Susanne Bach
Bhabha's 'Third Space' A Danger Zone?
Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow and Brian Moore Black Robe explore 'Third Spaces'
published in
Michael Heinze (ed.)
Cultural Migration - Literature on the Move
(Trier: WVT 2010).
Susanne Bach
Bhabha's 'Third Space' A Danger Zone?
Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow and Brian Moore Black Robe explore 'Third Spaces'
Novels always have always attempted to map the known and the unknown world; to
depict explored, unexplored, or unexplorable territories in manners, which
cartographers and geographers are unaware of or would reject offhand. From Swift's
Laputa to Rowlings' Hogwarts, from Walpole's Italy to Barnes' England and Ackroyd's
London, authors have always merged and mingled fact and fiction and have tried to
invent or depict cultures different from their own, thus paying homage to the Latin
etymology of the word novel: novella, new.
Both, historical and science-fiction novels – despite their obvious differences – are
particularly well-suited cases in point: the former recreate a world, which is only
partially based on known facts; the rest is creative invention, imagination, and
deduction. The latter, namely works of science-fiction, often depict extra-terrestrial
worlds, peopled by aliens. Even though the former is directed towards the past and the
latter mostly to the future, they do sometimes share common characteristic features.
Two surprisingly similar novels shall serve as examples. In his 1985 historical novel
Black Robe, Brian Moore (a Northern Irish/US-American/Canadian author with
Catholic roots)1 focuses on the Jesuits' missionary efforts in 17th century Canada. Mary
Doria Russell (a former Catholic, now Jewish, US-American writer with an Italian
background) also explores missionary endeavours in her science fiction novel The
Sparrow, but she has Jesuits of the year 2021 travel to the recently discovered planet
Rakhat. Secondary literature has already, however indirectly, pointed out the
proximity of both works. Lembert mentions that Russell's impetus for writing the
novel was closely connected to the 500-years-celebrations of Columbus' discovery of
America and to the critical debate about colonization that accompanied the
celebrations.2 Wymer comments on The Sparrow:
Like their predecessors who voyaged to the New World in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, they [the crew of the Stella Maris; SB] set in motion
consequences which they could not have possibly anticipated, and part of
Russell's point was to re-enact the disaster of those initial contacts with the New
World without assigning any obvious individual or collective blame: 'I thought
that it would be almost inherently tragic. There is no way to do First Contact right
Cf. McIlroy: "... our understanding of Moore's aesthetics is predated by the knowledge that
he is an emigrant, a traveller, a displaced person..." (1989: 215). For biographies of the
authors, see Craig (2002) and Russell's homepage, http://marydoriarussell.info/.
2
Cf. Lembert (2004: 116f. and 126f).
1
– the language trouble alone would generate endless possibilities for disastrous
errors and mistakes'.3
Both novelists, Moore and Russell, focus on an 'alien' culture - alien because it is far
removed in time (Moore)4 or in space (Russell). Both have to invent, create, and then
to deal with otherness and to face the inherent problem that they have to depict the
Other with words and concepts taken from our familiar, Western culture. Therefore, it
can be called expedient that both make use of Jesuit protagonists: Father Laforgue
(Moore) and Father Sandoz (Russell). The authors can count on the well-known
stability of the cultural concept 'Jesuit' through time and through space: Since 1534,
the Jesuits have spread the Christian faith in nearly all nations and on all continents;
they stand for missionary efforts as well as for the furthering of learning and
knowledge. The Jesuits can thus offer a stable, coherent, familiar, and time-tested
concept against whose backdrop then a confrontation with an Other is staged; or, as
Russell explains:
Everything about the history of the Society of Jesus bespoke deft and efficient
action, exploration and research. During what Europeans were pleased to call the
Age of Discovery, Jesuit priests were never more than a year or two behind the
men who made the initial contact with previously unknown peoples; indeed,
Jesuits were often the vanguard of exploration. The United Nations required
years to come to a decision that the Society of Jesus reached in ten days. (9) 5
The questions addressed in this paper are straightforward: How do Moore and Russell
represent the Other? How do they deal with the 'us' versus 'them'-dichotomy and its
influence on the representatives of the source culture? How do they make use of a
hybrid, a 'third space', a liminal area between the cultures? I will start my discussion
with direct, exemplary analyses from the novels, then move on to develop the relevant
theoretical background of the terminus technicus 'third space' and draw my
conclusions about not only the advantages but also about the inherent dangers of
conceptual third spaces.
