literature { } religion at UCI. May 11, 2012.

A word regarding KONY 2012.

Dear people I know,

I’m not going to debate about this anymore. I’m sick of the whole thing, but since right up to this morning it’s still warranted argument and accusing me of not caring about geopolitical crises (really? do you know me?), I’ll say this one thing and then shut up. However, don't even try to accuse me of lacking compassion. If your understanding of the world is so limited as to include only "not caring" or "supporting a terrible, destructive plan," then the problem is yours, not mine.

Now, if you're still with me...

I want to get one very basic point off my chest regarding this Kony 2012 business: at the very least, those of you supporting this crusade need to admit to yourselves and the world that you are advocating for war. I know that's not how you choose to think of it, and it’s certainly not how the Invisible Children organization wants to characterize itself, but saying, “We just wanna get this guy to the Hague” is nonsense on a level so absurd that it embarrasses me that I feel the need to explain this. There is no nonviolent way to depose and capture a warlord. Unless that video was so touching that Joseph Kony’s going to just turn himself in, there needs to be military action; and when your team’s knights in shining armor go in to end child suffering, guess who will be manning the front lines of defense? That’s right: child soldiers.

Maybe that doesn’t bother you. Maybe you’re saying to yourself that unfortunately a few lives need to be sacrificed to save the thousands more. Cracking eggs to make omelets, and all that. Except that there aren’t thousands suffering under Joseph Kony; there are hundreds at most (and not all children). You see, that high number from the video was an estimate of the total number of victims over several decades. So if we’re talking about the present situation, Joseph Kony is less like Hitler than, say, a more violent and enduring Warren Jeffs; and the main resemblance he currently bears to Osama bin Laden is that he’s been chased out of his home nation and is hiding out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, dying, surrounded by what’s left of his supporters.

That’s right, he’s not in Uganda. So you’re not just advocating for war, you’re supporting a movement that proposes to get behind the Ugandan government’s incursion (with US military aid and direction) into another country altogether. All to catch one guy. That’s a government, by the way, that’s guilty of its own human rights abuses (surprise!). And believe me, there are plenty of people who will be happy to cooperate so they can fill the power vacuum left open by this one guy whom a bunch of formerly apolitical facebookers are suddenly convinced is such an important representative of a worldwide problem that we should all train our focus strictly on him because some American traveler made a very specific promise a few years ago.

So I’m glad you’ve been made aware that this is a problem, and Invisible Children is to be commended for bringing this to your attention, but it's a mistake to commend the Kony 2012 campaign past that very first step. If you think that this one guy is the problem, and that the answer to that problem is to uncritically go along with a plan hatched up by a few Americans living out some White Man’s Burden fantasy in league with the Ugandan government, and to ignore the objections of better established aid organizations and the Ugandan people themselves, then Kony 2012 has already done plenty of harm in its own right.

There are better ways of helping Kony’s victims, and once they’ve been addressed, I hope you don’t need sleek videos and rubber bracelets to raise awareness about the plight of “invisible children”—paramilitary or not—in the DRC, Liberia, Chad, Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Burma, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, India, Chechnya, Haiti, Colombia, El Salvador, and so on down the long list of places and people who won’t be affected one bit by this sudden enthusiasm for myopic international heroics. This is a much bigger and far more complex problem than can be conveyed in a half hour-long video; its solutions must be worked out by the people directly impacted rather than externally by European and American crusaders; and we should consider that the incredibly sudden explosion of this particular “solution” after a decade of this charity's operation comes suspiciously close on the heels of the discovery of oil in Uganda (plus a recent push to loosen up restrictions on extracting foreign chemicals, including cobalt, found in the Congo).

And once all these questions have been carefully examined, you will still have barely scratched the surface. As you develop this new awareness of a horrible problem, it's important to also remain aware of the fact that there are many, many forms of aid that hurt more than they help. 

There are better charities than Invisible Children and their Kony 2012 campaign, ones that assist afflicted people without limiting their self-determination, and base their actions on reasoned considerations of facts on the ground rather than emotional reaction to exploitative media campaigns. Below are some links, in case you’re really interested in helping. 

The Kony 2012 Alternative

Some Alternatives to Kony 2012 for All You Haters

Amnesty International - Kony Campaign: From Awareness to Action

Doctors Without Borders 


Acholi Street: "Stop #Kony2012" by Angelo Opi-Aiya Izama

"African voices respond to hyper-popular Kony 2012 viral campaign" - Boing Boing

Kony 2012: How not to change the world - CNN

"Solving War Crimes With Wristbands: The Arrogance of Kony 2012" - The Atlantic

"The Soft Bigotry of Kony 2012" - The Atlantic

"Why We Should Take Heart From the Backlash Against Kony 2012" - The Atlantic

Of democracy, faith, and bodily fluids.

