Fall 2010 Issue

the undergraduate philosophy magazine of Columbia UniversityGADFLYTHE

Existential Stage-Fright: Dostoevsky and Identity [p. 6]

Debate: How far can we criticize the

Western Canon? [p. 17]

Interview: Making Small

Talk with Bruce Robbins [p. 14]

Systematic Criticism:Marx, Nietzsche and the Financial Crisis [p. 20]

GADFLYTHE

Fall 2010

ShortsPhilosophy Talks

Upcoming Conferences, Talks, Lectures

Branching Out Philosophy-Related Courses

A Treatise to Spirit DragonsThe Paradox of Reductionism

Features

Existential Stage-Fright

Toward A Functional Definition of Religion

Systematic Criticism Marx, Nietzsche and the Financial Crisis

On Public Art

CriticismMaking Small Talk with Bruce Robbins

An Interview

How Far Can we Criticize the Western Canon?A Debate

A Review of A Clockwork Orange

Joshua Maslin

Shai Chester

Thomas Sun

Peter Licursi

Arton Gjonbalaj

Rebecca Spalding

Bart PielaPuya Gerami

Evan Burger

2

3

6

10

20

24

4

14

17

28

From the Editor

The Gadfly is sponsored in part by the Arts Initiative at Columbia University. This funding is made possible through a generous gift from The Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

STAFF

Editor-in-Chief Bart Piela

Managing Editor Puya Gerami

Shorts EditorSumedha Chablani

Features EditorsStephany Garcia

Alan Daboin

Criticism EditorsVictoria Jackson-Hanen

Rebecca Spalding

Copy EditorAmber Tunnell

Arts EditorHong Kong Nguyen

Layout EditorChristina Johnston

Technology DirectorCindy Zhang

Business and Finance Manager

Michelle Vallejo

Thanks to the Columbia and Barnard Philosophy Departments for their support and assistance.

ILLUSTRATORSAmalia RinehartLouise McCuneKeenan KorthDaniel NyariAshley Lee

Arais AbbruzziChristina Johnston

Rachel Shannon-Solomon

[A plain, empty common room. Four chairs arranged around a central table. In the middle of the table lie three copies of a magazine. A fly buzzes around the room. Enter Vlad—a philosophical sort of chap, Descartes’ Meditations in tow—and Estro—not.]

Vlad [excitedly]: A table! Existent or not? [Pauses.] I. The same question.

Estro: You cogitate. I sit. [He sits.]

Vlad [under his breath]: Heavybody. [More loudly.] What’s that? [He sits across from Estro and peers at a magazine.]

Estro: What?

Vlad: That! With the queer fellow on it. What a beard on him. He doesn’t look so good.

Estro [looks down]: Looks fine to me.

Vlad [noticing another copy, flipped]: Ha! A kind of mask. Exhibit A: cool, composed, calculating. Exhibit B: rotting. Two sides of the same shekel, though you wouldn’t know it. Or would I? [He opens a copy and begins read-ing ‘From the Editor.’ The hand holding the magazine begins to fade.]

Vlad [shouting]: Reductio ad absurdum!

Estro: Who!? [Aside.] But enjoy. [The lights go out. With a nervous shout.] Vlad!

Vlad [calmly]: Yes?

Estro: What are we waiting for? [Silence. He crosses himself, slowly.]

[The lights turn on. The same room, empty. In the middle of the table lie two copies of a magazine and a tome of Descartes’. Enter a janitor. Tidying, he throws the magazines in the trash. Later. Enter a student. He places three copies of a magazine on the table and, with a smile, he picks up the Meditations. He exits.]

Bart Piela

THE GADFLY Fall 20102

Philosophy Talks

Out and About

Friday, February 11, 2011 Rachael Briggs (Sydney/NYU visiting)

Friday, February 25, 2011Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers)

Friday, March 4, 2011Sally Haslanger (MIT)

Friday, March 25, 2011Anthony Gillies (Rutgers)

Friday, April 29, 2011Shelly Kagan (Yale)

Thursday, February 24, 2011 Tamar Gendler (Yale University)4:10 PM- 6:00 PMRoom 716 Philosophy Hall

Thursday, March 10, 2011Kathrin Koslicki (U. of Colorado)4:10 PM- 6:00 PMRoom 716 Philosophy Hall

Thursday, April 7, 2011Brad Skow (MIT) 4:10 PM- 6:00 PMRoom 716 Philosophy Hall

The Center for Public Scholarship at the New School The 22nd Social Research Conference

CPS: The Body and the StateFebruary 11, 2011 - February 12, 2011

10:30 AM - 7:00 PM

“Join us as speakers discuss the body as a human rights arena in which many forces, such as religion, science, media, and market struggle for control over policies that control our bodies. We hope to illuminate how the often tacit assumptions about the ‘normal,’ ‘healthy,’ and ‘acceptable’ body lead to policies which are, at their core, unjust.”

New York University Spring 2011 Colloquium Series

Columbia University Spring 2011 Colloquium Series

shorts 3

Branching Out:Philosophy-Related Courses Outside the Department

Aesthetics & Philosophy of History Dorothea von Muecke Germanic Languages W 4:10-6:00 PM

Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal Pierre Force French Romance & Philology TR 2:40-3:55 PM

German Thinkers & Heidegger Matthias Bormuth History M 11:00-12:50 PM

Plato the Rhetorician Kathy H. Eden English and Comparative Literature W 11:00-12:50 PM

Philosophy and History of Evolutionary Biology Walter Bock Biology MW 1:10 - 2:25 PM

Buddhist EthicsThomas F. YarnallReligionTR 2:40-3:55 PM


A Treatise to Spirit Dragons:

Joshua MaslinIllustrated by Amalia Rinehart

The Paradox of Reductionism

The reductionist has done it! She has found the most basic constitu-ents of the universe: we are all

nothing more than spatiotemporal points being blown around by the stellar winds of cause and effect. Humanity has philo-sophically ascended (descended?) enough to figure out what the universe is made of: really—REALLY—small things. Don’t believe it? Doesn’t matter. You’re still composed of these spatiotemporal points. Better start coming to terms with it. And you know who else has to start coming to terms with this idea? Corn. Someone should really tell corn that it too is made of spatiotemporal points. Corn has spent so much time festering in its unintentional ignorance (ironic for a plant with so many ears). Sure, corn is not as “complex” as we are; really, it’s so simple that it couldn’t tell a man from a woman, a woman from a pernicious tree fungus! I guess we need to try a bit harder to get through to corn. Find a loud SigEp and get him to yell. Not working? Have

him yell louder.

Fine, fine, the yelling is useless. Get that bro out of the cornfield. At the end of the day, we know what constitutes corn. If corn doesn’t want to listen—if corn doesn’t even know we exist—we might as well exploit the hell out of it. Plant it in rows, harvest it, turn it into syr-up, maybe even a pseudo-efficient gasoline substitute, and distribute it to the masses! Corn will never know the difference.

