With this post, November becomes the most prolific month of this blog so far! I was thinking that when I reach 100 posts, which will probably be around New Year, then I will a) release the address of this blog on my Facebook page or something, and maybe actually get some readers, and b) do a roundup of the 'best' posts, to act as an introduction. It'll be interesting to see how the thing develops from there. I'm sometimes (like right now) very tempted to divert onto personal ground; but I'm resisting the temptation.
Now I am taking the week off writing here. Eighth week is just too much for me!
Sunday 28 November 2010
Saturday 27 November 2010
Yet Somehow the Whole Game
On J.R.R. Tolkein's anarcho-monarchism, and the virtue of kings:
But a king—a king without any real power, that is—is such an ennoblingly arbitrary, such a tender and organically human institution. It is easy to give our loyalty to someone whose only claim on it is an accident of heredity, because then it is a free gesture of spontaneous affection that requires no element of self-deception, and that does not involve the humiliation of having to ask to be ruled.And this, from the same article:
The ideal king would be rather like the king in chess: the most useless piece on the board, which occupies its square simply to prevent any other piece from doing so, but which is somehow still the whole game. There is something positively sacramental about its strategic impotence. And there is something blessedly gallant about giving one’s wholehearted allegiance to some poor inbred ditherer whose chief passions are Dresden china and the history of fly-fishing, but who nonetheless, quite ex opere operato, is also the bearer of the dignity of the nation, the anointed embodiment of the genius gentis—a kind of totem or, better, mascot.
There are those whose political visions hover tantalizingly near on the horizon, like inviting mirages, and who are as likely as not to get the whole caravan killed by trying to lead it off to one or another of those nonexistent oases. And then there are those whose political dreams are only cooling clouds, easing the journey with the meager shade of a gently ironic critique, but always hanging high up in the air, forever out of reach.
Thursday 25 November 2010
By Birth or Consent
The other day I was talking to a visiting scholar who had given a paper to our seminar; I gave a brief and garbled explanation of my project (in its new form), and she said, 'have you read Holly Brewer's book?' No I hadn't! Turns out, it's extraordinarily relevant and useful! Also, thankfully, it's nothing like the book that I want my thesis to be. It is a story of changing attitudes to childhood, in relation to political theory, in the Anglo-American world from the 16th to late-18th centuries. By Birth or Consent (great, evocative title):
A review on H-Net complains that "the connection between changing theories about civic authority and childhood often seems more theoretical and corollary than experiential and causal." I agree, Brewer shows that the two discourses seem to be connected but fails to find that connection. Surely it is psychological. At the very start, she touches on it: "On some level this image [of "children as metaphors for obedience"] transcended metaphor, became, in its pervasiveness, a structure through which many people understood their world [p.2]." But she doesn't follow this point up. The book would have benefited from a deeper theoretical appreciation of conceptual metaphor.
...in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a fundamental shift occurred in the legal assumptions about childhood, adulthood, and responsibility [p.1]... During the late sixteenth century, children became a metaphor for obedience and submission to church and kingdom... [but] political reformers of seventeenth-century England distinguished children's political identities from adults', emphasizing experience and reason as requirements for the exercise of political power. Their distinctions grew out of attempts to justify a form of government based on consent [p.2]... This paradigm shift, from authority based on birthright to authority based on reasoned consent, reconstituted the nature of legitimacy and power [p.5].One of the particularly interesting things for me is the questions it raises about what defines childhood: as I expected, we see some elitist politicians (e.g. John Adams) equating certain classes of adults (e.g. the propertyless) with children. What I also found interesting, though, is where Brewer's project differs from how I envisage mine. She ignores or tacitly refuses psychological implications, and builds her argument on corrolations and parallels between childhood issues and political issues.
A review on H-Net complains that "the connection between changing theories about civic authority and childhood often seems more theoretical and corollary than experiential and causal." I agree, Brewer shows that the two discourses seem to be connected but fails to find that connection. Surely it is psychological. At the very start, she touches on it: "On some level this image [of "children as metaphors for obedience"] transcended metaphor, became, in its pervasiveness, a structure through which many people understood their world [p.2]." But she doesn't follow this point up. The book would have benefited from a deeper theoretical appreciation of conceptual metaphor.
