In light of the psychoanalytic approach, Freud’s “attempts” to interpret the case history of Doctor Schreber’s psychotic disorder lead to the particular conclusion that the origin of Schreber’s illness was triggered by unconscious feelings of a passive homosexuality (which Freud terms as feminine wish-phantasy) and his subsequent conscious retaliation against it. The process by which Schreber’s latent homosexual tendencies move from elaborate delusions of persecution to acceptance by means of transferring identities and associations in the unconscious allow for the paranoia to subside. Through the interpretation of these shifting associations and dividing identities in Schreber’s unconscious, Freud finds particular significance in the masculine figures of Schreber’s father and brother that effect feelings of emasculation in Schreber, especially concerning his inability to have children with his wife. These frustrations as Freud calls them are what lead to Schreber’s delusions. In this way Schreber’s ideas of his father, the sun, and God take on similar meanings as he develops homoerotic feelings toward them in coping with the deaths of his father and brother and his sexual impotence with his wife.
I’m led to believe that Freud’s interpretation of "The Psychotic Doctor Schreber" was particularly intended for the community of contemporaries interested in, yet at unease with, the psychiatric discipline of psychoanalysis. Throughout his analysis he appears always self-consciously returning to the discipline to reaffirm the reader of his methods and to address what seems to be an array of possibly menacing objections to his claims. This causes me to read his analysis with fascination at how he arrives at such claims but always at the risk of being susceptible to a “diminution in the certainty and trustworthiness of his results”. I do not see myself as part of his original audience but rather a member of a new audience not interested in just the relevance of psychoanalysis but in a broader theoretical discourse on the relevance of interpretation.
The most obvious assumption Freud’s analysis questions is Schreber’s own interpretation of his psychosis as being attributed to work-related causes. Another less obvious assumption is that there is no one reason or angle at which to view Schreber’s condition.
4. The closest thing to an explicit thesis is stated at the beginning of the case history (version 1) and reiterated at the beginning of his interpretation of the case history (version 2).
Version 1: “The psychoanalyst, in the light of his knowledge of the psychoneuroses, approaches the subject with suspicion that even mental structures so extraordinary as these and so remote from our common modes of thought are nevertheless derived from the most general and comprehensible of human impulses; and he would be glad to discover the motives of such a transformation as well as the manner in which it has been accomplished.”
Version 2: “The problem now lies before us of endeavoring to penetrate the meaning of this history of a case of paranoia and lay bare in it the familiar complexes and motive forces of mental life”
These two versions work together to give us an idea of what is a more implicit thesis along the lines of:
While Dr. Shreber’s case of paranoia may be shrouded in the complexities of thought completely foreign to our understanding, there exist a method by which to tease out the familiar meanings and motives at work underneath that may shed light onto a better understanding of the origins of the mental illness.
5. One example of reasoning offered up in support of Freud claims is the process of “transference” in which he explains how Schreber’s homosexual impulses for Dr. Flechsig are really connected to feelings for his brother or father but nevertheless through this associative process become synonymous with his physician Dr. Flechsig. Freud uses numerous instances of Schreber’s own autobiographical accounts to back up this interpretation with many others.
One particularly crucial and even arguable warrant is when Freud makes the connections between Flechsig, God, and Schreber’s brother and father without any evidence from the Denkwurdigkeiten to support the claim. Another warrant can be seen when Freud refers back to his previous work Traumdeutung to support the claim that “absurdity in dreams expresses scorn and derision.” He ends up relying on this assertion stated in a previous work by himself in order to argue for the connection between Schreber's miracles and the idea that they are an expression of scorn or derision.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Conclusions
How do you guys usually go about concluding humanities papers? My go-to strategy is to briefly philosophize on the broader implications of the argument or to suggest other potentially fruitful avenues of inquiry. Both seem kind of cheesy and inappropriate in the case of these papers, however.
My Rhetoric 103A teacher says that summarizing the preceding arguments in a short paper is insulting to the reader's intelligence. I'm not sure I buy this, since at least some crystallization of the thesis seems useful.
Any ideas?
My Rhetoric 103A teacher says that summarizing the preceding arguments in a short paper is insulting to the reader's intelligence. I'm not sure I buy this, since at least some crystallization of the thesis seems useful.
Any ideas?
Monday, June 29, 2009
About the Prompts
This morning I have given you at last, the last minute gift of some added prompts for the final due so soon. I will admit that I am hoping that nearly all of you are already so well along in your writing that you will have no need or interest in taking up these new prompts, but I also suspect that at least some of you will turn to them, whether because you are are stymied or uninspired by the already available topics, or perhaps because you have been putting things off to the last minute. But whether you actually write about these topics in your finals or not, I do hope that everybody will give some thought to them, because taken together they also function as a kind of preliminary map of the terrain to which the last lectures of the course will be devoted. It seems to me that it is only now, in the end, that it makes good sense for you to be turning your thoughts to these connections in particular as a way of beginning to take stock of the texts, themes, and problems of the course as a whole.
Final Prompts:
For Essaylet Two:
In "Relfections on Violence" Hannah Arendt writes
How does this viewpoint comport with Judith Butler's elaboration in the essay "Precarious Life" of a connection between politics and an awareness of the precarity of human life? In the essay Butler draws our attention to a provocative claim by Emmanuel Levinas, namely: "To be in relation with the other face to face is to be unable to kill. It is also the situation of discourse." How does this assertion differ (if it does) from Arendt's insistence that "to speak of nonviolent power is actually redundant"?
For Essaylet One:
Option A -- Make and defend any strong claim about the situation of the colonized and their political prospects in the chapter "Concerning Violence" from Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, but you must substantiate that claim primarily through a close reading of the unusually long passage Fanon recounts (curiously without providing much in the way of a reading himself) from Aime Cesaire's Les Armes Miraculeuses, the exchange of the Rebel and the Mother. How do the arguments and details in that passage illuminate the problems, ambitions, characteristics of the text as a whole to which you want to draw our attention?
Option B -- Make and defend any strong claim about the relation between the "doing" of gender, our "undoing" by gendered desire, and the differences (or not) between these doings and undoings and the way in which violence can "do us in" as Judith Butler elaborates these paradoxes in Undoing Gender, but whatever case you make, you must substantiate your claim in a way that takes into account, among other things, the following provocative claim:
Although there is no necessity about this, it may be useful, in responding to either of these options for Essaylet One, to bear in mind (even if you do not address it specifically in the resulting reading) the passages on the relation of mortality and freedom from Arendt's "Reflections on Violence" to which I have already drawn your attention in the prompt for Essaylet Two, above.
In "Relfections on Violence" Hannah Arendt writes
The experience of death, whether the experience of dying or the inner awareness of one's own mortality, is perhaps the most anti-political experience there is, insofar as it is usually faced in complete loneliness and impotence, signifying that we shall leave the company of our fellow men and with it that being-together and acting in concert which makes life worthwhile… What is important is that these experiences, whose elementary force is beyond doubt, have never found an institutional, political expression. No body politic I know of was ever founded on the equality before death and its actualization in violence.
How does this viewpoint comport with Judith Butler's elaboration in the essay "Precarious Life" of a connection between politics and an awareness of the precarity of human life? In the essay Butler draws our attention to a provocative claim by Emmanuel Levinas, namely: "To be in relation with the other face to face is to be unable to kill. It is also the situation of discourse." How does this assertion differ (if it does) from Arendt's insistence that "to speak of nonviolent power is actually redundant"?
For Essaylet One:
Option A -- Make and defend any strong claim about the situation of the colonized and their political prospects in the chapter "Concerning Violence" from Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, but you must substantiate that claim primarily through a close reading of the unusually long passage Fanon recounts (curiously without providing much in the way of a reading himself) from Aime Cesaire's Les Armes Miraculeuses, the exchange of the Rebel and the Mother. How do the arguments and details in that passage illuminate the problems, ambitions, characteristics of the text as a whole to which you want to draw our attention?
