential to her, but she begins to question those
unequal situations in Jamaican society. As to No Telephone to Heaven, it is more of a
self-searching of the conflicted adult Clare, on whom those issues have caused a great impact.
What is worth noticing is that, alongside Clare’s life and journey, there emerge other
characters that not only are important to Clare’s identity construction, but also reflect the
social condition of Jamaica. Moreover, they are als exploited by the society. Nevertheless,
these characters do not have much appearance in the novel. Also, in the critical essays or
analyses of either novel, the focuses are often on Clare’s Creole and conflicted identity; or
Cliff’s own experience and the relation between she and Clare. However, the characters who
are related to Clare, namely, Christopher, Bobby or Zoe, only occupy a little space in those
essays. Even if the essay has devoted a whole section to analyze them, or even put them in
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the center, there is still something about them that seems to be left out or neglected. That is,
in my opinion, they are the ones that reflect the predicament of the powerless people, who
may not have the chance to struggle for their identity, but only have to accept the reality in
order to keep on living. Yet, this situation seems to be neglected or become a minor problem,
when compared to Clare’s problems, which are often the center of analyses. Therefore, in the
thesis, I would like to focus on these seeming sub-characters instead of the protagonist and
then discuss how these characters—Christopher, Bobby and Zoe, could be categorized as
subaltern, which is a contrast to the privileged and self-conscious Clare who might also be the
oppressor. Furthermore, I would try to argue that not only are they oppressed by colonialism,
class and gender in the level of the novel; but they somehow are oppressed by the epistemic
violence of the critics as well because in the critical essays, they are pushed to a sub-level or
to the margin.
Among the criticisms, Noraida Agosto takes great effort analyzing Cliff’s novels and
had written an excellent book about the novels. What she claims can be closely related to my
thesis because she puts the emphasis on those memories and histories that had been erased
and suppressed by the colonizer. Also, she also argues the importance of recovering the minor
and folk cultures, such as dialect, in order to challenge the dominant culture. This is similar to
what I try to explore, that is, the importance of minor or sub-characters. Thus, I would like to
discuss Agosto’s analysis first. In the book Piecing the Tapstry of Memory and History,
Agosto claims that it is important to question the official history and to revive the memory of
the colonized people in order to construct the history of the colony, and also the identity of
the colonized people and slaves. In the process of recovering the memories of the colonized
people, they would remember their own lives and generate the consciousness of resistance
because to “[remember] is essential for protecting identity” (5). When they can reconstruct
the identity denied and oppressed by the colonizer, they can resist the oppression. She also
argues that all the non-official heritage of the colony’s culture should be remembered,
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including patois and the African religions, thus it can challenge the dominant culture of the
empire. Yet, in this process, it would be more important to examine and discover the women’s
resistance, since women’s experiences are more easily ignored. In this enlightening book,
Agosto employs many female characters in Cliff’s works, such as Nanny the heroine of the
Maroon, to demonstrate the important but often neglected experience of woman’s resistance.
Further, she explores “the memory of resistance as inspiration to create strategies for
liberation against pervasive oppression” (9), and “the subjects who recover this suppressed
memory” (103). In these two endeavors, she mainly puts Clare Savage in the center and
examines her experiences as a character who possesses multiple identities and world views.
By portraying Clare as a female resisting subject who has the responsibility of “preserving
and transmitting women’s ‘endangered’ memory” (66), Agosto again shows the significance
and potential of women’s capability of preserving the colony’s history and subverting the
official history. What she claims is very important, with which I cannot agree more, however,
I cannot help but wonder, what about other women’s memories and memories of people like
Christopher? Especially those who do not have opportunities or access to the resistance, such
as Zoe and the maid who got killed by Christopher. Although Zoe, Christopher and Bobby are
mentioned in the book, the emphasis is still on Clare. They seem to function as evidences or
support of Clare’s resisting consciousness. While Agosto claims that the subordinate cultures
and the memories of the colonized people should be valued and revived, these three
characters are also being neglected and placed in a subordinate position. Nevertheless, what
they represent could be as significant as the women’s resistance and the oppressed cultures
because they are also being oppressed by the dominant ideologies. Thus they deserve the
same attention as those more central female subjects such as Nanny, who has the courage and
also the capability or access to resist.