Tuesday 23 November 2010
Writing: Autism Compensation Effect
I incline to this. From the New York Times blog, The Stone:
Consider, for example, Sartre’s classic one-liner, “Hell is other people.” Wouldn’t autism, with its inherent poverty of affective contact, go some way towards accounting for that? The fear of faces and the “gaze of the other” that Sartre analyzes are classic symptoms. Sartre recognized this in himself and in others as well: he explicitly describes Flaubert as “autistic” in his great, sprawling study of the writer, “The Family Idiot,” and also asserts that “Flaubert c’est moi.” Sartre’s theory that Flaubert starts off autistic and everything he writes afterwards — trying to work out what is in Madame Bovary’s mind, for example — is a form of compensation or rectification, could easily apply to his own work.
Planning an Essay (Continued)
[Continued from here]
5) applying this approach to aspects of Federalist thought. The most important issue in the politics of the 1780s was [financial] debt and responsibility: there is a clear metaphorical connection to family relations and its notions of freedom and control, which can be analysed. Intergenerational justice more broadly is also key. Western expansion is a difficult issue for Federalist thinkers. So is the question of slavery. Finally, conceptions of representation and government, the overarching constitutional issue, can now be approached in this new light. Federalist impulses cherished freedom and social control; it was part of their coming of age.
6) return to the historiography. All this relates to the problem of liberalism and republicanism, and relates the two to each other in a new way. Both can be seen as forms of social control, but while the latter is overt the former is covert: it thus offers a mirage of freedom. Federalists' contradictory impulses spurred the imaginative political innovation of the 1780s, as they sought a way to resolve the tension between freedom and responsibility/order. Both liberal and republican elements were necessary, but the tendency was necessarily a movement towards liberal, covert forms of social control, which seemingly created order out of freedom.
5) applying this approach to aspects of Federalist thought. The most important issue in the politics of the 1780s was [financial] debt and responsibility: there is a clear metaphorical connection to family relations and its notions of freedom and control, which can be analysed. Intergenerational justice more broadly is also key. Western expansion is a difficult issue for Federalist thinkers. So is the question of slavery. Finally, conceptions of representation and government, the overarching constitutional issue, can now be approached in this new light. Federalist impulses cherished freedom and social control; it was part of their coming of age.
6) return to the historiography. All this relates to the problem of liberalism and republicanism, and relates the two to each other in a new way. Both can be seen as forms of social control, but while the latter is overt the former is covert: it thus offers a mirage of freedom. Federalists' contradictory impulses spurred the imaginative political innovation of the 1780s, as they sought a way to resolve the tension between freedom and responsibility/order. Both liberal and republican elements were necessary, but the tendency was necessarily a movement towards liberal, covert forms of social control, which seemingly created order out of freedom.
Monday 22 November 2010
Planning an Essay
1) the key problems in 1780s politics. The big problem is the apparent 'counter-revolutionary' nature of Federalist politics. Is it an outcome of power-struggle between pre-existing groups? If not, then what? What brings together the undoubtedly diverse set of groups that support the Federalist constitutional project in the late 1780s? What best characterises Federalist politics as a unit or type? An equally big problem, this time from a historiographical angle: why are historians still able to disagree so radically and strongly about the motives and intentions of the Federalists?
2) how can we solve these problems? Existing analyses are evidently flawed. What do they fail to take into account? They have looked at material factors and ideological, either in their relation to the material or in splendid isolation. Human motives are inadequately theorised: this is a general problem but particularly applicable here. Note how biographies of founders so often fail to fit them easily into general narratives. We need a psychological approach that shows how founders attitudes to power changed in tandem with historical/political context: this is coming of age.
3) language, metaphor, psychology: theory. We must connect the inner to the outer world before we can attempt to analyse the former through the latter. Metaphor provides this link because it is a cognitive reality that structures both thought/psychology and language/culture. Americans commonly used language of child-adult relationships to refer to politics. But this does not imply that the metaphor does not influence their thought when they are using different language. It acts unconsciously to shape conceptions of freedom, responsibility, justice, and government.
4) conflict, change, rhetoric: practice. We can attempt to analyse the kinds of political conflicts that occurred, and the rhetoric in which they were fought, in terms of this structuring metaphor (and see if it works). On the other hand we can look for clues in sources that are not explicitly political, but approach from the other side, i.e. that deal with child-rearing and the responsibilities of adulthood. Both these types of evidence will help to understand precisely how the metaphor of coming of age works politically in the 1780s.
[Continued here]
2) how can we solve these problems? Existing analyses are evidently flawed. What do they fail to take into account? They have looked at material factors and ideological, either in their relation to the material or in splendid isolation. Human motives are inadequately theorised: this is a general problem but particularly applicable here. Note how biographies of founders so often fail to fit them easily into general narratives. We need a psychological approach that shows how founders attitudes to power changed in tandem with historical/political context: this is coming of age.