Rick Santorum, a fervent Roman Catholic (I take issue with his stranglehold on what that designation means, but that's not the issue here), says that he felt like throwing up upon hearing John F. Kennedy's speech about the separation of church and state.

Rick Santorum, a fervent Roman Catholic, wouldn't even be a viable candidate today had it not been for that speech and the discourse of which it was a part (nor would Romney, but he's at least admitted as much).

So Rick Santorum, a fervent Roman Catholic and the primary beneficiary of John F. Kennedy's speech on the separation of church and state, is nauseated by that very same speech.

Rick Santorum is not just a fool. He's as close as one can get to embodying Proverbs 26:11 without literally being a vomit-eating dog.

"As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly." (KJV)

 *Image brazenly pilfered from one of the single most wonderful places on the internet, Hyperbole and a Half.

Conference on literature and religion at UCI.

Hey there. It's been a while. Anyway, I'm one of the people organizing this conference and, if you're still reading this blog and this topic interests you, you should come. And if you're not reading this blog and the topic interest you, you should come. And if you're a tumblr-er, tumble this page: http://literatureligion.tumblr.com/

Literature { } Religion
 

Inaugural Conference for the Study of Literature and Religion.

The University of California, Irvine.

Friday, May 11, 2012.

Studies of the relationship between literature and religion have picked up significant momentum in recent years, with many scholars in the humanities, arts, and social sciences taking a “religious” or “postsecular” turn in their work. This conference seeks to gather scholars across varied disciplines and areas of expertise to explore the wide variety of intersections, parallels, collaborations, ruptures, and inspirations to be found under the rubric of a discussion focused on literature and/or/with/on/of/against/about/in religion. 

Without privileging either term or limiting the prepositions or conjunctions between them, UCI’s “Literature { } Religion” conference is conceived with all the broadness that its name implies.  We seek extensive engagement with various religious traditions both Western and Eastern, monotheistic, polytheistic, or non-theistic. Papers may include but are not limited to studies of any literary, rhetorical, narrative, or textual aspects of literature and religion. We invite essays on exegesis and hermeneutics; discursive intersections of civil and canon law; ethics and justice explored in religious and secular literature; the poetics of holy writings; political theology; orthodoxies and/or heterodoxies; humanisms; religious art and imagery; literary works about religion; secularization and the post-secular; religious aesthetics; literature as a mode of religious engagement; comparative literary and religious studies; and conflicts mediated through literature and religion. Papers will be 15-20 minutes long to permit time for discussion.

Finally, there will be a plenary session with Professor Jack Miles (UCI), Pulitzer Prize-winning author of God: A Biography and editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of World Religions, which will be published in two volumes at almost 4,000 pages in Fall 2013. Professor Miles will share his views and lead a discussion on the relationship between literature and religion.

 

This conference will take place on Friday, May 11, 2012, at the University of California, Irvine.

Those who heed the call for papers should send abstracts to Brian Garcia (bjgarcia@uci.edu), to whom inquires may also be addressed. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, and should arrive before January 30, 2012. Invitees will be notified by March 30, 2012.

Speechless (because immigrants took my speech).

So, I saw this ad today on CNN. I don't even have any further commentary. I saw this fucking ad on CNN in the afternoon and that's crazy to me.

Democracy in a field of brambles.

I recently returned to the Old Testament and can’t help thinking that there’s a strong anarchist strain to be found there. I never really thought that before, but I just see it everywhere this time around. There are some obvious moments—Pharaoh’s defeat, Samuel’s warnings against the establishment of a kingdom, much of the prophetic tradition—but even those parts most dedicated to military triumph and the Law end in disaster precisely when a transition is attempted from the taking of land to the establishment of state authority. The very founding of the chosen nation constantly undermines itself in subtly—and sometimes not so subtly—ironic ways.

What’s fascinating is not only that this is in the text, but that it goes largely ignored by Christian anarchists, who, as far as I know, focus almost exclusively on the pre-Pauline New Testament.

Now, it could be said that the Old Testament’s critiques are simply anti-monarchical. Indeed, I think it’s a miracle of human ignorance that the Old Testament was ever used to unquestioningly prop up monarchies, but there’s more to it: inherent in its denunciations of monarchy are important warnings about empire which our not-monarchy has yet to heed. Furthermore, to restrict the Old Testament’s message to ancient feudalism is to miss some of the Bible’s most important points about the nature of power—and thus to prove it obsolete in our time (a judgment which, no doubt, some readers of this blog will find unsurprising and correct anyway).

Seriously, America? This is effective propaganda?

These musings, in pretty much this sloppily-conceived form, have been bouncing around in my mind recently and complementing my general discontent with the current state of democracy in the U.S.; with my disgust at how hard most people will actually try to remain as ignorant as possible as to the origins of their condition; and with my bewilderment as to how the hell it is that a voting public can be so easily duped into repeatedly and enthusiastically accepting the sorts of candidates which make up our elections.

