"Girl" Prompts for 2/4

For Thursday, please read Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" and respond to one of the following prompts. Be sure to use specific examples from the story.

1. For the most part, the precepts espoused in "Girl" are inseparable from acts of labor. In what ways are these acts examples of alienated labor?

2. In what ways is the "girl" in the story being asked to commodify herself? Which is most important within the context of this story: use value, exchange value, or sign-exchange value?

3. Many readers of "Girl" hear the voice of a mother giving instructions to her daughter, but the story can be usefully read in other ways as well. How, for example, is the narrative voice a kind of superstructure? How might that superstructure be promoting a false consciousness?

4. In what ways does the story promote capitalism? In what ways does it censure capitalism?

5. In what ways does the form of the story--a single paragraph, semicolons rather than periods, many conjunctions--relate to its content? More specifically, how might the form reinforce a Marxist reading of the text?

Thank you. See you on Thursday.