Wait a minute—let’s pump the brakes for a second. If living corn is completely removed

from the complex reality we experience, does that mean that human beings...No. It couldn’t be. Could it? Could we be the corn? Of course we aren’t actually the corn. But are we like the corn—could the universe be farming us? Are spirit dragons farming us?! Corn experiences the universe in its own corny way, for it lives and reproduces. But corn is missing out on so much! Is it pos-sible that we are, too? Is it possible that we are equally bound by our humanity, just

as corn is by its corniness?

shorts 5

Humor a thought experiment and take actor Haley Joel Osment. As a child, he played a superhuman

introvert in M. Night Shyamalan’s family classic, The Sixth Sense. Before we all became disillusioned with M. Night’s complex cinematic writing formula (arbitrarily selecting plot twists from a hat during drug-induced states of consciousness), we were shocked to find out that (spoiler alert) our young protagonist could see dead people. This was his sixth sense. Like everyone else, he could, ostensibly, taste cake, hear Ke$ha songs, see double rainbows, touch furry rabbits and smell gas leaks from the stove. But he could also perceive dead Bruce Willises. While I often dream about dead Bruce Willises, I have yet to perceive his mopey ghost in a waking state. Those spirit dragons! Who knows what they can perceive? Dead Abe Lincolns? Intelligent Republicans? I bet they’re laughing at our spatiotem-poral points right now. Jerks! They’ll never understand…oh. If we can’t understand corn’s place in the universe, how could spirit dragons (cough—god—cough) understand humanity’s? If they could, they’d be just as “simple” as us. So why even speculate about these spirit drag-ons? We don’t have the hardware to deal with their issues, nor do they have the means to un-derstand ours.

Oh, Reductionists: As long as we’re ac-knowledging the possibility of these unknown unknowns, you guys should

probably send someone over to apologize to the corn. After all, we’re all re-

ally in the same boat. A little empathy could do everyone some good. So, just to summa-rize: there are spirit drag-ons farming us, and corn deserves our respect. Stated another way: we exist in an incom-prehensible universe filled with incom-prehensible things. Our vision of this universe will al-ways be strained through a human sieve. Reductionist logic, born of hu-manity, is subject

to infinite regression (and progression). To

conceptualize the fabric of the universe in terms of

“parts” could be an entirely false paradigm, if not physically, at least philosophically. Disagree, oh mighty Reductionists? Then I am at your mercy, omnipotent Gods of Corn. And if you like manipulating the fates of the ignorant and disconnected, consider capi-talizing off of the wildly popular “Farmville.” You could catapult Universal Farming Religion to the forefront of human consciousness!

Our vision of this universe will always be strained through a human sieve.


Existential Stage-FrightShai Chester

Illustrated by Daniel Nyari

Universal truth is an outdated con-cept. Traditional philosophers explained reality through a single

system of precepts which, though often abstracted to the point of meaningless-ness, provided the singular satisfaction of complete and absolute truth. Contempo-rary thinkers are skeptical of such grand unifying theories. To them there is no one objective vision of reality, only various perspectives, all equally valid and limited.

This pluralism subverts the lay-man’s conception of the soul. While one might at first assume that each person has a single, unchanging soul and that the wildly contradictory emotional states that possess us are merely superficial masks, a pluralistic interpretation would assert that there is no single, unchanging soul, rather that each of these emotional states is its own distinct soul. All of these emotional states are bound by their common physical location: you. The absence of an absolute identity would not seem to be so troubling though, as it validates a plurality of masks. (Here and throughout I have in mind Wendy Doniger’s essay, “Many Masks, Many Selves.”) This relativism is liberating in a world that demands many identities, allowing a career woman to change from doting mother, to cutthroat capitalist, to sultry temptress without undermining any

of her masks. Freed from the obsolete no-tion of the soul, Pluralistic Man defines himself more or less as he wills.

The Underground Man, the anti-hero of Dostoyevsky’s novel Notes from the Underground, is the epitome

of the pluralistic personality masquerader. Throughout the novel, the Underground Man deliberately assumes identities ranging from debauched aristocrat to radical social critic, culminating in his stirring sermon on vice and redemption to an enraptured prostitute, which is ultimately revealed as a cynical intellectual self-indulgence with no true pathos. The Underground Man does not feel liberated by his radically different personalities; rather his acute realization of his masks undermines his masquerade. The jarring contradictions between his different personae make them feel phony and reveal his terrible disconnection from his true self, which Dostoevsky, unlike modern pluralists, fervently believes in. Dostoevsky employs the Underground Man to prove that the individual who “knows thyself ” cannot comfortably wear pluralistic masks.

The vestment of the sanctimo-nious is the most uncomfortable mask for the self-perceptive man because the hon-est preacher, constantly aware of his own sins, hesitates to cast the first stone. Dos-toevsky demonstrates this with the Un-derground Man’s failed speech during the goodbye dinner of Zerkov, a successful army office and former school mate. The protagonist prefaces this episode by de-scribing his childhood jealousy and hatred

A version of this article previously appeared in the Journal of the Undergraduate Writing Program.

The vestment of the sanctimonious is the most uncomfortable mask for the self-perceptive man.

features 7

of Zerkov, a typical aristocratic philistine blessed with beauty, moral indifference, and social graces. This last attribute par-ticularly vexes the Underground Man, as it is what he lacks and longs for most. To prove his moral superiority and disdain, he decides to don the smirking mask of satire and interrupt the dinner with a dia-tribe that he thinks will shatter Zerkov’s

conceit. In the middle of his philippic, though, he is struck by the hypocrisy of his cynicism. After all, he invited himself to the dinner originally out of a vain at-tempt to ingratiate himself with the very men whose vanity he is attacking. Crippled by this revelation, his tirade trickles into confused and sentimental rambling, which only fuels his opponents’ contempt.


Seen through the lens of pluralistic selves, the Underground Man’s mor-alizing is defensible. His supposedly

sinful true self is no more fundamental than the righteous persona he adopts, so

the latter is not hypocritical, but merely different. A pluralistic self that wears con-flicting masks is no more duplicitous than a single actor who plays separate conflict-ing parts in the same eternal play.

Such a carefree possessor of anti-thetical ethics is acknowledged by Dosto-evsky. He longingly describes the “rogue [who] can be absolutely and loftily honest at heart without in the least ceasing to be a rogue.” Yet such innocence is limited to those who have “a faculty for the most contradictory sensations,” i.e. unreflec-tive laymen. The perceptive man’s visceral aversion to conscious hypocrisy cannot be assuaged by an intellectual recognition of the plurality of self.

