In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

309 GO WEST, YOUNG WOMAN! Hegel’s Dialectic and Women’s Identities in Western Films Gary Heba and Robin Murphy The myth of the Old West is rooted in a kind of nostalgia for the lure of the frontier and the freedom and challenges it presented, resulting in a quest focused on bringing order—western order—to an untamed world. More so than any other epoch in U.S. history, the American Old West has been mythologized in the collective unconscious of the country through the many iconic representations of this historical period in film. The popularity of the western genre in U.S film and television from the 1930s to the 1960s has left an indelible set of images on the popular imagination—stark, rugged landscapes populated by rough-hewn men with horses and guns. Homesteads were spare and devoid of any urban comforts. The heroes wore white hats, while the outlaws wore black. Native peoples were characterized as a cultural other who posed a threat that needed to be addressed, violently in most cases. The social contrasts represented in these films were, by and large, clearly drawn and unambiguous and have been criticized for being simplistic morality plays. Noticeably missing, however, from the catalogue of immediately recognizable western images above are images of women. Women certainly appeared in western movies, often in starring roles; but compared to their male counterparts, their representations have not had the same iconic immediacy and value. As a result, women’s identities in western movies remain to be constructed, not only through the narrative of the film, but through the minds of the viewers as well. In this study, we argue that although women’s identities in westerns do not have immediately recognizable iconic status, their roles in these movies still provide markers of identity that characterize a certain cultural point of view, so that women’s roles in westerns function not only dramatically, but rhetorically as well. Because of this, in the western, women characters are often per- 310 Gary Heba and Robin Murphy ceived to possess emerging identities—identities that are formed through contrast with other identities—that is, their identities are constructed by means of dialectic. The specific dialectic applied to this analysis is Hegelian in origin. Although the terms thesis, antithesis, and synthesis are often associated with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) dialectic, they are originally derived from Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and Beiser notes that Hegel never, in fact, used this schema and opposed the use of any kind of schemata.1 Though it was not a specific heuristic for him, Hegel was fond of thinking in threes, and his dialectic does, like the concept of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, have a tripartite structure and it functions in a similar way.2 Overall, the mission of Hegel’s dialectic is to provide a process whereby ideas, and ultimately truth, can emerge. According to Fox, Hegel referred to the result of the dialectic process as aufheben, a term that has three distinct meanings important to this study: to preserve or maintain; to destroy or negate; and to elevate or transform. The complexity of meaning afforded by the term aufheben is a centerpiece of Hegelian thought, says Fox, because “the word itself is dialectical, in that it contains opposing yet coexistent and interdependent elements of meaning.” The three meanings of the term also provide some insight into the stages and functions of each part of Hegel’s dialectic: (1) the first understanding—to preserve or maintain; (2) the dialectical moment—to destroy or negate; and (3) the speculative moment—to elevate or transform. While Hegel’s dialectic provides these three distinct “stages” for identity construction, it does not provide a clear vocabulary for discussing the identities established within these stages. In order to discuss differences in identity as they are represented in film, we have grafted concepts and terminology from Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1885–1975) theory of the social functions of language onto Hegel’s dialectic, as is explained below.3 The function of the first understanding is to posit something absolute and unconditioned, conceived in itself and by itself as if it were an independent entity, or a thing in itself.4 At this stage, the identity of something is formed in contrast to things it is not. It is a kind of mechanical stage in which one separates items according to types, like an inventory. Described anotherway,thefirstunderstandingisanalogoustoBakhtin’sideaofamonoglossic discourse. According to Bakhtin, monoglossic utterances contain “the...

Share