How Come Christianity Has So Much War?
November 30, 2006
Why has Christianity experienced so much in the way of war? It is hard to read the Sermon on the Mount, with the admonition to turn the other cheek.. and then to look at the long history of warfare in Europe and elsewhere. We live in a country in which conservative Christians of various stripes have an important voice in policy decisions, yet we are also one of the most militarized nations of all time. How does the religion of the New Testament.. strictly interpreted.. turn into a culture that looks like us?
Perhaps we represent a natural development of the secular vacuum of the New Testament. I remember talking about the Sermon on the Mount with my Dad, and hearing how those rules were great for personal values, but were completely unrealistic when it came to national policy. A nation could not conduct its affairs by turning the other cheek or going the extra mile. At the level of the group, it seemed, self-interest had to take over. So yes, the Sermon on the Mount hardly preaches violence, but its vision is so other-worldly and private that it also allows for a group actor—such as a state—to engage in actions that seem contrary to the spirit of the text.
Let's put this another way. Since the New Testament does not offer direct foreign policy advice, but looks to the individual's relationship with God.. it becomes possible for the state to wield power with little oversight. We know from the New Testament that Roman soldiers converted to Christianity, and they were not ordered to drop out of the military. So what would this Roman soldier do if Rome decided to invade Persia next door? He would of course do as he was commanded. On this earth he would render to Caesar what was Caesar's and look to his eternal reward for his private devotion to Christ.
As a result, Christianity does not have much in the way of overt declarations of war to explain away.. especially if one allows the New Testament to simply overrule the Old Testament. But it nevertheless sets up a dynamic that allows for a highly militarized culture.
Look around. You see little dissent from American Christians about the choices our government has made for war. The appeals are made to patriotism.. that is, we fight not because we are Christians.. or with reference to any specific verse in the Bible.. but because we are patriotic Americans. We have our personal religious comfort on Christmas.. but our national pride on the 4th of July. We go to church on Sunday.. but then catch the news about our wars on television. The mark of our national culture is this coexistence of religion and patriotism.. the one sanctioning personal piety and the other underwriting self-interested actions.
But those violent Muslims, with their Qur'an and their calls for jihad!!
The Divisiveness of Peace
November 29, 2006
Our daughter's middle name will be Peace. Having a child in this time of war, it made sense to give her a name that looked toward a hopeful future.. I trust she will listen with amazement to our descriptions of the wild destruction that was being sown at the time of her birth..
Oddly peace has come, in some quarters, to stand for something divisive.. even anti-American. This article in the New York Times has a surreal feel to it.. a house in Colorado banned from displaying a peace sign?
Are we so committed to our philosophy of militarization that the proclamation of a philosophy of peace is inherently offensive? Our daughter will have a reminder of that alternative philosophy in her name. It will also be a constant reminder for us as parents to find ways to support that philosophy.
Aurora Sighting
November 29, 2006
Yesterday we went to one of the now bi-weekly check-ups that Emily must go to. The doctor had a concern (which proved to be nothing) and so we got our second ultra-sound portrait of our coming child.. Aurora Peace. She is getting a bit more crowded down there.. and it was hard to get a view that was not framed by her limbs. But here she is:
Isn't she a cutie?? Emily insists that she bears strong resemblance to me, but I don't think so. She continues to be an amazingly active baby.. having regular periods of workout.
The Topography of Time:
Comments on The End of Faith
November 26, 2006
Tomorrow I will be leading a discussion on this book for a class in the philosophy department here at Lawrence University. I will be defending Islam from the charges of Sam Harris. It is the type of book I would never have chosen to read on my own, but which was nonetheless healthful to read.. so that I have a better sense of what people out there are saying. I happen to agree with Harris that religion should get a much more critical treatment than it currently does.. but at the same time Harris has only the most ham-fisted points to make about religion in general and Islam in particular.
Case in point the following passage about religious moderates:
The first thing to observe about the moderate's retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God's utterances difficult to accept as written. [17]
So, moderates are those who, under the influence of their culture, allow themselves to overlook the tenets of their religion. Extremists meanwhile stay true to the clear (and often violent) tenets of their scripture.
This is an obviously fallacious way to approach religion. First, it lifts extremists out of any cultural context, making them some kind of pure and non-contextual beings. Everyone lives within a specific culture at a specific time, and why could not "cultural developments" partially explain extremism as much as they do moderation? The pull of hatred and violence could push moderate people toward extremism, just as much as it pulls them toward moderation. But that point would be crippling to Harris' argument since in his view religious extremists do bad things mainly because they are carrying out what they see written in scripture.
Second, some moderate positions are actually the result of religious extremism. Harris conflates the tepid believer with the believer who holds moderate opinions. But does the historical error there really need to be stated? From Quakers and their stance on peace, to Baptists and the early development of a doctrine of the separation of church and state.. all the way to Pentecostals and their allowance of women in ministry.. many religious groups have, out of religious zeal, found their way to what Harris would recognize as a moderate position. Religious zeal strikes me as a coin toss.. heads is bad things, tails is good things.