The self-aware individual’s com-prehension of the artificial source of his mask inhibits his ability to naturally mas-querade, as Dostoevsky exhibits again with his hapless protagonist. In a surge of anger, after being humiliated at the dinner party, the Underground Man imagines an elaborate revenge involving an honorable duel, years of stoic suffering in Siberia, and finally a climactic confrontation with the grand perpetrator, Zerkov, whom the Christ-like hero magnanimously forgives,

attaining absolute moral revenge. The in-tegrity of this mask of righteous anger is quickly undermined, however, by the Underground Man’s realization that the entire revenge fantasy is merely a trite re-

hashing of plots lifted from Pushkin and Lermontov.

Appropriating personae from art is not unique to rarified literati such as the Under-

ground Man. How often do you find yourself repeating jokes you have heard on television? And how many of the al-most meaningless cutsie phrases that un-necessarily replace simple words in our sentences are lifted from trite TV charac-ters and ads? We all imitate art, and usually not even the sort of meaningful art that the Underground Man apes. The external-ity of our masks is not an issue to the plu-ralistic interpretation though, as it denies the existence of a wholly internal mask to begin with. We are never ourselves to our-selves, but always in relation to others, so the difference between the Underground Man quoting Pushkin versus Pushkinís original exhortations is just a matter of degree.

To Dostoevsky though, this mat-ter of degree is crucial because the wearer of the mask is conscious of it. All ideas may be necessarily external because they are ultimately an amalgamation of reac-tions to others ideas, but they do not im-mediately appear so to their conceivers, even those who are perceptive. Converse-ly, when the Underground Man copies di-rectly from Pushkin, since art is artificial by default, he is unavoidably aware that he is uttering artifice. Again, the confidence

The self-aware individual’s comprehension of the artificial source of his mask inhibits his ability to naturally masquerade.

features 9

of the masquerader is determined by his awareness of the masquerade, not the the-oretical validity of the mask.

A mask worn in its proper scene can appear authentic; during the transition between scenes, how-

ever, the absurdity is naked. Dostoevsky illustrates this with the Underground Man’s final interaction with the prostitute Eliza. The penitent harlot comes to his house seeking the holy man who had lectured her on sin. Although her savior begins his address appro-priately, sanctimoniously extolling his humble abode, he is soon dis-tracted by his hated manservant and starts squabbling with him over some petty mis-deed. Pathos turns to bathos, and the Un-derground Man is reminded once more of the silliness of his masks. Note that moral hypocrisy is not the issue here. The man-

servant may have deserved a tongue lash-ing as much as Eliza merited more flowery words. It is the awkward juxtaposition that undermines each persona.

This damning disparity is not just apparent during abrupt switches. No mat-ter how brief and fluid the transition, the perceptive individual will always note the momentary non sequitur. Even Wendy Doniger’s model career woman, coming home from a day of merciless layoffs to bake cookies for her children, would be

disquieted by the contrast of her masks.

Both the contemporary concep-tion of self and Dostoevsky’s older conception have their con-

solations. The former does not posit a single fundamental identity, but effec-tively replaces it with the pluralistic self. Dostoevsky denies the feasibility of this pluralistic self, but believes in an ultimate

authentic identity: a soul. Although the Underground Man may have lost his soul through “lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite,” his Notes serve as “corrective pun-ishment” for himself, for the reader, and

perhaps even for the author, urg-ing them to avoid his mistakes and return to their true selves. When viewed through each other’s lenses though, these consolations cancel out. The Pluralistic Underground Man can neither blithely exchange

masks, nor piously pursue the sacred aspi-ration of the non-existent true self. He is the tragic archetype of modernity: mastery of reasoning has allowed him to penetrate the mind’s substrata of comforting delu-sions and fantasies, only to find nothing beneath. Doniger optimistically assures him that “as we strip away masks, or faces, each time we see more in the hall of look-ing glasses.” The Pluralistic Underground Man only sees infinite reflections of his plastic face, endlessly mocking him.

Even the model career woman, coming home from a day of merciless layoffs to bake cookies, would be disquieted by the contrast of her masks.

During the transition between masks, the absurdity is always naked.


Toward a Functional Definition of Religion

Thomas SunIllustrated by Christina Johnston

The conflict between religion and sci-ence is still contentious today. One prominent view holds that there is

a clear division between the two camps and that one is either a scientist or religious be-liever. The opposing side asserts that there are similarities between the two fields and notes particular counterexamples of scien-tists who are religious. I do not wish to side with either camp but rather to draw atten-

tion to the fact that we often put the cart before the horse when engaging in such debates, for we do not have a sufficiently clear grasp of the concept of religion to begin with. What should be considered a religion is a debate in itself. The famous philosopher William James famously pro-posed a set of criteria to define religion. I wish to show that none of these criteria are sufficient, and that a better approach would be to analyze what unique function religion holds in society, and then to define religion as that which performs this func-tion.

In The Varieties of Religious Experi-ence, James divides religion into the insti-tutional and the personal. In defining reli-gion, he focuses on the latter, for he claims that religion in its most fundamental sense is personal. This claim is justified in at least the following sense: the founders of in-stitutional religion must themselves have had personal communion with the divine.

James proposes that we take religion to be “the feelings, acts, and experiences of indi-vidual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” He takes care to describe the object of worship as “the divine,” not “God,” and thus avoids excluding from his definition religions, such as Buddhism and Emer-sonianism, that do not worship a God in concreto.

But we ask: “What is the divine?” In clarifying this, James adds that the di-vine must satisfy two criteria—the divine has to be the “primary truth,” and it has to be treated in a solemn and serious man-ner. However, we run into a problem here. Scientists revere the primary truth of the universe; the main purpose of science is to discover the universe’s laws—its secrets—through experimentation. And, certainly, scientists treat the primary truth with the utmost rigor and seriousness when they pursue a life of scientific investigation and institute specific social practices to protect the truth (e.g. peer review). Surely science, regarded by many as the antithesis of re-ligion, is not a religion itself. And yet, the pursuit of a life of scientific investigation fits James’ definition of religion quite well.

A further distinguishing characteris-tic of religion, James says, is that religious believers undergo emo-

tional states of passionate happiness. Wit-ness Julian of Norwich or St. Augustine during their religious catharses. Unfortu-nately, the addition of this criterion does not rule out science as a candidate either.

Science cannot make one embrace pain, suffering or death with enthusiasm.

features 11

Scientists undergo euphoric states just as much when they admire the beauty of the galaxy or the complexity of the brain. Richard Dawkins, in an article entitled “Is Science a Religion?”, describes this well: “The merest glance through a microscope at the brain of an ant or through a tele-scope at a long-ago galaxy of a billion worlds is enough to render poky and pa-rochial the very psalms of praise.” If deep euphoria isn’t the distinguishing character-istic of religion either, then what is?