Enter the Book of Judges, chapter 9. Gideon's already refused the throne and denied it to his sons on the grounds that no human king should rule over Israel (see what I mean?), but now he's dead and his illegitimate son Abimelech has declared himself king. In so doing, he kills his brothers; but Jotham escapes and yells the parable of the bramble king from a mountaintop.

I think this sums up the current political landscape rather nicely:

7 When it was told to Jotham, he went and stood on the top of Mount Gerizim, and cried aloud and said to them, "Listen to me, you lords of Shechem, so that God may listen to you."

8 The trees once went out to anoint a king over themselves.
So they said to the olive tree, "Reign over us."
9 The olive tree answered them, "Shall I stop producing my rich oil by which gods and mortals are honored, and go to sway over the trees?"
10 Then the trees said to the fig tree, "You come and reign over us."
11 But the fig tree answered them, "Shall I stop producing my sweetness and my delicious fruit, and go to sway over the trees?"
12 Then the trees said to the vine, "You come and reign over us."
13 But the vine said to them, "Shall I stop producing my wine that cheers gods and mortals, and go to sway over the trees?"
14 So all the trees said to the bramble, "You come and reign over us."
15 And the bramble said to the trees, "If in good faith you are anointing me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon."

from "A Key to the Lock"

"To sum up my whole Charge against this Author in a few Words: He has ridiculed both the present Ministry and the last; abused great Statesmen and great Generals; nay the Treaties of whole Nations have not escaped him, nor has the Royal Dignity itself been omitted in the Progress of his Satyr; and all this he has done just at the Meeting of a new Parliament. I hope a proper Authority may be made use of to bring him to condign Punishment: In the mean while I doubt not, if the Persons most concern'd would but order Mr. Bernard Lintott, the Printer and Publisher of this dangerous Piece, to be taken into Custody, and examin'd; many further Discoveries might be made both of this Poet's and his Abettor's secret Designs, which are doubtless of the utmost Importance to the Government."

- "Esdras Barnivelt, Apothecary"

(aka, Alexander Pope, reviewing his own work)

Why I went to Italy.

I've now been home for two days from a fantastic trip. Although in the second week it became a for-pleasure wandering tour of central Italy, I was technically there for "work," attending the conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric at the University of Bologna. Since then, several people I've spoken with (some of whom are frequent readers of this blog) have asked to see the paper I presented; so--although it makes me a little uncomfortable to publish this in blog form--I'm sharing it here. Please feel free to criticize as brutally as you feel necessary. I took a methodology that calls for exhaustive research and attempted to reduce it to a fifteen minute-long talk, so I'm aware that it has weaknesses, and would be delighted to get feedback from you fine, intelligent folks.

*         *         *

Regional Interests, Universal Truths: The Legal Implications of Conflicting Christian Moral Rhetorics. 

            On March 7, 1850, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts gave a now infamous speech advocating passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, mandating that all runaway slaves must be returned to their masters, and that the law was enforceable in Free Soil states on pain of fines and/or prison sentences. Part of the Compromise of 1850, the Act was viewed by many of Webster’s constituents as a betrayal of northern sovereignty. Abolitionists obviously opposed it, but even many more moderate and more inclined toward compromise viewed this compromise as an encroachment which forced their hand in the most divisive and important issue of the day, with no less than Abraham Lincoln famously alleging a Southern conspiracy to turn the U.S. into one large slaveholding nation. In Webster’s speech, the emphasis was not on the moral virtue of slavery, but on preservation of the Union and the prevention of secession as the primary objective for American legislators.

By contrast, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s reaction to passage of the Fugitive Slave Act and especially to Daniel Webster’s role as an advocate for the Act considers preservation of the Union a worthless goal if the purpose of a nation and its laws amounts to nothing more than the protection of property and the exploitation of human beings as property. Both of these noted pieces of Antebellum oratory make use of an interpretation of human law based on the transcendental Law of God as interpreted in different parts of the New Testament. For considering the use of biblical allusions in each of these famous speeches, I plan to read them through the prism of Steven Mailloux’s rhetorical hermeneutics, in order to show how such a method illuminates the ways in which such oratory is contemporarily and historically interpreted, as well as its effect on the historical interpretation and even canonization of particular works, figures, and movements in American politics.