Option B -- Make and defend any strong claim about the relation between the "doing" of gender, our "undoing" by gendered desire, and the differences (or not) between these doings and undoings and the way in which violence can "do us in" as Judith Butler elaborates these paradoxes in Undoing Gender, but whatever case you make, you must substantiate your claim in a way that takes into account, among other things, the following provocative claim:
[O]ne mourns when when one accepts the fact that the loss one undergoes will be one that changes you, changes you possibly forever, and that mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation the full result of which you cannot know in advance.
Although there is no necessity about this, it may be useful, in responding to either of these options for Essaylet One, to bear in mind (even if you do not address it specifically in the resulting reading) the passages on the relation of mortality and freedom from Arendt's "Reflections on Violence" to which I have already drawn your attention in the prompt for Essaylet Two, above.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
One day, at Disneyland...
...I met Michael Jackson. I was about 7 years old and he was in a wheel chair and wearing an oft-donned surgical mask. I remember it very vaguely and my memory has been strengthened by the snapshots taken of this meeting (which are now in some Rubbermaid bin at my parent's house). But I do remember his lit up eyes and, of course, a very gentle disposition.
Anyway, the truly interesting part of this, to me, is when I met M.J., I was exiting the ride "Peter Pan" while he was just about to board the flight to Never, Never land. Rapidly, a huge group of people formed around the exit from the ride, waiting for Michael to appear. After a long time of waiting, much longer than it takes to fly to Never, Never land and back, people began to leave, it seems Michael never found the exit.
True story.
Friday, June 26, 2009
How to cite graphic novels
What is the appropriate way to quote Maus (or any g.n.)? Page numbers? Does each box have a special marker?
Thursday, June 25, 2009
A History of Violence Alternate Edition
I stumbled across this in my research... I figure it would resonate with some of you and give you a little break as well.
Question
Does anyone know if Dana is right or left handed? Can anyone remember any possible references in the text?
Gender/Sexuality question?
Hi Professor,
I was wondering if you were still going to post a 'gender' question for the final?
-G-
I was wondering if you were still going to post a 'gender' question for the final?
-G-
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Prompts for Second Essaylet for the Take-Home Final
1. The very first words of the novel Kindred describe the loss of the protagonist Dana's arm. Octavia Butler subsequently wrote of Dana's loss, "I couldn't let her come back whole."
****What do you take to be the significance of Dana's loss? What is the significance of the necessity of this loss to what you take to be Butler's project in Kindred?****
How does the mysteriousness that surrounds the depiction of this loss -- its specific cause, the mechanism through which it occurs, the suspicions it inspires in authorities, and so on -- contribute (if it does) to the expression of this significance? Is the loss of Dana's arm an adequate registration of the loss of wholeness that Dana has suffered? How can we reconcile the ways in which the representation of this loss seem at once literal, figurative, and euphemistic -- and what (if anything) does this tell us about the anxieties, ambitions, problems the novel is tackling?
2. In Section Two of On Violence, Hannah Arendt repeatedly insists that "power and violence are not the same" -- indeed, she finally insists on the stronger claim that they "are opposites." Similarly, in his Introduction to The Will to Knowledge Michel Foucault doubts whether "prohibition, censorship, and denial [are] truly the forms through which power is exercised in a general way, if not in every society, most certainly in our own[.]"
****Make a case (and substantiate it with evidence from the texts themselves), either, that through these claims Arendt and Foucault are formulating complementary understandings of power and of the political sphere, or that the differences in their understandings of power are nevertheless more salient in their separate conceptions of the political.****
3. Hannah Arendt focused considerable attention in On Violence on the work of Frantz Fanon. Even if she qualified her judgments of Fanon with grudging concessions about the clarity and realism of his thought compared with many others (including Sartre), she still accuses him of "irresponsible" views "praising" or even "glorifying" violence. Now that you have read the Fanon piece Arendt discussed, do these accusations seem accurate and fair, on Fanon's terms? Or even on Arendt's own terms?
****Produce a close reading of Fanon's "Concerning Violence" that either (1) suggests their two pieces provide complementary visions of political power, even if Arendt herself may have overlooked their affinities in her own critique of Fanon, or that (2) shows how the concrete differences in their treatments of the realities of oppression and discontent help us understand larger differences between Arendt's and Fanon's ideas concerning what political freedom is about and what it is for in the first place.****
****What do you take to be the significance of Dana's loss? What is the significance of the necessity of this loss to what you take to be Butler's project in Kindred?****
How does the mysteriousness that surrounds the depiction of this loss -- its specific cause, the mechanism through which it occurs, the suspicions it inspires in authorities, and so on -- contribute (if it does) to the expression of this significance? Is the loss of Dana's arm an adequate registration of the loss of wholeness that Dana has suffered? How can we reconcile the ways in which the representation of this loss seem at once literal, figurative, and euphemistic -- and what (if anything) does this tell us about the anxieties, ambitions, problems the novel is tackling?
2. In Section Two of On Violence, Hannah Arendt repeatedly insists that "power and violence are not the same" -- indeed, she finally insists on the stronger claim that they "are opposites." Similarly, in his Introduction to The Will to Knowledge Michel Foucault doubts whether "prohibition, censorship, and denial [are] truly the forms through which power is exercised in a general way, if not in every society, most certainly in our own[.]"
****Make a case (and substantiate it with evidence from the texts themselves), either, that through these claims Arendt and Foucault are formulating complementary understandings of power and of the political sphere, or that the differences in their understandings of power are nevertheless more salient in their separate conceptions of the political.****
3. Hannah Arendt focused considerable attention in On Violence on the work of Frantz Fanon. Even if she qualified her judgments of Fanon with grudging concessions about the clarity and realism of his thought compared with many others (including Sartre), she still accuses him of "irresponsible" views "praising" or even "glorifying" violence. Now that you have read the Fanon piece Arendt discussed, do these accusations seem accurate and fair, on Fanon's terms? Or even on Arendt's own terms?
****Produce a close reading of Fanon's "Concerning Violence" that either (1) suggests their two pieces provide complementary visions of political power, even if Arendt herself may have overlooked their affinities in her own critique of Fanon, or that (2) shows how the concrete differences in their treatments of the realities of oppression and discontent help us understand larger differences between Arendt's and Fanon's ideas concerning what political freedom is about and what it is for in the first place.****
Foucault readings?
Is anyone else super confused by the reading titles? They don't correspond to the syllabus. Dale, perhaps you have some insight?
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Alexia and Yin's workshop piece
scene: Tom daughter screaming as sub for screaming of girl at Motel before she got shot
claim: text emphesises the ubiquitous nature of violence. Every act of violence produces another act of violence
objection: Violence does not solve anything, one act of voilence causes more
Rebuttal: without Tom's act of violence at the dinner more violence would have enssured from the incremental perspective, his violence decreased the possible sphere of violence
claim: text emphesises the ubiquitous nature of violence. Every act of violence produces another act of violence
objection: Violence does not solve anything, one act of voilence causes more
Rebuttal: without Tom's act of violence at the dinner more violence would have enssured from the incremental perspective, his violence decreased the possible sphere of violence
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Food, Inc.
I just saw the new film by Robert Kenner Food, Inc. It is, not surprisingly, a very sobering film. You can watch the trailer here. Essentially it chronicles the massive flaws and abuses in our food industry. The film called my attention to (among other things) the different violences that are inherent in the way our food industry is currently working.
It is expensive to buy healthy (meaning not injected with all kinds of growth hormones and crawling with E coli) food, but, it is hard for poor people to afford it. They are violated by the high prices of healthy food. Not because of the high prices themselves but of the effect that the high food prices have. It forces them to buy fast food, food that makes them diabetic over sustained periods of consumption or kills them quickly if it is infected with e coli. The fast food, is less healthy and it's cheaper. It is a violation of their health that they must buy fast food. But it is a violation of other aspects of their life to buy healthy food, because it is more expensive. If buying fast food allows that person to be able to buy books to send their kids to school, or to buy medicine to stay alive they may do it to avoid the violence of non-education, or of death from a contagious disease. For them to contradict the system is a form of violence they do to themselves.
