Author Archives: William Chang

The book Maus has been titled and categorised as many different things. It has been considered a graphic novel, an autobiography, and somewhat paradoxically, both a history and a piece of fiction. But I’d like to focus on it in a more common literary theme and consider Maus a tragedy as well. The story of Valdek is quite similar to the arc of a tragic hero in many senses. He started off as a dashing young Jew that caught the eye of many a young lady in Europe at the beginning of the story and transformed into a cynical old man living in America that lost most of his family in the Holocaust, who was on the verge of losing the rest of it.

A tragic hero needs a tragic flaw, and Valdek’s tragic flaw was his avarice. We can see throughout the book how this greed intensifies and grows. How it was only a character trait of him in the early period of his life and how it slowly grew to consume him towards the end of it. Valdek had always been a thrifty man, he was even complimented by his father-in-law as such for his ability to make money on the black market even as the Germans cracked down upon the Jewish people and forbid them from most legal jobs. Valdek’s spirit of entrepreneurship persists in the concentration camps and he is able to trade and barter enough goods to bribe to guards to visit Anja for one night.

There is a very interesting quote on page 222. While giving the Kapo in charge of his barracks some eggs as a bribe, Valdek comments that “If you want to live, its good to be friendly”. This shows a personality shift Valdek as he begins think of human interaction in a very realist sense.

The Valdek that emerged from the concentration camp at the end of the war and tells his story to his son keeps his avarice but little else of his personality. He is no longer charming but irritable and abrasive. Yet he is tragic in the sense that we cannot attribute his personality change to any fault of its own, it was the experiences of the Holocaust that twisted him in such a way.

It is my belief that the reason for Anja’s suicide was a combination of her initial depression, the psychological stress of the Holocaust, and the inability of Valdek to emphasise with her. The argument that “[He] had to make order with everything” (161) after her death and thus he burnt all her papers makes  little sense when you consider that he kept four 1965 copies of a savings bank calendar (95). While his explanation that they held too many memorises holds a bit more merit, but also begs the question of his inexplicable amnesia regarding the contents of the papers. If they did hold so many memories, it seems unlikely that he’d only remember essentially one sentences from all her diaries. In conclusion, I am of the opinion that the burning of the diary was most likely a result of deep-set guilt regarding the suicide of Anja and most likely an inability of dealing.

“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”

–  British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey

One of the first ideas that came to mind when reading William Jame’s writings was something rather unexpected. I was reminded of the last two lines of the poem Invictus: “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.” Both of those works resonated to me as excellent symbols of Western society in the years before the First World War. An Europe deeply rooted in the revolution that was the Enlightenment, a Europe that believed that God was dead and that humanity, finally free from the shackles of religion and tradition, would rise to take its place at the helm of the world. It was an optimistic, idealistic, even naive Europe that shattered on the bloody battlefields of the Great War and would remerge an utterly different entity four years later.

William Jame’s descriptions of perception struck me as such. Yes, he did state that perception itself was subjective and that we would all perceive objects in a different manner, but then nowhere did he question the infallibility of our judgement. Whereas Freud believed our actions were controlled by an undercurrent of human emotions called the subconscious, James believed that we were all utterly in control of our each and every action*.

It is also interesting to note that the theory of stream of consciousness, which is irreversible and linear progressing, shares certain similarities with the Enlightenment’s theory of history. While pre-modernist history tended to be cyclical in nature, modernist thinkers tended to think of it in a linear fashion and post-modernist thinkers found that still too simplistic and shifted towards a web like format.

The Europe that emerged from the First World War was nothing similar to the Europe that entered it. Four years of brutal warfare had left Europe jaded, bleak and cynical. Not only was this apparent in the political field where international relations took a realist turn, but also in visual art. Gone was the colourful impressionist art of the pre-war period to be replaced by the brutally honest surrealist movement that sought to strip the romantic facade around humanity to reveal its inner nature. If Monet’s Water Lilies was the representation of the beauty of pre-war Europe, than Edvard Munch’s The Scream would represent what it had become. And indeed, such a turn took place in psychology as well. No longer are humans  immaculate and perfect, they are brutish animals. This was reflected in Freud’s works in the form of the pleasure principle where the Victorian tradition of stoicism, of mind over body, is replaced by Freud’s theory of a repressed animalistic state kept in containment by social institutions.