3) language, metaphor, psychology: theory. We must connect the inner to the outer world before we can attempt to analyse the former through the latter. Metaphor provides this link because it is a cognitive reality that structures both thought/psychology and language/culture. Americans commonly used language of child-adult relationships to refer to politics. But this does not imply that the metaphor does not influence their thought when they are using different language. It acts unconsciously to shape conceptions of freedom, responsibility, justice, and government.
4) conflict, change, rhetoric: practice. We can attempt to analyse the kinds of political conflicts that occurred, and the rhetoric in which they were fought, in terms of this structuring metaphor (and see if it works). On the other hand we can look for clues in sources that are not explicitly political, but approach from the other side, i.e. that deal with child-rearing and the responsibilities of adulthood. Both these types of evidence will help to understand precisely how the metaphor of coming of age works politically in the 1780s.
[Continued here]
Sunday 21 November 2010
Contradiction and Dialectic Imagination
"Contradictions imply more than mere conflicts, and they are logically (and perhaps psychologically) less easily shelved than are many other kinds of problems. Indeed, if Hume is right, 'the Heart of Man is made to reconcile Contradictions.'" - James Farr, "Understanding Conceptual Change Politically," in Ball, Farr, & Hanson eds. Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (1989).The political development of the 1780s was not simply a matter of leaders shifting from an anti-authoritarian to an authoritarian (or responsible) stance. Neither, of course, does the shift from childhood to adulthood follow this pattern. Revolutionaries who, in their own eyes, acted to keep social and political order as the new republic came of age, did not forget their revolutionary principles. They did not reject liberty in favour of tyranny, despite Jefferson's later criticisms.
Rather, they came to appreciate more powerfully and personally than before their contradictory impulses, to be free and to be responsible. While every generation faces such a contradiction, American leaders in the 1780s were in a unique historical position to play out their reconciliation in the politics of the republic. The feats of conceptual imagination in the 1780s, in the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, were the results an attempt to ease a tension psychologically associated with coming of age.
Metaphorical Thought and Politics
I have already written that metaphors have power over us. I want to go a little further in exploring the ways literary and linguistic metaphors might relate to historical psychology. Previously I had assumed that the power of familial metaphor over thought had come from a long period in which that metaphor was developed culturally and linguistically. However, there is another possibility: that the psychology comes first, and the development of language is a secondary phenomenon. That is the contention, as far as I can tell, of Johnson and Lakoff in Metaphors We Live By (1980):
Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature [p.3]... Metaphors... are among our principle vehicles for understanding. And they play a central role in the construction of social and political reality [p.159].Moreover, as they point out, "metaphorical thought is unavoidable, ubiquitous, and largely unconscious [p.272]." This understanding of conceptual metaphor, and its deep unconscious influence, is important to my project. I don't need to show that Federalists in the 1780s always spoke about politics in terms of family relations. Rather, I need to establish only that it was a dominant metaphor, unconsciously shaping thought. I can then structure my own exegesis around such a metaphor, without becoming detached from the inner lives of Federalists themselves. At the least, I will be helping understand an aspect of their thought.
Friday 19 November 2010
"Always Historicise!"
- Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, 1981
In my writing about coming of age so far, I notice I've been treating this phenomenon as static or eternal. But of course like everything, it also changes. Although perhaps this needs more proper clarification, which I haven't achieved yet, I want to use coming of age both as a psychological reality and as a cultural metaphor: both are inextricably linked in ways I will explain later. But should those two forms be historicised in different ways?
The question of historical, or 'evolving' psychology is worryingly close to the philosophical question about what is 'human nature' and can it be seen as fundamental. Freudian (or any psychological) ideas seem to imply certain levels of unchanging-ness: that everyone is affected by the same types of complexes. But that is perhaps a superficial reading: we can be affected in different, changing ways; complexes can take different, changing forms. I need to confirm that my model of the child/adult shift in thought could be applied to eighteenth-century minds. How much will my argument here be circular, pointing to the ambivalences in the sources to show that the psychology exists, and then using the psychology as an explanation? Is such an approach illegitimate?
Historicising texts and metaphors is much more familiar to me, and historians generally. That said, it sometimes seems that readers - of Quentin Skinner for example - find this concept strangely novel and awesome. Perhaps all Skinner does is lend authority and credibility to techniques literary scholars had long understood, but that historians had shunned, until a grand old Cambridge man could show the way. I'm sure that is selling him very short. Anyway, I have been reading about changes in the literature of child/adult relations in the eighteenth century, which must be taken into account by my work. We are shooting moving targets from a moving train.
