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The Following are Just a Few Examples of the Kinds of Books and Information You'll Get from Questia |
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Modern Critical Interpretations Ernest Hemingway's (The full version of A Farewell to Arms, Modern Critical Interpretations can be found at Questia's Online Library by clicking here and searching for A Farewell to Arms). Editor's Note My introduction begins by seeking Hemingway's place in American literary tradition and then relates A Farewell to Arms to the aesthetic impressionism of Walter Pater and Joseph Conrad. Daniel J. Schneider begins the chronological sequence with a study of the poetic imagery or "imagism" of A Farewell to Arms. An investigation of tragic structure in the novel by Robert Merrill is followed by William Adair's Freudian account of A Farewell to Arms as Hemingway's own interpretation of the dreams, fantasies, and compulsions resulting from his early involvement in war. Michael S. Reynolds compares Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage to Farewell, and suggests that Hemingway, like Crane, relied upon imagination and not upon the autobiographical experience of battle. The palpable hostility of Hemingway toward women as the image of desire is traced in Farewell by Judith Fetterley, who confirms the earlier analysis by Leslie Fiedler which is cited in my introduction. In a textual study of the novel's much rewritten conclusion, Bernard Oldsey attempts to illuminate Hemingway's choices among his multiple possibilities. Scott Donaldson skeptically reads the passivity and "innocence" of Frederic Henry as masking a wily self that calls the narrator's stance into question. In Millicent Bell's interpretation, A Farewell to Arms is a coded system of feeling and judgment based upon Hemingway's war experiences on the Italian front. In a previously unpublished essay concluding this volume, Sandra Whipple Spanier sees Catherine Barkley as the true exemplar of Hemingway's code of heroism, since she manifests courage, loyalty, grace in confronting death, and a true ability to teach Frederic Henry what he badly needs to know. Spanier's argument is both feminist and shrewdly kind to Hemingway; it provokes skepticism in me, but itself shares in some of the qualities that Hemingway urged upon us. (The full version of A Farewell to Arms, Modern Critical Interpretations can be found at Questia's Online Libary by clicking here and searching for A Farewell to Arms). Introduction This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old Or again: I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore drips, thinn'd with the
Hemingway is scarcely unique in not acknowledging the paternity of Walt Whitman; T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens are far closer to Whitman than William Carlos Williams and Hart Crane were, but literary influence is a paradoxical and antithetical process, about which we continue to know all too little. The profound affinities between Hemingway, Eliot, and Stevens are not accidental, but are family resemblances due to the repressed but crucial relation each had to Whitman's work. Hemingway characteristically boasted (in a letter to Sara Murphy, February 27, 1936) that he had knocked Stevens down quite handily: "... for statistics sake Mr. Stevens is 6 feet 2 weighs 225 lbs. and . . . when he hits the ground it is highly spectaculous." Since this match between the two writers took place in Key West on February 19, 1936, I am moved, as a loyal Stevensian, for statistics' sake to point out that the victorious Hemingway was born in 1899, and the defeated Stevens in 1879, so that the novelist was then going on thirty-seven, and the poet verging on fifty-seven. The two men doubtless despised one another, but in the letter celebrating his victory Hemingway calls Stevens "a damned fine poet" and Stevens always affirmed that Hemingway was essentially a poet, a judgment concurred in by Robert Penn Warren when he wrote that Hemingway "is essentially a lyric rather than a dramatic writer." Warren compared Hemingway to Wordsworth, which is feasible, but the resemblance to Whitman is far closer. Wordsworth would not have written, "I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there," but Hemingway almost persuades us he would have achieved that line had not Whitman set it down first. (The full version of A Farewell to Arms, Modern Critical Interpretations can be found at Questia's Online Libary by clicking here and searching for A Farewell to Arms). II III It could be argued persuasively that Hemingway is the best short- story writer in the English language from Joyce's Dubliners until the present. The aesthetic dignity of the short story need not be questioned, and yet we seem to ask more of a canonical writer. Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises and not Ulysses, which is only to say that his true genius was for very short stories, and hardly at all for extended narrative. Had he been primarily a poet, his lyrical gifts would have sufficed: we do not hold it against Yeats that his poems, not his plays, are his principal glory. Alas, neither Turgenev nor Henry James, neither Melville nor Mark Twain provide true agonists for Hemingway. Instead, de Maupassant is the apter rival. Of Hemingway's intensity of style in the briefer compass, there is no question, but even The Sun Also Rises reads now as a series of epiphanies, of brilliant and memorable vignettes. Much that has been harshly criticized in Hemingway, particularly in For Whom the Bell Tolls, results from his difficulty in adjusting his gifts to the demands of the novel. Robert Penn Warren suggests that Hemingway is successful when his "system of ironies and understatements is coherent." When incoherent, then, Hemingway's rhetoric fails as persuasion, which is to say, we read To Have and Have Not or For Whom the Bell Tolls and we are all too aware that the system of tropes is primarily what we are offered. Warren believes this not to be true of A Farewell to Arms, yet even the celebrated close of the novel seems now a worn understatement: But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain. (The full version of A Farewell to Arms, Modern Critical Interpretations can be found at Questia's Online Libary by clicking here and searching for A Farewell to Arms). Contrast this to the close of " Old Man at the Bridge," a story only two and a half pages long: There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro.It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have. The understatement continues to persuade here because the stoicism remains coherent, and is admirably fitted by the rhetoric. A very short story concludes itself by permanently troping the mood of a particular moment in history. Vignette is Hemingway's natural mode, or call it hard-edged vignette: a literary sketch that somehow seems to be the beginning or end of something longer, yet truly is complete in itself. Hemingway's style encloses what ought to be unenclosed, so that the genre remains subtle yet trades its charm for punch. But a novel of three hundred and forty pages ( A Farewell to Arms) which I have just finished reading again (after twenty years away from it) cannot sustain itself upon the rhetoric of vignette. After many understatements, too many, the reader begins to believe that he is reading a Hemingway imitator, like the accomplished John O'Hara, rather than the master himself. Hemingway's notorious fault is the monotony of repetition, which becomes a dulling litany in a somewhat less accomplished imitator like Nelson Algren, and sometimes seems self-parody when we must confront it in Hemingway. Nothing is got for nothing, and a great style generates defenses in us, particularly when it sets the style of an age, as the Byronic Hemingway did. As with Byron, the color and variety of the artist's life becomes something of a veil between the work and our aesthetic apprehension of it. Hemingway's career included four marriages (and three divorces); service as an ambulance driver for the Italians in World War I (with an honorable wound); activity as a war correspondent in the Greek-Turkish War (1922), the Spanish Civil War (1937-39), the Chinese-Japanese War (1941) and the War against Hitler in Europe (1944-45). Add big-game hunting and fishing, safaris, expatriation in France and Cuba, bullfighting, the Nobel prize, and ultimate suicide in Idaho, and you have an absurdly implausible life, apparently lived in imitation of Hemingway's own fiction. The final effect of the work and the life together is not less than mythological, as it was with Byron and with Whitman and with Oscar Wilde. Hemingway now is myth, and so is permanent as an image of American heroism, or perhaps more ruefully the American illusion of heroism. The best of Hemingway's work, the stories and The Sun Also Rises, are also a permanent part of the American mythology. Faulkner, Stevens, Frost, perhaps Eliot, and Hart Crane were stronger writers than Hemingway, but he alone in this American century has achieved the enduring status of myth. IV Fiedler finds a touch of Poe in this, but Hemingway seems to me far healthier. Death, to Poe, is after all less a metaphor for sexual fulfillment than it is an improvement over mere coition, since Poe longs for a union in essence and not just in act. (The full version of A Farewell to Arms, Modern Critical Interpretations can be found at Questia's Online Libary by clicking here and searching for A Farewell to Arms). Any feminist critic who resents that too-lovely Hemingwayesque ending, in which Frederic Henry gets to walk away in the rain while poor Catherine takes the death for both of them, has my sympathy, if only because this sentimentality that mars the aesthetic effect is certainly the mask for a male resentment and fear of women. Hemingway's symbolic rain is read by Louis L. Martz as the inevitable trope for pity, and by Malcolm Cowley as a conscious symbol for disaster. A darker interpretation might associate it with Whitman's very American confounding of night, death, the mother, and the sea, a fourfold mingling that Whitman bequeathed to Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, and Hart Crane, among many others. The death of the beloved woman in Hemingway is part of that tropological cosmos, in which the moist element dominates because death the mother is the true image of desire. For Hemingway, the rain replaces the sea, and is as much the image of longing as the sea is in Whitman or Hart Crane. Robert Penn Warren, defending a higher estimate of A Farewell to Arms than I can achieve, interprets the death of Catherine as the discovery that "the attempt to find a substitute for universal meaning in the limited meaning of the personal relationship is doomed to failure." Such a reading, though distinguished, seems to me to belong more to the literary cosmos of T. S. Eliot than to that of Hemingway. Whatever nostalgia for transcendental verities Hemingway may have possessed, his best fiction invests its energies in the representation of personal relationships, and hardly with the tendentious design of exposing their inevitable inadequacies. If your personal religion quests for the matador as messiah, then you are likely to seek in personal relationships something of the same values enshrined in the ritual of bull and bullfighter: courage, dignity, the aesthetic exaltation of the moment, and an all but suicidal intensity of being—the sense of life gathered to a crowded perception and graciously open to the suddenness of extinction. That is a vivid but an unlikely scenario for an erotic association, at least for any that might endure beyond a few weeks. Wyndham Lewis categorized Hemingway by citing Walter Pater on Prosper Merimée: "There is the formula . . . the enthusiastic amateur of rude, crude, naked force in men and women.... Painfully distinct in outline, inevitable to sight, unrelieved, there they stand." Around them, Pater added, what Merimée gave you was "neither more nor less than empty space." I believe that Pater would have found more than that in Hemingway's formula, more in the men and women, and something other than empty space in their ambiance. Perhaps by way of Joseph Conrad's influence upon him, Hemingway had absorbed part at least of what is most meaningful in Pater's aesthetic impressionism. Hemingway's women and men know, with Pater, that we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Our one chance is to pack that interval with the multiplied fruit of consciousness, with the solipsistic truths of perception and sensation. What survives time's ravages in A Farewell to Arms is precisely Hemingway's textually embodied knowledge that art alone apprehends the moments of perception and sensation, and so bestows upon them their privileged status. Consider the opening paragraph of chapter 16: That night a bat flew into the room through the open door that led onto the balcony and through which we watched the night over the roofs of the town. It was dark in our room except for the small light of the night over the town and the bat was not frightened but hunted in the room as though he had been outside. We lay and watched him and I do not think he saw us because we lay so still. After he went out we saw a searchlight come on and watched the beam move across the sky and then go off and it was dark again. A breeze came in the night and we heard the men of the anti-aircraft gun on the next roof talking. It was cool and they were putting on their capes. I worried in the night about some one coming up but Catherine said they were all asleep. Once in the night we went to sleep and when I woke she was not there but I heard her coming along the hall and the door opened and she came back to the bed and said it was all right she had been downstairs and they were all asleep. She had been outside Miss Van Campen's door and heard her breathing in her sleep. She brought crackers and we ate them and drank some vermouth. We were very hungry but she said that would all have to be gotten out of me in the morning. I went to sleep again in the morning when it was light and when I was awake I found she was gone again. She came in looking fresh and lovely and sat on the bed and the sun rose while I had the thermometer in my mouth and we smelled the dew on the roofs and then the coffee of the men at the gun on the next roof. The flight of the bat, the movement of the searchlight's beam and of the breeze, the overtones of the antiaircraft gunners blend into the light of the morning, to form a composite epiphany of what it is that Frederic Henry has lost when he finally walks back to the hotel in the rain. Can we define that loss? As befits the aesthetic impressionism of Pater, Conrad, Stephen Crane, and Hemingway, it is in the first place a loss of vividness and intensity in the world as experienced by the senses. In the aura of his love for Catherine, Frederic Henry knows the fullness of "It was dark" and "It was cool," and the smell of the dew on the roofs, and the aroma of the coffee being enjoyed by the anti-aircraft gunners. We are reminded that Pater's crucial literary ancestors were the unacknowledged Ruskin and the hedonistic visionary Keats, the Keats of the "Ode on Melancholy." Hemingway too, particularly in A Farewell to Arms, is an heir of Keats, with the poet's passion for sensuous immediacy, in all of its ultimate implications. Is not Catherine Barkley a belated and beautiful version of the goddess Melancholy, incarnating Keats's "Beauty that must die"? (The full version of A Farewell to Arms, Modern Critical Interpretations can be found at Questia's Online Libary by clicking here and searching for A Farewell to Arms).
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The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, By Robert M. Baird, Stuart E. Rosenbaum get the full version of this research at Questia Online Library by clicking here Introduction
Sometimes, however, the judgment that
comparable integrity moves activists on both sides seems confounded
by the facts. When Michael Griffin, an anti-abortion activist,
allegedly shot and killed Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider, at a
clinic in Pensacola, Florida, on March 17, 1993, one could only
wonder what acts of violence might be next on the activists' agenda,
and what kind of moral or religious integrity could endorse killing
to achieve its ends. Nevertheless, Michael Griffin, according to
news reports, vowed to provide his own legal defense and to make the
Bible its primary source. However much one might be baffled by
Michael Griffin, the man himself apparently felt morally comfortable
with his action. Furthermore, public statements offered by those
commenting on behalf of Operation Rescue and Rescue America, while
regretting Griffin's action, did not neglect to mention the millions
of babies abortion providers like Gunn kill every year in America.
They did not say Griffin was justified in killing Gunn, but they
obviously thought Griffin's action was no worse morally than Gunn's
regular abortion of living fetuses. Was Griffin morally justified in
killing David Gunn? Was Gunn even more disreputable than Griffin
because he regularly and without compunction dispatched living
fetuses (what antiabortion advocates call innocent babies)? Was Gunn
so blind, morally speaking, that killing him was the only
responsible recourse? Or, was Griffin's idea of moral and religious
integrity just badly misguided? The deep perplexity many people feel
about these and related questions motivates this collection of
essays. An interesting analogue of Atwood's anti-choice society appears in contemporary Communist China. Chinese society is also antichoice, but instead of requiring women to reproduce as much as possible the Chinese require women to reproduce no more than once. The one-child mandate is rigidly enforced, and women who become pregnant a second time face mandatory abortion. Most women in contemporary Western societies likely find Communist Chinese society no more desirable than Atwood's imaginary one. Most women want control over their own reproductive powers, control systematically denied in both of these anti-choice alternative societies. "Pro-choice" individual might naturally find Atwood's imaginary society more objectionable than Communist China, while "pro-life" individuals might find Communist China more objectionable than Atwood's. What those alternative societies have in common is the requirement that women accept "external" control of their reproductive powers. Different sorts of rationale seem to authorize external control of women's reproductive powers. A biblical rationale for an anti-choice position differs from a population control rationale for the same position. Michael Griffin, with his staunch biblical perspectives, would certainly not be tolerant of the Chinese one-child-per-family policy mandating abortion. Likewise, Communist Chinese planners would find Griffin's biblical perspective, at best, oddly unrealistic. Most women in contemporary Western societies would find both Griffin's and the Communist Chinese positions to be unacceptably paternalistic. Where on this confusing spectrum of alternatives is the view richest in moral integrity, the wisest view, the view most worthy of allegiance to be found? Again, these are the questions that motivate this collection of essays. This revised selection of essays and opinions about abortion reflects the fact that the issue is now more divisive than it was four years ago when we first focused our attention on the topic of abortion. The social and political landscape now looks significantly different. We have tried in this revised volume to take into account the new look of that landscape. We have also segmented the collection into clusters of essays, each addressing a distinctively problematic aspect of the abortion issue. An ideally "balanced" selection of essays on this topic, along with an ideally "balanced" introduction, is probably an impossible ideal. Anyone picking up a volume like this one will inevitably look to see how their particular predispositions are handled by the editors and authors. We, the editors, do have our moral, political, religious, and professional perspectives. We confess that those perspectives as a whole have guided our choices about what to keep from the original edition and what to add to create the present volume. In our opinion the selections included here are incisive and informative, and anyone who hopes to think coherently about the topic of abortion needs to become familiar with them. The first cluster of essays presents a series of "snapshots." Richard Selzer focuses on the horror of the killing in abortions; Ellen Messer and Kathryn E. May, followed by Anna Quindlen, call attention to the horrors of fife without safe, legal abortion. The second cluster concerns the
constitutional issue of abortion. Whether or not Roe v. Wade was a
legitimate use of judicial authority is a question judges and
scholars have debated extensively. We offer here edited versions of
each of the three major Supreme Court decisions dealing with
abortion: Roe v. Wade, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, and
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. The
remaining selections mark out a route into the question whether or
not the Roe decision was constitutionally legitimate. Robert H.
Bork's brief essay deriding the "political activism" he sees in the
Casey decision is set alongside Melvin Wulf's response, and Ronald
Dworkin's applause for the decision.
Horror, like bacteria, is everywhere. It blankets the earth, endlessly lapping to find that one unguarded entryway. As though narcotized, we walk beneath, upon, through it. Carelessly we touch the familiar infected linen, eat from the universal dish; we disdain isolation. We are like the newborn that carry immunity from their mothers' wombs. Exteriorized, we are wrapped in impermeable membranes that cannot be seen. Then one day, the defense is gone. And we awaken to horror. In our city, garbage is collected early in the morning. Sometimes the bang of the cans and the grind of the truck awaken us before our time. We are resentful, mutter into our pillows, then go back to sleep. On the morning of August 6, 1975, the people of 73rd Street near Woodside Avenue do just that. When at last they rise from their beds, dress, eat breakfast and leave their houses for work, they have forgotten, if they had ever known, that the garbage truck had passed earlier that morning. The event has slipped into unmemory, like a dream. They close their doors and descend to
the pavement. It is midsummer. You measure the climate, decide how
you feel in relation to the heat and the humidity. You walk toward
the bus stop. Others, your neighbors, are waiting there. It is all
so familiar. All at once you step on something soft. You feel it
with your foot. Even through your shoe you have the sense of
something unusual something marked by a special "give." It is a
foreignness upon the pavement. Instinct puts your foot away in an
awkward little movement. You look down, and you see . . . a tiny
naked body, its arms and legs flung apart, its head thrown back, its
mouth agape, its face serious. A bird, you think, fallen from its
nest. But there is no nest here on 73rd Street, no bird so big. It
is rubber, then. A model, a . . . joke. Yes, that's it, a joke. And
you bend to see. Because you must. And it is no joke. Such a gray
softness can be but one thing. It is a baby, and dead. You cover
your mouth, your eyes. You are fixed. Horror has found its chink and
crawled in, and you will never be the same as you were. Years later
you will step from a sidewalk to a lawn, and you will start at its
softness, and think of that upon which you have just trod. Now the street is filling with people. There are police. They know what to do. They rope off the area, then stand guard over the enclosed space. They are controlled methodical, these young policemen. Servants, they do not reveal themselves to their public master, it would not be seemly. Yet I do see their pallor and the sweat that breaks upon the face of one, the way another bites the fining of his cheek and holds it thus. Ambulance attendants scoop up the bodies. They scan the street; none must be overlooked. What they place upon the fitter amounts to little more than a dozen pounds of human flesh. They raise the fitter, and slide it home inside the ambulance, and they drive away. You and your neighbors stand about in the street which is become for you a battlefield from which the newly slain have at last been bagged and tagged and dragged away. But what shrapnel is this? By what explosion flung, these fragments that sink into the brain and fester there? Whatever smell there is in this place becomes for you the stench of death. The people of 73rd Street do not then speak to each other. It is too soon for outrage, too late for blindness. It is the time of unresisted horror. Later, at the police station, the
investigation is brisk, conclusive. It is the hospital director
speaking: ". . . fetuses accidentally got mixed up with the hospital
rubbish . . . were picked up at approximately eight fifteen A.M. by
a sanitation truck. Somehow, the plastic lab bag, labeled HAZARDOUS
MATERIAL, fell off the back of the truck and broke open. No, it is
not known how the fetuses got in the orange plastic NM labeled
HAZARDOUS MATERIAL. It is a freak accident." The hospital director
wants you to know that it is not an everyday occurrence. Once in a
lifetime, he says. But you have seen it, and what are his words to
you now? He grows affable, familiar, tells you that, by mistake, the fetuses got mixed up with the other debris. (Yes, he says other; he says debris.) He has spent the entire day, he says, trying to figure out how it happened. He wants you to know that. Somehow it matters to him. He goes on: Aborted fetuses that weigh one pound or
less are incinerated. Those weighing over one pound are buried at a
city cemetery. He says this. Now you see. It is orderly. It is
sensible. The world is not mad. This is still a civilized society. And you know, too, that the Street of the Dead Fetuses will be wherever you go. You are part of its history now, its legend. It has laid claim upon you so that you cannot entirely leave it--not ever. I am a surgeon. I do not shrink from the particularities of sick flesh. Escaping blood, all the outpourings of disease--phlegm, pus, vomitus, even those occult meaty tumors that terrify--I see as blood, disease, phlegm, and so on. I touch them to destroy them. But I do not make symbols of them. I have seen, and I am used to seeing. Yet there are paths within the body that I have not taken, penetralia where I do not go. Nor is it lack of technique, limitation of knowledge that forbids me these ways. It is the western wing of the fourth floor of a great university hospital. An abortion is about to take place. I am present because I asked to be present. I wanted to see what I had never seen. The patient is Jamaican. She lies on the table submissively, and now and then she smiles at one of the nurses as though acknowledging a secret. A nurse draws down the sheet, lays bare
the abdomen. The belly mounds gently in the twenty-fourth week of
pregnancy. The chief surgeon paints it with a sponge soaked in red
antiseptic. He does this three times, each time a fresh sponge. He
covers the area with a sterile sheet, an aperture in its center. He
is a kindly man who teaches as he works, who pauses to reassure the
woman. A little pinprick, he says to the woman. He inserts the point of a tiny needle at the midline of the lower portion of her abdomen, on the downslope. He infiltrates local anesthetic into the skin, where it forms a small white bubble. The woman grimaces. That is all you will feel, the doctor says. Except for a little pressure. But no more pain. She smiles again. She seems to relax. She settles comfortably on the table. The worst is over. The doctor selects a three-and-one-half-inch needle bearing a central stylet. He places the point at the site of the previous injection. He aims it straight up and down, perpendicular. Next he takes hold of her abdomen with his left hand, palming the womb, steadying it. He thrusts with his right hand. The needle sinks into the abdominal wall. Oh, says the woman quietly. Another thrust and he has speared the uterus. We are in, he says. He has felt the muscular wall of the
organ gripping the shaft of his needle. A further slight pressure on
the needle advances it a bit more. He takes his left hand from the
woman's abdomen. He retracts the filament of the stylet from the
barrel of the needle. A small geyser of pale yellow fluid erupts.
