[since the portfolio deadline precedes the final research essay, this is my second draft and will be replaced with the final draft once I complete it]
Other-izing Parts of Society into Purgatory: How Challenging the Surface of Imposed Otherness without Dismantling Broken Systems Has Broadly Negative Implications
Otherness pervades everyday life. Anywhere there is a plurality, there is the potential for traits or actions to be tallied somewhere along the scale ranging from Normal to Other. But in practice, Otherness is more subtle and dynamic than some kind of dystopian tally of belonging. It is informed by the power structures of society, but because these eventually change, so does the concept of Otherness. Sometimes, the old and new collide amidst hasty attempts to right past wrongs in ostracizing various groups. Especially in these cases, such solutions are often hasty, and superficial and allow the problem to escape notice temporarily, while it metastasizes within society. As a result, potential positive metamorphoses of society itself are stunted—progressing far more incrementally, if at all, than they otherwise might. Two prominent such examples are the strained relations between ordinary settlers and the highly Other berserkír (violent, potentially shape-shifting outlaws) in Icelandic Sagas, and the hydra of disingenuous attempts by White America to fix racism against people of Asian descent in the United States.
Heroes in the Islendingasögur are known to personally fend off berserkír, though this doesn’t extend to effective sanctions or re-education in the Alþing (Parliament) dating back to these times. In other words, they confronted a known threat posed by an Other group, but only incompletely. In a society as highly literate and with such a strong collective memory for folklore as in Iceland, it is also worth exploring the idea that these unresolved literary issues might be correlated to modern-day aberrations in domestic violence in an otherwise-egalitarian society. Both within these tales and in wider society, unresolved patterns of Saga violence appear.
The American government and citizenry has committed many atrocities against Asian communities, with many half-hearted or even disingenuous attempts to fix things. The overarching society has claimed such individuals pose similar threats of violence and instability to society, much like the claims against berserkír, though the stark contrast is that these groups are not at fault. In previous centuries, there was mass racism during economically-motivated immigration and periods of urbanization, and the stripping of human rights during Internment. Today, the “model minority” myth is insidious and hate crimes have risen alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether these phenomena are examined through literature or crime data, there are many ways to identify how Asian-Americans have repeatedly been labeled Other, often with more negative implications, and these instances have never truly been remedied. Society as a whole becomes trapped in cycles of harm and antiquated modes of thought, with disastrous consequences.
Not all forms of Otherness allow for this kind of insight. Alternative cases of society imposing Otherness on a minority group, such as in the case of mental health stigma or fitness, tend to be either consistently un-addressed (in the case of the former) or part of an ongoing dialogue to attack the heart of the problem (such as the body neutrality movement and that to undermine the bigotry of BMI). Only when we explore two significant cases of Otherness with deferred or superficial solutions and explore how they inform each other can we understand the broader implications. Ultimately, we can see that in the case of ostracizing certain parts of society as Other and thereby sowing seeds of conflict, it is very common—although ultimately mutually detrimental—to challenge only the surface of these issues. Whether the label of Other is applied towards threats that need to be resolved (berserkír) or in fits of unwarranted xenophobia (against Asian-Americans), in neither case is the core of the problem confronted, so all of society suffers. Given how “smart” society has been in rapidly developing technologies, it might seem surprising how much we are held back by latent tensions and prejudices. But, these analyses show how deeply ingrained the pattern of only superficially combatting detrimental other-izing is, and can inform new approaches to societal progress and ultimate cohesion.
Icelandic sagas are rife with symbolism and cultural context, where some conflicts appear to transcend the page. Given the strong literary tradition (of both passing down old stories and publishing new works) in Iceland that has been retained in the modern day, it is not surprising that sagas are the subjects of some detailed literary analysis. This genre comprises dozens of tales, each with plots and casts too detailed for an analysis of this scope, not all with readily-available English translations. For this reason, the focus of this part of the analysis will be on a chapter of the commonly-known Grettir’s Saga where these ideas about other-izing and its consequences can be observed.