In addition, in the essay “Race, Privilege, and the Politics of (Re)Writing History: An
Analysis of the Novels of Michelle Cliff,” Belinda Edmondson explores “how Cliff
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negotiates the dilemmas posed by race and class,” and her attempts of “[constructing]
narratives that map the history of black, white, and mulatto Jamaica, mixing genres of
narrative . . . .” (182). She argues that by mixing different genres of narratives, Cliff creates a
“geo-political space of memory” (185) and “an alternative ‘reality’” (190), and therefore
deconstructs the linear and chronological quality of dominant history. In this essay, we learn
about many important points of view, for example, the comparison between Cliff’s novels
and those of earlier Caribbean writers, including Jean Rhys. She also demonstrates the
imbalanced relationship between Clare and Zoe: “Her [Clare] relationship with Zoe also is
saturated with the imperatives of class, since it is only possible because Clare has the ability
to move in and out of Zoe’s world” (188). This is the point that I appreciate the most because
she also recognizes Clare’s privilege, especially when compared to a less-privileged character,
which I think is an important aspect when discussing the novel. The reason I want to quote
from this essay is because the author not only offers many insights of the novel which could
be very helpful to discuss the postcolonial issues, but she mentions this imbalanced
relationship between Clare and Zoe as well. However, it can also be observed that Clare is
still the center of this essay in the following passage: “ . . . her texts attempt to dismantle
notions of official history and the relation of that history to myth . . . by conflating Jamaican
legends and myths with ancient and contemporary histories . . . and among all of these,
intertwining Clare Savage’s personal journey” (185). In this short passage, it can be seen that
Edmondson considers Clare’s personal journey is entangled with Jamaica’s history and
culture. Still, by emphasizing Clare and the relation between her journey and the bigger
theme of Jamaican histories, Christopher and Bobby are almost forgotten. Even when Zoe is
mentioned and analyzed, she is not the focus but only comes up in relation to Clare. So even
though Edmondson has offered significant insights and analysis of Cliff’s novels, she forgets
that these characters also need an “alternative narrative” to show their struggle since they are
even more oppressed than Clare. That is why I would like to put more emphasis on these
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three characters.
One of the characters I would like to discuss is Christopher in No Telephone to Heaven,
who slaughters a “backra”1 family and finally becomes a vagrant, and gets killed in a film
shooting set in the end of the novel. The distinctiveness of this character is that, compared to
the female protagonist’s opportunity to be aware that she is in a conflicting position and
trying to deal with this plight, Christopher can only stay in a passive situation in which he is
always the exploited and the oppressed one. When he takes his action to solve or to react to
his problem, it only results in another problematic situation, which is a crime and he becomes
a murderer. In one essay that puts Christopher in the center of the analysis, Ramchandran
Sethuraman argues that Cliff creates a new kind of narrative outside the dominant history, to
reveal the voice of the colonized people and challenge the “fixed boundaries of identity and
difference” (251). Sethuraman also points out that psychoanalysis is complicit with
colonialism because it is employed by white men to construct their identity as subject and
people in the colonies as other by putting the colonized people in the position of being
watched, that is, the image of an other. Yet Christopher is this “other” that “dislocates and
ruptures the power relations of the dominant discourse” (263). Moreover, it might be in the
“gazing back” and what he did to the corpses of the “buckra” family he had slaughtered, that
he creates a new self who “is imaging rather than being imaged, signifying rather than being
signified . . . .” (265). It is similar in the last scene when Christopher appears again as “De
Watchman.” Though he is put under the camera of a neocolonialism represented by the
British and American film production, what he does or how he is being represented in the
scene still creates an “other narrative,” which “[subverts and transforms] a series of
oppositional binaries,” including “the Western visual violence of exoticizing the primitive
and the counterviolence of the revolutionaries . . . .” (278). In this essay, Sethuraman offers
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White people or those who identify with white people. In the novel, it often means the light-skinned,
privileged and upper-class people who occupy the higher social position.