James, I think, mentions it in passing: “In the religious life, on the con-trary, surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in order that the happiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary.” Unlike religion, science cannot make one embrace pain, suffering or death with en-thusiasm. At best, it can teach one to be patient and accepting of the ways of the universe. Science can ease pain, suffering and death by reducing them into sums of chemical reactions or parts of biological cycles, but it would be extremely difficult for science to transform them into some-thing worth embracing. Here we finally have the distinguishing characteristic of religion—the ability to make easy and fe-licitous what is necessary.

Instead of defining religion to be the personal, solemn worship of the pri-mary truth, as James approaches it,

and therefore running the risk of char-acterizing science as a religion, I propose that we take a backwards approach. In-stead of looking at the different emo-tive or doctrinal components that build a religion, why not look at what religion is uniquely able to accomplish? This unique

ability is to make what is necessary, such as suffer-ing and death, easy and felicitous. A religion has to prepare one in such a way that one starts to positively embrace suffering. It does not have to make demands on its believers, nor establish rituals, nor create social gatherings, nor worship the divine, so long as it accom-plishes this func-tional task.

This func-tional approach to defining religion is helpful in eliminat-ing the vagueness inherent in other approaches, partic-ularly James’. When James tried to define religion in terms of belief in the divine, he found himself in muddled wa-ter. The chief trouble was in


hinging the defini-tion of religion on the nebulous concept of “the divine,” itself a term laden with connotations of a religious nature, when James was attempt-ing to puzzle out what religious nature was in the first place. To explain “the divine,” James asserts that it is “any object that is godlike.” When pushed further, he ex-plains that what is godlike is the “primal truth.” The overall strategy seems to be defining one ambiguous term in terms of another. If, on the other hand, we define religion in terms of its function to us, a subject we probably know more about than nebulous concepts, then we can

avoid dependence on illusory terms and ideas.

A preliminary test will show that the ma-jor religions of the

world will fit the funct iona l definition. Chris- tian and Is-lamic followers believe in the p r e s e n c e of Heaven and Hell and an impending Last Judg-ment. The doctrine that suffer-

ing in the current life will be recip-

rocally compen-sated by rewards in

an afterlife is one of the most effective tools

religions use to ascribe positive attributes to suf-fering. Critics of Chris-tianity such as Nietzsche criticize just this ability of Christianity to make “suf-

fering contagious.” Indeed, Christianity is so effective at

this that occasionally we hear of followers who not only em-brace suffering—theyask for

more. Julian of Norwich, in her Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love,

begs to be sent a bodily crisis so that she can gain intimate knowl-

edge of the suffering of Christ. In similar veins, suffering and sacrifice are positively espoused in Buddhism and Hinduism. In the former, suffering is cast as a necessary step towards achieving nirvana. In the lat-ter, sacrifice in the current life is said to ac-cumulate and be proportionally rewarded in the next world.

If we define religion in terms of its functions to us, then we can avoid dependence on illusory terms and ideas.

features 13

An immediate objection to the functional definition of religion may be that, according to our

common experience, religions are not the only entities that can render suffering and sacrifice in a positive light. The most strik-ing counterexample is nationalism. Many war heroes have cho-sen to sacrifice their lives not for their reli-gion but for their nation. This line of criti-cism insightfully points out that the func-tional definition of religion offered thus far is not a sufficient condition, just as I have pointed out that James’ definition of religion in terms of the solemn treatment of the primary truth does not sufficiently

qualify religion. Perhaps a sufficient defini-tion of religion should combine these two necessary conditions: a religion must (1) revere the primary truth of the world in a solemn manner and (2) positively espouse sacrifice and suffering. This definition will rule out science as a religion, for science does not render sacrifice and suffering in a positive light. It will also distinguish reli-gion from nationalism, for nationalism is about the pursuit of things like freedom and independence, not of the primary truth of the universe.

In order for this two-part definition of religion to stand, a more detailed analysis will have to show that

other recognized religions of the world, besides the ones discussed above, will

continue to be qualified as religions un-der the definition. The search for a pre-cise definition of what it is to be a religion does not only have theoretical value, but also practical value. It can help the Inter-nal Revenue Service in drawing the line between religious and non-religious insti-tutions and the Supreme Court in judging cases related to the separation of church and state. And, considering a case we are perhaps more familiar with, it will give

answers to the premed student who finds himself behaving more and more like a re-ligious follower during his weekly MCAT Bible study, his communion in weekend study groups and his relentless sacrifice of social fun. He may be a zealot, but he is not a religious zealot.

Instead of looking at the different emotive or doctrinal components that build a religion, why not look at what religion is uniquely able to accomplish?


Making Small Talk with Bruce RobbinsRebecca SpaldingIllustrated by Ashley Lee

Bruce Robbins is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities in Columbia’s English and Comparative Literature Department. His primary interests include nineteenth and twentieth century fiction, literary and cultural theory and postcolonial studies. A prolific author, Professor Robbins has published such works as Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress, The Servant’s Hand: English Fiction from Below and Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture. From 1991 to 2000 he was co-editor of the journal Social Text. He regularly teaches courses on contemporary literary theory, modern comparative fiction, and intellectual history. Recently, I sat down with Professor Robbins to discuss his undergraduate years, the important relationship between literary theory and philosophy, and the Core Curriculum.

How did you first get into your field?

I was a history and literature major at Harvard, which was a combined program for those students who hadn’t quite figured out which field they were more interested in. I had gone into college thinking I would become a philosophy major. I had read Plato, Nietzsche, and Sartre during my adolescence, in the hey-day of existentialism. I remember I once told my high school friends that I was interested in ‘existentionalism.’ I was, of course, mocked and put down in the way that people are severely put down in high school for being pretentious. Anyway, I was familiar with those thinkers before I got to Harvard but I never ended up tak-ing a philosophy course during college. In-stead, I was turned on to literary criticism through a close reading course that I took freshman year. The best way the history department and literature department had found to combine the two subjects was, in effect, a sort of compromise. We did read social historians who were big in that peri-od, but intellectual history was at the cen-ter. That’s what gave me the confidence to take a shot at so-called “theory” when it took off in the U.S. in the 70s.

At some point in senior year, I went more in the literary direction. I guess it seemed to me that literary criticism was more open than other fields. The philoso-pher Richard Rorty said it well when he said that philosophy had abandoned the goal of asking the big questions, and lit-erary criticism had picked up the ball af-

(i)

15criticism

ter philosophy dropped it. For in-stance, around 1972 there was a certain excitement around Claude Levi-Strauss, and a friend of mine, an undergraduate at the time who actually went on to become a professor at the Uni-versity of Chicago, suggested we form a reading group with an as-sistant philosophy professor in or-der to read Levi-Strauss.