Given this limited primary grounding, it is productive to examine the conclusions of scholars who have synthesized interpretations of a broader swath of the genre. Rebecca Merkelbach is one such scholar. In her chapter within Shapeshifters in Medieval North Atlantic Literature, she makes claims mostly concerning the nature of other-ness rather than its effects. Much of the article is focused on evidence for berserkír being mentally, if not physically, other; and the allegory of characters’ reactions to the threats they impose (Merkelbach 85, 95). She does concede limitations to these allegories in the statement “from the moment at which it arises, the monster exists to be read by the time that receives it: the time that created the sagas, the time that transmitted them, and the present day in which they are analyzed and interpreted” (99). This means that any modern interpretations or translations of sagas are necessarily a product of their times, to some extent—i.e. fresh perspectives should not be discounted, but their different contexts should be acknowledged as such. Her work ultimately concludes that in the face of mentally (and potentially physically) monstrous berserkír, medieval Icelanders retained tales of grappling with pervasive social issues such as sexual assault and social rifts forming in society (Merkelbach 85, 99-100). She opens the conversation, towards the end, to the modern phenomenon of how rape culture perpetuates the idea that rapists are violent Others at the fringes of society, in parallel to how Icelanders in sagas took care to delineate the stark contrast between ordinary and trollish men (Merkelbach 100-101). Notably, the author does not speculate about the mechanisms by which modern societal plights rooted in otherness are brought about, and what (if any) relation this might have to earlier instances of other-izing. In this space, I will attempt to connect the dots.
Additionally, modern criminology reports corroborate an unexplained uncharacteristically high rate of intimate partner violence (IPV) in modern Iceland (Gracia and Merlo 28). True to form, this quantitative report considers various possible explanations (statistical noise, societal factors, etc.) but does not examine cultural traits (Gracia and Merlo 29). Without making baseless claims, it is still possible to trace some of the ways a deeply-ingrained literature rife with unresolved violence might have real-life consequences.
In addition to the modern lens, the sagas can also be examined as a case study informed by general academic theory. In his essay “He Stuttered,” Gilles Deleuze describes a process of authors creating a “minor use of the major language in which they express themselves entirely” that, among other tactics, establishes stuttering not simply in speech, but in language itself (Deleuze 109). He introduces this idea after raising the idea that maybe progress can’t be achieved unless “we…enter into regions far from equilibrium” (Deleuze 109). We can enhance our understanding of how an Other is identified and what implications this has through analyzing particularly noteworthy use of language in these discussions. These sources highlight a trend that in pre-existing scholarly discourse on sagas, literary analysis doesn’t prominently consider modern cultural patterns, and vice versa.
The first area of disconnect between settlers’ motives and cultural contexts in Icelandic sagas is their incomplete dealings with berserkírs. Settlers strongly other-ized these disruptive and potentially troubled criminals, yet rarely displayed the ability to thwart this threat to society entirely. First, it is important to note that sagas occupy the liminal space between history and legend: they sometimes contain supernatural elements, but in other regards are hailed as sources of detailed medieval history—some details must be taken with a grain of salt, but the themes and issues capture a snapshot of society. In her chapter “Eigi í mannligu eðli,” Rebecca Merkelbach notes that “when [berserkírs and revenants] take over an area, all human life, all social interaction between the living and thus all human society stands for, effectively comes to an end” (92). This, coupled with the fact that non-crazed saga characters often thought these conditions to be contagious or hereditary, underscore the severity of the problem (Merkelbach 92, 94-95). In delineating