In my writing about coming of age so far, I notice I've been treating this phenomenon as static or eternal. But of course like everything, it also changes. Although perhaps this needs more proper clarification, which I haven't achieved yet, I want to use coming of age both as a psychological reality and as a cultural metaphor: both are inextricably linked in ways I will explain later. But should those two forms be historicised in different ways?
The question of historical, or 'evolving' psychology is worryingly close to the philosophical question about what is 'human nature' and can it be seen as fundamental. Freudian (or any psychological) ideas seem to imply certain levels of unchanging-ness: that everyone is affected by the same types of complexes. But that is perhaps a superficial reading: we can be affected in different, changing ways; complexes can take different, changing forms. I need to confirm that my model of the child/adult shift in thought could be applied to eighteenth-century minds. How much will my argument here be circular, pointing to the ambivalences in the sources to show that the psychology exists, and then using the psychology as an explanation? Is such an approach illegitimate?
Historicising texts and metaphors is much more familiar to me, and historians generally. That said, it sometimes seems that readers - of Quentin Skinner for example - find this concept strangely novel and awesome. Perhaps all Skinner does is lend authority and credibility to techniques literary scholars had long understood, but that historians had shunned, until a grand old Cambridge man could show the way. I'm sure that is selling him very short. Anyway, I have been reading about changes in the literature of child/adult relations in the eighteenth century, which must be taken into account by my work. We are shooting moving targets from a moving train.
Tuesday 16 November 2010
Psychology and Metaphor in History
Here are some further, but still preliminary, thoughts about how the psychology of coming of age might relate to a historical explanation of the Federalist movement in the 1780s. Clearly, people are going to be pretty skeptical about this as an approach. To be accommodated it has to be carefully defined.
To begin with, I agree with Peter Hoffer that "the strongest justification for psychohistory is that it can unravel riddles of motivation and expression which have resisted (or escaped notice in) conventional treatments." [Revolution and Regeneration, 1983, p.13] The unsolved problem of the Federalist movement, in my view, is its ambivalence towards power. Conventional histories either assume basically power-seeking or altruistic motives, without accounting for what seems to be an inner conflict. That is why I think psychology is relevant. (Such an inner conflict would need to be demonstrated, but it can already by inferred from historians' disagreements with each other, and their use of paradox and irony.)
Some historians have drawn on psychology to help explain the revolution itself, and I find their ideas interesting and fruitful. However, in some ways I think the Federalist movement is a more appropriate field for this type of analysis, because it is more closely tied (it seems to me) with a few individuals' thoughts and actions. That does raise a question: is the 'conspiratorial' or 'reform caucus' interpretation of the consitution movement correct, and if so how should we explain the constitution at a popular level? That question, though interesting, is outside the main scope of my concern.
In the 1780s, American elites (and presumably others!) reflected on the experience of revolution and the next steps for the nation and themselves. There is less question here of 'the heat of the moment' or the press of events than there is in the revolutionary crisis of the 1770s: we can give even more concern to thought, and therefore to psychology. The real problem is, how do we access the psychology of proto-Federalists, even those who wrote a lot?
In "The American Revolution: the ideology and psychology of national liberation," (1972) Edwin Burrows and Michael Wallace stress "symbolic collective identity" [p.274]: they find such an identity in the language of parent and child that was common in the rhetoric of the revolutionary period. Drawing that point out, we can say that the metaphor of child/adult relations, with its long period of development in the American political vocabulary, had the power to shape thought in the 1780s. It is all the more powerful for being a deep metaphor, acting primarily on the unconscious, rather than an element of rational or ideological thought. As literary scholars and now scientists tell us, metaphors indeed have power over us. It is the implications of this metaphor, and its workings in the Federalist mind, that I want to explore.
To begin with, I agree with Peter Hoffer that "the strongest justification for psychohistory is that it can unravel riddles of motivation and expression which have resisted (or escaped notice in) conventional treatments." [Revolution and Regeneration, 1983, p.13] The unsolved problem of the Federalist movement, in my view, is its ambivalence towards power. Conventional histories either assume basically power-seeking or altruistic motives, without accounting for what seems to be an inner conflict. That is why I think psychology is relevant. (Such an inner conflict would need to be demonstrated, but it can already by inferred from historians' disagreements with each other, and their use of paradox and irony.)