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an insightful reading of the two major events in Christopher’s life, but there are still other
things about Christopher worth noticing, such as the experience of Brother Josephus
designating him as the “Christ bearer.” Also, questions such as what makes Christopher kill
the family, and why does his howl sound so powerful are also very important, but are not
discussed in the essay. In addition, Sethuraman has called Christopher a subaltern, which
corresponds to my point of view, but in my opinion, there should be a clearer explanation of
how and why can he be categorized into this category. On the other hand, in the interviews of
Michelle Cliff, the interviewer would ask many questions of Cliff’s own experiences and the
relation between herself and Clare, who is like Cliff’s embodiment. However, there are far
fewer questions about Christopher or Zoe, and even fewer for Bobby. Cliff says about
Christopher “What I want to show with Christopher is how a murderer is created, how
somebody like Christopher is created, and how any chance that he has for self-respect or
self-love is bashed . . . .” (Schwartz, 613). Although this is a very important issue in the novel,
it seems to be less noticed among the critics and analyses. Even when it is noticed and dealt
with, it is still in a subordinate position, or not completely analyzed.
Besides Christopher, there is another character who appears even less often, that is,
Clare’s Vietnam-War-veteran-boyfriend—Bobby. The most distinct thing about Bobby is that
there is a wound on his ankle, which “seemed to represent something which couldn’t be
cured” (143). During the life they live together, Clare takes care of Bobby’s wound
meticulously, and keeps urging him to talk about his story and what had caused the wound.
Later we learn that the real cause of the wound is the chemical lesion during the war. What is
significant is that in their relationship, Bobby is the one being oppressed or exploited because
Clare always tries to push Bobby to talk about his past while he does not desire to say it, or
he cannot talk about the painful memories. Moreover, although Clare’s taking care of his
wound might be out of concern, it could also be a process of healing herself. Thus, there exist
an imbalance between the two. In addition, there also exist imbalance between Clare and her
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childhood companion, Zoe, who is a quite different figure compared to Clare. She is a darker
and less privileged girl who lives on Clare’s grandmother’s property and is obliged to be
Clare’s companion during vacations. Although their friendship seems to be carefree, there
actually is the shadow of class, which can be seen in the incident of hunting the wild pig. In
this incident, the two girls possess two kinds of thoughts. For Clare, it might be a chance or
challenge to do what girls are not allowed to do, but Zoe does not to do this at all because she
will be the one who takes all the consequences of the hunting. Also, when Clare accidentally
shoots the bull later, Zoe also realizes that she will be the one who would be blamed. Thus, it
can be observed that Zoe knows there is a difference between she and Clare, but Clare is still
not aware of it, or tries to ignore it in the ideal friendship.
What these characters share in common is, besides that they are all related to Clare,
they are also in a less-privileged, oppressed or even exploited position. In Suzanne Bost’s
discussion of the “tragic mulatta tradition” of African American and Afro-Caribbean literature,
Zoe is a name borrowed from this tradition in which
The beautiful, Christian, near-white2 heroine [is] trapped between racial worlds
and locked out of domestic harmony because of the ‘one drop’ of ‘black blood’ . . .
Despite her attempts to assimilate into the white society that is part of her parentage,
Zoe’s tragic racial admixture leads to a clash of cultures. Which often results in her
death” (675).
Bost views Clare and Zoe not as the “tragic mulatta,” but as subjects who possess fluid
identity given by the mix of blood, and they can “play between different realms” and “subvert
singular categories of identity and chart new space for shifting, multiple, feminist
subjectivities” (685). This is indeed a very ideal point of view, but Bost seems to forget that if
all this were true, the one who could move between different realms would be Clare. Zoe
does not have the opportunities and agency to even leave the country. If Zoe should leave, she
2
Emphasis added mine.