these violent beings as firmly Other, who only crossed into “normal” society in cases of boundary infraction, it becomes evident how fiercely Icelanders of the time might have braced themselves against such threats. Along with the sexual violence these Other figures threatened, the cultural context meant the honor of society as a whole was threatened, leading some settlers to defend their communities in battle (Merkelbach 97). Despite these severe threats and recurrent duels for honor, there was never any (functional) broader attempt to confront the root of the issue. In Chapter 19 of Grettír’s Saga, “It was considered a scandal in the land that pirates and berserks should be able to come into the country and challenge respectable people to the holmgang [duels] for their money or their women…Eirik abolished all holmgang in Norway and declared all robbers and berserks who disturbed the peace outlaws” (Hight). Here, it is clear that in some Norse cultures, ineffectual legislation was slapped onto the manifestation of the problem. But despite ad hoc challenges to this Otherness, there was never a systemic examination of the factors that cultivated this population of violent deviants—they did in fact perpetuate Otherness without resolving it. The Icelandic Alþingi (Parliament) does date back to the time of the sagas, so such reckonings aren’t far-fetched. It is impossible to know how things would have panned out had a more ground-up approach been pursued, but it is possible that examining the factors that alienated these Others and seeking ways to resolve them and offer paths to re-integrating productively with society could have mitigated the motifs of similar repeated harm. Not only were certain elements of categorizing Otherness at odds with elements of societal organization at the time or writing, but the motif of this kind of violence also raises the question about tangible, modern implications of not confronting and remedying such negative threads of Otherness. Although today villages might not shut themselves in in the face of violence, in a metaphoric sense these issues still persist unaddressed. Areas with high crime rates might be assigned more police officers, which similarly doesn’t cut to the core of the issue. It would be one thing to understand the systemic factors that might have led to fewer educational or employment opportunities in an area, and it’s another entirely to think that more arrests will solve things. By examining what doesn’t work today, and hasn’t worked—even centuries ago in a different society—then maybe it is time to re-evaluate and try more targeted solutions.
This lens is also valuable jumping forward in only time, rather than both time and space. Were Iceland not a culture identifying so strongly with the preservation of traditional stories, it might simply be a case of correlation without causation. But it remains a fact that reported rates of IPV against women in Iceland (and other Nordic countries) is anomalously high compared to other metrics that establish such societies as otherwise more gender-equal places, a phenomenon known as the Nordic Paradox (Gracia and Merlo 28). The authors do state that statistically confounding factors such as more-normalized reporting of gender-based violence in an equal society could be partly responsible, but that meta-analyses have revealed this is not enough to explain the gap away (Gracia and Merlo 28). Turning to the sagas (some of the earliest traditions influencing this societal identity), we can see similarly common violence against women. In Grettír’s Saga, the narrator states that “[berserkír] used to carry off men’s wives, keep them for a week or two and then send them back. Wherever they came they committed robberies and other acts of violence” (Hight). Similar instances can be found across the canon (Merkelbach 87). As explored above, the plot of sexual violence at the hands of other-ized figures, individually though not globally challenged, is pervasive in sagas. Clearly, women’s agency and lot has improved significantly since these times. But, if the trend of treating threats of abuse and abduction as local problems (rather than a plight society as a whole can unite against to support healing the unremedied wayward mental states of such violent individuals) might have survived intact in some minor form, perhaps it could inform the modern Paradox.