After the above passage, Harris goes on to quote a passage from the book of Deuteronomy in which a relative is to be put to death for following other gods. He then comments:
The above passage is as canonical as any in the Bible, and it is only by ignoring such barbarisms that the Good Book can be reconciled with life in the modern world. This is a problem for "moderation" in religion: it has nothing underwriting it other than the unacknowledged neglect of the letter of divine law. [18]
Again you see his point about moderates. One can be a moderate only by strategic ignorance of what is really contained in scripture.. which the extremist embraces.
But it literalism really the only legitimate approach to scripture? Christianity is loaded with examples of sophisticated reading strategies that allow these kinds of passages to be enfolded into a broader canvas of religious belief. This process is one of the most fascinating parts of religion: the sense-making apparatus of interpretation. For Harris there is only literalism or evasion.
The same charge comes is leveled against Islam and the Qur'an. Several pages are devoted to Quranic passages that deal with Jihad and God's punishments. But there are interpretive mechanisms by which those passages can be understood, and Harris shows no interest in discovering what those might be. In his world one is forever damned by the literal statements of your scripture.. there is no way to break out.
My own view of religion is that societies and religions interact in complex ways. The words and concepts of a scriptural book such as the Qur'an go some way toward forming the parameters of a society, but then by means of interpretive strategies societies create the version of a religion that best suits them. Religion is a plastic thing.. able to be poured into any number of social molds and still be recognizably itself.
It is strange and difficult to think about a religion moving through time. Harris seems to view religion as a steel train moving from a beginning to our own time.. The train at the end must be a culmination of the train that began the journey. Thus Harris can judge Islam for the tactic of suicide bombing, which seems bizarre to me since it has only arisen in the last couple of decades and therefore hardly seems descriptive of Islam as a religion that has existed for around 1400 years. But if religion is a steel train, events at the end of the journey must be reflective of its character all along.
I like to think of a religion as it moves through time as a body of water. There is a spring and inevitably other contributors of water that get mixed up in the flow. Then the religion can pool out into a wide, calm lake.. only a little later to tumble out into a narrow little channel.. or maybe two channels.. And sometimes a religion hits a bog. In other words, there are lots of paths that the water can take, and one would hardly judge any particular stage as somehow "definitive" of that religion. The end result may even look a lot different than it did early on, and that is not so much a reflection of the quality of the water as the topography of time.
Architecture and Identity
November 24, 2006
Anthony Tung's book Preserving the World's Great Cities is another piece of evidence in my long running argument that questions surrounding cities are best approached through a comparative methodology. In this case the issue is specifically preservation of the cityscape. Tung was a member of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and when that ended he traveled to some of the world's cultural capitals, east and west, to see how they went about preserving their own cityscapes. It turns out that cities all over the world.. of whatever religion and heritage.. are facing parallel challenges.
I was also struck by the way an architectural style could be connected to a cultural identity. The most dramatic example of this is Warsaw. In World War II when the Nazis wanted to stamp out not just the Polish nationalist cause, but their very identity, they began to demolish the historically important structures of Warsaw. After the war Poles were faced with a question: how to rebuild. They opted to reconstruct, by means of photographs and maps and memories, in all the historic detail possible, the old Warsaw city center:
Thus the significant buildings, streets, squares, and parks of the past could be remade in the same location they had occupied for centuries. The Germans would not be allowed to steal from Warsaw that specialness of place which constitutes the essence of collective urban memory. [84]
The story is a neat affirmation that identity has markers and that something terrible is lost if the places of a shared public life are destroyed.
In contrast to this extreme care for the past stands the treatment of the traditional cityscape by communists. Tung treats the story of both Moscow and Beijing in one chapter. In both cases a government came to power by means of a revolution, and inherent in that revolution was a judgment of the social organization of the past. Between 1924 and 1940 approximately 50% of the historically significant structures of Moscow were destroyed (155). In summing up the situation in these two cities Tung writes:
...since in both nations Communist revolutionary movements represented an attempt to correct deeply rooted social inequities in which large agrarian populations were exploited by elite consumer cities, Communist policies often had an anti-urban and anti-intellectual bias. At various intervals, the architectural achievements of past generations were associated with rejected historical values. [133]
The important idea here is that architecture has been "associated" with older values. When you think about it, that is odd. One could imagine a revolution in which architectural works were allowed to stand simply for their technical mastery or beauty.. or utility! When changing a society, who cares what the buildings look like? But that is not the way it works historically.. architectural styles are indelibly associated with values.. and they become connected to identities. Who we are is strangely connected to the structures in which we live.