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would be “[working] as a domestic someplace, to live and to die in somebody else’s kitchen
or nursery” (Schwartz, 608), as Cliff says in the interview. Also, Zoe is this dark-skinned girl
and the daughter of a market woman, thus she is not a mulatta of the tradition. This is similar
to Christopher’s situation in that although this time Zoe gets more attention, there is
something important being left out. What is worse, there is even less discussion about Bobby.
In my opinion, Clare is an important subject to be analyzed, but characters like Christopher,
Zoe and Bobby deserve more attention since they are the ones who can reflect the social
injustice. So they should be more emphasized.
To analyze these characters more thoroughly, I would like to introduce the idea of
“subaltern.” According to Antonio Gramsci, who discussed the term in Selections from the
Prison Notebooks, the term can mean “[non]-hegemonic groups or classes,” and it can also
mean “subordinate” and “instrumental.”3 In this sense, the characters mentioned above may
be able to be called “subaltern,” since they are obviously cast into the sub-category or subtext
both in the novel and in the critical reviews. In addition, to discuss the issue of subaltern,
Gayatri Spivak’s theory of it must also be discussed. She investigates the imperial oppression
of Indians by illustrating how the British Empire and the East India Company manipulate the
native people in northern India states, and construct them into an other. Furthermore, Spivak
illustrates how the Rani of Sirmur’s4 choice to sacrifice herself was prohibited by the British
because they needed her in their own interest and completely ignored the reason why she
chose to do it. Besides, Spivak introduces another woman, Bhubaneswari Bhaduri, who
hanged herself while she was menstruating. Her suicide was also misinterpreted into a
sacrifice for love, while the truth was she had commited suicide for the trust of a
revolutionary group that she had joined. Both women tried to use their bodies to speak and to
“[rewrite] the social text of sati-suicide,”
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4
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5
but under the colonial and patriarchal restraints,
Quoted from “Terminology” of “Preface,” page. xiv.
The queen of Sirmur, which is a northern Indian state.
Widow sacrifice.
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both of the attempts had failed. By introducing these two women as examples, Spivak means
to emphasize that women as subaltern would be under a double oppression—colonial and
patriarchal. Although Christopher and Bobby are not women, they do suffer from the
oppression and pain caused by colonialism, which is also the reason why they should be
examined more carefully. Not to mention Zoe, she might well be the doubly oppressed
woman who suffers from colonialism, class and gender.
In addition, Spivak mentions the idea of “epistemic violence,” which is “the forcible
replacement of one structure of beliefs with another.”6 At first, the term might indicate how
the British Empire forcibly imposed its ideology on the native Indians, but Spivak extends the
meaning to the “complicity in the persistent constitution of the Other as the Self’s shadow.”7
That is, she criticizes the first world scholars who claim that they can represent the subaltern
people and speak for them, or to think of themselves as having an objective point of view to
analyze the subaltern issue. However, when the scholars do these things, the subaltern people
have lost their voice because they are being represented by the scholars’ conceptions. The two
Indian women, the Rani and Bhaduri were subjected to this kind of epistemic violence from
both imperial and patriarchal power, and even from her female descendents, as in Bhaduri’s
case. Consequently, they were erased from the imperial history, and their true intentions to
commit suicide were ignored and obscured. Similarly, what has happened to the three
characters in Cliff’s novels is also neglected, obscured and might be misinterpreted by
readers or even scholars in terms of interpreting the novel, since they do not have the chance
and agency to begin a self-constructing and searching journey, or to join the revolutionary
group. Thus, they cannot even try to find their own subjectivity and identity.
In Spivak’s examples, the two female figures and their behaviors were being reduced to
some unimportant events in “history,” for instance, the Rani only appeared twice in the
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Quoted from note 2 of “Can the Subaltern Speak?” p. 2197.
Quoted from “Can the Subaltern Speak?” p. 2197.