Similarly, there is a gap in the discourse surrounding the sordid history of racism against people of Asian descent in the US. Angela Gover et al. give an overview of some of the more prominent low points in this form of racism, and make the claim that continued “othering” of people of Asian descent has been instrumental in the exacting racism levied against them (649-653). Groups in power have removed these groups’ senses of “civic belonging” during the Gold Rush and rise of de facto and de jure nativism in the 19th century, internment of those with Japanese ancestry during WWII, proliferated the “model minority” myth of hard work and success amidst fears of “being replaced,” and faced slander of “dirtiness” during plague (1900) and SARS (2002) outbreaks (Gover et al 649-653). They also underscore how recently racist terminology, othering, and violent treatment such as in the term “China virus,” and (though still developing) evidence for increased hate crimes against Americans of Asian descent in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic (654,658). Overall, many papers examine the facts of exactly how and when this form of racism has been perpetuated. It is rare, if not impossible, to find scholarly discourse examining how everyday interactions (whether recorded or codified in realistic fiction) uphold this theory of othering via incomplete resolution of a constant stream of piled-up hate. Conversely, there is extant scholarship exploring the pernicious nature of some modern racism in the US. Author Halford Fairchild only acknowledges the existence of hate crimes and police brutality in other chapters, somewhat undermining his credibility. However, in the chapter of focus, he proposes aversive (unconsciously ingrained) racism as the primary mechanism through which racial inequality is perpetuated in the United States today (Halford 214). This lens does pose racism as cumulative. But, contrary to my intended analysis, it does not (other than in discussing the controversy of abolishing slavery) discuss the ways in which abortive attempts to reconcile systemic injustices have led to the current predicament (Halford 214). I will examine the historical fiction novel When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, concerning a Berkeley family’s relocation to several internment camps and subsequent incomplete re-incorporation into society, met with hostility. This lens will be informed by sociological theory, as well as the more general academic theory of stuttering in language, as explained above. Together, these resources enable the identification of exactly how the construction and reality of interactions exemplifies the surfeit of unresolved otherness only driving the nail of systemic racism deeper.
As described previously, the US has gone through many cycles of egregiously violating Asian Americans’ rights and subsequently going through other periods where they come closer to ignoring past crimes. When the Emperor Was Divine, although it is a fictional work, is grounded in real primary sources and personal testimony. This book closes with the hasty backtracking by the American Government where they released interned people “with twenty-five dollars in cash… we later learned, [it was] the same amount given to criminals on the day they were released from prison” (Otsuka 117-118). The family learns that this is only the first of countless disingenuous, incomplete, and otherwise problematic steps that mark their being allowed back into society. Although the forced physical relocation that once marked their being labeled as Other has been revoked, society has not become more progressive in their absence. Upon their return, the family hears neighbors make threats such as “People around here have got plans for you” mixed up with friendly greetings (unless these are also sardonic racist statements) such as “Nice to see you again, neighbor” (Otsuka 112). As they return to the rhythms of everyday life, they are continually reminded of their separation from the “normal.” For instance, the sense of lost time and latent tension was palpable in interactions so mundane as paying for snacks at the corner store: “The girl behind the counter was older now, and prettier. She wore dark red lipstick and was swaying back and forth to a song on the radio whose words we did not yet know. When she saw us she turned down the music and stared. ‘Coke’s still a nickel,’ she said softly” (Otsuka 116). The neighbors have not made time in their lives to check their privileges and confront their internalized biases. The cashier doesn’t know how to react, perhaps because high school or her co-workers did not do much to consider ways to address the changes in society (first for the worse, then for the better) and how those not recently subjected to violent racism could help grease the wheels of societal progress. As time went on, the family continued to experience bewilderment and shock in such simple interactions. This is evidence that the sense of Other was still just below the surface, never mind what any backtracking executive orders might say. Internment was the result of past manifestations of racism that went unresolved, and it will soon become evident that it was far from the last occurrence. If the problems had been addressed in the moment of any one of these instances, perhaps society would not have continued the pattern of inflicting so much harm, and weakening itself from within.
Beyond interactions between community members underlining the racism that still plagues society after internment was reversed, much like the sense of otherness in the sagas, minor uses of language heighten the strength of this conclusion. The perspective in this chapter, shared between the brother and the sister, describes how the begrudging space made for them in post-war society is riddled with racist slights, both overt and implicit (Otsuka 120). These siblings struggle to process the circumstances of their betrayal and supposed newfound freedom in trains of thought such as “We were guilty. / Just put it behind you. / No good. / Let it go. / A dangerous people. / You’re free now. / Who could never be trusted again. / All you have to do is behave” (Otsuka 120). In moments such as these, it becomes even clearer that society has never stopped labeling them as Other. But, applying the framework of linguistic stuttering allows us to extract more meaning. This relentless list of doubts, alternating between those internalized and those imposed by society, falls within Deleuze’s category of a writer “ceaselessly placing it [language] in a state of disequilibrium, making it bifurcate” (109). According to Deleuze, intuition, or even the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics, we unconsciously expect systems to increasingly approach equilibrium. When expression prolongs this contrast, language stutters. In the case of this stuttering, the rapid vacillation between racism being in the past and being a growing threat shows how much of an incomplete solution, although a step in the right direction, simply ending internment was. As long as dualities of racist and progressive thought persist within society, it is as if society as a whole is wasting time. In the long run, it would be simpler not to waste energy on drawing arbitrary lines of exclusion and going through the mental gymnastics of considering how “bad” systemic racism those groups are made out to be at specific points in the convoluted history of labeling groups as Other.