Some historians have drawn on psychology to help explain the revolution itself, and I find their ideas interesting and fruitful. However, in some ways I think the Federalist movement is a more appropriate field for this type of analysis, because it is more closely tied (it seems to me) with a few individuals' thoughts and actions. That does raise a question: is the 'conspiratorial' or 'reform caucus' interpretation of the consitution movement correct, and if so how should we explain the constitution at a popular level? That question, though interesting, is outside the main scope of my concern.
In the 1780s, American elites (and presumably others!) reflected on the experience of revolution and the next steps for the nation and themselves. There is less question here of 'the heat of the moment' or the press of events than there is in the revolutionary crisis of the 1770s: we can give even more concern to thought, and therefore to psychology. The real problem is, how do we access the psychology of proto-Federalists, even those who wrote a lot?
In "The American Revolution: the ideology and psychology of national liberation," (1972) Edwin Burrows and Michael Wallace stress "symbolic collective identity" [p.274]: they find such an identity in the language of parent and child that was common in the rhetoric of the revolutionary period. Drawing that point out, we can say that the metaphor of child/adult relations, with its long period of development in the American political vocabulary, had the power to shape thought in the 1780s. It is all the more powerful for being a deep metaphor, acting primarily on the unconscious, rather than an element of rational or ideological thought. As literary scholars and now scientists tell us, metaphors indeed have power over us. It is the implications of this metaphor, and its workings in the Federalist mind, that I want to explore.
Republicanism, Liberalism, and Social Discipline
My conception of the coming of age in the 1780s has a lot to do with social discipline. Federalists who had fought "arbitrary" British authority came to feel that their responsibility was to establish and enforce order in the independent nation. These ambivalent drives relate to the classic problem of republicanism and liberalism in the political thought of the revolutionary period, for both sets of ideas contain strong but opposing prescriptions for social discipline.
Classical republicanism emphasises virtue, which is in most cases another word for self-discipline: moderation and disinterestedness are central. Republican institutions are meant to encourage or enforce these kinds of self-discipline - so that in fact we are really talking about social discipline (on this general point see Robin Hanson). Classical republican government is highly visible, and citizens are supposed to be acitvely engaged. Its forms of discipline are structured by mutual surveillance and the threat of censure.
Liberalism is obviously quite different: in fact, it appears to offer a great relaxation, or even elimination, of social discipline. Liberal capitalist citizens have few responsibilities: they are supposed to act in their own best interests. Yet the liberal society exercises its own, social discipline, beginning with the rule of law but extending to a set of conditions that organise people and communities around economic markets. The contraction of the public sphere, and loss of positive liberty, restrict citizens in general to acting out their roles as rational producers and consumers. This liberal, capitalist social discipline is invisible; the penalty for disobedience is poverty.
Classical republicanism emphasises virtue, which is in most cases another word for self-discipline: moderation and disinterestedness are central. Republican institutions are meant to encourage or enforce these kinds of self-discipline - so that in fact we are really talking about social discipline (on this general point see Robin Hanson). Classical republican government is highly visible, and citizens are supposed to be acitvely engaged. Its forms of discipline are structured by mutual surveillance and the threat of censure.
Liberalism is obviously quite different: in fact, it appears to offer a great relaxation, or even elimination, of social discipline. Liberal capitalist citizens have few responsibilities: they are supposed to act in their own best interests. Yet the liberal society exercises its own, social discipline, beginning with the rule of law but extending to a set of conditions that organise people and communities around economic markets. The contraction of the public sphere, and loss of positive liberty, restrict citizens in general to acting out their roles as rational producers and consumers. This liberal, capitalist social discipline is invisible; the penalty for disobedience is poverty.
Sunday 14 November 2010
Ten American Books
So many books, so little time! Here are ten I want to read, in an effort to consolidate my credentials as an Americanist... Five from the 19th century, five from the twentieth. Setting myself a deadline: the end of the academic year.
1. Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1850
3. Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851
4. Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, 1881
5. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884
6. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, 1920
7. Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940
8. Saul Bellow, Herzog, 1964
9. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1973
10. David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 1997
What is interesting?
Robin Hanson against sophistication:
Interesting folks, in contrast, get so far into a particular topic that they become at risk of violating conversation etiquette, by talking too enthusiastically for too long on topics of minor interest to sophisticates. Yes, interesting folk are at risk of being distracted from dress or hygiene, or from carefully climbing their local status ladder. But they are also at risk of making a unique contribution to the world.
Thursday 11 November 2010
Responsibility and the Public Sphere
One of the many ambivalences in the Federalist experience of the 1780s was towards the public sphere, or as George Washington would probably have called it (he was fond of theatrical metaphors) 'the national stage'.