We are in the right place, says the doctor. Are you feeling any pain? he asks. She smiles, shakes her head. She gazes at the ceiling. In the room we are six: two physicians, two nurses, the patient, and me. The participants are busy, very attentive. I am not at all busy--but I am no less attentive. I want to see. I see something! It is unexpected, utterly unexpected, like a disturbance in the earth, a tumultuous jarring. I see a movement--a small one. But I have seen it. And then I see it again. And now I see that it is the hub of the needle in the woman's belly that has jerked. First to one side. Then to the other side. Once more it wobbles, is tugged, like a fishing fine nibbled by a sunfish. Again! And I know! It is the fetus that worries thus. It is the fetus struggling against the needle. Struggling? How can that be? I think: that cannot be. I think: the fetus feels no pain, cannot feel fear, has no motivation. It is merely reflex. I point to the needle. It is a reflex, says the doctor. By the end of the fifth month, the fetus weighs about one pound, is about twelve inches long. Hair is on the head. There are eyebrows, eyelashes. Pale pink nipples show on the chest. Nails are present, at the fingertips, at the toes. At the beginning of the sixth month, the fetus can cry, can suck, can make a fist. He kicks, he punches. The mother can feel this, can see this. His eyelids, until now closed, can open. He may look up, down, sideways. His grip is very strong. He could support his weight by holding with one hand. A reflex, the doctor says. I hear him. But I saw something in that mass of cells understand that it must bob and butt. And I see it again! I have an impulse to shove to the table-it is just a step--seize that needle, pull it out. We are not six, I think. We are seven. Something strangles there. An effort, its effort, binds me to it. I do not shove to the table. I take no little step. It would be . . . well, madness. Everyone here wants the needle where it is. Six do. No, five do. I close my eyes. I see inside of the
uterus. It is bathed in ruby gloom. I see the creature curled upon
itself. Its knees are flexed. Its head is bent upon its chest. It is
in fluid and gently rocks to the rhythm of the distant heartbeat. Its place is entered by something. It is sudden. A point coming. A needle! A spike of daylight pierces the chamber. Now the light is extinguished. The needle comes closer in the pool. The point grazes the thigh, and I stir. Perhaps I wake from dozing. The fight is there again. I twist and straighten. My arms and legs push. My hand finds the shaft--grabs! I grab. I bend the needle this way and that. The point probes, touches on my belly. My mouth opens. Could I cry out? All is a commotion and a churning. There is a presence in the pool. An activity! The pool colors, reddens, darkens. I open my eyes to see the doctor feeding a small plastic tube through the barrel of the needle into the uterus. Drops of pink fluid overrun the rim and spill onto the sheet. He withdraws the needle from around the plastic tubing. Now only the little tube protrudes from the woman's body. A nurse hands the physician a syringe loaded with a colorless liquid. He attaches it to the end of the tubing and injects it. Prostaglandin, he says. Ah well, prostaglandin--a substance found normally in the body. When given in concentrated dosage, it throws the uterus into vigorous contraction. In eight to twelve hours, the woman will expel the fetus. The doctor detaches the syringe but does not remove the tubing. In case we must do it over, he says. He takes away the sheet. He places gauze pads over the tubing. Over all this he applies adhesive tape. I know. We cannot feed the great numbers. There is no more room. I know, I know. It is a woman's right to refuse the risk, to decline the pain of childbirth. And an unwanted child is a very great burden. An unwanted child is a burden to himself. I know. And yet . . . there is the flick of that needle. I saw it. I saw . . . I felt-in that room, a pace away, life prodded, life fending off. I saw fife avulsed * -swept by flood, blackening--then out. "There," says the doctor. "It's all over. It wasn't too bad, was it?" he says to the woman. She smiles. It is all over. Oh, yes. And who would care to imagine that from a moist and dark commencement six months before there would ripen the cluster and globule, the sprout and pouch of man? And who would care to imagine that trapped within the laked pearl and a dowry of yoke would fie the earliest stuff of dream and memory? It is a persona carried here as well as
a person, I think. I think it is a signed piece, engraved with a
hieroglyph of human genes. Later, in the corridor, the doctor explains that the law does not permit abortion beyond the twenty-fourth week. That is when the fetus may be viable, he says. We stand together for a moment, and he tells of an abortion in which the fetus cried after it was passed. What did you do? I ask him. There was nothing to do but let it five,
he says. It did very well, he says. A case of mistaken dates. 2 The Bad Old Days CAROLINE For a long time I think I drank to avoid the feelings. And it wasn't until quite recently, five years ago, after I had stopped drinking for a while, that I went through a whole period of really reliving the terror of this experience. It was in the summer, between my junior and senior years of college. I was going to college in Cleveland, living there for the summer. And somehow I just knew I was pregnant. It was the first and only time that I was ever sexually intimate with this man. He was a young artist whom I had been seeing for some time. I wasn't particularly physically attracted to him, but he was pressing me, and I just finally got to the point where I couldn't struggle with it anymore. So I gave in. Somehow I immediately had the sense that I was pregnant. I really didn't know what to do. I knew, though, that having a baby would ruin my whole life. The man involved felt responsible and wanted to marry me, but I thought it was a very weak reason for getting married. I spent a lot of time just seeing my life in a shambles. Things at that time in Cleveland were very tight. There had been several incidents reported in the paper. An abortion ring had been broken up. It was 1963, and when I followed up on the few leads there were, it seemed that it was absolutely the worst possible time in about five years to have an abortion in Cleveland. In the meantime the weeks were going by and I was more pregnant all the time and it was really getting to the point that if I didn't do something soon it was going to be too late. Being raised a good Catholic girl, abortion was not a thing that I was very comfortable thinking about. But I didn't feel that I had any other option. I was getting pretty desperate by this time because I was nine weeks pregnant. I finally located an abortionist in Youngstown, Ohio. This so-called doctor was a bookie and he was an abortionist. He was an elderly man in a ramshackle little house in a disreputable, shabby part of Youngstown. It in no way fit my image of a doctor's house and office. I think there was some actual gambling going on while we were waiting. He had a room with a chair and stirrups set up. The money, one hundred dollars, had to be in cash, in certain denominations, and it had to be given to him in an envelope. He checked it very thoroughly to make sure it wasn't marked. He explained he was doing a saline injection and that there should be some cramping and the abortion would happen within twenty-four hours. Nothing happened. I don't know how many days passed; I did a lot to block out this experience. But I do know that when I finally aborted I was alone in my room in the dormitory at school. I went through at least twelve hours of labor alone in my room. It was more terrible than I ever imagined, partly because I was alone, partly because I was scared. I was timing the contractions and I just didn't think I could bear anymore. I didn't feel I could cry out for help, and I just remember thinking, "I'm going to get through this." I remember noticing that the contractions were getting more and more frequent, five minutes, then four minutes, then three minutes, and then there was a lot of blood and there was a fetus. I was really beside myself, and terrified. I didn't know what to do. There was more blood than I ever imagined. I used one of these metal waste baskets we had in the dorm rooms and I remember it being filled up. I think I had gone through a whole night and it was now midmorning, and there weren't many people around. I managed to get to the bathroom, very surreptitiously. I was terrified of someone discovering me, of being arrested. I remember taking this fetus and not knowing what else to do but flush it down the toilet. And I was terrified that it wasn't going to go down, that they'd have to call a plumber and then there would be this hunt to find out who did this terrible thing in the dorm, and I'd be tracked down and prosecuted. Somehow I thought then it would be over, but it wasn't over. It went on and on. I kept hemorrhaging and it just wouldn't stop. I had become pregnant in August, and the abortion was in early November. I remember going home for Thanksgiving and my mother kept saying, "I think you're anemic." And I remember being very drained and wiped out. Early in December, I became friendly with a very gentle, brilliant but quite crazy college student who had been hospitalized while he was suicidal. I found myself confiding in him that I'd had this abortion, and was still bleeding. He talked to the rector of the Episcopal Church in Shaker Heights, and the rector, to whom I shall be forever grateful, called one of the doctors in his congregation. He was so appalled at my condition that he said, "Do you rearm you could have killed yourself?" He admitted me to the hospital. After they built me up they did a D & C. I wasn't yet twenty-one, so the doctor called and spoke to my mother and said there was nothing to be concerned about; the D & C was just a routine procedure and would help. He said that I was quite anemic. I must have been in the hospital five days. The Episcopal Church paid my hospital bill and the doctor never charged. I was very thankful, and totally done in at the end of that ordeal. I didn't feel guilty. I was determined
once I made the decision to go through with it, and I did.
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The Affirmative Action Debate By George E. Curry, Addison Wesley get the full version of this research at Questia Online Library by clicking here INTRODUCTION
Women, like African-Americans and other racial minorities, were treated as less than full citizens throughout much of American history, though to a different degree. As Justice William J. Brennan observed, neither slaves nor women could hold office, serve on juries, or bring suit in their own names, and married women traditionally were denied the legal capacity to hold or convey property or to serve as legal guardians of their own children. Over the past three decades, the United States has struggled valiantly to overcome that sordid legacy as it moves toward what Manning Marable, in the opening selection in this book, calls "the ultimate elimination of race and gender inequality, the uprooting of prejudice and discrimination, and the realization of a truly democratic nation." Out of that struggle came the policy of affirmative action. Although the term "affirmative action" is relatively new, the concept is not. The Civil Rights Commission defines the contemporary term as encompassing any measure, beyond simple termination of a discriminatory practice, which permits the consideration of race, national origin, sex, or disability, along with other criteria, and which is adopted to provide opportunities to a class of qualified individuals who have either historically or actually been denied those opportunities, and to prevent the recurrence of discrimination in the future. But well over a century ago, at the beginning of the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War, the Freedman's Bureau was established to assist newly freed slaves, providing for AfricanAmericans to receive clothing, land, and education. More recently, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to avert a march on Washington planned by A. Philip Randolph, president of the powerful Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, signed an executive order in 1941 forbidding federal contractors from discriminating. However, the pernicious problem of
racism still existed two decades later in 1961 when John F. Kennedy,
observing that the nation's top defense contractors employed few
blacks, signed Executive Order 10925. It invoked the term
"affirmative action" for the first time and established the
Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. President Lyndon B.
Johnson followed up in 1965 with Executive Order 11246, which
required federal contractors to take affirmative action to provide
equal opportunity without regard to a person's race, religion, or
national origin. Three years later, women were added to the
protected groups. In 1969, under President Richard M. Nixon, "goals
and timetables" were added as yet another component of affirmative
action. Now, a quarter of a century later, affirmative action is more controversial than ever. It has been credited by supporters with expanding the black middle class and lowering barriers to equal opportunity, while its critics suggest that this tool intended to eliminate discrimination is itself discriminatory. The question has developed into a major wedge issue in the 1996 presidential election. Affirmative action faces the prospect of being sharply curtailed, if not eliminated, by Congress and by voters in California, our largest state. This collection of twenty-nine essays, most of them published here for the first time, is not likely to end this emotionladen debate. Nor would I want it to do so. Rather, my goal from the outset has been to assemble some of the sharpest minds in the country, provide a forum for them to express their personal views on affirmative action, and hope that in the process we would expand our knowledge of the issue and develop a deeper tolerance for views with which we fervently disagree. CHAPTER ONE Affirmative action and other race-conscious remedies were created to erase the differences in rights and opportunities defined by that color line. In this chapter, four essays trace how affirmative action has evolved in the twentieth century. While all these authors favor affirmative action, their essays raise important questions: What alternatives to affirmative action did our country's political leaders see? Mat were their aims? How much can rules that prohibit discrimination accomplish? Do affirmative action programs go far enough? In context, we see that the debate over affirmative action is not a simple yes or no issue. First, Manning Marable, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University and author of Beyond Black and White: Transforming AfricanAmerican Politics (1995), contrasts the efforts to prohibit discrimination in the 1940s and the triumphs of the civil rights era with the current political atmosphere. He also places affirmative action in the context of a long debate within the African-American community over the value of integration and inclusion. More than sixty years after Du Bois wrote about the color line, President Lyndon B. Johnson, a southerner, observed that it remained clearly visible: "In far too many ways American Negroes have been another nation: deprived of freedom, crippled by hatred, the doors of opportunity closed to hope." Reprinted here is Johnson's commencement address at Howard University in 1965, which set both the tone and the rationale for affirmative action in the 1960s. The Johnson administration made affirmative action national policy to help open the doors of hope for racial and ethnic minorities (later expanded to include women and other disadvantaged groups). Appointed in 1969 as the nation's first assistant secretary of labor for employment standards, Arthur A. Fletcher has often been referred to as "the Father of Affirmative Action." He is the author of the Philadelphia Plan to combat racism in the construction industry. His essay is a behind-the-scenes account of the earliest efforts to institutionalize affirmative action. Despite the best intentions, however, the policy quickly became a political orphan, never clearly codified in federal statutes and owing its shaky existence to the generosity of the executive branch. The chapter concludes with an essay by
Dr. Cornel West, whom Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of Harvard University,
calls "the preeminent African-American intellectual of our
generation." Looking at affirmative action in the context of race
relations in the United States, he is surprised that the furor over
it is so intense. Affirmative action, he says, is a "weak response"
to the "legacy of white supremacy." It is interesting to consider
what other corrective measures our society might have tried.
Instead of pleasant-sounding but simplistic defenses of "affirmative action as it is," we need to do some hard thinking about the reasons why several significant constituencies that have greatly benefited from affirmative action have done relatively little to defend it. We need to recognize the critical theoretical and strategic differences that separate liberals and progressives on how to achieve a nonracist society. And we urgently need to reframe the context of the political debate, taking the initiative away from the Right. The triumph of "Newtonian Republicanism" is not a temporary aberration: it is the culmination of a thirty-year ideological and political war against the logic of the reforms of the 1960s. Advocates of affirmative action, civil rights, and other policies reflecting left-of-center political values must recognize how and why the context for progressive reform has fundamentally changed. The first difficulty in developing a more effective progressive model for affirmative action goes back to the concept's complex definition, history, and political evolution. "Affirmative action" per se was never a law, or even a coherently developed set of governmental policies designed to attack institutional racism and societal discrimination. It was instead a series of presidential executive orders, civil rights laws, and governmental programs regarding the awarding of federal contracts and licenses, as well as the enforcement of fair employment practices, with the goal of uprooting the practices of bigotry. At its origins, it was designed to provide some degree of compensatory justice to the victims of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and institutional racism. This was at the heart of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which stated that "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens. . . ." The fundamental idea of taking the proactive steps necessary to dismantle prejudice has been around for more than a century. During the Great Depression, the role of the federal government in protecting the equal rights of black Americans was expanded again through the direct militancy and agitation of black people. In 1941, socialist and trade union leader A. Philip Randolph mobilized thousands of black workers to participate in the "Negro March on Washington Movement," calling upon the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt to carry out a series of reforms favorable to civil rights. To halt this mobilization, Roosevelt agreed to sign Executive Order 8802, which outlawed segregationist hiring policies by defense-related industries that held federal contracts. This executive order not only greatly increased the number of African-Americans who were employed in wartime industries, but expanded the political idea that government could not take a passive role in the dismantling of institutional racism. This position was reaffirmed in 1953 by
President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Government Contract
Compliance, which urged the Bureau of Employment Security"to act
positively and affirmatively to implement the policy of
nondiscrimination in its functions of placement counseling,
occupational analysis and industrial services, labor market
information, and community participation in employment services."
Thus, despite the fact that the actual phrase "affirmative action"
was not used by a chief executive until President John F. Kennedy's
Executive Order 10925 in 1961, the fundamental idea of taking the
proactive steps necessary to dismantle prejudice has been around for
more than a century. PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCES AMONG
CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS The alternative to the Du Boisian position was expressed by integrationist leaders and intellectuals like Walter White, Roy Wilkins, Baynard Rustin, and Kenneth B. Clark. They too fought to destroy Jim Crow, but their cultural philosophy for the Negro rested on inclusion rather than pluralism. They deeply believed that the long-term existence of separate, allblack institutions was counterproductive to the goal of a "color-blind" society, in which racial categories would become socially insignificant or even irrelevant to the relations of power. Rustin, for instance, personally looked forward to the day when Harlem would cease to exist as a segregated, identifiably black neighborhood. Blacks should be assimilated or culturally incorporated into the mainstream. My central criticism of the desegregationist strategy of the inclusionists is that they consistently confused "culture" with "race," underestimating the importance of fostering black cultural identity as an essential component of the critique of white supremacy. The existence of separate black institutions or a self-defined, all-black community was not necessarily an impediment to interracial cooperation and multicultural dialogue. Despite the differences between Du Boisian progressives and inclusionist liberals, both desegregationist positions from the 1930s onward were expressed by the organizations and leadership of the civil rights movement. These divisions were usually obscured by a common language of reform and a common social vision that embraced color blindness as an ultimate goal. For example, both positions are reflected in the main thrust of the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which declared that workplace discrimination should be outlawed on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." However, the inclusionist orientation of Wilkins, Rustin, and company is also apparent in the act's assertion that it should not be interpreted as requiring employers "to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group." Five years later, after Richard M. Nixon's narrow victory for the presidency, it was the Republicans' turn to interpret and implement civil rights policy. The strategy of Nixon had a profound impact on the political culture of the United States, which continues to have direct consequences within the debates about affirmative action today. Through the Counterintelligence Program of the FBI, the Nixon administration vigorously suppressed the radical wing of the black movement. Second, it appealed to the racial anxieties and grievances of George Wallace voters, recruiting segregationists like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond into the ranks of the Republican Party. On affirmative action and issues of equal opportunity, however, Nixon's goal was to utilize a liberal reform for conservative objectives: the expansion of the African-American middle class, which might benefit the Republican Party. Under Nixon in 1969, the federal government authorized what became known as the Philadelphia Plan, a program requiring federal contractors to set specific goals for minority hiring. As a result, the portion of racial minorities in the construction industry increased from 1% to 12%. The Nixon administration supported provisions for minority set-asides to promote black and Hispanic entrepreneurship, and it placed Federal Reserve funds in black-owned banks. Nixon himself publicly praised the concept of "Black Power," carefully interpreting it as "black capitalism." It was under the moderate-conservative
aegis of the Nixon and Ford administrations of 1969-77 that the set
of policies which we identify with "affirmative action" was
implemented nationally in both the public and the private sectors.