Yet, at the same time, the industry that is producing the fast food is doing violence as well. The industry is plunging the farmers that work for them into massive debt, it is abusing animals, and paying for laws to be passed (or that have been passed) in Congress that violate our freedom of speech.
It appears we face the individual eating fast food to avoid the abuse of not being able to have other basic things in life, or the more widely abusive food industry. I realize that this is a kind of a false dilemma. I had the vague notion that the violation of the farmer was a subjective violence, and the violating that the industry does was an objective violence. The good news is it's not. Because the violence the industry does is not the discourse through which we come to understand the violence that is done to the person who must buy the fast food. They are both subjective violences, the latter is just ironic.
This means that there is hope in the message of the film. What we have to do is change the system so that healthy food is cheaper. No small task right? Especially considering the way we will get the food industry to change is if all consumers start to buy healthier food (thereby increasing demand and reducing price). But, it will initially be expensive. And, there are also bigger forces at work, like all of the subsidies the federal government gives the corn industry, which is part of what makes the fast food so inexpensive. Even so, there is a possibility for both described violences to be ended, because the distinction between objective and subjective violences actually exists between the suffering of the consumer and the suffering of the industry. And that is another story.
It's a fascinating film.
It is expensive to buy healthy (meaning not injected with all kinds of growth hormones and crawling with E coli) food, but, it is hard for poor people to afford it. They are violated by the high prices of healthy food. Not because of the high prices themselves but of the effect that the high food prices have. It forces them to buy fast food, food that makes them diabetic over sustained periods of consumption or kills them quickly if it is infected with e coli. The fast food, is less healthy and it's cheaper. It is a violation of their health that they must buy fast food. But it is a violation of other aspects of their life to buy healthy food, because it is more expensive. If buying fast food allows that person to be able to buy books to send their kids to school, or to buy medicine to stay alive they may do it to avoid the violence of non-education, or of death from a contagious disease. For them to contradict the system is a form of violence they do to themselves.
Yet, at the same time, the industry that is producing the fast food is doing violence as well. The industry is plunging the farmers that work for them into massive debt, it is abusing animals, and paying for laws to be passed (or that have been passed) in Congress that violate our freedom of speech.
It appears we face the individual eating fast food to avoid the abuse of not being able to have other basic things in life, or the more widely abusive food industry. I realize that this is a kind of a false dilemma. I had the vague notion that the violation of the farmer was a subjective violence, and the violating that the industry does was an objective violence. The good news is it's not. Because the violence the industry does is not the discourse through which we come to understand the violence that is done to the person who must buy the fast food. They are both subjective violences, the latter is just ironic.
This means that there is hope in the message of the film. What we have to do is change the system so that healthy food is cheaper. No small task right? Especially considering the way we will get the food industry to change is if all consumers start to buy healthier food (thereby increasing demand and reducing price). But, it will initially be expensive. And, there are also bigger forces at work, like all of the subsidies the federal government gives the corn industry, which is part of what makes the fast food so inexpensive. Even so, there is a possibility for both described violences to be ended, because the distinction between objective and subjective violences actually exists between the suffering of the consumer and the suffering of the industry. And that is another story.
It's a fascinating film.
Anthony and Nuveen's claim
scene: Tom/Joey cleansing himself in the pond outside of Richie's mansion in the penultimate scene.
claim: True rebirth can only occur through dealing with unresolved tensions from one's history.
objections: We cannot be certain that Tom/Joey's "baptism" in the pond can actually be considered a rebirth. He comes back to the dinner table in the ultimate scene and based upon the actions of the son and daughter, he seems to have returned to his constructed America, but we don't know if his wife has accepted him as a new person, or if he cannot escape the ghost of Joey.
claim: True rebirth can only occur through dealing with unresolved tensions from one's history.
objections: We cannot be certain that Tom/Joey's "baptism" in the pond can actually be considered a rebirth. He comes back to the dinner table in the ultimate scene and based upon the actions of the son and daughter, he seems to have returned to his constructed America, but we don't know if his wife has accepted him as a new person, or if he cannot escape the ghost of Joey.
Jonathan, Eamon, Pamela
Scene: closing sequence at the dinner table
Claim: The inability of the family to speak about and to recognize the recent violences and the father's history of violence is an attempt to recreate the false sense of domestic security and non-violence.
Objection: In remaing silent about past violences the family is returning to a normal life of domestic security.
Violence to end violence
Scene: Son saves father by unexpectedly shooting mobster
Claim: The legacy of violence is inescapable; It is only a matter of time before people are forced to resort to violent means.
Objections: The film also showcases substitutes to violence, such as the son's effective use of rhetoric to ward off the bully and the mom's verbal threats to the mobster (arguably also a form of violence). Also, despite the fact that the characters often seem to be in situations where force is the only option, there are usually foreseeable alternatives to murder available.
Claim: The legacy of violence is inescapable; It is only a matter of time before people are forced to resort to violent means.
Objections: The film also showcases substitutes to violence, such as the son's effective use of rhetoric to ward off the bully and the mom's verbal threats to the mobster (arguably also a form of violence). Also, despite the fact that the characters often seem to be in situations where force is the only option, there are usually foreseeable alternatives to murder available.
Tim, Elena, and Zach: A History of Violence
Scene: Tom's self-baptism in the lake outside Richie's house.
Claim: Tom carrying out this ritual does not make his rebirth final and true. Even after killing Joey in the desert, Tom had to revert back to that lifestyle when faced with his violent past. It is possible that Tom will, one day, again have to become Joey once more.
Objection: The ritual of something may not make it true, but the act is a demonstration of a willingness to change. Tom has finally dealt with his past, and hoping he will never have to confront it again, washes the blood from his hands, and is able to return to his family. Even though his family has witnessed him as he never wished they would, he has finished his business and wants only to live in peace.
Claim: Tom carrying out this ritual does not make his rebirth final and true. Even after killing Joey in the desert, Tom had to revert back to that lifestyle when faced with his violent past. It is possible that Tom will, one day, again have to become Joey once more.
Objection: The ritual of something may not make it true, but the act is a demonstration of a willingness to change. Tom has finally dealt with his past, and hoping he will never have to confront it again, washes the blood from his hands, and is able to return to his family. Even though his family has witnessed him as he never wished they would, he has finished his business and wants only to live in peace.
Alexia and Min's workshop piece
scene: Tom daughter screaming as sub for screaming of girl at Motel before she got shot
claim: text emphesises the ubiquitous nature of violence. Every act of violence produces another act of violence
objection: Violence does not solve anything, one act of voilence causes more
Rebuttal: without Tom's act of violence at the dinner more violence would have enssured from the incremental perspective, his violence decreased the possible sphere of violence
claim: text emphesises the ubiquitous nature of violence. Every act of violence produces another act of violence
objection: Violence does not solve anything, one act of voilence causes more
Rebuttal: without Tom's act of violence at the dinner more violence would have enssured from the incremental perspective, his violence decreased the possible sphere of violence
Saturday, June 20, 2009
A History of Violence
Scene: Joey/Tom Stalls kills out-of-town robbers in his diner.
Claim: It is human nature to resolve conflicts through violence.
Objection I: Settling disputes through violence does not solve conflicts because the repercussions follow one mentally, emotionally, and/or physically. Non-violent actions are morally superior and/or pragmatically more effective.
Objection II: Not all human beings resolve conflicts through violence.
Ex. Pacifists, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, Dalai Lama
Friday, June 19, 2009
A History of Violence Claim and Objection
A detail on which this depends: The one, lone, chubby older Sheriff goes out (on a long desolate road) to confront 3 or 4 scary, fierce mobsters.
What we first decided this meant:
The Sheriff is symbolic of the town's almost childlike innocence and simplicity. He is totally out of his element and unprepared to confront these other-worldly vicious men.
The objection to this claim that stuck out the most and was pretty damn cool:
Actually, the mobsters are wholly out of their element and unprepared to confront the town.