Russell and Moore supply the reader with access to their novels via identification
figures: On the one hand the human crew of the starship 'Stella Maris' (The Sparrow);
on the other, the educated French priest Laforgue and Daniel, his young secular
companion, who dare to approach the 'savages' of Canada's first nations (Black Robe).
They make their protagonists likeable to their readers by showing their deficits, their
oddities, their little vanities: Laforgue is half deaf and tries to hide it (Moore), Sandoz
Wymer (2007: 270). Quotation Russell.
Cf.: O'Donoghue: "... one has, conversely, to allow for a much greater imaginative leap on
the novelist's part in order for him to understand the motivation and mentality of characters,
all of whom live in a different age from ours and half of whom subscribe to a radically
different set of beliefs" (1990: 187 f.).
5
All page references pertain to the editions listed in the bibliography.
3
4
in turn knows "every actor and all the dialogue from every movie since Horse
Feathers" (25).
Moore, in the very first sentences of his novel, immediately catapults the reader into
his protagonist's mind: "Laforgue felt his body tremble. What can be keeping them?
Has the commandant refused? Why has he not sent for me? Is this God's punishment
for my lie about my hearing?" (13). Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, in a clever
dialectic of form and content, attempts to protect its protagonist Father Sandoz: The
"Prologue," with its plural pronoun "they" and with its rather general statements about
the Society of Jesus, shields the first chapter, so to speak, and the first chapter in turn
introduces a spokesman who not only keeps the press at bay, but the readers, too:
On December 7, 2059, Emilio Sandoz was released from the isolation ward of
Salvator Mundi Hospital in the middle of the night (...). The next day, ignoring
shouted questions and howls of journalistic outrage as he read, a Jesuit
spokesman issued a short statement to the frustrated and angry media mob... (11).
It takes quite some reading time until the recipient is allowed to understand Father
Sandoz' motives and the complex background of these suspenseful and deliberately
vague opening chapters.
Sandoz needs protection, as it later becomes clear, because he had been held hostage,
was subjected to rape, and was repeatedly forced by adverse circumstances to question
his faith. The first scenes of the novel are nothing but a frame narration to the Rakhat
exploration report.6 In contrast, Brian Moore's Father Laforgue does not yet understand
that he needs protection,7 his world in this linear narrative is still ordered, even though
he will undergo a similar fate to Russell's Father Sandoz: he will also be held hostage,
his body and especially his genitals will be subjected to torture, and he will also
question his faith in the process. Having developed a familiar Jesuit background for
the two Fathers' travel into an alien country, the authors are faced with the problem of
how to represent the per se unrepresentable.
History, for one, is unrepresentable in the sense that any form of an 'authentic' access
to the past is always a re/construction. In Moore's case, ethnology and history would
"The story is told in two sections, in alternating chapters: the story of the expedition, from
2019, when alien transmissions were first detected, and the story of the aftermath, from 2059,
when Sandoz, the lone survivor, is trying to come to terms with some terrible but unspecified
evil..." (James 1999: 24).
7
Laforgue does not see the minor character of Mercier as a threatening foreshadowing device:
"'See that Savage with a musket on his back? (...) It's Jean Mercier. (...) He dresses like them
now. He even eats their food.' Tallevant stared uneasily at the almost naked figure biting into
a piece of bear meat, the animal hair still on the half-cooked flesh. (...) [']He likes to hunt, he
likes to get away from the lives the priests would have us live here, praying and fasting and all
that. He's free up there. And he's not the only one. I have twenty-one traders on my books. In
five years, if they stay here, most of them will be like Mercier'" (28).
6
be able to produce some evidence-based access to the completely oral culture of the
First Nations of Canada but only literature can invent, can supply missing elements.
Even more so, fiction can illustrate the day-to-day consequences of the factual data as
the following passage taken from Black Robe demonstrates:
(...) Laforgue entered the bark habitation, pulling aside the bearskin covering
which served as a door. Inside, on the bed of spruce boughs, were huddled all the
Indian families, men, women, and children (...). Huddled against them or on top
of them were their dogs. (...)