The chapter on Vienna and Amsterdam, bundled together because of underlying similarities, was an example of cultural continuity. The struggle in both these cases was how to make a tradition meet the demands of the modern world, with increased population and new transportation needs. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a school of architecture arose that modeled a philosophy of continuity. Tung describes the design technique of Otto Wagner:
Wagner believed that architecture should be conceived with regard not only for contemporary functions and technologies... but also for the compositional continuum of the city as a whole, causing the social face of new buildings to act in concert with existing historic structures and spaces to make the city more beautiful. Unlike most other twentieth-century architects, Wagner required his students to draw each building proposal in its urban surroundings, a practice he followed himself. [208]
I could not help but compare that philosophy of continuity with the practice of Frank Gehry, as on display in the documentary The Sketches of Frank Gehry. The point of Bilbao.. or of the Disney Concert Hall in LA.. is not continuity or development of a cityscape.. but a jumpstart of the cityscape. It is as if Gehry and the host city were saying: we have nothing really to offer, no real identity.. but want to make a splash. If one accepts the idea that cultural identity is bound up in architectural style, then it should be clear that designing a building is not about making a splash, but of adding a voice to a community. The architect influenced by Otto Wagner would probably not presume to be able to design something for a distant and foreign city such as Bilbao, Portugal.
Thankful for What's Left
November 23, 2006
Elizabeth Kolbert has written for the New Yorker another clear and scary article about global climate change ("The Darkening Sea" 11/20/2006). This time she looks at the changes that are possible in the composition of the ocean. She cites Thomas Lovejoy on what these changes could mean in the future:
It is going to send all kinds of ripples through marine ecosystems, because of the importance of calcium carbonate for so many organisms in the oceans, including those at the base of the food chain. If you back off and look at it, it's as if you or I went to our annual physical and the body chemistry came back and the doctor looked really, really worried. It's systemic change. You could have food chains collapse, and fisheries ultimately with them, because most of the fish we get from the ocean are at the end of long food chains. You probably will see shifts in favor of invertebrates, or the reign of jellyfish. [74-5]
That last phrase sounds particularly ominous, conjuring up a vision of useless jellyfish crowding the oceans.
We are limited to reasoned conjecture when it comes to figuring out the ultimate results of global climate change. Some scenarios we can live with, and some we literally cannot live with. Our current vice president, according to Ron Suskind, championed a "one-percent doctrine." The idea was that if there is even a one-percent chance of an attack, the US needed to treat that attack as a certainty. After the last few years in Iraq, that kind of talk looks absurd.. But the doctrine goes some way toward showing the craziness of our current wait and see attitude to global warming. We have no other world.. no other place to go.. so we should recoil at the idea of changing in any fundamental way the makeup of our atmosphere and ocean.. that should be a red line.
I have to count myself as a pessimist when it comes to the idea that our nation—let alone the world—will be able to make the necessary changes to lifestyle and priorities that it would take to actually do something about the predicament. The US is the one country whose dedicated will to change could shake up the larger global picture.. but there is too much money and power and pride standing ready to hinder the important decisions.
But I count myself thankful as well, for my position in time.. that I have been able to live in the world with some of the old human expectations.. When I think of travel priorities for myself and my little family, I rank high my desire to see parts of this world that are likely to change.. glaciers and coral reefs.. things that will not always be around. When I think of my scholarly goals, I realize anew that the idea of preservation is central to my work.
Milwaukee & Its Art Museum
November 22, 2006
The Writing Life:
Paul Theroux on V.S. Naipaul
November 19, 2006
After reading a lot from any author I start to get a certain itch: I want to know something about the author's life. Often this leads me to pick up a biography, but in this case I came across something better: Paul Theroux's memoir of his friendship with V.S. Naipaul, known to friends as Vidia. The book was more than merely insightful concerning its main character; it was a reminder to me about the writing life and its demands.. but more on that at the end.
This narrative of a friendship is propelled by interesting stories about Naipaul. One of my favorites came at the beginning of their friendship when they met in Africa (back in the 60s). Naipaul was connected for a short time to a university in Uganda, and is there called on to judge a literary competition. Having reviewed the entries he insisted that there be no first or second prize, but only a third prize.. because the entries were so bad!
Much later there is the time when Theroux visits Naipaul at his new home, and is shown a garden in which all colors except green have been banished.. and, in addition, there is little in the way of grass. Naipaul explains:
I have a theory that it is exhausting for anyone to look at a large expanse of lawn. The viewer becomes tired reflecting on the effort that goes into cutting all that grass. A lawn is not restful to look at. A lawn represents great labor and noise, hours of rackety lawn mowers. A lawn is exhausting. [232]
Theroux, unknowingly, had brought Naipaul a red maple as a gift!
You can call Naipaul an eccentric or a crank.. it will depend on your patience for his kind of character. But he is certainly unique, no matter how you judge him. Theroux recalls meeting Naipaul for lunch at an Indian restaurant:
I was, as always, eager to see him. I needed to know what was on his mind, because he questioned everything, took nothing on faith, saw things differently from anyone else. His talk was unexpected and original. He was contrary and he was often right. [264]
I read that and thought: that is someone with whom I would like to talk. Naipaul is the antithesis of the creative writer weaned in a writing program, and taught to mimic standard artistic judgments.