Prompts for the First Essaylet of the Take-Home Final Exam
For the Final Examination you will be producing two short essays, each 4-5pp. long. Each essaylet will be a close argumentative reading of your chosen text, and should demonstrate your facility with the four habits of argumentative writing. For each of the two essaylets I will offer you three prompts that will provide you with points of departure for your reading. If a prompt asks many questions, it is not demanding an answer to all of them, but providing different avenues of argument. The second set of prompts will arrive on the blog in a few days. Both essays constituting your final exam will be due at the beginning of our final scheduled class meeting.
1. ****Make and defend any strong claim you like about director David Cronenberg's film "A History of Violence," but you must substantiate that claim primarily through a close reading either of the opening sequence of the film (at the motel) or the closing sequence of the film (the wordless sequence at the lake and around the dinner table). Your essay should include a plausible case as to why the opening or closing scene is especially key or exemplary for the film as a whole for whatever it is you are illuminating through your reading of it.****
How does a history of violence shape the history that is made in its aftermath? Is the making of history always violent? Is history a kind of madness? What are the violences that suffuse the everyday rituals and familiar/familial exchanges that form the quotidian backdrop against which we need to compare the disruptions and violations we name violences? Can the substance of violence be represented without being exercised?
2. In Chapter 5 of Part One of Art Spiegelman's Maus, the living narrator-protagonist of a comic-within-the-comic accuses his Mother -- who has committed suicide -- of murdering him, while with his last word the (same?) narrator-protagonist concludes Part One by accusing his father of being a murderer as well, this time for destroying his dead Mother's diary.
In what sense might the completion of the book that is Maus come to substitute for the diary that was destroyed? In what ways do these books substitute for the lives they memorialize? In light of your answers to these questions, what is the significance of the tombstone which constitutes Maus's last image? Just what is it that is captured in the testimony that is Maus? What is captured (differently?) in the photographs that are reproduced throughout the narrative? What is lost? What is recaptured that was lost? Who survives?
****Focus on just one of these dimensions of Maus, survival, memorialization, testimony, or representation, and make a strong claim that you substantiate through a close reading of at least one of the moments in the text alluded to above and including at least one moment or element that is not included above.****
1. ****Make and defend any strong claim you like about director David Cronenberg's film "A History of Violence," but you must substantiate that claim primarily through a close reading either of the opening sequence of the film (at the motel) or the closing sequence of the film (the wordless sequence at the lake and around the dinner table). Your essay should include a plausible case as to why the opening or closing scene is especially key or exemplary for the film as a whole for whatever it is you are illuminating through your reading of it.****
How does a history of violence shape the history that is made in its aftermath? Is the making of history always violent? Is history a kind of madness? What are the violences that suffuse the everyday rituals and familiar/familial exchanges that form the quotidian backdrop against which we need to compare the disruptions and violations we name violences? Can the substance of violence be represented without being exercised?
2. In Chapter 5 of Part One of Art Spiegelman's Maus, the living narrator-protagonist of a comic-within-the-comic accuses his Mother -- who has committed suicide -- of murdering him, while with his last word the (same?) narrator-protagonist concludes Part One by accusing his father of being a murderer as well, this time for destroying his dead Mother's diary.
In what sense might the completion of the book that is Maus come to substitute for the diary that was destroyed? In what ways do these books substitute for the lives they memorialize? In light of your answers to these questions, what is the significance of the tombstone which constitutes Maus's last image? Just what is it that is captured in the testimony that is Maus? What is captured (differently?) in the photographs that are reproduced throughout the narrative? What is lost? What is recaptured that was lost? Who survives?
****Focus on just one of these dimensions of Maus, survival, memorialization, testimony, or representation, and make a strong claim that you substantiate through a close reading of at least one of the moments in the text alluded to above and including at least one moment or element that is not included above.****
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Need Precise Definition
Hi folks,
I am looking for a Dale delineated definition (name that figure) for Declarative/Indicative Utterance and Performative Speech.
Can anyone help? Please just post it if so. I also posted this question to the Google group newly created.
Thanks and good luck,
Dre
Friday, June 12, 2009
Google Group Rhetten Summer 09
I've created a google group for a class. You can get to it by clicking here
With the midterm on Monday, feel free to ask and to answer questions on the google group.
Good luck on the midterm everyone!
Friday, June 5, 2009
God is (sort of) Great
All three texts that we have read so far have made arguments which appealed to invisible authorities. This sort of appeal is perhaps most clearly present in Martin Luther King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," in which King posits God's moral law as the foundation of the justice with which man's law ought to align itself ("A just law is a law that squares with the moral code of God," - "of" here denoting both the moral law that belongs to God and the moral code that God is). We can find similar moves in Hecuba, where Odysseus justifies the sacrifice of Polyxena ("'of' here denoting...") on the grounds that it is the wish of Achilles', who functions as a kind of absent presence in the Hellene's arguments. Kant too posits "Nature" and "her secret" as being the driving forces behind human history as a way of interrogating the shape that such a history might take.
Appealing to an invisible authority, whether it be God, ghost, or Nature, seems to be a particularly tricky strategy as it allows the rhetor to fabricate an essential piece of the argument (I wonder too, what it says that in all three arguments this kind of appeal, which I think is at base an ethos appeal, is so central.) By "fabricate," I mean something like this: when Martin Luther King explains that he urges people to follow the law regarding the Brown v. Board decision because it is morally right, but to break the law in other cases that are morally wrong, is he not saying: obey God's law whether or not it coincides with federal, state, county or municipal law? In this argument, he entirely side-steps any law other than the law of God, in whose absence King will explicate. The appeal to a lacking authority grants the rhetor the power speak ethically in that authorities name.
It is also worth noting however, that none of the three arguments noted above rely solely on the invisible authority they invoke for their ethical effect. In the same paragraph that I quoted from King's letter above, he goes on to characterize God's law as being something that appeals to the dignity inherent in every human being - a very different kind of ethos move. Similarly, Odysseus buffets his argument with a claim about the undesirable effect that sparing Polyxena will have upon the Greek soldiers, and indirectly, upon Troy itself (an argument behind which lies brute, patriarchal, force as we discussed in class.) And while Kant uses claims about Nature to try and prove the rest of his case about human history, he tries to prove that his claims about Nature are true with a pathetic appeal to the effect that their being false would have upon the human subject.
Thus it seems that in a strange way these appeals to an absent, invisible, or otherwise lacking authority, are supported by appeals to present, tangible, utterly available subjects. In other words, an appeal to God sometimes conceals an appeal to humanity.
Appealing to an invisible authority, whether it be God, ghost, or Nature, seems to be a particularly tricky strategy as it allows the rhetor to fabricate an essential piece of the argument (I wonder too, what it says that in all three arguments this kind of appeal, which I think is at base an ethos appeal, is so central.) By "fabricate," I mean something like this: when Martin Luther King explains that he urges people to follow the law regarding the Brown v. Board decision because it is morally right, but to break the law in other cases that are morally wrong, is he not saying: obey God's law whether or not it coincides with federal, state, county or municipal law? In this argument, he entirely side-steps any law other than the law of God, in whose absence King will explicate. The appeal to a lacking authority grants the rhetor the power speak ethically in that authorities name.
It is also worth noting however, that none of the three arguments noted above rely solely on the invisible authority they invoke for their ethical effect. In the same paragraph that I quoted from King's letter above, he goes on to characterize God's law as being something that appeals to the dignity inherent in every human being - a very different kind of ethos move. Similarly, Odysseus buffets his argument with a claim about the undesirable effect that sparing Polyxena will have upon the Greek soldiers, and indirectly, upon Troy itself (an argument behind which lies brute, patriarchal, force as we discussed in class.) And while Kant uses claims about Nature to try and prove the rest of his case about human history, he tries to prove that his claims about Nature are true with a pathetic appeal to the effect that their being false would have upon the human subject.
Thus it seems that in a strange way these appeals to an absent, invisible, or otherwise lacking authority, are supported by appeals to present, tangible, utterly available subjects. In other words, an appeal to God sometimes conceals an appeal to humanity.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Misconception of Time
I am curious to learn if any of you connected King's repudiation of the recommendation to "wait for justice" (as if justice is an inevitable effect of time's passing) and the decision of lawyers Olson and Boies to file a federal lawsuit seeking to invalidate Prop. 8. Many folks, including those who arguably hold leadership positions in the gay equality movement, deride this lawsuit as rushed and probably harmful to the acquiring of equal access to marriage for all, arguing instead for a state by state focused movement.