            In favor of the Fugitive Slave Act, Daniel Webster’s March 7 Speech characterizes the Boston Senator “not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States…a body not yet moved from its propriety…” With the specter of secession looming, Webster follows this self-description by noting, “I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union.” Personally opposed to slavery but generally moderate and accommodating to Southern interests in his policy decisions, Webster lists the opposing factions on either pole of the debate: well-meaning, devoutly Christian Southern slaveholders, whose peculiar institution certainly has its flaws but who are generally misunderstood and mischaracterized by their foes; and Abolitionists, whose radical perversion of Scripture for the Abolitionist cause sows discord and undermines the possibility of a gradual progress which might organically bring about the end of slavery in due time if given the chance. In support of his allegation that the Abolitionists are in fact engaging in little more than anti-Christian rabble-rousing, Webster points to the Book of Romans, chapter 3 verse 8, in which St. Paul admonishes the Christians at Rome not to “do evil that good may come of it.” Webster’s allusion to Paul’s letter—itself an address aimed at heading off an ideological split between Jewish Christians and converted Gentiles—employs a deceptively simple good/evil binary that nonetheless speaks volumes and quickly makes a complex case for his preferred emphasis.

            It’s important to remember that Webster’s support for the 1850 Compromise was the result of political wrangling in the North, lifelong opposition to radical measures taken for any purpose, and compromise and cooperation with Southerners, especially the Kentuckian Whig Henry Clay. It is with that in mind that audiences would have heard Webster’s self-identification not as a Massachusetts man or Northerner, but an American legislator first and foremost. By identifying this vocation as one which includes him in an august “body not yet removed from its propriety,” Webster lays claim to a correctness of ethical interpretation based on his position as an elected official, and to the ultimate goal of preserving the institution that allows for election, for debate, and for the democratic tradition on which all of Webster’s most celebrated oratory is predicated. In so many words, Webster proves his mettle as primarily American by showing a willingness to compromise his own personal beliefs for an ultimate national good; and the very possibility of such service, debate, and compromise is itself proof of that national good’s superiority to other more specific moral and ethical concerns. The dissolution of slavery would, it is implied, be good; but the disunion inspired by that good would be the greatest possible evil.

            If we accept Webster’s claims, his allusion to the Book of Romans does not posit a purely pragmatic realpolitik approach by which compromise is simply necessary for a chosen outcome; rather, it’s a hermeneutic tool by which the Union and its laws are interpreted as the ultimate manifestation of a shared moral tradition, so that any threat to the Union must be seen as more immoral and more unethical than the alternative.

            Interestingly enough, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s argument against the Fugitive Slave Act over a year later operates on the basis of many shared assumptions regarding the status of the United States and its Constitution as the ultimate manifestations of western moral tradition and ethical progress; with one important distinction: that the Act itself represents not the necessary compromise for maintaining the Union but the opening salvo in a dissolution brought about by national participation in an unforgivable immoral act. Formerly an admirer of Webster’s intelligence and oratorical skill, Emerson considers the March 7 Speech an affront to the principles for which Webster once stood and fought, and which catapulted him to regional admiration and national fame. Throughout his best known works, Emerson sees in the U.S. and its Constitution the embodiment of his paradoxical reconciliation of radical autonomy and a collective spirit of progress. In particular, Emerson had long seen in New England the moral beacon of the republic, with Webster as one of its brightest lights and one of its staunchest defenders of a moral and ethical legislature that upheld what Emerson refers to alternately as “natural law” and “first principles.” Drawing on legal precedents taken from British judicial history, Emerson argues repeatedly that the institution of slavery itself is contrary to basic human morality and decency. For example, quoting from Blackstone, Emerson holds that sovereignty is “the antecedent to any positive precept of the law of nature” and that all “should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render unto every one his due,” continuing that “No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this.” Going on to borrow from such notables as Coke, Mansfield, Montesquieu, Burke, and even Cicero, Emerson drives home in no uncertain terms the point that even one so dedicated to the letter of the law as Daniel Webster must acknowledge that legal precedent itself holds to a standard of human decency which transcends the merely political. Political ethics and morality, Emerson argues, must be founded on a universal and incontrovertible moral standard which endures throughout human history. This, the argument goes, is not negotiable, regardless of political contingencies: “Laws are merely declaratory of the natural sentiments of mankind and the language of all permanent laws will be in contradiction to any immoral enactment: And thus it happens here: statute fights against statute…” 

            To buttress his case, Emerson presents—as the foundation of European and American civilization—the Golden Rule as stated in the Book of Matthew, 7:12: “Do unto others as you would have others do to you.” Here it’s worth noting that my analysis of these speeches consciously omits the voices of staunch activists on the abolition or pro-slavery sides, not to mention the oratory and writing of such important African-Americans as Frederick Douglass and David Walker. This is to underscore that the discourse being examined here is what would have passed for a quite mainstream treatment of the events of the day, with Webster’s and Emerson’s views being those of a prominent legislator and public intellectual, respectively. With the former addressing fellow members of Congress and the latter a series of patrician New England lecture attendees, it virtually goes without saying that, within the context in which these speeches were heard, the subaltern certainly did not speak. Although both personally disliked the practice of slavery, neither Emerson nor Webster self-identified as a member of the abolitionist movement and—even at the height of their anti-slavery sentiments—both evinced varying levels of ethnocentrism with regards to relations between white and black Americans. Even among abolitionists, there were in the Antebellum period debates as to what would be the rights of freed slaves post-abolition, or whether they should even be allowed to remain in the United States at all.

