Re/Presentation

Though we started a new unit, I cannot help comparing the Cooper and Johnson pieces to Text/uality.  More specifically, I found myself using genres and metacommentary to explain re/presentation...or try to understand it.  I'm not quite sure I really understood it.  

Cooper's piece began with the interesting concept that the "south remains silent" (Cooper 379).  However, only a faction of the South--the black woman (and to some extent the black man)--were silent; instead, whites had taken it upon themselves to depict the African America.  In considering the black as presented in literature, I had to think of textuality and interpretation.  In the way that metapictures are self-referent and require interpretation of the individual in order to be multi-facted in meaning, so the writings of the black is.  Of the two types of writers mentioned by Cooper, she states that only the first--the honest--will "withstand the ravages of time" (Cooper 381).  I'm not sure if I believe this, however.  I think that a lot of the writings about a group of people--be they accurate or no--will shape their niche in society, give them a stereotype that'll define them.  Since, at the time of writing, many of the accounts of blacks had been written by whites, the genre of black narratives and stories was created....created by a group that writes to propagate an idea and force an idea to the public.  After the creation of a genre, I would say that much of the way society sees the subject will then be dependent on the groups depiction in previous literature.  Johnson discusses this more in her ideas of the Indian woman; having been typecast as an advancing, betraying, and masochistic individual, so has a majority (if not all) of the literature written about the Indian woman portrayed her.  Stereotypes are cast here by the recurring description of a group--regardless of how accurate it is.  In a sense, the representation of an individual is dependent on the presentation of similar individuals to the rest of society.

The presentation of the individuals would be an example of metacommentary, no?  I have written from class that metacommentary is reflexive (as mentioned by Mitchell on p56) and creates a discourse that will ask "what am i" or "how do I look".  This prompts an observer to ask questions, and in presenting a group of people similar to an individual being looked at, doesn't that enable one to ask "what am i[or what is he/she]"?  Is Re/presentation really its own category or instead a sub-group of Text/uality?  For black women and Indian women, wouldn't previous accounts (even if not written by their people), require them to reflect on who they are as individuals (what am i?) and how they fit the category they've been typecasted to?  If they would attempt to have a voice dependent of white perspective, would their writing ever really escape the grasp of the genre it would be siphoned to or would they remain the product of their presentation in society?

Trying to apply this to a "real world" view, I'm reminded of Trayvon Martin.  The presentation of the black teen--especially one that wears his hood up when walking, led to him being represented as a threat--to the point of his death.  Is it fair that the presentation of his peers created a genre/stereotype of black individuals that inadvertently led to him being represented as a threat?

I don't know.  That (^) may be a stretch, I'm just trying to get this all to relate.