For my part, while I am terrified by the possibility of the Supreme Court closing down the discussion around equal access to marriage on even the state wide level, I am also interested to see how a federal lawsuit would actually play out. But, since this isn't a game and the stakes are too high to "play" I am pulled back toward the voices that say "wait" out of fear for losing the little we have. But then, considering King's words that "the time is always ripe to do right", I reconsider.
I guess it is also a matter of what the "right" in doing "right" is. Are there any instances where waiting is "right"?
My Dear Fellow Clergymen
Following is the public statement directed to Martin Luther King, Jr., by eight Alabama clergymen, which occasioned the reply assigned for tomorrow's discussion, "The Letter from the Birmingham City Jail."
April 12, 1963
We the undersigned clergymen are among those who, in January, issued "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense, " in dealing with racial problems in Alabama. We expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts, but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed.
Since that time there had been some evidence of increased forbearance and a willingness to face facts. Responsible citizens have undertaken to work on various problems which cause racial friction and unrest. In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that we all have opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems.
However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and lead in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.
We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area. And we believe this kind of facing of issues can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experi- ence of the local situation. All of us need to face that responsibility and find proper channels for its accomplishment.
Just as we formerly pointed out that "hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions." We also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham.
We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demon- strations have been handled. we urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement officials to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence.
We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. when rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.
Signed by:
C. C. C. Carpenter, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Alabama
JOSEPH A. DURICK, D.D., Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Mobile-Birmingham
Rabbi, MILTON L. GRAFMAN, Temple Emanu-el, Birmingham, Alabama
Bishop PAUL HARDIN, Bishop of the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the Methodist Church
Bishop NOLAN B. HARMON, Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the Methodist Church
GEORGE M. MURRAY, D.D., LL.D., Bishop Coadjutor, Episcopal Diocese of Alabama
EDWARD V. RAMAGE, Moderator, Synod of the Alabama Presbyterian Church in the United States
EARL STALLINGS, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama
April 12, 1963
We the undersigned clergymen are among those who, in January, issued "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense, " in dealing with racial problems in Alabama. We expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts, but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed.
Since that time there had been some evidence of increased forbearance and a willingness to face facts. Responsible citizens have undertaken to work on various problems which cause racial friction and unrest. In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that we all have opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems.
However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and lead in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.
We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area. And we believe this kind of facing of issues can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experi- ence of the local situation. All of us need to face that responsibility and find proper channels for its accomplishment.
Just as we formerly pointed out that "hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions." We also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham.
We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demon- strations have been handled. we urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement officials to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence.
We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. when rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.
Signed by:
C. C. C. Carpenter, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Alabama
JOSEPH A. DURICK, D.D., Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Mobile-Birmingham
Rabbi, MILTON L. GRAFMAN, Temple Emanu-el, Birmingham, Alabama
Bishop PAUL HARDIN, Bishop of the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the Methodist Church
Bishop NOLAN B. HARMON, Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the Methodist Church
GEORGE M. MURRAY, D.D., LL.D., Bishop Coadjutor, Episcopal Diocese of Alabama
EDWARD V. RAMAGE, Moderator, Synod of the Alabama Presbyterian Church in the United States
EARL STALLINGS, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Checking In
How are you guys finding the reading this weekend? Any preliminary problems, questions, flights of fancy, provocations?
Hecuba
The online version of Hecuba appears to lack a few lines at the very end of the play. Here they are:
POLYMESTOR
Close it now; for I have spoken.
AGAMEMNON
Haste and cast him upon some desert island, since his mouth is full of such exceeding presumption. Go thou, unhappy Hecuba, and bury thy two corpses; and you, Trojan women, to your masters' tents repair, for lo! I perceive a breeze just rising to waft us home. God grant we reach our country and find all well at home, released from troubles here!
(POLYMESTOR is dragged away by AGAMEMNON'S guards.)
CHORUS (chanting)
Away to the harbour and the tents, my friends, to prove the toils of slavery! for such is fate's relentless hest.
POLYMESTOR
Close it now; for I have spoken.
AGAMEMNON
Haste and cast him upon some desert island, since his mouth is full of such exceeding presumption. Go thou, unhappy Hecuba, and bury thy two corpses; and you, Trojan women, to your masters' tents repair, for lo! I perceive a breeze just rising to waft us home. God grant we reach our country and find all well at home, released from troubles here!
(POLYMESTOR is dragged away by AGAMEMNON'S guards.)
CHORUS (chanting)
Away to the harbour and the tents, my friends, to prove the toils of slavery! for such is fate's relentless hest.
The Melian Dialogue
From HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR by Thucydides
CHAPTER XVII.
THE next summer Alcibiades sailed with twenty ships to Argos and seized the suspected persons still left of the Lacedaemonian faction to the number of three hundred, whom the Athenians forthwith lodged in the neighbouring islands of their empire. The Athenians also made an expedition against the isle of Melos with thirty ships of their own, six Chian, and two Lesbian vessels, sixteen hundred heavy infantry, three hundred archers, and twenty mounted archers from Athens, and about fifteen hundred heavy infantry from the allies and the islanders. The Melians are a colony of Lacedaemon that would not submit to the Athenians like the other islanders, and at first remained neutral and took no part in the struggle, but afterwards upon the Athenians using violence and plundering their territory, assumed an attitude of open hostility. Cleomedes, son of Lycomedes, and Tisias, son of Tisimachus, the generals, encamping in their territory with the above armament, before doing any harm to their land, sent envoys to negotiate. These the Melians did not bring before the people, but bade them state the object of their mission to the magistrates and the few; upon which the Athenian envoys spoke as follows:
Athenians. Since the negotiations are not to go on before the people, in order that we may not be able to speak straight on without interruption, and deceive the ears of the multitude by seductive arguments which would pass without refutation (for we know that this is the meaning of our being brought before the few), what if you who sit there were to pursue a method more cautious still? Make no set speech yourselves, but take us up at whatever you do not like, and settle that before going any farther. And first tell us if this proposition of ours suits you.
The Melian commissioners answered:
Melians. To the fairness of quietly instructing each other as you propose there is nothing to object; but your military preparations are too far advanced to agree with what you say, as we see you are come to be judges in your own cause, and that all we can reasonably expect from this negotiation is war, if we prove to have right on our side and refuse to submit, and in the contrary case, slavery.
Athenians. If you have met to reason about presentiments of the future, or for anything else than to consult for the safety of your state upon the facts that you see before you, we will give over; otherwise we will go on.
Melians. It is natural and excusable for men in our position to turn more ways than one both in thought and utterance. However, the question in this conference is, as you say, the safety of our country; and the discussion, if you please, can proceed in the way which you propose.
Athenians. For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences- either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us- and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they canand the weak suffer what they must.
Melians. As we think, at any rate, it is expedient- we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest- that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current. And you are as much interested in this as any, as your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon.
Athenians. The end of our empire, if end it should, does not frighten us: a rival empire like Lacedaemon, even if Lacedaemon was our real antagonist, is not so terrible to the vanquished as subjects who by themselves attack and overpower their rulers. This, however, is a risk that we are content to take. We will now proceed to show you that we are come here in the interest of our empire, and that we shall say what we are now going to say, for the preservation of your country; as we would fain exercise that empire over you withouttrouble, and see you preserved for the good of us both.
Melians. And how, pray, could it turn out as good for us to serve as for you to rule?
Athenians. Because you would have the advantage of submitting before suffering the worst, and we should gain by not destroying you.
Melians. So that you would not consent to our being neutral, friends instead of enemies, but allies of neither side.
Athenians. No; for your hostility cannot so much hurt us as your friendship will be an argument to our subjects of our weakness, and your enmity of our power.
Melians. Is that your subjects' idea of equity, to put those who have nothing to do with you in the same category with peoples that are most of them your own colonists, and some conquered rebels?