'Here, Nicanis,'8 Neehatin said, pushing aside a woman to make place for the
priest. 'Lie there. You will be well.'
Obediently Laforgue curled up, his back to an old woman, his face
uncomfortably close to a young male who put his arm around the priest as though
they were children in the same bed. Dogs crawled over the bodies of the sleepers,
looking for a place to lie. A child cried. Two men conversed in low voices. Rain
drummed steadily on the birch-bark roof and dripped into the dwelling from a
large hole of the habitation which opened on the night sky. The bed of spruce was
surprisingly soft and Laforgue buried his face in the boughs, hoping that the
smell of the needles would dull the sickly odour of unwashed bodies. (...) the old
woman behind him kicked him in the back as she rolled over, snoring. The fetid
smell of the savage's breath lay like a cloud in the confined space, and gradually
he became aware of giggles as young girls and boys crawled about in search of
each other. He pulled his hat down over his eyes to shut out that which he should
not see, but as he did a girl came close to him and he felt his penis stiffen. (43f.)
By conveying how the sensual perception of Laforgue, after all a celibate priest,
changes gradually (smelling, feeling, touching, etc.) by being 'displaced' in "a world he
fails to understand and whose customs increasingly offend him,"9 Moore is able to
show how the contact with the 'savages' also alters some of the most basic mental
processes of the Father: "...he began to read his breviary, but the familiar book seemed
strange in this place, and the Latin sentences jumbled in his head" (40). Instead, the
priest as a representative of culture - within a vast spread of uncultured nature perceives the latter, namely nature, in a new light: "A rush of tiny black birds whirled
like commas across the clearing...." (41) and "....sunlight struck down through the
great aisles of trees, reminding him of the shadows in the nave of the cathedral of
Coutances" (46). The book, a symbol of culture, seems to dissolve in nature; the
cathedral is only vaguely present in the forest, and the alien surroundings are in turn
perceived within cultural parameters.10 This leads Laforgue to an epiphany in which he
interprets an eagle's flight as an answer to his prayer: "God was not hidden; He had
shown Himself in the eagle's flight. (...) his heart sang a Te deum of happiness" (47).
Father Laforgue's Algonkin name.
Dahlie (1988: 89 f.). For a discussion of displacement, cf. McIlroy (1989).
10
Cf.: "...inherited knowledge can be reinscribed and given new, unexpected meanings".
McLeod (2000: 219.)
8
9
But Moore does not only grant access to his protagonist's mind and emotions.
Interestingly enough, the readers are also allowed to take the perspective of the Other.
Neehatin, a 'savage', describes Laforgue from his perspective: He sees him peering "at
a small charm which he carried with him. It was covered in a black skin and was made
of white strips of bark sewn together. On the white bark were signs painted with a
black stick" (109). It might take some time for the reader to understand that Neehatin
is actually describing a book. Another remark is equally telling - a 'savage' asks
Laforgue: "Why do you keep a corpse in that room and eat it to give you strength?"
(221). It takes a moment to identify the concept of the host in a tabernacle, which
Catholics believe to be the transubstantiated body of Christ. Mestigoit, a 'savage'
sorcerer, exposes the cultural dependence of the Christian terminology. Daniel calls
Laforgue a "Father," after which the sorcerer shouts: "Father, what father? (...) This
black robe is not your father, I tell you. He is not what he says he is" (69). The main
point, however, is that there is no narrative hierarchy, no priority, no evaluation, and
no master discourse visible between the concepts of the source and of the alien culture.
The individual perception of a young 'savage' woman, Annuka, is credited with the
same narrative reliability as the examples of Christian faith depicted in the novel: "Her
father lay alone in the clearing, resting on the pallet of branches. But, as she watched,
his spirit rose out of his body. The spirit of her dead father walked towards the trees,
his hand in the She-Manitou's hand" (173).
Thus two general principles permeate Moore's novel: on the one hand, the principle of
merging and blurring cultural boundaries; and – on the other hand – the principle of
trying to retain cultural margins. Readers become immediate witnesses to deliberately
alienating and decentering processes, without initially being able to predict which
principle will be at work in this or that passage. They witness Laforgue's defamiliarisation and his attempts at fortifying his cultural boundaries, but they are – by
reading - at the receiving end of the novel's de-familiarising influence, too.
