Author Archives: Syndicated User

Silence and Speech

Posted on by

This week, I’d like to talk about a chant–a little ear-worm, if you will–that has been embedded in my mind for decades. It’s an unpleasant puzzle why, when I’ve forgotten other arguably more useful and less damaging things, somehow I still vividly remember this chant. It’s stuck in my head. It is a part of my history. And so, it is also a part of myself.

We were studying North American history in Elementary School Social Studies. I think it was grade 5 or so. And one of my classmates took it upon themselves to extend one of the teaching-tool chants from this unit: “The Columbus Chant”.

Here it is, in case you are unfamiliar:

In 1492,

Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

It’s pithy, has a good beat, and has probably helped millions of students remember the date come test day. But my classmate thought there was more to be said. And, against all odds, the extension of the chant that a classmate of mine came up with is still, possibly forever, in my mind.

In 1492,

Columbus sailed the ocean blue,

He found an island and staked a claim

And now to give his new land a name

West Indies he said, he called it so

‘America’ he failed to know.

There might have been more, but that’s all I can recall. I remember my teacher enthusiastically endorsing this student’s initiative, and all of us singing this together while clapping our hands. I don’t remember if there were children from the Tsuu t’ina nation in that class, but there might have been. A fair number of them went to my Southern Alberta school. But I don’t remember if there were any present that day and I remember no discomfort while singing about Columbus ‘staking a claim’ to land that was already claimed by indigenous groups. If anything, I remember the whole lesson as being rather fun. That, in itself, is upsetting.

Don’t get me wrong. My teacher was a good teacher. In fact, she was one of my favorite teachers precisely because she encouraged us to be creative and to take an active role in our own education; which was exactly the thing my classmate had done by extending the ‘Columbus chant’. This teacher’s embracing of our creativity and her willingness to be playful with our education are still things I remember fondly. So I don’t write this to condemn either my school or my teacher. And I certainly don’t write it to condemn my classmate, who was, after all, ten years old. The fact that this chant was chanted by otherwise kind and well-meaning people is, actually, the whole point. It’s why I’m writing this blog post this week.

I write it because, while reading Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past this week, I was recalled to this classroom in a visceral and uncomfortable way. And I was reminded of the way in which speech can be a tool for silence. And for inaction. And I remember, as uncomfortable as that memory is, that I have unwittingly participated in this silencing. My own speech has been used to silence others. And this was done without malice, without forethought and without even an awareness that I was doing it. I was, of course, not the instigator of this silencing, as anyone who has read Trouillot’s book knows. But I was participating in it. My chant, in elementary school, was ensuring the enshrinement of history. Trouillot tells us, when speaking of Columbus, that the celebration of Columbus day on October 12th is significant. That the United States has reduced Europe’s bloody and prolonged encounter with America to one “single moment thus creates a historical ‘fact’.”(Pg. 114) This fact becomes an anchor from which to understand our present selves. And it becomes transparent. Obvious. Beyond question. Eventually, beyond thought. So easily assumed that my elementary school class could make a nursery rhyme of it, stripping it of all the horror of the original event. (Nursery rhymes do this stripping effectively, after all. Just look at “Ring around the rosie”!)

Whether I knew it or not, I was participating in the creation of history, which means I was also participating in the silencing of what happened. I was participating in the constant “narrativization of history, the transformation of what happened into that which is said to have happened.” (Pg. 113) By repeating the old chant, and by extending it, my class was reaffirming what many elementary school classes had done before. We were reasserting this narrative as historical ‘fact’ and simultaneously denying any possible counter-narrative. No, it was more than denying a counter-narrative. We weren’t acknowledging the possibility of the existence of the counter-narrative. To deny something is, if only tacitly, to acknowledge it. After all, what’s the point of denying something that isn’t there? Through our speech, we prevented the possibility of the counter-narrative from even arising. Our repetition of a chant that had been repeated over and over made it mindless. Self-evident. No denial was needed because no conceptual space for a counter-narrative was given.

We’ve examined the ways in which speech can be used for action, communication, and power in this class. But we haven’t directly looked at the ways in which speech can be used in the service of silence, maybe because it seems paradoxical. The society I live in is one that seems to shy away from silence. My bus ride to work is filled with individuals who, like me, have ear buds on, blocking out the silence with the noise of a podcast, music, or an audio book. We are all encouraged or coerced into participating in ‘small talk’ whose use is mainly to put others at ease by filling up the silence between us with noise. I’ve heard it said, more than once, that my society is one that doesn’t like silence. Silence must be eradicated at all costs. And we have a multitude of tools at our disposal to shatter silence wherever and whenever it arises. The easiest one, and the oldest one, is speech.

But this dichotomy between speech and silence is a false one. Speech doesn’t just eradicate silence. Often, too often, it perpetuates it. And, more frightening still, it can perpetuate this silence effortlessly and unconsciously. Perhaps the question I am left with here, then, is how does one shatter speech? How do I uncover what has happened, when what is said to have happened is comfortably ensconced in my mind?How do I squish my ear-worm?