Even after the 1978 Bakke decision, in which the Supreme Court
overturned the admissions policy of the University of California at
Davis which had set aside sixteen out of one hundred medical school
openings for racial minorities, the political impetus for racial
reform was not destroyed. What did occur, even before the triumph of
reaction under Reagan in the early 1980s, was that political
conservatives deliberately usurped the "colorblind" discourse of
many liberals from the desegregation movement. As conservatives retreated from the Nixonian strategy of utilizing affirmative action tools to achieve conservative political goals, they began to appeal to the latent racist sentiments within the white population. They cultivated the racist mythology that affirmative action was nothing less than a rigid system of inflexible quotas which rewarded the incompetent and the unqualified, who happened to be nonwhite, at the expense of hardworking, taxpaying Americans, who happened to be white. White conservatives were able to define "merit" in a manner that would reinforce white male privilege, but in an inverted language that would make the real victims of discrimination appear to be the racists. It was, in retrospect, a brilliant political maneuver. And the liberals were at a loss in fighting back effectively precisely because they lacked a consensus internally about the means and goals for achieving genuine equality. Traditional liberals like Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, who favored an inclusionist, colorblind ideology of reform, often ended up inside the camp of racial reactionaries, who cynically learned to manipulate the discourse of fairness. SUPPORT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
AT DIFFERENT LEVELS According to a USA Today/ CNN/Gallup poll ( March 1719, 1995), when asked, "Do you favor or oppose affirmative action programs?" 53% of whites polled expressed support, compared to only 36% opposed. Not surprisingly, AfricanAmericans expressed much stronger support, with 72% in favor of affirmative action programs and only 21% against. Despite widespread rhetoric that the vast majority of white males have supposedly lost jobs and opportunities due to affirmative action policies, the poll indicated that only 15% of all white males believe that "they've lost a job because of affirmative action policies." However, there is severe erosion of white support for affirmative action when one focuses more narrowly on specific steps or remedies for addressing discrimination. For example, the USA Today/ CNN/Gallup poll indicates that only 30% of whites favor the establishment of gender and racial "quotas" in businesses, with 68% opposed. In contrast, two-thirds of all African-Americans expressed support for quotas in business employment, with only 30% opposed. When asked whether quotas should be created "that require schools to admit a certain number of minorities and women," 61% of the whites were opposed, with 35% in favor. Nearly two-thirds of all whites would also reject policies that "require private businesses to set up specific goals and timetables for hiring women and minorities if there were not government programs that included hiring quotas," whereas two-thirds of all African-Americans strongly favor affirmative action programs with goals and timetables for private businesses. On issues of implementing government-supported initiatives for social equality, most black and white Americans still live in two distinct racial universes. It is not surprising that "angry white
men" form the core of those who are against affirmative action. What
is striking, however, is the general orientation of white women on
this issue. White women have been overwhelmingly the primary
beneficiaries of affirmative action: millions have gained access to
educational and employment opportunities through the implementation
and enforcement of such policies. But most of them clearly do not
share the political perspectives of AfricanAmericans and Hispanics
on this issue, nor do they perceive their own principal interests to
be at risk if affirmative action programs are abandoned by the
federal government or outlawed by the courts. In the same USA Today/
CNN/Gallup poll, only 8% of all white women stated that their
"colleagues at work or school privately questioned" their
qualifications because of affirmative action, compared to 19% of
black women and 28% of black men. Less than one in five white women
polled defined workplace discrimination as a "major problem,"
compared to 41% of blacks and 38% of Latinos. Forty percent of the
white women polled described job discrimination as "not being a
problem" at all. These survey results may help to explain why middle
class-oriented, liberal feminist leaders and constituencies have
been less vocal than African-Americans in the mobilization to defend
affirmative action. A quarter-century of affirmative action programs, goals, and timetables has been clearly effective in transforming the status of white women in the labor force. It is certainly true that white men still dominate the upper ranks of senior management: while constituting 47% of the nation's total workforce, they make up 95% of all senior managerial positions at the rank of vice president or above. However, women of all races now constitute about 40% of the total workforce overall. As of the 1990 census, white women held nearly 40% of all middle management positions. While their median incomes lag behind those of white men, over the past twenty years white women have gained far greater ground in terms of real earnings than black or Hispanic men in the labor force. Black professional women have also gained ground in recent decades, but blacks overall still remain significantly behind white men in median incomes at all levels. In this context, civil rights advocates and traditional defenders of affirmative action must ask themselves whether the majority of white American women actually perceive their material interests to be tied to the outcome of the battle for income equity and affirmative action that most blacks and Latinos, women and men alike, continue to fight. We should also recognize that although all people of color suffer in varying degrees from the stigma of racism and economic disadvantage within American society, they do not have the same material interests or identify themselves with the same politics as the vast majority of African-Americans. For example, here are mean on-the-job earnings, according to the 1990 census: All American adults $15,105 None of these statistics negate the reality of racial domination and discrimination in terms of social relations, access to employment opportunities, or job advancement. But they do tell us part of the reason why no broad coalition of people of color has coalesced behind the political demand for affirmative action. Various groups interpret their interests narrowly and in divergent ways, looking out primarily for themselves rather than addressing the structural inequalities within the fabric of American society as a whole. A DU BOISIAN STRATEGY TOWARD
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Affirmative action was largely responsible for a significant increase in the size of the black middle class; it opened many professional and managerial positions to blacks, Latinos, and women for the first time. But in many other respects, affirmative action can and should be criticized from the Left, not because it was too liberal in its pursuit and implementation of measures to achieve equality, but because it was too conservative. It sought to increase representative numbers of minorities and women within the existing structure and arrangements of power, rather than challenging or redefining the institutions of authority and privilege. As implemented under a series of presidential administrations, liberal and conservative alike, affirmative action was always more concerned with advancing remedies for unequal racial outcomes than with uprooting racism as a system of white power. Rethinking progressive and liberal strategies on affirmative action would require sympathetic whites to acknowledge that much of the anti-affirmative action rhetoric is really a retreat from a meaningful engagement on issues of race, and that the vast majority of Americans who have benefited materially from affirmative action have not been black at all. A Du Boisian strategy toward affirmative action would argue that despite the death of legal segregation a generation ago, we have not yet reached the point where a color-blind society is possible, especially in terms of the actual organization and structure of white power and privilege. Institutional racism is real, and the central focus of affirmative action must deal with the continuing burden of racial inequality and discrimination in American life. There are many ways to measure the powerful reality of contemporary racism. For example, a 1994 study of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management found that African-American federal employees are more than twice as likely to be dismissed as their white counterparts. Blacks are especially likely to be fired at much higher rates than whites in jobs where they constitute a significant share of the labor force: for example, black clerk-typists are 4.7 times more likely to be dismissed than whites, and black custodians 4.1 times more likely to be fired. Discrimination is also rampant in capital markets. Banks continue policies of "redlining," denying loans in neighborhoods that are largely black and Hispanic. In New York City in 1992, for instance, blacks were turned down for mortgage applications by banks, savings and loans, and other financial institutions about twice as often as whites. And even after years of affirmative action programs, blacks and Latinos remain grossly underrepresented in a wide number of professions. As Jesse Jackson observed in a speech
before the National Press Club, while native-born white males make
up only 41% of the U.S. population, they are 80% of all tenured
professors, 92% of the Forbes 400 chief executive officers, and 97%
of all school superintendents. If affirmative action should be criticized, it might be on the grounds that it didn't go far enough in transforming the actual power relations between black and white within our society. More evidence for this is addressed by the sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro in Black Wealth/White Wealth (1995). The authors point out that "the typical black family has eleven cents of wealth for every dollar owned by the typical white family." Even middle-class African-Americans, people who often benefited from affirmative action, are significantly poorer than whites who earn identical incomes. If housing and vehicles owned are included in the definition of "net wealth," the median middle-class African-American family has only $8,300 in total assets, as against $56,000 for the comparable white family. Why are blacks at all income levels much poorer than whites in terms of wealth? African-American families not only inherit much less wealth; they are hit daily by institutional inequality and discrimination. For years, they were denied life insurance policies by white firms. They are still denied home mortgages at twice the rate of similarly qualified white applicants. African-Americans have been less likely to receive government-backed home loans. Given the statistical profile of racial inequality, liberals must reject the temptation to move away from "race-conscious remedies" to "race-neutral" reforms defined by income or class criteria. Affirmative action has always had a distinct and separate function from antipoverty programs. Income and social class inequality affect millions of whites, Asian-Americans, Latinos, and blacks alike, and programs that expand employment, educational access, and social service benefits based on economic criteria alone are absolutely essential. But the impetus for racism is not narrowly economic in origin. Racial prejudice is still a destructive force in the lives of upper middle-class, college-educated African-Americans as well as poor blacks, and programs designed to address the discrimination they feel and experience collectively every day must be grounded in the context of race. However, affirmative action is legitimately related to class questions, but in a different way. A truly integrated workplace, where people of divergent racial backgrounds, languages, and cultural identities learn to interact and respect each other, is an essential precondition for building a broadly pluralistic movement for radical democracy. The expanded implementation of affirmative action, despite its liberal limitations, would assist in creating the social conditions essential for pluralistic coalitions to promote full employment and more progressive social policies. What is required among progressives is not a reflexive, uncritical defense of affirmative action, but a recognition of its contradictory evolution and conceptual limitations as well as its benefits and strengths. We need a thoughtful and innovative approach in challenging discrimination which, like that of Du Bois, reaffirms the centrality of the struggle against racism within the development of affirmative action measures. We must build on the American majority's continued support for affirmative action, linking the general public's commitment to social fairness with creative measures that actually target the real patterns and processes of discrimination that millions of Utinos and blacks experience every day. And we must not be pressured into a false debate to choose between race and class in the development and framing of public policies addressing discrimination. Moving toward the long-term goal of a colorblind society, the deconstruction of racism, does not mean that we become neutral about the continuing significance of race in American life. As the national debate concerning the possible elimination of affirmative action comes to define the 1996 presidential campaign, black and progressive Americans must reevaluate their strategies for reform. In recent years we have tended to rely on elections, the legislative process, and the courts to achieve racial equality. We should remember how the struggle to dismantle Jim Crow segregation was won. We engaged in economic boycotts, civil disobedience, teach-ins, freedom schools, and freedom rides; we formed community-based coalitions and united fronts. There's a direct relationship between our ability to mobilize people in communities to protest and the pressure we can exert on elected officials to protect and enforce civil rights. Voting is absolutely essential, but it
isn't enough. We must channel the profound discontent, the
alienation and anger that currently exist in the black community
toward constructive, progressive forms of political intervention and
resistance. As we fight for affirmative action, let us understand
that we are fighting for a larger ideal: the ultimate elimination of
race and gender inequality, the uprooting of prejudice and
discrimination, and the realization of a truly democratic nation. Our earth is the home of revolution. In every corner of every continent men charged with hope contend with ancient ways in the pursuit of justice. They reach for the newest of weapons to realize the oldest of dreams; that each may walk in freedom and pride, stretching his talents, enjoying the fruits of the earth. Our enemies may occasionally seize the day of change. But it is the banner of our revolution they take. And our own future is linked to this process of swift and turbulent change in many lands in the world. But nothing in any country touches us more profoundly, nothing is more freighted with meaning for our own destiny, than the revolution of the Negro American. In far too many ways American Negroes have been another nation: deprived of freedom, crippled by hatred, the doors of opportunity closed to hope. In our time change has come to this
nation too. The American Negro, acting with impressive restraint,
has peacefully protested and marched, entered the courtrooms and the
seats of government, demanding a justice that has long been denied.
The voice of the Negro was a call to action. But it is a tribute to
America that, once aroused, the courts and the Congress, the
President and most of the people, have been the allies of progress. As majority leader of the United States Senate, I helped to guide two of these bills through the Senate. As your President, I was proud to sign the third. And now very soon we will have the fourth -- a new law guaranteeing every American the right to vote. No act of my entire administration will give me greater satisfaction than the day when my signature makes this bill too the law of this land. The Voting Rights Bill will be the latest, and among the most important, in a long series of victories. But this victory -as Winston Churchill said of another triumph for freedom -"is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." That beginning is freedom. And the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share fully and equally in American society -- to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others. But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough to just open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity -- not just legal equity but human ability -- not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result. For the task is to give twenty million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities -- physical, mental, and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness. To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family you live with, and the neighborhood you live in, by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the infant, the child, and the man. We seek not just freedom but opportunity
-- This graduating class of Howard
University is witness to the indomitable determination of the Negro
American to win his way in American life. The number of Negroes in schools of higher learning has almost doubled in fifteen years. The number of nonwhite professional workers has more than doubled in ten years. The median income of Negro college women exceeds that of white college women. And there are also the enormous accomplishments of distinguished individual Negroes -- many of them graduates of this institution, and one of them the first lady ambassador in the history of the United States. These are proud and impressive achievements. But they tell only the story of a growing middle class minority, steadily narrowing the gap between them and their white counterparts. But for the great majority of Negro
Americans -- the poor, the unemployed, the uprooted, and the
dispossessed -- there is a much grimmer story. They still are
another nation. Despite the court orders and the laws, despite the
legislative victories and the speeches, for them the walls are
rising and the gulf is widening.Here are some of the facts of this
American failure. Thirty-five years ago the rate of unemployment for
Negroes and whites was about the same. Today the Negro rate is twice
as high. Moreover, the isolation of Negro from white communities is increasing, rather than decreasing, as Negroes crowd into the central cities and become a city within a city. Of course Negro Americans as well as white Americans have shared in our rising national abundance. But the harsh fact of the matter is that in the battle for true equality too many are losing ground every day. We are not completely sure why this is. The causes are complex and subtle. But we do know the two broad basic reasons. And we do know that we have to act. First, Negroes are trapped -- as many whites are trapped -- in inherited, gateless poverty. They lack training and skills. They are shut in slums, without decent medical care. Private and public poverty combine to cripple their capacities. We are trying to attack these evils through our poverty program, through our education program, through our medical care and our other health programs, and a dozen more of the Great Society programs that are aimed at the root causes of this poverty. We will increase, and accelerate, and broaden this attack in years to come until this most enduring of foes finally yields to our unyielding will. But there is a second cause -- much more difficult to explain, more deeply grounded, more desperate in its force. It is the devastating heritage of long years of slavery; and of oppression, hatred, and injustice. For Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences -deep, corrosive, obstinate differences -- radiating painful roots into the community, the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the Negro they are a constant reminder of oppression. For the white they are a constant reminder of guilt. But they must be faced and dealt with and overcome, if we are ever to reach the time when the only difference between Negroes and whites is the color of their skin. Nor can we find a complete answer in the experience of other American minorities. They made a valiant and a largely successful effort to emerge from poverty and prejudice. The Negro, like these others, will have to rely mostly on his own efforts. But he just can not do it alone. For they did not have the heritage of centuries to overcome. They did not have the cultural tradition which had been twisted and battered by endless years of hatred and hopelessness. Nor were they excluded because of race or color -- a feeling whose dark intensity is matched by no other prejudice in society. Nor can these differences be understood as isolated infirmities. They are a seamless web. They cause each other. They result from each other. They reinforce each other. Much of the Negro community is buried under a blanket of history and circumstance. It is not a lasting solution to lift just one corner of that blanket. We must stand on all sides and raise the entire cover if we are to liberate our fellow citizens. One of the differences is the increased concentration of Negroes in the cities. More than 73% of all Negroes live in urban areas compared with less than 70% of the whites. Most of the Negroes live in slums. Most of them live together -- a separated people. Men are shaped by their world. When it is a world of decay, ringed by an invisible wall -- when escape is arduous and uncertain, and the saving pressures of a more hopeful society are unknown -- it can cripple the youth and desolate the man. There is also the burden that a dark skin can add to the search for a productive place in society. Unemployment strikes most swiftly and broadly at the Negro. This burden erodes hope. Blighted hope breeds despair. Despair brings indifference to the learning which offers a way out. And despair, coupled with indifference, is often the source of destructive rebellion against the fabric of society. There is also lacerating hurt of early collision with white hatred or prejudice, distaste, or condescension. Other groups have felt similar intolerance. But success and achievement could wipe it away. They do not change the color of a man's skin. I have seen this uncomprehending pain in the eyes of little Mexican-American school children that I taught many years ago. It can be overcome. But for many, the wounds are always open. Perhaps most important -- its influence
radiating to every part of life -- is the breakdown of the Negro
family structure. For this, most of all, white America must accept
responsibility. This, too, is not pleasant to look upon. But it must be faced by those whose serious intent is to improve the life of all Americans. Only a minority -- less than half -- of all Negro children reach the age of eighteen having lived all their lives with both of their parents. At this moment little less than two-thirds are living with both of their parents. Probably a majority of all Negro children receive federally aided public assistance sometime during their childhood. The family is the cornerstone of our society. More than any other force it shapes the attitudes, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of the child. When the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale the community itself is crippled. So unless we work to strengthen the
family, to create conditions under which most parents will stay
together -- all the rest: schools and playgrounds, public assistance
and private concern, will never be enough to cut completely the
circle of despair and deprivation.
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| Beowulf THE OLDEST ENGLISH EPIC
Translated into Alliterative Verse with a Critical Introduction by
CHARLES W. KENNEDY INTRODUCTION Began a series of savage crimes.
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| Banned in the
Media: A Reference Guide to Censorship in the Press, Motion
Pictures, Broadcasting, and the Internet, By Herbert N. Foerstel get the full version of this research at Questia Online Library by clicking here Introduction There is little doubt that the media have overwhelmed books as the preferred source of information and entertainment worldwide, and the United States is both the primary producer and the primary consumer of the media product. A recent study conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the New York communications investment house, Veronis Suhler, produced some startling figures. The media business has become one of the twelve largest industries in the United States. Profits are high; operating margins range from 5.4 percent for the emerging interactive digital media to more than 16 percent for broadcasters. Several of the big newspapers do even better. The expectation is that the growth rate of newspaper revenues will double between 1995 and the year 2000, and the other media will do almost as well. 1 More interesting is the data indicating the stranglehold that the media have on the American public. The ordinary American spends 3,400 hours a year consuming the media output. That represents almost 40 percent of our lives, more time than we spend sleeping and far more time than we spend working. Radio and television represent 80 percent of our media consumption. Our reading occupies about an hour a day, half of it for newspapers. By the year 2000, according to the study, we will be reading even less, watching television even more, and spending more time on the Internet. 2 Little wonder, then, that we hear so much about the power of the
media and its influence on everything from morality to politics. The
current problem is not the growing media power, but the narrowing
corporate cabal that wields it. In 1983 Ben Bagdikian, then
journalism dean at the University of California, Berkeley, published
The Media Monopoly, which revealed that at least half of all media
business was controlled by just fifty corporations. By 1987, when
his second edition appeared, he reported that just twenty-nine
corporations exercised that power, and by the time of his fourth
edition in 1992, that number had shrunk to twenty. Bagdikian noted a
similar evolution in newspapers and magazines. Of the 1,700 daily
newspapers in this country, 98 percent were local monopolies and
most of their combined circulation was controlled by fewer than
fifteen corporations. Among magazines, Time, Inc., alone was
responsible for 40 percent of industry revenues. 3 Bagdikian wrote, [A] shrinking number of large media corporations now regard monopoly, oligopoly, and historic levels of profit as not only normal, but as their earned right. In the process, the usual democratic expectations for the media -- diversity of ownership and ideas -- have disappeared as the goal of official policy, and worse, as a daily experience of a generation of American viewers and readers. . . . It's no way to maintain a lively marketplace of ideas, which is to say it is no way to maintain a democracy. 4 Bagdikian's trailblazing research and widely praised 1987 edition of The Media Monopoly were virtually ignored by the media. His explanation of why the major media had failed to discuss the disadvantages of media consolidation was simple: editors were not interested in these problems because they were all in the newspaper consolidation business themselves. Indeed, the media's failure to address the most significant problem in its industry caused that very issue to be declared the "most censored news story of 1987" by the prestigious Project Censored. Every year since 1977, Project Censored, based at Sonoma State University, has published its list of the news issues or "stories" that have been most heavily suppressed during the previous year. The judges who selected the media monopoly story as the "most censored" during 1987 included John Kenneth Galbraith, Bill Moyers, and Judith Krug. Communications professor Carl Jensen, originator of Project Censored, said the judges selected the media monopoly story because it was the root cause for underreporting generally. "We have fewer sources, fewer outlets and more control by fewer people," said Jensen. 5 The problem of media monopolies has worsened in recent years, but it continues to be ignored by the media. Project Censored's latest edition, Censored 1997. The News That Didn't Make the News, featured an article, "Free the Media," that literally mapped out the four giant corporations that control the major television news divisions: the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and the Cable News Network (CNN). Author Mark Miller notes that two of the four holding corporations are defense contractors (both involved in nuclear production), and the other two purvey entertainment. Miller concludes that we are thus the subjects of a "national entertainment state," in which the news and much of our amusement are provided by the two most powerful industries in the United States. Miller presents an elaborate chart that maps the tentacles of General Electric, Time Warner, Disney/Cap Cities and Westinghouse, the four media giants. He says a glance at each chart reveals why, say, Tom Brokaw might have difficulty covering stories critical of nuclear power, or ABC News will no longer be likely to do an exposé of Disney's policies, or, indeed, why none of the media is willing to touch the biggest story of them all -- the media monopoly itself. Miller says such maps "suggest the true causes of those enormous
ills that now dismay so many Americans: the universal sleaze and 'dumbing
down,' the flood tide of corporate propaganda, the terminal inanity
of U.S. politics." He warns that "the same gigantic players that
control the elder media are planning shortly to absorb the Internet,
which could be transformed from a thriving common wilderness into an
immeasurable de facto cyberpark for corporate interests, with all
the dissident voices exiled to sites known only to the activists."
Only a new, broad-based antitrust movement can save the media,
according to Miller. 6 The media have always been the captive of religion and politics, scorned and manipulated by both in ways beyond anything suffered by book publishers. A recent example of the former is the boycott launched by Baptists against the Walt Disney Company. On June 18, 1997, the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, Texas overwhelmingly approved a resolution urging the denomination's 15.7 million members to boycott all presentations and products bearing the Disney name and everything produced by the vast Disney conglomerate that includes Miramax Films, ABC television, ESPN, E! and Disney cable channels and Hyperion Books. The primary objection expressed by the Baptists was Disney's support for homosexuals, as represented by ABC's sitcom "Ellen," whose star is an admitted lesbian and Disney's willingness to grant health benefits to the partners of homosexual employees. The Baptists admit that the effectiveness of the boycott may not be immediately evident, but Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission, said, "The Crusades were not a high point in public relations for the church, but they give people a feeling of accomplishment, and this boycott may do the same for many Americans." 7 Banned in the U.S.A. ( 1994) examined censorship in book publishing, but only in the context of schools and libraries. This book may be regarded as a sequel to Banned in the U.S.A., but there are significant differences. Banned in the Media examines censorship in six formats -newspapers, magazines, radio, television, motion pictures and the Internet-in a wide variety of contexts. Whereas individual books can be plucked from school classrooms or library shelves by nervous school or library officials, much of the media product is ephemeral, and its censorship is wielded with a broader brush. An important distinction between my methodologies for analyzing books and the media is the manner in which incidents of censorship are tallied and compared. The number of times a particular book title is banned from school curricula or removed from library shelves can be tallied and a list of the most banned books can be assembled, but much of the media does not admit to such particularization. The wide and disparate variety of media formats make it impossible to analyze statistically and rank incidents across the entire media. Frequently, it is even difficult to isolate and identify the origin of media censorship. Serial publications, particularly magazines, are uniquely
vulnerable to newsstand or convenience store boycotts. They also
suffer censorship of individual articles or issues. Motion pictures,
like books, have been banned in ways that allow statistical
analysis, but the monolithic
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| THE DEATH PENALTY:
A WORLD-WIDE PERSPECTIVE By ROGER HOOD Get the full version of this research at Questia Online Library by clicking here 1 Overview Any review of the situation with regard to the abolition of the death penalty on a world-wide basis over the last thirty years is complicated by the fact that, during this period, the political map of the world has changed considerably. In particular, many newly independent states have emerged, some of them, of course, being fragmentary parts of formerly unified states. During the thirty years since 1965, 58 countries have abolished capital punishment: 46 of them absolutely for all crimes, and 12 of them for 'ordinary crimes'. Several of these countries had been, at the time they abolished the death penalty, abolitionist de facto, meaning that they had not executed anybody for at least ten years. The pace of change towards abolition has further increased in the six years since the first edition of this survey was published in 1989. Since then, 25 countries have abolished capital punishment, 23 for all crimes, whether in peacetime or in war. In comparison, 35 countries abolished the death penalty (25 absolutely and 10 for ordinary crimes) in the 23 years between the survey undertaken for the United Nations by Norval Morris, and that carried out in 1988 for the first edition of this report. In other words, the annual average rate at which countries have abolished the death penalty has increased from 1.5 to 4 per year, or nearly three times as many. A list of all abolitionist and retentionist countries with the date of abolition and of the last execution, in those which are abolitionist or abolitionist de facto, can be found in Appendix 1. Amongst the retentionist states, at least 30 have not executed anybody during the last ten years, and often far longer. Thirteen of these countries have reached this abolitionist de facto status only since 1989. However, 10 countries which had been previously considered de facto abolitionist moved in the opposite direction by resuming executions and were still considered to be retentionist in 1995. Three more countries, and two states of the United States of America, which had abolished the death penalty, re-instated it, although none of them have yet carried out any executions. Get the full version of this research at Questia Online Library by clicking here Although the world-wide movement towards abolition has proceeded at an increasing pace, it has to be recognized that this has not occurred evenly across the globe. Many of the recent abolitionist states are in Africa south of the Sahara, with some in Asia--regions where very few countries were abolitionist six years ago. On the other hand, there has been a marked resistance to appeals for change, indeed official support for capital punishment, in various parts of the world. Furthermore, the creation of 15 independent states, all but one of them retaining the death penalty, within the boundaries of the former Soviet Union, inevitably distorts any comparisons between 1988 and 1995. By the end of December 1995 there were 58 totally abolitionist countries, 14 abolitionist for ordinary crimes, 30 abolitionist de facto, and 90 still retentionist (see Appendix 1). Bearing in mind that the countries are not necessarily the same in 1988 as they were in 1995. Even though, by the end of 1995, less than a third of all separate political entities had completely abolished the death penalty de jure, more than half had abolished it either in law or in practice. Of great significance has been the adoption of protocols to conventions on human, civil, and political rights which endorse the abolition of the death penalty as an international goal. In December 1982 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), article 1 of which provides for the abolition of the death penalty in peacetime. Article 2, however, does allow a state to make provision in its law for the death penalty in time of war or of imminent threat of war. Seven years later, in December 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 1 of the Optional Protocol states: 'No one within the jurisdiction of a State party to the present Optional Protocol shall be executed'. Although article 2, like the Sixth Protocol to the ECHR, allows a reservation to be made 'which provides for the application of the death penalty in time of war pursuant to a conviction for a most serious crime of a military nature committed during wartime', the reservation can only be made at the time of ratification or accession. In June 1990, the General Assembly of the Organisation of American States adopted the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty (ACHR). Article 1 calls upon states to abstain from the use of the death penalty, but does not impose an obligation on them to erase it from the statute book. Thus de facto abolitionist countries may also ratify the Protocol. None of these instruments, of course, fully endorse the complete abolition of the death penalty. However, a significant move was made in this direction when, in
1994, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
recommended that a further Protocol to the European Convention on
Human Rights should be established. This would provide for the
complete abolition of the death penalty with no possibility of
reservations being entered for its retention in any special
circumstances. In addition, the Assembly resolved that 'the
willingness to ratify the [Sixth Protocol] be made a prerequisite
for membership of the Council of Europe'. The importance of these
international developments is discussed further in paras 87-89
below.