In a way, I suppose that I find myself more in line with Hegelian thinking. Sadly that also means that my personal viewpoint on James v Freud is rather simplistic; it is only through a synthesis of the two that we can begin to better understand the human psyche. Jame’s thinking is a bit simplistic in a certain sense, though through no fault of his own as he was one of the first in his field, and focuses a tad bit too much on the individualistic aspect thought and not the effects that society has upon the individual. On the other hand I suppose is should be noted that Freud’s On the pleasure principle wasn’t extremely well received even by his followers who regarded the text as a bit ambiguous and confusing.

Of course, I myself also find myself to be biased to a certain extent. This clear distinction between a pre-War and post-War Europe reeks a bit of meta-narratives. The colonial powers of Western Europe, the British Empire and French Republic, remained power world powers until the end of the Second World War while the idea of “empire” remains deeply ingrained within the British mindset till this very day, which I’d even attribute for the Falkland wars in the 70’s (I’m fairly certain that a couple of islands with sheep on them isn’t necessary for sending a carrier task force to retake).

*Note. Since I’ve not extremely well read on both Freud and James, I sincerely apologise for any misinterpretations of the works of either author.

A master narrative is the idea that events should be interpreted through a linear fashion in order to give an overarching meaning to existence. Karl Marx explained History through the division of it into 5 phases from Primitive Communism all the way to Communism. Marx believed that the meaning of history and existence was so that human society would eventually advance to a stage where everyone had class consciousness and were no longer divided into social classes. Meta-narratives do not have to be as lofty as to give meaning to history/life but can also be simpler ones that deal with morals and ethics.

President Bush also created a master narrative of his own, which I’ll refer to due to lack of a better name as the 9/11 master narrative. The 9/11 master narrative, which forms the direct backdrop to the book the Reluctant Fundamentalist, seeks to establish the the legitimacy of the war on terror. The 9/11 master narrative draws inspiration from Christian doctrine where sinners are cast into hell and the pious brought into the kingdom of God. Likewise, the 9/11 narrative portrays the West as the Kingdom of God while the Middle East as Hell. President Bush even claimed to a senior Palestinian official that “God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq“. So in a way, the 2003 invasion of Iraq could be thought of a neo-crusade by the Godly United States of America against the barbaric and despotic hordes of Iraq.

One of the problem with Meta-narratives like this is “So……  what’s next?”. The proletariat have gained class consciousness and society has become communism. God has brought the pious to the Kingdom of Heaven and the sinners are burning in hellfire. The Americans have defeated the Iraqi and toppled the Hussien regime. So…. What’s next?

Americans are still trying to find out in 2018.

Meta-narratives such as 9/11 also tend to be too simplistic. Historical meta-narratives tend to create an endpoint in time, then establish arbitrary phases of history to support their idea of linear thought and change that lead to this endpoint. Francis Fukuyama argued that the modern Liberal democracy was the end point of history (Later retracted). Hegel attempted to argue that Prussia in the 1800’s was the final form of government and end of History back in the 19th century (Insert Holocaust and both World Wars). The only reason that Marx’s final stage of communism cannot be disproved is because it’s so far in the unforeseeable future to be even debated.

The 9/11 narrative not only established an arbitrary endpoint supported by nonsensical and nonexistent goals, but also lumped humanity into groups of good and bad, famously proclaiming that “If you aren’t with us, you are with the terrorists.” This resulted in not just negative global opinion towards the Americans but also the inability to establish a stable peace in the Middle East.

(Darkly amusingly, the United States killed more civilians in its month long invasion of Iraq than ISIS did in the entire year of 2014. 7,269 versus 4,325.)

Hamid launches a counterattack against the master narrative of 9/11 through his book the Reluctant Fundamentalist through two [mathematical] planes of attack. The first method was a bit more manifest and straightforward in nature. Contrary to the portray of Muslims as singleminded extremists with only the destruction of America and all it stands for in mind, the protagonist Changez is shown as a conflicted character caught between his love of both America and Pakistan.

In a sense his longingness for the idealism and wealth that America offers is symbolised by his love for Erica. But subconsciously, he holds a deep love for Pakistan that is shown sporadically such as when he visits Manila and feels shameful after comparing its infrastructure with Lahore. Those deep rooted nationalistic feelings finally implode after the events of 9/11 and he eventually decides to return to Pakistan while his love of America, symbolised by Erica, never really fades either.