Retirement fantasies were common and acted-upon to different extents: Washington 'retired' but continued his political involvement on many levels - whether or not entirely by his own choice. Hamilton retired from political life in favour of his legal practice, but he of course re-entered the scene in 1786. Madison and Jay were very much engaged in the public life of nation and state. Jefferson and Adams were away from America (but acting on its behalf), and so had a different relationship again to the public sphere.
The question of a proper relationship to public life and the public sphere is (I now see!) closely bound up with the problem of adulthood, and coming-of-age. Not to get too speculative, but we can presumably link childhood with privacy and adulthood with being in public - even more so in the eighteenth-century, I would imagine. For revolutionary leaders in the 1780s, facing the idea that they were now responsible for the country's wellbeing, their renegotiation of the public sphere was an important part of coming of age.
Retirement fantasies were common and acted-upon to different extents: Washington 'retired' but continued his political involvement on many levels - whether or not entirely by his own choice. Hamilton retired from political life in favour of his legal practice, but he of course re-entered the scene in 1786. Madison and Jay were very much engaged in the public life of nation and state. Jefferson and Adams were away from America (but acting on its behalf), and so had a different relationship again to the public sphere.
The question of a proper relationship to public life and the public sphere is (I now see!) closely bound up with the problem of adulthood, and coming-of-age. Not to get too speculative, but we can presumably link childhood with privacy and adulthood with being in public - even more so in the eighteenth-century, I would imagine. For revolutionary leaders in the 1780s, facing the idea that they were now responsible for the country's wellbeing, their renegotiation of the public sphere was an important part of coming of age.
Wednesday 10 November 2010
Supervisor as Safety Net
So I pitched the Coming of Age idea to my supervisor yesterday over dinner. He was pretty skeptical, but he was at least 'intrigued'. 'If I thought it was completely ridiculous, I wouldn't be sitting here in silence,' he said. On the other hand, he also actually said, 'The 1930s called, and they want their pychology back!'
As I remember it, he had two main points to make: 1) child/father language is one of the vocabularies of development used in the 1780s, but to make it the whole thesis would be distorting; 2) my previous work emphasised material reality and I shouldn't abandon that: Federalism was a coalition of groups whose outlooks were shaped in a continental direction by their political and material circumstances. I'll give responses (in the sense of discussing how I could incorporate this advice) soon.
As I remember it, he had two main points to make: 1) child/father language is one of the vocabularies of development used in the 1780s, but to make it the whole thesis would be distorting; 2) my previous work emphasised material reality and I shouldn't abandon that: Federalism was a coalition of groups whose outlooks were shaped in a continental direction by their political and material circumstances. I'll give responses (in the sense of discussing how I could incorporate this advice) soon.
Monday 8 November 2010
Federalists and the Coming of Age
Over the last few days I've been thinking about a new alternative way to approach the Federalists and the 1780s in America, which is quite different from my previous formulations. It stems to some extent from my thinking about sympathy, and the potential novelistic qualities of history.
My thesis (as you know!) intends to examine the social, cultural, and intellectual background of the movement for the Constitution. My thought is that this can be done through the lens of 'coming of age,' the moment of achieving - or the struggle to achieve - adult status. This approach seems to have many possible overlapping and not-mutually-exclusive forms, encompassing both various levels of metaphor, and various levels of psychological experience. I hope to draw out my thinking on all of this over a series of posts here, which I might then be able to turn into some sort of coherent plan.
This idea did not occur to me in a systematic way: like perhaps most ideas, it was presented to me as an answer without a question. So the first job is to work out what the question is. I don't think that's so backward and facile as it might sound, though; I imagine that this is only a process of expressing questions that already existed unconsciously, based on my reading and work so far. The cart cannot have come entirely before the horse! These are the questions I think might generate fruitful answers using this new approach:
My thesis (as you know!) intends to examine the social, cultural, and intellectual background of the movement for the Constitution. My thought is that this can be done through the lens of 'coming of age,' the moment of achieving - or the struggle to achieve - adult status. This approach seems to have many possible overlapping and not-mutually-exclusive forms, encompassing both various levels of metaphor, and various levels of psychological experience. I hope to draw out my thinking on all of this over a series of posts here, which I might then be able to turn into some sort of coherent plan.
