There has been a great deal of discussion concerning the real-world applicability of critical theory. Despite ostentatiously basing their works on tangible examples in literature and society, theorists have often been accused of merely exchanging ideologies amongst their own elite academic society with no acknowledgement to those outside their ‘interpretive community’. There are however many artistic works which do not allow for an interpretation unaided by critical discourse. Certainly the most popular critical model used to interpret art in the twentieth century has been psychoanalysis. It has been praised for its universality, although it is just as frequently been over-emphasized as an effective tool of evaluation. Other models have been proposed which can be applied just as universally, arguably the most important of which have proven to be the deconstructivist ideas of Derrida and Foucault. In establishing mutually-dependant binaries – such as Self and Other – deconstructionism has proven to be a productive supplement to literary studies, explicating relations between characters for example. Furthermore, other critical movements have emerged from deconstruction theory which have also been of great influence. Perhaps the most currently debated critical movements are feminism and post-colonialism, which are similar in that each acts as periphery to the central masculine-imperial ideology. They endeavour to subvert this dominant cultural ideology and displace it with their own. Adapting these theoretical models to analyse Kristjana Gunnars’s text The Prowler demonstrates their usefulness to literary study, as indeed the work is pregnant with theoretical meaning. Gunnars continually emphasizes the Other, which is mainly the various representations of the prowler as individual, and in fact the Other can almost be viewed as the Althusserian problematic of the text. The Other is also signified in the author’s implicit post-colonial discourse, which posits her native Iceland as occupied country under the authority of several other nations. Additionally, feminism informs not only the subject matter of the novel, but its structure as well. Indeed, the form of the text – regarded somewhat loosely as a novel by Gunnars herself (or the publisher) – is difficult to interpret without regarding feminist discourse.
Emerging from Saussurian and Lacanian ideas of slippery signification, deconstructivist theory analyses the relationships between dominant and marginal entities. Derrida’s work – and also in the ideas of Bakhtin – suggests that the two are not mutually exclusive, but alternately are intimately intertwined ontologically. The definition of one depends on the existence of the other. It is within this context that the concept of the Other can be applied to literature. In The Prowler, the Other is not one entity to the narrator, but indeed there are a variety of Others. Gunnars is in fact subtextually referring to the structuralist ideology of slippery signification in this regard, for while the meaning of the term itself remains the same, that which it signifies changes dramatically through the text. The prowler is variously a thief, the reader, the narrator, a man onboard the Gullfoss, the author, and finally the text itself. Indeed, it is the prowler-as-reader which provides the greatest disclosure of Gunnars’s application of slippery signification. Every aspect of the prowler – as thief, as author, as narrator – are all contained within the position of reader: “There are prowlers everywhere. They prowl about, looking for dialogue” (Gunnars, 74). The author and narrator become the reader as well as the thief in order to understand their story, for it is the “reader [who] ... steal[s] from the text”(Gunnars, 59) and is therefore able to take its meaning. The exchange of roles in this manner is implied by her statement that “the answer is also contained in the question” (Gunnars, 24), that the very act of questioning is its own answer. By destroying the boundaries between the various prowlers, between author and reader, the author / narrator is “free to steal from [herself]” (Gunnars, 59), and consequently learn from her writing. This is made most evident when the narrator and the prowler-as-Other cooperate in reconstructing a puzzle on board the Gullfoss. Furthermore, there are several instances in the novel where Gunnars posits herself as Other to the text itself: “It is not my story. The author is unknown. I am the reader.” (Gunnars, 119). The Self is identified by the Other; Gunnars logic therefore is to become the Other in order to realize the Self. The narrator herself endeavours to become the Other, first describing herself as the prowler of the school library, but also more importantly when she begins to learn other languages. Throughout the text she refers to the almost mythological purity and value of other cultures, that “anything that came from far away was good. Life elsewhere was magical. The further away it was, the more magical” (Gunnars, 21). There is no purity in the Self, it is diseased and needs to be cured by the Other. Such a belief emerges when the narrator is brought to a doctor who tells her “if you live in the Middle East, ... you can maybe go to the Red Sea and wash in it. That will no doubt cure you”, as “up here in the North there is no hope” (Gunnars, 37). Indeed, the self-doubt of the narrator is blatantly expressed when she states that “material for stories came from magical places so far away that people there had never heard of us” (Gunnars, 83).
