Yamashita says in an interview, http://www.loggernaut.org/interviews/karenteiyamashita/,
when asked if she is an irreverent writer, “I suppose so, since I paid no
reverence to those forms (magical realism, film noir, etc.) ripped them off,
parodied, and satirized the genres as useful to the narratives. Maybe writing
is an irreverent business by necessity. At the same time, thinking about it, I
think I'm pretty reverent about much of what I write.” She calls writing a
business but calls attention to the fact that though she may be writing to
create the best possible product at its base, she is true about the words she
writes and her message. She finds it important to draw to attention the
difference between her commercialization of her magic realism techniques and
the commercialization of natural resources in the novel. One of the central
themes of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest is the commercialization,
exploitation, and destruction of nature and Yamashita shares a message of the
negative effects that it can have. That is why it is so interesting that she
comments herself on her ability to change her words and feelings and writing
technique to fit the “business” or commercialization of writing novels.
This theme of the exploitation of nature in
the novel is so heavily present and it is interesting that the political
philosophy behind it can be examined by reading into and drawing connections
with Karl Marx’s political and philosophical beliefs. As Marx explains in Das
Capital, he believes the criteria for deciding a commodity’s value is simply
its usefulness or its value in relation to other commodities. In his
description, Marx ignores the concept of intrinsic value; an advantage that the
nature in Through the Arc of the Rainforest can claim before many of its
characters commercialize it and believe that usefulness defines value. One of
the important questions Marx debates and tries to discover in Das Kapital is
what this value comes from. He then asserts his labor theory of value. He
believes that all commodities have a social dimension and that their exchange
value is not intrinsic to them as resources or even commodities. He believes
that value is more social than it is material. This is interesting to think
about when reading Through the Arc of the Rainforest. What makes a commodity?
And what makes a commodity valuable? In Through the Arc of the Rainforest, the
characters, the consumers, and the producers decide the value of the feathers.
All the real value is stripped of the object and the object becomes purely
defined as a commodity, value based completely on usefulness. It looses its
essence, which is so central to it when it is originally made use of. For
example the feathers or when “Chico Paco would race with the children out to
the Matacao to listen to the drops spatter against the smooth surface and to
slide with wild abandon across the slippery surface of that tropical skating
rink.” Nature is defined by its intrinsic value. The quote featured in the
PowerPoint is a good excerpt to complete this thought with, “A commodity
appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis
brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical
subtleties and theological niceties…the form of wood, for instance, is altered
if a table is made out of it. Nevertheless the table continues to be wood, an
ordinary, sensuous thing. But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes
into a thing, which transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet
on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its
head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful
than if it were to begin dancing of its own free will. (163-4 Capital)” This
can be interpreted in terms of Through the Arc of the Rainforest if you think
that once something is turned into a commodity, it loses its being. It is no
longer itself. It is something else. A comparison can be made with how as
commercialization became central in the plot of Through the Arc of the
Rainforest, plastic was used to recreate the nature of the feathers. The
commodity, the feathers, became purely social value, all based on labor and
rate of exchange. There is no personal value to the commodity made by the
plastic and industrialization in the second half of the novel took the value
out of humanity and made it completely based on it’s social variable.
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