This complex cognitive dissonance that Changez experiences is utterly at odds with the simplistic notion of good and evil typically applied to Americans and Arabians respectively.

As literature itself is concerned with the human condition, then it is obvious that Hamid was using this novel as a mouthpiece for his own thoughts. Humans are not two dimensional. This simple statement invalidates the entire causa belli of the entire War on Terror. The United State’s of America is not God’s people and cannot whimsically launch invasions of countries that just happen to share the same ethnicity as terrorists based on negligible and sometimes even fabricated evidence. Lambasting the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan then doing the exact same a few decades later is hypocritical in nature.

But then, if we take Changez’s story to be an allegory, then isn’t it too a meta narrative, albeit a bit more narrow in scope? But first, on to the second plane of attack.

Hamid also attacks the idea of a meta-narrative on a deeper level since,

There is absolutely no reason why we should believe any of Changez’s story to be true.

In spite of his assertions that the waiter at the cafe was harmless, this “waiter” eventually follows the American back to his hotel with Changez constantly attempting to mislead the American by trying to convince him that it was an illusion and the American was confusing people.

This shows Changez to be an unreliable narrator and compromises essentially everything he says as being potentially a falsehood.

On a deeper level, Hamid may have been trying to assert that there is no reason to believe meta narratives because meta narratives themselves are written by peoples with agendas. Changez was clearly playing a game of his own and could have made up or fabricated parts of his story as part of his goal to keep the American in place.

Of course, the idea that Hamid is completely rejecting meta narratives is going a bit off the deep end too. As mentioned before, literature is primarily concerned with exploring the human condition. Borrowing from the recently deceased Stan Lee, a story without a message is essentially like a man without a soul, therefore literature is invariably a meta-narrative in a way or another. Yet the idea that Hamid would write meta narratives whilst simultaneously rejecting them is paradoxical.

I don’t think the conclusion that Hamid simply wants us all to indulge in the mind exercise of double- think is very suitable in any case.

More likely, he was attempting to show a idea that we call in Chinese, “盡信書不如無書” or “It is better not to have a book than to mindlessly believe it.” Indeed, Hamid seems to be saying that while the meta-narrative he offers is better than the 9/11 narrative, you should not mindlessly believe in any meta narrative regardless of who says it.

As any other assertions regarding what Hamid intended or may have subconsciously implied will largely reveal what the author him/herself believes, I’ll just assuming ownership of everything coming next.

Absurdism is the philosophical idea that life is inherently chaotic, random and has no meaning. Yet humans attempt to apply meaning to it, whether it be through social constructs such as religion or meta-narratives that try to show sort sort of meaning or value to existence. This paradox between the unsympathetic nature of the universe and the imaginary worlds that humans attempt to create is called the absurd.

“The absurd is born out of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

– Albert Camus

Absurdism is not nihilism, as absurdism is also the act of accepting that life itself is absurd and living one’s life to the fullest. While the logical conclusion to nihilism is suicide, absurdism views suicide as being even more absurd.

In conclusion, Meta-narratives are thus fundamentally incompatible with reality as they seek to create order where there is none. Entities such as morals, ethics, nation-states, corporations are social constructs that exist merely within the framework of the human mind.

“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”

– Nikos Kazantzakis

Postscript: I feel like I should mention that the fact that I believe in absurdism doesn’t mean that I am utterly immoral and don’t believe in ethics but rather that they are irrelevant in the grand scale of… well, everything. I still uphold moral standards and indulge in hedonism because…. I enjoy them? I merely accept the absurdity of the fact that they mean absolutely nothing to anything.

Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2014/

The “Arts of Resistance” exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology was quite a fascinating exhibit, showcasing the ubiquity of oppression in Central America which ranged from native Aztec Tlatoani to Spanish conquistadors and then neo-colonial corporations ¹. Of course, the general theme of oppression was intertwined with the theme of resistance against it ranging from the revival of native art to satire of Christianity and protests against GMOs.

Protests against GMOs. That strikes a chord, but in a wrong way. The exhibit in question, which is called “Defence of Maize”, portrays transgenic maize in a negative light by claiming its lower prices are “negatively affecting the Indigenous and locally grown maize market.” but this exhibits is disturbing on economic, scientific and ethical levels. It advocates a violent, unethical and uncompromising response to the issue at hand without consideration to the poverty stricken in Mexico and highlights how resistance is not always a positive nor beneficial action.