For all my admiration for his work.. and even forgiveness for an arrogance that was in many ways a condition for his being able to write ambitiously.. despite that, I realized that Naipaul is hardly someone I would get along with. I could not quite imagine myself going out of my way for a personal meeting. This would be no friend.. but that is my typical response to a biography of a writer.
The book also told the story of what it means to trust oneself.. and to begin a life as a writer. There is an audacity there. How a young man like Naipaul, arriving in England from Trinidad, ever began to imagine a life as a creative writer is a mystery. Something of that necessary self-confident audacity seems to have rubbed off on Paul Theroux. It is a leap of faith.. every bit as scary as some spiritual leap. It is like walking out onto the air. It is like standing on a rock and hoping for the sea to part.
A couple of paragraphs give a view of how this transference of confidence could take place:
That was his greatest strength, his unwavering belief that writing was fair—that a good book cannot fail, that it will ultimately be recognized as good; that a bad book will eventually be seen as junk, no matter what happens in the short run. Only the long run mattered...
This belief was both armor and a sword, and by repetition he instilled this belief in me and made me strong. [188]
This book, Sir Vidia's Shadow, manages a similar transference of confidence.. demonstrating to the reader that a certain type of arrogance pays off: the type that allows one to set down on paper the world as one sees it. A certain amount of perseverance in that direction is bound to get results.
Woody Guthrie, Meet Kurt Cobain
November 16, 2006
Emily and I are finishing up a biography of Woody Guthrie. Our running debate has been whether Kurt Cobain is parallel or not to Guthrie. Emily says no, and I think her argument is based on the fundamental value system with which Guthrie operated. He was a union man and communist sympathizer. If he had a natural venue during his peak years, it would be a union hall fundraiser. His lyrics reach out to a community, and announce something positive: "This Land is Your Land!" or "You can;t scare me I'm stickin' with the Union!" Nirvana hardly stood at the vanguard of altruism. This is the band that sent up that sappy 60s song: "Come on people, smile on your brother, everybody get together try to love one another right now.." Cobain sings the words, but there is no mistaking his savage dislike for them.
Perhaps that should end the argument. But I kept latching onto all the other ways that these two men saw the world similarly. As a member of the Almanac Singers, Guthrie was dismayed by the demands put on them to play up an image:
...Guthrie refused to wear a costume—but then his everyday work clothes and scuffed boots might pass for one...
Despite the group's stubborn refusal to become an act, Steiner would not give up. The more the agent worked to secure bookings, the more belligerent Guthrie became, and the more hostile to the values of the entertainment industry. "I noticed in New York and in Hollywood, and I stuck me head a good piece in both directions," he wrote later, "that the sissier, the smoother, the slicker, and the higher polished that you get, and the fartherest from the truth, that the higher wages you'll draw down." [239]
It is hard not to see a bit of the Punk/Grunge aesthetic there. First, there is the non-outfit outfit—a uniform that stridently denies it is a uniform. In Guthrie's case it was work clothes and scuffed boots, while for Cobain it was the ripped jeans and flannel shirts that easily present themselves to the imagination upon hearing the word "grunge." Second, Guthrie insists on some kind of an authentic voice that could be found as he eschewed anything highly polished. Cobain lived by that creed.. and his slashing messy guitar solos testify to it.
Guthrie also delivered a critique of the pop music industry:
"The Monopoly on Music pays a few pet writers to go screwy trying to write and re-write the same old notes under the same old formulas and the same old patterns. Every band on the radio sounds exactly alike... Do the big bands and the orgasm girls sing a word about our real fighting history? Not a croak." [286]
In Guthrie's time there was not a lot of money to be made with this non-pop outsider attitude.. and the hardest thing in reading about Guthrie is to realize just how far the popular music landscape has shifted since his time. A meteoric talent like Guthrie would have found himself signed to a fat record deal and making television appearances. suddenly he would be part of the establishment! But despite the rise of outsider stars the world of soulless pop (at least in rock mythology) is always there to be attacked. This same patterned pre-cut pop world served later as Cobain's bogey man: "Here we are now, entertain us/ Something stupid, and contagious.." fuck all that! he seems to be saying.
That is the core of my argument as to why Guthrie and Cobain would have understood each other. The crux of the issue perhaps depends on how one imagines Cobain would respond to Guthrie's musical credo:
I hate a song that makes you think you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing... Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling.
I am out to fight those kind of songs to my very last breath of air and my very last drop of blood. [285]
Those are lines that thrilled me years ago as I listened to them read on the Woody Guthrie tribute album recorded in the 60s.