We did, but it didn't work. The guy in the philosophy depart-ment was not interested in answer-ing the larger questions, such as, What is this thinker trying to do? Why is it worth doing? This particular phi-losopher, not the discipline as a whole, was not prepared to answer these larger questions and I believe I was because there was more room to do so in literary criticism, at least at that moment.

Have things changed for literary criticism?

It is not a good moment for literary theory. All across the

country, partly due to financial pressure, scholars have pulled back into a narrowly historical understanding of their field; many only work within that particular peri-od. Not many people are asking questions that transcend their period. Theory exists to impose these larger questions on the discipline. Are we really talking about the same object as in earlier periods? Or are we relying on the lazy assumption that these texts are the same simply because they are all called “literature”? To a certain extent, literary criticism is a place where that still happens, just less so. As a

historical fact, the impulse of French theory in the ’60s and ‘70s does not seem as strong now. To-day, people are looking elsewhere for that philosophical excitement that we got from French theorists.

Is there anyone working in theory now who gives you that philosophical excitement?

Etienne Balibar, for one, who is actually teaching a seminar at Columbia this fall. He is asking very interesting questions about violence and civility. He and Judith Butler are working on the same problems, particularly the problem of universality.

Is there such a thing as the Western Canon as taught in Literature Humanities and

(ii)(iii)

(iv)


Contemporary Civilization and is the Core an adequate way to teach that Canon?

I have never had the good fortune of taking Lit Hum or CC or teaching either course. It is something I would like to do while I’m still walking. The Core is great when I want to refer to a certain philo-sophical tradition in my other classes be-cause students have read Herodotus, Kant, etc. There are not many other universities where you can do that. However, I think it would be a good thing if the Core were re-vised in some way by integrating other tra-ditions into Lit Hum and CC. Not as other options on the side but at the center—I would like to see the Core tell the story, the true story, of the communication be-tween these traditions and the Western tradition. This could happen in the Core. This currently happens through institutes around campus that bring together people

from different intellectual backgrounds to explore the same problems.

Which philosopher or philosophi-cal tradition has most influenced your approach to literary theory?

The Kantian tradition. It is Kant’s inter-pretation of the aesthetic that makes lit-erary criticism a viable discipline whether critics acknowledge that debt or not. That being said, traditions that are hostile to Kant are also influential for me and for the discipline; Hegel, for example. A great deal of contemporary theory is based, at least in part, on readings of Chapter 4 of the Phenomenology of Spirit. And in turn, the anti-Hegelian traditions of French post-structuralism have also become important to me and to the discipline.

What’s your favorite novel?

Dickens' Bleak House. But I will put in a good word for Franzen’s new novel, Free-dom.

(vi)

(v)

17criticism

The more we know about some-thing, the better we can ‘place’ new information about that thing:

the better we can make connections, ad-vance our understanding, go beyond our immediate knowledge set. Even when new information complicates old information, we have the hope of working through the complication towards a better understand-ing. This is the value of dialectic (and, hopefully, this debate). To be able to place any informa-tion, we need to start somewhere. We cannot remain intellectual blank slates for long. So where should we start? That’s a complicat-ed question. Should we begin by gathering scientific knowledge and go from there? Or religious knowledge? Philosophical? Political? Should we start with the East and move West, or the other way around? In an important sense, it does not really matter. We can start anywhere—with any canon—and move outwards, as long as we are careful, discerning, curi-ous intellectual agents. Where we start is a matter of convenience. In our case, it is roughly a function of geography.

It is useful to take the evolution of thought, bind it by relatively arbitrary geography and study that evolution.

This offers us a way to explore how criti-cal thought originates, evolves, overlaps,

diverges and converges in a fairly well de-fined historical set of works. It gives us somewhere to begin investigation into our very humanity.

So, does the Western Canon exist? Yes it does—and we’ve invented it. We, as an intellectual community, have attached more or less permanent labels to works, one of these being ‘Western,’ and we ex-ploit these labels for our own ends, one of these being learning. And these labels truly are useful. As our ends (gradually) change, so can the labels. This explains why the syllabi of Literature Humanities and Con-temporary Civilization have evolved over the years. This is not to say the labels are perfect, even when most everyone agrees upon them. We make mistakes, and we have to acknowledge our larger intellectual community does as well. We resist change and so does the community.

But, overall, learning happens and it happens within a specific frame-work. Without this framework, we

would be much worse off. We would have nowhere to start. We could start some-where else, but this would take immense energy and effort—a complete reorienta-tion of Western academia. If the current method isn’t broken, we shouldn’t try so hard to fix it. It’s not perfect, certainly. It ignores some questions too permanently,

A Useful ConventionBart Piela

Debate: How far can we criticize the Western Canon?

Illustrated by Rachel Shannon-Solomon


when these questions should come up. But it gives us our all-important starting point. And by virtue of its obvious imperfec-tions it brings up the obvious questions. In this sense, it is more valuable because it is imperfect, because it is something we must revaluate, question and probe. Our revalu-ation, though, should not be too vicious; in a way, we should be just as cautious in criticising the Canon as we are in accept-ing it.

We cannot deny existence or use-fulness to something because it is, at bot-tom, arbitrary. This would undermine the very notion of a convention. Few endeav-ors would ever get off the ground. As long as we can move from the point we have decided upon towards new horizons, as long as we do not become trapped within the Western Canon, its value is immediate and important.

The selection of a Western Canon involves a flexible manipulation, conscious or not, of the past—

what to remember, and what to forget. It is not a fixed collection of unquestioned masterworks, celebrating the inexorable progress of human civilization. Nor is it a monolithic body of aesthetic and philosophical texts that will remain eternally relevant. It is a battleground for constant cultural self-definition. Because of this, the formulation of the Canon is implicitly informed by various interests which probably affirm and reenforce the prevailing values of the current order rather than substantially challenge them. And just as we must always be suspicious of who is writing our history—since, as Orwell reminds us, those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future—we must be equally wary of those who claim the intellectual capability to determine a Western Canon. More often than not, the

reading of a canon uncritically reflects the patchwork of principles and hypotheses which bolster the intellectual foundation of the reigning political-economic system.