By now, a macroscopic lens has enabled the accumulation of evidence for exactly how other-izing so ruthlessly, without confronting the root of the problem, can have repercussions. But, these conclusions have at times been qualified by uncertain circumstances. In light of this, it is perhaps more telling that paying attention to the minutia of firmly delineating Otherness in sagas can reveal other societal choices that exacerbated suffering as a result. Specifically, taking saga interactions to be allegorical (with precedent in the literature) and examining characters’ word choices surrounding interactions with the Other can be informed by the concept of “stuttering in language” (Deleuze 107). As alluded to previously, such stuttering can shatter barriers of expression and achievement through language. In this excerpt of Grettír’s Saga, there is such stuttering, but it is limited in extent and scope. For context, Grettír is himself amidst a downward spiral towards increasing levels of violence, but at this early point in the story, he still protects his family from incoming berserkír posing more of an immediate threat than himself. Specifically, this section reads:
Grettir went off to the homestead, and on reaching the door cried out very loud, asking where the mistress was. She was silent, being afraid to answer. He said: “Here is rather good sport to be had. Are there any arms which are good for anything?”
“There are arms,” she said; “but I don’t know for what purpose you want them.”
“We will talk about that afterwards; but now let each do what he can; it is the last chance” (Hight ??)
In this passage, some words overlap in interconnected instances of chiasmus and synchysis (of the words “said,” “arms,” and “purpose”) as the dialogue moves between Grettír and his wife. This could very well be an instance Merkelbach alluded to where the times of creation, translation, and interpretation all lead to different conclusions, but this is jarring. Sagas are primarily works of prose, though antiquated translation might have exaggerated the role of literary devices common in epic poetry. At any rate, this repetition and piggybacking increases the apprehension between characters and about the foreboding battle (“it is the last chance”) to fend off the violent Others. This is a fabricated minor use of language, with rhetorical weight not seen in the surrounding sections, drawing attention to the forward movement of resistance to hostile encroachment the characters are discussing. Grettír and his wife seem to be fulfilling the spirit of Deleuze’s statement of “enter[ing] … regions far from equilibrium” as a mechanism to reach progress (109). It is unclear exactly what kind of progress he is referring to, but there’s a good chance it is more intellectual than in the form of societal order. Even if the scope of his ideas could be extended, almost as soon as these weighty phrases are uttered, the expression returns to some narrative “normal.” No longer steeped in diction that stalls and foreshadows, the story moves back into more standard constructions and sequences of thought (Hight ??). This is significant because of how temporary the “blip” of stuttering language was. The potential victims of the berserkír are communicating internally in meandering expressions laden with dread, but they do not go very far down the path of resistance. Rather than eking out a more-complete minor language in which to stage broader and systemic resistance, they retreat to the case-by-case approach which does little to remedy or resolve the violence that stems from so effectively other-izing the berserkír and enabling their crimes to continue. The problems persisted, incompletely addressed, and society suffered as a result.