Russell's The Sparrow adopts a similar technique of dealing with the representation of
the Other. The first signals from Rakhat being picked up are songs, "...like nothing I've
ever heard before" (114), says Jimmy. As it later turns out, the songs do not replace
language but just form an additional feature of communication, similar to its function
on Earth. Father Sandoz, famous for being able to learn new languages quickly, and
Askama, a child of the alien culture, who is offered as an interpreter, intend to bridge
the language and culture gaps between the humans and the aliens. The human starship
crew are lucky: On the planet Rakhat two separate species and cultures exist, the Runa
and the Jana'ata, thus both alien cultures are used to 'foreigners' and at least
theoretically know how to deal with an 'Other'.
Similar to Moore's Black Robe – think of Annuka's perception of her dead father (173)
–, readers of Russell's The Sparrow are invited to partake in the unfamiliar atmosphere
the 'Stella Maris' starship crew is subjected to. They first apply familiar concepts to the
new world –
...they named everything they saw. The eat-me's and the elephant birds, hoppers
and walkies, the all-black Jesuits and the all-brown Franciscans, scummies and
crawlers, hose-noses and squirrel-tails. Little green guys, blue-backs and flowerfaces, and Richard Nixons, which bent over looking for food. (238)
- but then they try to immerse themselves into the alien culture. The readers can find
detailed descriptions of the Rakhat situation, and again, of the rendering of the
consequences it entails for representatives of the source culture. Let me quote a scene
reminiscent of the one from Black Robe above:
Sometimes they would simply sit and watch Askama sleep, enjoying the rare
silence. The others complained about the constant talk and the physical closeness
the Runa liked, the way they crowded around one another and around the
foreigners, back leaning against back, heads in laps, arms draped around
shoulders, tails curled around legs in a muddle of warmth and softness in the cool
cavelike rooms of the cliff. Emilio found it beautiful. He had not realized how
starved he was for touch, how isolated he had been for a quarter of a century,
wrapped in an invisible barrier, surrounded by a layer of air. The Runa were
unselfconsciously physical and affectionate. (318)
Similar to Black Robe, readers are also granted access to the aliens' perception of the
humans; here it is a representative of the Jana'ata culture, Supaari VaGayjur, who
meets Father Sandoz for the first time:
... Supaari VaGayjur, speechless with shock, (...) simply stared at the ... thing
crouching over him. Finally, when he collected enough breath and nerve to speak,
Suupaari asked, 'What are you?' 'Foreigners,' the monster said peaceably (...). The
impossible being stood and offered him a bizarre hand. There was a momentary
pause and the foreigner's half-bare face changed color abruptly in a way Supaari
had no words to describe (...). (387f.)
After some time, Emilio Sandoz is not only able to translate words; he is also skilled in
adapting, in mimicry and in mediating between cultures:
[Supaari:]'This one is called Supaari, third-born, of the Gaha'ana lineage, whose
landname is VaGayjur.' He waited, ears cocked expectantly towards Sandoz.
Emilio realized that, as the interpreter, he was supposed to introduce Yarbrough.
Winging it, he said, 'The Elder is called Dee, first-born, of the Yarbrough lineage,
whose landname is VaWaco' (391).11
"This one is called" stands for "I am called". Dee Yarbrough VaWaco actually is D.W.
Yarbrough, the "New Orleans Principal of the Society of Jesus, from Waco, Texas" (143).
11
Language plays a major role in the relating of the Other. Russell does not always stick
to English. Sentences are partially rendered in the alien Ruanja language, such as:
"'Healthy and loud,' Emilio said. 'Sipaj, Askama! Asukar hawas Djordj. Kinsa, tupa
sinchiz k'jna, je? George, please, ten minutes? Jimmy?'" (321). But the alienation
process again works both ways: The familiar English word coffee, for instance, is
turned into "kafay" by the aliens (305). A gun in alien perspective becomes a "rod that
smelled of carbon steel, sulfur and lead" (391), reminiscent of the alienating
descriptions of for instance the host and a book in Black Robe. Sandoz speaks the alien
language, but he has not mastered it. He is able to translate an alien signifier like
sta'aka,12 however, he does not grasp the cultural context, namely "the way the hands
were made to look like the trailing branches of ivy, which grows on stronger plants, to
symbolize and enforce dependence" (475). This lack of understanding will finally
bring about the ruin of both of his own hands.