This idea did not occur to me in a systematic way: like perhaps most ideas, it was presented to me as an answer without a question. So the first job is to work out what the question is. I don't think that's so backward and facile as it might sound, though; I imagine that this is only a process of expressing questions that already existed unconsciously, based on my reading and work so far. The cart cannot have come entirely before the horse! These are the questions I think might generate fruitful answers using this new approach:
What drove the leaders of the movement for the Constitution? What linked them together, and relatedly, why was the politics of this moment so transient (preceding comprehensive realignment in the 1790s)? And, perhaps most interestingly, how can we explain their ambivalence to power, and the tensions in their thought over aristocracy and republicanism, inheritance and independence, conservatism and revolution?
Sunday 7 November 2010
The Safest House of Present-Day Utopias
Fred Inglis (who, as it happens, wrote a biography of R.G. Collingwood, the opening chapters of which are quite beautiful, although I never read the rest) on "Toytown Utopias" in THE:
The safest house of present-day Utopias is, however, to be found in the 50-year-or-so history of television tales for five-year-olds. Trumpton and its sister villages, Chigley and Camberwick Green, all still easily available on DVD, plus the work of the recently deceased but always immortal Oliver Postgate and his utopian planet-home for The Clangers, these noble classics, together with Bob the Builder and Postman Pat, have for two generations taught their solemn audiences the lineaments of the good place...
These tales all corroborate the news from nowhere. Postgate's mouse-people on their distant planet do the same. Nature and industry combine in the harmonious provision of nurture (the Soup Dragon, the Iron Chicken), the denizens of the planet, speaking a language of melodious whistles perfectly endorsing Noam Chomsky's deep-structural theory of meaning, are impelled in all their doings only by kindness and curiosity. Their planet dances also, to the music of the spheres as played by little orchards of bell-bearing trees ... and hardly any lower in the nursery ratings, Bob the Builder and Postman Pat ply the politics of politeness with their unfailing kindness and consideration, the latter in the perfect landscape of the Yorkshire Dales.
In these places, and in their many descendants, the companion books often including their own DVD, the idea of Utopia lives staunchly on. Indeed, it is an agreeable and rational place for it to do so, for what are the stories we commend to our children and grandchildren for, if not to say implicitly and unplonkingly, "Here is how the world ought to be. We grown-ups haven't managed to make things come out like this. Remember these tales and see whether you can do better. One day, they will give you occasion for thinking the best possible thoughts.
Saturday 6 November 2010
EducationMart
Stefan Collini on the Browne Review, in the LRB:
The single most radical recommendation in the report, by quite a long way, is the almost complete withdrawal of the present annual block grant that government makes to universities to underwrite their teaching, currently around £3.9 billion. This is more than simply a ‘cut’, even a draconian one: it signals a redefinition of higher education and the retreat of the state from financial responsibility for it...
The report includes various ‘access’ regulations intended to mitigate the more extreme effects of this reallocation of students by family wealth, but differential fees are, of course, absolutely central to its conception of the way the market mechanism will operate, and it is a necessary truth about markets that they tend to replicate and even intensify the existing distribution of economic power. ‘Free competition’ between rich and poor consumers means Harrods for the former and Aldi for the latter: that’s what the punters have ‘chosen’.
History and the Novel
In fiction-writing there's a lot of talk about empathy, which isn't really any different from what I meant by sympathy the other day. Novels are often about the possibility of entering another mind. That idea seems very similar to R.G. Collingwood's conception of what history should be: the rethinking of past thoughts (my understanding of Collingwood comes not yet from reading his books, but from a great lecture by George Garnett). To me, it seems that written history normally fails at this task - or, rather, few historians attempt it - while fiction has been capable of amazing things. To enter someone's mind in fiction is always moving; history rarely is.
What's the different between what novelists are trying to do and what historians are trying to do? Is there a difference between what they should be trying to do, or in what they succeed in doing, or are capable of? From the reader's side, how do we use history, and how do we use novels?
History appears to work on a rational level as opposed to novels working on an emotional one, but I think that distinction is misleading. People use history books to develop and buttress their ideas and beliefs about the world; and they do the same with novels. There's no meaningful way to draw a line between the 'factual' or rational element of those ideas and beliefs, and the emotional or irrational element. One kind of difference could be in scale: histories are macro, novels micro. But that obviously doesn't hold universally: compare War & Peace with The Cheese and the Worms. What does this kind of scaling even mean, and how do novelists, historians, and readers make choices about it?
This problem of scale is central to the greater problem that both history and fiction share: how are we different from each other, how the same? Across time, space, culture, and every other kind of division, what unites us, what divides? The possibility of sympathy must be part of our answer.