What would Cobain say to those lines? He is not exactly positive about life.. This is the guy who sings over and over at the close of a song: "I think I'm dumb.. I think I'm dumb.. I think I'm dumb.." But does self-destructive and angry lyrics count as songs that make others think they are no good? Or is savaging oneself, oddly, a way of putting others at your same level.. and giving them pride? My reading is that Cobain is the poet of inarticulacy.. and stands for the right of everyone.. even the dumb ones.. to pick up a guitar and start singing. I think Woody would have liked that attitude.. and seen in it something positive.. but Emily disagrees.
Ethnic Separation in Our Time
November 14, 2006
This past weekend I read a review for a new book by Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. The reviewer for the New York Times calls it "a hugely ambitious panorama and moral analysis of the military-industrial slaughter of the 20th century.." And there is lots to write about when it comes to war and slaughter through the 20th century. I wonder, though, whether the focus on slaughter does not distract us from another theme: ethnic separation.
I often run into ethnic separations that I had no idea existed. Just last week I realized that over 1 million settlers were relocated into France from Algeria in the early 60s. After World War I Greece and Turkey exchanged populations. India and Pakistan also swapped a large number of citizens. Occasions of genocide.. from the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust.. were a particularly ugly version of ethnic separation. Then one can count out the contemporary conflicts that have been driven by ethnic hatreds.. from the whole Balkan mess to the current fighting in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'ites. What I propose is that all these conflicts be seen in the light of a longstanding worldwide trend toward ethnic separation.. by whatever means necessary.
What might be the cause for this trend? I wonder if it is just coincidence that through this same period the system of nationhood was adopted worldwide. This is not to say that nations did not exist in Europe before then, but the global demarcation of borders and the rise of nations as the only legitimate actors, superseding tribes, cities, or any other form of large-scale social organization.. this was the result of the last century. Africa was carved up into national entities; the Middle East was likewise divided after World War I.
What happens when a nation is defined? The nation comes to be a primary form of personal identification for its inhabitants.. a citizen is English or German. That works fine when the population is mostly unified in its language and ethnic composition.. or comes to see itself in that way. But even in Europe, the home of the nation-state, the fit is not exact between "people" and "nation." In the rest of the world, the fit has been even worse. Various tribal groups and distinct peoples find themselves enfolded within a single nation.. and then inevitably people get around to defining what it means to be "Jordanian" or "Nigerian".. and that definition can be used as a basis for excluding those who are not seen as part of the nation.
I guess this is a way of saying that the word "nation" tends to goad a population into looking for some form of purity. Tribal groups may not mind living next to each other, but they may intensely dislike the idea that some other tribe is part of their nation, and holds power. This argument opens up the question of whether the violence of the preceding century is not a result so much of deep human evil, as of a changeover to an awkward and fudging worldwide system.. a system whose very words push people into drawing distinctions they would not have otherwise thought about.
After reading a little bit of Ibn Battuta a few weeks ago, I asked my students to come up with some suggestions for a medieval travel guide.. and they quickly commented on the lack of passports and distinct borders. There once was a multiplicity of large-scale social organizations.. from powerful central states with a reasonably coherent identity, to city-states with a much smaller catchment area, to tribal groups that had control of a certain area of land, to trading outposts ruled by a strongman. Islam made for a global system that could be navigated by a traveler or merchant.. allowing for multiple systems. It sure sounds a lot more fun than the system we now have..
First Snow, First Visit
November 12, 2006
We finished up a weekend that brought us both or first snow and first visit from relatives.. Emily's mother arrived on Friday night from Atlanta. We were pleased to show her around Lawrence and our small home.
The Sadness of Those Who Remember:
A Review of Tokyo Story
November 12, 2006
Not often that I see a film which I can immediately classify as one of my all-time favorite films. Ozu is a conservative film maker.. keeping his camera still, using medium distance shots, and building characters through inconsequential dialogue.. nothing fancy there.
Tokyo Story resembles King Lear as it focuses on the reception of aging parents by their children, who mostly live in Tokyo. Their visit is treated as an inconvenience, and they are mostly shunted aside.. with the notable exception of a woman who had married their son—who had died eight years earlier in World War II. She had remained single, and when her step parents arrive in Tokyo, we see her make small sacrifices in order to be with them. Her kindness makes the coldness of the actual children show up plainly. Shortly after the parents return home to the small city which was their home, the mother dies.. and all the children gather, their recent actions fresh in their minds.
While the plot puts King Lear in mind, we are not treated to any hysterics or shouting in the midst of a storm. Still the dark bitterness creeps in. It is agreed: life is a disappointment. The statement comes and goes.. but it describes a settled and firm view of the world. At the end of the film when a small emotional tempest threatens.. one of the surviving daughters gives voice to anger at the treatment given her parents by her siblings. And the woman whose kindness brightens the film calms that anger and explains how people change.. that those children are not bad.. just people with their own lives to live.
What about this woman, though? She gains the admiration of the audience for her devotion to parents which are not even truly her parents. It is filial piety above and beyond any duty. She is the good one, but also the saddest since she does not have her own life. Ozu seems here to be at his darkest. Generations falls away from each other.. becoming indifferent to those who raised them.. but the lone person who exemplifies the way memory can bind together these generations.. she is the very one who cannot get on and live. Memory is beautiful, but forgetfulness is the stuff of life.