One subtle irony of the text as a whole lies in the fact that faulty communication does
not only occur between the aliens and the humans, where it could be expected, but also
among the humans themselves. In The Sparrow, misunderstandings between crew
members have dire consequences:
[Sandoz:] 'When I tried to make Mark eat, he would say, 'Ill son, less and sawn.'
Something like that. I should have recognized it....' 'Ils sont les innocents.' It was
Giuliani's voice. 'It is hard to think the unthinkable. They were offering you the
meat of the innocents.' (473)
In the end, the trained linguist Sandoz13 keeps suffering from not being able to
distinguish between languages any more:
'Grazie,' Emilio said, hoping this was thanks in Italian, but unsure. He wanted to
tell the boy that he could manage the stairs on his own now but couldn't find the
words. It was so long ago, so many languages ago. (...) Language, his life's work
and his delight, which had failed Emilio Sandoz word by word, now deserted him
utterly. (163; 488)
The Sparrow and Black Robe both point out the pitfalls and dangers of language and
semantics, of any implied dominance of one culture over the other, and they question
the notion of 'translatability'. They do not believe that cultures or individuals can
remain unchanged after having been exposed to an Other. Therewith, they also
question implicit or explicit hierarchies, namely that a transparent norm is constituted,
as Homi K. Bhabha has it, "a norm given by the host society or dominant culture,
which says that 'these other cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within
Sta'aka means ivy.
He speaks Spanish, English, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Portugese, Chuukese, Polish,
Arabic, Gikuyu and Amharic (cf. 28f.)
12
13
our own grid'".14 Rationalist assumptions, with which both source cultures operate, 15
are exposed as ideologies – "because rationalism is an ideology, not just a way of
being sensible", as Bhabha claims.16 The Sparrow and Black Robe show that it is not
only difficult, but sometimes "even impossible and counterproductive, to try and fit
together different forms of culture and to pretend that they can easily coexist". 17
However, the Other is needed in the process of creating and sustaining a "cultural and
political identity".18
The binary opposites of identity and alterity, self and other, center and periphery are
well-known parameters of the postmodern center-margin- (and border-) debate. 19 But
these concepts also carry additional analytical possibilities. By trying to represent the
cultural encounters of separate spheres, the opposites are stepping stones towards the
creation of a third space. For the sake of my argument, a – necessarily short – working
definition of third space can be adapted from Bhabha's reading of Joseph Conrad's The
Heart of Darkness, namely the passage: "He had tied a bit of white worsted round his
neck – Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge – an ornament – a charm – a
propitiatory act?"20 Bhabha comments:
.... Marlow enters a third space. He is now engaged in a translational temporality
in which the 'sign' of the white worsted from beyond the seas, is an object of
intention that has lost its mode of intention in the colonial space, or vice versa.
(...) The third space is a challenge to the limits of the self in the act of reaching
out to what is liminal in the historic experience, and in the cultural representation,
of other peoples, times, languages, texts.21
Laragy further elaborates this, including that key term in postcolonial discourse,
hybridity:22
In bringing this to the next stage, Bhabha hopes that it is in this space 'that we
will find those words with which we can speak of Ourselves and Others. And by
exploring this ‘Third Space', we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as
the others of ourselves'. (...) embracing the hybridized nature of cultures steers us
Bhabha in Rutherford (1990: 208).
We see the beginnings of rationalism in Moore's 17th century French authorities, and its full
development in Russell's 21st century.
16
Bhabha in Rutherford (1990: 209).
17
Bhabha in Rutherford (1990: 209).
18
Bhabha in Rutherford (1990: 219).
19
Cf. McLeod (2000: 217).
20
Conrad in Bhabha (2009: xii).
21
Bhabha (2009: xii f.).
22
Bhabha employs kindred terms: hybrid, in-between, third space, the beyond, transitory,
liminal, interstitial, etc. A differentiation would lie beyond the scope of this paper. Cf. instead
Bhabha (1994) and McLeod (2000).