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| Mahatma Gandhi:
Peaceful Revolutionary By Haridas T. Muzumdar (get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on Gandhi at Questia Online Library by clicking here) PREFACE Gandhi may truly be said to be the prophetic voice of the twentieth century. Violence inflicts upon its practitioners physical and spiritual wounds; the way of non-violence, said Gandhi, "blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used."2 Again, "non-violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law -- to the strength of the spirit."3 Let us be sure we do not misunderstand the philosophy of non-violence embodied in Gandhi's life and teachings. A practitioner of the non-violent way of life, far from being passive, is the most active person in the world. He is ready to join the fray -non-violently -- wherever and whenever there is injustice or wrong. He neither tolerates nor compromises with injustice, wrong, tyranny, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, dictatorship. His task in life is not to destroy the evildoer but to redeem and to convert the evildoer by love. " 'With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right," he is ever ready to "bind up" humanity's "wounds," to minister to the underprivileged and to the misguided. The constant concern of the follower of non-violence is, in the words of Lincoln, to "achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." The spirit of India's Gandhi as well as of America's Lincoln is today sorely needed by a generation madly dancing over a precipice. We have learned to fathom the secrets of the atom, we have learned to master nature, but we have not yet learned to master our inner selves. Our scientists can predict with accuracy the long-range behavior and movements of stars and planets millions of miles away -- but we are unable to foretell our nextdoor neighbor's behavior and movements the very next moment. The world has become a small neighborhood. Therefore, we are called upon to understand and appreciate our neighbors across the Atlantic and the Pacific, as well as across the Great Lakes and the Gulf. To understand other nations, we must know their values and their historical development. This requires a sympathetic approach to other nations, cultures, and religions. By understanding Gandhi we may build a bridge of understanding between ourselves and India, between ourselves and the Orient, between ourselves and noble free spirits the world over. What is Gandhi's message for our small neighborhood world divided
into two camps -- democratic and totalitarian? First of all, Gandhi
would have us set our course by the twin stars of Truth and
Non-Violence; which means, we must approach other peoples with
charity and sympathy. Second, Gandhi would have us stand on a
platform of values to which we must be faithful unto death; which
means, we must act in accordance with principles, not expediency.
Appeasement, even for the sake of peace, must be ruled out, because
appeasement implies sacrifice of principles. Third, Gandhi would
have us work ceaselessly for the realization of "common-human"
values, as the sociologists say, for the triumph of the common-human
way of life. Gandhi did not believe in imposing his values or his way of life upon others; by the same token, he resisted even to death the attempts of others to impose upon him or his people their values and way of life. To be true to the Gandhi spirit, we may not, we cannot, think of imposing our democratic values and way of life upon the nations behind the iron curtain; nor would we permit those nations to impose their totalitarian values and way of life upon us. At the same time, the Gandhi way of life imposes upon us the obligation to share our democratic values and way of life with the peoples behind the iron curtain by open and non-violent methods. According to Gandhi, there are three types of human beings: (1) the coward, (2) the brave, (3) the superior. The coward, in order to save his skin, supinely acquiesces in injustice and wrong. The brave hero, on the other hand, violently resists injustice and wrong in order to re-establish justice and right. The superior person is he who, in the fullness of his strength, forgives the wrongdoer and tries to redeem him and convert him to the ways of doing good. As Americans we hold the first type -- the despicable, cowardly type -- in low esteem. Our choice today and tomorrow must be between the second and third alternatives. Let each one decide, in the light of his conscience, in terms of his definition of the situation, which alternative he must adopt in the present crisis. Our generation is doomed to live in a state of perpetual crisis. You and I are called upon to be on the alert every moment of our lives. Truly, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance; but ceaseless effort and continuous vigilance, untempered by inner poise, are apt to lead to nervous prostration. Hence inner serenity in the midst of crisis must be cultivated if we are to safeguard our personal integrity, national freedom, and universal human values. In Mahatma Gandhi we have a sure guide to a happy, rich, and
meaningful life. A self-disciplinarian, he embodied the Hindu
concept of the superior man -- of the Mahatma, the Great Soul. Throughout the text, except in quoted passages, the word Hindese (derived from Hinda or Hind anglicized into India) has been preferred to the word Indian in order to obviate confusion between the Indians of India and the Indians of America. The literature on Gandhi is growing apace. The very first
biographical sketch of Gandhi to appear in any language was a work
by Rev. Joseph J. Doke, entitled M. K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot (
London: London Indian Chronicle, 1909). My book, Gandhi the Apostle
( Chicago: Universal, 1923), was the first full-length portrait of
the Mahatma to appear in any language of the world. My second book,
Gandhi Versus the Empire ( New York: Universal, 1932), was banned
from India by the British Raj. In Gandhi Triumphant ( New York:
Universal, 1939), I set forth Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of the
fast and the story of his victorious struggle with the Prince of
Rajkot. Sermon on the Sea, sometimes entitled Indian Home Rule or
Hind Swaraj, written by Gandhi in South Africa in 1909, and edited
by the present writer in this country ( Chicago: Universal, 1924),
reveals Gandhi's views on civilization and on soul force. For a comprehensive biography the reader may refer to The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer ( New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950). For a commendable interpretation of the mystic in Gandhi, read Lead, Kindly Light by Vincent Sheean ( New York: Random House, 1949). C. F. Andrews's trilogy: Mahatma Gandhi -- His Own Story ( 1930), Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas ( 1930), Gandhi at Work ( 1931), all published by The Macmillan Co., New York, are indispensable to an understanding of the man. Nehru on Gandhi ( New York: The John Day Co., 1948) is a splendid little book which everyone should be familiar with. Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography for Young People by Catherine Owens Peare ( New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1950) should be helpful especially to High School teachers and pupils. The Navajivan Press, Ahmedabad, India, is getting out a uniform series of topical books containing the Mahatma's voluminous writings over the past forty years. The two volumes containing Gandhi's writings in Young India, Ahmedabad, published in this country by B. W. Huebsch, Inc., New York, and by The Viking Press, New York, respectively, as Young India 19191922 ( 1923), and Young India 1924-1926 ( 1927), are a veritable gold mine for the researcher. Gandhi's autobiography: My Experiments with Truth, recently published in full in this country ( Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1948), is a must reading. Two books published in India have been particularly helpful to me: Gandhiji, edited by D. G. Tendulkar and others ( Bombay: Karnatak Publishing House, 1944, 2nd ed., 1945), and The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi by R. K. Prabhu and U. R. Rao ( Madras: Oxford University Press, 1945, 2nd ed., 1946). To Messrs. K. R. Kripalani, Gulzarilal Nanda, and M. R. Masani I am indebted for fresh material, respectively, on "Gandhi and Tagore," "A Charter for Labor," and "Is Gandhi a Socialist?" appearing in Gandhiji. Portions of my chapter on "Gandhi's Pedagogy" had appeared in School and Society ( Lancaster, Pa.), Unity ( Chicago), and The Social Frontier ( New York). I am indebted to the authors and publishers named, to Dr. Hiram Haydn, editor of this series, and to countless others not named. Full credit is given in footnotes. So far as possible, references, listed at the end, have been made to books published in America. In addition to my three books on Gandhi mentioned, I have drawn freely from my book, The United Nations of the World ( New York: Universal, 1942; 2nd ed., 1944), especially for material embodied in Chapters III and VII. When all is said and done, my greatest debt is to the Saint of Sabarmati, my association with whom at the Satyagraha Ashram, on the Dandi March, and in London, I count among the greatest privileges in life. HARIDAS T. MUZUMDAR. CORNELL COLLEGE MT. VERNON, IOWA MAY, 1952 Whether we knew much or little about him, this man in a loin-cloth somehow reminded the men of the present generation, and will continue to remind future generations, of the great heights which the spirit of man can scale. In him we see an image of our higher self, of that nobler self which recognizes nonviolence and truth as the law of our species. A proper understanding of Gandhi requires recognition of two
strands woven in the makeup of his personality as of every human
being: the universal and the particular. Every human organism is subject to the universal biophysical processes of birth, growth, maturation, senescence, disintegration. Every human being, endowed with original nature, becomes human only as the original nature is transformed into human nature through socialization, through social interaction within a cultural context. This, too, is a universal process in which all human beings become involved immediately upon birth. Mind, intelligence, intellect, emotion, insight, all rooted in the organism, come to flowering as a result of interaction with nature, with fellow human beings, with culture. In this process, the heart, a physiological organ, is spiritualized into a special instrument of insight; notice, for instance, Gandhi's frequent use of the idea: "Ultimately we are guided not so much by the intellect as by the heart." He made that statement upon our arrival at Dandi Beach, a forlorn, forsaken place, with few trees or habitations to relieve the monotony of the open, sun-baked landscape. In this process of interaction, too, the human potential, in contrast to the subhuman potential, becomes realized as the soul or spirit of man. Upon man's animal ancestry is superimposed a certain attribute, which distinguishes the world of human beings from the animal world. To the extent that man, by deliberate effort, achieves a way of living in which animal traits are subordinated to the distinctively human, to that extent does he realize his entelechy, his implicit destiny, a Greek concept -- or his dharma, a Hindu concept. Such a way of living brings man near unto God. The realization of his soul, his self, becomes tantamount to realization of the Supreme Soul, the Supreme Self, or God. This mode of reasoning, implicit in Hindu thinking, should not be unacceptable to social scientists. At any rate, Gandhi accepted the theory of the distinctively human traits differentiating man from the subhuman creation. "Non-violence," he affirmed, "is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law -- to the strength of the spirit." 1 The distinctively human, or rather common-human, nature of man is succinctly described by Hindu seers in the formula: Tat-Twam-Asi -- That thou art. You are part of That, part of the Godhead. You have within you some of the divine attributes. In. deed, you have, as the Quakers say, that of God within you. Thus man is a complex of animal-human-divine attributes. In some the animal traits predominate, in others the human, and in others again the divine: in the language of the Bhagavad Gita, some men are dominated by the Tamas quality, some by the Raids quality, and some by the Sattva quality. Man, a specific person, as a complex of animal-humandivine attributes, may be best understood if from his behavior patterns we get a clue to the dominant and recessive qualities of his being. Gandhi belonged to the company of those in whom Sattva or the divine attribute is dominant and the other two attributes are recessive. Gandhi made much of conscience. He used to quote with approval a verse from the Mahabharata: The individual may be sacrificed for the sake of the family; The family may be sacrificed for the sake of the village; The village may be sacrificed for the sake of the province; The province may be sacrificed for the sake of the country; For the sake of conscience, however, sacrifice all. What is this thing called conscience? The unsophisticated Polish peasant defined conscience as one's own voice but somebody else's words. We may look upon conscience as a highly developed instrument in the inner recesses of man's heart, a subtle part of evolving human nature specializing in sensitive reactions to the world round about oneself. Conscience manifests itself in terms of sensitivity to sufferings and injustices, to right and wrong. Thus conscience is the internalized experience of the mores of a given society. Non-totalitarian societies exalt freedom of conscience alike for atheists and for theists; for non-conformists as well as conformists; for Catholics, Protestants, and Jews; for Hindus, Muslims, Parsees, Christians, Jews, and Sikhs. The history of the human species eloquently bears testimony to
the fact that those who are especially sensitive to the sufferings
of others and, being sympathetic, are impelled by an inner urge to
redeem their sufferings, are peculiarly exalted not only by those
who benefit from the ministry of service but also by society at
large. At the age of 24, when Gandhi landed in South Africa as legal
retainer for a Muslim Hindese firm, he was no better and no worse
than many a contemporary barrister-at-law, Hindese or non-Hindese.
But when his conscience was shocked by the injustices done to his
people, when he espoused the cause of the underprivileged and the
downtrodden with utter abandon, without the slightest notion of
monetary reward, he began to enmesh himself in a process that was to
give him inner satisfaction and raise him to the pinnacle of glory
successively as "our Bhai," our Brother; as "the Mahatma," Great
Soul; as "Gandhiji," revered Gandhi; as "Bapuji," Dear Father.
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| The Politics of
Gun Control, Book by Roberst J. Spitzer get the full version of this research at Questia Online Library by clicking here Introduction At its heart, the gun debate is a question about the relationship between the citizen, the state's power to regulate, and the maintenance of public order. All these relationships come together under the public policy umbrella and are thus amenable to a policy analysis that has as its central question: should gun possession and use be significantly regulated? In raising this question, I am not primarily concerned with the efficacy of each and every regulatory alternative, although most receive treatment here, but with the regulation principle as it applies to the gun issue. This is no esoteric exercise; every political dispute over some new effort to regulate guns invokes broader questions of government regulation. The regulatory question is given coherence and context within a
larger framework of policy analysis. Far from being an idiosyncratic
issue that defies generalized analysis, the gun issue fits into a
broader policy pattern, labeled social regulatory policy, that
provides considerable predictive and explanatory power for the
observed political trends.
-- President Bill Clinton, comments at 30 November 1993 signing ceremony for the "Brady bill" 1. Policy Definition and Gun Control Regulation, Public Order, and Public Policy Writing several decades after Hobbes, the British political thinker John Locke in his Of Civil Government concurred, noting that "God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men. I easily grant that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of nature." That we in America largely take the value of order for granted is a testament to the remarkable stability of American life. 2 Order is not the only priority for government, of course, since democratic nations value freedom and the protection of basic rights as well and must continually strive to strike an appropriate balance between these values. 3 Nevertheless, order is the first purpose of government because without order there can be no freedom in society (aside from the "freedom" of anarchy to which Hobbes and Locke referred). As the political scientist Samuel Huntington once noted, "men may, of course, have order without liberty, but they cannot have liberty without order." 4 And, as James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, "It is a melancholy reflection that liberty should be equally exposed to danger whether the government have too much or too little power." The maintenance of public order by governments occurs through
public policy, defined most simply as "whatever governments choose
to do or not to do." 5 The close link between order and public
policy is underscored by the interesting semantic fact that "policy"
has the same linguistic root as "police." 6 Note the link between
the two in this definition of public policy offered by the British
constitutionalist William Blackstone in 1769: "the due regulation
and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the inhabitants of the
State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform
their general behavior to the rules of propriety, good neighborhood,
and good manners, and to be decent, industrious, and inoffensive in
their respective stations." The techniques or tools of public policy take many forms, from the dispensing of benefits to strict regulation of individual conduct. Yet basic questions of public order usually involve direct regulation--power exercised by the government "for the protection of the health, safety, and morals of their citizens." 7 Beyond the simple maintenance of order, "government is the guarantor of the public good. Ideally, this is achieved as government regulates private functions to maximize public welfare." 8 The regulation of individual conduct may include that considered harmful to others, such as driving under the influence of alcohol, or conduct considered immoral, such as gambling or prostitution. 9 This returns us to the question of the regulation of firearms. (In this analysis, "guns" and "firearms" are treated as synonymous.) The fierce and protracted debate over gun control raises a variety of issues about individual behavior and the role of the government. Nevertheless, the gun debate at its core turns on a single, central question of public policy as it relates to both order and personal conduct: should gun possession and use be significantly regulated? This central question of public policy guides the organization of this book. Guns and Regulation In addition to immediate coercion, regulatory policy shares a
characteristic that fans the flames of political controversy: it
seeks to control individual conduct. When the government imposes
highway safety regulations, pure food and drug requirements, cable
television rates, criminal laws, or laws regulating abortions, it is
regulating the conduct of individuals (not only individual citizens,
but individual companies or other entities). Because of these direct
consequences to individuals, regulatory policies are more
controversial than policies that seek to shape the "environment of
conduct," such as fiscal and monetary policy, the progressive income
tax, and welfare programs.
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| Black, White, and
Huckleberry Finn: Re-Imagining the American Dream, By Harry Mensh, Elaine Mensh (get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on Huck Finn at Questia Online Library by clicking here) 1 The
Trespassers A ninth child had not been informed that the students were to come as a group. When she arrived alone, there were shouts from the mob, which now numbered about five hundred: "They're here! The niggers are coming!""Get her! Lynch her!" The student tried several times to pass through the troops; on her last try, she was stopped with bayonets. The mob yelled, "No nigger bitch is going to get in our school." With the troops standing by impassively, someone screamed, "Get a rope and drag her over to this tree." A white-haired woman fought her way through the mob, shouting: "Leave this child alone! Why are you tormenting her? Six months from now you will hang your heads in shame." The mob hollered, "Another nigger-lover. Get out of here!" The woman, a professor at a Little Rock college, stayed with the child until she could get her away on a bus. Joining with her to protect the child during the wait was the New York Times education editor, who was threatened as a "dirty New York Jew." In the next weeks, there were attacks on black men and women and on their homes, as well as assaults on black and white journalists. Finally, confronted with the Little Rock black community, which refused to surrender to the authorities or the mob, and also challenged by national and world opinion, the president acted to enforce the desegregation order; he federalized the Arkansas National Guard and directed the secretary of defense to send in regular troops as needed. 2 The incident at Little Rock had myriad consequences, explicit and tacit. One of the latter appears to be an action taken by the New York Board of Education. Just eight days after the confrontation at Central High, the New York Times reported, in a front-page story, that the board had "quietly dropped" Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from approved textbook lists for elementary and junior high schools. The novel, the Times also related, could still be purchased for school libraries and used as a textbook in high schools. The story linked the board's action to objections from the NAACP. The NAACP denied having protested to the board, but acknowledged that it "strongly objected to the 'racial slurs' and 'belittling racial designations' in Mark Twain's works." 3 Although there is no evidence that the NAACP protested directly
to the board, objections from one or another source certainly
reached the board. But the official in charge of curriculum
development stated that no objections had come to her attention. She
said the novel had been taken off the approved textbook list
because, as the Times put it, it was "not really a textbook." 4 In
giving this explanation, which was notable only for its surrealism
(a book approved as a textbook was removed for not being a
textbook), New York City school officials apparently believed they
had converted a controversial move into an administrative
correction, and so could escape responsibility for their own action.
5 II Since these lines descend from a supposedly more innocent time, it might seem they really were intended for children. But not only is it quite illogical to expect that children would be delighted by Huck's newfound respectability, it also seems odd to contrast the novel's respectability in the eyes of real parents with Huck's lack of it with fictional ones. Clearly, when the editors spoke of Huck's ostracism in his "early days," they had in mind not Huck's status in Tom Sawyer, but Huck Finn's expulsion from the Concord Public Library in 1885 as the "veriest trash," "rough, coarse, and inelegant," 9 unfit for "our pure-minded lads and lasses," 10 and the copycat expulsions that followed. The editors were Emily Fanning Barry, an English teacher at Teachers College, and Herbert B. Bruner, who headed its Curriculum Construction Laboratory. Under the aegis of the publisher, Harper & Brothers, they conducted the study, which involved "thousands" of reports obtained from an unspecified number of teachers and pupils. The editors describe the student participants according to class, nationality, and location. Since they do not mention race, it is quite safe to assume "children" meant "white children." 11 That this study undoubtedly included white children only does not mean the editors consciously sought to exclude black children. Their apparent absence from the study simply mirrored the exclusion of blacks from vast areas of American life. And even if the editors had been amazingly ahead of their time and wondered how black children might feel about Huck Finn, there would have been no reason to pursue the daring thought. Certainly it would have had no value for the publisher, given that black schools were likely to receive books handed down from white ones. While the study, the classroom edition, and growing support from
educators laid the groundwork for Huck Finn to become required
reading, something more was needed to bring the effort to fruition.