Finding the Novel in Your Experience:
The Writer and the World by V.S. Naipaul
November 11, 2006
In 1979 Naipaul finished the essay "Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad." The theme will not be surprising, since Naipaul is once again writing with disdain for the political fantasies that take root on the margins of our global civilization. But the essay is atypical in its willingness to follow a single storyline.. that of the self-styled Michael X who made a name for himself in London before returning to Trinidad and setting up a commune. The project ends in horror as he orders the slaughter of both a worker and the English wife of a partner.
The essay stands out as Naipaul's attempt at "new journalism." It is built out of good old-fashioned investigation and reportage. Were it not for the locale and the fixation on a certain type of racial politics, one could read this as a strong essay by Joan Didion, belonging in a collection such as Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Alternatively, it could be a Trinidadian In Cold Blood. The interest of the reader is captured by the oddity of the central characters; the personal experience of the narrator recedes into the background.
This is not a typical essay from Naipaul. In fact, it helps spotlight what is unique in his work: a confident personal aimlessness in his prose. The image I have of Naipaul in his best non-fiction is of a writer who just shows up somewhere and then begins to stitch together small events and impressions.. until some kind of theme arises. This kind of essay hardly counts as journalism, since it involves no investigation or even interviews with important people. It is not a travelogue because the goal is not to report some kind of journal of sites seen.. or to paint the experience of travel. The goal is to get at a place.. to describe it in a lasting way.
To catch Naipaul at his best one could do worse than starting with "The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro." Visiting the Ivory Coast Naipaul fixates on the presidential palace in the village of Yamoussoukro.. and the aged crocodiles that are kept in an artificial lake there. The long essay (70 pages) then hops around a small constellation of people, describing how they were met and what they had to say about themselves and their country. And of course Naipaul is always enquiring about the crocodiles.
Naipaul himself provides some meta-commentary on his methodology in this essay:
It is a writer's curiosity rather than an ethnographer's or journalist's. So while, when I travel, I can move only according to what I find, I also live, as it were, in a novel of my own making, moving from not knowing to knowing, with person interweaving with person and incident opening out into incident. The intellectual adventure is also a human one: I can move only according to my sympathy. I don't force anything; there is no spokesman I have to see, no one I absolutely must interview. [239]
That paragraph deserves to be unpacked carefully. First, I love the distinction between a "writer's curiosity" and that of a journalist or ethnographer. I think I have felt that distinction, but not mentally defined it. It is the difference between a scholar and a journalist.. both of which approach a topic with a quite different level of interest. Naipaul situates the writer in an altogether unique place.. one that neither scholar nor journalist readily understands.
Next Naipaul speaks about his travel experience as the creation of a novel. A few pages later he expands on this idea:
My days became full and varied. After the random impressions and semi-official meetings and courtesies of the first days, I began to discover themes and people, I began to live my little novel. [245]
Just as a novel is filled with interpersonal drama and probing of characters.. so Naipaul looks for the novel present in the midst of his travels. Characters come into focus, and motives appear. On the world-scale these are minor characters.. not the type that a journalist seeks out.. but the types who could be characters in a novel.
In the quotation Naipaul specifies that his work moves from "not knowing to knowing".. and I think I detect there another important principle: his essays are not about creating the illusion of an all-knowing gaze (the goal of journalists and scholars), but to write a particular personal drama.. which we could call the "coming-to-be-of-knowledge." That is an essentially novelistic way of approaching the experience of travel.. It involves a certain reckless allowance for a personal voice and the vagaries of daily life. It is distinct from the "new journalism" that establishes its credentials by linear narrative drive and the inherent interest of a marginal character.. but in which the narrator himself is distant, only a teller, not an experiencer.
Violence and Islam:
The Battle of Algiers
November 9, 2006
In my Islam class on Monday we discussed The Battle of Algiers (1966) directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. It was an unusual class for me because generally my effort is to keep our collective eyes on a text of some kind: what is this author saying, how does this text work. But in this case I was working to engage the class about the historical situation portrayed in the film.. the Algerian War for Independence.
Several students noted in their responses that the film had little to do with Islam.. beyond the obvious fact that one side in the conflict was Muslim. And that was part of the point: here is a violent conflict in which Islam was not the source of violence. The struggle to drive the French out came as a result of nationalist sentiment, not as a religious call to jihad or martyrdom. Even though today one can see the growing incorporation of Islam into these nationalist struggles, that should not let us be fooled into thinking that somehow religion lies at the root of these struggles.
How does religion get involved in an armed struggle? Watching the scenes of The Battle of Algiers in which Algerians are stopped and searched entering the French section of town, one sees how easily Islam (or any religion) can be recruited to a cause. The markers of difference between cultures are accentuated as people are segregated and discriminated against.. and those markers then take on a symbolic importance. The external elements of religion, which previously were taken for granted by many, now appear newly important. Thus Islam enters the fray.. as a package of symbols and ideals which can be made to define an opposing identity.