            Thus we return to Emerson’s citing of the Golden Rule to ask, “Who are these others unto whom we should do as would be done to ourselves?” In other words, who is a citizen, who is human, and who deserves the benefit of universal human morality? It is an obscene question in the 21^st century, and yet even in the Romantic humanist milieu of the Antebellum period, the 1850 Compromise was viewed in many quarters as the most sensible and least radical option. As such, the Golden Rule as used by Emerson takes on several implications. The primary concern outlined by Emerson is that the Fugitive Slave Law mandates kidnapping. This applied not only to escaped slaves, but to the fact that several legally freed African-Americans at the time were kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Emerson does not need to distinguish between the kidnapping of freedmen and that of escaped slaves, since the primary topic of his speech is not the well-being of the kidnapped, but the moral standing of the kidnappers and the fact that it legally intends to turn otherwise moral citizens into kidnappers: “It is contravened by the mischief it operates. A wicked law can not be executed by good men, and must be by bad. Flagitious men must be employed, and every act of theirs is a stab at public peace. It cannot be executed at such a cost, and so it brings a bribe in its hand. This law comes with infamy in it, and out of it.”

            Speaking to an audience of anti-slavery advocates occupying various spots on the ideological spectrum, Emerson would have found it rhetorically inexpedient to wade into debates about the status of African-Americans, but could easily find common ground among Northerners who felt that the Fugitive Slave Law imposed immorality upon them through a political act which subordinated their own sense of justice to the commercial interests of the South. Thus is revealed a clash of universalities in the speeches of Emerson and Webster. Both New Englanders claim to want to protect the moral foundations upon which the United States was founded, and in doing so both refer to Christian Scripture for evidence of that foundation. Ostensibly, each speaker uses biblical moral standards as a hermeneutic tool with which to interpret the constitutionality and necessity of the Fugitive Slave Act, and yet they reach opposite conclusions. How is this possible?

            I would argue that the use of Christian Scripture as an interpretive tool for positing opposing arguments about the Fugitive Slave Law is itself an example of what Steven Mailloux in Disciplinary Identities describes as “contingent rhetorical beliefs,” whereby the rhetorical heft of the statements used relies not on accuracy of interpretation (which is impossible to determine) or logical validity so much as the “rhetorical force of the ideas hovering around” the terms and quotations in question. So whereas Daniel Webster defends the law based on the need to keep intact the Union and its Constitution, Emerson argues that the law violates natural Law and the human constitution, which chafes against abuse of other humans; thus setting in motion the inevitable unraveling of the Union due to its residing on an unstable foundation—the defense of property rather than human rights, freedom, and love.

            Logically, Webster’s is a strong enough argument: the Union must avoid disunity at all costs; disagreements between free and slave states threaten to create disunity; ergo, the Fugitive Slave Act must be passed to effect a compromise which will prevent secession and Civil War. But as Mailloux aptly points out in describing how discourses often traverse the boundaries of their respective disciplines, “For some people a belief can be weakened not logically but rhetorically by the effects of new experiences, including being scandalized by someone you admire who holds a belief you also hold or by being persuaded that the philosophical status you once gave to your belief (that it was true absolutely) is no longer believable.” If applied to the debate at hand, we might consider some of the absolutes to which both Emerson and Webster (and, presumably, their audiences) subscribed: mainly justice and freedom, as insured in and upheld by the Constitution of the United States of America. Quoting from the New Testament is not merely a way of calling attention to the particular statements quoted, but is itself a powerful signal; the New Testament stands as a rhetorically potent trope, a signifier that carries with it associative implications of transcendental first principles, unquestionable moral standards, and the history of western civilization. By signaling such an interpretation of their speeches, both Webster and Emerson build their arguments regarding the Fugitive Slave Law on the foundation of the universally (at least to their audiences) coveted idea of the United States, which itself rests on deeper, more generally universal foundations such as freedom and justice.

            But what do we mean when we talk about “universals,” “absolutes,” and “first principles”? Building from Stanley Fish’s antifoundationalist critiques of universalism, Mailloux remarks that “Positive universals are empty and must always be filled in by instantiations that are not universal but local, not neutral but interested, not transcendentally general but politically specific. Positive formal universals can never serve the guiding function they claim for themselves.” Thus we see the rhetorical pragmatism at work in the speeches of Webster and Emerson: far from taking their positions on the Fugitive Slave Act from a democratic ethic based on interpretations of universal or natural Law, their uses of biblical allusion are based on foregone moral conclusions. So even as first principles are rhetorically positioned as preceding the political arguments being made, they are actually selected based on the rhetorical efficacy of the very idea of absolutism and universal Law as a metaphor for an otherwise unreachable Truth. This is not to accuse our rhetors of abject relativism—far from it—but rather to consider the structure of truth claims founded upon abstract principles that are paradoxically both unverifiable and extremely powerful. To quote Mailloux again:

These are practical and pragmatist questions, practical in not being based on universalizing theories and pragmatist in making judgments by looking toward the effects of actions. They are also, I submit, rhetorical hermeneutic questions insofar as the judgments made are based on interpretations of past conditions and future probabilities, and those interpretations and resulting judgments are rhetorically enmeshed in the persuasive arguments, enabling tropes, and grounding narratives of the times and places of their rhetorical performance.