Athenians. As far as right goes they think one has as much of it as the other, and that if any maintain their independence it is because they are strong, and that if we do not molest them it is because we are afraid; so that besides extending our empire we should gain in security by your subjection; the fact that you are islanders and weaker than others rendering it all the more important that you should not succeed in baffling the masters of the sea.
Melians. But do you consider that there is no security in the policy which we indicate? For here again if you debar us from talking about justice and invite us to obey your interest, we also must explain ours, and try to persuade you, if the two happen to coincide. How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals who shall look at case from it that one day or another you will attack them? And what is this but to make greater the enemies that you have already, and to force others to become so who would otherwise have never thought of it?
Athenians. Why, the fact is that continentals generally give us but little alarm; the liberty which they enjoy will long prevent their taking precautions against us; it is rather islanders like yourselves, outside our empire, and subjects smarting under the yoke, who would be the most likely to take a rash step and lead themselves and us into obvious danger.
Melians. Well then, if you risk so much to retain your empire, and your subjects to get rid of it, it were surely great baseness and cowardice in us who are still free not to try everything that can be tried, before submitting to your yoke.
Athenians. Not if you are well advised, the contest not being an equal one, with honour as the prize and shame as the penalty, but a question of self-preservation and of not resisting those who are far stronger than you are.
Melians. But we know that the fortune of war is sometimes more impartial than the disproportion of numbers might lead one to suppose; to submit is to give ourselves over to despair, while action still preserves for us a hope that we may stand erect.
Athenians. Hope, danger's comforter, may be indulged in by those who have abundant resources, if not without loss at all events without ruin; but its nature is to be extravagant, and those who go so far as to put their all upon the venture see it in its true colours only when they are ruined; but so long as the discovery would enable them to guard against it, it is never found wanting. Let not this be the case with you, who are weak and hang on a single turn of the scale; nor be like the vulgar, who, abandoning such security as human means may still afford, when visible hopes fail them in extremity, turn to invisible, to prophecies and oracles, and other such inventions thatdelude men with hopes to their destruction.
Melians. You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians, who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly irrational.
Athenians. When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do. Thus, as far as the gods are concerned, we have no fear and no reason to fear that we shall be at a disadvantage. But when we come to your notion about the Lacedaemonians, which leads you to believe that shame will make them help you, here we bless your simplicity but do not envy your folly. The Lacedaemonians, when their own interests or their country's laws are in question, are the worthiest men alive; of their conduct towards others much might be said, but no clearer idea of it could be given than by shortly saying that of all the men we know they are most conspicuous in considering what is agreeable honourable, and what is expedient just. Such a way of thinking does not promise much for the safety which you now unreasonably count upon.
Melians. But it is for this very reason that we now trust to their respect for expediency to prevent them from betraying the Melians, their colonists, and thereby losing the confidence of their friends in Hellas and helping their enemies.
Athenians. Then you do not adopt the view that expediency goes with security, while justice and honour cannot be followed without danger; and danger the Lacedaemonians generally court as little as possible.
Melians. But we believe that they would be more likely to face even danger for our sake, and with more confidence than for others, as our nearness to Peloponnese makes it easier for them to act, and our common blood ensures our fidelity.
Athenians. Yes, but what an intending ally trusts to is not the goodwill of those who ask his aid, but a decided superiority of power for action; and the Lacedaemonians look to this even more than others. At least, such is their distrust of their home resources that it is only with numerous allies that they attack a neighbour; now is it likely that while we are masters of the sea they will cross over to an island?
Melians. But they would have others to send. The Cretan Sea is a wide one, and it is more difficult for those who command it to intercept others, than for those who wish to elude them to do so safely. And should the Lacedaemonians miscarry in this, they would fall upon your land, and upon those left of your allies whom Brasidas did not reach; and instead of places which are not yours, you will have to fight for your own country and your own confederacy.
Athenians. Some diversion of the kind you speak of you may one day experience, only to learn, as others have done, that the Athenians never once yet withdrew from a siege for fear of any. But we are struck by the fact that, after saying you would consult for the safety of your country, in all this discussion you have mentioned nothing which men might trust in and think to be saved by. Your strongest arguments depend upon hope and the future, and your actual resources are too scanty, as compared with those arrayed against you, for you to come out victorious. You will therefore show great blindness of judgment, unless, after allowing us to retire, you can find some counsel more prudent than this. You will surely not be caught by that idea of disgrace, which in dangers that are disgraceful, and at the same time too plain to be mistaken, proves so fatal to mankind; since in too many cases the very men that have their eyes perfectly open to what they are rushing into, let the thing called disgrace, by the mere influence of a seductive name, lead them on to a point at which they become so enslaved by the phrase as in fact to fall wilfully into hopeless disaster, and incur disgrace more disgraceful as the companion of error, than when it comes as the result of misfortune. This, if you are well advised, you will guard against; and you will not think it dishonourable to submit to the greatest city in Hellas, when it makes you the moderate offer of becoming its tributary ally, without ceasing to enjoy the country that belongs to you; nor when you have the choice given you between war and security, will you be so blinded as to choose the worse. And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best. Think over the matter, therefore, after our withdrawal, and reflect once and again that it is for your country that you are consulting, that you have not more than one, and that upon this one deliberation depends its prosperity or ruin.
The Athenians now withdrew from the conference; and the Melians, left to themselves, came to a decision corresponding with what they had maintained in the discussion, and answered: "Our resolution, Athenians, is the same as it was at first. We will not in a moment deprive of freedom a city that has been inhabited these seven hundred years; but we put our trust in the fortune by which the gods have preserved it until now, and in the help of men, that is, of the Lacedaemonians; and so we will try and save ourselves. Meanwhile we invite you to allow us to be friends to you and foes to neither party, and to retire from our country after making such a treaty as shall seem fit to us both."
Such was the answer of the Melians. The Athenians now departing from the conference said: "Well, you alone, as it seems to us, judging from these resolutions, regard what is future as more certain than what is before your eyes, and what is out of sight, in your eagerness, as already coming to pass; and as you have staked most on, and trusted most in, the Lacedaemonians, your fortune, and your hopes, so will you be most completely deceived."
The Athenian envoys now returned to the army; and the Melians showing no signs of yielding, the generals at once betook themselves to hostilities, and drew a line of circumvallation round the Melians, dividing the work among the different states. Subsequently the Athenians returned with most of their army, leaving behind them a certain number of their own citizens and of the allies to keep guard by land and sea. The force thus left stayed on and besieged the place. About the same time the Argives invaded the territory of Phlius and lost eighty men cut off in an ambush by the Phliasians and Argive exiles. Meanwhile the Athenians at Pylos took so much plunder from the Lacedaemonians that the latter, although they still refrained from breaking off the treaty and going to war with Athens, yet proclaimed that any of their people that chose might plunder the Athenians. The Corinthians also commenced hostilities with the Athenians for private quarrels of their own; but the rest of the Peloponnesians stayed quiet. Meanwhile the Melians attacked by night and took the part of the Athenian lines over against the market, and killed some of the men, and brought in corn and all else that they could find useful to them, and so returned and kept quiet, while the Athenians took measures to keep better guard in future.
Summer was now over. The next winter the Lacedaemonians intended to invade the Argive territory, but arriving at the frontier found the sacrifices for crossing unfavourable, and went back again. This intention of theirs gave the Argives suspicions of certain of their fellow citizens, some of whom they arrested; others, however, escaped them. About the same time the Melians again took another part of the Athenian lines which were but feebly garrisoned. Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE next summer Alcibiades sailed with twenty ships to Argos and seized the suspected persons still left of the Lacedaemonian faction to the number of three hundred, whom the Athenians forthwith lodged in the neighbouring islands of their empire. The Athenians also made an expedition against the isle of Melos with thirty ships of their own, six Chian, and two Lesbian vessels, sixteen hundred heavy infantry, three hundred archers, and twenty mounted archers from Athens, and about fifteen hundred heavy infantry from the allies and the islanders. The Melians are a colony of Lacedaemon that would not submit to the Athenians like the other islanders, and at first remained neutral and took no part in the struggle, but afterwards upon the Athenians using violence and plundering their territory, assumed an attitude of open hostility. Cleomedes, son of Lycomedes, and Tisias, son of Tisimachus, the generals, encamping in their territory with the above armament, before doing any harm to their land, sent envoys to negotiate. These the Melians did not bring before the people, but bade them state the object of their mission to the magistrates and the few; upon which the Athenian envoys spoke as follows:
Athenians. Since the negotiations are not to go on before the people, in order that we may not be able to speak straight on without interruption, and deceive the ears of the multitude by seductive arguments which would pass without refutation (for we know that this is the meaning of our being brought before the few), what if you who sit there were to pursue a method more cautious still? Make no set speech yourselves, but take us up at whatever you do not like, and settle that before going any farther. And first tell us if this proposition of ours suits you.