I found the morals!

Posted on by
I found the morals!
"Morality began to be introduced into human actions..." (Rousseau 115)
Not that I wanted to focus on them in this post, but I find that Rousseau speaks more of morals than Hobbes did in Leviathan…

What most interested me in Rousseau was the concept of dependence. Rousseau treats dependence as an origin of inequality. Interesting things Rousseau says about dependence:
·         Makes people weak – lose ability to defend oneself
·         Leads to creation of family groups which become like little states (we all know how that turns out…)
·         Leads to inequality as man begins to measure himself against others rather than himself
·         Leads to unhappiness in the same manner
·         Led to slavery
Since a child depends on his/her mother from birth, what does Rousseau then think of children?
Is there any sort of dependence which doesn’t lead to negative results, which Rousseau has overlooked?
To what extent is Rousseau’s view of dependence similar or different from Kant’s view of dependence?

The other thing I wish to speak of is Rousseau’s treatment of women. Although he speaks mostly of men, there are a few lines which indicate the respect he has for women, which is far different from Hobbes: “Lovable and virtuous women of Geneva – the destiny of your sex will always be to govern ours…It was this that women commanded at Sparta, and thus you deserve to command in Geneva.” (Rousseau 67)
Is Rousseau’s view of women consistent throughout his discourse?
How does the idea of women governing over men fit into Rousseau’s ideas on dependence?

The final thing I wish to note is a certain line on page 128 – near the end of Rousseau’s discourse: “The jurists who have solemnly affirmed that the child of a slave will be born a slave have decided, in other words, that a man will not be born a man.” (Rousseau 128)

This idea corresponds with my post on identity from a while back – this statement being about the extent to which family lines determine identity.  The judge in the statement is of the mind that family determines identity to a great extent, but Rousseau seems to disagree – to have family be the sole determinant of identity and position is to dehumanize man. Interesting!
Posted in Uncategorized

Where are the morals?

Posted on by
So I just finished reading from Hobbes. (I see why it’s called Leviathan now!) Although it was difficult to get past the first 40 pages of definitions, there were some things about what Hobbes had to say about commonwealths that struck me.

What most interested me is that Hobbes seems to argue that in the absence of commonwealth, concepts such as justice and the like don’t apply. Hobbes says: “Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice” It’s difficult to explain, but I find myself opposed to that assertion, as I find myself opposed to many other assertions made in the portion of the book that I’ve read.

I guess what I’m wondering is: where are the morals here?What role do morals play in determining justice? I find myself connecting justice and morals in a way that defines “justice” in a little bit of a different way that Hobbes does. I have a hard time separating morals from justice and/or injustice, whereas Hobbes treats them as entirely separate. If I was a wanderer, completely separate from any commonwealth, my actions, according to Hobbes, cannot be unjust, but I still feel as though I would view them as unjust due to morals.

One of the other things that struck me, is that Hobbes tends to see issues in black and white, so to speak. There’s either war or peace, justice or injustice, love or hate, honour or dishonour, etc. There seems to be no middle ground in such issues, which is not the way I've seen the world in my experience. I would tend to see a middle ground in a lot of these issues such as war and peace. So, in trying so hard to define the world, does Hobbes overlook a middle ground, or am I seeing a middle ground where it really doesn't exist?


Is Hobbes writing as he does, and using the definitions he does only to describe concepts in relation to commonwealths, or is he trying to also describe the human condition? If so, is he doing it justice? 
Posted in Uncategorized

Faustus, Freedom, Knowledge and Distraction

Posted on by

Continuing with my theme of alliterative titles, today I want to explore one of the tensions between the 1604 and 1616 editions of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The introduction to our text tells us that there are two broad versions of the text, the A text and the B text. The A text was written in 1604. The B text appeared later in 1616. It is noteworthy that both texts, then, appear after the death of Marlowe, and neither can be said with assurance to represent his definitive vision for the play. But that’s not what interests me here (though the issue of authorship and whether the play has a definitive vision are interesting). What interests me here are the changes that are made between the A and the B versions. Most specifically, the A version seems to assume that Faustus is not free to repent. While the good angel may entreat him to repent, and the demons may fear that he will repent, the A text gives an “insistent suggestion that his despairing inability to will his own salvation is due to the withholding of divine grace.” (Pg. 55)The B text, by contrast, tends to remove much of this suggestion.

How does this suggestion, its presence or its absence, change our reading of this text? If he is unable to repent on his own, because true salvation requires divine intervention, and that intervention is being withheld, then I’m curious why the good angel begs him to repent, saying ‘Faustus, repent yet, God will pity thee.” (Pg. 117)  And why Mephastophilis seems to fear that he will repent and keep distracting him with things like the seven deadly sins, or Helen of Troy as his wife. In short, if his fate was sealed from the moment he signed his soul away, why don’t the angels just give up, and why do the demons show fear?