 And it is the historical context of the performance—as well as the consistency of the truth claims upon which Webster and Emerson base their arguments—that ultimately dictate interpretations of those speeches for posterity. As mentioned before, Emerson and Webster both operate on assumptions that take for granted such abstract principles as freedom and justice. Both men consider history teleologically, making the case throughout their illustrious careers that the progressive arc of history is toward greater justice and human dignity. And yet, in this instance, only Emerson upholds those principles at the most abstract and affecting—indeed the most pathetic—level. While both make pragmatic rhetorical arguments about the morality of the law as well as practical arguments about the viability of its implementation, Webster uses universal Law not as a centerpiece of his argument but primarily as a precedent to make the case for the necessities of mundane earthly law.

            Lest we consider this a foolish decision on his part, context must again be considered. Webster’s speech was made to a meeting of exasperated Congressmen, many from slaveholding states working to diffuse a four year-long conflict between the Free-Soil and slave states; and it worked: the law was passed. Yet in scholarly settings the speech is now considered—if at all—not for its moral strength or even its persuasiveness but for its rhetorical flourishes, clarity, and construction; what Rufus Choate called the “crystal water of the style.” It is mainly regarded with infamy as an example of skillful oratory used to ignominious ends. And so we see an example of a formerly “extreme” position (abolition) taking on the valence of a universally accepted principle and in so doing changing the interpretation of all the tropes used in a speech predicated on the immutability of certain principles.  

            I consider this an example of what Mailloux identifies as stemming from “events of universal truth-making.” This concept is drawn from philosopher Alain Badiou’s interpretation of Pauline Christianity, which considers Paul’s proclamation of the Word the event that emerges out of a particular situation, which must be named and in its naming develops around itself a truth procedure. Mailloux’s own example in discussing the theory of the event is the September 11 terrorist attacks, an event whose impact had to be universally acknowledged in order for the discourse surrounding it to make sense by standing on a common foundation. To identify at what point Webster’s speech begins to be considered less sensible and less moral in American public discourse than Emerson’s is a difficult task because there are so many individual events that could be said to have turned the tide, and such an analysis requires more historical and theoretical rigor than this short paper allows for. What we can certainly say, however, is that much had not yet taken place in March of 1850 or in May of 1851. Webster’s speech followed the anxieties of the Mexican-American War in a context punctuated by the fear of slave revolts and anxieties over states’ rights; it also preceded the beginnings of more widespread abolitionist sentiment by about a year, and Bleeding Kansas by four years. The election of Abraham Lincoln and Civil War were eleven years away, the Emancipation Proclamation twelve, and the Thirteenth Amendment still fifteen. All of these events—and more—played a role not in relativizing the concept of truth but in constructing it around a shared set of principles drawn from common experience and discourse. As such, they not only shape how we interpret individual tropes within a work, but cause the dominant discourse to view those works themselves—as well as the works to which they allude—as signifiers for ideologies and their valuation as outmoded, progressive, revolutionary, opportunistic or any number of judgments we might apply to them with the benefit of hindsight and careful reading.

Grandma's travel and art review.

There it is.

In the original Portuguese:
“Florencia é lindo! Vais ver os Michelangelos! O David com a sua pombinha de fora!"


In English:
"Florence is beautiful! You're going to see the Michelangelos! The David with his little weiner hanging out!"

Keep your head up.

I haven't had time to contribute as much as I'd like, and I'd ideally like to be posting something everyday. But in keeping with a theme running through my May 19 and May 27 posts, it's worth noting that Tupac Shakur would be forty years old were he alive today.

Tupac! Would be forty!

Time does fly, doesn't it?

I can't help but wonder what the cultural and even political landscape would be like had he survived the stupidity that got him killed. Maybe had he lived the world wouldn't have learned its lesson, so it was inevitable that he had to be sacrificed, Jesus-like, for the rest of us to grow up. I personally hate the everything-happens-for-a-reason, let's-reduce-a-person's-death-to-our-own-life-lesson approach, but I suppose it's one way to make sense of senselessness.

It's hard not to dreamily guess at what a Tupac would have to say about these times in which we live. The man was so full of contradictions. For every Hit 'em Up there was a Keep Ya Head Up. For every spittle-hurling vitriolic battle interview a thoughtful expression of compassion and complexity.