The Melian commissioners answered:
Melians. To the fairness of quietly instructing each other as you propose there is nothing to object; but your military preparations are too far advanced to agree with what you say, as we see you are come to be judges in your own cause, and that all we can reasonably expect from this negotiation is war, if we prove to have right on our side and refuse to submit, and in the contrary case, slavery.
Athenians. If you have met to reason about presentiments of the future, or for anything else than to consult for the safety of your state upon the facts that you see before you, we will give over; otherwise we will go on.
Melians. It is natural and excusable for men in our position to turn more ways than one both in thought and utterance. However, the question in this conference is, as you say, the safety of our country; and the discussion, if you please, can proceed in the way which you propose.
Athenians. For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences- either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us- and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they canand the weak suffer what they must.
Melians. As we think, at any rate, it is expedient- we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest- that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current. And you are as much interested in this as any, as your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon.
Athenians. The end of our empire, if end it should, does not frighten us: a rival empire like Lacedaemon, even if Lacedaemon was our real antagonist, is not so terrible to the vanquished as subjects who by themselves attack and overpower their rulers. This, however, is a risk that we are content to take. We will now proceed to show you that we are come here in the interest of our empire, and that we shall say what we are now going to say, for the preservation of your country; as we would fain exercise that empire over you withouttrouble, and see you preserved for the good of us both.
Melians. And how, pray, could it turn out as good for us to serve as for you to rule?
Athenians. Because you would have the advantage of submitting before suffering the worst, and we should gain by not destroying you.
Melians. So that you would not consent to our being neutral, friends instead of enemies, but allies of neither side.
Athenians. No; for your hostility cannot so much hurt us as your friendship will be an argument to our subjects of our weakness, and your enmity of our power.
Melians. Is that your subjects' idea of equity, to put those who have nothing to do with you in the same category with peoples that are most of them your own colonists, and some conquered rebels?
Athenians. As far as right goes they think one has as much of it as the other, and that if any maintain their independence it is because they are strong, and that if we do not molest them it is because we are afraid; so that besides extending our empire we should gain in security by your subjection; the fact that you are islanders and weaker than others rendering it all the more important that you should not succeed in baffling the masters of the sea.
Melians. But do you consider that there is no security in the policy which we indicate? For here again if you debar us from talking about justice and invite us to obey your interest, we also must explain ours, and try to persuade you, if the two happen to coincide. How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals who shall look at case from it that one day or another you will attack them? And what is this but to make greater the enemies that you have already, and to force others to become so who would otherwise have never thought of it?
Athenians. Why, the fact is that continentals generally give us but little alarm; the liberty which they enjoy will long prevent their taking precautions against us; it is rather islanders like yourselves, outside our empire, and subjects smarting under the yoke, who would be the most likely to take a rash step and lead themselves and us into obvious danger.
Melians. Well then, if you risk so much to retain your empire, and your subjects to get rid of it, it were surely great baseness and cowardice in us who are still free not to try everything that can be tried, before submitting to your yoke.
Athenians. Not if you are well advised, the contest not being an equal one, with honour as the prize and shame as the penalty, but a question of self-preservation and of not resisting those who are far stronger than you are.
Melians. But we know that the fortune of war is sometimes more impartial than the disproportion of numbers might lead one to suppose; to submit is to give ourselves over to despair, while action still preserves for us a hope that we may stand erect.
Athenians. Hope, danger's comforter, may be indulged in by those who have abundant resources, if not without loss at all events without ruin; but its nature is to be extravagant, and those who go so far as to put their all upon the venture see it in its true colours only when they are ruined; but so long as the discovery would enable them to guard against it, it is never found wanting. Let not this be the case with you, who are weak and hang on a single turn of the scale; nor be like the vulgar, who, abandoning such security as human means may still afford, when visible hopes fail them in extremity, turn to invisible, to prophecies and oracles, and other such inventions thatdelude men with hopes to their destruction.
Melians. You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians, who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly irrational.
Athenians. When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do. Thus, as far as the gods are concerned, we have no fear and no reason to fear that we shall be at a disadvantage. But when we come to your notion about the Lacedaemonians, which leads you to believe that shame will make them help you, here we bless your simplicity but do not envy your folly. The Lacedaemonians, when their own interests or their country's laws are in question, are the worthiest men alive; of their conduct towards others much might be said, but no clearer idea of it could be given than by shortly saying that of all the men we know they are most conspicuous in considering what is agreeable honourable, and what is expedient just. Such a way of thinking does not promise much for the safety which you now unreasonably count upon.
Melians. But it is for this very reason that we now trust to their respect for expediency to prevent them from betraying the Melians, their colonists, and thereby losing the confidence of their friends in Hellas and helping their enemies.
Athenians. Then you do not adopt the view that expediency goes with security, while justice and honour cannot be followed without danger; and danger the Lacedaemonians generally court as little as possible.
Melians. But we believe that they would be more likely to face even danger for our sake, and with more confidence than for others, as our nearness to Peloponnese makes it easier for them to act, and our common blood ensures our fidelity.
Athenians. Yes, but what an intending ally trusts to is not the goodwill of those who ask his aid, but a decided superiority of power for action; and the Lacedaemonians look to this even more than others. At least, such is their distrust of their home resources that it is only with numerous allies that they attack a neighbour; now is it likely that while we are masters of the sea they will cross over to an island?
Melians. But they would have others to send. The Cretan Sea is a wide one, and it is more difficult for those who command it to intercept others, than for those who wish to elude them to do so safely. And should the Lacedaemonians miscarry in this, they would fall upon your land, and upon those left of your allies whom Brasidas did not reach; and instead of places which are not yours, you will have to fight for your own country and your own confederacy.
Athenians. Some diversion of the kind you speak of you may one day experience, only to learn, as others have done, that the Athenians never once yet withdrew from a siege for fear of any. But we are struck by the fact that, after saying you would consult for the safety of your country, in all this discussion you have mentioned nothing which men might trust in and think to be saved by. Your strongest arguments depend upon hope and the future, and your actual resources are too scanty, as compared with those arrayed against you, for you to come out victorious. You will therefore show great blindness of judgment, unless, after allowing us to retire, you can find some counsel more prudent than this. You will surely not be caught by that idea of disgrace, which in dangers that are disgraceful, and at the same time too plain to be mistaken, proves so fatal to mankind; since in too many cases the very men that have their eyes perfectly open to what they are rushing into, let the thing called disgrace, by the mere influence of a seductive name, lead them on to a point at which they become so enslaved by the phrase as in fact to fall wilfully into hopeless disaster, and incur disgrace more disgraceful as the companion of error, than when it comes as the result of misfortune. This, if you are well advised, you will guard against; and you will not think it dishonourable to submit to the greatest city in Hellas, when it makes you the moderate offer of becoming its tributary ally, without ceasing to enjoy the country that belongs to you; nor when you have the choice given you between war and security, will you be so blinded as to choose the worse. And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best. Think over the matter, therefore, after our withdrawal, and reflect once and again that it is for your country that you are consulting, that you have not more than one, and that upon this one deliberation depends its prosperity or ruin.