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historical record. Nevertheless, this reduction could reflect the situation that minority and
subaltern people are reduced to the background and become an insignificant object of
colonialism or first world scholar’s interpretation and representation. The three figures in
Cliff’s novels are similar to this kind of plight. On one hand, compared to Clare, they are less
privileged and do not seem to have the agency or access to find their own identity or try to
challenge the dominant power even if they know they are being oppressed, for example, not
one of them has joined the revolutionary group. On the other, although they are like the
insignificant events in the history, since they do not appear very often in the novel, they could
disclose a greater site of conflicts and struggle. Maybe Cliff tries to show in the novel that
there exists this problem of people being pushed to the margin other than Clare’s struggle, but
most literary reviews do not notice this. That is, Clare is not the only character who should be
discussed and analyzed. Christopher, Bobby and Zoe, and even other powerless characters
should be paid attention to because, like the Rani and Bhaduri, the trivial things sometimes
are more important.
That is, in Chapter one, I want to discuss how each character fits into the category of
the subaltern, and also to examine their experiences more carefully and thoroughly. First, I
would like to relate these characters’ situation to that of Spivak’s and Gramsci’s notions of
subaltern and try to find the relation between the definitions of subaltern and the character’s
lives. For example, Christopher is the most obvious one who can be defined as a subaltern
because of his life experience in the Dungle, his silence and his being exploited by multiple
powers. Although Bobby and Zoe seem to be more privileged than Christopher, they are also
oppressed by different forces, and therefore their voice cannot be heard, or they are not able
to speak. To view them as subaltern by examining more closely their life experiences, I would
like to show that these characters are the most oppressed and exploited.
Chapter two will be the analysis of how these minor characters relate to each other and
how they are related to Clare. What I want to explore is that if they could be called subaltern,
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what would they have in common except the relation to Clare and what does this similarity
mean? Also, since Christopher, Bobby and Zoe are all very different in terms of life
experiences, there might be different definitions of subalternity. In this chapter, I would like
to analyze these characters in pairs in order to find connections among the characters,
especially the pair of Christopher and Bobby, and the pair of Bobby and Zoe because the
former seems to share the silence of a painful past, and the latter is related because of the
intimacy they both have with Clare. That is, I want to bring in their relations to Clare, too,
and try to show that they do not have the same agency as Clare does. Therefore they do not
have the opportunity to deal with the issue of identity, which may reflect the subaltern
people’s situation. That is, the subaltern cannot speak, or the subaltern does not want to speak,
and cannot be heard. Also, their predicament might be ignored if the focus is placed on a
subject who possesses the agency to quest for his/ her identity.
Chapter three will be the discussion of what is at stake if these characters are neglected.
If the emphasis is put mainly on Clare’s journey, we could recognize the struggle of the
conflicted subject and the importance of recovering the memory of resistance, which is very
important. Yet something equally important could easily be omitted, and what happens to
these oppressed characters would subside into the background. Similar to the situation of the
Rani of Sirmur and the girl who hanged herself, if we put too much emphasis on analyzing
Clare or other bigger themes, such as history or even the identities of the colonized women,
there exists the danger of neglecting other important but trivial things, which might be
another kind of epistemic violence. Therefore, I also hope to conclude in this chapter that this
kind of negligence appears to be a problem or symptom. In Cliff’s novels, Christopher,
Bobby and Zoe, or even other voiceless characters actually occupy an important position
because they can represent the oppressed people, though they do not have the same emphasis
as Clare. Nevertheless, I think she still tries to show that this kind of people and their
sufferings coexist with the struggle of privileged backras like Clare, and Cliff herself.
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However, in the critical analysis, this problem is somehow cast aside. Instead, the privileged
but conflicted subject’s struggle, or the themes of identity and women’s resistance become a
more obvious and general reading of the novels. Again, as what I have argued, these issues
are very important, but what Christopher, Bobby and Zoe reflect is also very important.
Therefore they should be place in the center in order to understand more thoroughly the
problems of the colonized people.
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Bibliography
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Agosto, Noraida. Michelle Cliff’s Novels: Piecing the Tapstry of Memory and History. New
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