I guess those of a mind to believe that there's a point to all this say things like "Everything happens for a reason" to avoid joining the rest of us who can do nothing but shake our heads and sigh.

Fuck the world indeed.

Gil Scott-Heron. April 1, 1949 - May 27, 2011.

Gil Scott-Heron died today. I don't know yet what was the cause of death, but that's another truth-teller in the grave too soon. At sixty-two years of age, forty-one years after the release of Small Talk at 125th and Lenox and forty after the groundbreaking Pieces of a Man, his words are still all too relevant and--as a nation in general--we have yet to listen. The Godfather of Rap, an unflinchingly prophetic critic of national entropy and persistent injustice, tragicomic to the bitter end. Listen to Gil Scott-Heron. I mean, listen to Gil Scott-Heron. May he rest in peace.

das Man.

Something about this pisses you off.

"We have shown earlier how in this environment which lies closest to us, the public 'environment' already is ready-to-hand and is also a matter of concern. In utilizing public means of transport and in making use of information services such as the newspaper, every Other is like the next. This Being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into the kind of Being of 'the Others', in such a way, indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the 'they' is unfolded. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the 'great mass' as they shrink back; we find 'shocking' what they find shocking. The 'they', which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness."

 - Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, I.4

A letter from Tom Lutz.

Spread this far and wide.

Dear colleagues and students,

After a year and a half as Chair of the department, I am stepping down.  Professor Andrew Winer will be taking my place, for which we should all be grateful.

As my last act as Chair, I would like to share with you my sense of the gravity of the situation we face.  I spent most of my academic career doing what most of us do—teaching, writing, reading graduate applications and theses, having office hours, reading in my field, doing research.  I didn’t pay much attention to the University and its administration.  None of us have that luxury anymore.  Budget cuts after budget cuts after budget cuts have left us all painfully aware of how the sausage is made, or not made. 

Having served in administrative posts for most of the last five years, I have come to know the budget issues very well.  We are now past the tipping point.  We are on a rapid downhill slide that will have profound effects for our state, our families, our country, and our world.

In the space of less than a single lifetime, the University of California, Riverside went from being a small agricultural experiment station to being one of the top 100 universities in the world.  An incredibly dense and elaborate web of specialists across all fields of scholarship, science, and the arts was developed, and it took enormous efforts by thousands of people over those years to make it happen.  In less than the four years it used to take to graduate, it is being destroyed.

Our department is a great example of the breadth of vision and dogged effort that has made Riverside the exceptional place it has been.  There are other creative writing programs in the country, but not a single one anywhere with the range across genres and fields, with the breadth of knowledge in world literatures, with the diversity of voices, methods, and styles that we have.  And there is not another creative writing program anywhere—and certainly none with our caliber of professors—that is more truly dedicated to its pedagogical mission at every level.  The faculty at Princeton is perhaps a bit more famous, but undergraduates there never meet them, much less have access to them in, before, and after class.  I have now taught at every kind of school—fancy elite universities, small colleges, Big 10 universities, art schools, and universities abroad.  I have never been part of a faculty this student-centered, this concerned about the educational experience and future prospects of its undergraduate and graduate students.

Three years ago I was offered a job at USC, which is much closer to my house, more prestigious as an academic address, and was offering me more money.  UCR worked hard and did the best it could to match the salary and I stayed.  I stayed because I wanted to be part of this project, I wanted to teach a student body that is over 85% first-generation college students, that comes not from the richest families in California but some of the poorest, a group of students that have a much greater likelihood than not of coming from immigrant families and from families that speak more than English.  I wanted to remain part of one of the greatest democratic experiments in history, and certainly one of the few greatest experiments in public education in the history of the human race, the University of California.

If I got that offer today, though, I’m not sure I could turn it down, and in fact, many people are not turning down outside offers these days.  There are people who have taught here for more than twenty years considering going somewhere else, somewhere the future is a bit more certain.  These are people who are the best in their field—you don’t get such offers unless someone thinks you are among the best in your field—and UCR, and the educational experience at UCR, is diminished each time this happens, each time one of the best of our best leaves for a better job.  We can’t blame them—they have kids of their own to put through college, they have research projects that require funding, they know that to teach the most complex subjects effectively, they need to run seminars with 15 students sitting around the table, not 150.

The budget cuts of recent years and the ones we know for certain are coming next year mean a gross deterioration of our school.  Those faculty who leave for better jobs are not being replaced.  Many of you know Yvonne Howard, who has been the chief administrator for our department since it was founded.  This year her job was unceremoniously terminated.  Staff people and faculty who retire are not being replaced.  Next year students at UCR will have trouble getting the classes they need, and many of the classes they get will be crowded beyond responsible limits.  Departments are being forced to abandon optimal class-size limits for classes two, three, and five times that size.   The library has virtually stopped buying books.  We are on a race to become a mediocre university at best, and if the $500 million of proposed cuts to UC turn into a billion dollars, as they are now discussing in Sacramento, we will be over.  The billion dollar cut translates into thousands of classes across the system.  It means creative writing workshops with 50 students.  It means we will cease to be a real university, and will simply become another community-college-level institution. Then, maybe, after a few years, with tuition at $25,000 or $30,000 a year, we can begin the slow build back into a real university.