This arrived in the form of essays by Lionel Trilling ( 1948) and T.
S. Eliot ( 1950) that provided the novel with the "academic
respectability and clout" that assured its entry into the nation's
classrooms, points out Peaches Henry. 12 Trilling, who launched what
Jonathan Arac calls the "hypercanonization" of Huck Finn, 13 spoke
of it as "one of the world's great books and one of the central
documents of American culture." 14 Eliot termed it a "masterpiece."
15 Both, however, were concerned with defending it against the by
now largely anachronistic morality charge. Eliot made the point
fairly subtly by stating he had not read the book as a boy because
his parents considered it unsuitable, while he also spoke of things
in it that would delight boys. The matter is, though, handled quite
explicitly by Trilling, who remarks that Huck is "really a very
respectable person." 16 If Huck is objective (as other commentators have also held), 2 he speaks faithfully for an author who can be unequivocally relied upon. In fact, though, Huckleberry Finn presents an author-narrator relationship of quite a different kind. That Twain's perspective is antislavery and Huck's is not, and that the concept of racial prejudice, meaningful to Twain, would be meaningless to Huck--these preclude any possibility of a consistently objective narrator. And, too, while Twain often purposefully clouded Huck's "restive eyes" with ideas received from the society Huck lived in, there is, again, the question of the degree to which Twain's own eyes, clear and penetrating as they could be, were not also thus shadowed. Fitzgerald's remarks also illustrate the role of commentators in creating a legendary Huck. Although some of the myths around Huck Finn have not traveled beyond critical circles (for instance, Trilling's myth of Huck as "the servant of the river-god," who "comes very close to being aware of the divine nature of the being he serves"), 3 others occupy a favored place in the national consciousness. One of these is the myth of Huck-the-rebel. It is not that this myth is entirely devoid of truth, but rather that it favors lesser truths over greater ones. The distinction between Huck as legendary rebel and the Huck that Twain created can already be detected in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. There Twain describes Huck as a "romantic outcast," but even this phrase does not express Twain's own attitude. It is instead that of the properly-brought-up village boys: "everything that goes to make life precious, [Huck] had. So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg." 4 These boys see a Huck who can come and go as he pleases, is not expected to attend school or church, is free to swear and to fight if he feels like it. Twain, though, allows us to see that it is the boys' vision of Huck that is romantic, not Huck's life: if he can do as he pleases, it is only because his father is the town drunk and his mother dead. So it is not surprising to learn, in Huckleberry Finn, that Huck is prone to melancholy, is sometimes so sad he almost wants to die. If most readers of Tom Sawyer, despite Twain's signals to the contrary, see Huck as a rebel, one explanation may be that they have allowed Huck's deeds to eclipse his motives. Take, for instance, Huck's first violation of a taboo in white-black relations. In a passage in Tom Sawyer that prefigures Huck's relationship with Jim, Tom asks the homeless boy where he will sleep. Huck replies: "In Ben Rogers's hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap's nigger man, Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and any time I ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can spare it. That's a mighty good nigger, Tom. He likes me, becuz I don't ever act as if I was above him. Sometimes I've set right down and eat with him. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing." 5 On the one hand, Huck--whom Twain described as a boy with a "sound heart and a deformed conscience"--is humanly appreciative of help from Uncle Jake and reciprocates by giving Uncle Jake what help he can. He is also perceptive enough to recognize that the black man wouldn't like him if he acted as if he were above him. Yet Huck does consider himself above Uncle Jake--not as an objective matter of social station, but because the man is black and Huck is white. (Although Huck never doubts that Uncle Jake, who remains offstage, is taken in by his pretense, a reader may wonder whether an Uncle Jake would not be wary of a white boy who, even in his innermost thoughts, cordons him off as "nigger.") It was not unusual for the young sons of slaveholders to have a
relationship with a slave (traditionally known as "Uncle") in which
the man would tell the boy stories ( Twain himself had such a
connection with an "Uncle Dan'l"). Where these boys would go to a
black man in search of diversion, Huck goes to Uncle Jake out of
need. As a result, the white boy's role is determined by the black
man rather than the other way around. But the need that drives Huck
to Uncle Jake is also a source of shame, making him do something he
"wouldn't want to do as a steady thing." Still, it does not seem
that Huck would have any objection to sitting down to eat with Uncle
Jake were it not for a mind's eye that looks on censoriously. No
incident could better suggest the vast social and emotional distance
that separated even the poorest whites from the blacks than this
one, which finds Huck--a boy who dresses in rags and sleeps in
barrels, whose reputation is so disgraceful that the schoolmaster
punishes Tom Sawyer for talking to him--desperate about what people
will think if they find out he ate with a black man. 6
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| J.R.R. Tolkien and
His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-Earth, By George Clark, Daniel Timmons (get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on J.R.R. Tolkien at Questia Online Library by clicking here) 1 "There is something about Tolkien's art which eludes the conventional strategies of contemporary criticism, even when these are deployed with sympathy and patience." This view from Brian Rosebury in Tolkien: A Critical Assessment (4) is insightful. The key words are, of course, "conventional" and "contemporary," for what Tolkien was doing, for all his contemporary popularity, was anything but writing a contemporary--or modern--novel. Given that he was not writing a modern novel, it is quite typical that conventional criticism can make little of Hobbit and LR other than reduce them to World War II allegories or mere escapist yearnings for a passing rural England (the sort of criticism continually aimed at The Wind in the Willows, among others). What was Tolkien doing, then? As a student of traditional narrative, I have returned to Tolkien's two most famous books from time to time and have begun an argument that I would like to continue here. 1 I believe that Tolkien committed a traditionally patterned oral narrative to paper, and that we can understand Hobbit and LR better if we look at them not through the lenses of modern critical methods but through lenses developed for the study of earlier works. 2 Clearly, Tolkien drew his inspiration from the older literatures of the north and west of Europe and from other writers, such as (and especially, perhaps) William Morris, who made fiction based on those ancient narratives. Many critics, myself among them, have commented on the traditional Märchen plot that structures both of Tolkien's novels. 3 Other primary evidence for traditionality includes the dwarf names taken from the Elder Edda, a dragon kin to the one described in Beowulf a wizard from the Merlin/Druidic tradition, a dragon slayer with the requisite magic arrow, elves and dwarves and trolls from northern European lore in general, a ring of invisibility, a band of sleeping warriors, a mirror of seeing, a throne of power, a greedy town mayor, a magical healing draught, plant seeds of exceptional fertility, a dragon's missing breastplate, and a host of other familiar motifs--and not all of them fantastic--from myth, legend and folktale. 4 Tolkien did not "borrow" these materials from ancient prose and poetry any more than any traditional artist borrows his or her material, be it a ballad or a quilt pattern. Like traditionally recognized folk performers, Tolkien was using material that he had been conversant with, quite literally, from childhood. He may have learned much of it in more formal circumstances than a ballad singer or a quilter does, but those were the only places--that is, classrooms and books--where that material was available to him. Thus, when he came to write Hobbit and LR, it was after many years' apprenticeship in the halls of academe; and when he wrote about the dwarves, he knew their names and the pattern of their story from a lifetime of experience, just as a ballad singer knows the verses or the quilt maker knows the pattern. He made this traditional story his own by creating the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, and by splitting the heroics, almost at the last minute, between two characters: Bilbo, who finds the answers, and Bard, of the Royal Line of Dale, who slays the dragon. The same split, this time between Frodo and Aragorn, occurs much earlier and is developed more fully in LR. And even that split may have been influenced by tradition. I am not about to assert that Tolkien was a folk performer and
that Hobbit and LR are folktale and legend, respectively--although
Katharyn Crabbe 1981 J.R.R. Tolkien does analyze them quite
profitably as fairy tale and legend (the literary forms of the
traditional folktale and legend). What I can provide is some
evidence that Tolkien was exposed early to the dragon slayer tale, a
tale that figures as a central motif in most of his later fiction,
and that he was influenced by other authors, perhaps most especially
William Morris, who were also attempting to write fiction patterned
after older oral forms. In addition, I can offer some comments about
ancient northern European literature in general and the Icelandic
family sagas in particular, which will be clearly applicable to
Tolkien's writing--much more applicable, in fact, than Aristotelian
poetics or the theory of the properly structured novel. Humphrey Carpenter remarks that Tolkien found that William
Morris's view of literature was very like his own, and that in the
prose-verse romance The House of the Wolfings "Morris had tried to
recreate the excitement he himself had found in the pages of early
English and Icelandic narratives" ( 70 ). And that is exactly what
Tolkien would later do in his narratives. As T. A. Shippey suggests,
"[l]ike Walter Scott or William Morris before him, [ Tolkien] felt
the perilous charm of the archaic world of the North, recovered from
bits and scraps by generations of inquiry. He wanted to tell a story
about it simply, one feels, because there were hardly any complete
ones left" ( 54 ). Indeed, Tolkien himself remarked that the "prime
motive [for writing LR] was the desire of a tale-teller to try his
hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of
readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or
deeply move them" ( FR11). Those'hose forms of literature in which Story exists merely as a means to something else--for example, the novel of manners where the story is there for the sake of the characters, or the criticism of social conditions--have had full justice done to them; but those forms in which everything else is there for the sake of the story have been given little serious attention. ( 3 ) Lewis points in a direction in which mythology-in-literature scholar John Vickery continues when Vickery argues that most mythology-in-literature critics would agree that "myth forms the matrix out of which literature emerges both historically and psychologically" (ix). That is, the Story came first, even though all of the uses to which it has been put and all of the critical means by which it has been interpreted have overshadowed story of late ( Sullivan 18 ). Furthermore, understanding the nature of traditional narrative, of story, can also put us on the road to understanding rather more complex issues in contemporary fiction: issues of story that have been overlooked in the critical rush to deconstruct the modern forest into its component postmodern trees; issues of story that have been lost in the critical study of the novel (an essentially reality-based narrative, ultimately Aristotelian in its structure and well-made according to its nineteenth-century aesthetic); issues of story that have been ignored as literature was separated into elite and popular (primarily by the New York establishment and university English departments); issues of story that have become confused as realism was championed over fantasy and then the designation "magic realism" was coined so that no one would have to admit that Borges is writing a kind of fantasy and Theroux is stealing ideas, and old ones at that, from science fiction; issues of story that have been pushed aside as literary criticism has privileged novel over narrative, privileged writer over teller, and (most recently) privileged criticism over fiction. The inadequacy of contemporary criticism to deal with Tolkien's novels was reinforced, as I researched for this essay, by Icelandic scholar Theodore M. Andersson, who commented on the same critical situation in regard to the Icelandic family sagas. [T]he sagas stand outside of the ironic or intellectual tradition
to which the reader of prose narrative has been accustomed since the
advent of modern fiction. The saga is plane [sic] narrative with no
vertical dimensions; the sagateller does not manipulate the
complicated set of mirrors used by the modern author to catch and
bind together himself, his subject, and his reader. ( 1967, 31 - 32
) Andersson study The Icelandic Family Saga contains a great deal that might illuminate Tolkien's art. The structure of the plots of Tolkien's novels corresponds quite nicely to the structural pattern Andersson articulates for the Icelandic family saga, with the obvious exception of the revenge element; however, the second section of his book, "The Rhetoric of the Saga," is particularly interesting. In that section, Andersson argues that the "arrangement of the material and the progress of the narrative are governed by certain principles and techniques, which may almost be formulated as saga laws and which combine to give the saga its peculiar complexion" ( 32 - 33 ). The rhetorical structure that Andersson advances for the saga applies to Tolkien's novels as well. 6 The first principal Andersson advances is one of unity: "The saga has a brand of unity not unlike the classical injunction against the proliferation of plot in drama. . . . The story is seen only in terms of the climax. Everything that precedes the climax is conceived as preparation for it and everything that follows is conceived as a logical consequence" ( 33 ). Quite clearly the unilinear plot of Hobbit can be described this way, but so also can the multilinear plot of LR. Even after the Nine Walkers become sundered and various hobbits, men, dwarves, and elves follow several plotlines to the climax, all are headed inexorably in that direction, each following his own path. "What is unique," Andersson says of the saga, "is the deliberate and single-minded way in which the story is related to the high point and the peak of the pyramid is achieved" ( 35 ). Andersson describes the progress of individual and sequential narrative events as scaffolding: "The episodes leading to the climax necessarily all tend in that direction, but they can be unrelated to each other" ( 35 ), and each episode "is an independent drama" ( 38 ). This is less true of Hobbit, as its plot is basically sequential, but it is certainly descriptive of the several plots in LR after the breakup of the Fellowship. The three main plots--Frodo and Sam, Merry and Pippin, and Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli--are not dependent upon one another; each set of characters succeeds on its own, and the only thing the three sets of characters have in common is that they are all headed toward the same end, the narrative's climax. "Although . . . these episodes are related," Andersson concludes, "each is an independent action" ( 38 ). Within the scaffolding structure, Andersson delineates several
techniques by which the saga author "guides the action toward a
conclusion." One such is escalation, "the technique of staggering
the episodes. . . . in order of jeopardy; each succeeding adventure
is more provocative or perilous than its predecessor" ( 38 ). This
is certainly the case in both of Tolkien's novels. In Hobbit, the
confrontations escalate from the almost-Cockney trolls to that most
fearsome of beasts, the dragon; along the way, Bilbo develops to
match the increasingly formidable challenges. In LR, even the
secondary characters take on increasingly difficult challenges as
Frodo moves from a vague fear of the Black Riders to the final
confrontation with Sauron. Andersson suggests that escalation can be
achieved by "an increase of danger, a multiplying of portents, a
deterioration of behavior, [or] a quickening of the pace" ( 40 ).
Balancing the escalation of episodes in the saga, Andersson sees
something he calls retardation, "a meaningful slackening of the
pace" ( 40 ). This retardation "arrests the pace and leads to the
anticipated climax obliquely and slowly" ( 42 ). Such breaks in the
action occur in both novels. There are two major respites in Hobbit:
the stay at the Last Homely House, a pause before heading off into
the "real" wilderness, and the refuge with Beorn, a pause before
beginning the last stage of the journey. There are more such
respites in LR, but the major ones are the passage through
Bombadil's enchanted wood, a stop at the Last Homely House, where
the Fellowship is assembled, and the stay in Lothlórien--all three
incidents in which the pace of the story is dramatically slowed and
the characters are able to rest. This retardation, Andersson
comments, functions "to delay the climax and concentrate interest" (
42 ). And in Tolkien, it often serves, as does the stay in
Lothlórien, to concentrate interest on the climax by showing what
may be lost if Sauron triumphs. Andersson suggests that the "most obvious and ubiquitous
rhetorical device in the sagas is foreshadowing" ( 49 ; my italics).
Foreshadowing is certainly prevalent in both of Tolkien's novels;
early in each, Gandalf sits with the main character, and, in Hobbit,
some others, and outlines the general course of the action to follow
and the challenge to be confronted. This initial foreshadowing is
followed, in each work, by a more complete explication of the
problem and a more detailed discussion of each quest at the Last
Homely House. In addition, there are various signs, portents, maps,
prophecies, and other elements that indicate, in Andersson's words,
"the goal of the story" ( 49 ). By setting out the story, and
prefiguring the climax, foreshadowing helps distribute "interest
over the whole text and prevents the otherwise heavily stressed
climax from eclipsing the rest of the story" ( 49 ).
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| Constitution
Making: Conflict and Consensus in the Federal Convention of 1787,
By Calvin C. Jillson Get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on the Constitution at Questia Online Library by clicking here
Preface I will demonstrate that constitution making is an elaborate and delicate, yet elegantly simple, process in which the participants refer to distinctly different sources of knowledge and information to reach judgments about two fundamental aspects of constitutional design. Thus, I will show that the Founding Fathers acted out of broad, though distinct and competing, philosophical perspectives concerning the working relationships between human nature, particular political institutions, and the resulting social order, when they struggled to design the general institutional structure for the new national government. On these issues of basic governmental organization and design, the nationalist delegates from the Middle Atlantic states, generally supporting Madison's vision of an "extended" republic, opposed the delegates from New England and the lower South, who held tenaciously to Montesquieu's warning that free institutions could survive only in "small" republics. The delegates, on the other hand, pursued narrow material interests when they voted on specific mechanisms for implementing various aspects of the constitutional design. When debate touched upon the distribution of power and influence within the institutions of the new government, coalitions based upon interest posed the large states against the small, the northern states against the southern, and the states with large claims to the lands in the West against the states that had no such claims to future wealth and power. This movement from the consideration of broad principles to a concern with narrow interests conforms to the general expectation of modern social choice theory, particularly in the work of James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, and Vincent Ostrom. I will argue, however, that there was more frequent movement back and forth from philosophical principles to material interests than social choice theory would seem to anticipate. Such recurring movement indicates that constitution making is a more delicate and complex process than either the traditional historical analysts or the contemporary social choice theorists have realized. This complexity arises from the broad range of issues raised in constitution making, the lack of a single natural majority coalition across all issues, and the consequent tendency of delegates and state delegations to realign during constitution making as the Convention moved from one set of critical and controversial issues to another set. Underlying the complexity of the constitution-making process in
the Federal Convention of 1787, there nonetheless existed a very
simple and widely shared goal. The delegates, though drawn from
different cultural and material contexts, sought to create a common
constitutional framework through which representative
decision-making could resolve their legitimate political
differences. They disagreed on the appropriate design of the
Constitution, and on the distribution of political power and
influence within and across particular institutions, but the general
goal of a representative constitution united them and led to a
sophisticated and sincere decision process that continues to stand
as a model of democratic constitution making. In elaborating this thesis, I attempt to accomplish three goals. First, I supply an empirical description of the voting coalitions, the stable patterns of cooperation and conflict among the delegates and their state delegations as voting units, that characterized the Convention's work. Particular attention is dedicated to changes in voting coalitions and to the implications of these changes for the substantive issues before the Convention. The goal here is to establish the traditional historical and philosophical discussion of the debates and decisions of the Federal Convention on a firm empirical footing. Second, I advance an explanation of the underlying rationale (philosophical, sociocultural, economic, or regional) for each division of the states. I will describe the Convention chronologically as a series of confrontations between stable coalitions of states and their delegates over the major issues that confronted the Convention from its opening on May 25 to its final adjournment on September 17, 1787. Questions such as the following will be addressed: What were the major issues that spawned each alignment? What were the theoretical justifications and the practical power implications of each of the principal positions adopted by the delegates? Who finally prevailed and why? Third, I will demonstrate that the long-standing division in the secondary literature on the Convention between those analysts who stress the impact of philosophical principles and those who stress the influence of political and economic interests is misleading. In fact, a dynamic relationship of mutual interdependence existed—and, in fact, had to exist—between philosophical and material influences in the Convention. I will show that the principled or ideological conflicts that arose in the Convention were generated by the clash of regionally based variations in the republican political culture of the new nation, while the conflicts over power and policy were generated by differences in political and economic interests relating to state size and to region. The key to my interpretation of the politics of the Federal Convention is the contention that debate moved between two distinct but interrelated levels of constitutional construction and that the relative influence of the delegates' political principles and their material interests on the Convention's debates and decisions was quite different at each level. My thesis is that principles guided action on distinguishable types of questions, while on other sets of questions, personal, state, and regional interests encroached upon, and in some cases overwhelmed and subordinated, the independent impact of ideas. I will argue that questions of each general type dominated the Convention's attention during particular phases of its work, so that at some stages, the dominant voting coalitions were organized around shared principles, while at other times, the dominant coalitions were organized around conflicting material interests. In developing this revisionist interpretation, I argue that intellectual divisions in the Convention had their basis in regional variations in the republican political culture of the American founding period. This argument is based on the work of Daniel Elazar, Robert Kelley, and many others. Elazar, for instance, has described three related but distinct political subcultures: moralistic in New England, individualistic in the Middle Atlantic states, and traditionalistic in the South. Kelley, while calling his regional subcultures by different names and finding two distinct subcultures active in the Middle Atlantic states, has provided very similar substantive descriptions of the ideas and values at the center of each regional subculture. Further, I will support this argument by demonstrating—both
empirically, through analysis of roll-call voting data, and
substantively, through analysis of the Convention's voluminous
debates—that when the Convention concentrated on "higher" level
questions of constitutional design, voting coalitions among the
state delegations formed along lines of intellectual cleavage.
During these phases of the Convention's work, the delegates from the
more nationally oriented Middle Atlantic states opposed the more
locally oriented delegates representing the northern and southern
periphery. When the focus shifted to "lower" level choices among
specific decision rules, each of which represented an alternative
distribution of authority within and over the institutions of
government, the states split along lines defined by economic and
geographic interest, state size (large versus small), and region
(North versus South). But perhaps most importantly, I will show that
coalitions, whether based on political principles or on material
interests, consistently undercut, disrupted, and weakened one
another as debate and decision ranged across the fundamental issues
that were the Convention's daily business. What is more, the
interplay between coalitions effectively checked and limited the
long-term cohesion that any alignment of states could maintain and
resulted in the politics of bargaining, compromise, and
accommodation for which the Convention is so justly famous. The impact of factional politics, political compromises, and
shifting coalitions has, however, been less happy for scholars
seeking to understand and interpret the Convention. Because no
consistent set of political principles, no region, no social or
economic class interest dominated the Convention's business, and
though each of these sources of influence was visibly present and
was clearly felt, no simple description of divisions in the
Convention or of their sources is available. This has greatly
embarrassed most of the sweeping dichotomies—nationalists against
federalists, large republic men against small republic men, large
states against small states, northern states against southern
states, commercial interests against agrarian interests, and many
others—that have traditionally been used to explain the work of the
Convention. Consequently, we have been inundated by a wealth of
contradictory claims concerning divisions within the Convention and
their effects, with no firm basis for choice among them. I will
attempt throughout this book to explain in some detail, both
empirically and substantively, who won (in factional terms), when
(at what stage in the Convention's business), and why (in terms of
intellectual or practical political advantage) on the major issues
faced by the delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787.