The Athenians now withdrew from the conference; and the Melians, left to themselves, came to a decision corresponding with what they had maintained in the discussion, and answered: "Our resolution, Athenians, is the same as it was at first. We will not in a moment deprive of freedom a city that has been inhabited these seven hundred years; but we put our trust in the fortune by which the gods have preserved it until now, and in the help of men, that is, of the Lacedaemonians; and so we will try and save ourselves. Meanwhile we invite you to allow us to be friends to you and foes to neither party, and to retire from our country after making such a treaty as shall seem fit to us both."
Such was the answer of the Melians. The Athenians now departing from the conference said: "Well, you alone, as it seems to us, judging from these resolutions, regard what is future as more certain than what is before your eyes, and what is out of sight, in your eagerness, as already coming to pass; and as you have staked most on, and trusted most in, the Lacedaemonians, your fortune, and your hopes, so will you be most completely deceived."
The Athenian envoys now returned to the army; and the Melians showing no signs of yielding, the generals at once betook themselves to hostilities, and drew a line of circumvallation round the Melians, dividing the work among the different states. Subsequently the Athenians returned with most of their army, leaving behind them a certain number of their own citizens and of the allies to keep guard by land and sea. The force thus left stayed on and besieged the place. About the same time the Argives invaded the territory of Phlius and lost eighty men cut off in an ambush by the Phliasians and Argive exiles. Meanwhile the Athenians at Pylos took so much plunder from the Lacedaemonians that the latter, although they still refrained from breaking off the treaty and going to war with Athens, yet proclaimed that any of their people that chose might plunder the Athenians. The Corinthians also commenced hostilities with the Athenians for private quarrels of their own; but the rest of the Peloponnesians stayed quiet. Meanwhile the Melians attacked by night and took the part of the Athenian lines over against the market, and killed some of the men, and brought in corn and all else that they could find useful to them, and so returned and kept quiet, while the Athenians took measures to keep better guard in future.
Summer was now over. The next winter the Lacedaemonians intended to invade the Argive territory, but arriving at the frontier found the sacrifices for crossing unfavourable, and went back again. This intention of theirs gave the Argives suspicions of certain of their fellow citizens, some of whom they arrested; others, however, escaped them. About the same time the Melians again took another part of the Athenian lines which were but feebly garrisoned. Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.
Friday, May 29, 2009
From The Rhetoric by Aristotle
Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular subject-matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and unhealthy, geometry about the properties of magnitudes, arithmetic about numbers, and the same is true of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us; and that is why we say that, in its technical character, it is not concerned with any special or definite class of subjects.
Of the modes of persuasion some belong strictly to the art of rhetoric and some do not. By the latter I mean such things as are not supplied by the speaker but are there at the outset-witnesses, evidence given under torture, written contracts, and so on. By the former I mean such as we can ourselves construct by means of the principles of rhetoric. The one kind has merely to be used, the other has to be invented.
Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided. This kind of persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of his character before he begins to speak. It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses. Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile. It is towards producing these effects, as we maintain, that present-day writers on rhetoric direct the whole of their efforts. This subject shall be treated in detail when we come to speak of the emotions. Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.
There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited. It thus appears that rhetoric is an offshoot of dialectic and also of ethical studies. Ethical studies may fairly be called political; and for this reason rhetoric masquerades as political science, and the professors of it as political experts-sometimes from want of education, sometimes from ostentation, sometimes owing to other human failings. As a matter of fact, it is a branch of dialectic and similar to it, as we said at the outset. Neither rhetoric nor dialectic is the scientific study of any one separate subject: both are faculties for providing arguments. This is perhaps a sufficient account of their scope and of how they are related to each other.
Of the modes of persuasion some belong strictly to the art of rhetoric and some do not. By the latter I mean such things as are not supplied by the speaker but are there at the outset-witnesses, evidence given under torture, written contracts, and so on. By the former I mean such as we can ourselves construct by means of the principles of rhetoric. The one kind has merely to be used, the other has to be invented.
Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided. This kind of persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of his character before he begins to speak. It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses. Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile. It is towards producing these effects, as we maintain, that present-day writers on rhetoric direct the whole of their efforts. This subject shall be treated in detail when we come to speak of the emotions. Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.
There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited. It thus appears that rhetoric is an offshoot of dialectic and also of ethical studies. Ethical studies may fairly be called political; and for this reason rhetoric masquerades as political science, and the professors of it as political experts-sometimes from want of education, sometimes from ostentation, sometimes owing to other human failings. As a matter of fact, it is a branch of dialectic and similar to it, as we said at the outset. Neither rhetoric nor dialectic is the scientific study of any one separate subject: both are faculties for providing arguments. This is perhaps a sufficient account of their scope and of how they are related to each other.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Syllabus
Rhetoric 10 -- What Is Compelling? -- The Rhetoric of Argument
Summer 2009, Session A, 12-2.30pm., Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 219 Dwinelle
Instructor, Dale Carrico: dalec@berkeley.edu
Attend/Participate: 14%; Workshops: 14%; Mid-Term: 36%; Final 36% (Provisionally and Approximately)
A Provisional Schedule of Meetings
Week One
May 27
Course Introduction
SKILL SET: An argument is a claim supported by reasons and/or evidence.
May 29
2-3 Minute Introduction Speeches
SKILL SET: Ethos, Pathos, Logos
Week Two
June 1
Euripides, Hecuba
SKILL SET: Reading Critically/Writing Critically; Four Habits of Argumentative Writing; Audience/Intentions
June 3
Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
SKILL SET: Intentions -- Interrogation, Conviction, Persuasion, Reconciliation
June 5
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
SKILL SET: Audiences -- Sympathetic, Unsympathetic, Apathetic; Rogerian Rhetoric
Week Three
June 8
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
SKILL SET: The Toulmin Schema
June 10
SKILL SET: Syllogisms, Enthymemes, Formal Fallacies, Informal Fallacies
June 12
SKILL SET: Literal/Figurative Language; Figures, Tropes, Schemes; Four Master Tropes
Week Four
June 15
Mid-Term Examination
June 17
Screening Film, "A History of Violence"
June 19
Art Spiegelman, Maus
Week Five
June 22
Octavia Butler, Kindred
June 24
Hannah Arendt, Reflections On Violence and "Must Eichmann Hang?"
June 26
Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish and The Will to Knowledge (History of Sexuality, Volume One)
Week Six
June 29
Frantz Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks
July 1
Take Home Final Examination Due
Judith Butler, from Undoing Gender and Precarious Life
Summer 2009, Session A, 12-2.30pm., Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 219 Dwinelle
Instructor, Dale Carrico: dalec@berkeley.edu
Attend/Participate: 14%; Workshops: 14%; Mid-Term: 36%; Final 36% (Provisionally and Approximately)
A Provisional Schedule of Meetings
Week One
May 27
Course Introduction
SKILL SET: An argument is a claim supported by reasons and/or evidence.
May 29
2-3 Minute Introduction Speeches
SKILL SET: Ethos, Pathos, Logos
Week Two
June 1
Euripides, Hecuba
SKILL SET: Reading Critically/Writing Critically; Four Habits of Argumentative Writing; Audience/Intentions
June 3
Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
SKILL SET: Intentions -- Interrogation, Conviction, Persuasion, Reconciliation
June 5
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
SKILL SET: Audiences -- Sympathetic, Unsympathetic, Apathetic; Rogerian Rhetoric
Week Three
June 8
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
SKILL SET: The Toulmin Schema
June 10
SKILL SET: Syllogisms, Enthymemes, Formal Fallacies, Informal Fallacies
June 12
SKILL SET: Literal/Figurative Language; Figures, Tropes, Schemes; Four Master Tropes
Week Four
June 15
Mid-Term Examination
June 17
Screening Film, "A History of Violence"
June 19
Art Spiegelman, Maus
Week Five
June 22
Octavia Butler, Kindred
June 24
Hannah Arendt, Reflections On Violence and "Must Eichmann Hang?"
June 26
Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish and The Will to Knowledge (History of Sexuality, Volume One)
Week Six
June 29
Frantz Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks
July 1
Take Home Final Examination Due
Judith Butler, from Undoing Gender and Precarious Life
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