14
15
away from the problematic binarisms that have until now framed our notions of
culture.23
The depiction of this hybrid space, however, should not be confused with notions of
synthesis or transcendence. The "transformational value of change lies in the
rearticulation, or translation, of elements that are neither the One (....) nor the Other
but something else besides', which contests the terms and territories of both".24
Schröttner applies the concept in her analysis of another seminal text of postcolonial
literature, The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie:
... Rushdie gives voice to the broad political, religious, historical, and cultural
experiences of India. Being aware of India's representation as Other in East/West,
colonized/colonizer binary, he refuses to reproduce India and Indians as Other
who are primitive and/or inferior. Instead, he demonstrates how the Indian as
Other is the other face of Western modernity/postmodernity. Through his
writings Rushdie shows that there is a cultural, religious, and historical
intermixing – not only between the non-West and the West, but also within India.
In consequence, Rushdie creates an alternative space, a third space, to a binary
system that defines India as devalued Other. He constructs a postmodern space of
third principle, which is a 'space that attempts to include both sides – East/West,
colonizer/colonized, religious/secular – and to foreground hybridity over clarity
and openness over closure.' Therefore, he suggests that to possibly survive in this
space of the third principle, one has to be fluid, adaptable, creative, and
imaginative.25
So far, secondary literature has only been able to diagnose the cultural clashes which
feature prominently in the two novels discussed here. Dahlie, for instance, observes
about Black Robe:
[Moore] dramatizes the coming together, the clashing, and the compromising that
result when two opposing systems of belief come together in a world of darkness
where neither system has been challenged before, and where survival regularly
takes priority over dogma.26
Russell and Moore, however, do create third spaces in which - at first sight - the
encounter of the cultures depicted may result in the invention of something new: a
place where a different form of communication and interaction may begin and where
Laragy (2010).
Bhabha quoted in Rossington (1995: 50; italics in the original). This reminds me of an
interview which Russell gave to Nick Gevers: "One of my greatest convictions is that very
few things in life are Either/Or. In my observation, almost every issue is And And And And
And." Russell quoted in Lembert (2004: 126).
25
Schröttner (2007: 6f.).
26
Dahlie (1988: 88).
23
24
none of the cultures is devalued and stigmatized as inferior. In third space, interaction
is "fluid, adaptable, creative, and imaginative".27 But whereas some works of
secondary literature naively sing the praise of third spaces, The Sparrow and Black
Robe also show the dangers of trying to establish them: One may lose one's faith, one's
center, or one's physical integrity, and one risks destruction and death. Laforgue and
Sandoz can never really return to their source culture; they are neither located within
the third space nor outside of it:
...the disruption of received totalising narratives of individual and group identity
made possible at the 'border' can be described as an 'uncanny' moment, where all
those forgotten in the construction of say, national groups return to to disturb and
haunt such holistic ways of thinking. This uncanny disruption brings with it
trauma and anxiety.28
The binary of first and second spaces, to remain within Bhabha's terminology, exposes
unexpected lacks: lacks of knowledge, lacks of understanding, and emotional lacks. It
comes as no surprise, for example, that the two priests are initially happy with the
aliens'/savages' exceptional bodily proximity. This happiness exposes the preceding
lack of human warmth, which forms a consequence of their vocation. "What's celibacy
like?", asks George, and Sandoz replies with "prompt honesty": "It's a bitch" (50). The
sight and the proximity of a young girl immediately gives Laforgue an erection (44);
lonely, he masturbates with "shame, anger and desire" (57). Correspondingly, the
Others (the Runa and the Jana'ata in The Sparrow and the 'savages' in Black Robe)
come to learn and to honor the fact that temporal isolation sometimes may have
rewarding and beneficial functions.
To sum up the first part of my argument so far: the two novels by Moore and Russell
imaginatively show the necessity, the advantages, and the 'practice' of third spaces in
communication and interaction but they also voice and highlight the inherent physical
and mental dangers for those who move within them.
Is there a third space beyond that? There is another Other; no pun intended. Both
novels discussed here dedicate themselves to the depiction of God as an Other (der
Ganz Andere in the sense of the theologians Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth). 29 Even
in this area, the area of faith, a third space is able to develop. Secondary literature has
so far diagnosed two spaces:
Even if they [the 'savages', SB] scoff at the absurdity of Christian beliefs and at
the blindness of Christians when it comes to recognizing the forces of nature and
Schröttner (2007: 7).
