The Language We Speak When We Theorize about the Creature

In "Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times," Henry Louis Gates calls for the use of Afro-American language--the same vernacular that Alexander Crummell decried as "inferior" in the nineteenth century--in order preserve black "critical tradition" and avoid losing identity and legitimacy at the hands of Euro-centric universality and hegemony. To theorize about the Afro-American experience in the language and terms of the white master's narrative would, as Gates implies at the end, strip theory of its blackness.

Shelley's text offers competing linguistic narratives: the novel's empowered and universal narratives--the portions narrated by Walton and Frankenstein--and the creature's narrative. Even the title, "creature," that we use to identify the being makes its narrative essentially "other." The creature begins its narrative (I use the very 'name' that I have just insisted is used by Walton and Frankenstein to alienate the creation because I find myself trapped in their narrative's universalizing discourse) by recalling its origin, and it says "It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original aera of my being" (68). In this line, the creature asserts its own legitimacy by referring to itself as 'I' and claims ownership of its own existence with the phrase 'my being.'

The creature is engaged in reflection--it has already been incorporated by society's hegemonic language when it speaks of its origin. Though the use of 'I' and 'my being' is empowering, language has divorced the creature from its authentic identity; that "originial aera" which the creature can no longer remember represents a time of purity and originality prior to the creature's baptism into the English "matrix." A pure recollection of those moments, re-presented without the knowledge the creature gained after being appropriated by the rest of society's existing culture, would "defamiliarize" readers--including Frankenstein and Walton--but would preserve the true "integrity" of the creature's experience and history.

Thus, my questions: "How does the creature engage with language in a way that still preserves some of his true identity? In other words, what "perversions" of the language work to actually save the creature's cultural integrity? Do our discussions of the text work only to perpetuate the essentializing process first undertaken by Victor's narrative? How can we discuss the text in a way that lends the creature more legitimacy?