She does in fact come to a very distinct conclusion about her existence within the Self-Other binary however. Like Derrida, Gunnars states her preference for the ambiguity – of the freeplay – between the definitions of Self and Other caused by their mutual dependence. By identifying with the text itself, Gunnars is able to observe all of these different borders and abuse their definitions, for “all that a story is ... is a way of looking at things” (Gunnars, 90). She is well aware that any definition given to an entity is not a strict and complete measure of its existence, but instead that “everything ... depends on vantage point” (Gunnars, 90). There are many references to the uncertainty and arbitrariness of socially defined borders which express the author’s desire for freeplay. Iceland itself, while having the definite physical borders of being an island, does not have any ethnic or cultural ones. There is no sense that nations are defined by natural reasons, and consequently the narrator questions the rigidity of national boundaries, whether one can “know when there was a border? Can borders be felt? Is there perhaps a change of air, a different climate, when you go from one country to another?” (Gunnars, 60). At several times Gunnars mentions the classless system upon which Icelandic society is built; everybody is a “white Inuit” at relatively the same socio-economic level. The narrator is often confused when confronted with distinctions in class, as when she lived with her great-aunt and her housemaids. The encounters that she has with other cultural groups also hint at the ambiguity of boundaries. She initially defines Americans as abusers, as men who would prey on teenage Icelandic girls. When she goes to school in America however, she learns that Americans are not in fact different from her own countrymen. The author also makes reference to the lack of a perimeter in modern electronic communication, which can indeed be seen to define much of modern world culture: everyone has access to American radio and television broadcasts. It is within such regions of ambiguity that the author / narrator does indeed find solace. Outside of boundaries she defines herself, free of self-judgement and free of judgement by the Other. It is for this reason that she likes sailing, where she is between boundaries and can feel “entirely at home (Gunnars, 134) as “the text is relieved that there are no borders” (Gunnars, 164).
There are certain limitations placed upon such a lack of ‘natural’ borders however, as it is human nature to delineate the natural world for political and economic reasons. Consequently, those Icelanders who did in fact listen to American radio were accused of betrayal: “Rolls of invisible barbed wire circled the American as across the airwaves” (Gunnars, 71). Additionally, while the narrator herself is above all ethnic classification and is able to function among all the various groups at school, nevertheless there were many who had been rigidly inscribed within a set class definition. These socially described exactitudes can be seen to emerge quite directly from Iceland’s status as an occupied country. Following Bhabha’s discourse of mimicry, it could be argued that the Icelanders’ adapting of class distinctions is a mimicry of the authority imposed upon them by their quasi-imperial occupiers. In other words, the occupying peoples – such as the Danes – attempt to recreate the stratified conditions in their home country, and in doing so they cause the Icelanders to internalize colonial authority and displace their own identity. Gunnars makes the resultant alienation quite apparent when she speaks of their culinary habits, which are different from those of other peoples because of necessity: “we are the white Inuit. We eat fish. And in summers we graze like sheep among the mountain grasses” (Gunnars, 7) because Iceland “was a country where people died of starvation” (Gunnars, 39). The reader is brought to sympathize with these white Inuit not because of the relatively poor food selection, but rather due to the estrangement and self-effacement that results from their cultural differences. A more obviously colonial alienation occurs as a result of the extensive leprosy found in Iceland, lepers which had been expelled to Iceland by other countries because “they did not think the people on this remote island counted” (Gunnars, 41). Gunnars is implicitly asking why it is that Iceland is not to be respected, and why it has little respect for itself. According to Bhabha such is the nature of colonial discourse, as the authority of the occupying nation – signified by its denigration of Iceland – is mimicked by the colonized. Gunnars herself predates Bhabha’s work, yet she does signal his ideology; another interpretation of “The answer is also contained in the question” is the mimicry of colonial discourse.
