Setting:
If you are imagining this as tape recorded conversation, you might hear the mechanical click of a PLAY button, and the ambient noise of a turbulent mental landscape, signaling a return to a polyvocal scrum.
MR. WHINEY
(gives a chuckling sigh before continuing in a less whimsical tone.)
Yes, that is certainly the one.
I can hear quite a bit of each of our aesthetic voices in that writing sample, but I think getting lost in a formalist analysis of prose would be an unnecessary and distracting addition burden for this already heavy task. Although… (pauses a beat, as if MR. WHINEY was stopping to scratch a chin that does not exist.)
…attempting to separate form and content is also likely another mistake, don’t you think—
MR. PROVE-IT
—Yes, I do, Mr. Whiney, think, all the time.
And right now, I think you are missing the point. We ain’t real. It doesn’t make any sense to ask our audience to look for evidence of us in the words of Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett. We exist to expose him, in relationship to McPherson’s Unit and mass incarceration in America.
MR. WHINEY
Well then, why don’t you get us started.
What does this essay reveal about who this Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett thinks he is, that believes investigating McPherson’s Unit is his investigation to investigate?
MR. PROVE-IT
(takes a deep breath before continuing)
1. Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett is a white boy, born and raised.
2. He has years of experience working with prisoner’s rights organizations.
3. He flirts with confusion about whether he has actually served time in a correctional facility, probably because he has come close and is afraid to reveal how or why.
4. His reasons for doing this work have been tested by questionable experiences that had no satisfying answers.
5. He emerged from this experience still doubting that prisons do the things society expects of them.
6. He cares about preventing sexual violence, knows it is a problem in prisons, but thinks it is an issue that prison administrators can easily use to silence other conversations.
7. He’s tries to be funny, even when it ain’t time to be funny.
(Takes a beat to consider if he’s missed anything.)
…Did I miss anything?
MR. WHINEY
Well, probably, but that seems like enough to start with, and it gives us a lot of important aspects of identity to discuss. Maybe we should begin wi—
EXAMINER
(Interjecting boldly, before a rant ensues.)
8. What is your relationship with Arkansas?
MR. PROVE-IT
(Surprised, MR. PROVE-IT laughs and follows EXAMINER’s lead with a snicker.)
Oh, Snap! The Examiner has spoken. But that’s an important point that I totally missed.
Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett is not from Arkansas.
In fact, his relationship with the Arkansas is pretty damn confusing. Since this investigation’s supposed to talk about people and place, I think it makes sense if we start there.
MR. WHINEY
I see what you did with “we” and “there,” Mr. Prove-it.
(MR. WHINEY pauses a beat in hopes the AUDIENCE hears the quotation marks around the words, “we” and “there,” and yet his silence only proves that nothing kills the cleverness of word play like drawing attention to it.)
And it probably is best to follow the guidance of Examiner, even though his presence is growing in both authority and mystery.
The relevance of place in America is equal parts grossly exaggerated and wildly underrated in our national literature and identity. Critiques of American culture range from its monolithic brute force to its fractured incoherence. McAmerica has taken over everywhere, yet exists nowhere specifically, because the abstraction of universality always falls short of reality. We want to believe that cookie cutter homes and assembly-line models of fabrication mean that we will know exactly what to expect when we walk through certain predictable doors or golden arches.
Terrifyingly often, our experiences with places that we think of as similar run together into one collective memory—if we hold on to those memories at all. It is very difficult to know what differences are worth appreciating and which ones are not while an experience is happening. Because of that, Americans, and people all over the globe really, have a very strong vision of what it means to be born in America, but very little consensus about what the vison looks like. The most relevant and particularly egregious example of this dissonance can be seen in America’s continuing obsession with the North/South divide.
MR. PROVE-IT
Yeah, it’s pretty tough to talk about a single American culture as a walk into McDonalds when you compare that experience in Chicago, Illinois and Newport, Arkansas.
There is a reason that “you ain’t from around here” is more often a warning than it is a warm welcome.
MR. WHINEY
Wait, has Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett ever been to a Mc Donald’s in either of those cities?
MR. PROVE-IT
Randomly enough, yes. But it wasn’t to test this comparison or to be a part of this investigation.
Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett hasn’t put a foot down in either of these places since this project began. But let’s stay on topic: McDonalds, Chicago, Newport and “Y’all ain’t from around here.”
MR. WHINEY
Yes, thank you, Mr. Prove-it.
(MR. WHINEY stops to clear his throat.)
Those examples are not even geographically very far apart, are they? Only five-hundred-and-fifty-five miles by road. They are not even at the extreme ends of what Americans envision either Northern or Southern culture to encompass. Perhaps my reference point is a little dated, but if you ask the question about whether someone prefers Neil Young or Lynyrd Skynyrd, you are as often asking a complicated question of politics as you are one of Rock and Roll aesthetics. But it is a coded debate that oversimplifies a complex historical premise. It is problematically reductive to pretend like only a bigot could appreciate the song “Sweet Home Alabama,” or to try to make the argument that liking the song “Southern Man” proves one’s anti-racist politics—
MR. PROVE-IT
(interjected with scorn and elitist distain.)