Economics 

Economically speaking, a rejection of GMO maize would have a negative affect on the economic conditions within the country, leading to an increase in overall poverty levels and lack of competitiveness against foreign imports. The argument that native farmings communities will be hurt by the introduction of GMO maize is valid to a certain extent, but it can be easily rebutted through two means, the utilitarian perspective and the false dilemma, also known as the fallacy of only having binary choices.

OECD Secretary-general Ángel Gurría estimated that “7 of every 10 Mexicans are living in poverty or vulnerability“². The introduction of GMO maize can alleviate this problem by making the price of maize more affordable through increased crop yield and higher resistance to insects. Assuming that we adhere to the utilitarianism principle that “the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct.” we can easily see how that the benefits of GMOs greatly outweighs the costs. According to the CIA Factbook ³, only 13.4 percent of the Mexican workforce is employed in the agricultural sector while only 17.5 percent of the Mexican population is Amerindian, according to Encyclopaedia Brittanica ⁴. This means that an extremely small portion of indigenous farmers would actually be harmed by the introduction of GMO maize in comparison to the large amount of Mexicans in poverty that would be benefited by the lower price of food.

Remember, regardless whether Mexican or native, human lives are still human lives

Regarding the false dilemma? The exhibit argues any solution to the introduction of GMOs would be binary, either they [The natives] win or they lose. This is shown pretty clearly by the native woman holding up a rifle against cowering scientists, an ethical atrocity that we will go more into depth later on. The absurdity of this idea is shown by the fact that there are plenty of ways to solve this issue without resorting to such extreme means.

As native farmers make up a minority of the population, the Mexican government can easily offer subsidies to native farmers that plant traditional maize without too much increase in fiscal spending. The government can also give quotas to farmers or set price floors that stabilise their income ⁵. This will protect them against low cost competition, regardless from GMO maize or foreign importers as their maize will always be bought. Honestly, it’s ridiculous to suggest the introduction of GMO maize will spell the end for indigenous communities.

It can even be argued that not introducing GMO maize will actually spell the end for indigenous communities as the rest of the world will still adopt GMO maize. For one, the United States has already done so extensively for corn and soybeans and the Chinese are following close behind. This means that the prices around the world for maize will fall as more and more countries adopt GMOs, rendering traditional maize in Mexico obsolete unless the government start placings tariffs on foreign crops. Let’s not go into details regarding how disastrous and what sort of trade wars that this sort of action will entail.

Please don’t tell me how to explain this, IB Econ was a long time ago

Scientific

From a scientific perspective, the second crux of this argument primarily deals with two sub-arguments, the benefits of GMOs, and the fact that the entire “tradition” argument is extremely debatable and a weak point to boot.

So the exhibits brings up a few points regarding GMOs, which are in my opinion its only valid ones. The curator calls the effects of GMOs “Very damaging” and that it “Makes the ground un-arable” at 1:41 in her introduction of the exhibit ⁶. Here’s statistics for GMOs for another country: 88 percent of the corn in the United States is genetically modified along with 93 percent of the soybeans according to the Department of Agriculture ⁹. Unless the curator’s definition of “very damaging” means obesity, there isn’t currently a massive health crisis in the United States because of those GMOs.

I’ll admit that this is the weakest portion of my argument because I do not take biology nor do I have any advanced knowledge regarding GMOs. An empirical argument based on GMOs in the United States having no visible negative effective is no where as strong as a biological one, but I believe that it is sufficient to prove that most GMOs most likely don’t have the “very damaging” effect that is being claimed, a claim that is supported by the New York Times where 90 percent of scientists believe it to be safe ⁸.

The un-arable argument is really weak because it partially contradicts the previous argument. One of the major reasons that soil is rendered un-arable is due to too many nutrients being absorbed by the plants (Aka. Law of conservation of mass, those nutrients still have to go something), this is actually a common problem which appeared prominently on the plantations of the South where excessive monocropping of cotton rendered the soil un-arable. This isn’t a new phenomenon and can be easily be solved by crop rotation, which has the increased benefit of expanding the types of crops planting which actually increases financial stability as farmers have back-up in case prices for a particular crop collapses.