Furthermore, it is important, I think, to dispel the dangerous notion that the authors of the Canon

are undeniably ingenious thinkers who, through intellectual meditation and open dialogue, built the extraordinary foundation of contemporary society. This triumphalist account denies the competitive nature of philosophical discourse. If the place of the Canon is to be justified, then readers must recognize the divisive upheavals in intellectual history that have glorified some authors while condemning others to oblivion. We must also be aware of the often questionable factors that are involved in the formulation of a Canon. For example, it is now discreditable to insist

The Canon and the Status QuoPuya Gerami

19criticism

on some sort of “Western civilization”, and if we are to defend a Canon, then all attempts must be made to discard the notion of “the West” as a separate culture representing enlightenment and intellectual progress. Similarly, it is no coincidence that in a society defined by patriarchy and the sanctity of private property, a great deal of the Canon respects these characteristics and provides fodder for their defense. I am, of course, pointing to the repeated and not unconvincing claim that the support of a Canon reproduces the intellectual foundation for a flawed and starkly unequal society. Nonetheless, granted that one acknowledges the dangerous implications of a Canon and notes the obvious effect

that such a project will often signify an underlying approval of the status quo, I think that one can reasonably argue that it is a supremely valuable educational tool if re-directed for different purposes. It ought to be used first to rigorously interrogate our own fundamental political assumptions. In the process, readers will be able to find relevance in certain authors while dismissing others as no longer theoretically valuable; in this way the Canon will be constantly re-made. In that case, the Canon exists, surely; but it is not a collection to inspire passive awe, but rather a body of thought to be perpetually challenged, re-interpreted, destroyed, and re-built.


Systematic Criticism

Peter Licursi Illustrated by Keenan Korth

As the dust begins to settle in the aftermath of the recent finan-cial crisis—which has caused

the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression—two different posi-tions have emerged among various intel-lectuals, politicians and activists. The first,

popularly touted by fundamentalist pro-ponents of the free market, views the cri-sis as a result of inhibiting state-imposed regulations which compelled the private sector to design more mystifying financial innovations. The second, advocated by the more moderate defenders of liberal-democratic capitalism, oppositely argues that the crisis was sparked by massive de-regulation, the growing power of financial managers, and in certain cases, the greedy ethical deficiency of those in positions of economic responsibility. And yet, few if any of these vocal analysts have ap-proached understanding the crisis in sys-temic terms.

None have surmised that the essential calamity debated between moderate and fundamentalist lib-eral capitalists can be found within liberal capitalism itself. Contrary to these flawed patterns of mainstream political discourse, I believe that what is needed today is a totalizing theoreti-cal critique of the political-economic system. To do this, we must use the tools first provided by two philoso-phers whose works undermined the

prevailing, embedded religious and ethi-cal values of their societies: Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. I argue that their works remains relevant and can be utilized to call into question the seemingly ubiq-uitous belief in the fundamental sustain-ability of liberal capitalism. The primary triumphs of Marx and Nietzsche, within their respective methodologies, are that they re-historicize morality, subvert ethics and call into ques-tion the very foundations of so-called “Judeo-Christian” religiosity. From these groundbreaking critiques of the funda-mentally universal, one can derive the im-petus to en-vision

Marx, Nietzsche and the Financial Crisis

What is needed today is a totalizing theoretical critique of the political-economic system.

features 21

our societal catastrophes, and conceivably their resolutions, on a systemic level. Marx’s historical materialism is central to his account of human con-sciousness in society and its manifestation in religion and morality. In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx posits the materialist argu-ment that religious sentiment is a purely social product. This leads to a basic meth-odological innovation: in understanding religion and morality, philosophy must not consider the abstract individual, but rather a particular form of society. Ideas are the by-products of economic material relations. Morality, religion and other ide-ologies do not stand by themselves, inde-pendent of these relations. Nor do their corresponding forms of consciousness. All ideology, whether religious or secular, relies exclusively on the material experi-ence of human beings: “Life is not de-termined by consciousness,” Marx writes, “but consciousness by life.”

This underlying materialism is key to understanding the manner by which Marx’s conception of reli-

gion is fruitful in constructing a systemic critique of contemporary capitalism. For Marx, the critique of religion is the key to the critique of all ideologies and institu-tions. Man’s reluctance to understand his material reality, including that of his situa-tion under capitalism, is clearly manifested in religion. This fundamental concept also allows us to deconstruct some of the mis-guided criticisms of the financial crisis. Rather than appealing to a very vague con-ception of business ethics to target par-ticular managerial trends as perpetrating this crisis, we can attempt to understand how capitalism as a complex social system produces these trends. Rather than under-standing this incident as an abstract psy-chological or ethical trend, one must insist upon analyzing it as a material reflection of capitalism. In essence, the crisis represents

a series of trends that were first identified by Marx. However, these patterns have ac-celerated and developed to a degree that Marx could not have foreseen.

Marx describes the power of capitalism to alienate man from his labor and mediate all social

interactions as relations of production, re-sulting in a commodity fetishism in which the socially produced material goods seem naturally produced. In this crisis, one ob-serves a level of alienation in which the material product has been removed. Even the innovators of complex derivatives admit that their financial speculations occupy a fictitious realm divorced from material production. With this level of sustained alienation from the means of production and productive forces, accord-ing to Marx’s logic, man loses his ability to exert influence over his material reality, and thus, his human essence. This com-plete mystification of productive relations

leads to the false consciousness that Marx analyzes in his critique of religion. Furthermore, as Marx suggests, capitalism today is no longer merely an economic system, but rather a complex so-cial structure in which individuals devout-ly trust. As Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek warns, one should never underesti-mate the infinite plasticity of capitalism. It has adapted and regenerated through a number of crises, and yet despite this it has become increasingly clear that neither the market nor the state can solve the in-finite problems that face our world. Still, contemporary political discourse largely disregards the possibility of a systemic critique of liberal capitalism. For its most

Ideology is a mere construct, utilized to further the aims of those in positions of dominance.


ardent supporters, the crisis occurred pre-cisely because capitalism, they argue, was restrained. Like religion, capitalism, both as ideology and complex social system, is fetishized and masked as a naturally oc-curring phenomenon, despite its roots in our material reality. If, as Marx insists, man is the human world, the state and society, then the status of capitalism is far less cer-tain, and we have much more control over our social, political and economic organi-

zation than presumed by those who de-fend this system. In order to add another level of nuance to this critique, it is gainful to turn to Niezsche’s critique of morality.

In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche sets out to disprove the widespread notion in the philosophy of ethics,

from Plato to Kant, that morality is a priori to society. These doctrines search for the metaphysical criteria for judging any ac-tion good or evil. But for Nietzsche mo-rality is an a posteriori phenomenon, and religion is merely a mode of valuation with tangible historical origins. Nietzsche characterizes the emergence of religion, beginning with Judaism and continuing with Christianity, as a triumphant slave revolt in morality. This act, on behalf of the weak, is prompted by the resentment of the once powerful knightly-aristocratic class, and produces an inversion in which good qualities (nobility, aggression and strength) become Evil, and bad qualities (impotence, weakness and simplicity) be-come Good. Nietzsche’s argument is em-bedded in an understanding of human history similar to Marx’s materialism in that it is concerned with the a posteriori ori-

gins of ideology. Unlike Marx, however, Nietzsche

assaults these values as man-made con-structs. In fact, in an evaluative sense he posits that everything considered Good in Judeo-Christian ethics is merely a set of defensive constructs, hypocritically imposed on society, without any inherent meaning. In doing so, Nietzsche estab-lishes a mode of criticism that calls into question the most foundational ideologi-cal presumptions of society. It is in this methodological tradition that one can pursue the systemic criticism ad-vocated above. As Nietzsche decon-structs the entire teleology of Eu-ropean ethics, we too can decon-struct the teleol-ogy of capitalism and its insistence on its own per-manence via de-mocracy, human rights, and the free market.

An impor-tant de-v i a t i on

from Marx in Nietzsche’s cri-tique is the no-tion that ideology, even broad ideo-logical systems like Morality, is a mere con-struct, utilized to further the aims of those in positions of dominance. Marx, on

As Žižek warns, one should never underestimate the infinite plasticity of capitalism.

features 23

the other hand, sees ideology as the product of material conditions, functioning as both an expression of those material conditions and as

their mask. This theoretical crossroads is key to a cri-tique of contemporary capitalism. Is this system,

as both an ideologi-cal construct and a complex social or-ganism, buoyed at the insistence of its power ben-eficiaries and their ideological wardens? It does seem that the vic-

tims of this crisis are far more willing to attack the greed

of a few managers, like Bernard Madoff

or the executives that flew to congressional

hearings on private jets, than to seek those fun-damentally problematic structures in capitalism that make crises inevi-

table and recurring. How-ever, this reaction assumes

that capitalism requires a balanced ethical outlook; in-

stead, in the tradition of Marx, we must pursue the notion that capitalism, as a system, produces the behaviors that our so-ciety has quite clearly deemed unacceptable. In fact, we see that in prosecuting the individu-als who perpetrated risky speculations without looking at the inherent causal elements in capi-talism that prompt these behaviors, we end up perpetuating and strengthening the system as a whole. Thus, the public embarrassment and prosecution of bank executives is merely a

masquerade, in which the public demand for justice is superficially satiated and a select few take the fall for the inherently problematic ele-ments of capitalism. Thus, using the Marxist and Nietzschean critiques, I believe that the reactive discourse of the financial crisis is a mystification of class-consciousness, in which those with a vested interest in the prolongation of liberal-capitalism dole out what appears to be justice in order to avoid the actuation of real social justice. Those who desire to divert criticism from capitalism disregard it altogeth-er as a subject for critique. Apologists create an assumptive discourse in which the longev-ity of the system is incontestable, and, in so doing, mystify the ability of the victims of the crisis to understand the totality of capitalism as a historical process. In both the works of Marx and Nietz-sche, consciousness of the historical, material

origins of grand ideological systems is key to the intellectual liberation of man. Each thinker posits that the maintenance of these grand ide-ological systems depends on the unconscious-ness of its material origins, which is why these systems are fetishized and masked as natural, rather than social, entities. It is the very fact that the permanence of capitalism in politi-cal discourse is so staunchly presumed that we must view it with a skeptical, critical lens. I am not positing a solution to the problem of the financial crisis, as this is not the true purpose of philosophy, but rather a redefinition of this problem as a systemic crisis necessitating a cri-tique of the inherent qualities of capitalism. Marx and Nietzsche provide us with the intel-lectual tools to make this critique.

It is the very fact that the permanence of capitalism in political discourse is so staunchly presumed that we must view it with a skeptical, critical lens.


Public art faces a challenge that is quite unlike that which is faced by all art: each and every instance of

public art has both a time limit and a spa-tial attachment. That is to say public art has a temporal restriction, an expiration date, a moment when it ceases to interest its viewing public, as well as a site-specific designation. The implications of site-spec-

ificity for public are more obvious and immediate than those of time-specificity. To derive a theory that combines both specificities, I question human nature, with particular emphasis on the viewing public’s sensitivity to public art. The speci-ficities, or parameters, of public art are re-vealed precisely when the viewing public becomes conditioned by, or desensitized to, public art. We can confidently declare the end of public art when we, as human beings qua viewing public, stop caring, talking and thinking about public art.

It is crucial to understand first that both the artist and the viewing pub-lic play an important role in the time-specificity and site-specificity of public art. Because public art is so exposed, it is extremely accessible to the viewing pub-lic. The artist is thus confronted with the challenge of creating public art that re-tains its viewing public, namely its local community. Due to this over-exposure, public art fails to transcend the temporal restrictions that are less known to works

of art in the museum. Public art is directly restricted to the changing tides of human interest, participation and sensitivity, to the changing face of its viewing public, to the changing times.

Public art is site-specific because it must occupy a specific public space. Complicating matters, it must be

relevant to the public space of its viewing public. This is, again, a burden and a chal-lenge placed to the artist. The philosopher Hilde Hein notes, “[The] sheer presence of art out-of-doors or in a bus terminal or a hotel reception area does not auto-matically make that art public—no more than placing a tiger in a barnyard would make it a domestic animal.” For example, Maya Lin’s “Vietnam Veterans Memorial” in Washington, D.C. is an instance of pub-lic art, but a public rendition of Salvador Dalí’s “The Persistence of Memory” in London is not. Some art, like “The Per-sistence of Memory,” is essentially taken out of the museum, copied, and placed in a public space—for the purpose of this article, I shall not consider this public art. Memorials, such as that of Maya Lin, are often highly site-specific, as they should be, but their time-specificity becomes rather complicated and controversial. A memorial is thought to possess qualities that transcend the boundaries of time, to appeal to and communicate with count-less generations of people through time. Yet memorials are confined to the time of their installation, the time when they (and their subject matter) were considered rele-vant. This is not to say that memorials are

On Public Art

Illustrated by Louise McCune

Arton Gjonbalaj

Public art faces a challenge that is quite unlike that which is faced by all art.

features 25

unsuccessful works of art; in fact, they are extremely successful, but only if they help the ever-changing viewing public experi-ence or at least imagine the time when the work was installed, when it was important and relevant, when it was alive.

It is apparent, then, that public art can link us to the past, taking us out of our time and space. Public art can force us to rethink our habits as well as our habi-tats. At the proper level of engagement with public art, we are placed outside of our very recognizable selves, outside of the environment with which we were once so familiar. We think that we know our space, but only a drastic modification of the space—through public art—can accu-rately test our familiarity and knowledge. Public art compels us to question our identity as well as our surroundings. Only after this transformation can we truly un-derstand our time and space and, more importantly, ourselves. After we have inevitably exhausted public art of this function, it expires. Public art can take us out of our time and space, but it cannot save itself.

What transpires in art’s transition from the museum or gallery to the park or street corner?

Think of the Salvador Dalí and Maya Lin examples. On a more personal level, think about the “Thinker” and “Alma Mater” on Columbia’s campus, the first simply copied and placed on campus, and the latter made specifically for the site that is Columbia University. When Columbia students, the viewing public of “Alma Mater,” tried to destroy the sculpture in the 1970’s, as philosopher Arthur Danto recalls, the students “were not vandals but revolutionaries, symbolically attacking the public whose values ‘Alma Mater’ embod-ies.”

There is hope that public art can be kept alive if its artist does something innovative and original. To extend its im-pact and push its temporal and spatial boundaries, public art should provoke

controversy and interaction in the

There is hope that public art can be kept alive if its artist does something innovative and orginal.


form of discourse or deep personal medi-tation. Public art must respond to and in-teract with the viewing public by reflecting the cultural, historical, philosophical, po-litical and social interests of the viewing public. However, in doing so, it is tied to a temporal and regional locality. As it attempts to reenergize and sculpt an often-overlooked public space, by transforming the blank canvas of bare public space into an artistic and expressive fête, public art pays tribute to the local, the ordinary and the vernacular, deeply time-specific and site-specific ele-ments.

The role of the viewing public, as influenced by different times and localities, is essential to under-

standing public art. Public art requires the sensational investment—the active partic-ipation—of the viewing public. As Hilde Hein suggests, we are no longer mere “passive onlookers.” Instead, we

are participants

“actively implicated in the constitution of the work of art…A work’s realization depends on the audience’s bestowal of meaning upon it, a contentious social and political undertaking.” However, the view-ing public rarely becomes more attached

to any instance of public art over time. It seems that at some point each instance of public art becomes a fixed entity, merely something we pass by on a daily routine. The interruption of the flow of nature, of the flow of human traffic, caused by public art is crucial to its overcoming the specificities. Public art must have redemp-tive value that implicates an understanding of the spatial and temporal arrangement of the environment—an understanding of that which constituted the space before

the installation and that which consti-tutes it after the installation.

The ideal instance of public art demonstrates relevant meaning that transcends its in-stallation in a specific time and space, a meaning that is in-fused in a new, updated instal-lation. This subsequent in-stallation reflects the artist’s careful consideration of the criticism of the viewing public, as well as the dy-namics and restrictions of time and space. This no-tion of the continuity of an idea or meaning con-veyed through an instance of public art transcends

The ideal instance of public art demonstrates relevant meaning that transcends its installations.

features 27

that particular instance through a series of generational installations. In this case, the essence of a specific instance of pub-lic art is never lost. However, the piece itself, the particular instance of public art, becomes outdated, outmoded, and ignored. Ultimately, this is not a solution to the notions of time-specificity or site-specificity, nor a solution that is absolute-ly necessary. In fact, part of the very fab-ric of public art is its ability to evaporate, to disappear from the eyes and lives of the viewing public, making way for a new local installation.

Public art is sculpted by the hand of the artist and the eye of the

viewing public, from the moment of its installation to the moment of its elimination, its re-moval. Public art that is neither initially nor ul-timately given any meaning by the view-ing public, has no meaning. It is therefore toppled, in total—the idea, the meaning, and in extreme cases, the artist. The time-specificity and site-specificity of art do not necessarily condemn it; instead they challenge the artist to create fresh, new public art that meets the changing de-mands of the changing viewing public, with hopes of creating and understand-ing a form of art that can transcend time and space.

Public art that is not given any meaning by the viewing public has no meaning.


Evan Burger

little philosophy

books

A Clockwork Orange

Illustrated by Arais Abbruzzi

In 1972, Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece A Clockwork Orange was released in British theaters. The film ratings

board of Great Britain had been especially hard on this viciously violent movie, and the board’s harshness was soon justified: a multitude of copycat crimes, supposedly inspired by the movie, broke out across the country. The most horrific of these involved a 17-year-old Dutch tourist raped by a gang of young men chanting—just as in the film—the lyrics to the

song “Singing in the Rain.” Kubrick subsequently bowed to public pressure and forbade the showing of the film in Great Britain, a self-imposed ban that lasted until his death in 1999. The public reaction to the movie was motivated by an unspoken theory of art and ethics; namely, that the aesthetic good is inextricably bound to the moral good, that good art makes good people. The great irony is that the work of art in question is itself an attack upon this commonly held (but rarely challenged)

assumption.Alex, the protagonist of

A Clockwork Orange, has the most refined aesthetic taste of all the characters in the movie—he loves Beethoven and appreci-ates beauty for its own sake, even if that beauty is almost solely restricted to the female

form. And yet, Alex has the blackest heart in a cast of vil-

lains. This dichotomy induces in the audience an unpleasant cog-

nitive dissonance, conflicting with our assumptions. Despite this con-

flict, Kubrick’s mastery of cinema-tography draws us into rapport with

film

29criticism

the young man. Throughout the first act of the movie, we see Alex beat a homeless man, steal a car only to run other drivers off the road, rape one woman and mur-der another. It all seems somehow playful. An early scene in which Alex’s gang fights with another group of thugs epitomizes Kubrick’s approach to violence in the first act: the young men fight with stage fur-niture that shatters upon impact, making the brawl seem lighthearted; Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie accompanies the action. Yes, we in the audience think, this violence is morally reprehensible—but it certainly is fun to watch!

This tone is sustained until Alex is arrested and sentenced for the murder of a middle-aged woman.

In prison he volunteers for an experimen-tal process that claims to cure criminals of their sociopathy. The so-called Ludovico technique conditions Alex against violence by forcing him to watch footage of crimes and evil acts while under the influence of a drug that makes him feel like he is dying. And it works. Alex is made a better person not by appreciating beautiful things, but by being forced to see the true monstrosity inherent in violence. The transformation central to the plot of A Clockwork Orange enacts a theory that contradicts the public reaction to the film: crime is reduced by showing more violent films, not fewer.

Upon release, Alex, without a home, finds himself on the street, where he meets the same characters that he per-secuted in the first act. This time they take revenge upon him, assisted by Alex’s in-ability to remain conscious during the vio-lence, a side effect of the Ludovico tech-nique. Kubrick attacked our complicity in

the depravity of the first act: he guided us to enjoy the savagery of the first act, and we gladly consented. Now, he turns the violence upon our surrogate and turns his directorial expertise to revealing the horror of that violence. And this is the director’s ultimate attack on the common conception of beauty: he uses his control over the audience’s experience to replace the drugs and straitjackets of the Ludovi-co technique with the pain we feel upon seeing the rehabilitated Alex so cruelly punished.

When the critics of A Clockwork Orange said that the movie pro-moted violence through the

sympathetic but evil character of Alex, they got the story only half right. The first act of the film certainly does this well, but only for the purpose of revealing our guilt in the third act. Thus we should see A Clockwork Orange, a movie banned in Brit-ain for twenty-seven years on the grounds of excessive violence, for the anti-violent, but philosophically radical, work of art that it actually is.

Alex is made a better person by being forced to see the true monstrosity inherent in violence.

www.gadflymagazine.com

Date post:	21-Mar-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	the-gadfly
View:	213 times
Download:	0 times

Fall 2010 Issue

Documents