Perhaps it is because they don’t know that his fate is sealed. There is, here, a gap between what is believed to be the case and what actually is the case. Neither Faustus, nor Mephastophilis nor the good angel seem to realize that Faustus cannot be saved through any act of his own. Not realizing the futility of their acts, they throw themselves behind their goals in earnest, trying to get what they want. In some ways, this makes the role of the good angel doubly tragic. Not only is he fighting a losing battle, in fact he is fighting a lost battle. The battle was lost before he even began to fight, and the tragedy is that he just doesn’t know it. Much as Antigone is already dead before the play Antigone opens, Faustus is already lost before the good angel ever appears and urges him to repent.

But presumably God must know. The introduction of this play tells us that in the A version, Faustus is not saved because he is refused divine grace. This raises an interesting issue of causation for me. Is it that Faustus is refused divine grace, or merely that God knows Faustus is already lost? One might say that divine grace is not properly refused because God cannot refuse you something that it is impossible to give. So, divine grace is not refused, rather it is simply not possible. Of course, God is supposed to be omnipotent, so presumably He could save someone even if they were already lost. Thus, knowledge and causation meet in God. For God, all things are possible, and this should, presumably, extend to the ability to save someone who has damned himself. Or should it?

There is a long debate in medieval philosophy about whether God can really enact all things, or whether He must also obey fundamental laws of logic and physics. If He must obey fundamental laws, then perhaps he cannot save someone who has damned themselves. But this is a pretty bleak world. Not only is Faustus damned in a way in which he cannot save himself, but he is also damned in such a way that God also cannot save him. God cannot undo Faustus’s fate once his fate is sealed. This is pretty freaky stuff. Not only does Faustus lack free will here, so does God!

Curiously, the evil angel also seems to know that Faustus is beyond saving, even going so far as to say he is no longer human, and no longer has the free will to save himself. “Thou art a spirit, God cannot pity thee.” (Pg. 118) So, while the predestination of Faustus’s damnation is not known to the good angel, nor to Mephastophilis, the evil angel and God seem to have this knowledge. Or, perhaps the evil angel doesn’t know, but wants Faustus to believe that he does. The interaction between claims of knowledge and action is definitely worth considering in this play.

To complicate matters, there was a B version of the text written that largely erased this suggestion made in the A text. In the B version, Faustus has only himself to blame for his damnation. In the B version, the need of Lucifer and Mephastophilis to shower Faustus with gifts is fully intelligible. It isn’t just that they don’t know his fate is sealed but, rather, that his fate really isn’t sealed. He might, at any moment, choose to repent. And should that moment arrive, God will, of course, grant him divine grace. God is omnibenevolent, after all. Divine grace is part of the package.

In the B reading, then, Faustus and God are both beings of free will. Faustus freely damns himself. And whenever he seems to be questioning this choice, a demon with a shiny new toy appears to distract him from exercising his free will. But the demons don’t remove his free will, they just distract and pacify him. The B text, in other words, makes Faustus a freer and much less sympathetic character.

But, while our editor notes the places that mark the changes between the A and B text in our reading, it was surprising to me how little effect they had on the overall action of the play. And this seems to me to be because, free or not, neither Faustus nor most of the other members of the cast knows that Faustus is free (or not). Thus, they assume that he is free and act as though he is free.

This makes the evil angel all the more interesting. I am left wondering whether he really did know that Faustus was a spirit, or whether he only wanted Faustus to believe he was. If the former, this makes this otherwise unremarkable character the only one who stands on the same level as God in terms of knowledge. If the latter, then this makes the evil angel the only demon who openly deceives Faustus. Lucifer and Mephastophilis seem to deal quite openly with Faustus. They do not lie or deceive. So the evil angel becomes quite a puzzle to me.

Upon further contemplation, I think the evil angel must truly not know. In a later encounter with the good and evil angels, the evil angel does not seem so certain that Faustus cannot repent. Upon hearing the good angel urging Faustus to repent, the evil angel replies “If thou repent, devils shall tear thee to pieces.” (Pg. 123) But why threaten Faustus if he truly cannot repent? Clearly the evil angel must no longer be certain that Faustus can repent.Perhaps he never was certain.

I think that, perhaps, life is also like this. Free will debates in philosophy have certainly not gone away. And in different eras we sway towards believing in free will, or towards endorsing determinism. But we don’t know (yet). Yet–and this has been commented on a few times–most people, including philosophers who believe in determinism, act as though they were free (at least outside of the classroom). That is, even though we don’t know, we tend to assume that we are in control. We assume we are free to choose, even as we question this freedom. I wonder sometimes if it is at all possible to live without assuming free will. What would an entirely fatalistic life look like? Would one feel responsible for one’s own actions? Would one feel compelled to give advice to friends and family if one thought what they were doing was unwise? Or would one be able to resign oneself to fate, and claim everything was meant to be?

This is all getting a bit weighty and metaphysical. maybe it’s time for a distraction.