Ultimately, a conceptually sophisticated and empirically accurate
understanding of the politics of constitution making in the Federal
Convention will allow us to see the democratic politics of our own
age in clearer perspective.
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| Muhammad By Michael Cook (get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on Muhammad at Questia Online Library by clicking here) Introduction There are many Muslims at the present day whose ancestors were infidels a thousand years ago; this is true by and large of the Turks, the Indonesians, and sizeable Muslim populations in India and Africa. The processes by which these peoples entered Islam were varied, and reflect a phase of Islamic history when different parts of the Muslim world had gone their separate ways. Yet the core of the Islamic community owes its existence to an earlier and more unitary historical context. Between the seventh and ninth centuries the Middle East and much of North Africa were ruled by the Caliphate, a Muslim state more or less coextensive with the Muslim world of its day. This empire in turn was the product of the conquests undertaken by the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula in the middle decades of the seventh century. The men who effected these conquests were the followers of a certain Muhammad, an Arab merchant turned prophet and politician who in the 620s established a theocratic state among the tribes of western Arabia. I Background Over the last few thousand years it has probably been the general consensus of human societies that there are numerous gods (though men have certainly held very different views as to who these gods are and what they do). The oldest societies to have left us written records, and hence direct evidence of their religious beliefs, were polytheistic some five thousand years ago; by the first millennium BC there is enough evidence to indicate that polytheism was the religious norm right across the Old World. It did not, however, remain unchallenged. In the same millennium ideas of a rather different stamp were appearing among the intellectual élites of the more advanced cultures. In Greece, Babylonia, India and China there emerged a variety of styles of thought which were noticeably more akin to our own abstract and impersonal manner of looking at the world. The tendency was to see the universe in terms of grand unified theories, rather than as the reflection of the illcoordinated activities of a plurality of personal gods. Such ways of thinking rarely led to denial of the actual existence of the gods, but they tended to tidy them up in the interests of coherence and system, or to reduce them to a certain triviality. (Consider, for example, the view of some Buddhist sects that the gods are unable to attain enlightenment owing to the distracting behaviour of the goddesses.) What they did not do was to pick out from the polytheistic heritage a single personal god, and discard the rest. This development was to be the contribution of a conceptually less sophisticated people of the ancient Near East, the Israelites. Like other peoples of their world, the Israelites possessed a national god who was closely identified with their political and military fortunes. Like others, they experienced the desolation of defeat and exile at the hands of more powerful enemies. Their distinctive reaction to this history was to develop an exclusive cult of their national god, eventually proclaimed as the only god in existence -- in a word, as God. Had monotheism remained a peculiarity of the Israelites (or as we
can now call them, the Jews), it would not have ranked as more than
a curiosity in the history of the world at large. As it happened,
this situation was drastically changed by a minor Jewish heresy
which became a world religion: Christianity. Its primary spread was
within the Roman Empire. By the fourth century after Christ it had
been adopted as the state religion; by the sixth century the Roman
Empire was more or less solidly Christian. At the same time
Christianity had spread unevenly in several directions beyond the
imperial frontiers. There were, for example, Christian kingdoms in
Armenia and Ethiopia; and although the Persian Empire held fast to
its ancestral Zoroastrian faith, it contained within its borders a
significant Christian minority, particularly in Mesopotamia. West of
India, no major society was unshaken by the rise of monotheism, and
only the Persians stood out against it. Arabia In comparison with the Fertile Crescent, Arabia was accordingly a land of deprivation. Agriculture, the basic economic activity of mankind between the neolithic and industrial revolutions, was largely confined to the oases; and even the rainfall agriculture of the Yemen was derisory by comparison with what could be achieved across the Red Sea in Ethiopia. Much of Arabia was fit only for pastoralism, and a nomadic pastoralism at that. These conditions did much to shape the character of Arabian society. Civilisation, with its cities, temples, bureaucracies, aristocracies, priesthoods, regular armies, and elaborate cultural heritages, requires a substantial agricultural base. With the partial exception of the Yemen, such an edifice could not be built in Arabia. Arabian society was tribal, in the oases as much as in the desert. There were pariah groups excluded from tribal society, and 'kings' who were almost but not quite above it; but by the standards of the Fertile Crescent, Arabian society was egalitarian and anarchic. By the same standards the culture of Arabia was simple, if not threadbare; its principal legacy is its poetry. The isolating peninsular geography of Arabia, and the mobility of pastoralists within it, contributed to another significant feature of Arabian society, its homogeneity. To a surprising extent, the Arabian desert was the land of a single people, the Arabs, speaking a single language, Arabic. This cannot always have been so. The Arabs do not appear by name before the ninth century BC, and were not the first nomadic pastoralists of the area; but by the time of Muhammad, any earlier diversity had been obliterated north of the Yemen. Although Arabian society was very different from the settled societies, of the Fertile Crescent and beyond, it was by no means deprived of contact with the outside world. Yet these contacts, though ancient, had wrought no transformation on either side; their effects were most pronounced in the border areas where the two patterns interacted. We may begin by looking at the military and political aspect of
this relationship. A nomadic tribal society is warlike and highly
mobile; but it is also allergic to large-scale organisation. As
raiders, the tribesmen of Arabia were accordingly a persistent
nuisance to the settled world; but they were rarely a serious
military threat. The Nabatean Arabs built up a kingdom on the edge
of the desert which in 85 BC occupied Damascus, and an Arab queen of
the later fourth century invaded Palestine; but such events were
exceptional. They might lead to the creation of Arab statelets, and
encourage penetration by Arab settlers, but they initiated no
massive and enduring conquests. A state governing a settled society,
by contrast, is capable of organised military effort on a large
scale, and may adopt a more or less forward policy of frontier
defence against nomadic raiders. It has, however, neither the means
nor the motive for conquering a desert. An eccentric Babylonian king
had once spent several years in the western Arabian oases, and a
Roman expedition had blundered through the Arabian desert on its way
to the Yemen; but again such episodes were exceptional. Under normal
conditions, the political influence of outside powers was confined
to frontier areas, where it might lead to the formation of Arab
client principalities and the use of their troops as auxiliaries. It
is true that a certain departure from this pattern seems to have
arisen from the imperial rivalries of the centuries preceding the
career of Muhammad. In this period the Persians established a
hegemony over the Arabs on an unprecedented scale. They were
entrenched in the east and south, and even had some presence in the
oases of central Arabia. But it is hard to imagine this yoke as a
heavy one in inner Arabia, least of all in the west, and it scarcely
appears in the story of Muhammad's life. Another significant form of contact with the outside world was trade. The Islamic sources remember a trade in silver to Persia from south and central Arabia, in close connection with the Persian political hegemony. In the west they describe an Arab trade with southern Syria of which the staple commodity would seem to have been leather. By the standards of the international trade of the day, both the silver and, still more, the leather trades were doubtless rather trivial. Frankincense, the great Arabian export of antiquity, had long ago lost its market in the Roman Empire; and coffee, the only other Arabian export of consequence before the arrival of oil, had not yet appeared. At the same time the bulk of the peninsula played no part in international transit trade; it was naturally cheaper to ship goods round the peninsula than to transport them across it. But such trade as there was sufficed to ensure that a knowledge of the civilised world and its proceedings existed far into Arabia. Arabia and monotheism As might be expected, the Arabs were affected by the rise of Christianity, and more particularly by the sects which came to predominate among their settled neighbours. In Syria, the prevailing doctrine from the fifth century was that of the Monophysites; this sect achieved a considerable following among the Arab tribes of the northern desert. In the Persian Empire the Christian population was mainly Nestorian, and to a lesser extent this sect held an analogous position among the neighbouring Arabs. It was also active along the Arab side of what in political terms was very much the Persian Gulf. In the Yemen we hear most of Monophysites, matching as it happened the form of Christianity which prevailed in Ethiopia. There was also a considerable, and probably much older, Jewish
presence in western Arabia. The Islamic tradition describes
substantial Jewish populations in several of the western oases, in
the region known as the Hijaz, and this has some confirmation from
archaeology. In the Yemen a Jewish presence is likewise attested.
There is evidence that it was in contact with the Jews of Palestine,
and it seems to have achieved some local influence; in the early
sixth century a Yemeni king martyred Christians in the name of
Judaism. If we imagine ourselves for a moment in sixth-century Arabia,
what long-term expectations could we reasonably have entertained?
First, that if the Arabs had never in the past been a serious
military threat to the outside world, they were unlikely to become
one now. Second, that the escalating rivalry between the leading
foreign powers, the Romans and the Persians, would lead if anything
to a tightening of their grip on whatever was worth controlling in
Arabia. And third, that despite the persistence of paganism and the
presence of Judaism, it was only a matter of time before Arabia
became more or less Christian. In the event, the triumph of
monotheism in Arabia took a form which rendered each of these
plausible expectations false.
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| Images and
Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism By Mircea Eliade, Philip Mairet; Sheed Andrews and McMeel (get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on Religious Symbols at Questia Online Library by clicking here) I Symbolism of the "Centre" But the excessive scientific probity of his output has ended by alienating him from the cultured public. Except for quite rare exceptions, the historians of religions are not read outside the restricted circles of their colleagues and disciples. The public no longer reads their books, either because they are too technical or too dull; in short because they awaken no spiritual interest. By force of hearing it repeated--as it was, for instance, by Sir James Frazer throughout some twenty thousand pages--that everything thought, imagined or desired by man in archaic societies, all his myths and rites, all his gods and religious experiences, are nothing but a monstrous accumulation of madnesses, cruelties and superstitions now happily abolished by the progress of mankind--by dint of listening almost always to the same thing, the public has at last let itself be convinced, and has ceased to take any interest in the objective study of religions. A portion, at least, of this public tries to satisfy its legitimate curiosity by reading very bad books--on the mysteries of the Pyramids, the miracles of Yoga, on the "primordial revelations", or Atlantis--in short, interests itself in the frightful literature of the dilettanti, the neospiritualists or pseudo-occultists. To some degree, it is we, the historians of religions, who are responsible for this. We wanted at all costs to present an objective history of religions, but we failed to bear in mind that what we were christening objectivity followed the fashion of thinking in our times. For nearly a century we have been striving to set up the history of religions as an autonomous discipline, without success: the history of religions is still, as we all know, confused with anthropology, ethnology, sociology, religious psychology and even with orientalism. Desirous to achieve by all means the prestige of a "science", the history of religions has passed through all the crises of the modern scientific mind, one after another. Historians of religions have been successively--and some of them have not ceased to be--positivists, empiricists, rationalists or historicists. And what is more, none of the fashions which in succession have dominated this study of ours, not one of the global systems put forward in explanation of the religious phenomenon, has been the work of a historian of religions; they have all derived from hypotheses advanced by eminent linguists, anthropologists, sociologists or ethnologists, and have been accepted in their turn by everyone, including the historians of religions! The situation that one finds today is as follows: a considerable
improvement in information, paid for by excessive specialisation and
even by sacrificing our own vocation (for the majority of historians
of religions have become orientalists, classicists, ethnologists,
etc.), and a dependence upon the methods elaborated by modern
historiography or sociology (as though the historical study of a
ritual or a myth were exactly the same thing as that of a country or
of some primitive people). In short, we have neglected this
essential fact: that in the title of the "history of religions" the
accent ought not to be upon the word history, but upon the word
religions. For although there are numerous ways of practising
history--from the history of technics to that of human
thought--there is only one way of approaching religion--namely, to
deal with the religious facts. Before making the history of
anything, one must have a proper understanding of what it is, in and
for itself. In that connection, I would draw attention to the work
of Professor Van der Leeuw, who has done so much for the
phenomenology of religion, and whose many and brilliant publications
have aroused the educated public to a renewal of interest in the
history of religions in general. In an indirect way, the same interest has been awakened by the discoveries of psychoanalysis and depth-psychology, in the first place by the work of Professor Jung. Indeed, it was soon recognised that the enormous domain of the history of religions provided an inexhaustible supply of terms of comparison with the behaviour of the individual or the collective psyche, as this was studied by psychologists or analysts. As we all know, the use that psychologists have made of such socio-religious documentation has not always obtained the approval of historians of religions. We shall be examining, in a moment, the objections raised against such comparisons, and indeed they have often been too daring. But it may be said at once that if the historians of religions had only approached the objects of their study from a more spiritual standpoint, if they had tried to gain a deeper insight into archaic religious symbolisms, many psychological or psychoanalytic interpretations, which look all too flimsy to a specialist's eye, would never have been suggested. The psychologists have found excellent materials in our books, but very few explanations of any depth--and they have been tempted to fill up these lacunae by taking over the work of the historians of religions by putting forward general--and too often rash--hypotheses. In few words, the difficulties that have to be overcome today are these: (a) on the one hand, having decided to compete for the prestige of an objective "scientific" historiography, the history of religions is obliged to face the objections that can be raised against historicism as such; and (b) on the other hand, it is also obliged to take up the challenge lately presented to it by psychology in general--and particularly by depth-psychology, which, now that it is beginning to work directly upon the historicoreligious data, is putting forward working hypotheses more promising, more productive, or at any rate more sensational, than those that are current among historians of religion. To understand these difficulties better, let us come now to the subject of the present study: the symbolism of the "Centre". A historian of religions has the right to ask us: What do you mean by these terms? What symbols are in question? Among which peoples and in what cultures? And he might add: You are not unaware that the epoch of Tylor, of Mannhardt and Frazer is over and done with; it is no longer allowable today to speak of myths and rites "in general", or of a uniformity in primitive man's reactions to Nature. Those generalisations are abstractions, like those of "primitive man" in general. What is concrete is the religious phenomenon manifested in history and through history. And, from the simple fact that it is manifested in history, it is limited, it is conditioned by history. What meaning, then, for the history of religions could there be in such a formula as, for instance, the ritual approach to immortality? We must first specify what kind of immortality is in question; for we cannot be sure, a priori, that humanity as a whole has had, spontaneously, the intuition of immortality or even the desire for it. You speak of the "symbolism of the Centre"--what right have you, as a historian of religions, to do so? Can one so lightly generalise? One ought rather to begin by asking oneself: in which culture, and following upon what historical events, did the religious notion of the "Centre", or that of immortality become crystallised? How are these notions integrated and justified, in the organic system of such and such a culture? How are they distributed, and among which peoples? Only after having answered all these preliminary questions will one have the right to generalise and systematise, to speak in general about the rites of immortality or symbols of the "Centre". If not, one may be contributing to psychology or philosophy, or even theology, but not to the history of religions. I think all these objections are justified and, inasmuch as I am a historian of religions, I intend to take them into account. But I do not regard them as insurmountable. I know well enough that we are dealing here with religious phenomena and that, by the very fact that they are phenomena--that is, manifested or revealed to us--each one is struck, like a medal, by the historical moment in which it was born. There is no "purely" religious fact, outside history and outside time. The noblest religious message, the most universal of mystical experiences, the most universally human behaviour--such, for instance, as religious fear, or ritual, or prayer--is singularised and delimited as soon as it manifests itself. When the Son of God incarnated and became the Christ, he had to speak Aramaic; he could only conduct himself as a Hebrew of his times--and not as a yogi, a Taoist or a shaman. His religious message, however universal it might be, was conditioned by the past and present history of the Hebrew people. If the Son of God had been born in India, his spoken message would have had to conform itself to the structure of the Indian languages, and to the historic and prehistoric tradition of that mixture of peoples. In the taking up of this position one can clearly recognise the speculative progress that has been made, from Kant--who may be regarded as a precursor of historicism--down to the latest historicist or existentialist philosophers. In so far as man is a historic, concrete, authentic being, he is "in situation". His authentic existence is realising itself in history, in time, in his time --which is not that of his father. Neither is it the time of his contemporaries in another continent, or even in another country. That being so, what business have we to be talking about the behaviour of man in general? This man in general is no more than an abstraction: he exists only on the strength of a misunderstanding due to the imperfection of language. This is not the place to attempt a philosophical critique of historicism and historicist existentialism. That critique has been made, and by more competent authors. Let us remark, for the present, that the view of human spiritual life as historically conditioned resumes, upon another plane and using other dialectical methods, the now somewhat outmoded theories of environmental determinism, geographical, economic, social and even physiological. Everyone agrees that a spiritual fact, being a human fact, is necessarily conditioned by everything that works together to make a man, from his anatomy and physiology to language itself. In other words, a spiritual fact presupposes the whole human being --that is, the social man, the economic man, and so forth. But all these conditioning factors together do not, of themselves, add up to the life of the spirit. What distinguishes the historian of religions from the historian
as such is that he is dealing with facts which, although historical,
reveal a behaviour that goes far beyond the historical involvements
of the human being. Although it is true that man is always found "in
situation", his situation is not, for all that, always a historical
one in the sense of being conditioned solely by the contemporaneous
historical moment. The man in his totality is aware of other
situations over and above his historical condition; for example, he
knows the state of dreaming, or of the waking dream, or of
melancholy, or of detachment, or of œsthetic bliss, or of escape,
etc.--and none of these states is historical, although they are as
authentic and as important for human existence as man's historical
existence is. Man is also aware of several temporal rhythms, and not
only of historical time--his own time, his historical
contemporancity. He has only to listen to good music, to fall in
love, or to pray, and he is out of the historical present, he
re-enters the eternal present of love and of religion. Even to open
a novel, or attend a dramatic performance, may be enough to
transport a man into another rhythm of time--what one might call
"condensed time"--which is anyhow not historical time. It has been
too lightly assumed that the authenticity of an existence depends
solely upon the consciousness of its own historicity. Such historic
awareness plays a relatively minor part in human consciousness, to
say nothing of the zones of the unconscious which also belong to the
make-up of the whole human being. The more a consciousness is
awakened, the more it transcends its own historicity: we have only
to remind ourselves of the mystics and sages of all times, and
primarily those of the Orient.
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| To Die Or Not to
Die? Cross-Disciplinary, Cultural, and Legal Perspectives on the
Right to Choose Death, By Joyce Berger get the full version of this research at Questia Online Library by clicking here 1 The Right to Die: Perspectives of the
Patient, the Family, and the Health Care Provider Possibly the most neglected aspect of patient care is the medical and psychological management of a patient's death. The existence of a deficiency may seem surprising. One would think that either patients would have reached a conclusion regarding their deaths and resuscitative measures prior to serious illness, or a discussion by the physician with the patient and family would result in a decision on how to handle resuscitation. When addressing how aggressively to manage and treat serious illness, implications that lie outside the boundaries of human rights and a person's quality of life should be considered. Approximately two million Americans die each year and, because of an increase in the population and particularly an increase in the number of elderly citizens, the annual number of deaths is rising. Eighty percent of the health care dollar is spent on people who survive less than one year. The care of nonsurvivors is approximately double that of survivors ( Scotto and Chiazze, 1974). Only 10 percent of patients who require admission to an intensive care unit because of complications of their disease or treatment leave the hospital. In the past fifteen years the cost of health care has risen from 8 percent to over 13 percent of the gross national product--more than a 50 percent increase. These statistics should encourage health care providers to address the issue of resuscitation and aggressive management of life-threatening or terminal illnesses. By addressing such issues at an appropriate time, the use of expensive medical care in the pursuit of prolonging a patient's life would be averted. It is particularly important that the decision of whether or not to implement heroic measures be resolved at a time when the patient is able to make a decision. Despite our best intentions to grapple with and resolve the issues of a patient's right to die, there are obstacles that can render arriving at a solution difficult, if not impossible. I would like to describe these obstacles from the perspective of the patient, family, and health care provider. THE PATIENT'S PERSPECTIVE Although the physician may attempt to inform patients about the severity of their illnesses, patients may employ an appreciable amount of denial. In a study of 315 cancer patients ( Eidinger and Schapira, 1984) being treated with chemotherapy or radiation therapy for advanced cancer, only 50 percent of the patients correctly responded that their cancer had spread and was in an advanced stage. All the patients had been informed of their condition prior to the study. This lack of knowledge was not due to an unwillingness to seek information, as over 90 percent of the participants wished to learn all information regarding their disease, irrespective of whether the information was pleasant or unpleasant. We asked the participants what they felt their prognosis was. The majority of patients felt they would live at least three years or longer, and an appreciable percentage felt they would "beat the cancer." In fact, over 75 percent of the patients expired within a year of participating in the study. If patients have a very optimistic view of their prognosis, discussions regarding resuscitation may seem incongruous. If patients deny the severity of their condition, they may not
make a rational and realistic decision about how the process of
dying should be medically managed. Patients may also feel that
making a decision not to be resuscitated may result in abandonment
by the health care team and enhance a feeling of hopelessness. It is
of interest that only 14 percent of patients who had a "do not
resuscitate" order on their chart left the hospital alive at the end
of the admission. Factors other than denial may affect the patient's decision regarding resuscitation. A patient may make a decision not to be resuscitated based on erroneous information, emotion, or mood. A patient may become depressed with the side affects associated with the disease and feel that "life is not worth living." If, however, the symptoms can be alleviated, the patient's quality of life may be markedly improved and the desire to be aggressive with medical management may change. Patients who feel they have not received a desired amount of attention and emotional support from spouse, family members, or friends may express a desire not to be resuscitated in an attempt to engender sympathy and emotional support from these individuals. Patients may even go so far as to attempt suicide to achieve the desired outcome. Patients may have preconceived unpleasant illusions about the aspects of resuscitation. They may fear the trauma of intensive care units, tubes and intravenous lines inserted into the body, respirators, or the cardiac arrest procedure. Impressions of these traumatic measures may lead patients to decide to make a more passive decision. These feelings of depression or fear that lead to a decision not to be resuscitated may be implemented by the health care team unless the reasons underlying the decision are examined. The situation can arise in which the patient's quality of life and desire for life is not dealt with appropriately. This is exemplified when an elderly patient with a terminal disease is admitted to an intensive care unit. The medical staff may view the admission and intensity of care to be inappropriate. They may be unaware that the patient wishes to remain alive for a few more weeks or months to see the birth of a grandchild or wedding of a child. A somewhat similar philosophical decision was presented to a Massachusetts court ( Brophy vs. New England Mt. Sinai Hospital). The court authorized the withdrawal of nutrition from an adult in a chronic vegetative state. While healthy, he had stated that he would not want his life sustained if he were permanently unconscious. The court rejected the view that a decision to withdraw life-supporting measures could be made on the basis of a quality of life that was determined by individuals other than the patient. The decision should not be perceived as a step toward euthanasia for those patients who lack the capacity to satisfy someone else's vision of a satisfactory quality of life or are deemed to be a social burden. THE FAMILY'S PERSPECTIVE Families are placed in a similarly uncomfortable position when the patients are gravely ill and unable to make their wishes known due to decreased consciousness. Families may express a desire for inappropriately aggressive management because of guilt. A physician may attempt to educate a family with an objective presentation of the medical facts surrounding the case. Many families are uncomfortable with this amount of education and participation. They may not understand and assimilate the information at such an emotional time and may lack the objectivity to make such an important decision concerning a loved one. In order to avoid the responsibility and guilt associated with adopting a passive approach, they choose a safe course of action and request that "everything be done" for the patient. This situation can be rectified by the physician's explaining why a passive approach is in the patient's best interest; this can alleviate the family's guilt when they agree with the physician's decision. Cultural or ethnic factors can make a decision regarding
resuscitation almost impossible. Hispanic families prefer to shield
the patient from unnecessary anxiety and depression and may ask the
physician not to tell the patient anxiety-provoking information such
as a diagnosis of cancer. Throughout the patient's course, the
family protects the patient from any depressing information;
therefore a discussion about dying and resuscitative measures
between the physician and the patient is obstructed. Although the situation of not informing the patient may seem inconceivable, one must be careful not to impose one's belief system as regards health, disease, treatment, and death on patients from a different ethnic or cultural background. If one attempts to impose one's wishes and values on patients, the response is often denial, resistance, and decreased compliance. In fact, although we feel that we are open in telling patients their prognoses, physicians often collude with patients in not correcting optimistic misconceptions of prognoses. Because of their cultural or religious beliefs, and indeed their
personality, some patients may wish to take a passive role in the
decision making regarding the circumstances of their deaths. To
disregard the wishes and beliefs of the family and to confront the
patient with the decision will probably not be fruitful, and indeed
may lack understanding and not be in the patient's best interest.