I was uncertain what students would think about the movie. The parallels between what is happening in Israel and Palestine are so clear. With the FLN bombing civilians, I wondered whether the class would respond negatively to the "terrorism" or follow the even-handed approach of the filmmaker and see shades of gray. To my surprise students did not see the film through the lens of "terrorism".. and focused instead on the fact that the French were in another country. If colonialism is wrong, their thinking seemed to go, then resistance to that colonialism must be legitimate.. even if one disagrees with tactical choices.
The French had been in Algeria since 1830. French children had been born and raised knowing Algeria as home. The novels of Albert Camus are probably the best glimpse into the way this land was experienced. A struggle to kick the French out of Algeria meant expelling the settlers who knew no other land as home. And that was exactly the result.. over a million settlers left Algeria and relocated to France.
Was this the ideal outcome for the struggle? I tend to think not.. Why not imagine an Algeria which allows for the French and Algerians to both have a role in the country? This could only have come after various forms of discrimination were ended.. but eventually it would have developed. The most successful example of this kind of integration must be South Africa, which has kept justice in mind, but, so far as I can see, allowed the opposing cultures to grow side by side. Banishing the French from Algeria was a losing idea.. and, further, it was the idea of a small group of people whose tactics appear to have drawn the broader population into the conflict.
One foundational principle of non-violence must be a willingness to allow for cultural change. Algerian culture would not be the same after colonization, but in that mixture there could be the seeds of something new. But this means making allowance for the impure.. for a national identity which is not ideal, but in flux. That is hard.. I know.. look at our anger and fear when it comes to non-citizen Hispanics simply making a life in the United States. Civilization is about to end!! And imagine how heightened that anger would be if Hispanics were colonizers with power and we the colonized and downtrodden.
The Elections of 2006
November 8, 2006
I think I speak for Emily as well when I say that it was nice to vote for some winners. The incumbent Democratic governor of Wisconsin won re-election.. and most crucially the Democratic congressional candidate Steven Kagen soundly beat Republican John Gard. The only downside in the election was the passage of an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.. thus excluding the possibility of gay marriage.
A problem in American politics is the tendency for voters to identify with their "team." Here in Wisconsin we get special coverage of the Green Bay Packers, and fans write in to talk about the necessity of staying with the team even in bad times. The "true fan" stays even when the going gets rough. This is fine when we are talking about a sports team (only one team can really win each year, after all), but when we come to good governance voting should not be about a team.. but about performance.
In the past few years I have been amazed at the way Bush's numbers have held up (they are low, granted, but still around 40% express approval!)—even when things are going so badly in Iraq. What would happen to the CEO of, say, Disney if he came out strongly in favor of a certain new direction.. 3D animated movies!.. and then after putting the finances and prestige of the company behind the venture, it failed miserably. I have no doubt that shareholders would react angrily and remove that CEO. It would not be a matter of sentiment, but of judgment on poor performance. In fact, any CEO who had run a corporation as incompetently as Bush has led this country would have been gone long ago.
So what has kept voters from a general uprising? Team spirit, it seems to me. Voters have learned to approach politics more like a Packers game than a business venture. With the elections last night one sees the strains that have developed in this approach.. reality keeps leaking in.. but it is still there: a sense that the honorable thing to do is to stay with the team.. even when times get tough.
Halloween Americana in Appleton
November 5, 2006
As part of our continuing effort to bring you the flotsam and jetsam of American life.. as experienced up here in Wisconsin.. we present a short video on the spectacular Halloween display set up next door to us. The video also includes a brief interview with our next door neighbor.. the creator of the tableau.
Getting Out the Vote:
The Election of 2006
November 4, 2006
Emily and I are looking forward to voting on Tuesday.. I, for one, find it hard to think about anything except the coming election.. wondering whether the Republicans will be held accountable for some highly incompetent governing.
This will be my first time voting since I lived in California.. which does not mean I made no attempt to vote while I lived in Atlanta. For the Bush-Gore race of 2000, I had just relocated to Atlanta and apparently missed the deadline for sending in my voter materials, and thus was ineligible on election day. By the time the Bush-Kerry contest came around in 2004, Emily and I were newly married, and I made sure we got our voter registration materials off in time. Then a funny thing happened.. Emily received her voter information, but mine simply never came. I mailed the material at the same time.. dropping the two enveloped in the same mail slot.. yet only Emily was registered. I called the people in charge of voter registration, but they had no record of me having sent in any material.. and so I would have no vote once again. The really funny thing is that a full three months later I received my voter registration material in the mail. My materials had been mysteriously misdirected to the wrong district.