What's the different between what novelists are trying to do and what historians are trying to do? Is there a difference between what they should be trying to do, or in what they succeed in doing, or are capable of? From the reader's side, how do we use history, and how do we use novels?
History appears to work on a rational level as opposed to novels working on an emotional one, but I think that distinction is misleading. People use history books to develop and buttress their ideas and beliefs about the world; and they do the same with novels. There's no meaningful way to draw a line between the 'factual' or rational element of those ideas and beliefs, and the emotional or irrational element. One kind of difference could be in scale: histories are macro, novels micro. But that obviously doesn't hold universally: compare War & Peace with The Cheese and the Worms. What does this kind of scaling even mean, and how do novelists, historians, and readers make choices about it?
This problem of scale is central to the greater problem that both history and fiction share: how are we different from each other, how the same? Across time, space, culture, and every other kind of division, what unites us, what divides? The possibility of sympathy must be part of our answer.
Thursday 4 November 2010
Sympathy in History
What does it mean to be sympathetic to someone? Can you sympathise and condemn at the same time, or is a refusal to condemn inherent in sympathy? I saw a play yesterday whose protagonist I loved (or 'sympathised with') but who did something - I was going to write unforgivable, but is anything unforgivable? He did something I condemn. Perhaps the solution is to, as Christians say, love the sinner, hate the sin.
I think the same rule should apply in history-writing; by which I mean I hope to apply the same rule to my work. But how does non-fiction and historical writing work when it comes to things like sympathy and condemnation? It seems not to work in the same way as novels (or plays), generally. Often the affectation of appearing impartial, and relaying the facts, makes real sympathy impossible. But ironically it makes condemnation easier. In history, past actors are made of their acts: the sin becomes the sinner and vice versa. Is this because in history the range of attributable causes is so narrow, in comparison to fiction? How can we solve this problem?
I think the same rule should apply in history-writing; by which I mean I hope to apply the same rule to my work. But how does non-fiction and historical writing work when it comes to things like sympathy and condemnation? It seems not to work in the same way as novels (or plays), generally. Often the affectation of appearing impartial, and relaying the facts, makes real sympathy impossible. But ironically it makes condemnation easier. In history, past actors are made of their acts: the sin becomes the sinner and vice versa. Is this because in history the range of attributable causes is so narrow, in comparison to fiction? How can we solve this problem?
Wednesday 3 November 2010
More on the Post-Revolutionary Public
Privacy... underwent a shift in this period from a classical conception of seclusion and withdrawal to a more recognizably modern notion of independence and intimacy [p218]... Discussions of solitude and retirement in the revolutionary period represented fantasy narratives of self-liberation from the public sphere, even as they address that public sphere [p219]... In one sense, private withdrawal made thought about public things possible. Narratives about individuals who chose to leave society had a social function, of course, and one way to account for the prevalence of hermits in the print culture of late eighteenth-century America is to consider them as exemplary figures of the public sphere [p220].Eric Slauter, The State as a Work of Art (Chicago, 2009)
Monday 1 November 2010
Public and Private After the Revolution
The Revolution transformed the landscape of public space in America. People's conceptions of their own and others' public roles were challenged, redefined, and threatened. Elites were in a sense at the forefront of this change, because it was they who were most exposed by the removal of previous colonial elites. They had to radically adapt their conceptions of their own public and private lives. This seems to have resulted in all sorts of exagerrations and contradictions, which shifted and settled through the early national period. As Peter Thompson points out in Rum Punch and Revolution:
How did questions of public and private spheres affect other future Federalists; did their answers differ from future Antifederalists? What was the relation between emerging conceptions of the public sphere and the constitutional project? Can that movement perhaps be defined as a deliberate attempt to shape a public sphere - or to define a public/private relationship - for the new nation?
Lurking behind this contradiction between self-interest and community development was a fundamental tension between the values and imperatives of private life and those of an idealized but imperfectly realized public world. [p8]During the 1780s, i.e. after the first great public test of the war itself, revolutionary elites faced anew the challenge of negotiating between private and public roles. The idea or ideal of retirement to private life was strong for men like Washington and Hamilton, both of whom spent the 1780s mostly out of public office. Others like Madison, remained in public life but shifted between national and local spheres.
How did questions of public and private spheres affect other future Federalists; did their answers differ from future Antifederalists? What was the relation between emerging conceptions of the public sphere and the constitutional project? Can that movement perhaps be defined as a deliberate attempt to shape a public sphere - or to define a public/private relationship - for the new nation?
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