—Well, “Sweet Home Alabama” is trash—
MR. WHINEY
—But it is that exact attitude that demonstrates the significance of the question we are trying to address.
Knowing where Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett considers home would go a long way towards establishing the credibility, he has to speak about cultural issues that have steep regional boundaries.
MR. PROVE-IT
(MR. PROVE IT raises his voice, nearly to a shout.)
I am calling bullshit.
Even though I get where you are going with this line of thinking, and I see how I might’ve helped start us down that road, this isn’t going anywhere good. White folks in the South have a long history of believing that they are the experts on facing the ugly reality of what racism has accomplished for America. They have made a fucking joke of themselves, that has wormed its way into that national story you are going on about. You might be able to find a redneck anywhere, but it was white southern democrats that argued the loudest for bullshit like “separate but equal,” while committing unspeakable acts of violence to ensure that “equal” would never actually mean equal. I am unaware of any period of American history in which there were not white southern men championing themselves as the “pragmatic authorities” on every political issue under the sun.
Saying that we, as Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett, have nothing to contribute to a discussion about a southern prison because we weren’t born here, seems like an attempt to evade the larger issues by excusing ourselves from responsibility from keeping an eye on an obvious institution of state authority.
(If it is possible for disembodied voice to do so, the AUDIENCE imagines they hear MR. PROVE—IT make a noise quite like spitting on the floor before continuing.)
Fuck that.
MR. WHINEY
Your concerns are heartfelt, and it is important not to shirk responsibility in those situations where we have the power to investigate the investment of authority in an institution of the state…
(MR. WHINEY takes a beat to consider what he is about to say.)
…But, assuming that we actually have that power and are not just taking it from someone better suited to the job, would lead this investigation to disastrously predictable conclusions. If we want to believe that we have some legitimate agency in investigating the existence of McPherson’s Unit in Newport, Arkansas, we damn well better be willing to engage in the work necessary to make sure that we are not misdirecting our energy into a project that could be harmful to the people on the front lines of this struggle—
MR. PROVE-IT
(the dawning rays of understanding illuminate MR. PROVE-IT’s response.)
—We’ve got to make sure we don’t become the problem by insisting that we’ve got all, or even maybe just any, of the answers we set out to question—
MR. WHINEY
Exactly!
Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett is not a southern man any more than he is a man of the North, East or West. His sense of rootlessness is a mystery in and of itself. A mystery that we won’t take up the time and space to adequately address within the scope of this investigation.
However, he is a man—and a white one at that. The intellectual arrogance of white men has far too many flavors to pretend like regionality alone is the only relevant factor to consider in how the identity of the investigator might impact this investigation. As you have stated, the fact that “He…ain’t…
(MR. WHINEY struggles awkwardly around the contraction he is unaccustomed to vocalizing.)
…from around here,” must be observed as much for the “he” as for the “not here.” After all, the entire purpose of discussing identity in this section of our investigation is to make note of factors that might effect the investigation’s outcomes. Otherwise, we are misleading our read into assuming that we are speaking with some kind of authority, or we are asking them to do the work of vetting us as investigators for themselves.
MR. PROVE-IT
Alright!
Identity is important. We’re gonna keep things honest and out in the open. But let’s also agree to keep this as focused as possible, so we don’t lose our audience.
MR. WHINEY
If intersectional feminism has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that any effort to simplify the relationship of socially constructed identities within a complex web of power hierarchies is doomed to reinforce the ones that are left unacknowledged…But…
(MR. WHINEY pauses a beat as if responding to some unseen non-verbal que from MR. PROVE-IT.)
…I consent to letting you to frame this discussion over the roles that Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett’s identity signifiers might play on this investigation, if—
(MR. WHINEY’s voice intensifies in volume as he interrupts himself.)
—IF, we are both willing to admit that our limited perspectives, as voices within that constructed identity, might lead us to miss significant patterns of causality that could render some potential impacts unobserved.
MR. PROVE-IT
(MR. PROVE-IT laughs.)
Yr words are bordering on academic nonsense, but I think I like what yr getting at. I will do my best to break these identity issues into categorical groups that seem important to me; BUT, I will do so in the full knowledge that I only see what I see and if other folks, you included, see more, than they should feel free to jump in.
MR. WHINEY
Superb!
(MR. WHINEY shouts, and sounds suspiciously like he has slipped into a fake British accent.)
MR. PROVE-IT
Alrighty then.
(MR. PROVE-IT ignores MR. WHINEY’s nerdy enthusiasm and tries to set a more serious mood as he moves into more serious subjects.)
Things that matter: