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.
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