Lastly, what you see below was the ancestor of maize. Along with many other cultivated plants, they were slowly modified over long periods of time through the process of breeding to gain positive traits until they became the maize we know today. This process is known as genetic modification. Of course, selective inbreeding is not exactly the same as transgenic GMOs, but the goal is the same. To weed out negative traits and instil positive traits that will make farming and the final product both easier and better. It is only the methodology that has changed.

The tradition argument is not completely without merit, indeed it was the Amerindians that modified ancient Maize, but a rejection of GMOs based on tradition is problematic in that it is basically rejecting a process that has the same goals and ideas of the original traditions in the first place. The argument that improvements in technology that lower costs will hurt traditional industries is easily exploitable to be used in basically any technological setting. Thus the entire thing feels just Luddite in nature and threatens to stagnate scientific development in Mexico as a whole merely for the benefit of the few.

Ethical

There’s a picture below of the “Defence of Maize” exhibit ⁹, and below that is a children’s picture of American built attack helicopters attacking refugees. The first exhibit shows a violent response to scientists that are trying to cultivate better and more efficient maize that will benefit the poor. The violent response is largely in response to the threat that this cheap maize poses to the personal interests of the native farmers. There is no recourse other than violence because there is no alternative. If they refuse to accept the new kind of maize [Since they refuse to accept alternatives] , they will lose their livelihoods and will forever be forced to rely on social welfare.

The second exhibit below that shows a violent response to fleeing migrants from a repressive regime who were just seeking asylum and a better life. This violent response is largely in response to the threat that the natives, which made up most of the rebel forces, posed to the government during the civil war. There is no recourse to violence because there was no alternative. Ok, that’s enough. I think I’ve made my point and there’s no need to make up arguments for genocides.

It is true that those two events are on vastly different scales, but the mindset behind them is essentially the same: violence is the solution to threats to your personal interests and all alternatives are non existent. Note that the people being threatened with bodily violence in the first exhibit are civilian scientists and not business executives which would be also bad, but not to the same extent.

This exhibit is basically an atrocity in action. You do not point guns at scientists to get across a point during a discussion, you point guns because you are threatening or actually about to kill someone. There’s honestly no other way to interpret this other than that. This exhibit is morally repugnant in the extreme for suggesting violence against innocents in the defence of “personal interests”

Conclusion

Indeed, it is important to think about the native and indigenous farming communities across Mexico that will be unable to compete against the GMOs, but in a changing world where 78.84 percent of Mexico now lives in urban areas, it is also essential to consider that a much larger amount of people will be negatively impacted if GMOs were to be withdrawn or even banned from Mexico. There are plenty of ways to deal with the issue of an disadvantaged native community ranging from quotas of native crops to just overall subsidisation. This is just under the assumption that the native communities stick with their original varieties of maize while they could just as easily switch over to the new kind and increase their own crop yield as well.

In a way, the distinction of oppressor and oppressed has become increasingly blurry the more you consider this issue. The exhibit “Defence of Maize” gives a biased response to the use of GMOs, showing the negative aspects of GMOs in addition to ignoring the benefits it brings while excluding the idea of any alternatives and responding to the entire issue with the threat of violence.

So let me ask you this as a closing statement.

Is there a certain point where resistance merely becomes oppression of a different sort?

Footnotes

1.“Arts of Resistance.” Museum of Anthropology at UBC, MOA, moa.ubc.ca/exhibition/arts-of-resistance/.
2.“Mexique – OCDE, Global and Mexico Economic Outlook 2018.” Estadísticas – OECD, OECD, www.oecd.org/fr/mexique/global-and-mexico-economic-outlook-2018.htm.
3.“The World Factbook: MEXICO.” Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, 26 Sept. 2018, www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html.
4. Cline, Howard F., and Angel Palerm. “Mexico.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 28 Sept. 2018, www.britannica.com/place/Mexico/Ethnic-groups.
5. Holroyd, Stephen. IB Economics. Oxford Study Courses, 2004.
6. “#5 The Defence of Maize.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 Sept. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N96FK4CHiM.
7.“Biotechnology FAQs.” USDA, www.usda.gov/topics/biotechnology/biotechnology-frequently-asked-questions-faqs.
8. Brody, Jane E. “Are G.M.O. Foods Safe?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 Apr. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/well/eat/are-gmo-foods-safe.html.
9. “Arts of Resistance.” Museum of Anthropology at UBC, MOA, moa.ubc.ca/exhibition/arts-of-resistance/.

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