Georgia has quite restrictive voter registration rules.. The forms must be completed well ahead of time and the voter must show legal identification. A lot of that is defended necessary to keep the vote safe from illegal immigrants or fraud. But let's cut through the rationalization crap. These policies are aimed at making it tough for those who are mobile or who do not pay a lot of attention to politics to vote. I lost my vote twice as a result of those policies.. and I am above average in education and attention to politics. The registration policies in Georgia clearly favor those who are stable.. i.e. have lived in the same place for a long time and thus get connected to the system and stay connected.
This year voting is going to be a lot easier. In Wisconsin voters can register on election day.. so we just show up with proof of residence in the form of a bill, and we should be able to cast our vote no problem. It is hard not to notice how much more user friendly the system here in Wisconsin is..
But what is the goal of our democracy anyway? If I dare ask a big question. If we believe in democracy, then it would seem that the goal of everyone should be to maximize voter turnout.. to make sure that everyone with a stake has a voice in the local and national choices that confront voters on election day. It strikes me as problematic that voter turn-out efforts are so highly partisan in orientation. We have entered an era in which democracy is managed more than actually encouraged.. which is all rich in irony given our propensity for making war to bring democracy to others.
We are 6 years from the contested election of 2000, and if anything was obvious after the dust settled, it was that our infrastructure of voting needed to be updated and repaired. But it was clear that the Republicans did not really want an update that could solidify our democracy well into this century.. and strengthen the appearance of fairness. It is hard to shake the feeling that a thorough update in voting equipment and registration policies would lead to a few more Democratic votes.. and so democracy is slowly displaced by partisanship.
Dylan and His Band:
A Review of Concert in Madison, WI
November 3, 2006
I should admit right off that this was the first Dylan concert I have ever walked away from with disappointment. I first saw Dylan live at the Hollywood Bowl, co-headlining with Paul Simon. I liked Paul Simon, but walked away thinking that Dylan was historic. It is that sense which has continued to motivate me to see Dylan. This time it felt different..
Part of the problem was that I am not being surprised musically by Dylan. It is hard for a Dylan fan not to take a sidelong glance at what Neil Young is up to, and it is striking how shifting his musical sets are. In the last few years we have been treated to Young playing with Crazy Horse (Greendale), then settled comfortably into a country setting (Prairie Wind), and finally singing political protests with Crosby, Stills, and Nash (Freedom of Speech Tour). At each stop it seems like Neil enjoys surrounding himself with different people and being challenged by new players. Dylan is on a different path, which we might call the "Neverending Tour" path. His touring band has revolved and changed cast members, but provides the same setting night after night.
It was not always so for Dylan. The 70s saw Dylan with about the same level of musical change that Young shows right now. He played with the Band, worked in the studio, came up with a wild tour with a broad supporting cast, then in successive albums worked to build a bigger and more diverse sound (climaxing in the gospel of Saved). That kind of changing sound is a thing of the past.
It could all work out pretty well.. and has worked out well. I am right now thinking about putting into the CD player our bootleg of the Atlanta Philips Arena concert from a few years back.. and that was a great concert. But I think I detect now a bit of tiredness in the whole set-up. The music went straight ahead and very fast. The songs ceased to breathe and open up, as the band ripped through the set. The sound was plenty loud, but not big.
The close of the show (before the encore) has been "Summer Days" (from Love and Theft). I always love the sinewy guitars, which any Dylan fan will recognize.. but the pleasure of the song depends on space.. you have to enjoy the play of the guitar, and sharp solos come out of that space. In this concert it all seemed truncated and mashed together.
"Summer Days" also carries the lyrics which I think are most typical of the late stage Dylan that we are seeing now. "Summer days, summer nights are gone/ I know a place where there's still something goin' on." I always translate that in my head as an admission of loss: "the sixties are gone, na na na.. there are still some sparks in these latter days.." That is the chastened Romanticism that I love in later Dylan.. a part of his broader work of mining the American folk tradition for motifs to re-use in a modern setting. You can't repeat the past.. no, of course you can.. kind of.
The encore has now expanded to three songs: "Thunder on the Mountain" (from Modern Times), and then "Like a Rolling Stone" and "All Along the Watchtower." At the start of the encore the background of the seeing-eye falls down behind Dylan and his band. The words inevitaby come:
Thunder on the mountain, rolling like a drum
Gonna sleep over there, that's where the music coming from
I don't need any guide, I already know the way
Remember this, I'm your servant both night and day
I hear hints of Moses in those lines (and elsewhere in the song).. It is the great gig on Mt. Sinai. Dylan is our servant night and day, and we might just be part of that army of tough sons-of-bitches recruited from the orphanages.
I can't help but think this is somewhat out of touch with where the world is right now.. and that is my deepest problem with Dylan. My mind runs continuously to the election that is coming up this coming Tuesday, exactly a week after we saw Dylan. But he is still out there with the same band doing the same thing. I am not asking for protest songs or anything particularly active.. but just a tone that goes with our now times.. and that tone should come through in concert, if anywhere.