Such a confrontation may impair the patient's quality of life and
future communication with the physician. Unfortunately, medical anthropology and thanatology are not part of the curriculum of most medical schools. Without a knowledge of these areas, physicians may lack awareness and sensitivity toward alternate belief systems relating to health, disease, and death. The physician can only be left to impose his or her belief system and values on the patient, the result being an unsatisfactory outcome. THE PHYSICIAN'S PERSPECTIVE Apart from their desire to avoid discussing emotionally laden issues, physicians vary in their communication skills. Some may lack directness or honesty or may use technical language that is beyond the understanding of the patient and family. In this situation a facilitator, such as a psychiatrist attached to the health care team, nurse, social worker, or chaplain, can act as an intermediary and resolve any difficulties in understanding the issues. I find this approach very effective as patients and families may not want to ask physicians questions for fear of interrupting their busy schedules or for fear that certain questions are too simple or inappropriate. Members of a psychological team may be able to discuss and allay a patient's or family's fears because of their training and the fact that patients may find them less intimidating than the physician. In a study by Bedell et al. ( 1983), 95 percent of physicians felt it was appropriate to discuss the patient's wishes regarding resuscitation, yet in only 19 percent of cases did the physician discuss the subject of resuscitation with the patient, and in only 33 percent of cases did the physician discuss resuscitation with the family. Fear of legal liability may interfere with a physician's ability
to make the best choice for the patient. A physician may have a
primary objective of minimizing liability, real or imagined. This
strategy may be at the expense of humane treatment and may be at
odds with the family's wishes. There is only one case (as of 1984)
in which two physicians were charged with murder for withholding
life support from a comatose patient. The charges were dropped by
the California Court of Appeals. The fear of litigation following
the withholding of life support is grossly exaggerated by
physicians. If the conversation with, and wishes of, the patient and
family are documented in the hospital records, it is extremely
unlikely that a physician will be sued. In spite of legal
uncertainties, appropriate and compassionate care should have
priority over undue fear of liability. WHAT CONSTITUTES RESUSCITATION? The living will is a document, distributed nationally, that outlines patients' wishes regarding medical management should they subsequently become incompetent to decide ( Society for the Right to Die, Living Will, New York, 1985). This document is not binding in some states, but it does clearly outline a patient's desires and expectations. At the present, thirty-eight states have enacted living will or "natural death" legislation ( Jonsen, 1978). CONCLUSION The medical team in a hospital is often faced with a situation in
which a patient has a life-threatening episode such as cardiac
arrhythmia or cardiac arrest, and there is no statement in the
patient's chart regarding resuscitation. Under these circumstances
the medical team has to make every effort to resuscitate the
patient, even though resuscitation seems inappropriate and would
have been against the patient's wishes. This not uncommon situation
can be frequently averted if the attending physician discusses
resuscitation measures with the patient either before admission or
on the first day of admission to the hospital. This discussion
should not be held with every patient, but only with those patients
deemed to have limited survival or a serious life-threatening
condition. Another approach would be to educate patients regarding their rights to make a living will, and to make the drawing up of such a will a relatively simple and inexpensive exercise. Living wills drawn up by patients attempt to extend patients' authority to decline certain therapeutic measures that may be involved in their death. This attempt would be made at a time when the patient was capable of entering into decision making. A standardized document could be obtained from a doctor's office or hospital that would describe the various levels of resuscitative measures with explanations. Patients could then make informed decisions as to the level of resuscitative procedures that they would want to have invoked should they become critically ill. A third approach would be to have certain criteria for the entry of patients with terminal illness into intensive care units. There is considerable evidence ( Cullen et al., 1974) that an appreciable portion of the cost of caring for terminally ill patients is associated with treatment in intensive care units. There are standards that cover the admission of patients to intensive care units. The bill for such an admission may not be totally covered by the insurance company and the surviving family may be left having to pay a considerable amount of money. A more stringent application of admission guidelines would reduce expenditures for the health care system and family, which is important when the admission of a patient to such a unit is inappropriate and unsuccessful. A very reasonable alternative in caring for terminal patients who do not wish an aggressive approach to their management is the hospice movement. Hospices provide an alternative form of care for the dying. They allow terminally ill patients a choice of dying at home or in facilities other than the hospital. Hospices are often a more appropriate form of care, as they are designed for palliation and caring rather than curing. Patient autonomy and dignity are enhanced. In 1982 Congress ensured that hospice care would be covered by
Medicare. It is not clear that hospice care will reduce the cost of
health care, but the system allows terminal illness to be more
bearable for the patient and family if a decision has been made not
to follow an aggressive course.
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| The Crusade
against Slavery, 1830-1860, By Louis Filler (get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on slavery at Questia Online Library by clicking here) Preface
The abolition and reform movements were complex by nature, carrying emotional overtones, and associated with spectacular events. It was not possible to present disinterested analyses of their content and direction, either in their time or for a long time thereafter. The growth of free soil and the struggle to preserve the Union made reform seem less important, and confused the definition of abolition. In the post-Civil War period the reformers, once bound together by concern for the slave, by free speech, temperance, education, woman's rights, and other causes, tended to separate, each to pursue his own specialty. This growing emphasis on "specialists" made it increasingly difficult to accept the fact that one could agitate for woman's rights, and education, and the rights of the individual all at once--that many Americans had once done so. Hence, although there have been numerous biographies of pre-Civil War reformers, and monumental histories of woman's rights, temperance, education, and other crusades, their relevance to each other has been less persistently sought. The central hub of reform--abolition--has received fragmented consideration, for the most part, in the interest of one or another major figure. It has been too readily assumed that the "moral struggle" against slavery in the 1830's became transformed, from 1840 to 1860, into a "political struggle" which diminished the value of the abolitionists. Whether true or false, the thesis requires re-examination. The present volume traces the relationship of antislavery to abolition, and probes their connection with the several reforms which dominated the period. It attempts to avoid merely mentioning names, to say nothing of name-calling. It seeks, rather, to discriminate among individuals and inquire into their purposes and worth. It endeavors to recapture a sense of the contemporary consequence which reformers enjoyed; and it may well be that such an attempt affects our judgment of their relevance to our own times. The available materials are as numerous, as complex as our "densepack'd cities," as broad as our "myriad fields." The investigator who seeks to rise above the level of partisanship has a delicate task in seeking out representative materials intended to open inquiry, rather than to close it, while at the same time satisfying the reader's right to know how the author feels about his own findings. My appreciation is due Antioch College, the American Philosophical Society, and the Social Science Research Council, which, at strategic points, provided grants in aid of research and for related expenses. Antioch College's fine library staff helped keep materials coming during the long preparation of the manuscript, and its excellent sabbatical policy enabled me to complete the work. Many more people than can be conveniently mentioned have given aid and comfort, suggestions and advice. Thanks are due, first, to my editors, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, who gave this work the benefit of their long experience and understanding. Numerous persons read the manuscript in part, and many more influenced the formulation of passages and ideas. It is a pleasure to note, among my colleagues, Professors Bernard A. Weisberger of the University of Chicago, the late Robert S. Fletcher of Oberlin College, Harry R. Stevens of Ohio University, Wesley M. Gewehr, emeritus professor of history at the University of Maryland, Lawrence A. Cremin of Teachers College, Columbia University, C. Stanley Urban of Park College, Mary E. Young of Ohio State University, Dean Lloyd E. Worner of The Colorado College, and Bernard Mandel of Cleveland. Mr. Boyd B. Stutler of Charleston, West Virginia, not only gave freely from his great store of information about John Brown and related topics, but contributed a warm interest which was welcome during stonier stages of investigation. Librarians are friendly folks, and one is grateful to them as a class. Helpful beyond the strict call of duty were Mrs. Alene Lowe White of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Miss Lelia F. Holloway of the Oberlin College Library, and Miss Louise F. Kampf of The Colorado College, as well as Dr. Henry J. Caren, Associate Editor of the Ohio Historical Quarterly.
Yet curiously enough, during the decades which preceded the reform era, slavery inspired not one notable literary or legal defense. Many influential leaders of society assumed that it must ultimately give way to a more democratic order. Others deplored its workings and sought to hasten its end. Their compassion sometimes extended to the Indian, as well, who had also been marked for enslavement, though he was less tractable than the black man. In New England, back in the seventeenth century, John Eliot, "apostle to the Indians," had been stirred to his saintly labors of Indian conversion. In the South, the following century, Christian Priber, from Saxony, adopted the Cherokees in western Carolina; he died a prisoner of Oglethorpe, English reformer and founder of Georgia. 1 Among others, Samuel Sew. all, notable Massachusetts diarist and penitent judge of the Salem witchcraft hysteria, had been concerned over the right and wrong of slavery, and had undertaken to pay his own slave for services rendered. Theirs were literally voices crying in the wilderness. It would later become a major assumption in American history that the frontier had fostered freedom. There is, indeed, persuasive evidence that the frontier encouraged the creation of democratic ideas and attitudes and helped push democratic leaders to the fore, but it did not, on the other hand, help to undermine slavery. The frontier tended to reflect the prejudices and expectations of those who settled it. It permitted them almost unbounded opportunity, so that practical and experimental, progressive and patently reactionary, modes of behavior flourished according to the strength of their sponsors. Cosmopolitan Cincinnati in Ohio and Mormon Nauvoo in Illinois, Natchez with its Old South ways and atheistic New Harmony in Indiana--all were made possible by the open terrain. 2 It was part of the tragedy of the South that its rapidly tightening social system should have so dominated its own frontier as not to have permitted a leavening process between the new areas being developed in the South and the original states. Western Virginia--hilly, with few slaves, with large numbers of poor whites and individualists--was not able to modify Old Virginia's ways. Ultimately, they separated. 3 The American Revolution and the years following excited new expectations that slavery must soon dwindle in strength and prestige. Such actual plans for ending it as maintaining high tariffs on the slave trade, or permitting slaves to buy their own freedom, were impractical. 4 But the spirit of the times seemed to favor an expansion of civil and other liberties. Leading Southerners freely expressed abhorrence of the foreign slave trade and domestic slavery. Not a few rewarded loyal slaves with manumissions for services during the Revolutionary War. Dr. Samuel Hopkins, noted theologian and a disciple of the great Jonathan Edwards, expressed himself in behalf of the slave, and contributed a vital Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans ( 1776) to the Revolutionary debate. After the Revolution had been fought and won, it continued to influence the American imagination; identification with it would strengthen a demand for a specific reform. The Negro's cause was seen as aided by his association with the Revolutionary effort, which was regarded as the most favorable era in Negro-white relations. In due course, antislavery views of the Revolutionary Fathers would be carefully collected and widely quoted. 5 But with the war over, popular interest in the slave declined. Abolitionist petitions to the first Federal Congress were, according to one caustic observer, received "with a sneer" by John Adams, presiding, and with hostility by distinguished senators. Such acts as Virginia's, officially manumitting Negroes who had served the Revolution, did not contribute to a landslide of manumissions, although well into the nineties it was customary for slaveowners to manumit some of their faithful Negroes by will. 6 The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 made slavery profitable in cotton cultivation; thereafter, the southern leadship became more assertive in defense of its rights. Representative Northerners unequivocally expressed their antislavery sentiments, but they did not speak for a section united on the issue, nor were they themselves clear about what should be done. Sensibilities on the subject took time to form in the North. William Jay, soon to be one of the most distinguished of abolitionists, was proud of the career of his father, John Jay, and of the latter's services as president of the pioneer Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves. His biography of the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court placed Jay's ownership of slaves in a special category: In the year 1798, being called upon by the United States marshal for an account of his taxable property, [ John Jay] accompanied a list of his slaves with the following observations: "I purchase slaves, and manumit them at proper ages, and when their faithful services shall have afforded a reasonable retribution." As free servants became more common, he was gradually relieved
from the necessity of purchasing slaves; and the last two which he
manumitted he retained for many years in his family, at the
customary wages. 7 Thus, in this early period, antislavery leaders resorted to slaveowning for "humane" ends. By 1825, North and South were clearly distinguishable in their attitude toward slavery, but not in their attitude toward the Negro. The celebrated visit of the Marquis de Lafayette, in that year, helped underscore how far the new nation had fallen from earlier expectations. The eminent Frenchman received an appeal from a publicspirited citizen to speak out against slavery, the latter having "a recollection of the notices in my early youth of thy generous efforts in the Cause of American liberty," and being convinced that the General's views would be received with enthusiasm. 8 But Lafayette himself was dismayed by the amount of anti-Negro prejudice he observed, in the North as well as in the South, and remarked that during the Revolution "black and white soldiers messed together without hesitation." 9 Theodore Dwight and John Sergeant were typical of many Northerners who were sincerely antislavery in sentiment, but who inadvertently fell into the posture of mere sectionalists. Theodore Dwight, editor of the New York Daily Advertiser, not only favored the abolition of slavery; he denounced the flogging of soldiers, and cruelty toward Negroes, Indians, Eskimos, mental patients, and even lobsters. But besides being a reformer he was also an ardent Federalist, whose strictures on the virtues and vices of Thomas Jefferson were far from dispassionate. 10 John Sergeant was an outstanding Philadelphia lawyer and congressman who earned the denunciation of Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina as being "a distinguished advocate of the Missouri restriction, an acknowledged abolitionist." There is no evidence, however, that Sergeant had any regard for Negroes as individuals or as a people. 11 Having little firsthand knowledge of slavery's workings, such partisans failed to acquire the information which would have added sinews to their arguments opposing it. Of different mettle was Benjamin Lundy, greatest of the pioneer abolitionists, who noted in 1826 that the governor of South Carolina had recommended that the custom of burning slaves in capital cases be stopped. "Is it possible that this has not been done long ago?" Lundy asked. "Will the cruelties of slaveholders hence be denied, as they have, by slaveite editors?" 12 The majority of Lundy's fellow Northerners remained indifferent to such practices; in fact, not a few of them were actively proslavery. The line between anti-Negro sentiment and proslavery feeling was sometimes shadowy, but Major Mordecai Manuel Noah, picturesque and popular Jacksonian, did not beat about the bush. Noah preached the rights of man, but also defended enslavement for the Negro. His point of view was shared by numerous elements throughout the North. 13 Daniel Webster, in his greatest peroration, pleading in 1830 for "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," observed that suspicion had been fostered in the South against the North for political reasons. The North was represented as "disposed to interfere with them in their own exclusive and peculiar concerns." The charge was untrue, Webster averred: "Such interference has never been supposed to be within the power of government; nor has it been, in any way, attempted." Many other Northerners adopted an equally virtuous stand regarding their willingness to live with slavery as a system. 14 Their insensitivity was a major challenge, not only to abolitionists, but to other antislavery partisans now coming to be frustrated in their hopes that southern spokesmen would support programs for freeing slaves. But as Theodore Parker was to point out in sermon after sermon, the supporter of the slave system would not let the North alone. Horace Greeley was one day to sum up the problem brilliantly: "Why can't you let Slavery alone?" was imperiously or querulously
demanded at the North, throughout the long struggle preceding [the
bombardment of Fort Sumter], by men who should have seen, but would
not, that Slavery never left the North alone, nor thought of so
doing. "Buy Louisiana for us!" said the slaveholders. "With
pleasure." "Now Florida!" "Certainly." Next: "Violate your treaties
with the Creeks and Cherokees; expel those tribes from the lands
they have held from time immemorial, so as to let us expand our
plantations." "So said, so done." "Now for Texas!" "You have it."
"Next, a third more of Mexico!" "Yours it is." "Now, break the
Missouri Compact, and let Slavery wrestle with Free Labor for the
vast region consecrated by that Compact to Freedom!" "Very good.