[need a transition] It is also worth examining how the “model minority myth,” described previously as the latest iteration of a long history of racism, continues to be applied despite the evasion of deeper issues it enables. Despite the supposed superiority of Asian Americans in terms of work ethic, the same cultural zeitgeist has allowed a diametrically opposed stereotype to persist: that of the “China Virus,” a metonymy for larger unchallenged racism that says people of Asian descent are unhygienic or backward (Gover et al. 654). With this in mind, it is clear that the myth, although often hailed as a “positive stereotype” is simply another way to make claims of Otherness against people of Asian descent. Rather than confronting its own past and present racism, White America has painted over past problems which have the undeniable potential to boil over in harmful ways. Already, the effects are visible. Since the situation is still evolving, data is scarce, but a combination of crime data and informal reports expose the current violence, in line with the spirit of the latter assumption, but truly no different in nature from the first. Gover et al. remark that “Although the two data sources [UCR and NCVS] may not be consistent in terms of the magnitude of any spike, together they should provide empirical evidence about whether the qualitative, anecdotal suggestions of a pandemic-related increase in anti-Asian hate crimes was true nationwide” (659). That such serious consequences of modern stereotypes have already emerged only confirms the pattern that the US has never entirely addressed this form of racism, and that any number of supposed solutions have failed to truly challenge the predominant and underlying bigotry. Living in these times without searching for deeper solutions resembles the chosen turning point in Grettír’s Saga. The berserkír (dangerous stereotypes) have already landed (been established) and an attack is imminent (violence is latent). The Icelandic settlers might not have had the foresight or means to stage a community intervention challenging the conditions of Otherness of the berserkír and seeing if there was a way to productively integrate society and resolve these recurring threats, but by now we should no better. It might seem easier in the moment to ignore these issues, but one certainty, given this overwhelming body of evidence, is that not only is this not true, but the problems will probably get worse. The berserkír will become more emboldened and claims of continued prejudice might become even more normalized, and societal productivity and cohesion and progress will slowly reach a grinding halt.
[still need to open the conversation in a conclusion] → this sounds kind of appropriate for some point within a conclusion: It might not be true today, but Americans certainly like to claim that “diversity is our greatest strength.” Without genuinely challenging deep-rooted prejudices in society, this can never come true. We will continue to lose communities, innovations, and more to a society that never seems to learn from its mistakes.
Works Cited:
Cordo Russo, Luciana, and Santiago Barreiro. Shapeshifters in Medieval North Atlantic
Literature. Project Muse, 2019, pp. 83–101.
Deleuze, Gilles. “He Stuttered.” Essays Critical and Clinical, translated by Daniel W.
Smith and Michael A. Greco. U. of Minnesota P., 1997, pp. 107-14.
Fairchild, Halford H. and Heather F. Fairchild. “Chapter 56: Modern-Day Racism Masks its Ugly
Head.” Social Psychology and World Peace: A Primer. Indo American Books, 2018, pp.
213–215.
Gover, Angela R., et al. “Anti-Asian Hate Crime During the COVID-19 Pandemic:
Exploring the Reproduction of Inequality.” American Journal of Criminal Justice,
vol. 45, no. 4, SPRINGER, 2020, pp. 647–67, doi:10.1007/s12103-020-09545-1.
Gracia, Enrique and Juan Merlo. “Intimate Partner Violence Against Women and the
Nordic Paradox.” Social Science & Medicine (1982), vol. 157, Elsevier Ltd, 2016,
- 27–30, doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.03.040.
Hight, G. H., translator. “Chapter 19: Berserks at Haramarsey.” Grettir’s Saga, pp.
30–36. Original Icelandic source edition, publisher, and publication date unknown;
retrieved online from https://sagadb.org/grettis_saga.en2 28 February 2021.
Otsuka, Julie. When the Emperor Was Divine. Anchor Books, 2002.
Unknown Author. “What Makes the Icelandic Sagas Unique.” Iceland Monitor,
https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/culture_and_living/2018/08/14/what_makes_the_icel
ndic_sagas_unique/#:~:text=Some%20universities%20teach%20the%20Icelandic,them
20in%20the%20original%20language. Accessed 7 March 2021.