Why is this happening?  Political demagoguery and corruption.  Thirty years ago UC received 9% of the state budget and prisons 3%.  Now UC gets 3% and the prison-industrial complex gets 9%.  The legislature is taking the money that should be used to educate the best of its citizens and using it enrich the people who make a profit from the imprisoning the poorest.  The percentage of the cost of higher education provided by the state has been cut in half, cut in half again, and is on the verge of getting cut in half a third time.  The people in the legislature understand the value of public higher education—the vast majority of them have degrees from our state system, and many of them have multiple degrees—all made possible by the legislators who preceded them and had more courage.  They do not protect the University for a very simple reason:  because they risk a flow of conservative attacks and Tea Party racism if they stick up for anything that is directly devoted to the commonweal.

In my darkest moments, I think the monied interests working against reasonable taxation are doing so because they consciously, actively seek to make sure we do not have an informed, educated citizenry, the better to extract our collective labor and wealth unimpeded.  But such intentionality isn’t necessary.  Simple, short-sighted, grab-it-now, bottom-line greed explains their destruction of our culture, without recourse to any dystopian conspiracies.

The only thing that has a chance of turning this devastation around is student activism.  We in higher education cannot spend millions of dollars on campaign contributions the way the prison profiteers or the medical and insurance and aerospace industries do, so we need to find other ways to provide a political counterweight.  We need to make our voices heard.  For you students, your own self-interest should be the catalyst, as you will, no matter what happens this year, have trouble finding the classes you need, much less than the ones you want, and the chance you will graduate in a reasonable amount of time is already gone. But you should also think of what this means for your families, your neighbors, your friends, your own kids when they come of age.  And think what it means if California reduces its higher education budget to the levels of Missouri or West Virginia—we will become like those places.  Because of its education system, a system that, until just a few years ago, has always been considered the best in the country, California has been among the most innovative and significant literary and cultural centers in the country, and because of this education system, too, California has been the economic powerhouse it has been—1000 research and development companies a year are formed out of the UC system, for instance, and four UC inventions a week are presented to the patent office.   We had the best educational system because we were willing to pay for it, and our expenditures were among the highest in the nation, too. In a few short years we have dropped into the middle in state spending, and we are fast falling even farther.  Only a political movement strong enough to buck the corporate money determining our tax policy can change this downward spiral.  Only you can make that happen.

We have been told, from the top, not to expect a return to ‘the glory days.’  This year was not the glory days.  This year we already have discussion sections that are not discussions, fewer classes, an exploded faculty:student ratio; we are very far from the glory days.  Now that either 500 million or 1 billion more dollars are getting yanked out of the system, your favorite lecturer will be gone.  The class you wanted won’t exist anymore.  Your student advisor will have 800 or 1000 students to advise instead of the 300 we all agreed was an absolute maximum two short years ago.  This is the end of quality.  And why?  Because a few very wealthy people are protecting their wealth from taxes, taxes considered reasonable not only everywhere else in the developed world, but considered reasonable in America until the last 20 years.

I hope you get angry.  I hope you get active. Call and write your legislators, get out in the streets, take back your university, don’t let yourselves be the last people to have even this chance.

Tom Lutz
Professor and Chair, Department of Creative Writing

May 19.

May 19 is Malcolm X's birthday. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz would be turning 86 were he alive today. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be 82. Medgar Evers would be 85. Fred Hampton: 63. Bunchy Carter: 69.

All (and many others) were killed within a five year span at the peak of COINTELPRO's efforts to prevent the emergence of a "black messiah." That's not even conspiracy theory--that shit's in the file.

Their truncated efforts fomented the rumblings that Nixon used at the end of the 1960s to seize on fears of integration and black urban migration with the euphemism "Law and Order." That became Reagan's "Morning in America," with its wars on vague concepts and its rancid downward trickles.

But unless you grew up in a disenfranchised community with some sort of minority political agitation, making those connections is just not a valid part of the study of history. If it comes at all, most Americans will only ever get that part in college--and now the motherfuckers want to take that away. Intersections like these are not simple coincidences, folks: UC tuition might jump 32% if tax proposal fails, official says.  

Just because we can't point to some back room where one group of scary men in suits pulls all the world's strings doesn't mean the game's not rigged to work in the favor of a de facto aristocracy. 

How many investment bankers have you seen in handcuffs?

Maybe Ahab was right when he observed that "This whole act's immutably decreed." 

Maybe.