What next?" "Buy us Cuba, for One Hundred and Fifty Millions." "We
have tried; but Spain refuses to sell it." "Then wrest it from her
at all hazards!" And all this time, while Slavery was using the
Union as her catspaw--dragging the Republic into iniquitous wars and
enormous expenditures, and grasping empire after empire
thereby--Northern men (or, more accurately, men at the North) were
constantly asking why people living in the Free States could not let
Slavery alone, mind their own business, and expend their surplus
philanthropy on the poor at their own doors, rather than on the
happy and contented slaves! 15
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| Feminist
Interpretation of the Bible, Book by Letty M. Russell (get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on the Bible at Questia Online Library by clicking here) Introduction: Liberating the Word This collection of essays does not pretend to have the answer. Rather, it continues the tradition of the earlier book by inviting a wide readership of women and men to share in discussion of these questions. Discussions of feminist perspectives are not taking place in the academy alone. In all parts of the church, many women and not a few men seek ways of liberating the word to speak the gospel in the midst of the oppressive situations of our time. It is hoped that FEMINIST INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE will provide resources for collective discussion in Bible study, teaching, and preaching as well as personal study and meditation. As we join together in our study of the Bible, we may even be surprised by the fresh insights and challenges that arise as we search out the meaning of the texts for our own lives. Fresh insights are needed as the rising consciousness of women and people in the Third World or in other oppressed circumstances leads them to challenge accepted biblical interpretations that reinforce patriarchal domination. From this perspective the Bible needs to be liberated from its captivity to one-sided white, middle-class, male interpretation. It needs liberation from privatized and spiritualized interpretations that avoid God's concern for justice, human wholeness, and ecological responsibility; it needs liberation from abstract, doctrinal interpretations that remove the biblical narrative from its concrete social and political context in order to change it into timeless truth. Feminist and liberation theologians and biblical scholars have begun working on this process of liberating the word. Reading the Bible from the perspective of the oppressed, they note the bias in all biblical interpretation and call for clear advocacy of those who are in the greatest need of God's mercy and help: the dominated victims of society. These scholars lift up not only the personal but also the social, political, and economic dimensions of the biblical narratives, as they try to reconstruct the hidden history of the "losers." Thus they seek to keep the prophetic and liberating story of God's concern for the oppressed and for the mending of creation alive among communities of faith and faithfulness. Feminists find that even here the going is difficult, for the biblical texts were written in the context of patriarchal cultures. It is not even clear that the category of the oppressed is "generic" in the worldview of patriarchy [ 118 ]. Thus the issue continues to be whether the biblical message can continue to evoke consent in spite of its patriarchal captivity. The Liberating Word Feminist biblical interpretation has developed into two interdependent areas of research: inclusive language and inclusive interpretation. Both areas have one thing in common: They are carried forward by cooperating groups of women and men who see their work not only as a scholarly enterprise but also as a collective effort to bring about change in the thoughts, values, and actions of religious groups in the United States and abroad. The original task force was created because of a concern for the interpretation of the Bible that takes place through translation. The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. holds the copyright for the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and continues to sponsor the committee on revisions. Concern for representation of feminist scholarship on the translation committee has led to the appointment of Phyllis Bird, Cheryl Exum, and Katharine Sakenfeld to the committee currently at work on revisions of the Hebrew scriptures. At the same time, subsequent NCCC task forces have developed An InclusiveLanguage Lectionary for use in worship and preaching. Like the publication of the RSV before it, the Lectionary has sparked a storm of protest. It has made substitutions for key biblical words and concepts: God the Father [and Mother]; God the SOVEREIGN ONE; Realm of God. 4 These may or may not turn out to be the most imaginative renderings, but the greatest outcry has to do with "changing the canon" and thus weakening its "authority." Detractors seldom notice that The Living Bible and The Good News Bible are also paraphrases, or that the Reader's Digest version is also an alteration by deletion of the RSV. The difference is that inclusive changes have to do with imaging God as transcendent of male sexual characteristics or as inclusive of both male and female characteristics. The Lectionary confronts the seemingly divinely sanctioned patriarchal view of the world that is the basis of religious security for many people [ 64 ]. This book is the fruit of the second stream, cooperative research relative to the inclusive interpretation of the Bible. It seeks particularly to affirm women so that they are acknowledged as fully human partners with men, sharing in the image of God. Liberating the Word The question of liberation hermeneutics has been on the agenda of the Liberation Theology Working Group of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature for some time. It was the theme of the papers in 1979 and has been the central research topic since 1981. In 1980 a particular focus on feminist hermeneutics was added after an SBL centennial session on "The Effects of Women's Studies on Biblical Studies," moderated by Phyllis Trible. The recognition of the marginalization of women in the biblical field provided an impetus for cooperation among feminist and liberation scholars in asking one another how they do or do not do biblical interpretation differently from the mainstream of biblical study and interpretation. The published papers from this 1980 meeting 5 indicate that there is a second marginality experienced by feminist biblical scholars: They are marginal to a great deal of feminist scholarship because they continue to uphold the value of the biblical materials in spite of their patriarchal bias against women. For this reason it was important to work together as biblical scholars and theologians to reflect on a particular area of activity: feminist interpretation of the Bible. There had been considerable activity. Some members of this 1981 session had been at work in this area for more than ten years and welcomed a chance to reflect together on this action. They were asking, "What is it that we are doing as feminists when we interpret the Bible? Is there something distinctive about this interpretation? If so, what is it?" Perhaps the one area that could be agreed upon from the beginning
was that, like the nineteen women suffragists who worked with
Elizabeth Cady Stanton from 1895 to 1898 to publish The Woman's
Bible, these women are searching today for a feminist interpretation
of the Bible that is rooted in the feminist critical consciousness
that women and men are fully human and fully equal. This
consciousness is opposed to teachings and actions that reinforce the
social system that oppresses women and other groups in society. In
her contribution to the centennial session, Dorothy Bass reminded us
that Stanton published The Woman's Bible because the keystone of
misogynist religion and of women's oppression is the Bible. 6 Then
as now, there are those who find the Bible irrelevant or hopelessly
sexist and others who find feminist critique ungodly, but many women
and men struggle to combine a feminist consciousness and serious
consideration of the biblical witness with the story of God's
presence in the lives of women and men. In order to learn about feminist hermeneutics through reflection on action, two feminist exegetical papers were prepared and discussed at the Dallas meeting. (These papers were later published in revised form in the Fall 1983 issue of Semeia, devoted to feminist hermeneutics and the Bible, edited by Mary Ann Tolbert.) Sharon Ringe says that her paper on the transfiguration, " Luke 9:28-36: The Beginning of an Exodus," is an elaboration of Sakenfeld's third option; it looks at a particular pericope from a liberation perspective. Her conclusion is that the exegesis is feminist, not in the way she used techniques of historical and literary criticism but in "the concerns, questions, and sensitivities" she brought to the task. In contrast, Cheryl Exum's paper, "You Shall Let Every Daughter Live: A Study of Exodus 1:8-2:10," was on a text specifically chosen because the courageous action of women is the beginning of the liberation of Israel from Egypt (fourth option). The actions of the midwives and Pharaoh's daughter become extraordinary as we see the risks they took in opposing patriarchy and hear this old story of liberation in new ways. What did we learn from reflection on these concrete actions of exegesis by feminist scholars? One thing is that, in the words of Phyllis Trible, "feminist hermeneutics embraces a variety of methodologies and disciplines." 8 A second is that the interpretative bias and understanding is built into the exegesis itself, so that it is impossible to delay the feminist or liberation critical perspective until the exegesis is finished, as a sort of theological afterthought about meaning or relevance. 9 Third, as Fiorenza has pointed out, we must seek feminist hermencutics not just in ways of dealing with the biblical material but in the criteria for evaluating one's approach to scripture. 10 The New York meeting in 1982 was based on a series of responses to Fiorenza's own proposals for evaluating one's approach to scripture. We attempted to move beyond feminist critical perspective and options for biblical exegesis to the issue of criteria for feminist interpretation. In addition to Fiorenza's chapter (published in The Challenge of Liberation Theology) and the circulated responses of the panel, we also considered Rosemary Ruether's first chapter from Sexism and God Talk, entitled "Feminist Theology: Methodology, Sources, and Norms." The criteria were not spelled out in great detail, but it is possible to identify what Ruether calls the "critical feminist principle" as it is found in these two papers. For Ruether, the "critical principle of feminist theology is the affirmation and promotion of the full humanity of women. Whatever denies, diminishes, or distorts the full humanity of women is, therefore, to be appraised as not redemptive" [ 115 ]. 11 Fiorenza maintains that "only the nonsexist and nonandrocentric traditions of the Bible and the nonoppressive traditions of biblical interpretation have the theological authority of revelation" [ 128 ]. 12 Both statements immediately raise the issue of our understanding of biblical authority and canon, as the panelists were quick to point out. The whole canon is to be taken seriously, especially because of the possibility of the Bible's use as a tool for the oppression of women. But it is not considered to function as the Word of God, evoking consent or faith, if it contributes to the continuation of racism, sexism, and classism. In her "Response to the Responders" in New York, Fiorenza asserted that this was not an issue of authority but rather of the political struggles of women against oppression. 13 She seeks to shift the criteria of biblical criticism from a focus on what is adequate to the human condition and appropriate to scriptures to what is adequate to historical-literary methods and appropriate to the struggle of the oppressed for liberation. 14 From a feminist liberation perspective, feminist theory of interpretation begins with a different view of reality, asking what is appropriate in light of "personally and politically reflected experience of oppression and liberation." 15 Interpretation does not begin with dogmatic statements about the authority of scripture and canon but rather--as we did in the hermeneutic project--with feminist perspective and praxis. Nevertheless, as we arrive at a critical feminist perspective that says the biblical text can only be considered to function as God's word, compelling our faith, when it is nonsexist, we ourselves have raised the question of authority [ 137 ]. The dogmatic and patriarchal view of authority, as timeless truth handed down, is being challenged by what Fiorenza calls a "paradigm of emancipatory praxis." 16 Issues that have been raised in areas of experience, biblical authority, and models of interpretation need to be pursued in a continuing search, not for an abstract synthesis but for a theory of interpretation that is rooted in the concrete particularities of oppression and liberation, such as those expressed by Jewish feminist writers and writers from Black, Hispanic, and Asian perspectives [ 30 , 111 ]. 17 There is much to learn about paradigms of authority from communities of oppressed people such as the Black community, whose members listened to the Bible not for doctrinal propositions but for "experiences which could inspire, convince and enlighten." 18 What is needed is not the old questions and paradigms of authority but the development of new questions and paradigms of authority, which are functional in the communities of struggle wrestling with the biblical text. (get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on the Bible at Questia Online Library by clicking here)
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| Theses and
Dissertations: A Guide to Planning, Research, and Writing By R. MURRAY THOMAS and DALE L. BRUBAKER Traditionally in academia, the two main purposes of master's-degree and doctoral projects are (a) to provide graduate students guided practice in conducting and presenting research and (b) to make a contribution to the world's fund of knowledge or to improve the conduct of some activity. The practice aspect goes well beyond the demands of a typical term paper or individual-study assignment, since the aim is to equip students to do research and writing of respectable, publishable quality in the future. The contribution-to-knowledge aspect is intended to make the student's study more than just a learning exercise by using this opportunity to produce valued information or to introduce a point of view not available before. This aspect is what usually distinguishes a master's thesis from a doctoral dissertation, in that the contribution of the dissertation is expected to be of greater magnitude than that of the thesis. Sources of Guidance "If I'd known he'd be too busy to be of much help, I would have tried to find a better advisor." At the outset of your project, it is well to identify potential sources of help and to recognize the advantages and limitations of each. Those sources of most value are usually academic advisors, fellow graduate students, experts outside of your own department or institution, you yourself, and the professional literature. ACADEMIC ADVISORS Policies for assigning faculty members to supervise students' thesis and dissertation projects can vary from one institution to another and even across departments within the same institution. In some cases, the advisor who guides a student's general academic progress automatically becomes the supervisor of the candidate's work on the thesis or dissertation. Under such a policy, students are relieved of the responsibility of choosing a mentor, but they may unfortunately end up with less than optimal help. In other cases, an academic advisor will not automatically be assigned, but he or she will be only one of a group of several faculty members from whom a student can choose a guide. Under these circumstances, before students announce their choice of a mentor they can profitably collect several kinds of information about the professors who form the pool of potential advisors. Included among the sources of information are fellow students, the professors within the pool, other faculty members, secretaries, research assistants, and the professors' publications. Institutions and departments can also differ in the number of
faculty members assigned to supervise and evaluate a student's
research. One common pattern at the master's level is to have a
three-member committee for each thesis, with the committee
chairperson acting as the candidate's principal supervisor. However,
in colleges and universities with large numbers of master's degree
students, the entire master's project may be directed and assessed
by a single faculty member. At the doctoral level, the supervising
committee often consists of three to five professors. (The rest of this book can be found at
Questia's online libary by
clicking here and searching for Theses and
Dissertations: A Guide to Planning, Research, and Writing By R.
MURRAY THOMAS and DALE L. BRUBAKER) In learning about the professors in your pool of potential
mentors, you will likely find it helpful to discover their (a)
fields of interest and expertise, (b) style of advising, and (c)
attitudes about appropriate research topics and methods of research.
Obviously, the closer an advisor's area of expertise is to your research problem, the better equipped she or he will be to identify difficulties you may encounter, recommend sources of information pertinent to your topic, and guide your choice of methods for gathering and interpreting data. There are several ways to learn about faculty members' specializations--the titles and contents of classes they teach, their published books and articles, the topics of theses and dissertations produced under their guidance, other staff members' opinions, and other students' experiences with those faculty members. The task of deciding how well a potential advisor's interests and skills suit your needs is likely easiest if you already have a specific research problem in mind, or at least if you have identified the general realm you hope to explore. If you have no inkling of the kind of topic on which your study will focus, then the next of our selection criteria--style of advising--may become your primary concern. Style of advising Professors vary greatly in how they work with students on theses
and dissertations. Those at one end of a monitoring scale closely
control each phase of the student's effort, in some cases dictating
what is to be done at every step, then requiring the student to hand
in each portion of material for evaluation and correction. Advisors
at the opposite end of the scale tell students to work things out
pretty much by themselves and to finish a complete draft of the
project before handing it in for inspection. Professors also differ in the way they offer advice and criticism. Some are blunt about the shortcomings of a student's effort, perhaps derisive and abusive. Others are direct in pointing out weaknesses in the candidate's work, but they do so in a kindly, understanding manner, recognizing that doing serious research is a new endeavor for the student and that mistakes along the way are not only expected but can function as valuable learning opportunities. Yet others are so cautious about potentially hurting a student's feelings that they are reluctant to point out weaknesses in the project and thereby fail to guide their advisees toward correcting the shortcomings of their efforts. Consequently, you will likely find it useful to learn ahead of time about faculty members' styles of directing theses and dissertations--about how closely they monitor steps in the process, how available they are to offer help, and how skillfully they identify deficiencies and suggest solutions without unduly damaging students' egos. Your best sources of information about advising styles are usually (a) fellow graduate students who are farther along than you are in the thesis or dissertation process and (b) other professors whom you know personally and who are willing to talk about their colleagues' modes of guidance. (The rest of this book can be found at Questia's online libary by clicking here and searching for Theses and Dissertations: A Guide to Planning, Research, and Writing By R. MURRAY THOMAS and DALE L. BRUBAKER) Attitudes toward topics and methodology Faculty members often disagree about what constitutes proper research. Consequently, you might end up with an advisor whose notions of suitable research topics and methods of investigation are at odds with your own beliefs. Therefore, three types of information you may wish to seek are your potential advisors' views of (a) quantitative-versus-qualitative methods, (b) positivism-versuspostmodernism perspectives, and (c) basic-versus-applied research. Quantitative-versus-qualitative methods: As these terms are generally used, quantitative research involves amounts, which are usually cast in the form of statistics, but qualitative research does not involve amounts in any strict sense. Here are titles of projects that might be categorized under each type: Quantitative: Qualitative: Professors who locate themselves exclusively in the quantitative camp demand that students' research involve the compilation of data in the form of amounts. Hence, they reject historical chronicles, philosophical analyses, a line of logic leading to a conclusion, a comparison of the qualities of different societies, the detailed description of an individual's or group's style of life, and the like. Furthermore, adherents of quantitative studies sometimes prefer studies that focus on rather large numbers of people, schools, cities, or political constituencies so that broadly inclusive generalizations can be drawn from the research results. Such adherents thus disapprove of studies focusing on one autistic person (singlesubject research) or only a few subjects (three autistic children, two schools, four candidates for political office, five neighborhoods) whose results cannot, with confidence, be generalized to a wide range of people or events. Proponents of quantitative studies tend to prefer such research methods as controlled experiments and surveys that employ interviews, tests, systematic observations, questionnaires, and quantitative content analysis. (For arguments supporting the quantitative position, see the following references: Howell, 1997; Shavelson, 1996.) In contrast, professors who subscribe strictly to qualitative methodology tend to belittle research that involves what they may refer to as "no more than number crunching" which they feel oversimplifies complex causes, dehumanizes evidence, and fails to recognize individual differences among people, among environments, and among events. Advocates of qualitative studies tend to favor such research techniques as historical and philosophical analyses, descriptive observation, case studies, ethnography, and hermeneutics. (For rationales supporting the qualitative stance, see: Bogdan & Knopp, 1992; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994.) There are, in addition to the foregoing two polar positions, a great many faculty members who will accept a wide array of research approaches, quantitative and qualitative alike. We would count ourselves among their number because, in our opinion, the quantitative-versus-qualitative controversy is really off target. The issue, in our minds, should not be: Are quantitative methods better than qualitative, or vice versa? Instead, the issue should be: Which approach-quantitative, qualitative, or some combination of both--will be the most suitable for answering the particular research question being asked? This point of view, which respects the contributions that can be made by all sorts of methods, is the one we espouse throughout this book. However, to be practical about your own situation as a student pursuing a degree in a particular department, what we as the authors of this book believe about the quantitative-qualitative debate is really not important. What is important is how well your own beliefs match those of the advisors with whom you might conduct your research. Thus, a useful twofold question to ask is: Which research methodologies do the potential members of my research-project committee prefer or even accept? And how well do my own preferences match the opinions of those professors? In effect, establishing a good match promotes efficiency, effectiveness, and goodwill in your work with advisors. The rest of this book can be found at
Questia's online libary by
clicking here and searching for Theses and
Dissertations: A Guide to Planning, Research, and Writing By R.
MURRAY THOMAS and DALE L. BRUBAKER
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Morrison: Solo Flight Through Literature into History, Journal article by Trudier Harris (get the full version of this research and other sources for your paper on Toni Morrison at Questia Online Library by clicking here) By any standard of literary evaluation, Toni Morrison is a phenomenon, in the classic sense of a once-in-a-lifetime rarity, the literary equivalent of Paul Robeson, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Chris Evert, or Martina Navratilova, the superstar whose touch upon her profession makes us wonder if we shall ever see her like again. The indelible word portraits she has created, the unforgettable mythical and imaginary places, the exploration of the psychological trauma of slavery, racism, and war, and the sheer beauty of prose that frequently reads like poetry have assured Morrison a place in the canons of world literature. Her impact upon our world and her recognition as one of America's greatest writers have exceeded the sum total of six novels, a play, a short story, a collection of critical essays, and several edited volumes.1 America, she has brought new life to American literature classes, new energy to traditional convention sessions, and new directions for study to hundreds of scholars and students writing books, theses, and dissertations. Around the world, she has offered a new lens through which to view American literature and African American experience. Morrison's is the rare case in which popularity and quality are commensurate. As early as 1982, long before Beloved or the Pulitzer Prize, Morrison's works were available in Japanese. I saw the advertisements when I was in residence at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute at Radcliffe/ Harvard just as I was beginning to focus on my book-length study of Morrison's novels. I had plans that, if I could complete the work in a timely fashion, it would be the first published study of the author and her works. Few scholars, it seemed to me then, were recognizing the extraordinary genius of this woman, who, in four novels by that date, had offered such dramatically different portraits of black communities and black women that it was impossible not to notice her talent. Although Morrison had appeared on the cover of Newsweek when Tar Baby was published in 1981, she was not generally a household name. When my Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison appeared in 1991, it had missed being the first booklength study of her works, but it fit solidly into the establishment of a body of critical commentary on a much-deserving writer. By 1990, when Italy awarded Morrison the Chianti Ruffino Antico Fattore literary award, its highest literary honor, there were few scholars, students, or general American readers who were unfamiliar with her work. It was the first time the Italian prize, the equivalent of the American Book Award, was granted to a black person or to a woman. By 1990 Beloved had been translated into Norwegian, and in March of 1993 Morrison was in Barcelona for the publication of the Spanish edition of Jazz; one of her hostesses, Angels Carabi, was the Spanish professor who had recently published a critical study of Morrison's fiction. I charted this international appreciation of Morrison's work from my position as Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where, in 1990, a Fulbright scholar from Algeria undertook a directed reading on Morrison with me. A student from New Delhi came to interview me about the dissertation work he was completing on contemporary black American women writers, Toni Morrison among them. Graduate students in South America requested that I forward critical commentary on Morrison's works to them in 1992. In July of 1993, after my move to Emory University, two well-known French scholars, Claudine Raynaud and Geneviève Fabre, sought permission to reprint a section of Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison in an anthology of criticism on Beloved, for that text had just been selected for inclusion on the syllabus for the agrégation, "a national competitive examination which helps the French government recruit college teachers"--which means that the novel will be taught "in all French universities. "2 More recently, a Polish friend of mine wrote to inquire where he should begin in the reading of Morrison's works. If my small encounters with people from around the world are duplicated in the lives of other Morrison scholars, I can only begin to imagine the impact her works are having. Morrison's winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature, therefore,
was the official inscripting of a worldwide recognition and
appreciation of the intellectual stimulation and awesome power of
her writing. As probably the most well known of African American
writers and perhaps even of all contemporary American writers,
Morrison has provided for international readers an entree into
American culture and specifically into African American culture.
Readers testify that it is because of her treatment of slavery in
Beloved that they became interested in reading about that period in
American history. Or they find the beauty of the writing in Sula,
along with the title character, too compelling not to know more of
Morrison. Or the power of Morrison's writing led them to more
expansive explorations of African American and/or American writers.
The Nobel Prize in Literature will mean that Morrison's works will, be ever more popular and ever more available. It means that an African American writer who may once have been viewed as writing against the grain of American literature will be more centrally incorporated into it, indeed claimed in a variety of ways. It means that a woman, writing in English, has been recognized as equal to the best writers worldwide. It means that Morrison will become even more the representative artist/spokesperson for African American writers, as Richard Wright was in the 1940s, James Baldwin after him, Ralph Ellison briefly thereafter, and Alice Walker in the 1980s. In the best of worlds, Morrison's success could open doors for young writers following after her, something that she has indicated in interviews is important to her. Most important, her success signals the permanent arrival of the African American literary canon onto the stage of American and world literature, a development that will make it impossible for future exclusion. The recognition of her works is simultaneously a recognition of the cultural nationalism implicit in them, another centering of African American life, culture, and philosophy. For American literature, viewed perhaps too long as an upstart, derivative tradition, Morrison's success marks the peak of individuality even within the larger national group. Morrison's claim to Southern and Midwestern soil, her focus on African Americans and American history, and her expanding of the boundaries of topics acceptable for inclusion in literary treatments have added dimensions to the emphasis on freedom and democracy that characterizes so much of the national literature. Indeed, Morrison has written a national epic with a twist, firmly rooting black people in the polluted American soil of their slave heritage and transforming that soil to a garden of possibility through the tremendous force of the human will to survive and to thrive. She has thereby reclaimed America for the best of itself. The literary establishment and the not-so-established have heaped awards upon Morrison like Parisians heaping compliments upon the beauty of Jadine Childs, and the enthusiasm with which she has been greeted would rival that of Milkman's upon the discovery that his great-grandfather could fly. Each time a student expresses wonder at a black man running "lickety split" into the myth of his African ancestry, we owe a debt to Toni Morrison. Each time a reader struggles with the difficulty of passing judgment on Sula and raises issues about his or her own place in a forced scheme of morality, we owe a debt to Toni Morrison. Each time a public library holds a discussion of poverty and rejection in The Bluest Eye, or members of a community reading group or in a senior-citizens' center want to know about ghost stories in Beloved, we owe a debt to Toni Morrison. Readers appreciate Morrison for a variety of reasons. Some applaud her for daring to explore the complexities of intraracial prejudice, as she did in The Bluest Eye in 1970. Others focus on her unforgettable characters, such as Sula in the 1974 novel of the same title; or Pilate Dead, the conjurer and converser with spirits in Song of Solomon, published in 1977; or the blind Thérèse, whose sight beyond sight enables her to guide Son Green to the land of myth in Tar Baby, which appeared in 1981. Perhaps readers are drawn to the haunted Sethe, the haunting Beloved, or the hauntingly eloquent Baby Suggs in Beloved ( 1987 ), or perhaps the photograph of a teenage girl killed by an older lover in Jazz ( 1992 ) provides the same bone-gnawing lack of release for readers as for Morrison. In a time when African Americans, in a wonderful surge of
historical and racial pride, were moving from their designation as
"Negroes" to their designation as "black" or "Afro-American,"
Morrison maintained that we should pause and focus on a little black
girl in Lorain, Ohio, for whom that movement had no significance.
Believing her blackness is the source of her ugliness, Pecola
Breedlove finds no pathway to an inner core of salvation or an
outward reflection of acceptance. She can imagine reversing her
rejection only by acquiring the bluest eyes of all, bluer even than
those of her idol, Shirley Temple. Neglected by her mother, scorned
by her peers and teachers, raped and impregnated by her father,
Pecola believes desperately that blue eyes will save her. Her
journey from self-rejection to ultimate insanity in The Bluest Eye
charts the course of the individual who finds herself outside
community norms, basically outside community caring. Although the
adolescent Claudia, who alternately narrates the tale, and her
sister Frieda do care about Pecola, their efforts, exemplified in
the "magic" of sacrificing money earned from selling seeds in a
childish attempt to alter Pecola's fate, are insufficient to save
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Regan Latta, L.U.T.C.F.