The author / narrator’s self-doubt can also be explained in terms of post-colonial theory. It is the desire of the colonizer to define the colonized; they are the Self which defines the Other. When she doubts the authenticity of her text – “I do not feel clever. If I laugh at myself, it is because I have nothing to say and I am full of love. Because nothing I say says anything. There will be mere words.” (Gunnars, 4) – it is precisely because she questions her right to assume for herself a voice. Much like her relationship with her parents – Iceland “was not a country where children spoke to adults. Only the adults spoke to the children” (Gunnars, 10) – the narrator struggles to claim for herself a discourse within the colonial system. Obliquely referring to Said’s Orientalism, the narrator presupposes the authority of imperialist texts when she describes Malraux’s text on the Chinese Revolution as “something worth writing ... a true story” (Gunnars, 86). Her own text is something to be doubted: “it is not writing. Not poetry, not prose. I am not a writer” (Gunnars, 1). The voice that does emerge however is not expressed in her own Icelandic language as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o suggests is necessary, ostensibly because she has internalized so many languages as her own. She even forwards the notion that language is not the defining characteristic of an individual, that “there can be nothing extraordinary ... in a language” (Gunnars, 5). Iceland itself remains under colonial authority and does not express itself in any meaningful cultural way: there are, for example, “no Icelandic dances” (Gunnars, 44). But ultimately the text is given life by the author / narrator, it does stand independent as a worthy story.
Indeed, by claiming the text for herself – not as a story or a poem, but just as a means of expression – Gunnars not only escapes from the trap of a post-colonial mentality of silence, but also from the trap of a masculine ideology which similarly imposes a silence upon her. It the “relief just to be writing” (Gunnars, 3) that confirms her independence. The very act of writing itself rejects patriarchy, for “writing ... contain[s] a note of defiance. To confront its opposite, to stare it down” (Gunnars, 105). This rejection of masculine-imposed silence is completely within the ideologies of Helen Cixous, who explicitly calls for women to write. The traditional masculine views of women, that they are far too influenced by their emotions to have meaningful discourse, must be rejected if women are allowed to speak. Gunnars posits that it is not emotion itself which impedes discourse, but rather it is “conflicting emotions [which] are silencing” (Gunnars, 36). Certainly she had internalized masculine oppression, of not owning her own identity as her name was not her own but belonged to a man: “I was certain I was my father’s property” (Gunnars, 94). This identity is quickly rejected however as she continues to write and identify with the text. From one author emerges two voices, one which remains repressed by a patriarchal society and another which merely intends to write in her own voice. The latter censors the intended writing of the former, it is the other author, “behind the official author, who censors the official text as it appears. The other author writes: that is not what you intended to say. I think of a book which has left in the censor’s words.”
(Gunnars, 63).
This multiplicity of expression again finds a correlation in the ideologies of Cixous. Women must acknowledge their bodies in their writing, as indeed this is the basis for expression for both genders. Consequently female writing will be informed by the multiplicity of their sexual experience; no single approach will suffice, but instead the multi-orgasmic, multi-sensuous woman will speak with multiple voices. Certainly Gunnars makes several references to the importance of the female body to her expression: the anorexia experienced by the narrator’s sister is directly associated with her silence. More importantly however, the very structure of the text is informed by Cixous’s ideology of multiplicity. It does not have a linear focus, but instead approaches the narrative and thematic strands in a variety of ways; the ending itself is self-described as arbitrary. Neither time nor the narrative are contiguous, but are broken up and placed seemingly randomly in the text, picked up at certain moments and subsequently dropped until late. The structure of the text is not a ‘rising action leading to climax followed by denouement’, but rather “an unfolding of layers” (Gunnars, 25). Conversely, male authors need a distinct purpose which is to be followed directly and linearly: “The male line. The masculine story. That men have to be going somewhere. Men are always shooting something somewhere” (Gunnars, 25). Accordingly, the novels written by Icelandic men have a particular motive, which was to slander women accused of having American lovers. Such works have one centre which is pursued. Alternately, The Prowler is an attempt “to watch the egg hatch” (Gunnars, 28); it has no specific centre but is composed, like the jigsaw puzzle that the narrator and the prowler collaborate on, of numerous centres. While in her text “there are figurative prowlers looking for something” (Gunnars, 110), Gunnars-as-prowler has already found the numerous centres with which she has constructed her identity.
Certainly when one has been informed by some measure of critical theory The Prowler aids in its own interpretation. Gunnars does not bury the Althusserian problematic of the text too deeply, but rather seems to delight in periodically exposing it for critique. Indeed, such is perhaps her point, as it conforms with the theme of the text. The Prowler is a meditation upon the gradual cognizance of self-identity, an identity which emerges in multiple fashions. Gunnar’s Self is not informed and defined by any single Other, but rather it is a centre for numerous Others. Consequently, identity could be extended to represent the transitional area between an almost infinite number of centre-periphery relationships. By the end of the text, Gunnars suggests that it takes a long time to come to this necessary realization.
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