McLeod (2000: 220). The word uncanny is telling. In its German translation, on which a
famous Freud-essay is based, it is double-faced: un/heimlich. Cf. Freud (1966 and 2010).
29
Deus totaliter aliter, cf. Busch (2008) and Webster (2000). For an excellent analysis of the
problem of God, of the theodicy, and of "human suffering and undeserved pain" (116) in
Russell's works, see Lembert (2004).
27
28
the spirit of the animals, they recognize that the Christians have a coherent
alternative set of values and beliefs. (...) Daniel Davost [Father Laforgue's
companion, SB] recognizes a coherent Savage belief.30
But for Laforgue, Christian faith gets intermingled with 'savage' elements and is thus
moved to third space. Suddenly God is present, he can be experienced (and not only
read-about or prayed-to) in an eagle's flight - an epiphanic moment for Laforgue:
O Holy Mother, he prayed, I ask for your solemn benediction on this journey. I
ask for your help in this weakness which has afflicted my ear. (...) But God
sometimes hides Himself, and then the cup is very bitter. (...) At that moment, a
great shadow passed over him, and, looking up, his prayer stillborn on his lips, he
saw, high above, a huge eagle of a sort he had never seen in France, its head
white, its beak and talons yellow, its great blackish wings rigid as sails, catching
the wind eddies as it glided back and forth over the trees. Suddenly, swift as
clashing swords, the great wings shut. The eagle plummeted between the trees.
And as Laforgue knelt there, his struggles, his deafness, the dangers of this
journey were transformed miraculously into a great adventure, a chance to
advance God's glory here in a distant land. God was not hidden; He had shown
Himself in the eagle's flight. (47)
This divinely connoted third space may also play a major part in Emilio Sandoz'
feelings when he gets into close contact with the 'other children' of God:
...it seemed only natural that he should move into the airlock and open the hatch
and step out alone, into the sunlight of stars he'd never noticed while on Earth,
and fill his lungs with the exhalation of unknown plants and fall to his knees
weeping with the joy of it when, after a long courtship, he felt the void fill and
believed with all his heart that his love affair with God had been consummated.
(....) 'God!' he shouted into the sunshine and leaned down to kiss the top of
Askama's head and pull her up into his arms for an embrace that included the
whole of creation. (238; 288)
But his faith cannot remain in this state of enlightenment, it undergoes serious
disillusioning and ends up in a no win-situation,31 namely in a choice between atheism
and the belief that God is "vicious" (490):
You see, that is my dilemma. Because if I was led by God to love God, step by
step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true,
then the rest of it was God's will, too, and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness.
But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously,
30
31
O'Donoghue 1990: 191.
Cf. Watzlawick (1968).
then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business
becomes farcical, doesn't it. (490)
The Christian belief of Father Laforgue undergoes serious alteration, too, after having
been questioned and exposed to the 'savage' faith:
Why did Chomina die and go to outer darkness when this priest [Father Jerome,
SB], fanatic for a harvest of souls, will pass through the portals of heaven, a saint
and a martyr? (...) The hosts in the tabernacle were bread, dubbed the body of
Christ in a ritual strange as any performed by these Savages. (219)
So the blurring of boundaries between the faiths in Black Robe contains exceptional
merits and exceptional dangers. The rules that applied to cultural and linguistic third
spaces are thus also valid for those of religion and faith.
In short, The Sparrow's and Black Robe's description of third spaces reveal their
inherent temporal limitation and their fragility, their danger and their volatility. Very
much by the way do the novels suggest that the term space is misleading, suggesting
something solid and stable. It becomes clear that third spaces are not areas that, once
created, remain the same. Instead, their 'essence' is no essence but clearly a process.
They have to be opened up, to be found, to be created time and again, it takes an effort
and it is dangerous. As we can see, both, Laforgue and Sandoz, find and lose God in
the course of the novels. They both succeed and fail in the tasks of communicating and
interacting in the third space. They both open up and destroy third spaces. Third spaces
are extremely beneficial in intercultural communication. But they have a hidden, a
dark side. Moore and Russell are two authors who do not let themselves be blinded by
either.
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